Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to the Victory Podcast.
Hey victors. Welcome to this episode of the Victory Show. If this is the first time you're joining us, I'm Travis Cody, best selling author of 16 books and creator of bestseller By Design. I've had the privilege of helping hundreds of business consultants, founders, entrepreneurs write and publish their own best selling books. And along that journey, I've discovered a really fascinating pattern. Most businesses hit a revenue plateau and they struggle to break through it, usually around a million dollars a year. So on this show, I sit down with some of the world's most successful founders, CEOs, leaders and business owners to uncover the strategies they use to overcome those plateaus and scale their business to new heights so that you can do the same. So get ready for some deep insights and actionable takeaways that you can implement in your life and business. Starting now. My guest today is a master of real estate and business growth. Someone who's built a career around clarity, action and results. Matt Miali is a high impact entrepreneur and real estate leader with over two decades experience. He heads one of Connecticut's top producing real estate teams, closing over 600 homes annually. We gotta have a conversation about that. Cause that's amazing. While also helping agents hit peak performance through structure, accountability and simplicity. He's also the founder of Agent Production Academy, Empower Events and the Real Estate MD Podcast. Each focused on helping agents, leaders and teams grow faster with more intention. Known for his bold leadership and no fluff approach, Matt shows up every day with unmatched energy and a deep commitment to living and helping others live a wildly fulfilling, action packed life. Matt, thanks for being here so much.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: I love, I love it. Thank you for putting that.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Where do I even start with all of that? That's awesome.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Feels like you might be talking about somebody else, but then I'm like, yeah, no, he's right. I did all that stuff. That's crazy.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Is that the thing where somebody's like asking you about your bio and then you're like, I gotta update it? And you're like, I guess I did do that.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Yes, I did. Yeah, exactly.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: I had a point. Sometime I was working with somebody on a book and I've been writing since I've been a little kid. So it's. I'm one of those weird guys. It's just, it's what I do, right? I mean, I guess it's kind of like Tom Brady throwing football. He just always did it. And some one day somebody asked me how many books I had and I was like, oh, I Got four. No, I have not. And then I felt like a schmuck because I actually had 12 books and I felt like I was bragging and I was like, one break. I actually didn't know how many I had.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: So I love it. So you, you, while you've built a fantastic business in real estate, you actually started an old school door to door sales.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: I was, I was a.
It's one of my favorite stories to tell, especially for two young people.
I'm actually going to turn 50 this year. So I've got 50 spins around the sun under my belt. And when I was, I went to college in a small state, small school in southern New Hampshire called Keene State College right there. And you know, about 5,000 undergraduate students and I. You kind of cut my teeth in business there at a young age. Had sort of a pretty clear aspirational view of what I wanted to do with my life, but didn't have a clue how to get there.
Came from pretty humble beginnings. You know, my father was a New York City firefighter. My mother worked for the Department of Mental Health Services in the state of Connecticut. So, you know, I grew up in a town in New York called Carmel. And in Carmel, New York, everyone that I knew, everyone I went to school with, all their parents were cops, firemen or teachers. So I didn't have, you know, lawyers in my life. We didn't have doctors in our life. We didn't have business owners or entrepreneurs.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: You were blue bloods.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. That, that was, you know, like educated, working, you know, working professional people, but in, you know, civil service, particularly around the New York area. And so that was like what I grew up with. So I, you know, managed to go to go to college and while I was there, got introduced to, you know, all kinds of really cool things and different people. And it started to open my eyes. I mean, if you had asked me at 18 or 19 what I was likely to do, I would have said, I'll probably be a fireman. And between the time I was 18 and the time I graduated from college, I had all these new doors open to me. Among them was this, this idea that there was this, this world out there called business. Now, I kid you not, I had no concept of business, nothing. Like, it wasn't, it wasn't like something I vaguely understood. I just wasn't even a thing I had like any insight into that you could build something and charge money and make money. I didn't, you know, there was like the only aspect of business that I understood were businessmen wore suits, like, that's it. Like, I don't know what they do.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Wall street guys.