Transcription
As a real estate agent, you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Most agents believe they have a lead problem. But the real problem is their systems, or lack thereof. But here's the biggest problem: Most agents don't know what systems they need or how to create them.
Today, I bring on Stephanie Lugo, who has an incredible YouTube channel of over 30,000 subscribers, and she is the queen of systems. And in this video, she breaks down the three critical systems every agent needs if you want to be closing two-plus deals consistently every single month without stress or overwhelm.
Now, two quick things before getting started. Number one, I will link her incredible channel below as well as her Instagram so you can check out her amazing content. And number two, I will link her calendar below in case you would like her help for free to create your systems. So without further ado, let's bring on Stephanie and talk all things systems, which is the bane of most agents' existence.
All right, Stephanie. So super excited to have you on here today and to talk about what I think is one of the biggest problems for agents, which is systems. And many seem to feel like they've got a lead problem without realizing that you don't scale to the level of your leads, you fall to the level of your systems. And this is like the bane of most agents' existence, uh, because they have none. And I was that agent at one point, flying by the seat of my pants, hanging on by a thread. And when you look back, you realize how many deals you leave on the table. And this is why most agents struggle to scale. So I'm excited to get your opinion on systems in general. And then we could start diving into your three-step framework.
I love that and you put it so well. It is truly a systems problem at the end of the day for most agents, as challenges, right? Um, but the problem is that I find is that right now, systems is like, kind of a buzzy word. It's like a sexy keyword, but it's a really vague, right? And so when I'm when I'm chatting with agents, a lot of times they'll refer to systems as like their CRM or whatever tech platform they're they're using in the moment, when really what I like to do is start by defining systems, right? I think that that would be a helpful place to start. And for me, I'm curious to know how you kind of look at it. For me, a system is an intentional way of doing things step by step to achieve a planned result, right? Would you agree or or what do you want to add to that?
Yeah, I completely agree. And I think people overcomplicate systems. Like most agents, their their perspective of systems is like these intense, techy automations and CRM. And, you know, for me, a system, I have some of my systems built on a checklist on a Google Doc because it's a repeatable process that you do multiple times that you can be able to train anybody to do for you. And so I completely agree.
You know, it's so funny that you say that because I first learned systems back in like 2016, '17. We were a couple of years in the business and we were talking with one of the most successful agents in our market who had been around for like 40 years. They sold all the homes in this one specific zip code. They just owned this forum area. And we were having this conversation with him and he said, you know, he starts bringing up systems and he points to this clipboard with some paper on it and checklists and he's like, "That's the system. That is like the Bible that this whole office runs on." And that was really impactful for me because to see that you can have a decades-long legacy of a real estate business selling thousands of homes in that time from just a simple checklist. That's what really taught me, okay, this can be simple. Anybody can pick this up and go because for me, and this is also another objection that I get, I am not an organized person. I'm kind of a mess. I live in chaos and and that's just my natural state of being. And so I found that that was creating a lot of challenges for me. And if I could just get very simple systems, like boil it down to is exactly what I need to be focusing on that 20% that's going to yield 80% of the results, then my husband and I and my husband and wife team, we would see a complete change in our business. And we did. It was like magic. As soon as we started being even like the slightest bit intentional with how we were doing things in our real estate business, everything changed. And so that's why I'm so passionate about this. And I mean, for those who might have seen my YouTube videos, I've been talking about the same thing for literally five or six years now because it can really be like the crux of the matter. It can change everything or it can break your entire business. And for agents who find that you're starting over after every deal or you have that one really good month and then two months of nothing afterwards, that is kind of a red flag that this is a challenge for you. So, I'm really excited to kind of walk through what I think are the three core systems. And these are like, for me, universal truths for any real estate business and really any business in general. These are the three systems that we need to have in place in order to thrive, right? Whatever that version of success needs to look like for the individual agents. So, do you have anything to add or it might get to go on? What do you think?
Yeah. No, I'm I'm excited to dive into it, but I just wanted to say like, you know, a couple different things. Number one, I like that you talked about the fact that you harp on this on your YouTube channel because one of the things that I get all the time, and I'm sure that you do too, is like, "You talk about YouTube because you've got YouTube training." I'm like, "I talk about YouTube because it's what I do. It's what changed my life, and I want to give you the path to change your own." And I'm sure that's very similar where it's like, okay, you you talk about systems, but you don't just do it because it's a sexy topic. You do it because it's what literally changed your life and you want to be able to help people get that same outcome. But one of the things that I find before we start diving into the three systems is that agents are always looking for an excuse to delay taking action. And for me, because people seem to make systems this complex topic, they're always in that state of mind of like, "I'll take action when it's ready. When I have the system, then I'll do it." Instead of just saying like, "The reason why you don't have time is because you're lacking those exact systems."
