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Stay Paid Podcast
CEO of HomeServices of America Offers Lesson in Leadership, Discipline, and Mindset
00:43:23
Gino Blefari, CEO of HomeServices of America, shares key insights from his rise as a top industry leader. Listeners looking for practical leadership tactics will learn the powerful strategy he used to recruit 1,000 agents in 18 months, the daily...
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the Stay Paid podcast where we help agents and entrepreneurs master the latest business trends to unlock growth and create a life of freedom. Brought to you by Reminder Media.
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B
Welcome to Stay Paid. My name is Joshua Steich.
- [00:13]
A
And I'm Luke Acree.
- [00:14]
B
And before we bring on our guest today, we love if you take a minute to subscribe to Stay Paid on Apple podcasts or Spotify. If you're not already subscribed. While you're there, drop us a review. We will read it here on the show. Joining us this episode without his partner today, Cody Smith from Acre Brothers Real Estate or Realty Virginia. Cody, what happened to Stephen?
- [00:34]
A
You got rid of him.
- [00:37]
C
You're not hitting your metrics, Stephen. No. He is at KW wealth conference this weekend in Arizona.
- [00:45]
A
Nice.
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B
Awesome, man.
- [00:46]
A
Nice.
- [00:46]
B
Well, our superstar guest of today, we are super excited for this. He is Gino Blafari. Gino is a dynamic leader in the real estate landscape, holding an unparalleled reputation as an industry icon. Having founded Ontario real Estate in 2002 and leading it to be one of the fastest organically growing companies in the history of real estate. Gino now serves as the CEO of Home Services of America as well as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services. He's a respected thought leader, keynote speaker and mentor, engaging audiences with his insights on business optimization and leadership. Gino, welcome to Stay Paid.
- [01:20]
D
Yeah, great being here, guys. That was a great introduction too.
- [01:23]
A
Thank you for that, man. Josh has the best interest in the biz. That's what we've been told.
- [01:28]
D
Gino, man, I should. I gotta subscribe to the show, guys. I mean, this.
- [01:32]
A
You guys are.
- [01:33]
D
You're already impressing me in the first couple of seconds, so this is good.
- [01:37]
A
Hey, man. Well, thank you for that. I mean, it is truly an honor to have you on. We've had some amazing guests, of course, but I don't think we've had ever somebody of your caliber and what you've accomplished. And I don't say that lightly. I mean, it is pretty amazing. I've been following your career for a very long time. You know, people who follow us and listen to us, they know we've been helping in the residential real estate space for a long time. But to have someone like you who has built a really successful business and then gone on to lead, you know, one of the biggest real estate companies in the world, I think you can give us a lot of insight today. I would love for you to share a little bit of your journey and just give the audience a background for Maybe those who don't know. Gino, that should a little bit of your story and then we can dive right in.
- [02:22]
D
Sure. Okay, that'd be great. And I'm happy to do that. And you know, a lot of times when I'm talking to agents like that, I say something like my story is really their story. Because in 1985 I started out as a realtor knowing nothing about real estate, not owning a house and with a $1 bill in my pocket. So if I could do it, anybody can do it there. But any case, I work for a really high end company called Fox and Karskadden. And I struggled for those first six months to get to get anything going. In fact, if I had my own. My old interrogation rule is if you didn't sell a house in your first six months, we let you go. So I would have been firing myself. But in any case, it clicked, you know, my mindset and things like that. I studied so much stuff. It clicked and I finally did really well and ended up selling lots of houses that first year after the six month wait and about three years into that, my little baseball coach called me up and he had a little company called Contempo Realty and he wanted me to be part of his company. And I made all these crazy realtor demands that realtors do now, today with what we pay a realtor. They weren't even that big of demands, but I wanted to be a partner and all sorts of other things. And he looked at it for like two seconds and, and signed it. And I thought, man, why would he, why in the world would he do that? But he did. I guess he knew what he was doing. We grew that company from about 65 agents to 650 agents. And in 1997 we sold that company to Coldwell Banker, or at the time it was called Syndant, but it's what, what is known now as anywhere. So I had a 5 year non compete where they gave us the brand Century 21. I had the largest Century 21 in the world and I had seven of the top 11 offices. And back then Century 21 had like 6,500 offices. So that was a big deal. Three and a half years into that, we merged it into Coldwell Banker. I became a senior vice president for nrd, which was more of a national job. That was the national realty trust that Realogy got