This is the introductory Podcast where you get to know Liz and Nelson, their background and their passion for the Business Greater than You Podcast.
Tue, 3/15 8:44AM • 38:04
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, hire, prospecting, people, team, work, mortgage, build, deals, fulfillment, clients, agents, years, realized, admin, block, thinking, burn, utah, loan officer
SPEAKERS
Liz Sears, Nelson Barss
Liz Sears 00:00
And we are live.
Nelson Barss 00:01
Good morning, Liz. How are you?
Liz Sears 00:02
I'm great. How are you, Nelson?
Nelson Barss 00:04
Welcome to our podcast.
Liz Sears 00:05
I know our first podcast.
Nelson Barss 00:06
Episode one.
Liz Sears 00:07
Kind of excited about this.
Nelson Barss 00:08
Absolutely.
Liz Sears 00:09
So I was thinking it might be fun for us to start with our audience by just telling them a little bit about ourselves and get to know them. And so, for them to get to know us guess is a better way to say it. So why don't you start?
Nelson Barss 00:20
Okay, let's do it. My name is Nelson Barss. And I'm in the mortgage business been in the mortgage business for 20 years.
Liz Sears 00:28
I thought you're gonna start off with like, I'm a Sagittarius, or something
Nelson Barss 00:32
I was born at an early age. Yeah. All right. 20 years, 20 years in the business.
Liz Sears 00:38
I didn't realize it started about the same time because I'm 21 years. So you started 2001?
Nelson Barss 00:43
Yeah, I don't know exactly. When I just keep track. I guess when my son was born, I keep track of it that way. Yeah, he was born during my first year in the business. So almost 20 years. And I've done a lot of different things with teams. In that time. I've almost almost always had some other role in addition to being a loan originator. So I've been a full time loan officer, and team leader or branch manager, or some kind of role like that, in the recent three or four years have really been able to build a company of my own so I started my own business three years ago, Utah Independent Mortgage.
Liz Sears 01:21
I do find it interesting, you know, forgive me for interrupting you that our paths are a little bit more similar than even I realized, like, just now talking to you is that I started off kind of doing my own thing. And in mortgages for 10 years from 2000 till 2010, being a loan originator, things like that. And then it's only been in the last two years that I've started building a team. So 2010 is when I switched to the real estate side.
Nelson Barss 01:46
Yeah, and I think I've always wanted to build a team, but it just hasn't haven't been successful with it until recently, I think, yeah, the last three years, I've learned some things that really enabled me to let go of, you know, the mentality that I'm the best at every single thing on my plate?
Liz Sears 02:03
Well, you probably are.
Nelson Barss 02:04
No Im not. I've learned that I'm not right. I've learned to hire well and train well. And that's part of what we want to talk about one talk about in this podcast. The idea of building a business bigger than yourself,
Liz Sears 02:18
Yeah.
Nelson Barss 02:18
I remember a moment when I decided, I want this to be bigger than me, I want to grow something that can accomplish way more than I could ever do by myself. And that's the kind of the genesis of the name of the podcast Business Greater Than You. Anyway, so I have a company, we have 22 employees right now based out of Layton, Utah. And we've just been hiring like crazy, it's been an easy time to build a mortgage business, right? With the rates so low, and
Liz Sears 02:48
lots of transactions happening.
Nelson Barss 02:51
So that's a little bit about me about where I'm coming from, tell us about your company, tell us about your path.
Liz Sears 02:55
So mortgages from 2000 until 2010 got into real estate and I love being a smarty pants, I love learning everything I can so had a little bit of the same concept as you as you know, working so hard to know how to do things and have the, I almost referred to it as having like all of those freak little knowledge pieces that you only use every four or five years like you have your core base knowledge of how to do the job well. And then just all the little interesting situations you find yourself in and so and what I realized is working so hard to be the best I could be at my job benefited me and my clients. And that was it. And so kinda like you said about wanting to have a bigger impact and a bigger, just help more people. And so I realized that one way I could do that was coaching. And so I ended up getting hired as the productivity coach for the brokerage I was at they had three different locations that I was the productivity coach for. And I just seriously fell in love with that. And then I started realizing now I'm impacting not just me, but also those agents and their clients and just wanting to grow from there and then met somebody who had started a team and had a partner but that partnership didn't work. She started with family, that can sometimes be a bad way right here. Yeah. And so anyways, knowing that she had partnered before she asked me to teach a class with her. And as I was walking away, I was thinking, I wonder if she'd be open to partnering again, in fact, I refer to it as personal revelation because I had three questions popped into my mind that as I was walking down the hall, you know, ask her and or ask Shannon if she's open to partnering again, what went wrong before and if she sees it happening again. So I just pivoted on the spot and walked back and you know, that was about two and a half years ago. And now we opened our brokerage about a year and a half ago. And we've grown so we have we went from two agents and two admin to eight, or around 30 agents and eight admin at this point.
