The Hiring Test Top 1% Team Leaders Use (with Treasure Davis)

Most team leaders have a standards problem. Here’s what it typically looks like a roster full of licensed agents and one person who is probably the team leader still doing most of the dig still doing most of the deals. Listen, I get it. You hired well on paper, you ran the training, and yet somehow all of the production rides on your back. My guest today has led a 20-plus agent team to the top 1% in her state for over two decades. Not because she’s the best salesperson in the room, although I would argue she is, but because she’s built systems that make ordinary agents extraordinary. So if you don’t have a team yet, stay with me because what makes her agent roster produce is the same thing that can make a one-person business produce their standards that you can actually follow and that will help your business.

So by the end of this episode, you’ll know exactly what she looks at before she ever hires an agent. And also the habits that she doesn’t bend on. And also, if you are a team leader, she’ll tell you if an agent will make it or not make it way before the numbers actually prove you’re right. My guest today is the amazing Treasure Davis. She’s the team lead of the Treasure Davis team, brokered by eXp in Colorado Springs. She’s been a friend of mine for over a decade, and I kind of feel selfish like I’m just hanging out with her right now. But so so that you know a little bit more about her, she’s been in business since 2005.

She has over 3,500 transactions under her belt. That’s a billion dollars in volume. She’s of course the top 1% of realtors in Colorado every single year for 20 years running. But more than that, she’s led a large team with a full support staff. And she is also a certified Tom Ferry coach. She also volunteers for over a decade teaching home buying classes to military families at Fort Carson. The reason that I want you to hear from her is because Treasure didn’t just build a big team, she built a team that performs top to bottom. Treasure, welcome to Take It in Run. Please tell everybody a little bit about you, your team, and who you serve.

Oh my goodness. I don’t think I have anything else to say after that. That was beautiful and lovely. So thank you for the introduction. A little bit about me is like Kristi, we’ve been in the Tom Ferry ecosystem for a very long time and been proud coaches. I can definitely speak for Kristi on that as well. Proud coaches of Tom’s, not as long as Kristi, but for a few years now that I have been. And I serve the front range of Colorado, and I love every minute of it. I’ve been licensed since 2005, like Kristi said, and we have run our team. So today, I really wanted to get permission, Kristi.

Can I just keep it real? Please.

We would love that.

You know, there’s so much fake talk that goes on, and sometimes from the stage as well. And I just want to keep it real today.

Okay, so we’re getting we’re getting real today. We’re exposing. No, I know I know what you mean. Actually, before we before we hit record, one of the things that I said to Treasure is that for as long as I’ve known her, I’ve always appreciated that she’s been transparent. There tends to be some smoke and mirrors, right? So people throwing up big numbers, but their profitability is not there. And that’s one of the reasons that I invited her here is because Treasure has a great story of just how she became a real estate agent and and how, you know, out of from fear to faith to just getting it done, bootstrapping getting it done, she’s built an incredible career.

And somewhere along the lines, she decided that it she shouldn’t be doing it alone. In fact, I’d love for you, I’d love for us to start there. You know, I know you were as a oh gosh, you’re doing 50 transactions a year, which now seems like nothing when I know what you’re capable of in your own personal production. But there was a time that, you know, you’re doing these deals and then something clicked. Like maybe I shouldn’t do it all alone. Take us back to that. Like when did you when did you first get the inkling that maybe you should start a team?

So this is to me one of the funniest stories because I didn’t want to start a team. I didn’t even really know what a team was. It was really before teams were even a conversation that were had, right? I remember being one of the first people that joined Tom Ferry team coaching. And there was a small group of us that went behind the stage at Summit and he said, come back here. And I was like, I don’t even have a team, but I’m interested. And I remember running back to my coach Debbie Holloway and I’m like, can I qualify for this group? I think I have dreams of it, I just really don’t know.

So what happened was I just had more opportunities than I could handle myself. And I think that’s the key to actually starting the team, is you have to have more opportunities than you can handle yourself. If you look at your team, like they’re gonna make you money, you’re not gonna have to work, you’re gonna have more problems than you know what to do with. But if you have more opportunities than you know what to do with, that’s when things can really turn the other way. So I had an agent that I was doing a transaction with, and you know, you can usually tell when someone’s new.

