Steve Ladrido: A Servant Leader

Hey, welcome back to The Real Estate excellence podcast. Your host, Tracy Hayes, best of the best. Once again, today on the show, my guest today is actively involved in a local community, coaching, volunteering, as well as serving in the local board here in the St Augustine Board of Realtors currently serving as president, incoming. President, incoming. That's what I thought you had, but your bio, maybe you jumped the gun on the bio there.

Steve Ladrido  4:00  
so I've seen a lot of the growth happen. Yeah, a lot of the growth happened. I didn't get here till 2000 I know my wife's from Jacksonville, but, I mean, they've been talking, they talk about, obviously, a lot of lot was dirt roads and that we're seeing now that are four lane, yeah, highways, if you call them. I don't go back that far, but I can't tell you, for the St Augustine folks, when I moved here, the cobblestone 312 complex that had just been built that was like the brand new thing. That was the nice, hottest shopping center. So it's grown quite a bit since then. So you, as I mentioned in the intro, you spent your 10 years. I mean in literally. I mean, how old were you when you, I mean, you is as a young man, just getting a job washing the cars, yeah. So in high school, down in Winter Haven, I worked for a buddy of mines dad's detail company, and learned how to detail cars, you know. And just that was, that was something we did while we were, you know, after school, and ways to make money. And.

Tracy Hayes  1:19  
He's also the Vice Chair of the St Johns County affordable Advisory Committee as well that I serve with him on working in the automotive industry for 10 plus years in Northeast Florida. He went from washing cars to managing dealerships. We're going to talk about that. I'm looking forward to that he was a top 40, under 40 in automotive news. He spent a decade committing his personal professional life to mastering his sales skills and later increasing gross profit and sales volume in various auto dealerships. He has taken those skills to real estate, and that's why he's on the show today with a clear passion for people, leadership and sales. Steve is focused on providing customers with a professional and exceptional customer service with strong communication and negotiation skills. As a servant leader, he thrives on growing, developing, mentoring, teaching and positively impacting all of those around him. I think he shows that daily, and when I see him and the things he's involved in, he definitely puts himself out there. Let's welcome the Regional Director for Caldwell, Banker Premier. Steve ladrino,

Steve Ladrido  2:23  
thanks. Thanks for having me. Tracy, excellent. I'm

Tracy Hayes  2:25  
so glad to have you on, and I know you're, you're, you're so involved at the board, and obviously we're on the Affordable Housing Committee. And then you know, you guys have had some changes going on at Caldwell premier that you're heading up, and we want to dig in and talk about that, because, I mean, I mean, you guys are sitting, you're on a gold mine in St John's County. And I know you guys, you know, probably, you know, drooling at the bit of 2022, and what's, what's coming on every day. And exciting about the new sales coming in, new people moving in. We can't find

Steve Ladrido  2:56  
them homes, right? Yeah, right. Well, that's where, you know, Dream finders and jet Home Loans comes in to help with a lot of new construction. Yeah? But yeah, the market's crazy right now. I'm sure we'll talk a lot about that.

Steve Ladrido  3:57  
Yeah, I moved here in 2003

Steve Ladrido  5:00  
And after high school, I did a little bit of community college, local area Polk, state college there. And then I decided to leave the country. I moved to Costa Rica, which you won't find

Tracy Hayes  3:07  
Yeah? So I wanted to start, we always start off just getting a little bit to know you sure, so if I read your bio correctly, you were born in California, but you moved to Winter Haven, yeah?

Steve Ladrido  3:17  
Young, yeah, fairly young. Young. Teenage years, went to high school there, and you know, it was, it was a bit of a culture shock, growing up in Southern California and being born and raised there, and then moving to Central Florida. When we moved there, there was nothing but cow pastures and

Tracy Hayes  3:33  
Orange Grove. Yeah. What brought your family from California to here?

Steve Ladrido  3:37  
Family? So my dad was in the Marine Corps. And when he got out of the Marine Corps, just want to be closer to family. And my grandparents lived there, close by in Bartow, and it was just, it was time, it was time to leave Southern California,

Tracy Hayes  3:50  
and then throughout, because you've been here in the Greater St Augustine area for 18 years.

Tracy Hayes  5:10  
in the No, I did not do that in the bio. Yeah, let's get there. Why didn't you stay?

Steve Ladrido  5:16  
A lot of people asked, but I went down to Costa Rica and lived down there for a while and surfed and did what? What 20 year old kids do? Yeah, when they move outside of the country, right? That is so cool. And then when I moved back, I knew I didn't want to stay in Winter Haven. I grew up next to the beach in Oceanside California, and

Tracy Hayes  5:34  
just got done surfing in Costa Rica, and it was just

Steve Ladrido  5:37  
I didn't want to be land locked. And nothing wrong with with with Winter Haven just didn't fit my lifestyle, right. And I found St Augustine because a bunch of friends of mine were going to Flagler, and they were, they made a home base in St Augustine. I came up for a weekend, and it's kind of funny, because I didn't have a place to stay, but I left that Sunday, and I was back by Tuesday with all my stuff. This is, this is where I want to be. So the naturally, the first thing I did was started going to dealerships. Hey, I know how to wash cars and and clean cars. And I registered and at the local community college, St John's River and, and that was it. I started washing cars and going to school and doing what 20 year olds do in St Augustine back then, yeah, and just, you know, really enjoyed life. And then I got to a point where I started to see the sales people and the kind of money they were making, and what they were what they were doing, and that's, you know, I could probably do that. I could probably try that. And fortunately for me, I've had really great mentors throughout.

Tracy Hayes  6:35  
That was one of my things. I could see that in your bio. I'm like, okay, he's moving up. Either he has just a truly natural skill, or you're least catching the eye of somebody who's

Steve Ladrido  6:44  
I loved. I like to believe it was a little bit of both. I think my background gives me a little bit of cultural diversity. And just being able to be in those different environments and talk to all sorts of different types of people, communication is a big deal. And I did. I had a few mentors that said, You know what? This guy, he talks well, he dresses well, he's he's personable, and let's see if he's persuasive. So I did, I tried, and it was kind of funny, because when I was when I was washing cars, I was trying to do a trial run. So I was like, Listen, I'll wash the cars, and then at night and on weekends, I'll go get changed, and we'll see how it works. And like, lo and behold, six months later, I'm like, near the top of the leaderboard. I'm still, like, even four or five months into it, I'm still doing both jobs. So I literally would sell a car and then go back there and wash it, or sell a car at night and then have to come back and wash it the next day. Right, right for delivery. So I appreciate all the help that was given to me and somebody recognizing that. But, yeah, that's what, that's what started my sales career. I just saw people doing something that I could do, yeah, and it slowly, slowly progressed into something, you know, it is now

Tracy Hayes  7:56  
that that, that story right there, is precious from the standpoint, with your kids, and you know, you were doing the right thing, observing, learning, and like you said, you had, you had the skill, and obviously someone probably recognized you because your work ethic. Were like, well, you know, the guy does a really good job there. We like them, you know, let's see if we can. And then the sky was the limit there, sure, yeah, that's just awesome.

