Episode 12: What Causes Realtors to Fail—and How to Beat the Odds

Micah Munro ():

This is the key. You have to take the action. Again, it’s not a magic pill either. When we do the onboarding with the agents starting this, we’re very transparent with them. You got to take the action. If you don’t, you’re not going to get the results. But if you take the action and you do everything in that program, you will come out of that with hot leads and at least one or two deals. And then not only that, but then you’re set up with good, solid habits and skills that you need to then carry it on and have a successful year in your first year in real estate.

Chris Cook ():

All right. Welcome to mind your real estate business. Micah, how are you doing today? I’m great. I’m great, Chris. Thanks for having me. Of course. I, I’m really happy to have you on and I know that you’ve moved some stuff around today. It was a little bit last minute, but as realtors, that’s what we do, I suppose. And it’s actually, it’s something that we do try in our roles as coaches, as broker managers, people that do guide other people through this process. We help them to avoid the last minute yet. Here we are. I want to jump right into this. You and I, we’ve been working on a new training program launch

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That we’re going to be delivering and we are delivering in beta form to brand new agents and some agents that maybe need to get that sort of restart going. And so I wanted to talk to you specifically because I think unlike a lot of broker managers, you have really recent experience as a team leader, as somebody that was actively involved in the industry. You still do sell although less. And so I want to talk to you about that training process and what you’ve seen over the years with new agents where you think they’ve gone wrong and some of the things that we’re trying to address now with this new launch program.

Micah Munro ():

Awesome.

Chris Cook ():

So let’s start with that is where do you think a lot of brand new agents go wrong? They just get their license, they’re with a brokerage, they’re in their first week on the job. What do you think holds most people back from getting success sooner?

Micah Munro ():

Great question. I mean, at the end of the day, I think a lot of the training is not hands-on practical training. It’s in a training center or Zoom meetings or classes. And you and I have talked about this, but human beings learned really well from doing, and I, that’s just a big missing with all the training programs out there, the coaching programs, all the brokerages, all their training is just the hands-on actual doing.

Chris Cook ():

Interesting you say that because I actually got an email from you about five minutes ago I think, that said, Hey, one of the requirements of this program is to book an open house. Have you done that yet on Wednesday? If you don’t have an open house booked by the end of the day today, where are you working?

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And I think it’s interesting that this is happening, I think as expected through the platform is like, yes, this is training, but there are requirements. Have you fulfilled them? Have you done this yet? I guess, and this is as we’re going through the podcast, I mean it’s part of more of a conversation that we have on an ongoing basis is how do you undo that? How do you get somebody that’s come into this to shake this idea of being a student and get into being a professional and doing the things that actually generate business? What do you think the missing piece is here?

Micah Munro ():

I think a big part of the missing piece is accountability. And so look, we had a previous training program called the Jump Program, 10 week program, great program, but something was missing. Agents are coming out of it. They’ve learned about offers, they’ve learned about lead pillars. They’ve learned all this stuff in a classroom, but they come out of it and spin their wheels for months. And it’s because again, there’s none of that practical part of it. And then there’s no accountability check-ins, right? And so what you’ve built, you and Jessica and I know as some of the other managers have helped out and other people at Hallmark, but is pretty cool because it takes that program and then it adds in that accountability. So perfect example is we have some agents on it, some new agents, some agents that have been in the industry for a number of years and just have not been able to get past that 50, 60,000 a year.

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And so I’ve had my first check-in with a bunch of them. And so I get a notification after throughout the week, have they booked their coaching call with you. And I was pleasantly surprised out of, I don’t know how many, maybe seven of them, I think all of them. But one booked their coaching call. But then I go through their coaching call and it’s like, okay, you’ve done this great, you’ve done that, great. You did you do that? Well, no. Well, why not? And then you get to have that difficult conversation with them right up front like, well, listen, this is what it takes. If you don’t do this, you’re not going to be successful.

