How Tina Caul went from expired and FSBO calls to a team on pace for 900 homes

Tina Caul00:00

I’ve never lost sight of the foundation of the business that truly builds businesses that are solid. And to me, the one thing has never gone away in the last 15 years, and that’s picking up the phone and having conversations. And so you’ll hear a lot of social media influencers out there.

00:19They’re like, “Oh, build a YouTube channel. Go join a company and recruit all these agents. You’ll be rich.” All of that is shiny object syndrome. And yes, there are opportunities in social media. There are opportunities in recruiting. There are opportunities in building a course and selling it. But at the end of the day, when you look at the foundation of any business, it’s picking up the phone and calling people.

00:39Every lead source leads to the telephone, so you gotta get good at it.

Loida Velasquez00:57

What’s going on everyone? Welcome back to a brand new episode of Vulcan7 Coaches and Mentors, where we bring you some of the best in the industry, and they share with you their tips and strategies so that you can implement in your business immediately. We have done so many episodes. We have had so many amazing guests.

01:15So if you need to catch up on previous videos and audios, make sure to check out our YouTube channel or listen on any of your favorite streaming platforms. Now, with that being said, I wanna welcome today’s guest. We’re gonna talk a lot about things that you need to be doing, especially for next year, so that you can have a successful 2024.

01:35So with that being said, I wanna welcome Tina Caul. Welcome, Tina.

Tina Caul01:38

Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me.

Loida Velasquez01:41

Yes, so for everyone that’s watching that maybe is not familiar with you, go ahead and share with us a little bit about yourself.

Tina Caul01:48

Yeah, so I’ve been in the real estate industry now for 24 years.

01:53I started when I was 23. I’m 45. So I’ve been through the gamut of different roles, so of course single agent. I started in Michigan for seven years. Met an amazing coach who changed my mind about moving out of state and away from the cold. Moved down to North Carolina in 2010. Didn’t know a soul, and sold, like, 30 homes my first year with my new coach, and then 55, 85, 130 homes I was selling year after year, making expired and for sale by owner calls.

02:23And then I decided I was gonna start a team. Met my first business partner. She joined, and here we are 10 years later. We have a team of 50 agents, and we’ll sell 900 homes this year. Hallelujah.

Loida Velasquez02:39

That’s amazing, and congratulations for all of that success.

Tina Caul02:43

Thank you.

Loida Velasquez02:44

When you first started, what did that look like?

02:48Because I kind of wanna show everyone from your beginning to where you are now, because I’m sure that many of the agents that are listening eventually wanna get to that point where you’re selling 900 homes, but you yourself maybe are not doing it and you have a team.

Tina Caul03:01

Right. Right. Well, in the beginning it was humble beginnings, you know?

03:05I was at a brokerage. We didn’t have the tools that we have today. Nobody was teaching real estate on YouTube. It was just learn by tribal knowledge, by the agents in your office. I remember I used to put my ear up to their door and just listen to the conversations they were having with other clients, and that’s how I learned.

03:25And so I wasn’t a big producer the first seven years. I might have sold, my best year, maybe 30 homes. However, the market crashed, and it was like my friends, my family, it just sort of… In 2006, the market was just really not doing really well, and I needed a solution. And so because my business was, I was letting my day happen to me.

03:49I was letting my business come to me, and it was inconsistent because I didn’t know when somebody would call. I ended up finding a coach, The Mike Ferry Organization, years ago, and to me, it made sense because there were systems and processes. And so I adopted those systems and processes, and then had time management skills, prospecting skills, script and dialogue.

04:10I got into the office every day, I role played, and I got on the phones. And when I realized that I could transition my business into a highly duplicatable, sustainable, profitable business, everything changed for me. So it was the non-sexy, boring, daily activity that got the results, and I was obsessed. I was obsessed.

04:33So, yeah, from no consistent business to very consistent business based on scripts, dialogue, and prospecting.

Loida Velasquez04:41

That’s awesome. So at what point did you see that, okay, it’s time to start building a team and growing that way?

Tina Caul04:47

You know, I think, Loida, you get to a point and you’ve probably… I think you’ve sold a lot of homes.

04:52I know your story as well. It’s like you get to a point where, for me, it was 15 years in the business and I thought… I woke up and just went, “I can’t do possibly one more deal.” I’m just to here. And the joy factor was going away. I was still driven. I was still motivated. I’m one that I’m never gonna retire and just sit on the couch and eat bon bons all day.

