Why Great Teams Don't Hire First - Scaling Before Hiring

These are three aspects that have served Kelly and I incredibly well over the past 10 years as we built the number one team here in Northeast Florida, Jacksonville, St. Augustine. It's been such an incredible blessing. And so we're going to kind of walk and talk, shall we kind of get a little comfy?

And the first part of this is before you hire out of pain, it's so worth to look at your systems and make sure that you've maximized and built a system that the system can solve the problem on before you actually hire a person that a system could do. Can you expand upon that a little bit? Yeah. Like I think when you're a real estate agent and you're feeling the pain and you're kind of doing everything all at once, right?

There's a lot going on. Have you systematized as much as possible before you need to bring somebody on because that will not only help you feel less pain, a little more calm, but when it is time to bring somebody on because those systems just can't scale without somebody else monitoring them, do you have a system in place that somebody can come in and easily take off from you? Now, let me jump in because I feel like one of the top three complaints that agents have is I just don't have any systems.

Like they're just not wired to be systems people. And like, we get that as well. And I think you guys do have systems, right? I mean, it may be a lack of systems.

It may not be a great system, but it is a system that's there. But when you get to the point where it's like, okay, I cannot, like, I absolutely cannot do this anymore. It is just way too painful. And my business is profitable enough for me to bring somebody on because it's going to let you grow and do more too.

Right. But this, at least you have something in place that somebody can come in and it's a starting point that a person who is systems oriented can be like, okay, I've got a, I've got a starting point. I'm going to organize. I'm going to make this more efficient.

This is what I'm going to add. This is what I'm going to take away. And then now your system begins to become more organized and more efficient. But I think you do need to have some kind of system in place.

Yeah. You know, here locally, there's a company, a contract company that you can hire to build out like specific systems. So that's not a full-time employee or position. It's more of a contract relationship, right?

And so for an agent that just says, I'm too busy, I don't want to fool with it or it's just I'm never going to build a system. I may encourage you to look first for companies that you can hire for a contract to build a specific system for you to solve a specific problem before you go off and hire a full-time employee because that's a huge risk and a huge energy drain versus just getting if you hire this contract company to build two or three systems that solve all your problems and you don't have to hire somebody.

That may be all you need. Yeah. Yeah. Depending on what your goals are, you know, do you want to be a solo agent with just maybe a showing partner and then some systems that somebody can build for you?

That's awesome. Right. But if you're going to grow a team with multiple agents and looking to scale large, you will need to bring on a person to maintain them. Right.

Okay. So now let's talk about when you have made the decision to bring on a person. And let's talk beyond transaction coordinators, because there's a lot of easy solutions for transaction coordinators. So more of an executive administrator, more of an operations person.

And what is this saying? Don't hire your clone. Right. Yeah.

Don't hire a clone because you already said you're looking to hire somebody because this is really painful and maybe your systems aren't really great like you as an agent when when I hired on there were systems in place and you know enough to have some really great systems you just don want to run them and maintain them and grow them or you know it is what it is but in order to scale they did need to become a little bit more efficient If you hired somebody like you who like okay I know enough to just get a system in place.

That's where it's always going to be. So you're going to have to hire somebody who is that systems oriented person that will take that starting point and just throw gas on that fire and turn it into an actual system, a standard operating procedure, something that's repeatable and scalable. So while an agent system might work for the 20 deals that you have, will that same system work for 200 deals? That's good.

Opposites attract. Yeah. And I think that's applicable with business. I was thinking about the game Tetris.

In Tetris, you're always trying to find that shape that fills the empty slots. And that's what you're looking for whenever you're hiring for a position. And so what is that empty slot in your business or maybe the way that you're wired and operate yourself? You're really looking to hire to that empty slot.

Not your best friend, not someone that you're just going to have a lot of fun with and feel comfortable with and hang out with. It's like, where are the gaps in my business currently? And where do I want to grow in the future? And now I need to hire someone to own those responsibilities, not just do a task.

