Suneet Agarwal

Parking lot panic attack led to hiring a coach

00:00Bill Gallagher: Have you ever had a week when you're completely slammed, but somehow nothing actually moved? Is this one of those weeks? That's not really a time problem. It's a busyness habit problem. My new book, Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More, is all about growing by doing less, not more. Read or listen to a sample chapter over at busyisbroken.com. That's busyisbroken.com. It's also on Amazon and other booksellers.

00:31Bill Gallagher: Hey. What if the thing that made you successful is the same thing that's about to break you? We know it's often the thing that's holding you back. It's in the way. Right? Suneet Agarwal built Sacramento's number one real estate team. 3 billion in sales, almost all of it from a parking lot panic attack with his pregnant wife next to him. We're gonna be getting all that in just a minute.

00:56Bill Gallagher: Hey, everybody. I'm Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the Scaling Up podcast. Over 700 or nearly 700 episodes now. You'll find all those more. Where are we getting this right now? Like, subscribe, turn on your notifications, get them every week. Every Wednesday, we drop a show, and there are guests, authors, entrepreneurs. We got both today. People sharing their journey, their experience, plus some stories about our coaching clients, that kind of thing. You'll find all that and more wherever you're getting it now. But also at scalingcoach.com. At scalingcoach.com, you can also get our Q20 diagnostic where I'll take a look at the possible growth paths for your company, the risks, I think, that might be involved, do a look at your competition for you, give you some outside perspective on growth path. Scalingcoach.com/q20 is that diagnostic. You'll find that there. Listen. Go check that out if you want to. Let's get into our guest right now.

01:53Bill Gallagher: Suneet Agarwal joins us from Sacramento. Suneet, welcome to the show.

01:57Suneet Agarwal: Bill, thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to this.

02:00Bill Gallagher: Really looking forward to it. Been CEO of Best Sacramento Homes Group, number one mega team. He's a cofounder of Reside Platform. He did over 1 billion in sales, 3 billion in career sales, 4,500 homes sold. And he's written a book now, Team Leader Secrets, an Amazon bestseller that we're talking about today. Particular, Suneet, you build a team of six agents in just a few minutes walking up to people at Coldwell Banker saying, I've got leads. You close them 50/50. Right? Boom.

02:33Suneet Agarwal: Yeah. So I was in, it was Keller Williams, but same principle. Somebody told me to go buy a portal, like a real estate lead gen portal, and I think I borrowed a couple $100 and then I bought it. And now all of a sudden, there are Google pay-per-click leads. And I have all these leads, Bill. I've never called for these kind of leads in my life. Like, what do I say? So I made about a day worth of calls. And at that time, real estate teams were getting more in fashion, and I kinda heard about it. I never aspired to start a team. I was happy doing my thing at the time. But I stood up at the end of a row of cubicles, man. I'll never forget it. I stood up and I said, hey. I got leads. I'm starting a team. Who wants to join? And everybody sitting within hearing distance raised their hand. And I was, well, I guess we gotta figure this out. And then, later, welcome to leadership.

03:42Bill Gallagher: People want the leads. I need the Glengarry leads. Right? They're like, if only I had the leads. We, I think we all think about that at some point or another. Like, I've always been a great person as long as I had good lead flow.

03:57Suneet Agarwal: Yes. And I learned then that leads are easy carrot to dangle, but it can't be the only carrot. Because then people are joining you for leads, and they're leaving you for leads. Just because you got someone's name and number and a little bit of interest, it really doesn't mean that much more in many cases, especially with the big companies spending millions and millions of dollars to get those clicks inside of salespeople's CRMs.

Why his father gave him Think and Grow Rich at twelve

04:29Bill Gallagher: Right? Yep. Yeah. So let me just go a little bit off script here. Agarwals are famous for business.

04:36Suneet Agarwal: Yeah. They are. Yes. It's true. Yes.

04:43Bill Gallagher: Yeah. And one of the coaches that I coached is Neel Agarwal, who's done a bang up job of launching his coaching career. What is it that you learned in your family and in your extended family that has…

05:00Suneet Agarwal: What a good question, Bill. Well, I love talking about this. My parents, my mother and my father, were not business owners. They were very educated. My mom came here, like, in the sixties. Right? She started being a college prof. She was a college professor here in Northern California by the time she was 21. So a lot of education, a lot of formal education. I'm the only person who doesn't have a master's in both lines. And my father, like many other Indian people, was an engineer. Right? So, however, they both had entrepreneurship, like, driving them. Right? Like, my mom, she went on to get three masters. Like, that's a lot.

