The Broker FastTrack Retreat: Insights, Strategy & Growth

Um, I cannot stand going and listening to people speak or watch different things when they give you, like, they're great speakers, right? They're great at the, the rah rah and the showboat shit. Like, you know, like, I want the real raw. Tell me what I need to do, right? Like to give me different actionable ideas. I don't want not even ideas. Like, I don't want this fluff. I want, like, do this takeaways, right? Like, that I can implement and tools I can actually implement to help in technology and get me there way quicker. I remember when we were doing one of the trainings, I think it was Donna, and we were showcasing one of our training software that we use, Tango, and like, she was so quiet the entire time and then all of a sudden she's like, oh my God, that right there is worth everything. Every single penny should be worth the. Price of Admission, right? That was the worth the Price of Admission right there. She said, I don't. Even if I don't learn anything else, this right here, this 15 minutes is changing my life. I'm like, huh? I mean, that gave me chills of like, something so small for somebody that deals with it day in, day out and knows the struggles with it, that we just saved you umpteen hundred thousands of hours of training, like, yes, totally worth it, right? Welcome to the Leading Lane podcast for real estate pros by real estate pros with your hosts Ashley Ashley and Steven Burch. If you're looking for an honest, authentic and raw perspective, you found it. Welcome everyone back to the Leading Lane podcast and this week we are going to talk about an upcoming retreat that Leading Lane will be putting on. It's called a Broker Fast Track and it is a three day event obviously geared toward Broker owners. There's so much to know. My famous quote is, you don't know what you don't know. So, Steven, this was your concept. Can you tell us a little bit about what this entails for someone that might be interested in attending? Yeah, absolutely. So the next one we have coming up is actually an exclusive next home Broker Fast Track retreat. We next their leading lane has created a partnership in a lot of the different things that we are rolling out and working with them. So this next one is exclusive for next home Broker owners and managers. Really the concept behind it is like, I don't feel that there's a book out there. There's not a true training or at least one that I ever could find of. How do you actually run and operate a company right? And you know, I think a lot of people when they first hear about the Broker Fast Track retreat, they, you know, like, oh, like I'm gonna get all of these crazy checklists and all these tactics on how to sell more real estate and like they don't really come in and approach it in the right way in my opinion. I think that really what they leave with is things that they never even thought of, the things that they never realized that they were doing themselves as individuals and as leaders. And do we have the checklist? Of course. Do we have the different tactics? Of course. But a lot of it, that first day is a crazy amount of self reflection and self identity work of really what you are after. So I mean you attended now a few times that we have done this. What do you think that people, when they first sign up, what do you think that they're truly thinking they're going to get out of the retreat? You know, I think it's funny, I think that they're just thinking like, yeah, maybe you'll get some tips or, or tricks of, you know, what's working for someone else. Right. Like a very quickly. I think most people actually probably don't know exactly what they're expecting in the fact of like Broker Fast Track, like am I going to learn to do things differently? I think a lot of people think that it might be about recruiting solely, like are you going to grow your business through recruiting? And I think that everyone that comes will tell you that it's completely different than what they expected. But I also think that it's important that it is an in person event. So I have done my fair share of online trainings. I think we all have like everything's switched to module base or webinars and I think that that serves its purpose for sure. But when you're talking about your brokerage and you're trying to figure out things that you're doing that maybe aren't working well or again, huh, Never thought about doing it that way. Those conversations only happen when you're in person. Those conversations many times are during a break or we go out to dinner later at night. You know, many times it's through the course. If people are want to, you know, speak up, we'll try to pin people too. You know, it's got to be engaging. And I think that that's when other people start to chime in and will be like, well, I do this or I never thought about doing this or I'm afraid to do this because what if my agents think this or what if my brokerage, you know, the looks different in my town compared to others. So the in person part of it I think is key. The other thing about the in person, which I have found to be really great, is that you create connections with people that you might not have ever met before. And it's on a different level. Right. You're not at a conference where like it's hoorah rah the whole time. You're actually in this like deep in depth reflection of what you've been doing, what you were taught, which may or may not have been correct, and then now a new way of doing it. And it's not like you can just turn a switch on and all these things happen overnight. It takes time to implement a lot of these things. And I think that that's where having those people that you can also reach out to afterwards. But now those are the friends that when you are at conference and you're at hurrah, like, yep, I've spent three days with them. I know their whole entire business inside