George Laughton, founder of The Laughton Team, begins by candidly recounting his start in real estate, highlighting his remarkably poor timing as an investor in late 2006, buying three rentals with Option-ARM financing just before the crash. This failure forced a pivot into REO and short sales in the turbulent 2007-2008 market. He successfully transitioned his operationally-minded REO team into a traditional sales model by 2013, focusing heavily on lead generation and CRM implementation. Today, The Laughton Team has 200 agents primarily in Arizona, averaging about $900 million in annual volume and around 2,000 transactions.
A core principle of Laughton’s leadership is the constant anticipation of market shifts, employing a strategy of firing “bullets than cannonballs” to test and refine business pillars. His mindset is one of abundance, famously viewing the iBuyer phenomenon in Phoenix (its epicenter) as an opportunity. His strategy was to “make friends with them” (Opendoor, Zillow Offers) and position his team to capture the high volume of seller leads generated from their marketing.
The team’s structure is built on interdependence, rejecting the traditional independent contractor model. Laughton seeks agents with a “strong desire to win” (economic competitiveness). His management philosophy involves scaling into multiple satellite “pods” with a sales leader-to-agent ratio in the 30-40 range, which he considers the breaking point for quality connection and retention.
He shares proprietary systems for the benefit of the listeners, notably the Reverse Offer Playbook. This strategy is used to combat canceled and aged listings by generating a seller-initiated offer to prospective buyers and their agents who have shown interest. His final advice centers on the non-negotiable need for consistent investment in coaching and development. He argues that a strong P&L-based investment in self-development is the true measure of a top performer, not a cost to be cut.
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Here is a sample link to the toolkits we discussed on the podcast.
Connect with George on LinkedIn.
Learn more about The Laughton Team on Instagram and online at myphoenixhomesearch.com.
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