I know people could tell when I was new selling real estate, and so it was her first transaction, and this was back 14 years ago, 15 years ago, and I friended her on Facebook, and she would not friend me back, and I was so like, oh my gosh, the transaction’s going great! Like, what’s going on? So we get to closing, and that day she hits accept on the friend request. And I see that the reason why she didn’t want to post was because it was actually her very first closing, and she did not want me to know that that was her first closing, and she crushed it.

Now, Kristi, you have known me for a long time, so you will know exactly who I’m talking about, and I’m talking about none other than the one and only Leanne Potts, who has been with me since the very beginning, and so she we met for coffee because I just wanted to tell her, you’re amazing, like I had no idea you were a brand new agent. And she thought she was gonna recruit me over to her company, and I was not about recruiting anybody anywhere. And so we met for coffee and we had a lovely time, and then I said, Hey, if I get some opportunities, can I just send them your way?

And she was like, Oh my gosh, I would love that. Well, I just had more opportunities, so I kept giving them to her, and then one day, about six or eight months in, she came to me and said, By the time that I give you like a small referral fee and pay my brokerage and do all that, there’s not a lot left. So I’d like to join you and start a start a team. And I was like, No, no, no, I don’t I don’t even know what that is. Like, I don’t know what that is. And so we decided to form the team. Well, my logo always had my name on it, right?

And when she came over, I was like, well, what do we name the team? And she was like, Oh, no, no, no, we leave that alone, like that’s established, we leave that alone. And I was like, okay, it’s probably just gonna be Angela, you, and me, who thankfully are still with me to this day. And I was like, okay, that makes sense. Like, we’re probably just gonna stay little. So that is actually how the team started, which is very unassuming, very non-traditional. It just happened because I had too many opportunities.

I w did not plan for that to be in here, and I love that you said that because you know, Leo Pareja, he spoke at the Tom Ferry Success Summit recently, and he said something that was so interesting. One thing he said was that we’ve overglamorized teams. So too many people are starting teams. But the other thing that he said was that if you are gonna start a team, you start a team after you have more opportunities than you can handle. And yet you and I know we’ve seen, I I love what you said. So the the motivation going into the team is like, oh, if this team’s gonna make me money and I’m not gonna have to work, and yeah, I I hate if you’re listening right now and you’re thinking, I think I should start a team because I just don’t want to work that hard for I’m telling you, running a team is an immense amount of work and it’s a privilege, right?

And there’s there’s pressure there, there’s a lot there. So I love that you you pointed that out. At what point though, Treasure, you know, you’ve you’ve got Leanne with you, you’ve you’ve got Dean. I know how long has Dean been with you?

Oh my gosh, probably 14 years. He’s been with me for a really long time as well, and he will like to tell you that he is the first man that we had joined the team. We had been kind of an all-girl team before, not for any reason, it’s just the way that it happened. But he will like to spit the story that he was the one that broke the glass ceiling for all the other men that have joined the team. So I’m gonna give credit where credit is due and let him have that one. And he has been just a tremendous asset to to who we are and what we’ve built.

And and I really could not have built what we’ve built without Angela, Dean, and Leanne. We just would not have been able to build what we build without them. And I’m so thankful that they still choose all these years later to work alongside of me every single day. And just like you said, like that is a huge privilege that we should not take lightly, and we should always make sure that we’re meeting people where they’re at. And I think that’s the second thing that I wanted, you know, just to make sure that team leaders know is like not only like they’re really the clients are really not your clients, your agents are really your clients.

And it’s all comes down to like their experience being on the team because how they’re treated determines how they go out and treat you know the clients that are actually buying and selling.

