Dishin' Dirt on "Building your Real Estate Business and When to Add People to Help You" with Stephen Cooley.

On this episode of Dishin' Dirt, the #5 real estate agent in the WORLD for Keller Williams, Stephen Cooley of the Stephen Cooley Real Estate Group at Keller Williams, joins us to give agents great business advice on how to run a successful business. He focuses on when adding an assistant is good for your business and when and how to form and run a top producing team. Whether you are on a team or not, Stephen provides great information that will help any agent build a successful business.  He is #5 in the WORLD after all.  Also, Jordan Stallings of Blair Cato  joins me to update us on county tax bills.  And of course, I will have another segment of Corona Crazy Closings and Gary's Good News Only! This week it is all in the numbers.

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* Gary serves on the South Carolina Real Estate Commission as a Commissioner. The opinions expressed herein are his opinions and are not necessarily the opinions of the SC Real Estate Commission. This podcast is not to be considered legal advice. Please consult an attorney in your jurisdiction for applicable legal advice germane to your issue.

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* Gary serves on the South Carolina Real Estate Commission as a Commissioner. The opinions expressed herein are his opinions and are not necessarily the opinions of the SC Real Estate Commission. This podcast is not to be considered legal advice. Please consult an attorney in your area.

Transcript

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coming up this week on deshon dirt with Gary pickin we have a really great guest today is going to be Steven Cooley from the Steven Cooley Real Estate Group. Steven Cooley is the team leader of a team of 45 real estate agents that are ranked number one in North Carolina and South Carolina for Keller Williams. Not only is he ranked high in North Carolina, South Carolina, but he is ranked number five in the entire world for Keller Williams has sold over 11,000 homes in his 30 year career. Luckily, Steve is a good friend of mine. So I was able to persuade him to come to y'all today and talk about teams how to form a team, when should you form a team as forming a team right for everybody. So we'll have a good conversation with him coming up here in just a few minutes. My law partner Jordan Stallings is also going to join us one more time to update us on what tax bills have come out for which county and of course, no episode would be complete, without crazy Corona closings. And Gary's good news only before we start today, even though every single platform will basically publish anything you put on it, which basically is why we got published, I would like to thank everybody that is listening to us, I received some really good emails over the last couple of days about how people are really enjoying the podcast and sharing it with other agents. And so if you do like us, we'd ask that you please like us, share us and subscribe so that you can get all of our episodes, they come out every Thursday morning, we'll always be under 30 minutes, it will always be about things that matter to real estate agents without all of the fluff and wasted time that you don't have to listen to a podcast. So we always try to make it short and sweet for you. And we hope that you will like it. Of course, you know, you can find us on any podcast platform typing in Gary pequin, podcast PRC k arienne. And it will show up on any podcast or even in Google. So let's go ahead and jump right into our episode today. Because I know Steven Cooley is going to have so much great information to share with you. And I'm really excited about having Steven here today with us because Stephens a legend in real estate has been doing this for 30 years. And if you're in the Rock Hill, Fort Mill area, Charlotte area, no doubt, you know, Steven, his billboards are everywhere, His signs are everywhere, his marketing's everywhere, he's just really an incredible marketing genius. But what's great about Stephen, if you ever have the opportunity to go to a Keller Williams event, your national national event, you will 100% see Steven there, and you'll see a lot of real estate agents trying to figure out how they can get some time with Stephen to learn from him. And Stephens always willing to help other agents. And that's one thing I've always liked about him. And when I reached out to him, I said, Hey, Steven, would you join me for a podcast, there was no hesitation immediately said, Yeah, I'll be happy to do it and help any way I can. So, Steven, I really appreciate you being here. I'm really excited to just jump right into it. Gary, thanks for having me today. honored to be here and share my story with you. I've been in business for 31 years, and I've been building a team for 27 of those years, I go back to building a team so far back that in 1991, I hired an agent to assist me and the real estate commission and South Carolina investigated me for three years, why they could not figure out why a realtor would hire a realtor. How about and they were getting me under agency relationship and who was actually representing the client. So I have no documentation to prove this. But I believe I've started building the first team in the state of South Carolina. And for what it's worth, I don't think the real estate commission is still figured out how to do that. Exactly right. You have had these conversations over the past few years, have we not? So your team is one of the largest teams in the Carolinas how many members are on your team right now. There's currently 47 team members 29 of those are agents in production, most of the of the 45 plus our license, but the restaurant support staff. So 1329 in production and a total of about 47. You