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And so what are you going to do to catch up? Now you’re behind week one. What are you going to do to catch up, get back on track? Great. Text me when you’ve done that. And so I think that accountability and then I think that practical hands-on, I emailed you, we’ve got some new agents in our Vaughn area. It’s not my typical area that I’m in all the time. I don’t know all our agents in the Vaughn area. I need some experienced agents that these new agents can shadow to learn from a big part of at the end of week one, they’ve got to shadow an experienced successful agent in doing an open house. And so that was the email you got because reached out to Jessica to get somebody she wasn’t sure. And so I got to, I’ve got I think three new people at the von office. I got to get some open houses for them.

Chris Cook ():

Yeah, okay.

Micah Munro ():

Yeah.

Chris Cook ():

Okay. I mean this particular weekend’s not great because it’s Thanksgiving. I think there’s

Micah Munro ():

Shortage of, but even next weekend, even if we have to push it a weekend, but get it lined up, right?

Chris Cook ():

Yeah. And I think as you’re talking through this, I think one of the things I’m remembering back to when I first got my real estate license, and I remember the first time I was writing an offer, I was writing it with a friend of mine that was a realtor, and I was going through it and I was kind of stammering on things. I didn’t have all the experience that I have now to be able to blast off an offer and get it done. And I remember he leans over my shoulder and he goes, didn’t you get 90% on all those exams? And at the end of the day, book learning is book learning, and you’re still until good under the pressure of having to actually do these things in real time with a real life client that has their life savings wrapped up in this. I don’t think you really understand what that pressure is, and I don’t think it can be simulated.

Micah Munro ():

Yeah, no, yeah, no, you’ve got to do it and you’ve got to have that support and structure and mentorship in the beginning to show you how you’ve done it properly to show you how to do it. Yeah.

Chris Cook ():

Yeah. So when you got your real estate license, did you dive right in? Did you join a team? What was your process of getting started?

Micah Munro ():

Well, listen, I was extremely fortunate. My dad was a real estate agent and I also had a massive network. I used to throw parties at all the nightclubs in downtown Toronto. And when I joke, because when I started real estate, I had a garbage bag full of coasters and napkins with people’s phone numbers and email addresses. So I took those, put ’em in the beer stains on them, Excel spreadsheet, whether they remembered me or not,

Chris Cook ():

I would love it if you told me that was still your CRM. I still got, I had to get a new garbage bag. No, I don’t think that’s a good way to scale.

Micah Munro ():

Yeah, that’d be awesome. So I do realize how fortunate I was to have that support of my dad and I look at new agents because they don’t have that in most places or when they’re starting, right? And that’s exactly what this launch program does for them is it gives them the in-class lessons, it gives them the hands-on practical shadowing experienced agents, having your manager coach you once a week, having you step in and coach them. I think you have three, four coaching calls with them throughout the 90 days. I’m really excited about it. I gave you feedback too. Brady and Eliza, they were, so they have been in real estate I think close to a decade. Each of them,

Chris Cook ():

They were 12 years,

Micah Munro ():

So never been able to get up over 50, 60 k having to get second jobs outside. That’s tough, man. I just feel for them. So in 90 days, well, they’re not even in 90 days, they’re in week two, they’ve got open houses lined up, they’ve been calling making their five calls a day to their network. Both of them, each of them of them got a solid lead, so they’ve got two leads. They’ve came to us with a listing, so they’ve got a listing and two solid leads, so there’s a good chance they keep going. They’ll do two or three deals in their first 90 days, right?

Chris Cook ():

Yeah. I mean the goal really is to get that pipeline filled up.

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The other goal, and this is where I think a lot of new agents now are really at, should I call it a disadvantage? I don’t really know if I should call it a disadvantage, but there are so many of these paid programs and lead generation. I get four or five lead generation companies calling me every single week telling me how just for a few hundred bucks, how I can double my business and all these things I’ve done online lead generation as I know you have. We’ve laughed about it, like the hundreds of thousands of dollars that we’ve dumped into that silver bullet that’s going to grow our business.