05:13I have tenacity, but I was getting older. I knew that it was belly to belly or bust. You just had to be in front of people constantly. So I woke up one day and I went, “God, I don’t have a business. I have a job. I don’t have passive income. I don’t have money that comes into the mailbox when I don’t sell a home.”

05:33So I started to think about investments. How do I scale myself? How do I leverage? And the first thing I did was I hired an ISA to say, “Okay, help me with these appointments.” Because if I’m calling from 8:30 AM to 11, once I leave that post of being an ISA, from 11 to 6:00 PM, 7:00 PM, I’m now in servicing mode.

05:58Who’s making the calls? So once I hired a partner and I said, “You sit next to me and let’s make these calls together,” I taught how to replace myself in that ISA role. Even though we did it together, when I left that post, we started to build. And so we started to build appointments. What happened was I had so many appointments that I couldn’t handle, and then I knew I needed to build a team.

06:20Whereas the mistake I see from the agents I coach today is that they just go, “I don’t like selling homes. I’m gonna build a team.” Well, wait, you don’t even have opportunity. You don’t have enough business. You didn’t build anything. You just wanna build a team. So I think it was that abundant opportunity,

06:40I have more than I can handle, back against the wall moment that you said, “Okay, now I need to bring on partners because I trust that I can afford to help them build their business,” if that makes sense.

Loida Velasquez06:53

Yeah, absolutely. And I’m glad that you brought that up because I hear that all the time as well.

06:57Where agents just wanna start building teams and getting agents when they themselves haven’t even prospected or they’re not even consistent in their business.

Tina Caul07:05

Correct. Yeah, they haven’t really built anything, but they can go buy leads and build a team, and you go, leads is not equivalent to a team.

07:13There’s so much that goes into the day-to-day management of just selling real estate in any market. And who do you wanna be led by, somebody that’s doing it part time or has done a few deals, or somebody that’s been in the trenches for years? I think it’s really important to have somebody in your corner that has been through it, that way they can guide you through it too.

07:35So you gotta put in the time and the work and prove that you can build it on your own before you go building a team and inviting members to join you.

Loida Velasquez07:43

Yeah, exactly.

07:45So the agents that you currently coach, or maybe even any new agents that you’re gonna be coaching, what is something different that you were teaching maybe two years ago that now you’re talking about or bringing back just because of everything that’s going on?

Tina Caul07:59

Well, I think that I’ve never lost sight of the foundation of the business that truly builds businesses that are solid. And to me, the one thing has never gone away in the last 15 years, and that’s picking up the phone and having conversations. And so you’ll hear a lot of social media influencers out there.

08:19They’re like, “Oh, build a YouTube channel. Go join a company and recruit all these agents. You’ll be rich.” All of that is shiny object syndrome. And yes, there are opportunities in social media. There are opportunities in recruiting. There are opportunities in building a course and selling it, but at the end of the day when you look at the foundation of any business, it’s picking up the phone and calling people.

08:40Just like if you buy leads, just like if you have a lead that reaches out to you on social media, it’s all the same. You have to get your skills and your ability to convert people at a high level of communication over the phone. So every lead source leads to the telephone, so you gotta get good at it.

08:59So I do coach them on, if you have phone reluctance, you’re not gonna make it in the business. You’re just not. You’re gonna find every creative avoidance, shiny object thing, and at the end of the day, you’re still gonna be led back to the phone.

Loida Velasquez09:14

Exactly. Yes.

09:15Yeah. No, I’m glad. Everything that you’re mentioning, it makes sense.

09:18I understand, and it’s great that you’re talking about it because I know that agents need to hear this. Just like you said, I get a lot of ads myself where they say, “Cold calling is dead. That’s something ancient people do.”

09:29I hate that. And I’m like, “Okay, continue that way.” I hate that.

Tina Caul09:33

But think about it. It’s not that they’re thinking that way. And this is what I tell my clients. The marketers are smart. They’re marketing to your pain point. What does every agent hate? Picking up the phone and making phone calls. So if you have a hate for that and you hear somebody say, “You don’t have to do it,”

09:50“My God, I will pay you whatever’s in my bank account so I don’t have to do that dirty deed.” But show me the results. I always tell clients, “Go to that coach, show me everybody on their roster and the success results that they’re having.” Then I might coach with that person.

10:07Because I don’t see the high…

10:09I see the one or two shiny people that they have that did it like them, but the reality is I can’t make everybody a YouTube star.

10:17I can’t, because your personality’s different than yours, and that’s a whole different ballgame.

Loida Velasquez10:23

Exactly. Exactly.

10:25So in terms of your team, I know you mentioned 900 homes, right?

