Building a Bench - a podcast by Nate Joens, Robby Trefethren, Erik Hatch

Nate Joens: [00:00:02] Welcome everybody on this fine and freezing Tuesday morning out of Fargo and great state of Iowa. I am Nate the CEO Structurely these fine gentlemen or with Hatch coaching we're about to start our what is this our fourth webinar. Fourth or fifth team 18 20 18 eighteen hundred webinar which is how to build a bench. Erik in Robby are gonna be leading this one giving us some insights into really frankly they lost two thirds of their sales team at Hatch Realty. Guys give us some background. Let's get this thing started.

Erik Hatch: [00:00:58] So people used to ask me how much do you bench. My answer would be most of the game. And so it's fun to talk about benching once again. And so here we find ourselves dive in and I'll give you a brief synopsis in twenty seventeen. At that point that was our highest year of production for our team. We we had thirty eight or thirty nine people we sold six hundred and fifty two homes in Fargo North Dakota which is a city of one hundred and twenty thousand. The counties we serve in total are about two hundred and fifty thousand but are our main metros one hundred and twenty thousand. And we did. So we had grown exponentially and our team members never left. The people that we started with five years ago and four years ago were basically still with us and our agents were like the top of the top producers are our average listing agent sells anywhere from what is it Robby 90 or 100 homes for a listing agent and a floor is about 75 80 ish up to 1 10.

Robby Trefethren: [00:02:01] So yeah average in 90 95.

Erik Hatch: [00:02:03] Yep. And then our buyer agents were averaging you know the floor was probably thirty five for our bottom producers and ninety five for our top producers we were averaging about 60 transactions on the buy side. Now right away if you're B.S. meter is like mind you say how in the world can each agent produce so high and it's it's the leverage that we give them we have we have shown partners we have ISAs we have great admin and so the agents and their actual tasks that what they have to do on a regular basis is maybe different than most people's. And we had a group of people that had never left our turnover that happen annually was only coming from us removing people from the business. Occasionally somebody would move to a different part of the country or what it would be or we would help them find their way out the door if they weren't the right fit. And so we had 90 percent plus retention year over year. Robby what am I missing here and kind of our background.

Robby Trefethren: [00:03:03] Yeah I think just to emphasize the point of a lot of people think 90 60 homes per person that seems like the essence of valid thought I want to re-emphasize the amount of leverage and specialization that we have built in.

Robby Trefethren: [00:03:18] When you say our team was thirty nine people at peak that includes you know we have three full time ISAs as well. So there's a lot of leverage to bring temps. There's a ton of love to bring to the table as a value proposition to our team frankly and to our clients right.

Erik Hatch: [00:03:39] And so obviously the topic of this of this webinar and for us to dive in is to really understand how did we lose everyone and how do we continue to sell more houses because I told you in 2017 we sold six hundred and fifty two homes in twenty eighteen we did six sixty four we sold twelve more houses while losing five of our eight buyer agents by losing two of our five ISAs by losing a couple of admin. And here's what happened. Let's rewind the clock and I'm gonna have maybe flashbacks here. So if I start twitching you know why in February we had just an issue with the team member that didn't go so well and we had to remove him from our business when that happened. This was a friend of mine a good in fact a great producer a hard worker charismatic as the day is long and the guy who was like one of the founders of the company he was ingrained in the fiber of our business and we oftentimes allowed the little things to be ignored. And if ever we're a trigger for anybody listening right now I think that if you ever have a statement that says oh well that's just Robby that's just the way Robby is that that's just Robby if that's something that happens in your organization.

Erik Hatch: [00:05:03] I'm guilty of it. Across the board where we've just said well that's just that person and we haven't allowed them to necessarily be coached exceedingly well or maybe they're just stubborn and they don't want to be coached and we just ran into some problems where we had to agree to go our separate ways with this person because we had said that's just Robby for far too long. And we needed to look out for the betterment of our company and our agents. We knew that he was tied directly to another agent and so we expected that person to go and sure enough they did. Those issues happen and the mistake that we made is that it was never a big thing. It was just a whole lot of little things. And it started to impact our our culture and our energy and we didn't realize we didn't realize that this person will be better off without us we'll be better off without them. But I'm so thankful for the time that person put into our organization because it has been a huge gift. So we had to let somebody go because of culture and they just didn't necessarily fit anymore.

