Encouraging Future Real Estate Brokerage Leaders with John L Scott VP Howard Chung

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All too often, leadership in real estate brokerage, means family members, friends, or agents that weren’t successful. Worse is that most brokerages do not provide any leadership training for agents.

Howard Chung, the VP Of Franchise Development for John L Scott Real Estate, in the Northwest, joins Brokerage Insider to discuss what brokerages can do to encourage diversity and growth in their leadership.

Transcript
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Hi everybody. And welcome to brokerage insider the podcast where we interviewed the leaders in real estate and technology. I'm your host, Eric Stegemann and I'm the CEO of Travis. We're one of the largest independent PropTech companies in real estate and provider of custom brokers technology to medium and large sized brokerages, both in the United States and around the world today on the show, we have Howard Chung. Now Howard's the VP of franchise development for John L Scott. Now John L Scott is one of the largest brokerages in the Northwest, and Howard has been with them on and off for over 15 years. He started out as an agent, went to a franchise owner and has grown with the company to the position that he's in today. Howard, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks so much Derek for having me. It's very nice to be here on talking about the industry and real estate. It's exciting to have you I've known you on and off, and we've seen each other at events for a number of years now. And so it's great to dig in a little further with you on a couple topics that I think we both have some interests in here. So first to get started, why don't we give everybody else a little more information on who you are? So tell me what got you started in residential real estate. Yeah. I fell in love. How about that? College I was traveling abroad and of all places I met my wife in Israel while I was traveling. And so she was studying abroad in Israel. I was traveling abroad in Germany and we ended up falling in love. We got engaged in Germany and we finished off our final year. At our colleges, she was in the Michigan and that was at the university of Washington in Seattle. And so we had never actually even seen each other for more than two weeks before we actually got married and she was off together, graduate degree at Harvard. And so I said I didn't get into a graduate degree at Harvard. So how about we get married? And then I'll go work out in Boston and support you. And so she said, great. And so that's the, how the journey began. And, I literally walked by. A real estate sign that said now hiring at a century 21 office, in the middle of Harvard square and Porter square over in Cambridge. And so I walked in, they said, Hey how sh how do I get started? And so I, at the time it was like one of those deals where you could take a weekend course, like literally Saturday, Sunday. So I took a Saturday and Sunday course. And then got licensed on Monday and it was off selling real estate. So that was the beginning of the journey, but I was very successful by the third year of my of my real estate career. And by the time my wife was graduating her initial, her first degree. Anyway I I was the number one agent for century 21, the entire East coast now. So that was, the average sale price was 150,000 probably at the time. And my. Loved it and hated it. I loved the money, but hated the hours. This is pre you know, like understanding teams or any of that type of thing. So I was just like, I am so sick of real estate and selling real estate. I just need to get out of this business. We moved back to Seattle and then I took a year off and I did decided to go. Back into real estate. I said, I want to make sure that I've got systems in place and I want to have a much more balanced life, especially now we're going to having kids. And yeah, that's basically what I did. I was like, I went back into the business, just selling real estate. But I was very successful managing a kind of a Monday through Thursday kind of calendar selling real estate, taking Friday, Saturdays and Sundays off and still selling a lot of real estate. Got very systems oriented and then that eventually led me on to becoming. Or going into leadership and management then starting my own franchise and becoming an executive for John L Scott real estate. And like I said, or like you mentioned, I've been back and forth in various roles and so oversaw marketing for awhile. And now I'm overseeing the franchise development and growth for John L Scott real estate. Wow. That's a, that is, I keep using this term and I didn't realize it was to the extent of what you just said. But I keep using this term of real estate lifers. And it seems like we've had the opportunity to interview a number of real estate lifers, last week was. Was Philip White, the CEO of Sotheby's a couple weeks before that was Joan Dr. The, the president of Berkshire Hathaway, Fox Roach realtors, which is a 5,000 person brokerage or company in, in Philadelphia based around Philadelphia. And now here's Howard with his real estate lifer, just like me. It seems like a bunch of us just got into it. And I always say we get sucked in and you can't leave. For a lot of different reasons, one is the knowledge that you have, and it seems like that knowledge has played very well in terms of your growth at general Scott. Yeah. I think one of the things is I love, whether you're a quote unquote natural salesmen or an out or natural salesperson, I've really found that there's elements of sales that I really love. I love the engagement, there's a lot of those reasons, why we love the business, but then I found that really diving deep into stuff. Systems, and then coaches, you had systems that they could share on with you. That's what I love is just understanding how to utilize those best systems. And those aren't just real estate systems. Those are life systems, right there, there are people