Micah Munro ():

Not to mention the time,

Chris Cook ():

The time, let’s not even talk about that, but it’s a lost opportunity cost of chasing after these things. When I say it, I think it’s a bit of a disadvantage of being a brand new realtor coming into the business right now is because I think that we’re in this time where the real estate industry is really shifting. When I got in online lead generation was a really solid business plan. I actually built my business off of online lead gen. I did 18 deals my first year that were directly attributed to online leads, but I also ruined my life in the process. I really smashed myself against the rocks. And the issue that I’m starting to see now is that actually the online leads space is becoming really tight. There’s a lot of people fighting for the same business, and in the meantime, the consumer is getting really fed up with the tactics and the calls and that sort of strategy. That’s why when I built this thing out and I wanted to connect with people like yourself was to really put a spotlight on what I think a lot of these companies view as the enemy, which is the old tried and true ways of actually building your business, doing the free things first. Yeah,

Micah Munro ():

Mean potatoes.

Chris Cook ():

Yeah. Is it scalable? Yep. Can you scale it in a really big hurry? Probably not, but you can certainly get to one or two deals a month by doing free activities, and that’s where I think a lot of new agents that are coming in are really distracted. You can’t keep them doing this stuff because they’re being pulled in other directions and every time they go on the internet or every time somebody finds their name as a realtor, they call like, Hey, I got this new magic potion that’s going to solve all your problems and it’s going to be easy. You’re going to love it, and it’s only going to cost you $5,000.

Micah Munro ():

I think it’s not just new agents, and you and I have succumbed to this. I think it’s human nature is to try to find the easier, softer way, right?

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And the reality is, is that there’s no easy, softer way. The easy softer way is doing the work, doing the skill development, doing the meat and potatoes, the daily prospecting, your sphere of influence, door knocking open houses. I have these conversations all the time. Just before this, I was with a new agent that, not a new agent, he’s been around five years. I was talking to him about coming to join Bre Max Hallmark, and he hasn’t done a deal in the last two years, and I was talking to him about this. You’ve got to develop the daily habits. That’s your engine. You have to have an engine that drives consistent revenue, and that’s your daily habits around your meat and potatoes, sphere of influence, past clients, open houses, door knocking, all free, all lowest hanging fruit, all best leverage of your time. And if you create those good habits, then look, you can play around, throw a little money at this, throw a little money at that, try things out.

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But I think a lot of agents just try to go the easier, softer way and throw money at internet leads, and especially in a major city where hundreds of thousands of agents are all going after the same lead, and that lead is sold to all these different agents, and it’s such an uphill battle. Your cost per lead’s really expensive. The people are already pissed off because 10 other agents have called them a lot of the time. They’re a lot further out in their search like six months to a year out. So it’s a tough one to just make your number one lead pillar right off the hop.

Chris Cook ():

Yeah. The other thing too, to back up your point, I am not going to name any names here, but I was being coached by a company that was pretty well known for online presence and on building your online pipeline, and I had come into a bit of a rough time. It was just right when COVID hit and I was really quite worried about my business. And what was interesting was I got on an emergency call with them, I really need some help. I really need some direction and coaching. And their advice to me was, the way out of this for you is your sphere interesting. You have to get on the phone and you have to talk to people who already know and trust you and position yourself as somebody that can help them in whatever they’re going through. And I thought that really resonated with me that the meat and potatoes of their business was helping people solicit online leads, and this was the advice that I got

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And they weren’t wrong. I thought it was actually really, it must’ve been not very easy piece of advice to give coming from them like, yes, you can’t do this other stuff because that all costs money and you’re not in a position to be able to spend that. And if you want a more immediate return on your effort and time, yeah, God, it’s your sphere. Yeah, it’s true, man. It’s true. Yep. There’s a lot less conversion. People are going to tell you they’re not going to lie to you and tell you they’re going to do something when they’re not. They’re not going to ghost you out of an appointment or they’re less likely to, you’re going to get a much truer client coming from that than you would some stranger that you’ve just met online. I thought that was interesting, and it was something that actually really fueled my desire to be able to build something out that has that meat and potatoes, something that is proven to work over and over again. I think you could debate whether or not it’s scalable. I think there’s a number of agents, and I’m trying to get actually Audrey’s ad on my podcast as well.

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This is somebody that has really built and scaled her business to a very high and successful level through a personal connection doing an amazing job.

