Podcast: Systems for Hitting $75 Million in Sales Volume

Cody Tritter led his Calgary-based real estate team to the top in no time at all. Now in their second year, Real Estate Partners is selling $75 million in volume annually. On today’s show, Cody shares the lead-generation and follow-up systems that have helped his team hit Rockstar-level sales figures fast. He also discusses the team’s social media strategies, his personal time-management practices, and more. Tune in and hear what you can do to start selling more homes in less time.

Listen to today’s show and learn:

Why Cody decided to start a team [4:44]
Cody’s team structure [6:30]
Why Cody believes ISAs are essential for teams [7:42]
Cody’s role in the team [12:20]
Cody’s automated follow-up systems [17:30]
Opinions on the major lead-gen platforms [20:14]
Why hiring a VA is a no-brainer [21:52]
Cody’s social media practices [33:02]
Cody’s system for transaction management [36:35]
The value of 10-minute increments [41:31]
Cody’s donation to the Agent Success Toolbox [50:40]
How to break through your goals.
Plus so much more.

Cody Tritter

Cody is a very driven real estate professional with great organizational skills and a highly regarded attention to detail. He thrives in the role of meeting new prospects and generating leads through a solid foundation of outgoing personable skills. Cody works with buyers, sellers and investors in real estate transactions spanning all of the price ranges and property types, from new home builds and assisting clients with finding reputable home builders in new developing areas to infills, to condominiums and homes that are being resold in developed communities. Residential real estate in Calgary is where he thrives. Cody is highly adaptable, trains very easy, and possesses a wide skill set in communication, business management, problem solving, sales, marketing, information technology, SEO, brand distinction/development and much more.

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Read the Full Interview

Ian Lobos: What’s up Rockstar Nation? My name is Ian Lobos and I’m filling in for Pat Hiban today. On today’s show, we’ve got a young dynamic team owner from Calgary up in Canada. The guy’s awesome, Cody Tritter, super happy to have them on the show and today we’re going to be talking about marketing, lead gen, and high-level lead conversion. Let me say that again. For those of you that are really doing stuff in the real estate business and they’re looking to take your business up in 2020, what Cody is doing in a very high level is what you want to hear. Without further ado, Cody, let’s do this thing. Welcome to the show.

Cody Tritter: Hey, thanks for having me, man. I really appreciate it.

Ian: Definitely.

Cody: Me and my business partner, Dusko are huge, huge fans of what you guys do, the program, just the loot box of stuff that you guys give away alone is

awesome. The content on top of it is wild.

Ian: That’s the toolkit on hibandigital.com and it’s awesome. I’ve enjoyed our conversation before we started recording. Really quickly, I want you to– You’re wearing a hat and a shirt, and for those of you that watch this on the vlog, I think this is awesome and it goes to show why Cody has 26,000 followers on Instagram and why he’s a marketing machine. He’s got a shirt on and a hat on that says REPYYC. Now explain that.

Cody: I’m rocking it– I got the other one here.

Ian: [crosstalk] back here.

Cody: A little art background there, but yes, when we started we wanted to do less about us. As team leaders, we wanted to be– My business partner, Dusko, we didn’t want to be Dusko and Associates. We wanted to go with a name that resonates, but also it’s good for future growth. If we want to move to Edmonton or Vancouver, or Toronto, we could use a name that’s going to be easy to migrate to a different city, right? What we did was real estate partners and then in the US, you guys know this, JFK Airport, LAX Airport. In Calgary it’s YYC and so REPYYC it’s a play and Rep your city as well.

Yes. It’s all about marketing and branding and getting people to remember you.

Ian: That’s awesome, man. That’s awesome. Well, it certainly works because it made me ask. You’re trying to figure it out, “What does that mean?” I almost want to figure it out so I don’t have to ask, but asking has a great story. There’s the point to prove. You don’t know just ask because it could come with a really cool story.

Cody: 100% and you know what we actually get a lot of and it’s going to sound awful? We get people coming up all the time being like, “Where did you buy your hat? Where did you get your hat?” I’m like, “Man, we should just start selling this as merchandise.”

Ian: You probably should.

Cody: People in the city love it, right? Especially the younger crowd, right? It really resonates with them. The colors are on point but we still we’re with Remax, they mirror that coloring as well, but–

Ian: Yes, that’s awesome, man. Well, let’s jump into it. You got a– You and your partner started a team in June of last year and you were previously on another team and just decided, “Hey, man, we’re going to do this thing on our own, do it our way.” Tell us about that and then get right into your numbers.

