Navigating the Wild West of Real Estate: An Intriguing Journey with Tom McCouch
Nov 28, 2023Season 1Episode 4
Terese Brittingham
Ever wondered what it's like to navigate through the wild west of the real estate industry? Well, today's episode takes you on an intriguing journey with our long-time business partner, Tom McCouch. We share our experiences from the early days when there were no systems in place, it was a challenging period, but our passion and the desire to be part of something bigger kept us going. Reflecting on the evolution of the industry, we discuss how we could have scaled greater heights with today's advanced tools and systems. We also muse about the diverse personalities in the industry and how they've contributed to our successful collaboration.
Our 30 years of experience in the real estate world have shaped our unique teaching styles. This episode reveals how these styles work together in educating and guiding our agents. We emphasize the importance of respecting individual needs and growth in the industry. Moreover, we'll share the wealth of knowledge and insights we've gained from years of learning, teamwork, and growth. Join us as we explore the dynamics of collaboration and hard work in achieving real estate success.
Ever wondered what it's like to navigate through the wild west of the real estate industry? Well, today's episode takes you on an intriguing journey with our long-time business partner, Tom McCouch. We share our experiences from the early days when there were no systems in place, it was a challenging period, but our passion and the desire to be part of something bigger kept us going. Reflecting on the evolution of the industry, we discuss how we could have scaled greater heights with today's advanced tools and systems. We also muse about the diverse personalities in the industry and how they've contributed to our successful collaboration.
Our 30 years of experience in the real estate world have shaped our unique teaching styles. This episode reveals how these styles work together in educating and guiding our agents. We emphasize the importance of respecting individual needs and growth in the industry. Moreover, we'll share the wealth of knowledge and insights we've gained from years of learning, teamwork, and growth. Join us as we explore the dynamics of collaboration and hard work in achieving real estate success.
Speaker 1:
Here we are another episode on the best of the best with Teres Brittonham out of Collegeville, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2:
Who do?
Speaker 1:
you have today.
Speaker 2:
So I have a special guest today, Tom McCouch, who's been my business partner for 30 years. Wow, 30 years. I know that's a long time, isn't it? How have you put up with me for this many years?
Speaker 1:
Well, I would say how you put up with anybody right. You have mutual respect with each other, you have a plan, a goal, you know you do it. You're winging. Every once in a while, but hopefully most of the time, you come in with some idea of what you're going to do, what you're trying to accomplish, and then, you know, go from there.
Speaker 2:
You know. So I was thinking the other day it's you know all the way back to the beginning and how things started and how it's grown and what we've accomplished. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I mean there wasn't what we have today. I mean you didn't have the training that you have today, you didn't have the, even the guidelines of how to do stuff. It was literally the wild west.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, there were no systems and models. We kind of made the systems and models, not knowing it.
Speaker 1:
Right, the marinal teams there were and you know that wasn't really the model of how to run a real estate business. It was kind of like everybody for themselves and the franchises were different. They were mostly, you know, coddle, bankery, array, those type of franchises.
Speaker 2:
More dependent and we were dependent, we didn't even exist.
Speaker 1:
You know, we kind of fell into it through. You know, I guess dumb luck in a way.
Speaker 2:
Well, I think it's kind of I don't know that it was dumb luck. I think it's what we always wanted. We always wanted to be part of something that felt like you were part of something right, True, Everywhere we worked. What?
Speaker 1:
we were looking for didn't exist yet.
Speaker 2:
Right, you know, it didn't really exist.
Speaker 1:
Or let's put it this way it did exist. It didn't exist in Pennsylvania, Right.
Speaker 2:
You know it didn't come to Pennsylvania until we were 2002, so we're just going for that, yeah probably 95 or ish somewhere around there, yeah, so it was kind of into our career, but not that far into our career, because I think we started in like 92, 93. Right, so it just didn't come around to where we were, but it was always what we wanted, so that was kind of cool.
Speaker 2:
We always liked the collaboration and the passion of the business Like. I don't think we would have stayed in it if we didn't love this business.
