003 - The team building mistake that sinks Real Estate Agents

Missionaries vs. Mercenaries.

It’s one of the most important distinctions a leader can make when building a team.

In Episode 3 of the Loan Daddy Podcast, Scott Nadler explores why some team members become invaluable long-term partners while others ultimately create friction—even when they’re talented.

Drawing from a conversation with a veteran real estate agent, Scott breaks down the warning signs of misalignment, the traits that define a missionary mindset, and the interview questions top-performing leaders use to identify the right people before making a hire.

Whether you’re a real estate agent, sales leader, entrepreneur, or business owner, this episode offers practical lessons on hiring, leadership, culture, and building a team that grows together.

Key topics:
 • Building a scalable real estate team
 • Missionary vs. mercenary mindset
 • Leadership and accountability
 • Hiring for alignment
 • Team culture and long-term growth
 • Interview questions for prospective team members

Subscribe and follow the Loan Daddy Podcast for more conversations on leadership, real estate, mortgage strategy, and business growth.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So now we're having lunch and I bring up Mason again and he says, starts shaking his head. And he says, it's not working out. In fact, I had to fire him. I started to realize he was a mercenary and not a missionary. Welcome to the Lone Daddy Podcast episode three. My name is Scott Nadler, and today I want to talk about missionaries versus mercenaries and in the context of real estate agents and them building their team. This could really be relevant for any business, but again, I want to speak about it specifically for real estate agents. To start, why would a real estate agent need to build their team? If we take a step back and we think about all of the different hats that a real estate agent has to wear, it starts to make sense. This is probably not the norm, but for the agents that are ambitious and want to grow and want to scale, this is for them. Agents need to work with sellers. And when working with a seller, you need to do a lot of market research, you need to prepare their home, stage it, and know exactly when to go live with that listing to market. That takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. On the flip side, working with buyers. Buyers are going to want to look at various properties to get an idea of what's out there. And that requires a lot of time, right? Physically going with them to the different properties, having phone calls with them, which usually take place after hours or on a weekend. Overall, doing market research and understanding what's happening in terms of price points, different types of properties that are selling or why properties are not selling, getting a sense of off-market listings, and then also brand building and networking and marketing in general. Finding a way to get your voice out there and your brand to attract more buyers and sellers to work with you and to give you the opportunity to help more people. Ultimately, when you are growing and you're new to the business, even not new to the business, but maybe you have a shift in focus where you are focusing on building. It's impossible to wear all these different hats if you start getting inundated with a lot of volume. So as a result, you inevitably get to that point where you need to grow and you need to scale, and that requires building a team. And I thought about this recently because I had lunch with a top agent, you know, who's been in the industry for 30 years. I had lunch with him a couple weeks ago. And we'll call him John. And again, John's been doing this for a long time, and he has nine people on his team. And we're having lunch, and there was one young guy on his team, we'll call him Mason, who was up and coming, who the last time I met with this agent, he was very excited about him. So now we're having lunch, and I bring up Mason again, and he says, starts shaking his head. And he says, it's not working out. In fact, I had to fire him. He went on to tell me that little things started to happen where, in his words, he said, I started to realize he was a mercenary and not a missionary. What he started to see with this junior agent Mason was to start, he said when he would be when Mason would be on the call, would be on a call with prospective clients, he would say that it's the Mason team instead of the John team. Again, John has been in the industry for 30 years, Mason's been in the industry for two years. Mason aspires to be like John one day, but it turned out it wasn't one day. It was now. He wanted to be John right now. As a result, he's on the phone with prospects saying this is the Mason team, right? It's not the Mason team, it's the John team. So much so that when a commission check came in and John was away on vacation, Mason thought that commission check, the full amount, belonged to him. You know, there were agreed upon terms ahead of time that, you know, John's providing all these leads and helping Mason grow his own business, but that specific check was not a hundred percent guaranteed for Mason. There was a there's a split. That's a couple examples of several that let John know this person is not a good fit. And