KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Stop Chasing Commission and Start Building a Business

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

Summary:This episode provides a powerful mindset shift for real estate agents from being "commission chasers" to becoming business owners. The host, Coach Randy Byrd, argues that focusing solely on the next transaction leads to a stressful, inconsistent career. He offers a tactical guide on how to build a predictable, systems-driven business that attracts clients rather than constantly pursuing them. The content is inspiring, tactical, and provides a clear framework for long-term career growth.

This is everything they never told you about real estate with the AI Queen Carrie Sovay, sharing the tech, tools, and lead gen strategies that top producers won't tell you about. Now, here's your host, Carrie. Welcome back, everybody. I am here at 11.30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time with Steve. John Stone. And Steve, I really appreciate you coming on because you are in South Africa. And what time is it there? It is 5.30 p.m. in South Africa. Oh, I love that. Okay. So a little bit of a difference here. But I wanted to have Steve on. First of all, we met through EXP. He was, he moderated

the panel I was on in Miami this past October. And we really hit it off. And I think he has a lot to say and I think that agents should be listening. So you've, you have, you've trained more agents than most people have Facebook friends. Let's be honest, right? You're like, you're like known as the godfather of real estate in South Africa. Let's dive right in. First, tell me how you got here. Well, my story, quite honestly, is one of continually faking it until, you know, you have some kind of success. So what happened originally, how I got into real estate training, the short version of the story is that I met a guy who was the ex-chief executive of a very big real estate training and coaching company in the States. At the time, it was called Providence

Systems. Now it's called Bafinian Company. And Tom introduced me to Brian Bafini. And through a set of circumstances, I ended up bringing Providence, Brian's business to South Africa. And so I spent a little bit of time with Providence in America. I came back with all these cassette tapes, you know, old school, old school VHS, VHS tape. And I've stretched those things as I watched them and I've learned the whole referral system as he taught it. And I just regurgitated that. Look, I changed it a little bit for the South African market, but I knew nothing about real estate. You know, in the beginning, actually, all the jokes were the same. Everything was the same. I just completely cloned what he did in South Africa and yeah by the grace of God it worked you know we we ended up over seven years building

the biggest coaching business in South Africa in the real estate space and I trained tens of thousands of agents and the more I obviously spent time with agents and I regurgitated my and it was very good the content was good and it was applicable the more I did it the more conversations I had the more I learned about real estate and that was now 21 years ago so I can tell the EXP piece of that story, but that's how I got into real estate. Well, that's very interesting because I've had my license for 15 years, and when I got into this industry, it was Brian Buffini everything. Like, do you remember, like, the handwritten cards that you got?

Come on. I think I still have them in my closet somewhere. Yeah, I've still got them. They sit on my desk. Look, Brian Bafini, the guy is a genius. I mean, really did change my life and many people's lives through what we did here. It works. And that's the thing. Like, everybody's chasing the easy way. And I didn't align with his, his ways of generating business. It was a little bit, I was kind of like a social butterfly. And then I got into social media really, really quickly. But it all works. You just have to do something, right? And stick with it and be consistent. And I think that most agents are just like running from doing the work. And I think that's the problem. What do you think? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I like what you say.

You've got to pick a strategy that you know works and then really double down and commit to it. So we've got guys in our group here. I've got guys in my EXP group here who have got, I'm thinking of one guy in particular, Neil Robinson. He's become incredibly famous in a very short space of time in South Africa for his Instagram video content. It's outstanding. It's some of the best in the world. And he has entered the luxury space in Cape Town, which is really the luxury part of South Africa's real estate market. And in not being an agent like a year and a half ago, he's now selling multi, multi million dollar properties in Cape Town, simply because his social media content has been so good. So he's found a strategy, but he has worked incredibly

hard to make it work. And I agree with you that the enemy of Great is bouncing around and trying to do all these different things and you never come into one thing. What's his name again? Because I'm very interested in this. I want to see his stuff and what he's doing. Yeah, so his name's Neil Robinson. Perfect. I just have to write a detail for later.

