Becoming a Leader of Leaders with Laura Fleming

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Interview Transcription

ADRIENNE: 

Welcome back, and thanks for listening to the Team Lally Real Estate show home of the guaranteed sold program or we’ll buy it. I’m Adrienne. And I’m Attilio. If you have any questions, give us a call at 7999596 or check us out online at Teamlally.com.

ATTILIO: 
Adrienne, who do we have on the show?

ADRIENNE:
So our guest today was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and spent her childhood as an Army brat. She married her husband Paul, almost 20 years ago, and together with her three children and Fur babies, has traveled the globe as a military spouse. She started her career as a professional photographer and created a brand of workshops for budding photographers, Laura founded a nonprofit grew into corporate event planning and landed at Team Lally about five years ago as an unlicensed, unlicensed admin, where she now serves as the President of our organization. Please welcome our guest, Laura Fleming, in studio

ATTILIO: 
low. Hi.

LAURA: 
So glad to be here.

ADRIENNE: 
Yes, we’re happy to have you. And I’m sure we’ll have you again, too. Sounds good. Let’s we’ll make it a date. Yes. Awesome. So Attilio, you would you like to start with your question, and you want me to go?

ATTILIO: 
Well, Laura, how did you get into real estate and tell us? It’s always a good origin story. What the two wands is, is that we always ask yes. Is how did you get into what you’re doing today? And how did you end up in Hawaii? If you’re not from here,

LAURA: 
right? Well, yeah, as my intro said, I’m not originally from Hawaii, sadly. And I made it here through my my spouse’s career, my husband Paul’s in the army. And the second time that we moved out to Hawaii, which was, oh, dear 2016. I said, you know, I’m just gonna spend my time hiking and traveling the island and learning about the culture. And that’s what I did. And then I said, You know what, I’m ready to go back to work. So I, you know, what did a simple Google search and I found Team Lally and I signed up for an interview for, I think it was executive assistant, was the role and I said, You know what, I think I could do that. And I’ll never forget, yeah, when you interviewed me, Attilio looked at me sideways. And he said, Why are you applying to do sale? Why aren’t you getting into real estate? You know, and I just, I know, I don’t know anything about it. And so I really walked in, with eyes wide open. And yeah, long story short, here we are, you know, I Teamlally supported me through real estate school, and helped me get a license. In fact, I passed the exam on the first go, which anybody that’s taken those exams knows that’s a feat in and of itself. You know, being surrounded by people who had been doing this for years, I mean, gave me such an advantage that that nobody else really had. So that’s, that’s how I came to the island. And that’s how I got started with you guys.

ADRIENNE: 
And we’re so thankful for the army and your second time around. So you guys were here previously, for four years back in like, early 2000s.

LAURA: 
Right. In fact, our youngest daughter was was born here. And, you know, we she, you know, oddly enough, she absolutely loves the ocean, and her hair responds wonderfully to saltwater. And she tans like, no problem. It’s very envious anyway. So yeah, we had lived on island for about four years, moved back to the mainland, and then we were lucky enough to get orders again to Hawaii, which we really advocated for. And and since then, yeah, we’ve been traveling the globe, and we have a little bit longer, and then we’re going to be retiring on islands. So we’re very excited.

ATTILIO: 
Well give potential clients or you know, we just have curious listeners, what, explain your role on the team. And you will us some depth on that.

LAURA: 
Sure. So my role now my title is I am the President of Team Lally, which is our group underneath of course, the Keller Williams, Honolulu brokerage, right. And I, much like Adrienne and Attilio, get get the opportunity to wear a lot of hats with our team. I’m really heavily involved in in recruitment right now. So people that are looking to get a career started in real estate mean, they’re, they’re very curious, how do I get started? Where do I go? What do I do and having done traveled that road firsthand, and I’m really able to help them do that. And then one of my other major responsibilities is helping to coach and train all of the new and seasoned agents that are within Team Lally, making sure that our team has the resources that they need day to day to serve our clients at the highest level. So again, you know a lot of hats just like a lot of us were and and it’s a lot of fun. And the really coolest thing is too is I get to continue to serve my own, you know, clients as well, who reached out to me directly and and say, Hey, we’re also military. We’re moving to the island and you know what, how do we get started? So, so yeah, it’s it’s a fun role for sure. It’s challenging. You know, I’m one of those people that I don’t like for any two days to be the same. And it never is. And realistically,

ATTILIO: 
we’re like a teaching hospital, you know, you’re gonna do a couple of brain surgeries every once a while, and then you’re teaching brain surgeons how to perform the surgery with our sales team.

