(Above) The Adam Olsen Team (partly pictured) is the No. 6 social media team in the U.S.
Adam Olsen has achieved much in five short years.
After graduating high school, he began his career in real estate solo—but there were challenges.
“It took me over seven months to sell my first property,” explains Olsen. “I ended up teaming up with an individual in the office, and from there, we just grew.”
Now, as leader of The Adam Olsen Team, based in Greater Houston, Olsen oversees 22 agents and staff, with headquarters in Huntsville. He attributes the group’s growth largely to marketing on social media, driven by a Facebook following of 48,000, and ads reaching upwards of 200,000. In fact, in 2018, Property Spark ranked The Adam Olsen Team No. 6 for social media in the U.S., and Olsen himself was ranked Texas’ top social media influencer by Top Agent Magazine.
A born motivator, Olsen is also a public speaker, and has participated in seminars with Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak, Dr. Phil McGraw and others, championing the entrepreneurial spirit. Here, he discusses operating a team, and his advice for new teams.
Suzanne De Vita: Adam, you’ve cultivated a major presence on social media…
Adam Olsen: Our biggest asset to any consumer choosing The Adam Olsen Team is the online marketing that we have on Facebook, as well as other social media. We were actually ranked No. 1 in the state of Texas and No. 6 in the U.S. and Canada for online and social media marketing by Property Spark in 2018. We reach 200,000 to half a million people a month on Facebook ads online. We have about 48,000 followers on Facebook. That’s why, generally, consumers choose to go with us. I will always invest heavily in online marketing. A lot of people don’t like Zillow, realtor.com® and similar websites, but my mentality is, ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’ That’s just the way we’ve always operated.
SD: You have a fairly large team. Do you have meetings regularly?
AO: We meet every Wednesday and go over what agents and team members may need help with—issues that they may have encountered that week, etc. We also hold trainings every Wednesday. A couple times a year, we’ll go out to an event—a Grant Cardone event, we’ll have our Christmas party or go to a fun place like Top Golf or race go-karts, just to have fun and keep morale going.
SD: How do you distribute leads?
AO: Leads go through our automated system, except for call-ins. People can schedule time to take our team phone, which is a cell phone that we rotate between agents. It is the only number online for our team. In addition to that, all of our Zillow, realtor.com and other online leads feed into our CRM follow-up process. They get distributed evenly on a round robin to all of our agents.
SD: How do you determine who fits with your team? What characteristics or criteria are you looking for?
AO: We like to hire individuals with at least somewhat of an experience, whether it be a year-plus or two years-plus experience with at least a couple of transactions. That’s not to say we won’t hire someone new, but you really have to fit into the puzzle if you’re brand-new. We’re generally looking for highly motivated, driven individuals. That’s our biggest thing: people that are willing to work, because a lot of agents aren’t willing to invest the time and energy.
SD: What advice would you give an agent that’s considering forming a team, or to a team that’s just starting out?
AO: Keep your head down and keep going. In this business, there’s a lot of ups and downs, and it’s easy to get caught up in the downs, because there are a lot of them. You get difficult clients or transactions that completely go south, and it’s hard to remove yourself personally because a lot of times you do take it personally, whether they’re friends or family or people you’ve gotten close to. If you take care of your clients, in return, they’re going to take care of you. Most of our business comes from referrals and online marketing. Those two are very important to us, and we’ve built what we have today because of them.
Suzanne De Vita is RISMedia’s online news editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at sdevita@rismedia.com.