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Yeah, that was it. That was what I understood about business. And so, you know, through a couple of years in college, I learned that I was pretty good at communicating and leadership. And, you know, I wound up being president of my fraternity and I was involved in the student council and I got involved in a lot of stuff. I said yes to a lot of things, which is just sort of a personal belief system that I had, especially at that age, was, well, if I'm here, I may as well try to experience as much as I can. And so I'll never forget the first time I thought about getting a professional job. I was a junior in college and I had a friend that was working at this small company called monadnet. Now, Monadnet was short for Monadnock region, which is the Monadnock region in New Hampshire, and Internet. So it was this very Creative acronym.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: 1996, the company was called Monadnet. And it was. Was one of these sort of merged projects between public and private, public and private sector. So it was like publicly funded with, you know, some tax money and some grants and some, some assistance funds in order to bring the Internet to the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. In 1996, I had a friend that worked there in like customer support, right? And I was talking to her one day and she was like, yeah, it's cool. It's like a computer's job. And I was like, computers, that sounds like the future, you know, so 99. I'm like, that sounds like where I want to go. That's. That's the future. I want to work with computers. And so not knowing how to do a resume or fill out a resume or even apply for a job, I printed out all the accolades and made the best version of a resume I could. And I went down to Monadnet Corporation and I walked in and I saw the person working in the front desk. And I said, I. I'm here to apply for a job. And she was like, do you have an appointment? And I was like, no. And she was like, okay, you're going to need an appointment. And I said, okay, cool. How do I get one? And she said, well, you have to talk to George S.C. now, George Scott was the executive director of the company. And I said, okay, no problem. Is he here? And she was like, he is, but he's in a meeting. And I said, okay, no problem, I can wait. And I sat down and I waited and like two hours later, this, this silver haired guy comes out. He was probably in his mid to late 60s. And he looks at me and I'm, you know, an 18, let's see, I'm probably 21 years old. I have a ponytail in a full blue suit with a white shirt on, and I have a leather burgundy briefcase, you know. And he looks at me and he's like, you've been waiting here for two hours. And I was like, yes. And he's like, come on, let's sit down for a minute. So he brings me into his office and he's like, so what do you want to do? I heard you came here for a job. And I'm like, I think I'd be great at computers. I don't know anything about them, but I work hard and I'll learn. And you know, I just really think that it'd be great for experience. I'll work for free if I have to, but I want to, you know, build a resume. I want to have an opportunity to do it. And he goes, you're not going to work at computers. And I was like, why is that? And he's like, you're going to go, you're going to be in sales. And I, I was like, utterly offended, to be honest. I was like, what does that mean? Like, I'm not a salesman. Like, I, I literally emotionally had like a reaction. Like, I don't think you're right, I don't. And he's like, just settle down, kid. Like, he's like, look, you're going to be in sales and we're going to help you be in sales. And he literally, we spent another 30 minutes together and he offered me a job. And he said, look, we have this thing and this is again, early iteration of the Internet. He's like, we have this, this web services division that, which is basically, we're going to be bringing websites to the area, which is going to be Internet access, emails and web design for all of the small businesses that are in and around the region. And you could be the guy that goes out and sells them. And I said, what does that look like? And he said, what we'll do is we, you know, I think they charged $599 for an intro package and, you know, $1,200. And it included all the bells and whistles of like an entry level, you know, Internet, Internet experience for, for a business. And he said, whatever you sell, we'll give you 50%. And I was like, oh, that, that could be Pretty good. Like, I started doing the math on it and I thought, okay, let me try that out. And so that was my first foray into sales. And it literally, they handed me a phone book. They said, call businesses, tell them what you do, figure out if you can get an appointment and then go get them to sign up. And. And I did. And I got a lot of really interesting experience through that process.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: So you said the magic word for any company needs sales.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: You said, I'll work.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: And they went, awesome. There's our commission guy.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: That's right, he's our commission guy. Yeah, right, exactly.