Nelson Barss 04:59
Wow. your brokerage is called My Utah Agents.
Liz Sears 05:02
My Utah agents. Yep.
Nelson Barss 05:03
So you have how many agents again? 30.
Liz Sears 05:05
And about 30. Yeah. And we just earlier this year opened up our second state. So we now have My Idaho Agents and we're licensed there. We expect to go across the nation. Yeah. Cool.
Nelson Barss 05:18
Well, congratulations. Thanks. I think it's important we point out some of the differences between what you and I are doing because I think there's two different ways we're coming at this. Most of the people that I've been hiring are hourly employees, staff, right. And our process and our, you know, the way we delegate things like that is very different. If you're hiring agents who are on commission.
Liz Sears 05:39
Yeah
Nelson Barss 05:39
That's a different level of hiring. Right?
Liz Sears 05:42
Yeah. So in our brokerage, we have two different hiring paths that we do. So one is with the admin, and they come on as a salaried employee. And they have set tasks and they have set hours that they need to be there. And then our, like you said, 1099 agents, where it's 100% Commission, and we have guidelines that they need to follow in order to be part of our brokerage, but the bulk of it is at their discretion, you know, how they approach the business,
Nelson Barss 06:05
Right? So I think that'll be very helpful. And I'd like to also just talk about some of the goals of this podcast. I mean, one thing, I hope that the listeners will recognize that we want this content to be valuable for every industry, I can think of just a lot of friends who are solopreneurs right now.
Liz Sears 06:23
Yeah.
Nelson Barss 06:23
Right. And they're not necessarily in the mortgage, or the real estate business. They could be attorneys, photographers, right, or accountants, any any business
Liz Sears 06:32
Bakery shop.
Nelson Barss 06:33
Yeah, any business where you got, you know, one person who's got the passion and starts the business, and is doing all of the sales, and all of the customer service and all the fulfillment and all the bookkeeping, you know, there's just a natural cap to what you can accomplish. And it's also a very difficult lifestyle. It's not a good lifestyle.
Liz Sears 06:52
No, and even people who have businesses that kind of run themselves, so I have a cousin who owns a storage shed unit, and they're still a mentality that happens when you think you need to do the whole thing yourself. Or you think that the only way to get ahead is to be very penny pincher, which obviously you want to be fiscally responsible. But there's some times where spending a little bit of money to get the marketing or the growth or something will actually exponentially increase your profits long term and, you know, create the lifestyle you want.
Nelson Barss 07:21
Yeah. So that's the goal. That's the goal of our podcast is to, we're going to interview people who have done this successfully, people who have who have built a team, we're not necessarily focused on a huge business, you know, if you're an insurance agent, this will be really valuable to you. Even if you're working, if you're a real estate agent or mortgage loan officer, if you're working inside of a company, but you want to hire an assistant or two, you want to prove your your profits and your lifestyle. This is for you.
Liz Sears 07:47
Yeah. And you know, there's a lot of businesses out there that if you put together like, let's say you are an employee, but you want to grow, you're like you're saying your segment inside of the business, when you can understand how hiring somebody to take the tasks off of your plate, that don't generate as much money for the company. You could even use some of the things we're talking about in this podcast to pitch that to your manager.
Nelson Barss 08:11
Yeah,
Liz Sears 08:11
get an assistant.
Nelson Barss 08:12
Great. So should we jump into the first topic?
Liz Sears 08:14
I think that'd be fantastic.
Nelson Barss 08:15
Okay, So this first episode.
Liz Sears 08:17
Oh, you know what?
Nelson Barss 08:18
Yeah,
Liz Sears 08:18
Actually, let's introduce ourselves a little bit more. Okay. So my name is Liz Sears. I was born and raised in Seattle, I moved to Utah to go to college and move back home was my plan. But I met a Utah boy and got married. And I'm still here. I've got four kids. Four boys, they range. Right? As of today, they're 15, 17, 21 and 22.
Nelson Barss 08:38
Awesome,
Liz Sears 08:39
How about you that way?