have a great team. It's very productive. It's been around, as you said for many, many years. But when we talk about forming teams, a team could literally be two ages together or an agent and a couple of systems. Absolutely. You know, probably one of the most successful teams setups that I've seen. Gary is a high producing agent, and a couple of really good licensed assistants that are involved in every deal. But also the the heavy producer is to those three or four people make a very successful team. When you want to create a team. What do you need to do to start the formation of the team? Was there a magical formula that I should say I'm an agent, I'm producing such a high volume now Is there a number that says when you get to this number, that's when you need to form a team? Yeah, I think that it you know, numbers or units are always also based on sales price. So in the Carolinas we're a low price point when you look at the entire nation and the entire world. And so we're typically higher volume teams the Carolinas, then maybe someone in Los Angeles or Miami or New York, and so more by your mangy probably need to build a team a little bit sooner when the the the success sets. And when the primary agent is overwhelmed, to the point they need to give up some job duties, to keep their sanity and get a bigger business. And initially, it's kind of like owning a restaurant, initially, you're the chef, the waiter, the hostess, the busboy, the, you know, all the 30 people that work in a restaurant, but as you grow, you'll realize you can't do all those things and and stay sane and continue to grow. That dizziness is the sign that you need to hire. And when I say busy that six days a week, 12 hour days, and teams, people who hire sooner than that tend to fail. So if I had, if I was doing, say 20 units a year, it doesn't seem like I need to form a team at that point. Now I'm just trying to get somebody to work because I don't want to work I need to be fully vested fully employed in what I'm doing. I and most single independent agents who don't form teams, Gary, still need to hire hire clerical, maybe even part time Hale attorney or a doctor who's a one person operation will probably still have someone answering the phone, and filing files and maybe running, getting them lunch and making sure the cars clean and a new yard signs have been wiped down and things like that. So even an independent agent who's not building a team probably should hire a good staff person, you know, and I'm in South Charlotte, upstate South Carolina, you're in Columbia. Now you can get that in our area for 10 or $11 an hour. So when I decide I want to start my team, I've gotten to the point where I've got six days a week, inundated, I want to grow my team for two reasons. Obviously I want to grow so I can make more money, but also want to grow a team to take some of the stress off like you were talking about. Obviously, the admin i think is the most important thing, the first thing and you're doing that even before you form a team is having that admin as you said, What is the next person I'm looking at? Am I looking at a buyer's agent? Am I looking at a listing agent? What am I looking at, I would say that you give up the big money making task last. And I'm probably two really good assistants, one licensed, maybe both licensed, and you're still the agent. And probably that third or fourth hire, probably fourth hire my opinion would be someone that's also in production, because that's the last thing you give up. Because that's where the big big money's at, you know, you can pay qualified staff people 12 $15 an hour. But when we as agents, when we're on a listing appointment, or we're showing the right house to the right buyer, we're billing at over$1,000 an hour, and in some markets three or 4000 an hour. And that should be the very last business you give up. And so if you can have four people at 15 bucks an hour, and you still go on the listings and show the right house to the right buyer, you should still be in production. I was in production 28 of my 31 years. So you're not in production. Now you're man, you're basically managing That's exactly right. And if I'm in production, I'll take a producing agent with me and they get the business I go because the client required me to go and I certainly will go and and building a team, I believe the people that I've hired for this specific job duties that I've hired them for are better at those job duties than I am. So when I you know turn my marketing over to my marketing director, she's better than me. And when I send out a one of my incredible listing agents, that's their one thing, Gary, they do nothing else. And so they're better than me. Well, and I think that's a very important concept that you just talked on. Having a team doesn't necessarily what I hear you saying doesn't necessarily mean I hire the exact same person as me. And the two of us are doing the exact same thing all day long. You know, the last person to replace yourself, I mean, replace all these things that we don't like to do. And I truly found myself only enjoying going on listings and showing the right house to the right buyer. I never enjoyed typing things into MLS, putting up yard signs, you know the things that you can get done fairly cheap, cheaply, compared to what we make as real estate agents. I need you to come talk to my office as lawyers if we can get rid of things We don't like to do so I can do these things which I do like to do, which is the marketing and, and I think you are a marketing genius. I see your signs all over the Charlotte area. And I think you're nominal what you do. And one mistake that team builders make is they, they give up the job duties, Gary to stay home. And the only time I give up a job duty in my office, after I've conquered that job duty, my sales is given up to someone