ADRIENNE: 
So yeah, so let’s talk about your path of travel. She does in your intro, we talked about you coming on as an unlicensed admin. And then here you are, like, wearing all these hats. Yeah, share with the listeners. So

LAURA: 
executive assistant was my first role unlicensed admin, and I got licensed 11 months later. And I moved into what’s what we call inside sales. And most people know that as a client care management, and I was responsible for taking the inbound calls, it would come as a result of the radio show, or people looking up our reviews who wanted to buy or sell a home or invest in real estate, right. And then what my job there was sort of a matchmaker between what they needed and the agents on our team who were ready to serve them. I grew from that role into, you know, a sales agent. And so I was helping buyers and sellers now directly, instead of handing them off to somebody else. So I was helping them buy a home, sell a home, whatever they needed. And then we found out we were moving and it was really unexpected. And that was that was, you know, was really challenging. So I looked at taking my real estate expertise to another team on the mainland. And, you know, then COVID happened, right? And we all came to the realization that, you know, there was opportunities to do a lot of business from home or wherever we were located nationwide because

ADRIENNE: 
of zoom, and everyone was being forced to kind of do things using technology over COVID.

LAURA: 
Exactly. And we had already we were already leveraging that technology and team well, I mean, we were using Zoom before I even ever came on the team. And so an electronic signatures etc. So, so I moved into biz, Director of Business Development and Agent Training. So I was really just helping the team to leverage systems, processes, really refine the operations, and then also train and onboard the new agents. And then now I’m President. So that’s actually five roles in five years, within within Team Lally alone. And so and that’s part of the reason I absolutely love this team. And I always tell anybody who’s looking for a career opportunity with us or even you know, with Keller Williams, look for operate for places that have unlimited opportunity and career growth for you. And this wasn’t a path you guys had laid out for me, right?

ADRIENNE: 
We just designed it for you, right?

ATTILIO:
Well, customer.

Well, we learned from a class called Career Visioning with Keller Williams is that opportunities will be put forth before talent, if they exceed the expectations of the team over a multi year period. Adrienne, Did Laura do that?

ADRIENNE: 
Absolutely. And she can do it. And she continues to do it. And we look forward to watching her grow into this leadership. Like I mean, she was already in the leadership, but even now more responsibility and more leadership within the team.

ATTILIO:
Laura, translate this into what our clients want to hear. You know, we always say all the time that your clients, don’t they, you don’t necessarily want to, you want Adrienne and Attilio, you just want a five star, four seasons level of service? How are you helping us with that?

LAURA: 
Yeah, absolutely. You know, we talked about this and you Attilio, you and I use this analogy very often is that Team Lally is structured sort of like when you walk into a doctor’s office or a clinic, right? The same person who’s sitting at the front desk is not the same person who’s going to be operating on you. Everybody within our team is the same way very specialized roles. And everybody is truly an expert in their own field. Let me give you an example of that. You know, my role coaching, training, helping to level up agents enables them to have better conversations and be more knowledgeable with our clients, you know, especially when they’re in a situation like, they want to do a 1031 exchange. Great, our agents are 100% educated on that and all equipped to help you with that. If you are looking to do an investment property or any any of those elements, but then we have other team members who we have a media manager in house, and his entire role is to make our sellers homes look, five star well forget that 10 star,

ADRIENNE: 
okay. And he’s super friendly to he’s the friendliest.

