How We Scaled From $20m to $50m Sales Volume (In Just Two Years)

Jamie Broderick: Let's say I have a Google pay-per-click lead that comes in. One of the things that I don't think is articulated well enough is the conversion rate has significantly increased due to the brand presence that we have from the work that we do with Platform Marketing. 

Tim Chermak: This is The Platform Marketing Show, where we interview the most creative and ambitious real estate agents in the country, dissect their local marketing strategy, and get the behind the scenes scoop on how they're generating listing leads and warm referrals. We'll dive into the specifics of what marketing campaigns are working for them, how much they're spending on those campaigns, and figure out how they have perfected what we call The Platform Marketing Strategy. This is your host, Tim Chermak. I'm the founder and CEO of Platform. I love marketing and I talk too much, so let's dive in.  

Tim Chermak: Hey guys, it's Tim Chermak. Welcome back to another episode of The Platform Marketing Show. I'm joined today by Jamie Broderick. Jamie is the team leader of the Bricks Team on Midland, Michigan. Jamie, welcome to the show. 

Jamie Broderick: Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

Tim Chermak: Jamie joined the PlatFam back in, was it May of 2020? 

Jamie Broderick: May of 2020, just coming fresh out of COVID lockdown in Michigan. 

Tim Chermak: At the time of this recording, you've been using the Platform Marketing program for about two and a half years. Now, when Jamie started, she already had a successful business. I wanna state that upfront that this isn't one of those rags to riches stories where she was really struggling and Platform saved her business or something. No. Jamie was already extremely successful and had already built a successful team. Platform and using the strategy, I think, has helped unlock the next level of that team growth. She already had a really successful solid business going. 

Tim Chermak: At the point Jamie signed up, they're in Midland, Michigan. It's a smaller town in northern Michigan. It's what, 50,000, 60,000 people? Is that right? Midland? Something like that? There's some, I know, small towns around it, like the greater area. Being from rural Minnesota myself, I understand how that goes where the town you're from has the population it has, but then there's always little towns around it that contribute, but you don't really call them suburbs because a town that has 2,000 or 3,000 people isn't really a suburb but that's how you think of it when you're from the rural Midwest. You were at a total team volume of about $20 million as a team before you ever joined the Platform Marketing program. You had a team back then of seven agents, is that right? 

Jamie Broderick: I believe it was seven at that time. [Mind’s] starting to get a little blurry.

Tim Chermak: It was you and your husband Daniel. You and Daniel were the main producers of that $20 million. You said, “We did about $20 million as a team, had about seven people, but if you looked into the numbers, the asterisk is that $12 million, $13 million perhaps of the $20 million was coming from you and your husband Daniel.” A huge majority of that wasn't really the team's volume, it was your own. 

Tim Chermak: By the way, kudos because probably less than 1% of any realtor anywhere in the United States ever gets to $12 million, $13 million in production. It's worth stopping to acknowledge that that's a huge accomplishment in and of itself because that puts you for sure the top 1%, maybe the top half of the top 1%. You've since scaled it, and now, you went from seven to how many team members do you have now? 

Jamie Broderick: I just counted yesterday. If you include Daniel, it's me plus 16. 

Tim Chermak: Really, you've more than doubled your team in the last couple of years going from seven to 16 and the team volume has gone from, you said, about $20 million to about $50 million? 

Jamie Broderick: I haven't quite seen what the 2022 numbers have come in at quite yet, but I'm pretty sure we have tipped over $50 million. 

Tim Chermak: That's awesome. I know obviously it's flipped where the bulk of that production isn't you anymore, it's actually your team. 

Jamie Broderick: A lot of it's still me. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, it is, but it's not, “Hey, I did $45 million of the $50 million.” That's the catch 22 of a lot of team production. When you see impressive team production, you're like, “Oh wow, they've really scaled it out. I bet whoever owns that team is earning all this passive income.” You ask them, “What's the breakdown of the numbers?” It turns out they're doing 85% of the volume at which begs the question, why are you even wasting your time building out a team if you're doing 85% of the volume? That extra 15% or whatever is probably just a huge headache for you to babysit and manage all that. It's just really not worth it. 

Tim Chermak: You, I know, have scaled your business obviously in a very meaningful way. Frankly, I've met a lot of the agents on your team. I know that you guys had a bunch of them come to the Platform Mastermind. I've actually met them in person face to face and they love being on your team. There's clearly a vibe that you've built and a culture that you've built on the Bricks Team where they don't just view it as a stepping stone to going off and doing bigger and greater things on their own. You don't have a lot of churnover. People genuinely love being on your team. I think you've created this culture, Jamie, where they feel like entrepreneurs on your team and they love being on your team as a long-term plan. Again, they're not just joining because they wanna learn the ropes and they plan to quit in six months. That's been really cool to see. 

Tim Chermak: Take me way back. Let's just go back in time to when you first became a real estate agent. I know that you have an MBA. You had and have plenty of career options that you could have pursued. It's not like you had to be a realtor because that was the only job available to you. Obviously, with an MBA, there's a lot of different corporate positions you could have taken. What led you into real estate in the first place? 

Jamie Broderick: That's a really good question, Tim. When I was graduating with my MBA, graduated in May, and it was the last week of April, and I didn't have a job lined up at the time. It was 2011, and I was talking with a family friend who was already in real estate at another big box brokerage. She says, “You know, you'd make a really good real estate agent with a business mindset and with just a heart to serve.” I was serving, waiting tables at that time as well. She said, “Why don't you just come in and talk to our broker?” I said, ”Okay, cool.” 

Jamie Broderick: Our broker at the time, great guy, he's since retired. He sits me down and this was the one question. I was wearing a three piece skirt suit with a canary yellow jacket and was way overdressed for real estate sales, but sat down with him and he says, “Tell me about where you see yourself in five years.” I think at the time I had to be what, 24, 25? Young pup. I said, “In five years, I see myself owning my own business.” He says, “If you join real estate, you'll own it tomorrow.” That had me hook, line, sink, or sold. Graduated, walked the first week of May, the second week of May, we have a 40-hour licensure class in Michigan. The second week, I took that licensure class, I passed the test still in May and I started June 1st. 

Tim Chermak: Okay, so it all happened quickly. 

Jamie Broderick: Yeah, very quickly. 

Tim Chermak: How did you build your real estate career and your success pre-Platform? Obviously, if this was happening back in 2011 and you didn't sign up for the Platform program until 2020, there's about a decade here where you built up your business to the point that you were already hauling in $250,000, $300,000 a year plus in GCI before you ever signed up for Platform. What were some of the things that you did in terms of local marketing or sales strategies just to build your business to that point before you ever signed up for Platform? 

Jamie Broderick: There's a few things. The very first year from that June 1 until the end of the year, I did two transactions and they were a $70,000 house and a $27,000 trailer. I went into the new year with so much debt because we had a huge just fee every month and it was tough. I am actually surprised that I didn't get out of the business then, but I didn't. A couple of years after that, I met Daniel in the business, my husband and counterpart and business partner and another awesome realtor, who at the time we met and we were each other's accountability partners. That made a huge difference in a very low and slow coming out of a recession market where it was hard. 

