KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Stop Losing Your Agents - Advice for Firm Owners and Team Leaders

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

So if you don't mind, tell everyone who you are, what you do, how you do it, and all that good jazz. All right. I'm Susan McLean. And I actually was senior network analyst. I'm now director of agent retention at EXP. So I didn't tell you that before we went live. So, but essentially what I do, what I do now is I do everything retention at EXP prior to this position, just like, I don't know, a week. and a half ago maybe I took this position. But prior to that, I worked with the large networks at EXP, right, the large organizations. So EXP Lingo, they're called Alpha's and Beta's, if you're familiar with that. So I worked really closely with them, helping them to run a better organization under the EXP umbrella, really focused on attraction. But my two big pillars that I really tried to go deep with those leaders on are retention and productivity. That's really where I'm passionate of helping

our agents sell more homes, be more productive. The more homes they sell, obviously, the happier they are, the more money they're making, the longer they stay at EXP. So productivity and retention, all kind of married, you know, they're kind of married together. Yeah, you know, when we bring on an agent, we always call it the belief check to be their first check, the first check, to believe that they can do this. You know, there's something part of that. So called the belief check. So since you're writing that down. Yeah, the belief check, yep, because they don't believe it, Right? Nothing is they don't believe RevShare. They don't believe stock. They don't believe. And this goes with any firm. They don't believe commission. They don't believe this until they get the first piece of money. And then they start to believe that they can actually do this and that it makes sense in their world. Yeah. That's exactly right. And I've been in real estate for over 20 years. And I've been everything from a coach, a trainer, a managing broker, you know, VP of sales. So you kind of name it. I've probably probably had that position in real estate at some point. And you're right. So mindset is extremely important so much so that I kind of took a hiatus a little bit from real estate and really went deep into how to,

into coaching salespeople around the mindset of sales and success because I saw so many agents. And honestly, I saw so many leaders too, like manager levels and higher really struggle with the mindset. And, you know, if you can't, if you can't believe it, just like you said, right, you're not going to be able to experience it. I meant my husband calls me a hippie. I've got my mala beads on. Right. So, you know, I'm all about energy and you really have to, you know, you have to get the mind in the right place before, you know, the results follow. Totally agree. You know, that being the number one thing. You know, they wrote a book called Think and Grow Rich, right? It's think first. But what, since you've been around the block, you've kind of checked out the VP side, you've, the alphas, the betas, these larger organizations.

And let's just stay to this subject just real quick. What would you say are the top two to three things that those organizations put in place to retain their agents? And if you don't mind, get great, get super deep into it if you want to. Yeah, I would love to. I could talk for days. So you're going to have to cut me off so I don't miss my plane. I will.

I promise. Okay. So, you know, from a retention standpoint, it's, there's really three things. that we should be doing to retain our agents. And by the way, you can also kind of flip these around to learn how to attract agents from other brokerages, right? But I'll just kind of stick to the retention side for a second. So the first thing that you should be doing and that the really good, you know, leaders, we'll just call them leaders, right? The thing that the really good leaders do is they have a deep relationship with their agents. So the quality of your relationship and the

deeper your relationship is with your agents, obviously, the longer they're going to stay with you. And I put it like this. Like, you know, imagine, I mean, this is horrible, but it kind of paints a picture, right? But imagine something, you know, tragic happened in one of your agent's lives, right? They got sick. Something happened to their, you know, send their family. Would they call you? Would they call you and be like, oh, man, like this thing happened?

And I just, I need to talk through it with someone because you want that, right? you want to be able to be that person and you want that deep relationship with your agents. So the ones that are successful in retaining their agents have a deep relationship. And that comes down to many things, right? Sometimes it's giving them something, you know, like here's a business plan, here's a token, here's a free training, you know, whatever it is, right? But it's also being vulnerable. When you're vulnerable with the people that you're around, your agents, they start to see you as a human.

And that's something I think we're really missing in today's society, right? Because, you know, you look at anyone's social media, mine included, right? You look me up on social and you just see like all the pretty happy things. But when you show vulnerability to someone, that relationship can go from surface level to super deep like that. So that's that's number one, right? So and actually I was talking to Connor Steinbrook, actually. So if you don't know, Connor, great leader. And he said, and I'm not going to quote him directly. You know, I'm going to mess this up. I know. Basically, it was something like, you know, good leaders know the names of their first line. You know, great leaders know their third line. And phenomenal leaders know, like the spouse and the kids names and, you know, the business goals and all of that. So, and he's a great leader, right? So he's a great one to learn from. Yeah, I'm writing this down.

