Dishin' Dirt on "Are You Wasting Time Not Growing Your Real Estate Business Correctly" with Stephen Cooley.

How much time do you need to waste growing your business before you realize there just might be a better way. Stephen Cooley, the #5 agent in the world at Keller Williams tells us several ways to grow your business and stop wasting your valuable time doing tasks that others should be doing.  Stephen shares his many years of success in become one of the top agents in the World!

Also in this episode, Gary's Good News Only! and a very special segment that might actually get me cancelled. Or at least should!!  

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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

Unknown: 0:02

Welcome back to dition dirt with Gary Pickering. And on this episode, we're going to conclude our conversation with Steven Cooley. Stephen is one of the top agents in the entire world at Keller Williams. And he's going to spend some time with us today, like he did about two weeks ago to discuss how to evaluate your business growth plan. And to look financially at what your steps should be for 2021 is going to help you not only meet those goals, but hopefully exceed them. Now, well, we haven't been cancelled yet. And I know that it's amazing to some of y'all, we might actually get so when you hear our final segment today, but before we get started with Steven, I'd like to ask you to please share, like us and subscribe this podcast. We'd also like to ask you to tell all the other real estate agents in South Carolina about us, the quicker we can grow, the more good content and information we can provide for you. And we'd also ask that you please follow me on Instagram at PyCon. Gary, that's p IC k, r e n d a r y. So let's go ahead and jump right into our show with Steven. Great to be back. Gary, thank you for having me back. Awesome. Well, last week, we got a lot of response from our listeners with some particular questions. Last week, we talked mostly about why you would form a team, how you would form a team, how you bifurcate, the duties and so forth. So today, let's talk more about specific. So the first question we got from a listener was when forming a team? Is it going to guarantee me more business? Or is there a chance that I might actually take a step back financially? And if so, how long is normal for you to take a step back? Absolutely. And the answer to the the clean answer that Gary is no forming a team does not guarantee more business. What it initially guarantees is a higher expense. And so when your p&l, initially, the the income probably will not go up and expenses will go up considerably, considerably until it levels back out. And so that's why you should not go from one person to 50 people, I've got 47 people on my team, all in one big slew you want to hire and let income go up higher and less income go up. And if you hire an income doesn't go up, you hired the wrong person. I think last week, you mentioned that if you're not fully in business, meaning that you're not working six days a week, you aren't to the point you need to have a team, you may need an assistant but not a team. Yeah, when I said last week was don't give up what pays the most, when you can get a lot of the work that a realtor does done in our area for 10 or 12 or$15 an hour. So you don't want to give up what pays the most first With that said, What pays the most is also the most stressful and the hardest, you know, going on a listing appointment, Gary's a job interview, they own the home, so you don't have anything to take your attention off of you. And they're deciding whether they want to hire you in our area, I'm a 50 $500,000 home, which these days isn't that big of a home, that seller is gonna pay me $30,000. So I'm only a$30,000 job interview. And the goal is back when I was in production was to go on five to six of those per day, five days a week. And when I got out of listings at the end of 2015, I was doing that because I was listing 40 or 50 homes a month, which meant we went on 80 to 100 listings. And so going on job interviews all day long is difficult. It's stressful. I put a suit on in the morning and had another suit for the afternoon, especially in the summertime, change your search in between every listing appointment. And so that is the hard work too. And agents tend to want to shy away from what's hardest. And you've got to stay in that high paying hard job. You know, it's an oven and it's 500 degrees in there. Most agents want to jump in and jump out. If you stay in there and pay everybody do everything else in the kitchen. That's where you make all the money. I had an agent one time told me that how they figured out they needed a team to take a sheet of paper out and over a course of seven days to write down where they spent all their time. And what I think they would most agents would find out is that where most of their time is spent is clerical stuff where they can hire an assistant, which doesn't pay you any money. Like you said you could hire somebody for 10 or 15 bucks an hour. Let them take that off your plate. And then the second is the actual showing of home because of the skill level what you like to do most of the listing and I think that takes the most skill level because you're on a job interview, trying to get people to trust you with a $30,000 listing impossible commission. But perhaps the least or one of the easier parts might be the showing of the house and so if they can show the house that takes a lot of time off of your plate So that's one of those areas, I think that