Jamie Broderick: I've been in the business 11, 12 years and he's been in the business 19 years. He was my senior at that point in time as far as what we've seen in the market and how to market. Having that accountability partner was huge for me for one, and there's a lot of accountability. I actually just talked with my Platform rep, Jordan, this morning and it's nice to be able to touch base and have her tell me what to do. 

Jamie Broderick: We got really creative with some marketing. One of our favorite things that we had done and that we still talk about today just from a creative and unique marketing perspective is we marketed two expired listings and we bought little stress balls. We had them branded with our name at the time, which was Those Brodericks. We put them in a little box with an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper that was [piece of] marketing that we folded all up so that it would fit in a little box. It was all baseball themed and said, “Did your last agent strike out?” It talked about how our stats were significantly better than a lot of the market industry standards stats. We sent that out, and then two days later, three days later, we sent just one of those sheets of paper, we reprinted it, crinkled it all up, and with red ink that we stamped on it that said, “Please don't throw me away again.” We put it in an envelope and we sent it to their house. 

Jamie Broderick: We had so many people call just because it was creative, unique marketing. Some people laughed, some people actually called to go out of their way and yell at us for being whatever, I don't know. Most people laughed and we had a lot of business turnout from that. Some business that took months to call us, and they still call us. That was cool. 

Tim Chermak: You've really tried a lot of marketing strategies over the years. Did you ever do billboards or Zillow leads? What are some of the other marketing things that you guys have tried over the years whether it's BoomTown, TV ads, radio, anything at all?

Jamie Broderick: We do have pay-per-click CRM leads like BoomTown, Time, kvCORE, we've used them all. We also have bought leads from a Google pay-per-click or from Zillow. We've never done radio, we've never done TV, we've never done billboards, and then now Facebook, Platform Marketing. 

Tim Chermak: What was the difference back when you had Zillow, pay-per-click, BoomTown, things like that? What is the difference in the type of leads or even in the way that your business was structured versus the way that you do things now with Platform Marketing just qualitatively? 

Jamie Broderick: The best way that I can describe what Platform Marketing has been able to do for us is back when we partnered, we were coming out of COVID. During that time, we were still a fresh, new, independent brokerage. We had only been established for a couple of years and to build a brand from nothing is not the easiest thing to do. I'm sure you know that. We were really looking for helping us build a brand and making our faces, our names, our hearts, our missions known to our community. 

Tim Chermak: You were coming from RE/MAX, right? 

Jamie Broderick: We had started there and then we were independent when we partnered with Platform. 

Tim Chermak: At that time, you were thinking, “Hey, I've had all these awesome balloons in my marketing before, but now I need to build my own brand. I don't have this big national company doing branding campaigns behind me. I need to build my own brand for this new independent boutique brokerage.” 

Jamie Broderick: Correct. For us at that time, it was, “Okay, how can we become known?” I'll tell you what, we have become known. What it does for the amount of clients that we are in front of is it might not be what you think that it is, maybe you've heard this many times before, but because of the brand and because of the amount of visibility that we have in front of people, it makes it so that if we are in front of someone we've never met before, so not a past client, not a sphere, but a new lead, they already essentially know us, like us, and trust us because they've seen us so many times in different capacities and doing different things. They sometimes have seen our families, they've seen our team members, they have a validation of the contributions that we make to our buyers and sellers. That's all been because of Platform Marketing. 

Tim Chermak: Really, it was about establishing this awareness in the community of who you are. The focus wasn't necessarily as much on leads. Obviously, you do get leads as part of Platform, but you weren't really concerned about, “Hey, I wanna buy X amount of leads per month.” It was more, “I wanna create a respected brand in this community where people actually know who we are so that when they call us, it's not cold.” That's actually somewhat of a warm call if someone gives you a call. That was why you signed up. That was back in May of 2020. 

Tim Chermak: Again, at that point, just to review, you were at about seven agents, you guys were doing about $20 million approximately in total volume, but well over half of that was you and Daniel. Now, if you're gonna do $50 million this year, even if you and Daniel are doing, let's say, $20 million, $25 million, an interesting thing happens that even if the ratio is similar, the difference is it's really impressive if you have a team doing $25 million or $30 million even if the percentages are technically similar. Frankly, it takes a lot of leadership and it takes a brand and it takes a marketing system to have a team that does $20 million or $30 million. 

Tim Chermak: A lot of people, a lot of agents, I hear, “I built a team.” It's like, “Cool, what was your team's volume last year?” They have, let's say, three agents, and those three agents did $7 million. It's like, “Okay, well, they're all starving then.” With splits and everything, if your three agents combined for $7 million, I've got to basically assume they all have part-time jobs because that's not really a sustainable way to run a business. 

Tim Chermak: If you want to build a team at a certain point, you have to burn the ships and go all in and build a team. If your team members can't make a meaningful living on your team, they're going to have to find another job. Clearly, you guys have built a business model that allows your team members to thrive. What do you think, Jamie, that you have done differently that other agents don't do when they build a team that's allowed your team to thrive and grow? Again, because you're in a somewhat small town. It's not like you're in a metro area with millions of people. It's pretty significant that even in a small town, you've grown your team to, you said, is it 15 or 16 agents now? 

Jamie Broderick: Yeah if you include Daniel, which he hasn't sold anything in, it’s been, I don't know, three years or something.

Tim Chermak: He's not really active in the production anymore. Really, it's 15 people. Again, I've met these people because they were at the recent Platform Mastermind. I've met a lot of these agents in person. You're attracting really high quality people. You're not picking up random black sheep from the family where the reason they joined your team is because they had no other options in life or something like that. It was either go work for Jamie's team or I was going to work at the gas station or something. 

Tim Chermak: You're getting really high quality people as part of your team and they love being on your team. I haven't really seen that with many other teams. The Remy's come to mind in McKinney, Texas. They've been working with Platform for, I think, six years now. They have that same vibe where I can tell that the people on their team love working with them. You have created that same culture. I'm curious, what have you done, whether it's how you recruit them or what the splits look like or what the training or mentorship looks like? I guess I don't really know what question I'm asking as much as how have you done it? What do you do differently that you see other team leaders not doing? 

Jamie Broderick: That's a great question, Tim. At our last big box brokerage, we got to the point where when we were walking in, we put on our horse blinders, went to our desk, and worked. That was it. If we did anything else in the office, everything we did was negative. There was no support. We would go to a big conference, they would tell us to do something. We would go to implement it, and then we would be met with restrictions. “That's never gonna work,” and pessimism. Our brand just told us to do this and we're gonna implement it. What's the issue? We did that so many times, time and time and time again. 

Jamie Broderick: When we went independent and created the Bricks Team, we really concentrated on doing things different. Probably not quite half, maybe six agents, seven agents on our team started their career somewhere else, so they know what another atmosphere looks like. When they come over here, they're like, “Wow, this is just different than anything I've ever experienced. This is really nice.” 

Jamie Broderick: What we really concentrated on was, for one, training. When I started my career, I did those two transactions and I feel bad for my first clients because I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea how I was negotiating. It was bad. I should probably call them and apologize. Training is super important for us. We have weekly team meetings, and the second half of that weekly team meeting, so about 30 minutes of that is on a training topic. 

