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Lauren Bowen’s shift from healthcare to real estate may not be unheard of, but her process-oriented mindset has fueled her success in both fields. As a natural leader, Bowen sought a career that offered independence, ultimately discovering her calling in real estate.
Bowen joined Robert Slack, LLC, in 2014, quickly rising to team leader in Ocala, Florida, where she expanded the agent roster and led the team to top performance in conversion, transactions and volume. Now, as Chief Operating Officer, she oversees 12 team leaders and holds real estate licenses across five states, with 10 years of industry experience.
Currently, Bowen is focused on adapting to NAR rule changes, which she describes as “the most pressing issue” her team faces. Through dedicated training and transparent communication, Bowen has ensured her team’s smooth transition.
In a conversation with Inman, edited for length and clarity, Bowen discussed those challenges, the real estate industry’s recent shift in the wake of commission lawsuits and what she’s looking forward to at Connect Austin next week.
Inman: Have you narrowed down the tools that you’re planning to discuss during your Inman Connect Austin session?
Lauren Bowen: We are going over a few different tech tools that we utilize. We have a massive database, and we will be going over Follow Up Boss for our CRM. We’re also going to be touching on RealScout, Fello and CallAction. We’ll also throw out some others that we use like Digital Maverick and Ylopo.
Is there anything else that you look forward to at the conference? Is there anyone in particular that you’re excited to see?
I always love the value and the speakers that Inman brings together. We were at Inman New York, Las Vegas, and Miami, and we’ll be going to Austin. They cater to the area quite well by bringing relevant speakers to each of the areas. We have brokerages in Miami and in Austin, so bringing speakers and what’s relative to that market has always been a strong point.
I haven’t seen Tracy Tutor speak in person, and I am looking forward to seeing her speak. Ryan Rodenbeck from Spyglass Realty will be there. I know what he and his team do, and we’ve been able to pick his brain a bit. I’m excited for some of these speakers who might not be as heard-of out there being able to provide the value that they’ve been able to help us with.
I saw that you used to work in the healthcare industry, so I was very curious about how that transition from healthcare to real estate happened.
I don’t think it’s that unheard of that people know that I came out of the healthcare industry, but you are actually the first one that has asked what that transition looked like, and why it occurred.
I worked in the operating rooms for 10 years [as a certified surgical technologist and first assist], and then I got married and had a baby. When I had my son, my heart actually stopped, so I needed the pacemaker, and at that time, we weren’t sure if I would be ever able to resume working in the position I was in.
I started looking at other careers where I could be my own boss and dictate whether I was working or not. I found real estate and got my license and went from there. I guess I’ve been doing operations my entire life, whether it’s operating field or operations for the company.
Are there any skills that you learned in the healthcare industry that you find useful in real estate?
I do. I was trained to be very process-oriented. Office surgeries are all unique, with different variations of what occurs, but they’re process-oriented. I worked in general OBGYN, podiatry and major cardiovascular. From start to finish, you have a procedure that you need to follow and a method you need to follow, and that helped me with real estate.
I was very methodical and very process-oriented when I came into real estate. I like people, so it was easy for me to build that relationship with the client, get them to showings, get them through a deal and help them in their largest financial decision they’ll ever make. It really is still a process, and you have to learn it.
You have to find what you’re good at doing, and you have to find what you’re bad at doing as well and tweak that. The process is behind both fields. I do think that learning that in the healthcare field did help me succeed in the real estate field as well.
What’s been the most pressing to you lately in the market?
The most pressing thing that we’ve had to focus on is the lawsuit — the changes and challenges of the NAR lawsuit that came about, and the procedures that we had to put in place. Four out of the five states [that we operate in] were fully operational and already utilized BBAs, but our largest state, Florida, did not have BBAs.
In the states that we did have them in, I can’t say we were always doing them before the showing like we should have been. So really needing signed agreements prior to taking clients out to the house was the most pressing thing that we’ve really been focusing on for probably the past three or four months. Our agents needed to be able to articulate the value of what they’re doing, why buyer’s agents were needed, as well as being able to get the clients to trust them, because this wasn’t something clients had ever been used to.
While there were plenty of agents who needed education on what was going on, we had to educate the clients as well, so we’ve really put an immense amount of time into all of our training, our buyer presentations and our Robert Slack Facts. We have scripting, we have role-playing and we opened up Zoom rooms every day the week it went live to make sure we could answer any questions.
To confirm, you said that four of the states already had BBA’s?
Florida did not utilize BBAs prior to this. Idaho, Colorado, Texas and Georgia did utilize them, so we were pretty lucky in that event, but we have to make sure we are getting them signed prior to showings now. Sometimes, it was the second, third, or I hate to say, I think we had some going on when the offers did, which was not what we should have been doing.
How have you helped team leaders that you oversee navigate the changes, and is there anything else that has been working really well for you since the changes took effect?
We realized quite early on that we couldn’t do it as a generic or general session between all of our team leaders, because each state was so different, even in the documents that they had. We had to break this down into state-specific courses, state-specific lessons. Texas and Florida were probably two of the largest groups that we had because Florida gave us our forms very late. Texas changed the forms the day before.
The biggest value that we’ve had is consistency, and that is in the training we’ve held. We have a NAR Edition, Slack News is what we call it, that goes out every Thursday which includes: state-specific forms, blank forms that the agents can print out and filled out copies so they know what information to put where with descriptions next to them. We do this for all of the states we’re in as well as the scripting and role playing.
What is our stance on some of the items that came forward? A lot of it comes down to broker level. What’s our stance when it comes to listings? How is the commission being paid?
Being able to be very transparent to our agents and our team leads, being consistent in the information we’re giving them, was probably one of our biggest strengths we had. When the time came to launch this, I am confident to say, it was a little bit smoother sailing than what I anticipated because we have been working on it for so long with all of our team members.