Featured Spotlight - Steven and Consulting

Welcome to the Leading Lane podcast for Real Estate Pros by Real Estate Pros, with your hosts, Ashley Frederick and Steven Burch. If you're looking for an honest, authentic and raw perspective, you found it. All right, welcome everyone, back to our Leading Lane podcast. And today we are actually going to do a little bit of a featured spotlight on our very own Spotlight Steven Burch. But more specifically, I love the look on your face. More specifically, something that you started, I believe, two years ago, which is your broker consulting, which I have been lucky enough to go through myself. But as you and I have had many conversations, it appears that there are a lot of brokers that maybe need some help. Right. A lot of us were just top producers that one day decided to open up an office. And there is no manual for that, but you have got a pretty good manual for it and how you've been able to help other offices and what that service looks like on your end. So, Steven, tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so it's been about two years now that I've started and really, you know, let me first say that this is one of those big breakthrough points for me because I always had the self doubt that nobody wants to hear me, nobody wants to listen to what I have to say and I'm not smart enough. These, these self doubt things that I've been telling myself. But then as I started working with brokers and you got more involved with our franchise and just helping other people and just really being in front, like, really recognize that there is a need and people are listening to what I have to say and they are implementing what I am, you know, suggesting to them. And so, you know, I was pushed by my, my high performance coach to, hey, why don't you start consulting? And you know, initially that conversation started as coaching. And I have to say, like, I still struggle with the word coaching because I feel that everybody and their mom out there is, let me, let me coach you on this. And I just feel like it's kind of a, you know, fad right now that everybody gets to be a coach for whatever reason that they want to if they've been in it for a hot minute or for a few years. But so I struggled with that. And I made one Facebook post and got like so many inquiries, got 15 people to, you know, sign up really quickly. And so I learned a lot very quickly on how to, to work with people on that level. And really what I'd like to do is get a general understanding of not only like where you want to go but what are the things in the past that have worked well with you? What does not work well for you? You know, times that you've tried to implement something and it didn't work, like really identify the things that, why aren't we really getting the action that we're looking for? And that's kind of the discovery portion. And you know, of course I'm asking, you know, future goals and whatnot as well. But you know, the thing is that I think a lot of people that I work with, at least they know how to sell real estate. And I'm not here to, you know, I can give you my, you know, my opinions on certain things on the sales aspect, but really they don't know how to run a business and they don't know how to operate a company. And really that lifeline between the taking your sales and then, you know, you want to jump into ownership and broker you, you just can't, you know, cut off the cells because you still need the money coming in. So I, my goal is to be able to help that transition for people that want to go that direction or just get more efficient within their business. One of the things that I really pride myself on is first looking at the, you know, the self portion of my clients. Like what are, what are you doing right now to be able to manage your business? Are there things that you can be more efficient at? Organization? Um, maybe you don't have to do everything, identify those control things. Um, then from there, after this, self identity, identity, we really start working on the processes that you can start implementing into your business so that you can change the people that you already have and start coaching them up. And then we really start looking into those outcomes and those breakthroughs and then start talking about the recruiting and getting people to come into your business. And I think that the coaches that are out there right now, at least the ones that I, I follow, it seems that it's always recruit, recruit, recru. Well, yes, I don't get me wrong, we have to recruit if we're going to grow our business, that that's the direction we want to go. But what does it make sense if you're going to be pulling people into your business and it's a shit show already and you're not organized and you're already pulling out your hair trying to manage your own transactions, manage the agents you already have, if you have staff or not, like if you already are in chaos, why invite more chaos into that? So, right, like what systems are in place? What, what? Yeah, like what Systems, what tools do you have? The processes and communication? Is everybody on the freaking same page? So I really try to start in inward first and I know that everybody's looking for that outcome first. My instant gratification. But if you don't do the work internally, and I'm not talking about just internally and self work, but internally within your own operations that you already have going on right now, like you, you have to be able to, to realize that there's more efficient ways to be able to do these different things and make it to where you're not the one