So relationship. Relationship, that's huge. And, you know, I was going to ask you two things that we could break off of that relationship that we could actually systematically put into our own business. And you gave that to me. Be vulnerable and really know about your agents, you know, however deep it goes, again, depending on whatever brokerage it is, just going deeper and deeper and really understanding them, their lives and everything else.

I think that's huge. You know, back in the day, I used to be a CEO. of a Keller Williams office. And I was thinking about hiring what I was calling a C-H-O or a chief heart officer, someone who just focused on that because that was one of the big things that I felt like I was slacking at. And I wanted someone to kind of hold that position and make it their own and own it and really give back to the agents through the heart. So I love that. So I'm going to give you a great book. And it's kind of around that. It's around vulnerability and, creating safety in groups and in organizations. And it's called the Culture Code. It's by Daniel

Coil, C-O-Y-L-E. And it's a phenomenal book. So I actually took a class on it, like kind of like a master class. This was a few years ago. I don't remember what platform it was. But I took this class on the book. And it was amazing. And then I taught it to the franchise that I was running at the time. I taught it to all the managers and the senior leadership. But it really does kind of teach you how to create that safety and that, you know, that leading from the heart in an organization. And it works. A lot of the principles will work virtually and in person. There are some things that are like, you know, sit in a circle when you're together and do high fives, you know, stuff that you can't necessarily do on Zoom. But there's a lot of it that you can incorporate into your organization.

And we have large organizations, right? I mean, literally we have organizations that span the entire globe. And there are things in that book principles that you can incorporate. Yeah, that's interesting. Even sitting in a circle is interesting, right? Because it doesn't show a hierarchy, right? It's a circle. It's a woman sitting on one side of the table. Yeah. And we all know that, you know, the body language is so important.

You know, 7% of what we say is conveyed with our words or 7% yeah, of, you know, of our intent, right, is conveyed with our words. But everything else is, you know, our inflection. It's our body language. And so, you know, it's those cues, right, that we don't necessarily pick up on until we start to study it. That's awesome. Okay.

So what would you say is the second part of retain? Because you got the relationship and we kind of went deep into that. What would be the second version of that? Yeah. Yeah. So the second preventable reason that someone will leave you is they question their financial success. So they think that they would make more money somewhere else.

And when I talk about money, I'm not talking about fees and splits. It has nothing to do with what they pay. It has everything to do with, do they think that they can make the income that they have, that they've set as a goal for themselves? So the clearer you can be to help them, you know, see that clear financial path from where they are to where they want to be, the longer you're going to retain them, right, the more agents that you're going to retain. So sometimes though when I talk about this, you know, most agents who have

organizations, right, most leaders in our company, most of them haven't run a brokerage like you and I have, they don't necessarily have that background of business planning and, you know, and all of that. So that gets a little bit, a little scary to them sometimes, right? It doesn't have to be this phenomenal business plan. It can be something on, you know, a napkin as far as, you know, here are the top five classes that I want you to take. And once you take these five classes, I want you to loop back to me. Tell me what you learned and then we're going to go to the next, you know, the next set of classes, right? It could be as something as simple as what are all the different ways that you,

You can generate leads at EXP, and then let's start going through those. Or it could be a full-on business plan. But the more clarity they have around how to achieve those financial goals, they're on a path. You're helping them. You're not doing it for them. You're not hand-holding. But you're kind of clearing out the weeds in front of them, right? And that's what a good leader will do.

Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, we just brought on another agent. And, you know, they said, tell me what to do, and I'll do it. That's all it is. is like, show me the path. I just want to climb that path, you know? And that's a good agent right there. I want more of those, right? I'll go do it if you tell me what to do, but most agents, they don't know the first step. And they're so concerned about the end result of how am I going to get my first closing. And it's not how are you going to get your first closing.

It's how are you going to contact the first person and the first five people? And then, you know, and it's how are you going to get outside of your comfort zone? It's those steps. They're so concerned about the end result and, you know, I just left my corporate job and can I make what I, what I left? And they're thinking down the line and we have to readjust their financial picture to what's step one and step two. And if we keep clearing the weeds in front of them, they'll get to that, what do you call it the belief check. Yeah. I'm going to steal it. You should steal it. You should steal it. Drop my name in that room that you're going to be in. I will. I will. But that, I mean, that totally makes sense. You're chunking it.

down you're not making it too big of a thing just get to closing and what does that even look like i don't even know what that looks like to get a closing or a belief check you know at the very end but you're saying how many people we're going to chat with today and maybe even who is that person so what you know talking to these local organizations did they mention some of the blocks that happen in the mindset for them to even do the simple activity of maybe talking to some of their warm leads And if so, what are some of the strategies that they give to them to help them move past that? That's such a great question. You're right.