Micah Munro ():

Yeah. Well, look, that’s what I did. I built my business through my sphere of influence, and I actually at one point decided with a coach that I was working with, we were going to scale up, and so we added online leads. At the time, it was BoomTown, BoomTown was the big online lead platform. They did search engine optimization, Google ad campaigns, Facebook ad campaigns, all of that. I was spending like $10,000 a month. I had inside sales agents, I had sales reps, and I was less profitable then when I didn’t have all of that and didn’t have the internet leads. It’s really interesting because I’ve talked about this a number of times, but at the time when you went to leave BoomTown or say you were going to leave, they put this emergency team together to help you. And so they put this emergency team together and we’re trying to work on it, and I was doing everything, sending personal BombBomb videos, like role playing the scripts, everything.

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And then my coach said, we started to kind of develop this theory that it was really difficult in major cities. And so my coach said, well, why don’t you ask them for three references in major cities? So I did. I said, look, I need to talk to some other people in major cities that are having success with this. They sent me one person, and that guy I had a conversation with had a small boutique brokerage, and he had stopped all the ad campaigns, search engine optimization, all of that. He was just using it as a CRM for his team, and I was like, bingo, I’m done.

Chris Cook ():

Yeah, that’s interesting that you said that because I came to the same conclusion. The last one that I was using was YouTube. They used YouTube to scrub the leads and bring ’em in, and he actually said in Toronto, your numbers are in the toilet everywhere else. Everybody’s getting really great return on it. And he showed me the numbers and we agreed to part ways, and I think he stopped actively trying to solicit in Toronto, Toronto, Chicago, Montreal, Vancouver. He’s just like, I’m not even going to bother. The numbers are so terrible.

Micah Munro ():

Yeah. I had in the coaching organizations and coaching clients, I was coaching having lots of success in little towns where there was less competition, but in a major city, just so much competition. Your cost per lead is so high. It’s such an uphill battle just getting harassed by so many other agents. And yeah,

Chris Cook ():

And it probably puts a stain on our industry as well, having that many people, I don’t what they view it as unsolicited phone calls, which I mean, I got your number for a reason. You click something. Yeah. So yeah, I guess that’s the one thing that myth that I’d like to dispel I guess, is that this business costs money to get into. It’s actually, I think by far the best business to get into because the cost, the barrier to entry from a cash perspective is essentially zero. You get licensed and have a car.

Micah Munro ():

Yeah, I mean it’s pretty cheap as far as starting a business goes

Chris Cook ():

Compared to, say, starting a

Micah Munro ():

Restaurant, it’s probably what, four grand or something like that for all your fees and everything. Where can you start a business for four grand,

Chris Cook ():

Right? And then to be able to go out and have all of these opportunities, and that’s what I want to put a little bit of a spotlight on the leadership team within Max Hallmark specifically, that they are really invested in making sure that the agents that are here are finding their way to success as quickly as possible versus if you were to go into something that’s more of a high volume brokerage where it’s about number of warm bodies. I think that this is something that’s really truly special in the leadership team and the people that own the company and that drive it forward. But also in there are some of their new initiatives and the way that they’re starting to tackle 20 25, 20 26 problems that agents are facing.

Micah Munro ():

I mean, I coach for a coaching organization and I coach realtors all over North America, and I have honestly not seen anybody that has a program like this. They have lots of them have these training programs. We used to the jump program, but to incorporate the practical hands-on the mentorship, the coaching, all in one, to really give people the best chance of success in their first 90 days and make money in their first 90 days. I haven’t seen a program like this at any other brokerage.

Chris Cook ():

So let’s play a game. Actually, this is something that we offer new agents that come into the brokerage. It’s free. You work for a coaching company. What would the cost, if we were to plug this into another coaching company, what would the cost for this be?

Micah Munro ():

Well, it’d be thousands because look, just to hire me as a coach is for two 30 minute calls a month is 800 US a month, right?

Chris Cook ():

A thousand bucks.

Micah Munro ():

Yeah. Mastery is 1,504 calls, four 30 minute calls a month, but it doesn’t include everything else. It does come with a lot. They have a backend website with lots of scripts and stuff like that, but it’s not an interactive cloud-based training program that takes you from A to Z with the accountability, with the coaching, with the practical, I don’t know. I feel like you could charge 10 grand for it pretty easy.