Nelson Barss 08:40
Born and raised here in Utah. I also have four kids. My youngest is seven right now. My oldest is 20. 2 boys and 2 girls.
Liz Sears 08:48
Lucky. That's what I tried for. But then you know I just gave up.
Nelson Barss 08:51
I was gonna say when you said you have four kids, I was gonna correct and say four boys. That's very different than for kids.
Liz Sears 08:56
Right?
Nelson Barss 08:57
But yeah, I live in Syracuse with my wife and four kids. And yeah, just I love this area. I love mortgage business. Yeah, dude. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. All right. So let's talk about why you need a team. The reason for, for building a team. For me, you know, first is lifestyle.
Liz Sears 09:07
4 seasons is really fun Absolutely, definitely. There is such a difference.
Nelson Barss 09:22
I remember when I left my company to start my own little brokerage. My vision at first was just a one man show. It's just gonna have a little office, go hang out, close the door, take a nap whenever I wanted to. And just, you know, do some loans and make pay the bills.
Liz Sears 09:38
Right.
Nelson Barss 09:38
And I quickly realized that was a horrible lifestyle.
Liz Sears 09:43
Why?
Nelson Barss 09:43
Just I mean, there's no vacation time, right?
Liz Sears 09:46
Yeah.
Nelson Barss 09:47
There's no time off. There's really, there's no one to help you. Let's say you have two fires burning at the same time. You can't work on both.
Liz Sears 09:54
So one of them is going to get
Nelson Barss 09:55
Somebody's going to be disappointed. It's it's going to be bad news for your business for your reputation. For your brand,
Liz Sears 10:02
And I think you and I both experienced where we were on a vacation and something happened. And I remember being at Disneyland with my family, and they were all in line to go on a ride, and I'm like, you're going to get up there to ride the ride before I'm done with this problem. So I had to step out. And just kind of deal with that I wasn't mentally there, I wasn't, you know, participating with my family. And I'm like, this is a waste, this is not a way to live.
Nelson Barss 10:23
You know, and I remember being at campgrounds, you know, constantly driving down the mountain, to pull out my laptop and find some Wi Fi so I could fix a problem or get an update to somebody. And it's not that honestly, there were people at the company where I worked to, were responsible to help me. But either I wouldn't let them or they didn't care like I did about the customer about their satisfaction. And so
Liz Sears 10:47
yeah, and when you're working on your own as 100% Commission, you know that every time you ask them to help you, they're putting a pause on their business to help you and you can trade to an extent. I mean, it can work somewhat real estate, I think is a little bit easier to cover for each other, because just the nature of it, as opposed to mortgages, because there's just a lot more
Nelson Barss 11:09
Yeah,
Liz Sears 11:10
risks.
Nelson Barss 11:12
Yeah, now the difference when I look at the way my team functions, I have some very trusted assistants who are part of my team who help in all points of the process, I can go on a vacation, and a lead can come in and get a phone call instantly from my assistant, and they'll get an appointment to meet with me for when I come back. And they'll begin working on their application, right, they'll they'll have their credit pulled, they'll submit some income documentation. And if it's urgent, if somebody really needs a pre approval, while I'm gone, it can happen. Because I have licensed and trained people to help do that. It's not that I've given up that 100%. But I have the backup, you know, and it's someone that I've trained and that I trust, and that represents me the way I want to be represented.
Liz Sears 12:00
And that's the biggest thing is when you, if you don't have your own team, and you're having other people help you, they do business their way, like completely and having them do it your way is it's just not going to happen the same. And so when you have your own team, and you have your own training process, and you have your own protocol and expectations and systems in place, that's where it actually feels seamless for your clients.
Nelson Barss 12:25
Yeah.
Liz Sears 12:25
And that's what you really want, your clients don't hire you because they want you a lot of realtors, a lot of mortgage people, a lot of people out there think that they hire you because they want you and there's just that very select few that might be your mom, your best friend. But otherwise, the reason they hire you is because they want the quality of service that you're going to provide. They want that experience.
Nelson Barss 12:45
That's a great point. Right? I think what held me back for a long time was thinking that, that I would be disappointing people.
Liz Sears 12:52
Yeah.
Nelson Barss 12:53
if I had a team, if I didn't do every piece of the process, I almost had a mental block, where I thought those guys who did it with a team and who didn't do the whole process where we're cheating, somehow.
Liz Sears 13:05
I know, right? I had that same thought to
Nelson Barss 13:07
it's like immoral or something.
