Keeping It Real Podcast • Secrets Of Top 1% REALTORS ® • Interviews With Real Estate Brokers & Agents

Courtney Hatfield the owner & top producing agent of Your HomeCourt Team talks about how she got into the real estate business. Courtney discusses how she started her career by joining a team and how shortly after that she decided to start her own team. Next, Courtney and D.J. discuss the importance of making big decisions and seeing mistakes as only tools to learn. Courtney describes the role of social media in her success and shares strategies for posting for agents.

Please check out Courtney’s Social Media Guide here.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Courtney Hatfield can be reached at 330-704-2621 and [email protected].

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and FollowUpBoss.

D.J. Paris 0:00
How does a small real estate team that closes one home every three days? How do they generate almost all of their business from social media? We’re going to find out today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interests and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with top producer and Team Lead Courtney Hatfield. But before we get to Courtney, just wanted to say thank you, because by the time you hear this, it’ll be probably about three weeks after I’ve recorded it. But we actually had our very biggest month ever as far as downloads and listens, which actually has been every month since we started, we’re super lucky to have always kind of gone up. But guys, we hit like a new plateau last month. So that would have been October of this year. So thank you does that November, December, you know, might not be as high because of the holidays. But we are so grateful which basically what I’m saying is thank you because we are not spending money on advertising. And the only way this is really getting out there as if people somehow stumbled across it on their own or that you’re telling them about it. My guess is you’re telling them about it. And so we want to say thanks. Really, it’s been a long wild ride five years now we’re going to keep going. But please keep telling every agent you know about our show. Our whole mission is to help every single agent you know learn from top producers like Courtney, so please tell a friend send over send them over to our website keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done can be streamed right there or of course you can find us wherever podcasts are served. So thanks. Hope everyone is having a great end of 2022 and on to our conversation with Courtney Hatfield.

All right, today on the show ruff Courtney Hatfield from McGough homes in Cleveland and the surrounding areas. By the way, they just opened up in Akron office. Let me tell you more about Courtney. Now Courtney is a wife, a mother of two and owner and top producing agent of your home core team. She’s also the co owner of your home court designs and social media and she’s a social media speaker. According to launched her career in real estate believing you 100% Get what you work for authenticity paired with hard work and determination is carried her team of six into the top 1% of Northeast Ohio. She’s closing and her and her team are closing a home every three days and again, only six team members. Now one day it just clicked said Courtney and the freedom to live life on our own terms was hers for the choosing. She held the power she chose how hard she worked her schedule her paycheck and her opportunities. And we’re excited to chat with her today and she is willing to share a lot of what she did to become successful with our audience. To learn more about Courtney wants you to visit her company website which is m c d M as in Mary C as in Charlie Diaz and David Holmes plural.com MCD homes.com And also follow Courtney on social media because she absolutely shines there. You can find her on Facebook just by searching for Courtney Hatfield, also on Instagram, Courtney Hatfield dot realtor. By the way, all of those links are in our show notes as well as a social media guide that Courtney is generously going to provide to all of our audience, which is also in the show notes. So Courtney, welcome to the show.

Courtney Hatfield 4:52
Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. I am a time listener. I just an episode this morning on the way to work.

D.J. Paris 4:59
Wow. Well, I I am so honored to hear that and really grateful to have you on the podcast as well. Because you what you and your team have accomplished in a relatively short amount of time is just nothing more than incredible. But before we get to sort of the present day, I’d love to start at the beginning. So can you tell us a little bit about why you got into real estate and and how you got into real estate?

Courtney Hatfield 5:22
Absolutely. So I got into real estate truly, by happenstance in 2018. It was a family decision, my husband’s family owned a brokerage at the time. And you know, I was a stay at home mom and I was bored. I was actually spending more money as a stay at home mom out of boredom that my husband was like, You need to go do something. So I was like, Well, what if I go into the family business, and I did, and I, I loved it from the start. I had a slow start with it though. Because right after I got my license, my husband’s uncle who was the broker actually was diagnosed with cancer. And he ended up passing away a year later. So it wasn’t really until 2019 that I really hit the ground running with my career. And I chose McDowell homes. I interviewed a few different brokerages, but they were one of the smaller boutique independent brokerages in Cleveland, and I really loved their culture and what they stood for it was a good fit. And that’s just really where I’ve made myself home. And I decided to start our team here. And so over the last three years, I’ve just really poured myself into this, you know, this baby that I created your home court team, and here we are, well,

D.J. Paris 6:39
you are killing it. And I think we want to just maybe remind everyone that you’ve only been really been practicing for, you know, a handful of years. And you started right when COVID was happening. So the fact that you started and again, on the heels of a tragedy and my my condolences for that, but also disability to start at, you know, tragedy aside, just COVID its own tragedy, of course, and what it did to, you know, to agents and their production, and everyone was was obviously struggling as agents to produce. And, of course, last year was was a pretty good year for a lot of agents because there was a lot more activity as we were all getting back to some degree of normalcy, but to then, but But this, you know, just to be able to, to start at this pretty challenging time is incredible. And how did you? How did you notice to create it? Did you create a team right away? Or were you already sort of chugging along yourself and sort of needed help? Or what was that? How was the decision made for that?

Courtney Hatfield 7:41
So I will say was the one thing that I really took away, besides the opportunity that I got from my husband’s uncle, when I came on to the family brokerage was I remember him, he had just missed a phone call. And I was sitting at the desk and I was just kind of like watching him because I was new. And I didn’t know what I was doing. And it in my mind, I was like, Oh, well, he has time to call that person back. But literally, he just missed it. And he was already dialing the person back. And I was like, Oh my gosh, that’s the type of hustle that I need. And I knew that I had it, like buried down in me. And so I was like, This is what I’ve got to do. So when after everything unfolded, and I started at McDowell, I was on a team. I came to McDowell and I joined a team. And I was only on that team for a short period of time before I realized I can do this. And I had everybody leads differently. And I had my own ideas brewing up inside. And I was like, I need to put this into action. And so I know I just went on a little side tangent. No, no,

D.J. Paris 8:47
no, this is all this is all. Absolutely. This is so incredibly unique. I want you to I want to stay with this. This is amazing.

Courtney Hatfield 8:54
It’s just interesting to me. It’s almost kind of how it all happened by happenstance. And but how it all fell together just so beautifully, to give me this career that I’ve built and to give these agents the career that they now have, and the people that we’ve met along the way, and it’s just I’m truly blessed for how it all unfolded. So, yeah, I know, I feel like I just gave him a really long winded answer there. But yeah, I joined a team. I realized very quickly, you know what, everybody leads differently. I do have leadership qualities. So what’s the worst that can happen? You know, I’m not successful at it. And so I kind of took that leap and I started and I started with one agent and I very slowly just grew to where we are now. I have six agents and we are all full time top producing, and just really incredible people all the way around.

D.J. Paris 9:54
Yeah, well I hear that I hear. It’s such a unique story. I’ve done I think 400 plus of these, and I’ve not ever heard anyone say I needed to develop a team, within a short period of time of not only being in the business, but also being part of someone else’s team where you’re like, I see what they’re doing, I could maybe do this in a different way or, you know, in my own way, and, and the fact that, in a time of really difficult time to be a realtor like all of this is, is blowing my mind, it’s leaving me a bit speechless. Because, because the results really do speak for themselves. I mean, here you are now with your six, or your five other agents are, you know, and your guys are closing, you know, 100 plus homes a year. And it’s not like, well, you’re 20 years in the business. And you’re like, it was time for me to build a team. And I was tired of working 80 hours a week. And so I started, it was like, right away, you’re like, I can do this. And that’s an incredible amount of confidence. And I mean that in the most sort of lovely way, because it’s just, it’s, you really did bet on yourself. And they’re really, you know, and I don’t mean this in any sort of pejorative sense or critical sense, but maybe you shouldn’t have even had that much confidence, right? And yet, and you made it. And that means I love those stories, you bet on yourself.

Courtney Hatfield 11:17
You know, I have that mentality. And sometimes it does bite me in the butt. And I’m just like, well, what’s the worst that could happen? You know, and so here we are, and the worst, there’s nothing bad about it. I went together,

D.J. Paris 11:31
I went, I love what you just said. And I really I know, I’m sort of stuck on this point. But I think it’s so important, this mindset that you have, I went and saw the filmmaker Kevin Smith speak once and we’re probably all familiar with him or or at least we know, we know the name and, and whether you like his movies or not, he’s he’s definitely had a impressive career as somebody that like worked in a video store, essentially, and then bet on himself and made his first movie clerks with like, a credit card that that was no studio would finance it. And then of course, went on to to a lot more fame, and he’s still making movies today. But anyway, when I saw him speak, he said very similar thing to you, to you. And this was his big message that when I saw him speak was, he’s like, betting on yourself. There’s really not much downside, right? He’s like, if you don’t make it, oh, well, you find something else to do. But what if you What if you’re wrong? What if you what have you would make it? And he’s like, What if you’re What if betting on yourself is actually right. And, and I, and the fact that you’re saying this now, is just I hope our audience is taking this in as like, betting on yourself might feel risky, but it’s maybe not as risky as as people think. And so I applaud you for taking that leap. And, and obviously, you’re having an amazing ride. So congrats. Yeah,

Courtney Hatfield 12:50
thank you. Go ahead.

I was just gonna say very similarly to betting on yourself, which I feel like people, people need to do that not just in real estate, but just life in general, just have the confidence in yourself. And in your gut feeling of what you’re supposed to be doing all my life. I had been told I was, you know, bossy, or at leadership skills. And it’s like, Yes, I know these things, but how can I get there and channel them? And when? What’s that, quote, when preparation meets opportunity? perspiration?

D.J. Paris 13:21
Yeah, yeah, thing like that? Yeah, yeah.

Courtney Hatfield 13:25
It’s like, when everything comes to gather, so divinely just you have to trust it, that everything’s gonna work out in your behalf. And I think people should do that more often, not just in business, but in life. Well, I, I was just gonna say, I’m sorry, you don’t get what you don’t ask for, you know, I’m not going to ask you’re not going to get it.

D.J. Paris 13:47
And, and failure. Getting used to failure is a good thing, right? Because I’m sure as you run a team, there’s probably lots of things you’ve tried, you know, with your team that work and lots of things that don’t work. And I’ve found, and not in every case, but almost every really successful person I know, fails a lot. Like they’re just like, oh, failure is just part of the deal. But you just keep going you get back up, you try harder. And so it’s not even that failure is really the issue. It’s getting up from the failure, I think,

Courtney Hatfield 14:15
totally. And I wouldn’t even think I don’t even call it failure. Right? And it’s growing pains. We are gross. And I’m fortunate to be surrounded by agents that have a lot of grace as we grow to trust my vision, but they can say, Okay, well, this isn’t working out, you know, how can we correct this instead of just being all up in arms? You know, we have to we have to shift.

D.J. Paris 14:39
Yeah, yeah, pivoting and having having grace to for the imperfection of running a real estate business, whether it’s an individual practitioner and they just learned their best friend went with a different realtor as opposed to them or you know, somebody who’s running a team and maybe their top producer decides to leave and and it feels, you know, it feels Like, Oh, this is all failure. And it’s like, well, no, it’s just, it’s just an experience happens to be one that doesn’t feel very good and sort of sucks. But but it doesn’t have to be the end, right? It can keep keep moving you forward. And in fact, I learned, I read this, I didn’t learn it myself. But I learned it from reading it. But it’s like, we only actually learn from making mistakes. It’s only really the way that we do it. So I love the fact that you took it enormous chance on yourself. And here we are, I want to talk about social media and its role in how that’s helped really skyrocket your business. And you teach this as well. So this isn’t just something you do, you’re able to really tell agents. And I guess I want to start, before we get into it was something that I rarely, rarely ask people about social media. And I actually was telling this before we started, like, I gotta remember to ask this, because what is it maybe, first, maybe it’s a mindset thing. But how did what was the biggest mistakes that you see agents making in the way they approach social media?