more qualified for me than I am. So I can then put my time into more things to build the company and the team. Well, that's the most important thing you said today, and I 100% agree with you. People think if they form a team, the team just works for them. They can go about doing whatever they want, and just make money off your team. But like any business, if the owner of the business does not have his hands or her hands in that business every day, it's not going to work, right? That's exactly right. We did a recruiting video a couple of weeks ago, and one of my agents who's on the recruiting video is testimonies from my agent. And this is what Amy Lam said. She said, I work for Steven Cooley, because he sets the standard for hard work in our office, he remains the hardest working person and our organization. Gary, that's the only way I've found long term to have people work for you is you be the lead the lead dog in the pack. And you show them a work habit and a work standard in the teams that the owner stops doing that those teams are usually on some slowdown process over a period of time where they're not going to be as successful as they could be. Well, I think that's outstanding advice. regardless what kind of business you're in, if you're going to own a business, you have to be fully invested. But going back a comment you made earlier about bifurcating the duties, I think that's an outstanding idea. Because if I if I do buyers and sellers and you do buyers and sellers, and we're on the same team, all we're doing is just two agents that just I don't know what why we're forming a team. If you're best at listing meetings, and you like that aspect, and I love showing buyers homes, then we should bifurcate those duties and not repeat what each other's doing. Absolutely. And the the success is there, there are really great agents in production that have two or three really good staff people, and they can make what us big team owners make. And so the options are there for small team to make as much as a team owner, you should never give up the big money making things until the very, very last moment. And I agree with you also, I don't think you should give up the things that you truly enjoy doing either because we work more than we do anything else. If you really look at other than sleep, you probably you probably don't sleep a lot with much more because you do. But you spend most of your time at work. And so if you are going to be a successful team leader, I think having the joy and letting others know how much you enjoy, it shows about the type of work you do. And as you said, You love working with the sellers. And so that is the thing to do. The other aspect I think I really appreciate you said was that when you have people doing specific jobs, they can become the best at that job. Absolutely, everyone should be the expert at what they do. And that makes the entire group extremely strong. When everyone specializes in something, and our clients go through our clients almost touch every desk and our office. And so each each staff person has a one piece of that puzzle. And so a client goes through each of the processes from marketing the home, all the way to the closing. And it makes the client feel really special when they've got a specialist. And each of those departments it does make a client feel good knowing they have somebody that's going to handle that aspect. Do you find that and this is something that I think stops a lot of people from forming teams is that a they don't want to give up their contact with a consumer. They don't want to hand them off to somebody else. Or they're fearful that the consumer hire them because they're the face of the company and now they're working with a particular buyer agent. Have you found that your clients have any concerns about that? I think that in our mind, if you really peel back the layers on what you just said, Gary, it comes down to my ego. My ego doesn't want the client to be happy with other people and my ego wants me to be aware of the Superman cape and jump into the deal and save it. But if you remove your ego from that, that question as an agent, the answer would then be clear. Is the agents ego that thinks that okay, and that took a lot of time for me to really go deep and understand that it was only my ego that know that The study done on restaurants. And the more people that serve the table during the the consumers visit to the restaurant, the higher the tip will be. And so if you go into a roof Chris or a really high end restaurant, you'll notice you've got, you know, a waiter, you've got a water person, you got a food carrier, you got a dessert person, you got a wine person, the manager stops by, the chef may stop by all these things, because what's proven is the tip is higher, the more people that touch the table, who works there throughout the day, and I don't think people's mentality shifts from restaurants, to airlines, to hotels, to customer service in real estate or doctor's office, I think the more people you see why you're at the doctor, the more more you care, you feel like you've been given. And one of your friends at Keller, Williams and Maryland, the number one agent in Maryland, I spoke with him one day about this. And he was saying the same thing that a lot of is the presentation you give as a team that you present up front that we are a team, and this person is going to show you these houses because that's what they're best at, this person here is going to walk you through the repair addendum, because that's what they're best at. And I over here, I'm going to be overseeing all these and jumping in when needed and having conversations with you. So that your presentation is that you're not getting one agent, you're getting all of this. Absolutely, you know, we as we as human beings, and we as workers, realtors, it's very hard