And you know this as well as I do, that the path is one thing. But the agent taking the steps down the path is something else, right? And so what I used to do, and this works, it worked for me for coaching and training my agents and still works today. But what I did was I gave them a list of options. So I used to do expires. I loved expires. I despised for sale by owners. I had a horrific for sale by owner experience.

I still have nightmares about it. So I don't ever want to do another for sale by owner, but I loved expires. I could do internet leads, no problem. I didn't have a sphere when I start. Right. So you have all of these different paths. And we tend to, as agents, we tend to say, well, this worked for me. Open houses worked for me.

So you're an agent. I want you to do 10 open houses. They might hate open houses, but maybe they're really good at cold calls or there's, you know, whatever it is. But I think the big thing is have them. I started to say make them. We can't make them do anything. Have them try everything. Right.

Have them try everything. And then, you know, what they're find out what they're good at and then find out what they're medium at and find out what they don't want to do. And so we kind of direct them to do that. And that's, I think that's probably, and it sounds really. simple, right? It's very basic. But it's true. If we give them different paths, it's your choice, which path you go down, but I want you to try these seven or these five or whatever it is. Right. And start eliminating the ones that doesn't necessarily fit with who you are as a person.

Yes, but we have to give them those multiple paths because if we give them one that worked for us, if they're not just like us, and there are different personality types and different things drive people. If we get to that, you know, I can go through what those primary motivators are. But, you know, different people are driven by different things. So we have to give them, let them find their path. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting.

Are there any tests or assessments that you would put in place to help you identify what that is as a leader, like DISC or five love languages or something like that? Yeah. So I've done DISC so often for my agents. And I think DISC is important to understand how to communicate with our agents. But I think it's really important for them to understand disc so they understand how to communicate with their clients, right? Is it going to affect what they do and what they're good at? Maybe, you know, but ultimately, I think it's more important for them to understand how to

have that, how to how to identify is my client a driver or are they, you know, a high S or, you know, whatever it is. And I think at that point, the communication becomes easier with them. So more than anything, I would use it for that. Yeah, that makes sense, right? Because not saying that all would, but maybe an S or an I or definitely a C, you know, they may get their villains hurt in a way of a high driver or high D. But for them to understand, oh, this is just a personality has nothing to do with me.

That may help them get through that conversation as well. That's a good point. Yeah, that was a great question, though. I love the personality styles. And the more that you learn about it, the more it will benefit you in all. all areas. So yeah, totally. Okay, cool. So we got 15 more minutes. So that was fantastic. We covered that first half in 15 minutes. Perfect. The next 15 minutes, attraction. So what would be the two things that you see these larger organizations, firms, whatever, that has worked the best on not just attraction,

but bringing on talented people, not just numbers, but people who want to create something bigger, have a good vision, just all around great people. How do you start attracting? those type of people. So I think first it comes down to understanding who's your ideal agent avatar, right? So what's my ideal agent look like? What do they sell? Are they a team leader? Are they an individual? You know, what's their niche? So once I have my ideal agent avatar defined, that helps me narrow down who I'm looking for, right? You know, from there, darn it, I lost my train of thought. I had something really good to say. I hate it when that happens. I'll get back to it. Oh, all the time.

I have so many things constantly in my head. Okay. I literally took our agent what I was thinking yesterday this morning. I said, oh, da-da-da-da-da. And they were like, you're crazy, man. But 24 hours later. But yes, go ahead. I know, exactly.

Okay, I'll be on the plane later. I'll be like, oh, darn it. That was my point. Okay, but identify your ideal agent avatar. One really important step that I always have people do too is to look at your organization and identify the, I call it. I call them up and coming rock stars in your organization. So look at your organization and who's been on board with EXP 120 or maybe 180 days or less.