systems there it's relationship strategies and technology strategies. And so as I just get to learn, and that's one of the best things I love is I get to learn a lot of these, techniques and strategies. And then I was mentioning my wife earlier. She is an organizational psychologist, and and she teaches at Seattle Pacific university on management leadership and a lot of these organizational behaviors. And so I lean a lot from her and then translate that. Back into leadership and real estate sales and and quality of life and a bunch of those kinds of things. Yeah, so yeah, the industry is a great industry and like you said it's easy to be a lifer on something when not, when you love it and you make an impact, for people. So yeah, I guess I'm darn right. And that's what I always say too is I never thought I would be in this industry 22 years later. But I was just doing it to sell real estate to pay, to go to college. And I never thought I would be doing it two years later, but I fell in love with it and for a lot of the same stuff of what you're talking about. So speaking of all of that, let's talk a little bit about leadership and leadership development in real estate. So what do you think makes a good leader particularly when it comes to the brokerage industry? Yeah. Diving into this question going from sales and then when I decided to become a franchise owner, you're going to become a leader. And I had already been an assistant manager and a mentor at the office prior to that, But it's not like anybody ever said, Hey, here's some leadership training, some leadership development, and you basically, got your broker's license. So that's not anything to do with leadership. That's just knowing a few more laws, and a few more processes. But at the end of the day, in terms of meeting people and helping to really encourage them and do some of those things, there's a lot of skills that you've got to manage there and over the years, really come to recognize that real estate specifically? As an agent, especially as a new agent and experienced agent in a good market in a bad way, market leadership leader, leadership skills are so important. And yet it's almost as if Hey there's a lot of executives, of course, for the big companies and they get to go to the trainings and maybe they, have the leisure time to read the books, but how much real leadership development are we putting on for the middle managers, the brokers, the ones who are actually leading the sales meetings, as well as coaching the agents and all of that. And I think we've fallen short as an industry often in terms of really empowering. Managers. And and I oftentimes we talked about, Oh, there's a leader and there's a manager. And that's just, those are just words. But ultimately, if you are influencing others, leading others in your brokerage we have got to understand the importance of those management skills, those leadership skills, a lot of those processes. And, you have companies like Amazon and Microsoft and all the big companies. They actually pay people like my wife's psychologist, right? Who've got PhDs and the stuff to come and HR and really help almost at every level. And oftentimes we don't really dive into those skills. And yet now we're talking about the greatest emotional, as well as, greatest financial investments, people making their home. Yeah. When it comes to agents and their lives, we, as leaders, as managers, as executives, we've got to make sure we are, we're taking the time to understand and learn some of these leadership skills. So back to your question. What are a couple of things that we need to focus on. And a lot of times we'll read maybe a book we'll go to maybe a seminar. But there is a theory. That's like the full range leadership as a theory or a model that, I really encourage and, that's one that I learned over the more recent years, but it's really understanding that there's something called a transactional leader. And there's a transformational leader. Okay. And it's not like you're one or the other, it's a full reign. So you've got to be strong in both transactional kind of management or leadership skills, but more importantly is also really diving deep into the transformational side. So if I can break that down a little bit, and the far extreme side of a bad transactional leader is what's called the Lazarus. They're a leader now, the law's a fearless leader and we all know that word. It's not meaning that they're a lazy leader. In fact, it might be the person who's super likable. And you might be one of these leaders that's super likable, or, as an executive, maybe you've got some of these leaders where they're super likable, they've got their broker's license and here's the thing they might even be super good when it comes to contracts. When it comes to, negotiations and, some of the brokerage type of things, that we typically want and a good manager, but ultimately that last day for our leader is just there, but they're not proactively Dooney. They're not thinking about coaching. They're not really thinking about, taking Eric, Hey, let me just. Check to see if a Eric is doing the same kind of number of deals. This year versus last year is the opposite down. What's going on in his personal life. The, after a leader doesn't really consider any of that because ultimately he's just available and he might be like, Hey Eric, if you ever need anything I'm available. So that is the far extreme side of this laissez-faire transactional leader. And we all know that, the statistics are so rough in our industry where so many agents fail out of the business. I think it's because we've got a lot of. Good personality leaders who are very transactional nature, they're the Slavic or leader they've been doing it for years, but they've really not progressed in terms of the additional strengths as far as transactional, as well as again, back to that transformational. And so if I go to the other side of transformational and then I can just simply ask this question, we've all been inspired by various leaders in our