Erik Hatch: [00:06:09] They had another agents attached to them so there we lost two of our eight buyer agents. So now we're down to six. We had a gal blind side us. She again was part of the original group. We never thought she would leave. I thought that she was a lifer and I thought that she she was gonna be with us until the end of days and she came to me blindsided me a few weeks after we had left that previous person go. And what happened is she said I want I want to work less and I want to make more and I can't do that here. And so I'm going to go out on my own. And I just I was flabbergasted she didn't talk to me about a compromise or a way to build it a way to grow and just totally walloped me. She then was connected to another agents on our team really well we knew we would lose that person and we sure did. Robby you. You posed some really great questions as we watched this gal leave. What some of that insight that I think some of the people listening and tuning in right now can maybe absorb so they can avoid some of these pitfalls.

Robby Trefethren: [00:07:21] So I'll simply say this that when it came to losing that person what really hurt about it was we were traditionally a place that prides ourself on connecting with the people in our world and helping build a runway for them. And what really stung was we didn't hear if you wanted a different one way until she walked into your office right there and literally said this isn't right for me and it and that wasn't on her. It was on us because what we realized was the person that she was expected to be connecting with. That was the leader in the organization was the person that we had to let go and that person wasn't necessarily the best fit to dig in to the people that they were leading and try to find out what their needs wants and desires. And what really happened in all of this. And I think upon reflection is she slipped through the cracks. We didn't connect with her. We didn't make her feel valued and her name wasn't on her anymore because that's the future. It was on us. I think the big thing is it's so easy for things like that to happen to have somebody in the wrong position graduate someone in their competence is a top producer to be the leader when they don't do leadership things. And I think that was one of our pain points and that was this all the culmination. Losing her was a piece of that. So I want to say I was sorry you did.

Erik Hatch: [00:08:49] My day is bigger than yours so here we go. Three words are the reason that we lost this gal. She became invisible.

Erik Hatch: [00:09:02] And it wasn't because we didn't love her and care about her. She wasn't our top producer so she wasn't always celebrated. She wasn't the bottom rung where we had to give a lot of pressure to her and attention. She was just our steady bet a middle of the pack unbelievable team player and she became invisible to us. And in your organization right now I dare you to try to figure out who's invisible because there's some of them out there right now and it's dangerous. I don't get it. Your team is how big and Structurely 7 1 1 or 2 of those people right now probably feel invisible. I hate to break it to you man but they they might be dreaming of a life where somebody pays more attention to them and loves them a little bit more and appreciates all the stuff they do because they're poor and and the same goes for everybody else too and then it's a big problem. So enough about our SOB STORY Our last agent moved across the country two of our ISAs is one here across the country and the other one we coached out and so now all of a sudden we had eight buyer's agents and five of them were gone. We had five ISAs A's and two of them were gone. We were man, I didn't think for the life of me we could have sold as many houses as we did. And somehow when I ran the numbers at the end of the year we sold 12 more and twelve more is not a huge number. But when we lose literally 65 percent of our producing agents and top producers at that time we still manage to sell you guys. S

Nate Joens: [00:10:43] I know you guys are kind of going out your way to be vulnerable here on this webinar and I appreciate that a lot. I think everyone including myself can certainly learn from from all of your growing woes what would you call it failing failing forward. We coined the term yes the term on our some of our past admirers and you guys are great at it. Failing to meet

Nate Joens: [00:11:14] A little reality can you tell. I appreciate that encouragement.

Nate Joens: [00:11:17] I know you said you're blindsided by some of this. Were you preparing your team to fill these vacancies prior to these these people leaving. And if so how

Erik Hatch: [00:11:31] If you would have told me that person a and person B the first two examples that I gave you would've told me that they were leaving our organization and we weren't expecting it would we be prepared for the storm that's about to hit. And I had no idea. And it's not just the production storm.

