Guests: Erik Hatch, Daniel Ramsey
Recorded: July 3, 2019
Excerpt
REALTOR® Erik Hatch has been through many ups and downs in the Real Estate industry. Through these ‘fires,’ as he calls them, Erik found what it takes to find success. He currently has a radio station and leads a top-rated team. MyOutDesk CEO and co-founder Daniel Ramsey have a conversation with Erik to discuss the adversities he has faced and how he turned them into opportunities.
Erik went from a solo agent in the early stages of his career after selling 52 houses to building a team because he felt that it was what he was supposed to do. He built his team of 13 comprised of agents, a few admins, and they were ‘Erik and the Rockets.’ Erik said he fell short as a leader because he was not doing much for them. They made many mistakes as they were growing. He says they were messy. He got all the attention and did not listen to anyone else because he let his ego get in the way. Eventually, he crashed and burned and got kicked out in April of 2013. Out of his team of 13, only two people went with him. After everything went down, he learned from his mistakes and had to rebuild his career, shifting to a different market, focusing on brokerage and investments, and taking steps to make sure he didn’t fall down that hole again.
Erik has learned that being a realtor and running a team is different from climbing a tree and swimming in the ocean. Not realizing that is what causes most people to stumble when they transition from being a Realtor and a high producing realtor to them leading a team. They bring people along to pick up their breadcrumbs instead of building up their team. Every day should be about the refinements of your leadership, but even more so, scaling leadership and developing those other people in your organization. Erik has 18 companies as of today, and he is part of 10 investment groups. Aside from building those businesses, he is also focused on his leadership and maximizing other leaders’ potential within his sphere.
Erik Hatch is a native of Fargo, ND, and has a beautiful family (wife Emily and children – Finley and Simon). His passions are simple – making a difference and having fun while doing so. Erik is the Homeless & Hungry movement creator that has raised close to a million dollars since 2006 for local homeless shelters. His dedication to the community and investment in the place he calls home is unparalleled.
Erik has built the top producing real estate team in North Dakota (source: Wall Street Journal) since 2012. Erik’s real estate team has grown at a record pace – amidst significant failures and successes. As a result, he is garnering national attention for his efforts. With culture at the core, The Erik Hatch Team has helped over 2,500 families since 2012 with their real estate needs.
Since college (North Dakota State University), Erik has been building events, businesses, charities, and people. He’s an investor at the core – investing his time, talent, and treasures into those around him. Erik has spoken at local, regional, and national conventions.
Make sure to watch the video above!
Transcript
00:00:04:00 – 00:00:25:24
Erik Hatch
Being a realtor and running a team are as different as climbing a tree and swimming in the ocean. I mean, they’re such different beasts. And that’s the reason why I think most people stumble when they transition from being a realtor and a high producing realtor. To then leading a team is that they’ve got to bring people along and they’ll pick up their breadcrumbs.
00:00:26:00 – 00:00:46:22
Erik Hatch
And I’ve had fortunately, I was designed from the beginning to care more about leadership than I was about sales and transactions and that sort of thing. My background is I spent about ten years in the ministry before I got into real estate full time and caretaking of people and being. Bless you. I love that you even neutered yourself.
00:00:46:22 – 00:00:50:04
Erik Hatch
That’s as a performer.
00:00:50:04 – 00:00:52:17
Daniel Ramsey
A ninja move. We need to move.
00:00:54:03 – 00:01:11:23
Erik Hatch
So leadership was what I was naturally accustomed to, and I didn’t know how to be a businessman. A lot of business people and salespeople know how to do that and they don’t know how to lead. And so for me, every day is about the refinement of my leadership, but even more so, scaling leadership and developing those other people in my organization.
00:01:12:08 – 00:01:32:00
Erik Hatch
I’m not interested in followers. I’m interested in other leaders. And so now Hatch Realty essentially runs without me. I’m here to cast some vision and still teach our leaders. But the day to day interactions and if you’re Joe Blow berated your listing agent, you don’t have any interaction with me. And so I’ve had to scale that. We had to build that trust.
00:01:32:01 – 00:01:48:19
Erik Hatch
We’ve had to figure out how to do scaled leadership on a big level. And that’s now given me permission to go out and build. And I have 18 companies as of today that I’m a part of ten are investment group. So those are those are just, you know, you give it some money and you have some strategy behind it, then you don’t have to touch it.
00:01:49:05 – 00:02:05:19
Erik Hatch
But the other eight are active in all a part of the real estate industry. So I own as an ownership in a moving company and a mortgage company and a marketing company and a coaching company and I’m closing gifts company. It all kind of is interbred with one another.
00:02:06:05 – 00:02:14:23
Daniel Ramsey
Wow. And so is your real estate company kind of feeding those individual kind of different side businesses? I would say.
00:02:15:16 – 00:02:36:16
Erik Hatch
Our our real estate company is the proving ground for it. And it’s the place where we trial and error things before we offer it to the rest of the people. And so I coached my real estate team before I started coaching realtors around the country. And now instead of starting with people like at the bottom, it said who was willing to pay 200 bucks a month to coach.