Steve Ladrido  8:21  
And honestly, Tracy, that's kind of been the catalyst for and the makeup of my career, and that kind of drives me to be who I am, which we'll talk a lot about that, but that, that passion there, that that somebody was able to find something in me, that's what drives me every day. I mean, that's my job, is to find the same thing in other

Tracy Hayes  8:37  
people, right, right? Yeah, you went through a couple things. There. You actually spun my mind. I had a question. Then you just created another one. We're going to dig deeper in that. And how you go in select agents, because you guys are very busy. You are very present in it. You don't have to bring everybody on. And I do, I do have that question a little bit later on. So I mean, you went up to a general, as I recall, a General Sales Manager, yeah, yeah, running a dealership sales

Steve Ladrido  9:05  
department, yeah, it's kind of, it's a really funny story, you know, I said I moved here in 2003 started working in the dealerships, got my my sales belt underneath me, right? I was working in sales, and then ended up working for, I moved dealerships with, with one of my, my mentors and managers, ended up getting into the which, at the time is kind of funny. I ended up getting into internet sales. And mind you, this is early 2000s So yeah, if you know the dealer world in the early 2000s they were, they were big naysayers like, Oh, that'll never work internet. What's the internet, right? So I took on the internet sales department, and that was really the big defining moment that shifted me to a leadership role, because I took that on selling that. Yeah, I did. I took that on, and I hired a few people and and just was able to scale from five units in a month's time to like 65

Tracy Hayes  9:58  
let's take that the. Little snapshot there for a minute. And of course, we're talking primitive internet at this point, early, 2000s Yeah, today's technology, and it related to homes, yep. And how many people I think the builders says the typical person walks in a model has already seen the model a handful of times online. What is it like for in a car? I mean, I imagine you probably even know what the statistics start today. People are researching online, researching online. When they come walking in, they know what they want.

Steve Ladrido  10:28  
Yeah, it's the same thing. And the reason I bring that up, or the reason I use that is because that's been a really big advantage for me, because the real estate industry is a is a little bit behind the automotive industry, right? So at that time, you had the Auto Trader magazine, right and websites were just becoming a thing, and syndicating their their inventory was just becoming a thing. Well, that's that's not been going on for very long in real estate, you know, relatable. So I had a leg up. I had an advantage to see how that was going to powerful this I was going to change our industry and how it was going to change our business. So I got a ground, ground level seat in the automotive industry, and I was able to apply that to real estate. And now, you know, exposure is exposure for listings, exposure for your properties, everything.

Tracy Hayes  11:13  
I think it's coming. You know, the internet finesse just a standpoint on just talking about that and in homes, because of how hot Our area is we do have people buying home site unseen, as crazy as that sounds, but you also have investors who are just investing in home site unseen. They're seeing them on the internet, and how well you're presenting it is vitally important.

Steve Ladrido  11:34  
Well, I think a big part of that it was the paradigm shift from being able to use the internet as a resource. Think about it this way, when you were looking for a home 20 years ago, you drove neighborhoods, right? You looked at the paper, you got the local homes and land, or whatever it was. Now, to your point, you use the internet and that those photos that the that the listing agent takes, and the videos that they make and the exposure that they create now becomes the first viewing

Tracy Hayes  11:59  
for a potential buyer, yeah. And they may, they may, yay or nay, it right there, yeah.

Steve Ladrido  12:04  
Oh, because many buyers are ruling properties in and out every day just by photos,

Tracy Hayes  12:10  
then YouTube is only the second largest search engine, next to Google. So it's power of video, right from that standpoint. So I know some guys in the car business that they at least drive a nice car, because I'm sure you had a, they gave you a car to drive.

Steve Ladrido  12:24  
I did. I had demo, a demo for many years. Yes, exactly. I will tell you the number of cars that I had during that 11 or 12, yeah, span,

Tracy Hayes  12:32  
especially being the top sales guy, you probably had the choice of which one you wanted

Steve Ladrido  12:36  
into management. It was back then that was normal, commonplace for, you know, your

Tracy Hayes  12:41  
major got demo. Yeah, absolutely, all the managers had demos. Absolutely, that was the first job I got out of college. Was, I was, I was selling cars for a little bit. So there's a transition. And, like, it was like 2014 what? What started the what transpired? Yeah, look over the fence into real estate. What's going what was going on there? You know, in 2014

Steve Ladrido  13:00  
my youngest daughter was two or three years old at the time, and it was really starting to take over and not not be a balanced life, you know. And this is not a knock against the car business. It's changed a lot since I've left, but back then it was, especially in management. It was bell to bell, bell to bell. That's it, you know, like you work bell to bell, and if you took your day off, it was, like, frowned upon. If you went on vacation, it was like, What are you doing? You know, there was a lot of questions there. And that's just, that's just the way that that industry had been for a long time. Again, it's changed, I think, with

Tracy Hayes  13:33  
retail sales have always been, you know, yeah, but

Steve Ladrido  13:36  
it was, it was tough to raise two kids and have a, have a have a sustainable marriage and just have a work life balance. Yeah, working 75 hours a week, yeah? So I had, I had an epiphany, and it's kind of funny, most people don't realize this. I have the picture on my social media, so if you, if you go through my social media and you find it, you'll please like it, right? It was a really defining moment for me. We were on a family vacation in December. My wife is Colombian, so we were down in Colombia, and I climbed a mountain, and I'm not a I'm not a rock climber, mountain climber, right? So we went on a hike, and I went with a guide, and he decided to take the long way up, which was tough and difficult, and it challenged me, and I just started to rethink some things. And when

Tracy Hayes  14:20  
your life flashes in front of you, when your legs are hurting, like this mountain leg up on the next

Steve Ladrido  14:27  
rock, right? So when I got up there, you know, there's just pure beauty. The mountain, or Hill, is called Cerro to which is notoriously famous for Juan Valdez, which is like the icon of Colombian coffee. The mountain behind him, right in the photo, is Sarah, too. So I climbed that, but when I got to the top, I just, you know, it created an opportunity for me to really self reflect and say, you know, this is what life is about. It's about family, it's about doing things you love, and it's about capturing the moment like we we have limited time here. Well. Hmm, so I want to do something that's going to make an impact. I want to do something that's going to be fun, and you'll read it in my profile, and it is defined me. I was able to a take my vacation, get my real estate license, and then figure out a way to pair the two things I love most, which I love people. I'm a people person. Always happen in sales. I love the chase. I love the pursuit. I love the closing I just I had a real passion for sales and people, and the best way to do that is I went from selling the number two thing that most people buy, besides a boat, which is a car, to selling the number one thing, which is a home, right? So I was able to really define that and find peace in that, and really create a life that was that was a life by design, and was the life that I wanted to live and give me the balance that I was looking for?

Tracy Hayes  15:44  
Yeah, so you just jump in cold turkey. You took your vacation, vacation.

Steve Ladrido  15:49  
Got my license. Got your license. It's kind of funny. I'm just, if you if you know me, or get to know me, I'm just an intense person, overachiever. That's just who I am. One question on the real estate course exam, and I just It ate me up. Moving forward, I got my license, and then I joined a small local boutique agency down in St Augustine and and got some training, and I got heavily involved at the Board of Realtors. I was looking for mentors. Mentors had always been a big part of my success. I was looking for people to to learn from, and people to that would pour into me. And I found that. I found it a few different organizations, few different people.

Tracy Hayes  16:27  
And, yeah, let's hold on there for me, because this is one thing that I I've mentioned several times in the other some other episodes. How important is it to be involved in the board now, obviously, I go down there, if I see you down there. Obviously there's a there. Seems there's a regular group down there that you see, but a lot of agents, some of them never. The only time they ever may go there is if they're going to sit in a CE class, because they're not taking it online. Sure. And here you were just, you know, obviously you're the sales background, but you know much about real estate and what's, what's going on in the industry, you dove in there to run into people who were successful.