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: So I love it because. Well, there's two things about what you just shared that I find a lot of people that I have on that are part of this book project, part of the show. Most entrepreneurs come from an entrepreneurial family. Right. It seems really rare that entrepreneurship will like find someone who's never been surrounded by that. So the first, first off, the fact that you kind of ended up there is, is pretty remarkable to me. And the fact that you went into, you know, traditional door to door sales, also pretty remarkable. My, my first mentor, that's how he was a sales guy through and through. And he, you know, he was a guy in the 60s and 70s that was going door to door selling, you know, Kirby vacuums. Nowadays people like, wait, you want door to door? They don't understand. Like, isn't that scary? Like, don't people get mad or, you know, it used to be okay to go to door to door. So just talk a little bit about like just the experience then of working with, not only in sales but also in, you know, that, that, that gimmicky thing the Bill Gates said, the gimmicky thing called the Internet. What was your.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: You know, first of all, it was a wild thing because I didn't know what it was either. Like, I, I genuinely really didn't know what the Internet was or how it worked. I mean, you know, we would log on at school, there was a computer lab and you know, but, but like the Internet wasn't the Internet. Like, this is still pre dot com explosion. Like there was no, there was no dot com. You didn't go to. Like, it was just sort of like you said, gimmicky. It was like, you can send email and you can, you know, and for sure I would have interactions with people where I would say things like, you know, you're going to have email. And they would say, but where do you get your email? And I don't get it. Like, what is it? Like, so explaining to people that this new like ecosystem existed, where business was going to be transacted was, was a really interesting experience. It's like I always say, interestingly enough, after I sold the Internet, after I was selling Internet access, website design and web development, I wound up working in radio. And so, and then I sold radio advertising for two years from 1999 until the year 2000.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: But what's interesting to me about that is that, that people understand, right? Finance on the air, right? You probably went into this and be like, oh my gosh, this is so much easier to sell.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Yeah, but what I, what I still find really interesting though is that both of those products as like an early iteration of a sales career, there's no deliverable, there's no box, there's no like you buy it, you open it, your delivery date is this like both of them were like selling theory, like error. Like I'm going to sell you time and space where someone's going to talk and listen. Like it's such a, they're just these really intangible sales. So, but, but here's what's great about that. Here's what I will, what I, what I learned in that, you know, first four years of my sales career is that all sales is about selling an experience, not a product. Both of those, both of those interactions were about creating a future that somebody wanted and that they were, that they envisioned happening as a result of the product that I was selling. So whether that was a website that was going to expand the reach of a small business in Keene, New Hampshire to the world, you know, you sell this, but I can give you access to the entire world. And so the vision beyond that was, it wasn't cool, I'll sell one more product. It was, wow, my business can be global. And then, and same, the same was true in radio that what we were selling wasn't 30 second spots or 60 second spots or it was, it was your business on the radio means your business now reaches a far bigger, has a bigger impact. And so what, what you learn in that kind of cut your teeth sales is that selling isn't about feature benefit like the traditional. This is so cliche for anybody that's in the, in. You know, you're not there saying our widget is better because it's shinier faster and spins better. You're there saying, tell me what's important to you and let me help you show, let me show you how what I do can help you get to what you want. And let me, let Me paint that picture for you and that, that sales is much more about finding what problem you can solve for somebody and then helping them solve it. So it really is a very. What I learned in it was that there was this interesting sort of altruism to helping people navigate something they didn't understand, which is what, what I love about what I do today. You know, you sort of fast forward to how my career evolved.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I want to get into that, but I also want to, before we move on, I want to point out, because we live in a world where things are going so fast now. I think for, for people of a certain age, you know, here 96 and it's the Internet. I remember doing sales in 2006 and 2007 and 90% of small businesses still did not have a website totally 10 years later, right. It wasn't even in 2010. It was the 50, 50 people going, do I really need one? Do I? Today people, you know, people under a certain age will be like, what do you mean they don't have a website? I don't understand. Right. But that was like, it was like a 15 year like adoption of like, I don't know if this, you know, look what's going on with AI now, like how fast we're going fully, you.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Know, it's, it's, it's expected. Like how can you have a business and not have an online presence, right? How do you even function?
[00:14:07] Speaker B: You know, and just even now, like, like you said, right. The idea in 1996 of like I could make your, your business global and sort of how mind blowing that is and now how like you know, 30 years later, look, we're like people in Europe feel like our neighbors, right? Because I can just, I just jump on a zoom call with them. We're having a face to face conversation. World is so, so we're in this process. Then did real estate start to kind of pop up on your radar?