I'm always really interested in what successful agents are doing. Like, we all do it a little bit differently. And you brought up that you basically like cloned Brian Buffini. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with taking what some of these doing really, really well and making it your own as well, right? Like, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. And I think that's a really good message too.

Really good message. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I heard, I've heard that Brian Bafini has now into AI a little bit. Like, he's been owning it. Like, because you got, when AI first launched, I remember all of the traditional coaches like Mike Ferry and Brand Bafini, I feel like, just like when social media, you know, they were like, that is not a prospecting method. This is how you work. This is the way that works. So I know that they've been, had kind of blinders on to their systems for the most part. But I heard

he's open to social media. He's got some social media training now, maybe some AI. So good for him. he's like he's like the madonna of real estate you know just reinvent yourself over and over and over again i love that yeah and the exciting thing about brian is if he's if he's into ai now even if he's late onto the boat he is such an exceptional communicator and such a clear thinker that when he's cottoned onto something he will do his homework he will get the best people in the world on his podcast he's got this podcast it's a good life or something which is exceptional as well that he will now put out very high-quality content on AI, simply because he is who he is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that takes, like, let's take it to EXP now, because you are a big presence in EXP globally, international. How did you come across EXP? And your freaking organization, 900 plus agents, that's quite impressive. Tell me a little bit about that. Thanks, Carrie. Yeah, so I'm,

I was approached by an ex-client of mine who had Sotheby's franchises in South Africa. He eventually moved to Canada. I didn't know the guy very well, actually, but I got a phone call from him from Canada just saying, hey, Stephen, do you remember me? It's Bill, you know, you did some training for me. And you need to check out this company that's coming to South Africa. It's called EXP, they're changing the way real estate works. So I don't really know him.

I didn't trust him. And he had to be a bit persistent. He contacted me a few times. eventually he actually came to South Africa and he was sitting at a hotel in Cape Town and he phoned me again and I thought oh my goodness I guess so this guy has now come all the way from Canada a better guy and meet him so no way he sat with him and he actually just put a Brent Gove model explained video in front of me he said are you hungry I said yes he said what do you want to eat I said a chicken mayonnaise sandwich so he bought me a chicken mayonnaise sandwich and there I was

dripping crumbs on his laptop watching Brent Gove's model explained video and literally in that 25 minutes, my life changed. I didn't tell him that I was excited, but so many things I'd done in my past seemed to all come together. They sort of coalesced in the single moment of this opportunity and like, you know, lights came on and I just thought, this is what it's all been about, like 25 years worth of graft. And I'd been involved with network marketing businesses. So I understood the model and I believed in it. And I knew a lot of agents. I knew tens of thousands of agents in South Africa. I just thought, I'll never see an opportunity like this. So I went, I did a whole bunch of homework. I didn't want to get involved with the business that wasn't

legit. And I didn't want to be involved with people that weren't good people. So I did a bunch of research and eventually got hold of Sheila Fezarin. Sheila and I got to know each other a little bit. I really respect Sheila. And so after that conversation, then I started feeling like, you know what? I feel like this is, this is meant to be. This is a good thing. So I joined. And then I just started making phone calls. You know, to this day, I still believe the best way of building your first tier in EXP is through personal phone calls. I know guys like Mike Sherrod have made a huge success through inbound leads through, but let's be honest, 99% of people are not going to do what Mike Sherrod has done,

but everybody can make a list, pick up a phone and say, hey, it's Stephen, I want to show you something. When can we get together? There's something I want to show you. And that's all I did. I just made lots of phone calls in the first sort of 18 months or so. I sponsored a whole bunch of people on my first tier. And, you know, because of EXP's model, the rest is history. Yeah. How long ago was that? Four and a half years ago.

Good for you, what you've built. Like, it is, it's just incredible. So one of the biggest takeaways from that story is that, obviously, you were coached for a long time. You coached a lot of agents. And I'm hearing if you're an agent. with great relationships with a lot of agents and you're not looking at the EXP model, then somebody needs to like shake you. That's what I'm hearing right now.

