Tell us the basics. A little bit about yourself!
I live in Petoskey, MI. I have been in the business for 18 years. I run a small independent brokerage. Last year we did about 85 deals for about 19 million in GCI. I have been coaching with Glover U for two years. I initially started at Coldwell Banker before going to another small company. We then left there and started a team at Coldwell Banker. From there, I went on my own last June and formed my own independent brokerage.
When did you find out about myself or Glover U?
I learned about you maybe ten years ago, maybe a little less. I went onto Real Trends and looked up who the number one realtor in Michigan was. I’m in Detroit a lot. I saw your billboards and then once you started Glover U I thought “Hey this is something I want to get involved in.” My first Glover U event was in Battle Creek. A group of us went from Northern Michigan. I started Prospecting Boot Camp right after that. Through that, I heard about Kate, who later became my one-on-one coach and I’ve worked with her ever since.
I’ve taken Prospecting Boot Camp twice, Listing Mastery twice. In fact, I was joking with my assistant before this call. My accountant asked whats Glover U. I told him it was a company I coach with. I asked why and he said, “because you spend 20 grand there last year!” You gotta invest in yourself to make the business work.
When you back up to say 10-11 years ago and you checked out the Real Trends report were you observing from afar? Where were you? Because obviously Glover U didn’t exist and I wasn’t sharing a lot of our success publicly so what were your takeaways in that 7 or 8 year period where you were watching what we were doing?
I would say there’s this guy that’s the same age as me doing much bigger things than I am, growing the business, putting himself out there, spending money on the business and it was just something that I sort of envied from a distance.
So it was more of an inspirational story. Which by the way, every success story starts out that way when I think about my years with other coaching and training organizations I was always watching people from afar, observing how they behave, learning how they were leading, how they were growing, how they were listed, how they were selling and even though I didn’t have a direct line to them they were still an inspiration to me and that’s what kept me going. Besides me, I’m sure there are other people in your life as well that you’ve had that same experience with. So fast forward to now, you came to the event we had in January of 2018, what was it that you got from that event, what were the takeaways that finally caused you to say “I need to follow this system, I need to follow this guy, I need to follow these people, I need to have Kate as my coach." What was it at that event where you said "Yep, this is it"?
Anytime there’s someone that will smuggle a microwave into a hotel room to stick to a plan they set for themselves I thought “that’s the lady I need to help me stick to my plan.”
In all your events that I’ve been to you don’t waste a second, it’s hard-hitting, there’s no fluff, it’s all stuff that you guys are using every single day. It wasn’t a big sales pitch about "here buy this product or buy this system or buy this CRM."
I like that you’re in Michigan too. I know you have clients all over the country but for me, I’ve had coaches in Austin TX that said “how many sales do you have a year in your market?” I told them about 200-300 and they thought I meant a month. So it’s nice to have someone who understands the seasonality of my market.
In that event in January of 18’ did you sign up for coaching right then and there or what did you sign up for at that event?
Prospecting boot camp and then part of the way through that I hired Kate as my one-on-one coach.
What programs have you been through?
I had to write them down there was so many. I went through Prospecting Bootcamp twice, Listing Mastery twice and Business Mastery twice. I then put my assistant through Operations Group Coaching. All the programs are great but that might be the one we’ve taken the most actionable items from. I think the reason for that is because I know how to prospect and I know how to go on listing appointments. The operations I don’t know anything about. I hired Kate the same week I brought my new assistant on. I have to admit that id been through four assistants in four years prior to that I didn’t know what I was doing but with Kate’s help and I’ve finally found the right person that’s going to be here for a while. I thought the Operations Group Coaching is some of the stuff you do as far as providing an unreal experience for your clients we implemented for ours. We do the 5-star program, we created a series of What Happens Next books and it’s been really impactful for the customer service of our business.
What have you experienced in your business in the last couple of years after going through these programs?
Like I said before I started coaching with Kate I was on my fourth assistant and that was my second year running the team in 2017 we did 38 transactions. Then fast forward to the last year 2020 we did 85 transactions, 19 million in sales volume and $530,000 in GCI. So our GCI has gone up to $200,000. Now we have the framework to build when before we were doing this goofy system.
I read The Millionaire Real Estate Agent and decided I needed a team like everybody else but now I feel like we have something that can sustain it and we just added another agent that’s going to be starting in another month and going to be bringing on another admin on this year, put another office in another city. I really don’t know if I could have gone out on my own without Kate. She really was an advocate for me and was always there.
When you think back from 2019 to 2020 what changed? Besides GloverU, what did you have to do and who did you have to become. What took place?
Watching you Jeff being a strong salesperson, sell a ton of houses while leading a team, and I just decided that’s what I was going to do too. There’s always the idea of getting out of production and not really selling and being a CEO but I really made up my mind and that’s why I started following you.I decided I was going to sell a lot of houses and set the example of the culture so everyone around me is going to sell a lot of houses and that’s what we did. We started to pay more attention to the customer experience which led to more repeat and referral business. It was really the one-degree changes, we didn’t do anything drastically different. In fact, if you watched how I went to work in 2019 to how I went to work in 2020 from a distance you probably wouldn’t see any difference. It was just being a little more purposeful, a little bit more intentional, a little bit different mindset and it really made a huge difference.
What happened to your efforts and how did that change from 2019 to 2020. What does a typical day look like for you?
My day didn’t change much. Come in in the morning, I follow your plan, I prospect in the morning, lead prospect, own the day, attend appointments in the afternoon. I know you want something big that happened from 19 to 20 but I would have to say cultivating my assistant. She does way more for me than any assistant has ever done. I think I picked this up from you but I’m detached from every single transaction. For 16 of the 18 years, I lived and died on every single transaction. Thats the thing I really envy about you “when is the last time Jeff Glover has lost a night’s sleep over a transaction? Maybe never!”I don’t know if we have closings going on. It’s a surprise to me. I’m just focused on growing the business, bringing more business in. That has allowed me to do more. Also adding some accountability to the agent on my team.
How many hours would you say you put into the real estate business per week?
45-50. We don’t work weekends as much in the winter but definitely a lot more in the summer.I really try not to work Sunday. But Saturday I’ll come into the office in the morning and go on appointments in the afternoon.
Talk to us a little if you could what does Glover U put the coaches through, what is the training and has that been comfortable?
It’s actually been incredibly uncomfortable. Glover U coaches training is probably the hardest training I’ve ever been through and I’ve been through a lot of real estate training, etc. You, Kate, and Taylor all expect a lot out of us and I know why, we’re going to be talking to our coaching clients and you want them to have the best experience. Anyone that knows you know you’re not going to be easy on anyone.
How does someone sign up to work with you?
You can reach out to the team at info@gloveru.com and our Coaching Advocates will work with you to pair you with the best Coach depending on where you are now and where you would like to go in your business.