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Well, you know, I had a job and then I had another job working in sales and then I had another job working in sales and then I had another job working in sales. And somewhere around maybe the fourth or fifth version of that, I realized that the job wasn't all that much different, but the compensation models were largely up to someone else. And being that I was again pretty ambitious, pretty aspirational about what I wanted to do with my life, I recognized pretty quickly that if I wanted to have control of my own outcomes, that I was going to have to figure out how to control my income. That I was, I was somehow going to have to figure out how to, how to be in charge of that. That wasn't a straight line to real estate. So the first realization was I'm probably unemployable. I'm just not a great employee. I'm much more, you know, I'm too, I'm a good salesperson. But like you know the hardest thing to do with a good salesperson is keep them in a box. And most companies want to keep you in a box and they want you to do it their way. And doing it their way was never a good thing for me. I was always sort of like I found myself in all my professional careers and I, I did wind up, I ultimately got into real estate when I was 30. So I had about a you know, 10 year career in you know, quote unquote corporate America. And every one of my roles I wound up being in some outlier job. Meaning like people would, this is the best way I can describe it. People would be like this guy's really talented and really capable. He can't, he doesn't, he can't work inside our box. Like we don't want to let him go but we can't let him too far off the leash. Like so the way that that would show up was like worked for this company that was a publish fishing company and they hired me to sell the Internet version of their, their publication. So the, the company was called Network Communications. I don't think they're in business anymore but this is actually like the door open for me to get into real estate. And they used to publish those free digest size real estate magazines that were free on every corner. So, so they hired me and said you come here. We have, we publish 10 million magazines every four weeks with real estate listings in them and we now have a website. And what we want you to do is go out and sell that, go along with the ads in, in the publication. And I was like cool. So I went and I found one of these big dot com companies and I structured a seven figure, you know, up to multi million dollar deal which was not at all. They wanted me to sell $59 and $99 packages to Real estate agents. But instead I went and found the CEO of some startup company that was doing credit reports and background checks for people that wanted to buy real estate. And it was basically, it was an early iteration of like experience like self check. It's the same company. The company was called Consumer Info and they, we, I put this whole deal together and then I like come back And I'm like, hey, I know you want to. How about this? And they'd be like, how do we do that? And I'm like, well this is how you do it. You do this, you do this. And then what we'll do is we'll put these links up and we'll, we'll use this inventory. I had to like teach. And that's just where they would say like, all right, so the guy can get in rooms and he can get people to sign contracts, but he doesn't bring it to legal first. And then when you, you know, and then where I became unemployable is like, then you put it in front of legal and you put it in front of marketing and they're like, well it can't really be this way and we don't really want to do it that way. And then, you know, you're a salesperson that just went out and signed a multi seven figure deal and find out that the people you work for don't actually want the deal. At that point you're like, maybe I should just do this myself. I don't know what that means. So a lot of salespeople have those types of experiences or a lot of entrepreneurs. So like I had that coming in through my late twenties. I, I actually found myself being really unhappy inside of a career with all the boxes checked. That should have made me very happy. I had the title and I had a good compensation package and you know, I should have been able to sail along at least for another four or five years, but I was fucking miserable. I was so unhappy. And my, my wife would say like, I just was so uninspired by it. And so I made the decision.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Wait a minute. Corporate job crushed your spirit?
[00:18:39] Speaker A: Yeah. So I made the decision to, to quit my 40 hour a week job so that I could have and own, own all of my time and have all my control so I could work 80 hours a week and make half the money. So that's kind of what happened. So the real estate license was a byproduct of the process for me where I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but I think what I'll do is I'll get a real estate license and I'll, I'll at least learn that business. It was really about. Let me go learn that and see what that's all about. I don't really think I'll be a realtor though. Like that was very much. If you had met me at 30. 30 was not like a thing that I was committed to, but lo and behold, 10 years of really good sales experience, understanding how to solve problems for people, understanding how to navigate complex situations, sort of magically turned into the ability to do this job.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Really going to, going into an industry where there is no sales training and there is no, like most people are anti sales. So I mean, you just were like a kid in a candy shop.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: It was really interesting. You know, suddenly, you know, people started showing up in my life and, and saying things like, hey, I understand you have a real estate license. Like, you know, do you think that you could help me? And I, I was like, yeah, of course I'll help you. And, and, and then, you know, you realize, wow, the compensation model is pretty attractive too. So from, you know, this is probably, you know, 2006, I got my real estate license. So in between 2006 and, you know, 2010 or 11, I built what would be, you know, by most standards, a really good individual real estate sales business. I was selling about 40 or 50 homes a year here in central Connecticut and you know, kind of building a, building a pretty good business.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: I want to stop there for a second because I don't think people realize what you just said where you said you're selling 40 to 50 homes per year. What's the average for most real estate agents?