05:54Bill Gallagher: Don't be a slacker.

05:56Suneet Agarwal: Yeah. Don't be a slacker. Right? She went and got three masters, and she was a professor in multiple subjects. And my father, he had definite small business aspirations, but he definitely introduced business books and self-development books. And now as an author, I am a product of the self-development books. I've read them all 100 times. Right? He gave me Think and Grow Rich when I was, like, 12, Bill. And I remember getting that book. And I remember going to the last page looking for the secret. I was like, okay. What's the secret? Right? He gave me Tony Robbins tapes at a impactful early point in my sales career, and it changed everything. So that was the impact that my father had on the entrepreneurial journey that I'm, you know, still going down. It's kinda crazy.

06:55Bill Gallagher: Yeah. And self-improvement, inquiry. Right? Looking for answers, better way. Right? Not giving up, not settling, not doing just enough, but continually reaching.

07:08Suneet Agarwal: Yes. Absolutely. And just mindsets. Right? And seeing what's truly possible. I had, you know, like everybody, I had many challenges in my professional career prior to getting into real estate. Like, I had another life where I encountered really challenging times, and those fundamentals and the mindset and what's possible really kept me going.

07:38Bill Gallagher: Very many of my clients start their companies with a lot of hard work, a lot of scrappiness, a fair amount of grinding, and then it stops working at some point. Right? And sometimes it even becomes a problem. In our upcoming book, I've got some stories of people who really screwed up their companies and their lives with trying to overwork instead of letting the team work. You had a whole parking lot panic attack. Talk to us about what happened to you. What was going on in your life? What happened? Tell us that story.

Grinding as a solo agent stopped working

08:10Suneet Agarwal: Yeah. It's kinda where a lot of things got into context. It was when I was still a solo agent, I hadn't started any kind of team yet, and I was grinding. Right? I was just trying to make that next check, and my wife was with me in her seat, and it was February. And our daughter was born March 17th, so around the time of this recording. Right? It was just her birthday. Ten years ago, she just turned 10. And it was ten years ago in February where I had no money, and we had to go have this baby. And I was worried about having gas to put in my car to get to the hospital when the call came. Something that many independent contractors…

09:02Suneet Agarwal: Business people have to deal with. And at that point, I don't know if this is in the book or not, but at that point, I did my first discovery call with a coach, and just the timing was so right. And that's what got me into opening the door to being coached formally like that in that same parking lot.

09:30Bill Gallagher: So you're in the parking lot. You're having this anxiety about having the money and all that kind of thing. And then you call the coach or you decide to call the coach at the parking lot?

09:44Suneet Agarwal: We had a scheduled call in like thirty minutes. So I was sitting there freaking out then, and then it just right before the call. And it wasn't related. Right? However, they both happened just by kismet on that day.

10:01Bill Gallagher: Your wife was sitting with you in the car?

10:08Suneet Agarwal: She was sitting with me. Yeah. We had a doctor's appointment or something. When you're a realtor, like a new one, you might have your girlfriend, spouse hang out with you all day. Right?

10:18Bill Gallagher: Yeah.

10:21Suneet Agarwal: So she was right there pregnant, and I just knew that I knew that something had to change, and that it was gonna start with me and direction. Right? And one of the first things I learned was great effective time management, which I've mastered since. And it was so impactful. It really opened the door.

10:47Bill Gallagher: How was your wife in that interaction? Like, how much of it did she see? Were you speaking out loud, or was she just there and you having that privately in your own head with your pulse racing and your…

11:02Suneet Agarwal: Yeah, it was definitely like inside my own head. Right? Like, trying to figure it out. I'm a deeply introspective guy. Right? And my brain, I think lots of entrepreneurs and high producers, like, we've always got like, the brain is going. Right? And I'm sure in hindsight, I was catastrophizing a lot of stuff, which is natural in that high anxiety kind of state. But yeah, just internally, man, the heart racing. And like, I remember even, like, we ended up going to the doctor. I told the doctor, like, the baby doctor, the OB when my wife is pregnant. I was, I think I'm having anxiety, or I think I'm having heart issues. Right? It was just anxiety from the looseness of the business and being an upcoming father. Right? And that was the motivation that just you're gonna have to do this right.

