Start With A Win - Episode 1 of 3 Live at RE/MAX BOC 2019 With Sandy Hancock

Episode Date: August 28, 2019

Sandy Hancock hails from RE/MAX Results in St. Louis, Missouri, where she oversees 190 agents among all of her brokerages. She is very committed to making sure that all of her staff and agents succeed by setting up clear goals and expectations for them. By planning the vision for each year, Sandy wakes up each morning knowing what her tasks will be that day as well as what her staff are to be doing and how she can support them. She believes in providing her staff and agents with the tools and resources that they need and them empowering them to go about their business in the best way they can. Sandy exemplifies “tough love” by balancing tolerance and flexibility with holding her employees accountable, and she has found this culture to be beneficial for all involved.Links:Sandy Hancock: https://www.homestlouis.com/Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ 

At top of the 12th floor of the Remax World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With a Win with CEO Adam Kantos. And we are not top of the 12th floor of the Remax World Headquarters on this episode of Start With a Win. It's Adam Kantos here at the Remax Broker Owner Conference. Where are we at, Mark? Yeah, we're not. Episode of Start With A Win. Adam Contos here at the Remax Broker Owner Conference. Where are we at, Mark? Yeah, we're at Chicago. Chicago.

Chicago is my kind of town. I can't sing like that. But again, you're here, producer Mark, with me here. Yeah, of course. And how are you doing, as always? So good. So good. Right on. So we've got some really cool guests with us here today.

But this first show is an amazing human being, somebody who's contributed so much to the Remax network. We have with us here the broker owner of Remax Results in St. Louis, Missouri, Sandy Hancock. How are you, Sandy? Hey, Adam. Doing great. Glad to have you here. Great BOC so far. Glad to be here. Well, thank you. So we're simulcasting here. We're live in the Broker-Owner Conference in the Convention Center and we're on

Facebook Live and we're recording for Start With a Win. So you're gonna get like the, you know, the triple play here, Sandy, in this whole thing. So you ready for this? Ready. Awesome. Well, first of all, we're happy to, Sandy, in this whole thing. So you ready for this? Ready. Awesome. Well, first of all, we're happy to have you on Start With A Win. We talk about, you know, different ideas on building businesses and what keeps entrepreneurs and business leaders like yourself engaged and growing your business. So we're super happy to have you here today. But I want to start today with a question. What keeps you motivated each day, Sandy? What keeps you going? Well, in the momentum plan, we have a vision for the year.

And really, my daily tasks are built from the vision. Oh, so let's break that down a little bit. So you've established, I mean, kind of a North Star, your vision, right? Right. And then you said you have daily tasks. Tell me, you know, why is that important? Well, there's two things that I do. I focus on my own responsibilities and I focus on my staff. And so we have, you know, meetings, accountability. We've set our goals for the year and we break them down and we work towards them during the year.

So it's important because there's so many moving parts to a brokerage. You have to have a plan for how you're going to actually achieve them. And how many agents do you have in your brokerages? I have 190. Wow. Yeah. So you have 190 people and you're always thinking about their success. How do you as a broker owner help them take the next step in order to kind of break through that glass ceiling that we all put ourselves in, right?

Every day. Every day, that's my job, how to help the people who work for me succeed, whether that's my staff or my agents. That's my job. So you must face a lot of challenges in doing that. There are a lot of things that kind of get in the way, aren't there? There's a lot of challenges. What are you seeing as far as the big challenges that you face in trying to help these people do better business, do more business? Most of the time, the challenges come from the people themselves, and it's helping people get out of the way, so get out of their own way.

So saying what needs to be said, doing what needs to be done, like showing them that I'll work during the downturn, I'll move forward, I'll grow. They can do that. I'll work through health issues. They can do that. I'm busy. As busy as they are. Busy. I'm busy as busy as they are, but that's not an excuse.

