2429 - How Passion for Music Fuels a Billion-Dollar Real Estate Coaching Empire with Suneet Agarwal

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, it is Sunit Agrawal. Sunit, you've got quite a history. You were, this is bonkers, you were the number one real estate professional in sales for two years in the state of California. So you have quite a history. You're the founder of the Reside platform, which we're going to talk about. And you are the author of the book, Team Leader Secrets, the Ultimate Guide to Building a Real Estate Team. Well, Sunid, I think if we're going to listen to anyone, I'd kind of like to listen to someone who's been there, done that, and has the, you know, kind of the credentials to teach it.

1:34And not only do you have credentials, my friend, you have quite a guitar collection on your back wall, which before we get into talking about your superpowers professionally, let's talk about our mutual love of music. But man, I am salivating over that guitar collection. You want to tell me about what that is? Yeah, I mean, so, you know, when I was a kid, I would go visit my father in Los Angeles. list. I live here in Sacramento. And he would take me to the big fancy guitar stores in the Hollywood Boulevard, right? Sunset Boulevard. And I remember going in, I must have been nine or twelve, and I was saying, when I grow up, I want my house to look like this.

2:18And so guess what? Now my office, not my whole house, my wife and kids probably wouldn't like that, but my whole house is covered. or my whole office is covered in guitars. I mean, there's however many on this wall, as many as fit and there's boxes and other guitars strewn all over the room. So yes. And live music, dude, like, you know, we were talking off air. It's super like inspiring and like, it just does, it's like an animalistic thing, right? Like tribal type thing that really does a lot for me. Yeah. Well, and so you've met Zach Wild, of which you've gotten these guitars. Do you want to share, like, how you've acquired the collection that you do?

3:08Because these are stage-played guitars and signed, right? Yes, stage-played guitars by Zach Wild. You know, they do different packages that is much more economical than one would think. In fact, it's so economical that I just go every time, right? and you know do a mega VIP is what they call it and go backstage and get get the guitar sign and they play it on stage and then give it back to you at the end so I always bring my wife because of course right but she tells me Sunit I never see you happier than when you're about to get a guitar sign so I'm gonna lean into that right like it's it makes me happy it's exciting uh it's a it's a good memory and it's inspirational, right.

3:56To be able to meet your idols. Right. So. I love going to see live music. I feel like it keeps me young. I feel like, you know, when you're there rocking out with a bunch of other people, it's like all of a sudden we don't care about what our differences might be in the world or whatever in that moment, man, we are all united in the spirit of rock. Totally. Yes. And that's the thing too, is, you know, when, when you're standing in like a VIP line to go meet Zach, right? And you start talking to people. Like it's people from all walks of life and all these different things. People I would probably typically not have any reason to talk to.

4:37But it ends up being a passionate conversation right away because we're talking about having met all right. So everyone just starts to, it's really good like camaraderie and experiencing different type of people in a different setting. So it's really cool. It's really, for everyone who's only listening and not watching, I have a big cheesy smile on my face because it's so cool. Yeah. Don't you love, I absolutely love it when, you know, to me, it's like, you know, when you're talking with someone and they might, you know, they've got their professional presence, right? They're what they do for work and they're successful.

5:14But, you know, that's one of the main reasons I love asking this question at the beginning of the podcast is just, you know, just seeing what lights people up, you know, and usually successful leaders are multi passionate, you know, and they take that same drive that they have that's helped create that success. And they they're just they're equally passionate about their hobbies and, you know, the things that they geek out on. So thank you so much, Sonny, for for sharing your experience there. Yes, absolutely. Now with that same level of energy and passion, please share with us what you do with the Reside platform.

5:51And then, of course, we're going to talk about the book Team Leader Secrets as well. Yeah. So, you know, after my massive kind of insane success as a real estate agent and real estate team leader, it brought me a lot of notoriety. And once you have that notoriety and those credentials, opportunities start landing in your lap. One of those opportunities was to do high ticket coaching for other real estate team leaders. And it was very good economics. And it was really helpful for the client and for my personal growth and the agents, the families, everybody. But I wanted to go deeper. I wanted to really impact all aspects of the real estate teams, our small brokerage, all aspects of it.

6:39And coaching wasn't able to do that. So we started a consulting company. and we were able to provide deeper services, more broad services for the clients and just see more of an impact. So that led me, that business did very well. We never took on any funding. We barely spent any money on ads and we were financially profitable on day one. Like who can say that, right? And within three and a half years of me starting that company, we were acquired. So that's been a great journey. So now it's been about two months since the acquisition and they kept me on as president. We call it Aqua Hired, right?