Erik Hatch: [00:11:50] That's the thing that's so easy to talk about and we can glamorize this that we sold more houses even though and we're going to talk about building that bench and how to do it and how to improve yourself. But the biggest bomb that's been the hardest piece that we're still in trash over is how our team members feel are they walking around tiptoeing afraid of stepping on a landmine that we've planted in our organization and how we treat people in good times in bad times set minds off all around our world.

Erik Hatch: [00:12:23] Let me give you an example Nate. If it's Structurely you come in tomorrow and you fire someone because that person has pissed you off they haven't met their standard and maybe you've talked to him one time or maybe you've talked to him 100 times. Everybody sees what you're doing whether your organization your organization is seven people or seven hundred people. They see how you handle that situation. Now if somebody gets away with murder and you allow that person to always oh that's just Nate. If you allow that person to continually just be Nate and you don't help them get better. Everybody sees that too.

Erik Hatch: [00:13:00] And that also creates landmines where they understand that there's not many landmines and so they can step wherever they want to bring in whatever crap they want into the business and pollute the water and bring some toxicity in there. And for us that's been our hardest piece with all this is yes we had we had the bench built to work on production. It has been a time suck among all time sucks if you don't have the right environment that setup to retain people.

Erik Hatch: [00:13:29] It is such an exhaustion for your leaders and it instills such doubts in your people. If folks come and go quickly. Robby I know you have some thoughts on that. So I just want to add to this.

Robby Trefethren: [00:13:42] I would say actually when we first started building the bench for the most part I think we failed to envision a world where these people weren't in our world. Therefore we never really saw it as a bench. We saw this specialization and leverage I more of a pathway and really what it became was it's a bench that's our insurance policy on the business. Now it's those backups and honest we kind of fell into it. I think we got a little you know it was it was intentionally unintentional or maybe vice versa. But I think we went into it creating leverage for those people for the people that we just talked about that ended up leaving. What's great about it was when they came in they were learning from most people they were learning how to go on produce and when they did end up leaving of course they could. It was a one to one translation but we kind of unintentionally fell into it you know at the same time.

Erik Hatch: [00:14:37] So I think there are two types I'm I'm backwards in my camera there. There we go. I think there's two types of benches that people have in the real estate industry wide and deep a wide bench looks like this. If in our world you do six or seven hundred transactions a lot of people will have a team of 50 or 60 or 70 that supports that number of transactions. That's a wide bench. That means you have 40 or 50 or 60 salespeople. And if one or two leaves you have 10 leaves you've got other people that can pick up and do that business. And that is a common model in real estate. It is not a bad model. They're not necessarily right and wrong models. There's just models that have consequences with the choice that you make the model that we have decided on is to have a model that's very deep and not. As we've talked about a couple of times as we have are if a lead comes in and the lead comes in right here the ISA takes care of it. The ISA hands off an appointment they don't hand off leaves the of an appointment and that comes right here and now the agent is converting that but the agent is also partnered with a showing partner on our listing side.

Erik Hatch: [00:15:55] We also have listing partners. And so they're sandwiching that. And then when it comes to the details we have our transaction coordinators and then of course we have a whole world an ecosystem that supports those people. And here's what happened is every person in our organization we think at least our agents in production are Navy SEALs and I heard Ben Kinney say once that you can only have Navy SEALs if you also have a navy and it's a really great point. The only way that you can have your next Navy SEAL your next man or woman up is if you have other people still playing in your ecosystem that's ready to move up the football team in Fargo that that I love and Robby tolerates is the North Dakota State University.

Erik Hatch: [00:16:43] I'm an alarm of NTSC too and they've won seven of the last eight FCX national championships and they have a philosophy. They just graduated 24 seniors and they have a philosophy that is the next man up.