to switch, switch your mindset from talking to a seller, which is a job interview, to talking to a buyer, which is a personal shopper mentality to dealing with a home repair to dealing with a customer complaint dealing with this and that it's very hard for us as individuals to wear those hats throughout the day and be good at them. And so that I don't think a lot of agents can be because we spend a lot of time learning how to do listing presentations. And we don't spend as much time learning how to do buyer presentation. So when you have one that's phenomenal at doing the buyer presentation, that's where they should concentrate. Yeah. I've never been good enough to be good at all that you're doing something very good. Well, I know we're out of time. So can I please beg you we have a lot more to cover. Can I please beg you to come back next week and do our podcast one more week? Because I know a lot of questions are going to come from this podcast. Gary, that sounds great. And I'll see you next week. All right. And before we go, how can real estate agents get a follow you I know you probably have an instinct absolutely follow my personal page because I post so much about from affirmations to real estate ideas to all that is just on on Instagram. Steven Cooley my name. All right. Well, we will see you next week. Stephen, thank you so much. All right, Bubba. So back with us again. Today is Jordan Stallings from our Lexington office. So Jordan, tell us what's going on with taxes. And I guess the easiest way to do it is let's break it down by section to the state. So give me what's going on in the Upstate with property tax. upstate Anderson Pickens and your county are all out. Noticeably missing or Greenville Spartanburg in Oconee counties. And how about in the Midlands? What's going on? Richmond, Lexington, Calhoun are all out. We don't have anything from Sumpter, Kershaw, or Fairfield. And then in the low country, what counties around Charleston and Berkeley are out. We don't have anything from Dorchester, colliton, or Buford counties, though. So it looks like it's about what 15 or 16 of the all the counties in the state. That's all that's out so far as we enter almost into November. That's right. So we're reporting 16 are out of the 46. It's still 30. Pending that we're aware of Florence and Ori County are both out. So another two big counties in the state. So what have you seen so far happen as a result of some of these tax bills coming out? Have you seen any issues with that? One big issue to point out this time, especially if you're writing a contract Now that might be closing within the next 30 days, we're seeing where a lender for the seller is holding an escrow account. They're anticipating paying that 2020 tax bill now that it's out, but it's not showing as paid at the county yet. So they may have pulled it out of the escrow account, but haven't actually paid the county and the county marked it and checked it off with being paid. So now that it's a lien against title, we have to collect it and pay it on the seller side of the closing statement. So it looks like the seller is now paying out of their escrow account and on the closing statement, and they're gonna have to wait for a refund to come back from one of the two. So it does stink because we're a seller, you're sitting there having to essentially pay taxes, what feels like twice and get refunded back. What What about you what are you saying? Well, we had a big issue just this week where the seller was at 6% the buyer was at 4%. The Richland County tax bill literally came out the morning of the closing. So this buyer was expecting to get a huge credit from the seller at 6%. And then he was gonna apply for taxes at 4% And then reap the benefits of that under our ccra contract. The problem is because the tax bill came out, it's a lien against the property as you know, so we had to collect 10 months at 6% from the seller and two little over two months from the buyer at 6%. And then when the refund is issued, the contract selling or what to do with the refund so the refund will come back to us unless the parties can agree otherwise, we all we can do is re prorate it and give each party back its share. Assuming not a heavy sell. Yeah, this buyer thought he was gonna get about a $5,000 credit at closing. So it made about a $5,000 difference in the amount of money he had to bring to closing and his lender had to explain that Why all of a sudden he had been told to bring 10 to closing now he had to make 15,000 so wasn't a good good thing. Let me guess I was Richmond County releasing it on a busy Friday right? Yes, that's how Richland County rolls? Yes, exactly. One. Thanks, Jordan for being with us. This update is brought to you by Blair Cato, Pickering and Castro along with offices in Greenville, Lexington where Jordan is and in Columbia. Blair Cato is moving forward together with you. Thanks, Gary. And now we're at my favorite part of the show Corona crazy closings. You know 2020 is basically just sucked. And if you look back from Kobe Bryant dying and Prince Harry and Megan Markel, stepping down from the throne, not just good. I could really care less about that one. But other bad things have happened. You know, like the Coronavirus and murder Hornets and other crazy stuff, hurricanes 2020 has just been awful. And nothing shows how people are on the edge and stressed out quite like these two facts to me. Number one is that this year, I have 13 active cases I'm handling for real estate agents at the real estate commission. These are cases in which buyers and other agents have filed grievance against them. Normally, I have two to three cases going at a time this year 13. And this week's crazy Corona closing, it kind of exemplifies that we had a situation where the lender was having some issues getting a closing package to us the day of closing