And they've already had closings. Those are your up and coming rock stars. And those are probably your ideal agent, right? Your ideal agent avatars. So if you can identify them, they have a fantastic opportunity at that point to attract other agents in their market. So Agent Bob comes on and Bob's been here four months and he's already had two closings and Bob's in Boston, Massachusetts. The other agents in Boston, I guarantee they know that Bob moved to EXP because we know when agents

move companies, right? In our market, we always know that. So the other agents in Boston know that Bob moved to EXP. Bob's already closing. Bob is social proof that EXP works and we know it works, right? But sometimes agents, they question, right? And that's okay. So Bob has a fantastic opportunity to attract other agents in Boston because he's social proof.

I came to EXP. I'm having closings and having that conversation with Bob. So here's what I would tell the leader that I'm working with. You find your bobs. You call them. You introduce yourself if you don't know them. I'm Susan. I'm in your upline.

I just wanted to say congratulations. I see you've been with EXP just a few months. You're having success. Tell me how you got into real estate. Tell me, you know, why you came. to EXP. What do you love about it? What are you using? You know, why are you here? How can I help you? Where are your goal? You know? So get to learn Bob's story. And as you learn Bob's story, you'll probably find other agents that you're attracting that are very close to Bob's story. And then you can use Bob's

story. And sometimes you can use Bob, you know, as a third party, you know, call to say, I already came to ex-p, I'm where you are or I'm where you want to be. But the more you know those stories, the more you're going to be able to use those stories to help other agents. Yeah, that's really cool. And you could, if you want to nerd out, like I'm probably going to do it at this point, is building an Excel spreadsheet that has the questions at the top. And for the 120-day people, you put them in one column. And you would start to mark or even type like a quick word, or maybe two words of the answer of the question. And the spreadsheet will say loud and clear who your avatar is because you're going to see a pattern.

And that's probably something we'll do now. So that's interesting. I love that. So you know if you go into MyEXP, you can download your organization, right? So if you don't know, and I know you know probably, but if someone doesn't know, you go into MyExP, you click on your RevShare tab. You click on the total number of agents in your organization inside that blue circle. and then there's a download button in the upper right hand corner.

So you download them into an Excel sheet, and you can identify your up-and-coming rock stars by doing that. So many of us look at MyExP on our phone, but we don't go into our laptop. We don't download it, and there is so much information when you do that. Yeah, we'll probably add it to our onboarding process, meaning like we had an agent joined today in Fayetteville, North Carolina,

and we'll probably set a four-month follow-up for the person, for the person to look at their stats to anatomy give us the 120. So that way we're not constantly downloading and highlighting and trying to find. It's already in the system of something we'll look at to ask said questions to start putting to Excel spreadsheet to build an avatar. And then there goes my nerds. I love that, though. That's a great pointer.

What else? What else? One more. Yeah. So I'm going to actually expand on that a little bit more. I'm going to give you one other question to ask your rock stars. And it's what motivates you. And this is something I had alluded to earlier.

You know, we can go into this if we have time. And apparently we're going to have time. So, you know, if you find out what motivates your agents, this goes back to number one on your preventable reasons that agents will leave you as the relationship that you have with them. But if you understand their primary motivation and real estate, it is like talking to their soul. Like you talked about love languages earlier. That's exactly what you're doing. So the three primary motivators of an agent, number one is money.

and that's not good or bad, it's what it is, right? A certain amount of us are motivated by making money. Fantastic. If I know that my agent's motivated by making money, as I'm talking to this agent and saying, hey, by the way, you know, we've got this training coming up and I'd love for you to attend. If you do that, I think it can help you make more money next year or this year. Would that be beneficial to you? You're going to be like talking to their soul because that's what drives them.

So the second motivator is helping others. There are a lot of team leaders who are motivated by helping others, not by gaining their market share or making more money off their team. Their primary motivation is helping others. When you talk to a team leader and they say, well, how will coming to EXP benefit my team? It's because their primary motivation is helping others. So if you come here, Bob, you know, James, whoever you're talking to, and we can help you grow your team and your team members and here's what we can do and get them on this path,

you can help more people. Would that be beneficial to you? And so the third motivator is personal achievement. So a lot of those individual agents who probably should have a team, but they don't. They want to keep that individual status because they want to say, I did it. Not my team did it. I did it, right? Personal achievement is their primary motivator. And so if you come to this training or you come to EXP, right, it can help you to achieve all of your dreams. You want to have a number one market share in your county, I can help you get there. Would that be beneficial to you? Right. So those are the three primary motivators. And so as you're talking to your ideal eight or your rock stars that you brought on, understanding

what their primary motivator is is key to having that deep relationship with them because we want to get them. We want to tie them into us, right? They're rock stars and they're newer to EXP. So we're going to tie them in by finding out what their motivation is and then talking to them in that language. Yeah, I love that. So say we have 10 agents and eight of those, we have done a really good job. We found out our avatar tied to financial units, volume results. Is, or could you also have that extra two or 20% at more of a cultural avatar, like a heart, like the people who show up to

things and give hugs and is there is there that part is there is there is there is there is there is there that part of that whole portion is that I love that I love that you know I've never had anyone explain it that way but I think what you said is true gold right because there are those people that they may not sell 20 million dollars in real estate in a year but by gosh you just love them and everyone else loves them and they're always positive and the happy and cheering each other on. And I think what you hit on is, is amazing. So there is definitely a place for that.