history, right? And so that is one of the elements of a transfer. Informational leader is their ability to inspire. And a lot of times we take this word, like inspire inspiration. I'm not that type of person. I'm not an inspirational type of person, but it can be something as simple as, Hey, you've been exercising and losing a little weight, you know what, whenever we meet somebody like That's inspiring, right? Oh, you're taking better care of your health. Oh, you're a really good dad or a really good mom or, you've been talking about some things that are really also important for me. You're inspiring me. That's all about inspiration. The question is how strategic are we as leaders even about inspiration. How much time are we reflecting on what can I communicate this week? Not just from a legal perspective or, a sales meeting perspective, as far as what the market statistics are, but what's something that's inspirational that I can really just share with my agents this week or one-on-one. And that's another element of a transformational leader is you have something called. Individualized consideration. So instead of just taking all of my agents, as a large group, or even that group of my agents, like here's my producers versus my non producers, I think about each individual person, Eric Britt. What's a story. What's a story right now. What's his future, I wonder what he's, what's going on with him. So then I do some individualized consideration. Boy, when I have a conversation with Britt, I better know a few things, just in terms of what's been going on in his life. Business what his future goals are, all those kinds of things. And of course, we can also translate this just in terms of our buyers and sellers and homeowner relationships, the one-on-one type of thing. But I can't just group all my agents into a single category or, a block of categories might. Tier one, producers RIS my tier four, but rather I'm going to individualize consideration for everybody. And that also goes true for the support team members, the staff members, and especially these days when the market's kind of crazy for most markets everybody's overworked. They've got, of course all of the pandemic stuff and stress still happening. I'm not giving individualized consideration for my support team members for my agents. And and for myself or my family members. So that's another element of transformational leadership. Another component that's really important is an intellectual challenge. So it's a simple question, boy, have I intellectually challenged, Eric? I know he's really sharp. But what is you reading these days? What kind of technology? What about the video strategy? Can I challenge Eric to do something new and different, get him outside of his comfort zone? So again, we are thinking so frequently as far as just how do I manage, myself as a manager, right? I'll be thinking about these broad things, but I would just say thinking of ourselves as. Transformational leaders, individualized consideration, inspiration as well as just a, that intellectual challenge. Those are just a few of the elements that can start to make us better leaders. I'll just leave it there for analysis. That's quite a mouthful. No, it was phenomenal. Material there, man, I. I rarely do I hear somebody in the brokerage business and in staff and leadership, think about leadership to use the same word again, think about leadership in the scientific way that you're approaching it here. Who was a good leader that you have or had in the past, you mentioned, we all look at theaters. Is there a good one that you saw in the past? For me, something for myself personally, I think, we can think about every person who's influenced in a positive way, mean this goes back to probably what your child ends. They man, remember that teacher who really inspired you in one way, shape or form. And so there are positive elements. I think we can take from so many people in life. That's just wow. I remember when somebody challenged me. Yeah, that was an element of of a transformational leader. They helped transform me. And so I would actually say that, in my work career over the years, there's been many people that's inspired me. My current CEO, Lennox, Scott. He inspires me. He is still somebody that I look up to and he's just wow, he's he's got an amazing story as a third generation, a Scott who's been in this business for over 90 years now. And then also, bringing his daughter as a fourth generation and he's still in the business. Every single day, passionate about the agent's passionate about understanding markets and statistics. I'm inspired by a lot of people, but, but I often find that the higher you often go was, who is somebody who can challenge you intellectually. And I think we need to often seek that portion out if we're not challenging ourselves, who's somebody that can challenge me as well as hold myself hold me accountable to that challenge because I I think we're designed that way as people and maybe. Especially in real estate, we've got to have that come with a competition and some of that challenge out there. And so we can also just take the, those people who've challenged us in other ways. It could just be an exercise, having a personal coach, those are all people that can inspire and challenge us. One thing that, one of the things I want to also go on this is. We can identify the people who have challenged us or inspired us, but we can also see those lousy Faire people in the past who were technically our leaders, but they didn't challenge us. They didn't inspire us. And often we find We don't want to hang around with those people. That's one of the reasons why we love that organization. Right? And so it is very important that us in leadership and management and the real estate business and the brokers business, we're always talking about recruiting and retention as these keywords. But if we want to recruit and retain well, we better really focused in terms of reflecting on our leadership skillset. Really taking some time to dive deeper into that science of leadership. Yeah. It's, you mentioned the leader of your brokerage. My office manager is that's when I started is probably the reason I'm still in this business. 