10:29That’s gonna be this year?

Tina Caul10:31

Yes, this year.

Loida Velasquez10:32

So how many agents do you have, or what does your team currently look like?

Tina Caul10:36

So our team, when you look at the 900 transactions, we have 820, or 810 pending, and then we have about 80 under contract. Or I’m sorry, 810 closed, 80 under contract. We have about 45, a rolling 45 to 50 people that contributed to that number.

10:54So it’s just roughly around 20 units per agent, but obviously we have top producers on our team that’ll sell 60 homes. They’re on a team making $400,000, yes, at a 50/50 share of their commission. But they understand leverage. They understand their time. They want it back. So we have a lot of good, high producers that net more than team owners, and they’re very clear on that.

11:19But that’s what it consists of. And so we’re sort of a teamerage. We’re not a brokerage. We’re not a little team. We function like a brokerage, but we give the services of a team, so it’s much more coaching and hands-on services where they don’t have to think of anything, not even the gifts that they buy for their clients are done for them.

Loida Velasquez11:39

That’s awesome.

11:40So for anyone that’s listening that maybe is thinking whether they should join a team or stay solo because maybe they’ve been busy, just like you were at one point, and they’re ready to go to that next step, what would you recommend for them to look out for to see if maybe joining a team or starting a team would be a good fit?

Tina Caul12:00

Well, I always say if you’re thinking of starting the team, you should wake up every day exhausted because you have too many deals to service. If you are in that point, start a team. If you are just thinking of starting a team because you’re just wanting to start a team, you may want to rethink it because I have a million dollars of salaries every year.

12:18That happens over a period of time, but it’s a different animal. It’s literally, “I wanna start a brokerage.” So when people say, “I wanna start a team,” I go, “Oh, you wanna own a brokerage?” “No.” “Well, that’s what you’re about to do ’cause a team is a brokerage, so you’re telling me you wanna run a brokerage.”

12:34If you’re a single agent, when you look at the MLS and you look at the rosters of most companies, the top 20% at every company in every area do the majority of the business. So if you’re an agent that’s doing two to four deals in a year, which is the average agent, you’re probably keeping more of your commission, but you’re not in a volume-based environment.

12:57Meaning you’re keeping more of your commission dollars, but you’re making less because you don’t have volume. When you join a team that’s successful, not every team is perfect to join, but if you join a successful team with proven results, now you’re in a volume-based business. So yes, you might make a little bit less per transaction, but if I can go and get you to a 30 deal a year producer making 250 grand or 200 grand versus a four deal a year producer making 25 grand or 40 grand, which is the average salary of most real estate agents, which one is better?

13:29And so I coach my agents and I tell ’em, when I was a solo agent, I made 7,500 a transaction. I sold 130 homes. I netted about seven, $800,000. I did all the work and I was exhausted, and if I got hit by a bus, there goes my business. If I am a team owner and I make $2,200 a transaction, but we’ll sell 900 or 1,000 homes, now that 1,000 homes is 2.2 million.

13:53Take off expenses, net profit might be 1.4, 1.5 million. So even though I’m making less per transaction, I’m in a volume-based business, therefore I made more. And agents don’t think like that. They come from scarcity and just look at, “What’s my split?” And I would encourage every agent right now that’s struggling, go find a great teamerage and join it and get into a volume-based environment so you can support your family better.

Loida Velasquez14:20

Exactly.

14:21If you’re listening, you might need to rewind and listen again because you need to take down notes. So with that being said, we have about, let’s say two weeks left of this year. What do agents need to be doing right now to prepare themselves, let’s say for the 1st, when we know there’s gonna be hundreds of expireds?

Tina Caul14:39

Yeah. Number one, if they’ve never called an expired, they need to practice that script. They need to get going and understand that scripts are just a tool to become comfortable in character. So if I said, “Loida, you’re gonna be a star in a movie and you’re gonna be filming next to Tom Cruise, and you’re starting January 1st, and here’s the scene.”

15:00And Loida decides she’s not gonna learn the script, and she shows up with Tom, and he’s speaking the lines, and she’s winging it, Tom’s gonna get pissed and fire her. They’re gonna go, “This lady, we can’t put her with Tom. She didn’t learn her script.” So Loida would have to learn the script, get into character, feel like that top producing agent.

15:19You’ve gotta learn what to say. Then you become the character where she could go off the cuff and go off script because she knows that she’s in a scene with Tom where this and this has to happen, and here’s the reason why. And she might change a line or two, but at the end of the day, she’s delivering the same message.

