How I Sold Over 100 Homes Last Year But Worked 20 Hours A Week Less Than I Did Before

Brandi Long: I thought leverage was a luxury that I couldn’t afford, but it’s absolutely not. It’s actually like, I work better because I have leverage. I serve my clients so much better. They’re getting 100% of the good Brandi and not the stressed out Brandi.

Tim Chermak: This is The Platform Marketing Show where we interview the most creative and ambitious real estate agents in the country, dissect their local marketing strategy, and get the behind-the-scenes scoop on how they're generating listing leads and warm referrals. We'll dive into the specifics of what marketing campaigns are working for them, how much they're spending on those campaigns, and figure out how they have perfected what we call the Platform marketing strategy. This is your host, Tim Chermak. I'm the founder and CEO of Platform. I love marketing and I talk too much, so let's dive in.

Tim Chermak:  Hey guys, it's Tim Chermak and welcome back to another episode of The Platform Marketing Show. I'm joined again by Brandi Long today. Brandi, welcome back to the show.

Brandi Long: Thank you so much. I feel so honored to be sitting here with the Walt Disney Trivia Master of them all. 

Tim Chermak:  International Walt Disney Trivia Champion. I technically have won awards in multiple countries. Thank you very much. Okay, so I think it's actually your third episode. I think we've never had anyone do three episodes on  The Platform Marketing Show. 

Brandi Long: Oh my gosh. I feel honored.

Tim Chermak:  You should, yeah. And we were texting, I don't know, a month or two ago and you shared with me that, hey, our team closed 155 transactions this year. You personally did over 120 of those closings. There's not a lot of realtors in the United States of America that are personally closing over 120 transactions in a year. That’s a pretty small group. And what I find fascinating about that and why we wanted to bring you back on the show as if that wasn't enough is that you're doing all this without the structure of a traditional team. So we're not saying, hey, Brandi closed 120-some transactions and actually she had a bunch of buyer's agents or showing assistants or it's other people doing all the work. It is truly Brandi closing those deals. But where you've applied the concept of team or the concept of leverage is in all the other areas of your life that now you don't have to stress about. 

Tim Chermak:  So before we get into all that, give me the foundational lay of the land. Where is your business at? How long have you been in the Platform Marketing program? What are the volume in transactions look like this last year? Just to give people an idea of where you've been and where you're at, and then we'll dive into what your secret sauce is to make it all work. 

Brandi Long: I am in Southwest Florida, in DeSoto County. I've been with Platform for about a year and a half, I believe, or a little bit over a year and a half. The business has definitely grown. Like you said, we already had a successful business before Platform, but adding Platform, it just added fuel to the fire. I know we always say that, but that's literally the metaphor. It is what it is. 

Brandi Long: One thing that I did realize last year and I haven't even told you is that when I look back at 2024 or 2023 or even however many years before that, 'cause this is my 11th year in real estate, it's like we listed a lot of homes and land. I'm talking like little tiny lots. Those count toward those transactions, which is great because that leads to other business. But last year was my first full calendar year with Platform and we closed a record number of houses. The listing tours, that's really the money maker of it all. Platform is that. Now, we list way more homes than land. We still have land listings. So, that's better volume. That's greater commissions. That is really where we landed last year. We did have a lot of growth last year and I do attribute a lot of that from Platform.

Tim Chermak:  Now, I'm looking, I have my phone pulled up here. I'm looking in our text conversation, so I know you texted me. Okay, here we go. 2024, you did 121 closings. This year, the team did 155 closing. So basically since joining Platform in your full calendar year, you did about 35 additional closings as a team that you didn't do, and the actual volume increased by $7 million. 

Tim Chermak:  So we usually tell people that the cost of Platform is about $1 million a year in sales volume. It's probably like $1.2 million or something like that, but it's about $1 million. So if we help you sell an extra million dollars a year of sales volume, Platform has essentially paid for itself. 

Brandi Long: Yeah. Platform has paid for itself for 10 years for me.

Tim Chermak:  Yeah, that's good. 'Cause just last year, it looks like you're up $7 million. Who knows where you'll go in the future? So, I wanted to give people that overview of where you're at, that not only are you super successful now, but you were really successful even before the Platform Marketing program. As you said, it's basically just like walking over to a bonfire that's already lit and dumping some gasoline on it. That's where your business was at. 