[00:20:31] Speaker A: Well, again, most producers, most producing real estate agents, the average nationally is four. So a year. A year? Yeah. The average real estate agent will sell four homes a year.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: That's why I'm laughing, because you're like, yeah, 40, 50 a year.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: But that by the way, also is of producing real estate agents. You have to just start with the fact that 50% of real estate agents typically sell zero. So you eliminate the bottom half, which sells zero. And then you say the average across all the producing real estate agents is four. But unlike, I mean, we're all familiar with the Pareto princip, you know, 80, 20 rule. The truth is that real estate is much more like 95 than that. Like producers are doing a disproportionate amount of the business because they are, you know, they're that much better than the ones that are non producers, which is, which is really what led me to build the business because it started with, okay, I'm, I'm getting pretty good at this. People are coming to me and I'm, I'm really starting to be overwhelmed with opportunities and also starting to. That my standards are falling because I was doing a good job because I had high standards on how I wanted my customer experience to be. And then the standards started to fall off because I was too busy. Like a lot of entrepreneurs, I was out over my skis and trying to service too much and saying yes to everything and not knowing the right, the difference between what I should say yes to and not. And so I started to engage some of the training that's available at Keller Williams Realty around team building. And that was when the team started, which was really 2010. So that was when I made my first hire.
And then, and then really started to lean into what it looked like to take what I had done as sort of a natural process and turn it into something that was teachable and scalable, the best thing that can happen. And I think it's right now we're in this, we're in another iteration of this. And I say this to young agents all the time, this is the best time to learn how to sell real estate. Because the agents that had been through the last real estate boom from 2002 to 2008 were utterly devastated and destroyed when the market turned because they didn't have the habits and the skills and the knowledge of how to navigate a difficult market. My advantage was simply that I had come from a cut your teeth sales job. And so I knew what prospecting was. I knew how to wake up every day and go have to hunt and find an opportunity. But agents that had lived from 2002 to 2007, they didn't know how to do that. The phone just rang. All they had to do is put a, you know, stick a picture in the window and somebody would walk in and say, hey, like to buy that. So they didn't really know how to navigate the interpersonal experience of selling. So starting the business, you know, 2009, 2010 was the best thing that ever happened to me. I didn't have any idea what it was like to sell in anything other than a headwind. Right. I just knew that a headwind, headwind felt normal to me. This is just how you do it. And so, and then on top of that, we are in a part of the country, in Connecticut, where the real estate market really lagged behind for the better part of a decade net. We didn't really recover from that 2008 meltdown. Here, especially in central Connecticut, we had single digit price appreciation values really didn't come back up. We had no new construction, very economically depressed. So for, you know, from 2010 to 2018, that was just norm. You wake up every day and you go hunt. You know, we had plenty of inventory. We didn't have a lot of struggle. And so building the business was very much about do one thing right today, do the next thing right tomorrow, keep doing the next thing right and just grow bit by bit by doing one thing right and the next thing right. And that, that eventually led itself to where we are today, where we have 30 full time agents and the average agent on our team is outselling the average agent nationally by about five to six times. Our number one metric that we measure is what we call per agent productivity. That metric for me is the most important one. I'm much more interested in being in business with partners that can wake up and do the job the way the job should be done. I think the customer experience is far, their life is better. Real estate's a really weird business on the on like when compared to other businesses because it is a, it's a direct sales business similar to like a multi level marketing company, but it's professional services. And so you're in a direct sales business that has a professional services bend on it. The barrier to entry is pretty low. But you also have this like really cool part of it which is this professional services which is much more like financial, you know, like financial services or you know, insurance sales or something. So the industries merge and create kind of a really wild soup of, of who we, who we are.
[00:25:11] Speaker B: So this show obviously, or in this book is obviously about how we scale. So now what's interesting is you don't have a background in entrepreneurship and you kind of get into sales and then you become an entrepreneur. How did you approach the growth of the business of you know, you're going from 1 to 5 to 10 to 20. And what were the challenges for you having?