22 years later, check Toyota at my, when I started, I was at a Coldwell banker and he was just phenomenal and w literally helped me grow and learn the business and made me in a better sales person and made me a better. Realtor and everything. And he just, shaped me a lot in that regard. What do you, how do you think that leadership has changed if at all? A lot of what you're focused on is the scientific kind of approach. But do you think that leadership has changed at all during COVID? And I know you mentioned it a little bit, but I'd like to dig in with you a little more on that. Do you see leaders being different in terms of what they're targeting or how they're engaging? And not being a laissez Faire leader during COVID. Yeah, I think the biggest one is that's been an evolving thing, not just we've gotten in the real estate industry, but overall in all industries in companies is the ability to coach. Okay. And I think we go, Oh, I'm a coach. Are you really, one of the elements, as far as in leadership now is understanding that coaching skillset, and there's a difference between mentoring. There's a difference between teaching there's a difference between, coaching. And and that's A particular one for myself that I'm still learning all the time. My wife just use that again. She's a professor, but she's also a paid coach with a different organization. And that coaching skillset is really that ability to listen and. Ask incredibly challenging questions, right? So it's our ability to ask questions. And so some people are very skilled at that. They need to hone that even deeper and others are not so great at that. We're great talkers. We're great teachers, we might even be great mentors where it's just here's how I do it. So do it like this. But in terms of really that ability to ask that challenging question, get people to reflect. So that naturally what's happening over a period of time as that individual agent, for example, comes to that realization, Oh, this is the reason why I'm not doing these activities, which is the reason why I'm not getting as much listing inventory, or I'm not having the quality life that I want. So part of that leadership. Demand now more so than ever before is your ability to coach. And of course there's a lot of agents that, that are out there in the industry, there's way more agents than there are listings in most communities. In which case, then, our ability to coach to productivity, that business coaching and part of business coaching is about. And that's as a part of life coaching, because we know that it's so tied together. Our ability as leaders to be able to kind of transition, to become coaches in particular now in the zoom world, making connections, in a virtual environment as well as then, of course, back to, back in real life as well. But we've got a coach be able to coach and small groups. One-on-ones like never before. So I think COVID is a great opportunity for a lot of us to say I'm using COVID as the excuse to really become an amazing coach for the next five years, 10 years. In fact, among all my competitors among every other real estate firm and my entire city. I'm going to be known as the best coach. And through that process, I'm going to have a better more agents who are productive in my particular office, which then naturally you're gonna, you're gonna attract more agents. So I think that is definitely something that we've got to focus a lot more attention on lots of coaching books out there courses. And we can't just default to, Oh yeah. My agents are being coached by, one of those third-party companies that are out there. No, you become the coach as well. That's more important. That's going to be a Better time to really enhance your own coaching skills and start to let go of some of the duties that you've done in the past, right? Maybe some of those brokerage duties where you were only seen as the person to be the deal, doctor transitioned some of that off into some of the processes that exist or to other people, but you as the leader of the agents become a great coach. So it's funny that you keep mentioning this word coach. And we launched this product a tribe a few years ago called coach. And it was the funniest thing because when I ran my brokerage, I was so big on sitting down with my agents. On a monthly, sometimes more than once a month. But with every single agent, at least once a quarter, I sat down with every single one of them and talked about their business. And so we launched this product a few years ago called coach, and we couldn't get anybody to use it. Like we would talk to office managers and say, Hey, we've got this great product called coach. And it actually gives you all these super deep insights into your agents. Like one of the things that I used to talk about is list of sale prices. That's right, is, if you've got one agent that their list of sale is 92% and the entire rest of the market is 102%, you should probably sit down and have a conversation with that agent and coach them to be a better agent of not what I was called, buying the listing by taking at a price higher than what should really be at, or look at their days on market or maybe there's other data that's inside of there. Like for example, their average price per square foot or average sales price is. He's super, in the top 1% of the market. And so because of that you end up with longer days on market or different lists of sale prices and that's mitigating circumstances, but it's all about having the data, I think, to be a good coach. And it's funny during COVID. All of a sudden people started using it and they started going crazy with it of saying Oh yeah, this is great. And now I can sit down with my agents, have conversations over zoom with them and have data to talk with them about. And I was chuckle and say, man, this has been there for six years, seven years that