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's so true and I can't tell you how often I hear that too. The the the distinction that you made here that I think is really important to underscore is that a system can help you handle a tactic really well. And the tactics in real estate are going to change always, but the end result has to be we need to be having real estate conversations with people interested in doing things with real estate that result in a sale, right? The way that we reach them has changed quite a bit over the last 10 years because of social media and and the way that people um have diverted their attention, right, in the last several years. So, the tactic changes, but the end result is the same. And so a system helps make sure that whatever the tactic is, we're going to do it really well and really consistently because in the last 11 years, my superpower hasn't been being amazing on social media or being amazing in face-to-face. I'm kind of awkward as a person in general. Like I'm I'm I'm definitely an introvert. So it's not like I'm this like social butterfly out there like making the deals happen. It's that we're really consistent and we show up every single day, every single year, and we do a lot of the same things over and over again because once we figured out what worked, we built the system around it so that we wouldn't be getting in our own way and and creating creating reasons for us to avoid the work, right? Which is kind of exactly what you're explaining. So, I love that you made that distinction because I think that's really important.
Yeah, 100%. And you you said my favorite word, which is now we can start diving into what those three systems are, which is consistency. Because that's what I hear constantly is that I struggle with consistency. And often times it's because you're spending half your day browsing Google Drive, Google Docs because everything's a mess. You have no systems in place and then by the time you actually get to what you're supposed to do, you're frustrated beyond belief and you don't even want to do it anymore. So, uh, let's start diving in and and see, you know, what what are these three systems that you believe, um, are going to change an agent's life.
Okay. So, the first system, and you're going to love this, Mike, is demand. Okay. So, we have to have a system that's going to create consistent marketing and lead generation. And this can look different for different real estate agents, right? You do have to look at like what how much time you have, how much money you want to invest, and and the way that you feel most natural in showing up. Like, how do you most naturally take action in your business? Um, so so I'll kind of give my example. When I was a a newer real estate agent, my husband and I left our 9-to-5. We left corporate finance to get into into real estate full-time and we had a mortgage. We had like car payments. We had the whole thing. We straight up just quit our jobs and got into real estate. Not not really understanding the ramifications of that. Looking back, it was kind of a a foolhardy thing to do, but it worked out, so we're we're good. Um, but we we recognized after that first year, we had a great first year. We earned six figures. We couldn't believe it. But we were looking at the next year and we were like, "How are we going to do that again?" Like, "Where are our next clients going to come from?" And so many agents, even after 5, 10, and 15 years in the business, have that experience where they're like, "What what am I going to do?" Like, every single one feels different. And so what we want to do is get away from having like random tactics and finding things to do and instead creating a really simple business based off of like two solid pillars of business, two solid lead sources plus your database and referral. And I'm just going to say right now for those agents who are like, "But I don't have a database." Yeah, that's okay. If you don't have a database, your job in the next 12 months is to go build a database, okay? Because everybody needs a network at the end of the day. This is a people business, right? And so like what we did was we had a combination of social media, our database, and in the early days, we did a lot of open houses. And that's how we were able to sell dozens and dozens of homes in our first couple of years. But I'll tell you what, I hated open houses. Was tired of spending my weekends in these like properties just like waiting for somebody to come in. And we didn't have a big database. We knew like 30 people. And so what we did was we used open houses and social media to grow our database. And now today, years later, our business is 80% referral and repeat. The rest is from organic social media leads that just come in and find us on Instagram because I've been posting consistently for over a decade. And also some agent referrals. Now, some other agents might have a different approach. They might do cold calling, right? So, like maybe they don't they it takes them a little while to figure out the social media stuff. They know it's important. They want to get there, but right now they're going to lean all in on cold calling. You can do that. And every single one of those clients that you bring in needs to become a client for life. Someone who's going to do repeat business and referral for you. And after doing that for enough time, you will create that database. You'll build momentum on social media. Maybe you explore a third lead source. And you have this really solid on-demand system for new clients, right? We we have to have repeatable lead generation and marketing. And that plan can change over time, but it's with intention. And that's like the key word of a system. A system is built on intention. It's not trying something new every day. It's not throwing spaghetti at the wall. It's putting a flag in the ground and saying, "These are the two or three things that I'm going to be focusing all my time on in the next 12 months." Until I have enough data in my metrics to determine what's working and what's not so that I can continue to make data-driven decisions on how to lean into that system going forward. I'm going to pause here because you got me on a little bit of a rant.
