Why Real Estate Teams Need Systems, AI, and Leadership to Scale Beyond Hustle

Chris Heller (00:00)
here’s what I see from the teams and agents that are succeeding at the highest level. They look at everything that’s happening as an opportunity. They’re not spending time wishing the market was different, not being angry about how things are, fearful about the number of transactions that are happening. They’re actually looking at

opportunities and then taking advantage of them. The other thing is they know that no matter how tough the market is or how many transactions are on a national basis in their local market, there’s still more business happening than they could probably handle themselves.

Scott Bursey (02:11)
back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. And today we’re tapping directly into the highest grade fuel for business growth. Massive, repeatable, tech-powered scale. Our guest is the Chief Revenue Officer at PLACE, Chris Heller. Chris isn’t just watching the future of real estate, he’s building the runway for it. He’s bringing the fuel of systematic growth and operational precision.

showing pros how to move from a local powerhouse to a national game changer. Get ready to rev your engines pros because this is going to be a high level revenue episode. Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Heller (02:55)
Scott, thanks for having me.

Scott Bursey (02:56)
It’s truly awesome having you here on the Real Estate Pros podcast today. And for our listeners, Chris, who may not be familiar with your journey, please tell us how’d your career begin and what is your main focus now?

Chris Heller (03:14)
how it began was, let’s say I was 20 years old and I got a call from my dad saying, you’re going to get your real estate license and come up to Lake Tahoe and sell time shares for the summer. that summer job turned into a three year stint that had me relocate down to San Diego. And during that time I met a real estate broker. And for the next three years after I met him, he’d

tried to recruit me to get into real estate and residential real estate and kept writing me notes and calling me and every time I saw him. And finally one day he caught me at a weak moment and I said, okay, I’ll give it a try. That my first year I was rookie of year in San Diego, sold 27 homes, went on to build a big business after… ⁓

16 years with that same company. I moved to another company and that was 2004. 2009, that company was Keller Williams. By 2009, I was the number one Keller Williams agent in North America. The next year, I took an executive role with the company, became the president in charge of the international expansion, ultimately became the CEO of the company, helped lead it for seven years. Left.

This is 2017 joined not this was not planned. I ended up at loan Depot, which was the second largest non bank lender in the country at the time became the CEO of their sister company. After a couple of years there, one of the companies I was an investor in and on the board of said, Hey, we could really use you full time. We’re really, we’re really taken off. So that sounded fun. Decided to join them.

we made multiple acquisitions. One of them was a large acquisition of a real estate portal called Movoto. We ran that business for five or six years and grew it, ran a business very similar to Zillow. we sold that last year to a national mortgage company and, ⁓ I decided not to stay on with that company after three or four months and, ⁓ joined my, my friends, ⁓ the founders that PLACE

and help them take this company to the next level as the chief revenue officer.

Scott Bursey (06:28)
That’s incredible, Chris. You know, what really caught my attention about you was the way that you’ve been able to strategically use technology and robust systems to scale real estate operations from a high performing team to a dominant national platform like PLACE, proving that systems and culture, not just pure hustle, are the ultimate investor fuel.

Chris Heller (06:53)
Yeah, that’s not to say there’s not a lot of hustle involved too. ⁓ But whether it’s like building this top real estate team, building the number one real estate company in the world, ⁓ building the most complete ⁓ platform in the industry that we’re doing now, there’s a lot of components to it. There’s having a clear vision and plan. There’s having a talented team.

you know, maybe most of all, there’s just the ability to implement and execute at a really high level. ⁓ There’s lots of people with good ideas and good intentions, but don’t make progress because they’re not able to operate, execute, implement at the level that they need to to be successful.

Scott Bursey (07:44)
Let’s jump into our rapid fire session where we’re focusing on the mechanics of scaling a high velocity tech enabled real estate platform. What is PLACE’s unique strength and attracting and retaining top tier real estate teams in a competitive landscape?

Chris Heller (08:02)
no teams going to join us unless we’re bringing significant value. And the value that we bring is in the form of systems, models, processes. We do all the things and provide the teams with the things that they need that they don’t necessarily like to do or get it doing. So they can focus on just growing their business and helping more people buy and sell homes. having a ⁓

you know, the right systems, the right models, the right operations, the right training, all the things that help them build big businesses is what allows us to grow as a company and allows our partners to succeed at the highest level.

Scott Bursey (08:45)
It really sounds like there’s multiple components involved and that was a great breakdown. Let’s shift gears here just a little bit. What is the single biggest technological challenge and the industry faces in integrating advanced AI tools without losing the crucial human element of transaction Chris?