Courtney Hatfield 16:01
Well, one of the biggest mistakes that I think agents make is not advertising themselves on social media. So I’m not saying don’t make a post, I’m saying when I go to your page, your Facebook page or Instagram page, how do I know that you sell real estate? If it’s a picture of the sunset as your cover photo? And you and your kids as your profile picture? That’s beautiful. But where does it tell me that you sell real estate? We are. We need to advocate for ourselves. And we need to advertise for ourselves. And so it’s free social media is free. So why aren’t we putting you know, you’ll see if you go to my Facebook page, on the very top, it my cover photo is my name, and my phone number. And you see multiple pictures of me in real estate, you see pictures of my kids, you say things like that, but there’s no question when you get on my page, what I do. And that mistake.

D.J. Paris 17:03
Boy, I agree. I think there’s certainly the going swinging all the way to the other direction. There’s too much too much advertising, of course. But I think what you’re saying is really important, because one of the stats that I might be a little off. So I apologize, you may or may not be able to correct me if I’m wrong. But one of the stats that that people forget or maybe don’t know is that especially with Facebook, and I don’t know Instagrams algorithm quite as well. But people who follow you on Facebook only see like three to 5% of your posts in general. So this idea of, of advertising is really important, because even though you put out a post saying, Hey, guys, I’m looking for clients, or whatever, or I just closed this home, only a handful of your followers are even going to see that. So you do need to make a conscious effort of doing some consistent marketing and not being afraid that people are gonna get so annoyed by this. If you’re doing 20 of those a day. Don’t do that. But or maybe do it I don’t know. But But certainly, don’t be worried about that, because Facebook is probably not going to share it with as many people as you want it to see it anyway.

Courtney Hatfield 18:10
Know, the algorithm on Facebook and Instagram, on any social media platform is only a very small sliver. See. And I can’t remember this statistic, honestly. But it’s a I want to say it’s like 30% or something like that. And I could be totally wrong. I could have just made that up that number sticking out to me for some reason. But yeah, like you said, only a small percentage of people see what you post. And so you need to be consistent in your social media posting, you’re not going to get water the same day that you dig the well. But if you keep digging, and you keep reminding people, you know, hey, I’m in real estate, look at this closing look at this review. Look at this cool kitchen, I got to show something like that, then you’re gonna stay top of mind. So you really have to be consistent and it goes first. When I go to your page. Can I see what you do? Do I know your face is your brand? Where’s your face? Where’s your phone number? I know I don’t scroll for phone numbers. You know if I want something? If it’s not right there I’m gonna find another phone number somewhere else.

D.J. Paris 19:18
Yeah, make it easy for people to reach out. Oh, and that can be done like you were saying that can all be done really in the profile or the the header image of of of a Facebook page or your own personal profile? Those your right you should make it easy. So that because and there’s nothing inherently cheap about that. I know some people struggle with like, well, I’m advertising and maybe that’s it’s like, you know what, it’s only it’s only cheap if you think it’s cheap. Like if you actually authentically I’m like I mean look, we advertise our business we I recruit Realtors as for our company, while the way I advertise is we have people who make cold calls to other realtors that’s advertising you If if that would have helped me on my Facebook page, I would put it on there. It’s not, it’s not. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that whatever your version of advertising is letting people know what you do is not bragging. It is simply telling people what you do.

Courtney Hatfield 20:15
Yeah. 100% You’re so right. It’s not like I said, your face is your brand, the brand of your real estate business, when somebody thinks real estate, I want them to think of my face, I want them to think Courtney Hatfield. And by doing that by posting and being consistent on social media, I recommend posting two to three times a week. Don’t Don’t post those filler posts, don’t post the post that, you know, just because you feel like you have to post something, post something that is going to post a survey be like, what what would you want in your dream house? You know, do you want a wine cellar? Do you want to library? Do you want to in ground pool posts, you know, get something that’s going to get the people involved? Yeah. I also recommend, why recommend posting two to three times a week, I have my notes right here. So that’s what I’m looking off at the side. So I can stay on track, but also posting on stories daily.

D.J. Paris 21:16
What do you recommend for stories, because agents have lots of different strategies, some agents are like, Hey, I met a showing or, you know, listing or whatever. And I found this really cool thing in the home that I want to show you or check out this beautiful, whatever. Or there’s people that are like in the car on the way to the gym, or you know, there’s lots of different approaches. And I’m not here to say which ones work better. But I’m curious what you found works the best for you.

Courtney Hatfield 21:43
So I keep my posts, my posts on my page are very strategic, I fake posts with faces get 30% more likes and interaction than post without faces. So I’ll post pictures of myself or my kids or whatnot. Clients, when they close in front of their house, I’ll post a picture and I’ll paint the story for them. When it comes to stories, those are a little bit more, they don’t have to be as thought out. If you’re out to eat and you’re like, look at this amazing milkshake I got and you tag the location in it. You can throw a song on there, you know, you’re out in a showing and look at this incredible bathroom. Oh my gosh, you know, it, you don’t really have to put much thought behind it. I know people go live in their stories. I think that that’s great. Show your face go live. As long as you’re consistent doing it. And it was funny because I had somebody I was I didn’t post on stories for maybe a day or so I kind of took just like a break from social media for a minute. And I had one of my agents reach out to me, she’s like, how am I supposed to know like, what you’re up to if you’re not posting on your stories? And I was like, You’re right, like people follow along. And you don’t realize that but people are like, Oh, Courtney didn’t go to Starbucks today. What’s going on, you know, and people get invested.

D.J. Paris 22:59
They do. I mean, it’s funny, like, you know, this, this I, for those for anyone listening who is into gaming, or maybe has children that are into gaming, they there’s a huge industry now people watching other people play games, or talk about playing games. And and this is something people do get invested in other people’s lives. And this is a great opportunity to get people hooked on you. And so you said something really interesting. I just want to this really particular granular thing you said that was so, so smart, which was look at this cool milkshake I’m enjoying at whatever place and you can tag of course the place and then it just in case they’re not on top of their social media. If you know if they you know that well, if they are on top their social media, they’ll see it and maybe even repost it or or sort of set it out to their audience. Or if you don’t see that you can always message them and say hey, FYI, I just put this put you in a real I wanted to support the business. Yeah, and yeah, and then that becomes an opportunity to chat with the owner or whoever’s in charge.

Courtney Hatfield 24:01
Absolutely. A few things. So you could do with that by being your market expert tagging your plate, the tagging places and social media. So then they’re going to share it. People are going to see Courtney Hatfield dot realtor shared that post. She’s a realtor in this area. And I’ve gained followers from that I’ve had people message me from that. You can also one thing that I think is really neat to do is do interviews with local owners and love that local businesses and just draw Hey, I’m your market expert. It has does not have to have anything to do with real estate. But you

D.J. Paris 24:40
can either. I’m going to take over the interview for two for 30 seconds because Courtney just in Courtney, I’m so sorry but I am such a big fan of what Courtney is saying so I apologize for jumping on top of this one but I love this so much. So Courtney just gave everybody a literally a a strategy you could do every single week, find a local business in your area that you love and support and that you want to see succeed. And you have to think about it. Now we’re going to switch to the business owners perspective. They’re getting phone calls constantly from people wanting them to spend money on marketing efforts, right? Whether it’s print ads, radio, you know, internet ads, whatever it might be, it’s all about, can we get more money out of the owner so that they can get more business? You’re basically saying, I want to give you a free shout out to everyone who follows me? And can I do a quick Can I come down to your thing and do a quick like, two minute interview or 10 minute interview about why you started this business? There is never going to be somebody that says no to that, like, oh, no, I don’t, of course, I don’t charge. It’s just something I do. And oh my god, it’s so incredibly brilliant.

Courtney Hatfield 25:46
It’s just a great way for you to be in the media. So when people think of you, the goal is to get people to think of you as their source of information for your town, it doesn’t just have to be real estate related. And so you can go to the dance studio, and you can say, Oh, this dance studio has classes Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and they’re offering a special this month, this is the owner, Billy Bob, you know, and he has done this 37 years and just really expand on that. They will show the video, you can share the video to different you know, if you have a city Facebook page, I know I know those exist, you know, a county Facebook page, and you can just get your face everywhere.

D.J. Paris 26:36
I’m pausing, you know, because you just said another amazing thing. So because I live in a little neighborhood called Wicker Park, we have a Wicker Park community group and and we’re, you know what, you know, most of the posts are either there’s a lost cat or dog and somebody wants to find her other than that, it’s does anyone have a good recommendation for an Indian restaurant or whatever, a hairdresser, or doctor or whatever. So you pretty just said this amazing thing, you you go interview the business that you want to support, whatever it is, doesn’t matter what it is just something that you are really into. And then you absolutely have a community page somewhere online on Facebook, or there’s other places too, but and then post it there. And then oh, by the way, they’ve learned that Courtney, the realtor is putting this out and that’s amazing.

Courtney Hatfield 27:21
You’re their market expert. That’s how you want to brand yourself with your face. In on social media. With social media that I I like to drill, like drill in on is going live. So people are uncomfortable, they don’t like going live in front of the camera. It’s not for you. It’s for other people. So when you go live and you’re at a showing, or you’re at an open house, or you’re at you know, we have a theater downtown, where I live, going live there and saying I’m live here with this Beatles tribute band. And just those things won’t go into your won’t go into your feed, they won’t go on to your profile, but they’re going to go in your stories. And it looks like you’re everywhere all the time. And this has nothing to do with anything I just said. But when you’re posting in your stories, people don’t need to know that you’re actually you know, on your couch ordering a pizza, you know watching a movie, like out and about, it looks like you’re constantly going.

D.J. Paris 28:31
Yes. And perception is important. Is

Courtney Hatfield 28:35
it is so if you look like you’re everywhere, and you’re involved in everything, and you dabble in everything, people will say, Oh, Courtney has done this, she’s been here. And then they’ll come to me and it just builds that relationship. And you’re

D.J. Paris 28:48
also providing value because like oh, by the way, Beatles are my favorite band of all time. So I will always go see a Beatles tribute band. But but the but what you said is really important because whether you’re actually at the event, or you’re just promoting the event saying hey, Beatles fans, there’s this there’s the Beatles thing tonight like that’s that’s still incredible value to people that like wow, Courtney really knows what’s going on whether you’re there dancing, or not even able to attend this idea of providing value, even outside of real estate just saying like, I know what’s going on because this is my community. I work in this community. Oh, yeah. Brilliant. If we’re talking about branding now really, we’re talking about this idea. Yeah. Oh my gosh,

Courtney Hatfield 29:29
nobody needs to know you’re on your couch in your pajamas. Like you’re just providing value. That’s literally what our job is to do is to provide value via market resource be people be their go to person and that will eventually you don’t get water the same day. You take the while it will turn into clients it will turn into referrals. I’ve seen this time and time again in my own business, and we’ve only been in business, you know a few years.