00:02:36:16 – 00:02:58:11
Erik Hatch
I started with like my top people and I’m in the race network radio and television experts, and in that group it’s the top performers in almost every market. And what it boiled down to was this is a whole bunch of people wanted what we had. I wanted the sales that they had. They wanted the culture and the retention and the energy and the community impact that we had.
00:02:58:11 – 00:03:17:06
Erik Hatch
And so I was able to come in and be a coach for leadership, for hiring, for developing, because that’s what we’ve done exceedingly well. And that’s just a natural byproduct that we’ve now sold more houses because we figured out that piece. And for most people they go in and they say, How can I sell as many houses as possible?
00:03:17:06 – 00:03:30:01
Erik Hatch
And then we’ll get caught up on all those other things. And we’ve approached it differently. We said, Let’s be really great to our people, and then we’re going to move it along and we’ll sell more houses and have more wealth when we do it that way.
00:03:30:12 – 00:03:47:05
Daniel Ramsey
What’s interesting, I’ve never really heard that from any other like mega team or our owner before. Tell me, like, how does that work? Like the specifics of it, like how do you invest in people before the growth and how that impact the growth?
00:03:48:24 – 00:04:14:19
Erik Hatch
So I think the real estate industry is broken. To be honest, if you’re going to be a new realtor on a team or even on your own, the average buyer looks for 12 weeks and there’s going to take six weeks in escrow. So if you’re lucky enough to have a buyer on day one, which you nobody is, after four months, you’ll get your first commission check and that’ll pay for your licensing and your class and everything else.
00:04:14:19 – 00:04:26:17
Erik Hatch
And so in order to get into real estate, you have to have either a sugar daddy or a sugar mama. Yeah. Trust fund or massive financial irresponsibility.
00:04:26:24 – 00:04:27:09
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah.
00:04:27:23 – 00:04:30:23
Erik Hatch
And those are those are the things that get people into real estate.
00:04:31:00 – 00:04:37:21
Daniel Ramsey
Had the last one. I had the last one. I was young and I was dumb and I had no clue. So yeah.
00:04:38:19 – 00:04:43:23
Erik Hatch
Yeah, I guess I get it completely. I can smell my own from a mile away.
00:04:44:02 – 00:04:44:16
Daniel Ramsey
That’s awesome.
00:04:45:17 – 00:05:06:23
Erik Hatch
And so as we’ve done this now, we’ve changed the onboarding process in our world. So if you’re ever going to start in our world, you start as if you’re an agent. You start either as a showing partner or a listing partner, which means you’re salaried and you have three primary responsibilities. Your primary responsibility, number one, is to leverage the agent that you’re partnered with.
00:05:07:17 – 00:05:34:08
Erik Hatch
The second is to train and develop. And the third is to lead, generate. And so we have a breeding ground for people to sharpen their sword and to come in. And so we’re emphasizing everything about camaraderie, leverage, teamwork and we’re building skilled leadership within it because our agents who are in production are now leading these people here. And it’s not me as the overarching rainmaker that has to have 20 new people that come into our world.
00:05:34:12 – 00:06:01:14
Erik Hatch
In fact, I, I know a lot of people in this industry that are like, we’re going to we’re going to bring in 20 people. And the ten that make it are going to be great. And for me, that’s that’s not my fit. No shame in that game, but that’s not our fit. And instead we say, if we’re going to give a salary, if we’re going to pay this person X amount of dollars a month, we now have a responsibility to them to train them exceedingly well and set them up for long term success.
00:06:02:00 – 00:06:23:00
Erik Hatch
Yeah. And so I’ve been doing this now this this hiring program for four partners for about five years. And every person that we’ve ever hired, most of them are still with our team, but those that aren’t are still in the business and doing exceedingly well. Right. And there’s there’s this scarcity mindset of what happens if we train people really well and they leave us.
00:06:24:01 – 00:06:43:04
Erik Hatch
And my question my question is, this is what happens if we don’t train people really well and they stay with us, you know? And so we have this commitment, this servant leadership mindset that from moment one, when somebody starts in our world, we’re going to give them the keys to the kingdom and we’re going to equip them to have massively huge success.
00:06:43:16 – 00:07:09:13
Erik Hatch
And so we’re going to pay them to train, we’re going to pay them to learn. And when they’ve proven that they can feed themselves from super deals and from being accountable for the team, we then graduate them up as an agent into production. So we in fact have a six year career path. Daniel That has agents starting out and if they hit each metric, they have a spot with us for at least six years and the turnover for people on teams is usually 2 to 3 at most, right?
00:07:09:16 – 00:07:12:08
Erik Hatch
And so I just burp. That was a good lunch.
00:07:13:14 – 00:07:14:16
Daniel Ramsey
We’ll smack that one out.
00:07:16:08 – 00:07:39:21
Erik Hatch
That’s the good stuff. It’s not smell or vision, but it should be. Here’s, here’s the insider trick is that the agents that we have in our world. I heard Ben Kenny once say that if you want to have Navy SEALs, you have to have a Navy. And so we use our bench, we use our partners who are in training and leveraging those superstars as our breeding grounds to be Navy SEALs.
00:07:40:16 – 00:08:02:05
Erik Hatch
My listing neighbor, my listing agents average 80 to 100 transactions per listing agent and my buyer agents average 60 to 80% per agent. And so these are top performers in the industry, period. And yet they’re on my team and I have the privilege of leading them and we’re creating leadership and opportunities for them where they have the responsibility and the impact.