Erik Hatch: [00:16:56] Then everybody is in that system and they understand the values and maybe they didn't get all the playing time right away. But they've been instilled in that system for years and they're ready to go into the game when called upon. And if you can create an ecosystem that's next man or next woman up and that has become a training ground for your next level of talent. If you have a year like we did last sixty 65 percent producing agents and the work that they do and we still sold more houses it's because the system was set up for somebody to win rather than simply relying on a couple of people and we're screwed and out of luck they're gonna screw.

Robby Trefethren: [00:17:37] It up by the way as well I think one of the things that I've realized about entering real set is the typical model is broken and that's why I struggle with the going wide model is the turnover rate is not just in terms of are they going to be on their team but are they still in real estate.

Robby Trefethren: [00:17:58] A year later is very minimal and what's really kind of an interesting idea about every single person whether there's a witness or not is I believe every single person that we've brought in as a show showing partner almost everyone is still in real estate and almost everyone have every every showing partner and every agent we've ever brought in is still in production full production everything on with our team.

Erik Hatch: [00:18:21] And so that's a fight that's over five years. Yep.

Robby Trefethren: [00:18:24] And I think that's a testament to most people that are in the live model. Obviously we know that the burnout rate is what 80 90 percent but by year 2 in this game for us the entering real safe broken in the sense that you come in and this is what you walk into is you have no training or minimal training you don't make any money for six months to a year and if you're making money it doesn't come for at least four five months so you don't attract top tier talent because of your towns. I can't weather that what we've found is when we created this bench is there was a way for us to attract top talent come on and you get to learn from a top producing agent gonna be leverage for them and along the way you're going to get paid to do so and so no one is saying that the resume kind of shows hard won wide versus deep model for any kind of ratio of close volume per team member.

Nate Joens: [00:19:27] Could you share how many people are on your team and how many transactions you did again.

Erik Hatch: [00:19:32] So. So we've studied this model at pretty great length. I'm fortunate to be in a network with some of the top real estate teams in the country. So I've investigated what a healthy team really looks like and what I like to compare is I like to compare the number of people on your team not just agents but the number of people on your team and compare that side by side with the number of transactions in our world we finished out 2018 with 34 team members and we did six hundred and sixty four transactions. Simple math and the rule that I'm applying here is the rule of 20 to 1. I think that you have the capacity on a healthy team of doing 20 transactions for every team member that is if you're choosing the deep model the wide model looks different. I have I have friends who have a hundred agents on their team and they're doing twelve hundred transactions. That means they're doing a 12 to 1 ratio. And again that's a fine and fair model it's just not the model that we are choosing to do in our world. I believe that 20 transactions for one team member is healthy. If you can do 22 or 23 or 24 you're going to enter into a better profit and a better sustainability. Now some of the people I have the privilege of coaching we've been talking about this number at great length and they see a gap because they're seeing that they're inefficient right now that they either have agents who are newer who aren't producing at this higher capacity or they've over hired on admin or maybe they've hired too soon because they want leverage in their life and those are OK to be at a 15 to one or 16 to one ratio.

Erik Hatch: [00:21:17] If I think your as the team leader still in production you can afford more hiccups. Tracy you asked as the team member count staff. No I'm talking staff and everyone Yep staff and everybody not just producing agents because if I told you in our world we have this year we have five buyer agents three listing agents and two soon to be three expansion partners. If I told you we have a team of 11 that's going to sell seven hundred and fifty to eight hundred homes it's just not possible. I don't think a team of 40 can do that. And we can do that with 11 agents in production. So it's a very specific way to break this down and we have to be very careful if somebody says my agent sells 60 percent probability of anything to on that awesome.

Nate Joens: [00:22:08] But what kind of leverage and support do they have an item that are 20 to 1 ratio number is that the ground is waiting to get well your shrinking team and then growing team again.

Nate Joens: [00:22:18] I think that we kind of covered what caused them to leave. What were you doing to train up your bench. What were you doing to train those replacements that they were coming in.