LAURA: 
We also have the friendliest Team, you guys that we really, really do. We hire really good people and and want to keep them on board. So no grouchy people allow. Right right. And so you know, having been somebody who has been through Each of those specialized roles, and now being able to have the opportunity to serve at the level that I am serving at, I really understand how all of those pieces and elements come together for our clients. And it’s important, you know, for people to know out there that we really do serve differently, you will have a very different experience.

ATTILIO: 
The other thing I want to talk to is that sometimes you know, when you’re working, oh, by the way, in the only time you’re gonna see the same person doing everything, is if you’re watching a Monty Python movie. You know, they have a famous comedy routine where the guy like you checking into the hotel, and then the person at the front desk is this, Gary Gleason. And then he puts a, he puts on his bell, Captain hat, and then he comes around the counter to grab your bags. And then you see him wearing an apron, because he’s cooking your breakfast for the next morning. So we have that same sense of humor, but not that level of experience. As far as one person trying to do everything. We do have our specialized roles. But you know, a lot of times there’s a knowledge gap and talk to the amount of experience that we have. Where the agents if they don’t know something, what do they do? They just sit there and go, Oh, not too sure how to do that? Or do they have some other opportunity? Other musicians will make them

LAURA: 
google it and figure it out on their own? No, you know, we we combined have something like I don’t know, over 60 or 70 years of experience, if you were to combine all of our individual experiences. And like you said, Attilio, too, you know, all of those, those are very diverse experiences. And so chances are if I haven’t experienced a client with a particular scenario, someone else on our team has, and I will go seek out that person and get them involved, not just say, Hey, can I have your advice, but we partner up, you’ll hear terms when you work with us, like business partner. And that’s somebody who is, you know, on the transaction with us, helping to serve the client in a in a way that if I’m not experienced, I’m bringing on a partner to help with that. So yeah.

ATTILIO: 
So I’ll share with the listener, an example, you know, Ashley, are in sales, a sales agent was talking with a gentleman, unfortunately, that’s going through a pretty challenging divorce. And she had a good conversation with the client and got the basic information. But I said, let’s get back on the line with the client. And I looked at my phone, when I finished up the conversation with that person. By the way, Adrienne and I have taken over 60 plus hours, we’ve actually done a ton of sales that are interrelated with divorces, unfortunately, and we have a ton of experience before we took this certification, but I think we’re the only ones on the island that have that. And so I got back on the phone. And this is not a consultation. This is just an initial call. That call was one hour. And I really and when I know that we’ve served the client at the highest level, even in the initial call is when at the end, I say do you have any other questions or concerns, and the client, you can almost see them, you can almost hear it through the phone or see it in person, if you’re meeting with them. That sigh of relief, and Adrienne or Laura speak to it. When they sit down with us. And we’re done with the meeting. We’ve asked if you have any questions or concerns, and they don’t and they have that big sigh of relief. What does that mean?

ADRIENNE: 
That we’ve done our job? Yeah. And that sometimes we even will sit down with clients that we’re not going to be selling their home. Yeah, I know. Just recently, I had a person that’s there, their father in law is having some trouble with their mortgage, it’s a reverse mortgage. And we sat down and gave them a closure. Yeah, we gave them the game plan on how to get out of that that mess. And the goal was

ATTILIO: 
to remind me, Adrienne, how much Commissions do we make on that consultation?

ADRIENNE: 
Nothing, nothing. It’s just, you know, we want to make the connection and educate and, you know, make sure that their you know, their families. Okay.

LAURA: 
I’m glad that you mentioned that Adrienne, I was just in an email conversation with military spouse who’s overseas with her service member right now. And they’re going to be moving to the island this summer. And in our conversation, so far, we’ve been talking about what they’re considering doing, you know, they have to find a place to live. And they the housing wait times are getting much, much longer these days. And it’s really challenging, you know, for them to find a place to live on on base or on post. And so we’re talking through Well, if renting is the best, you know, scenario for you. You know, I can help you with that. If if buying is the best scenario for you. I can help you with that. And and that’s coming from service because we don’t I yeah, there’s no commission to be made on helping someone find a rental or figure out whether or not that’s the best path for them. But, you know, based on your goals and your priorities, what do you guys want to achieve through homeownership? And then, if it’s not a fit, we’re going to tell you that and that’s one of the things I’ve always loved about being on this team. It’s it’s not about making a commission. It’s about serving people and helping them meet their goals and what they want to achieve.

