No Broke Months For Salespeople - What Top Sales Leaders Do Differently When Scaling Teams | Teach to Sell Live with Karen Cooper

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

What you’ll learn in this episode: ● Why hiring because of a “pain point” often creates bigger problems ● The danger of too many specialists too early in business ● How systems create consistency—and consistency creates momentum ● Why simplifying your business can increase profitability ● The real reason 50% of hires don’t work out (and what to do about it) ● The SCARLET hiring framework: Self-starter, Competitive, Assertive, Relationship-based, Learning-based, Team player ● How removing friction in your processes leads to predictable success If you’ve ever felt capable but inconsistent in your income, this episode will show you how leadership, systems, and the right people close the gap between effort and results. 👉 Don’t miss out! Sign up here:https://link.cpi-crm.com/widget/form/bJZ4NbRp6ZpSVgGoNb4j?notrack=truehttps://link.cpi-crm.com/widget/form/bJZ4NbRp6ZpSVgGoNb4j?notrack=truehttps://link.cpi-crm.com/widget/form/bJZ4NbRp6ZpSVgGoNb4j?notrack=true Shadow Hour Updates to get the latest updates and reminders for our Shadow Hour sessions. Stay informed, stay ahead! To find out more about Dan Rochon and the CPI Community, you can check these links:Website: No Broke MonthsPodcast: No Broke Months for Salespeople PodcastInstagram: @donrochonxFacebook: Dan RochonLinkedIn: Dan RochonTeach to Sell Preorder: Teach to Sell: Why Top Performers Never Sell – And What They Do Instead

You're listening to No Broke Months for Salespeople Podcast. Thank you so much for having me here. Yes, I, so I've been in the real estate industry for 24 years. And 12 years ago, I found myself in this kind of strange place, which I think a lot of high producers, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of business owners find themselves in, which is I was feeling kind of lonely in my business. And I was struggling to find, you know, 12 years ago,

we didn't have a lot of the resources that we do now, like with your program and the Facebook groups and things like that. And I was really struggling to find a place where I could connect, specifically with other women in the industry to, you know, to learn from, to vent to, you know, no one understands what you do like the people who are in your business. And so I started this community called Empowering Women in Real Estate, which, you know, I really had no aspirations for beyond just probably my local market.

And it has grown now to more than 40,000 women in the real estate industry, are a part of this group. It has expanded to a podcast. I published my first book two years ago. We do a big annual conference. We have monthly meetups. There's a coaching program. And truly, building this organization, building this community has transformed not only my business, but my life. Wow. That's amazing. So Karen, so we're talking about like organization. So you have several different businesses, teams, organizations. And so, you know, we could take any one of them. empowering women is a great example, right, with a group of 40,000. That's a very substantial, very, you know, you should be proud of yourself. I don't know how often people tell you that,

but you should be proud of yourself, Karen. Like, you really should be proud of yourself. Like, that's amazing. Like, I know the work that you've done is I haven't had your experience, of course, right? But I know that you put a lot of work into that. And so as you've done this, like, what have you learned about, like, getting the right people in the right places, getting the right systems in the right places. Can you, Karen, can you get 40,000 people without any help to be able to do something? Like, is that something you need sort of some systems and organization and people to guide you? Would that be a true statement?

That is a very true statement. I mean, I see that through all the different threads, as you said, I do have multiple organizations, right? We have the Empowering Women, which is kind of the biggest sort of the top of the funnel organization. I have, you know, my network or my organization at my brokerage, which is about 300 people. I mean, then I have my real estate team, which is 65 people. And so at every different level, you need that. You need systems. I mean, we really emphasize, I consider myself very much a systems person, because, you know, anytime you're going to do anything at scale, you have to make it repeatable. You have to make it systematized because I am only one person and I can only do so many

things. And if you're constantly having to recreate the wheel or think about, okay, what am I going to do next or what would the next best step be? You're doing nothing, but, you know, just kind of slowing yourself down. You don't have an opportunity to get momentum. But when you can start to systematize, especially when you can borrow someone else's system who has done it well and who has a proven track record, and then you can start to implement that, then it speeds up everything that you do in your business. Yeah. I love that you say, especially when you can find somebody else's system and there's a lot of, you know, like, we're not here to sell any in any system, anything like that, you know, today. but we want to, I mean, certainly, if you're a woman, how do you, if I'm a woman, how do I join your network, by the way?