If you hire someone to simply do a task, that's temporary. It will be short-lived and it will create more work for you. Can you kind of talk to that point? Nothing will ever get better.

Nothing will scale. If you don't have someone who's thinking forward and bigger and at scale, you will always, I mean, what do they say? You rise to the level of your systems. So if this is where your system is and no one is maintaining it or growing it and has that system oriented mindset, you'll always be at that level.

Your system will never, you will rise to the level of your system, which is here, not here. Right. So if you're just solely basing your decision off of the DISC personality assessment and you're like, well, we need to hire a high C because they have an attention to detail. Not all attention to detail means a grower, a builder or a problem solver.

something that I told Kelly often our first year or two was I know you can do these things but I didn't hire you to do them because I could outsource it to a virtual assistant for pennies on a dollar to do stuff right but I hired you to think and I never really it was so hard to explain until we read a lot of books and now we totally get it right right and and I think the term ownership really like encompasses it. I think that was the term that made everything click was I have to own it.

So all of the problems that arise from this area, those are my problems. They're not your problems. So any kind of problem, any kind of roadblock, any kind of issue, all of it is mine to solve first. And I can take it as far as I can take it until I would need to involve you.

But it wasn't like you're hiring somebody to do tasks. You're hiring somebody to own this aspect of your business. And if you make the wrong hire and you settle for someone that can just do tasks and you are inherently a builder grower, you're going to be aggravated. And we have a close friend that's gone through that a couple of times.

And you're like, oh, but it's just so easy. This person is good enough. They can just solve a temporary pain or problem, but long-term you're still not solving the growth problem. Right.

Exactly. And I think a lot of it is you're in so much pain and you just need somebody to come in really quickly. And like you were saying, you're not hiring your best friend. You're also not hiring like your friend or your neighbor that lives down the street or a friend of a friend just because it would put a on that pain really quickly It definitely has to be the right person to come in and fill the role and own the role Ownership.

That's the key word here. Okay. And then lastly, the third aspect of whenever you do hire someone is push them, encourage them, nudge them. You want to see what they're capable of.

And just because someone is busy doesn't mean they're maxed out. No. It's the Pareto's principle or the Parkinson's principle or whatever it is. If you give yourself enough time, you will fill the time with things to do.

So if I'm working an eight-hour day, I will find things to work an eight-hour day. But sometimes if I tell myself, all right, you've got an hour to do this, I'll do it in an hour. So it's that whole principle of you will fill time with things. So compressing time has also been like a huge unlock for us, but it has to come from a person who is thinking bigger and at scale.

And also the pushes and the nudges of, I know when we first started working together, it was like, okay, this is the goal for the week, this big idea. And it was like, when can we have it done? And it's like Friday. And it was always like, okay, well, what about Wednesday?

So we're always trying to compress time. We're always trying to healthfully push our people because we know that they can do it. Like, right. And it's uncomfortable.

It's uncomfortable to be pushed. And I know as I've grown, it also feels uncomfortable to put that pressure on people because I know how it feels, but it's all in like, I believe in you and I see the growth in you. And I know this little push will open doors and just make you better. But we have to push past the uncomfort of making somebody else feel uncomfortable.

That's true. And if it's the right person, they will rise to the occasion. Right. If it's not the right person, it doesn't mean anything.

There's nothing. It's not about them. It's just not the right person in the right seat. And that's totally fine too.

But even in our church, all the kids stay with us. And so Tilly, she's five. You know, she's like your typical five-year-old, just like bigger than life. We sit on the front row and she sits with us for an hour and 15 minutes.

And we have, we've pushed her, encouraged her and allowed her to rise to the occasion of being capable to sit in church on the front row for an hour and 15 minutes. And I think because you have those high expectations for her, she's able to meet those expectations. But if you don't have expectations for the person that you hired, like, you know. And if we, like, took her out the first 20 minutes just because we didn't know if she was capable, well, guess what now becomes the expectation.