12:03Bill Gallagher: When our son was born, I had a lot of anxiety about, and there were some health events for my wife as the date approached, right, during the pregnancy. And so I was anxious about the health and things like that, but I wasn't thinking about, like, oh, it's gonna be hard to be a dad or I'm not gonna have money or things like that. Like, I thought about all that as fine. I was worried about this unknown thing, and I felt like health is fragile and random. Then we had a baby, and he was, so he's chill today, but at 28. He but he was so overwhelming and so hard, and so a couple years go by, and I'm exhausted being a dad and that kind thing. And then we are expecting our second child, and I went into a panic over that. I went into a panic not about money. I went into panic not about eating just like personal space and capacity. Right? It's so freaked out. And I about, like, oh, my life is over now. Like, me, the individual, like, whatever is over. And the most outward visible signs is I went out and I got my pilot's license and I got my scuba certification.

13:18Bill Gallagher: It was an early midlife thing just before my daughter was born. Because I'm like, I'm, there are things I want for me, and I better do them now. So I jammed them in there. And then my daughter was born. She was really easy. By comparison to our son at that age, at that stage, like, the early birth to toddler, she was much more chill, less high demand than his. It's funny. They have up and down kinds of things, but she was very chill, and I was like, oh, it's fine. And like, but at least then I also like, I had my pilot's license and my scuba certification. So I've taken them both scuba diving. I've taken them both flying.

13:56Bill Gallagher: That's awesome. I don't regret that. So before real estate, you had a downturn. You were doing something else and you lost, you had a collapse. You went through a transition. Talk to us. What were you doing? Take us through that whole collapse in the couple of years that that built up.

14:17Suneet Agarwal: So prior to real estate, I helped launch medical cannabis dispensaries here in Northern California where we wrote the ordinance for Sacramento. We wrote the tax. We wrote it for Stockton. We lobbied cities. I worked with some of the big guys in your neck of the woods, hired an attorney from Oakland to come and help. And we were the first legally licensed dispensary in Sacramento, and we wrote all the ordinances and the taxes in partnership with city hall. We lobbied city hall, and they were agreeable. They're still a cannabis friendly. And now it's totally different anyways, but this was 2007. Right? There wasn't any state medicinal besides just that senate bill, SB 420. It was all medical with doctor's notes. Now you can call anybody and get whatever you want sent to your house. But back then, it was a different landscape.

Federal raid destroyed his cannabis business

15:21Suneet Agarwal: And the pizza could get the weed and the pizza delivery. A six pack of beer. Right? You could have the whole party without leaving your house. Yeah. You know, throughout that process, we were locally, we were locally supported by the senate bill on the state level. But the federal government, it was during a reelection for Barack Obama. And during that time, he instructed the U.S. attorneys to go after dispensary owner landlords in any state that had the same kind of guidelines with the medicinal. Right? So they did, and my landlord got really scared. We had two landlords, and they got scared. We tried to fight it. And doing a fight resulted in a federal seizure raid where they took assets, never pressed any charges because we were a clean business. They sometimes they expect back then to go to someone's house, and there's guns and piles of cash and all of this. Right. I had bank accounts and a legitimate business. Right? So yeah. So that kinda left me wrecked. Because, yeah, just number one, it's traumatic to have your door rammed in for cannabis. Right? So that's a traumatic thing. And then to get asset seized and lose your business, like, you're literally starting from zero. So that's what I've been licking my wounds from for a year prior to getting into real estate. So I have that behind me, pushing me. Yeah.

17:08Bill Gallagher: So you hung out for a while with like, talk about the doldrums of being in between things and what you did to get through that. Like, what were you doing in that time frame? And then what is it that got you into real estate? So talk about…

17:24Suneet Agarwal: So I lived with a broken up girlfriend at a house, and I'm pointing it for those of you who are watching because it's down in the same neighborhood. And I had gotten some guard dogs because there I had been…

17:40Suneet Agarwal: We had had some break-ins, and people were breaking into my house. I got a couple guard dogs. And after everything happened with the cannabis, after I lost everything, I moved to a farmhouse that I thought was a teardown, right up the street here, with my dogs. All I had was my dogs, nothing else, and my car that almost broke down. And what did I do? I didn't know what to do.

