S5 E17: Running your team like a business!

Ren Jones (00:04):
It’s that time. Welcome to Roadmap, how to take three listings a week until you’re ready for more. Each week we interview great agents, taking two, three, four listings a week. This week is a topic show. We encourage you to take notes and apply as much of the knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat principle. Let me introduce my co-host from San Diego, Carley Hathaway. That’s carleyhathaway.com.

Carley Hathaway (00:39):
Hi, Ren.

Ren Jones (00:39):
Howdy.

Carley Hathaway (00:40):
Hi, Ren. Hi everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in and we’re so excited for today’s interview.

Ren Jones (00:47):
Great. I want to remind everybody that we’re simulcasting the show on the private Lead Gen Facebook group. They have 51,000 members, so we have a large audience there today as well. And we will be pausing for a commercial message during the show as a thank you to the Lead Gen folks.

(01:03):
All right, let’s dive into our topic. It’s an exciting topic folks. If you take a few notes, I don’t see how you can’t take at least one extra listing a month, if not two extra listings a month. And in a way forever change your business with some of the ideas that we have on the show today. It’s a shorter show, but it’s full of great, powerful things that are going to help you improve your business.

(01:26):
It is adding a listing or two a month when you run your business like a business. So I asked everybody, are you running it like a business? Carley, by the way, are you running your business like a business?

Carley Hathaway (01:39):
I could do better. I could do better. Let’s be honest.

Ren Jones (01:40):
So on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being, you’re running it like a business and 1 means what business, where are you?

Carley Hathaway (01:49):
I’d say I’m a 6.

Ren Jones (01:51):
Okay. Well, in that you’re a 6 and a 10 in the other category.

Carley Hathaway (01:54):
Okay.

Ren Jones (01:54):
All right. So here are a few thoughts in that that are critical. And as you were talking about before we started. Consistency, you already know you want to be consistent. So if you were a Starbucks, as they say, if you ran a Starbucks, you owned a Starbucks, could you open at 5:00 AM on Monday, 7:00 AM on Tuesday, skip Wednesday, open at 6:00 AM on Thursday. Can you do that?

Carley Hathaway (02:24):
No, obviously not ’cause you’re not going to get the loyal clients and customers that you need, right?

Ren Jones (02:28):
Right, right. People can’t count on things and there’s no momentum, there’s no acceleration that takes place that there is when there’s consistency. One of the things you mentioned when you shadow agents that are high performers is it’s boring. Because every day at certain times they do certain things and it’s just boring, but they’re rich.

Carley Hathaway (02:51):
Yes. Yeah. So they-

Ren Jones (02:52):
Okay. Yeah, we have to embrace that repetitious boredom.

Carley Hathaway (02:55):
Yeah, that’s what I’m going to say. Embrace the repetition, enjoy the repetition. Get used to it. Just know that that’s what it is because you have to start at the same time every day like a real business, right?

Ren Jones (03:05):
Right. Now why do agents free wheel? I have a theory. What do you think? Why do agents just free wheel and they don’t know how their day’s going to unfold? They got two or three things in their mind they want to get done, but they don’t really know how it’s going to unfold.

Carley Hathaway (03:18):
Well, I think because a lot of agents, like myself, we get into this industry because we’re like, ooh, we don’t want a boss. We want to work whatever hours we want. We just want to go with the flow.

Ren Jones (03:28):
That’s it. That’s it, Carley. And it feels good to just be freewheeling and multitasking. Freewheeling and multitasking and woo, woo. And then we’re running here. What are they called? Star sales where you go from here to here, here, then over to here and then here and here and it draws a star. It’s what it does.

Carley Hathaway (03:49):
I like it.

Ren Jones (03:50):
That’s what people do.

Carley Hathaway (03:51):
Yeah

Ren Jones (03:52):
We run around, we’re busy, but we’re not effective. We’re busy, but we’re not effective. So folks write this down. Let’s keeps it real simple. All morning, look for new business.

Carley Hathaway (04:03):
All morning. Yeah.

Ren Jones (04:06):
All morning, look for business. Middle of the day is administrative work on your business in the middle of the day and then in the afternoon, go on appointments. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. All morning, look for business in the middle of the day. Work on your business in the afternoon, go on appointments. So that reminds me of the five things high producing agents never say. And you went, you’ve shadowed some great agents and I bet you never heard them say these things.

Carley Hathaway (04:35):
Tell me.

Ren Jones (04:36):
The first one is “Great, I’ll meet you tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM.”

Carley Hathaway (04:41):
Never.