00:08:02:10 – 00:08:29:03
Erik Hatch
We’re self feeding them a lot of business from our estates and giving them a world of leverage and giving them a world that we don’t think that they want to leave because we’re continually raising that glass ceiling for them that they don’t run of run out of opportunity in our world. And that’s been the whole change. I’m starting to ramble here and I, I think it’s at least worth pointing out that we as a team have had to continually find the way to make this the best possible place for a high producing agent to exist.
00:08:29:22 – 00:08:58:18
Erik Hatch
And for me, I’d rather have one headache making high producing agents who has a massive amount of talent and potential than trying to pull along five agents and get them trained up and hope that they know what they’re going to do. And maybe two or three actually work out. I’d rather I’d rather deal with the problems of a superstar than the recycle button people, because for me, this is a relationship game and I want to give everything I have to these agents that are on my team.
00:08:58:18 – 00:09:25:21
Daniel Ramsey
Right. Well, okay, so let’s break that down. I’m kind of curious like when you say I want to give them everything that you have and then you say you have to continually find ways to up the game and give more value. Like, walk us through that. Over the last five years annually, what have you upgraded and how have you added value to your 5 to 10 people who are closing 60 to 100 deals?
00:09:26:04 – 00:09:48:23
Erik Hatch
Yeah, it started off with we we’d hire them and those folks that started with us back in 2014, five years ago we had Issa’s working for them and I trained them myself. So immediately they were trained by somebody who knew like 2013 and 2014. I individually sold 150 houses each year on top of what our team was doing.
00:09:48:23 – 00:10:12:19
Erik Hatch
So I had sharpened my sword and I knew what I was doing and they were fortunately getting trained by an industry expert. Now, I never knew much about real estate, and in fact, up until a couple of years ago, I didn’t know that drywall and sheetrock were the same thing because I. I knew nothing about houses, nothing. But I knew I knew a lot about people and connecting and listening and serving.
00:10:12:24 – 00:10:34:22
Erik Hatch
And so I would teach them that. So the value proposition five years ago was get trained by an industry expert, but it’s not like here’s a week of training now go and do it. This was an every day role playing, sharpening the sword. I’m invested in one on ones and continued to scale their business and I knew what they wanted and where they wanted to go.
00:10:34:22 – 00:10:51:09
Erik Hatch
Not just their big why, but even the the depth and the the the juice behind the big lie. I wanted to know why they wanted to make $200,000 a year, what they were going to spend the money on, the debt they had in their life, the problems that they were having with their spouse and everything in between. Right.
00:10:51:09 – 00:10:56:08
Erik Hatch
And we best business and personal together because I don’t think why I get so excited.
00:10:56:17 – 00:11:20:15
Daniel Ramsey
No. Yeah, I can hear it. And you’re a fast talker like me. So you just there’s a ninja skill. I like bondage. I don’t really care seals. You can call it whatever. But when you set an agent down, walk me through the questions you would ask in order to discover their desires, their dreams, what their frustrations are, their worries like.
00:11:20:22 – 00:11:27:21
Daniel Ramsey
How do you have that conversation where they just tell you everything and you have a real connection?
00:11:27:21 – 00:11:50:03
Erik Hatch
To be a great leader means that you need to be a great listener first. And so I would simply ask, it’s not about what I say, it’s about how you feel when you’re with me. And if I’m going to be a great leader for you, Daniel, I’m going to ask, I think, really poignant questions. So I’ll say, Daniel, what’s important to you and what does success look like at the end of this year for you?
00:11:51:05 – 00:11:56:22
Erik Hatch
And you’ll say, I want to sell 50 houses, I want to make $150,000, something like that. I’m like, That’s awesome.
00:11:56:22 – 00:11:58:18
Daniel Ramsey
Y Right.
00:11:59:14 – 00:12:20:22
Erik Hatch
And we think that there’s like these really fancy scripts and the script of Tell Me More and Why and Keep Going and what does that mean? Like just active listening and understanding. So if you want to make $150,000 a year, why? And you’ll say, Well, I want to buy a new car and I want to buy a new house.
00:12:20:22 – 00:12:55:01
Erik Hatch
That’s so cool. What kind of car do you want to buy? I want to buy a Tesla suite. Why do you want to buy a Tesla? Well, I really care about the environment. Awesome. Why do you really care about the environment? Well, my parents really like. And you just start pulling back the layers and the levels. And by the time the conversation’s done and this starts in our hiring process and we see it all the way through and how we lead our team as we’re going, I think that our goal is to get to the emotional stuff that people don’t have a rehearsed answer for.
00:12:55:01 – 00:13:13:23
Erik Hatch
So if you think about it, if you’re an interviewer and I’ll say like, who’s the most important person in your life, you’re going to say, Well, my mom’s the most important person in my life because I was raised by a single parent. She was everything for me. Most of us take it and we stop right there. But what if I said, Daniel, what was it like?
00:13:13:23 – 00:13:32:04
Erik Hatch
What? What did you see your mom go through as a single parent? Right. And how was that for you growing up without a father? Right. And notice I didn’t bring up your parents. You did. And now you give me permission to start peeling the layers of this onion back, and I’m going to find out what you really care about and that you don’t have a rehearsed answer for.