Tim Chermak:  But what I find interesting is we're not going to talk about sales and marketing and business growth on this particular episode. I wanted to actually focus on the personal life and the time management and the productivity side of things. 'Cause a lot of people are hearing this and they're like, okay, but you sold 120-some homes last year by yourself, and they're thinking that's bullshit. How did you actually do it? Are you lying about having a team or whatever? 'Cause how could you possibly have time to do all that and still be a mom and a wife and, I don't know, are you cooking and cleaning? Or do you bring your kids to church or extracurricular activities? Because I know you have kids, right? Are they in sports or dance or volleyball or football? How do you possibly do all the other things that we call life while selling 120 homes a year? 'Cause I could see how you could do that if you sell 30 homes a year or 40 or 50, but 120 is almost-- I'm sure people are skeptical, frankly, of do you have a life outside of real estate? 

Brandi Long: Yeah, that's one of my biggest questions that I get asked. "Are you on a team? Do you run a team?" To me, the answer is so tricky because, and I even, on social media, like from a positioning or marketing standpoint, I do use the word team because we do have a team here, but it's not a real estate team. I am a solo agent. We run it like a team, but there's just a lot of people. 

Brandi Long: The way I do business is not for everyone because I take a huge price or profit loss because of how many people we have around us. If you look at the top producer of a team of a regular real estate team and they're closing 150 deals a year. They're most likely gonna get paid more than what I get paid. But the quality of my life is exactly the way I want it to be and I get paid what I want, and that is what makes it successful. 

Tim Chermak:  And which is ultimately all that matters. Because it's like, who cares if you sell 120 homes or if you sell 200 homes a year if you have no friends and you hate your life and you're stressed all the time? Okay, what does that look like? What does your team structure look like? What are the areas of your life or your business that you've applied leverage and you hired people? Let's get into some of the specifics of what this looks like for you. 

Brandi Long: Okay. So first of all, it is me. I work between 40 and 50 hours a week. I love work. I used to work 80 to 90 hours a week, so this is taking a big cut. 

Tim Chermak:  Yeah, you're working 40 to 50 hours a week. A nice part-time job. 

Brandi Long: Yes, exactly. But it's what I love. I've designed the life that I love, and so that's good. And then we have my mom. My mom is the broker of the company. She is my director of operations. She also is licensed. She basically, once we get an offer in on one of our listings, she will take it from there. I literally just chime in. Like, "Oh my gosh, I heard we have an offer. Michelle's gonna reach out to you here soon." I just get to do all the parts that I love. She gets to do all the parts that she loves. We've designed it to where everyone is working with their strengths. I'm basically like, I take the phone call. I do all the marketing. I'm mainly a listing agent. I don't do a lot with buyers. My strengths are marketing. My strengths are lots of energy in the beginning and getting the listing agreement signed. That's where I stay at, in my lane, and then it gets handed off to my mom. She's also licensed. That's two of us. 

Brandi Long: Then we have Joy. She is my front desk office assistant. She answers the phone. We still have a brick and mortar. We still have a lot of walk-ins and phone calls. Like I tell everyone, like Arcadia, my little town is 20 years behind everyone so we still get fax every now and then. And so she is here answering the phone. She's like the gatekeeper. She's scheduling appointments for me if need--

Tim Chermak:  You have to pay someone to man the fax machine. Yep. 

Brandi Long: I do. Yeah, someone's gotta do it. And then we also do property management here at our office. I will never give a presentation about property management because I despise it, but that is leveraged out. We've got Aisha, and she is 40 hours. Joy is 40 hours, Aisha is 40 hours. They are paid hourly. And Aisha does all of our mailers. She also does the property management, so making sure tenants pay on time, all of that stuff. 

Brandi Long: Then we've got Candace. Candace is my full-time personal assistant. She works 40 hours a week. She helps me with content, like taking pictures, going everywhere for me, running errands, paying bills, all of that kind of stuff. She's just here, whatever we need to do, if she needs to go pick up lunch, take dry cleaning, everything. She also sends out newsletters. She can keep our CRM updated, all of that. She's 40 hours. 

Brandi Long: Then we have our virtual assistant, which is Carlos. He is the man. He is in the Philippines and we love him to death. He is 40 hours a week. He is the person that gets everything on the computer, all the systems, everything. If we have an issue with our Google ads or anything like that, he is gonna fix it. He works 40 hours a week as well. 

Tim Chermak:  Go, Carlos. 

Brandi Long: Carlos is amazing. I swear. He's the most recent addition to our team, and he is literally awesome. 

Tim Chermak: And I'm going to ask you too. You can keep going, but I want to ask, how much are you paying these people? What does their salary look like? 