Liz Sears 13:09
Thats not how you do mortgages
Nelson Barss 13:11
And they didnt even do that, they hand that person off from the very beginning. And that held me back for a long time, you know, thinking that I had some kind of superiority because I was slogging through every inch of the process myself,
Liz Sears 13:23
you know, one of the things that made a difference for me and shifting that mindset, because same thing I had that mindset was, there's a lot of mortgage loan officers and realtors who are not high level professionals, they don't have the skills, they don't have the knowledge, they don't have the same professional full time commitment. And so it's easy to kind of think of that as a different environment than let's say, a doctor or a lawyer, a doctor or a lawyer that everybody already associates them with a high level professional, you would never expect the doctor to be the one calling to remind you of your appointment, or to check you in when you get there or take your blood pressure and weigh you or submit your insurance papers. But yet, I was kind of expecting myself as the realtor to do all those steps. And when I started investing my time and effort to know how to, you know, let's go ahead and keep the parallel with the doctor, diagnose and prescribe and, you know, follow through that most important part. Then investing my time to be amazing at that became more beneficial to my clients than me scheduling their showings or me putting up their sign. And so it helped me become a better resource and a better professional for them to hire.
Nelson Barss 14:39
That's a great way to look at it right. I mean, the doctor nurse analogy gets talked about a lot in my I'm in a coaching program where they talk about doctor nurse they try to encourage us to build
Liz Sears 14:50
Thats the hive right?
Nelson Barss 14:51
The Core, the hive. That sounds kind of cool. The Core,
Liz Sears 14:51
the core, That's right. That's what I named mine
Nelson Barss 14:57
The Core is a nationwide coaching program for Mortgage People I've learned a lot from them over the years. They also coach realtors, and they're big on teams, right? I think they're big on teams because they want, they want me to spend a lot of my time prospecting. Yeah, they know that not gonna happen if I don't have a team. So it goes hand in hand. That's the other thing about that doctor nurse that I've noticed as a benefit is when customers do meet with me. They've they value the time more they they,
Liz Sears 15:27
I've noticed that to
Nelson Barss 15:28
It's almost like they're, they're not going to miss the appointment. They're, they're going to respect what I have to say. Because they worked pretty hard to get to that moment. And they worked with some pretty awesome people on my team. And I don't know, I haven't even met them yet. And I feel like they're half converted. already. Right. And the selling is much easier. Because they see this is this is a very high performance team. And a good organization.
Liz Sears 15:52
Yeah. So lifestyle. Huge. Yeah. And so the second reason that we wanted to tell you about the good, well, backup, why to build a team for the money. And the reason why is because, you know, Nelson, I, you know, we were talking about how people would say, Do you want to double your income? And most solopreneurs say no, because they think that doubling your money means you have to double how hard you're working. But that's actually not the way it works. And so why don't you share a little bit what you were saying?
Nelson Barss 16:20
Yeah, I think there is a, I said earlier, there's a cap, right? If you're operating alone, there's a cap on what you can do,
Liz Sears 16:28
There's only so much time that you have to invest in, if you have to do all 100 steps,
Nelson Barss 16:32
Right?
Liz Sears 16:33
Then over and over again. That's your cap,
Nelson Barss 16:36
yeah, you're capped. And you're actually in a pretty risky position I, for much of my career, you know, I've just kind of flew of what I consider to be flying too low to the ground. I didn't realize at the time, but now I see it as I had a friend who's a pilot. And he asked me once if it's safer to fly, high or low. Right. And I felt low, it would be safer, right? Because you're closer to the ground.
Liz Sears 17:02
Yep.
Nelson Barss 17:03
And he corrected me said, No, if you're high and something goes wrong with your plane, you have a lot of time to adjust, you have time to find a place to land, you, you know you have options. And I look at that with my business when I was kind of trying to close four to five loans a month with no team. It really wasn't four to five loans a month that might have been the average, but it was four or five and then zero, and then four or five, and then zero, right?
Liz Sears 17:26
And then nine, and you're putting your kids to bed over the phone, while you're driving to appointment.
Nelson Barss 17:30
Yes,
Liz Sears 17:31
I did that.
Nelson Barss 17:31
Yeah, I think that the roller coaster,
Liz Sears 17:33
oh, my gosh
Nelson Barss 17:34
income on a commission job is it comes from the fact that you cannot sell and service effectively, at the same time right.