we launched coach and we couldn't get, we couldn't pay people to use it six years ago. It's interesting that you're saying that the exact same thing is what we're seeing. Good leaders or seemingly good leaders in real estate do and move away from being deal doctors. And especially do we need deal doctors anymore when there's zero contingencies and zero appraisal writers and everything like that, the concept of a deal doctor is certainly different than it was six months ago. And now's the time to focus particularly on coaching. So totally agree with you. There, let's talk about getting into leadership particularly. As the people in this industry I've always noticed from my experience that there's only two types of people that have previously gotten into leadership in real estate. And that is. Owners and their family members of the brokerage. And that, part of that's a good thing is you get the person who's has been in the industry since they were two years old more or less. My wife has a really good example of that. She started putting labels on envelopes literally when she was four or five for her parents that were both realtors or the other one is. Agents that were doing okay. Or maybe even not so great and decided to move into a salary based role. So how can we get people that are outside of those is spaces, people that are just good leaders to, to accept roles or want to get into real estate, or maybe the better question for you is how do we get the current leaders of real estate to look outside of the industry for leaders? Yeah. Yeah. A couple of pieces that I want to, I would love to adjuster. I think the biggest, we won't, we all know this, the teams, right? There's more teams now than ever before. And that's going to be a continuing trend. And so as a team leader, all of a sudden you got up then maybe a buyer's agent or two and you're maybe still the rain maker. Maybe you've got an admin person. You are a leader, you lead a team. It's basically the same thing as a small franchise. Like you've got a team of three, two, three, four. Those are still families lives that you're impacting. Just among those those people, they are now reliant upon you. And so what is the quality of life that you are having for yourself in that team? So you, as that leader, you now are in charge. You coaching them and, creating a culture of mattering that's, which I'd love to talk a little bit more about here in a little bit, but so I think just among right now, all those team leaders, and if you're a man, if you're a manager of a brokerage and you've got teams. You've got to now instill leadership skills to those team leaders, because the worst thing also is just you've got this revolving door of these team members are coming onto these teams. They were basically, Oh, like I wanna, have a little bit more stability or I want to get to know the business a little bit. And they've got a horrible experience because that team leader was just a jerk. They didn't have any leaderships. Gills they weren't inspiring their team members in any way or individually challenging them or they're also laissez-faire or something else. So I think the team leaders who are, really thinking about the growth of the future of their business we've got to focus on them. We've got to make sure there's opportunities for them. And that's also how you going to attract. It seems to your brokerage, right? If that's a goal of yours. By all means there's that piece. And and again, creating a culture of leadership. And so what I mean by that is everybody's wondering I've got no time. How am I supposed to coach? How am I supposed to do all these additional new things? Things as a leader when I am still having to be the deal doctor, it's my license. That's on the line. If a deal is incorrectly done. So those opportunities and moments where you go, listen you need a leadership team. You can't do it on your own. Start to identify various people within your organization and start giving out different, exercises that they can do, that they can lead, give them opportunities, even your support team members, what are things that they can lead on? That's so you're really looking to yourself as the leader develop a leadership team. So that goes back to the leadership development process and culture that you're creating. So that even agents. Might be a part of the leadership team. And, yeah, you can create different types of incentives, but ultimately people do love to matter as far as what they're doing and therefore look for opportunities to give leadership roles, to various people that you might not have otherwise thought of. Take a DEI, do a two day. Leadership development, retreats, at some point or even a zoom, leadership conversation. And you're going to find so often that even among your agent pool, some of their backgrounds in history, isn't leadership, they have leadership skills, hone some of that in there. There are resources oftentimes, in front of us that we're not even recognizing. So that's just, my encouragement is to. Really again, focused in terms of some of the scientific ways that's I'm going to develop that office culture to be one where there's just a lot of servant leadership. In terms of identifying and seeking these people out that are maybe outside of the industry it seems like first of all, very few people in high school or in college, sit there and say, I want to be a realtor number one. And that's the most sexiest thing of what we do. And there's 75 TV shows currently on air about real estate, but they're all about. Being a realtor and there's zero shows about managing a brokerage. And it seems like, people know very few people say in high school, I want to be a realtor. Nobody says I want to run an office or I want to be in a brokerage leadership type of a position. How can we get younger folks involved knowing that. Steve Murray. My friend Steve Murray told me once that 60% of all brokerages are currently for sale because the person that owns the brokerage has nobody identified to hand it off to or hand leadership