ADRIENNE: 
And it all comes back to you. It’s good karma.

ATTILIO:
I’m hearing you correctly. We go over all the options with the client. And one of those options might be that they keep the home or that they don’t buy a home, or they do something else. It has nothing to do directly with us making any money, but it’s just the best option for their family. Yes,

ADRIENNE: 
yes. So So Laura, I’ve got a question on with this new role, where you’re like leading the team, and you’ve got all these fresh new ideas, what like, what do you foresee over the next year, the biggest changes? What are what are you going to be implementing?

LAURA: 
Oh, there’s lots of good stuff, we’re going to be implementing, you know, I my nuts and bolts person, and I love digging into the operation side of things. So everything that we’re doing, we have some new technology that we’re going to be introducing within the next about 45 days out now, which can be a scary thing for a big team like us, you know, to change something. So so we’re gonna see that I am personally making client care calls after our agents have met with prospective clients who are looking to hire Team Lally. And those conversations have been awesome. It’s great. Just to hear the feedback, you know, what went well for you? Did you have any questions leftover? And, you know, how are you going to make a decision on how you’re moving forward. So you know, they won’t get to hear this radio voice right through this very expensive microphone, but they’ll hear me on the other line calling and leaving them a voicemail to check in on their experience with us. And then we have some really fun team events planned, you know, any organization will benefit from a strong team culture. And it’s another reason I’ve been with Team Lally. I mean, it’s, it’s, you can’t beat it. So we have some fun team events that are coming up as well. And you know, chances are folks, you’re gonna see our agents out and about in their red shirts, putting out their red team Lally signs a lot more. So just give us a wave. Let us know if you’re a listener and we love chatting with our listeners when we’re out in the field.

ADRIENNE: 
Let’s talk about those fun things. Just just a few of them. While this

ATTILIO: 
was let’s talk about those red shirts and more specific, bigger on a bigger scale, Keller Williams on a little little what, what about red shirts in the month of

LAURA:
May we have red day, that day. That’s so exciting. So as as a as a culture under our brokerage, which is Keller Williams, and in the Honolulu branch, specifically, we celebrate red day, once a year, which is when all of Keller Williams is brokerage comes together globally, on the exact same day. And we all find a way to give back to our communities. What are some of the events that we’ve done in the past

ADRIENNE: 
that like, like a beach cleanup? We’ve done the like the food drive the food from

ATTILIO: 
time to time in Washington, Waxhaw my cars.

ADRIENNE: 
Nobody wants your cars. Nice.

LAURA:
You know, and it will and it’s an opportunity for us to just to give back. And that’s that’s a huge part of the Keller Williams culture. Yeah, is in its givers gain is what we always talk about on the team as well. That’s right.

ATTILIO: 
All right. And then are there any opportunities for new people to come join us?

LAURA: 
Absolutely not. We are just closed or closed? No more? Absolutely.

ATTILIO:
Secret society with secret handshake?

LAURA: 
We are Yes. Yeah. You know, like you said, I think in the beginning Attilio we’re always looking for talent. And so yeah, first step is always the same no matter what, JoinTeamlally.com. And that’s all one word JoinTeamlally.com. So we have a few career opportunities that we are recruiting for right now. One of which is coming on as an agent, if you’re newly licensed or experienced, and you want the accountability and the organization and the systems, JoinTeamlally.com If you’re no fun, and the fun. Yeah. I know, I know. But you know, if you if you want to be a part of a culture that gives back and does the things that we’ve talked about today, then that’s the place for you. So JoinTeamlally.com And then you and I personally will reach out to you. If you’re a candidate, and we’ll have a discovery call. And then we’ll we’ll help you figure out your path from there. Just like we treat our clients Attilio. That’s how we treat our candidates. So yeah, what are your goals? What are your priorities, and if you’re looking to join, let’s make sure we get you in the right seat on the bus.