D.J. Paris 29:56
Unbelievable what percentage of your business comes from social median I mean, just a general idea of I want to pause for a moment to talk about our episode sponsor are one of my favorite companies out there follow up boss. Now after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country for this podcast, do you know which CRM is used by more than any other by our guests. Of course, it is a follow up boss. And let’s face it, following up is the key to taking your business to the next level follow up boss will help you drive more leads in less time and with less effort, do not take my word for it. Robert slack, who runs the number one team in the US uses follow up boss and he has built a one and a half a billion dollar business in just six years. Follow up boss integrates with over 250 systems, so you can keep your current tools and lead sources. Also, the best part they have seven day a week support so you’ll get the help that you need when you need it and get this follow up boss is so sure that you’re going to love their CRM that for a limited time, they’re offering keeping it real listeners a 30 day free trial, which is twice as much time as they give everyone else. And oh yeah, no credit card required. So you can try it risk free. But only if you use this special link visit follow up boss.com forward slash real that’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial. Follow up like a boss with follow up boss. And now back to our episode.

Courtney Hatfield 31:23
My my personal business is all social media. Everything that I do i We do get leads on the team. But I don’t take I don’t take leads I pass those out. Sure. So all of mine last year, I just social media referrals I had 30 I closed 30 transactions.

D.J. Paris 31:42
Amazing. That’s amazing. So this idea how long did it see you talked about? Yeah, look, you know, we’re this is a marathon, not a sprint, you post once, and then nothing happens? And you’re like, Well, that didn’t work. And it’s like, no, it probably did work. It’s just not how people make decisions about about their biggest what are their biggest assets, if not their biggest asset. They need to get comfortable, it’s going to take time if you’re the followers, the followership is going to grow. How long did it take before you started seeing results on social?

Courtney Hatfield 32:14
It was probably

maybe a year and a half or two years into consistently posting that I really started to get and you’ll see in the packet and the PDF that I’m going to share with everybody, you’ll see examples of people saying, Hey, do you have a business card or phone number I can share with my ex husband, he’s on the hunt for a house. Oh, Courtney Hatfield, 100%. She’s amazing. And local to the Canton area, one of the nicest ladies you’ll ever meet. And I share, I share a ton of screenshots. Just proof that this does work, if you keep putting in the time putting, you know, it takes time, it does take time. I’m very authentic in what I post. I’m not it’s not everything is curated. It’s right now you’ll look at my Instagram, and I just bought a house and I’m redoing it. And just little projects. And so you’ll see a bunch of reels of me, you know, attempting different projects. It’s what’s really happening in my life. And I get comments on there that people are like, I can’t wait to see how this turns out. And you know, it keeps people in the loop. So they may not need me for real estate right now. But if they want to redo their fireplace, they can call me, you know, yeah, still providing that value, even though it’s very authentic to who I am.

D.J. Paris 33:36
And they might, they might be doing their fireplace and going, you know, we don’t know the right masonry guy or or the architect or the contractor. Like, we should ask Courtney because I know I’ve been following her. And this is what she’s up to. Oh, I love that. I love that that is really, really smart. And I don’t know that anyone’s ever really talked about that in that way on the show. So I appreciate you going into that detail. And I’m a marketer. So I just absolutely love this conversation. And it’s so funny because what we’re not talking about necessarily is how to hone your actual skills as a realtor, which you absolutely should be doing on top of that. But I think agents focus on that quite a lot, which they should and they often neglect this this marathon like you were saying one and a half to two years before you saw results on social that is not a fun ride, right? Like that is a that is a it’s a grind that you just have to trust is eventually going to pay off. And it’s just look this podcast. No, nobody listen to this podcast for the first year and a half. Nobody cared about it and took that long before anyone even noticed it. So I am right with you.

Courtney Hatfield 34:41
Right you have you have to put in the time. I I’m weary about instant success. So every day that I’m like, Are we still like a top producing team? You know what I mean? I still question how I just question it because I feel like instant success. There’s something to be said about it. So we really have, you have to put in the work. And we really have to get where we are social media, I do recommend. So what I, my method on social media is I pick five topics to post about. And they are real estate related. And I can fly through those real quick, just my guess. So the first thing I posted are pictures of myself, because like I said, photos of faces get more, they get more engagement than photos of like, I don’t know, a certain set. Then I post work new listings, sold listings, reviews, market news and team news. And anytime I post team news, I am a big fan of giving credit where it’s due. So I am tagging the entire team. It’s not about me, it’s about them. This is their businesses that we are trying to grow. And so I will tag every single person. So now what I just posted about your home court team ends up on six different Facebook pages or Instagram pages or Instagram stories. And our brand grows from there. I’m a big, big advocate of posting reviews, you should absolutely don’t post a one star review. But if you’ve got a five star review, you should absolutely post it. If you sold a million dollar house, it doesn’t matter if you sold that house. Last July, you still sold that million dollar house. So post it keep posting it posts, you know, different posts like different photos of it. Because you are a million dollar agent now. You sold

D.J. Paris 36:36
Yeah. And you can even every year on the home anniversary, say congratulations to so and so who purchased or sold this home a year ago. So much fun working with you, you know could be something like that. And tagged.

Courtney Hatfield 36:49
Lee? Absolutely. Yes. i The third thing I post, I post my kids and I always try to make it business related. So my daughter had career day at school. She’s six, she wanted to dress up like me for career day. Oh, she put on her earrings. She put on her sweatshirt that says your home court team. She carried her purse, and she carried a little coffee mug. And that’s what she went to school and I posted the picture. And everybody loved it.

D.J. Paris 37:16
Where I’m supposed to do this thing I’ve ever heard. It was,

Courtney Hatfield 37:19
it was like, wow, she had my business cards in her little she had a little fake Louis Vuitton purse, and she put her business cards in there. And she took them and that was like passed those babies out, like get them everywhere.

So I’ll post

pictures of that or her in front of a listing sign. You know, pretending like she sold it. Just, that’s great. I love that. Just different ideas to kind of bring it it’s still business related, but it’s still personal to me.

D.J. Paris 37:47
Sure.

Courtney Hatfield 37:48
I’ll post quotes. I do like sales quotes. And funny. The quotes that I see get the most interaction or saves on Instagram are quotes about money. And I used to yeah, I’ve never I’ve never even spoken about this with anybody because that’s just like one of those you look at your insights and you’re like, oh, okay, but I’ve noticed quotes about money, financial freedom, things like that those get the most saves and shares on Instagram, which I thought was. So I’ve ramped up sharing those.

D.J. Paris 38:22
Well, everybody wants more money. Right. So I think that’s makes sense. Yeah,

Courtney Hatfield 38:26
absolutely. It. Yeah, it does. And then I post I, I like doing DIYs. So I that is my fifth thing that I post our DIY videos of the house, or a big thrift or something that I found a Goodwill or I’ll post things like that very authentic to me brings in a different type of audience gets the engagement and they know that I’m a realtor. In the meantime,

D.J. Paris 38:53
well and I want to point out something about the DIY crowd because DIY crowd is online. This is where they’re learning oftentimes how to do some of their DIY projects. So this this is also like going where your audience is yes, it may be it’s a different audience than then who was more attracted to other posts of yours. But that’s the whole point is you have different different sort of categories for different types of clients. And this idea of DIY, people are always looking for inspiration ideas instruction. So that is I’ve never heard anyone talk about that. That’s really smart.

Courtney Hatfield 39:26
It’s it’s home. It’s you know, we sell homes for a living so people what do they want to do they want to renovate their home or they want to update it in some way. And so I just post my personal DIY projects and products that I got things like that. And I mean, like I said, it’s a different following, but it’s it’s very in line with what I do.

D.J. Paris 39:49
You you’ve given us so many great I’m sorry, did we hit all five of your topics because I Okay, good. Because I know you You were you were wonderful, I lose track of things because I get so excited with with a lot of these ideas. And I’m realizing as a quiz, so funny. So this is This is Courtney, is was kind enough not to scold me, but she, she, she probably should have because she said to me, before we started, do you guys have Instagram? And I’m like, really for the podcast? And I was like, How stupid are we that we don’t have Instagram yet. And I’ve heard about lots of people talking about social media in the past. So this is my challenge to myself to take my own advice or Courtney’s advice, rather. And I’m going to commit to starting to post more regularly about the podcast, as well as our own business for recruiting realtors. But you are absolutely right. And you’re getting all of your business through social That is insane.

Courtney Hatfield 40:47
Yes, that one thing and I know, we talked about something mistakes, agents make

social media Polit politics COVID You know, religion, issues

that yeah, religion, things that we are, we’re not in the market to debate, we’re in the market to sell houses. So let’s, if somebody, you know, if I vote for somebody, and somebody else votes for somebody, I’m not going to not sell them house because they didn’t vote for the person I wanted, you know, I don’t care who they voted for. I care that they, you know, use me to buy their house. So I just keep all of that separate, you’ll never find a single thing on my page about anything political. And, well, it’s just

D.J. Paris 41:32
gonna polarize, it’ll polarize and alienate a certain group. And you’re as a business owner, I guess there’s, I guess, a strategy of like, if I polarized one side, maybe the other side comes? I don’t know, it seems like a very risky strategy. I would rather let everybody wanted to work with

Courtney Hatfield 41:50
100%. And I am shocked by how many agents I see that are just so like, rude about it on Facebook or Instagram, more. So Facebook, but I’m just like, oh, my gosh, don’t stop talking.

D.J. Paris 42:03
i Yeah, I’m a big fan of the the realtor community labcoat agents, which is, I think, the largest realtor community online. And it’s wonderful. And there’s so much value there. And I love Tristan, and those guys, they’re lovely. They’ve been on my show. But you’re right, like in this is just a realtor thing that other people wouldn’t necessarily see. But there’s a lot of like, you know, a brokerage has, you know, layoffs or something bad happens to a brokerage. And there is a lot of brokers out there who are like, Thank God, so and so’s going down and, and I’m just, it’s just, it’s an incredible amount. And I wonder what they’re posting on their own public stuff, if you know, they’re willing to serve. It’s very strange. So don’t really hate people. Exactly.

Courtney Hatfield 42:44
There’s enough sun to shine for every single person. And you know what, I kind of feel like if you were not, if you used your time better, maybe, maybe you should be selling a house instead of complaining on Facebook, you know?

D.J. Paris 43:01
Yeah, you’re right. And people who, you know, just being really conscious about the about your image. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s called branding. It’s really important. It’s funny, like we’re starting, I’m starting another podcast, unreal estate related for non real estate related for an organization. And as a result, I’m just interviewing people for this particular nonprofit. And it has nothing to do with me, but someone has to be the podcast host. And so I had to really think that even though I don’t speak for the organization, I’m not on their board of directors, I’m part of the community of this organization, but I’m not their main person. But it’s going to come across that I’m the main person because I’m going to be doing this podcast. And I had to realize, okay, it’s important for me not to insert myself into this new podcast, because I don’t I don’t speak for this brand, but you speak for your own brand. And on this show, I can be as you know, obnoxious says I want because it’s my own brand. But, um, but you’re absolutely right is, is really being aware that, you know, every time you post, it’s permanent, it’s forever. And, you know, maybe people should be more conscious of what their brand is because their clients are going to look them up.

Courtney Hatfield 44:10
They they really are. Yeah, just be very careful what you put on and what you’re willing, some people that’s the hill they’re willing to die on. So all right, I’ll take the clients you don’t want.