I agree. And so the fact that I even I know several of your team members, I know their names, I’ve met them, it just kind of goes to show that Treasure is not the what what do you know, what does Tom say? Like, you know, you’re you know, you’re Lady Gaga and everybody’s just you know following you. That’s that’s not Treasure’s team at all. But I am curious, so you’ve always you’ve always put up immense numbers, like I’m always I mean, the numbers that Treasure does in her personal production when I first started meeting her are the the numbers that teams do, and she’s doing them and and Leanne and and Dean and many of the agents on your team.

And I we’ll get into that, but what was it that shifted from from being in your mind? And I don’t want to say the from being a top producer because I know you still are, but there is something that shifted from yeah, I’m gonna do 130, I’m gonna do a hundred a hundred plus deals myself, so that top producer, to someone who builds producers. Because I think if knowing you as I do right now, I think that’s your main focus is building producing agents. So talk to us about that shift.

I think that the shift came because I was probably just we’re gonna keep it super real today. I was probably one of those agents who’s like, I don’t think that they can do it better than me. I I do this the best. And then once I started watching them do it and I actually slowed down to watch them, I actually learned like they actually do it better than I do. And that’s a very humbling feeling to have, especially when you do take such great pride and immense pleasure in making sure that your clients are raving fans at the end of the transaction, right? And so when you leave that and then you still see people doing more, you’re like, wow, like gosh, like Dean’s listing presentation and his launch still to this day, I am baffled by it because I’m like, there is nothing you have not thought of, and it is impressive.

I’ve sold a gazillion houses, but none of that matters because I’ve surrounded myself with people that do it better than me every single day, and that I learn from literally every single day. And I think that’s really the mindset that shifted for me really early on was who do I want to be surrounded with? Because real estate’s very lonely, and it’s not usually the kind of you’re usually not in the kind of ecosystem where people will easily share and give and contribute and actually be friends with you because they look at it as you know your your competition. But because I got into coaching so early, I realized I’m just my own superpower, right?

Like if they’re gonna hire Kristi, they’re gonna hire Kristi, and I’m gonna be like, You got you did a good choice. Like I would have hired Kristi, right? If they hire me, it’s because I clicked with them and I aligned with them, and I wasn’t of the same sameness. I really took the time to try to align with them if I could and still keep it genuine to who I am. So I really think that it shifted for me really early on to say, I do not want this to be about me. I really want this to be about surrounding myself with people that do this better than I do.

And that is my wish and my hope for every team leader out there. I wish you would Angela, a Leanne, and a Dean.

Oh, I love that. That I mean I would take them. Because they’re so good. But okay, so so that was the shift in you. But now let’s talk about a system because you have built incredible systems. And I know that there’s people listening right now that they’re about to make their first hire and they’re absolutely terrified of getting it wrong. You know, what if I train them up and they leave me? You know, that whole thing. So walk us through what are you actually looking for when you decide whether you’re gonna bring on someone to the team? Like, help us help us know, like what is Treasure looking for?

How does she know she’s gonna get a dean?

Yes. So I want to circle back to one of the things you just said is when team members leave. Because I have a very sweet story about that with Tom. So the way that you hire amazing people is when people show you who they are, you need to believe them. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that they’re a bad person, they’re just not the right person in the right seat for what you’re trying to build. But you’re gonna come along a lot of great people who you can learn from, but that doesn’t mean you bring them into the circle of what you’re building, and so I think when you’re looking at, I used to really overcomplicate this, but after two decades of doing this, and I don’t say that to be like I’ve been in business for this long, I’m talking about from all the times that I’ve had my face smeared down the asphalt.

That’s where I’m coming from now, right? And I think the question that I would really ask myself now, as we’re looking to hire somebody, is would I actually use them to buy or sell my own home? And if the answer is no, you should never hire them.

Give us some examples, right? Like, because that’s I mean, I’m gonna challenge you a little bit on that. I like the premise, right? That means that I that means I like them, right? There, there’s there’s some rapport there, there’s clickable, but there also is like, how do you know they’re trustworthy? How do you know? I mean, I’m just thinking, like, who would I hire? I want someone who’s gonna pick up the phone, I want someone that’s gonna work hard, I want someone that’s gonna fight for me. What does that how does that show up in an interview?