Nate Joens: [00:22:27] You kind of mentioned you put them in a position to start learning but how did you graduate them up to take over that position when those vacancies arose.

Erik Hatch: [00:22:37] So let me touch again on a point that Robby made because it is not to be breezed over quickly when we can get people and their entry points to come in with certainty rather than uncertainty. The real estate model as a whole asks for agents to come in with uncertainty and uncertainty of when their first transaction is going to close when they're actually going to get paid how they're going to get trained. And for most of most people they go to a two week course and they're handed the keys to people's kingdoms but they have no idea how to actually implement and deliver. And for us we believe that that is insufficient for our clients. Our clients deserve better than that and if you're watching let me lean in here OK. Your clients deserve better just as they move closer. Your clients deserve better than people just showing up and getting the privilege of working with clients. They deserve better happiness because that good does that cost. And and here's why we shouldn't be practicing on our clients when we bring people in we bring them into the showing partner model or the listing partner model. You cannot sell real estate at Hatch realty unless you start off as a partner. And I have stories upon stories of people who are making 80 thousand dollars a year as managers and as engineers and everything across the board and they took more than a 50 percent pay cut to come in to our entry point in our entry point got people in and now we have literally we have six steps to our business that every step along the way people can grow and graduate to take on more responsibility and they train while they're getting paid.

Erik Hatch: [00:24:21] But here's the beauty. Here's the beauty is we have Navy SEALs in our organization. We have some people that are the best of the best and the only way that they can produce and maintain that lifestyle is if we give them leverage and so our leverage. Are these partners this partner model is the leverage for a Navy SEAL so that they won't pick up and leave. I want Navy SEALs and my organization. I don't want a bunch of people who are just in the reserves. I want people who are shining superstars and we build this model and as people graduate and as they step up you start here as a showing partner. You're in that role for a year and you have to do X number of deals from your own sphere. You get a referral for that that you bring in.

Erik Hatch: [00:25:09] But this is gonna be really important. I'm going to walk through these five steps here and we start here with a base pay in our average sales price here is two hundred and thirty five thousand bucks so we start with the base pay of thirty thousand. Meaning from day one. You are not having to go and chase after that mission you're not going to have to wait six months to hopefully get a paycheck or to have a spouse or someone that's going to support you. You can come in right away and make a moderate salary. Then you have to do at least eight deals from your sphere that you're open house and sphere. Once you've done that you can graduate to showing partner plus I should make a sidebar here before I go too far. Is that these partner models are paid by the agents that use them as leverage. We have a series of steps that that I can talk through people with but we would digress on a different path there. If you are interested please shoot me a message and I'm happy to share with you. Robby and I made a great video on these different steps for showing partners and how to compensate them.

Erik Hatch: [00:26:15] So after we start with the showing partner then we move to the showing partner plus model. That means you can now start working with buyers that you bring in under the tutelage of the team or the agent that you're partnered with. Then you're a buyer agent Phase 1 and then a buyer agent Phase 2 and then a buyer agent plus which means you can start working on listings as well that you bring in and then you can even graduate to be an independent agents on our team which simply means you don't receive team leads anymore. You're on your own but you still get all the leverage and support you're still a part of our ecosystem. And as we do that we've built now a at least six year plan for our agents and we told you of the gal that left some out 10 or 11 months ago and here's what she said. She said even though we. We dissected and figured out that we were treating her as somebody who was too invisible. She said I want to work less and I want to make more. And if Robby says to me Erik I want to hire commission split. Most of our answer is what. No chance right. No. Sorry. I used to be a buyer agent on a team loved him. I went to him and said I wanted to get hired this late because I'm doing 70 percent of the business myself.

