April 16, 2025Suneet talks with Michael Gillies, who leads Gillies Team Real Estate in Northern Virginia, about the recruiting machine behind more than 1,000 applicants: how he took over his parents’ business, built a steady hiring pipeline and set a goal of growing from 13 or 14 agents toward 30.
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Episode breakdown: recruiting with Indeed ads and twice-weekly Zoom calls
Michael Gillies leads Gillies Team Real Estate in Northern Virginia, with an office in Stafford. He joined his parents’ real estate business in 2008 after the subprime mortgage company he worked for closed, and took it over as they retired. At the time of this conversation with Suneet Agarwal, the team had 13 or 14 agents and a goal of getting closer to 30 by year end. Most of the episode is about the recruiting machine behind that goal.
Run a scholarship ad that leads to a Zoom call
Michael runs paid Indeed ads built around a scholarship offer, with headlines like “we have too many leads, we’ll pay for your license.” The team covers the cost of the license class on the recruit’s first deal, which comes to under $200 with the discount the team gets from its licensing school. By his count the ads have brought in over a thousand applications since October, for what he estimates is about $600 a month.
Applicants don’t get a link straight away. Once they apply, Denise on his team sends a templated email inviting them to a 45-minute Zoom call on a day in the life of a successful agent, and they register through Zoom. Michael learned the format from another team leader and adapted it. Suneet recommends checking the cost per application inside Indeed and testing the same offer on Meta. Suneet lays out the real estate recruiting scripts he uses for conversations like these.
Hold the call twice a week, every week
The calls run Monday at 6 p.m. and Thursday at 9 a.m., two slots that reach different people. Attendance swings from the upper teens to four, and Michael’s early fear was hosting calls where nobody came. That hasn’t happened once. Since October he has missed only about three sessions.
He is direct on the calls about the numbers, why some agents succeed and why others don’t. He walks through the team’s values, starting with hunger and hustle, so the wrong people screen themselves out. Then he nurtures the rest through their licensing classes until they’re ready to join.
I want the people that are gonna work. I want the people that wanna learn how to sell, that wanna learn how to convert, that aren’t afraid of the phone.
Michael Gillies
Plan growth around headcount, not existing agents leveling up
Michael has made the mistake of pausing recruiting because he trusted the team he had and didn’t want to dilute their leads. Then people left, often the ones he least expected. He now keeps a constant pipeline. When two agents left on a Tuesday the week of recording, others were already starting that same week.
His reasoning rests on two thermostats. Every agent has a financial thermostat, a level of income they’re comfortable with, and a work-hard thermostat, the effort they’re willing to put in. Better leads, tech and coaching won’t push everyone past both.
If you’re counting on everyone’s financial thermostat to keep going up and everyone’s work hard thermostat to keep going up, it’s just probably not gonna happen.
Michael Gillies
He doesn’t treat agents who are happy where they are as a problem. To hit team goals, though, he has to add people and opportunities.
Track conversations as a conversion metric
The team had always tracked appointments set, met, signed and closed. After moving to Follow Up Boss about six months earlier, it added Sisu, which pulls in Follow Up Boss conversations and the rate at which they turn into set appointments. More conversations led to more signed buyers and sellers than the team had ever had. The data also showed a gap. Set-to-met was lower than Michael wanted, which pointed to setting stronger appointments.
Lead in your own style
Michael was a strong closer before he was a leader, and he says he made every mistake new team leaders make. The lesson that took longest was that copying another leader’s style made him come across badly. Having been an agent on the team before leading it now helps him, because he can tell recruits he has done everything he asks of them.
One of the biggest lessons that I learned, and it took me a long time to figure it out, was you can’t lead like anyone else.
Michael Gillies
Key takeaways for team leaders
- Use a paid Indeed ad with a clear offer to start conversations with people interested in real estate.
- Gate the invite behind an application, then run a recurring group call at two different times each week.
- State your values and expectations on the call so the wrong people opt out.
- Keep recruiting even when your current team feels solid.
- Track conversations and set-to-met, not just appointments and closings.