[00:25:30] Speaker A: We need hours for this, Travis. I mean I did everything wrong and got lucky a few times. You know, that's it. Like I see that's really like I look back on it and say like, well you know, what did I do right? I'm not going to had some raw material that worked in my favor. I definitely understood the business. I've learned that one of my skills is simplifying things that seem complex to other people. The business that I've built is much more is really about breaking things down to their simplest parts and then giving people clarity. And so you know, our, our business is very much systems and models driven.
So our agents understand exactly what to do, exactly when to do it, what to say, how to say it, to who and when. And we deliver that message consistently over time. You know, over and over and over again. And that's why we're able to get a predictable result from our agent productivity.
That's not the norm in the industry.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: It's shocking to me, as big as the real estate industry is that there aren't systems and procedures in place.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: Well, it's again, it's this really weird thing about our industry which is that, you know, every real estate agent that you know just about is an independent contractor.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: That means they're not actually an employee, they're 1099 independent contractor. That means that they can't be required to show up anywhere. They can basically do whatever they want as long as they pay their fees. They're not required to adhere to anything other than the professional standards laid down by the national association of Realtors and whatever brokerage they work for. And so if you are a brokerage and you offer a bunch of training because you think that's going to make agents better, you know, the number one thing that brokers run into, whether they're Keller Williams, Coldwell Banker, Compass, Exp Real, doesn't matter, is they can't get their agents to show up to stuff. Which is nuts because isn't it their job? Well, technically it's not. It's more like an mlm for a lot of them, it's not a job, it's a hobby, it's a thing. It's maybe an income stream. They're not really sure. And so the systems actually exist. But if you're running a. This is where the beauty of what we do, which is we're not a brokerage, we're a team, which has become its own business entity in the, in the space. There are real estate teams that operate as businesses but without the responsibility of being a full scale brokerage. Because a brokerage takes everybody, a team only takes the ones they want. So it's a really again, an interesting sort of business around how these things have grown. So like, what did I do? Well, again, it wasn't that I knew this, it's just sort of, it evolved. But somewhere around 2015, I decided I knew who I was and what I wanted wanted. And that was a huge part of figuring out what kind of team we.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: Were going to have.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Was a very pinnacle moment for me in my leadership experience where I recall very clearly a day where I had at the time probably seven or eight agents that worked for me and nobody was really producing all that well and I was still the number one producer on the team. And there was a lot of complaining and a Lot of things not working and a lot of people that were pissed off and not selling and not making any money. And I was.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: Another day at the office.
[00:28:24] Speaker A: Yeah, just another day at the end office. And I would do these, you know, these one on one meetings and they used to be an hour long. And we, and I do them back to back and sit with, you know, four agents a day for an hour. And one after another, they would all just turn into these sort of, you know, crying sessions about how their life wasn't working and they couldn't do. And. And I'd sit there and basically provide therapy through the process. This one particular day, everyone was crying and it wasn't about me. They were just. Everybody was miserable. Like, it was a very. Whatever it was, it was a tough time in the business. It was a tough time. And I remember going home and my wife was like, how was your day? And I was like, I don't know. I don't even know how to put words to how my day was. It was. It was weird. Everyone's crying. He was like, why? And I said, you know, I don't know. I just wish I could run my team the way my high school wrestling coach ran our team. And that was the moment she said, in her wisdom of simplifying, she said, said, well, why don't you? And I was like, huh? I never thought of that. I never thought that I could run my team the way my high school wrestling coach ran our team. Because there were a few things that, that occurred to me as soon as she said that. One was that he was really hard on us. He pushed us. But there was never any question about why he pushed us. He pushed us because he wanted us to win. He pushed us because he cared if we won. And he didn't accept our excuses. Meaning it was understood that if you were on the high school wrestling team that you showed up to practice. Practice. Right. You also showed up on time and ready to play. Whether it was practice, whether it was your third practice, fifth, whether you were a senior or a freshman, you always showed up and you showed up the same way. And when you got there, you did exactly what he told you to do. There was no debate, There was no discussion. There was no, like, I think I'm going to sit this one out, coach. Like, you did that until he let you go home, right? And sometimes he didn't let you go home until you ran around the high school for, you know, like, there was a lot of. Of. But the intensity behind it made us a phenomenal wrestling team and made us all really good at what we did. And when my wife said that to me, I started to, like, break down. Like, well, what would I do if. If I had the team that I want to have, how would I expect them to perform?