Jamie Broderick: For any team leaders listening, it's easier if you create monthly training topics, which was a tip given to me, where you're not having to recreate the wheel every single training topic or every single week. We do trainings twice a week where you're not doing something, you're not spread thin, you're concentrating and honing in on one thing per month. We also have another training session that is just training. We have monthly training topics. We have a 21-day RAMP camp, Rapid Agent Mastery Program, which is required for all agents coming on the team, including if they started their career somewhere else and they're a 10-year veteran agent. Go ahead. 

Tim Chermak: I said that's a badass acronym, RAMP. You said Rapid Agent Mastery Program. 

Jamie Broderick: Yeah, it's 21 days. There's homework every day. They learn six different tools on our team. They learn how to write a purchase agreement frontwards, backwards, upside down with their eyes closed. They start off with doing about 45 minutes to write a purchase agreement, they ended about 11 minutes after the 21 days. They know how to write it competitively. They know how to write it not competitively. They know everything that there is. Training is huge for us. 

Tim Chermak: Is that something proprietary that you guys came up with in-house, this RAMP system, or is that something you borrowed from somewhere else? 

Jamie Broderick: Hand created one typing letter at a time. 

Tim Chermak: Okay, so there's your MBA showing up in your real estate practice where you've had this detailed system and you've even branded it with a proprietary name. I love it. When someone joins your team, they're not just joining your team and then, “Hey, Jamie doesn't do anything and takes a cut of all my commissions.” There's a real protocol and a curriculum and a program that they're joining. 

Jamie Broderick: Very, very much so. It's not just like, “Hey, it exists.” We actually converted about three months ago to, “Hey, it's required.” For our monthly stuff that happens twice a week, 75% of those are required. They're all recorded, so if you're not here in person, you can watch the recording. We can't all be going up the hill and having a couple agents that are just floundering at the bottom of the hill. We're all going to go up the hill together. Training was really big for us. 

Jamie Broderick: Another thing that at my last brokerage that I hated, those two transactions that first year, I was hungry. I was ready to make the calls. I was ready to do stuff. I didn't have anybody to call. Lead gen is really important for us. We brand a lot with Platform, but we do also use Platform a lot for lead gen as well. Also, the people that you've met on my team, you'll probably notice that we have more like a family mentality. I imagine probably a lot of people say that, but it really is. I don't know. The people that are not meant to be here work themselves out pretty quickly too. They see that, “Oh wow, this is a lot. I didn't sign up for this. I'm not meant to be here.” They figure that out pretty quick too. 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, because it sounds like you guys have this unique juxtaposition of being very intense and very intentional and proactive in everything that you do, but at the same time, being very casual and having this family atmosphere. I think a lot of teams is like, “Hey, join my team.” The only reason they want someone to join their team is they're just viewing it strictly as a passive income stream of, “Hey, if this agent technically hangs their license here, I'll grab, whatever, 10% or 20% or 30% of every deal they do flows to me.” It's almost like you're running an MLM scheme. I think the most accurate, straightforward way of describing your business model is you're actually treating it like a business. 

Jamie Broderick: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think that is a lot where the education comes into play. We are not the typical real estate company, the typical real estate team or agent or whatever you wanna say. Our business is operated as a business. I set all my buyers and sellers up on my Calendly link where they get automated emails that are going out to them, setting the proper expectations. Everything is a business in our business. 

Tim Chermak: You guys purchased a building as well, right? 

Jamie Broderick: Yeah. 

Tim Chermak: I know that, just speaking of running it like a business, currently you are affiliated with eXp, right? 

Jamie Broderick: Yeah. 

Tim Chermak: Obviously, a huge selling point for many people is the cloud nature of these new brokerages like eXp where you don't have to have an office, you don't have to pay for leasing an office somewhere, that you can do everything remotely if you want. I think because you view it as a business, you're like, “Hey, what will prove to the community that we are more rooted here, that we're truly part of the community if we all work from home and we're invisible, or if we buy a building, because we're a real estate company and we prove that we're invested in the community by physically owning part of the community?” I think that's awesome that even though you are with eXp, this cloud brokerage that, in theory, allows you to be remote, you're like, “No, it's actually that important to us that even though we're with eXp, we're gonna buy a building and we're gonna renovate it. We're gonna have a real office so that people know that we're a real business.” 

Tim Chermak: By the way, I say that as Platform has no office. Platform is a remote company. I think there is something true that a lot of people who run remote businesses aren't willing to acknowledge out loud that if you have a physical space, a real building, a real office, people think of you more as being a “real business.” It just is what it is. You can't really argue with that. I think it's just true. If you own a building and they know that, “Hey, here's their address. I can stop by and see Jamie,” or “I can stop by and see someone on the team and they have a building,” that feels a lot more, I think, real of a business than someone who is purely online, they work from home, “I'll meet you at a coffee shop” type thing. I think that's really cool. 

Tim Chermak: Let's get down into the real specifics. How have you structured your team in terms of the value for the team member? What do the commission splits look like? Do you provide leads to them? Do they have to pay for their own marketing or leads? What does it look like if I'm going to join Jamie Broderick's team? 

Jamie Broderick: That's a really good question, too. It's something that I feel like has changed a lot in the six years that we've been operating as Bricks. If there's any team leaders talking or hearing this conversation, what I would really say is that I figured out a lot of the ways that it doesn't work. When it doesn't work and you're like, “Oh, my gosh. This isn't working,” you pivot and you do something else. 

Jamie Broderick: Our current split set up has been this way for about a year and a half, so I feel like it's working pretty good. There's probably four or five different splits prior to that in six years. I'd say we're doing pretty good right now. What it currently is, and this is something that I had conversations with three big team leaders, like big team leaders, they aren't even eXp, they're different team leaders all over North America, running different business models, and I interviewed them all and said, “What am I missing? Why does this not work for me? What are you doing that you guys are running these amazing teams? How can I be more like you?” I pulled different things from each of them. They were similar, but a little different. I pulled things that I was like, “Okay, I think this will work,” and so far, for a year and a half, it's been working. 

Jamie Broderick: If you could see me right now, if I have two hands up in the air, on one hand I've got sphere, so your sphere of influence, and on the other hand, I have team. Those are the two types of leads that we're going to close. On your sphere hand, you get a different split that is more competitive to the agent if it is in your sphere. On the team lead hand, the team gets a more competitive split because the team has provided that lead to you. On each hand, if you hold up two fingers, your pointer fingers are going to be buyers and your next finger is going to be sellers. Your buyers is going to have a better split to the agent because there is less team involvement based off of we've got virtual assistants that are creating our pending files and getting paperwork where it needs to go to and putting all this stuff in the computer system and doing a lot of the back-end computer paperwork type stuff. There's less involvement on the buy side of a transaction where the split is better to the agent. The agent has more time invested running out showing houses, higher gas prices, running all over doing stuff. 

Tim Chermak: If you're the buyer's agent, to get a transaction done, you probably have invested more hours than the listing agent did. 

Jamie Broderick: Typically, that's true. On the listing side of things, our team pays for photography, we do more of the backend work, we do partial listings, we set up showing time. We do more work as a team and the agent does actually less work. We have four splits and they're sphere, buyer, sphere, seller, team, buyer, team, seller. 