off to, for them to be able to retire. Yeah, great question. People do of course want to have those kinds of opportunities. And so as far as looking outside the industry I think, I don't know how much you want to look outside the industry. I still think that within the industry, there's so many great agents where we just. We just need to find that right. Fit for them, and that opportunity and more so than ever before, I think these kind of creating teams to become, a leader team, it's almost just that's quite the process, but it's just that talent management side, where we're constantly looking for the people who in the future want an opportunity like that. That's one of the things I'm doing right now, just in terms of franchise, I'm not looking, for people outside the industry, I'm looking for it. Agents who've been in the business for three years, which in the real estate space is not a long time, but I'm like, Hey, in three years, you've done pretty well as an agent. So I'm not necessarily even looking at the million dollar producers I'm looking for that person. Who's making between a hundred and 500,000, maybe I'm like, do you want to build an asset? What's your future? What's your dreams? Do you want to just, sell real estate your entire life or do you want to, own something and lead a group? That's what I'm constantly looking for. So I'm looking at the agent pool constantly and I find them, they're there and they never thought about owning a franchise. They never thought about going into management until I say would you be interested in just a leadership development class? And then they go. I'd be open to that. And then we started talking about the data, and Adrian production and the business models and different ways that they can earn money, especially with joint ventures of title, escrow mortgage, and then those kinds of things. And all of a sudden they appreciate those kinds of conversations. Those are not conversations that their managers are often not having with them. A lot of times just within that agent pool, there are existing people. We're just not. Maybe looking deep enough, having those individualized conversations impossibly enough. So yeah, I'm still hopeful that there are a lots of good people in the industry who loved the industry. Who've got enough years of experience under them, but, it's just creating these new opportunities in in management leadership last last question for you on this topic which is. Do you think that to run an office or a region or however you want to slice and dice it up, do you think that it should still be required to have a license and I'm not talking about from an oversight perspective, having oversight of somebody that's licensed is obviously a good idea, but do you think that the people that run an office outside of deal doctoring should be. Or required to be by the state licensed or do you think that it would be good to sometimes at least open it up to whoever the best leader is outside of what you just said, that you're identifying agents that could be great leaders in the end that they're open to it and want to expand out their knowledge. Do you see any benefit in making it easier to become a leader versus, I think many people would agree that it shouldn't be as easy to become an individual realtor. Yeah I, it's who do you have on your team? Ultimately the real estate business, as far as like on the brokerage side, that's how can I get as many of my agents to be as productive as possible, thereby also attracting other people to come to my firm because they're doing well. So other people want to be with me. And it's down to behavior. And so leadership, as far as back to that coaching, how can my coaching help? Change behavior. Do you have to be the managing broker? No. Absolutely. When it comes to behavior changes and some of the sales skills and relationship and technology components no in fact you don't have to be that person right. So oftentimes in fact, it is the support team members who support agents in some of these things. And they're not licensed or a lot of them are not. So I would definitely think it's all about finding that right team, and one of the things that at the, at an executive level, at a company level, we've got the, the ability to have HR and at the strategy level, talked about all the different job descriptions so that we can, Put together a really good org chart. So you got to have the people in the right, right seats, right on the right bus. A lot of times at the franchise level or the small brokerage level from level, we just haven't taken the time to do that. So all of that burden and weight is just on one person, not owner manager. And I think that's where we got to make sure we're taking time to really develop that leadership. Team. And back to your point that doesn't have to just be the one managing broker I think are really takes that, the entire team. Part of that leadership is focusing on that right. Leadership team. So if you do anything in the coming year really take the time to figure that org chart out in a really honest way. Speaking of that, let's move on to a different topic here. That's about finding the right people because the right people come from all different backgrounds and places in their lives, and so one of the things that I'm interested in is, Okay. In terms of getting into real estate you said you're identify agents. That could be good leaders a lot of times and you push them down the right path. But I recently saw a survey that showed minorities in real estate or minority real estate agents typically, or on average, across all pulling only about a third of what a nonminority a realtor makes. Why do you think that is. I that's a really good question. I don't know exactly the statistic or the I would be very curious as far as the details of that, that, I think that's probably possibly too general. Of a of a statement without diving a specific more into the details of that survey. My organization, I don't know, I'd be really surprised if that was the same study. So yeah, now I'm