Growth Drivers

Modern Real Estate Team Model

• Mike & Rachael Novak

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CHAPTERS:

0:20 Final Thoughts on Team Building

0:36 Modern Real Estate Team Model

1:13 The Old Model Explained

5:17 Challenges of Bigger Teams

7:43 The Cost of Team Operations

10:31 The Importance of Leadership

11:41 Building the Right Team

13:19 Leveraging Showing Partners

18:10 The Role of Inside Sales Agents

19:46 Profitability and Scaling

22:08 Advanced Team Strategies

23:18 Balancing Team Dynamics


In this episode of the Growth Drivers Podcast, we unravel the evolution and intricacies of the modern real estate team model with Mike and Rachael Novak as your guides. 

The discussion kicks off by comparing traditional real estate structures, which often separated tasks into distinct roles, with today's more dynamic approach.

Mike and Rachael reflect on their experiences since 2017, emphasizing the need to adapt to a marketplace that demands flexibility and comprehensive service. 

They highlight the outdated prestige associated with being a listing agent and the pitfalls of rigid role definitions, advocating for a more integrated model that prioritizes client needs and effective service over simple expansion. 

With tales of the challenges posed by the “bigger is better” mentality, they caution against scaling operations without a clear focus on profitability and quality.

The Novaks introduce their innovative 'micro team model,' encouraging teams to prioritize administrative support and strategic hiring to enhance client relationships and sales effectiveness.

They share insightful practices for role definition and team culture that promote accountability and excellence. 

Listeners are equipped with actionable advice to rethink their team structures, positioning success as not just about increased output, but about fostering a collaborative environment that thrives. 