and out. And it's a different type of relationship. Right, right. And you know, I think it's, it's fun because when, when you get these people to all come, it's in Manhattan, Kansas, it's in our junction city office as well. But we're rural town America. And so I think that as they fly in, you know, on our, our airport, like the jokes of seeing the, the cattle and seeing the, you know, the hay and everything else, like we're legit in the middle of a field, you know. I have to say my favorite with that though was being at the airport with Leon. And he literally had to like FaceTime Lisa, because he's like, you were never going to believe that there are only two gates at this airport. It was hilarious. He wasn't he upset that there was not a restaurant in the airport? Yeah, I was like, no, we got to eat before we get there. So I mean, I think it's like great because you know, like people see, you know, that we, we're extremely successful. We sell a lot of real estate, we have a lot of transactions, a lot of agents. And so they think, oh, it's so easy. And you know, there's been a lot of trial and a lot of error, a lot of hard knock lives and a lot of crying and all of these things that go along with growing a brokerage that you just had to learn because there was, there's not any real guidance on the back end of things of how you operate a company. And so as people come here, like, one of my favorite things is to be able to. To be able to showcase when they leave regardless. And if you're in a market, you know, that is small like mine, small like ours, or you're in a large market, right? Like, you can't have these limiting beliefs of that that will never work here. That's never the way that our market is because you just don't understand our market. And a lot of times, you know, that first day we really cut through a lot of bullshit stories of what are we really telling ourselves, of why I can't grow, why I'm struggling. And you know, we're identifying truly, where do you want to be able to go? And so if we can eliminate those bullshit stories and we know a clear path of where you want to be. Oh, now we just need to be able to close the gap. And that's where then, you know, the second day we go to the junction office and we open up and showcase, you know, our relationships with title companies and our relationships with different lenders, right. Like, and how you can have other income line items into your business and stack this to where that it'll now allows you to either step out of the production if that's what you want to choose to do, or, or if you just are looking for other ways to cover overhead so that you could be more profitable. Then we open up our sales meetings. I think that's probably one of the coolest experiences is that our agents thankfully are very open, so the attendees of the Broker Fast Track get to experience truly how we run and operate our sales meetings, the structure of it, um, how we try to make sure that every single time that we have agents leaving with value and then we open it up to where it's kind of a all gloves off, no topic with agents are off base. Right. Like we were pulling back the curtains. We made the joke that it's just like the wizard of Oz. We're truly pulling back the curtain to get to see behind the scenes. And our agents, we want them to tell the good, the, the bad, the ugly. We have high producers that have come over from other, you know, franchises and we talk about our experience of how we recruited them. We talk, you know, the struggles of. Sometimes we have tiffs in the office and what that really looks like. And we always talk about that we have great culture, but that's the Persona. But you know, there's things that do happen behind the scenes that we have to have heart discussions and reality checks. And one of my Favorites was we, we had people. One of my favorites because I don't think it's talked about enough. And we actually had Andrina on here before as a guest and her and a couple of other people were talking about their experience of diversity and the lack of, and how people treat them because they have different color skin than them or a different background than them. And you know, that, that first Broker Fast Track that we had, we had a wonderful gal come in and she opened up and shared her experience. The same of people are, are mean and racist and they judge each other differently. And I remember after that session there was a break and one of the, the gentlemen that were attending pulled me aside and he had tears in his eyes. Like he, he just came back in from the break and he was like, I just had to call my wife and tell her like this has been game changer because never thought about talking about or recognizing about race and culture and diversity. And we were so open and vulnerable. He was like, you don't see this anywhere. This is not a. Something that is ever discussed and definitely not ever open like this to where people trust one another in a room to, to be that vulnerable. So I mean, like, so I think like it goes to the real life atmosphere and being able to, you know, put that on website. And how do you, how do you actually portray that? How do you show people that, hey, you know, how you create culture and how you create the environment, you can only truly know how to do that until once you experience it, then you can go back and you can replicate that. Do you, do you agree with that? Yeah, I definitely do. I think that one question I wanted to ask you is how do you think that most people become a Broker? Like where are they coming from to become a Broker? I think that they obviously they have sold real estate, right, and they're successful and they're, they're looking for that next step. So that may be that they're a high performer in sales, production and they want to go open their own because they want to make more money or you know, grow truly a brokerage, or maybe it's a team lean that no longer wants to be under the umbrella of a different brokerage and wants to open up their own. I think very rarely is it truly a Broker going over, you know, Broker to Broker jumping. You know what I mean by that? Like we're a franchise owner. If I were to go jump to somewhere else and no longer be a franchise owner, like, it's not like I'm going to go open up A different franchise. I'm more than likely going to be absorbed inside of another company and work for a brokerage. Does that make sense of what I'm trying to say there? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know what I, what people forget, is that correct? Most brokers were originally a high producer, part of a team, you know, or unhappy where they were where they were, thought that maybe they'd have a better route. Someone talks to them about what it looks like to be the Broker. But it's kind of like we talked about the, the life of a top producing agent and the life of a Broker are two different things. Yes, they can be coupled together. But you, you don't have a book that like you open your franchise on like day one and it's like, okay, and this is how you run your profit and loss statements and this is what you charge agents and this is what you don't charge agents for. And this is how you recruit and this is what you do for marketing. Like there is no, no book for that. I mean, if you think about it like if you're coming over, you can't just cut your lifeline of production. Right. Like, it's not like you can say, oh, I'm going to be Broker now, I don't have to sell anymore. So now what you're doing is you're still trying to figure out how do I maintain my regular book business that I'm used to while learning all new systems of how to sell. Right. Like, and merge myself into the, the agent hat. And you know, when we first get started, like, yes, there, there's, there's, there's things that come at us. Like we, you know, there's different guides and things that, you know when you first start up, but you're so hyper focus. At least I was, I was so hyper focused. Is how in the world do I use these tools and tech to sell? Because if I don't sell, I can't pay my bills. And so it's almost this vicious cycle of that you can never get off of this merry go round. And because you're not focusing on new tech, new technology, methods and ways to run and operate a business, a totally another business, different business. People never learn how to bridge that gap between production and brokerage. It's two totally different hats. Yeah, I mean like when we started, I mean it was two of us. A day later it was three of us. So I mean I obviously we both all had to produce in order to keep our doors open. And I think when you do start Fresh, Right. Like a lot of times you'll have somebody that's coming over with you or two or three people that are coming over with you. But you still have to, again, manage your business as far as producing. But then there's this whole other layer of when you start doing well and then people start to like the culture and then other agents want to join, which is great. And then you start. All of a sudden you turn around and you have nine agents. Well, what does that look like on the back ends of, you know, communication of compliance and adding more staff? Like, oh, shoot, we probably need to hire an admin. We need to hire an office manager or marketing person. Like, all those things start to come in and then, right. There are maybe things that are offered in your market and you need to figure out how to offer those or something complementary to that. And again, it's just a trial and error where if you go to an event like this, you kind of get this blueprint, if you will, of what's worked really well for your office. And, you know, you've changed throughout the years many times and, you know, picked up things from other offices along the way and then it's that. But then you also have other people in the room that can chime in. And then. Yeah, I mean, normally, like, everyone's just like, literally, like, just like writing, you know, like left and right, all these ideas. I think one of the things I enjoy the most is like a to do list that is on the table. And I mean, I think I ended up on like two pages, you know, and the thing is, it doesn't happen overnight. I mean, like, the first one I went to, I think two years ago, and I think on there, like, I had a support email. Like, that was one thing I had in there. I mean, it fell on to the lower list of things. But as things happened, right. Like, we realized that that needed to be bumped up as a priority. And I was able to talk to you about it because you implement those things. So I think that's the other part too is that, you know, there's one coming up in April, but then there's also a Broker Fast Track 2, which is for people that have attended the original Broker Fast Track. I think that that's going to be fantastic to, you know, everyone's kind of had this, you know, open view of what it looks like. What have you been able to implement? What have you struggled with? What are the new things that we've learned throughout the years? I think that it's just an ongoing Basis like, we can't stop learning because things are changing. Real estate changes every single day. I mean, we're still dealing with lawsuit changes. I'm sure that there will be new things that are, that are coming, right? So we're not staying in touch and in tune with one another. And I think the way that you and I both look at it too, is that by us pouring into other people, it helps the industry as a whole. And we want to see other people that, you know, and they can affect their market and they can pour into other people in their market. And that's how we change an industry for the better. 