Tim Chermak: It's basically a four-quadrant matrix. There's two variables, therefore, there's four possible splits you could have on any deal. The first variable is, is it a team lead or is it a sphere? The second variable is, is it a buyer or a seller? 

Jamie Broderick: Correct. We had run other splits where it was a different split between sphere and team, but one of the big components that we were missing that I had pulled from one of those other team leaders that was doing such a great job was that you have to submit a sphere list when you join. You get to adjust it once a year.

Tim Chermak: Ahead of time. 

Jamie Broderick: What? 

Tim Chermak: You have to submit that ahead of time. If a person's not on that list, then you can't claim it was part of your sphere. 

Jamie Broderick: You got it. 

Tim Chermak: That is genius. All right, that's worth the price of entry to this podcast episode. If someone's listening to this, that is one of the single best pieces of advice that I have heard in, frankly, the last year. That is the quintessential problem with people who run teams, is if you have a dual split, a dual commission split system where, “Hey, I'm paying you a different split based on is this a team lead or is it from your sphere,” you are inevitably going to get into arguments about, “Hey, I already know this person,” or “This is my family's friend,” but it came in through the team's website or it came in through marketing that you paid for, maybe a Platform Marketing campaign. Would you have converted that lead anyways? 

Tim Chermak: It's always this question of both sides can't claim 100% truth. It's a conundrum that a lot of team leaders find themselves in, is you don't want to give away a higher commission split to all your team because then you go out of business if you're not making money, but at the same time, you don't want to feel like you're screwing over the team members on your team by charging them a higher split for someone that is technically, whatever, a family friend or someone they know from church, but you want to do it fairly. Both sides want to feel that it's done fairly and a win-win. I think what you just said is absolutely genius. It's brilliant that, “Hey, submit to us everyone you think is in your sphere ahead of time. That way, if we ever have a disagreement, we'll just consult that list. If you didn't think to include them, it couldn't have been someone that's that important to you or that close to you.” 

Jamie Broderick: Correct. Now, there are two more pieces to that that were big aha moments for me as well that I'll share to you just because I feel like it was such a big like, “Oh my gosh, this is genius. No wonder why these guys are doing so great.” For one, if you are less than one year of an agent, you get up to 75 names. Bob and Sue Smith is one name, but you have a limited amount of names. I have 4,000 contacts in my phone. There's a lot of contacts. By the way, if you're looking for how to create a sphere list, what I tell my people is go through the contacts in your phone. There you go. There's your sphere list. 

Tim Chermak: That's probably a pretty good way of thinking about it. Hey, I'm not really gonna count someone as your sphere if you literally don't even have their cell phone number. I think that's the proof in 2023 of does this person actually know you at a close enough level to where that's the reason they're working with you is because they know you? You could say that someone is your cousin, but if you don't even have their cell phone number, then you don't really know them that well. You can't claim, “That's my sphere, the reason they're working with me,” if you don't even have their cell phone number saved. I think that's a genius litmus test that gives a sense of objectivity to a question that's usually so subjective of, “Hey, is this a sphere lead or a team lead?” I love that. 

Jamie Broderick: If they are three years plus of an agent, they get up to 350 names. Even myself that has 4,000 contacts in my phone, if I was joining my team, I'd have to pick out my top 350. Now, the other thing that was a big, “Wow, that's genius,” because I like to treat everybody the way that I would want to be treated and the way that they would want to be treated, both platinum and the golden rule. This was July of a year and a half ago and when we worked through this new change in the team, and it was June, just a month before, where a good friend of mine from college, we called him Farmer, moved to Iowa after college. He lives in Iowa. You don't think about him. He was thinking about moving to the tri-cities where I live and, of course, he called me. He's like, “Hey, Jamie. I'm gonna be up there. I have a job interview. I wanna see a couple of houses. Would you mind showing them to me?” He's obviously coming to me because he's my sphere. 

Jamie Broderick: Everybody gets wild cards too. The wild card concept I stole from one of those three team members that I talked to. You get up to 12 wild cards per year. It resets. You get to use a sphere on your wild card, but you have to prove that it's a wild card. If he's my college friend, it's an easy way for me to prove that because he's my college friend. There's a way that you can prove that. If you're going to use a wild card or a sphere split, you just got to prove it. 

Tim Chermak: That's actually really generous. You said they can use 12 wild cards a year. Frankly, most agents don't even sell 12 homes a year. I'm actually really surprised that you offer 12. I was thinking if you had something like a Mulligan or a wild card type of system, maybe you would offer it up to three times a year or something like that. Really, your agents can never complain that you're trying to just take advantage of the commission split. You're being, honestly, I would say exceedingly generous in how you define the different categories. 

Jamie Broderick: That really comes down to if I were to move to Naples and join a team down there, how would I want to be treated? That's how I'd want to be treated. 

Tim Chermak: Okay. On your team, what are the top two people earning in terms of their GCI? 

Jamie Broderick: I know Donna, I shouldn't say know because I don't track this stuff super closely, I'm pretty sure Donna did $7 million last year. I believe Rebecca did $6 million. 

Tim Chermak: Okay. That's awesome. You have individuals on your team that are obviously making six figures in GCI. 

Jamie Broderick: Oh yeah, easy. Multiple agents doing six figures. 

Tim Chermak: I think that is the mark of a real team, a successful team. It's not like, “Hey, do you have a bunch of people who are making $35,000 a year?” Therefore, if they wanna provide a middle-class standard of living to their family, they probably have another job. Frankly, one person is just luck. If you have one person who's maybe doing six figures, more than $100,000 in GCI, maybe you got lucky that some ambitious person joined your team and they're making six figures on your team despite being on your team, not because of being on your team. 

Tim Chermak: If you have multiple people on your team that are selling $6 million, $7 million, meaning they're well past that $100,000 GCI mark, that means that you can look at the team structure and be like, “Okay, there's something on the water over there.” Clearly, they're successful because they're on Jamie's team and because of Jamie's blueprints and systems and everything. It's not just dumb luck. It's not random chance. That's great. How are you recruiting people to your team? Where do those leads or where do those conversations typically come from? Are you cold calling and poaching people from other brokerages in town or are they coming to you? How does that work? 

Jamie Broderick: That's a really good question. Before I answer that, do you mind if I answer one that you didn't ask me? 

Tim Chermak: Yeah, absolutely. 

Jamie Broderick: Okay. You probably don't know to ask me this, but it's one of the things that I'm most proud of, is because of the systems and processes that we have in place and the agents that are doing these types of production including myself, last year, I could probably count on one hand the amount of weekends that I worked. I haven't worked more than one hand's worth of nights in a month, like past 5:00, period. Most of my agents can say the same thing if they so wish. That's not desirable for everybody, but for quite a few people it is. 

Tim Chermak: Obviously, there's people that are in their phase of their career to where they're happy to work weekends because they're wanting to get ahead. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. If you're at that point where you're already at a certain level of success, then one of the things you wanna do is, frankly, buy back your time and not have to work seven days a week or whatever. Absolutely, that's amazing that you said you basically just a few times in the last year have had to work a weekend. 

Jamie Broderick: Yeah, and it's really when I choose to, if it's whatever. That's really important to me. That goes hand in hand with recruiting and how I've been able to recruit and some of the systems and processes that we have in place because of that business mindset where other companies just can't even touch it. You know what I mean? 