Yeah, because I think even the top agents, most of them have got the same problem that coaches and guys who've got big training companies like myself had. We've all got the same problem. When you stop working, you stop earning. There's no exit plan for these kinds of businesses. And when I saw EXP, that is. exactly what I saw. Here was a way that I could take 25 years of serving the real estate industry and I never drop balls. The best of my ability, I am faithful. I work hard. I produce a high

quality product no matter what I do. But all of that faithfulness over 25 years had left me with trying to sell the next webinar to pay next month's bills, trying to come up with some new course that I could write to sell to the same audience. And top real estate. state agents have got the same problem the moment they stop selling they stop earning and here is a way if people will just stop and look at the model and understand it they will see here is a way for them to take what they have built through their excellence over the last X number of years and actually turn it into passive income yeah that's that's great what you said that you just picked up the phone when you were and just called people so for the agents listening right now like me

How many people should I be calling a day? What's a good goal to set for myself? Sure. It's such a difficult question to answer. But I'll tell you what I did. My list was so big. And I realized not everyone is in this situation. I was in. I was just blessed to have this massive list of agents. So I never made a cold call. It was all people who knew me. But what I did was I said, I'm never going to be able to one-on-one show everybody the model because I want to show so many people. So what I'm going to do is on a Friday morning, I'm going to have a Google meeting, like a Zoom or whatever. And the previous week, I'm going to phone as many agents as I can and use a little script that I wrote for myself, hey, I've got a private meeting next week.

I want to talk business with you. I've got a private meeting next week that's going to explain a model we're working with. If I could give you the link to that or if I could get you a place on that private meeting, would you join me and give me your feedback afterwards? It's if I would you. That's a J. Kinda thing. I love it. And it works.

I love how you're making it sound like super exclusive. I really like that. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So if I could get you a place, would you join us and give me your feedback afterwards? I've virtually got a 99% yes to that. Probably 60% of them actually pitch up on the call the following week. So I would try to have 20 agents every week booked into that call.

and let's say 10 or 12 arrived so I'm showing 10 12 15 people a week on this on this sort of small Google meeting and then the big job after that was then I picked up the phone to each of them and I said okay hey what what did you like most about what you saw and then the follow-up process send them some resources get them in a three-way call with someone you know the normal strategy and I probably did that faithfully for probably the first 18 months so I showed a lot of people people. Now, there's more to learn how to use resources correctly, et cetera, but that's the bottom line of it. You currently are running a build event in South Africa. Yeah, just finished. So you just finished this year. I know you did it last year. Are you doing it next year?

Next year, we're not doing a build conference because EXP Con is coming to Africa. And the South African market is too small to accommodate two national. events in the same year. Agents are not going to travel twice. So I've agreed with EXP here. I've got a very good relationship with Andrew Thompson, the head of EXP here. And Andrew and I've agreed that I won't do a build conference next year,

but I'll support the EXP Con event. And then, you know, God willing, 2027 will do build again. That is so exciting. I can't wait to come to South Africa. You must come. Wait. I am going to be there next year.

And then I'm coming again the year after to support you as well, at your build event. Awesome, Kay. Yeah. So let's talk about South Africa. Where in South Africa do you live? I'm in Cape Town, which is on the very southern tip of Africa. South Africa is the country that is on the southernmost part of Africa.

There's 60-odd, I think, other countries in Africa. So if people's geography is a bit sketchy on African geography, we are one of the countries in Africa. We're called South Africa. Cape Town's on the very tip. And I will say this about Cape Town. It was voted, and it's been voted a number of times, the top tourist destination in the world. When people come to Cape Town, they cannot believe what they are encountered with.

They are expecting kind of rural Africa. I'm not sure what a lot of foreigners expect. But when they get you, they see this is an incredible city. Okay, tell me a little bit more about that. What's it like? What is the average house price there? So, property in Cape Town is very expensive by South African standards. And the rest of the country, just about the rest of the country, is really under pressure because we have a lot of political problems within South Africa.