Ren Jones (04:41):
The second one is “Great, I’ll meet you tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM.”

Carley Hathaway (04:45):
Absolutely not.

Ren Jones (04:46):
“Great. I’ll meet you tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM.”

Carley Hathaway (04:49):
Never.

Ren Jones (04:50):
“Great. I’ll meet you tomorrow morning at 9:30 AM.”

Carley Hathaway (04:53):
Nope.

Ren Jones (04:54):
“Great. I’ll meet you tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM.”

Carley Hathaway (04:57):
Never.

Ren Jones (04:57):
No, because they’re busy. It’s not in the schedule to meet with people.

Carley Hathaway (05:00):
No.

Ren Jones (05:01):
No. In the morning it’s look for business and we have to limit access because how many times at 8:30 or 9:00 or 9:30, all of a sudden you get a call in and next thing you know you’re at the door because of something. And it’s like an emergency and I don’t get it. There are only two professions where we have to move that fast. We have to like, “Oh my God,” we have to move that fast. One of them is if you’re an ER surgeon, ER doc, you have to move fast in that industry. And the other one is obviously delivery –

Carley Hathaway (05:40):
Firefighter.

Ren Jones (05:41):
Delivery pizza.

Carley Hathaway (05:44):
Not as serious.

Ren Jones (05:45):
And I always ask, are you in either one of those two businesses? So from the time it goes pending to the time it closes, is that, and this is it 45 minutes. 45 hours or 45 days, which is it?

Carley Hathaway (05:59):
45 days.

Ren Jones (06:00):
So there’s nothing in our industry that is that urgent. And we need to just take a chill pill and from the time we get up until 11 o’clock, we stop looking for business. We need to be totally isolated. A good recording that agents will put on their voicemail that’ll say something like this, “Hi, this is Carley Hathaway.” Actually, she won’t sound quite like that. “Carley Hathaway. I’m on appointments this morning. I’ll be returning calls at between 12:00 and 1:00, And again, between 4:00 and 5:00, let me know where I can reach you at one of those times.” Now you can call them at other times, but make sure that you at least get back to them. That way they aren’t trying to reach you and trying to reach you and trying to reach you. They understand.

Carley Hathaway (06:45):
And you know what people, and people don’t get mad at this. They take it, you’re a professional because it’s a professional career. And that’s a professional message. And that’s when you’ll get back to them like any other industry.

Ren Jones (06:56):
And it works really well. And then this urgency thing goes out the window. By the time you get back to them, they go, oh, we didn’t have a copy of the termite report, but we got it. So a lot of these things solve themselves by the time you get back to them.

Carley Hathaway (07:09):
Exactly. And I was talking about this to someone at the prospecting clinic a couple weeks ago that you could go through these 17 phone calls and here and there and there and there. If you would’ve just waited five, six hours, it works itself out.

Ren Jones (07:23):
A lot of those things work themselves out and you may want to have, maybe you bill your business up to have somebody part-time coming in five days a week for four hours a day, let them screen your calls. If they’re inbound calls, hand them your cell phone, just say handle them, check them up, check anything that comes in. And if somebody wants to list or buy, you can interrupt me, otherwise write them down and tell the person that you’re meeting with me at 11 and that I can reach out to you after that. That’s another one.

Carley Hathaway (07:58):
I agree. Yeah, because I think also think about it too, like you were saying, there’s only a couple jobs that it’s like an emergency situation, but think about any other job you clock in, you’re working, you can’t leave at 10:30 and go run and do something. No. You’re there for eight hours doing your job.

Ren Jones (08:17):
Yeah. It’s just an energy rush. And that’s why agents do it.

Carley Hathaway (08:21):
100%.

Ren Jones (08:21):
… go just to make more money.

Carley Hathaway (08:25):
Exactly. But like you were saying earlier, how you get, it’s really nice to not set your alarm clock and go, oh, I work when I want. I do what I want. And that makes you happy. But how happy does it make you when you look at your bank account?

Ren Jones (08:40):
So one of the things I would write down, and you are bringing that up, is the fact that we need to stop at a certain time in the evening. And a lot of agents won’t do that. And they say it like a badge honor, I was up till almost midnight negotiating an offer last night.

Carley Hathaway (08:57):
Yeah.

Ren Jones (08:58):
Why just shut it off at 9:30 or 10:00? Tell them a little story. Just say, I have to get up at 4:30 in the morning. Just tell them, I mean, just whatever it is. Tell them I have to be up at 4:30 in the morning, I’m so sorry. We have to pick up where this left off and at 9:00 whatever clock out. Because here’s the thing, if you’re up till midnight, how is your morning going to be?