Yeah. No, I I love it and and then I'm going to ask you for an example of like what one of those systems would look like. But I think it's really important because you know when when we talk about being intentional, we start looking at this. I I think you're you're hitting one of the pain points that I find a lot of agents are struggling with is that first one of like, "I don't have a database. I don't have a sphere." It's like your job is to go build one. And I think one of the things that that really struggle, you know, people struggle with is that entire concept of overwhelm. And this is what I really harp on with people is that nothing by nature is overwhelming. There's nothing that just exists and suddenly it's overwhelming. It's you are making the conscious choice to attempt to do far too many things. So you made the decision to become overwhelmed, right? And so I think many people aren't thinking about that logically. Of any successful agent, and this this kind of goes back to the quote that I think really jacks up a lot of entrepreneurs is I hear that the average millionaire has seven income streams without realizing that almost 100% of them got to their first million with one and then diversified after. And every successful agent that I know, like you said, for decades with content is hyper consistent with one or two things that they just master. Usually it's a blend, like you said, of now business, prospecting, and later business, content, and branding. Um, but I just like the fact that you kind of like reeled that in and helped people understand that simple scales and agents notoriously complex, you know, add complexity to their business because it makes them feel like they're making progress when it really is just busy work that's not moving the needle without realizing. We don't get paid for the time into the business. We get paid for the result.
Yeah, absolutely. And movement and to your point, movement does not naturally equal progress. But the challenge is is for new real estate agents specifically or agents who have never really had to think about it. And I would include agents who have been in the business for like 10 years, had that like built-in network and and sphere and referrals. Like, we all know them. We all know at least one of those agents, okay? They are out there. And at some point they realized, "Oh, the experience doesn't matter the way it used to," or "People stopped referring me because I stopped asking," or "I was sick all last year and I had to focus on my health and now I feel like I'm starting from scratch," even though I have years in the business. Right? So like, whichever end of that spectrum you're on, you will deal with this challenge. It will come up eventually in your business. You will deal with this. It is not an experience problem. It is a systems problem. And I think that if we're looking at the the other side of the spectrum with newer agents, they don't understand the ramifications of being a business owner until it slaps them in the face. And and it stings, okay? But like the moment you put on that real estate hat, the torch was passed to you to make the decisions. And the more you are putting off making the decision to take action, the more pain and overwhelm you are putting yourself through. And so we have to make the decision to put faith in a process and say, "Okay, if I just do this one thing consistently enough, one of two things are going to happen. I'm going to either have enough information to see that it worked, I'm going to have results from it, or I'm not going to have results from it, and I will have enough information to try something different again with intention." All right. So like the way that this manifested for me is in 2016, we had had our first year, year and a half of business and it was really stressful and it was like every single month starting over, where's the next client going to come from? And at that time, that's when like Facebook Live and like Instagram were really picking up in the small business space and I remember seeing friends of ours who had a photography business get wildly successful. It felt like overnight, but I knew that it wasn't because we knew their journey and we knew what they had been working on for years. And a huge part of their success was social media on Instagram. And I was like, "I've got to figure this out." My husband, super camera shy. Didn't want anything to do with it. I'm an introvert. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be on camera either, right? And so, although I'm I'm happy to be here in this moment, but like I'm thinking, I don't want to do this, but I think I have to because we only know like 30 people. We were young adults. Everyone we knew at the time were young millennials. No one was buying in 2016. You know, like our market was still practically recovering from the great recession that happened in 2009. And so I'm like, "Okay, I have to figure out Instagram. Doesn't matter if it's uncomfortable. Doesn't matter if I want to do it or not." And I spent $280 on a course to learn how to do Instagram. And it was like 2016 Instagram, okay? This was like like just like early days. And I remember going to Bryce and it was like one of those like old-school course launches, you know, when they had like the doors are closing at midnight and it was 10 p.m. And I went to Bryce and I was like, "Bryce, like I know every dollar counts right now. I know we don't have a huge budget."
"We have to do this and if we don't do this, I feel like this is going to continue forever and we're always going to be in the space." And he was like, "Okay, if that's what you think, go go do it and then give it everything you got." And I said, "Okay." And within two years, we were making two, 300K a year on GCI from Instagram alone. Like it it it just changed everything for us and it helped me understand, okay, we have to have the right lead generation and marketing. We have to do it consistently and we can never stop. And and that's not necessarily the the truth because now I don't have to post nearly as much on Instagram as I do because we've nurtured so much of that referral base and we've grown such an incredible community here in Phoenix. And so the business comes much more predictably with 20% of the effort that it used to take because we spent those years working so hard to make it happen. It didn't happen by accident. And so like if you look at my Instagram now, like I have I have a a following. Like, sure, that's not even the most important part. I have thousands of posts on Instagram. I'm not like one of these cool people on Instagram who has like 150 posts and like 30,000 followers or something. Like, I have thousands of posts on my Instagram and it's the same one that I've had since 2016. So, everyone can see how long I've been posting. And also, everyone can see how awful the posts used to be. My content used to be crap. And I leave it all up there so that everyone can see that I had to go through it and I had to put some really crappy stuff out there to figure out what worked. And so again, the only reason I was able to do that for years is because I had a system every single day. I was going to post on Instagram like it was my job. Didn't care how I felt. Didn't care whether or not I felt like showing up that day. I was going to do it because I had a system and I made the decision to stick to it. And that that instance back in 2016 is really like the beginning of this long line of everything that I've been able to create alongside my husband in our business over the last decade. But it starts with understanding and being intentional about what that needs to look like. And it's going to be different for every agent, which is why you have to really put yourself out there and make that decision even if feels if even if it feels scary or uncomfortable in the moment.