on one every single time in these got a minute meetings. And like they're for me, I mean I just share my experiences with my clients and the heartburns and the turbulence and everything else that I've learned. And you know, my goal is to be able to speed that up, get them through the hard knock life if you will, get them over those humps quicker so that they can start growing and scaling their businesses faster. So yeah, it's very eye opening to be able to see and I think people really appreciate how like we dive into your business. You know, we, we pull your profit and loss statements, if you even have profit and loss, right. We analyze those numbers. Are they, are they making sense? Are you understanding these numbers that you're to be looking at? And then we start seeing like, okay, what is your ultimate goal? How can we start leveling you up slowly? Not just by saying let's add 20 agents this month to your company, but what other solutions can we go ahead and implement into your business to increase the profitability, lessen your headache and the, the burden on your shoulders so that you can truly focus on the things that matter and what are making the money or making the business money, which is what you focus on for your business. Well, and I think you make a good point with the profit and loss. Right. So I think that's a really simple way for people, at least for you. Like you can, I know you're very good at, I call you like the freak in the sheets because sheets are nonetheless a little over the top, but I follow them. But right. It's as simple I think for you is like you can hop into someone's profit and losses. And I'm getting to that point too that like a quick look at them draws either some red flags or some like, hey, we need some clarification here. But I think you're right in the fact that there are a lot of people that again, like, especially if you're still a selling Broker too that like profit and losses maybe like aren't like your, your go to area, you weren't trained how to read them or let's be honest, you weren't trained how to actually use your accounting system. So like if you're using QuickBooks, are you categorizing them right? Are they, you know, under income, but they should be under expenses, those types of things. So what are kind of like what's the most important thing you look off of out of a profit and loss outside of just the income expenses? What's the tall tale sign for you that something is not right? So I think it's just the a. How is, how organized is it? Because you know, if it's to me, I think if it's all over the place, that kind of is an indication that we don't know really where things are going. And so therefore how are you truly tracking it? And for me, the first time that I started really doing this, you know, I was trying to analyze like how much return of investment are we getting off of these lead systems that were paying from the dot coms. And when I was working it like I had to go through and like work myself backwards over all of the files that we've had and try to like I call it PI be a private investigators in my and my files and try to see which ones were, you know, what lead sources were these coming from. Then you know, I categorized everything together as, you know, online marketing. Well, I need to drill those down even further. Like what.com is that coming from? So then I can take my income and then I can throw it against my expenses and what truly is my return of investment off of that. Right. Like so being able to even see those at a quick glance and so that you're making educated decisions because back then we were spending a lot of freaking money, I mean almost ten grand a month on online liens, which we were doing well. But just because we're just making the bill and making the payment, we weren't getting anywhere. So that made, I mean that was an eye opener for me to be able to say, hey, let's pull back the this ad spend on there. Yeah, we're not getting as many leads or as many closings from it. But our ROI on it is totally different because we're not spending and just throwing money out the freaking window. So I think that's probably a big one right off the bat that I look at, you know, for like if you're spending into online leads. The other thing that I like to really be able to analyze is how much is each agent truly netting you. And that is so eye opening. And yes, we're taking all, you know, across the entire company and you know, it's an average, but it really is eye opening. We worked with somebody this last week and you know, I think that they were netting only like, I think it was $600. The transaction. Yeah, $600 per transaction over all of their agents because they have high splits. That's a red flag to me. Like if each agent on, on a net is only getting you four to six thousand dollars a year, like, the way that I look at it, horrible analogy, but this is how my visual brain works. Like the old Sims game. Uh, you know, they're walking around and they have these bubbles over their head. Like inside those bubbles, I put in how much money each of those agents make me. And, you know, that's a bad way to look at it, I think, but also it's a really good way because I know exactly which agents are making me what money. But until I wasn't able to or until I actually analyzed from a company level, what is that number truly at? Like, holy hell. Like, maybe I need to be making adjustments. Maybe I don't need to be adding, you know, throwing in so many leads to them and, or maybe if I'm. Like so many incentives. I'm going to give you this for free and this for free. Let's go to this