Brandi Long: Yeah, I can. Okay, so I'm just looking at my list. So two full-time in-office admins, Joy and Aisha. They get paid between $20 and $22 an hour. 

Tim Chermak: That's mostly on the property management side of things that they're working? 

Brandi Long: Aisha is the property management side, and then Joy is here in the office just manning the office, answering phone calls, all of that [crosstalk], notarizing, fax-machine girl. And then my mom, I can't disclose what she gets paid, but she's based off commission so she gets a portion of the commission that I bring in. And then, we have Carlos. That cost me $1,799 a month for 40 hours a week.

Tim Chermak: Oh, so you're actually paying him a lot then. Are you using a company or did you hire directly or--

Brandi Long: Yeah, I used a company. And I'm glad I did. They're a good buffer. They provide a lot of good resources for Carlos as well.

Tim Chermak: Okay, cool. 

Brandi Long: Candace is my full-time. She's $18 an hour. We're about to move her up to $20 an hour. And then we have a full-time transaction coordinator. So the buyer or the seller, that gets passed onto the buyer or the seller, but that fee is about $325 a file 'cause we do so many. We also have John. He is just like a part-time, whenever we need to put signs out, stuff out. If my husband or my son isn't available, he's there to do the running. That is the whole office crew. And then we have my personal house crew. 

Tim Chermak: What would the answer be, if you don't sell a single house in a given month, what are the costs of you running your business? Just with all the payroll. What's your monthly break even point? 

Brandi Long: It's about $25,000, $27,000 a month. 

Tim Chermak: Okay. So if it's, let's say $25,000, that's a round number, that's $300,000 a year. Because $25,000 a month times 12. Building out that team means that you have to be doing a fair amount of volume to justify having that team. Another thing that I guess I'll just say out loud, because I'm sure some people listening to this are already thinking this, is those salaries seem really low. I don't know if I could find talent in my area for $20 an hour or whatever. And I think how I would answer that is Brandi's in a market where a lot of the homes are still $200,000, $250,000. If you're in a market where the homes are $500,000, the commission is therefore double. Meaning, you have money to pay people a lot more. 

Brandi Long: Yeah. It's all relative. Our average price point's $215,000. It's pretty low. So $20 an hour here, that's a good paying job here locally. 

Tim Chermak: It means even if in theory you were just selling $300,000 or $315,000 homes, not a huge difference, but then you could afford to pay people $25, $30 an hour if it was a little bit higher. So if you're in a market, let's say, where homes are $400,000, $450,000, in theory, you could pay your people $30 to $40 an hour and the math is all the same 'cause it's literally just a percentage.

Brandi Long: And the goal is always to-- I feel like-- I'll just go into my limiting mindset before. My limiting mindset was that if you hustle hard enough and you do it all yourself, it's a badge of honor. That cannot be further from the truth. So to me, I think the better we do as an office, and you'll hear me use-- you won't ever-- you'll hear it sometimes, but most of the time, I'm using inclusive language, like we, our team, all of us. It's just we. The better I do in production, the better we all do. 

Brandi Long: The goal is to always pay people more every year and to give really wild bonuses and to flood them with gifts and just know that they're appreciated. And to create a culture where it's like, people enjoy, as much as you can enjoy, coming to work. That's the basis behind it, but how cool of a mindset is it to have because I get to do my strengths, then I get to employ seven other people to do their strengths. And that, it's a blessing to all of us.

Tim Chermak: That's the team on the business side of things. But you also have built up a team structure and you've applied this idea of leverage to your personal life, which is something I haven't seen a lot of realtors do in the way that you have done it. This is what I think you're doing differently from so many other agents. 'Cause of course there's many agents out there that have an admin assistant or people that have a TC or people that have a buyer's agent, whatever. You're not necessarily unique in that you've done that. What is really cool that you've done that is genuinely unique is what we're gonna talk about next. What is the personal life side of things look like for you? 

Brandi Long: A lot of people have lawn care people. I do have a lawn care company that we employ. They come every week. We're in Florida, so especially during rainy season, they're coming all the time. They keep up with all the lawn care. We live on five acres, so it's a lot to keep up with. And then I have a weekly car detailer. Obviously, if you're gonna go out to appointments, and I also, like you can imagine since our price point's $215,000, it is very familiar for me to go down a country back road in my car and it gets filthy and it's just always dirty. So I do have a car detailer that comes every week. He gets paid $70 each week. 