Speaker 1:
Right. I think the personalities that we have and then the franchise that we gravitated to kind of mirrored themselves. So you know, we worked where we worked, but that was only because that was the only option. And then as you develop and you become better at what you do, you know you kind of do want to have your own shop. You want to kind of make your own choices, make your own decisions. And I think for us, we, you know we were different from the majority of agents, even in our area. There might have been agents like us throughout the country, but even within our franchise we were number one in the country for a couple of years in a row and that was, in today's world, pretty mediocre in what they're doing what they're accomplishing today.
Speaker 1:
We're like oh, that would have been embarrassing, like we thought, I mean now.
Speaker 2:
I've been looking what we're doing now. We do so much more business now than we did then, but we were at the top of our game because we worked really hard and we didn't have, like you said, we didn't have the tools, Uh, to do a lot of the automatic stuff Like we're talking about. You know, we had a box with index cards in it and that was our database.
Speaker 2:
Like literally, you would pull out a card and call that person and stick it in the back, and then you go to the next one in the front and stick that one in the back, and that was our database Right. So now, with all these tools, you look at it and you're like gosh, if we had all of this back then.
Speaker 1:
What could you accomplish Instead of selling 200?
Speaker 2:
houses. We could have sold 1,000 houses a year.
Speaker 1:
Well, the crazy thing about that is, you would say that, but then you have the millionaire agent book, right, it's a book that's written specifically to how to become a millionaire in real estate, and yet not everyone follows it. People still fight the models and they do what they want to do. They accomplish not what they're trying to accomplish, but they have the tools right in front of them and yet they still don't use them. Where I think for us, the tools weren't there for us to use and we came before the tools, which kind of makes us old. But you know, speak for yourself.
Speaker 2:
No, I think you're right and I think a lot of the tools that are out there now and a lot of the systems, you look back and you're like, hey, we used to do that, we did that.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:
So we had a lot of the clues were there and a lot of things were there that are helping agents today. But I think today what's really interesting is and I think it comes into, like you said, we have two different personalities. We're like we make a hole because we're so different, and my personality is more of that like, just go, you know you'll get it done. Go get more business and just make it happen. And then your more systems models. You know how can we make this easier for next time? Learn from each one. But I think when you look at the average makeup of a real estate agent, they're more of that high D I personality, which is, you know, like me. They just want, they see something, they want it. They go get it and figure it out afterwards.
Speaker 1:
Right, the producers, the big producers, are that high D, but they only account for 5% of the real estate population, where the other, say, 75% need to really should be following models. They really should be plugging into training, they should be doing those things because they don't have that, that drive, that to just go, go, go, go go and not worry about the consequences of it. You know they, they either think through it too much, like sometimes they think through it to the point of not doing anything, whereas you know again, personality like yourself it's you have an idea of what you want to do and then you'll figure out how to do it once you get there.
Speaker 2:
Right, and you're there picking up all the pieces that I'm driving dropping on the place. That's why we make such a good team. What's?
Speaker 1:
been our, our called. Our blessing is is we're have like a yin-yang relationship where we are good at different.
Speaker 1:
Yeah for our different skill sets for different things that we do. You know where you're. You may have different, high, higher skill sets for one part of the business mind or something different, and again you don't normally get people partnering, which is again a lot of times. People want to like how do you do it? Or we want to put a team together and you look at their two personality and you're like you're never going to make it.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, like because they just you don't want to partner with the same person you are. Yeah, yeah, I think that's.
Speaker 1:
That's hard, it's hard. It would be hard to have two drivers in a car. Yeah Right, I mean, a lot of times you, you, you have to be the passenger and you have to let the person drive, regardless of the speed that they're driving at or you know the the, the stop lights that they're running through Like. I think the one thing that has always been good about you has been your vision of the field. Like a lot of times, people are reckless when they drive or when they're doing things Right. I think you see the field very differently than most people, in the sense that you can look out over the landscape of real estate and see more than what the average person, who may be a high personality or high-d personality, does Like. Sometimes they're just they're going a million miles a minute but they're not paying attention to anything that they're doing, and I think for us, what has worked is you have a enough of the vision of the rest of the field, that you don't blindly go through stop signs.
Speaker 1:
Like I think a lot of times the red light, green light, stuff you do well.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, but I think that's because I do have the other half. So you know, when I am running that way, you're always bringing that reality piece back in, which makes me running in that direction more successful, because we're already trying to figure like, what are the what, where are the pitfalls, what's going to happen? You're kind of patching those and it's it works, because we're just, we're just continually moving forward, but we're picking up and learning from every single thing that we're doing. So I think that's what's made us really successful, and I think that's where agents could relate with us the most, especially if we're thinking about building something bigger than just themselves. Right, you know it's. You can only go so far by yourself.