conference. I'll pay you, you know, to go and do this or this training. And you know, like, I think it's great that we're here to help people, but you know, I used to put value and associate that only with money and dollar signs. And that's, that's just because the way that I was raised of, you know, here, you want something and you know, let me show you that I, I love you or whatever. Like, here's a hundred bucks. So the value dollar is what I always put that to. And that's truly not what people look at. And that's not what I look at any longer. Yes, monetarily, value I get from agents, but what is the true value of being able to help and incentivize and train them, coach them? That doesn't cost me anything. There's a totally different level of value that is there. But yeah, being able to see from a very bird's eye view. What do I need to be doing a little bit differently or what do I need to focus on and start changing just ever so slightly? I mean, I remember when you and I first started working together, we were pulled your profit and loss, and you showed me your fee structure and I started doing the math on there. And I was like, something's. Something's not math in here, right? Like, I'm not understanding. What am I not understanding? And we jumped on a call and I mean, that was very eye opening for you right there, right? Like, you made a change in your business. And I don't know what the numbers were, you know, off the top of my head, but you made a slight change because of the way that you've been told and taught. Like, that changed a huge portion to your bottom line and altered the way that your business operations and cash, you know, flow is available to you. So, yeah, I mean, that was just, you know, one thing. I think that's the great thing is that I think that people are. Are scared to have someone else come and look at their stuff, right? Because it could be considered slightly. I don't want to say, like, embarrassing, but kind of, right, because we feel like we should know that. But then I always say, like, well, how do we know that? Like, if there isn't a manual for it, we just go with the flow and you learn from your mistakes. So I think the important thing is, like, it's not an embarrassing thing. It's actually like the ability to have someone look at you and like, to be able to give you, like, hey, here's like, five things that could really turn your business around in the. In the next year. I mean, that in itself. This is what I always tell people. Like, there's a cost of doing business, right? So there's a cost of hiring someone to consult. There is a cost of coaches, but if you're using it the way that it should be, that cost is nothing in return of what you'll get. Right. Like, I say that my consulting paid for itself. I think I said within like the first 60 days after changes that we made. I mean, that's just 60 days, but now is moving forward, you know, into a full year out. Had I not made those changes, we wouldn't necessarily be at that level. You know, I think outside of, you know, profit and loss, I think for me it was just systems that were available to us that we weren't necessarily using. But I also think, you know, communication for sure. Like, you have some suggestions on how to make that a lot easier, which actually tie into one. It's communication, but then it's also things on the back end, which makes all of our lives easier. It's Funny to me. How many. And I'm sure we can relate. Like how many brokers will. Brokers will say. I think even when we were at conference, they were like, I don't know if we've had any, you know, transactions while we're gone. I don't know if we had any clothing while we were gone. I don't know if we had any accepted offers while we were gone. And we're in person. So it's probably a little bit different for us and that, like we talk and all of our agents are very talkative. But now with the systems that we've implemented, like, I know the minute that an offer is accepted, there is no question. I know if I need to follow up on somebody with something, if I need to check it, I already know. I know exactly when closings are. So I think as a broker. Broker, right. If, if you're in that sphere of maybe you don't know everything that's going on, there are definitely some systems in place to make sure that you do. Yeah, you know, I think that it is extremely eye opening. I had a call with somebody before, they ultimately did not sign with me, but they were doing, I believe, over 500 transactions a year. And you know, I asked this broker, I said, all right, so when you have an agent that goes under contract with a, a buyer, right? Like, how do you get notified? And she was like, well, the day of closing. So you, I said, I just want to make sure that I'm understanding this. Like, you know, you have 250 transactions out of the year that you do not know anything that is happening or you didn't even know you had a contract on it until you receive a check from the title company. And she was like, well, yeah, but you're, you're, you are responsible, like as the broker in charge, broker, record supervising, broke, whatever it is called in your state. Like you are on, like you're putting your license on the line and you don't even know. Like right there, that's lack of supervision, violation all over it, you know, in my mind at least. And you know, she's like, oh, it's working, it's fine, it's not that big of a deal. But then, you know, like, if you just look at that scenario, if you don't know that you have a contract until you receive a check, then you're going to have to go and figure out whose check is this, what