Yeah, it makes complete sense. And I've got a very similar story in the sense that I got started in 2017, broke new agent, new city and I posted 1,000 days for my first a thousand days in a row on Instagram and I kept them all up there because again, they're trash, but it shows that journey. But I would I'd love to kind of like make this tangible for people and maybe walk through like what what did your system look like or what would a system look like for Instagram in order for somebody to start staying consistent?
Yeah. And and it can be any channel, right? So, we're talking about Instagram, could be YouTube, could be TikTok. I've generated leads and closed deals on all of them. If we're talking about Instagram, literally your job is to post every single day. Like, if you're going to post every single day, then you are posting every single day. Um, for me, these days, I think most agents can get by, and I'd be curious to know your opinion on that, but I think most agents can get by with posting three to four times a week and showing up in the stories five days a week, right? Take the weekends off, but you're going hard all week. You might be batching your content a little bit. So, what I used to do is on Sundays, I would take some time to look at the week ahead. And if I had a closing coming up on that Thursday, and then I knew I had those clients coming out of town to go look at properties on the Tuesday coming up, I would just post about that. So, I wasn't necessarily posting like the listical or the how-to. I was showing what we were doing on a day-to-day basis. I was really leaning into that like old-school Gary Vee like document, don't create um aspect of content creation because that's what felt easier for me in the moment rather than creating this like very um like polished thought-out content that took a lot of effort. That's just not my style. I'm much better off the cuff in everything that I do, especially when it comes to content. And so again, that was just me knowing myself and knowing all right, so batching for me looks like what do I have coming up and what can I like weave into my posts? For me, it was posting every single day, seven days a week. For others who don't have a lot going on or like who who might not, sorry, for others who who have a lot going on, maybe it's only three days a week. It there's no one right or wrong way to do it. You just have to make the decision. Um, so so for me now, I have two children at home. Got a three-year-old who never stops talking and screaming in the background. He's amazing. And I have a kindergartner who always wants Mommy to play with him. I'm not on stories every single day face-to-cam like I used to be. So, the plan has changed. But if I can hit three posts a week and hit the stories five days a week, I'm solid and I'm and I'm good. I try to hit it. If I have a bad week, I just don't have two bad weeks in a row. I try to get back on it. So, I know that sounds silly, but again, simple scales, right? It can be that simple.
Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree. Like sometimes people I don't really share this, but since it's on the topic before we go to system number two, I'll kind of share it, which is, you know, a lot of people are wondering how I've been consistent two videos a week on YouTube for eight years. And, you know, for me, again, it's it's entirely a system. Like I have not changed my system for eight years, which has and I've traveled the world, I've been sick, I've, you know, life happens, um, and I've never missed a week. And so for me, my system when it comes to YouTube is I plan on Fridays, I record on Saturdays. Days. As soon as I record, the videos get uploaded to Google Drive. My team gets notified through Monday. They edit it. They do the thumbnails. Whenever they're finished, I get a notification for approval. Then somebody uploads it and optimizes it. I do a final approval and it goes out. And so for me, it's like a simple checklist and making sure that again, that's just a repeatable process. But I think what's really important for people to know is you're always going to make time for your priorities. And so when people are like, "I don't have time," you you will always make time for what matters to you. For me, this matters. And so I don't take any meetings. I don't care care who you are, what you want. You're not getting into my calendar on Saturdays because this is my priority. Um, and so it's no wonder that I've been able to be consistent with that because again, it's just a non-negotiable system that runs my business. Like this is the lifeline. Um, and I don't think enough people really put enough emphasis on what that can do for their business. So, with that being said, you know, we talked about obviously creating demand. I think that's first and foremost, knowing, you know, agents only have three activities: get clients, service clients, and nurture clients. So, we talked about getting clients. What is going to be the second system that they need after they start to create demand?