ATTILIO: 
Asking good questions. And if you’re at a crossroads with a career, you want to make a career change. Don’t call us. No, no, I’m just kidding. You can still call us but instead go to Hawaii career night.com We do a career night, I think every other month and

ADRIENNE: 
we have one coming up in April. Yep. We’ve

ATTILIO: 
got one in April

LAURA: 
1 Monday in April, actually. Yeah, April 3 is the day.

ATTILIO: 
Laura, there’s a career nights we just we handed out hot potato off to her.

LAURA: 
Well, and you know, you’ll have the opportunity to meet with our broker in charge Chad Shimabukuro, who is with Keller Williams, Honolulu, because it’s really not focused on here’s all the things you can do to join Team Lally, right We really go, we paint with broad strokes. And we help you understand what a career in real estate could look like regardless of where you decide to join.

ADRIENNE: 
So there’s some other there’s some other roles that we’re looking for right now

LAURA: 
we’re looking for a transaction coordinator at the moment, we’re so it’s a bittersweet thing. We’re very, very happy for our current transaction coordinator, Shane, who is moving on to one of his life’s goals, actually. And but we’re losing a really talented person on the team. So transaction coordinator, let’s talk about really quick what they do and who they are as a person. So what did they do on our team?

ADRIENNE: 
They keep us organized. Once that is open. They just, they keep us organized without paperwork and a timeline. Yes,

ATTILIO: 
well, we see like, you just say, transaction coordinator, and then you just say they coordinate the transactions.

LAURA: 
Script of it. But yeah, that’s so. So the transaction coordinator in our world, it looks different wherever you go, but your full, full fledged part of the team, we love to have you in office, and you’re facilitating or helping facilitate all of the transactions. And like Adrienne said, as an agent, you’re serving clients at a high level, you get the opportunity to serve more clients. Well, you need to get a hold of your agent, right? Yeah. And so the transaction coordinator is the one who’s managing the paperwork, making sure we’re staying on time. If we have something to deliver, did we deliver it? You know, we don’t want to follow up

ADRIENNE: 
with signatures like oh, yeah, like they’re an awesome piece of leverage. Yeah. So we provide on the team. Yeah. And we’re looking

ATTILIO:
to point out to people, we don’t have the hated phone menu was the hated phone menu. So I tried to press one.

ADRIENNE: 
We had to, we had it at one time.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah. We took it all back to the office and I shot it in the head. He did

LAURA: 
the full menu. We call team Lally. It’s an anomaly. You you talk to a real life person. Yeah. And that’s what our transaction coordinator helps to do, too, because our clients will have questions while we’re out at showings, or we’re at a signing or closing. And our transaction coordinator will say, hey, yeah, I see that piece of paper. Let me walk you through it.

ATTILIO: 
And we don’t use a landline phone system. We use actual cell phones. We’ll be calling somebody because somebody’s number you’re calling their cell wall.

LAURA:
Yeah. Which is also an anomaly because you can reach us after hours.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah. So I do karaoke every evening, though. I probably won’t answer.

LAURA: 
That’s okay. That’s okay. Because we haven’t we have a team. That’s, that’s why we have a team. Yeah.

ADRIENNE: 
So I had to go.

ATTILIO: 
Okay. My question is, my question is, Laura, what do you want? You know, what do you see? What do you see team Lally doing five years from now we’re gonna be doing?