00:13:32:22 – 00:14:00:02
Erik Hatch
And when that rises to the surface, you have a real connection. And for me, that’s why people want to work in any working world is not because they can make the most money, although in our world you can crush it. People want to feel important and seen and heard and valued. And so if we circle this back around, your question originally was like, how do we continue to raise that glass ceiling for people?
00:14:00:02 – 00:14:24:21
Erik Hatch
And it starts here on the foundation and the foundation of what we have, our relationships, right? It’s vulnerability and transparency and authenticity. It’s not having work and life as a as two different things. And it’s not even balanced. It’s just intertwined. And so we’re going to talk about your family. We’re going to talk about your cancers and your insecurities and ways that you’re crushing it and everything in between.
00:14:25:08 – 00:14:53:22
Erik Hatch
From our one on ones to our casual passing, we could say that the word is culture, but the word culture is overused. In our business world. I’m going to say the word heartbeat, and the heartbeat of our organization is built on relationships and connection doesn’t mean we always get it right. It’s simply that it’s the striving force of what we’re always going to go back to the rhythm of our connection.
00:14:54:14 – 00:15:15:11
Erik Hatch
In fact, I just finished writing my first book ever. I’m really excited about it. It’s called Play for the Person Next to You A Guide to Servant Leadership and what We’re Talking About in it. And it’ll come on in September excited for it. And the premise of the entire book is that you can create champions by giving rather than by taking.
00:15:15:24 – 00:15:27:21
Erik Hatch
And it starts with leadership and you can have everything in life you want. If you help enough others get what they want. That’s what Zig Ziglar says, and that’s how I run my business, and that’s how I think we’ve grown something pretty special.
00:15:29:15 – 00:15:33:16
Daniel Ramsey
So when did you know that that was the right way to run a real estate firm?
00:15:34:20 – 00:15:39:02
Erik Hatch
When I got kicked out. Why did you get kicked out?
00:15:39:02 – 00:15:40:22
Daniel Ramsey
Like, give me the real scoop, okay?
00:15:40:22 – 00:16:00:03
Erik Hatch
Yeah. I told the team leader I didn’t like her or trust her, so that was probably one of them. And I. I had beef with her because she was trying to coach me all the time, and I wasn’t coachable. In fact, that’s like the least attractive element of anybody that’s on my team now. And I look back on who I was six years ago and I just wasn’t coachable.
00:16:00:03 – 00:16:21:10
Erik Hatch
I thought I had it all figured out because I was selling more. So I thought that meant that I was better than yes. It was the biggest crock of B.S. I could have sold. So I told her I didn’t like her or trust her. And I live in Fargo, North Dakota. So we’re a border city with Minnesota. We have Moorhead, Minnesota, as a sister city.
00:16:21:10 – 00:16:45:00
Erik Hatch
So 20% of our business is in Minnesota, 80% is in North Dakota. And I had an agent who was licensed in one state but not the other, improperly represent a transaction. And that was a reflection on me because I didn’t inspect what I expected, and that was the catalyst that really led me to getting kicked out. And so when I recognized how I had been building it, I was miserable too.
00:16:45:11 – 00:17:12:05
Erik Hatch
I was chasing the almighty dollar and titles when realistically what matters to me is impact and influence, and when almost everybody left me and two people came with me out of 13, I realized that I was the problem. And when I realized that I was the problem, I had to change my approach and to being the leader that I would want to follow rather than being the top producer that everybody wanted to ride the coattails of.
00:17:12:11 – 00:17:30:01
Daniel Ramsey
But you did. The reality, though, is you didn’t immediately know that. I mean, you just can’t it you’re in it and you’re fighting for your life and you’re like, you probably felt like you lost 11 people and two are the only loyal ones. So what really caused you to shift.
00:17:31:19 – 00:17:59:15
Erik Hatch
From so in 2008 and 29? Well, I sold real estate part time from 2006 to 2011 when I went full time, I had my full time job doing ministry and it was part time. I ended up joining a team in 2009, so I was a buyer agent and I started to produce and I sold probably 24 homes in 2009 I think was about the number.
00:17:59:18 – 00:18:23:02
Erik Hatch
And as a part time agent, I was really pleased with that. I was making twice as much in my part time job than my full time job. So as I was doing that, I approached the team owners and I said, Listen, I’m bringing in 70% of the business from my own sphere, my own open houses. I’d love a chance to either renegotiate a split or I’d love a chance to start working some lessons.
00:18:23:21 – 00:18:29:19
Erik Hatch
And I was met with the response and anybody who’s run a team has had these conversations with agents who want more.
00:18:30:01 – 00:18:36:09
Daniel Ramsey
I have more. If you get even one agent, you can that conversation.
00:18:37:13 – 00:19:02:17
Erik Hatch
And I was met with the simple response no. And when it was met with the simple response, no, I recognize that I had no more growth there outside of just chasing what I was already doing and the language that we’ve changed in our world. When somebody has asked for more, we respond with Yes comma, when. And it’s a really simple adjustment.