Brandi Long: And then my favorite gift to myself last year was to hire a house manager. It was the gift to myself because I just couldn't keep up with laundry. The time I was trying to spend with my family was like, “Hey, tell me how your day was. Let's sit and fold laundry while we talk,” and it just wasn't great. My kids are 14, 13. They clean their own room. They can do their own laundry. That's not the laundry I'm talking about. They do their own laundry. I'm talking about my personal stuff, like making sure all my Amazon packages are returned. I have no idea how many times I've just let stuff sit and all of that money go to waste 'cause I didn't return it to Amazon.

Tim Chermak: Even in our house with Amazon packages, I can say the amount of time that we spend opening stuff and then cutting up the boxes so that we can fit them in the recycling thing. Because when you get enough packages, you can't just throw them in. You have to actually take a scissors or knife and flatten and cut the boxes. The amount of time we spend on that, and then when I look at what me and my wife's time is technically worth per hour compared to our income, it's like, oh, we shouldn't be doing this.

Brandi Long: Doesn't make sense. No, for sure. And she will also, every time my clothes come out of the dryer, she'll make sure they're steamed and ironed so that in the morning when I pick out my outfit, I just throw it on and then go. I was feeling that when I was coming home at night and there was still dinner to cook, there was still dishes to clean up, there was still laundry to do, my cortisol levels on the scientific level was getting really crazy high and I immediately tense up. I cannot serve my family as best as I can in that role. I had to hire it out. Because even if you go to scientific, like I'm operating in my masculine energy all day trying to be a boss and then at home if I have to come home and be a boss there, I'm just drained. 

Brandi Long: And so basically she does all of that, laundry. She'll go grocery shopping for us. She'll meal prep for us. That's something that I'm still trying to get better at because that makes me have to plan and I'm not there yet. But she did holiday shopping for us. She wrapped gifts. Everything was just done.

Tim Chermak: It's really like a full-time personal assistant type, helping with everything around the house. 

Brandi Long: We had to get a new dryer. She was there to take the dryer and sign off on it. If we run out of toilet paper, she's going to the store or going on Amazon and ordering that right away.

Tim Chermak: And is that person full-time? How many hours are they working? 

Brandi Long: Right now, she's working 20 hours, but I'm about to bump her up because I want her to do more meal prep. And I feel like just even to pack lunches for me, not my kids. They're on their own 'cause they're old enough. I'm not paying someone to do–

Tim Chermak: And how much?

Brandi Long: She is $20 an hour. 

Tim Chermak: Okay. That's actually approximately what I've heard from a lot of people that have house managers, is they're paying somewhere between $20 and $25 an hour. 

Brandi Long: I'd pay $30. I'd pay so much more.

Tim Chermak: I won't tell her.

Brandi Long: I'm just like, "I'm about to bump your hours up and I don't care how much more it costs me," but it is such a lifesaver. Obviously, you have to be very careful because this person's living in your house. They know everything about you. There's nothing off limits.

Tim Chermak: They're not actually living with you. It's not like a live-in, though. They go home, obviously.

Brandi Long: They go home. 

Tim Chermak: It is something that's culturally interesting because, no one says this out loud. You're not supposed to say this. It's probably politically incorrect to say this, but over the last, I don't know, 50 years, 75 years, whenever, as women started to work more in the workplace and we moved away from this old school Americana, hey, the husband goes to work and the wife is a homemaker and stays at home however long that took. I don't know if it's 100 years, 75 years, whatever it's been, lots of women have careers now. You're absolutely killing it in your career, and yet nothing changed with the responsibilities of the house. Food still has to be cooked, laundry has to get done, the house has to get cleaned. All of that is still there, but it's not like husbands don't have careers anymore too. 

Tim Chermak: What's created with so many families across the United States is it used to be that the wife stayed home and did all this, and now the wife has a full-time career, the husband has a full-time career, and they're both just scrambling to, "We gotta have something for the kids for food tonight," or "We've gotta find some time to clean." The answer is, for most families, I'm speaking here from personal experience, a lot of it just means that stuff doesn't get done. "Hey, we're just not gonna cook a family meal tonight," or "We're not gonna have a clean house ever," or "We're not going to do all this stuff." 

Tim Chermak: Just recently, in the last couple years, I'm hearing from more and more of my more successful friends, "Hey, we finally caved in. We hired a house manager for 20 hours a week, 30 hours a week, 15 hours a week," whatever. Everyone says it's been life changing 'cause until they had someone helping out, let's say 20 hours a week, they didn't realize how much stuff around the house wasn't being done poorly, but more just like they didn't realize how much stuff just wasn't getting done. They're like, “Oh my God, I forgot what it felt to have a clean house. I forgot what it felt like to not have to do laundry.”

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