Speaker 1:
Well, when you think about who, who thought about building something for 30 years?
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
You know, like how many partnerships even last 10, 5, 3 you know, because you start developing and then you go. Well, I could do this better on my own right, or I could replace this person with that person, and I think a lot of times what happens, like what I was talking about mutual respect is, everyone knows what they're capable of doing and what the other person brings to the game. You know, and, just like any team, you know, you, you, you benefit from the all of the players on the team and you need to find the individual players that best fit the team so that the team can function at its highest level. I think a lot of times when you have dysfunction, it's because somebody isn't fitting in and you're trying to force it to fit because you don't want to go through the the pain of finding another person or hurting someone's feelings or, you know, filling in the bank. You know, whatever I think with us, even though we've had our you know our disagreements, or you know our arguments.
Speaker 2:
We don't.
Speaker 1:
We don't drag each other through the mud, as it were. You know it, does you know? Sometimes, if you're outside looking in, it might sound like, wow, these guys are really going out, but I think for the most part, it's at the end of the day, nobody hates each other. No, we care about what happens in each other's lives. We care about each other's families. We kind of go through the process of what we need to do as individuals, but we also are very focused, or maybe even hyper focused, on the success of our real estate. Yes, where a lot of people maybe that's not their number one thing that they're worried about. Maybe they're just worried about making money, or maybe they're just worried about doing a deal and they're not looking at it from a long term 30 year, 40 year into the future. What would that look?
Speaker 2:
like Yep, and I think that serves us well. And why our company has grown so much is we can look at somebody and not just see that somebody. We can see what they have the ability to do even when they don't. So shaping and molding and helping people grow into something bigger than what they were or are or even thought they could be.
Speaker 1:
I think that's what is most exciting to me, at least at this point in our career is just watching people grow and flourish and just being a little piece of that You'd like to think you make a difference in people's lives, like everybody starts somewhere and you can relate back to where you were at that moment in time, like when I think about when we got together, we were both individually doing stuff but you couldn't have scripted it.
Speaker 1:
I don't think the way it came out, I think it just sometimes things work right because the right pieces are there. Sometimes things don't work right because, even though you have talent, it doesn't mean you actually win the game, right. You know. I mean, and I think that's been the difference for us over time, as we've either adjusted with the time, you know, or made adjustments to fit the situation. You know again, even with our company and team leaders, mcas, you know you go through the pieces of the people that make something successful, and, as painful as it is to move on from people because they're not working out, you also have the responsibility to make sure that your company is succeeding.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean that's the hardest part for me the people part, because I love people.
Speaker 2:
Right, you know it takes a lot to separate from someone and when you start to realize that it's not in their best interest, they keep them in a position that's not right.
Speaker 2:
And that's a lot of times when you come into play because you can you know, we have a conversation you can make me see things from a position of a different place that I wasn't seeing things at. So I think that's where we really make a great team and I think just growing this company and looking at what can we do for the industry I think we're always looking how can we make the industry better? How can we make the agents' lives better, like, what can we do that would make it so they don't have to go through a lot of the things that we went through. And I think you know we talked in another episode about asking our agents on our team, you know, to do 52 trainings a year. We do 52 trainings a year every year, without fail, for the entire length of our career. We don't ask people to do things we're not willing to do. So I think we set a good example about what they should do to be successful in the business, and I look at some of the careers that we've helped build.
Speaker 1:
I mean we have. There's some great agents out there that we definitely could say we had a hand in. I mean, ultimately they build their own success, but role modeling and examples help them get that way.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So I think that there's a lot that can be learned, and Tom is a wealth of knowledge and he has a really good way about himself. So when it comes to teaching classes and that type of thing, your style is different than mine, so it's kind of interesting. Everybody gets a different feel depending on what they need, but you're really great at educating and listening and hearing what the agents have to say and also just being really respectful of where they are and where they need to be, so it's been really great growing in this business together. I mean, 30 years Holy smokes, it's a long time, I know. So thanks, tom, I really appreciate you taking the time to sit down here and go through this podcast with me.