Carley Hathaway (09:24):
No, it’s going to be rocky. It’s going to be rough. And you’re prospecting-

Ren Jones (09:27):
And you won’t be starting early.

Carley Hathaway (09:29):
No. And if you do, you’re prospecting, you’re not going to have the energy level to get through those expired in FSBOs. You’re going to be-

Ren Jones (09:36):
Right. And you’re going to be the 17th caller. That isn’t going to work.

Carley Hathaway (09:39):
You’re the 17th caller and you’re not going to have the energy to push through when they say, “Oh, you’re the 17th caller.” “Okay, bye.”

Ren Jones (09:47):
So the stopping time is a critical piece and if you want to start early in the morning and be consistent, you’ve got to have an ending time and you have to know what to say to make that be able to carry on the next day. Agreed. Just say, “I’ve got to get up at 4:30 in the morning. We’re going to have to pick this up after 11 o’clock tomorrow.” “After 11:00?” “Yeah. I have appointments till 11:00.” “Okay.” And then you do that.

Carley Hathaway (10:08):
Yep. Agreed. Yeah. Run your business like a business. Other businesses aren’t open till 11 o’clock at night.

Ren Jones (10:13):
That’s right. Exactly. I wrote down delegating.

Carley Hathaway (10:18):
Yes. Okay, so this is-

Carley Hathaway (10:21):
… what I was going to ask. This is what I was going to ask you about because I think that’s why I’m at a 6 or a 7 rather than a 10 is like I’ll delegate a little bit, but then I still want my hands and everything.

Ren Jones (10:30):
Okay, but you can delegate a lot and have your hand in everything. We expect, you’ll just say, “Now that you’re gone under contract, Steve is going to take this from pending to close. He’s the best in the business. I’ll be checking with you once or twice a week to make sure we’re taking good care of you.” Then you call them. And then of course they’re going to tell you about, I mean it’s a prospecting calls because your pendings will tell you, give you more business than any other person.

Carley Hathaway (11:02):
Right. Because they’re in it. So they’re talking to other people that could be interested.

Ren Jones (11:06):
Yeah. We just sold our house. You sold your house? Oh, Mary and Bob are, think about selling their house. Oh really? Okay, great. So we have to learn how to delegate. We’re not saying delegate to people that are going to do a poor job. And in a funny way, you’re probably delegating people that’ll do a better job than you if you think about it.

Carley Hathaway (11:23):
Oh, 100%.

Ren Jones (11:25):
Ego. You know how the ego goes.

Carley Hathaway (11:27):
Yeah, 100%. My assistant/transaction coordinator is way more organized than me. She follows up on emails way faster than me and she’s more detail oriented. So all in all, she’s doing a better job than I would and I need to remember that. And we all need to remember that.

Ren Jones (11:45):
That’s it folks. So add a couple more listings a month to your business when you run your business like a business. I’m glad you could be here for this. And folks, let me read a couple things.

(11:58):
If you’re watching on Vulcan7 and you want to get involved with that Lead Gen Facebook group that simulcasts our show, they are at facebook.com/groups/gotobjections. And I want to thank Aaron Wittenstein who runs that, he has a great program called trajectorynow.com. And finally, if you’re watching on Facebook and you’re not yet involved with Vulcan7, make sure to sign up at vulcan7.com/leadgen for special deal. And most importantly, Carley Hathaway. You know she’s at some big months making 40,000 a month. She’s really been rolling. Congratulations Carley.

Carley Hathaway (12:36):
It’s really thanks to Vulcan7.

Ren Jones (12:38):
And her secret, that’s one of her secrets. The big secret is she goes over to Seaside Market, she drive over in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, or she goes to the Whole Foods, both of them, anywhere in North America. If you go to graeters.com, you can find out where you can get the ice cream for listing agents. It is the Graeter’s mint chocolate chip. This is the one flavor that makes you powerful in taking your listing. I remember one time I went on listing home and hadn’t had the first bite. I didn’t get the listing, but next listing I went on, few spoon pools, walked in the door and I took that listing. It is powerful folks. The other flavors are for working with buyers. If the listing is slow to sell dig a hole in the front yard, bury it upside down, and that listing will sell just like that.

(13:29):
Want to thank you guys for being here. We’ll see you next week. And Carley, have a great long weekend and-

Carley Hathaway (13:37):
Oh, I will. Thanks for tuning in everybody.

Ren Jones (13:39):
All righty. Bye-bye.

Carley Hathaway (13:40):
Bye.