And where I live in the Western Cape area of South Africa, we have a different political party that kind of runs the municipalities. So a lot of people are wanting to move, we call it semigration, a lot of people are moving from other parts of South Africa into the Cape. That has kept our property prices very buoyant. If you want to buy a luxury property on the seafront in Cape Town, you can be looking at, you know, 60 to 80 million RAND. US dollars, 80 million RAND in U.S. dollars is about 5 million U.S. dollars. Okay. So, you know, it's still, it's not as expensive as you would pay in America.

To get a nice family home in Cape Town in a relatively nice suburb, let's say three bedrooms, two baths, rooms, maybe a small pool and a small garden. You're looking at probably three and a half to four million rand, which is maybe 250,000 US dollars. So, yeah, and let me digress just for a second, Kerry, one of the things you will love about visiting South Africa as an American or Europeans, the same story, because your currency is so strong compared to the South African Rand, which is our currency, everything will be so unbelievably cheap for you when you're here. You will have the vacation of a lifetime, and it'll cost you a fraction of what a vacation

into Europe or something like that would cost you. Oh, I'm so looking forward to this. So do you have like whole foods there? Like, what city would you say that Cape Town is most like in the U.S.? I don't know. Probably very similar to San Francisco or San Diego, I would even. imagine. Very interesting.

Okay, okay, this is great. And, oh my goodness. Are there, so I guess there's beaches in Cape Town, right? Some of the best in the world. What's the weather like? Because you think Africa and you think like 150 degrees. We have a very similar climate to what they have in San Diego. So our summer is obviously reversed because we're in the southern hemisphere.

So our summer is December, January, February. and beautiful in Cape Town, not too hot. We do get a bit of wind in summer. So if you want to, you know, the secret season to come to Cape Town is actually March. That isn't. And we try to have the build conference late February every year because it's the perfect time for our overseas guests to be in the city. So do you still coach a lot of agents or are you kind of like just enjoying life right now? Yeah, I'm just done.

I asked a guy the other day, how are you doing? And his answer was like pretty close to how I feel. I'm saying this tongue in cheek. It's not half fuel. But he said it's only as good as your golf. So that's like, you know, I'm trying to spend a lot less time with the sort of coaching and hands on. Even guys in my team in EXP know I'm not here to coach you.

In fact, even when I sponsor people personally. personally now, Carrie, and this could be a whole other discussion. I say to them, I'm not yet to coach you. I'm not yet to be your mom or your PA or your, if you need help desperately with something, reach out to me. But you're not going to hear, I'm not going to be checking in on you and seeing if you're okay. You need to be able to stand on your own two feet as an ex-be agent.

I just tell people straight from the beginning. And that has worked for me. There are agents in my team that take the total opposite approach. They provide huge support in little meetings. And now, I do do stuff for the whole group, but it's always one to many communications. I do, you know, big team meetings. I produce a lot of really good video-based resources that the team can use. But I'm not going to do any one-on-one support.

You can forget that. I got into this to be free, not to get a job. So, you know what? I feel like the agents, how am I going to say this? I feel, so I have, I have both in my downline. I have agents that call me. every single day and i will tell them what to do every day um and then i have agents that i've never heard of for her and it's the agents that i've never heard from that are doing the best

surprise surprise the agents that want me to tell them what to do every day they don't ever do what i tell them to do anyways and it's super frustrating so i'm trying to take on a new leave so now when they call me and they want to have a discussion i'm like hey are you are you calling me to say high as a friend or are you calling me to get some information on what you should be doing today to get business? Because you haven't been taking my advice for the last six months. And I know you're not trying to waste my time, right? Because people pay a lot of money for my time. And I got to get really like passive, aggressive with them. And then they're like, no, no, no. Oh, no. Just call on, just call them to stay high. Just freak them out of it.

Okay. Let me quote a stat to you. And, you know, as much as sort of EXP corporate probably wouldn't want to hear me tell the story, but it is just a statistic. So probably the most important stat in our business, or one of them, is your FLQA to FLA ratio. Okay. So how many people on your first tier are FLQA's? Let's explain what that is. Let's explain that. Okay, so in terms of, in terms of EXP's revenue sharing system, we get paid through seven generations of agents that join our network. So if I introduce a bunch of people that are on my first tier, but then they might introduce some people, those people are on my second tier, and we get paid through seven generations of agents. When any of them do a transaction, we get a percentage of that.

