Team building is the difference between doing ok and doing great! It wasn't until I started building my team that my business exploded. I went from myself and $6 million or so to myself, two buyers agents and an assistant and $18 million production in 1 year. A couple years later and I have 20 Agents But starting and managing a team can be very challenging and extremely frustrating for the Agent/Team Leader who is successful and motivated.
Among many challenges, to me, the biggest challenge is realizing that my Agents are not me. It's a hard pill for me to swallow. I have managed medium and small staffs my entire life and managing a Real Estate staff, at least the way I run a business is one of the more challenging feats. I have always managed by creating opportunity for my employees and Agents. Our systems are very strong and for Real Estate I created even stronger systems than normal since I don't have control over my income. I had to create the "MacDonalds" of Real Estate, which I believe have done. However, no matter how good the system, if the Agent doesn't want success, there isn't much I can do.
Back to the first ime of the second paragraph. When I first started hiring Agents I trained them to follow my system and to have a high degree of integrity and ALWAYS be ethical when dealing with everyone! On top of that, I expect them to maintain a work ethic that will propel them to the level I was at in selling homes. That was my mistake. For the past few years I have found myself very frustrated with my Agents for not wanting to become successful as much as I wanted them to become successful. My goal is always to make my Agents successful therefore, as a team, we all become successful. The problem is, nobody, and I don't mean this in a cocky way, but nobody puts the effort into their success the way I do and did when I was selling homes. With this in mind, I built even better and stronger systems which I thought would make the change in my Agents....didn't work either.
I was lucky enough to go to a Tony Robbins seminar in November and then another one in December. If you ever have the chance to go, I highly recommend it. I can't tell you how much it has done for myself, my relationship with my wife and my business. While in these seminars I had many breakthrough moments. I believe my biggest for my business was understanding that no matter what I do, they will never be like me. If that's the case, then accept it and stop wasting time thinking about how you can make them better. If they don't want it, no matter what you do, they won't acheive it. It's really that simple...right in front of me all this time, but it never dawned on me that even though Agents say they want success, very seldom are they willing to do what it takes to actually obtain success. I even know that most Agents are not successful because their mind gets in their way. They are simply afraid to do what it takes because of the fear of failure or embarassment or whatever fear is holding them back. You see, if they don't put their best foot forth, they can't fail because they didn't try it. In reality of
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