when they were buying all the independent companies that you probably remember and moving most of them to the brand of Coldwell Banker. In five years, my non compete was up I thank them very much. I loved Bob Becker, our CEO at that time. But I was ready to do something different and thought I could do something different and started entero in the end of 2002, like October, November of 2002. So in 2003, as was mentioned in the introduction, Interro was actually the fastest organically growing real estate company. When I say organic, that means no mergers, no acquisitions, just one agent at a time that believed in our vision and our values. We grew that zero to a thousand agents in 18 months with no crazy pyramid scheme, no crazy commission schedule. We just took Coldwell Bankers IC Agreement and another big independent Alan Panels IC Agreement. You know, kind of merged the two of them together and started a traditional real estate company based on, you know, really people being part of that culture, that vision and that values. It was. The vision was guided by the prince of trust, respect and integrity. We empower people to achieve their dreams. And we had 15 core values. And crazy thing was, is every person that we hired had to sit in with me for about an hour and a half to two hours and hear the whole Interro story, even though in the beginning there wasn't much to it. And then you were either in or you were out, and either one was okay, right? But we got Interrogative Italian word, which means whole and complete. So we like to say we're doing more than just real estate with a lot of. A lot of the companies that had come up have that kind of like that culture piece almost at that ninja culture piece or whatever it was. But we grew interrel. And in 2013, I got a call out of the blue from Ron Peltier saying Warren Buffett bought Prudential and he was looking for a CEO of the franchise group. And we were going to be the first ones to use the name Berkshire Hathaway. And I wanted to know if I wanted to do it. I told him. He said, don't answer me now. Call me. Call you back in a week. Call me back in a week. I said, no, I'm not interested, but thanks so much, Ron. This is a nice honor, but I've got an independent company right now that I own. It'd be awkward being the owner of both. And he said, warren Buffett said, if you accept this job, he'll make that transition possible for you by buying Intero. So I had three partners in Interro. We decided to sell interro. So on May 4, May 17, 2014, I sold in Taro Real Estate Services, which from a volume standpoint, because our prices were so high. It was the seventh largest real estate company out of 80,000 real estate companies at the time. From a volume standpoint, right, because our average sales price was so high. So then I became the CEO of the brand Berkshire Hathaway Home Services. And that was kind of cool because it was like, hey, Warren Buffett wanted to buy my company, which was cool. And then Warren Buffett wanted me to be the CEO of the first company that carried his brand name, Berkshire Hathaway. So I did that for five years from 2014 to 2019. And in 2019, I was lucky enough to get promoted to be the CEO of the parent company, which is my role right now. Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, or excuse me, Home Services of America, which is big in the title business, big in the franchise business with, with the brand. I have 53 brands actually right now, but we have the mortgage, title, insurance brokerage and franchise. So all five pieces of the puzzle, which grace basically with the, the strain on company dollar and things like that, it's great having all those other businesses, which is a terrific thing to have. And that's kind of how you look at it. You could be cloud based, you could be agent based, you could be all the other things. When I'm part of Berkshire Hathaway, my role is to make money for the shareholders. So it's a little bit tougher when you're competing against companies. These are all public knowledge. During, during COVID I delivered a billion dollars profit to the bottom line in the same market. My competitor Compass lost a billion nine. That's pretty hard to compete against a company that can lose money, right? Or other money. Other companies that grew, they may have twice as many agents as I would have. But one good mortgage month I make, could make more than that giant, the biggest company in the country, right, that had 186,000 agents. But so it's kind of like, what model do you pick? And that's. I know we're going to close the interview with kind of what does the future hold? But shoot, boy, that's the rub right now. And that's the tough thing for being in the real estate. Real estate market. But anyway, that's been my. That was my journey. Okay, so I was a top agent from 1986 to 1998. I was the number one agent in the, in Silicon Valley, which is the second largest county in Northern California. So I got a chance to, you know, I'm a real estate guy at heart, you know, totally real estate guy. Been a branch manager, been an owner, started Companies and now I'm actually in the executive role. So it's been quite a journey, but it's been a journey that anybody could do. And knowing I started out just as a brand new agent, 1985, with a $1 bill in my pocket, you know, broke as you could be.