But from your generations or tiers four onwards, four, five, six, and seven, you've got to unlock your earnings on those tiers. You don't get paid on those transactions automatically. How do you do that by having X number of what is called FLQAs, frontline qualifying agents? So those are people on your first tier, people you've personally sponsored, who are doing, essentially it's about two deals a year. That's what it works out as. It'll be a U.S. dollar in South Africa, it's a rand value criterion.

Basically, it's going to be someone who's selling two homes a year is what creates them being a qualifying agent. If you've got, I think it's 15 or 10 qualifying agents or five or something, you then open up your fourth tier. If you've got 15, you open up your fifth tier. 20, you open up your sixth tier. And then if you've got 30, you open up your seventh tier. So if you have got a big organization. and you've got a bunch of people on your seventh tier, you really want 30 FLQAs because otherwise people are doing deals that you're not getting paid on, which you could be. So that's why it's an important stat.

Now, back to the story, I've got an agent in my group, unbelievable leader. Her name is Lisner Nell. She's the current chairperson. You know, Lizna. I mean, she's just like this phenomenon. She's the kind of person who you dream of having in your revshed team. because she's going to do it. It doesn't matter what I do. She's going to go and do it. She's unbelievable. She is building on top of her revenue share group. She is a very successful

agent. She's one of the only icon agents in South Africa. And she's got her own branded real estate team for realtor South Africa. Now, she provides the most incredible level of support. She has a daily huddle. She has office Wednesday. They have training that they run every week. She helps the new agents. she sits with people. She's like next level support for the agents that join her, okay? I'm on the other extreme. Here are the resources, and I do want to make a point on that just now. I've provided very good resources for my team, okay?

But they're all pre-recorded. They're there for you if you need them. Here are the resources. Here's what to access them. You need to stand on your own two feet. Let me know if I can do anything. That's what I do. Now, you would think that listeners, FLQA,

to FLA ratio would be higher than mine, you would expect, because she's providing all this additional training and support. Mine's actually higher than hers. So I've got 99 people on my first tier. I've got 43 FLQA. So it's like a 45%, it fluctuates between 45 and 50% of my FLAs or and hers is around 40%. Oh, wow. So, you know, there is some, something about selling EXP to high quality agents and telling them from the word go, you need to stand on your own two feet. People rise to our expectations of them, but here's the thing. I will go a whole week, Carrie, and my phone won't ring. I've got 912 agents in a revenue share team or 911, and my phone won't drink, whereas Lizna's phone probably rings 30 times a day because she's supporting people, et cetera. this is a lifestyle choice

and I'm very grateful I've done it the way I've done it. I guess so. Eventually she's going to want to retire and she's going to, you know, have to put some more systems in place to be able to do that, right? What I did

because I think here in North America there aren't a lot of people doing it your way. They're offering so much that nobody can actually take a advantage of everything that's offered, okay? That's what's happening here. So what happens is agents shop around to see where they're going to get the most value. I'm like you.

I have everything pre-recorded. I used to do weekly meetings. I just dropped them to monthly meetings. But in anticipation of people having questions, you know that I'm traveling all over the world constantly. Like I'm here for maybe a week of month if I'm lucky. I just hired somebody to take all the file. That's what I did.

I took one of my agents who is really, really, really good at being supportive and doing the admin stuff. And she's like the mother hen, but not necessarily great with the drive of going out to find new business. And I said, you are wonderful the way you are. I'm going to pay you from being your wonderful self. Let's do this.

And now I have somebody. who will answer questions. Because, like, Steven, I have no business answering questions about deals anyways. I haven't traded in two years. So, like, if somebody called me and asked me about a clause, I'd be like, I don't know. I think there's new regulations in place. You might want to call a broker anyways, right? So this is just like my buffer.

So I'm trying to get where you're at. And yeah. But one of the things I wanted to ask you is, so, I have, I obviously attract agents. A lot of them. I do not have a large downline. I have like 10 people. Okay. I have 20 something thousand that I attract, but I attract them for my other business. I think now that that business is built and scaling, I'm ready to jump into agent attraction. So I, what I got, like this was such a high value podcast for me personally, Stephen, because you gave me so much. You have no idea.