It shows up in an interview sometimes when we set up ahead of time. This is a little aggressive, but let’s hear it. We set up ahead of time to go to a restaurant, and we go to the restaurant and we tell them, hey, we’re we’re interviewing them. Purposely make a mistake on their menu, make a mistake on their meal. Let us see how they react. Do they take it in stride or do they flip out? Because in real estate, as you know, you can’t flip out. You you gotta just keep rolling with the punches. Now, do we do that for everybody? No, but if you really want to know how someone is, see how they treat the servers, see how they act when their meal is wrong, see how they show up, see how they answer the phone, look at their social media that will tell you light years about who they are, right?

And so the way that we do our interview is they come on, they do a a phone interview with the person that does the hiring now, and he’ll interview them and ask them some questions to just kind of get a gauge of if they’re full-time agents. We don’t hire any part-time agents for us just because the liability and the way that we want our agents to be trained and be professionals is a big deal for us. For other teams, part-time agents may work for them. That’s the best thing I love about real estate is there’s not one way to do anything. You can do things however you want to do them, and whatever is true to you, this is just what’s true to us.

And so for me, with Leanne, she had come from a property management background. She had been in real estate, she is one of the sweetest people that you will ever want to meet. She doesn’t know a stranger, and what I love about her is the thoughtfulness that she puts behind that. And so those are the things that show up for people. But if you’re just looking at like a standard DISC test, I used to like ride and die for the DISC test. Now, do I think that there’s some benefits to those? For sure. Do I think there’s benefits to working geniuses test? Yes. Do I think there’s benefits to the Enneagram?

Like, yes, there is benefits to all of that, but it really comes down to really having them integrate into your sales meeting, into your weekly meeting, and seeing how they interact with the other agents on the team. Are they sitting over here shy? Of course they’re shy because it’s their first time going into a meeting and maybe they feel intimidated. But guess what? You’re gonna go to a listing appointment and you’re gonna feel intimidated. So, how do you show up? What do you look like? Are you dressed professionally or is everything wrinkly and kind of off-kiltered? So we’re really looking to see who can blend in with who we have as far as now, everybody has different personalities, right?

If you look at Leanne and Dean, they have very different personalities. Dean is very analytical. So when we were looking at hiring Dean, he was a teacher. He does a lot nonprofit-wise, he’s very active in the community, and so those are the things that we are building because our core values are charity. And so when people are active in their community and they’re giving back for the right reasons, that automatically attracts them to who we are and what we’re trying to build.

That makes a lot of sense. Now, I mean, I agree with you. The the disk, the you know, Myers Briggs, all of the different assessments are helpful, but you also have to spend some time belly to belly, if you will, to see if they’re gonna be the right fit. Now, are there any like telltale signs? You know, let’s say you bring somebody on, can you tell, you know, within a matter of a couple weeks if they’re gonna make it or not?

I can. If they’re not leaning in to what we’ve built, and if they’re not leaning in to the mentor that we’ve assigned them to, they’re not gonna work out for us. But if they actually lean in a hundred percent, they’re going to find success. And success to them is going to look different than other people’s success, right? But they’re gonna find their own internal success. And that’s different than what you’ve probably heard me say before. But we’re gonna find they’re gonna find what’s in alignment with their success.

Okay, so I’ve always known the the team to be agents who produce at a high level, right? And so help me understand, you know, for the person. That’s listening, what does that mean? They’re going to find their their success, and how is that in alignment? Because you give a lot of opportunity, you give a lot of resources. Like there’s, you know, at some level, I have to imagine there’s an expectation of production. So, how does how do you how do you match their level of success with an expectation of production?

Part of that comes down to the questions we ask them in the interview. You know, what how many homes do you want to sell? How much do you want to make? What does this look like for you? Really, why are you getting into real estate? Right? And I think if we all sit back and think about why we actually got into real estate, the answers are all a little bit different, right? But that means that you have to align with what that actually is of why you got into real estate. So for me, I got into real estate because I personally wanted a different lifestyle.