- [10:22]
A
I mean here's, I mean, I don't know, why haven't you done more, man? I mean, come on. I mean, I mean that is just crazy to me. I love how you say anybody can do it. You know, my heart goes to really quickly. Like, you know, recruiting is such a IT people are what move the business, right? Recruiting the best talent and hearing that you recruited a thousand people to Interro in 18 months, like what would you share is like the way to attract and retain talent in, in your experience? Because I'm trying to do that at my company. I know Cody, you're trying to do that.
- [10:58]
D
Yeah, you know, you, you've got it, you've got to add value. You got to be adding value. Well, you, one thing you can do, you give everybody 100% and not charge them anything and you'll get some people that want to come, right. In fact, there's a lot of cloud based companies that are really growing like that and that is one way to do it. What I believe you have to do is you have to be adding value, okay? You have to be adding value to them through your culture, through your continuous learning, continuous training, continuous improvement. You know, you've got to be adding that and you got to connect with them. And then, you know, you'll have some really good people that you helped along the way and they'll just leave to go somewhere else where they think they can get a little bit more or where they're having certain sort of turmoil in their life and they need a change and those things happen. So my what I would say is you have to be adding value to them and showing them away. I would get an agent all the time. They're in Silicon Valley, they're leaving and they're leaving because they want a higher split somewhere else. And then I have to take them through the steps and if I couldn't make them make more money with me, well then they probably should leave, right? But usually there's a way by getting them to do more transactions. I actually have a, you know, cause I'm into recruiting and things like that. I don't know how familiar you are with NLP neuro linguistic programming, but I had an NLP line on, with a true story on how I could take an agent that was gonna leave to go to another company for X price or would stay with us for this price. And how I could talk to her about if she could do one more deal or two more deals after she's told me she could probably do one more deal per month if she was doing that. So I would say you gotta have every company that does it. You need to have your own business strategy coaching. Like, Cody, what's the name of your company?
- [12:54]
C
Acre Brothers Realty Team.
- [12:56]
D
Acre Brothers Realty Business strategy coaching program. Okay. It's not Ninja, it's not Tom Ferry, it's not Buffini, it's not Mike Ferry. It's the Cody's business strategy coaching program. And you get those people in there and you move their business by what you're sharing with them. That's where I saw you had a chance to build it. I also taught at the community college and so I have like a hundred, two hundred, three hundred people coming through my class, which was one of the smart.
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A
Yeah.
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D
You know, to get a real estate license. So that was big too. So I'm blabbing a bit, but I think you needed that thing like that background.
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A
Yeah. Super powerful. Like the emotions of losing a top producer. It feels like the. One of the biggest frustrations for all of us is we spend all this effort building up somebody and then they leave because they feel they can get a better split somewhere else. Does that not affect you? Like, how have you controlled your emotions? When people leave you when you've invested and they're believing something that's.
- [13:59]
D
Yeah, yeah, good. Great question. And it's a punch of the gut. Right. But I always go back. I have these certain things that get my mindset straight every morning that I do part of my routine, and one of them is to read a poem by Richard Kipling. If you can keep your head when all about your losing, there's. And blaming on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too. But there's a great line in there and it. What was your good. Give me your question again and I'll give you that line back because I got kind of off track.
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A
No. Yeah. My question is, like, how do you control your emotions when, like the top producer uses you?
- [14:33]
D
Yeah, perfect. Yep. So I. And I'll go to the Kipling poem and there's a line and it says, if you can make one heap of all your winnings at risk, it one turn of pitch and toss and lose and start again. At your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss. Okay. I did just have to kind of. You got to reprogram yourself to not take it personal and to use that energy to go out and hire somebody else. That'd be mine.
- [15:01]
A
What else do you do in your morning routine? I'm just. You. You're managing 53 brands, I think you said. Like, I mean, I'm just blown away. I don't. I can barely manage the executive team I have at Reminder Media.
- [15:11]
D
Like, what do you do? Yeah, I got leaders in every one of those brands that run their brands. But like Houlahan, Lawrence Long Properties in Taro, Kentwood in there. Adina, a big company in Minneapolis. You know, so there's all these different companies and then a whole bunch of Berkshire Hathaway ones in there too. But so routine. My routine has always been this. When you. When I was a brand new agent with that $1 pill in my pocket, I wake up every morning scared and wondering if I could get through the day and what the day had to offer. And as I studied successful people, I found that I had to program myself to be fearless. So I set up a routine that would help me be fearless. Okay. And, you know, basically, I don't know if you. If you did any, heard me talk on anything else, but I talk about meds. Familiar with the term meds?