Steve Ladrido  17:08  
That's, honestly, that's what I was looking for, was to try to surround myself with as many successful people as possible. Now, they'll get me wrong. There are plenty of people that are involved at the board that don't have the success that you would define as success in real estate, right? They're not top producers, they're not running their own companies or organizations, but they define success differently. They define success by being an advocate for the industry. They define success by being involved in their local community and making an impact, right? So I believe that you can do both. So to your question, how important is it? I think it's it's important if you're the type of person that is going to be able to harness that energy that comes from that, and the type of person that's going to be able to get some fulfillment out of being actively engaged and actively involved. But to your point, there are plenty of realtors who aren't that are very successful and top producers. But I think that if we want to really make an impact in our industry and make sure that the realtor brand is around for for many years to come and evolves with the times. You have to be involved. You have to be involved, right?

Tracy Hayes  18:11  
You're, you're the incoming president. I am installation. We're talking about the board installations in two days, two days tomorrow, tomorrow, Thursday. Okay. What are some things that that you want to you know you have on your you must have some things on your mind that you want to improve.

Steve Ladrido  18:28  
I do soap boxes got bigger. Yeah, I've got, I got three initiatives. Yeah, I've got three initiatives. I've had them for quite some time. Actually, because of covid, I was actually supposed to be president last year, but because of covid, and in fairness to the previous president, Bert Odom, yeah, he did a lot of time. Yeah, we decided she extended an additional year, which was great for me, because we had a banner year at the company, and was able to go through some transitions, but it was also able, I was also able to refocus and just really hone in on what I want to accomplish. So there are three things as the President, that are on the main focus for me. One is education. We have to do a better job educate, educating our Realtors and providing education that's relevant, right? The things you used to teach 10 years ago, they're not relevant, right? What's relevant now, social media, marketing, contract law and understanding how to run your business, right? That's important stuff. So education is a really, really big deal for us as a board to make sure that we can raise that baseline knowledge of our realtor membership, engagement is a big deal. Covid has done a lot of different things, and unfortunately, one of the bad things it's done is it's disengaged a lot of people, not just for our membership, but for organizations, for companies,

Tracy Hayes  19:42  
when you say, disengage, do you think they because some people have evolved around it, right, and find a way to conquer that, where others have used it as an excuse?

Steve Ladrido  19:51  
I think that that's exactly what it is others have had to adapt. And I think that you're always going to have those types of people that just figure out a way to make it work, right? Right? And then you're always going to have those, those folks that are using it as a crutch or an excuse. Oh, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do this. Or what's the point?

Tracy Hayes  20:07  
Right? Now, you say that from an angle, remember, we're on number two. Zach, write that down. You say that from an angle, almost as if you're an employer. Yeah, and do you been a broker? You've, you've led sales teams. How important is it that that person's there because they want to be there?

Steve Ladrido  20:23  
It's incredibly important. Yeah, I don't think that you get the buy in, not only from the leader or the whoever's running the organization, but you also won't get the buy in from the membership or the employees. If you're not really interested in being there, you can see that like my passion is there. So engagements a big part of that, because we got to bring those people back in and

Tracy Hayes  20:43  
show them, alright. So when you're talking about engaging, you're talking about engagement with the with the with the members active in the in the board, okay, yeah, all right. I just want to clarify not you didn't mean active, like in your brokerage, or many of these brokers, they may have 60 agents, but only 10 are really selling stuff.

Steve Ladrido  20:59  
It's no different. And I think that that's my event. My advantage is I look at my position, although it's a volunteer position, it's something I want to do as a servant leader, I still look at it the same way as running an organization, right, right? Because I'm the leader, and if I'm not out there trying to engage these folks and bringing value to their membership, because at the end of the day, as a Board of Realtors, whether it's nefar or Flagler or St Augustine Board of Realtors, those are people that are paying a membership. They're paying dues to be a part of that organization. And when they're when their questions become, what am I getting as a return? What's my value proposition from them? Right? Why am I paying them? Right? When that starts to become cloudy, or when it no longer is relevant, and you feel like you're paying and the value doesn't exceed what you're paying. It's a problem, right? And that's where you get disengagement coming in. They don't see the value in being involved or going to the events or or being a member of that organization, and that's when you start to have the problem.

Tracy Hayes  21:56  
So membership, engagement, engagement, or just increase numbers too. Yeah, we want

Steve Ladrido  22:01  
we want to increase our membership engagement, but we also want to get new engagement right. Because with these types of organizations and with these types of of platforms, a lot of times you can have recycled people right, where people are just moving around, but it's the same group of people we want that I want new blood. I want new ideas. I want to innovate. I want to grow like in. The only way to do that is to be able to broaden your horizons, open your open your mind up a little bit, and start accepting other ideas and other people. And that's a big part of it, right? It's a big part, right? Number three. Number three is exposure. So this lends to the realtor brand. I'm heavily involved at Florida realtors, but there are some really, really awesome realtors in our communities, all across the country, but specifically in our local market, that do really, really awesome things. And I think as a member of the Board of Realtors, I think we could do a better job of exposing our membership and the good that they make, excuse me, the good that they do in the positive impact that they make on our community. It's our job to be able to make sure that the general public, if they have a perception of Realtors, we make an impact on that, a positive impact, and hopefully try to change that. Because you got to remember, I'm coming from being in the car business, right? So if you've ever looked at the like the surveys, JD Power and Associates and all these different surveys, they're down there. Not a knock against any other profession. But you're down there with dentists. Nobody likes to go to the dentist. You know, insurance, people, attorneys, and again, not a knock against any of those because I have plenty of friends that own those businesses or in those industries, but I know the general work. You're down there, and I can make an impact. You can make an impact. We can all make an impact to elevate how the general public feels about realtors, and the best way to do that is educate them and expose what we do.

Tracy Hayes  23:51  
Because, I mean, I know the board, and I know a lot of the people, obviously, together, when you mentioned highlight some of the the outstanding agents in the area, I think that, yeah, highlighting them, getting them in to talk, to give a seminar on whatever it may be, whether social media just business planning whatever it may be, but folk like because those people really I find, and having a lot of them on The podcast, like yourself. They do want to, they want to give to other realtors. They don't see other realtors as competition. They really don't see that. And I probably, I'm sure you feel the same way, because you're mixing at the board. Not everybody works for Caldwell, banker premiere, no.

Steve Ladrido  24:32  
I mean, a majority of the people that I talk to on a regular basis don't necessarily work for our company, and that's okay, yeah, there's plenty of business to go around. Yeah, there's plenty of business to go around. And if we all help each other again, that goes back to that, that engagement and education, if we all help each other get better, then, as an industry and as a whole, we get better, right? And that's the main focus.

Tracy Hayes  24:53  
So I'm on, I'm obviously not around, married to a real estate agent, but I'm not, I'm not in in the industry, and I'm thinking. Asking you, okay, what is their mindset here, of what they the impression that they want to give the community? What do you feel right now in our area, not nationally, just just in our area, is the perception of the real estate agents? Because obviously, I hang out with a lot of great real estate agents, you know, we've seen the you know, obviously I invite them on the podcast for a reason, because they're great. You're because they're great, right? So you kind of talk to them and get to know them. But is there realtors out there really doing a bad job that's really has a percentage of the community?

Steve Ladrido  25:32  
I think so. Not so warm and fuzzy. I think so it's, it's the bad apple scenario, right? Because in this is a big part of Florida realtors and NAR, you know, National Association of REALTORS pushes is that, that barrier to entry to get into real estate? I mean, it's a 63, hour course, right? So I'm not saying it's easy, but what I am saying is this, it's not super hard. They don't make it very difficult,

Tracy Hayes  25:53  
right, right? There's not a big financial investment. There's not so few weeks of your life, and maybe you don't like it, you can go do something else.