100 And, and that's really, I mean, the ultimate goal is if we can save and help the, the next person not go through the same struggles or at least give them guidance on the struggles or, you know, like, I mean, if we can shorten that gap, if we can take the last 10 years that have been doing this and I can try to, you know, put everything in str. And you take away just a little smidget of it and it saves you a little bit of time and it gets you there quicker. Like, that is the goal, right? Like, and so I think that also with this too, is that because you, I mean, learners are earners, right? Like, I know it's cheesy, but like, it's the truth. The people that are actually constantly learning and evolving, like implementing and evolving are the ones that are going to earn more. And the industry is changing so great, rapidly way more than it has ever in previous, you know, history. If you're not going to shift and pivot now, now is that a struggle in for the future? Right? If you're already struggling, imagine where you're going to be at in another year or two years, three years. But if we can get you on the Fast Track to be able to get the right way to your profitability or increase it or efficiency, like, I'm here for it, right? Well, I think a lot of brokers get like, lost in the weeds, right? And I think we talked about, like, we definitely spend some time on, on retention. That's the pie, you know, recruitment. But there are other ways to be profitable besides that. And you know, in working with our office, we were able to make, I mean, probably like three minimal changes that greatly affected our bottom line, you know, for the positive. And that was just it. It was just a way of thinking that we hadn't done. And so when you have an outsider that's willing to, you know, take a look at what you're doing and be like, did you think about doing this? And here it changes the trajectory of what you're doing. And it was just a simple change that you didn't know or didn't think about doing. It's the aha moments, right? Like, anytime I speak, anytime that I do a training or an event like this, like, I'm so big on actionable items. I want to make sure that anybody that is listening to me, anybody that is involved in the training, they at least have a clear idea of what they need to accomplish. I cannot stand going and listening to people speak or watch different things. When they give you, like, they're great at speakers, right? They're great at the. The rah rah and the showboat. Like, you know, like, I want the real raw. Tell me what I need to do, right? Like to give me different actionable ideas. I don't want, not even ideas. Like, I don't want this fluff. I want, like, do this takeaways, right? Like, that I can implement and tools I can actually implement to help in technology and get me there way quicker. I remember when we were doing one of the trainings, I think it was Donna, and we were showcasing one of our training software that we use, Tango, and like, she was so quiet the entire time, and then all of a sudden she's like, oh, my God, that right there is worth everything. Every single penny should worth the Price of Admission, right? That was worth the Price of Admission right there. She said, I don't. Even if I don't learn anything else, this right here, this 15 minutes is changing my life. I'm like, huh? I mean, that gave me chills of like, something so small for somebody that deals with it day in, day out and knows the struggles with it, that we just saved you hundred thousands of hours of training, like, yes, totally worth it, right? Like, and I thought, I think it's just those different things. Everybody's coming to the table in different spaces, different placements in. In their journey, in their career, different backgrounds. And so that means that every single person is going to take something completely different away. It's not a one size fits all that. You're going to come here and you're going to like, I don't know it all. So that does not mean that you're going to walk away with agreeing with 100% of every single thing that I'm going to say. But I do really love doing as well. And I always ask permission. People that worked with me is, I'm very blunt and honest. And upfront. Coming from a caring, I try to come from a caring, passionate, you know, place. But sometimes there's chin checks, sometimes there's times to look in the mirror and I'm as the, you know, trainer, facilitator here, like I'm not afraid to challenge you. You're not paying me just to get off the, in the fluff. Like you're paying me to come and change your future. You're paying me to not be your friend. I'm here to help you be better. And you have to be open minded, open hearted to be able to be in the right space to receive that. And sometimes it takes a little bit for some people to, you know, take a day or two to start seeing of the different method and approach that I have to, to be able to deliver this type of message. I think the other thing too is that, you know, you have to remember that in business, like you have to invest money in yourself and in your brokerage if you truly want to. Like that's the way I look at it. You have to invest money to make more money. Have to invest money to do things different. If, if you've been doing the same thing over and over every day and seeing the same results, then you do something. So I think that that's the other thing is I think that it's a fairly small investment to be able, I mean, it's like what, you know, Donna said, the Price of Admission, but then you put that over a six month period and it's like triple of, you know, and then it's, then over time it becomes like hundreds of thousands of dollars. You know, even if it was the, you know, the right way to recruit another agent or, you know, changing something in your books, and again, like that small amount that you decided to invest into yourself and into your future can change the way that your business runs moving forward. Right. And you know, with that being said too, like