I'm trying to figure out, do I want to build a bot that's going to do agent accruiting in my go high level account? Because that's so me, right? And you're going to remember 25,000 agents that like want to be in my community or in this database. So I'm like, how do I go about this? How do I track them? A lot of them I've never met before. I don't know if I'm comfortable having a conversation. So I'm going to do what you did.

I am going to have the bot put it out there and be like, hey, I'm doing a super exclusive meeting. Like, this is so, this is gold for me right now. And then they're all going to show up and I'm just going to like, I'm going to nail the box. No, I'm joking. But this is so great. So if we could have a conversation after this, I would love to call you because you said there's other things to it and I just want to back your brain because I do this company has changed

my entire life not for the same reasons as you not for the same reasons as Jennifer Jones like we're all building different businesses that look completely like some of them like some of us are doing real estate you know what I mean um I would be doing what I'm doing if I didn't join XP okay yeah and I want to put that opportunity in front of people out to show them that there's more to life than just selling real estate, because a lot of us, especially the way the market's been, are getting very resentful of our clients, our business. And I just want to give everybody the opportunity that I have. So yeah, I'm definitely going to call you after. I'm so thankful that you shared that because that's exactly what I needed to hear to see

you guys know all my listeners. I do this podcast on a, like, I do it for you guys, sure, but like this is purely selfish. Like, this is so I can talk to people like Stephen, like Amy, like Elizabeth, and get the answers that I'm wondering about. I'm not, maybe one day I'll open it up to the public and say, hey, what do you want me to ask Stephen when I have them on my podcast? But until then, I'm just going to ask him what I want to know. So I, appreciate that. Let's have one more question before we leave. How much time we go? We can go. We can keep going. Like we can. Okay, cool. Let me share with you. I don't think the picture is complete unless I share with you what I have done to create stability and growth

within the organization. Okay. So I'm going to give you four things that I have worked very hard on. Although I'm not doing one-on-one support, these things have created the environment for growth. So number one is big events. So Brent is obviously the master of that internationally. And Brent was a huge support to me, obviously to bring the build event to South Africa. So that build conference is hugely stressful and it is a financial risk. But it is absolutely, but there's nothing like a big event. Something happens at big event. Something happens at big event. that just cannot duplicate in any other environment. And it's very difficult to quantify,

but big decisions happen in people's hearts as they're sitting in a room and there's energy and there's a speaker and it's just something about it. That I do. The second thing was I knew from the get-go when I joined, I have to create good resources that duplicate. So it's not what works that counts. It's what duplicates that counts. So if I show you the model, for example,

and it's a very first time you've seen the model actually explained and you think, wow, that is actually pretty good. I'd love to show my colleague, you have to be able to immediately go and explain this to your colleague. Now, if I have sat with you and drawn circles all over a piece of paper and told it, you're never going to be able to go and do that with your colleague. If I showed you a video, that's what you're thinking. You're just going to go and press play and show the next person.

And then they're going to press play. So I understood that. that I have to create really good resources. So we have a very good model explained. And that has been my number one priority in this country. And then sitting behind that, there's probably 20, 25 other resource pages, follow up resources and onboarding video. And that's that that so frequently asked questions or things that everyone is going to want to know. We have an onboarding drip campaign for Everyone who joins the business, how do you use the listing system? How do you get your listings online?

That's the first thing people need to know. How do you get paid? How do you do the financial, where you've got a thing called FICO, where you've got to financially qualify people? How do you do that with the XP systems? These are urgent matters. I don't want to do that one-on-one. So I've just created good resources that do all of the major tasks of the business.

And then we create one place where everyone can find the resources. I'll make you a deal. You share with me the framework of everything you provide your agents. I know I can't use it because South Africa is different than Canada. I will help you create a bot that can communicate all of this information. What do you think? Beautiful. Let's do it.

Now they can ask the bot questions as well. Love it. I've got something else. I want to ask your advice on something when I get to the end of this. The third thing I've done is you have to create community. People want to belong. They want to feel like they're part of a community. So my group is all over South Africa, which is a big country.