Cody: Basically for us, we were on another team and we sat down and said, “Man, not only could we do this but I think we could do this in a way that’s just delivered a lot better.” There’s just a lot of misses there and we just said, “Let’s do this on our own. Let’s jump in headfirst and let’s see what we can do with it.” Our first year at 2018 we were pretty strong but 2019, we’ve really accelerated. Year-to-date we’re just, we’re hovering between 175 firm to about 185 with conditionals right now.

Ian: Nice. Transactions-wise.

Cody: Transactions. Yes. Volume is somewhere around I think 75 million, where we are and it’s about one and a half million in commission.

Ian: Wow, that’s amazing. Wow. For a team that’s basically a year and a half old.

Cody: Yes, yes. It’s been really good. I think a lot of it is attributed to the team we have behind us. We just got some incredible agents and my business partner, I don’t know anyone that works harder than he does. It was a good person to go to business with and it’s made all the difference in this growth for us.

Ian: Now, I’ve got a ton of questions on that because those numbers are super impressive, really impressive. Those are dream numbers that most people who were doing 30 million want to hit. Most people doing really literally anything, want to hit 75 million. That’s big. All right. Let’s break that down a little bit and now unpack it. Your team structure, what does that look like? It’s you and your partner obviously and then are you both in production or do you both run certain aspects, and you have agents in production? How does that work?

Cody: Well, I’m not licensed anymore. I was licensed a couple of years ago but Dusko, my business partners was licensed and then what we did from the onset is we recognized we need especially with a high volume, we needed an ISA. We have an ISA on our team. Initially, we started out with one. We’ve got two ISAs now and a VA and then we just started out with a few agents, and what we saw though was that we were generating so many leads that it got to the point where we said like, “If we don’t bring out more people to service these leads-

Ian: We’re wasting them.

Cody: -we’re wasting them.” Yes.

Ian: All right. Back up because this is a topic, man, and I’m telling you there’s no gray area and I don’t get it. Either there are people that love the ISA model and would not do anything and/or there’s people that are no ISA, the client wants to hear from the agent directly, there’s no relationship. Now, I’m with you. I think that the average agent, you tell me what you think, they’re not built to crunch calls and lead generation like that only conversion. They’re just not built like that.

Cody: They’re not, man. I could pull my numbers right now but my agents are busy producing. I want them producing. I love when they make calls because I do see the direct conversion, get someone on the line and they could go from A to B real quick seeing a home. The volume is just tough for them, right? Because if you go out and show people for four hours in a day and then you’ve got a couple of contracts or amendments, or whatever it is to do-

Ian: Done.

Cody: -you’re getting burn out pretty quick, right? Whereas our ISAs are just there, they’re at home. We don’t make them come into the office, they’re at home chilling in their pajamas in the morning just like banging out calls for us. That’s far more valuable for us, for them to be doing that than having our agents, right?

Ian: Do they work for you directly?

Cody: They do.

Ian: On staff?

Cody: I’ll tell you– On staff, yes. [crosstalk] I think that a lot of people do is when you outsource the ISA sometimes you’re going to have– you really have to work on the training with them, right? If they’re not from the city, it’s hard for them, it’s a very generic conversation, right? Our ISAs are local in town and they know the market, they just pick it up very quick. They know the communities, they know schools, they know how to talk the talk versus the ISA. Yes.

Ian: Sure. In Canada does your ISA have to be licensed to talk about real estate?

Cody: They won’t talk about certain aspects of real estate. They can’t talk about if someone says, “What’s my home worth,” we’re getting into an agent by the way, right? If someone says, they’re not from the city and they’re like, “How far is the school from this community,” they can just say–

Ian: Obviously, yes. Okay, that makes sense.

Cody: Things like that, right?

Ian: I’m always curious as to how someone starts a team like this and goes to 75 million that fast. Did you guys have a bunch of cash just saved up and you just poured everything you had into this thing, and everybody stayed in their lane or how did that work? Because that’s– Dude, 18 months, 75 million for a brand new team, that’s no joke.

Cody: I think we went– To be honest, we went a little Wild West on it and just said, we know certain models work, we just stuck to it and committed to it, right? The old saying of like, “Be great at one thing,” we just focus on that, right?

Ian: What was the model that you knew worked, the ISA?

Cody: It’s the ISA, the conversion, but it’s just that just too, we put a ridiculous amount of hours into our drips, into our systems. We’re with BoomTown and in December 2018, we flipped over to Commissions Inc. For us, that was just to make sure that– We’re a bit more familiar with Commissions Inc platform, but we just needed a system that exactly what we wanted. The team that we work with there just made everything work for us. There was no, not to talk poorly of anyone, of any companies, but we just weren’t getting exactly what we needed out of BoomTown. When we went to CINC model, it all clicked for us and for our guys to the system.

Ian: Got it. Yes, I’ve heard that before and I’ve heard it the other way around. They’re powerhouse systems. You just have to figure out which one works for you. I totally get that.