we started just like you, a handful of people and now we have, you know, the whole property management division, we have multiple other ventures, we have 30 some agents. And you know, some of the things that a lot of people come here for is like, how do I grow and how do I scale? And a lot of that is empowering your people and hiring the right people to be able to do that. So we have, just like with our agents, we have our staff. So our director of operations, our property manager, our marketing director, you know, our member relation, director of member relations. Like everybody is here at one point or another and you get to talk to Them and we open up the goodbye and ugly with them as well. Because we are so hyper focused I think at first about our agents and growing by recruitment, well, growing on the back end of getting the shit off of your plate that you shouldn't be doing. So you can go spend time recruiting so you can go spend time doing that production. The things that are actually making you money. Not sitting behind a computer on Canva or not behind the computer doing, you know, compliance, administrative shit like get that stuff off of your plate. So that if you truly are looking to be able to scale you can. You make the prime example of, you know, when you were having me write down things that I was doing and then you would, you know, your face tells it all just like mine. And you'd be like you're doing what? Is there someone else that could do that? You know, and it's just, that's the other thing, right. Is right where as a Broker like you're used to being in control, like you like things a certain way. But as you start to look at what that looks like on a big scale, like yeah, I probably don't need to be doing the floor schedule, I don't necessarily need to be sending out all payments, those types of things, you know, and when you start to remove those, that really gives you time to focus on what you want to. And it could be, you know, in your personal sales, it can be within the brokerage, can be other, you know, things within the office. Just as far as agent development, when you actually have that extra bit of time. Yeah. So if like two or three takeaways, like what are some of the things you've been to multiple of these with with me and you've worked with me on a one on one client side of things as well. But what are two to three things that you feel that are most important that you've taken away from one of the Broker Fast Track retreats or from attending. That's a good one. You know, I think that it is probably some of the empowerment, you know. So I think that change is hard for anyone and you know, implementing that change is hard. But when you're in a room full of other people that are looking to implement the same changes, like you know, that you won't be alone, if you will. So I think that you know, really using our, our staff for what they are capable of. And that's one thing too, you know, is you have your staff there at the retreat and you can kind of hear a little bit about what they do, you know, Their goals. And I think hearing that like, it's okay, it was okay for me to like start to give some of those things up, but also to empower them to make decisions on their own to stop the hand holding. You know, that was a really big thing. And I think, you know, for, for staff and agent growth that helps in the big picture. I mean, technically these agents are running their own business. Right. So we want to make sure that they feel confident in those decisions. You know, I think the other thing is just really like reminding yourself that maybe what you were doing, it has worked. It worked. Years removed from that. They've impacted the way that we do everyday business. But I think the last part of that too is just the connections that you make where they'll lead you later in life, you know, other opportunities that those people can introduce you to or that you can help them further. And then, you know, it's. We talk about it and it's, you know, it's lonely at the top, if you will. But it's also just kind of lonely in real estate. I mean, real estate is its own little animal and you can't necessarily have those conversations with people that aren't doing it every single day, that aren't running a brokerage, that aren't dealing with the, you know, lawsuits that we've had to deal with and implement or you know, changing systems. And those are big tasks. And I think that being able to now have more people in your, in your network that you can reach out to and just be like, hey, are you seeing this? Or you have a problem with that? Like that has been outstanding for me. Yeah. And I think really to sum it up to me is you're not alone. We're empowering the leadership aspect of things and it's a lot of self growth. And once you do the self growth, you're now able to empower others and create critical thinking team to really take you where you want to go by utilizing the strengths. Yeah. So remind me, the April dates are. Oh, that's a good question. I should know that, you know, right off the top of my head. April 28th through the 30th. And then if you are interested, we're actually doing a special for the next home exclusive one for conference in New Orleans. So we'll have a discount code. So stop by the 021 swag store and we can talk about that. Or I'll give you my personal cell, you can text me and if you have questions I'll give you different references. And there's tons of videos of different people that have attended of what they've taken away on the website. So my Cell phone is 785-375-1940. And then you can go to LeadingLaneCo.com, click on the retreat, and then you'll have the full rundown of all the details of what's going on, what you'll learn, the different schedule, and then again those videos of the testimonies of the previous attendees. Great. We're looking forward to seeing all of you in April. Let's go.