Liz Sears 17:45
Because you'll be selling and all of a sudden you have a bunch of loans or transactions that you need to take care of. Otherwise, they're going to fall apart. And once somebody has hired you, it is immoral, in my opinion, to not do everything you can to get that deal to closing. And when you're doing that your ability to sell diminishes, because there's only so many hours in the day.
Nelson Barss 18:04
I think most people feel that way. Right. It's like I committed to get this done. And so I'm staying up late, I'm skipping my trip. And what you're not doing also is prospecting and selling for next month.
Liz Sears 18:14
Yeah. And since you tend to get paid three months after you prospected if it goes, you know, normal process, then that means three months later, you don't have any money, right or closings. And so you know, this actually goes right back into lifestyle, I noticed that when I was on my own, about two months before my trip, I would actually already start to be tapering down my prospecting, because I didn't want to be building the pipeline that would like take over all of my time. So I stopped prospecting and just closed out my deals. But then I'd come back from my trip and be like, ah, I need to get some business going.
Nelson Barss 18:51
Yeah,
Liz Sears 18:52
so
Nelson Barss 18:52
Well and I think, you know, that's, that's kind of flowing into topic. Number three, we started with number one, the lifestyle benefits, you know why to build a team, because it's a better lifestyle. And the second one is, you can make more money with a team that just is obvious.
Liz Sears 19:07
You know, actually, let me just add one more thing to that. Because let's say that you and I just do a ton of selling. And then we have a team that helps with the fulfillment or servicing those deals, that makes it possible for us to go back out and sell. And when you're hiring a team, you pay them a portion of what you would have made. And so let's say we have to give 50% You know, just pick a smack in the middle number is if I give 50% for them to finish out these deals that I've got, and I'm able to pick up six more because honestly, like a lot of the heavy lifting is after you get them for a client that's when all of these things come up and you have to deal with you know, gathering documents or writing letters of explanation getting everything that way communicating and dealing with all of the conditions, you know, for on the real estate side to your showing homes. You're facilitating negotiations, all of those things Like, what are the different pieces you can read? or outsource? So that way you can gather more clients. And so for, for me, for real estate, a listing tends to be about 10 to 15 hours. Once we've signed the paper separate from actually no, let's include what the transaction coordinators do to 20-25 hours. And then a buyer is 25 to 50 hours. And if I spend that time going and finding another client, I can definitely find at least one more.
Nelson Barss 20:27
Yeah,
Liz Sears 20:28
which they're I breakeven. But what if I find two or three more? Instead of getting 100%? Of one? I'm getting 50% of four?
Nelson Barss 20:35
Yeah. Well, I agree that the idea of hiring, you have to when you hire somebody, they have to be profitable to you, right? I think for the most part, I looked at it at first as just a huge cost, right? If I'm
Liz Sears 20:47
We all do right. Cause your like I have to write a check for how much?
Nelson Barss 20:50
that hourly wage is a lot of money, that's a cost. That's an expense. But you need to design the job and make it so that it's not a cost, it's an ADD, right? It's going to add to the bottom line by hiring that person. So huge leap of faith, I can remember physically, you know, for almost everyone, I've hired every step I've taken from one employee to two and two to three, three to four, there's been so much angst, emotional, you know, going up to the moment I offered him a job just just absolutely sick to my stomach about bringing on another salary. Right?
Liz Sears 21:25
Oh, and you know what, I don't even think I've ever told you this story about one of the employees I hired, I did not thoroughly think through what I wanted them to do. So they would show up. And I'm like, I'm not exactly sure how to have you helped me. And that one was a massive crash and burn. And so because of that I got really gun shy for when I went to hire my next person, because I'm like, I didn't do it. Well, I'm a bad manager, I'm a bad hirer. I'm a bad delegator. And so that was something I need to overcome. So I don't know if anybody can resonate with that out there. But that is a topic we're gonna cover thoroughly here.
Nelson Barss 21:57
Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna really get into delegating, onboarding. And all of these processes, right?
Liz Sears 22:03
Yeah,
Nelson Barss 22:03
Cuz we both done it well and badly. Quite a few times.
Liz Sears 22:06
Right. More than once.
Nelson Barss 22:07
there's, there's a lot to share on that, right. So. So the money is, is definitely a big reason to hire a team. And I hope people will look at it and realize that it's not a drain on your cash, it's gonna add to your profits if you do it correctly, right. And then we've already kind of covered item three. But our third benefit that we talked we want to talk about today is that, you know, if you if you want to time block, if you want to be proactive in your day, you have to have a team. It's a prerequisite. If you want to either just remember, you know, my coaching program, they would say, Okay, you got to spend, you know, 20 plus hours a week prospecting,
Liz Sears 22:48
And your like where am I getting that time?