I can still get done what I say I'm going to get done. What do you think of that word busy when people throw it out there? Hey, it's an excuse. Yeah. Yeah. So we're looking for productive, right? Not necessarily busy, which takes you back to the, those steps that you were talking about each day, right? Right. So those are, those are like micro commitments, little, little things that you do in order to accomplish the big part in your business. Exactly. And how, you know, you have to motivate and lead a group of people who are independent contractors. So real estate agents are all independent contractors. And you as their leader, you're on the horse kind of riding with the cattle,

getting everybody going the same direction here, getting them to do the things that that aren't necessarily hard to do, but they're easy not to do, right? Right. And what we found is what we're really good at is providing the tools and systems and structure for them. What we're not as good at is holding them accountable. And so that's really our focus going forward. We know they have the tools we've provided them but now we have to be the one that's there every day making sure that it happens have you noticed when when you say that word you know you're in like a meeting or something like that one-on-one with somebody you say the word accountable

they they want to turn and run right why is that I I think there's a, I mean, something that I live by. Acknowledge how you feel. Act anyway. And I think the thing that holds people back is their worry. You know, they're worried about failure. They're worried about looking silly. They're worried about something. So acknowledge that and then move forward.

I love that. So do you think that agents put this false sense of potential failure in their minds? Absolutely. Because the reality is we've lived through every hard situation we've been through so far in our lives, right? And making a phone call is not really a physical threat. Right. It's just a phone call. That's a good point. There's nothing that we're doing that is life or death here. I usually look at my staff and, you know, somebody comes busting in your office. They're like, oh my gosh. And you go, all right, is somebody bleeding or is something burning right now?

And that's kind of how we build these fears in our heads, these artificial beliefs that something bad's happening. In all reality, it's one of those situations where you kind of need to go, all right, let's just focus on what needs to happen, right? Right. I mean, what I've seen is a lot of times people are worried about what's going to happen, but there's really only one path to take. You know, a staff member will come in, I've got this problem. Great. What options do you have? Well, I only have one. Go do that. You know, there's one option. Go do it.

Let's talk about this for a second because that's an amazing point. You as a broker owner, you have to focus on empowerment, right? And when you look at what causes fear, it's people who don't feel like they have empowerment to take these actions. And so what do you do when you don't have the empowerment to take these actions? You throw up an artificial barrier, an excuse, as we called it. You find something to keep you busy, to keep you from having to do that. Your job is holding them accountable is just to observe the truth, which is you're not doing what you need to do. So I'm going to help you realize there's a way to do that. And it's not that bad. It's easy. You can do it. You just got to step forward. It's easy. So the thing that you

have to do is you have to distinguish between, you know, choice and decision. I could decide to make the calls or I choose to make calls as it is. You know, it's just, it's like saying you want a different mother. Okay. That's not, that's not an option. Just accept your mother. Yeah. I don't know if my mom would take that. Well, I mean, some people do have hang-ups, right? So just choose. That's it. You've got a fear of this. Fine.

Then make a call with the fear. Don't wait until you don't have the fear. Just choose to have the fear and make the call. So this is like standing in line for a roller coaster or something like that. We've got this fear. We don't know what it is. And then you go do it. And by the time you're done doing it, you're like, wow, that was amazing. It's going, you know, when you go talk to potential new clients and let's say you're standing in line at Starbucks, right? And I can't tell you how many times I've been at Starbucks and I see an agent look around and go,

I don't know if I'm going to talk to anybody here. I'm afraid of it for some crazy reason. You never want to be that person that's trying to sell to everybody in the line at Starbucks. But you can certainly meet them or talk to people or buy them a cup of coffee or something like that. But it's doing these little things, getting over the emotions of preventing you from doing these little things. Right. Focus more on being prepared, doing the work up front so you know when you make the call, you know the script. When you do the buyer presentation, you've got the best one.

And then the call, you know, then you're going to have those results. Just winging your way through it, that's different. You know, but do the work and then make the calls and then you'll have success. I love that. So winging your way through it. So not having a plan, right? Right. How many agents walk into the office each day and don't have a plan, you think? A lot of them. A lot of them?