So I do want my ideal agent avatar. That's who that's who I want to attract into my organization. But those glue agents, right? They are so, so important. I love that. That's fantastic. Yeah, that's a great point. It is, it is the glue.

So if you look at, let's say a building and it's made out of bricks, let's say the bricks are the units, the agents who love the production and all of that. But what binds it all together is the cement. There's not as much cement as there is bricks, but the whole thing would fall without the cement. I love it. We can solve all the world's problems together. All right, monthly mastermind, you and I, this is just what we're going to do. Every month, I love it.

Yeah, we might have to add another part to the, I'll share this Excel spreadsheet too after I get it done. But I have to have a volume and a heart avatar section. Yes. That's phenomenal. Yes, that's phenomenal. No, but there are so many ways that we can connect with our agents and, you know, and create that, again, going back to culture code, right? So part of that is, you know, again, kind of creating that, that cohesiveness in your organization.

And so that's why I love that book. And I talk about that book all the time. I actually reached out to Daniel Coyle. If anyone knows him, let me know. I reached out and said, would you come speak at EXP? And I wanted him to speak to the alphas and the betas and the senior leadership. And he was like, I can't. I'm so busy.

But if anyone knows him and can get me in front of him, I would love to have him speak to the company. But I love that book. And it really does talk about how to create that cohesiveness and the glue agents. Those are amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm going to definitely look into that, look more into that and see what kind of

strategies he has. But, man, I know I've already filled up my. up pretty pretty what can what can we do for you i know we only have five minutes but what could we do for you susan oh that's a great question i'm so glad you asked so uh new role director of retention so um all things retention right so if you have and i'm kind of like i'm kind of scared to say this but if you have an agent that's struggling reach out to me right i want to be able to help them and there are so many reasons right sometimes it's just they they're not sure how to get plugged in they're not sure who to contact if they have a question.

I cannot solve all the world's problems. But if you have someone that's struggling, you have a team that came over and they're not sure where to go or how to start off on the right foot, reach out to me. I would love to step in and help them and just kind of be that face for EXP for them to help them with whatever their struggles or questions might be. And I'm not going to, again, I can't solve all the problems, but I can, I'm a good connector, right? I know who to connect them to if they have a question or an issue.

So I'm good at that. When did you take this role? Two weeks ago, maybe. It was created, actually. So we've never had anyone really over retention at EXP. So it's a new new role. And I am extremely excited to be, you know, leading the charge with retention. We have some really amazing things coming.

It's only been a couple weeks. but I know exactly where I'm taking this. And I'm, it's going, there are some things that we're going to be launching that will be game changers for us. That's great. That's great. And if there's ever anything that we could do or if you want to beta test anything with us, shoot it our way.

We'd love to work with it and work on it and all the good stuff. But, you know, I just want to say thank you for jumping on. We had 30 minutes and you crushed it and you gave tons of value, new things for us to work on in such a short amount of time. and I just really appreciate it. I want to say that for everyone who's watching as well. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me.

And I appreciate you being flexible with the time today. Totally. You got a very important meeting to get to. So again, thank you. And we'll leave on this. Where can people find you outside of workplace? Maybe, again, with another firm or just want to hear more of you. Where could they find you?

Yeah, that's a great question. Someone asked me this yesterday when I did a training. And they were like, can I reach out to you? I follow you on Instagram. I'm like, you totally can. Susan M. McLean, but I'm not, I'm not a poster. You're not going to see anything. I mean, I posted stuff like years ago. But you can reach out to me on Instagram. Give me a little while to respond to you. I'm just not a huge social media person. You can find me on LinkedIn, a workplace, and just call myself. If you can track down myself, call myself. Like, I don't care. Yeah, that's perfect. Cool. Again, thank you so

much catch that plane go to that important meeting and again if there's anything that we could do for you just let us know