I wanted things to be different for my children growing up, and I wanted to be able to have opportunities for my daughter. And I wanted to move to a bigger city. And so this is what it took for me to get into real estate. Everybody has their own story of the why, but that why is also the alignment. Before when I would get up on stage, I would get up there and say, if you don’t sell 24 houses a year, you’re not on our team. 24, no one even sold that. Everybody on this team sold 40, 50, 60. Yeah, I was gonna say double that.

Yeah, was like we set the bar so low that you couldn’t have not hit it, right? Because everybody was such high producers. But what shifted for us was when COVID happened. And one of my top producers, her dad is a war veteran and he had been burned massively. And he has, I don’t know the exact amount, but let’s just say over 70% of his body is completely burned. And he goes on the road and he speaks and he shares his story and is incredibly motivational and will move anybody to tears. And his his wife and him have traveled doing this for many, many decades. Well, one of my top producers and beloved agents, Kim, her mom got COVID and died suddenly and very tragically from COVID, which completely left this other side of her world in turmoil.

And so she had she was trying to straddle two worlds to figure out how do I support my dad and how do I keep this legacy going and how do I still be here for my husband who’s a firefighter and COVID’s going on, and I have girls and I have all these things. And that was the first time that I sat back and said, you know, all these years we haven’t been meeting where we haven’t been meeting people where they’re at. Right? We’ve been setting these expectations of what we want people to perform to, but we haven’t been meeting people where they’re at. Now I will tell you the piece of that is you have to be doing the things you need to do day to day.

This doesn’t mean the person that isn’t showing up, the person that isn’t making their calls, the person that isn’t doing that, that’s not that person. I that person, you’re honestly doing them a disservice by keeping them in real estate if they’re not doing those things, because you know every single month they’re just they have the potential of falling deeper in debt or deeper into potentially having some you know mental thoughts about, you know, this is too hard, I can’t do this, those kind of things. And we don’t want to wish those thoughts on anybody, right? And so if you have those person, if you have that person on your team, I think as a leader, you owe it to yourself and to them to have that conversation to say, I don’t know if this is for you, or maybe this isn’t for you, but you should do something that’s going to propel you into the future because what you’re doing now is just holding you back.

That is so much easier said than done, but clear is kind, right? And so that’s shifted for me over the years. However, we do have a minimum of 12. It has changed, but it’s also changed because the burnout after COVID was so real because what is what does Tom say? Champagne and cocaine.

Yeah.

Now on our team, we’re not doing that. However, we do understand the concepts of what he’s saying, right? As soon as he says that, everybody’s like, okay, yeah, we got you. There was also a burnout piece to that, and so again, we had to pivot and meet people where they were at that are doing the activities that they need to do to be successful.

Let’s talk about that. Like, take me through a normal day of one of the agents. Like, what are the daily habits? You know, whether it’s required or whether it’s just recommended, like, what do you know? And that the person listening can say, okay, let me write that down. If I do these things, Treasure says I’ll be successful.

Yes. So the first thing, just speaking of team leaders, is you can’t require them to come to any meetings, you can’t require them to do any trainings, you can’t ask them to do anything, they are independent contractors. So all that you can do is set it up and encourage them to come and join you and to lean in and do all of that. And so for us, we really say that if you don’t have a mentor or a coach, whether you’re a solo agent, and I really believe if you’re a solo agent, you’re still a team because you still work with your lender, you still work with your title company, you still work with your inspector, these people all still make the deal happen.

You’re a team. That’s it, that’s your team. For me, my team is just bigger because I have a full admin staff, a full marketing staff, people to do all those things, but we’re all moving in the same direction to get that done, right? So I would say for us, if they don’t have, if you are not willing to invest in yourself and your development with either a mentor andor a coach, no matter how long you’ve been in the business, and I’m not just plugging that because obviously we’re coaches and obviously we’ve been in the ecosystem for a long time. But if you think about it, everybody in professional sports has a coach.