By episode’s end, Mike and Rachael invite their audience t

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M. Novak Just because you're a great real estate agent does not make you a great leader M. Novak or a great business operator. And that's where people run into major problems. R. Novak You're handing away your commission, first thing. You're handing away the service of that client. M. Novak Welcome to the Growth Drivers Podcast, the show where we break down the leadership M. Novak frameworks, mindset shifts, and strategies that fuel entrepreneurial success, M. Novak personal transformation, and business breakthroughs. R. Novak I'm Rachel Novak. M. Novak And I'm Mike Novak. R. Novak Let's dive in and start driving your growth. M. Novak All right, so the modern real estate team model, that's what we're talking about M. Novak today. This is a very interesting subject. M. Novak It's something that's changed a lot over the last five years. M. Novak Now, we first built our team in 2017 and 18. M. Novak And since then, the world has changed and has changed and iterated multiple times. M. Novak And so today, our goal is to break down what is that old model? M. Novak And then what are some other kind of opportunities and models that we were seeing exist today? M. Novak And how's that kind of morphed and changed? That old model is still alive and M. Novak working for some people, right? R. Novak Oh, yeah. I mean, what they would call the modern real estate team model. M. Novak Yeah. Gary Keller. Yeah, exactly. MRE, right? R. Novak MRE. M. Novak Kind of like the Bible of the team. R. Novak Exactly. How to build it. So what does the old broken model consist of? R. Novak It consists of listing agent-specific agents and then buyer agent-specific agents. M. Novak Which is how we started things, actually. R. Novak It was, yeah. M. Novak Yeah. And so why is that not working now, and why do you think that that started? M. Novak That way? Like, why did that work at one point? Why is it a little bit more broken now? R. Novak I think at one point, the systemization of listings was really pronounced. R. Novak And it was kind of a badge of honor for agents to earn their way into, right? R. Novak Like, everybody wanted to be a listing agent, because they believe that that R. Novak was like the pinnacle of how to make money in this industry. R. Novak And the buyer's process, buyer's agents didn't have much of like systemization, R. Novak there wasn't a lot of process on the buy side. R. Novak It was really more driving people around and hopefully writing offers. And so I think that, R. Novak It was kind of a stereotype of a listing agent being more of an advanced agent, R. Novak and you had to earn your way into being qualified for listings and get listings R. Novak certified, which there's a shred of truth to for sure, R. Novak because as a listing agent, you're incurring hard costs, obviously, R. Novak when you're listing a property. R. Novak So especially in a team environment, there needs to be some level of accountability R. Novak and then some level of training so that the agent going out representing sellers R. Novak understands what their responsibilities are or what the value they can bring R. Novak to the client in the listing process. M. Novak It was exactly that, right? Like, hey, the newer agents on the team, M. Novak they're going to work the buyers and the seasoned veterans that have been here improving themselves. M. Novak Like you said, badge of honor, they're going to get the listings. M. Novak We're going to divide this up. We're going to specialize in one thing. M. Novak And that's how we started with our team, too. I mean, we kind of split it up M. Novak right out of the gates where you worked with listings, I worked with buyers. R. Novak For years and. M. Novak It worked pretty well. R. Novak Actually for a long time yep it did yeah i think that um R. Novak you know that that allowed kind of R. Novak people to stay in a particular lane um and you R. Novak know we actually it worked really really well for us one because of our skill R. Novak sets and two because uh there was a very clear process that each of us got to R. Novak follow with every single client so when we had mutual clients i helped them R. Novak on the listing side you helped them on the buy side so we were consistently R. Novak just kind of in one train of thought, right? R. Novak Because as a buyer's agent, the goal is to find the right property, R. Novak save that person as much as possible, get them the best deal possible, R. Novak write a strong contract. R. Novak On the listing side, you're kind of doing the opposite almost, R. Novak right? Like you're trying to get a good contract for the seller, R. Novak which is tough in some states. R. Novak And then you're also trying to make them the most money, retain the most amount R. Novak of equity in that contract for the seller. R. Novak So it made sense in a way if you have mutual, you know, mutual clients, R. Novak if you're a married couple. R. Novak But for other agents on a team, it's a very difficult thing to represent somebody R. Novak on the buy side and have really great rapport. R. Novak But if you're not listing certified, then having to pass off that deal to a R. Novak teammate when you get along well with the client, you've built a rapport with that client. R. Novak That was a really tough part that we started running into it with agents on the team, especially. M. Novak Yeah. And our team was one of the first to adopt a lot of the listing processes M. Novak and procedures and actually build those into the buyer process. M. Novak I've talked about this with lots of people, obviously we coach on it in Warrior M. Novak Agent, on how to standardize the buyer process. So it's a lot more predictable M. Novak and