00:19:02:17 – 00:19:28:04
Erik Hatch
But if you, Daniel, were on my team as an agent and you said, Eric, I want to change my commissioners, but I want to make 20% more. I think I deserve it. I’ll say, yes, you can make 20% more when you reach a certain benchmark, and it’s a big benchmark. And in our world, if you hit at least 20 spear deals from your own procurement and the year you get bumped up another 20% for those spear deals.
00:19:28:08 – 00:19:48:09
Erik Hatch
So deals 21 and beyond for those spear deals are at a 20% increase in production. Now, in my world, I’m like, nobody’s ever going to hit 20 deals. It’s not. And if they do, I have already made my money off of them. And so they deserve the rest. Yes. All my buyer agents now hit that damn number every year.
00:19:49:18 – 00:20:14:03
Erik Hatch
And and I realize, like, what a great problem to have is I’m now paying 20% more on these splits because I’ve already made my money and yet because I said yes when we saw the capacity for their talents grow and they had that carrot to chase after instead of me just putting them in the box. And if I would have responded by saying no, they would leave.
00:20:14:03 – 00:20:31:13
Erik Hatch
And so back to your original question of what’s changed in our world and how did it how did it change? I recognize when I was a buyer, agents on that team, that I would have built an empire for those people. And I love them. I appreciate them. But I would have built an empire if they would have shown me a path.
00:20:32:02 – 00:20:56:21
Erik Hatch
Yes. And for me, I’m in the business of hiring talent and hiring leaders that happen to sell real estate. And I’m not chasing after the next transaction. And so because of that, I have to continually figure out how to reshape my world. And and that was the change. The change was I stopped hiring people that wanted to sell houses and I started hiring people that wanted influence and wanted creativity.
00:20:57:03 – 00:21:19:14
Erik Hatch
I was hiring entrepreneurialism, not entrepreneurs, because entrepreneurs just want their own thing more. There’s far more interpreters that people that want to build something that they have their fingerprints on, but they don’t want to take all the risk. And I was willing to be that testing ground for them. And so we have teams within teams and we were continually risking and failing and reinventing and getting back to it.
00:21:19:20 – 00:21:24:03
Erik Hatch
And when we learned how to do it exceedingly well, we then share that with people through our coaching.
00:21:24:21 – 00:21:37:02
Daniel Ramsey
It’s awesome. Talk to me about your coaching. Like, what do you like when you bring a new client on? What’s the primary focus? What’s your secret? Boss Yeah, your ninja skill in the lab.
00:21:38:05 – 00:21:44:13
Erik Hatch
So our coaching platform and it’s cleverly called Hatch Coaching because I put my name on everything. I don’t know how to name correctly.
00:21:44:13 – 00:21:45:22
Daniel Ramsey
Yes, it does.
00:21:45:22 – 00:22:06:05
Erik Hatch
Yeah, really. I’m the Colonel Sanders of most businesses is like I put my face on it. I have beady eyes and white beard and I created the recipe. But I’m not in the kitchen anymore. Right. The the premise of our coaching company is we say that we’re here to redefine how people treat people. So it starts on two levels.
00:22:06:11 – 00:22:33:03
Erik Hatch
The first is how we treat our clients, and we could treat our clients transactional or you know, there’s Wolf of Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross and the Boiler Room that talks about how you use whatever manipulative tactics you can in order to transactional people. And of course, those are animated movies. And yet there’s a lot of people that are using whatever fast scripts that they can to get somebody to convert.
00:22:33:14 – 00:22:59:10
Erik Hatch
Right. And we’ve approached it very differently, similar to how we’re approaching our our leadership. And that is we’re finding out what these buyers and sellers intrinsically want. We’re teaching people not how to have conversations about the house and the script, rather saying, how can you go deep and learn about this person’s life? Because if somebody calls on one, two, three Main Street, the chances of them actually buying that house is slim and none.
00:22:59:23 – 00:23:20:24
Erik Hatch
Yeah. And so we’re treating or treating people instead of they call them one, two, three, Main Street, we find out who’s on the line, why they want to buy one, two, three, Main Street. What who’s going to live? I want you through Main Street. Why that location or the economics of that house matter to them their motivation, their hopes, their wants and their desires and then we’ll talk about the house.
00:23:21:17 – 00:23:50:09
Erik Hatch
So when we build that foundation again of relationships and connecting, we’re building up, we think, a much more sustainable infrastructure. So it Hach Realty, we have the top estates in the country, literally hands down the top issues in the country. There’s a guy named Chris Tam. He owns a company called Castle Services, and they are doing CRM audits, looking at what different people are doing for their long term nurtures and who’s actually doing what they say they’re going to do.
00:23:51:03 – 00:24:27:16
Erik Hatch
We have been acknowledged by him as the top CRM in the country with what we’re doing to nurture these relationships long term and to touch the people the way we’re supposed to be contacting them and staying in front of them. As an example. Daniel Our average Zillow lead takes from birth day until closing about 180 days. So from the time in which they first come in until they closed about 180 days for a pay per click lead from the time they first come in until they close, it averages over 600 days.
00:24:27:16 – 00:24:54:11
Erik Hatch
Jeez. And yet that’s a massive part of our business because it’s about long term nurture and it’s about relationship building. So with Hatch coaching, we have two elements. The first is if we’re going to redefine how people treat people, it’s how we’re treating our clients. And so I have a partner and that has names. Robby Trevathan now goes in the business is Robby because his last name sounds like a medical symptom and so goes by Robby and he’s coaching ices and lead converters from around the country.