Nelson Barss 22:49
time blocking that time, well, I didn't, I was like, Okay, I'll do it. And I block it out. And I put these chunks on my calendar for prospecting, and for going to lunches with referral partners and all this stuff.
Liz Sears 23:00
Yeah.
Nelson Barss 23:00
And it would never happen. It would never happen.
Liz Sears 23:02
Yeah, because the time block would come up, and suddenly, you've got to fire you've got to put out a client who needs something from you? Or have you ever found that you just don't feel like doing prospecting? Because you've got not a lot of other important things to do? Every single day. Yeah. And it's easy to bump the task that's most important, it's funny, it's almost like the more important the task, the more our internal monkey brain or whatever you want to call it is like, no, let's do something else, we really need to work on this other project.
Nelson Barss 23:33
Well, I never thought of it as being that's true, though. It's important. And that might be one of the reasons why you avoid it.
Liz Sears 23:39
I think the reason this is my belief in this area is that when you do something that's really important, your life is going to change. And our whole DNA, everything about us from the way that we were created, knows that change could be dangerous. And so your subconscious sabotages you to stay with what is familiar, so familiar is this income, this structure of life, this everything, and as we do something that's going to change that? Subconsciously, we're we're scared, you know, the whole change means that there might be a tiger and it might eat you,
Nelson Barss 24:21
Yeah
Liz Sears 24:21
I think it is described to me one time. And so we literally like fear for our lives. And so we sabotage ourselves without even realizing what we're doing. And so there's different tricks that we're going to talk about how to just
Nelson Barss 24:34
yeah I would love to have an episode about self sabotage. That's been a really big topic for me over the years. Learning why I'm self sabotage, there's been times where I've quit my job and went somewhere else thinking it was a step up. And then in hindsight, I knew that subconsciously, I was getting too high on a tree that I felt like limbs were going to break and I needed to get down to safety.
Liz Sears 24:55
Really? That would be a good one to talk about.
Nelson Barss 24:57
Yeah, but that's, that's the idea of a time block. Right? If you Have a time block, that's a proactive thing that's really going to move the needle, and you have any of those subconscious fears, it's gonna be very easy to skip that time block. Right?
Liz Sears 25:10
Right.
Nelson Barss 25:11
And if you don't have a team, you got 1000 excuses to skip that time blocks like, well, I got
Liz Sears 25:15
and good excuses
Nelson Barss 25:16
at four fires burning over here, I'm not going to ignore them to prospect. And so I think probably for four years, I just beat myself up. Because I was not sticking to my time blocks, right? I had this I got a prospect, I got to go to lunches, I got to do whatever it was I had planned, that would never do it. And, and part of it, I think, was the subconscious. And part of it was just, it was impossible. It was it was unrealistic for me to expect to spend time doing those things. When I had nobody to take care of the fires that were burning off.
Liz Sears 25:49
Yeah, we we find ourselves when you're solopreneur. We are absolutely like you said before capped, you know, there's only so much that we can do. And so building this team makes it possible to honor those time blocks that will change our lives. And sometimes those time blocks are not just prospecting the some of the time blocks that are on my calendar that we'll be talking about in future episodes to is. And so by the way, my business partner is Shannon Olson and my name is Liz Sears or initials or SOLS. So our true corporation is empowered souls spelled SOLs. And so we have a meeting every week called Empowered Souls. And that's where we do big picture planning. So we step back and we look at everything, where are we at. So a very important time block is to work on your business, not just in your business. So working in your business is prospecting, that's absolutely critical. And that is what makes it possible to work. It's basically the blood if you want to be you know, pumping through your business that is going to keep it alive. And then we have our big picture meeting Empowered Souls. And then you have to time block for your financials, like you need to know your numbers. If you meet an Olympic athlete, they know their numbers, every single teeny little piece, they know their numbers, because if you want to improve and you want to be the best you can be you got to know your numbers. So you got to have, you know, your financial meeting. And there's ways that you can start out small and grow until you have your bookkeeper and your CFO. And by the way, a CFO is somebody who helps you interpret what your numbers mean? Like, yeah, we know how much we're spending everywhere. But what does it mean? How is that guiding our business? Where's it going to be? Where do we need to tighten up? Where do we need to invest more, where's our ROI, blah, blah, blah, on that. And so just making sure that inside of your week, you have time blocked the different segments, pieces that are going to grow you your business to where you want it to be. And some of those are like 30 minutes, some of them are one hour, some of them are bi weekly, instead of every week,
Nelson Barss 27:48
right like that. Yeah, I mean, what about just strategic planning for next year or next quarter, actually taking some intentful time to sit down and decide what's our focus going to be for the fourth quarter of this year. If you're just slogging through the swamp of deals, and whirlwind all day, never happens,
Liz Sears 28:05
it never happens. And then you just or you just keep repeat, you will always repeat where you're at in your business unless you take time to identify and create the path of where you want to be next.