it's not just this huge drain on time. R. Novak Yeah, exactly. Well, you proved, R. Novak systematizing and creating really streamlined process on the buy side, R. Novak especially with the showing partner model, R. Novak like you proved that you can do just as much business and make just as much R. Novak money and serve just as many clients as a list, a typical high producing listing agent would. R. Novak Being able to sell 80 to 90 homes in a year, $40 million in revenue just on R. Novak the buy side is insane. Like I actually don't know anybody else who's actually done. M. Novak Yeah. So that's a bad model. R. Novak Like you've proven that you can build a very sustainable business. R. Novak And now what have you been able to reap the rewards of? R. Novak Well, now all of those people that you put into homes over the last eight and R. Novak a half years aren't going to be listing. M. Novak And I have four or 500 past buyers who all are going to sell their house. M. Novak So there's been plenty of seeds kind of, you know, put out there. So for sure. M. Novak Great points. I think another point, and I think that we got caught up in this M. Novak a little bit, and every team that I know of actually has kind of fallen into M. Novak this trap a little bit, they take this bigger is better approach. M. Novak Would you agree with that? R. Novak I would agree that a lot of teams take that approach. Yes, right. Yeah, for sure. M. Novak And so you hear people talk about like, you know, 1500 units, M. Novak 2000 units, 1000 units, but they kind of lose sight of like, M. Novak what's the actual profit, right? M. Novak And I think that that can be dangerous. There are big teams that are profitable, for sure. M. Novak We know a couple of them, but it's kind of the exception these days, M. Novak and not necessarily the rule. Like big teams can be very challenging to make M. Novak money on. Why do you think that is? R. Novak I think it's because when you, the more people that you bring in, R. Novak the harder it gets to maintain standards. R. Novak And now you're dealing with, you know, this is a people business, R. Novak regardless of, you know, R. Novak the money and the leads and everything they bring in, you bring people in and R. Novak you're managing people, you're managing each individual agent's business and R. Novak goals and dreams and doubts and, you know, frustrations and daily struggles. R. Novak And so when a team leader is building a huge team to chase units, R. Novak it becomes more about continuing to close units, which typically means reverse R. Novak engineer, reverse engineer, R. Novak feeding the leads, buying the leads, investing in systems and processes, R. Novak making sure that agents can continue to close, which is good. R. Novak But people don't understand how expensive it can get to buy leads, R. Novak to have staff to support those agents. R. Novak It very quickly snowballs into being not profitable when agents have 50 agents R. Novak on the team and now they're having to spend six figures on lead gen or six figures R. Novak with Zillow each month, like that doesn't pencil at a certain point. M. Novak Right, yeah, it's like, are we really going after the right thing? M. Novak Because I think the right thing is impact. M. Novak Like you want to scale your impact and help more people, but you also want to M. Novak run a business that makes money. Like if we're not making money, M. Novak what's the point of really doing it. R. Novak Right? Yes, exactly. M. Novak And so we have to make sure that we keep profit as kind of the center of this, M. Novak along with helping people, right? Like the profit is the byproduct of impact and help. M. Novak Yeah, 100%. Some of the things that I think that really weigh teams down, M. Novak it's the massive amount of staff it's the technology it's M. Novak the systems it's the leads it's so M. Novak much money to spend i mean our team um like M. Novak it still costs about eighty thousand dollars a month to run M. Novak our team and at one point it was like a hundred and twenty thousand dollars M. Novak a month to run our team and that's before any money is made and that's that's M. Novak a huge risk for people to do especially in like the uncertain market we had M. Novak like in 2020 and 2021 it was like hey this works because there's so much business M. Novak to be had but as the total amount of home sales have gone down nationally, M. Novak it starts to look pretty daunting and scary, right? R. Novak Yeah, well, 100%. I mean, especially in a team that is reliant on quick hits, right? R. Novak Like the Zillow, the realtor.com, like these low hanging fruit, R. Novak right? High producing lead generation sources. R. Novak Like you're handing a lot of these leads to people who may not have a great conversion. R. Novak Process. They may not be great at converting yet. And so that's another reason that teams go, R. Novak unprofitable very quickly is if they haven't, if they are not maintaining standards R. Novak where the best lowest hanging fruit leads are going to the best converters consistently, R. Novak and they're just shooting them out to anybody on the team who's willing to take R. Novak them, that's a big problem. R. Novak Because now you could be throwing away money and somebody who should be getting R. Novak that lead and able to convert that lead isn't because they're busy. R. Novak So this other person who isn't able to convert at a higher level is getting R. Novak these leads and wasting them or throwing them away or not serving them at a R. Novak high level as they should be. M. Novak Right. I know I made that mistake. You know, when 2019, we had like 20 something M. Novak agents on our team and I was like, oh, they'll all convert like I convert. Right. M. Novak And that that's a huge