November 23, 2023In this mini-episode, co-founders of Reside Platform Suneet Agarwal and Nick McLean, sit down to discuss the idea that: “You’ve lost everything, and you’re starting your team over from scratch. Your goal is to make $1 Million as quickly as possible and you’ve got $10,000 to your name. How would you do it?” Suneet and Nick dive DEEP and put themselves into that headspace that they are truly starting from scratch. What would they do in this scenario? They discuss the importance of mentors and just showing up, and they break down the things that you should spend the $10k on.
Video Contents:
0:00 – Introduction
01:00 – Starting Over, What Do You Do?
05:40 – The Importance of Mentors
08:42 – SHOW UP!
14:40 – What To Spend Your Money On
Episode breakdown: rebuilding a team from scratch with $10,000
In this short episode, Reside Platform co-founders Nick McLean and Suneet Agarwal take on a thought experiment. You’ve lost the brand, the CRM and the team, you have $10,000, and the goal is to build a team that makes $1 million as fast as possible. With production down across many markets when they recorded, Nick said a lot of teams were close to starting over anyway. Their answers start with habits that cost nothing and end with where the money should go.
Show up every day and find mentors
Suneet’s first move would be the one he made as a new agent. When he got his license there was no team for him to join, so he found a mentor, then another one. Asked what those mentors cost him, he said it was absolutely free. He went into the office every day, and every weekend he held three open houses and followed up with the people who came through. No one had taught him about lead generation, and he made 100 grand in nine months in his first year.
Show up every day, expand your horizons, be open-minded, try new things.
Suneet Agarwal
Work the leads nobody else is working
Suneet’s view is that the opportunity is already sitting in other people’s systems. An agent can walk up to a team leader and ask which leads no one is working. Even a team with every automation and a full bench of ISAs has thousands of leads it never gets to. He used to tell team leaders to hand him their missed-call report. In a lead audit with his own ISAs the week before recording, he found a voicemail from someone asking his team to sell their home, and nobody got back to them for two days.
Nick, who runs agent onboarding for Reside, makes the same point in training. He asks agents to imagine he’s handed them a ready, willing and able buyer with a million-dollar budget. Then he asks them to raise a hand if they think they could still screw it up. That’s the point. Deals get lost through poor follow-through all the time.
Keep calling expireds
Both hosts noticed expired listings coming back on their MLS at the start of November. Suneet’s team works expireds every day, by mail and by phone, and he said they could still get better at both. Nick pointed out how many agents treat expireds and for-sale-by-owners as something they did once to cut their teeth, then stopped. Suneet never stopped.
Spend the money on skills first
When Nick finally asked where the $10,000 would go, Suneet said he’d put it into himself. He would find strong sales and persuasion coaches and marketing coaches, then implement fast and hard. He’d rather spend on his own skill development than on a marketing campaign. Nick added that a coach isn’t the only option. An audiobook subscription is cheap, and the real gap is acting on what you already know.
I think what people lack in today’s market more than ever is execution, not ideas.
Nick McLean
Market with video you shoot yourself
For marketing, the hosts would lean on organic social media, local events, value-added webinars and seminars. Suneet shared his own test. In September 2023 he started posting one Instagram reel a day and kept it going. His followers grew to one and a half times what they were, and his impressions went from about a thousand a month to 100,000 a month. He shot and edited everything on his iPhone, inside Instagram, without a VA or special equipment.
He said video lets an agent become well known in a local market quickly, and that agents hold themselves back by thinking they need to be experts first.
You don’t have to be an expert. Be an enthusiast. Share your enthusiasm.
Suneet Agarwal
Key takeaways for team leaders
- The habits that rebuild a business, like showing up, open houses and finding mentors, cost little or nothing.
- Audit your missed calls and unworked leads before you buy new ones.
- Keep a daily mail-and-call routine for expireds, even after you think you’ve outgrown it.
- Put early dollars into sales and marketing skills, then act on what you learn quickly.
- Post short video consistently. You don’t need an editor or special gear to get started.