Steve Ladrido  26:01  
So when you have that, when it comes so easy, you do have some, some licensees that get in the business for the wrong reasons, right? And I think that that bad apple, or that scenario where they're just after the money, or they think it's a, you know, they believe in, in certain programs on TV, that it's a get rich quick scheme. It's not, it's hard work. Yes, it's just a different type of work, right? So I think that, yeah, there are, there are a majority of realtors out there who, a, don't have the education from a broker standpoint, or B, they don't have the right motives for why they do it. And that can, that can sour the public perception.

Tracy Hayes  26:41  
I see a lot, you know, because working for a large builder, I see a lot of these agents who are giving their a lot of their commissions to offset the help, to help the buyer. Sure, now, that may sound great to any buyer right now, but the reality is that means that guy's not making a lot of money. He's got to work somewhere else, and that's what they're doing? Yeah, they're literally working somewhere else. They are just signing the contract because they're licensed to simply cut you back money, right? If you don't want their service, don't, don't ask for their service, in my opinion, right? You know that part time guy is really not giving real order a good name, because they're like, Oh, what do I Sure? What do I need him for? Really? I mean,

Steve Ladrido  27:18  
that goes back to the valid one, right? Yeah, there's a there's a saying out there that, and I don't know who said it, so don't quote me on this, but, but you know, value is only important in the absence of service, right? So if you're not providing a service, you have no value. And I think that that's where the issue comes in, where you've got these realtors and they're doing they can do whatever they want, right? License law allows them to do whatever they want to do, as long as it's disclosed to both parties, but they don't know their value, and they don't necessarily understand what they bring to the table. So maybe they feel like they've got to give some back, or discount this or discount that, when in reality, if they just went to if they were just engaged and educate themselves and really see how incredibly important your job is to help somebody buy the most valuable asset they're ever going to buy. And they're relying on you, your eyes, your ears, your your navigating the process with them, and you're the person to do that, right? There's real value in that.

Tracy Hayes  28:11  
There's, you know, because I see what my wife does, and she's she's totally homegrown, that she doesn't buy any leads. She's just totally hungry. Obviously, I make the income because she doesn't sell something, no problem. But because she is so involved in what she's doing, in delivering that service, adding great value the fruits has fallen off the tree consistently, every month.

Steve Ladrido  28:34  
I would liken that to honestly, the drive in my career is I've never I've never pursued the money, never pursued the money, but the money's found me right, because I'm doing it for a reason. I'm doing it for the purpose and the passion. And you're exactly right. You know, I don't buy leads. A lot of my agents don't buy leads. They do it organically. They cultivate the relationships, but there's real value in what they do, and they take what they do very seriously, and they're professionals at it, yeah, and that's, that's the bottom line. It's no different than any other industry or any other, any other, any other thing that you're going to do, if you really take it seriously and you're a professional at it, you deserve to get paid what the normal rate is, right? And I think to your initial statement about, you know, giving back and cutting commissions and things of that nature. I think that that has a lot to also do with the market. Because found business easy, easy money, right? You know, it's just easy money. They don't have to do a whole lot to work for it, so they

Tracy Hayes  29:31  
don't see the values. Yeah, trust, yeah. Gets thin, and you're going to remember, why did I Yeah, if I had that money from back in October, yeah, yeah, yeah. Steve, So, I mean, you've risen so quick. You were in the car business, you've you've held and now you'll be, you know, President of the Board. You're Ripper. You're in front of people all the time. Personal Development, yes. What are the they are you? Are you a book readers or someone you follow podcast listener? What do you do to keep yourself sharp?

Steve Ladrido  29:58  
All of these, all of these. Grant Cardone, he's an old car guy. If you didn't know that, I think I recall, yeah, he's an old car guy. John Maxwell, I see you there a lot of a lot of personal development. Honestly, one of the things that I focus on most is just being a better me. So I do, obviously, I read books, but I'll be my guilty pleasure is audible. I'm in

Tracy Hayes  30:19  
the like that. I'm in the car all the time. There's some people like to watch the video, like the podcast. Watch the video podcast. I'm like, I can't believe I'll hear it in the car. Sometimes I'll play it while I'm working, but I to sit there and watch someone talk. Sure, you know, yeah, thanks for watching.

Steve Ladrido  30:36  
But no, I mean, I think I'm always just, I learned a long time ago that you got to really be, be sacred with what you put into your brain and what you put in and what you what you eat, right, right, as food for your brain. So I'm a positive person, right? We have a saying in my household, and my kids are gonna laugh at this. I'll make them watch this. And this actually comes from Stephen Covey, PMA. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of that. It's positive mental attitudes and acronym for that. So we have a saying in our house every morning it sees the day with PMA, right? So every day, when you wake up, it's your opportunity to say, I'm either going to have a good day or a bad day, or you're going to let outside things impact how the rest of your day goes. Right? So I just don't powerful stuff. I just don't believe in that. I believe that you have the power to be able to say, You know what? That's something I couldn't have controlled. I'm gonna, I'm gonna deal with it now, but I'm gonna move on, and I'm gonna move on

Tracy Hayes  31:26  
in a positive mindset. When you say that, you know, I try to on a daily basis, I may actually, I'd like to be more like you, but I have a feeling, I feel I like take a lot of the negativity, but what I try to do when it goes back, I try to make people smile throughout the day, sure, whether it's tipping the waitress at, you know, a little extra at lunch, or, you know, something like that, doing something for others and not have to tell just, just doing it. And and they find it, and they they're like, Oh man, thank you and that and that, you know, or you know, you send a card out. I do a lot of that, and your birthday cards and things like that, where people hopefully, I'm hoping at the other end, they're opening it. And, you know, whether it's a picture or whatever, as you receive something my birthday, you know that just this just gave them a little smile for days, someone thought about them, yeah, but, yeah, but,

Steve Ladrido  32:15  
so I'll reverse this, right? We're gonna switch cameras here. Ask you, Tracy, why you do that? Because I will tell you, I appreciate the personal relationship that you've cultivated and you've tried to develop with not only with me, but many successful people in the real estate industry. So I would ask you the same thing, why do you do that? And I obviously you try not to ask questions you don't know the answer to, but I have an idea of knowing, because I know you. Yeah, you do that well.

Tracy Hayes  32:42  
I mean, ultimately, as a salesperson, you want them to want to do business with me, but as I teach the young people here in the office, you've got to reach out. If you're impacting people, you're influencing them, influencing you got to read John Maxwell. If you're not reading John Maxwell, and I say influence, you won't, you won't, ultimately know what I'm talking about, the power of influence that I tell some of the loan officers, you may never get a deal with that agent you took the cough, you went out the coffee with. They may think you're the greatest guy, but they've been in the business a while, or whatever, or their brother in law, whatever they have relationship with someone else. Worst case scenario is you're on the other end of the deal, and they say, Hey, I had lunch with Tracy. He's a great guy. All I need, right? If they don't know you, they have no problem going, Oh, maybe you want to find another lender. I don't know that dude Exactly. You know I'm saying exactly. So it's all just that power of influence as the podcast and bringing you on, sitting down here with you an hour, as we probably wouldn't normally be able to, and really, be able to, and really drill down some questions. Who does, like, a real interview, right? Or, you know, hearing your story and you're in researching you. Obviously, I learned a lot. You know, when I take the time just go on someone's LinkedIn and research you, that's why a lot of people saying, like, on the social media like other people's, you know, social media let them know. You know, as the we were talking about Carl white and mortgage market handles go under social media like the realtor social media. Take a few minutes to see, oh, you've got a couple of kids. Oh, you go to Orlando, your baseball game, whatever you are involved in, your influencing them in a positive way, and they see you as a positive so when you do interact, hopefully that you grow that relationship, but you got to plant a lot of seeds. That's it to grow the relationship.