00:24:54:22 – 00:25:17:15
Erik Hatch
Okay, my coaching is simply about how to develop a better culture, a better heartbeat, how to hire better, how to train better, how to make a deeper community impact, and how to lean more on your sphere of influence in your past clients to grow your business. I can teach people how to sell houses faster. I can help them adopt things like transaction fees and higher commissions.
00:25:18:09 – 00:25:40:23
Erik Hatch
But the value in my coaching comes from leadership development, and so that starts with the person on the other line, their personal habits, who they are first to their God and family. Second is who they are to their team, then to their clients, then to their community and we build up an infrastructure of figuring out who’s in your world, how can we get the best out of them?
00:25:41:04 – 00:25:56:01
Erik Hatch
Instead of squeezing them to get more, it’s giving them as much as we can so that we have more fruit to bear. And so that’s our coaching platform different than most. And yet we’ve been able to have a really great Rolodex of people that have relied on our coaching.
00:25:56:17 – 00:26:14:17
Daniel Ramsey
That’s very cool. What has been the biggest challenge in running a team, a coaching platform, a gift thing, probably an insurance and a mortgage? I mean, you’re running a lot of different things, buying properties for yourself. What’s been the biggest challenge for you personally in that space?
00:26:15:22 – 00:26:26:14
Erik Hatch
People? I spoke at a convention this last January and the title of my talk was Real Estate is Easy and tell people get involved.
00:26:27:05 – 00:26:27:21
Daniel Ramsey
Okay.
00:26:27:21 – 00:27:02:07
Erik Hatch
And and bricks and mortar and mortgage rates and that sort are all really fairly easy to learn because it’s, it’s, it’s one plus two equals three. But with people one plus two equals purple. And it all depends on what’s going on in their life. And so if, if you have more than one business or even if you have just one business, understanding the dynamics of the people that are in that organization change the dichotomy of how you’re running each business.
00:27:02:23 – 00:27:23:13
Erik Hatch
I can’t show up at my desk profiles. I’m a 99. I am a 9090. I’m like an 88 and I’m a9c. So details like I don’t even know how to spell X. I’m not going to take the time to slow down and I just want to be fun and jovial and connect with people. But if everybody in my world has to mirror and match me, I have order takers.
00:27:24:09 – 00:27:48:21
Erik Hatch
And remember, my desire is to create leaders and not followers. If I’m trying to create followers, they all need to mirror and match me. But if I’m trying to create other leaders, I have to be a different version of myself with each person still authentic to me. But if I’m going to mirror and match Joe on my team, I know that I need to be much more calculated and analytical.
00:27:48:21 – 00:28:16:19
Erik Hatch
And if I’m going to match Shah on my team, I have to slow down and talk about her dog right, because we have to individualize each one of our connection points as a leader. The best, the best, the best leaders are not lions, they’re chameleons. And so it’s my job to match and make each person feel like they’re connecting with somebody who’s at their same wavelength.
00:28:17:00 – 00:28:32:04
Erik Hatch
If I’m ever going to help them be their best selves. So to your question, the hardest thing about these businesses are people. And it’s because I have to be marrying and matching them, but I don’t want them to fall in line with who I am. I need to fall in line with who they are. Wow.
00:28:33:03 – 00:28:37:22
Daniel Ramsey
How did you develop that skill set?
00:28:37:22 – 00:29:02:01
Erik Hatch
I stumbled my way into it. Really? I shared with you before that my background is in ministry, graduating from college. I graduated from North Dakota State University in 2002, and immediately after that I went to work at the church that I was baptized and raised in when I was 21. In college, my mom, my only parent, died of a cancer battle and so I was orphaned at 21.
00:29:02:01 – 00:29:26:08
Erik Hatch
And my church was like this great caretaker of me, and it was this massive value in my life. And so I immediately went to work for them after I graduated college. And for me, it was not only a place to impact the lives of kids, but it my life was radically getting impacted as well. I, I paid very close attention to the importance of ministry.
00:29:26:21 – 00:29:51:11
Erik Hatch
And ministry was never what was said or spoken at the pulpit or from the altar. It was what happened when you were in the trenches of people, when they were dealing with life, with death, with divorce, with self-doubt, with suicide, with all these things. My job as a youth minister was to meet kids where they were at instead of them coming to church.
00:29:51:20 – 00:30:11:12
Erik Hatch
Right. In fact, the church model is oftentimes broken because it’s inbred and it’s like, let’s just take care of the people that are within these walls. Right. And I didn’t ever care for that. Like, yes, take care of those people and go out and reach other folks. And not to just preach the gospel, but to make connections and to get them to trust you.
00:30:12:04 – 00:30:41:15
Erik Hatch
And if you’re ever to get a middle schooler to trust you, you better know what’s going on in their world. And so I learned a whole lot about the video games they were playing, the music they were listening to, the places they were hanging out, and I had to meet them on their turf instead of me just sitting in my office expecting these kids to come and hang out with me because most kids didn’t want to go to church and most kids didn’t give a rat’s patootie about what I had to say unless they knew that I cared about them.