Erik Hatch: [00:27:32] And their answer was No. And I would've built them an empire but they said no. So I picked up and I left. And what we have to say is we have to say yes when as a huge take away right now I hope that you write that down. Is don't say no. You say yes. When. And when that opportunity shows. Now we all of a sudden have a chance to build up to get Navy SEALs. I want to get back to the original point of the webinar here Nate because it is not lost on me by any means is the idea of building a bench only happens when you have people at different points now in the wide model. You can have everybody as an agents and if people leave you just put in more agents. I think that our model is you have everybody at different steps and in different points. And if your Navy SEAL is up here these new folks come in and they do three things in this order. If you're showing partner the first thing you do is you leverage this Navy SEAL you are leveraging that agent that means inspections and showings and everything else. You were there to leverage this person because this is my shining superstar right here and I'm tired of losing them. You lost some of them and I don't want to do that again because I love these people.

Erik Hatch: [00:28:52] I have years of training and I know they're gonna crush it if they go on their own. Our world is better with these people here. But here's a sidebar. Is these people also give me huge headaches because their talents and talents pushes Robby is the most annoying person in my universe guys. And the reason why is because he's talents and talent pushes and I don't want an environment that has a whole bunch of yes men and women. I want people to challenge me and I don't I don't want I don't want a bunch of followers I want a bunch of leaders in my organization. And so as we have our Navy SEALs up here these partners step number one is they're leveraging this person. The second thing they're doing is they're trainings. That means going through role play regularly having training partners watching a whole bunch of videos making sure that if something happens to this person they're ready to go. And the third piece in this order first of leveraging second is their training their third piece is their lead generating which is different because up here their primary job is to bring in business. But. I have to I have to say this. Robby on our team. How many sphere deals do our agents average in a calendar year. Just as they bring in from their own procuring.

Robby Trefethren: [00:30:14] It's probably right around 20 so it's all in.

Erik Hatch: [00:30:19] You're exactly right it's 20 to 25 spear deals that each agent brings in. That's these agents the Navy SEALs and these guys start off by bringing in five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve and we bring that all the way up so that they're not reliant on waiting for the company to just feed them. We don't have right rate here. If everybody starts like this you have a bunch of goldfish. And the goldfish in your world will be replaced by other goldfish as a kid. I had all these fish and they would die like I did. Now you say a prayer and then you go and vice That's right. Nate you're laughing Did you have a goldfish or is that just me fish. Well I guess I wasn't good at taking care of goldfish but up here as you as you as you grow you're getting sharks up here that can feed themselves. Again these are Navy SEALs. These are agents that will crush it on their own and when they leave it really hurts when somebody here leaves you're gonna be fine. You really are. But if somebody up here leaves the only way you can supplement is if you built people right here to start climbing their way up and that's what we've done. I mean I could summarize this whole webinar right here by simply saying bring in other leverage to leverage your best people and having them train on the job and that's it. That's the summation of it. And a bunch of you are saying like I'm really wasting my time right now listening to it. It's really simple. And it is it's really simple. It's not easy because for this person I keep missing my hands up for this person over here to grow from here to here. Robby what does this look like for somebody to go from here to start climbing. What kind of training and systems have to be there so that this person is best leveraged.

Robby Trefethren: [00:32:14] So I'll say this first off in order for a navy to become a Navy SEAL. There needs to be clearly defined standards that say this is when you get to earn your next opportunity and you talked about a few of the steps Erik and maybe we should just send out and post the you know the pathway to an independent agent. Basically long story short is it is dependent on you bringing in your own sort of influence. It's a big check mark for us going from you said eight to graduate from front partner to strong partner plus and then from there the number goes from 13 right from a strong partner plus to eventually become a buyer agent. I think the other piece I want to talk about is in our world we have very high standards for growth. And what I mean by that is my agents Monday Tuesday Wednesday and Friday must spend an hour together what we call a role play time and we have a wonderful team member on our team named Connor Connors our full time trainer and role play expert and what he does is he curated content conversations and he leads that time every Monday Tuesday Wednesday and Friday for an hour essentially and that is where we're practicing. That's where we're failing. You talked about practicing on ourselves and some of our clients and I would say that that is one of the biggest things that has helped our team grow is intentionally buying into that time and then it is the absolute expectation that you are at that. The only exception would be is that you schedule a showing or something during that time. But I would say the attendance that that is traditionally 80 80 plus percent and that is one of the biggest growth pieces.