misnomer and a kind of a myth. Like typically your Rainmaker M. Novak is hands down the best lead converter. M. Novak Right. And the best converter in person as well. And so when these opportunities M. Novak that the Rainmaker was once converting now go to these people with lesser or M. Novak skill, you're spending all this money and the conversion rate actually goes drastically down. R. Novak Exactly. M. Novak Right. Yeah. So it's kind of a dangerous balance to find. R. Novak Well, and that's that's the struggle with like the modern day team, R. Novak right, is the rainmaker, the person who's the best converter, R. Novak the person who cares the most, the person who has the reputation and wants to R. Novak maintain the service at a high level to their client base. R. Novak They want to hand off the lead generation, the lead conversion very first. R. Novak Right. That's the first thing they wanted the handoff, because that seems like R. Novak the thing to hand off. And that is the biggest mistake that a lot of teams. M. Novak That's the last thing we hand off. We're going to talk about that in just a M. Novak minute as we get further into this. M. Novak So yeah, awesome. So let's kind of share the modern model. M. Novak And I want to give a shout out to Eric Hatch. You know, he was a fantastic coach of ours. M. Novak He really, I mean, he actually wrote the book on the micro team model. M. Novak He coached us into doing it. We now coach other people into doing it. M. Novak He kind of gave us the rough design of the sharing partner model, M. Novak then we kind of standardized it, SOP the shit out of that. M. Novak I'm taking it to like a really far level. We've helped other people as well M. Novak with like standardizations to it, but let's kind of talk through what this modern team looks like. M. Novak And before we do that, I want to really emphasize for people that are listening M. Novak to this, that just because you're a great real estate agent does not make you M. Novak a great leader or a great business operator. M. Novak Okay. And that's where people run into major fucking problems with building M. Novak a team. They're like, Hey, I'm selling a lot of houses, I would be a great leader. M. Novak And that, that sometimes is true, but more often than not, like nine times out M. Novak of 10, it's not, they're two totally different skill sets, right? M. Novak Like the skill set that makes you a great agent is totally different than the M. Novak skill set that makes you a fantastic business operator and leader of other humans. R. Novak A hundred percent. Oh yeah. No, when I was on, I was on stage on a team leader R. Novak panel at rise this last year, last October. R. Novak And I said that up on stage, I was like, first of all, I want to be very clear R. Novak that nine out of 10 of you shouldn't be a team leader at all. R. Novak And everybody's like, oh, R. Novak Well, look, I'm not going to sugarcoat this. Because you're a good agent, R. Novak that doesn't mean you're a good leader, exactly like you said. M. Novak So obviously, if I'm a producing agent and I want to do more, M. Novak I would consider myself the rainmaker. M. Novak The scenario is I'm just a producing agent. I'm selling like 30, 40, 50 homes a year. M. Novak I need to scale. I need to start buying back time. So what's the first person M. Novak I'm going to add into my ecosystem? M. Novak And spoiler, it's not a buyer agent. R. Novak Stop handing off your clients to an agent first thing you're handing away your R. Novak commission first thing like you're handing away someone who's not the service R. Novak of that client to this the first hire you need to make is an admin an administrative employee. M. Novak Right get out of the task lane. R. Novak Yes start. M. Novak Doing like this is like this is the blueprint to make a lot of money stop doing administrative tasks. R. Novak Right if you stop doing your paperwork yep stop doing your marketing like absolutely R. Novak start handing off all the things internally. R. Novak Like I had an agent one time tell me, well, I love to be the one to, R. Novak you know, rearrange the photos in the MLS. Like, R. Novak That is not a job for somebody who can go and sell and serve clients at a super R. Novak high level, like hand the things off, especially you type a people who really R. Novak want something particular. R. Novak This is where it comes into writing a process for that person so they can do R. Novak it just like you want to want to see it. M. Novak Right. Standardizing your process, right? Having an SOP for these people. M. Novak So the first administrator, you know, I really think that they're great for M. Novak listing coordination, for marketing and some personal assistant type work. M. Novak Would you agree with that? R. Novak 100% and some transaction coordination. M. Novak At that point, you might still be outsourcing transaction coordination. M. Novak Maybe, yeah. Because there's economy of scale. M. Novak Like a lot of third-party transaction coordinators charge $400 to $500 a file. M. Novak And so until you get above like 50 plus files, I mean, at 50 files, M. Novak you're only paying $25 grand a year for transaction coordination. M. Novak So that doesn't really support or pay for a full-time person that has. R. Novak 100% agreed. Right? M. Novak So that first administrator, guys, they're going to be doing your listing coordination M. Novak so that when you take a listing, you sign the listing, you're able to hand it M. Novak off, and this person takes it and runs with it. R. Novak Your admin can also be putting lockboxes on the property and preparing the flyers R. Novak for any listings and preparing your showing notes and, R. Novak I mean, all the printouts of the MLS forms that you need for the showing tours. R. Novak Like, this is all administrative work. M. Novak Right. Second hire, showing partner. Like, we love this model. M. Novak I've got two full-time showing partners. M. Novak Showing partners, they are really leveraged for the agent that they're assigned M. Novak to. So a showing partner is a licensed agent. M. Novak A lot of times they're a newer person in the industry. R. Novak I know. M. Novak And they get paid a salary plus an override on the homes that they showed that M. Novak the person actually buys. M. Novak Like in our market, and this is unique to every market, it's a $40,000 based M. Novak salary plus a 5% override on the homes that they showed. M. Novak And so what this does is it kind of builds a bridge for people to get into real M. Novak estate that otherwise wouldn't be able to go straight commission only. M. Novak Because we know it takes six to eight months to actually start making consistent M. Novak income in real estate, if ever. R. Novak Yeah, exactly. M. Novak And so it gives them that, that opportunity to learn from a badass, M. Novak from an elite agent who's doing lots of sales and they get to see in the trenches, M. Novak what does this look like and learn it from the ground up. M. Novak It's kind of like that slowing down to speed up later process. M. Novak You know, like the story of Jin is a great example of how a showing partner M. Novak can morph into a fantastic agent. M. Novak But this showing partner really is leverage for the agent. M. Novak So they're not only just showing houses, sitting inspections, M. Novak leading communication with the client once that client is signed, M. Novak but they're also helping you manage your database, right? R. Novak Yeah, exactly. And it has to be kind of a unique personality. R. Novak Like they have to be humble enough to say, yes, I support you. R. Novak My name's not going to be in any of the contracts. R. Novak I'm going to work when you need me to work as a W-2, but I'm also understanding R. Novak that I'm subscribing to a lifestyle. So I'm going to be working a lot more than R. Novak a normal W-2 is going to work. R. Novak So, you know, it is an interesting combination of a W-2 where they have set R. Novak hours and agreed upon days. R. Novak And then we also encourage them to have a couple of days out of office that R. Novak are opposite hours so that we have seven day week coverage for the clients that need to go see homes. M. Novak Right. That's why I run two partners because it allows us to do like 50, M. Novak 60 deals a year and they can work opposite schedules. M. Novak So they actually get true time off, but start with one. M. Novak And you know, this is that third person on the team. It's going to buy back a ton of time for you. M. Novak I ran the math in 2021 when I sold 80 houses that were all buyer transactions. M. Novak And I found out that it typically took about 11 hours per client of showing M. Novak them homes to create one transaction. M. Novak Okay. So that's a lot of time. So if instead as the agent, you can focus on M. Novak setting the appointment because you're still in control of that and doing the M. Novak consultation and then handing them off to the partner at that point, M. Novak that's going to position you in a really, really good place. M. Novak Again, you're buying back your time. You've bought back your time for the administrator. M. Novak You're buying back your time on showing houses now and client communication. M. Novak Once the buyers are signed, what's next? R. Novak Exactly. So now we've got the user aim maker. R. Novak We've got one admin employee who's taking care of paperwork, R. Novak administrative tasks and marketing, that kind of thing. R. Novak Then we're bringing in a showing partner. So we've got some leverage. What is the next hire? M. Novak Admin number two, right? So again, it's still not a buyer agent, M. Novak guys. Like we still don't have an agent added to the team beyond us, right? M. Novak And the second administrator, they're going to do things like transaction coordination. M. Novak At this point, we're probably bringing that in-house, right? M. Novak Because they can do many more things, right? M. Novak They can wear a lot more hats, you know? M. Novak So one thing I want to like caution people and really like make sure you don't M. Novak do is don't have your your admins doing any sales related type tasks, M. Novak like don't have your transaction coordinator also is your ISA and things like M. Novak that. Like it doesn't work most of the time. M. Novak There's just totally different personalities. You know, your admin personalities M. Novak are going to be very steady SCs kind of on the disk profile, right? R. Novak But they're great support teammates, right? So now, you know, R. Novak maybe the first administrator has, has really evolved and understands a lot R. Novak more about the business. R. Novak And so maybe they're helping coordinate, you know, client events or client gifts R. Novak quarterly, and they're also doing listing coordination and they're preparing R. Novak marketing materials and they're putting out newsletters with you and for you R. Novak and coordinating with you on that. R. Novak So this person can kind of come in and manage at the back end of the business R. Novak so they can do transaction coordination, they can handle the commission disbursements, R. Novak they can kind of start handling some of the financials of the business, R. Novak making sure vendors are being paid, R. Novak making sure that bills in the business are being paid, keeping your P&L on point every week, right? R. Novak There's different things that they can do in the backside that the front person R. Novak is working together with, but they still have different jobs in different areas of your business. M. Novak Yeah, kind of wearing the operations hat. R. Novak Exactly, yeah. M. Novak Awesome, and they will help you with hiring, onboarding, standardizing your process. M. Novak Like if they're a really good admin, they're gonna help you start standardizing M. Novak everything, single thing that you're doing because most rate makers do not very good at that stuff. R. Novak Exactly, that's why we hire people. M. Novak That's why we bring it in. All right, and then the fifth and final hire is the M. Novak inside sales agent, the ISA, and this is a tricky fucking hire. M. Novak Like this is a really hard one to get right because it's a tough-ass job. M. Novak Like this is the person that now is going to start setting you appointments. M. Novak It allows you as the agent to focus on your past clients and sphere and fulfillment M. Novak of sales, like, you know, clients that are signed, that are shopping or listings M. Novak or bringing to the market. We're focusing on fulfillment. M. Novak Past clients in Sphere, now this person's going to focus on online leads, right? M. Novak They're going to take these inbound leads and dedicate their entire day to turning M. Novak these cold leads into warm appointments for you to go on, right? M. Novak Buyer consultations, listing appointments. R. Novak Exactly right. Yeah. You know, we've also kind of flirted with this ISA position, R. Novak doing both kind of ISA work, database management, as well as being kind of a R. Novak backup production partner, right? R. Novak So if you're getting to the point where, okay, I've got two admin, R. Novak I've got a showing partner. I'm also still showing homes. R. Novak I'm getting up into like the 50, 60 deals a year. R. Novak Like that's, that's a great opportunity for now, this person to kind of be the R. Novak backup to set, I mean, maybe sit in as inspection or maybe work one of the days R. Novak of the week that they do showings instead. R. Novak So I know we've tried both ways, struggled with both ways, found success in both ways. M. Novak Right. Well, so let's talk compensation models for ISAs because when we design M. Novak compensation models, we try to design them in a way that we find win-wins, not win-loses, Right. M. Novak And so a good win win on ISA is a relatively low base salary and then a fairly M. Novak generous upside on closed transactions. So, like, you know, I'm talking like M. Novak seven to nine percent upside because a really hard job. M. Novak But if this person gets good, no position scales as well as the ISA position M. Novak because it's such a light time commitment. M. Novak Right. Like showing partners, they can handle a pipeline of 10 to 15 active clients at a time. M. Novak But it takes a lot of pounding the pavement to get these deals going. M. Novak And ISA is just sitting on their butt in the office making phone calls, M. Novak and they can scale their time a lot more effectively and just go hunt for more appointments. M. Novak So it really does scale nicely, and it's a great way to create a six-figure income. R. Novak And I make it sound so easy when you say that they're just sitting on their R. Novak butts. That's like the hardest job in real estate. M. Novak I've done it. Like, I was my own ISA for years, and so I've done it, M. Novak and I can appreciate how hard it is. M. Novak Like, it's not easy, but if you're good, it's like an ATM machine. R. Novak Yeah, exactly. M. Novak And it becomes very, very fun. So why does this model work? Well, M. Novak the Rainmaker is the proven converter, right? So the Rainmaker stays in the conversion process. M. Novak Centric position for as long as himly possible. In this model, M. Novak we still have not added a buyer agent. M. Novak You could add one at this point if you wanted to, but my question would be to you, why? M. Novak Right? Do I want to build it to be bigger just to be bigger? M. Novak Or do I just want to be ridiculously profitable? Because at this point, M. Novak it's going to be nicely profitable. M. Novak I know people in our ecosystem, and we've been there that are making seven figures M. Novak net running this model. Not gross, net. R. Novak And they're not bringing in agents. They're not handing off leads, R. Novak these agents. They are bringing in partners. R. Novak They are bringing in administrative teammates. They get to employ. R. Novak Now they have a team that is completely revolved around their conversion, R. Novak which they know is good. They're a solid converter. R. Novak And now they're able to provide a great quality of life for at least three or R. Novak four people while also netting a significant amount. R. Novak So yes, the Rainmaker is the proven converter. So that is absolutely key. R. Novak And it also allows that Rainmaker, number two, to focus on the highest income-producing activities. Right. M. Novak Typically, that's going to be setting appointments, following up with people M. Novak and negotiating deals and signing clients. M. Novak If you're doing anything but those things, once you've got this full blown micro M. Novak team, then you've got someone on your team that needs to rise up and take on M. Novak some more responsibility. Right. M. Novak But this allows you to really kind of in a lineal progression, buy back your time. M. Novak You're just adding one position at a time as it makes sense financially. M. Novak Again, this is something we guide people through coaching them. M. Novak Like, when do I have these people? How do I hire them? What are their KPIs, M. Novak their key performance indicators? What are the SOPs? M. Novak So they come into the business, they actually provide leverage. M. Novak They're not just somebody that's sitting that's a warm body, M. Novak just kind of guessing on what to do, right? M. Novak There's actually like processes and frameworks for what these positions have for expectations. R. Novak Why do you think most... R. Novak That aspiring team leaders don't want to do this model? Like, R. Novak why do you think they jumped to needing an agent? M. Novak I think it's because of the illusion that if I add agents, I won't have to be a lead converter. M. Novak I'm totally like, just like people will go so far out of their way to avoid the hard thing. M. Novak And if they just leaned into it a little bit, they would get the outcome they actually really want. R. Novak Right. M. Novak Like instead of just running, like just instead of avoiding it, M. Novak just go head on into becoming a fantastic converter, stick with it until you M. Novak can afford to buy an ISA and bring that into your ecosystem, M. Novak you know, but always be a converter at the core, right? R. Novak Yeah, absolutely. M. Novak So there is one more advanced version of this, and this is kind of the version M. Novak that we're getting to now is becoming an investor, right? M. Novak Like start acquiring properties through this Rainmaker model. M. Novak You've created this ecosystem that is now super cash heavy, right? M. Novak Like you're making fantastic money. M. Novak You're not working that crazy of hours. Like you're maybe working 50 hours a M. Novak week, you know, which when you don't have this leverage, you're working like a hundred hours a week. R. Novak As entrepreneurs, I'm like, yeah, it sounds like vacation. M. Novak 50 hours a week, potential for seven figure income, right? Now it's time to M. Novak put this money to use and start flipping properties, building, M. Novak creating other additional income streams, right? M. Novak So this is where we use that term synergistic businesses, right? M. Novak Like what other synergistic businesses can you launch off of your main business M. Novak now that you've kind of created a cash cow? R. Novak Exactly. I mean, like when you build kind of an ecosystem that is based on your R. Novak ability to just convert, R. Novak right like just the minor appointments the high income producing activities R. Novak now you can start looking for other higher producing activities to bring into R. Novak the ecosystem to continue to feed the machine give opportunities to your people R. Novak and make everybody more money. M. Novak Right so um we have the rainmaker model like we've built this out to like all M. Novak positions within our team and then we have a larger team too so we're kind of M. Novak running like the old mega team and then we're also running the micro team within M. Novak the mega team so it's kind of an interesting hybrid. R. Novak It is yeah yeah i mean you kind of works and kind of doesn't work R. Novak yeah i mean you you gotta lead the micro team which i'm also R. Novak on and participate in of course with the production R. Novak partners isa and assistant and then we also have R. Novak the big team where we have a tc a transaction coordinator listing R. Novak coordinator and operations person a sales trainer and then we have 10 agents R. Novak so it's like we have both models kind of running um they both present their R. Novak own challenges they own both present their own fantastic opportunities and for R. Novak growth and all that but right yeah it's definitely an interesting interesting R. Novak dynamic for both for sure anything. M. Novak Else you want to leave people with today. R. Novak No i think that i would really you know i've said it before i don't know in R. Novak this format and this and this podcast but i think that it's incredibly important R. Novak that you identify the reasons that you want to start a team and, R. Novak listen to podcasts like ours, listen to other things other than what you've R. Novak just seen or what you think you know about what starting a team looks like because R. Novak what you think a team looks like and what you think a team makes or does for R. Novak your life are not likely the reality of what it does. R. Novak So just be cautious, understand your own personal reasoning to do it and then R. Novak know that if you're bringing people into your world, if you're hiring people, R. Novak if you're bringing people in, like it's a really big commitment. R. Novak You don't want to bring people in and have to fire them in six months because R. Novak you didn't do it the right way. R. Novak So we take it very seriously. We bring people in an organization. R. Novak We have everything that we possibly can to make sure that person succeeds. R. Novak We don't like letting people go. R. Novak We don't like, you know, failing people in that way. Right. M. Novak The big thing I was going to tell people is what you kind of just said is think M. Novak six months in advance on hiring, right? M. Novak Like don't wait until you're so stressed out and ran so thin that your current M. Novak micro team is burning out. M. Novak Like think six months ahead when it comes to hiring. M. Novak So you're not making a quick rushed hire and you do a great job on this. M. Novak Like we're going to go really methodically and slowly through our eight or nine M. Novak step hiring process to make sure we get that right person to really add someone M. Novak that's going to be a culture fit and a skill fit to this micro organization. R. Novak Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's all I would say. M. Novak Awesome. We'll leave it there. R. Novak Awesome. Love it. That's a wrap on today's episode of Growth Drivers. M. Novak If you found value in this conversation, don't forget to subscribe, M. Novak leave a review, and share this with a fellow entrepreneur. R. Novak For more insights, tools, and resources, visit us at thewarrioragent.com. M. Novak Keep pushing forward, keep leaning with purpose, and we'll see you next time.