again, it's it's such an important thing to understand this difference here between when you're building a team and you're looking at someone who acts more like a mercenary as opposed to what a missionary is. This is not a unique story. I meet with agents and I speak with real estate agents regularly. And oftentimes, agents who are growing their teams will ask me if I know of anyone in the industry, maybe with three to five years of experience, who is looking to join a team, who isn't succeeding as much as they'd like to on their own, and maybe has more of that mindset where they would like to join a team. How do we identify if someone is a missionary or if they are a mercenary? How do we do that? To start, it's important to understand what each term means. A missionary is someone who believes in the purpose and believes in the larger purpose. A mercenary is more focused on their own personal gain. That's really what the differences are there, right? So obviously, if you're building a team, you want someone who embodies more of that missionary mindset. As a leader, you're the one in charge, and everything stops and starts with you. If the team succeeds, the leader gets the credit. But if the team fails, the leader is the one that has to take the blame. And not everyone wants to be that leader. Not everyone wants that responsibility and that pressure to lead a team. But the ones who do, who are willing to take on that pressure, they need to find people on the team that believe in what their vision is, that see it, back them up, and want to see them succeed. And knowing full and well that if the leader succeeds, they, as a team member, will also succeed. And from the leader's perspective, you have to empower the people on your team to believe in your vision, and they have to know that you're going to take care of them, that as the team grows and succeeds, they will succeed as well. So, how do we identify if someone is a good fit and if they have that missionary mindset, right? Here are some great questions that I've heard from some of the top agents, what they use. These are real questions that agents use to ask prospective team members when they're interviewing them to seeing if they're a good fit. Number one, why do you want to join a team versus building your own business? It's a great first question. Two, if they were previously on a team, a good question to ask is tell me what your experience was like on your previous team, what worked and what did not work. Three, tell me about a time you sacrificed short-term income for long-term success. It's a really fantastic question. Number four, how do you define success on a team? Number five, tell me about a time you went above and beyond for someone when there was no direct benefit to you. Number six, what kind of team leader do you do your best work for? Number seven, where do you want to be in three years? And how does a team help you get there? And number eight, if another team offered you a higher split tomorrow, what would you do? I love all these questions. I will put them in the comment section and I encourage agents to use these. Again, these are these are questions that we've pulled from top agents around the country that use when they're interviewing prospects to join their team. You don't build a great team by hiring talent, you build it by hiring alignment. All right, that's also what someone said to me once. I've heard agents say this, and it's really, really, it really resonated with me as someone who's also building my own team. Talent without alignment is expensive. Alignment without talent is fixable. As that was said to me, it made me think about a great scene from the movie Miracle about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team. And there's a scene in the movie, it's fairly early on, where the US Olympic Committee, they are conducting tryouts. And they're there they have players from all over the country coming to try out for the US Olympic team. And the coach, Herb Brooks, is cutting a lot of players who the assistant coaches and the committee feel are some of the top players in the country. And it's happening over and over. Finally, one of the assistants builds up the courage to go to the coach and say, Coach, what are you doing? You're cutting so many of the top players, the best players in the country. And Herb Brooks responds to him and he says, I'm not looking for the best players. I'm looking for the right ones. Looking for the best players, Craig, I'm looking for the right ones. And I love that quote. And that's the type of mentality that I see a lot of the top agents have. And any top agent that you see out there, I guarantee you, they have a number two person, maybe even a number three person, maybe even a number four person who has been with them for many years. And they are people who really embody that missionary mindset. No agent, no business leader can do it by themselves. You need people on your team to help support you who ideally have strengths that you don't have. And the top people that I see always have that with them. That's all that I have for today. I really hope that you enjoyed this episode. Hit the subscribe button. Please feel free to comment if there's anything that I missed in this or if you want to add something to it. And I will see you on the next episode. Thanks.