D.J. Paris 44:21
I love that. And, and also, I said this at the beginning, but I sort of said it quickly, Courtney is been generous enough to provide a guide for our audience to really help them understand best practices around social media marketing, we’re going to make that available. It’s in the show notes. It’s a PDF super easy to to get and really will help you start your journey there. What do you tell agents, people that that you speak to about doing more on social, if they’re afraid to sort of turn the camera on themselves? If there is a fear of I don’t know. I don’t really, you know, it’s hard for me to expose maybe, you know, they’re just a lot of people aren’t calm. have trouble in front of a camera. I know I’m not.

Courtney Hatfield 45:03
I’m not either. But a lot of people are in, some agents on my team aren’t comfortable with it. And a lot of the time, it really just takes practice. It just takes practice. Honestly, they’re nobody’s thinking about what you look like when you send them that video, they’re listening to what you have to say. And when people look too far into it, they really do. Yeah. So you know, I, it just takes practice, stand in front of a mirror, record yourself a few times, one thing that I have told my team is instead, so let’s say they make connection with a new lead, send that person a video and say, it was so nice to talk to you, I can’t wait to work with you, I’m going to, you know, send you properties, whatever you guys spoke about. But do it, make a video of your face and send it to them? It’s so much better than, hey, this is Courtney Hatfield, you know, it was such a pleasure and being, you know, sending them a text message that’s so much more generic, anybody can send a text message, what makes us different? Let’s send a video message.

D.J. Paris 46:09
So So I want to, I want to drill down on this for a moment because I want to make sure I understand the process because this is brilliant. So let’s say you’re at an open house, you get a list of people that have come in. And now at the end of the open house, you now have names and phone numbers and email addresses of people to follow up with who maybe they’re not going to buy the home. But but maybe they’re you know, you could show them other properties. So So you saying make a video for those people as well? Yes. Every How do you send that? I’m sorry? How do you distribute that to them?

Courtney Hatfield 46:40
Just through a text platform. We use, though I send my stuff through follow up boss.

D.J. Paris 46:46
But follow up boss. They’re there. They’re a sponsor of ours. So we love

Courtney Hatfield 46:51
shameless plug. There you go. I know.

D.J. Paris 46:54
But you’re right, you’re right. We all have phones that can easily do this turn around, hey, it was so good meeting you at the open house. I love it.

Courtney Hatfield 47:01
That’s all it is. And I just flip my camera around, I take a video, it was so nice to meet you guys at the open house. I know this home wasn’t for you. But I’m gonna go into go home and send you some options that might be looking forward to working with you. Then they see your face again. They’re more apt to respond, like we said, faces get more interaction than just a generic text message that anybody can type up a text message. sure anybody can send a video, but not everybody will.

D.J. Paris 47:27
In fact, almost nobody will. Exactly.

Courtney Hatfield 47:31
And it’s really, just really,

it makes you stand out against your competition.

D.J. Paris 47:38
It does. And it shows that you are willing to go a little bit further maybe than other realtors to sort of earn the business I guess not even when the business earn it. I think you do have to earn it. I think earning it is through showing people that you’re willing to work, work for them and making a video shows. I mean, again, it’s just a great, great idea. Now I’m gonna we’re gonna put a cap on this episode, because Courtney has given so much of herself in this episode, that I think our audience is like madly scribbling notes about what they can do, because this is incredible. And Courtney has got to go because they’re probably closing a home later today. So I’m going to, I’m going to I’m going to do this and I want to have you back in the future to even give more more and more tips. But you’ve given us a solid hour of unbelievable tips and advice for social media, I am so so grateful to have had you on our show. And I want to make make a point that if there are any realtors out there, who are maybe in the Cleveland or surrounding areas, Akron area as well, you know, and you’re looking to maybe join a team, you know, you never know reach out to Courtney and see if she might be a good fit. Or you might be a good fit for her team. And by the way, maybe you’re just somebody who’s looking for a realtor to either your realtor in another area and you have somebody moving to that area or that you know you’re not a realtor and you found our podcast and you want to work with somebody like Courtney and by the way if you live in those areas you absolutely should you know what’s the best way that someone should reach out to you.

Courtney Hatfield 49:07
You can find me on Facebook, Courtney Hatfield, or you can find me on Instagram Courtney Hatfield dot realtor all one word. I’m on all the social medias, you can find me anywhere, Courtney happy.

D.J. Paris 49:20
And all of those links will be in the show notes if you’re listening to this through a podcast app. And also remember to download her pdf of some best social media practices that she was so kind to, to provide to our audience. And Courtney on behalf of our audience, we really drink from the fire hose today. And so I am my head is spinning a bit and I am about to start to put some some things into action for our own podcast here and my own real estate business or the real estate business I work for so that I can get better results on social so I want to check back in with you shortly and and get you back on the show. So on behalf of the audience, you provided incredible value. So thank you And I know how busy you are. So thank you on top of that. And also, well, we appreciate it so much. And also, on behalf of Courtney and myself, we want to thank everyone who’s watching and listening to the end. We really appreciate your your participation in our show. And the best way you can help us grow is by telling a friend just think of one other realtor that could benefit from hearing maybe somebody who needs to have a better social media presence and send them a link to this episode. The best way you can have introduced someone to us just send it to our website, keeping it real pod.com Or just have them pull up a podcast app search for keeping it real, hit the subscribe button. And then the other only thing we ask is that you leave us a review, let us know what you think of the show. It helps us grow helps us get better. So help us get better by telling other people and letting us know what you like and what you don’t like about our show so we can keep getting better for you, Courtney, thank you so much. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Thank you

Welcome to our monthly feature, Close-ing Time – in partnership with TheClose.com.

Chris Linsell from TheClose.com and D.J discuss lay-offs by a lot of technology companies and how it’s affecting the market. Chris and D.J. also talk about the value of personal brand vs the brokerage and discuss extensively the importance of building your own brand. Next, they talk about what should agents expect from brokerages they join. Last, they discuss what can agents do to improve their services to their clients.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Chris Linsell can be reached at [email protected].

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks, Reblie and FollowUpBoss.

D.J. Paris 0:00
As a realtor, what should you be expecting from your brokerage in 2022 and 2023? Well, the answers may surprise you. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this next year? And do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads into interested buyers? And are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? We’ll find out why agents across the country come to real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering Realtors a real estate sales and marketing solution to generate more business. Real geeks is easy to use. Their websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for the end user. Real geeks is mobile friendly delivering an excellent user experience on the go. Real geeks includes an easy to use CRM. So once your leads sign up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up triggers. Real geeks is loaded with tons of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase your brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. This episode is also brought to you by readly Aerial maps. An aerial retail map can sell a commercial listing before it investor ever sees the property. But creating retail maps takes hours robbing you of time you could spend selling real estate. And if you’re tired of spending late nights scouring the internet for retailer logos to populate your commercial real estate map or you’re tired of paying a designer hundreds of dollars to do it for you. While you’ll love rapidly. Now readily is a real estate map generator that lets you create custom designed professional aerial retail maps for your commercial sales buyers and listing appointments in minutes not hours. Simply enter the subjects property address, auto populate nearby retailer logos with the click of a button and download your aerial retail map readily turns the headache of creating commercial property maps into a quick five minute task so you can spend less time making maps more time making money. So get your first aerial retail map for free today by visiting readily.com. That’s REBL i e.com. And sign up for an account no credit card required. And now on to our show.

Welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ parricide. Your Guide and host through the show and today is our monthly series called closing time with Chris Lin sell from the close. Now this is a partnership between keeping it real and the clothes.com. And actually, let me tell you about the clothes. The clothes.com is the kind of real estate website designed to give agents teams and brokerages actionable strategic insight from industry professionals that they cover real estate marketing, lead generation technology reviews, team building strategies from the perspective of working agents and brokers who want to take their business to the next level. Now please visit the closed.com you can browse all of their articles they write incredible, long form deep dive, well researched articles about everything from how to grow your business to what tools you may want to consider which we might even talk about a little bit today. They just are absolutely it’s the some of the best content I have found in the real estate industry again, the clothes.com. And with us as always, as Chris Lynn Sal. He is a staff writer and real estate coach for the close. And Chris is the closest resident expert on real estate topics ranging from marketing, lead gen transactional best practices and everything in between. He’s also a licensed agent in the state of Michigan, and has been part of hundreds of real estate transactions from modest world starter homes to massive waterside compounds. And when he isn’t writing, you’ll find Chris flyfishing are performing on the stage of his community theaters production. Also he’s a he’s a busy father as well. And husband. So Chris, welcome once. Oh, and by the way, everyone before we bring Chris on, although he’s already here, please visit the clothes.com Make that before you go to bed tonight. If you’re driving, go to the close read one of their articles. And trust me you will be hooked. Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Linsell 4:42
DJ, thanks for having me. And I appreciate the fanfare here. It’s good to come back to come back to keeping it real because you’re welcome. So Flattery will get me everywhere. It really will get you in a lot of doors. I’ll be honest with you know, your real estate pawn there but that will opened a number of doors.

D.J. Paris 5:01
You know, it’s it’s funny, I don’t know if you’ve had this experience, but I was I was thinking a lot, I have a friend, this is funny, I’ll just mention this for a moment, I have a friend whose father retired he worked at, I won’t mention right word, but he worked at a traditional big fortune 500 company for for his whole career. And now he’s working just for fun at like a Home Depot kind of helping people find things because he’s really into using his hands. And, again, high level business executive now just kind of more having fun doing this, this thing in retirement, and he mentioned to one of the one of the co workers who happen to be female, he said, Oh, hey, if you smiled at customers more, you probably get, like more, you know, some sort of accolades, or people would talk about you more and, and I said, Oh, you have to tell your dad, you cannot say that you cannot, you cannot, cannot encourage people, but it is one of those things as real estate agents, I think about where I would never tell somebody, make sure you smile, because of course, you know, that’s not really the job. But being professional and being conscious of body language and how you’re communicating with your clients is really important. And so much of communication is nonverbal. Not to say that you should smile when you don’t feel like smiling, that’s actually disingenuous, and probably a really bad idea. But this idea of noticing, you know, if you are faced, we are face to face, again, at least most of us, you know, it’s really important to sort of, you know, practice in the mirror, have a good awareness of, of what your posture and you know, and your different mannerisms so that you can connect more easily with CLI. Anyway, that was my little soapbox.

Chris Linsell 6:39
I totally agree, though. I mean, frankly, like, the the mandate to smile more, you’re right is a little outdated. But I think it’s true, it holds true in the real estate space, there is a mandate to create an environment where your clients will connect with you. Because, you know, I’ll say this, that’s not a requirement to have a real estate license. But it’s very often a requirement for a successful real estate business, to have a demeanor and an environment where your clients feel like they have the opportunity to connect with you. So smile, frown, laugh, cry, whatever you feel like is providing the environment for for your clients to connect with you. I don’t really care. Just be genuine about it.

D.J. Paris 7:28
Yeah, yeah. Being genuine. And you know, we’re, I thought there would be a great Instagram account. I don’t know if anyone’s ever done this. And they should, I would love to see the the makeup lists real estate agent or the an unretouched photo real estate agent Instagram feed, where it’s literally just people as they are without all the you know, sort of bells and whistles. That technology allows us all to sort of be blemish free and perfect. And I think that people oftentimes, you know, don’t connect as well to that as they do just sort of genuine intimacy. And I agree that could be as just a matter of being yourself really, what’s what’s going on in in real estate right now you’re really well connected. You have a you have a good pulse about the industry and sort of what’s happening.

