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| Andrew Johnson |
Andrew: I'm actually a Charlotte native. I've known of Lars for the last ten years or more. He's also a mutual friend of Tom Tousignant, who runs a mortgage company here in Charlotte.
What made you reach out right now?
Andrew: We were discussing structure for 2015. To give you a little background, I purchased this business October 1st of last year, so we were looking for a platform by which we could increase sales and streamline operations, and Lars looked like a good fit.
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| Blandy Fisher |
Andrew: He's got a proven system. We know that what he's doing is working for him. We figured, why reinvent the wheel? We want to go to somebody who's doing the dollar amounts that we're looking to do here in the next 3-5 years and mirror a process that's already in place that's successful.
Describe where you're at with your business right now.
Andrew: We are in the process of restructuring this entire company. When I bought it, I knew it had what I consider good bones. It's got a good platform to springboard from to really make it a great company. It had all the right paperwork. It had the nice website. We had about 17 agents, which is perfectly fine, but I knew that most of those agents were part time.
I knew there was a structure by which we could define, refine, and grow this business. Everything was in place. To me it's just a matter of restructuring it to make it more profitable and more productive. That's really what we're looking to do.
What are the focal points you're hoping to address in your business right away?
Andrew: Number one, how do you control costs? What are the criteria by which you hire the folks that are really the producers. Obviously Lars is not working at the sales aspect of this every day. He's leveraging himself through his employees.
The marketing aspects of how do you feed those employees. How do you bring in business to supply everybody with the proper amount of leads or the proper amount of support? What's the scalability of that, and how long is it going to take? In general, if it's already been stamped out, then those numbers and those indices should be somewhere that are accessible to make it happen.
What does success on this program ultimately look like to you. What are you hoping your business looks like in 3 years?
Andrew: In a perfect world, the business would be to where I am managing the business on a day-to-day basis and not technically selling or working in it. I know that was one of the things that Lars has done. That was kind of a deciding factor, the fact that you can scale this business and leverage other people's time to be successful.
To me, success is being able to walk away from a business for a period of time while still reaping income and still having a successful business, not having it fail just because you're away.
Blandy: I'm the Broker-in-Charge who was sitting in this business when he bought it. I was considering walking away just to see what other opportunities were there. Andrew here convinced me to stay and take the leap into the unknown with him. I really agree with him. Lars has a system that's replicable.
I think real estate can be done better. I think most companies are working way too hard for not enough dollars. It's a whole new world. As far as technology, you don't have to be the big fancy company with the big fancy office. There's another way to do things, and that's what I want to learn.
What would a perfect day-to-day look like if you were successful with this program?
Blandy: For me, I really would like a sales staff who can function without me and just get it done. I'll help them do what they need to do, but not be working 10 or 12 hours a day or being awake at night knowing things didn't get done. I need something that's manageable and profitable.
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