And what I found really interesting is that you can't. One of my sort of business philosophies is that changing your business is a dimmer, not a light switch. You can't walk in one day because you had a grand epiphany as a leader and just flip the. Flip the lights off, or flip the lights on and say, now we do it this way, right? You've got to sort of slowly dim it out and turn it on. On. So as I started to, like, turn up the dimmer on, different systems and different accountability and different methods that we were going to use, certain people started to leave. But this other magical thing happened, which is different people were being attracted to us. So it was different experience of the people that were knocking on the door and saying, hey, what are you guys doing over there? That looks interesting to me. And so the team evolved, and in 2016, I started the year with 11 agents, and I ended with 13, but nine of them were different people. People. So, like, a monumental turnover where people that didn't like the new vibe left, but people who were really attracted to it came. And that was the beginning of. Of. We haven't changed much since then. Like the. The new version of who we are and how we operate, which is new, you know, circa 2016. We still live by the same rules, like the rules of engagement. We've gotten better at it, and the rhetoric is different, A little more clean and. And a little more catchy, but, like, the fundamental rules of how we operate are the same, and that is what gives us the predictable outcome that we have.
[00:31:51] Speaker B: So let's talk a little bit about the agent production academy. Did that sort of, like, spring out of this experience of you working with your own agents, or was that.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. So then what would happen is, you know, we. We. We had this goal of, we want to sell a thousand homes in the state of Connecticut in a single year. It's never been done by done before. No real estate teams ever hit that benchmark, so why not, right? Let's. Let's make that us. So we started looking at, like, well, what do we need to do in order to hit that benchmark? What kind of. What agents do we need and how do we need to grow? But like every business you hit, certain. You hit Certain pinnacle points where you're. You have to. You have to outpace your growth with your infrastructure before you can grow through to it. And the downside of trying to grow fast is that it's very disruptive, particularly when you're bringing in, you know, 1099 independent contractors who can do whatever they want. And you're trying to. You're trying to do the hardest thing in the world, which is change behavior.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: Herding cats is a good phrase there.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: Behavior. Behavior modification as a methodology to get people to do what they want is, has been. Has proven to be one of the most difficult things you can ever do, get someone to do something they don't want to do. And so we realized that we needed to create a system. And when I say we, it was sort of me and some other colleagues of mine that I collaborated with that, that, that would, that would be a selection process, not a training that agents will sign up for training all day, but then not show up and not do what they need to do. And so what starts as this concept of like, well, I know how I'll get agents to join my team. I'll train the best agents in the market, and then they'll want to stay. But then you realize, like, the people that are going to training all day are also not outselling real estate, right? So. So they're not necessarily the people that you want. So I just took a page out of the US Military, and I thought to myself, well, if, if, if the US Military has a recruiting and training program that they put everyone through, that's called basic training. But then there's this group of people that are Navy SEALs, and there's this group of people that are Special Forces. And I don't know about you, but I've never seen a Navy SEALS recruiting station. I've never seen a Navy SEAL go to a high school and try to recruit kids to become Navy seals. Why is that? They don't recruit to them.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: They have so many people applying, they have to turn them away, which is.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: Nuts, because what are they applying for? It's the craziest thing. They get tortured, right? We all know Navy SEAL training is the hardest training in the world. They come to the brink of death. 80% of people don't make it. Everyone knows that this is the craziest, hardest thing that you could ever sign up for, and yet they turn people away, even from starting.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: Not only that is once you're selected, you're going to do stuff where the chances of you dying are very, very high, very high.