Chris Linsell 8:20
I’ll tell you why there’s a lot happening, you know, we could talk about a number of different things. And here’s what I’m not going to talk about today. I’m not going to talk about interest rates, I’m not going to talk about the the the, you know, average sale price across the United States or in specific kinds of influential markets. I’m not going to talk about that stuff. I’m actually going to talk I’d like to talk to you about what I consider a second order effect of all of that other stuff. We’ll let all of that other stuff the guineas will leave that to the you know, pundits on CNBC and and an NPR and the like, let’s talk about the second order effects of all of that stuff. Specifically. The second order effect that I’m seeing a lot of which is we’re seeing a lot of real estate companies, specifically real estate brokerages and, and firms that are centered in their use of technology, and getting out in front of business and the way the transaction is conducted. We’re seeing a lot of these companies, laying people off. We’re seeing a lot of these companies, a lot of these firms, contracting, tightening their belt, you can there’s 100 Different euphemisms for it. But the long and the short of it is we’re seeing a lot of companies who are reducing their headcount and rethinking their strategy, and I think it is a valuable thing to point out and I’d love to get your insight on this. That a lot of the companies that What are leading the headlines for this sort of activity? Were the ones that just 18 months ago, were also in the headlines, but for very different reasons. They were there because they were a disruptive technology forward business. They were changing the way the real estate transaction was conducted. They were offering agents and brokers in teams, something they have never gotten anywhere else before. Those are the same companies that are now laying people off. You’re not seeing a lot of Coldwell Banker, a lot of REMAX a lot of century 20 ones in the news because they have to cut their technology staffed by 20%. Pretty interesting.

D.J. Paris 10:39
It is interesting, and I sort of, you know, it makes logical sense to me, why that’s happening, why these layoffs are happening, you have a tech heavy sort of, you know, player, whether it’s a brokerage, or a tech provider, selling individual services directly to agents, or to brokerages, who, you know, probably saw a huge boon in their business over the last, you know, 18 to 24 months. Of course, you know, we all remember, you know, what things looked like when rates were lower and inventory was was tighter, it was definitely still really difficult to be an agent, but firms flourished during that time. I know our firm did we were worried that gosh, we maybe we would have to go out of business, nobody really knew what was going to happen. And that’s like, oh, wait, all of a sudden, brokerages did really well. Individual agents were stressed out and, and they had a lot more work on their plate, but they typically did well, too. And now, of course, you’re having companies that, that maybe entered the market a little bit later with it and putting massive sort of, you know, capital behind some of this technology or the staffing. Now, mortgage companies are a perfect example. So they all staffed up because they had to, in order to fulfill orders during the boom, and then now are, you know, are now struggling and having to layoff people and firms are doing similar things. But yeah, you’re right, I don’t hear news. And maybe it’s maybe it’s just better kept quiet, or it’s actually just not happening, although wouldn’t be kept quiet. Some of those companies are public, and that information would come out in earnings reports. But this idea of not hearing it from the traditional brokerages that they’re they’re doing much much cost cutting measures at all.

Chris Linsell 12:28
It’s interesting too, because, you know, one has to kind of stop and wonder whether or not the reason that is, is that these you know, the more traditional brokerage models have less of their resources tied up in what would be considered more of these kind of forward bleeding edge sort of efforts. I think that that’s a reasonable take in this situation. But I do think it’s worth pointing out that one of the challenges with companies exploding onto the scene in the time of a boom, is that we know as real estate professionals, this market is cyclical, it doesn’t matter what’s going on in the world, there’s always going to be natural cycles. And if you buy in on the upswing, there’s going to be a downswing. It just is the natural course of the market and of the economics of the real estate industry in general. So, you know, one thing I’m telling agents, as we kind of talked through this sort of analysis, and people are asking me questions about this. You know, a lot of people are asking me, like, is the is the compass model? Dead? Like, are they are they doomed for failure? And the answer here is no, I think it’s unequivocally No. But what agents should be thoughtful about in this is that the compassed model, this idea of providing agents with a whole heck of a lot of technology and marketing and branding resources, as a component of your package, rather than outsourcing those things, Agent by agent. That is the v1 of that, that plan, and they’re going through a contraction right now they’re learning what did not work. They are retooling. And when the market bottoms out and scoops back up, there’s going to be a v2 there. I mean, if you think that Apple was offering the iPhone in the 1980s, had the finely tuned machine figured out, you’re crazy. They went through a number of market cycles before they really figured out exactly how to put their foot on the gas. We’re going to see that in the real estate tech and the real estate brokerage space too.

D.J. Paris 14:51
And I also think, too with a company like compass and I’m I’m at least here locally in Chicago. I’m connected to a lot of Compass agents. I’ve asked them like, hey, the news about some of this layoff and reducing staff by whatever the percentage was, I think around 25% of the back office staff maybe and please forgive me, compass people if I have that wrong. I, I, I’m not here to celebrate any sort of layoffs at all. Because I actually think that that’s not not good for, of course, those people in the company, but but I don’t hear people I know, having much concern about about the compass agents I know, in particular, are don’t seem to have much concern. And I, and I’m wondering if that’s because their individual business has not seen, you know, any sort of change the the tools that were promised, seem to still being being able to be delivered. Now. Now, you were saying, you know, maybe that will change, right? Maybe they’re the compasses ability to deliver on some of those promises may change, and they will adapt. But it doesn’t seem to have trickled down in that one specific companies instance, at least here locally in Chicago, I have not heard agents go. Agents might say, Well, I’m a little worried about what’s happening at the company. But I haven’t heard Oh, it’s affected my production. So I imagine maybe that’s part of the reason to why we’re seeing a lot of headlines, but maybe we’re not hearing a lot from Compass agents about it.

Chris Linsell 16:20
Yeah, I think that that’s, that’s probably on the nose here. And you know, one other element to kind of add to that particular point in the conversation is I speak to a lot of agents who they talk about their personal brand, versus their brokerage brand, and how those two things interplay. And the reason that this is kind of off the top of my head right now is I recently just published the 20 end of 2022. update to the best real estate companies to work for article. And in doing so in interviewing a whole bunch of agents across the United States to kind of get their take on their brokerage and on their brokerage brand. The emerges this trend of agents saying a brokerage and its brand and its offerings are all very important to me. But for most agents, their book of business is not based on the artwork on their sign placard, it’s based on the name on the rider their name on the writers, so whether or not they are a century 21, or a compass, or a side or a, you know, any of the major players in the company, or in the in the brokerage space. Regardless of what the artwork is on the sign placard, as long as their name is on the writer on top of the sign, their book of business is relatively stable. And so keeping that in mind, what’s most important to their clients is their relationship with them, like we were talking about earlier, I mean, it is about the relationship that they have with their buyers and with their sellers. And so, though, tools like an automated, you know, technology, forward listing presentation offered by compass or complete, you know, social media branding, offered by, you know, different exp teams, even though those are things that kind of grease the skids of building your business, that isn’t where transactions are won and lost most of the time, you may be reducing or increasing your conversations early on, you know, maybe as a part of that process, but at the end of the day, it’s not the tech tools that are winning new listings, it’s you that’s winning the listings.

D.J. Paris 18:44
Yeah, I agree. And obviously, this is evidenced by all the transitions that agents make, you know, in every market, this idea of moving from from company, you know, to a different company, a different firm because of whatever particular reason. I think you’re right, I think I think that’s becoming more evident to agents as well, that the Hey, our, our brand logo and our our local sort of brand. Yes, it can, of course make a huge difference, especially in smaller communities, maybe, you know, certain certain communities, maybe vacation communities that that comes up more. So yes, of course, someone’s brokerage brand can and will make a difference. But then there’s a lot of agents that self sponsor, and it’s just them and that’s the best sort of example I have of, you know, people are able to do it with zero with not not zero resources, but with just literally their own resources are able to build a successful business and many of the top agents I know have done exactly that. And it’s not because the other firms haven’t come calling saying please join our company and maybe the splits aren’t quite high enough. I’m gonna build my own thing no the splits are high enough you know brokerages right now I’m we’re seeing I don’t know what it’s if you’re noticing this with the people you you coach or or in your local market, but boy, there’s a lot of recruiting going on right now it is just constant which makes sense. But as as the, you know, business has slowed a little bit by missing a lot of recruiting.

Chris Linsell 20:21
Well, it’s so interesting you say that too, because I’m seeing the same thing. You know, agents that I talked to, I mean, are getting, I mean, it’s it is not uncommon to get multiple calls, from, you know, from different brokers entities. And one of the interesting things that kind of comes about this is that it does point out that the most successful brokerage models in our industry are not necessarily the ones that offer the best tools, but are the ones that offer the best environments for agents to build the business that they want. Like those are the brokerages that hang on to the agents that are the top performing in their markets, it is not a matter of like who’s got the flashiest listing presentation, or who has the best branding. It’s interesting, because some of that stuff does correlate, but I think it’s coincidental, but it correlates it is it is primarily in my opinion about who offers the best environment. And that’s for agents to build the business that they want to operate because that everyone else is just chasing that if you’re building, if you’re setting an environment that is not cohesive or conducive, excuse me to building you know, allowing agents to build a business that they’re actually satisfied with your your time is limited, you’re you’re you’re going to expire eventually because agents are going to find those places. And to that to that end, I think it’s important to kind of call out here. If you find yourself spooked, by like reducing of the headcount at maybe maybe you’re a part one of these brokerages, that’s cutting back on resources. Keep in mind, it is about finding that environment that is going to allow you to build your business. And so if you’re the brokerage you that you’re in right now is not offering you that environment, it’s time to answer those recruiter calls. But it’s also time to think about the fact that maybe this environment actually already exists. Maybe what you need here isn’t somebody to hand you a silver platter full of all the food that you’ve ever wanted to eat in your entire life. But maybe it’s just like this brokerage is just handing you the keys to the kitchen and saying like, listen, we got an open, open, open slate here, build whatever you feel like building, we’ll do what we can to provide the resources necessary to give you the opportunities that you want. We’re not going to build it for you. But we’re going to give you the opportunity to build it yourself. That is a very empowering feeling for agents. So be thoughtful about the fact that just because the tools maybe aren’t there in the short run doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, you just might have to build them yourself.