that's actually very smart on doing that. And if you're going on two listings a week, and you hire hail, and you don't increase the number of listings you go on, you will now make more money because you're paying people. So as you hire people to 85% of what we do can be done clerical Lee by 10, to 12 to $15 an hour people 85% of what we do. So the 15% that you're doing, now, you need to fill that up to 100% of your work week. So we make the money, that's where you make the money. So if you're going on two listings a week, you need to go on to a day, now that you've got a listing coordinator and a transaction coordinator, listing coordinator doing everything with the listing, when you bring the file back, and you negotiate the contract, when a contract comes in, you give it to the transaction coordinator that does everything to closing. And now you've got an entire listing team with you the listing agent, those are your two hires, and but if you still only go on those two, you will you will go in the hole and probably go out of business. So the goal is to stay in the oven more. But you know, and what your advice is there really applies for any type of business, whether you're a lawyer, your doctor, your real estate agent, mortgage lender, we have a business coach, and Sandy constantly asked us, is this valuable time? What is your rate of return on your time, and as a lawyer or a real estate agent? Is the rate of return on your time entering in data in a computer? Or is it face to face with your consumer trying to sign more clients up or and doing closing? So I think your advice is very well received there. And I'll just add into there, there's two pieces of the puzzle that you need to go climb on a mountaintop and go deep in your soul. And make sure that you're bought into number one, you need to be a money motivated person. You know, a lot of people aren't money motivated, thank god teachers and nurses and firemen and police officers are not necessarily money motivated, or they wouldn't have taken those incredible, amazing careers. But you got to be a money motivated person to pull all this all this out. And the second thing you got to do is remove fear. Fear from leading people fear from I had an agent that told me the other day, she said I read were one out of 25 clients will be combative enough possibly to sue you. So her goal was to do 24 deals a year to avoid that one, that one client might sue you. So we'll do it. We'll do 1002 deals this year. 1000 sales. So using her numbers, you know, that means I've got what's the math but 2030 lawsuits on my desk, I don't have that many as you know, I but um, you can't let you got to be money motivated. Your people need you to be money motivated, because you can get raises and, and that and then you've got to remove fear from everything about leading people, having more deals means more happy clients, sad clients plus the client. And we've got to go deep on those two things and keep my mindset there at all times, Gary, I have to be motivated to succeed at a higher level than yesterday. And I've got to remove fear from my decisions. And that's the beginning of building a team. I tell agents all the time, if you won't, if you're very risk adverse. They go work at Walmart stand at the door and greet people when they leave, and you pretty much have no risk. But the fact that you are a real estate licensed professional says that you understand there's risk because you don't get paid unless you close, there's no greater risk than not getting paid. Yeah, what I would do initially, before these things land on your desk, I would make sure that I understood labor law, I'd make sure that I had I interviewed an attorney that would work before I got in a lawsuit. If that's not the best time to hire one, I would make sure I really went deep with meeting with my CPAs I'd make sure I understand how trust accounts work so you can set money aside that's not suitable and and you know you you've saved me before Gary and and the relationship that we've had. So that's so valuable to building a substantial business with a strong foundation. Don't skip those things and find out that you didn't set it up properly. It's not that expensive. You just got to get you just got to set those up at a at a high level and not skip how to build a business while you're building a team. There's a lot of good books out there. There's a lot of good teachers out there that have coaches and inside your own company. There's usually agents like Steven that are more than willing to give you some advice and counsel on those. Absolutely and I call on people who are doing better than I am, maybe in a certain section of their business, I also um, you know, I read a lot. And I'm and I have I have two coaches, I have a business goes to a life coach, you know, there's all types of things to keep, keep a business up and running, that's just not out showing a house or putting a home on the market. Absolutely. Well, the next question we have from a listener was, do you become just a manager when you create a team? Or can you keep doing what you like most about real estate, and I think you've kind of touched on that. But as well, I'm not sure what to say before you become a leader, not a manager, a manager, shows people steps and holds them accountable to those steps, a leader takes people to the next level, a leader is here for their people, a leader eats life. Right? Right. And so you have agents that you recruit, they have an admin people that you are, they're looking for a leader, and you're not going to be able to keep them from being