18:11Bill Gallagher: You're not married at this point, I'm guessing.

18:12Suneet Agarwal: Thank goodness, I was single. Which probably saved my butt was being single and not having any kids yet. You know what I did, Bill? I did some consulting work for different kinds of businesses with my marketing and business scale experience I had. And I worked out. I worked out twice a day, working out at home with just a gym. I learned how to live for about $2,000 a month. Didn't really have any direction. I didn't know what I was going to do. There was a real sense of hopelessness. And one of my good friends had just gotten into real estate a year prior, and we had done some business previously. He's all, hey, Suneet, I made a couple $100,000 this year, and you're sitting on your butt at the gym. I wasn't sitting on my butt. He's like, and you're just working out. Like, what are you going to do with your life? You're 36 or something. So come hang out with me, come to Coldwell Banker, and let me show you. And he did. And that's what got me back in. In my first year, I was then Rookie of the Year, which was, I was like, well, I guess I know how to do this.

19:35Bill Gallagher: It's funny. So there you are. You're doing, but you're not doing nothing. You're living. You're figuring out how to live post smash, supposed seizure, and break-in. You have guard dogs. I don't know. I'm expecting to see a book or two somewhere.

19:55Suneet Agarwal: Yeah, it was a crazy time.

19:57Bill Gallagher: Well, I'm not an expert in the industry at all, but it seems like the legal cannabis industry, from dispensaries to cultivation, is mostly a bad business. It's so heavily taxed and regulated.

20:13Suneet Agarwal: I'm not associated at all. I completely went away. But I still have colleagues who were my attorneys. And they tell me, they're like, hey, I think, especially in California, maybe overtaxed, which is leading to the black market having an increase back. That's what I hear. I don't follow it. I don't follow it on purpose. Like, I'm not interested anymore. I had a, I'm disengaged. Disengaged.

20:45Bill Gallagher: Yeah.

20:45Suneet Agarwal: Yeah, that's intentional disengagement. You had a guy, you had your connect and the guy, like, you went there, he went to you, he took care of you. And the guys would attempt to rotate. You know, you'd lose track of someone and find a new one through one of your buddies. And, of course, they weren't the most stable people in the world.

21:12Bill Gallagher: Yeah. So then you're solo. You're making some money. You're a solo real estate agent, and then you build a team. Talk about why you build a team, what led you to, you mentioned a little bit getting some leads and that kind of thing. Talk to us about solo to team lead and why you did that and what you learned.

21:38Suneet Agarwal: Yeah. So, you know, after that panic attack with the discovery call with that coaching company, they encouraged me to start a team. And it wasn't enough yet. Their encouragement, it wasn't enough. I was content. However, then my daughter was born, like I said, about ten years ago, and within months I realized that I couldn't work, I didn't think I could work at the same clip that I was as a traditional real estate agent, showing houses evenings, weekends, all this. I couldn't do that and spend as much time with my newborn baby as I wanted to. So I needed leverage. And I needed scale. So the team, with the encouragement from the coach I had at the time and just reality, once again, timing, like, it just made sense.

22:43Bill Gallagher: That was your driver. So you start building the team. Talk to us about what happens. You said you found people who want to be on the, like, people said yes. But then what? Like, how did that go? What did, like, how did that develop?

23:00Suneet Agarwal: Yeah. So people joined, and I was being coached. But, you know, my previous business ownership experience, Bill, was owning a dispensary and having people work at the counter and work in the back and all of this. Now I'm leading independent contractors in a more professional field, at least at the time, outward, completely public-facing field. And I learned the difference about personalities in sales. I learned about what motivates versus inspires salespeople. I realized how you can help people through accountability. And there's just a lot of people lessons. I understood really quickly that the people move the money. In a sales business, there's skill acquisition, absolutely. But the accountability has to be driving it. People need to be inspired, and I can't motivate anybody. So me understanding those things about people early on, through books and coaching and practical experience, it's really allowed me to focus on the things that move the money, the people. We talked about recruiting. Like, many leaders of a sales organization, the leaders will say, well, my salespeople should want to make more money every year because I want to make more money every year. That's the natural thing to fall into. But if everybody was so focused on growth, then being a leader wouldn't be such an opportunity. People get content, and there's nothing that I'm going to tell anybody that's going to inspire them to want to make more money. That's going to motivate them to make more money. They either want it or they don't. Now I can inspire somebody. Well, how can I inspire somebody? Well, from leading from the front. But yeah, so just lots of lessons about people. I think that's where the opportunity is, understanding people.

