37. The Foundation Behind Our Success: Integrating Notion and Orbit in Real Estate

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In the midst of team building, I stumbled upon a game-changing realization that challenged everything I thought I knew about structuring a real estate business. It wasn't about the agents multiplying—it was about the systems that lift them. This morning, I reflect on how adopting a new model transformed not just my business, but the way my team breathes and thrives.

In today's episode of The Work From Anywhere Agent, I dive into the unexpected parallels between real estate teams and legal practices, redefining roles for maximum synergy. With Notion as my secret weapon, discover how I crafted an internal fortress for communication and growth, creating a seamless canvas where every team member's potential can flourish.

Join me as we explore the dynamic duo of Notion and Orbit, and how they individually and collectively play roles in making our business not just scalable, but sellable too. What's it like to marry an impeccable internal structure with an outstanding external presence? Today's insights just might change your game plan.

Curious about how you can reshape your business's heart and soul? Let's keep the conversation going in our Business Systems for Realtors Facebook group. Ready to discover more? Tune in to our episode now and be part of the journey!

Episode Transcript

Alexa (00:02):
In today's episode we're talking about how we use both
Notion and Orbit in our realestate business.
Now, as I started building myteam, our structure is a little
bit different.
So, to give you a littlebackground on my sort of team
building experience, severalyears ago I started a team and
was super excited because therewas a whole bunch of agents who

(00:22):
wanted to start selling houseswith me, and it was awesome,
right.
And then I realized that,without giving them any admin
support, without giving themstructure and systems and all
those things, they either A theyfailed out of the business, or,
b they learned how to sellhouses.
And because the only value thatI was offering them was giving
them leads, once they learnedhow to sell and once they

(00:43):
learned how to generate theirown leads, they ended up leaving
the team.
And so I sort of went back tothe drawing board and focused on
how would I build a team thatserves the business, serves my
goals and also can helptransform people's lives, and so
what I sort of landed on wasthat, instead of building a
production team per se as inhiring a bunch of agents that I

(01:04):
have to give away 50% of myrevenue to that we were going to
focus on building more of likea legal practice, right?
If you think about anattorney's office, it's
typically one or two attorneysand then they have a bunch of
admin support and they typicallyreally lean on that admin
support and paralegals and legalresearchers and all the

(01:26):
receptionists and all thosedifferent roles, and then
there's a couple of partners andthen maybe, as they get busier,
they start bringing onassociates, but typically they
start with the admin support,and so that was the focus that I
brought in when I startedrebuilding my team, and I have
to tell you I've loved it somuch more.
We really focus on havingspecialists in every single role

(01:47):
in the business, right?
So instead of having again abunch of agents that are just
doing a bunch of stuff, wereally focus on defining roles
in the business, and then everyperson is dependent on the rest
of the team, and so it's acompletely different model.
Now, with that in mind, whenyou're dealing with handoffs
like that and you're dealingwith all these different people

(02:08):
who are in one transaction,having a way of communicating
and having a standardized way ofoperating right becomes
essential.
It's not even a matter of likeyou know, okay, well, agents run
their businesses differentlyLike no, because every single
client runs through the sameprocess.
Number one I have a lot morecontrol over the experience that

(02:29):
the client gets, because now,when something comes up right,
so if a client asks a question,if there is a result that wasn't
what we expected, whatever itends up being, we end up
building an SOP around it, andso, little by little, these
teeny, tiny 1% improvements nowbecome sort of our standard
operating practice.
Notice what?

(02:50):
See what I did there?
So, with that in mind, thechallenge became like where do
we store all of our SOPs, all ofour trainings, where do we keep
all of our meetings right?
And so it was like started withGoogle Docs, then it turned
into using a bunch of differenttools, and so we eventually
landed on using Notion.

(03:12):
Now, I have to tell you, if I'mreally being honest, a lot of
people speak so highly of Notion, but if you don't have a good
foundation or you don't have anoperating system to build off of
, when you're working withNotion, it just kind of feels
like an infinite canvas ofnothingness, and while
everything might be possible,it's really hard to visualize.
And so the first thing that Idid when I started getting into

(03:34):
Notion was.
I read the book Traction and ifyou've been around for a while,
you know I've talked about thatbook a lot, because it really
is the foundation for how we runthe internal side of our
business, and so it reallyfocuses on setting your goals,
narrowing those down into 90-dayrocks.
We changed the name toInitiatives, focusing on running
really highly effectivemeetings, having really high

(03:57):
accountability, and I found aNotion template that helped
implement the EOS model, andthen we customized the crap out
of it.
So, even though, yes, westarted with a template, we
changed it so that it worked forour business, and so, with that
in mind, notion has become sortof our internal place that we
communicate.
Notion has sort of become ourinternal hub, right Like for

(04:20):
communications, for tasks, foraccountability, for our SOPs,
for running our meetings, forsetting goals, for tracking,
like the details of showingstuff for clients and doing our
finances and our HR, and allthat stuff happens in Notion
stuff for clients and doing ourfinances and our HR, and all
that stuff happens in Notion,whereas Orbit is focused on the
external experience, what peoplesee and what people feel, and I

(04:40):
feel like I would be doing adisservice if I didn't talk
about how we use these together,because, yes, it's important to
have that externalcommunication right, but think
of Notion as the foundation thatOrbit gets built on top of, and
so this is the thing that Itruly believe is what makes
businesses scalable and alsomakes them sellable right.

(05:00):
Because we've gone through in acouple of our acquisitions,
we've gone through multiple VAs,and it's interesting how
quickly our VAs are able to stepinto a role and get producing
very, very, very quickly becauseof the fact we have everything
so heavily documented.
And then, when you layer inNotion AI are you kidding me?
Like literally anyone on ourteam can ask for a status update

(05:24):
on a client or how to handle acertain situation and a whole
bunch of other stuff, andhonestly, it really is one of
the most powerful tools that I'mreally excited to continue
building on.
I'm pretty sure we talked aboutNotion AI recently, and one of
these days I'm probably going togo do like a whole rundown on
our Notion, because there's alot of aspects of the business

(05:45):
that are run out of there,whereas our funnels, our emails,
our CRM, our communication isall run through Orbit.
But truly, the two of them worktogether, and so I believe that,
when it comes to Orbit, we do agreat job of helping our agents
with the external piece, but,again, a lot of times we need to
do the inside work, we need todo the working on the business

(06:08):
in order to make sure that thebusiness runs well, especially
if we plan to bring other peopleinto our business.
So as a solo agent as maybe asolo agent and one admin you can
run out of orbit completely.
But when you start breakingdown the business into a bunch
of roles and there's a wholebunch of other complexity, then
that's where, like having theEOS model and being able to run

(06:31):
it effectively, their notionreally comes into play.
And, as always, please join usin our daily Facebook discussion
in the Business Systems forRealtors Facebook group, and I
will see you in the next episode.