Ian: Now, I have so many questions for you that are just keep coming up. It’s you and your partner, and you just were not selling from the beginning. What’s your role and what’s your partners role?

Cody: Yes, and that’s even funny too because for us like defining roles, it changes. When we started in 2018, there was three of us. Then now, we’re at eight agents, two ISAs, and a VA. For us, our roles have really changed and they’re very dynamic. My role is growth, marketing, operations, and then Dusko’s kind of a mix in between, but his focus is more on sales and working our guy– Training our guys up and making sure they’re really well-oiled machines.

We had an agent– One of our best stories as an agent for us who went from doing handful of deals like under 10 to this year, he’ll make more money than us. Had he not been going on vacation end of month here, but he would’ve done 52 deals in a year.

Ian: Wow. A deal a week, man. That’s insane for a team, and especially a team that’s on a big platform, big lead-gen platform like that like Commission Inc and BoomTown. Eight agents, you two. Now, when you talk about– I want to split this real quick. Literally, everything that I wrote down, I’m throwing it out the window.

We’re going to flow right now. Your partner in charge of sales and training the agents, did he develop a training program specific for them where it’s obviously, how to talk to people, how to ask the right questions, how to lead the people through the transaction from lead to prospect, prospect to client, getting buyer agency signs. I don’t know if you have that in Canada, but something of that sort. Is that what he does when he developed that program?

Cody: See, we don’t even have a program per se, but we’ve done is we’ve been a part of different coaching programs, we’ve been a part of some mastermind groups. Then honestly, even this podcast. We’ll spend hours listening to this. Taking out good pieces of it, putting it into presentations, and then expanding on it even further to grow it. We do meetings every Tuesday with our team.

Then we also have something cool which I think a lot of teams need to do is a call night. We don’t do it all year long. When it’s summertime, we’re not doing it. In the winter months, especially fall heading into, and then in the New Year, we do a call night. Basically, we just get everyone together, usually Wednesday or Thursday night, we’ll buy food for everyone like pizza, Chinese, something like that. From 4:00 to 8:30, as a team we get on the phones and hammer out calls.

Ian: Banging it out. Now, I want to talk about your role but with that same thing along that same mindset, how many leads can an agent handle? I’ve had teams, and I’ve been a part of teams where some– I’ve seen like 30 to 40 leads really a month is what an agent could handle because then as you start to stack up, the leads in their pipeline from six months, eight months, a year ago. That’s where the ISA comes in because your agents aren’t calling every lead. They’re only calling the leads that the ISA’s put through to them. Everybody else is basically in archive or in nurture.

Cody: Yes. For us like a big thing is, we have different funnels for different points, and we have different drips for when they’re in those different points. Because when we’re trying to reach out to someone, the drip, and nurture, or the campaign we’re going after with them is going to be really geared towards reaching out to us, we have value, just let us get on the phone with you and talk about what your needs are.

Once we get them on the phone, then we can have an idea. The person will say, “I’m six months out. I’m two years out. I’m buying tomorrow.” We know what they’re doing. Then we flip them into a nurture campaign that’s just tons of good info, guides. Anything we can do to just demonstrate value to them, and the services, and why they should use us. I think the big thing with any of it is that, if you just pump into a system link CINC, and just utilize the drips they have from the system. you’re going to have troubles with it. You’re going to be [crosstalk]–

I think the built-in notification systems with them. You’re running into just generic messaging. It won’t be local. There’s nothing better than sending an email that when someone receives it, that looks like– That’s local that talks to them. Happy Grasshoppers built off that. A whole campaign like a system that’s just built off of drip campaigns that are personalized. If you’re running a good lead-gen system, you should be doing the exact same thing in your system whether you hire them to do it, or you do it yourself. It’s got to be good content that’s local.

Ian: Did you write the content, or did you pay somebody to do that?

Cody: We wrote it. Some of it we borrowed it. [laughs] We’ve seen what the guys are doing to make it their own, right?

Ian: Yes, right. BoomTown’s got an entire library.

Cody: Yes. Exactly.

Ian: You basically have for every step of the way, from lead on, you got an email sequence and a drip campaign. Are you using texts as well?

Cody: Absolutely, yes.

Ian: That goes through CINC, right?

Cody: Yes, absolutely. For us, texts are our fail-safe after a while. When they attempt to contact– The thing we keep doing in our drip too is building it out because we’re having leads that are 400 and some days old come to us now, and they’re ready to buy, and they’re saying like, “Thanks for keeping in contact with me.” They’re thanking us for this stuff, and it’s part of the system.