Chris Heller (09:09)
Yeah, I don’t. But I don’t see any of it as a challenge. I see it all through the lens of opportunities. So so, you know, the opportunities are to be able to to do what what you just mentioned at even a higher level, right? They be able to build relationships at a deeper level, to be able to build relationships with more velocity, to be able to build more relationships.

⁓ in a shorter period of time. That’s where technology and AI ⁓ can be leveraged to achieve those things. And ⁓ we’re very, very focused on how we utilize AI to help our partners and to help our company ⁓ move as quickly as we need to move to stay ahead of consumer expectations and consumer behavior.

Scott Bursey (10:05)
Absolutely. Looking at things with ⁓ a positive lens is always the key to success. What would you like the listeners out there to know first about PLACE’s operation now?

Chris Heller (10:56)
Well, yeah, if they’re a real estate agent, a real estate team, a loan officer, a home inspector, you know, if they’re a service provider in our industry, what I would want them to know is that there’s a lot more to PLACE than what they probably have heard or even think they know. And to take the time to learn what’s here. Everyone that does ultimately ends up joining us or

if their business qualifies to, or telling other people about us that join us. So, know, taking the time to really understand and learn. If it’s a consumer, you know, a homeowner or a prospective homeowner, know, understanding that owning a home is hard and there’s a lot to it and there’s a lot of challenges and we’re on a mission to make it easy, to make it so that that homeowner, when they need a new loan,

when they need a plumber, when they need insurance, regardless of what their needs are, for them to be able to get it all at one place that being our company PLACE. And that’s the mission that we’re on, is to be able to provide all those services in a very seamless way to homeowners to make owning homes just a lot easier.

Scott Bursey (12:19)
Chris, in your view, which emerging market or specific geographic region offers the biggest untapped growth potential for a real estate technological platform model currently?

Chris Heller (12:33)
Yeah, don’t. Scott, it’s really not a geographic thing. ⁓ When we’re talking about the US, I mean, if you’re talking about the whole globe, yeah, there’s ⁓ some global markets that are more accessible or more ready for, you ⁓ know, prop tech and fintech. you know, that’s we only operate in North America. So I’ll keep my answer focused on there. It’s not geographic. It’s more of ⁓

the opportunities are in the number of agents that we’re able to service, the number of teams that a market supports. And those are the things we look at. But really, it’s closer to being unlimited than it is to limited.

Scott Bursey (13:24)
Walk us through how does that affect your bottom line, Chris?

Chris Heller (13:29)
⁓ Well, ⁓ we provide a lot of services. So when we partner with teams, it’s a true partnership. So the more profit that our partners make, the more money that we make. We also own a lot of companies and products that we provide to our teams. So we provide them with all their technology needs, their financing, their HR needs, their marketing needs, ⁓ their recruiting needs, all those things.

products and services we also provide to the industry as a whole. So the more we’re able to grow either our partner network or the number of agents, teams and brokerages that we service with one of our technology companies or one of our product companies, the more it impacts our bottom line.

Scott Bursey (14:19)
And on that note, Chris, what do you feel is the biggest opportunity right now as far as perhaps a market shift, a new offering or just part of the business that you’d like to double down on?

Chris Heller (14:32)
Yeah, growth is always the number one opportunity. we’re heavily focused on that. But the other is ⁓ really completing the ecosystem of everything that a homeowner would need. And that’s the other thing that we’re hard at work at. We do a lot of mergers and acquisitions and acquiring the companies that we need to be able to provide a homeowner with literally

everything they need in regards to owning a home or a tenant with everything that they would need to move from being a tenant to a homeowner. So the opportunity for us is just to complete, know, continue to complete that ecosystem of all the products and services that someone will need.

Scott Bursey (16:02)
I appreciate you highlighting that. Outside of the high interest rates, what is the biggest external threat to revenue stability for large brokerages and platform models right now in your view?

Chris Heller (16:17)
Yeah, I don’t think it’s interest rates at all. I think the

There’s two types of threats. There’s the ones we know and the ones we don’t know. The ones we know aren’t really threats. They’re just either temporary conditions or a shift in the economic landscape or a shift in behavior or new rules or laws or those things. And those things are all something that you can adapt to and figure out how to turn into opportunities.

The other threats are the ones that you don’t know, that you don’t see coming, that you can’t foresee. You know, and pandemics and those type of things. And so we tend to put our focus on the things we can control and not spend a lot of time on the things we can’t control.