Robby Trefethren: [00:33:57] And then again very clearly defined standards on a check. Are there any systems in place. I know you've read between lots of layers there. Those are possible because they have to source deals from their sphere of influence.

Nate Joens: [00:34:07] But you had mentioned that you do supply them with team leads when they're when they're not an independent agent. What systems.

Erik Hatch: [00:34:17] No. They get so they'll get appointments in our in our world. Our agents only work with their sphere their mets and their open house people. We have a very divided line right down the middle that says agents you go after people you know I ISAs you go after all the business that the company has paid for or procured through reputation or marketing or whatever it may be. Robby I know this is your hot button issue. Why is that so important.

Robby Trefethren: [00:34:51] I think it really just comes down to this is that who do you expect to catch more fish or father in law who likes a drink a Bud Light and go fishing once in a while. Okay our men all or the full time Master that is full time fishing on the lake and our say is our full time fisherman. That's our full time job. It's our full on focus. It's frankly why we created this podcast was to share that story. And these webinars. But really what it comes down to is when people have their one thing they excel at it and this is the problem with having agents do it. Is agents cant ever going to convert a company leads extremely well not because they're bad people not because they're not trying but it's because they're a part time fisherman and the system's flawed. So we clearly define that break. And again all these go to our ISAs. The other big piece is this is that my ISAs. What the agents accountable the where ISAs pay. They only get paid when something closes for the most part. And they hold my agent accountable to do the things they're supposed to be doing.

Erik Hatch: [00:36:03] Here's here's one of the biggest whores that I just had is when we have our folks up here when we have our Navy SEALs and they leave and they have been nurturing a thousand leads that I've paid for that I purchased through Zillow and maybe they haven't converted yet or they're a paper per click or they're a referral that I handed off to them when this person leaves. If you don't have a constant I actually think Structurely is a nice play in this because Structurely for anyone that's not in appointments traditionally is the constant. And if you were supposed to be talking to Jeff up here and Jeff is gone and all of a sudden Sally reaches out the consumer gets confused on that quite often and you have to make sure that you're protecting your business and if you're handing all your business to your agents and if one of them leaves you've not only lost that person's production but you've lost all the nerve trace don't they make every such an extended time.

Nate Joens: [00:37:02] And we'll see we'll be like inside your business and not a bit longer than you want. You're not seeing me through.

Nate Joens: [00:37:09] Ok. OK.

Nate Joens: [00:37:11] So I appreciate you guys sharing all that systems building up those bench players could we turn the topic a little bit in Erik.

Nate Joens: [00:37:20] I know you've talked about it quite a bit that it hurts the most when you lose those Navy SEALs see you. You. Greg what can you do to keep those Navy SEALs around so that you're not losing them other than leverage other than the leverage we've talked about.

Nate Joens: [00:37:33] What more are they looking for out of you as a team leader.

Erik Hatch: [00:37:38] If your value proposition is first transactions and money they're gonna be gone the minute that the next train comes by and you see that I played with the train those was.

Erik Hatch: [00:37:52] I think your value proposition has to involve their bigger dreams and wants and desires.

Erik Hatch: [00:37:59] We've adopted the language and we're gonna use it till we're blue in the face that talks about our job as leaders and our job as an organization is to build a runway for somebody else Robby doesn't work for me. I worked for Robby and that shows up in me knowing what Robby wants out of his life. And I know that this year Robby wants to buy a rental property or two in his neighborhood and rent out to some college kids. And so it's my goal to figure out how do I help Robby achieve that goal. And what do I need to do. What opportunities do I need to put in front of him that he can all of a sudden create things for his family that he didn't have otherwise.

Erik Hatch: [00:38:42] This is it is again so simple but it's not easy. Your value proposition cannot be around money and it can't be around leverage. It has to be around investing in that person's life. I'll be honest and I don't mean to project on you Robby but if every day I say Robby what can I do for you. Why would he ever want to leave that. If it and if I'm sincere I can't just say it like you're your words and your actions have to match up.