Steve Ladrido  34:24  
That's it. You do a good job of cultivating the relationship, and then back to your point, making a positive impact. I mean, it's so easy in today's world to be to be negative, right? So I will tell you, I've gotten taken a hiatus from social media for the past couple years, just because, again, censoring that, that positivity versus negativity. It's hard to do that if you're always on social media, because there's just so much negative out there. Yes, even my kids will tell you I watch news. I watch 30 minutes of news couple times a week, and that's it. Yeah. Other than that, I don't invest in any of that other stuff. Yeah, I just don't. No, because it'll cloud your perception. Will cloud the way you think. It'll cloud a lot of those things. And it helps me by not having those things create impressions. And you know, in my

Tracy Hayes  35:11  
mind, I have found, you know, really, since November of 19, shut it off and you got, we got to do what we got to do. Yeah, we got to go to work every day, and we got to make that change at every every individual in their circle of influence, their neighborhood, their work, their and make those, make those positive. And you got to drive on, put your family, as every American is doing. And we have gotten, yeah, the social media has allowed people, just because when you start reading this research on it, they're like, they're like, deliberately triggering us. Oh yeah, totally, they're trying. They're really, literally just triggering us. And when you stop and say, Hold on a second, come on, yeah, and walk away. But totally so let's just change up a little bit, because I want to talk about Coldwell Banker premiere. Let's do it. Yeah, let's do it now. In charge of the office at World Golf Village.

Steve Ladrido  35:59  
I'm in charge of all of them at this point now. So I'm the Regional Director. We've got, what offices are we talking about? So we've got, we'll start going from north to south. We've got our world golf village office. We've got two offices in Palencia, the Palencia office, and then the global luxury office, right? And then we've got cricket, Huff, cricket, yep. And then we've got San Marco, so downtown St Augustine. We've got the beach office, which was where I started as the managing broker for that office. We've also got an office in Palm Coast. We've also got an office in Ormond Beach, and we plan to grow and scale, and then we've got a few satellite offices in a few of the developments throughout St Johns County. So as regional director, it's my job to work with those managers who run those offices and help them grow the office. So I love,

Tracy Hayes  36:43  
I love, so you kind of took on this role if I saw last summer, right, right?

Steve Ladrido  36:47  
So part of that shift was in kind of just the evolution of me at global bankers. I joined there in 2015 came in as an agent, and slowly but surely, kind of worked my way back into leadership. And it wasn't, it wasn't necessarily intentional. It's just natural for me to help people and want to lead and want

Tracy Hayes  37:05  
to grow. I want to be involved. You want to influence others in a positive way, you know, teach them the skills, and hopefully they can be successful Exactly.

Steve Ladrido  37:12  
So then I took over as the managing broker for the beach office. I got my broker's license, and still to this day, I'm mad at dB, PR, I got my broker's letter since one day after I was eligible to get it, I wanted it on that day, and they didn't have an opportunity for me to take the test. That's a little insight into who I am, right? But I helped take over the beach office and helped grow that office, and then just took over. Well, not took over, but I helped and took on another role as business development director, which I paired with our marketing team, and I paired with the other managers, and just really focused on trying to grow that's

Tracy Hayes  37:48  
getting into the mic, sorry, the vibration of his phone.

Steve Ladrido  37:52  
So I really focus leadership grow.

Tracy Hayes  37:55  
That's leadership. It's one ringing, yeah. And

Steve Ladrido  37:57  
then so one of the big things, the big paradigm shift that kind of happened, that that kind of pushed me further into this role. Is Steve Kubler, our previous owner for Coldwell Banker Premier properties. He started that company 30 plus years ago as an independent in 2010 he joined with the Coldwell Banker franchise, and then we grew, I mean, we grew a lot. So in 2020 our franchise agreement was up, and we were all as a leadership team, talking about what we wanted to do. And it became very clear that a succession plan was was something that was needed to be talked about. And we were being quartered by a lot of different companies, by cold banker, the brand, by other franchises, by other other affiliates of the cold Baker brand, and one that approached us was just, was just top notch. The Schmidt family of companies, they're based out of Traverse City, Michigan, they made Mr. Cupola and the other partners an offer that just made sense, right? Not only it wasn't about the money at that point, it was about the fact that they could help us grow to to a level that we wanted to grow to, because they were a big company at this point, and then all of their core resources, yeah, all of their core values, their resources, just the company as a whole, fifth generation family owned company that's been with cold banker for a really long time. And it just made perfect sense for us to be able to join and become a member of the of the Schmidt family of companies. So we did that. We did that in 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, honestly, yeah, and it was really, really successful. And we did, we did have to move a few people around, and part of that moving around was me elevating to regional director and helping run all the offices.

Tracy Hayes  39:39  
So we've got agents that are watching this show. Sure they may not be totally you know, as they often do, shift around thinking the grass might be greener on the other side, but sometimes it is. What is it that you're doing? What is Coldwell Banker premiere doing that is driving that an agent would want to come over and. Sure sell it. What's your What are you guys doing? How much time do we have?

Steve Ladrido  40:05  
I don't believe in I don't believe in feature dumping and telling you all these different things.

Tracy Hayes  40:10  
Oh, we got all this great technology. I hear that all the time, and I'm like, Guys, Keller Williams, exp, that's what they're driving on. And be honest with you. As an outsider, I've heard a certain very large brokerage nationally, obviously internationally, been talking about it for years, and it hasn't developed. Right?

Steve Ladrido  40:30  
So here's the thing that I would say, right? And again, it's

Tracy Hayes  40:34  
not Caldwell Banker. Thank you for that, yes, for clarifying.

Steve Ladrido  40:37  
I reference back to the auto industry only because it's just so relatable to me. But if you took, you know, three mid sized sedans, and I'm doing this just to make it easier to understand, you took an Ultima Camry and a sonata, right? Three different manufacturers, three different brands, you took the badges off of them, you wouldn't know the difference, right? Right? And I won't, I don't say that to discredit those auto manufacturers, but it's the same thing in real estate, right? You take several of the largest brokerages in the country, the Coldwell bankers, the Berkshires, the REMAX, the century, 20 ones. I'm not calling you guys out, but what I am saying is we all offer a majority of the same things, right? The difference for us at Coldwell Banker Premier properties is our people, right? So it's not and it's not just our people, it's the way that we utilize our people, it's the way that we do all these different things. So I'm just going to talk to you, amen. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about how we decided we would change. Right? So several years ago, we said, You know what, most brokerages look at their agents like their agents, and the end result is the customer as a leadership team, we shifted that we no longer worry as much. We do care about the consumer, but we no longer worry as much about the end result being the consumer. We treat the agent like they're our customer. We're in business with the agent.