Next Sunday, 20 minutes happens and she's ready to go out. Right, right. The high expectations and you're setting the tone for how things are going to work. So if someone's like, no, I really don't think I can do that, I would expect an explanation of why, like in depth.

Or I would just feel like, maybe this isn't the right person if they're going to push back and hold me back from what I know is possible going forward. So true. I heard, and I'm going to say it wrong, but one of the most maybe caring or loving acts within a professional environment is someone creating a standard for you to rise to the occasion, pushing you, coaching you, stretching you and growing you. I would not be where I am if we didn't have those healthy pushes of compressing time or really high expectations and meeting those high expectations.

Because nothing feels better than hitting a goal that you didn't think was possible. That's so true. It builds so much confidence. And it's like, oh, my gosh, well, if I did that, then I can definitely do this.

Right. Plus, I don't like people telling me that I can't do something. That just, like, makes me want to go do it. So for all of you leaders out there when you hire someone or maybe your current hires for you to be able to see potential in them that they can see themselves and then help lead them to achieve it that the ultimate leadership accomplishment The other part that I was going to say is, oh, we do have multiple friends who have a very large staff.

And you and I see their organizations and we see their business and we're like, what does everybody do all day? And it's because I think leaders are incredibly generous. We have big visions, big goals. And oftentimes when we feel like a person or department is slowing down or getting busy, we immediately want to hire someone else to continue to grow.

And what happens is we're teaching those roles, those employees, that we don't expect a lot out of them. Oftentimes we're also overpaying them and they are underworked. Is that the right? They're not putting out, they don't have a high output.

So they're being overpaid. Right. And you're setting limitations on what they can do. If you're automatically like, oh, I see you struggling a little bit.

We need to bring somebody in. Like that's, that's the limitation right there. And then when we bring another person in, then both of their outputs drop because they're kind of leaning on each other as a crutch. Right.

So now you have a heavy payroll, kind of a cumbersome staff and the output and the efficiency is low. And that just weighs the entire business down and everybody suffers. Yeah. So can you just give them, we should have started with this.

What is the breakdown of our operation with 15 agents, 225 deals a year? Yeah. So with that, we have me who I'm director of operations overseeing kind of anything, anything large makes its way up to me. But we have a transaction coordinator, one, and she has a virtual assistant who works full time.

And that's our entire administrative staff. So we have one transaction coordinator and one virtual assistant that handles 225 deals a year. And that transaction coordinator is our listing manager. Yeah.

She also does listings. A lot of organizations, that's two separate roles. And then our virtual assistant does all of the marketing for the listing. So making sure everything makes it out on social media, any reviews that come in, our agents are getting recognized on social media.

So he handles that as well. But yeah, and it's all encompassing. I think sometimes people are like, oh, well, what does your transaction coordinator like that can mean different things to different people. It's full customer communication as well, because sometimes transaction coordinators don't communicate directly with the customers.

Ours is she's the first line of defense for all of our customers. She's agent experience and customer experience. Yeah. She owns that.

Yeah. So kind of just a little perspective for you. We've got two people who handle 225 transactions. Yeah.

Wonderful. I love it. That's so good. Yeah, but we have high expectations and we always push the limitations.

So when I'm approached with like, hey, this is where I am and this is kind of where I'm getting stuck, we're always leaning towards, okay, how can we use technology or a system to leverage that and push you past this roadblock because the last thing for us is bringing on another person. So if I can just maneuver some things around to make it easier for the people to do their job, or we can bring in technology, or we can rewrite our system, maybe it hasn't been revisited for a while.

What other adjustments can I make before a person becomes the solution to this problem? That's so good. That's so good. Okay.

We'll keep these conversations going as you guys have questions and specific nuanced situations, just reach out to Kelly and I. The best way is on Instagram at the Josh and Kelly. And we're here to help you guys grow and scale your business and your teams.