Standing up and recruiting six agents with leads

25:24Bill Gallagher: Have you had particular, are there books or ideas that, or trainers or people that have stood out for you particularly in this realm?

25:36Suneet Agarwal: For like—

25:38Bill Gallagher: Leading others, inspiring, elevating, motivating.

25:43Suneet Agarwal: I like Patrick Lencioni for sure.

25:47Bill Gallagher: What's that? He's an East Bay guy.

25:53Suneet Agarwal: He's an East Bay guy? Oh, cool. I didn't know that. And I think, like, you know, any of the fundamental books, Think and Grow Rich, I love The Compound Effect. I love Zig Ziglar stuff. Tony Robbins. Yeah, Zig is my stuff. They're like, I remember driving around with my dad and showing it.

26:19Bill Gallagher: Do it.

26:19Suneet Agarwal: Yeah, yeah, there you go. But, I mean, it's really the fundamentals. Marcus Aurelius, if you want to go back. There's, it's the fundamentals. Jim Rohn on leadership is great. So yeah.

26:38Bill Gallagher: Yep. Yeah, those are classics. Well, you know, it's funny. I had a sales manager once, and he taught me some funny lessons that I still, and it's the funnier ones that stick with me. One of them was on the motivation. He's like, you want them to produce more? Have them buy a nicer car, buy a house, get their spouse pregnant, get a fancier, like, higher lifestyle partner. Like, all the things that create pressure for more money. It's like, they make a little money, they're good, they get a car they like, and then you have to step—

27:13Bill Gallagher: Up lifestyle.

27:14Suneet Agarwal: Yes. I mean, here's the thing. This is the reality of the world. Every day, people with poor habits leading to poor health go to the doctor. Smoke, drugs, excessive alcohol, excessive weight. Every single day, thousands of these people go to the doctor, Bill. And the doctor says, if you do not change your habit, you will die prematurely. Yet the behavior of most people doesn't change. In fact, it only changes about 20% of the time if you want to talk about the Pareto principle. Because the immediate pleasure of my smoking, drinking, whatever I'm doing outweighs the delayed pain.

28:02Bill Gallagher: Of that suffering. So motivation.

28:06Suneet Agarwal: Yes. Motivation to live longer is not enough for 80% of the people to change their habits. What the hell am I going to tell somebody, Bill, if that's the truth? They don't even care about living longer. I'm going to get them to make extra calls. Are you out of your mind? Now, what I can do is take somebody down a path of discovery where they can figure out on their own what they need to do to do the thing that they want, not the thing that I want them to do, but what they want, and then with accountability, help them get there. That's the only thing I've seen that works.

28:47Bill Gallagher: Well, I think you're speaking to the same kind of thing, but so he was just like, just get interested in their life and then encourage them to lead a bigger, fuller life. I talk with them about whatever, and I'd be like, okay, well, it's really great. And I'm sure you are hoping for a better apartment someday or a house of your own or that kind of thing. So you just get interested and curious and related to them as human beings, then you plant a little seed about something that was the step up or that kind of thing. That's a pretty cool car. You'll probably like that for the next few months.

Why motivation does not work on most people

29:25Suneet Agarwal: Are you sick of that? Absolutely. Yeah, it's so funny.

29:30Bill Gallagher: And then he had another one was, if you have to talk to them about personal hygiene, it's a lost cause. Like, if they don't know to take a shower, you should just get rid of them.

29:42Suneet Agarwal: That's funny. That is funny. I've never heard that one, but I'm going to keep it.