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A
I think I've heard you talk about it before. Like, M stands for meditation.
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D
Yeah. Yeah. So those are like little keystone habits. Meditation, exercise, diet and sleep. Keystone habits that create small wins. And a small win is a great thing because there's a lot of research behind it. But once a small wind is accomplished, forces are set in motion that favor another small win. And those help you transfer to bigger wins and get you to believe. So essentially what I had to do when I started out there was change my mindset and make my routine part of it. And I just continued that. That on. So I have a morning routine and I have an evening routine. And that's probably more than anything else. The discipline to that routine has been my claim to fame. Okay. Because I'm going to get my. I'm going to get my head straight. I'm going to wake up early. Okay. I typically go to Starbucks with my dog. All right? And on the way to. On the way to Starbucks, I'm either going to have quite quiet meditation or I'm going to listen to myself reading out loud in my phone that Kipling poem, that Augmentino poem, the think and grow rich confidence formula. Then I'm going to actually read my entire business plan. Okay. Hear myself saying it or I'm actually going to read it. It depends upon where, where I am. So I'm going to get that meditation piece in, then I'm going to exercise. Okay. I'm going to get a workout in which, you know, there's so many benefits to exercise, right? The endorphins and those types of things. Okay. Then I'm going to eat a healthy breakfast and then I'm going to kind of like start my day. Right. I'm actually going to write in my success journal 10 things that made me happy, 10 things I'm grateful for, three things that made me happy in the last 24 hours. And then I'm going to program the non conscious portion of my brain by writing something out 25 times. I used to say I am earning X number of dollars or more in the next 12 months. Now I just write out I have perfect health, wealth and fitness and do that. So then I'm ready for the day. Okay? I'm ready for the day. And in the wintertime, that workout routine includes going in my pool, which is not heated, so it's pretty cold. You get that kind of like that cold plunge piece. This, what I do in the pool is I put fins on, workout fins on and hand fins on. And I will tread water for 30 minutes now. I'll do that until the water gets so cold that I can't stay in there for 30 minutes.
- [18:44]
A
And are you doing that every day, Gino? 30 minutes every.
- [18:49]
D
That's in. That's insane. That's something. If I'm like, I'm going to travel in October a ton, so I got to check with the hotel and see if they've got a pool. If they've got a pool, then I can do it there. If not, I've got a different routine for when I'm traveling. Right. But that, that's kind of like the key. And then I got an evening routine is pretty cool too. You know, eat a healthy breakfast. If you want to stabilize your glucose level, you want to do some sort of activity right after you've eaten. So now what I just recently started doing, I got this swing trainer because I hadn't golfed in like three years, went golfing. My daughter got married August 24, went golfing. And at night my back was stiff. So now I just take the swing trainer in my backyard and I'll practice my swing and I'll just swing for like five or 10 minutes after I ate. So I made it part of my routine because I found I never do things unless they're part of a routine. Okay. I didn't tell you in the. Well, some other time we can just actually have a whole podcast on just routine. And I would love that because there's two. I'll waste too. Not waste too much time, but I think it'll spend too much time telling you on it. But there's some great things that you're. Everyone in your audience can. Can benefit from hearing that routine piece.
- [20:10]
A
Oh, man, I would love to. Yeah, we'll have to do a whole nother podcast on that because just hearing, like, I just think about myself and it's the excuses I make. I'm running reminder media and it's easy to go. I'm doing a lot. And then you hear yourself and just your morning routine and all the things you're. You're working on and all the brands that you're running, and you go, yeah. The belief that you, like, you have so much more in you than you even realize you have because there are people out there working 10x harder than you are and are so more disciplined. I think of, like, Jocko Willenick, who wrote Extreme Ownership, and he talks about if you want more freedom in your life, you have to have more discipline. Because with discipline, it opens up time on your calendar, which in essence gives you more freedom, and it feels like every part of your day is regimented. Would you say that you are basically down to your calendar of, like, everything is scheduled for you or how do you run to be effective during the day?