Tracy Hayes  41:51  
Well, they're there voluntarily. That's it. You're not on a payroll, not giving them benefits,

Steve Ladrido  41:55  
absolutely so. So if we provide the agent all the tools, the training, the resources, the support, everything that they need to run a successful business, the end result is the same. The consumer gets a great transaction. We grow our business, we buy and sell real estate, and that's what happens, right? So that was a big shift for us as a leadership team. It's no longer just about the consumer, it's about the agent. The agent is our customer. So we have a value proposition, and it's easy to remember. So this is a great plug. Cold banker did a rebrand, and if you haven't seen the new Coldwell Banker logo, it has a star now. It's the North Star supposed to be guiding you home. The big story behind that, but what we did was we took our value proposition and we repurposed it into an acronym that is star, right? So that's easy for our agents to remember. It's easy for the public to remember. It's easy for our managers to remember honestly, right? So the star acronym, the first is the s, and it's support. We offer an unrivaled level of support. When you join our company, you get every single managing broker cell phone number. You every office has a managing broker. Every office has an ASC, which is an agent service coordinator. Their job is to literally help the agents

Tracy Hayes  43:06  
on on an everyday whatever questions they have,

Steve Ladrido  43:08  
the only thing they can't answer are the 2c questions about cash or contracts, money or contracts. They're not licensed, right? So they can't answer those questions. But other than that, we provide a unrivaled level of support. We've got a full fledged, top notch marketing team that they get access to, so the level of support that you get from us as a brokerage is far different from other people. I've walked into brokerages looking to talk to the broker, and the person at the front desk doesn't know who the broker is. They don't have the cell phone number. They're having to spend 10 minutes trying to track down the business card, and I'm not going to tell you who it is, but my point is is those agents don't necessarily have that level of support. Yes, the T back to what you talked about. Yes, it's technology, but more importantly, it's training, right and relevant training, actual practical application training. It's not sitting in front of a computer and saying, click this, watch this video, take a test. No, it's write an example contract, send it to me, and we're going to red line it right, different things like

Tracy Hayes  44:05  
that, with the changing market that we've had, and you know how you're doing escalation clauses and all this others. This is stuff that experienced people real life training, too. If you're not being taught these things, and probably need to find someone that will call me. Yeah, exactly

Steve Ladrido  44:18  
my point. But So training is a really big deal. We have a we have a training schedule. It's a weekly training schedule. We have tons of tons of people willing to train in virtual training, right? The A is awareness, and we rely on the brand for this a lot, because cold banker is a brand that people know we've been around since 1906, yep. And we do rely on the brand awareness, right? People know who Coldwell Banker is so we rely on that, we promote that, we use that to our advantage. And then the last but not least is resources. You mentioned technology. We've got every single technology that you could possibly imagine that are resources for our agents. But the difference is, every single one of our people in leadership, every single one of our support staff, they know how to use it. Help you implement it into your business.

Tracy Hayes  45:02  
So let me summarize this up for an agent, and if I could simplify this for you, because I see this, my wife became an agent, and you are running a business. If you've never run a business before, it's just you to start off with. You need some marketing materials. You need to know what works and what doesn't work, or how to use it and when to use it. From a marketing standpoint, how to, you know, the lot of younger agents recent the escalation clause, because there's so many offers and so forth, how are you going to win that deal? Are you good? Do you have access to somebody who's going to sit down with you and say, Yeah, this is how we're going to do this, you're in winning deals for you sure, because it's right now, this is very important right now. You may sell a house very easily, but buying a house is very difficult because there's so many multiple offers, and it's how important it is, when to sit down, as I know a lot of other brokers, say, Oh yeah, when I interview them, I tell them, goes talk to two other people, because they're confident what they're what they're delivering, but listening to the podcast and listening what you need to sit down with Steve and dig into those things that he just talked about and get the deal. How are you going to do that? How accessible when I call on the phone, is someone going to answer it, or am I put on hold, or if I have to leave a voice message, how long is until the calls return. You don't understand. You're running a business. You don't have time. You're buying into Coldwell Banker. Coldwell Banker, Premiere, and Steve, because he's supplying that, it's like buying a franchise. If you buy a franchise, what's the first grade? What kind of support you're gonna give me, you know? And some people don't even know what real support they even need. You know? Well, they don't

Steve Ladrido  46:43  
know what they don't know. They don't know that. They don't know they're brand new. Yeah, they're brand new. They don't know what they're don't they don't know. And back to the barrier to entry, right? When you go to get your real estate license, they don't teach you how to sell real estate. I don't know if you know that. No, they teach you how to stay out of jail and how to pass a test, right? And this is not a knock against them. That's what they

Tracy Hayes  47:04  
have to do. Some do's and don'ts. Let it stay out of jail. And to

Steve Ladrido  47:07  
your point, it's a business, yeah, you gotta, you gotta run it just like a business. You got to be conscious of your time. You got to be conscious of your marketing. You got a budget. There's a bunch of different things. And if you don't have somebody to walk you through that process,

Tracy Hayes  47:19  
and then be tough. Let's often be positive. You're gonna grow. Do you have you have support that they're giving it? There are they gonna show you how to grow? I think that is probably one of the most difficult things. It's one of the most difficult things I see. For loan officers, we reach a maximum point that we can do by ourselves. We need certain support. We talked a little bit about this before the show, and does your manager even know how to grow right? Some of them are put in the position and they're like, but then all of a sudden they got this, realtor is doing great, or loan officer doing great, and they're like, What do I how do I utilize their skill? How do I take LeBron James and get them and get them to the playoffs. Sure, because he can't do it all by himself. He needs four other players.

Steve Ladrido  48:05  
He's got to have a supporting cast around him, and I think you're exactly right to be a successful realtor or real estate professor, you have to have a cast of people, or a team of people, that help you get there. Your broker pays plays a pivotal role in that. So does somebody like you. You know, you got to have a good lender, you know, can get the job done. You got to have good home inspectors. You got to have all these supporting

Tracy Hayes  48:30  
surrounding yourself by at least five great people. But this all goes back, and we've mentioned this several times, of course, we know it's in all these books. Every one of these books will tell you right, surround yourself with, with with the top people. Well, one

Steve Ladrido  48:40  
that you mentioned that I want to bring up, which you just talked about, is, how do you get to a past a point? Well, in John Maxwell's 2021, Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, there's called the law of the lid, right? Yep, you can only go, you can only get so far, yeah, until you expand and grow and break through that well, and this is a shameless plug, can I do this? If you've reached your lid, call me, because I can break through it

Tracy Hayes  49:04  
for there's no doubt you've broken through many lids very quickly at a very young age. I mean, whether it was in the auto and gotten to where you're at to now, you're President of the Board of Realtors. You're obviously a huge influence in the community. And now running you're over. How many office was that? Five or six offices between Mormon beach and, yeah, 10 total. So you've broken through many lids. People have seen what you're doing. And obviously I forget the name of the family that bought some Schmidt Schmidt family. Schmidt family to reach out and say, you know, we want Steve to run the region. Yeah. So you've broken through those lids. And I could just see you, you're looking over because you got a lot, you have a lot of great realtors. I mean, we mentioned cricket earlier. There's others, I'm sure, really, and you're probably looking at, go, how can I increase their business absolutely, 10 to 20% or whatever? You know, can I get them another 20 sales this year versus last year? What can I do? And that, whether it's coaching them on sport, I think a lot of. People think they have to do everything if you want to be great in this business. I'm telling you right now, do what you do best where that might if that's out showing the houses and building relationships like a Melissa Ricks, then that's what you do. You hire people to do the 10 and $15 Well, now $20 an hour job, you have to hire people to that if you want to make the $500,000

Steve Ladrido  50:20  
an hour, sure, and we've done that with our agents, but I got to go back to one thing, right? So because, because servant leadership is a part of who I am, and I always make sure that agents understand this, and just people in general understand this, you can't define your success by comparing yourself to other people. You can't, right? So when you talk about helping agents grow their business. It's not necessarily just about them growing their business. Sometimes I have conversations with ages Bill Miller, for example, the guy's an absolute machine. He's my top producer, a machine.