file is this? And let's be real, if you didn't know about the transaction, you now have to go through all of the documents for compliance purposes. And like you are creating so much headache for yourself that we can go ahead and set up a system for you, Plug and play, hand it over to you. And now you don't even have to worry about necessarily like trying to track everybody down. Like you have a full log of everything that is going on so that you can make again those educated decisions. Like how are you supposed to improve your agents if you don't know what the world is going on with them? So I mean. Right. I guess the way I look at it is, you know, we have systems in place when we get a accepted offer or listing and several eyes are on them. But right when I'm in those files and I get to see what agents are doing, a lot of times I find like learning opportunities. Like, well, maybe they, they've never seen, you know, a drain field. Like that's something that's not common in our area. Like how should we address that? But I know that. Or right. There are things in an offer that are like maybe should address that differently or like where are we at with our dates and deadlines? You don't want to miss those. Right. But also like reviewing closing statements, like it's going to be real hard to correct those after the closing. If mission was wrong, if a home warranty was missed, I mean, that's just a headache. So having all those tools so that like you can confidently, you and your agents can confidently go to closing, extremely important. Absolutely. You know, and even with that, like these systems that we put into play, like, you know, let's, let's talk about transactions that fell through. Like, you know, I think again, coaches, consultants, whatever, you know, the mass majority, everybody's like, recruit, recruit, recruit. Well, let's look at what you already have on your plate. You know, I'll use some numbers, you know, kind of quickly here is that we were looking at somebody else this last week and they close or they have written, I think like 225 transactions. Ish. Right. My numbers are going to be off on here. I know that. But let's say that they actually closed like 176 of those transactions. So there's the fallout rate. Like what. Those are the contracts that fell out. And so like, I think it was like only like almost like 20, 22% or something like that of a fallout rate. So I asked the broker and I was like, okay, if you were to be able to retain half of that, how would that change your business and affect your business if you were to able to add an additional 20 some transactions to your bottom line. And they were like, well that would be great. Yeah, you didn't even have to go and recruit anybody. You can look at the people that you have in front of you and analyze those transactions that fell through. Was it because of inspections, Was it because appraiser or you know, buyer's cold feet? Like, do you have a agent that is consistently allowing buyers to fall out of contract because of whatever reason? But if you're not, if you don't know these things and you're not tracking them, you can't analyze it. And so how are you supposed to coach these people up? So if you're able to really focus on what is right in front of you and have everything right at your fingertips, like that will change your business drastically right there. And then you're not only improving the agents that you have, you're creating critical thinking agents. So you're saving deals, which means happier clients, which means that you're going to have higher average production per agents. And then so when you start recruiting, you now then can show that look at everything that we have here. And when you come over to my company, you will sell more real estate. Because we are analyzing, we are coaching, we are making sure we're invested into your business to help you better serve your clients, our customers. And at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. So yeah, I mean there's so much that we, we build up, we do our team on the back end and like, because implementation, let's be real implementation for a lot of people is really difficult. And so that's where me and my team come in. Figure out what your action plan is, start coaching you on things that you can start implementing directly into your business. Then hand over these tools, teach you how to utilize these tools and then now start analyzing the data that is coming from them and then all of that is happening on the back and we're doing it for you. So when you know, you get it rolling into your company. I have a lot of brokers that afterwards were like, what in the world was I doing before you? Like, I have so much more time. Well now you have time to go recruit or go get more listings or go, go on vacation. I had a client that didn't go on vacation for 14 years. 