What we’re doing is, there’s a whole pool of people in there. I think we’re at– This year alone, we’ve generated about 25,000 leads. As that pool keeps growing, the drip has to keep going. Every month I’m going in and creating new drips, so that if those people are still in that pipe– It might be 700 days before someone converts.

Ian: Yes. Year three, year four.

Cody: Yes, exactly. I want to make sure we’re messaging them and keeping on them. Because if they fall off a drip, there’s ways to do in our system to identify people that aren’t doing that. We call those CPR leads. We try to revive them. They’ve fallen off a drip, and now we’re trying to get them back on. Keeping someone engaged and actively seeing stuff on the site.

I’m a big believer there’s too much contact, but the way the system is, the daily things and every– We space it out about 14 days once they’ve been registered on the site for say six months. We drop the frequency off, but we still stay top of mind, so that when they think real estate, they go to their inbox and they know–

Ian: I love that. You guys have an easy name. REPYYC, that’s so easy.

Cody: Yes. It’s bad though because there is a bit– We created our own market confusion a little bit because we’re running three different platforms. For us, it was– What we want to do ultimately is have different avenues and pillars for bringing in leads for our guys. As the team grows, we can only pump in so much money into PPC, and creating leads that way. A big push for us with the repyyc.com is the SEO side. Tons of content, tons of pages, tons of blogging. Just constantly trying to grow that side, so that we can niche out little things for us.

Ian: Now, do you think you’ll ever be able to sustain on your own with AdWords and PPC and then get away from the Commissions Inc or the BoomTown? Not specifically them, just the large lead-gen platform?

Cody: I think there is that room but honestly, I love them because for us, it’s a guaranteed way to know that we’re going to be generate– We run a lot of our own PPC campaigns. We would just know– My business partner watches it maybe too much on how the daily– Daily, sometimes he’ll be sending me like, “Man, we generated this many leads for this much money. It was a good day today, right?” After a year of getting those updates, I’m like, “Man, you really love just seeing the [crosstalk] right?”

Ian: Right. [laughs]

Cody: Ideally, I’d love to get into the SEO model where all the leads are free. One of the biggest guys in our city, that’s where he’s making his money. He’s got six big sites that are all good with SEOs so he’s got a constant flow.

Ian: What are you spending on lead generation every month?

Cody: Anywhere, usually about 10,000 to 20,000 a month. [crosstalk]

Ian: What does your operational side look like? Do your agents write their own contracts? I always ask people that, big teams that, because I’ll tell you what, man. If I built a team again, I’m really into investing in coaching at this point in obviously the podcast. If I built a team again, I don’t want the agents doing anything. I want they’re happy talking to people, and showing houses, and listing appointments, because that’s where they’re happiest.

Cody: That’s where we’re going. For us, even myself, we brought on a VA to start taking on tasks that are just mundane. In three months, we generated 700 partial leads which were just addresses, basically no name but address. I’m like, “What are we doing with these?” We found a provider who sends out unlimited postcards to people, or not even postcards. They’re full cards. They’re on there and she goes on there and just pumps in the addresses, sends out these–

I’d fall asleep doing it because they would be so mundane [crosstalk] after two days and be like, “This task is done.” Hiring out people, having people do the tedious, the grunt work for you, it’s a no-brainer for me. For our agents, it was the same thing. We do and do it right off the bat with the VA, but we have one now and she’s writing contracts, uploading listings, doing all the work that I know that the agents, deep down, just procrastinate on. Paperwork. Paperwork alone. [crosstalk]

Ian: Yes, and it steals time. It steals time from you, it steals time from them, it steals time from clients, their families. It doesn’t let them live the life that they want to live. They’re in real estate for a reason, because they want to get out on the street and not be cooped up. When you make them generate their own leads, and convert their own leads coming in, and you make them write their own contracts, you make them do their own– they’re not loving that. In your experience, have you seen that the life cycle of an agent is shorter because of that?

Cody: Yes, absolutely. The big thing I think is taking as much off their plate that you can possible. I don’t have gray hairs but I know I’m going to have some pretty soon. I beg my guys sometimes. I know I’m humble bragging here, but I think volume-wise, we push out some of the most content in the city but even just the uniqueness of it. Just getting them to share it is tough sometimes.

Ian: When you say content, what are you talking about? Are you talking about blog posts, Instagram stuff? What are you talking about?

Cody: Yes, like videos, pictures, anything that’s just edgy. We just draw up the picture on our Instagram. It’s a banana and our logo at the Miami art tag. The banana is 120K and our logo is behind. He has a duct tape and it says free. It’s like free home evaluations.

Ian: That’s awesome.

Cody: Only one person shared it, my business partner. I had to beg my guys, “Please share this content, you guys.”

Ian: Who comes up with that marketing?

Cody: I do. I do all the marketing.

Ian: You?

