November 11, 2023In this episode, Nick McLean and Suneet Agarwal interview Laurie Finkelstein Reader, founder of the Laurie Finkelstein Reader Team. Laurie shares her 26-year journey enhancing real estate experiences and coaching entrepreneurs for nationwide business growth. The conversation explores Laurie’s team achievements, exceeding $2.83 Billion in sales and assisting 7,700 families. Laurie emphasizes leadership as a responsibility, discussing the importance of empowering and supporting team members for industry-wide growth. Viewers gain insights into Laurie’s leadership philosophy and valuable lessons on fostering a successful real estate business.
Video Contents:
00:00 – Introduction
04:45 – Laurie’s Take on Leadership & Constant Improvement
12:45 – Giving Permission to Fail
20:30 – Taking Accountability & Empowering Your Team
28:53 – How to Empower & Support Your Team
43:10 – Laurie’s Real Estate Forecast & Advice
Episode breakdown: leading by empowering the people around you
Laurie Finkelstein Reader has spent more than 26 years in real estate in South Florida, and her team has closed more than $2.83 billion in sales. She’s no longer taking listings herself. In this conversation with Nick McLean and Suneet Agarwal, she explains how she leads a company of about 120 people by building independent thinkers instead of answering every question herself.
Treat leadership as a responsibility you keep earning
Laurie thinks the word leadership gets used loosely. For her it means responsibility, to the consumer who trusts the team and to every agent who joins it. She still asks herself why 120 people would want to work for her company, and whether she is performing at a level that makes people want to be in her world.
When she moved from top producer to company builder, she says she wasn’t naturally built for it and had no training for the role. So she hired coaches, joined masterminds and went into rooms where she felt she didn’t belong. She reads constantly and passes each book on when she’s done. She also asks for feedback after almost everything, from agents, coaches and consumers, and tells people she wants to hear where she can improve, not just where she did well.
Give every new hire permission to fail
Laurie says the same thing in the first meeting with every employee, coaching client and agent. The work won’t be perfect, she expects mistakes, and she doesn’t want them to wait for perfect before they move. A new executive assistant, about 90 days into the job, told her no boss had ever said that to her before.
The reason I give you permission to fail is because you’re human and you will, and also because I don’t want you to wait to get things perfect or we can’t grow.
Laurie Finkelstein Reader
The same idea applies to newer agents who are scared to pick up the phone. Her team tells them it’s time on the task. Make the calls, get comfortable and expect to mess some of them up. If a client asks something an agent can’t answer, the agent can respond with a question of their own. Nick added that when people don’t have permission to fail, they hide mistakes and slow down on the work that needs doing.
Answer “got a minute” with a question
Laurie says the “got a minute” interruptions are under control in her life, and that only happened in the past couple of years. People kept calling and texting with questions they already knew the answer to. She started replying with some version of “what do you think you should do?” until they learned to trust their own judgment. She doesn’t want to babysit 150 people. She wants them self-sufficient.
She sets one condition for staff. When an employee comes to her with a problem, she wants several proposed solutions along with it, ideally three different paths the company could take.
It’s about empowering the people in your world, and that comes along with giving people permission to fail.
Laurie Finkelstein Reader
Bring your integrator into every room
Laurie’s CEO joined the company about eight years ago as a college student doing a few hours of admin work a day for some of the lead agents. She became Laurie’s admin, then director of operations, and grew into the CEO role over the last two years. Laurie calls herself the visionary and her CEO the integrator, and says a growing company needs both.
For about five and a half years, Laurie hasn’t attended a mastermind, training or coaching session, other than her private coach, without her CEO. Her CEO also has her own coaching. Laurie has put her on speaking stages too, including a Follow Up Boss event where the CEO spoke alone. The company now brings its wider leadership staff to events and tries to get them on stage. Laurie sees holding people back out of fear that they’ll leave as ego, and says leaders who have someone stepping up should be putting that person in front.
If you really want to grow people, you really got to be cool with stepping out and stepping aside.
Laurie Finkelstein Reader
Know why someone would join you before you hire
Laurie regularly hears from people who want to build a team fast and plan to buy a lot of leads to do it. Her first question is simple: why would someone want to work for you? Most can’t answer it. She tells them to figure that out and call her back.
In her view, leads are a product the team offers agents. They are not a value proposition. Her team does use its listing-lead flow from the Zillow seller Flex program in recruiting conversations, but the interview goes deeper into what matters to the candidate and whether they align with the company’s core values. A team that sells itself on leads alone gets called a bad company the moment an agent decides the leads are bad. Her team is also shifting its marketing to put agents’ brands out front, after agents told the company they wanted to build their own.
Key takeaways for team leaders
- Ask yourself regularly why your people would choose to work for you, and act on the answer.
- Tell every new hire, in the first meeting, that mistakes are expected and that waiting for perfect is the bigger risk.
- When someone brings you a question they can answer, ask what they think they should do.
- Ask staff to bring proposed solutions with every problem, not just the problem.
- Take your integrator to your coaching and masterminds, and give them the stage.
- Don’t lead recruiting with leads. Lead with your values and the growth an agent can expect.