Chris Cook ():

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking is it’s a 90 day to success program, and if you did it, you’re going to be well on your way. I know

Micah Munro ():

That

Chris Cook ():

Because I’m molded enough for what I would do if I was to start today as a brand new agent, knowing what I know. And then it’s also had input from probably 10 other high level leadership team members within this brokerage. It has a lot behind it. And that would be the question that I think I would ask a lot of people looking around at different brokerages and different coaching platforms and stuff is what’s the value that you’re getting? I think as real estate agents, we get challenged our value a lot. Like, oh, 5% commission seems like a lot. It’s like, well, it seems like a lot until you go ahead and sign with somebody that doesn’t actually bring a lot of value to the table. You can get this job done for 2%, but you’re going to get a 2% result. And that’s I kind of thing when I thought about this program before our call and I was like, I wonder what Micah would put on? How would he assess that value having worked? You worked with a coaching company that charges for this coaching and the one thing that I think probably has the greatest value in my mind, I’d love your opinion on this. It has a graduation date.

Micah Munro ():

Yeah,

Chris Cook ():

It has a finish line

Micah Munro ():

That if you sign up for this program and you do it, this is the key. You have to take the action. Again, it’s not a magic pill either, and you and I, when we do the onboarding with the agents starting this program, we’re very transparent with them. It’s like, look, you got to take the action. If you don’t, you’re not going to get the results. But if you take the action and you do everything in that program, everything each week training session has you come out of that with hot leads and at least one or two deals, it’s not, maybe if you do it, you will, will be successful. And then not only that, but then you’re set up with good solid habits with all the core habits and skills that you need to then carry it on and have a successful year in your first year in real estate. Right?

Chris Cook ():

Yeah. For me, when I think about it, when I got my license, I remember I made a deal with my wife. I was a coach and traveling and away from home a lot, and that wasn’t make me very popular at home that I was on the road for over 200 days a year. And I was like, look, I’m going to do this thing. I’m going to do real estate, but you got to give me five years and it’s not going to look a whole lot different from my personal presence. Like, yes, I’ll be sleeping at home at night, but I’m going to work. I’m going to be working late, I’m going to be waking up early, I’m going to be out doing showings, I’m going to be gone a lot. And it did. It took me almost exactly five years. I wish I had have actually said three years, give me three years. Because I think that now knowing what I know, I think you can actually develop a really strong business in two to three years. And I remember this quote, this line is do now what nobody else will. So later you can do what nobody else can.

Micah Munro ():

And

Chris Cook ():

I think a lot of agents get into this business, what this idea of freedom. I don’t have to punch a clock, I don’t have to answer to anybody. I can make my own hours. You’re going to make your own hours. All right, your sleeping hours. So you’ll get six of them, but if you did it it full for a year or two years, three years, where does that leave you from? Then you’ve purchased your freedom through your work that you’ve done.

Micah Munro ():

Yeah. I mean look, you’re right. Everybody gets in this, oh, freedom, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You got to put in the work. You got to learn the systems, the scripts, the presentations. You got to put in that time. Look, as somebody that’s coached athletes, and again, we say this all the time, it’s like do professional hockey players practice more than they play? Yeah, right. A lot. A lot more. Yeah. Do golfers practice more than they play a lot more. The crazy thing about real estate, I say this all the time, is like, we are so lucky. You could literally practice half an hour to an hour a day, five days a week and be in the top 5%, but for some reason,

Chris Cook ():

Well, I like that you use that word practice because I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you before. I like to use analogies a lot because people, they can draw similarities between things. And I always find it funny that realtors, they want to be treated like a professional, but they don’t always behave like one. And so I always think about your dentist. I like the dentist one the best. So your dentist, he has a practice, it’s called a practice, a doctor, it’s a practice, a lawyer. It’s a law practice because they actually practice the things that they do in real time. The more you do for the longer you do it, the better you get somebody with experience and relevant recent experience because they practiced it recently. I always think about the dentist because the dentist is like roo. When you go to the dentist office, you spend most of your time, or at least I do with the front desk receptionist.