Yeah. If if you don't have leads coming in, you don't have a business, right? So, we got to take care of that first. Once we know the plan there, then we can look to our system number two, which is the delivery, right? And and for us, that is the client journey. If you are out there talking about how great you are and if people believe you enough to commit to you as their real estate agent and as as your client, now you have to back up everything you said. Okay? And so what a lot of agents do is is they even really experienced agents, they find themselves recreating the wheel with every deal. They're like rewriting the same email for every part of the milestone that they've done with every single deal and they're forgetting silly things or like rushing at the last minute. That's not good for you and it's not good for your clients. Okay? And I think that where this became very very easily seen is when the market shifted in the last couple of years because now the follow-up actually matters. The way we're setting appointments and having consultations actually matters. Those sales skills actually matter now. Whereas before a lot we were just facilitating deals when the market was really hot and that wasn't good for anyone. Right? Now, we get to actually be really thoughtful about our delivery system and make sure that we have a client journey that at the end is going to create three referrals within two years from every closing so that you can start to create organic exponential business. What a lot of agents do though is they close and ghost. They close that client and they never reach back out. And then when they realize that they haven't reached back out in two years, they feel like such an that they don't want to reach back out. They're like afraid to come out when they don't even realize that the clients weren't paying attention anyways. And so here's here's what we need to do instead. We need to look at the workflows before, during, and after the client journey. And so that starts from lead to client. How are we following up with the client? Are we checking in once and then when we don't hear an immediate response, we just assume they hate us and we leave them alone forever? No. People are busy, people have stuff going on, we need to follow up a couple of times. What does that look like? And does it look like a, "Hey, just checking in?" Or does it look like a, "Hey, when we first spoke, this was the plan. Is this still the case? Because I want to help you map out your next steps. If you have 15 minutes, let's work it out so that you can have confidence in what the next steps are, right?" And so we want to not only think about like what's happening, but how is it happening? How are we delivering on that message? What's the point um of moving them through that transaction? And it feels kind of esoteric on the top or on on the top side of it, but but realistically, every client needs the exact same client onboarding sequence. Every client needs a consultation. Doesn't matter if they're a buyer that you've worked with before. Doesn't matter if it's a seller who's meeting you for the first time. Every single client needs a consultation. Every single client needs to go into the CRM. Every single client needs the same kind of notes so that you remember what the last conversation was and what your next steps are for them. If your client needs six months, but they're committed to you, how are you going to continue providing value for them for six months so that they don't lose confidence in you as a professional? Your job is to guide them through that process, right? Right. And I'm giving a lot of just like like examples because I think that as I'm saying this, we're going to have agents hearing that who are going to start getting a little pink at the chain pink in the cheeks, right? They're going to be like, "Wait a second. I've totally done that." And I didn't realize I was the only one who was doing that. And and you're not. So, if you're hearing that and you're feeling like a little bit of shame because you're realizing that maybe we haven't done quite as much as we could be doing, that's good because that's awareness on an area that we can pro provide a little bit more support in your business to create an amazing client experience that will instantly yield results. So, I want to pause here and see what comes up for you.
Yeah. No, I you know, I completely agree. I think one of the things when when people are thinking about the system in terms of customer journey or client experience, again, it it automatically defaults to drip campaign, nurture forever. Like that's like that's what people think is like, "I need the drip campaign." Um, and what I think people fail to realize is it's next time you have a client, it's just in immense detail documenting every single humanly possible step so that if you weren't here, somebody else could replace that. And it's, you know, if it's going to be something that you could do multiple times or more than once, then that should become a system. But what I'd love to hear from you is like somebody's listening to this, they have zero systems, but I know the one question they're going to ask is, "Where the heck do I start?" Like, if I was to sit down here today, what would that look like for me over the next month with the next clients to build out a customer journey?
Are there any platforms that I should use to keep it organized? Like if I was to start today, knowing that this is the fundamental, you know, system in an agent's business, how and where do I get started?
Okay, couple things here. I like to um point to an acronym that we've coined in my program. It's called IDEA and it's a four-step system maker. Okay. So, IDEA, excuse me, starts with I. We're identifying the workflow and the result we want to see. Okay. So, let's let's consider um a new lead from Instagram. We've identified the workflow: lead comes in, and we receive the lead and we set an appointment. Even if they're 12 months out, we're setting an appointment. Okay. So, the result is: lead comes in, appointment set. Okay, we've done it. D is document the steps and draft the communications. What steps is are that are those clients taking and what communications are you sending to move them along? Right? So, if you're asking for an appointment, is it, "Hey, yeah, you can book a call with me anytime?" Or is it, "It's really an interesting idea, it's better spoken over a quick 15-minute call?" And I find even if my clients are 12 months out, they really benefit from a little extra clarity on the process so they know what their next steps are. Are you free on Tuesday? We can hop on a quick call. Here's my link. Right? So again, like thinking about some of those statements and and drafting a couple of scripts that don't have to feel scripty, but are more so like conversation starters can go a long way in removing that blank page syndrome if you finally get a hand-raiser in your DMs and you're like, "What do I say? What do I do?" And you start overthinking it, right? So like, give yourself the the the the gift of a little bit of pre-drafted conversation starters. They don't have to be scripts that don't sound like you. They just have to give you somewhere to start from. So that's D. First there is identify the workflow and the result. Then draft the the the draft the communications and document the steps. E is execute. So you're going to execute that process a couple times. Do it at least once and see where you where you missed a step or make any edits on how you want to do things differently. Right? So, if you have drafted some communications and you sent them out and they didn't land well or you had an idea of something else you want to do differently, edit that communication that you drafted, edit the template. And then finally, A is automate. So, what can be automated? Rather than sending um a booking link manually like to your calendar, can you like set up a Calendly workflow that will sync your calendars that will automatically import their information as a new lead into your CRM? Because that's how we have it set up, right? And then can you