Cody: Yes.

Ian: Nice.

Cody: That’s the tough part when we’re trying to grow. That’s why we’re bringing on VAs, so that there’s certain things that I can do. We won’t always focus on the money-making activities. For us right now, the big push is SEO. We’ve even hired out a guy to help with our SEO because I only have so many hours in a day myself. Some of the stuff just takes up time like editing.

Ian: Yes, totally.

Cody: Shooting and editing a video is like a full-day production.

Ian: What about the other admin in-house? What does that look like?

Cody: There are two ISAs. I get weekly summaries from them of where they’re at so we got a general flow, and then we just do lead audits both on the agents as well as them just to make sure that we’re saying the right things. We had one guy. We have a whole process and we do our training, and then we found out three months into the process that he was– When we bring someone in, they’re under “attempt to contact”. We have them on a funnel that automatically reminds people, like our agents, to follow up with the person day 1, day 3, day 5, day 9, and say day 14, and then it goes monthly.

They get a reminder so they don’t have to keep setting reminders in their system saying like, “Call this lead. Call this lead.” When they’re flipped to “contacted”, that’s when the agent sets it because, like I said before, they know where that person is on their timeline. He was setting reminders himself on “attempted”, and we’d pumped him up with a bunch of leads. He comes to us one day and he’s like, “Man, I’ve been setting so many reminders plus the system reminders.” He’s like, “I’m just getting burnt out.” We’re like, “Well, you know that the system does these reminders for you,” and he’s like, “No.” We’re like, “Okay. Well, we’re going to save a lot of time for you here because they do and you got to stop doing that.”

[laughter]

Ian: No in-house admin besides the VAs? You have the VAs, the ISAs, and that’s it?

Cody: Yes.

Ian: No assistants, no operations manager?

Cody: No. Our one ISA will do little things like– Well, they’re big things because she does them. Gift baskets, for example. She puts those together for the team, drops them off. Everything else is either I handle or she’ll handle it for the most part.

Ian: Transaction coordination like from contract to close?

Cody: That’s our VA. She’s the one.

Ian: That’s your VA? Wow, okay.

Cody: Yes. We have it all processed that way. Our brokerage has a really good backend system, so it’s pretty clear. Our conveyancing team that they have is phenomenal. They’re very good about just letting us know, “Hey, need these docs, need this,” and our VA is either on it sending it to them or asking it from the agent and getting them. If it’s a client that needs a FinTrack– I don’t know if you guys do FinTrack in the US?

Ian: No. What’s that?

Cody: No? It’s a financial tracking form.

Ian: Oh, yes, like a disclosure for us.

Cody: Yes.

Ian: The VA is dealing right with the client and getting all the stuff that they need, setting up inspections, talking to the title company, or Escrow, talking to the lender, and the agent–

Cody: Our ISA handles that, actually the booking of showing– She’ll handle the booking of showings. She’ll do a booking of photo– Sorry, photos and future sheets, that kind of stuff. She’ll coordinate that and get that all set up.

Ian: She’ll list things. Then once it goes under contract, the VA is dealing with the client?

Cody: We try to keep anything client-related, we try to keep the agent on when it’s– because if the agent knows the deal in and out so– I don’t know what the US process is like but in Canada, you write the offer and then usually it’s just a couple of conditions, your financing, and your home inspection so agents are there. We have some great partners, our mortgage partner who’s embedded in our system. Like we have her into our CINC Site, so there’s all internal communications there so it’s a very fluid communication and very transparent of where everything is in the pipeline.

Ian: Got it. All right. There’s so many things we can talk about, but I want to talk about– I haven’t ever interviewed anybody that runs a team that’s not licensed, so I want to know a little bit about you and your thought process and not being licensed, and then I want to know how did you get into this business? Obviously, I’m looking at your Instagram, it’s all pictures, it’s all just photography stuff, there’s no real estate stuff on here.

Cody: I know. It’s funny because I got that handle, it’s a Calgary photographer. At one point I did run a simultaneous account but when you’re running business account– We have three different Instagram accounts that we run. I run all social media for our team, so I do have platforms that do mass publishing for us but between– For example, our agents have anywhere from one to three posts a day on their Facebook that I generate and put up, so it’s everything from local news to blogs from us to anything we can do to add a little value or engage people.

Then we have metrics on the back end that show us like, all right, these posts are really a hit, which is usually food posts. I don’t know what it is with the followers. Food posts are phenomenal.

Basically for me, what I’m trying to do is put my efforts into things that are going to be business growing activities. So far the mindset for us was that if I’m licensed, I’m going to be busy selling and we’re not going to be able to see the growth or the in-depth– making sure your system works, your Commissions Inc system or we have a Sierra site, we have a RooSite.