Jamie Broderick: The last two agents that joined our team just within the last few months or a few weeks, those two were both past clients of ours actually that had raised their hand wanting to get into real estate. Two agents that joined our team last November, so about a month, month and a half ago, they both came over from a different brokerage local that literally came into our CRM and said, “Please call me to set up a time to talk. I'm looking to make a move.” People are raising their hands saying, “Hey, pick me,” which has been really cool. 

Tim Chermak: Do you attribute any of that inbound leads of potential agents, I guess, to all the ads you're running? Have you ever had people say, “Hey, I love the marketing. I love the ads that you're doing. I wanna join your team?” Has that influenced anyone? 

Jamie Broderick: Yeah, I would say that it has. It's really just coming down to that branding. I see that you guys do things differently. I can't put my finger on what you are doing, but I know that you are different. They don't say, “Hey, what's your marketing company?”

Tim Chermak: They can just tell that, culturally, what you're putting out there with your marketing just seems different than what they see other people doing. 

Jamie Broderick: Absolutely. 

Tim Chermak: I know that you guys are really involved in your community. You are so passionate about the Midland area that you guys literally bought and renovated a building to turn it into your office, even though, again, you're with a brokerage, eXp, that prides itself on having the ability to use the cloud and go remote. What are some ad campaigns that you've run with Platform over the last several years that you just know really resonated with the community not because they maybe had the most video views? 

Tim Chermak: I'm not asking which ad have you ever done that's got the most clicks or the most video views because those metrics aren't always the most important thing. I think the most important thing is when you have multiple people in real life that stop you at the coffee shop or stop you at the gas station or they see you at church or your kids' school play or whatever and they say, “Oh, I love that video you did,” or “I love that ad that you did,” and they're actually referencing it in real life so you know that people are seeing it. Have you had that experience where people actually come up to you in real life and tell you about a specific post or ad or video that you guys have done? 

Jamie Broderick: Yeah, two of them come to mind. One of them, I gotta paint a little picture for you first. I just upgraded my car a few months ago. Before that, I was driving a 2011 Lincoln MKV, MKX, the little car one, that's how much I care. It was white, it was all chrome, chrome wheels, chrome handlebars, chrome mirrors. It was all blacked-out windows, blacked out tail lights because I don't like to sit in a fishbowl. My license plate says Bricks, which I hadn't thought about until I got pulled over about a year after having this license plate, that Bricks with a 2011 white chrome blacked out Lincoln could mean something different than my real estate company.

Tim Chermak: Now, just to clarify if there are people listening, they're thinking, “Why the hell did she call it Bricks?” Bricks is a play on the term Broderick’s, her last name Broderick. 

Jamie Broderick: When we went independent, we chose the name Bricks. There's three different supporting reasons, but one of them is we took out the R-O-D, so it’s a play on the last name. 

Tim Chermak: Broderick's, Bricks. 

Jamie Broderick: I'm saying that to say that my car is very recognizable. I haven't been pulled over since that time because I think the police officer was very shocked to see a middle-aged white girl driving it. I'm wearing a Bricks-branded sweatshirt or whatever. We have a coffee shop right across the street from our office. I was in the drive-through line and I was like, “This drive-through line is taking way too long. I'm going to get out and walk in. I'm going to get it.” I had a couple of agents in my car. We were going off to go do some marketing, something or another. 

Jamie Broderick: Rebecca, in my office, happens to drive the same as that vehicle that I do. She was like, “I'm just going to hop in and move her car out of the way.” She moved it out of the way. When she moved it out of the way, she didn't go into a parking spot. This is a small enough town that you can't walk into that coffee shop without knowing at least five people that you know. 

Jamie Broderick: Actually, one of my clients, his name is Ian. Ian sees my car at the coffee shop not in a parking spot parked like a hooligan. He comes up and he knocks on the window. Rebecca rolls the window down and he says, “Oh my gosh, you're the one who did that video.” He was expecting to see me and he sees Rebecca. 

Jamie Broderick: Rebecca did a listing, it was a listing video that was a play on a Legally Blonde video like Elle Woods and she always wears pink and she has a small dog or whatever. I had a listing, Rebecca did a listing video on it. It was run down a little bit. She was like, “I'm gonna walk in there and talk about how beautiful this house could be. I'm gonna get some people's attention by dressing this way with a feather boa and all this other stuff with a little dog in my purse and walk through the house and talk about how you can fix up.” 

Jamie Broderick: She got a lot of flack on that from some people, but she got way more recognition from so many more people. This was my client and he never interacts on social media ever. He knocks on the window and rolls it down and he's like, “Oh my god, you did the video from Legally Blonde with the pink dress,” and he went off. I think that’s really cool.

Tim Chermak: He immediately recognized you. 

Jamie Broderick: Oh, yeah, immediately. The other one that really sticks out in my head is probably my favorite Platform post that we ever did, which also happens to be the first Platform post that we ever did. 

Tim Chermak: It was all downhill from there. The first one was creative.

Jamie Broderick: Well, no. It was so magical, it's hard to top. I challenge you to figure something out that we can top it with. 

Tim Chermak: There you go. 

Jamie Broderick: Can you guess what it was? 

Tim Chermak: You joined in May. If you joined in May, 2020, I'm guessing it was the God Made a Small Business Owner video. 

Jamie Broderick: You got it. We created that God Made a Small Business Owner, which is so near and dear to my heart, having an entrepreneur's heart of supporting other local entrepreneurs and especially coming out of a lockdown where there are so many businesses that were hurting. It was so moving and so intentional and we had different team members read different parts on it on the audio and stuff and went to a lot of local businesses that we support, that we love, that we wanted to make sure that they continued to succeed and that they were doing okay. Even still when I watch it, it still really moves me. I have such a heart connection to that video. 

Jamie Broderick: It was so cool that our mayor, a couple days after it launched, it was, I don't know, three, four, five days, somewhere in there, she left me a voicemail and I saw her name come across my phone. I'm like, “What is Mayor Donker doing, calling me right now?” I was back to work finally and her voicemail was just, I can't even remember. It was two minutes long or something, it was so long. She was like, “I can't believe the video that you guys did. That was so wonderful. You're such great community supporters,” and commending everything that we did. It was like, “Man, I wish I could take the credit for this.” I didn't tell her that, that “Hey, it's our marketing company,” but that was probably my favorite and also one of the most near and dear to my heart ones. 

Tim Chermak: Cool. Let's actually take a second to listen to the audio recording of Jamie's video, So God Made a Small Business Owner. Now I know that if you're listening to this, you can't see a video. There is a video that goes along with it that features all of the local small business owners that they highlighted in this video in their community in Midland, Michigan. Let's just take a second to listen to the scripts. You can hear what Jamie's talking about when she says that the mayor loved this ad and even called me to tell me thank you for supporting the community. All right, one second. 