- [21:10]
D
Yeah, I try to try to follow a schedule. In fact, if Dietra was on this call and you said Deetra, you know, if you emailed her right now, she. What's her job? She's like, my job is to keep Gino on a schedule. If I stay on my schedule, that's the best. That's the best possible thing. Right? And certainly it never goes perfect. But I have a system for that where you write down the seven most important things you're going to do that day, and you put time frames by it and you try to finish the task within that time frame. You can put buffers in your schedule because sometimes things come up. But if I have a task, if I'm on with you for an hour, I want to be on with you for an hour, and then I'm off. Right? That kind of thing, that. That type of stuff. So it. I can tell you, you know, I work from home now a great deal, and I'm nowhere as near as structured as I was when I worked at the office, and everything was. Was there. It just. It's probably just called life.
- [22:05]
A
Yeah, it's. I'm curious to, you know, kind of switch subjects a little bit onto this whole leadership because you're leading so many people. But really what I want to ask you is, you know, the whole industry has been hit by this lawsuit, you know, issue, which it is. You're probably tired of hearing about it, but, you know, you guys got hit with a major amount of money to pay.
- [22:27]
D
You're extortion. All they do is they just look at you and they say, we want to take you down to bankruptcy and how much can you pay? But because we ran a better company than everybody else, we pay the most.
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A
Yep.
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D
Not how many agents you had, not how many transactions you had. It's all on your ability to pay. It seemed.
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A
It seemed that way, man. It really did seem crazy that, like, if you look at the different firms and what they had to pay and the fact that you guys had to pay the amount you did. I'm curious, though, like, how do you lead through that? How do you lead through a time of turmoil like that and keep. Keep the team aligned, the brand aligned? Like what? You know, kind of like a time of war. Even your dog's telling us it's a.
- [23:13]
D
Time of war, right? We're like, yeah, my daughter's dog was getting fired up. When you said the lawsuit. Any case, you know, here's what I'm doing, guys. What I'm doing is I'm getting out there in the field, okay? Like in. I'm gonna give you my October schedule. What am I doing? This is what Gino's doing. Whether it's right or wrong, who knows, right? But this is what I'm doing. I'm going to be out there with the people. And you know what my talk's going to be a lot of it's going to be mindset and routine, because that's really what they need right now. So get this. October, 2 to 4, I'm in Chicago. I'll hit at least five companies, 9 to 11. I'm in Montana, 14th and 15th. I'm in California, 16th and 18th, I'm in Tennessee, 19th and 22nd, I'm in Pennsylvania, 23rd and 24th, I'm in Texas. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Six different parts of the country. I'm going to be in, in person, firing people up, trying to get them on their routine, trying to get them to be positive, you know, trying to get them to be more disciplined. Right. Just those types of things. When you talk about discipline, what popped into my head was I have a little line. I like to say the pain of discipline weighs ounces. The pain of regret weighs tons. So it's, you know. You know, it's kind of like Ali, you know, suffer now and then live the rest of your life as a champion when you can't. If you can figure out. If you can't figure out if you can do more. Right.
- [24:51]
C
Yeah.
- [24:52]
D
So good, man.
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A
So good. I feel like I'm asking all the questions. I have so many more I want to ask, but I want to give you guys a chance to ask questions that you would want to know.
- [25:00]
C
So you've, like, obviously started a lot of companies. You've been the leader, and you've got to give a vision to people, so. And the biggest part is communicating that. So what is maybe the number one thing you look for in a vision to communicate to people?
- [25:15]
D
Well, I. The vision. I just need to tell them what my vision is. My vision is I help people achieve their goals faster than they would in my absence. That's my vision. Okay. And so, you know, or what, whatever the vision of the company would be like in tarot, you know, guided principles of trust, respect, and integrity. We empower people to achieve their dreams, whether it's a realtor coming into the business with the dream of building a business, or it's the homeowner of the American dream of owning a home. So that's a. Cody, hopefully, that's kind of like what I. What you were looking for there, pal.
- [25:52]
C
Yeah. Yep. Because leading a group of people, you've got to have a vision, and you've got to be able to communicate it well. And you've obviously done that and been very successful at that. So I was curious, how do you.
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A
Get it to resonate through the ranks, though, and not just be words on paper or like slogans on a brochure? Like, how do you try to facilitate it down through an organization?