automate a couple of email reminders to make sure they actually show up to the call if it's not the same day? Just thinking about ways that once we have the process in place, how can we then intentionally bring in a little bit of technology or another pair of hands to alleviate the burden on your time? And the the problem that agents fall into is they start with automate. They immediately jump to the tech. They're like, "Who do I need to hire? How much money can I spend to make this problem go away?" When it's like, if you just take a little bit of time, you might need not need any tech. You might not need any platforms at all. You might not even need an assistant if you just have the right process in place. Now, once you've identified, documented, executed, and automated, then it's very clear what platforms you need. You're going to need a CRM. If you have more than um like 10 or 15 leads coming in a month, if you have more than 80 people in your database, you need a CRM. It is now the cost of doing business. Congratulations. Cuz remember, you're a business owner. Okay? If you need um if you need a little bit of extra help on the task management side to keep these workflows because you keep losing your pen and paper and like your little scraps of um napkins and sticky notes that you're leaving these steps on. You're leaving them all over the place and they're getting lost in the house and your kids start coloring over them. Hasn't happened to me or anything. Uh, what you want to do then is look at like what kind of task manager do you need, right? So like Asana is a great option for real estate agents who want a very lightweight task management system that's more like a just glorified digital to-do list. Perfect. For a lot of agents, that's fantastic. Other agents need something more robust like Monday.com that you mentioned. We recently have moved over to that this year. And it's been incredibly helpful because there's so many different formats that you can keep your workflows in. You can use a doc feature. You can use a like a to-do list kind of table spreadsheet style. Different formats. Awesome. I would not jump to something more robust. I would start with identifying the workflows, documenting the steps, and drafting the communications. Executing it a couple of times to make sure it actually works and then looking at what kind of platforms we can implement from there. And that has to happen through the entire journey. Lead received all the way to two years after the closing. What are the steps? Start drafting it from there. You've already done it intuitively. You probably have some muscle memory that you can just like, "Okay, what did I do that one time when it worked out really well?" You can just draft it all out. You can literally start by blocking two hours on your calendar and brain dumping as much on these systems as you can. We give them pre-written to agents in our program, which you know is great, but you don't even need that. You can literally look at your own business and see how you want things to be done differently next time and start there. But you have to start is a big thing.
Yeah, I I agree. And I think it's always funny like people historically, especially if they bring on an assistant or an admin or a buyer agent, they're always like, "Nobody could do it like I do." And I'm like, "You don't even know how to do it like you do." Like you can't even document your own process. But you know to make it very simple for people, I'll explain what I do. I use ChatGPT. And, you know, when I look at this, this is one of the most fundamental things and and why I love your IDEA framework because for me, what I do is I pretty much follow a very similar process. I map out every single stepping component. I upload that document in ChatGPT and say, "Create me the most simple tech stack or workflow that I humanly can use that's going to be the cheapest, the most effective, the most efficient based on these steps." But if you don't have the steps, you can't figure out the system. And so it's it's never been easier. And that's why again, people are going to be like, "Oh my god, now I got to figure out what CRM now." It doesn't matter. Whatever you use, if you do the work, it's going to work. And that's why I always lean on AI because I'm like, "Hey, it knows way more than I do." But if I give it what I do, then it can automate it for me. Then it can plan out the strategy. Then it can give me the tech stack that's going to be within my budget and and get me the outcome that I'm looking for. But we're in an era where there's absolutely zero excuses to not know what your best next step is based on where you're at today.
I couldn't agree more. And I think that you said something really interesting there where it's like, "Oh, no one can do it like I can." And like I try to bring on these assistants and they just can't do it. They don't have what it takes. No one wants to work anymore. No, you're just a really crappy manager. Sorry. Like you just suck. You suck at managing because you have decided not to take the time to put these pieces in place. And so you throw these people into the deep end when you hire an admin or you bring on a showing assistant and you're like, "Well, I don't know. Just work. Just do something. Watch me. Watch how I do it." They can't do that. And so when there are not clear expectations, when your employee cannot say when they're done or when the result has been achieved, you don't have a system in place. And that is why you will never be able to scale because you won't be able to identify what people you need to be plugging into these, right? And so again, that's why like everything comes back to a system problem. It all comes back to a system problem. And it's so funny to me when we get the excuses of like, "Well, I don't have enough time. I don't have enough money. I need to wait until I get a couple of deals." Like, you're never going to solve the problem until you put these pieces in place. And and you see it crop up in people's client journeys all the time. It's like the waking up at 12:00 a.m. in the middle of the night realizing that you forgot to send that email or realizing that you've ghosted that client for two years and then they're selling with another realtor because 83% of buyers who purchase a home forget the name of their agent within two years. It's like, if you're not staying in touch with them, you are not entitled to the sale. You're not entitled to that client's referrals. You're not because you haven't done the most bare minimum part of the job, which is staying in touch and communicating with clients. And so, like, I I get frustrated because this is the best industry to be in. It really is. And it is so incredible that we get to to create these insanely dynamic businesses that can weather any shift in the market because systems help you navigate the shifts, right? Like if you're having a terrible year, it's not the market. It's because you have allowed your system not to respond to the client needs of the moment, right? And so if we can correct that, we get to be a realtor for life. We get to have clients for life. I just sold a house this summer from a client who we sold their home to almost a decade ago and they knew to come back to us and there was no sale. It was like implicitly trusting in us because of the way that we stay in touch with them throughout the year through our client journey. And so like like this is such an important piece that that can make you an insane amount of money, help people in your community and provide safety to your family. And so that's why system number two, even more so than lead generation and marketing, is almost more important because it loops back into lead generation marketing. If you have an amazing client delivery system, like a service delivery system for your clients, you're going to have so much business that comes from it. And that could almost completely replace system number one, which is really interesting. But you got to cut me off here. We got to go on to system number three, or else I'll never stop ranting about that because it's that important.