There’s a lot of work that goes into them and what you see a lot of people do is they pay the setup fee to get it going, they run a little PPC on it and it’s not successful and they go, “I don’t know what these guys are doing but it doesn’t work.” They dump it because it doesn’t work for them. You got to believe in those systems, you got to put time into them, and you got to really work them. For us [clears throat], if I’m busy selling, no one’s doing that or we’re paying someone to do it and they’re maybe not doing it the way you want it to be done.

Ian: Primarily, what’s the biggest source of leads for you guys, it’s Commissions Inc, then are you guys getting a lot of repeat and referral business too from the clients?

Cody: That’s a big thing we’re working on now and that’s one thing we noticed with our previous team was the nurture of past clients was almost non-existent, so they’d go 300 deals in a year, somewhere in there, work in those and then the next year of that business it was less than 10% of referrals.

For us we want the opposite because that’s the only way we’re going to keep scaling up is [clears throat] continue what we’re doing, but also jumping on the fact that we have 180 people that we can talk to right now that know us, trust us, and want to do business with us.

Ian: They’ve got somebody that wants to do something in the next 300 days, something like that?

Cody: Exactly. For us too, even with our agents, agent retention is huge and that’s why having me in the role I’m in, It’s probably downfall to us, but it’s hard for us to say no to things, so when they ask for stuff, we’re doing anything we can to make that good for them because the retention is like–

Bringing on a new agent, training them, getting them up to speed, getting them knowing the systems, all the processes we have.

It’s in-depth. It takes weeks to get ahead wrapped around all that. The retention for us is huge. For us that’s a big thing, so anything we can do to add that side value, I think it goes a really long way and will continue to go a long way for the future of the company.

Ian: I love that. Now, let’s talk about your back-end systems, do you have something custom that you use for transactions on a database, or obviously is everything in CINC, and does CINC run your transactions too?

Cody: We have a bit of hybrid. We actually use a program called ClickUp– it’s a website, it’s called clickup.com. Because what we’re finding especially with newer guys that might have done say five to seven deals in a year, they come on our team and then they’ve got four listings and they’re forgetting stuff. Stuff gets forgotten because they’re not used to the– and they’re dealing, it’s not like we don’t do the buyer-seller side, we do both, work both sides, get experience on it, we want full circle agents. For us, we wanted to make sure– Sorry, man, I lost my train of thought there.

Ian: It’s all good. What systems are you using for keeping track of transactions?

Cody: We implemented clickup.com and basically what I created was a couple of checklists for the agents to go in and have a list basically of stuff that they have to do per transaction. When it’s a listing side or buying side, it’s got all the documents. It’s super simple. They click new template, it brings up either if it’s a seller, a listing, or a closing or a buyer, and they click which one it is, whatever the category is.

It’s got 16 tasks and it includes things that are value too. We created a guide for our city, for example, it’s a PDF document, so if someone is new or first-time homebuyers will find value in it. It’s got garbage schedules, it’s got where hospitals are.

Ian: That’s cool.

Cody: Anything just to give a little bit of value for them. Tells them who the utilities are, how to call them, what to setup. Just a checklist for them. Our agent, we found was they forget about that, so putting that in the checklist, it forces them to go, “Okay, what do I got to do for this client?” Then that out. Same with our buyer’s guide. It’s just a reminder now in our system for the guys, send this new client once you’ve talked to them, sending them buyer’s guide, send them the seller’s guide, send them–

Ian: That’s awesome. How long have you been in real estate?

Cody: I’ve been in it since– I think is 2015 I got licensed.

Ian: Clearly, you knew and understood the processes going into this you just had– without selling you have cap watch. I’ve always thought about that too because I like understanding how the whole business works. All the time when you’re running 4 or 5, 10 transactions a month, you just can’t. What do you do for balance in your life? Do you have a family or are you single? What do you do for balance in your life and then what do you also do for growth in yourself like personal development?

Cody: I know all the parents out there going to hate me, but I have two dogs and one is a puppy and we’re just– I’m telling you a puppy, I feel it’s close to as much work as a baby and I know my brother maybe is going to hate me for saying it but I’ll give you a very quick version of this story. My business partner and I, we like going on– He’s engaged, I’m married. We love going on trips together. Just like we need a break, so we’re going to Europe in a couple of weeks here. We go on trips together, keep our phones on, obviously we’re available. But we went to Hawaii for just a weekend and a very short version of it. We found a dog randomly in the mountains in Kona.

She was on the verge of death, brought her back, and found a person there. We flew her back to Calgary. She ended up having a puppy. Now he’s got the dog that we found and I’ve got her puppy. There are a ton of work. Bringing another dog they’re a ton of work. For us, I think this industry really lends to having the lifestyle you want. You just have to– time management is huge. We preach it to our guys in our training.