29:54Bill Gallagher: Yeah. In those days, I was running a sales team for a company, and I had, I don't know, 10 salespeople. Not a big sales team. And I was probably 24, something like that. So I'm 24 running a sales team. Young team, and most of the people working for me—not all of them, but a few of the people working for me—are older than me. So he's trying to talk to me. And I want to explain to them how to pitch or whatever. He's like, no, we've got to deal with the motivation and the personal habit and the step up thinking. Years later, I learned something that I believe is a Zig Ziglar thing. And I found it really helpful for me and for some of my clients, but not as many as I would like. And maybe you've encountered this. It's the Be-Do-Have. Okay, the Be-Do-Have. And the Be-Do-Have says a lot of people have it backwards. They think that when they have a million dollars or $100 million or a billion or whatever it is, then they will finally do things, and they'll be a certain way. And Zig Ziglar is like, you've got to flip it around. You've got to imagine yourself being a certain way, and then you'll do certain things, and then you'll have different results. And I have applied it in many areas of my life, but one of them that stood out when I first—I learned it probably, well, more than 10 years earlier, but I didn't really apply it yet until I found myself with two kids and struggling businesses and some real fitness issues. Right? I'm fat, and I'm worried about my health, and I got cholesterol issues, and I'm on the couch, and I can't, like, whatever. And so I do the exercise at the direction of my coach at the time, and I'm like, well, I have about 40 pounds too many. I have bad fitness. I have a gym. I have a personal trainer. I have a fancy gym membership that includes things like massage and a private locker and laundry. Like, I had executive. I had the upscale thing, and yet I don't go. Like, I call in. So what am I doing? I have the personal trainer. I have the gym membership. I have these things. I also have the waistline and the extra pounds. And I am—the doing or not doing—is I'm calling my trainer a little bit before and saying, hey, I got a thing. I can't get there. And so I'm paying him not to work out. Like, I'll pay your fee anyway, but I won't be there. And then I go in my car, and I drive through McDonald's or KFC, and I get the supersized meal. And then I take it back to my desk, and I keep working through things. So I have stress, and now I'm eating shit, and I'm not working out. And then I'm worried about my health. So I'm being defeated, and I'm being a loser. And I am—and really, if I'm honest—my sort of unconscious view that appeared to me in a few minutes is, well, look, I don't have the DNA that those super fit people do, the great athletic—

33:26Suneet Agarwal: The story. You're telling yourself an old story.

33:30Bill Gallagher: And so, really, my goal here is just to live long enough to see my kids grow. And that was kind of heartbreaking, right? Because it was so sad. It's so defeatist. That is, as much like, eventually, I'm going to have a heart attack, so I just want to delay it long enough and be less pathetic. And let's not even get into the impacts on my relationship, my self-esteem.

33:56Suneet Agarwal: Absolutely. Yes.

33:58Bill Gallagher: So what would I do if I had the DNA? What if I had the DNA? What if I had the fitness? What if I had a different waistline, a different scale reading? All of that kind of thing. Well, I would do really cool things. I would do extraordinary things. If I was like that, I'd be out there on the Marina Green living large. Like, I'd be active, and I'd be alive. I'd be inspired. I'd be out there in the sunshine and living my best life with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. And then I realized, oh, with whatever DNA I have, I could be active, alive, and inspired. With whatever I got, I could do that. What would I do if I had that? And then I thought, I'd do something amazing. I don't know what it is yet. But the next day, I'm thinking about that. And the next day, I heard this woman talking about running her first marathon. And she's talking about running it, and she's training now, and she's past a 13-mile distance, so maybe she would run 18 by that point or so. She's getting really close to her first marathon. And I look at her, and I think privately, well, she's fatter than me. And she looks less athletic than me, but she's running a flipping marathon, and that sounds a little painful to me. So I'm like, I need to do something like that. Something—it sounded so outrageous. Now it sounds—

35:26Bill Gallagher: Lots of people run marathons, but at the time, as a guy who weighed more and couldn't get off the couch, I was like, that's so amazing. And I'm like, oh, I should do something outrageous, not just go to the gym a little bit more, but I should do something outrageous. I don't want to run a marathon because it sounds a little painful. So I said, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to run a triathlon. And then I finally went. I decided in that moment, and then I told people in the next moment I think I'm going to run a triathlon, except I didn't know what that was. I knew it wasn't a marathon. It was like a distant savannah of some kind. It had multiple things. It sounded a little more, I literally knew there was a bike involved, and it sounded less painful. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to run a triathlon. I told people, and then I looked up, Googled what's a triathlon and what's involved and how do I do that. And then I realised, oh, I gave up on swimming in the seventh grade because I was so pathetic, and I didn't know how to swim properly, like for speed and that kind of thing. So I'm like, how do I, but I said now to people that I'm going to run a triathlon, and I'm active, alive, and inspired. So I commit to running a triathlon. I register in a triathlon. I find a triathlon coach and a swim coach, and I start working out every day, and I quit my gym membership.