00:30:42:05 – 00:31:09:08
Erik Hatch
Right. And so I learned very early on that being relational was foundational. You’re going to be relational as your foundation. It cannot be transactional as foundational. It needed to be relational as foundational. Our commonality is not real estate. Our commonality is that we’re dealing with people and our own insecurities and our own strengths and weaknesses. And we’re coming in with some baggage together.
00:31:09:15 – 00:31:15:18
Erik Hatch
And those are the things that we can now start to build upon instead of just talking about the real estate businesses that we’re in.
00:31:16:07 – 00:31:36:21
Daniel Ramsey
All right. Well, how can we serve you? We we very much share the same value our one of our values as a servant’s heart. So we always, always, always ask, what would be the best outcome for you in a relationship? I don’t know. You know, my goal is just reaching out to anybody who had any influence in the industry and just scheduling her call.
00:31:36:21 – 00:31:47:21
Daniel Ramsey
And so that’s what this conversation was all about, us to just connect and say hi and see if there’s any, you know, value to us working together in each other’s world, you know?
00:31:47:21 – 00:32:11:03
Erik Hatch
Yeah. Well, first off, I’m grateful for the opportunity to share a bit of my heart and to be seen as an influencer, somebody that makes an impact. That’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly. I, in fact, believe that I have to be so careful with my words. I have a coach named Shane Hess and he said, My whisper is a shout.
00:32:11:13 – 00:32:30:09
Erik Hatch
Yeah. And so the things that I say have influence and matter, whether it be on a podcast or a webinar or in my own world or with my kids or anything in between. And I’m very intentional with the words that I choose, even though I ramble from time to time. It’s it’s to figure out the right the right direction of where we’re going.
00:32:30:23 – 00:32:52:11
Erik Hatch
So with that, to your question, the best thing that you can do is simply to share something. And it’s your intention anyways, is to share this kind of approach because I know that I’m not the only one. And that’s the thing. It was years ago God had put it on my heart after doing some mission work in Haiti in 2010.
00:32:52:21 – 00:33:15:23
Erik Hatch
He’s like, I heard this little voice like, Hey, man, you should start an orphanage. You should start an orphanage. I went to Haiti after the earthquake. 230,000 people died in the most poverty stricken country in the Western Hemisphere. And I went to serve at an orphanage. I saw 125 kids that were so beautiful and they had no step up in life.
00:33:15:23 – 00:33:35:01
Erik Hatch
They clung to me when I spent time with them as though I was their only hope to have to have life and life abundance. And so I was wrecked. In that moment. I’m like, I got to do something. And I found a guy named Nick Shivers out of Portland, Oregon, a fantastic dude and a great realtor as well.
00:33:35:01 – 00:34:03:05
Erik Hatch
And I had heard that he was using his business to fund an orphanage. And so I looked into it, I connected with them. And sure enough, he was filtering a lot of his money to an organization called Forward Edge International. Nick and I developed a really good friendship, and in fact, he’s my brother at this point. And I recognize that if there’s a weird duck out there like Nick, there’s going to be a weird guy like me, maybe in every market that has a heart to do something really big and impactful with their business.
00:34:03:15 – 00:34:23:20
Erik Hatch
And they have a business need more than just accumulation for me. And so we started a movement called Stella Home Save a Child in going to sell at home, save a child, dawg. And we said we can’t be the only ones who want our business to give back and to make a difference in this world. And so this has been about five years now that we’ve been at this.
00:34:23:20 – 00:34:46:02
Erik Hatch
We’ve raised about one and a quarter million dollars by our donating and then empowering other people around the country to give as a part of their mission and ministry as well. So, Nick Shivers, if you go to his website, you’re going to see that he says that his business is selling homes and saving kids and they’re partnered with all these different places that are just people who are aligned with our thinking.
00:34:46:17 – 00:35:05:11
Erik Hatch
And I want to know that my whisper is a shout and I want to be able to say to the world that you can have massive and impact locally, regionally, globally, from your team to Haiti to anywhere in between. You just have to be bold enough to put something out there and invite people to come along for it.
00:35:05:23 – 00:35:23:23
Erik Hatch
Yeah. And so the best thing you can do, Daniel, is to share what we’re doing. And I believe that the lava traction will find itself and there’s going to be people looking to have a deeper purpose and their business, whether it be through self-help, save a child or it be through servant leadership, whether it be through praying for the person next to you.
00:35:24:06 – 00:35:33:03
Erik Hatch
And there’s, I think, a best way to do it in that best way is is to show up as a servant and a giver. And that’s how you have more than you ever thought possible.
00:35:33:15 – 00:35:55:16
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah, I love it. So all of your all of our clients are on this the silver level donors like Adrian Wiley Garland, the Duncan Do. Marci. Yeah. All of these guys are our clients. Yeah.
00:35:56:10 – 00:36:15:06
Erik Hatch
And those are, those are of our major allies for Nick and myself, those are that that’s our community that we’re invested in. And every time I get a chance to talk about it, I get excited. I get fired up because I know that real estate means more than the bricks and mortar. It’s the people that sell it that matter.
00:36:15:06 – 00:36:19:20
Erik Hatch
It’s the people that are going to live in it that matter, and it’s the good that we can do from it that matters.