- [26:13]
D
Yeah, for. For me, it was. I was telling the story every two times per week, all the time telling the story. You know, I, I. When I first went to Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, the brand, I asked the communication guys, so, what's our vision? He didn't know it. It was written somewhere on the wall, but he didn't know it. Right. People don't know it. Most people don't even know what's the. What's the. What's the vision of your company. You know, what are the 15 values? What are they? You know, we would have it down to where we got it. You know, you get the leader knows it, then the managers need to know it, right? The managers need to know. There was a guy, I remember when we started in Tara, we created the first 10 values on it. Kind of knew what they were, but kind of like they were just up there on the wall. And Terry Meyer had one of our leadership meetings, says, okay, everybody, let's write down what, in order, what the 10 values were. I was like, wow. I had to ponder and I made a commitment then that that would never happen again. And then of course, when you do them all, all the time, you know, So I created the culture within the vision. I took the vision statement of interrogated by the principal. Trust, respect and integrity. We empower people to achieve their dreams. Then I took the 15 values and took a page out of the great John Wooden coach and created a pyramid out of it. But get this, you'll like this, guys. I wrap the pyramid in, in, in up one side, down the other side, and across the bottom in discipline thought on one side, discipline people on the other side, and discipline action. And the idea is when you have disciplined thought, you don't need a hierarchy. You have disciplined people, you don't need bureaucracy, you have discipline action, you don't need excessive controls. And when you take a culture of discipline with the ethic of entrepreneurial ship, that's where you get the magical alchemy of success and sustained results, right? Sustained results. Anybody can have one good year, right? But to do it, you know, in tarot, when I was there, had 12 consecutive years of organic market share growth. Wow. And it happened by accident, but it was a grind to get it to happen right. And everybody had to work really hard to get that to go. But any case, that's.
- [28:45]
A
Everybody should rewind that.
- [28:47]
D
What's that?
- [28:48]
A
I said everybody should rewind that and listen to the last two minutes again. That was so powerful. How do you like. The hardest thing, I think, think is translating that culture of discipline and accountability to down to your people and not putting up with mediocrity. Like, I know Cody, like you and Stephen there at the team, you guys have gone through a journey of like, do I get rid of these low producers? And Gino, you said, in six months at Interro, if you don't close the deal, you're out. So how do you, like, do you have zero tolerance for mediocrity? Do people just know, don't Mess around with Gino because he will cut you in an instance. Like, what's that? How do you balance radical candor and being going at people and stuff?
- [29:30]
D
Yeah. In my early stage, in my first management job at Contemplation, where I had 23 agents. This will blow your mind. Had 23 agents. Average age was 26 years old. This is 1989. And 17 of them made a hundred thousand dollars, which in Silicon Valley today, that'd be like 17 of the 23 agents made 2 million.
- [29:54]
A
Right.
- [29:56]
D
And there I had no tolerance, all right? Which I don't know if that's good or that's bad. If you're trying to just help people in and. And win, it is. But you still need to be nice. There was a. A Wall Street. A business journal article where they interviewed me in 1991, okay. Which was a recession year. And I made like $500,000 that year. More than, like anybody. It's not 1991. Right. Yeah. And they interviewed and I said in there, I said. I just. I think I said that line, economic Darwinism, okay? And I said, I just fired my top. My bottom three producers, right? And my mom called me up and she said I was all proud of this stupid article, right? Because it made me look. I thought it made me look good. And she goes, you didn't seem very nice in that. Right. So I had the hardcore piece, especially with the young and very impressionable ones. But you got to be. You just got to be careful. And then you're going to get the guys that already know it all and sometimes are doing pretty good. Okay. And that's a tough one, too. And I've got a line for that one, too, that you might want to just remember. It goes like this. Smugness comes before arrogance, and arrogance is the precursor to disaster. Once you think you know it all, your slide to mediocrity has already begun. Right now. The NFL has got that right now. You hear anybody being interviewed. We got to improve. We got to get better. We got to improve. We got to get better. Even that the guy from the Cowboys cd, Lamb or whatever. Yeah, yeah. When he out it about a week ago, he called himself out. I thought that was pretty cool, because in the old days, that didn't happen. Man, that.
- [31:47]
A
Yeah, that's so. Yeah. So good.
- [31:49]
D
That's been.
- [31:50]
A
Yeah. One of the hardest struggles for us at Reminder Media and growing our business. And then I know, for Acre Brothers Realty, and then we just talked to so many, you know, team leaders and stuff. It's like Do I put up with the mediocre producer, but yet I'm trying to build people and grow them in that fine line of having hardcore radical candor conversations. And it's like the golden nugget. Like you think of how you're leading today as you know, overseeing all these leaders and brands. You're getting in the trench, you're going down to the people that like servant leadership, getting next to the people because you can't help the people if you're not next to them. And I just think that's a powerful thing to point out.