Multiple of them. I think Tom has like four or five coaches in different avenues, right? And here’s what happens when you become a team leader. You kind of surround yourself with people that don’t tell you no. You don’t really have anybody that’s gonna challenge your thinking. You have to have that coach or that mentor that’s gonna kind of challenge you. So when you join a team, you need to make sure that you’re leaning into the mentorship, to the coaching. You need to make sure that you’re willing to treat this like a normal, normal job. You’re going to need to make sure that you are logging everything in CRMs because how are you going to remember six months from now a conversation that you had?

You’re just not going to. And how rude of you to call somebody and say, I’m just checking in. Who are you to check in with me? I don’t even know you to check in. I don’t want you to check in with me. If Kristi says, I want to check in with you, check in with me, I’m going to honor that because Kristi and I are friends. I’m I’m I know what she’s saying to me, but if I don’t know you and you say, I’m just checking in, I’m kind of like checking in on what? You’re not bringing any value to that conversation. So you have to have value conversations.

You have to make sure that you are leaning into people in the way that they want to be leaned into. You have to not take things personally because a lot of people think, oh, they ghosted me, they’re not talking to me, they’re not doing anything like that. And I’m like, when did it become about you? Like, how is them not answering about you? You don’t know what’s going on in their lives. You don’t know if they just had their first grandbaby, and they’re just a little bit busy right now celebrating. You don’t know if they’re going through a really challenging divorce, and you just aren’t on that list to be called, right?

So I think it’s really taking yourself outside of that. So I think if you’re able to have the follow-up and you’re able to log the notes and you’re able to do it so that you’re doing what’s best for the person you’re trying to connect with, and you’re taking the time to role-play and learn and educate yourself. Everybody knows I’m a huge Kansas City Chiefs fan. Huge diehard. Went to the Super Bowl, love it. I I always take it this back to if you go to the Super Bowl, you’re not going to practice there. You’re practicing years for that, your whole lifetime for that, right? And you’re practicing and you’re doing drills and you’re watching tape and you’re doing all that.

Why don’t we do that in our day-to-day business as well? Why don’t we do that? So I would say first, it’s having a CRM to log those information, whether it’s a spreadsheet, whether it’s I don’t care what it is, note cards, I don’t care. But logging that so you can have honest value conversations with people, you’re willing to show up to be educated because this industry is always changing. You have to be educated about the changes that are coming your way. How are you going to get that?

Right?

And how are you going to get that from the brokers that matter? And then I would say showing up to meet people where they’re at and having a process in a system so that when you have multiple clients, they’re all getting almost the same experience, right? There’s going to be differences for sure, but you don’t want them to talk to them and be like, oh my gosh, when I met Kristi for the first time, she brought me a coffee for my first showing. And then Kelcie is like, Well, I didn’t get a coffee when I first met with them. Well, why do they like you better?

You want to standardize those things. And then the way that our systems and processes grew is because honestly, we were taking so much time to educate ourselves and do all that, that when things would come up, we would just be like, okay, that was a lesson someone else learned, let’s build that into a process. Oh, we learned this lesson, let’s build that into our process. We just kept adding and adding and adding over the years. And so now when we put a buyer under contract, it’s roughly 273 steps that we take from the time we go active, like from the time they come in to the time that they close, which is a tremendous amount, but they’re just things that we’ve learned along the way, and that’s how things for us got built, is because if they if they happened, we wanted to learn from them, or we wanted to make sure that they were duplicatable and they were scalable, and so that people could expect their experience.

So you just shifted us right into culture, which was one of the topics, and so you she didn’t even know that, ladies and gentlemen. She just that’s who she is, and so you know, you there was so much to unpack there. But I want to back up. So I want you to listen to what she said and and write that down. A standard that you can put for yourself to be a productive agent, whether you have a team or you don’t, and you just want to increase your production. She said you have to be coachable. So ideally hiring hiring a coach or having a mentor through your brokerage, something like that.

But be have a growth mindset and learn is what I heard. Be willing to role play and put yourself out there. Don’t practice on your clients, and then have a system or a structure around making your calls, logging that information, and then having empathy and putting yourself in your client’s shoes. So that’s kind of I want to button that up. But then she shifted right into systems. And so you guys have said something like almost like a tagline of like who represents you matters. So clearly we go back all the way to the beginning. What I what this would I purchase a home or sell a home with this person, now they’re on my team.