Erik Hatch: [00:39:12] And I don't I don't get it right even half the time. But Robby knows because we have a close intimate relationship that I'm going to show up and work for him with great diligence and the only way that I know that is if I have approximation to him if I'm close to him and the reason why we lost a couple of our people is because they didn't have proximity to keep people.

Erik Hatch: [00:39:34] It's why I'm a Jesus guy and Jesus had 12 disciples. And I'm not Jesus and you're not Jesus and so we shouldn't have even 12 people directly reporting to us. You should have maybe five or six or seven at the very most. And then to go exceedingly deep into those relationships and then allow those relationships to go exceedingly deep into the next level. And so a scaled leadership model where somebody doesn't feel invisible. They have a voice they have community and they have proximity is imperative really important.

Robby Trefethren: [00:40:08] I want to add to that as well. Bernie Brown one of the most recent books daring to lead talk about how one of the biggest fears of human beings is the idea that they are not importance and not relevant. I think it's the word she. All right. Thank you. And I think that that can go hand-in-hand with what we lost that person we talked about the one that hurt irrelevant is the same as invisible.

Robby Trefethren: [00:40:36] It goes hand in hand. And what matters is not always that Erik fulfills getting me everything I want because sometimes it can happen. What matters is he's making sure that I'm seen and that is one of the biggest fears of human beings is that we don't matter that we're irrelevant that we're invisible that someone doesn't care about us. And what's so crazy about it is we invest all this time onboard and people training them. Why the hell are we investing the time to make sure people feel like they matter. And it takes 15 minutes a week or so. Just checking in making sure that person feels heard understood and valued.

Robby Trefethren: [00:41:22] If you do that that is going to undoubtedly help you keep people. When we lost people that we didn't want to lose it was because we lost sight of that. We were that person that wasn't investing that time to keep the people that we cared about. So make sure you're checking in finding out what matters to them and it's going to change. What I want for example has changed drastically. One of the first things that I wanted was this frankly you guys are experienced today was I was one of the major catalysts of Erik let's go coach people. Let's bring this nationwide and it came to fruition and it's going to constantly change. But you got to keep checking in and that's what a piece of leadership is it makes those people feel heard understood and valued. Or another word I like to say is they feel love. All right. Well yeah.

Nate Joens: [00:42:08] Robby once I got that I kind of like get some pretty tired of ones closing thought from you or tweeting on prestige worldwide added to this experience of losing only two thirds of your team what's what's one takeaway you can give to the team members listening into the team leaders listening so you know they're not losing each other.

Robby Trefethren: [00:42:33] Erik you take team leader all the team member.

Erik Hatch: [00:42:36] All right. For the team leader I will tell you that it's your fault. If stuff goes wrong we can cast blame and we can throw it aside and say oh that person was just on their way out.

[00:42:51] But I think that if you're going to learn and grow and do better knowing that everyone's watching and everything's contagious you need to dissect every single person whether they're fired or they leave whether it's expected or not you need to completely dissect and figure out what you could have done different or better in that situation. It's never about them. It's always about you. And I didn't realize because what happened is we had grown as an organization. I hadn't grown enough as a leader to adapt to our ever changing organization. And that's on me.

Robby Trefethren: [00:43:29] To play off of that team members quit expecting your team leaders to be perfect human beings quit expecting them to be perfect to be the ones that are always going to come to you. I think we can all eat healthier worlds when leaders take full ownership and they're proactive. But team members you can do this as well.

Nate Joens: [00:43:49] Awesome.

Nate Joens: [00:43:50] Well I appreciate everyone's time on this very very cold and soon to be snowy miserable Tuesday morning in Iowa in Fargo. Hopefully all of you in warmer weather. Really enjoying your lives.

Nate Joens: [00:44:05] Make sure you subscribe to theisaradio.com. Lots of really exciting content to come out. All right. Well take care guys.

[00:44:14] Thanks Robby. Erik appreciate your time.

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