36:49Suneet Agarwal: Wow.

36:51Bill Gallagher: I went on to working about thirteen hours a week for eleven years, and I did 45 triathlons and a few marathons.

37:01Suneet Agarwal: 45? Bill, that's a lot.

37:04Bill Gallagher: And I lost those pounds and I look pretty good today. I'm 61 years old now and I look better than I did when I started that journey.

37:16Suneet Agarwal: 45 triathlons.

37:18Bill Gallagher: There's 45 of them, right? That's that be, do, have kind of thing, right? That's an old Zig Ziglar thing. I find that's really useful. Like, if you had those things, what would you, how would you be then? And what would you do with that, right? And we could actually flip that around and start looking at where the, like, active, alive, and inspired was the quality that I most admire beyond having the DNA, beyond having the fitness, right? And that actually shifted my view of the present. Then I needed to commit to something and work on it. But I just said, I'm going to do it. I declared it publicly. That creates accountability, right? Tell a lot of people, now you have some natural accountability.

38:00Suneet Agarwal: Yes. Yes.

38:02Suneet Agarwal: That's such a great story, man. Commit. Thanks for sharing that, right?

38:08Bill Gallagher: There's, like, 45 finisher medals and stuff over there in the corner of the office and that kind of thing, right? That's so cool. I never had any chance of being in the top ten.

38:21Suneet Agarwal: I was never good at it. It's about completing it, isn't it?

38:26Bill Gallagher: Yeah. It's just about doing it and about setting my own personal goals and the next one and the next one and the next one. You ever do anything there in the bay there or what? Oh, yeah. The one I probably did the most, about seven times, I did this Escape from Alcatraz triathlon.

38:43Bill Gallagher: That's what I was going to ask. You bike all around the city, and you run along the beach, and up and down the sand ladder, and it's a pretty grueling nonstandard event, but it's stunningly beautiful, right? Then you look at it, and you're like, I'm a master of all that. I can swim in a boat.

39:01Suneet Agarwal: Yes.

39:02Suneet Agarwal: I was in the city last weekend on Saint Patrick's Day, it was beautiful. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I went out to go wingsurfing on Saint Patrick's Day. Oh, yeah. We went to a concert at the Warfield. That was a good time. Yeah.

39:16Bill Gallagher: Well, we've covered a lot of interesting things here, and let's tackle one more, maybe two more little things as we wrap up. But let's talk about recruiting and building the, so bringing the people in and then the culture that keeps them there.

Culture requires people to spend time together

39:35Suneet Agarwal: Yeah. So bringing people in. You want to grow your business, you must have more people work for you, right? I mean, sales business, right? Not, not if you own a store or a restaurant, don't hire unnecessarily, right? Or some kind of, right, right, right, right. Well, but we hire 1099 contractors. There is still cost. Yes.

40:02Bill Gallagher: Yeah. Still.

40:05Suneet Agarwal: But so recruiting should be seen as one of the major levers of growth, right? And you must, it's lead gen. Like, you need to generate leads. You need to market. It's a less conventional kind of marketing funnel compared to buying and selling houses, right? Because there's licensing that's involved. So you must be talking to people if you want to recruit licensed agents. So you need to make calls. You need to be good at organic and paid marketing. You know how to send the emails, you know, stuff that we both tell people to do. And then you have to have a frictionless process to get people in, and you have to get them productive in a 1099 environment as fast as possible. Right? Like, every day that people don't get the opportunity to do business is one day they're closer to walking out the door, right?

41:07Suneet Agarwal: So culture, you know, like, there's a quote that I learned from somebody, like, eagles don't want to hang around turkeys.

41:21Bill Gallagher: Probably.