recruited from you, or even come to work with you initially, unless you lead people, yes, you can have one employee, and they're looking for you to be their leader, just like if I went to work at Bank of America, I'm looking into the CEO, you become the CEO of that one person on your first hire. And so that's what you move into. And you know, as you can attest to Gary, labor law applies to you whether you have one employee or 1000, right. So you need to understand labor law, you need to understand what's okay to say and what isn't okay to say in job interviews, and just daily in the office, you know, you can't have the relationship with someone that you are due to labor laws, you can't have the relationship you would have with your buddy, right. And there's another law that we all need to look at two, which is a licensing law for agents, because there's very specific things that a licensed non licensed agent can and can't do. So for instance, your unlicensed assistant can't show property they can't explain contract. So you need to look at that state law as to unlicensed agents are assistant. And then secondly, as you know, the team name is a big issue. So you have to be very careful on. And I still don't understand what it really matters, whether we call you the Steven Cooley real estate team, or the Steven Cooley team that sells units that people live in. I mean, we don't want people know, we sell real estate, and it's the stupid as long as they have, that they don't want teams using the names or names. It's asinine, but that's a whole nother discussion. I'd like to transition on to topics I think are very important. One is how do you find successful people to work on your team? When you're hiring agents? I'm talking about not assistants, but agents? Are you trying to hire new agents? Are you going out and finding agents with a book of business? Or are you finding out finding agents that have no business, but you think they would be good at a particular set? Yeah, all the times that I've been in content where their coach or being masterminds with, no matter how big the team is, the DNA of the original founder of the team flows through that it flows through in customer service, attitude, culture, and who they attract. And Gary, I got in the business at 21. And I was number one in my MLS at 23. And so I'm drawn to younger people. With that said, My youngest agents twin and my oldest Agent 79. I like this is where I what I personally like, I like an agent who's been in it long enough to realize how hard it is out there on their own. And not so long that I can't change their work habits and, and accountability and teach them my methods that have been proven to work over the methods that they may have learned over five or 10 years and only sold a you know, a few homes a year. And so I love you know, agents who come on my team that are brand new, kind of always wonder if it's just like this everywhere. And agents have been a long time who come on my team, we really have to go deep with this is how we do it. Just because my name is on it. So we've got a standard. So I like I like six months to two to three years in the business. You've been in it 10 years and not doing well. I probably can't change that. Right. And I ever found and this is a hard thing. As a business owner. We know we have almost 50 employees here as well. Do you find that sometimes you just made a mistake and the person is just no longer a good fit. I think what's important for people understand is it's okay to sometimes admit failure and say this just isn't gonna work. We need to go a different direction. Gary, I'm single and I said I can date I can date you for five years and not know yet but I can work with you for 90 days and no way. That's true. We are under a 90 day trial period. And, and get to know the person and just make sure we're the right fit and they're the right fit for us and It's not failure if we made that mistake, because all the assessments, and we do to online assessments, all the meetings, and we try to meet with people in multiple settings, including in the evening, and then bring other significant people in their labs to that meeting, but you still go hit it wrong, Sam, and you just got to understand that it's not failure on your part or there. And you really don't know people until you get in business with them. I think it was Nelson Mandela said that we don't have failures, we have lessons and we win, or we learn. And I think those are learning experiences. And I think people that are so worried about failure, you mentioned that about risk aversion. If you're so fearful of failing, you're never going to succeed. That's exactly right. You know, I'm gonna be here, whether they stay or not, but so it's bigger failure in their life than mine. And so I really try to go deeper for their benefit than I do for my own. And so I really, really don't enjoy being someone's failure in their lives. In my personal life and professional life, I don't want to be someone's failure. And so I do go deeper to protect them over me. Right? Well, then do you set up compensation for team member agents? Do you typically? And how should teams do it? When I mean, you, you are good example. But what do teams look at? are they paying up a set percentage of commission? are they paying by the hour to agents? How would they handle their agents, I would say you need to look at a value proposition if you're going to do big marketing. And you're going to do a lot of own line purchasing of clicks and leads, and you're going to provide a heavy staff and office space and computers