Tracy Hayes  50:51  
Should I have bill on the show? Absolutely bill. They don't know that. He'll do it, though

Steve Ladrido  50:55  
time is incredibly important to him, right? So for him, it's not about getting past the 40 or $50 million mark, which, which he'll exceed. It's more for him about balance, right? How do I still do what I'm doing, but gain more of something that's important to me, which is quality time? Yeah?

Tracy Hayes  51:12  
Well, enjoy them. Enjoy the fruits of his labor. And

Steve Ladrido  51:15  
you can't let other agents or compare yourself to other people and let that define your success. Some people would be completely happy with selling 10 or $15 million a year, but being able to take two or three, four vacations a year, right? And being able to not have to work necessarily on the weekends. Some people want to have a team, and they want to grow it to 200 million to each his own. But you've got to define what success is for you, and you can't do that

Tracy Hayes  51:40  
by I like the successful my mindset of the same with me. This is me, when you're successful, to reach out and you need an assistant and now create a great job for somebody they love doing you like being around they're helping you. You're helping them by providing them a great job and atmosphere to work here. That to me, that

Steve Ladrido  51:58  
success, that is success, and that's how you grow, and that's how you scale, and that's how that's how it becomes much easier to grow and break through those those ceilings, right? Is because you got people on your staff. You got people that are supporting you doing something they love to do, right? I know of teams that are that have people on the team that they're just in the wrong they're in the wrong seat, they're on the right bus, but they're in the wrong seat, right? Right? I like that. You're a buyer's agent, but really, you're great at presentations and you're great at your task oriented really, you should be a listing agent, right? Right? And then the opposite, somebody who doesn't really necessarily like people. You got them out there driving people around. Well, you got to be personable to be a buyer's agent. You got to be able to develop that relationship and get people to like you. People do business with people they know, like and trust. It's that simple, right? So it's just a matter of identifying who the people are and putting them in the right seat.

Tracy Hayes  52:49  
My number man Zach's behind the camera here. He knows, because I've talked to him so many times. You know, in our world, it's, you know, who makes the phone ring? It is. Some people are really good at doing the back end stuff of the loan. Sure, other people are out there creating the relationships and building the confidence and making the phone ring in business, and you have a process. And then there's great people who are processors, great people who are underwriters. And if they're in the wrong seat, it can it can cost your business money. You may not realize it's costing you money, but it is costing you might

Steve Ladrido  53:20  
that could be the lid that's keeping you from getting very the next. Yeah, 100%

Tracy Hayes  53:25  
man, this is such great stuff. Let me see if I have any additional questions. Because I we, I really didn't even use my questions fire away, yeah, really. So you took over as a regional in in last summer, correct? You're you're now pulling the, calling the shots for the most part. Yeah, you have a leadership circle, because you got the brokers of every individual thing to work with. What are some of the things that you immediately wanted to get in and make some changes? Maybe, obviously, some offices may have been doing them. Other offices weren't. But you wanted to make build that culture, that uniformity between those offices. What were some of the things that you quickly implemented

Steve Ladrido  54:06  
so some of the things that we focus on, and it wasn't just me, you know, I've got a lot of really great people around me. Steve kupelo, still very involved. The previous owner, he's our regional vice president, Rob West. Those two have been great mentors to me and Rob West has moved to VP of Finance and commissions for the entire state. But what I can tell you some of the things that we focused on that were incredibly important, and this is for any business. Is operational excellence, right? How do we do what we do every day better? How do we free up more time? How do we put the right people in the right place? How do we create processes and procedures that allow us to be able to do more scale and get bigger, right? Because that's ultimately, that's what our goal is. We want to get bigger, bigger, better, faster. That's it. You know, we have a goal. We you know, it's my job to cast a vision for our company in our region, in our region. Our goal is to close a billion dollars in one year. We'll do we'll. Will quickly approach 700 million this year, but, and that's a three to five year goal, but the only way we do that is becoming better in all facets.

Tracy Hayes  55:07  
Processes are so huge, and not everyone is right. I could tell you what I want to I believe there's a better way to do it, sure, but there's smart people that actually will actually put the screws to it, so to speak, ABC, and put all the little details and make it a much more efficient process to add the technology in, or whatever it is. For sure, not everyone can do that. There's certain people that just have that analytical, precision, detailed line. So again, putting someone in the right yeah, you

Steve Ladrido  55:38  
got to empower them. And sometimes, because you don't empower people, you don't know what their true talents are, right? Because you know they're stuck in a job or in a position, and you want them to play in that, in that box, well, sometimes you got to take the lid off the box and just see what people can do. So I believe in empowering people. You have a task. Here's the task I need to get done. Here's how I would do it, but it's yours. Yeah, it's yours to get done.

Tracy Hayes  56:02  
You've got to empower. Empower people is so huge. I see it so many times. You know, everyone always hates that manager or micromanage. Yeah, you're a manager. Be confident. What you do. Stop being afraid someone's going to take your job. Sure, sure, get in there and empower. There's a lot of smart people. I personally do not want to manage people. Sure I've done that my life. I am old school. I think you're probably more new school than me. You're probably a little have my wife would say better tack than me. Yeah, thank you. And that's your, that's, that's what you excel at, right? Generally, your sales people make more to your managers. Anyway, I'm at that point in my life. I just want to sell, do my loans, let me manage my loans, but I don't need to manage a bunch of underwriters. And you know, everybody who's out sick or whatever, I just I don't have I that's not the best place. I'm short on empathy. Yes, that's my weakness. I'm short on empathy. I'm here to work. You have a family to feed. Get your butt here.

Steve Ladrido  57:00  
You know that, but at least you recognize that, right? At least you recognize that, and you're able to harness that and say, You know what? That's not something I want to do. I want to spend my time here. And clearly it's working for you. Yeah, right, yeah. So, so kudos to you. Congratulations to your success. I think that's a big part of his identifying and being self aware of what you're good at and what you're not. And it's okay to not be good at everything, just so we're all clear, I'm not great at everything. I'm just not right. We talked about this, we joked about this, right? Tracy was like, Hey, man, I want to get you on the podcast. You're tougher get a hold of than the President, and a part of that is because I'm just a doer. So one of my big downfalls, if we're talking about weaknesses, I'm just a doer. So I won't say I will just call it what it is. I'm usually late, like a little bit late, because I'm just constantly trying to fit one more thing in, do one more thing, talk to one more person, right? So that that is one of my weaknesses. I just try to do too

Tracy Hayes  57:53  
much, right? Who's been the most, biggest influence in your life?