Yeah. Go to Facebook. Find the Facebook group. Empowering women in real estate is on Facebook. That's a great way to do it. Connect with me on Instagram or go to our website, Empoweringwoman and Real Estate.com. All right. So if you're a woman, go do that right now because, you know, if you're a woman in real estate.

And so, all right, so Karen, so let's go back to the organization piece of this, right? So when you talk about having the right people in place, the right systems in place, you're place, the right models in place, in that people have lived before us. So there's a model already in front of us, right? We don't necessarily need to figure things out. One of the, uh, Frazier who just left us, he, he would tell me that one of my superpowers is that I, I, I, I, I, I, I study success and I, and I, and I emulate it. I wouldn't necessarily think that I'm a very, I mean, I think maybe I'm somewhat smart, but I'm not as smart as like, my smart is to find models of success and then freaking do it. That's where my, that's where my lane of smart is.

And so there's always somebody that's done something before us. So what have you discovered as you've developed and like, like how does a system help you? How do people help you? And also what are the problems with that as well, the growing things? Yeah, so many. I mean, we've gone through multiple iterations of that. You know, we're going to talk about maybe specifically people in hiring and leveraging things like that.

You know, we've had times where we've hired people and it wasn't that they were bad people. but we weren't hiring them for the right positions. And we weren't hiring the things. We tended to hire because we had a pain point, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs do this, you have a pain point, and so you try to quickly solve that by quickly bringing someone in.

And you think that that hire is going to just immediately resolve whatever the issue is that you're experiencing. But rarely does that ever actually happen. Usually that problem that you're having is often a symptom of maybe a bigger problem. And so then what ends up happening, I know at one point in our business, we had, you know, seven or eight full-time staff members, which was a lot for where we were at that time in our business, which was way too heavy. It was way too much overhead.

It was frustrating as a business owner. It was hard to manage. And so the more clear you can be on what your roadblocks are, where you need help in your business, and so that you can hire for the right positions, then I feel like that's really the, as a business, owner, I'm constantly striving and working to manage that part of it because I feel like that's one of the hardest. Tell me about the time. So you built the staff solid first and then you added like you added salespeople on top of the structure. Is that what you did? No, we had salespeople first. Got it. Okay. So you did it that way. Okay. So then at one point you had too heavy of a staff. Like talk to us through that. What was that experience? What did you learn? What could somebody avoid or

what could somebody replicate? Yeah. So I think especially, depending on when you're first starting out with your business, you can't have too many specialists when it comes to hiring. You need to hire people that have gifts in multiple different areas. That was one problem that we had. We would have a specialist in event planning. We would have a specialist in social media. We would have a specialist in operations. We would have a specialist in transactions. We would have a videographer. And especially in the beginning, it's really hard to do that. You have to have overlap or else you end up way too heavy from a staff point of view. It's hard to It's hard to pay for.

And so we've definitely learned that. We are more profitable now. We have a bigger business now than we've ever had. And we have fewer staff now than we've ever had. And part of that just comes from years and years of learning this. And at some point, you have to not be afraid to strip it down, which is really what we did a few years ago, is we really just started simplifying, stripping down. I think we always have these great ideas. You know, let me add this to my business.

Let me add this stream. Let me add this pillar. Let me add, add, add, add, add. But while we're doing all the adding, we don't subtract anything. And you have to do a little bit of subtraction also because you just, you can't keep it all going. And so now we've really simplified to a point where it feels good. Like, you know, I love my business again. I'm excited about my business again.