I guess a lot of people in life don't have a plan and that's me on some days too. Then I have to refocus to what's my plan. How do you realize you don't have a plan? When you wake up in the morning and think, hmm, what am I going to refocus to, you know, what's my plan? How do you realize you don't have a plan? When you wake up in the morning and think, hmm, what am I going to do today? That's a good point. So have a written plan. If you wrote it down, you've got a plan. You know it.

You can see it, right? You've got a plan, right. Have you put it on your calendar? Yeah, I mean, that's a good point because you just, it's funny. We talk about the productivity of agents and of running a business. And it seems to me like one of the number one issues that people cause problems with in their business is not having a plan, right? So to be able to start today, turn on the lights in your business, your life, things like that. If you've got something written down in front of you,

and you can look at it and go, okay, it is 1240, I'm going to do this. That's a commitment to start doing that, right? One of my most productive buyer's agents took our plan, and our plan from business planning that says how many calls she needs to make a day, and that's her plan. Make those calls. How's that person doing? Oh, she's fabulous. And she was just recognized as one of the 30 under 30 by NAR. Really? How long has she been in the business? Oh, three, four

years. Okay. So she's a relatively new agent. Right. And how many days a week is she executing her plan? Do you think? I think almost every day she executes it. Yeah. Okay, cool. Because you know, what's interesting is you you've got somebody and this is i mean you probably see this in your office you've got that agent you go do they ever do anything but they're doing a ton of business right and it's like they have this hidden time in their world where they go and they just in a focused manner execute on their plan and they make more out of 90 minutes than most people do out of 90 days. Exactly. She has to make 16 calls a day. And that might be a bomb bomb video. It's any number of things that she might do. But she makes those, then she goes home feeling good. And she knows

she can spend the rest of the day with her family. And I have people that don't make 16 calls in a week. I have people who don't make 16 calls in a week. I have people who don't make 16 calls in a month. No, what's the point? Just get up, make your calls. And that's, yeah, it's just doing the activities that cause you to be successful. And weird, you become successful when you do the activities that cause you to become successful. Right. So that's, I guess, the double-edged sword of our industry is you're an independent contractor.

Nobody's going to make you make the calls. But if you make the calls here you're gonna make some progress right and I think that's what makes it a little harder for the broker because for me I say one of my strong suits is accepting people as they are like I have a high tolerance for people and how they are is good it's good for me I'm not gonna try and change, but sometimes that has me hold back from having them be accountable too. I've learned a lot here in this last 20 minutes we've been talking. This is amazing because we've uncovered really the secret to success

in Sandy Hackcock's offices, which is get your system down, know where your North Star is, and execute on these tasks every day. Every day. Prepare. It's not rocket science, but it's very difficult to be accountable, right? Right. And your leadership helps them realize that, which is why you've been able to grow your business so successfully. And people like working there. I think they're acknowledged for their hard work. But it's a place where working hard is what the culture is.

So, you know. I love the word you just used, culture. That's it, right? Right. So people want to be part of that culture? They count on me to provide the stability for them to just come in and work. And I know one of the things that people wonder about is, well, how did you survive the downturn? Well, we were prepared for it. And then when the downturn hit, people came

to us to merge. Oh, okay. Because they saw how solid you were in the business. We were the solid company. We had had a budget. We had cut back when we were off budget, you know, and then that gave us opportunity. So Sandy, I have an important question for you. A really important question that all of our listeners want to know. How do you start with a win? Every day. Every day. For being a broker, it's refocusing on the people every day. So what I do and say isn't always what they want to hear. But because I care about them, I'm going to say it.

And they come to rely on that from me, and they're not offended when I do tell them, hey, you need to go to work, or we need to help you. We're not doing our job. We're going to step up and do it. So always say the truth because you care. Ladies and gentlemen, Sandy Hancock, one of our amazing leaders who's been extraordinarily successful in operating her brokerages, has a ton of accolades to show that. Sandy, thank you so much for joining us on Start With A Win. And you are one of our true leaders. You know how to start with a win. Thanks, Adam. Happy to be here.

Thanks. Hey, thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Don't forget to go onto iTunes and subscribe, write a review, or rate the show. It helps us get the word out and reach more people. You can follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, start with a win.