Steve Ladrido  57:57  
That's a loaded question, right? So I think that life's life goes in chapters and seasons, in the early stages. My parents, you know, I got to give a lot of credit to my parents. My mom's a Filipino immigrant. Came over from the Philippines and and started cutting hair, and did that for 30 years. My dad, who's actually really my stepdad, but he's my father. He knows me since I was two. He's a marine and then got into the diesel mechanic business. But these are people that just worked hard, and they just constantly worked hard. I won't say I was a latch key kid, but for a long time, like it was, you get home from school, you do your schoolwork, you fix yourself some food, and we'll be home when we get home from work, right? I mean, I think that's pretty much the definition of Alaska kid, yeah. So I just saw them work really, really hard, so that in the in the early stages and impressionable stages of my life, they were big impacts after that it was, you know, the few people in the automotive industry and a few people in the real estate industry that have been great mentors of mine, that have just kind of pushed me along. You know, they held me accountable. They saw something, and they were able to just provide me the opportunities. I say this all the time. All I ever asked for was an opportunity. Nobody ever gave me anything. Nobody ever gave me anything, right? All I asked for was an opportunity, and a few people gave me an opportunity, and I was able to do something with it. And that's what,

Tracy Hayes  59:17  
that's what. I bet you showed up on time. Oh yeah, yeah. Early in his years, he showed up, Oh, yeah. Definitely got into leadership. He feel that he could show up a

Steve Ladrido  59:25  
little late. It's not just that, just, I just try to do too much, man. People tell me all the time, you know, I live and die by my schedule, right, right? So to the point where, if you don't know this little hack, if in your iPhone calendar, if you put the address of where your appointment is, it will notify you when you need to leave based on where you're at, yeah. So I'm the notorious person that's like pushing the limit, how soon can I leave, or how late can I leave to get there on time?

Tracy Hayes  59:50  
Right? All right, we're gonna wrap things up. These are my two minute warning questions here. Is it more important who you know or what you know?

Steve Ladrido  59:58  
You know? I think that that's. A big question. I think it's relative to what you're what you're asking for in sales and in leadership. I think it's more important than who you know, because you don't have to have all the answers. You need to employ and find people that do. You talked about this before earlier. I've never been afraid of hiring people that were better than me. In fact, I want to hire only people that are better than me. So I don't have to be the one with the answer. I just have to

Tracy Hayes  1:00:24  
the stereotypical thing I was saying. You brought that again, Carl white mortgage market animals, because we were talking about, you know, like hiring people, hiring assistants. And he says, A players will hire B players, B players will hire C players. So you got to break that mold. You know, of course, has an A player hire an A plus player. You know, how important. But obviously, a lot of great men shows women too, but the ones we know in the history books have all surrounded themselves. I think was hardened Dale was Carnegie says in his book, hiring people that are smarter were smarter than he was. Yeah, this I changed this question up a little bit. Normally, ask about Jaguars or whatever. Got tired of asking that question. I'm a bucks fan, anyways. Bucks fan. Anyway. Go bucks you have teams and you have individuals now without being biased, and you know, I'm sure you treat them the same way everyone you know, with whatever they bring to the table, you give it back to them. Do you think that I, at least I personally, why I'm asking this question is because I see it. I think some of the I think some of the teams, they want to be teams, but they don't know how to actually operate a team, right? And therefore the team fails independence, or teams, if you had a choice and said, you know, this is, this is a route that Coldwell Banker premieres going, comes down. Thing that we're going to all be either teams or we're all going to be individuals. What would you, from a leadership standpoint, rather do?

Steve Ladrido  1:01:44  
I would book the system and say, You can't make me pick one or the other. I would say is, I think that I would go, I would, I would rely more on the team side, because I think that you have to realize that even as an individual, still need support. You have a team, yeah, whether you identify as a team, and I say the Steve ladrito team or the Tracy Hayes team, whether you identify as that, and you put that on your marketing or not, you still have a team. You got a man behind the camera, you got loan process, you got everybody, transaction coordinators, yeah, so it's just a title at that point, yeah, right. It doesn't matter, because you have those support staff, you have the supporting cast that makes it a team regardless, right?

Tracy Hayes  1:02:25  
So that circles back to what we were talking about in the support that you give. And this is, you know, a lot of agents get in there and they see teens and like, oh, man, that person is just sitting in the office, and all the agents are out there working again. But there's a skill to it. Sure, there's some people that are really good, and we know some people in this market are really good at it. You want to build a team. You need to do it right, and you need the support of someone like Steve and the mentors that you have. You want to join an organization that has strong team leaders to learn what they're doing. It's not just, Hey, let's go and get some other agents to work on anything. You know we can like. If they call us to the question, we'll answer it. That doesn't work that way. You guys

Steve Ladrido  1:03:04  
have a plan, and you got to be able to manage them. Yeah, so, and that's a big part of it, is people don't realize, you know, as a team leader, there's a big part of that that is a leader, right? You have to be

Tracy Hayes  1:03:14  
add value at that value to these people who are working under you, or they're not. They're just They, after a while, they realize, I can go somewhere else.

Steve Ladrido  1:03:20  
That's it. If you don't have a leader helping create the direction of where you guys want to go, and the process, procedures and all the other stuff that comes with being a leader or a manager, right? I believe in leaders helping you with your business, right? Then you're just a group of people together, right? Right? So you have to, there has to be somebody that takes that role. So if you're working on a team and you feel like your team leader isn't doing something. Just know that there is a lot that goes into that. It's not just, you know, being the person in the ivory tower calling the shot right, not just right.

Tracy Hayes  1:03:49  
Now, your wife's from Colombia, so you've been there, you climbed the mountain and everything. But what's on your guys? Travel bucket list, something everywhere.

Steve Ladrido  1:03:57  
So we love to travel. We love to travel. You know, we talked about this before. I travel a lot, not only for business, but for pleasure, but Europe. So Europe is something we're going to do. We're going to spend anywhere from four to six weeks and travel throughout Europe. And I want to get that done within the next five years. Nice, yeah, yeah. I want, I want to go see I love traveling. I mean, I've been to the Philippines, I've been to South America, Central America, and all over the country. Europe is the one place I haven't been to.

Tracy Hayes  1:04:26  
Well, on the other side of the globe, not the country, the globe. Steve, thanks for coming on the show. If someone's watching and they want to contact you. Learn more about your team. What's the best way

Steve Ladrido  1:04:39  
to contact call me on my cell phone, 904-377-9577, you can also visit any of my websites, hit me up on social media, although I don't post a whole lot, I do respond and I'm there, or just come by the office man just just reach out to me. My contact info is everywhere.

Tracy Hayes  1:04:56  
But you said you travel a lot. You don't really station yourself out of any office, is what. You told me,

Steve Ladrido  1:05:00  
No, I've got, I've got my beach office that I have an office in, okay, but like for this week, I've been there maybe twice this week. So I'm always on the road. I'm always out and about, moving around, shaking hands, and making sure people have what they need and have the support they're looking for.

Tracy Hayes  1:05:14  
That's, that's what it's all about, leadership. So Steve madrido, I appreciate you being on the show. Thank you. Thank you.

Podcast Intro  1:05:24  
I This may be it for today's episode of Real Estate excellence, but we both know your pursuit of excellence doesn't stop here, to connect with the best of the best and really take your skills to the next level. Join our community by visiting Tracy Hayes podcast.com where you'll meet more like minded individuals looking to expand their inner circle and their personal experience that's available at Tracy Hayes podcast.com

Speaker 1  1:05:54  
the questions around retirement have gotten tiring. Instead of asking, have you saved up enough? Shouldn't they be asking, what is it that you love to do, and how can we help you keep doing it? The truth is, you have no intention of slowing down. That's why your retirement plan should be more of an action plan, a hiking plan, a sailing plan, a music plan, a golf plan. The point is, no matter what your past time we can help make sure you never have to stop, because at Lincoln Financial, we have the products and over 115 years of experience to help protect and grow your financial future so you can keep doing more of what you love. Make your past times last a lifetime at Lincoln Financial comm slash action plan. Lincoln Financial your tomorrow our priority, Lincoln Financial marketing, name for Lincoln national corporation, its insurance companies and broker dealer affiliate Lincoln Financial Distributors Inc, copyright 2025 Lincoln national corporation.