Should You Start A Real Estate Team?

One of the questions I get asked a lot is, should I start a team? Hey, my name is Chance Brown, the broker owner of CB&A Realtors. I make video content for real estate agents because I'm passionate about helping them build great businesses. For some people, building a great business means leveraging the help of other people to help them reach their goals. That looks often times like a team. Let me give you a couple of the things that I really truly believe about teams. Number one, often times I think that a good working partnership is better than a team. Having a great person that you trust and can share business with or refer things to or get help if you're out of town or whatever oftentimes is better than having a team. It's cheaper than having a team from a relationship standpoint is awesome. That being said, it's not a universal fit because there are lots of people that want to grow bigger teams.

They have enough leads that they need people to actually come in as a buyer agent or whatever that looks like. So my second really really important thing is do you know what your cost of goods sold is? And some of you right now are asking what does cost of goods sold mean? It's an accounting term. If you have a CPA, they can help you figure it out. But without knowing your cost of goods sold, there's no way that you can properly structure compensation of other people on your team. You've got to know what that is. There are lots and lots of teams out there that are selling lots and lots of real estate and winning all kinds of awards and they don't have a pot to piss in because they don't understand the compensation structure because they don't know how much it costs for them to do business. And that's really important. So you got to know the answer to that. Outside of that, it really boils down to very simply putting together the right processes and systems to grow your team.

So, in my opinion, and this is just my opinion, unless you are overwhelmed with inbound leads, this starts with a transaction coordinator. Maybe it evolves into a full-time admin or a marketing manager or something like that. But oftentimes, I see people jump straight to buyer agent and they don't have the systems and processes set up in their business to be able to handle that. And it causes chaos. Nobody really knows who's doing what. It causes frustration and people leave. And then you see sort of this revolving door of people going through a team and that's not profitable in the long run. It's a paperwork nightmare. It's an resources nightmare. It's a tracking everything for years. It's just it's no good. So if we don't have processes and systems in place that leverage transaction corners that leverage admins to be able to let a buyer agent go out and just be a buyer agent, we're missing the boat. We've got to have the fundamentals built before we can start adding people that are producers. Without those fundamentals, these producers are going to be all over the place. So, I would highly encourage if you're thinking about forming a team, you need to hire a coach that knows how to do that and do that really well. And you need to start with building the right systems, understanding the accounting piece, and then bringing on people in a way that makes financial sense to both of you and gives them enough to eat from a lead standpoint that you are not having to go out and spend tons and tons of money buying leads. If you do that, you're setting the foundation for a really long-term profitable team. You're setting the foundation for a team that is easier to run and manage because ultimately at the end of the day, a team leader should be developing business and developing people. That's the key. That's the goal of every team leader should be to be the CEO of their business who it's my job to develop all these people that are on my team and it's my job to make sure that business is coming in so that they have leads and prospects to go out and try to convert and build business off of. That should be the end goal. And if processes and systems, if lead generation systems, if lead nurturing systems, all of those things aren't in place before those people show up, it will be chaos. I hope that helps. If you have any questions, I'm happy to help. DM, email, I don't care. Send a carrier pigeon. I'll help you however I