and closing listing coordinators, closing coordinators, then you're going to need to reflect that in your commission split. If you're going, there's gonna be two or three agents come together and maybe hire up a transaction coordinator, but call themselves a team, then then you probably can have higher splits. And so if you look at teams across the country exceeding at a high level, we almost all have the same splits. And no one told us what worked, we just found that what didn't work, it's like all being on different islands and creating a wheel, all that show up with a wheel that rolls all the wheels around. Right? Right. But the people the square wheels didn't make it to the to the competition. So we end up this interesting enough finding out what you can afford to do and what you can do. And it really needs to be based on what you bring to the table. Not at all, no one's telling teams how to structure themselves. So some things do know marketing. Some things by no internet lead, sometimes provide no office space, and I pay I pay all the fees and dues with Keller Williams and MLS and association realtors and lockboxes. My teams have zero expenses. So you know, somewhere that's got to be reflected in splits. So our last question, because I know we're running short on time again, we could spend two days talking with you, though, you know so much about this topic, before anybody sit starts their own team, I think the number one thing they need to do is business plan. Would you agree? Absolutely business plan. And listen, you don't want to fail at this. And you really don't want to not be able to support the people you hire. So business plan is step one. And really, again, what are you goals, you know, don't don't be motivated by other people's motivation be motivated by your own, and realize these decisions you make, or a commitment, their commitment to the people you have the days I don't feel great. I put on the suit, I get up, dressed up and show up, or those 46 other people. And so you've got to be in it for other people's success to now evaluate my success by two things, the service we provide to the public and the success of the team member. And that's my two meters of success, not my bank account. And I found that if I focus on those two are the people happy and making money who work on my team, and our clients really taking care of that the highest level with the best service, then the money is a symptom of success, right? And I don't have to focus. I don't I focus on number, but I don't focus on my money. Because I keep the focus on those two things. And so you got to go deep and make sure that's where you're at. People are not going to work for you if you're not for them. Well, one thing for sure you have been tremendously successful. You're the number four agent in the entire world for Keller Williams, which when you think of that, starting in Rock Hill, South Carolina, that Rock Hill, South Carolina agent has become the number four agent and I say that again in the entire world for Keller Williams. I'm sitting in Rock Hill right now I live in Fort Mill and and I am a South Carolinian and we're knocking charlet hard and we're doing great business up there, but always always be a small town boy. Well, you've done an incredible job and you've provided us some incredible information these last two episodes. I thank you very much. I know the agents that are listening. Thank you very much. Tell us one more time How can agents follow you so they can just follow me on Instagram. It's my name is Steven Cooley reached out to me there. You know, I'm limited on time some days, but I'm happy to help anybody. So they don't skip a step and regret it later. So I've always been that way. Thank Gary, thank you for being here for my business over the years. And thank you for having me today. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Before we get to our next segment, like to thank our sponsor this week real estate school for success. If you are your friend and looking to get licensed as a real estate agent, then look no further than real estate school for success. They have a unique online course system to get your license. While most courses consist of PowerPoint slides where you have to read and teach yourself at real estate school for success or online class is video of my good friend, Frankie Griffin teaching and explaining what you need to know so that you pass the exam, the full 60 hour unit one and the 30 hour unit two classes unlike any others, you will find online, register at real estate school for success.com. And now Gary's good news only. As y'all know, I usually start the segment with news about the economy and then the real estate market and I finish up by talking about the Coronavirus but because we have such phenomenal news as we concerning the Coronavirus. I think it's best that we start there. Now I know a lot of y'all may have just completely tuned out the news because of all the election chaos. But Pfizer this week announced that their vaccine that they have developed has been found to be 90% effective in preventing the spread of the COVID virus 90% effective. They've also said that they could produce 50 million doses of this vaccine before the years in so less than a month and a half. They also said that before the end of 2021 that they could produce and distribute 1.3 billion doses of the vaccine as well. Now when you start looking around the world, you'll start seeing that other countries such as Russia, India, China and England have also reported that they are on the last stages of having their