Tim Chermak: “On the eighth day, God looked down on his planet paradise and said, ‘I need a job creator,’ so God made a small business owner. God said, ‘I need somebody willing to sit up all night figuring out how to make payroll. I need somebody who's okay with paying their employees before they make a single dollar. I need someone who will take all of the risk to sign the front of the check so that others have the privilege of signing the back. I need someone who will risk their life savings just to break even every year and hope that the next will be better,’ so God made a small business owner. ‘I need somebody with a personality strong enough to handle a complaining customer and yet gentle enough to train a new employee. Somebody to run payroll, stock for shelves, skip lunch, run across town to hand deliver an order to an elderly customer, work late, and not get back to your own house until 10.30 at night,’ so God made a small business owner. ‘I need someone who will work 70 hours a week every week and be able to tolerate the media and even their own friends saying that business owners aren't paying their fair share,’ so God made a small business owner. God had to have somebody willing to always put the customer first, sometimes even before their own family. God needed someone willing to open early, stay open late, miss their kids' baseball games just so that the other parents wouldn't have to, so God made a small business owner. God needed someone who could get people what they need when they needed it for a fair price, someone who could be a living example of the old-fashioned virtues of self-reliance, hard work, and not spending more than you make. God needed someone to keep the American dream alive, so God made a small business owner.”

Tim Chermak: The mayor, with tens of thousands of other people in your community, saw that video. It was an ad that went out on Instagram and Facebook and it went viral. It got tens and tens of thousands of views and the mayor actually called you to thank you for supporting the community. I think that is the definition of genius advertising because it doesn't feel like an ad. If you're just supporting the community and it's an ad that happens to be produced by the Bricks Real Estate Team, but it doesn't look or feel like an ad, that is paradoxically the most effective form of advertising because people don't realize they're consuming an ad. 

Tim Chermak: What's happening at a subconscious level is you're building rapport with them and they're realizing, “Hey, this real estate team, Jamie Broderick and all these awesome agents, they're really involved in the community.” Again, they're not consciously thinking this, but that's the long-term takeaway. They'll forget all the specifics of what you said in the video, but their long-term takeaway is this real estate team seems really rooted and really passionate about their community. Those are always the most effective ads. Other agents can't compete with that. Doesn't matter how big someone's Zillow budget is if you really are planting that flag that we're passionate about the community, and oh, by the way, we just happen to be realtors. That's great. 

Tim Chermak: What are some other of your just favorite ads that you've done, Jamie? Whether or not you got a ton of feedback from your community, what are some other ads that come to mind of Platform-style retargeting ads, whether they're photos or videos that you guys have done over the years that are just your favorites? 

Jamie Broderick: There's been some really good ones. I usually pick out the favorites based off of how the community reacts. I don't know. The more engagement, the better for me. The one Looking for Listings, I think. We've had a couple good Looking-for-Listings ones, one of them with a sheet of paper on the telephone post. 

Tim Chermak: That ad, for people listening, is we photoshopped almost a wanted poster like when someone loses their dog or cat and there's a wanted sign that you staple the telephone poles. We made a wanted sign, but when you start reading the fine print, it's wanted and you're looking for listings and here's what we're looking for. We took a picture of you or one of your agents on your team standing with a hammer next to a telephone pole. You're not literally nailing it to a telephone pole, but it looks like you're swinging the hammer about to nail it to a telephone pole so that there's always people commenting on it saying, “What's on the wanted? What are you nailing?” Obviously, that just creates more engagement on the post and you can tell people, “Here's what we're looking for. Here's what's wanted.”

Jamie Broderick: Or if you live in a small community like mine, they like to post about how it is actually against our city rules to put anything on the post. 

Tim Chermak: And it's vandalism, which I think is great too. That happened to a ton of our clients when we all did this ad. I'm like, “That's amazing.” When all these people are commenting, they're just boosting the engagement of the post. The important thing is you're not doing anything wrong because you didn't actually nail it to a telephone pole. You can say, “Hey, I didn't actually do it. It's a joke,” but the point is if they commented, now they're boosting the engagement on that ad so even more people see it. 

Jamie Broderick: That's definitely why I think I like those ones the most, the ones that are the more unique engagement. As the brokerage, we can get on there and respond to those comments and you can be funny with it too. You can say, “There were no city telephone poles harmed in the making of this advertisement,” or whatever you want to call it. Those ones are some of my favorites. Anything that has anything to do with kids are some more of my favorites as well. I think it's fun to introduce my children and other people's children to the world of marketing. I'm getting ready to launch the one about buying property [for your children].

Tim Chermak: There's this ad where you take a picture or you find a picture maybe that you already have of you with your young son or young daughter and we wrote this ad that talks about, “Hey, here's why you should buy a house for your kid.” If that's the headline, people are like, “What in the? Why would you ever buy a house for a child?” It just begs people to click and find out, “Hey, what's the fine print here? That's crazy. What are you talking about buying a house for your kid?” 

Tim Chermak: Obviously, in the ad, if people click to read more, what we explain is that a lot of people, if they're responsible for their children and they want to save for their college, let's say they're probably putting up a 529 plan and they're locking it away in this specialized legal savings account that can only be used for accredited colleges, whereas if you actually buy a house and all you really have to put down is a down payment, the tenant's gonna make the payment every year, and then when your kid is 18 or 20, that mortgage is probably paid off in full, but the tenant was paying it all those years and now you own a house free and clear and probably some monthly cashflow. You can gift that to your child to either pay for their education or maybe they wanna use it to start a business when they're older if they choose not to go to college or whatever. 

Tim Chermak: I think that opening hook, that opening headline of this ad of, “Here's why you should buy a house for your child,” it's so creative and so contrarian that it gets people to click. Every Platform realtor that I've seen run this ad campaign gets a ton of engagement on it. It's really positive engagement. You're not being sarcastic, but it's click bait in a positive sense of you're hooking people in with a really creative headline and then you're actually sharing a really valuable strategy. 

Tim Chermak: I know that several people in the PlatFam saw that ad and they're like, “You know what? I'm not only going to do that ad, I'm going to follow that advice. I'm gonna go buy a house for my kid.” That's actually genius relative to a traditional 529 savings plan. Why don't they just own real estate? It's genius. 

Tim Chermak: Cool. Obviously, there's all sorts of ads we could talk about both lead generation and retargeting. Do you know what ads most of the actual leads come from? Are there any particular variation of homes lists or anything that have been most successful for you guys? As a follow-up question, because I'd love getting into specifics here, what approximately are you spending on the actual ads every month? Do you have an ads budget of $1,000 a month? Is it $2,000 a month? Just approximately, do you know what the actual ad spend is? 

Jamie Broderick: That's a good question, and I'll answer that one second. What was the first question you asked? 

Tim Chermak: The first question was, in terms of specifically lead generation, which ads typically are you guys getting most of the leads from or the best leads? We'll just go with that one. 

Jamie Broderick: There's two lead gens that work really well for us. One of them is an acreage homes list. IT’s what we've opted to do a lot of the time and just started at least a half an acre, so that does include some city properties, but at least not like the postage stamp ones. I think what's really nice about that specific one is that the conversation is really easy when leads start to reach back out. The conversation is, “Are you looking at just Midland County? Are you looking at Bay County too?” and go from there. The other one that works really well for lead gen is anytime that Donna did a fishing for listings, she got a listing up from it. Score.

Tim Chermak: It's a photo of her with a fishing pole. Is that the one that you're talking about? 