14 Years. Right. Like until we started working with her implementing processes and these systems and tools and tech and trainings right then. Now like she took a full week out of her office and she said that was the most relaxing time I've ever had because I didn't have to worry. There's a constant worry that people have in their brains and the goal is to be able to remove that from them. Because when things do arise, like there is a huge issue that we need to focus on, we need to be very intentional on working that issue versus, you know, being passive with it because you have 200, another 50 transactions you had no idea that you had under contract in your business. So. Right. I think one of the things too that you guys help implemented, we need to finish ours out. But we have like 3/4 of it done. But I thought it was interesting was the onboarding system for a new agent you can talk more about. But I wanted to just mention, I think I told you this, that I had a new agent coming on. So I was getting the onboarding system prepped like at a meeting somewhere else. And so I have all of the columns and trying to get them updated for their names, etc. And I was at another company in town that probably has maybe like 150 employees or so, and one of their employees walked by and was like, huh, we don't even have anything like that. But that would make our lives 100 times easier instead of recreating the wheel every single time. So can you tell us just a glimpse about what your onboarding program is? So, you know, as Ashley said, I'm. I love my Excel spreadsheets and that's what I used to have everything on. I still have everything. Let's not, let's not play, right? But what I used on an Excel spreadsheet. But what I, what I used to do is, you know, have the, my checklist in Excel and I would print it out each time that I would onboard somebody. And so you have to hand over this physical piece of paper to them and say, here, this is everything that you need to be able to do well from that piece of paper on. Like once you hand it over, you no longer have that vision of what is going on with them. Like unless you physically ask them, hey, give me a status update. So what I wanted to do is create a virtual extension of that, but I wanted to be able to see the, where they are in this progression of the task list and the checklist of everything that they need to do. But now instead of them just reading black and white, one line bullet point of what the task is, now we have an explanation of what is that task. Why is that important? What are the other resources that you can go to? You know to be able to finish said task or said training. Right. And so now as they check it off, we're getting, we're able to see when did they check it off, when did they sign off on that? They have done that. And not only that from, you know, from me from a broker standpoint to an agent standpoint, we are seeing that. But now we have all of our admins and people that are important and they're their mentor all on here. So we're all on the same page for communication of understanding exactly where this very brand new person to our company is in the onboarding timeline, in their journey of it. So if somebody's falling behind, we know that we can jump in and say, hey, what's up? Where you at? Are you struggling with something? Or if we have somebody that is flying through this saying yep, yep, yep, got this later on and something, you know, pops up and they went against what their training was within their onboarding. Now I have a physical like proof to be able to show that hey, you signed off on this saying that you read this and you didn't like what's up, like what happened? And now it's holding them accountable. So not only are we more organized, but we are holding people accountable. And that's truly where the, the piece and business comes to play is when you have the organization and the accountability and I freaking love it. Because now if there's something that happens that we learn with somebody that is joining our company and we drop the ball on something and like we don't, we don't want to do that ever again, we now know that we can go back, put in place a new card and say, hey, let's make sure that this never happens again. So anybody else in the future that's coming to our company not going to run into that same issue or we're trying to prevent that issue to happen again. And I think you made a valid point like, and this is even with progression with me and growing and, and realizing like since I'm not talking about, you know, sales on, on real estate, you know, really what we do is business in general. It doesn't have to be in, in real estate world brokerage whatsoever. This can apply, this efficiency and systems can apply to pretty much any organization that is out there. It just so happens that we are in real estate. So that's been my primary industry of focus. But this, it is crazy to see how businesses that are successful already, like they're doing great. But imagine if you were way more efficient, like how much more profitability and production, would you be able to increase? Because now you have everybody on the same page. There's no question. And you know, the phrase clear is kind, unclear is unkind. And when there is something that pops off and it's unclear, I take that personal and that's unkind to the other side. And so we need to find the solution to make sure that it's kind for everybody that are being, you know, onboarded into our company. Yeah, I mean, if you look at, you know, profit and loss, you look at systems, you look at communication, you look at recruitment and retention, that's not a real estate only avenue. That's a, anywhere avenue. I think the other, you know, one last thing I'll leave you with that I thought was important is that we're not all born in like recruiters. Right. Because especially like when you come from a small town, it's, you know, you have to be like, careful. But sometimes you come across people too that you just think like, man, they could do so much better or there's so many more opportunities potentially where we are. So I think that it was nice to have an outsider like you having those conversations because it, I think that there gets this like, this weight put on about like recruiting and recruiting and how many recruits are going to take this year. And that's just not like where I'm