- [32:32]
D
Yeah, okay, great. And that is a powerful thing. Cody, how many people in your company?
- [32:36]
C
We have 14.
- [32:38]
D
That's perfect. Cody, you can control that.
- [32:42]
C
Yeah.
- [32:42]
D
You can stand for no mediocrity. Andy C. Who's one of my interrogators guys. All right, you interview him sometime. Great guy.
- [32:52]
A
He's amazing.
- [32:54]
D
Fifteen people on his team. Okay. Andy C. You know, he doesn't have to have. And you won't last on his team. I could do it with the 23 agent office. Right? You can do it. You can't do. It's hard. You can't do it with 78,000 people. And you need them all. You know, you need them all. But Cody, a team, you can just frickin crush it because you can have a meeting with them every single morning, have them go through part of their, Part of your routine becomes part of their routine. Right, right. They're doing their affirmations with you, they're doing their script practice, they're getting their heads straight, they're writing out their goals and things like that. Because it's just 14 of them. That's great because I asked Andy, Andy, what type of accountability do you have? So I don't have any accountability because of the people that I've hand beyond the unaccountable ones just get out. They're not going to be there. You know, and usually that's what accountability does, it filters those out.
- [33:58]
C
Yeah, we made a switch because we were last year, I think the highest point we had like 20, 23 agents. And then we slowly started to realize like that's not the way we wanted to go. So yeah, we started to trim up and probably even a little bit more. So our standards going to up our standards on what should happen.
- [34:16]
D
Right. And still, you know, under 30 you could handle it because you're coming into the same office. Right, Right. Yeah. So Cody, you, you can, you know, hey, if I, if I had to start my career over again, I never would Even got into management, I would have just had the Geno Blafari team of like, 14 killers. Yeah. You know, wonderful, ethical, hard working, great people, you know, but that's. That's what I would have done, you know, that's. If I had. If you said, oh, if you did it all over, what would you do? You know? But what I was able to do was. Another thing that gives me great pleasure, is with this platform, I can impact more people. Right? Just like you guys are doing on your podcast. You're impacting people. You know, you're. You're like, I mean, this is great here. A couple cool, cool young dudes working hard. Here we are. I'm doing my podcast. You know, that's beautiful. People love that. You know, I don't know if I.
- [35:20]
A
Would say we're cool, but I'll take it. I will take it.
- [35:23]
D
Now, what was that one? That one author, the Navy SEAL guy? I'll give you a quote of his. This is what you. I can see you guys doing this every day before you get on the podcast. I'm feeling good, I'm looking good, I ought to be in Hollywood. Right? That was all. That was his little affirmation. Feeling good, I'm looking good. I ought to be in Hollywood.
- [35:44]
A
Yeah, yeah. What a great affirmation. So. Oh, man, this has been so valuable. So I would love to ask you, you know, the industry's changing. It's always changing, right? But if you were to try to give people advice of where they should double down or focus with everything that's happening with AI and you got the politics, you got commission changes, you got all this going on, what would you share with them as we close out?
- [36:11]
D
I would say just get to the consumer. Get to your. Get to your. For agents. If agents can create those relationships, get to the consumer, okay. And create relationships that whenever they think of doing anything in real estate, they only call you. So you don't have to ever buy a lead. Okay. You know, sometimes when you got a big team and you got to rent them leads, you do buy leads because you're giving them leads and then your margins getting squeezed down and things like that. But I would. That's why I'm doing the mindset talk and creating the routine to get out there to be more productive. But, you know, it's. It's a relationship business. And as far as all these changes, for a realtor, a good realtor, it's good stuff. It's good stuff. You got to get them to sign a buyer, broker Agreement. Great. And you get to represent them. Then you can show them how great you were. I. When I first started, I just did. I only had buyers because I didn't know any sellers, right? And I had a buyer presentation because in 1985, interest rates were 14%. You had to have a buyer's presentation. I got my buyer's presentation. That poor buyer spent two hours with me before we. Before we went out. I took them through the analysis of home ownership. I told them, here's your sales price. Here's your initial investment. I explained everything that would happen on a loan. I made sure. I just tell the agents, make sure you know mortgage better than your lender does, okay? I'd explain to them what their. How their property taxes work. I'd explain to them how their interest worked. I'd explain to them how the tech. Without giving legal or tax advice. I'd always say, learn, you know, go see your accountant. But I would show them. I'd pull out the irs, you know, dot com and come up and show them exactly