D.J. Paris 23:05
Yeah, or the company that you join or that you’re currently a member of or maybe even going to consider maybe they don’t have a particular tool that another company has. Well guess what there are? If not, while there’s certainly dozens, if not hundreds of pretty prominent tech firms offering those tools that you can piecemeal or ala carte order on your own. So if your business is down and individual production, if you’re enrolled in a virtual production is struggling right now, along with a lot of other people, I would encourage you like Chris said, if you’re exploring other options, I would look less for bullet points of things they’re offering versus having a conversation about so how can you help me get back on track? That how can you help me get to the next level? Not? Hey, we’re gonna you know, and then also understanding that recruiters are people who do recruiting oftentimes are, you know, these are salesy type people, and they’re going to want to persuade you to join. My advice is always randomly don’t ask the recruiter for names, randomly call three or four people at that brokerage and say, Hey, I was thinking of joining I just had a great conversation with so and so. I really wanted to, could I get just a few minutes, can I take you out for a cup of coffee and in fact, you probably already know people at those firms, saying, you know, do you think this is a good fit for me, typically, that person will have no real incentive to persuade you to join their company. But they if you have people that you trust and this goes back to having great relationships with other you know, people, other broker or other realtors in your area, you can actually have those conversations and you might find that, you know, certain offices have certain managing brokers that are more attentive. that have, you know, different types of meetings or different types of skill based training? I think anything that skill training is something that that is not as common. There’s not a lot of skill training that I find from brokerages and boy, the ones that offer it, you know, you can basically beat a, it’s hard to beat a path to their door because there’s so many people wanting to get in. So for me, my advice is look for skill focus training, versus the coolest and newest tech, I’m a tech guy, I love the coolest, the newest tech, that’s what I would be drawn to. But I wouldn’t know at the end, it’s kind of like when you go shopping for a TV and you are sorry, I when I go shopping for a TV, which happens like once every 10 or 15 years, and I do all this research and I want to buy the absolute best TV and then i i spend months researching, I buy the TV, wait for it to be on sale. And then I get it a week later, it’s just my TV, it’s just the exact same. I’m watching content as I was watching before and a slightly newer model with slightly more bells and whistles. I use none of the bells and whistles. But I just, you know, need to watch something I need to watch through a device. And so I think being aware that sometimes the bells and whistles up here are a lot more important than they actually are is something to keep in mind.

Chris Linsell 26:12
Yeah, I agree completely. And at the end of the day, also, there is this, I think the equivalent version of that that experience you just had in the real estate space, to me is a lot about agents realizing it doesn’t matter nearly as much as they thought it did. The the kind of the new, the new labels on things like the new label on the CRM or the new, the new graphic on my side placard, those things matter a lot less, if you are not transforming the way that you are operating your business. When you are switching firms or changing teams or you know, though making those level changes. And I guess that like the the moral of that story is just like DJs TV problem here. It would be a transformative experience if DJ went from he’s he’s watching us consuming his content on his TV, to consuming his content on say, a laptop. Yes, the screen is a different size, but all sudden he has a keyboard and he can have create these all of these relatively interactive experiences for consuming content that he would not have in a very passive, you know, exposure experience watching TV. The same can be said for your real estate business. Maybe it’s time frankly, I hope maybe this is a mandate for someone listening right now, maybe it’s time to turn off the business TV and turn open the business laptop as it were, maybe it’s time to stop being passive and expect your business to be built based on the tools of your brokerage, even if that brokerage is a really tech forward bleeding edge like we’re top of the line with all of our bells and whistles, sort of options. At the end of the day, all of that stuff is just a remote control with a volume knob and a channel in a channel changer. If you want to go to the next level, you got to go to a laptop or something with a keyboard and a mouse where you can start having interactive experiences and building the business that you actually want to be operating using the tools at your disposal because at the end of the day, a passive experience it doesn’t matter what the brand is, whether it’s Sony or Samsung or Coldwell Banker or REMAX a passive experience is going to get you the same basically the same result. It’s the interactive kind of active experience where things are really going to start to change.

D.J. Paris 28:50
I want to pause for a moment to talk about our episode sponsor are one of my favorite companies out there follow up boss now after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country for this podcast. Do you know which CRM is used by more than any other by our guests. Of course it is a follow up boss and let’s face it following up is the key to taking your business to the next level follow up boss will help you drive more leads in less time and with less effort. Do not take my word for it. Robert slack who runs the number one team in the US uses follow up boss and he has built a one and a half billion dollar business in just six years. Follow up boss integrates with over 250 systems so you can keep your current tools and lead sources also the best part they have seven day a week support so you’ll get the help that you need when you need it and get this follow up boss is so sure that you’re going to love their CRM that for a limited time they’re offering keeping it real listeners a 30 day free trial which is twice as much time as they give everyone else and oh yeah, no credit card required. So you can try it risk free but only if you use this special link visit follow up boss.com forward slash real So that’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial, follow up like a boss with follow up, boss. And now back to our episode. I wholeheartedly agree we’re talking about really building and maintaining and evolving your own personal brand, to, uh, to sort of become adept with the times. And and really the best way that I know, if you’re trying to figure out if the goal of your business is to develop more satisfied customers, if that’s ultimately the goal is I want people who have interactions with me, and do transactions with me to be like, Wow, that was amazing if that’s your goal. And I imagine it’s probably everyone’s goal who’s listening, then what I would encourage you to do as a first step is not to try to assume that you fully understand even though you may have perfect five star reviews across the board on Google and Zillow, and that does say that you know what you’re doing. But it might, I would, I would encourage you to do is to reach out to those previous clients and say, May I take you out for a cup of coffee, I am working on my business plan for next year, you are an amazing client. And I just wanted to get ask you a few questions about how I can better sort of stay in touch or better connect with people in between transactions. You know, once I’m in a transaction, I feel like I know what I’m doing. But, you know, there’s a lot of time in between transactions. And I don’t want to be the annoying person who’s always, you know, showing up in your inbox or in your texts or on your phone going, are you You know what, what’s going on as if anything changed in your life you need to buy or sell isn’t it. But at the same time, I want to stay connected. And I wanted to, you know, sort of have a conversation with you about maybe some ideas I have and what you think of that, if you did that with one client a week, for even just, I don’t know, if three months, you would get so much incredible information about what your clients actually want and need. And then to Chris’s point, you’re now you’re developing your own brand. And yes, you know, whatever firm you’re working out, hopefully that complements what you’re doing. And helps, you know, you’re hopefully working for a firm that has a a positive brand in the community. But this idea of reaching out to your clients now is the time to it’s towards the end of the year, you can even say Hey, this is for next year’s plan. But I just wanted to get a better sense of what I can do. Maybe in between sales. I think that is such a great question to ask. And very few professions ever ask service professions ask questions that way like I was, I’m always surprised when I buy a car. Why is it that and I it’s not like I’ve bought many, many cars in my life, but I bought a few. And how come I never hear from the dealership or the or the salesperson, maybe the salesperson is no longer there. But But I don’t hear from anyone one year out. Hey, it’s your one year car buying anniversary seems like the easiest, simplest thing. I don’t ever maybe I get a postcard once in a while, but I throw it away. But even car dealers could benefit from this right? Because you’re only buying a car so often. I’m sorry, I got off on a tangent. But I want to cancel that

Chris Linsell 33:09
you’re like right on the right on the numbers there. Like, I’m sure I’m not in the automotive space either. So I don’t I don’t know the details here. But I’m confident there is a wealth of knowledge around what the typical Buck car buying cadence is. And, man, it just does not it’s not a stretch to understand that people’s experience with buying something like a car is so colored based on the professional that they work with. It is it is the same it is it is the same in real estate. There’s just no two ways about it. And so creating systems that give you the opportunity to build that relationship to build that success, like I mean, I know we started this conversation talking about, you know, layoffs in tech in the in the tech space and like, what the bleeding edge of real estate looks like next and whether or not you know, it’s a market that supports all that stuff. Frankly, you know, this conversation is actually about the fact that it doesn’t matter what the bleeding edge looks like, as if that has nothing to do with the relationship that you’re building. Yeah, that’s right. If the tools that are either available or not available, will drastically affect your ability to build relationships, then yeah, you should be paying attention to that stuff. If those things don’t drastically affect your ability to build those relationships. Then those may be just distractions and things that are preventing you from that interactive business and keeping you trapped in the passive.

D.J. Paris 34:47
Yeah, I guess. I guess the message is brokerages are unlikely to save you that being said, can they complement can they add or subtract? Obviously they can and and Joining the right brokerage is something that is very important for everyone listening to consider, but also to realize that there’s just a lot of smoke and mirrors in the marketing or recruiting of agents in this industry, just like there aren’t any any recruiting industry. So realize that most brokerages are always hiring. That’s another thing to keep in mind. So whether they tell you or not most brokerages, certainly the larger ones are. And, you know, there’s i, if it was me, and I was out there producing and wanting to find the right brokerage First, I would figure out what my brand is myself. Here’s what I want my clients to think and feel about me, here’s what I’ve built already. And then I would take that brand to other brokerages and say, Does this fit, how can you help add to my brand? And and those are great questions, and I’m a recruiter. I’ve been doing this a long time. Nobody ever brings that to me. They really don’t. I wish they did. Because in a way, it’s easier that they don’t because it’s a tougher question to answer. But it’s, it is the best one of the best possible questions you can ask. When you’re meeting with another firm is saying, Here’s my brand. What can you offer? Or how can you help me grow my brand? And not just well, we’re going to give you some leads and rehab this great tech? Yes, yes. But how does that specifically help my brand? What can you do? And maybe it’s, Hey, it you should also know what your weaknesses are? In other words, as an individual agent, are you the person that goes, you know, I’m a I’m a Brian Buffini longtime fan. And I know I’m supposed to write personal notes, because that’s part of the Buffini method, and it works, but I just don’t do it. Okay, fair enough. Why not take that to a brokerage and say, Look, I understand your maybe you can’t write individual personal notes for me, maybe they can. But this is something that I’m not good at is do you have a solution for me, that can help me get these out because it will grow my business and really bring being more active in the conversations versus passive, the recruiters gonna lay out all the bells and whistles and it’s every firm you go to is going to sound like this is the greatest firm I’ve ever talked to, because that’s what recruiters do. But bringing, saying, Hey, here’s, here’s some of my weaknesses. Here’s some of my strengths. This is what I need from a brokerage. Because I just talked to my clients. And here’s what they told me they wanted. And I need some help with X, Y, and Z. And then can we write that up in any sort of agreement? Can we actually put that on paper so that we’re both on the same page, I have a clear expectation of what what you what I need, and you have a clear expectation of what you need from me.

Chris Linsell 37:42
No 100% right on the nose was right on the nose, that the business that people want to build is within your grasp. It is just a matter of identifying what levers actually will create that opportunity for you and which ones are distractions.

D.J. Paris 37:58
We should mention, too, that the close has a lot of resources around brand building around even, you know, as Chris said, they every year update their best brokerages to work for by the way, that would be the first place I would go because it’s important to understand the close is not funded, or or I apologize, Chris, if I’m speaking out of turn, but they are not influenced in any way. They are an independent, sort of, you know, content provider, they’re not influenced by the firm’s that they write about. In fact, if they were, you know, they wouldn’t have the loyal readership they they would have, because that would be evident that their content is being manipulated or, or or changed. They are independent sort of journalists and writers who do a deep dive and are willing to say, here’s what we think. And so that would be really honestly the first place I would look because it is a trusted source of independent, you know, individually thought out opinions and reviews. So, you know, that would be a great place to start to if you are exploring other options.

Chris Linsell 39:04
Yeah, I agree. Come visit us. close.com we got tons of stuff on here that will level up your real estate business. I guarantee it.

D.J. Paris 39:12
Yeah, I do as well. I’m a huge fan. And I think it’s a great place for us to sort of wrap for for this time. So this is this is really I think, for everyone out there struggling I get it our agents, we have about 800 agents at our firm here. Everyone’s a little freaked out. It’s it’s normal. It’s not trying to say it doesn’t, you know, don’t don’t worry, because of course everyone worries and and now’s the time though to realize you can be more proactive and you can actually take some some bigger steps forward. But talk to your clients see what they need. That’s the job. Right? So so do as much of that as you can and you’re going to weather the storm just fine. But yes, the clothes.com This is a great, great place, please make it bookmark it Make it something you check a couple times a week look for their content. It’s just good it’s really good. So anyway, on behalf of our audience want to thank Chris for coming on as he does every month for years now we just amazing content every single time really really thoughtful intelligent stuff and Chris is a writer at the close and he also does coaching with them and so Jeff check out the clothes.com for all things a Chris as well as just all things from that the other wonderful members of the staff there write and produce. And on behalf of Chris and myself always thank you for making it to the end of this episode. We really appreciate it we hope this has been helpful for you please give us feedback we need to know what you want so we can better meet your needs. So let us know and the best couple of ways to do that. Number one, I actually one way to do it, leave us a review. Just go to whatever podcast app you might be listening to or if you’re watching this on YouTube, let us know in the comments. But just let us know what you like and what you’d like to see different or changed it’s okay we can take it we want the criticism and we want to always improve because that it just improves our listenership. So it all everybody wins. Let us know what you think of the show. That’s that’s all I got for this week. Chris, any final thoughts?

