As a real estate rainmaker, your greatest successes AND your biggest mistakes are almost always the direct results of the decisions you make when recruiting people into your organization.

The thing about most bad hires is that we usually knew they were bad hires when we brought them on. Be honest, part of you was probably screaming inside the whole time, "This is a mistake!" 

Recruiting in the Early Climb stage of your team's development is a lot like dating in your twenties. There's a sense of misguided optimism that governs our decision making.  "I know there's no way in hell this is gonna work out -- so I'm gonna do it anyway," seems to be the mantra.

But consider for a moment the many and varied ways that a bad recruit can cost you now and later. Next week, we'll discuss the long-term catastrophe scenarios. Today we're going to focus on the immediate pain you'll experience from your hiring misfires. Our favorites mostly fall into two categories: 

1.) Time Bandits: In the early stages of your team's development, you're probably deep into the Captain Everything role, responsible for decisions and leadership in all of the Seven Pillars of a real estate business. The incredible demands on you at this critical period of your development leave you running at a constant time deficit as it is. That means you certainly don't have time left over to waste on agents or employees who aren't committed to their own success, much less the success of your business.

Time-wasters come in assorted flavors: 

• The Energy Vampire: This taxing personality will laser-focus on those lost-cause leads who are the least likely to be able and willing to buy. She is perpetually requiring your immediate assistance with whatever tortured, hard-money, contingent, back-up, government-loan-on-a-tear- down, Frankenstein of a transaction that she's conjured up this week. She drags you into one self-induced real estate crisis after another. While her never-ending stream of questions may initially make her appear curious and engaged, the Energy Vampire's true goal is to run out the clock in order to avoid working on the hard stuff, like committing scripts to memory and then actually using them on prospects. The incalculable number of minutes lost in parsing the minutiae of real estate into increasingly trivial levels of detail proves once and for all that, yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a stupid question. 
• The Jaw-Jacker: Just like the Energy Vampire, this overly-exuberant, glad-handing yes-man is adept at snowing you into believing that he is plugged-in and on-board with your mission to create massive success. Also known as the Big Talker, this personality type is a bright-eyed active listener, full of praise of your leadership and religious-like awe of you and the operation that you've built. His energy is infectious until you notice that he produces absolutely no results whatsoever, regardless of the hours you invest in training and coaching him. Really, he just enjoys the team comradery and the feeling of working side-by-side with top performers but is lacking the motivation to do the success-producing activities himself. Maybe he doesn't think he's worth it, or maybe he has a trust fund -- who knows? But it is certain that he will never take personal ownership of the problem and will probably leave your team on his own accord, moving on to the next 'amazing opportunity' in order to save a little face. 
• The Stubborn Mule: While her words say "I understand and appreciate your system," the Stubborn Mule will always, always revert back to how she thinks leads should be handled, or the way her first broker taught her to write contracts, etc. You will spend hours training and retraining, and in her eyes you may see a glimmer of appreciation for doing things your way, but tomorrow she will be back to her old tricks. She may produce a few deals but they will be in spite of the tools and leads that you give her, not because of them. Behind your back, she will spread her negativity to other, more impressionable agents, undercutting your training and causing them to question your system in total. 

2) Cash Burners: In a sense, all of the Time Bandits are also Cash Burners, since the economic principle of opportunity cost says that for every fruitless minute spent coaching and training a Time Bandit is a minute that you could be investing into dollar-productive activities like calling leads yourself or, I dunno, hiring agents who don't bleed you dry when it comes to time and energy. But there are additional personalities that may not consume huge amounts of time but still manage to cause your operation to hemorrhage cash: 

• The Uncoachable Prospector: Just like we talk about in the book, you should accept the fact that your agents are highly likely to suck at prospecting when they first start on your team. They are not, however, expected to stay stuck there if you're training and coaching them on how to convert. While not so phone-avoidant as the Energy Vampire or the Jaw-Jacker, this agent sets few appointments in spite of hitting the contact goals you've set before him. Fooled by the contact numbers, you will invest more and more time coaching him on scripts and objection handlers, only to listen to his recorded calls and find that he is implementing none of your suggestions with consistency. Most often the case is a basic matter of self-confidence that is so deep-rooted that you are unable to "fix" the person.  When you're up against decades of negative self-talk, how could you possibly prevail? 
• The Appointment Tornado: This phone ninja has no problem making all the follow-up calls you want and is rather persuasive, resulting in a decent number of appointments set. But where are the closed deals? Whether it's showing up late to a showing, touring buyers in a dirty car or spouting the latest politically-charged conspiracy theory, this agent is a wrecking ball, operating in a self-unaware daze and alienating prospects from your brand forever. When you ask about the vanishing clients, the answer will inevitably be some version of "That _____ is crazy."  My advice is to call those "crazy" clients and do a little digging to uncover what's really going on.
• The Not-So-Big Dreamer: "Six figures. I wanna make over $100k." I can't tell you how many prospective agent recruits have sat across the desk from us and uttered those words. On its face, this is a great goal for a new agent, and totally achievable in just about any market in 2018. The problem is that for many people who have been stuck at $40 or $50k/year, $100k is actually unfathomable. In fact, studies show that at $65k-70k, people in most areas of the U.S. find that their basic needs are met, they're able to save and possibly purchase a home, and drive a car that they're proud of -- with money left over for the fun stuff. So you may find that, for agents of a certain personality type, their efforts wane once that gross income bracket has been reached. This often means that these agents will attack leads with less vigor and will basically "check out" as they reach this new feeling of financial security. 

Next week we'll talk about the less obvious, more insidious types of bad hires and how they can wreak more havoc on your business over time than you can possibly imagine! 

Do you have a nightmare recruiting story? I'd love to hear it!

Talk to you next week,

Bradley Pounds, Co-Author of The Million Dollar Real Estate Team: How I Went from Zero to Earning $1 Million after Expenses in Three Years

P.S. The book is now on Amazon Kindle AND an audiobook version is on Audible, Amazon and iTunes, and makes a great gift for anyone who wants to build a real estate team. (Except your biggest competitor --- we definitely don't wanna give it to that chump.) 

P.S.S. This week in Jake news, his face tells us everything we need to know about what he thinks of weaning off the bottle and onto solid foods: