How Top Agents Grow Without More Leads | Real Estate Titans Ep. 1

Most agents think growth comes from more leads, better markets, or the next shiny strategy.

It doesn’t.

Welcome to the first episode of Real Estate Titans Podcast with Coach Bill Pipes and David Thompson, where we break down what the top performers in this industry are actually doing differently.

In this episode, they sit down with Michael Baird, a team leader who transformed his business by shifting focus away from chasing more and toward executing better.

No complicated funnels. No new lead sources. Just a disciplined approach that changed everything.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• The simple shift that drives more appointments and conversions.
• Why most agents stay busy but don’t grow.
• How top teams build a culture of accountability and execution.
• What separates agents who scale from those who stay stuck.

This is not theory. This is what’s working right now at a high level.

If you’re serious about growing your business and not just staying busy, this episode will challenge how you think and how you operate.

And if you’re ready to take that next step and apply these strategies in your own business, book a FREE strategy call HERE.

Start your journey by downloading the 7-Figure Blueprint guide HERE.

Commit fully. Build your seven-figure mindset today with G3 Nation HERE.

Connect with Coach Pipes:
instagram.com/coachpipes
linkedin.com/in/coachbpipes
coachpipes.com

#coachpipes #realestate #realestatecoach 

Copyright © 2026. All rights reserved.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hey there, welcome, good morning, good afternoon, amazing agents. It's Coach Pipes and Coach David coming at you live, excited and full of energy for our inaugural and very first launch of our incredible podcast, Titans of Rural Estate, right? And we're so excited to be able to actually have you guys here. When we created this, our commitment was to be able to bring the best minds in real estate, the individuals that are truly, you know, like dentning the universe in terms of their actions, their activities, and how it is that they lead and what it is that they're doing, so that you can basically R and D D rip it off and duplicate it and deploy it in your own business. You know, we're gonna open up the hood, some of the top agents. We're gonna look underneath, we're gonna see what makes them tick, what they've done that works, mistakes that they've made, and ultimately how it is that they got to where it is that they are. So, first of all, we're excited for you to be here. We're excited for us to be able to come to you every single week. You can count on this on a weekly basis, you know, for us to be able to bring you these mines that we are promising. And today, for our very first one, before I even introduce our guest, I do want to introduce my partner in crime, who is himself a pretty badass leader. I was a badass agent, has had multiple brokerages at this point, has skilled and grown. I would say probably the quickest I've ever seen. Not probably, but definitively the quickest I've ever seen. An incredibly successful high, high margin return business coach David Thompson. David, thanks for helping us put this together, our two minds together, man. So why don't you introduce yourself really quick to all of our great listeners and the audience that's out there?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

So I'm David Thompson. I run several businesses. I run a business in the Michigan. One of the businesses, our real estate team, but we sell about 2,000 transactions a year. Kind of a fun statement. We sell a house every hour. Isn't that kind of cool? Yeah. So in multiple businesses, and I run the team coaching program here at Coach Pipes. So and let's introduce Michael. Michael's a coach, by the way, too. So there's that.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Well, you know, I I'm really excited, and when we're thinking about who our first person was that we're going to bring in, there was definitively no doubt at all that Michael was going to be the person. I, you know, like having launched G3 and Coach Pipes, I've always said there would be no G3 or Coach Pipes if it wasn't for Michael Baird. And for that reason, he held a special affinity for me in terms of the friendship that we've built and uh and also just the support that he's provided as we've grown. I've had the chance to be able to actually know Michael for going on about four years now at this point. And when I met him, he was a small team and just watching him grow as wide as that I do what I do and the inspiration that I have. So, Michael, if you would please to to all of our wonderful listeners for all the Titans and future Titans that are out there that are watching and listening to this, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell them a little bit about who you are, background, history, et cetera, how you got into real estate and what the team looks like right now.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Yeah, Coach Pipes, David, thanks so much for having me. Honored to be here, first of all. And pipes right back at you, man. You've you've seen our team through a lot and meant a lot to us. So gosh, we've probably quintupled since we first met. So a lot of that's owed to you, man. But yeah, run a team here in Denver, Colorado. In 2025, we sold about 225 transactions, about 125 million. This year, 2026, we're on pace, we're over 100% above pace last year. Our goal this year is 500 transactions. Uh, we we should hit that. We we got the momentum going. So a lot of things we're building, we're working on inside team coaching, inside everything we're doing, is working towards that. So love, love the team. We've we've had a lot of growth here recently, not only in transactions, but in agent count. So excited to unpack that with you guys today and see if we can be a little value to some of the other real estate pros out there.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

David, so why don't you go ahead and lead this off with some of the questions that we put together for Michael, right? And so that they get a chance to be able to understand how it is, Michael, that you've had such incredible growth. I mean, like 4X and I remember, Michael, when I came out to speak and it was like six people, seven people. Do you remember that? Right. So I I'd love to hear, just to begin with, what do you attribute like this incredible monumental growth? Because you've done something that very few have. Um, last year was a big year of growth for you guys, but you didn't do it with agent count. You did it with per person productivity, right? And you really drove that PPP. So I'd love to hear for you to share how did you last year? What did you guys have? Like a 70-something percent increase?

SPEAKER_02 4:41

Uh, we were up about 70% last year, 60, 70% somewhere in there. And that's a great question. We've talked about this before. And you know, the first time I think you asked me this, I didn't really know, which is, you know, know your numbers, know what's going on. But we sat back and and thought about it. And we had a shift at the end of 2024. We decided to start going for the appointment, right? To to have, you know, all of our agents, we put in the work, we do all those things. We talk about per person productivity. We committed to asking for the appointment two to three times at least on every conversation, and we start getting more appointments, selling more houses, and our agents start getting better results. It's crazy how it works.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Yeah. I think it's important that people understand that isn't some, I mean, it sounds so simple, right? You know what I mean? But if you if you go to the YLOPO data and the stats that are out there right now, they've established through 48,000 calls that we've analyzed that the ask rate for a real estate agent data on appointments is less than 10%. It's like nine and some change. So only like one out of 10 calls on lead follow-up gets gets that ask of, you know, what works better for you Monday or Tuesday or four. Michael, how did you guys move that needle? Because I think a lot of times leaders are on like trying to move six different things at one time, right? That singularity of focus, you know, how did you guys do that?

SPEAKER_02 6:02

Well, be clear, I always have about 42 things going on inside my head, but it's the message you put out, right? And we just put a lot of focus around the message of we need to ask for the appointment. And you, you know, I think it boiled down to me helping my agents focus on why we do this, right? Do we do this to make calls? Do we do this to be at the office? Do we do this to, you know, check marks on the board? No, we do this to sell homes to go help buyers and sellers, right? And it I always ask people, how many homes have you sold without an appointment occurring first? And there's always, like I would be in the room, the smart alec that says, Well, I got that one call and they bought a house side unseen, you know, no appointment. But 99.9% of sales come from an appointment. And so if we can directly attribute something to that with such a high percentage, why not go for more of that, right? Why not go for more appointments? And it was just putting the focus on that. The pipes, you know, we we run Monday mayhem, which is three, four Mondays a month in the office all day calling, a lot of prizes, stuff like that. It's through G3, we've done that, and that just helps put a focus on appointments. We have prizes for most appointments, we have prizes for you know most overall appointments, and just really helps put the focus on that.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

How did you realize that that was an issue? I mean, how you know they just one day you just said, Hey, I don't think we're setting enough appointments. I mean, that's a big piece of gold you found.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Well, you know, it's something that the Pipes has always pushed, and and sometimes you you listen when you're ready to listen, right? With whatever the saying is, like the the teacher appears when the student's ready. It it was in a Monday mayhem, one of our agents, Omar Pipes, you know Omar well, he was kind of struggling. And in that Monday mayhem, we just started just kind of randomly saying, Hey, just call and try to send an appointment. And it shifted his mindset. And he went from having, I think, maybe sold one home on our team to putting three under contract in the next like two weeks, right? And so it was just game changing for him. And I was like, Well, gosh, if it's game changing for him, why can't it be game changing for everybody? And so we just adopted that mentality. And Pipe G did a call with our team one time looking at the power of setting one appointment every day, what it would do to the to their yearly income. And we need to do that call again, by the way. Yeah, sure. But it really opened my agent's eyes that they saw the hundreds of thousands of dollars they could add to their income by setting one appointment a day. And it's just it's magic.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

It is so amazing when you have a single focus and you go after single focus like that. Totally. Right. It's the intention you're gonna set appointment every single day.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

I think I, you know, like I I remember this process, right? DT, like I remember Michael, when we launched this, and I got that data from my local, and I just went on a mission. I went on a tear, right? Where I'm just like, that is you know, that that was like our theme inside of G3 for a long time. And and Michael, you've always been one of my betas, you know. And I remember we I was working with Colton Whitney, who we'll have on at another time, and you know, they they tripled their conversion rate by doing that one thing. But it wasn't, and we tried everything, Michael. We tried like put up signs that say ask for the appointment, do this, and ultimately it came down to repetition, right? Can you talk about the importance? Because when I come and speak to you at your, you know, at your office, which is a beautiful office, I mean, just gorgeous. And I I love that I walked in David to Michael's office, and he's like, I looked around, I'm like, this is huge. He goes, We got some work to do to fill this. Do you remember that? Work to do to fill this. So but I what I'm impressed on is the culture that you've created around two things. And I'd love for you to talk about this. You guys are a culture, because I noticed this with any top producing team. You're a culture of prospecting and you're a culture of skills, right? So I can count on, I come into your office and and yeah, like we were there, and I'm, you know, like I love my role play and I love that. And you guys are throwing a football around in a circle, and then everyone's role play. Like, talk to us a little bit about what the morning looks like at the bear team and why it looks that way.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Yeah. So you know, every morning at 8:30, we we start off, we're tossing the football. And you did this in your in your sales conferences, right? The the Bruce Lee's. Like, get your mind right. And so we toss football and you catch it, you do Bruce Lee, right? Like, wake everybody up in the morning and it's fun and it's kind of corny. And if you're not here and experiencing it, you'd be like, oh, what are these guys doing? But it works. And then we we go into role-playing a certain script in the morning, and then at the end of role play, we'll have two people get up in front of everybody and present that script, right? They each play each side, they each play the client, they each play the agent, and we give each other feedback. So it goes from a good warm-up, a good repetition, good learning, and then good putting yourself on the spot. So when you go make your prospecting calls, you're not just sitting cold in front of everybody hoping it be, you know, sitting cold on the on the phone, hoping it goes, well, you've already warmed up for 30 minutes and you're ready to go talk to people and and ask for the appointment.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

And everyone's David, everyone's put in the hot seat. You'd love this. Like they like it's not like you can hide, but if you show up, you can't hide. And so, you know, they put two people up at the front of the room and they're like, Okay, you go. And then they analyze that. So I just think that's fantastic. I mean, just really if more teams did that, there's no doubt that their conversion rate, because a lot of team leads think about this. They think, like, we need more leads. I need to get more leads to my people. No, you just need to get the people to convert, right? At a higher level, DT, I'll turn them over to you, man, for the next question.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Well, I mean, when you think about it, there's only three things that our agents can control, right? Their attitude, their schedule, and their skills. And you're controlling all three in that environment, aren't you?

SPEAKER_02 11:41

Yeah, exactly. And that's it. There's the accountability of showing up, right? There's the attitude of that's why we warm up, so we get in the right frame of mind. And the skills, obviously, is we're working on the script, where we're giving each other constructive criticism, so to speak. And yeah, that's a great point, David. It's the you know, before nine o'clock, before most real estate agents have had their first cup of coffee, where we've got all three three of those things done, and the rest of the day becomes easy.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

When you're recruiting, is that hard? Do they get to witness like they're coming into your office? You're actually telling them this is what we're going to do in our company. So therefore, the people that are coming into your company are okay doing this, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Yeah, yeah, definitely. We, you know, we we don't typically have interviews that early in the morning, but we talk about that. We're up front about it. And one thing we like to do is have all of our interviews come to our team meeting, right? Because we'll I always say, like Braden's our recruiter. I always say people like you, you know, me and Braden, usually, but you come to our team meeting and that's where you get to see the culture. You get to see 30, 40 people in the room talking about business, talking about wins, helping each other out, supporting each other. And so all of that ties in together. The work, the culture. That's what we want people to see because that's who we are. And the agents that really succeed with us plug into all of that. What year did you start your first team? I got into real estate in 2013 and started uh hired the first agent in 2017, very unsuccessfully, I might add, but that that's when this whole thing kind of started.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Major growth in the last what six months?

SPEAKER_02 13:11

Yeah, yeah. So we we had the leadership team, my sales manager John and operations director Jordan. We sat down, I think in August or September of last year. And at that point, we're on pace 60, 70% up from the previous year. But I I I likened it too. And pipes, you've heard me say this. You're like, we're on a we're like a Ferrari that's on the highway with a tenth of a tank of gas, right? Like, we look really good, we're going really fast, but we're about to crash and burn. We're about to run out of gas. And they're like, What are you talking about? I'm like, we our agent count this year has been stagnant, right? But most large teams grow production with agent count. And we had done a good job getting our production up, getting better at that. But I knew deep down that if we didn't recruit and bring in new good people that fit the culture, we were gonna have a year that was stagnant the next year. And to me, that's a loss, right? I don't care what the market's doing. I run this business to go help more agents succeed. And I one of those guys, good or bad, never satisfied with what we're doing. So I always want to do better. And I saw us treading water and wanted to make a change.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

So you've you've hired three recruiters that I know of, right? Okay. Um, I name them off, right? Obviously, Braden being your third one. Um two of them didn't didn't pan out, one did, right? I think that the that's such an important role for a larger team as it's on this growth trajectory. What did you learn from your two hires that didn't work out that allowed you to make this third grade hire?

SPEAKER_02 14:44

Yeah. So you guys have read the book Extreme Ownership, I'm sure. I I'm a big we we gotta, you know, the results we're getting ultimately fall to us. And and as the owner of the team, you know, previously the owner of the brokerage, I I failed in that, right? We didn't give proper expectations for our recruiters, didn't insist that they be on the phone, call right. Like when you're recruiting, I I tell my recruiter, I tell you know, team leaders I coach, a recruiting presentation, the recruiting process is like a listing appointment, right? If you're going and looking to get a seller to hire you to sell their home, you you have to pick up the phone, you have to call them, you have to follow up, and you have to have a great presentation and you have to believe in and show your value. It's the same thing when you're recruiting an agent. And it just through trial and error, I learned that if I wasn't pushing those things, if I wasn't helping my recruiter to be really good at those things, then they weren't going to succeed. And and Braden came in, he has some real estate experience, he's a great guy, gets along with people really well, and it was just a good fit, right? We we held him accountable to to the prospecting and to the culture of what we're trying to do, and gave him goals and we've knocked most of those out of the park.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

So if if someone was sitting down with you, I think about Landro, right? Brandon, just as well, too, right? What do you think are the characteristics, traits, behaviors that you're looking for if I'm hiring a recruiter? What should I look for? What should I stay away from?

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Yeah. So for us, we felt like for us personally, and and and Brandon, like he runs a great business, and and I know his person didn't come from this. So, but for us, it was I wanted somebody with real estate experience, right? Because we as real estate agents in the real estate world are weird people, right? Like real estate agents are different. Yeah, I at least I am. Maybe you're not but real estate agents are not accountants, they are not firefighters, they are not school teachers, they are a different animal, right? So for someone who is used to recruiting accountants or something else, that they're not gonna have success with real estate agents because they don't know how we tick, right? So I wanted somebody that had real estate experience. The Braden had that, and I wanted somebody that was gonna stick to what we wanted to do. Was okay picking up the phone, was okay following a schedule, was okay talking to people, right? Just like we ask our agents to do. I look at the recruiter position as someone who's maybe wants a little bit more stability than a real estate agent, right? Because it's a salary position with some bonuses, but also enjoys the hunt, enjoys going out and finding what, right? So I think it's a it's a good mix of somebody who likes to have that position with some stability, but sees the potential for growth and knows how to deal with real estate agents.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

It's it's so interesting to me because I think human beings are so afraid of failure, right? Like they're so afraid of getting it wrong. But the lessons, and I've always said this if you guys have heard of me, the lessons that we need for progress are in the wrong that we the wrong decisions that we make, which are really the right decision to get there ultimately. Um, the first person you hired, your first recruiter, Baird, yeah, there was your second lesson, which was I need someone to follow the system of the prospect, right? Yeah. The second person you hired was the first lesson, which is I need someone to understand real estate agents because that recruiter, although a great recruiter, was used to recruiting individuals that were in the healthcare industry and they were like lining up, etc. So uh you're not always gonna get it right, but you're gonna get the lesson if you keep your eyes open. I think I it's nice to see you land on this.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

And so I posted this on my Facebook this morning as a quote, vape, rough quote from Elon Musk: reality is the best teacher. Get to class as often as you can, right? So she's talking about SpaceX. You know, his goal is to go blow up rockets, right? He he wants to learn by doing, he wants to take action, he wants to shorten the time frame in between mistakes so he can make a mistake, change it, make a mistake, change it, and eventually get it right. And and so that's that's what we did, right? We made not mistakes, they were good people that we hired before, just not right for the role. And we learned from from those challenges and moved on and get it right.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Michael, for context, when you hired the most recent recruiter, how many agents did you have at that point?

SPEAKER_02 18:57

So it it a lot's happened since then, and I I'm not as good with my numbers as you are, David, which you know what we're working on getting better. We we were somewhere just under 30. We were upper 20 of agents at that point.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

And how many months now into this recruiter?

SPEAKER_02 19:13

So he started in October and we're in March, so just not quite six months.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Yeah, yeah, somewhere in there. And how many agents do you have now?

SPEAKER_02 19:22

So I just looked at our follow-up boss now, including people that are in the process of starting, we're in about 60 people.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

You doubled your team in five months.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

Yeah. We're doubling a little bit more than doubling our pace for last year, right? Right. I said we were that Ferrari that was cruising on the highway about to run out of gas, and if we didn't recruit, we wouldn't grow. Well, we've doubled our team and we've roughly doubled our sales. So I think any team leader out there, right? You know, the the more the more people you have, you you have to do two things. You have to make sure you have agent count and you have to make sure you have agent productivity. And either one of those is missing, and you might look like a Ferrari, but you're that Ferrari that's about to run out of gas.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Yeah. So when you add that many people to a culture, to your systems, to everything, major J-Curve, because we all understand J-Curve. You go through that, you come back out. Yeah, it's you doubled your team in five months. So just unpack that. I mean, there had to be some challenges. What's happening right now?

SPEAKER_00 20:22

I mean, this is awesome. Diluted the culture, right? Because you throw that many people in. It's there, there is this dilute can take place, this change, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:32

Yeah. So I sat for the first couple months on every interview that our recruiter did, right? Because it's that important to me. I wanted to make sure he was representing us well, and I wanted to make sure that he knew what we were looking for, right? So we would debrief after every interview. Man, they're great, perfect culture fit. Hey, I don't know. They they said this, right? Like red flags to me are bashing the previous place you were at, right? Like, oh, I'm great. My last brokerage was trash. They had horrible leads. They had that, like, well, they're gonna say the same thing about me, right? So I sat and unpacked that with him. And now I trust him to go be that filter for me, right? He he knows what we're looking for. So culture's our number one thing. If you're not a culture fit, you can't come be on the team. Doesn't matter how great you are, how many homes you sell, can't be on the team. Second was we knew things would break by bringing on this many people. And one thing that broke was our onboarding used to be and now officially is not anymore. Once a month, we would have classes of onboarding, right? And John, our sales manager, would onboard everybody over a two-week class, which was great. It was amazing. When we were bringing on, you know, one or two people every couple months, it worked really well. When we're bringing on, you know, depending on the month, three to 10 people in a month, it doesn't work as well. It's it has limitations. We lost people that we liked because there wasn't an onboarding class starting for three weeks, things like that. But we're like, hey, we're sticking to this, we're sticking to our standards. That system broke. We we now are Officially about to launch a program where we can onboard anybody starting at any time. We have classes that will happen throughout the weeks that people will have to attend. But if they can't go to one, they can go to another. And so with the things like that, we anytime you experience big growth, things are going to break, right? And I tell people this when you're building a team, when you're in the scaling phase, it's you're scaling the system you have starts breaking and you level up, right? And that's how you continue getting better. And where people get stuck is the system starts to break and they move backwards to make sure they stay in the system that they are in, where in reality they need to change things to be able to keep leveling up.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

And your culture. I mean, you just doubled the size of this morning football throwing thing that you do every morning, right? Yeah. So how did that, you know, sometimes agents get out hooked up on this. I don't want the company to grow because I don't want to have less leads. I don't have to have this. You have to get the agents bought into the growth of the company, right? How did you tackle that?

SPEAKER_02 23:04

Yeah. So somebody told me this back in the day is that if you're worried about that, show me how perfect your culture is, right? If you're worried about your culture getting wrecked, and I don't think there's any team, any company, any family anywhere that can say that culture is perfect, right? And so our thing is if they if they have the same values that we're looking for, right? Humble, hungry, you know, people smart, can you go deal with people? If they have those three things, then we hold each new person coming in to a higher standard than previous, right? So theoretically, with us growing, it gives us an opportunity to make our culture better by every person we hire. And what we found is there's certain people that maybe interviewed well, but in reality, they didn't believe in those things. And they find their way out pretty quickly. That's our thing, is we'll we'll hire quickly, but if you don't, if you don't want to work, if you don't match the culture, then we're not a good fit for it.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

And I think the onboarding that you guys do does a really good job of vetting them out right at the very beginning as well, too. Right. I want to go to onboard back to onboarding in a second, but I want to lean into something. I wrote down good leaders lead people, great leaders develop other leaders. You have one, two, three, four, like it's evolving, it's expanding at this time, the leadership stack that you have at your organization and the people that are doing it. Can you talk to me a little bit about your transformation from being a good leader? What, which was you led your people powerfully, to now becoming a great leader? Were John, Jordan, Janelle, you just gonna hire leaders with a J? Is that is that what it is? So, like if they don't have a J in their name, they're not gonna sorry. So we got to look for a Jefferson next. So can you talk a little bit about that for us, please?

SPEAKER_02 24:55

Yeah, so I I heard this early on and I just loved it, right? And I didn't really understand it, but that my job as a leader is to replace myself, right? I I can't do everything, I can't wear all hats. I know where I'm good and where I'm not, right? What I focus on now is being the face for our team, the as far as putting the message out there, being the face and and working on systems and lead sources and things like that that will help our agents sell more homes and our clients have better, better results. What I have found is that I'm not very good at implementing uh all of the great ideas I have. I I'm a I'm a good ideas guy, I'm not the best implementation guy. And early on in my career, I tried to be both, and things move very slowly. How how were we able to do this whole onboarding system, change everything, things like that? It's like, yes, have the idea, but don't rely on myself for the implementation. And as we grow to 60 agents, like we constantly have new leaders stepping up, we have new people coming in to roles of leadership. And rather than looking at it as I'm losing control, I look at I'm building something that is much bigger than me, that hopefully will outlast me and be able to be help a lot more people. If I don't have to individually touch every person and be the main driver for every person, we can touch a lot more people and help a lot more people with the overall system.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Michael, what does three years look like from now?

SPEAKER_02 26:19

So our goal last year, and we didn't really know the path. We just said that our our goal was to be the number one team in Colorado in 2027. Pipes, we've we've talked about this. We're on pace for about 500 this year. Looking at real trends, that probably puts us top three or four. I I think a thousand would would easily put us in the number one spot, but a thousand sounds nice. So that's the number, the number we wanted. So that's you know, about a year and a half out to to finish out next year. So that's the goal. And then I eventually, so I'm with LPT Robert Palmer, owner of LPT, amazing, one of the smartest guys I know. We had a mastermind in New York in in November, and he talked about the concept of the 1K team as a a team getting to a thousand members, right? So for me, down the road, that's kind of the you know, B Hag, Big Harry Audacious goal is to become somebody might beat me there, but the first 1K team, right? The first thousand team member team. And then his step past that huge goal is he wants to be involved in helping the first team that goes public, right? So LPT is going public, he wants to help teams inside of his brokerage go public. So to me, that's just a really cool thing to shoot for, right? No, no real estate team really has ever gone public. And to me, that creates levels in the business where you can always level up, right? You can always get better, you can always make your system better. Hey, would investors like the way that this business looks? Like, is the profitability there? Is it sustainable? Do I have layers of leadership that, you know, do I have my board of directors, right? There's a lot of things that that play into that. So yeah, next year, a thousand transactions, number one in Colorado, from there, a thousand agents. And I don't think I ever want to take the team public, right? But to be in a position where it's an operation that you could consider that. That's that's the goal.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

I love the 1K, 1K. 1K in transactions, 1k in agent count. That's like those are great.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

And one of our masterminds coming up, we need to unpack just having fun with taking a team public.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Like just on have a three, four hour conversation on that subject. We've learned so much in one of the masterminds doing that.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

You should do that in Park City, the Park City one.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

You know what I mean? That would be I think so. That's that's a cool subject. Yeah, very cool.

SPEAKER_02 28:37

The the cool part about it is it's not something that's ever been done, and it's not something that you really could ever be done with, right? You don't take a uh the company public and then quit, right? So it's one of those things where you you it forces you to look at every piece of your business, every piece of your team, and stop treating it as because what are most team leaders? They're really good real estate agents who got really busy and needed help and hired an assistant, hired some buyers agents, and they're throwing stuff together and hoping for the best, right? That that's not that's not gonna live on Wall Street. Now, if you create a team that is truly better than David, like you you'd be a great prototype for this. You built the team quickly, scaled to 2,000 transactions, you have a lot of layers in place that are like, hey, investors would like this, right? So it's just uh it's a different way of looking at it, but it all boils down for us to the the culture, the people around it, right? If we have a thousand agents, we want to have a thousand agents who are amazing and part of the culture. And cool thing is, even inside Colorado as we expand, there's there's always more people that are that are awesome that we can go help and help reach their goals.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

What advice would you give to somebody who has a medium-sized team that wanted to scale?

SPEAKER_02 29:50

That's a great question. Gosh, what advice should I give myself? No, I I think the the first would be don't be afraid to, and maybe this is a bad thing to say, like we always want to watch costs, but I've invested a lot of money over the last year into growing and providing opportunity, and it's caused us, you know, to really hockey stick up. I think too often team leaders get, from what I see at least, get greedy and don't want to spend money, want to protect every ounce of profit they have, and don't look at it as a business or something that they can grow and really make something special. So I think don't be afraid to invest, not only in leads, the things you think of, but in your people, right? Invest in your people, get the best people around you, hold them accountable, and that's when you can really start seeing that meteoric growth.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

So let me let me break that. I I love that. I'm gonna break it down a little bit more. I think the problem there's challenges that a uh a leader faces at that team from zero to 10, right? And then you've got messy metal of the terrible teams, I call them, where you know, like you're scaling up, you know, in terms of output of capital, output of people, et cetera, but you're not seeing the margins. And then there's the industrial, which is the 20 plus or 25,000. What did you learn at zero to 10? Uh what did you learn going from 10 to 20? Uh and now I think you answered the question on 20 plus, but I want to go back to that zero to 10 and then the 10 to 20.

SPEAKER_02 31:23

Yeah, so so zero to 10 is truly you're an agent that is starting to hire people to help you. It that point. So, so when I coach somebody that's in that phase, it's you you have you have two goals, right? You have to sell still, right? The the team leader in zero to 10 is still usually a majority of the production. So you have to sell and you have to work on recruiting talent to your team. So at that phase, you are an you're a full-time agent and a full-time sales manager, recruiter, everything for your team, typically, right? Maybe you have a transaction coordinator or something like that. That 10 to 20, it's funny, I call it the same thing. It's like the messy middle, right? You you have enough agents to where you don't have to sell quite as much, but you can't step out of it. You can't fully focus on the business, you have to focus on your business a little bit. You can't really afford to hire a bunch of people to run it. And so at that point, you're you're bootstrapping a lot of things, you're starting to hire some people. Then once you get over that 20-agent mark, if you have a good platform, a good system, you find yourself somewhere that you you really can scale from and you can really start investing. Love it.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

Important to understand not only just 20 agents, but 20 producing agents, right? Correct.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

I like that.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

I mean, that's almost a given, but it needs to be said, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:34

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

It's one word standards. Do you have them on the team? Do you expect people to like do you hold them to it? Do you do you let someone go if they're I know you do if they're on a cultural thing, but like you know, I I know I think we rise and fall to the level of our standards. So I'm curious what the standards are to be on BGR, beared to the role say.

SPEAKER_02 32:57

Yeah, so you know, that this, I think everybody has their own definition. And I I know I've not gotten in arguments, but discussions with people about this, right? Like to me, if an agent is a good culture fit and sells four homes in a year, right? They might not necessarily get all the leads, they might not get all the opportunity, but there's a spot form on our team, right? Now, in order to get leads, we have we have certain tiers of what you have to sell to access certain leads and then and then on up. So, you know, basically if you're selling at least one home a month, which in in our market with commissions, you can make a very good living. You're gonna have access to a good majority of the leads, right? And then and then above that, there are tiers for you know higher dollar leads, more right now leads, things like that, working up. The the only non-starter for me is is bad culture fit. If you're a bad culture fit, you're gone. If you're not, if you're not productive, I either want you working to become productive or selling, right? So if you're not selling, but you're not even attempting to sell, okay. To me, that's not the culture we want. So you're a bad culture fit, so you're out. If you're not selling, we're we're gonna help you to sell and figure out your goals and help you get there.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

Little little known fact. Michael Baer, professional golfer, right? So you were on the tour for a couple of years. What did you learn from that that has made you as successful as you are?

SPEAKER_02 34:21

Yeah, so I say that was in a past life, right? I have my golf life and I have my real estate life. And the crazy thing now is my real estate life has gone on longer than my golf life did. So, you know, it taught me how to work hard, right? Golf is a sport where you don't have anybody to blame but yourself. You can blame the weather, you can blame the course, you can blame a lot of things, but ultimately talk about the the ultimate extreme ownership is golf. There's no teammates, there's no anything else to blame. And so I was always an extremely hard worker when I played golf. I was I was pretty good. I wasn't on PGA tour, I was on PGA tour Latin America, which sounds really cool, but you know, isn't isn't quite as good as being on TV and making millions. But I was a really good player, but I never made it to the next level. And uh, you know, I actually in in retrospect, I think that's helped me in this career because the one thing for me that was missing in that career was the mental side, right? How important the mental side is, how important I understood how important practice was accountability, but the mental side of envisioning success, knowing where you want to be, having a great, great self-talk, things like that. I was younger, I was in my early 20s, mid-20s, and those things weren't that great, right? And so I think when I got into real estate, thankfully, I started reading a lot of books about sales, about you know, mental, mental attitude, right? If you don't read a ton of books in real estate, you're missing out. So I got a lot better at that and used my my hard work and knowing that I wanted to be successful at something, frankly, to put it into real estate and put all the pieces together a lot more than I could in golf.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

So wrapping this up, I know your wife, she's a bass, and I love her to that. You when I look at you, health on point, relationship, on point, business on point, right? Okay, you're a coach, like you do all of this and you coach our top agents, right? Okay, and the top team leads. I mean, it's amazing. Who else would you rather have than someone that's had the growth and been through what you've been through? I mean, it's just amazing, such an incredible opportunity. How do you balance all that shit out, man? How do you keep it all together?

SPEAKER_02 36:26

Yeah, so it it's funny when you get into real estate, like for me, I started off when I was done playing golf, I had 50,000 in credit card debt, failed at that, and I had to reinvent myself, right? And so at the time it was, gosh, I need to, I need to get commission checks to pay off my credit card bills, and then the next goal is buy a house, and then the next goal is make a certain amount of money. And I did all those things. And yeah, it was fulfilling, it was great. But in reality, what has been the most fulfilling to me in this career of anything is helping other people realize that success, right? We've got a couple of people on our team that have you known pipes have completely changed their lives, right? Go from having absolutely nothing to be able to go buy a car with cash if they want to on the spot, right? Like just life-changing transformations. And that's things that like I kind of did that myself, but to see someone else do that, that gives me fulfillment that I could literally never get by going and selling a five million dollar home or doing some great individual agent thing. So me being in a leadership position through coaching, right? Like getting to coach, you know, new team leaders on how to grow their business and have them have those aha's about like, oh my gosh, I never thought about that. I talked to my agent and had this conversation, and they they went and put a house under contract this weekend. Like to be able to do that to agents on my team, agents and team leaders that I coach, that to me is what is really fulfilling and why I'm gonna keep going in this business for a long time, right? Because that that's a high that I can't get from any personal success. Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

If they want to get a hold of you, how do they get a hold of me, Michael?

SPEAKER_02 37:57

Michael Beard, realtor on Instagram. We can probably post my phone number in here, email, stuff like that. Reach out anytime. I'm always always an open book. Uh, one thing in this business I've learned a lot from people who have gone before me, who have done it, you know, Bill, you, David, now, a lot, you, other people I've masterminded with in this business. If you're not pouring in other people, you you're moving back. So I'm always happy to pour into people as long as you promise to pay it forward one day when you're when you're crushing it and and have somebody you can help. That that's gotten me very far in this career, and I believe in that fully.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

But there's nothing more inspiring than watching where you've come. And actually, it's it pales into where we know you're going. Like I have zero doubt. I'm I've I see the trajectory and it's as clear as day. So thank you so much for you know being being our first. Thank you so much for everything that you've done for this industry and also for the agent century coach and the people that are inside of G3. We appreciate you very much for that. T T anyone to see anything you want to say to be able to uh take us off here for our first one.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

No, I'm just gonna say, Michael, you're simply awesome. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

Thank you, guys. Right back at you. I appreciate it. Well, my friends, remember you're all titans or titans in the making. Take this, do something with it, execute your face off. Thanks again. Join us next week.