what their tax savings was if they were owning this house. You know, explain to what appreciation was. Go through so much stuff. Go through every single line on that contract. Go through the agency disclosure. Explain to matter fiduciary duty to disclose to you what agency is. Because the California Civil Code 11 oh, 1102 requires me to do this. Now, nobody else was doing it, so I was a little bit better, Right? So what I would say is take it. You know, Cody, with your great team that you have, take it as a craft. It's a craft. And you want to be best ever at it. And if you're best ever at it, if you're Andy C. Okay, andy C. Put 12 million bucks in his pocket. His team 4. But he put 12 million in his topic, you know, get out of here, man. Andy. Andy. You want to be the CEO of. Of Home Services America? No, I couldn't take the pay cut, Gino. That's the realtors they got. Let's just, you know, get the right mindset, you know? You know, Mike Ferry, right? Show up, pay attention, tell the truth, don't be attached to the result. I'd add. Add value. Add value. Add value to your customers and get out there. I'd be. I my customers. I take people from my CEO agents out there. I take my CE coi, Center of influence. I take someone out every day, once a week, twice a week, three times a week, four times, however many do it and just meet them for coffee. Hey, so what do you do. How'd you get started? Where are you originally from? What's your, what's your current family situation? What was your family situation growing up? Were you active in school? Give me a memory from your childhood that stands out. Who from your childhood biggest impact on you? You know, what you learn from them. Look at your life as a Raider Scope. There'll be highs, there'll be lows. Give me one of the highs. What does that tell you about yourself? Give me one of the lows. I mean, I have 18 connecting questions. You know how like the Ninja has the four, right? The five. The four or five questions. I 18 questions. When I was done with them, their Superman ear would hear someone of their neighbors that was going to sell their house and call me. So that's what I would say to you guys. You know, Cody, you're in a great spot. You got a great, you probably have a great team. There's only 14 of you. So you can be 14 thoroughbreds and everybody can be improving. And you know, every single week you need to be having them declare to you, what am I doing to improve? So I'm better this week than I was last week. Love it.
- [40:41]
B
It has been an honor having you on. Before we close out, please let people know how they can connect with you.
- [40:47]
D
Yeah, it's ginoblafari@homeservices.com you know, G I N O B L E F A r I@homeservices.com and also too I set you guys up on my blog, right? You get my blog now because they would want to sign up for my blog and because I do a Thursday thoughts on leadership which is it's not a commercial for anything. It's just in fact this what what came out Last night was October 1st day of the new year, right? Get your business because we have the 90 day cycle. So make sure you're getting your routine down there. But any case, that's how they could get hold of me if they wanted to and you know, call the podcast. Those guys will connect you.
- [41:29]
B
We will make sure to include those links in the show notes of this episode. So wherever you listen to this, whether you're watching on YouTube or you listen to a podcast player, we'll have the show notes there. You can also get everything over atstay paid podcast.com. thank you all so much for listening. If you like this episode and want to show your support, head on over to Apple Podcast. Leave a review specifically about this amazing interview over at Apple Podcast or on Spotify and we'll make sure to read it here on the show. If you want to get hold of me, Luke, you can email us@podcastrinder media.com and of course you can message and follow us on Instagram. We are at Stay Paid podcast for this episode of Stay Paid. I'm Joshua.
- [42:05]
A
Psych guys, I'm Luke A. Regino. It is an honor like Josh said and thank you so much. I feel grateful having your wisdom and just learn so much. I would encourage people, hey, as you've listened to this, go rewind it, listen to it a couple of times because there's so many golden nuggets in there. And you're hearing from a true legend today. So it's been an honor. Here's my action item for you because you don't change your life if you don't take action. And so you've heard a lot of golden nuggets, but if you notice something about Gino, I mean, the guy is so intentional and it starts with his routines. And he probably said that five, six, seven times throughout this podcast in such a good way of you have to be intentional about what you're doing and not just let life just blow you like a leaf in the wind. You have to know what you're doing. It starts with your morning routine. And think about what he said with the whole meds, meditation, exercise, diet and sleep. Start there. That is a very achievable action item for you of meditating every morning, getting some exercise in, eating a healthy diet, and making sure you're getting your sleep in. Remember, the difference between top producers and mediocre producers in every business is top producers take action. Take action on that today.