15:36And that’s where agents, they feel uncomfortable in the beginning learning scripts. They go, “I don’t wanna do it.” Well, yeah, because you’re just learning how to ride a bike, but eventually, I know my expired script. I know my listing present- I haven’t done a listing presentation in three years, but I know what it sounds like because it’s part of me.

15:53So I would say get ready. I would also say happy new day. Everyone goes, “Oh, I’m waiting till the new year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. My New Year’s resolution, my New Year’s goals.” Every day is a new day, so happy new day is start now. Take action. If you’ve got a business plan, and it looks like this with all the numbers, and it’s, “Next 12 months, this is what I’m gonna do,” this gets old because it’s so far ahead of you.

16:20I want to know your intention for today, and if I… You say, “I need to make 15 conversations a day,” that is the only thing that I’m worried about. At the end of the day, as a coach, I’d be like, “Did you talk to 15 people?” If you didn’t, this doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. You’re never going to achieve this.

16:37So really focus on their daily intention, the boring, unsexy part of the business, and they will be, literally, they could become millionaires.

Loida Velasquez16:47

How about in January? What would be some of the things to make sure you focus on?

Tina Caul16:51

Well, it depends on everyone’s business. I mean, my business, if I were a solo agent, it would be how many conversations do I need to have to get to a contract, to an appointment?

17:02It’s literally just building that database. It would be, for me, I think every agent needs to get on video. They have to do a little bit of video in the new world that we live in, but not be distracted by it, just do a little bit of it. And then I would say really understand how do I get in front of customers and build relationships?

17:22And so I would plan four events per year. We just had a photos with Santa. We had 360 past clients come to that. How do you get in front of these people belly to belly? And what I find with a lot of real estate agents, they make good money, the good ones, but they don’t spend that money to hire the right people to execute these things, and they say, “That would be nice, but I didn’t get it done.”

17:44Well, then hire the people. So it’s hard for me to say exactly what to do without knowing people’s business, but there better be conversations happening every day, and I think that’s a universal thing that everyone needs to… They need to get Vulcan7 and they need to get on the phones.

Loida Velasquez18:00

Yes, absolutely, yes.

18:02So with that being said, tell us more about any coaching programs, events that you have coming up for anyone that’s listening that might want to get involved.

Tina Caul18:10

Yeah. So I have five masterminds a week. So we have a team-building mastermind, a solo agent mastermind, we have an operations mastermind, a lady leaders mastermind, and a wealth-building mastermind.

18:23That is within our organization at eXp. Not everyone’s gonna join our company, so if they’re not gonna join our company, then we do have Access Academy, which is we’ve got a few coaches that coach. So if they wanna reach out to us on Instagram or whatever, we can help them with maybe placing them with a coach that is right for them based on their level of expertise.

18:45So if it’s a team leader, I’m usually the one that helps with that. If it’s a solo agent, we have another great partner that does that. Or they can obviously partner with us anywhere in the nation and then they get free coaching.

Loida Velasquez18:58

Awesome. So where can they go just for that? Instagram, your website?

Tina Caul19:02

Instagram. Yeah, they can go to Instagram, YouTube. We do a lot of free training on YouTube, so I’m everywhere, Loida. They can just contact me.

19:10And I’m still answering my DMs. So I’m very involved.

Loida Velasquez19:14

Awesome, and we’ll make sure to put all of your links in the description box below as well.

19:18So with that being said, Tina, thank you so much for joining us today. You’ve dropped a lot of great information. Again, if you’re watching this, make sure to rewind, re-watch it, listen to it, go and watch Tina on all of her training videos on YouTube and all on social media. And with that being said, what would be one last tip you would leave agents with?

Tina Caul19:39

So I would say, and we just did this at our company, business planning. We said, right now there’s a capability gap. Most agents’ capability’s here, but they’re functioning here, and they don’t wanna push themselves because it’s uncomfortable. But when they look at their business blueprint, they say, “Well, but I wanna make 300,000 or 400,000.

19:59I wanna make this, and I wanna do this, and I wanna do that.” Okay. Well, you want… Here’s a quote I’ll leave them with. “You don’t get what you want, you get who you are.” So are you the agent that has the success schedule and the daily habits and the discipline to make the three, $400,000 a year, or do you just want it?

Loida Velasquez20:21

Awesome. I love it. Well, Tina, thank you once again for being here today. For those of you that are watching, make sure to watch our previous episodes here on YouTube or on any of your favorite streaming platforms. And with that being said, we’ll see you on the next one.

Tina Caul20:34

Bye, everybody.