Let's do it.
Okay. So, system number three, and you mentioned like, all right, let's talk about actual like platforms at some point. It does make sense to, once we put these pieces in place, once we've identified where lead gener leads are coming in and marketing is happening, like we've identified that, and then we have the client journey in place.
Where are we going to put everything and how are we going to build a routine off of that, right? And how many agents do you know that have spent a lot of time setting up their drip campaigns or putting their CRM in place and then they never go in and use it? Like, have you, have you experienced that? And they're like, "Oh, it's just a big digital paperweight because they don't know how to incorporate it into their workflow." Right?
Constantly. Yeah. Yeah. It's painful. And so what we want to make sure that we have is not only the platforms, but we want the right routines on when to, when to actually go in there and and and take action, right? And so that's, that's part of what I love, um, ASA for. Is in ASA, I've built out my weekly workflow and exactly what I should be doing each day. Now, I am not the person who can be told what to do. If you tell me to do something, I will go do the opposite. That's just who I am. And I, and I have to like, work against that a little bit. So, I have to give myself a lot of leeway to make sure that my time blocks are not, "8:15, morning routine, 8:20, check the inbox." I can't do that. But I can have a rolling time block where from 9 to 11, I need to be doing my most important work, and I can put that in Asana. And I can identify what that most important work is. And spoiler alert, it's system number one, lead generation marketing. That's the most important work. And I can have those activities detailed out in Asana. So I know during those hours, once I feel like it and I get around to it, I know the first thing I need to do is open up my CRM and make sure we are responding to any tasks or needs of, like, nurture clients, for example. And then we are taking action, doing a little bit of lead generation prospecting. For us, that looks like on Mondays, reaching out to some past clients. And we can get into that in another video more in depth. But the point is, is we have to have that record of like, "Okay, what do our routines need to look like? How are we streamlining our day-to-day in real estate? And where can we keep it? And which container does it need, need to be in order for us to know like, where to access these routines so that if we do get blown off track, we have somewhere else to go to get back into it." Does that make sense?
Yeah, 100%. And and for me, like, again, this this goes back to agents having this fixation with making a complex schedule where, you know, I, I wish I had a screenshot of it. Like my, I, I was very similar to you. Broke six figures in my first year, and my calendar five days a week was in the morning. I would create content, and I door-knocked seven days a week, three hours a day for my first six months. 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. was door-knocking. I had two time blocks. It was create content, door-knock. Anything else, whether it's showings, whether it's follow-up, what would all fit within the rest of the time. But there, my calendar had two meetings in it, which was prospect, create content. And if you just do the activities that actually keep the pipeline full, you're never going to have to worry about scaling your business. But again, everybody, you know, loves to spend two hours on Canva building some random brochure that they don't even have a client to give. um and they get to the end of the day exhausted wondering why they have no progress when it was just littered with again, busy work. It's really easy to fill a calendar, but is it the right activities?
So, this is why this is system number three. The workflow and like your daily operating system is system number three because a lot of agents, similar to idea, do this backwards. They start with the schedule and they're like, "Okay, I need to follow that person who I saw on Instagram. I need to take their exact schedule and I just need to do what they're doing. I'm just going to do what they're doing." But if you don't want to be doing those things, or if you don't have the same opportunities that that person does, or the same database, or the same goals, or the same vision of success, then it's not going to work for you. And so many agents come to me feeling like a failure because they can't stick to a routine or they can't stick to a schedule. Like they just don't, they have a time management problem. It's just not who they are to have good time management. No, we have to start from the beginning because when you know exactly what to do each day, content create and door-knock to use your example, then the rest is simple. We just create the time block to plug those things in. But it doesn't work the other way around. So that's why this is kind of a full, a full circle thing. And it's, and much like a much like a tripod or a stool with three legs, you remove one and it's going to fall over. So you need these three systems in place for things to work really cohesively. So we start with the lead generation and marketing because that's what's going to bring in clients. Once we get the clients, we have the client journey to get more clients, but al more importantly, make sure we're giving them a great level of service. And then we have the routine to fit those things into our daily schedule in a cadence that makes sense for our lifestyle, not the other way around. So like, you look at a mom who has three kids who is closing 60 deals a year. Her routine's going to look a little bit different from a single dude with no family who's got all the time in the world to bang on the phones. Neither are wrong, but you have to start with their like, what it is they're able to do and what their lifestyles are like and then work from there. Just too many people try to do it backwards.