41:22Suneet Agarwal: I'm one of those accessories posters or something. Yeah, right. That one's, like, at the back of the rack, right? Yeah. But eagles don't want to hang around with turkeys. When you're in a 1099 type of environment with culture, the culture is dictated by the people who are on the W-2 payments because they actually come in every day because they have to, right? So they're the holders of the culture. So they should be collaborative and giving and be seen as a steward to helping the salespeople get more of what needs to happen.

41:56Bill Gallagher: Yep. Yeah. Yes. Certain people being more important to the culture. Any specific elements of culture that you use or like to use? I mean, structures.

42:10Suneet Agarwal: Culture is such, like, a buzzword or at least it was, especially prior to COVID. I feel like people quit talking about culture when more people started working from home. Yeah. But at the same time, like, a great culture happens when a lot of people are working around each other. Post-COVID, California, me and you are both working from home, right? I have a beautiful office. I haven't been there in three weeks. I don't know about you. But as the employees are the stewards that they have to show up, how do you have culture around people who don't have to be anywhere? And it's funny because it comes back to spending time together. If you want to increase the culture in your sales organisation, do an activity off-site. I don't care if you go, like, axe throwing or get a happy hour with some potato skins and mini pizzas at the local café, right, at the local bar. And, you know, let the relationships build in this post-COVID type of environment to really see what you can do with culture.

Recruiting is lead gen for your sales team

43:23Bill Gallagher: Yeah. It's really valuable. I think about, like, it's those off-site activities, but it's also the activities in your office. The way you celebrate birthdays, the way you greet people in the morning, the way you run meetings, the decorations you throw up, the things you celebrate, the awards you give out, like, all of that stuff contribute to your culture, right? Like, for us, like, we use Slack.

43:44Suneet Agarwal: Free version still, religiously. I'm very proud of using the free version of Slack for seven years, Bill. Maybe if somebody who works there listens to this, I'll get an upgrade email. But, you know, like, what are you doing in the group messaging as people get further and further geographically away from each other inside an independent contractor type of environment?

44:11Bill Gallagher: Yeah. One of our teams did that really well. They would call out their quarterly themes or rally cries all the time. And one quarter, it was about the chief rainmaker for the company, so they would do hashtag KKS. Hashtag every time they did something, it'd be hashtag KKS, and that would tie into something they were talking about. Oh, they just did something that helped that in some way. Hashtag KKS. Keep Kevin selling.

44:39Suneet Agarwal: Yes. Love it. Exactly.

44:41Bill Gallagher: That is so great. How do you get this quarterly theme is all just about Kevin? No. It's about everybody. Kevin's the one doing the selling, but we all have to make sure Kevin keeps selling. What are the things that we do that help him sell or get in the way of him selling? Let's focus on that. That's what we do to keep him pulling together. You know? Love it. Yes. Absolutely. Let's keep the salespeople selling. Absolutely. Yes. Well, we've talked about a lot of great things today. Teamleadersecrets.com is the book. Go check out, go buy a copy. Go check it out. Teamleadersecrets.com. Thanks. Thank you so much for joining us from, yes, sunny, warm. It's probably hot as hell there today in Sacramento.

45:20Suneet Agarwal: It's 90.

45:20Bill Gallagher: Yes. It's 90. Can you believe it? Can you believe it's winter? Right? It's winter. Rainy doesn't start for a week. Still winter.

45:38Suneet Agarwal: Yes.

45:39Bill Gallagher: Terrible ski season. That's what I heard. Yes. Terrible ski season. But, anyway, we live in. By the time this airs, we'll be deep in the spring. But thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks to Wanda and Anna for producing our show and getting it out every week. Thanks to my friend and mentor, Verne Harnish, who created the whole Scaling Up framework that's the heart of our work. And if you want more from us, our workshop, that Q20 assessment, or any of that, scalingcoach.com is a place to go, or if you want to send referral my way. So all that and more at scalingcoach.com. Thanks again, everyone, for watching, for listening. Until next time, keep scaling.

46:28Bill Gallagher: Thanks for listening today. One last thing. If anything in this episode hit home, my book digs into it further. Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More. It's all about how to stop drowning in work and build a business and a team that scales without you. Available right now with content samples at busyisbroken.com. Go grab it. Be less busy.