Jamie Broderick: Fishing pole, she's sitting at the end of a dock with her dog. The copy is talking about from our team, not only hers, buyers that we have properties that were looking for with a couple of specifics. “We have a buyer for this, do you have a listing for us?” She got a listing from it, which was great. It actually just closed, I think, last Friday. We ran it maybe a month and a half ago for a little while. Those would probably be my two favorite lead gens that we do. 

Jamie Broderick: For ads budget, I tell my team I'm not really going to not put money behind ads. If they're willing to do the work, I'm willing to provide the budget because if they win, I win. Having that designated sphere list makes it a lot easier for me to know where it's coming from. I usually just defer to my rep, my Platform rep, and say, “Do you think it's still performing well?” There's metrics that you guys look at and when it's ready to be killed, we kill it. I don't honestly know. If I had a guess, I don't know, $1,000, $2,000 a month. 

Tim Chermak: In ad spend? Okay. Now, a lot of what we've talked about is the branding and the retargeting ads that Platform does. Honestly, that's what I'm most passionate about. I think that's what most realtors aren't doing enough of, if they're doing any at all, is creative retargeting ads. Obviously, when you build a team, your priority shift a little bit because there is this expectation, whether you explicitly say it or not or whether it's in the contract or not or the agreement, that if you join a team, a lot of people expect they're getting some leads from you, or else it's like, “Why would I join a team? I could just go off on my own if you're not going to provide leads.” 

Tim Chermak: Talk to me a little bit about what the lead flow looks like with Platform. I know you guys have used other systems for leads before like Zillow, kvCORE, BoomTown. You've used a lot of the companies to buy leads from. You've done the pay-per-click and all that. Approximately, how many you're getting a month or how many deals that your team closed last year that you can indirectly or directly attribute to Platform Marketing campaigns, do you know? 

Jamie Broderick: Directly would be harder to track. Indirectly, if I had an educated guess with indirect leads that closed from Platform, I would probably say 30 or 40. 

Tim Chermak: Wow, okay. Of the total transactions that you guys did last year, what was the total for your team in terms of number of transactions? 

Jamie Broderick: Again, I'm not entirely sure, wrapping up 2022. I just asked for that yesterday. I don't think eXp [sent] it to me yet, but I wanna say 200, 220. 

Tim Chermak: That's awesome. Okay, so your team totaled at about 200 transactions, let's say. Again, it could be plus or minus, whatever, but approximately 200 transactions, and 30 to 40 of those, you can track back to Platform. If each of those deals has a gross commission of, I don't know, in your market, $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 a piece, what's the average? 

Jamie Broderick: Our average sale price is $200,000, so $6,000, yeah. 

Tim Chermak: Let's say it's 30, not 40, that means you're pretty close to $200,000 of GCI that you can directly say, “Hey, this came as a result of either a Platform lead generation campaign or someone seeing one of our other ads,” even if it wasn't literally a Platform lead per se. Okay, and that's the main marketing you guys are doing right now? Are you doing any other major marketing systems? Are you spending $5,000 a month on BoomTown or Sync or Curaytor or Zillow or anything like that? 

Jamie Broderick: From a true marketing, this is the only what I would call true marketing. Do we buy leads? Yes, we do buy other leads as well. Leads that we buy through kvCORE, through Make It Rain, through Google, through Zillow, we do diversify. I was always taught six pillars of income means six lead gens coming in. 

Jamie Broderick: What I would say, which is I don't think articulated often enough when it comes to Platform, is that let's say I have a Google pay-per-click lead that comes in, one of the things that I don't think is articulated well enough is the conversion rate has significantly increased due to the brand presence that we have from the work that we do with Platform Marketing. 

Jamie Broderick: The conversion rate, I think the industry standard is around 20% conversion rate for most leads. My personal conversion rate, which I am still in production, so I know my numbers a lot better than I know my team's numbers as a whole, but my personal conversion rate is over 90%. My team's conversion rate, if I had to guess, is probably still closer to 60%. A lot of that is just coming from us being the face of this business and the face of this community on a regular basis. 

Tim Chermak: It's almost like, to use an insurance metaphor, Platform is the umbrella policy that goes over everything else. Yeah, you're still doing Google pay-per-click. It sounds like you're still doing Zillow or kvCORE, but Platform is not only generating leads itself, but it's also increasing the conversion rate on all these other lead sources. When a Google pay-per-click lead comes in, now, it's exponentially more likely that not only did they click an ad on Google and opt in and now you have their contact info and you're following up, but they've probably also seen your ads all over social media. That just improves the conversion rate on those leads, even if technically it didn't have anything to do with Platform where that lead originated. 

Jamie Broderick: Yes. That's where I think that whole fuzzy ROI mindset comes into play, which is why I love that mindset of you can't really put your finger on it, but you know it's there and you don't know how it's there. I think that's the best way that I can describe it, is just that conversion rate going up so much. 

Tim Chermak: Obviously, at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding, just look at the numbers. If your team, since joining Platform two years ago, has grown from $20 million to $50 million, obviously, whatever you're doing with marketing is working because no one spontaneously grows their business from $20 million to $50 million. 

Tim Chermak: I have this conversation with agents often that if someone was doing, I don't know, $6 million a year before they signed up for Platform and then the next year they did $8 million, that's not really a success story of Platform. Frankly, you could grow from $6 million to $8 million without doing any marketing at all if you just got lucky. Maybe in the following year, you had a couple more referrals come in than you normally have. That's not really a true, “Wow, a success story,” because you can spontaneously grow from $6 million to $8 million, or from $3 million to $5 million or whatever, without any marketing investment. No one spontaneously goes from $20 million to $50 million. No one adds $30 million of production just with luck. “Oh, cool. Last year we did $20 million and this year we did $50 million.” No. Clearly, there's something driving that success. That's cool. 

Tim Chermak: Jamie, the final question I wanna ask you, and I'm gonna set this up with an opinion of my own and then I would just love to hear how you answer this question, has to do with who should build a team and why so many teams fail. I've seen this phenomenon play out over and over again where an agent becomes successful as an individual agent, they're producing, they get to, let's say, $10 million or whatever in production, and they're making a pretty good living. 

Tim Chermak: Most agents, when you get to $10 million, depending on your split in expenses, whatever, you're probably making $250,000 to $300,000 a year. At that point, you start thinking, “Okay, how do I scale? What's the next step?” You don't wanna just become complacent and stay there. I think a lot of agents are sold this lie that, “If you're successful and you get to $10 million or whatever, you should build a team.” That's just the next step, is you should build a team. 

Tim Chermak: It's not that there's anything wrong with building a team. It's that building a team isn't inherently the next step from being a successful individual agent. It's a different type of business entirely. When you choose to build a team, you have to realize that your focus now needs to be on developing the team members and having a team business model and your personal production is often going to take a backseat to the team, frankly, or else you shouldn't build a team. If your team members are just a nuisance to you or an annoyance to you and you're focused on your own book of business and they're just, frankly, annoying to you, that's not really fair to you or them, if you build a team. That's why I see so many people fail. 

Tim Chermak: “Yeah, I have a team. I did $10 million last year.” A couple of years later, they have three agents and the total production is $15 million, so basically, they had to mentor and train and babysit three agents only to grow the total volume by $5 million. Obviously, they're probably all in food stamps if three agents are splitting $5 million in production. I would say, “Hey, you as an individual probably could have got to $15 million without a team. Why did you go through all the stress and heartache of building a team?” 