Chris Linsell 41:16
Go out there, be active and be be a part of your success. Don’t be don’t be on the sidelines of your own business here. This is your game to win.

D.J. Paris 41:27
I couldn’t I couldn’t have said that anywhere near as well as you did. So that will be the final word. Chris, thank you so much. And we will see everybody on the next episode.

Thanks

Welcome to the October episode of Learn With A Lender with Joel Schaub of Guaranteed Rate!

In this episode Joel explains what the FED raise of the rates means for the real estate market in general. Joel discusses the importance of educating your clients and never give up. Joel also emphasizes the importance of building relationships between realtors and lending professionals. Last, D.J. and Joel explain Joel’s Weekly Market Update and Lender Introduction Template is, how agents can subscribe for them.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Joel can be reached at [email protected] and 773.654.2049.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and FollowUpBoss.

D.J. Paris 0:00
Now that rates are above 7%. How are you talking about them with buyers and sellers? We’re going to discuss that today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.

Welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show today, once again is our monthly series learn with a lender with Joel shop from guaranteed rate. Now Joel is the vice president of lending at guaranteed rate. And he’s been doing loans at a high level since 2003. And he’s gotten to that level because of what he does specifically for agents, which is he gives back part of his commission to the buyer on every transaction. Now last year alone, Joel gave back almost $300,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with him and that puts Joe’s volume in the top 1/10 of 1% of all lenders nationwide. In fact, out of 400,000 loan officers in the country, Joel is ranked number one 137. Now last year, he closed 619 transactions, his highest amount ever, for one year for almost $250 million. And already this year, Joel is close to 162 transactions for $106 million. Now if you’re looking for a loan officer, we cannot more highly recommend Joel he’s the very best we’ve ever worked with. PS I’ve worked with him too. And I say the same thing. Joel can be reached. By the way, here’s his email address [email protected] J [email protected]. Or you can shoot him a text message or call him at 773-654-2049. Both of those ways to contact him are in our show notes. So you don’t have to write that down. Just go to our show notes. And you can click and call or email there. Now let’s say hello to the biggest Cubs fan. I know Joel Schaub welcome Joel

Joel Schaub 3:08
adj, thanks so much for having me. It’s crazy when you hear those numbers. But it’s always so good to come on here and give back and actually share the insight that I’ve gotten from other real estate agents who call me. And every single time we do it, we really have a black.

D.J. Paris 3:24
We do and we should start out by saying just yesterday, the the news that was being seen all over television and print and online, was of course that the Fed raised rates, raise rates, again, 75 basis points, so three quarters of a percent. And I know that you know I when I first saw that I thought oh, what does that mean? Meaning how does that affect me personally? How does it affect the real estate industry? How does it affect, you know, anything related to housing. And so I am excited to sort of get make sense of what that means and what agents can you can do with that information to help keep their business rolling.

Joel Schaub 4:05
I’ll break it down into two easy centers that you can have if you’re an agent when you’re talking to buyers, because agents really come to me and they go, how do I explain this? Right? And so, by the time this is happening, we’re getting ready for another federal rate increase of short term rates. Okay, but let’s stick with what happened yesterday, where we had a well choreographed increase of 75 basis points to the short term. And what that meant was it was already baked into mortgage rates. So people ask me all the time, how did mortgage rates not go up on a day where the Fed just raised rates 75 basis points. And as an agent, you can explain it to borrowers pretty easily. The Federal Reserve meets every six weeks, but the bond market reacts every single day and sometimes hourly, right? So the Federal Reserve increase was already baked into array So we saw them go up for sale, this announcement was already in the cards.

D.J. Paris 5:06
Yeah, the you know, I think one thing that’s that’s way to explain that for agents is to realize that these these banks, these lenders are higher economists who are tracking the what the Fed is telegraphing through some of their meetings. I know this 75 basis point height increase was absolutely expected. All the news outlets were talking about it days before it even happened. And of course, you know, companies that live and die on rates, which, of course, are lenders, this is this is their whole entire existence is making sure they’re aware of this. So the good news is, as as from what I understand, you’re saying is rates really didn’t move very much as of yesterday, because of the announcement.

Joel Schaub 5:48
And then by the time that we’re listening, we’re already getting ready for the next federal rate increase. And so what we’re going to see is pretty well choreographed another 75 basis point, hopefully, followed by a 50, and then a 25. So from here, we’re gonna see another 150 basis points of increases. So they’re not done yet. And what that means is, there’s still going to be a little bit more pain in terms of mortgage rates, which right now are already over six and a half percent. But as soon as the Federal Reserve indicates that they have completed the rounds of increases, the big mistake and the big myth, it’s wrong. And I’ll tell you as agents right now, we don’t need the Federal Reserve to cut rates for mortgage rates, the drop dead again, we’re not waiting down the line for Federal Reserve’s to cut the rate, as soon as next year happened. And they decide that they’re done with the rate increases, mortgage rates are going to come down. And they’re going to come down sharply. Okay, they don’t know how long it’s going to take. So I talked about it being next year. And that’s really what the economists think, is that they will have this under control, that the Federal Reserve might not cut interest rates for two years, two and a half years. So we’ll see exactly what happens. But as soon as they’re done with the increases, DJ, we know that anybody who’s buying today can refinance that mortgage. All right, so we go back to that one phrase, right, we’re gonna marry the home and date the rate.

D.J. Paris 7:19
Yeah, and, and so this idea, and that is such a great phrase, I kept I kept seeing this phrase over and over again, in the articles yesterday, you know, you marry the home, you date, the rate, it is such a great and imperfect, I remember back in the days, where there were even interest only loans, which I don’t, I’m sure, maybe they still exist to some capacity these days. But they were very prominent, as you remember, back in the early 2000s. And, and people would that that was part of the pitch was like, hey, as rates move, you know, you can obviously refinance. And and that’s something and also, I’m thinking as an agent, you know, if I’m thinking there’s going to be more rate increases coming, which, you know, you seem to suggest, as is happening, that you’re hearing another great reason to reach out to the buyers and say, hey, you know, rate increases aren’t over yet. And if you are, you know, thinking about making a purchasing decision, it might actually be a good idea to get in sooner rather than later not to use that as a scare tactic. But just to explain, here’s where here’s where our economists think rates are headed. And if we can get in sooner, boy, that might actually help us plus a lot of buyers sitting on the sidelines. Oh, yeah. And when rates stabilized, we can always refinance down the road. And you know, and you’re maybe not paying a premium for the homes that you would have made a paid a premium for back when rates were in, you know, much lower.

Joel Schaub 8:42
I’ll tell you a story. I’m glad you said that, by the way. DJs. Last week, I had several clients that knew that the federal increases were coming, right. And so what they wanted to do is they wanted to secure a rate even though they did not have a property. So I went down and I had probably five or six different clients that will buy sometime in the next couple of months. And what we’re able to do is do a rate lock before the increase and make sure that their rate was locked in for 90 days. And what that allowed them to do was not so much with this increase because it was just last week, but it’s going to insulate them over the next couple of months. So that when the next increases come, they still have a rate that was as of last week. And what does that mean for an agent if you’re listening, reach out to your lenders that you’re working with and ask them to do the same thing for any buyers that you have. Now you have a buyer that’s locked into a rate and as they go up, think about how much they’re going to be calling you to actually go out on showing they have a rate they’re going to have FOMO DJ they’re going to have a fear of missing out that if I don’t find a home and go under contract, I’m going to lose the rate that I have locked in. Okay, so banks have different names for this contact your mortgage advisor that you work with closely. Our our company called Audit lock and roll similar to rock and roll, where you can lock a rate and roll go out and find a home over the next 75 to 90 days. And this is one of the big advantages as an agent would be working with somebody that can do that for you. And just think of the power there, right DJ, you see how this could be an advantage for agents.

D.J. Paris 10:19
I see it as a huge advantage. I think it was much harder trying to get deals closed when rates were, you know, much lower, I think because we had more buyers, we had less, you know, less inventory, we had more competition. i All I heard was agents stressed out during that that time period, yes, deals got done at a record number. But boy, it seemed like a pretty stressful time to be a practicing agent. All of our listeners can probably remember. So even though you might have done more deals, you know, back then, remember what what amount of stress remember how many offers you were submitting? Remember how hard it was to get in touch with the other realtor? It’s actually much easier now. Yes, the hurdle is you have to educate your clients. But that’s your job, right? The job is to educate your client. So think about this, whereas I see realtors? Well, Joel does to us every single day. We have a lot here at our company, Joel works with hundreds and hundreds of agents. And he also sees this as a lot of people are kind of depressed right now. Agents meaning they’re going on. Gosh, it’s just hard. Okay,

Joel Schaub 11:20
it’s everybody. Right? Everyone seems to be that way. But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, I know you’re going to say,

D.J. Paris 11:26
well, the opportunity is always still there. And in fact, I every successful not every a lot of successful business owners that I know, say it’s in these times of challenge that the real opportunities are born because a lot of people just kind of, you know, fall fall apart. And now as you were telling me, before we started that you’ve you’ve put the gas on about doing more events, where now you have time to do more events, which is kind of nice. And you can you can actually put more into marketing so that when things do stabilize, you know, you’re going to reap the benefits of that as a loan officer agents could do the same thing. Now’s the time to do client appreciation events, you know, different maybe volunteer stuff, you could do volunteer events with your with your sphere. So if you don’t want to spend a lot of money, do a volunteer event, bring your sphere. There’s lots of things you can do right now as an agent to be proactive.

Joel Schaub 12:19
Right now, I fully agree with you in the sense that it seems slower for me personally. And the volume has dropped to about 10 to $12 million a month, when a year ago, we were doing much, much more than that. The difference here of doing 10 to $12 million on a monthly basis is that it’s so much easier for buyers to get an offer accepted. Okay. So when I’m submitting an offer, now we’re really talking about how much under the asking price we can get. Whereas almost six months ago, DJ, we were still saying, I’m going to submit an offer at full price and probably lose. Yeah, yeah. So there’s definitely a mindset here that you can definitely take advantage if you’re a buyer, if you can take some time and find the right place. As these rates stay high and maybe go even higher, there’s going to be sellers, where they’re just going to take a deal on a home to get it off the books and a dominant agent, I’m touching base with all of the people that are renting at a pretty high level, they can afford a certain dollar amount per rent, they can get out there and buy and let’s go make sure that they know there’s an opportunity coming up for sellers that will be selling under asking price.