not sure I've got a comment for that particular one without taking a look at it. But what I'll say is as the following is that, whether, the minorities that people of color or not, The real estate business is hard in terms of business development. And it's all still going to rely upon the sphere of influence and what kind of, behaviors and skills and marketing that they're doing. So again, I don't necessarily want to comment without having seen that specific study and the depths of it, actually. Sure. Sure. Maybe that leads to a better question for you then, which is, how do you look at diversity and inclusion both when it comes to being a realtor and finding, minorities to be agents but also, based around the conversation that we've been having about leadership, is that something that John L Scott actively seeks out. Hey Eric, sorry. Technical difficulties. So my internet went out. Oh, no problem. It's showing that it's unstable. So I lost your last question. So repeat it for me one more time. Okay. Sure. And Britt, I'm just gonna give a pause and then start it again, just so you can make it easier for you. Cutting it. Talking about this and minorities and involved in real estate, how does John L Scott think about diversity and inclusion of not only realtors getting into the business, but also maybe about leadership? Is that something that you guys. Pay attention to you. Absolutely. Part of the reason why I was sharing earlier, the fact that, I'm inspired by my CEO is because, he's a third generation family owned, operated one of the largest firms, again in the Northwest. And there was. Practices and history that she literally called out. In fact, he just how to a great conversation with the entire organization saying there was stuff in history that happened, he specifically called it out and he did something about it. It's not like you just swept that under the rug. He was just like, this was something in history. We were complicit, to some of the practices as far as some of the red lining, type of things that were happening. Back in the day and I'm calling it out and you know what, we, as a, as an organization, we're gonna, we're gonna, do things. And we're probably one of the leaders in the country right now in terms of having this conversation. Action plans, Diversity education conversations at the leadership level. Every single company owned office leader and highly encouraged franchise owner. We all went through a book together. We literally had a. Full on session on the color of law by Richard Roston, which has been a very popular book or the last couple of years, I'm just talking about the history in this country regarding housing policy and you know why we are all segregated, with housing so much, and that we as an industry have a responsibility. And so when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion, It is obviously very complex. The real estate industry has been very much a part of the history as far as why. The racial segregation that's happened here so much, and it's our responsibility to, to do something about it. And so specifically at at the company right now, we are looking constantly for new ways. Number one, I think the awareness and education that goes without saying and and it's gotta become personal at the at each individual office level agent level. We got to make sure that this is a conversation that is happening, that the history is really. Recognize as far as, the complicit like how the industry was. So the real estate industry and the mortgage industry for that matter was so complicit in all of the housing policies that made so much of the segregation, what it is today. And yeah. It comes to now for leadership and as far as conversations, as far as, trying to really reach out to all of our communities and making it as diverse as possible as well as just making sure that we're recognizing that bare housing is still a challenge, and what can we con constantly do it to bring up that awareness and education? So much of a as just in that space right now but we're additionally looking to create, funds available to, to create additional education opportunities. We've got even something called the 90 year project where we're creating a scholarship even for education for people to to become teachers, people, Diversity become teachers. So we're really excited about this topic. But it's gonna take not years, but decades to undo some of the stuff that's happened. So yeah, that's just some of the stuff we're focused on right now. Is there anything particularly when it comes to leadership or getting agents involved? Because one of the things that I read in that story, that they were suggesting in that article and for life of me, I can't remember if, whether it was an NPR article or from somewhere else right now. But one of the things they suggested was that. If more minorities became realtors that it would help with minority home ownership as well, or if minorities became, obviously my next step is if more minorities were in leadership in real estate, it might help with home ownership levels. And, certainly one of the things is the average minority family. Has only about between 15 and $20,000 in net worth in it. Whereas the average family in the United States overall, I believe is the over $150,000. So literally a 10 X, multiple. And of course, as you and I both know a lot of that comes from equity appreciation in real estate, right? Particularly over the past year. Holy cow. If you were, if you've owned a home this year, you probably in pretty good shape, unless you're in. A few of the mega cities of the United States. You probably came out. Great. And so from that perspective, do you think that. That getting minorities into selling real estate. And then bringing them along with the leadership, like what you were talking about before and identifying those that want to be leaders, do you think, and do you see the getting from point a to point B and helping them helping minorities achieve higher levels of homeownership and thereby net worth. That would