vaccine ready for mass distribution. As a result of all this, our financial news is on the way up. The Dow Jones flirted a couple of times this week with 30,000 points, that job growth was stronger than expected in October, that the economy added 638,000 new jobs, and that the unemployment rate dropped from 6.9%. from previous 7.9%. CNBC also reported the higher the lockdown, we were nearly 15% unemployment. So we've almost gained half of that, or actually, we have gained half of it back. And most economists thinks it the actual unemployment rate numbers are probably closer to 20% when you look at people who are still employed, but not allowed to work. So the economy is roaring back. The vaccine is on the horizon. And it looks like things are continuing to look up. And that is Gary's good news only. Now that brings us to our final segment today. Now, as many of y'all know, there's a couple things I really like in life. One is obviously baseball. I also love good craft beer. And of course, the Cleveland Browns. And I know the last one is kind of crazy, but ya know, we're actually doing well this season. But the other thing that I like, was something that happened this week. And I know while the world was hanging, trying to figure out who was going to be the president united states and the votes were being counted and all the craziness that was going on with that on Thursday night. There was something that happened on ABC that was equally as epic that had to demand our attention. And I had to watch it. And of course, I'm talking about the bachelorette. Now, I know, I know. I don't watch The Bachelorette either. I do watch The Bachelor, and my friends, Jonathan Stackhouse and Chris Clough actually have a show about the bachelor, its own. You can find it on YouTube, you go to YouTube and type in Blair Cato. And when our page comes up, you'll see three dudes talk about the bachelor, and we do it every week during the bachelor season. And it's great we make fun of the show and have a good time with it. But we don't watch The Bachelorette and I personally won't watch it because anytime I want to see 25 dudes that no one girl I can go to any bar in South Carolina and see that so I don't really need to see it on TV. I know it's a double standard. It is what it is. But on the bachelorette this week, the show has been on for like two weeks and Claire is your Bachelorette. And apparently after like just two weeks and maybe like an hour and 37 minutes of knowing this guy named Dale moss. He's apparently a former football player in the NFL. I've never heard of him. I don't think anybody else either has but after knowing that guy for that little amount of time, she decides she's madly in love with a guy. So Chris Harrison comes to her suite and says Claire, what's going on? And he uses a bunch of cuss words to show how upset he is about it. And she professes her love for this guy Dale, which she's barely known. Well, at this point, Chris is like, what do we do so they bring Dale over. And she spends a little time professing her love for Dale, who then reciprocates and professes his love for her. Now after like an hour and 40 minutes now total time of knowing each other, they go to the fantasy suite. And then the next morning, they come out and they decide they're madly in love. So Claire tails, Chris Harrison, she's done. So if she has to go tell all the boys that she's no longer going to date any of them. They had no rows for you one year, they act like they happy for her. But really, they're seeing they're really pissed off about this, you know, they quit their jobs, they took time off, they bought clothes, and they worked out and got their chest waxed, and they're very pissed about it now. So nevertheless, tell the boys Well, hold on, we'll figure something out. So now Chris goes back to Claire and says, Well, what are we going to do now is they're gonna ask you to marry him, which I don't think is actually actually entered this woman's head or a thought. I don't know if she's capable of thinking, but I don't know that it entered her mind. So at that point, Dale decides he's gonna ask her and he asked her there on national TV after knowing this young lady for about an hour and 48 minutes. So she says yes, they hug. She gives them a rose. And they're off. So now we have no Bachelorette, except for Chris rescues a day by bringing in a backup. We literally go the backup quarterback in this one and get some girl named Tiana, who was on The Bachelor that was her name. And so the boys seem to be relieved. And the show rolls on and that is your Bachelorette update for this week. And I swear you will never get another one from me. But it was just so epic that only on 2020 would The Bachelorette literally fall in love after like an hour and 50 something minutes and it'd be over. So that's the bachelorette for you. And that's our show again this week. I'd like to thank Steven Cooley for bringing such incredible knowledge on how to help grow your business and maybe even looking at forming a team. Steven has given you so much information. I just can't thank Stephen enough. You can always learn something even if you've been doing this for a day or been doing this for 30 years. So thank you very much. If you liked the show again, I ask you to please like us share subscribe, please pass the word to any real estate agent in South Carolina doesn't matter where they are. We want them listening so that we can continue to grow this show. And don't forget to follow me at Pickering Gary on Instagram. Hope you guys have a fantastic weekend and we will see you soon.