Tim Chermak: After I get that rant out of the way and lay that contextual foundation for my question, my question is, who is the right type of person to build a team? What advice would you give to someone knowing what you know now, if they do decide to build a team, that you would do differently if you were starting over today? 

Jamie Broderick: Do differently, okay. Those are really powerful questions. I do agree with you on quite a few of the comments that you made, Tim. I've heard team leaders say, “I have so many leads, I need people to take these leads. I'm going to recruit Sally, so that she can run some leads for me.” I've heard some team leaders say, “I don't want to show houses anymore. I still have buyers who want to look at or sellers that end up buying, and I just don't want to be in front of them because X, Y, or Z.” I don't think that a lead amount is maybe the right reason to build or not build a team. 

Jamie Broderick: For me, personally, it comes down to an impact question. What kind of an impact do I want to have in the world or with people or with this industry? What is the venue of which I can lead those people through having an impact in their life or in their business? I personally believe that unless you have a servant's heart and you are looking to lead and make an impact for people, you probably shouldn't start a team. There are a lot of other ways to distribute leads if you're coming from a lead-heavy situation. 

Jamie Broderick: I think you hit the nail on the head when you said agents contact you and starting to become annoying because they have questions. Well, yeah, everybody has questions. Sometimes, I have questions. Sometimes, I need help too. Who do I go to? What does that look like? I do and I have reacted sometimes, even with coming from a servant's heart with wanting to make an impact for people and their businesses and their families and in the world and in this industry of, I get a call of, “Hey, what do I do with my file? Do I have to get its bottom line by the buyer after the seller accepts the counter?” Yes, you do. Yes, we did talk over this in our RAMP camp. Yes, it is available for you in the training that's provided to you from RAMP camp, but I'm going to sit here and talk with you on the phone and work through this. 

Jamie Broderick: Sometimes I catch myself getting into that, “This is annoying,” mindset. I have to remind myself, “Hold on, why am I being annoyed? What is my goal? What is my mission? This person trusts me enough to reach out to me to ask for help in this. Where was I at back in 2011 when I needed this help?” It really comes down to me for impact. Why do teams fail? There's a lot of reasons why teams fail. 

Tim Chermak: What I'm hearing, just to summarize what you just said because I think one of the most specific things you just said there is having a surplus of leads is not good enough of a reason to start a team. If you're starting a team because you're saying, “Hey, I have so many leads that I don't have time to follow up with all of them,” or “I don't have time to work all of them, I think I'll just start a team,” that's not a good enough reason to start a team. If you think that as a team leader, your only responsibility to the team members is, “Hey, the leads I don't want to work with, or frankly, don't have time to work with, I'll just give them to you,” you really don't care about their success as much as you're hoping they can solve a problem for you. It's a very one-sided type of relationship. 

Jamie Broderick: Yeah, I would agree. That's my personal opinion. I'm sure that there are people that don't agree with me on that. Why do teams fail? I think that there's a plethora of different reasons why a team could fail. I think a lot of it comes down to annoyances and fights between money, which is why it was really important for me to set that clear boundary of sphere versus team and this is what it is and that's it. 

Jamie Broderick: It is easy to feel like you're trained well enough to run it on your own and then go out and do it. If your goal is to make an impact, go do it. If your goal is to earn more money, I mean, we are making money, but if I didn't have to have the hours in the day where I was giving back to my team, I very well could be making more money. It's not really a money thing for me, it really is an impact thing. 

Tim Chermak: As you said before, having a team has allowed you to make a very great income, have a very great business. You guys said you sold over 200 homes last year, but you're not working weekends anymore unless you want to. It's not like you're tied to the business where Jamie has to work seven days a week to put up these kinds of numbers. That's a huge amount of the value it's created for your business that, as you said, you probably could do more impressive volume yourself if you weren't spending time mentoring the team, but it also probably means you wouldn't necessarily have the work-life balance. You wouldn't be at home on nights and weekends. That's really important, frankly, because after a certain level of income, the dollars don't really matter as much as what does your life look like. You end up trying to buy back your time with after-tax dollars, which defeats the purpose of earning that money in the first place. 

Tim Chermak: Cool. Jamie, this has been an awesome episode. I do have one final question for you. As someone who's been with Platform for two and a half years now, and maybe someone's listening to this episode in the future and at that point you will have been with Platform for three years, maybe even four years, what would your advice be to someone who maybe signed up six months ago and they've yet to see that big impact it's made in their business? 

Tim Chermak: They heard it was really awesome. They've seen success stories or case studies, but they haven't yet seen the success and maybe they're starting to get frustrated. “When is this finally gonna start working? When am I gonna have my business blow up like Jamie’s has?” What would your perspective or what would your advice be to someone who's either thinking about starting Platform or someone who signed up 90 days ago or six months ago and they're starting to get anxious? “Hey, when is this finally gonna start working? When are the results gonna come in?”

Jamie Broderick: I would give two pieces of feedback. Number one, be patient. Number two, do more. 

Tim Chermak: When you say do more, can you unpack that a little bit? 

Jamie Broderick: Create more ads, create more lead gen, contact your leads more, borrow listings to be able to do listing appointments from if you don't have them yourself. If you do have them, just because you create one listing video on one property and it runs for 10 days or two weeks and it still isn't sold 30 days later, do another one. Change it up, do something more fun, do something more creative. Yeah, do more. 

Tim Chermak: Is that a mistake that you made in your first year with Platform? Where does that perspective of yours come from of be patient and do more? 

Jamie Broderick: I would say be patient because we've got a team, we've got a lot of people working towards the current goal. We have a lot of people willing to do content, but even with a lot of people willing to do content, I can honestly say that there's been some times where there might only be two things running for me. Usually, we try to keep, I don't know, five to seven or eight running at any given time, but there have been times where we were a lot less than that. 

Jamie Broderick: The branding piece of it, if I'm doing five to seven pieces and I started to see results, let's say, six months in and you're less than six months in and you're not seeing results and you're only doing one piece of branding material, do more and be patient with it. That one piece of branding material, that one video that I created that the mayor reached out to me on, I'm pretty confident that when the mayor decides to sell her house, she's probably going to call me. I have to be patient because she might not be looking to sell in 2020. 

Tim Chermak: Or frankly, all of the people that the mayor knows, if the mayor ever hears that friends are thinking of selling, guess who they're gonna recommend them to? 

Jamie Broderick: Right, exactly. You might not be in front of the people that are wanting to buy and sell today, but you are in front of people that are going to wanna buy and sell, so just be patient and making sure that you're staying in front of those people and doing the work and being more involved and more in front of them. That's the whole do more. 

Tim Chermak: All right, be patient and do more ads. Jamie, again, thank you for your time. I think this was a really awesome episode. We were able to dive deep into several topics of building a team, building success over the long term, structuring win-win agreements with your team on everything from commission splits to how you think about sphereleads and team leads. I think this was a really practical and valuable episode. Thank you for your time. We'll see you guys on the next episode of The Platform Marketing Show. 

Jamie Broderick: Thank you, Tim.