They were years where I really wasn't. So, you know, that's my advice. I love it, Karen. What I heard you say is. So one of the things that I've done in my business, a lot of times people come to me and they say, Dan, how do you hire great people? Now, first of all, I outline that and teach yourself. So I give you the hiring plan and teach the cell. But I can tell you, I only get it right around 50% of the time. Yes.

So I would say for me, in hiring great people, I don't necessarily, what I do is I collect great people. Right? Because the odds are 90 days in, if you work with me, 50% of the time, you will not succeed a day 90. 50% of the time from day 90, the average tenure is six years after that. I want somebody to close her ears because I know she's here. And I heard her yesterday tell somebody else when she says, I've been with Dan's company for six years. And that was like, oh, crap. We're not at the six years mark, are we?

Leslie, you're going to re-up for another six just so you know. Anyways. So it's about getting in business with the right people and then staying in business with the right people. And then choosing not to be in the right, in the business with the wrong people. And that doesn't mean that they're bad people like Karen said. It just means that maybe the wrong seat on the bus. That's right.

Tell us, Karen, how somebody or a system has helped you grow in like specifically, like, I had this problem. It was something that I didn't want to deal with or I didn't have the capacity to deal with. Somebody else did it for me or a system did it for me. And now I, you know, I didn't have the problem after that. What comes to mind when I ask you that? Yeah, there's a couple. One that's maybe easiest to understand is a consistency problem and operations problem.

I have a podcast, like you have a podcast. And when I first launched my podcast six years ago, it was very complicated. We had a very complicated process. And it wasn't what I would consider super systematized. And what we did have was, like I said, complicated. I had to sit with someone. I had to be at a certain place in order to record the episodes. And so, you know, we started out strong.

But within a couple of months, I stopped recording episodes because it was too hard. Like my, you know, I didn't have a good system around it. And so it took me a little bit of time. but I realized that in order to get consistency, which consistency is how you get momentum, right? Consistency is how you get predictable income. I needed to have a system that was so easy. Like, I had to take as many of the roadblocks away as I possibly could.

And so for me, it became super simple. And this is how I record. I use my notes app on my phone and I use my AirPods. And yesterday I released episode 392. And so by taking away some of that tension up front and systematizing it into such a way that it became very easy. Now I'm able to, you know, we record out a month in advance. And it's, it's fun, it's easy. I have a great team that helps me to process the episodes. Like, we have a

great system that's not complicated. That makes sense to me. And that's what allows me to do it so consistently. Karen, thank you for your time today. Audience, I want you to write down an acronym that I write and teach yourself called Scarlet. And so I want to give you a specific model today of hiring, right? So we go back into like, how do I hire the right person? And then I know that I've had headaches in hiring. I've had successes. I get it right about half the time. Karen, how often do you think you get it right?

Yeah, maybe not even half the time. It's definitely a struggle. Yeah. Now, that being said, there is a model that can get you to about half the time. And this model is called Scarlett. Scarlet is who I look for when I'm hiring people. S stands for self-starter. C stands for competitive.

A stands for assertive. R is relationship base. T is team player. So it's the capital T and little E. That's the scarlet. And L is learning base. So that's self-starter. And somebody put that in the chat there.

So thank you. Self-starter, competitive, assertive, relationship-based, learning-based, team player. So use that in your hiring. And then when you're looking for the success, you're looking for success leaves clues. We've talked about that many, many times today. So it is failure, by the way.

hire before you need them though that's the last piece there right hire before you need them and then but not too far before you need them because then you'll run out of money right so that's a little bit of a tricky wicket and uh and i'll walk you through in the book exactly how to implement that this is dan rocheon host of no broke months do you want consistent and predictable income with no broke months my new book teach to sell why top performers never sell and what they do instead is being published early 2006 by Simon & Shuster. You can pre-order now at

www.com and unlock over $10,000 of free bonus training. Don't wait, go to www. www.teachasellbook.com and grab your copy today. That's teach to sellbook.com.