So it's like, how do I do that? I never do in-person meetings. It's everything's online, but we have been able to create great community every two weeks. I do a team meeting called Family Time. Everyone in a whole group knows about it. So out of 900, I probably get 150 on that meeting every two weeks. And it's where people collaborate and they ask questions. and we do kudos and thank yous and everyone's saying thank you.

It's incredible. It's actually a great agent attraction meeting. We invite guests and then they get blown away by the culture. We've got a WhatsApp group. I know agents, I know you guys don't use WhatsApp, but in South Africa, we use WhatsApp. And we have a WhatsApp group. There's 700 of us on that. If anybody ever needs help, I know, just put a question on the WhatsApp group.

So now my phone's not ringing because we've got community helping community. So you've got big events. create good resources that duplicate and solve all the major problems, create community. And then the last thing is, I have learned the people who must get my attention on my leaders. So I've created three mastermind groups. I've got a leadership mastermind. And to get into that, you've got to have 15 people on your first tier or more. There's probably eight of us at the moment, and we meet every two weeks.

So one of the things I've learned is, if you want to build a strong organization, identify who your leaders are get them together and get out the way good people where you get good people together there's a magic and and I'm not a good person I'm not a I'm just honestly I know nothing about anything I just get good people together I just get out of the way it's unbelievable what happens now I mean that case seriously it's like I'm still faking it one day somebody's actually going to figure out this I can do absolutely nothing but I could you get good people together. The second one is all the capping agents. Now, you would do it with icon

agents. We don't have enough icon agents. So we just do it with all the capping agents. There's about 55 in my group out of the 900. And we meet once a month. Just get the capping agents together. One person gets the floor and there's a little agenda I get them to go through. What's the best thing and the worst thing that's happening in

your business right now? What new strategy have you got? So, masterminds and then I've got a small group mastermind. So I have planted small groups like sell groups all over South Africa. We've got about 20 small groups and people have just stuck their hand up to lead one of those. They meet in coffee shops or whatever.

I've got nothing to do with them, but every two months I meet with the small group leaders just to see how they're doing. Again, I just say, hey, let's go around the room. What are you doing? And I just get out the way. And they all encourage each other. So mastermind groups was the fourth thing there.

I've got a question for you, but do you want to respond to that? I love all of that, and I've heard a lot, like, I feel like the listeners and viewers are going to get so much out of what you just said because I speak to a lot of people about age and attraction, but they don't get in depth about exactly what they do on the back end, on the support level, right? So I think that's valuable because attraction is one thing, but retention is another. And I think all of these little pieces that you've put into place, you've been able to do it without placing yourself right in the middle at all times. And I think that's wonderful. I'm so happy for you. I am. Cool. Thanks, Carrie. So here's, if somebody were to ask me, Stephen, what do you want to do? What is on your luck dream list? Because the currency conversion from South African rands to US dollars or Canadian dollars or European, you know, euros is so favorable from our perspective if we get

foreign income. I would love to build a revenue share team in the US or Canada or Europe. I have put up a very good model explained video for the US. I shot a whole new video. So just like we did for South Carolina, produced one for America. I do have one US agent already. But I wish I could find a way because I don't know any U.S. agents. I wish I could find a way to drive U.S. agents to that model explain page, watch it, and then a percentage of them will click the button to book an appointment with me. That's what I want to do. Build a U.S. or Canadian or European Revenue Share Group. How do I do that? I think that you, if I were you, I would do it through digital contact creation, organic, organically. I wouldn't go the paid ad route. I don't really

believe in that. And with AI, you can do that at a very high level that will take them to that landing page. Essentially, that's how I've built my company. How I've built my company is through content creation from like nine platforms, really just answering the questions that my target is asking online. And then they get in my funnel. I offer them a lead magnet, you know, a whole funnel bit, but I'm building everything with AI. So that's what I'm doing. And it's, I've got about a hundred, organically around 100 leads coming in a week. We just added paid ads in January and now we've, we've, we've like doubled that, obviously. But up until January, we were spending like a few hundred dollars a month on retargeting ads.