at. So we're much more strategic. It's not like we have these floodgates open coming to our office and to be able to discuss that further with you or come up with ideas as, you know, an outsider of how would you approach this person like that was extremely instrumental in our business has been moving forward because we are very particular. But we also have a way that's not a pushy. And I'm not when it comes to that. It has to be the right fit. But I think that maybe through that consulting people will understand. I mean it shouldn't be a numbers game. If, if they're good quality people, the time will come where they choose to work with you. And I think, you know, just having you work through that is fantastic. So how long does the consulting typically last on your end? So really the, the, based on the, the client where, where they're at within our discovery call, you know, we, we come up with that action plan. I have people, when I first started, I was doing basically 12 weeks and let's like we were just like pounding the pavement. And for some that was, that was a lot right. To be able to, we're, we're implementing A lot. You're learning a lot. And so, you know, I had people, if we can spread that out. So I have some that do really well, you know, at the six month mark. So really the way, the way that we are doing it now is basically we have 12 calls, major calls that we, we start working on or have scheduled out. If you want to do that over a 12 month span, hey, I'm here for it. But then I have people that say, yeah, let's, let's do the 12 month span. But then they really get into this and start implementing it. And so we'll, we'll speed up and slow down based on our, our clients needs and where they're at. Because what we don't want to happen because we are totally different in this is that we don't want to set up all of these different tools, tech and every systems on the back end for you and then you have it all on your, your plate and then you just drop the ball. Like I don't want you spending money on consulting and you're not implementing and wasting the money. Like that's not a good fit whatsoever. So I want to make sure that really hitting home, I'm still even working with people and probably shouldn't even say this still people working with people that I've worked with two years ago when I first started and helping them and they still call me for, you know, suggestions and guidance and just events, you know. So really I want to make sure that it's a good working relationship and as long as we both are on the same page and you know, articulate what our expectations are and it's working well, we can make it happen in 12 weeks, we can make it happen in 12 months. It does not matter. Awesome. If you know anyone that else that's considering consulting, what is your advice to them really? I mean, you're more than welcome to reach out to me. Shoot me a text. Um, email me, stephen@leaninglaneco.com My cell phone number. I'll throw this out there. It's blasted everywhere anyway. So you can shoot me. Text 7853751940 and honestly, just like what we did with somebody else this week, like even if you're not ready, you don't know if you're ready to make that leap of consulting and a different level. You know, reach out, ask questions, we'll jump on. We took a company's profit and loss. Um, you know, I spent, you know, 30 minutes on it. Not a big deal. But I'm more than happy to help, like, I'm going to help people. And I think that the more that we can open up eyes that there are easier ways to do things, more efficient ways, more profitable ways, without this heavy burden of just saying let's recruit to our company. You know, once we, I think, open up those eyes of these different paths and methods to still make a profitable company, people will then naturally start wanting to work with us. And yes, money is why we're all in business. Get that. But I want to help other people not have to go through all the trial and errors and turbulence that I went through. So if I can save at least one person, like, I'm here for it. So definitely hit me up anytime. I'm more than happy to help and we'll see if we're a good fit. And, you know, and the last part of this too, I don't know everything, but I have a lot of contacts and a lot of people that if I don't know something, then I'm more than happy to bring somebody else in and make sure that we're guiding you in the right direction. Yeah. And also just say from personal experience. Right. Like if, if you're a broker that, you know, is the newer. Because that's the other thing. Like, let's try to catch some of this before you get three or four years in and have to try to correct all those mistakes. Right. Because if we can set some policies and procedures, et cetera, from the beginning that work. So new owners, brokers, you know, or let's be honest, seasoned ones, that something doesn't feel right or you're feel feeling bogged down or, you know, ins aren't meeting, you feel like you can't take vacation. Those are all things that these systems can help alleviate so that you can do. But we'd love to have you reach out to Steven. It was a game changer for our office. I'm forever grateful to Steven and his crew. So definitely reach out if you have questions. Well, thank you guys for tuning in today. Check out our website, LeadingLaneCo.com and we will see you this next time. Bye. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please, like subscribe and share with others. Stay connected for more genuine insights and strategies to boost your real estate career on Facebook or check out our website. We'll see you next time.