and the consumer, we had let know the issues but they decided to come to our office anyway for closing at scheduled time. Even though we told them we didn't have a package. And after sitting for about an hour with a lender telling us we have a package any minute. Finally, the consumer decided to leave and go home. Well, of course what happens the loan package finally comes in. But now it's like six o'clock. And and trying to help this client, one of our associate attorneys, Brandon decided to call the client say look, I'll stay late, and I'll get it closed. So the consumer drives on back down to the office. But instead of being happy that Brandon stayed late into the evening to get him close, he decided basically to cuss Brandon out for the fact that he was having to close after six o'clock, I guess Brandon could have gone home and not done the closing. But it was interesting that because Brandon decided to help the guy out and stay late that brand new couldn't be the brunt of his anger. Nevertheless, it's just another example of how everybody here in 2020 is on edge. And even when things happen for their benefit, they still still can't handle and that is this week's Corona crazy closing. So roll rod into Gary's good news only. And the title of this section is going to be called numbers, numbers numbers, because that's what we're going to be looking at today. There are a lot of great numbers out there in the economy and with the COVID virus, that if you just look hard enough you can find. So the first number let's talk about what the third quarter growth for gross domestic product is going to be. And this is a very important number, if you'll remember the GDP probably for the last 810 years has not been over three 4% for any given month, we are looking at according to the Federal Reserve, a growth number of 35.3% for the third quarter, that number is gonna come out on October 29, which is the day we issue the podcast. And that's very important because when you look at that number, if that number comes to fruition, that will show the largest growth since World War Two by more than two times. And so it is going to be an outstanding number. If that number comes back. That will basically be a complete recovery from the second quarter drop that we had. Now other numbers to share with you new home sales are up 32.1% year over year, according to housing wise fantastic news for our builders mortgage REITs had another record low at 2.8% for 30 year fix and we can tell I still feel that with all the refinances that are going on. Economic confidence also jumped to 118.3. That's up eight points from August and it's the highest it's been since March when the state's locked down now on the Coronavirus, Health and Human Services is reporting that patients with COVID in hospitals is down to 6% of hospitalizations that means 6% of the people in Hospitals had COVID not were there for COVID. But they were there with COVID at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, it was 24%. And that was back in April, the number has can continue to drop and drop dramatically. There also was a study, the guess that I read yesterday, I thought was interesting. And again, it goes back to numbers. Testing levels are at a six time rate of what they were in April, meaning that when they were testing for people with COVID, six times more people are getting tested daily for COVID. So if you test six times more people and get six times more positive numbers, that does not mean that the disease is exacerbated, it means it is level. For example, if 100 people tested in April, and six of them tested positive, you have a 6% positivity, right. But today, if 1000 people test and 60 test positive, you still have a 6% rate. Even though 54 more people tested positive, it doesn't mean that the right is getting worse, it means a race exactly the same. It's just more people are being tested. And that's something that I think is getting lost in some of these numbers. Now the other thing Food for Thought is testing, who's making money on tests, the average test cost $140.59. Total spent in the USA Today for testing is $18.4 billion. With a B, they are averaging daily amount of $152 million in testing. Now you can do what you want with the numbers. But my granddad used to tell me, when it comes up things in the news, look at where the dollars are. And that's all you need to see just some food for thought today. Do what you like with those numbers. And that's our silly little show for today. But before I put the dishes in the sink and call it a wrap, I like to thank Patrick Patrick's an owner and broker in charge of a real estate company in Sumpter. And he sent me a really, really nice email said he enjoys our podcast and the videos that we send out. He said he sends them to his agents every Friday and plans on using some of the talking points from the podcast and the team meeting next Friday. So Patrick, thank you for that. And we will of course try to keep content very relevant so that you can continue to do that with your agents. We'd also like to thank obviously Steven Cooley for spending a lot of time with us today. I think it was a lot of valuable information not only about teams, but just how to run a business in general. And I'm very excited that Steven has agreed to come back again and share his knowledge and wisdom with us again, so if y'all please tune in next week to listen to Steven, talk even more in detail about business, how to grow your business, as well as how to form a team. But in the meantime, please like us, please share us, please subscribe to us. But really, I really need you to share it because the more you can get the word out about this podcast, the better. We'll have an opportunity to get some more guests in here and keep providing all with valuable content. Anyway, y'all have a great weekend and see y'all soon