LAURA:
Well, you guys are gonna see those red signs and those red shirts everywhere. And if you ever see our cars out and about, we have those fun wrapped cars, just give us a little honk and a wave to leave,

ADRIENNE:
we’ll have a fleet of vehicles and perhaps vehicles, you know,

LAURA: 
we’re still going to continue to serve everybody from from the the client, that’s, that’s, you know, got a home maybe with a leasehold, that’s I don’t know, under $100,000 to, you know, our multimillion dollar clients, and everybody’s going to get the very same level of service. But our team is on the grow, you know, we have a goal of bringing on 20 agents. And so when I say you’re gonna see those those faces out and about a lot more. Yeah, you really are.

ATTILIO: 
Well, and I’ll give you a John Maxwell question. You ready for the John Maxwell question? Yeah, I’m ready. So John Maxwell, he wrote, I don’t know. All his all his all his books have like a number in it. You know, 13 ways to flush your toilet. 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. You live in laws of growth

ADRIENNE: 
has a number. But he doesn’t know he never talks about flushing toilets. So I can

ATTILIO: 
Oh, he doesn’t have 13 ways to flush. I think maybe I should write that book.

LAURA: 
Manually and already special. I think he’s

ATTILIO: 
about to get the domain name on that. But anyway, his question, it’s not a question. It’s a statement of leadership and or, or connect or how to connect with people. He says, If you want to impress people, tell him about all your awards and your accolades. But if you want to connect with people share with them your failures. What’s I mean? I mean, we’re about transparency here with Team Lally. Talk about something we screwed up majorly. And what did we do?

LAURA: 
Yeah, that’s a good one actually. And I think the most important thing before we even share a scenario is you always have to learn from your failures, it’s okay to fail. The thing is, you have to learn from it and you know, move on Yeah, you know, we’ve we’ve we mess things up. We’re human beings too. And and so we always tried to do our best I think the one that just sticks out in my mind the most and these are some of my favorite clients of all time was they were selling a home and buying a home with us at the same time and I was actually their agent, so this wasn’t just a nice mess up but anyway, you know, When there’s lots of moving parts, when that happens, we had a miss on something very logistical that was very easy to oversee. And I’ll never forget what we did. We discovered it on a Friday Attilio. And then you may you remember this, you were on the Zoom, we got the president of, first of all, as I First Hawaii Title, and all of everybody that was involved, there were eight of us on this zoom at 7am on a Saturday morning, and we all put our heads together. And we said, Okay, we goofed up, how do we fix it? Yes. And we came up with a collaborative way to fix it long story short guys, that would have delayed our clients being able to move into their home, and and possibly jeopardize the sale of their home, right, because then their buyer needed to move in. So we had this whole domino effect that was going to happen if we didn’t get this figured out quick. So on a Saturday, we got it figured out, we went back to the clients, and we said, hey, here’s our solution. And you will still get to move in on time. And Team Lally is going to take care of all of it. And they were floored. I mean, they were absolutely floored. So I’ll tell you what, I will have never missed that small line again. That was three years ago, and I still talk about what happened. And you know what, they left us a glowing review. They have introduced us to their friends and their family to help them sell homes on the island. And so we’re really proud of that learning opportunity.

ADRIENNE: 
So we have, we’ve got a couple minutes left, and I just want to talk about one of our listings. Yes, that we are doing a lot of promotion on. And it’s just it’s an amazing domain name. It is Estateoahu.com. So make sure you had what was that domain name Estateoahu.com. And I wrote it down. Yeah, this home is equipped with an elevator to allow easy access to all three levels. And the first floor features a high tech and spacious conference and theater room highlighted by 140 inch screen. and a high definition laser projector. It’s powered by 120 panel solar system, and six Tesla Powerwall batteries. I mean, that’s just one of the few

ATTILIO:
I’ll tell you right now you know what this place is? This is a dream prepper home for a Bitcoin billionaire, because it’s on 23 and a half acres. Yeah, cool. All mountains backing is your backyard. And it’s got a security fence. And more importantly, let’s say you’re in the home theater, which is on the first floor and you get completely wasted. You don’t have to worry about walking up the stairs falling down and breaking your neck because you can just get in the elevator. Go to your bedroom.

ADRIENNE: 
Yes. Okay, on that note, thank you for listening and thank you to our sponsors.

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