We literally just did a meeting on Tuesday, our Tuesday team meeting, which was just focused on time management. What we did was highlighted some of our agents who are very effective at what they do, but are also very effective with, that’s a bad way to put it, but they’re good family people too good.

Ian: Right, so a good balance?

Cody: Yes, because you can be in the office, we can come in our office, we’ve got two offices at our brokerage. You can come in there and be in there for eight hours and do a quarter of the work as the guy who’s working at home but it’s how you time management. It’s how you time-block. It’s how you systemize those things. We’ve got some killer agents who are really good at it. They set examples and give advice, and it branches out to everyone else for the most part.

Ian: The agents that I mentor and that I coach, when they ask me about time management and working from home, I’ve never been a guy that can work from home. I always wanted to travel and to go to a separate space. Somebody, I won’t say their name on here, but somebody told me it was a very, long-winded two-hour discussion about the value of 10-minute increments. There’s no book, it was just this guy.

He said, you need to value your 10-minute increments. If you’re doing something that’s buying up two or three of those in an hour, you need to start re-evaluating because– He made me write down my number one focus is my daughter, my wife, family time. Then my personal time is up there too, and doing things that I like. He made this map that showed these 10-minute increments and how when you just wasted driving to an office or sitting in an office talking to a bunch of people, how much it actually cuts out of your life the time spent with those people you love or doing the things you love.

I’m in my basement, you couldn’t tell where I’m sitting. This used to be in my office 20 minutes down the street, but now instead of me going to my office, doing the podcast, and then coming back, I just walk right upstairs. Literally, my office is 10 minutes away, but I can be upstairs in 5 seconds. That 10-minute increment went to, I get to now spend that 10 minutes more with my daughter.

Now it’s 20 minutes back and forth. It’s another 20 minutes at the office talking to somebody random. You see how those 10 minutes add up, so I can totally understand that. It’s the power of 10-minute increments and what you doing.

Cody: I’m going to tell that to my business partner because he’s always at the office. Then sometimes I’m like, man. He’ll be like, I got to go to the gym, but he wants to drive home first, grab his clothes, then drive back to the office, we’ll meet there.

Ian: No.

Cody: I’m like, “Man, all this time and stuff, it drives me nuts.”

Ian: It doesn’t work well.

Cody: It doesn’t, man. For me, because I’m always at home, when I go to the office, especially I’m so social that I’ve been at the office last two days, I’m behind. I’m stressed because I’m like, “I did not get work done because we’re–” I know people at the brokerage, I know my team at the brokerage, and we’re just like, it’s a constant conversation basically. When I’m there, if someone walks in, I can’t just say, get out, you know what I mean? I’m not that kind of guy. It could be a 30-minute conversation. Then I’m like, why am I doing this?

Ian: You protect the 10. That’s what this guy told me. I told him, I said, “Dude, you need to write a book.” I literally went on Amazon and I couldn’t find anything about that, but I’m going to talk to him again. He’s an elusive guy. I’m going to talk to him, but he said, “Protect your 10s man.” It makes so much sense. Like, “Bring your gym bag, don’t drive all the way home.”

Cody: Have a go-bag, right?

If someone’s wanting to go to the gym and I have the time for it, I don’t have to hustle back home. Five minutes of driving through my community is like a waste of time. I don’t want to do that. Even if my gym was a minute away, I don’t want to have to do that, that back and forth.

Ian: A book that I used to introduce to my team members and coaching clients is, oh my gosh, I just blanked on it, Regrets of the Dying. Oh my God. That’s not the name of the book. Yes, it is, Five Regrets of the Dying. When you read that things add up, they make sense. They really make sense. What you crush and work so hard, for now, means zero when you’re laying on a bed with six hours to live. Zero.

It puts into perspective what you really value, what you should value, what you need to value in a year from now, what you should value for the next five years from now because especially with children, you can’t get that time back ever, ever. It’s crazy.

Cody: I heard that saying, and it was very similar to that. I’ll probably botch it because I’m awful with quotes and all that. But basically, it was a guy who was on his death bed. He said, “No man will ever wish that he worked harder or worked more when he’s in that position.” I said to my business partner because he’s a very hard worker, but I’m like, “Have that balance man, have that because there’s burnout, there’s relationships. All that, stuff’s way more important.”

I’ve seen teams go from where we are to fall down real quick. No matter how much you put into something and how much effort you put in, there’s always that risk that all that could be gone, the stable in your life is family, and friends, and those relationships.

Ian: I agree. In wrapping, what books are you reading? What are you doing for personal development? Do you do seminars? What do you do?