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Lovely. And I like to chat with her and the hygienist, and then the dentist rocks up at the end and he looks and he looks for problems and he puts his expert eye on it and usually I’m lucky I have good teeth. And he goes, not making any money here. Off you go. He is a critical element of that. He is the expert and he can look at it and if there is a problem, he can deal with that problem. And he’s the guy that deals with the problem. Everything else is systemized and automated and he knows really quite quickly whether or not there’s going to be an issue. He takes that little perky thing and he sticks it in your teeth and he goes, off you go, you’re good. And I’m like, how much did you just make doing that? But I always think realtors, if they practiced, they could also be like a dentist. And I think a lot about my dentist, I imagine calling your dentist at four 30 on a Saturday afternoon to get an appointment. You’re just like, the office is closed, man. And I think that we behave in ways where we’re very reactionary. We react all the time instead of being proactive and taking the leadership in our business. And that’s really to put it in a nutshell, what I think we’re trying to do in this first 90 days here, Micah, is to set the behaviors for you to have a practice.

Micah Munro ():

Yeah, a professional practice. And look, just to tie back into my career, because a lot of agents don’t think it’s possible or they think, oh, customer service, you’ve got to be at everyone’s beck and call. You’ve got weekends. But when, my favorite time in real estate, and I feel like you run your business like this, I’ve had 10 people on my team. My most enjoyable was when I shrunk. It was me, two full-time assistants. One was licensed. I had one buyer’s agent that handled all the buyers, and I just did listings and I did not work evenings or weekends. And I had systems processes. When I met my clients, I set boundaries, but I was the professional and they wanted the results that I achieved. So they were willing to meet me when I was available, just like a lawyer or a doctor. And so that is possible in this business, and I believe you’ve done something similar now.

Chris Cook ():

Yeah, similar. I mean, I spend a lot of time coaching and doing other things, so I end up actually selling real estate largely on the weekends. Now

Micah Munro ():

You want to, that was your own doing.

Chris Cook ():

That’s because I want to,

Micah Munro ():

Yeah,

Chris Cook ():

I want to. And I move people to my schedule and I do things on my schedule and the clients. It’s amazing how when you give people an option, you’re like, these are the options that are available and they take ’em. But that comes from confidence and experience. If I know that I have a quality product that people are going to gravitate to, then I’m going to be less reactionary. And the only way to do that is to set the foundation of having a practice. You have to go through a very strict set of activities that are going to build up your abilities and with your abilities become confidence. With confidence, then you start attracting people.

Micah Munro ():

Yeah, I agree.

Chris Cook ():

Cool. Well, just like that, we’re at the end of the time, Micah, I appreciate you accommodating me and throwing your day upside down.

Micah Munro ():

No problem.

Chris Cook ():

To make time for this, I think it’s really valuable to have somebody else that’s in this that’s been working with me on this to help talk about it and promote it. If there are agents out there that are hearing this, that are feeling like they need a reset, they wish they could start back and do it over again, it’s not too late. And if you’re a brand new agent, you’re just joining the brokerage. If you’re listening to this and you’re thinking about joining a brokerage that’s got your back, this is a program that I believe 100% in. And we would encourage anybody to reach out, ask some questions, talk to Micah, get in contact with myself and explore more about where you can find real value in a brokerage.

Micah Munro ():

And Chris, just to add to that, we actually have some experienced agents on it that have been on it for a while that are crushing it. Right, that are really excelling. So yeah, it’s a great program.

Chris Cook ():

Awesome. Alright, thanks Micah. We appreciate you and your time. Yemen, we’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for having

Micah Munro ():

Me.

Chris Cook ():

Thanks for listening to Mind your real estate business. Our guest, Micah had some great insights including hands, hands-on training matters. Learning by doing not just by books or classes is what makes a new agent successful. Accountability drives results, regular check-ins and clear expectations, keep agents on track and moving forward. And last back to basics wins, sphere of influence, open houses and daily habits, beat expensive online leads every time. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please like and subscribe or share it with somebody that would enjoy this content.