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: It's like wild, right? So I looked at that and I said, said so what is it that attracts that high performer to do this thing that's really, really hard? Well, it's this like concept of the winning locker room. There's a certain character type that wants to be in a winning locker room and they'll do whatever it takes to be in the winning locker room. They want to win and they want to collaborate with other winners and they recognize that they win and they, their best, their best self comes out when they're surrounded by other people that are performing at a high level. But it's really hard to find those people. You can't find them with an Indeed ad and you can't even really find them with an interview. You've got to like test it out of them. Because especially in, in a business like ours where people will tell you exactly what you want to hear and they'll tell you they'll do all the things you tell them to do, but then they show up and they don't. So Agent Production Academy is the, the simplest way for me to put it. It is the Navy SEAL training of the real estate industry industry. So we have taken the things that we do on our high performance, high productivity real estate team and we've turned it into a 60 day training that has benchmarks and standards that have to be lived up to or you get booted. And the only way that you can make it in through the training and get, get the graduation certificate is to actually hit all the benchmarks and certificates. And it's also the only way to get on the team. So every agent that's on the team has to be a graduate of Agent Production Academy. And in order to get through Agent Production Academy, you have to do all the things. By the way, it's no mystery. What I know is that if you do all those things, you know what you're going to have in 60 days? A great real estate business. So for us, that's really my guarantee to people is I can give you the tools, systems, resources and models that will ensure that you have a pipeline that's going to feed your family and put you on a path toward the goals that you have in your real estate business. But you've just got to show up and do the work. So you've got to show up the way my high school wrestling coach expected you me to show up. You have to show up and do exactly what I say, when I say exactly the way that I tell you to do it. And here's my guarantee if you do that on the other side of 60 days, you're going to have a pipeline that people are going to be envious of.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: So what's your completion rate? I should say, what's your hell week? The last two weeks?
[00:36:42] Speaker A: I love it. Yeah. Well, I can give you exact numbers. So in 2024 we had over 80 people attend the information session. We had 50 people exactly sign up to start on day one.
We graduated 30 and we retained 18. And what retention means is that 18 on a six month timeline from when they started, they were still with us six months later and they were on a path to do a minimum of 20 units in their first year.
Really?
[00:37:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Again, knowing that, you know, the producers are doing four a year, it's just remarkable in their first.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: And that was a, that was a phenomenal outcome for us. That gave us that created just under a million dollars in gross commission rep revenue by running that program through 2024. So obviously we're running that again in 2025. We expect to beat those numbers in 2025 and we're going to be going to scale with that program in 2020. Probably at the end of 2025 we'll have our first addition teams in other.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: Markets that'll be participating, essentially franchising it out.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: That's right, yeah. We're basically going to offer this as like a market exclusive program. So in any particular market, you know, if you're in Paducah, Kentucky, Los Angeles, California, west, whatever, there'll be one team that will be a licensed agent production academy partner. And so we probably will at maximum have 100 to 200 teams nationwide that'll participate in the program.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: What a fantastic vision for the future. All right, well, we're coming up to the end of time here. So if somebody's listening to this and they're like, oh my God, this is what I've been missing in my life in terms of real estate agents. How does someone find you? How do they get involved in what you're doing?
[00:38:20] Speaker A: Oh, I love it. My son pointed out the other day that one of his friends in high school knew my cell phone number. And he's like, how do you know my dad's cell phone number? And I turned and I was like, if you Google me, it's real easy to find my cell phone number. Having been selling real estate for a long time, my, my, my cell phone number's been on a lot of real estate signs, a lot of websites, a lot of spots. So the best thing to do is find me on Instagram. Mialy Matthew, if you find me on Instagram. We do put up, you know, daily, daily snippets from our morning rise up. So if you're in the, you know, sales business or entrepreneur looking for just sort of insight into how we operate our house high performance sales team, you can plug into those meetings every day on Instagram. The Miali team at Keller Williams is our, is our real estate team here in Connecticut. We are a statewide organization so we cover every inch of the state of Connecticut and we do that with, you know, the best in the business. So our agents are, you know, high productivity and really, really good at what they do.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: So you think you're going to hit the thousand thousand houses this year?
[00:39:18] Speaker A: We will, we will definitely hit 1000. It probably will not be this year, but we will definitely hit 1,000 units. So we're, we're looking like we're going to have another 600 unit year. But that's okay. You know, sometimes a push is a win. It's been an interesting market here in.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: Connecticut, so that's, that's amazing. Matt, this has been fantastic. What an amazing story. Can't wait to read your book.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Thanks, Travis.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: Thanks so much. Have a great, great day.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: Thank you.