7:31So I was Aqua Hired and here we are. Yeah, man, just rocking and rolling and going all in on growth and scale. Yeah, well, okay. So let's talk about, Can you share just a little bit about what the Reside platform is? Yeah. So, I mean, you know, real estate team leaders oftentimes bite off more than they can maybe chew are what we're expecting to chew. Right? And I think it's true of any founder. Right? But I feel like in the real estate business, it's kind of its own animal. Right? Like it's all mostly independent. contractors. It's very cyclical and market dependent. For example, whatever's happening in the Middle East kind of slowed down all the positive strides that we were making this year with interest rates.

8:25So I just want to go deep. People question what technology should I use? How do I get my team productive? If you're a real estate team leader, you have a bunch of independent contractors in the real estate space where there's an 87 % fail rate after five years. You need all the damn help you can get. You need all the help you can get to try and not let people be in that 87%. And there's so much in the real estate space and the marketing space too, but so much shiny object stuff. What am I chasing? What am I chasing? What do I do? This person says this. Many people don't even have visibility into their financials.

9:15So we decided, hey, we have a fractional CFO and we'll do your books. We'll give you the best software, not that we own, but the best in class software that we know works. So we'll provide it as part of the package. We will train the hell out of your agents. You just got to get them to show up. we will train the heck out of you right and just the list of services just goes on and on because i remember what it was like right i remember watching a facebook post or listening to some random podcast telling me to start a real estate team and inspired me just enough to do it and me doing it and then saying oh crap what do i do now and more importantly who do i listen to and who isn't full of it.

10:04So we started the Resign platform to be that solution. And yeah, man, it's been great. It's been great. Like I'm living my dream life every day, Josh, and I can't believe it. Yeah, it's a big lift. You know, I think a lot of your real estate leaders or brokers, I mean, they come from sales. I mean, they were selling themselves. They likely just evolved and like, okay, well, now I'm going to manage a team here. Um, and, but yet, you know, I think that their reference for leadership and, you know, managing that is probably just what they picked up. I would suspect. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, and it's a different, it's, it's a very different skillset that it's okay to admit, you know, that that's not what you were raised in, you know, you just, you know, kind of maybe picked it up a long way.

10:53So hence, you know, why I think it's really critical that, you know, if I'm a real estate leader, it's okay for me to put my ego on a shelf and admit I don't have all the ideas and it's time to bring the big guns. Absolutely. I mean, just because you're a good salesperson doesn't make you a good leader. Like I remember my first leadership, my first leadership opportunity and I was, and I got it because I was a top salesperson. Right. And I was a prick. Like, I don't know, like nobody wanted to work as hard. Like not everybody wanted to work as hard as me. What's wrong with these people? They must be lazy, right?

11:31And how do I, you know, how do I make someone not lazy? Oh, I don't know. How about I act like a tyrant and see if that works? Okay, good luck. When at the end of the day - Sales professionals love that, by the way. Yeah. Exactly. So like, so at the end of the day, like the leadership lessons that not only I learned through reps, but I learned through my own coaching and personal development and the mentors I have and the books I read to be able to give it to other people, right? You know, like that's a full circle, right? I, I grew up listening to Zig Ziglar with my dad, right? So, so that's had a big impact on my life.

12:14Awesome. Okay, so your book, it's called Team Leader Secrets. The website you can go to is teamleaderssecrets.com. Sunit, the subtitle is The Ultimate Guide to Building a Real Estate Team. Who should be reading this book and what's the outcome that they'll get from it? I mean, who should be reading this? It is, as the title implies, as the sub-headline says, the ultimate guide to building a real estate team. So if you are a real estate agent who wants to build a team or a current real estate team leader who wants to scale your team, it is your step-by-step manual. And you will get many of my playbooks, if not all of them.

12:58I have people who have been in real estate for 40 years coming up to me and saying, wow, Sunid, your book is amazing, right? So that's the main avatar. However, if you want to learn leadership and marketing and lead gen from me, who was the number one realtor in the state of California, who just had his consulting company bought, right? If you want to learn this stuff from me, it's all in here too, right? And I know it'll impact anybody on that team building leadership journey. Dude, it took me three years to write, right? Because I just wanted it to be, I scrapped it twice and brought it back up.

13:47Wow. All right. So there's a few options here. So there is, there's teamleaderssecrets.com. I'm going to just share your websites. Resideplatform.com. And then, of course, there's your sunitaagrawal.com, agrawal.com. And who should be going where? And what would you recommend are next steps for our friend who has been listening to our conversation? What do they do? I mean, if you want to learn more about me or connect with me, I have all the social platforms going. Just go to sunitaagrawal.com. I have a newsletter on there. I have two newsletters on there, one for a specific on real estate, one for AI workflows I do in my business.

14:28so there's a lot of content right in your inbox there and yeah i would love to connect and chat and you know talk business and talk making money the your book uh by the way uh team leader secrets um it's you can get it's in kindle uh paperback uh hardcover it's also kindle unlimited so if you just if you got kindle unlimited go read it uh and then um certainly like i said resignplatform.com. Well, Sunit Agarwal, great guitar collection, great stories. And it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. All right. Thank you, Josh.

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