Scott Bursey (17:17)
Absolutely, and that’s the key. I love the transparency there. Chris, given your focus on operational excellence, what is the most common process breakdown you see limiting high performing teams from scaling from let’s say 100 transactions to 500?

Chris Heller (17:36)
Yeah, there’s quite a few. ⁓ There’s the ability to continue to grow the team with the right type of talent, the right type of agents. Training becomes an ongoing issue for many of the teams. They’re admin and administrations. They don’t have often the best systems and processes. And then they don’t know the right models or use the right models for compensation.

for lead generation, for growth, for recruiting. ⁓ And then technology is another one. There’s many times these teams going from 100 to several hundred transactions are utilizing five, seven, 10, 15 different technology platforms. When we’re able to simplify that and have them be able to get rid of the majority of those and use our system, that helps them a lot.

Those are the challenges, know, it’s always, it’s growth, it’s operations, it’s systems, it’s models, it’s training. And then lastly, it’s leadership, you know, helping, helping teams and agents become better leaders and better business people is something that I think probably almost every one of our partners would say that that’s, they’ve been impacted by that and have benefited from that.

Scott Bursey (18:59)
It sounds like it really boils down to evolution, Chris.

Chris Heller (19:05)
Yeah, it’s, yeah, I haven’t thought about in those, you know, in that context, but yeah, you like whether it’s an individual or business, if we’re if we’re not evolving, if we’re not growing, if we’re not improving, you know, we’re probably going backwards.

Scott Bursey (19:27)
What is some long-term vision for PLACE?

Chris Heller (19:33)
there’s, two that are, top of mind right now. And that is for, ⁓ us to become a household brand. And for that to be the brand that, that people think of when they have a need that revolves around real estate, mortgage insurance. ⁓ and then the other is for us to fully, ⁓ be able to, ⁓ to be able to fulfill on that.

and to reach our providential, ⁓ it’s for us to become a public company.

Scott Bursey (20:08)
Sure. You talked about having systems in PLACE. If a team leader is successfully running 50 transactions a year and wants to immediately jump to 150, what piece of technology, system, or operational mindset must they implement first to handle that explosive scale?

Chris Heller (20:30)
Yeah, if so, I’ll answer the technology part first. ⁓ They need to have a system that is not just going to allow them to do the things they need to do, but be able to ⁓ do some of the things for them that they need to do. And that’s where ⁓ artificial intelligence and how technology is evolving so fast, we can do that, where we can leverage AI ⁓ for nurturing and building deeper relationships with the

with their customers and building new relationships with their customers. The other thing they need to do is they need to have the right models. So as they grow, they’re growing not just in going from 100 to, or excuse me, from 50 to 100 transactions or to 200 transactions, but they’re doing it in a very profitable way, in a very scalable way so that the agents on the team are benefiting from.

from that growth as well as the owner of the team. And then they have to have just very strong operations and ⁓ systems to be able to handle the growth so that the level of service isn’t impacted.

Scott Bursey (21:43)
That is pure fire and a good example of why you’re operating at such a high level right now. Chris, you have brought a lot of high octane to our listeners today, but what golden nugget or additional piece of advice would you like to leave them?

Chris Heller (22:03)
here’s what I see from the teams and agents that are succeeding at the highest level. They look at everything that’s happening as an opportunity. They’re not spending time wishing the market was different, not being angry about how things are, fearful about the number of transactions that are happening. They’re actually looking at

opportunities and then taking advantage of them. The other thing is they know that no matter how tough the market is or how many transactions are on a national basis in their local market, there’s still more business happening than they could probably handle themselves.

So they’re focused on ⁓ how can they get the biggest share of the business so that their business continues to grow even if the market’s not.

Scott Bursey (22:52)
control what you can control. That is the message I’m getting from you, Chris.

Chris Heller (23:00)
That’s it. It makes life easier.

Scott Bursey (23:01)
Absolutely. And

Chris, this has been pure gold. For those of our listeners that want to follow your journey or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Chris Heller (23:13)
They can contact me on any social media platform. ⁓ My email is [email protected] and I’m pretty easy to find and reach.

Scott Bursey (23:24)
Chris, thank you for joining us today.

Chris Heller (23:28)
Thanks for having me. Always happy to share.

Scott Bursey (23:31)
And to our listeners, we appreciate each and every one of you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ve got a lineup of exceptional guests, just like Chris Heller, who are making huge moves in the market. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.