00:36:20:22 – 00:36:46:01
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah. So I learned all these folks, man. I love it. Yeah, we’ve, we have like I said, we share the same values. We’ve created a nonprofit called the Mod Movement and it’s very similar. Last year we rehabbed an orphanage. This year we’re doing an old folks home, sent 200 kids to camp for a year or for a week.
00:36:46:16 – 00:37:13:09
Daniel Ramsey
Actually, this week in Texas, they’re underprivileged kids. They build a house in Ecuador, like a whole bunch of stuff. So yeah, doing this, it’s it’s the same concept though. Get our clients and people in our influence and in our space to be part of the movement. You know how when you when you go to somebody and say, hey, would you be a monthly contributor?
00:37:13:09 – 00:37:21:11
Daniel Ramsey
What’s them like? Talk to me a little bit about how you do that. I’m curious.
00:37:21:11 – 00:37:41:06
Erik Hatch
Nick is is more the front man than I am in that regard. We created it together and then I share it as a coach. I get a chance to share it with some people. And so it’s simply an invitation. I the best sales technique I’ve ever adopted is to never sell, is to simply speak of passion of what I’m doing.
00:37:41:13 – 00:37:57:12
Erik Hatch
And I think that people will show up and you have to show them the evidence. If you want to learn more, hey, reach out to us. If you want to be a monthly donor, let us know. But it’s never a hard sell. It instead is just sharing with them what has changed my heart and the focus of my business.
00:37:57:23 – 00:38:21:19
Erik Hatch
And I’ll talk about I can’t be the only one. And again, if I’m not the only one, and if somebody else out there is feeling like they want to make a difference, sell a home, save a child is a great path for you. And so it’s nothing more than that. Nick is probably a little more aggressive with his sales technique because he’ll tell people, Hey, you need to do this, and he’s right up with it and it works for him and this works for me.
00:38:21:21 – 00:38:48:00
Daniel Ramsey
So yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it’s interesting. And the reason I ask is because we, we onboard, you know, between 50 and 100 clients every month. And I haven’t been able to figure out how to internalize it into our sales process and the appropriate point. So I don’t know, I’m it’s good I might have to just schedule, call it Nick and kind of talk him through it.
00:38:48:00 – 00:39:08:23
Daniel Ramsey
But we haven’t had very we’ve had certain clients contribute and we’ve had certain clients add it to their value proposition, which is the whole concept, right? You go into a listing presentation and you’re like, Look, when you mess with me, you’re saving a child. Same concept. Or in our case, when you list with us, you’re making a change in the world impacting the world, right?
00:39:09:10 – 00:39:27:21
Daniel Ramsey
So yeah, we’ve we just haven’t, you know, we haven’t been we take a percentage of our revenue and we spend, but we haven’t gotten enough people involved because we have 800 clients, 1200 virtual assistants.
00:39:27:21 – 00:39:51:08
Erik Hatch
So do you guys ever, ever do community type things? Do you do summits or masterminds or that sort of thing together? Because that for us has been one of our biggest, biggest platform. Just to cast a vision is when you find like minded people together. And then, you know, we just we were in L.A. a couple of weeks ago at the convention, and we raised 50,000 bucks there.
00:39:51:08 – 00:40:04:20
Erik Hatch
And we were in Fargo last September and we raised 50,000 bucks. And we’re finding these opportunities. When you get a couple of drinks in people and you get them excited about what they’re doing, they’re much more likely to say yes.
00:40:04:20 – 00:40:11:11
Daniel Ramsey
Okay, new formula, get drinks and then have an event. But I have one other order, right?
00:40:11:22 – 00:40:32:05
Erik Hatch
No, that’s right. You got it right. I have a I have a buddy who runs like a philanthropy that feeds other philanthropies. So his his goal is to feed nonprofits and his technique for every live and silent auction is get them drunk, take their money or something. Do it. Yeah.
00:40:32:18 – 00:40:53:11
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s good, man. I love it. Well, dude, I have really appreciated our time together. This has been. It’s good. I mean, I just. I like meeting, you know, especially people like you have a lot of influence in the industry and hearing your story. It’s so funny, man. You’ve got a great story from the from pastor to what would you say.
00:40:53:12 – 00:40:55:00
Erik Hatch
About dumpster fire?
00:40:55:10 – 00:41:00:22
Daniel Ramsey
The dumpster fire? The dumpster fire. Get the story today of Eric catch.
00:41:01:17 – 00:41:13:04
Erik Hatch
I have a TED talk that’s called I’m a hot mess that I gave a few years ago and it’s it’s about actually owning your mistakes and being the one to tell your own story. So nobody else does it for you.
00:41:14:04 – 00:41:26:18
Daniel Ramsey
Huh? Yeah. Okay, I’ll check it out, man. I love that. Great. Well, we’re going to turn this into a little video, man. I mean, exactly what? We’ll send it out to every single real estate person in the world.
00:41:26:22 – 00:41:28:22
Erik Hatch
So, so cool. Thanks for doing this.
00:41:29:06 – 00:41:33:24
Daniel Ramsey
Yeah. And if there’s anything else we can ever do for you, we would love to serve.
00:41:34:08 – 00:41:36:18
Erik Hatch
Well, thank you.