That's all we did for a year and a half. So I'm all organic and it's all content creation. Like, yes, I go and speak places and that can be a top of funnel as well. but I convert because I'm everywhere. Like, if you follow me, like, you're going to see me every single day until you die. But I'm also going to say something super interesting. I'm going to answer a question you've been wondering about. You know what I mean?

So, and I gave away really good free shit. So if you want help with that, I can help you with that. I'd love help with that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll help you build your. your structure for agent attraction. I love that.

It's something I have to do. I just joined Brent's inner circle this year, and I'm loving it. I'm really loving it. I'm speaking to his people in Sacramento in September. And hopefully that goes well, and then I can be in Cabo next year. Come to Spain, Carrie. There's a build in Spain in September. Yeah.

It's not publicly, it's not public. I probably shouldn't be telling this on a live podcast. 99% sure that's going to happen. And I will be there. So you want to come to Spain? Come and join me. 100%. Like I, listen, because, like, this is one thing about me.

Because I am built such an amazing brand from my home office, you're seeing me every day, but I don't leave my house. So when somebody invites me to speak, I'm there. Like, it's not your question. And it's like right right now. And my husband is all because he comes with me everywhere. You know, Ricardo. And he's like, I'm going to get fired.

Like, he doesn't like leaving the house because he's gone 10, 12 hours a day. But he's like, I get it. Like, you're here. Like, sometimes I'll go to the store and buy a bag of candy and just sit in my car and eat it for an hour. And he's like, where are you? I'm like, out of the house. So I am down to go anywhere.

I am. Yeah. Yeah. anywhere. This is going to be awesome. I'm actually, yeah, I'm going to text you after we get off as well. So don't go anywhere. I have one more question. What's the one tech tool that you cannot live without? I'm going to have to give you a couple. Can I give you a couple? Of course. Give me all of them. Okay. So I do a lot of landing pages and free webinars and stuff to keep the population of all of the expe agents in the country to keep them engaged with me.

I do a lot of free webinars and stuff. So in order to build a database, you've got to be able to build your own landing pages that look good. So a long time ago, I learned to use a landing page building software. The one I use is called Unbounce, UnB-B-O-U-N-C-E, Unbounce. and I've learned how to use it really, really well. And that has been such a powerful tool for me. And then that integrates with my primary communication channel is email. So I've got a big MailChimp account and I've got automated drip campaigns set up in there.

I've got all sorts of things set up in my MailChimp account. Those are two tools that I really depend on. I love that and respect that because I'm all about automation and the funnel. I'm going to make a suggestion right now. I want you to check out a site. It's app. dot landing. So app.

landing. dot. This is an AI powered landing page creator instantly. I think you are going to freaking love it. I got to check it out. And I know you're using MailChimp. Take a look at Go High Level. And I'm saying that because if you look at it like,

you can also you're not just hitting with email you can hit with text messaging but also you can customize a bot as well they can answer questions right in your CRM which is wonderful um when we're dealing with leads some people aren't ready to talk to us right away but yet we don't want to just you know hit them with emails we want to be more engaging maybe they have questions they just don't want a human and it's a really good solution to warm people up um it's probably my favorite I know a lot of real estate agents don't use it. This is for business owners. Sorry, guys.

Sorry, guys, but I really like that one. It's got a lot of integrations. It's fantastic. So definitely check those out. And Stephen, thank you so much for making the time to come on here, especially like, you know, I'm very aware of the time change for you. And I really appreciate it. And we're going to do some amazing things.

things. So your people can look forward to a bot that is trained on all of the knowledge that Stephen wants to give it about EXP so that it can answer questions for agents that you guys are recruiting. So I really look forward to that because I'm doing that for you no matter what. Beautiful. Carrie, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate your having me on as well. It really is a privilege. So thank you so much. Okay. Thank you. Don't go anywhere. they never told you about real estate. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. To connect with Carrie, or for more information about her coaching program,

check out carysovey.ca or at Carrie Sovey and Associates on Instagram and TikTok. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.