Nelson Barss 28:15
Right.
Liz Sears 28:17
All right, and then into our fourth is fulfillment. And actually, now that I read this on Mike, we kind of did already touched on this one, about how the reason that you want to build a team is because you want to get yourself to where you can have the biggest impact on the most amount of people have what works for you. So one of the things in fact, this is a it was interesting to me back in 2000, I think it was 15 and 2015, and 2017. I don't know, all of a sudden doesn't matter. And I was writing my New Year's resolutions. And as I was writing them out, because that was something I liked, even though some people poopoo Year's Resolutions because nobody ever sticks to them. That was a good time for me to self reflect on what was important to me. And I was writing them out and realized that all of the training I had received before about what success looked like was based on somebody else's definition. And as I was writing it out, I realized that those goals weren't mine, and it wasn't fulfilling me. And so what I decided to do was scrap writing out any new year's resolutions and instead just truly identify what it's what does success mean to me. And I just started doing bullet points and so some of mine were that I wanted to be home with my kids till they left to go to school and I wanted to be home when they walked in the door at least a few days a week. Even if it was just for 10-15 minutes because you know having all boys that's all they wanted me around anyways. And I wanted to be home for dinner and I wanted to have at least this many deals and I wanted to be healthy and I wanted time to the Sleep and I wanted, you know, I just started writing out all of these things, how much time I wanted to spend with friends. And when I was done, I was like, this actually helped causes me to write out slightly different goals than I have before. And as I wrote them out, even though they were really similar, those little differences, changed my emotional connection to them. And my emotional connection to my goals changed how I behaved in doing what it took to reach them. And so, in reaching fulfillment, having a team just makes all of that so much more possible. Because some of those pieces of things that I didn't love to do, this is the coolest thing in the whole world secret. Every single task that you hate to do, there is someone who's crazy out there who loves to do it. And the tasks that you love to do, there is someone out there who thinks you are crazy. And so building a team is also about finding those people who love to do the tasks that are important that aren't the ones you love to do.
Nelson Barss 30:58
Yeah, you know, and that's, for me on this topic of fulfillment just it is very fulfilling to teach people this business,
Liz Sears 31:07
right?
Nelson Barss 31:07
To give them the gift of a career in the mortgage business, something that's supported me and my family and given me all these great experiences, and helped me meet so many wonderful people, and provide for our family for 20 years now. I'm finding more joy in teaching other people the business, or as much joy as I get when I sit down with a client and teach them how to buy a house, or help them rearrange their finances,
Liz Sears 31:33
especially if they didn't think they could. You know, when I did mortgages, that was a piece that I found so freaking awesome is when they came in thinking that they were a year or two away, because that's what I'd always tell all my friends. I'm like, even if you think there are a year or two away their stuff they can do right now to get them on path. Yeah, to buy a house and have the best terms and they've come to sit down with me and say, Are you serious?
Nelson Barss 31:55
Yeah.
Liz Sears 31:55
Like I'm a month or two away?
Nelson Barss 31:56
that's the same fulfilling of when someone tells me they want to be a loan officer.
Liz Sears 32:00
Yes,
Nelson Barss 32:00
but they've never even they don't know how to spell the word mortgage. Right?
Liz Sears 32:05
A lot of people don't.
Nelson Barss 32:06
So, so it's, you know, we've, we've got a path for them, right, we've got, and it's just part of my nature, I'm a, I'm a teacher at heart. And I'm, I'm not maybe as driven towards the sales aspect as some people are, I'm more driven towards developing people and helping people. And so I've found just this whole new joy in teaching, I remember, my wife and I were at dinner, this is back when I was going to be a solo mortgage broker, right? One man show solopreneur. And, and she kind of challenged me or put that goal in my mind, or realize that was my goal and made me speak it was, yeah, I want to help as many people as possible, right. And we've defined that since as clients and employees, and realtors that partner with us, I want to help people grow and build their team, build their business, build their income, and I can find fulfillment in all three of those areas. It's just happened to be the last few years. The place where we found the most fulfillment is with employees, hiring teams, and helping other loan officers learn to build a team has been also really exciting.