So we’re kind of building that culture. You know, what does that look like past the tagline, right? Like how is how does every agent on the team embody, you know, what does that interaction look like? What is that client experience that makes working with the Treasure Davis team just so special?

Since we’re kind of talking just to realtors themselves, it comes down to some simple things that again are not very sexy. When the new contracts come out every year and you need to take training, we take the training in January. When we have ethics classes we need to do, we take that early. When there’s things that our brokerage asks of us to do or the state asks of us to do, we do that early and timely. We’re not the ones zooming in December. Now, people have situations that come up, but we’re getting our continuing education done early so that we can educate our clients to the best of the ability that we have.

I think that’s a huge one that again is not very sexy to talk about, but it’s one that who represents you matters, you need to be educated, and you need to be able to have kind of the tool belt, the toolkit of you need this, we have this. Like, hey, we recommend you talk to you know a lawyer or to an accountant. Well, who do you know? Yeah, well, you’re not doing a Google search on that, you’re saying these are the people that my clients have had a great experience with. You’re free to do your own research and hire who you want to. This is who they’ve liked, right?

So you’re having that kind of in your tool belt to make sure that you know you’re coming from a place of education. It’s also looking for ways where you can reduce liability for your clients at any step of the way. So that comes from one example in Colorado is home inspectors are the only part of our transaction that are not licensed, background checked, or fingerprinted. We have had claims, and I’ve had my own experience with a home inspector that sadly did not follow instructions on my home and that I was purchasing when I was a brand new agent, and he almost chopped his finger off in a broken sash of a window.

And then he wanted to file a homeowner’s claim against the homeowners. In this day and age, with the insurance issues we’re having across the country, that could really hurt homeowners, right? So, how do you get that from them, still knowing that these are the requirements? You ask for the inspector to send a copy of the insurance so that you know that they have insurance before they come onto the property. Again, just things like that, you know, and another one is you go to closing, the agents are in the room, buyers and sellers are in the room, everybody’s talking. The realtors aren’t actually sometimes paying attention to what’s going on, and there can be honest clerical mistakes done on those closing documents, right?

And so for us, we’ve always wanted to try to separate that a little bit and not to make the transaction cold, but just to say if you want to leave them a nice note or a gift, please, please do that. But we want to protect people’s personal financial information that’s shared at that closing table and keep that separate. If you guys want to connect afterwards, fantastic, but that financial last piece is something that’s pretty private, so that’s where it comes into who represents you matters. We have like we’re more than just our videos and our fun videos and our funny videos that we make. We don’t take it to the extreme that some people do.

Again, that’s their brand, that’s what they’re trying to do. But who represents you matters really comes down to are we just trying to sell you a home? Or are we actually taking the time to say, I know you like this home, but what I heard you say was this, and I have this other option for you. Would you just consider it? Right? And it’s doing what’s right for people even when it’s not easy for people.

Oh, well, we could end the podcast right there. Doing what’s right for people even when it’s not easy. Okay, so you said one thing before we button this up. I don’t remember the exact number, but you said there’s roughly 200 and how many? 200 and something steps in your transaction process. Oh, 273. Yeah, see so the fact that you know that there’s roughly 273 steps from you know from start to finish, what she’s really saying is they have systems. They don’t they don’t wing it. So when when you guys say who re who represents you matters, you guys have backwards mapped and thought of every possible contingency to try to make that experience as easy as possible, as safe and secure as possible.

And that says a lot because how many times have we been on this other side of a cross sale with an agent who was just a hot mess, a hot mess. I won’t go into it today. Maybe, maybe when I see you in person, ask me, ask me to tell you my most recent experience of that with an agent that I just was flabbergasted. I could not believe what this agent was telling me. And I thought, oh my gosh. Funny thing is, Treasure, whenever I don’t feel like making my calls, whenever I because let’s face it, there are days that that you’re just like, I mean, it’s Friday, it’s you know, in the afternoon, I’m I’m ready to put on my PJs, to be honest.