be great River, so simple, we just need to get more, people of color, to become realtors. And then that would change things around by all means, I think the industry, the real estate business can be, incredible for many. And yeah, the percentage of minorities were probably are not representing, the buyers and sellers and homeowners. Who are out there. So by all means, what are some things that we can do in leadership, to encourage people to come into the industry and to really again, just like anybody, but, coach them up to success and all those kinds of things. So I think there's a good responsibility to that. I definitely can't answer if that would. Help I'm sure it won't hurt by, but by all means, there's so much, probably more, but that's definitely one of the items, creating a very diverse, Salesforce leadership force. By all means we've got to look at that and I think a lot of us are right. We are definitely looking more and more at that. Going out there and and recruiting the best talent that's out there. And again, back to the coaching and the the training and mentoring and all those things, that's all happening right now. So that part's really exciting and the industry but I think as far as the we as. We in the industry as business people, as salespeople, we want a fast answer and it's not going to be that fast. It's going to take, a culture shifts, it's going to take a long time for us to continually have these conversations to that point where it almost seems like. Are we talking about this again, like some people are already feeling that way. Even in the more recent stop Asian hates campaigns with the Asian hate crimes that have been happening do we have to address another, racial situation now, with the Asians, we've got to talk about this again. There's some of that energy that's happening. And but you know what, that is part of the cultural shift that we've got to acknowledge and we've got to embrace and we've got to lead. And we've got to have a lot of one-on-ones and we've got to really bring because we represent communities of so many people. Who've been impacted for so many years. And again real estate is generational. It's going to take generations for us to lead our communities, our agent pool, our support team members to continue to just have these conversations, but something as simple as starting off by reading the book, the color of law, I think that's a really good starting place. It should be like mandatory reading, to know the housing history, to know why so many of our neighborhoods that so many of our cities are segregated, the way that they are, why that, there is that large discrepancy, lack of homeowners, in particular among the African-American community because they weren't allowed, even if they could get a mortgage. Not the same kind of mortgage, there's so much history there and we've got to, create an awareness and arguably even this is not right. What can I do about it today, besides just knowing about the history? What are the things I can do now, moving forward to make a difference. And I think that is just something that, that we all need to embrace as an industry. For sure. And we're pretty much out of time here. But I did want to ask you, I asked all of my guests one question and I always love getting all of their answers and something that I've heard from some people recently has been about raising the bar in real estate. I've heard other people talk about more of the tech side of real estate, obviously. But if there was one thing that you could change about residential real estate any facet of it. What would that one thing be. Yeah. Maybe I'll get a little philosophical if if that's okay here. So as we there's a lot of people who are realtors and who've done really well in particular the last few years, the market's been good rates have been great. I did get the full exercise and I was like, wow, there's. More million dollar earners in real estate than I've seen in history appeals people earning, three, four, five, six, 700, $800,000, million dollars or more, selling real estate. And the people, the reason why we all go into real estate is I want to have, I want to make a lot of money. I want to have flexibility and freedom, all those kinds of things. And if I could change something as just what real estate, as far as for salespeople for realtors, there is a lot of income opportunities. A lot of people have done incredibly well, but we do have a responsibility, right? Moving into the future, into the generations coming up. Boy, if I'm going to help somebody with the greatest financial and emotional investment, it's going to create generational wealth. There's a real responsibility that I have. And so I would just say we need to take on almost a philosophical approach to how we do the business, how we serve our clients or our communities. I just want that to be talked about more among leaders, among agents, among teams, among, the colleagues. That, that stuff matters. It really does because we do impact so many of our communities through how we sell real estate. So I would say, it is it's back to this diversity equity and inclusion piece. We've got as a responsibility as an industry to to do what's right in the coming generations of some of the stuff that we didn't do as well in the past generations. That was a, that's a great and Sage statement for the future and certainly the, probably the most forward-looking. And in terms of an answer here of everything we've received. So how are, thank you so much for taking some time out of your day and joining us and talking about leadership and diversity and how we can bridge the two together.

CEO | Director of Strategy
With more than 17 years experience in the real estate industry, including being a Realtor and Broker / Owner, Stegemann brings a wealth of knowledge to this job as CEO of TRIBUS. He focuses his time on helping brokers enhance and expand their business and working with the TRIBUS labs team to consider what's next in real estate.
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