Liz Sears 33:17
I love it. You know, that's, that's one of the things that kind of surprised me, when Shannon and I started our brokerage, we had actually hired a coach who owned, she didn't own a brokerage yet, but she owned a very successful team. And one of the comments, as we were hiring more admin, she said, You are way too admin heavy, it's gonna cost you too much money. That's not the way to run a team you're going to go under. So you need to tighten that up. And we said, well, everything that we want to get on our admin to do to support the team, because it is our agents team, is how we viewed it. So by us building our admin staff, we have a built in team for our agents to take advantage of as opposed to the traditional real estate brokerage, where the agent does everything. So we wanted to help already have them step into a leveraged situation. And anyway, so this coach said, here to admin heavy, you need to tapper down and we said, Well, God's gonna burn them out. And she said, yeah, they burn out, you're like, you have to replace your admin every two to three years, sometimes. sooner than that. And that did not sit well with me. I was like that. That's not what I want to create. That doesn't sound fair to the people who work for me. And then just talking about the agents, I had witnessed that their agents would stay there until they outgrew, or until they burnt out, type concept. And so building a team the right way can make all the difference in the world. And it was probably one of the coolest, most rewarding moments when I had one of our admin because the way that we've structured how we've trained them, how we've on boarded them now how we help them be as effective as we need She told us at her one year review that she can't talk about work anymore with her friends or family. And I said, why not? And she said, Because they think I joined a cult.
Nelson Barss 35:11
Yeah. Yes, I'm talking about it.
Liz Sears 35:14
Yeah, she's like, seriously, I have not just drunk the Kool Aid, I am bathing in it, putting her on that. And that's when you build the right type of company, and you have the right type of culture. The culture makes everything in fact, going into a different story. So I banked it to different banks, and I'd walk into one of them. And the people were nice, but they wouldn't say hi to me right away. And they wouldn't make me feel like I was important to them. And even though they were kind, it just is what it is. And then the other bank, I think that the second you pull up to the drive thru, they'd say, hi, welcome. I'll be with you in just a minute. It you know, just to let me know that they saw me. And then they'd always asked me if I had any fun plans, or you know what I was doing today or something like that, just some conversational thing. And when I'd go into their lobby, they'd offer me water. And it always was surprising to me how totally different the cultures were in those two banks. One was a credit union one was a bank, ironically, the bank was the one with the better customer service. And even as their staff turned, you know, new people were there, the culture stayed the same. So you build your culture, you protect your culture, you teach your culture,
Nelson Barss 35:14
yeah. Well, and it's actually really fun to do that, too. Right? Back to the rewarding work, there's a lot more that's rewarding about building a team leadership is rewarding, you know? Yeah. And seeing something take wings is exciting, something bigger than you seeing this organization that's bigger than you that's better than you. That's just awesome. It's very fulfilling, right? So let's just wrap this up, I want to just, I hope that the listeners feel inspired right now that they want to build a team.
Liz Sears 36:54
And if you're not yet inspired, just keep listening. You will be by the end.
Nelson Barss 36:58
And we're gonna we're gonna teach you how, at least share with you how it's worked for us. And then we're gonna bring guests in who have done it as well, right? We're gonna pick their brains, we're gonna ask them, how they did it, why they did it when they did it. Who was the first hire the second hire? What's their hiring process? Like? How do they onboard people? And, you know, what are their successes and failures. I mean, beyond our own stories, we're going to be bringing you over and over people who've done it. And if you want to build a team, stick with us, we're gonna help you do it. We're gonna help you have a better lifestyle, more income, right, we're going to help you finally stick to your time blocks.
Liz Sears 37:35
Finally, finally,
Nelson Barss 37:36
and find that fulfillment that comes from building a business that's greater than you.
Liz Sears 37:41
Yep. And along the way, we're also going to share with you some hard knocks things we learned the hard way so that you don't have to, and we're gonna share with you nuggets of brilliance that fell into our lap or different things that we've learned that have really, really helped us propel our business forward even that much faster and our guests and we're really excited to share
Nelson Barss 37:58
this with you. Okay. All right. Well, thanks for listening. We'll see you on the next episode. Thanks, guys.
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