Cody: You guys are going to say this is so cheesy to listeners, but honestly, all I’ve been doing is podcasts I’m not kidding. I won’t say what company we’re with, but we have a coaching program we’re with that the value in the Real Estate Rockstars podcast is 100 times more beneficial for us listening to those people than what we’ve gotten out of that from it, like the content in that. I’ve been a part of some of the bigger programs too.

I feel like they just rotate the same stuff over and over. It’s the same concept, some of the marketing. I’m not going to throw them under the bus, but running black and white paper ads with a highlighter, those are their suggestions. They’re like, “No, that’s not–” I don’t know, maybe if you’re in small-town somewhere, but the Real Estate Rockstar podcast for us, it’s been such a tool that we’ve leveraged and utilized. That’s why we’re huge on masterminding because that’s where you’re getting growth and where you’re pushing each other.

Even if some of the ideas on there aren’t exactly good for your market, you can grow and expand on them and then do your own. That’s where I’ve seen real growth and movement for us instead of the plug and play coaching programs that–

Ian: I completely agree with you on that. I’m very fortunate and very grateful that I get to be a part of this because I asked to be a part of Real Estate Rockstars and because I like doing the interviews. I learn as much as the audience because I’m an audience member. I’m just on the other side of the mic asking the questions. I always tell people if, I’m a little partial to this one, obviously but–

Cody: It’s real, man.

Ian: It’s a window into your world. The likelihood that you would give the average person, let’s just say the average agent who sells five deals a year, an hour of your time, which we just took up almost an hour of your time, to tell them all the things you just told us, highly unlikely, right?

Especially just talking about the 10-minute, protect your 10s, protect your hours. The fact that this podcast gets a complete window into your world and how you operate your team, which is actually very different and very similar than every other team. You have your differences and they have theirs, but you also have your similarities. I love being able to compare, not in that one’s better than the other, but, why does that work for you? I really appreciate you saying that, not just about Real Estate Rockstars, but just about windows into people’s world, who are professional, who you want to model, in general. It’s a great idea. Why not?

Cody: I think the coaches that are going to be the most strong in the industry are the ones that are coaching from that perspective and not coaching from a, “Here’s my name stay guy that we’re saying just regurgitate whatever it is he says and follow that system. [crosstalk] that there’s local influence, there are so many different aspects to it that do and don’t work. Like you said man, that’s a big one. When I listen to podcasts sometimes, I hear someone doing something and I’m like, “I have to do that” but I’m like, “No.”

Ian: Right. [laughs]

Cody: “Sometimes you just have to stay in your lane and know– “I’m not going to lie, I’d love to run a podcast one day but I don’t think I have time for it. I see the prep work you have to do for it and all the steps and balances and all that, right? It’s not like it’s just plug and play and like, “Hey, let’s go.” There’s a ton of prep work and systems and all that to get it going. Stay in your lane, work what does good for you and build on that, master that and then go to the next step. Then look [crosstalk]–

Ian: I love that, man. Very very well said. Well, Cody Tritter, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on man. Really appreciate the insight and you’re super chill, calm guy but your knowledge is very very powerful man, so thank you for that.

Cody: Thank you for having me.

Ian: Your free gift for the audience, what’s that going to be?

Cody: I mentioned a few times that we love guides and what I sent over was our home builder’s guide and that’s just a sample of one of the products of what we give out to our home builders. We customize that so when we approach a builder we have our eight pages in that or six pages that are static, and then we put in two pages on there that are custom to what they’re doing and we try to identify ways that we can do things for them that other guys aren’t going to do, haven’t thought about doing, but generally speaking, it’s just a great guide if you’re wanting to approach home builders. We just launched it probably a month ago.

We’ve been a little bad about getting it out to as many people as we’ve wanted to so far but people we have approached with it, it’s resonated. We’ve picked up two builders off of it already, so I’d highly recommend checking it out, seeing the content and the message we deliver in it and what we’re doing, and make one your own.

Ian: Awesome, so if you want to find that or find out more information about Cody, you can go to hibandigital.com/codytritter, T-R-I-T-T-E-R. If you want to find Cody’s free gifts, go to the agent toolbox at hibandigital.com and literally find anything and everything. You’ve been there, it’s a treasure chest man. It is a treasure chest of this cool, intellectual property that people have created to make their businesses better and I think it’s awesome. It’s been a real pleasure man. Really appreciate you having you on and I know the audience is going to get a ton out of this so thank you.

Cody: Man I hope so, and honestly reach out to me because I don’t mind masterminding with people and networking, so anytime someone wants to chat real estate, hit me up

on Instagram or message us on our site and we’ll go from there.

Ian: Cool, man. Well, I appreciate it and we’ll talk to you soon.

Cody: All right, man. Thank you so much.

Ian: Thanks, brother.