Like I’m tired. I yawned at the beginning, and and Treasure’s like, wait, you’re you’re tired. Like, I woke up at 4:30. But there are days when I don’t feel like making my calls. And one thing that I’ll tell myself is if I don’t call this person, they might end up with an I I probably shouldn’t say her name, but we nicknamed my producer’s like, no, don’t say it. Okay, fine. I won’t. There was an agent. Well, we have a nickname for, but there was an agent that will live an infamy in my head, and I name that agent. Every time I don’t feel like I need to, I’ll be like, I don’t want to be like that person.

And how would I feel if someone ended up buying or selling a home with that person? Pick up the phone, make your calls, because you know, there are good agents, and there are just lazy ones that are just kind of, you know, we’ll put that to bed.

What a great motivator! Like everybody can think of that person, whether they’re in real estate or not, right? Like, I don’t want to be like X person. If you’re driven by that, let that be your motivation, right?

Like it’s mine.

Yeah. We’ve got that experience makes you drill it in. You know, you’re just like, oh, like how Tom has had us like write checks, and he’s like, if you don’t do this, you’re gonna pay me five thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars. All he’s doing there is looking for the pain and that for you to have that motivation to say, I can’t write that ten thousand dollar check. I don’t want to write that ten thousand dollar check, I don’t want to send it to this political group or whatever it is, right? Yeah, he’s just looking for that piece. So I think it’s important. I still make my calls today.

When I’m done with this, I’m gonna go make my calls. You think I want to do that after talking to my friend Kristi? No, I don’t. I want to talk to her more, but I have a hard date to make these calls.

Yep. Yep, hard date on our calendar. I like it. Okay, we’re gonna go into rapid fire. This is and then we’ll go rapid fire and then we’re gonna give them the take and run challenge and we’ll sign off. So, first thing that comes to your mind, rapid fire. Would you rather work with somebody who’s coachable but slow or talented but stubborn?

Coachable and slow.

What do you think gets you farther? Mastering scripts or having a good personality? Mastering scripts. What’s the habit if you could wave a magic wand, what’s the habit you’d make every agent in America do tomorrow?

Make their calls.

Be consistent.

Be consistent.

I like that. Make your calls be consistent, show up, right? What’s the best money you’ve ever spent on your team?

Ooh, the best money I’ve ever spent on my team was taking us on our all-team trip vacation. We have we’ve been to five different countries over the years.

That’s amazing. I love that. Okay. What’s one thing that new team leaders get wrong every single time?

I think that we take off boarding personally.

Okay. What is the biggest lie about what it takes to build a team?

The biggest lie about that is that you will be profitable.

We could start a whole other. We might have to have Treasure come back because we can start a whole other episode on this because it’s it’s so true. There was actually, I wish I would have started with the with the the you know the rapid the rapid fire because it was so much good stuff in there. But it’s time for us to wrap this episode up. So here’s your take it and run challenge. I’m gonna call it the non-negotiable list. I want you to write down the standard for yourself or the standard for your team, whether that starts with integrity where treasure started, or it starts with, you know, can’t hire part-time people because of the standard of care that we have.

And I know that that someone working a full-time job somewhere else might not be able to pick up the phone and help their client like we help our client here. And it also then comes down to the non-negotiable list of the other things that she mentioned. What am I doing to feed my mind and to grow my skill? How am I showing up every day for my clients and for the opportunity that I’ve been given? Whether it’s a referral from a client, a referral from another agent or a lead from your team, how am I showing up? How am I a good steward of the opportunity?

So create your non-negotiable list, write it down, make it visual, and then show up and take action. So, Treasure, for people who want to find out more about you, want to connect with you, your team, possibly send you a referral, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

I welcome all the referrals. I know all the best realtors in Colorado, so I’m happy to connect you with anybody. And you can find me on Instagram at @TreasureDavisRealtor, or you can go to my website, treasuredavis.com, and connect with me there.

Love it. So, everybody, go build your non-negotiable list. I would love to hear about it. Treasure would love to hear about it. In fact, Treasure and I have now given you the instructions, so it’s your turn to take it and run.