Yeah. No, I completely agree. And and so there's going to be a lot of people on here that are going to want help with this. Um, and I think again, you know, it's, it breaks my heart whenever I see the fact that 74% of agents didn't close a deal in the first nine months of this year. And again, I personally feel like that's a conscious choice. um, you're a product of your environment and oftentimes it it's not that complex, but a lot of people do need that roadmap and do want to just go straight to the proven path that works. So, you know, what I always like to pull this full circle with Stephanie is that, you know, you and I are now partners and there's an opportunity now for people to be able to partner with the both of us, get your support on the system side. Um, and so I'd love for you to chat about, you know, why you decided to make this transition over to our group. Um, and what can people expect when partnering with you to take their business to the next level?
Well, thank you for asking, Mike. It's been a really big change in our business. So, like I've mentioned earlier, my husband and I have been in business for almost 11 years. Um, we've been with the same firm for that entire time, and then the industry has shifted, and the market has shifted, and our business shifted, and we realized that there were some things that we needed that were different from before. It happens, right? And so, we took almost a full year to make the decision truly to come over. Um, and we knew that we needed to land somewhere, but we didn't know what it needed to look like. And so, ultimately, the the final piece of the decision was the people. I knew that my husband and I both agreed that we had to be with the right people who were dedicated to um, the the type of support and community building and enrichment in the industry itself that we were. Because I've spent the last six years building my coaching side of our real estate business while we were still selling homes, and those things have to work together really well. And so the people made it the most simple decision ever at the end of the day. Um, so we are so happy to be over at EXP. Um, we're so happy to be partnered with you in the Wolfpack. Um, and still learning a lot about it, right? So there's so much to learn about EXP and everything they offer. And one of the things that was most um, most surprising to me, and I wonder if you ever hear this, is that it didn't feel like moving to a a cloud-based brokerage. And that's what I heard from a lot of agents like, "Oh, I don't know about like a virtual brokerage. like I like to like rub elbows." I have not felt that. I have felt so well cared for. Um, and like so many different people, not overwhelmingly, but so many different people reaching out to provide specific report relating specific support relating to transitioning brokerages, which for us after 11 years has been a massive undertaking. And it like the firm thought of everything, you guys. like the whole plat, the whole EXP platform is just made to support agents. And I was like, "Okay, great, like we're in the right room, we have the right people, and we're going to be able to continue providing support at a really high level." And and so what that means for me on my end with the Market Authority Academy, that is my program that I started um in 2020. We've had over 700 agents across the US and Canada go through that go through that program. And what I help agents do is get beyond and a a plateau in their business where they're being held back due to a lack of systems or unclear lead generation and marketing, or just really poor time management skills that is a result of those first two things. Um, and so what we help real estate agents do is is implement an individualized system blueprint for their real estate business. Um, it's there's a lot of plug-and-play. there's a lot of ready to go, you know, build it into your business because like honestly, a wheel is a wheel at some point. We we can decide where it needs to go in your business. But um, we we really work um hard with real estate agents in taking the systems that they need from that three-system plan and individualizing it to their unique business, their unique market. And it's a lot of substance. And that's one thing that um, that's one thing that I just, I love. I love working on this this part of the business in general. The business of doing business is really interesting to me. And we're able to create an incredible agent community from that. Um, so the, they, I get to work with the coolest real estate agents on the planet, and I'm the one that loses out because I get all these amazing friendships, and they live all over the world, all over the country, and so I don't always get to see them. Um, but whenever we are in person, it's like it's like a homecoming. It's like seeing a friend that you haven't seen in a long time. So, um, again, all that to say, it's the people, it's the support, it's the systems, all that has to go together. And I feel like, um, like we're very much at home with the move that we've made. And I feel that if any other agents are looking for that same sense, then this is where they need to be.
Yeah. No, and I appreciate that. And I think like looking at you, me, and Josh, it's such an incredible like three musketeers, if you will, where, you know, I focus on helping agents generate demand the modern way, Josh focuses on helping them generate it the traditional way, and then you have the systems that show people how to essentially make this a scalable um opportunity for the business so that they can run a predictable, scalable real estate business uh without inconsistent income, overwhelm, and frustration. So, um, guys, again, make sure you click that link in the description and and book a call with Stephanie. Have the conversation. I always like to say that the most expensive thing you can own is a closed mind because I also turned a blind eye to it for too long, uh, without realizing that I need to be around the right people with the right training, the right systems that could just put me on the proven path day one to go achieve the goals that I want. So, Stephanie, thank you again for sharing your three-system platform and all of the incredible details today.
Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me.
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