D.J. Paris 13:33
Absolutely. I think now is the time to educate customers there, educate your sphere of influence, tell them what the reality of it is, with this rate increase and don’t take your foot off the gas with respect to staying in touch now is the time now is the best time probably to reach out because if if your clients or your sphere are watching the news, and they’re like, Oh, the sky is falling, you get the opportunity to reset that expectation and provide value and that’s, that’s really I think what separates, you know, whether it’s a loan officer or realtor from the very, very cream of the crop, the people that do the most business, they are proactive, they reach out they’re not afraid to share the truth and also it helps them reset expectations and everybody in life I don’t know I always want I always have these fantasies that like I’ll start getting phone calls from my service providers, accountants attorneys, you know, financial advisors going I have an idea for you and you know what I get very few of those phone calls and I think I would love it in my life if somebody were to call me once in a while and go I have an idea for you and this is what agents can do is partner with loan officers find out what what the real story is and then be able to share that with your customers so they’re not sitting at home freaking out. I want to pause for a moment to talk about our episode sponsor are one of my favorite companies out there follow up boss now after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country for the spy have cast Do you know which CRM is used by more than any other by our guests. Of course it is a follow up boss. And let’s face it following up is the key to taking your business to the next level follow up boss will help you drive more leads in less time and with less effort, do not take my word for it. Robert slack, who runs the number one team in the US uses follow up boss and he has built a one and a half billion dollar business in just six years. Follow up boss integrates with over 250 systems, so you can keep your current tools and lead sources. Also, the best part they have seven day a week support. So you’ll get the help that you need when you need it and get this follow up boss is so sure that you’re going to love their CRM that for a limited time, they’re offering keeping it real listeners a 30 day free trial, which is twice as much time as they give everyone else. And oh yeah, no credit card required. So you can try it risk free. But only if you use this special link visit follow up boss.com forward slash real that’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial. Follow up like a boss with follow up boss. And now back to our episode.

Joel Schaub 16:10
Agents right now can go out and talk to buyers. And the same thing that why are people afraid to buy something when it’s on sale? Right? I talk about sports teams when the team is really hot. Everyone wants to go to the game and they’re willing to overpay now the theme is not so good. We can go get really good seats and get a discount and Phil have the same show. Right? So when Hamilton was in town, and it was really expensive to get Hamilton tickets, once it was lower price today, did they give a half a performance? Was it not the same show. And I know it doesn’t equate exactly the same. And people say oh, that doesn’t make sense. But it’s true. Like, I like buying my soup on sale. I like buying shoes on sale. I’m telling buyers, let’s go buy some real estate on sale. And when rates drop, you can refinance the debt, but you can never refinance if you overpaid by 40 grand.

D.J. Paris 17:06
Yeah, and you can now show with data through the MLS or whatever data systems you might be using, you can actually show how price values falling. And so it allows the person to to maybe make up that difference where they might feel the rate isn’t exactly where they want it to be. But that home price might be exactly where they need it to be. And that wasn’t the case, a year or two years ago, it was those home prices were like oh my goodness, that was that was actually in my in my mind, those were bigger hurdles to jump, I actually think the rate hurdle is is is is not as big of a hurdle. But Realtors need to sort of reset their own expectations and realize there’s opposite, there’s always opportunity, but it’s harder to sell a stock when it’s undervalued versus when it’s overvalued. Right. So it’s it is hard, but that’s your job is to reset your customers expectations, buy things on sale rates are still reasonable, although uncomfortable for some people, but they’re still very reasonable in my opinion. And I think if you’re able to have those conversations and then go, you know, hey, we’re going to have a refinance opportunity shortly anyway, then, you know, I think you should be able to proceed as as normal. And

Joel Schaub 18:15
he was telling me the story last week, DJ, and they were telling me how they were overcoming objections from a buyer, several buyers, a lot of times the objection came in that I’m gonna wait until rates come down to buy a property, right, I think I’m gonna wait. And I want to buy right now. All right, throw up I want to buy when these rates come crashing back down. And instead of putting up a big objection, the agent agreed. They said, You’re right, I think rates are going to come down in the future, too. So let me paint the picture of what that looks like. If you bought then the agent went on to describe the scenario in which if some day happens, where rates plummet? What are we going to see a bunch of buyers rushed back out into the market. Then he said, let’s talk about a scenario in which we bought right now and got a deal on the home, you owned the property. And then when rates drop, you don’t have to rush into anything. You can call your mortgage professional refinance down to the rates that you think they’re going to be. And we bought the place under value. And then we refinance the debt in the future. That client went under contract a couple of days later after them doing that. So you control the narrative, and really talk from you know, speak from the heart.

D.J. Paris 19:30
I absolutely agree. And I think part of it is just the reluctance to reach out with tough news. And I think if for all of our listeners, if you can be the proactive person that reaches out when there’s tough news to your sphere, you are so incredibly valuable to that sphere. They’re not going to choose anybody else. And so I love the fact that you come on every month and share with us and it’s not always Wine and Roses. Sometimes it’s it’s tough news, but you’re willing to share Eric, you’re willing to say, even though things have changed, here’s how to talk about it. I mean, you’re providing you’re doing the same thing that Realtors could be doing here on this podcast, I know you do it with your customers, and the agency you work with as well, we should actually mention that, that you still partner with agents, and if there are agents who are listening, who are looking for partnership opportunities, maybe sponsoring events, maybe co branding, certain, you know, flyers, brochures, loan officers can help with that, especially right now. So if anyone out there Joel is wanting to partner with you, whether they’re an agent, or maybe they’re a buyer or seller who found our podcasts or listening to you and say I would love to have a loan officer for my own property that has this much information, what’s the best way someone should reach out?

Joel Schaub 20:47
I’m happy to do that. And we could set up a conversation and just the easiest way would be there’s an email address, where I would send you the lender introduction template, where if you did have a buyer, and you wanted to refer them over to us, we would waive the fees on the lending side really partner with you. And so it’s just [email protected]. And I know I mentioned this probably two or three segments ago, and I paid literally 100 the agents across the United States where I’ve had email conversations, long phone calls, I talked to so many people in so many different markets. And whether we do business or not, they’re like, Wow, you actually answered, wow, you’re replying. And they think there’s like five or six of me. And sometimes DJ, I think there might be five or six of me. But there’s an opportunity out there, whether it is me or a local lender that you really like, if you’re doing business, you’re valuable, okay, so you make sure you get something from the lenders that are all reaching out asking for business. So one of the things that we deal with give back in that way. And then the second thing is you can even email us asking for the weekly market update. The market update DJ, you’ve seen this before? Tell everybody,

D.J. Paris 22:00
I love it. So every week, Joel’s team sends out a how to make sense of what’s going on in the lending world. In very short an email, very short, bite sized, digestible, easy to, you know, basically sound bites that you can then just take and use with your own clients. It’s, it’s, you know, like, for example, I’ll go to the the big mortgage website, if a news website is called mortgage News Daily, and they just aggregate tons of stuff. And I oftentimes as I read through mortgage news, daily stuff, I’m like, I don’t know what any of this means. It’s very complicated. And your team will actually take a lot of the data that’s out there and make it really digestible and easy to read in a short email format, with graphs and information. And then you can take that directly to your clients.

Joel Schaub 22:44
It just makes you sound better. And that’s what we’re about is getting information and making sure that you understand enough, and then be able to actually explain a few things to buyers. So that wow, that that email really helped from Joel.

D.J. Paris 22:58
Yeah. So if they want to join your email list, which everyone should there’s obviously no cost for it. And Joel, and his team would be happy to share that with you, should they just email [email protected]?

Joel Schaub 23:09
Yeah, we’d be happy to do that, we can add them directly to the list. So it’s Joel JOE [email protected]. And so that’ll apply to the weekly newsletter. And then as for a partnership, you can absolutely ask for the lender introduction template, it’s already written out the way that you can introduce potential buyers and we can start working together and we really will, anybody that reaches out, we will absolutely partner with you and help you on your next transaction and get the lender fees waived in full and make you look good, really helped you grow the business to the next level?

D.J. Paris 23:40
Well, I love it. I hope all of our all of our listeners consider reaching out at the very least please subscribe to his newsletter, I promise you, it’s amazing. And it will help you be a better realtor, because you’ll have more information. And you don’t have to read, you know, 10 different articles, you know, to get this information, they do the hard work for you. So you can just sit back and let it hit your inbox. And then you can if I were an agent, I would take what you send every week and I would call a certain number of people in my database every single day for that next week going, Hey, I have a couple bits of news for you just wanted to keep you up to date on what’s going on. You could even leave it on someone’s voicemail really, it doesn’t have to even be you know, you don’t have to get them on the phone. And boy can you imagine I don’t get those kinds of voicemails. I don’t know about you with your different service providers in your life. But boy, I’d love to get messages like that. So I imagine your clients, everyone’s clients here would as well or sphere of influence. And you can really provide value versus just going Hey, you want to buy yourself something right now which of course you can do to but you can only ask that so many times before your friends stop answering the phone right? So if you call with with purpose, they call it I call it marketing with purpose. This is you know, obviously Joel’s team can provide you the purpose and the reason to reach out so everyone subscribed to his newsletter just email [email protected] asked to be placed on it. They’ll do that. And then of course you can reach out to him for any and all opportunities to work together to? Well, Joel, what a great, what a great way to sort of talk about what’s happening right now we appreciate it. I was even scared because I’m seeing all this news about the rates. And even though I know that it shouldn’t necessarily affect, you know, our business, you know, directly, I still I was freaking out yesterday, and I’m like, wait a minute, I know what I’m, I know enough to not freak out. So if I’m freaking out, your clients are probably freaking out too great opportunity to reach out calm the waters. And then you can, you know, provide some value. So anyway, Joel, thank you for helping call my waters and also for helping provide so much value here on the show. You’ve done it year after month after month, and year over year. And you have shown up every single month for gosh, years now. And that is really impeccable, remarkable, and probably no secret to the reason why you’re so successful. So everyone out there, discipline, and consistency and value. If you just focus on those three things, you’re going to be successful, you’re gonna get through this sky is not falling and stay positive. Right. All right, Joel. Well, thank you for keeping me positive, keeping us positive and keeping our show full of value. So on behalf of the listeners, thank you. And on behalf of Joel and myself, we think the listeners the viewers, you’re the reason this show, we just surpassed 2 million downloads. I think in the last week or so. We are so grateful to everyone who listens. And so please tell a friend let’s help us keep growing. Just talk to one other person about the show, send them a link, we would really appreciate it and that’s all we ask. Joel thank you so much and we will see everybody on the next show.

Oliver Graf the Co-Founder & President of Big Block Realty goes back to the beginning and describes how he got into real estate. Oliver discusses how he and his partner built Big Block Realty, how they’re different and how they make it work. Next, Oliver talks about what are the best practices of top real estate agents that bring them success. Oliver and D.J discuss what tools their agents use in order to leverage them to greater success. Last, Oliver Graf talks about his own podcast Founders Club and what’s it about.

Please check Oliver’s podcast Founders Club here.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Oliver Graf can be reached at (800) 550-3209.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and FollowUpBoss.

D.J. Paris 0:00
What are 100%? Commission brokerages and why are they so popular these days? We’re going to talk about that. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with Oliver Graf to talk about 100% Commission brokerages and why they’re so popular these days. But before we get to Oliver, just one reminder, please tell a friend about this episode. Maybe you know an agent who’s looking to switch firms or see what other options are out there or maybe somebody who just passed their licensing exam and is trying to figure out what firm to go to remember those days how difficult it was, this might provide some insight into an option they might not know exists, so send them over to our website keeping it real pod.com Not only can they hear this episode of course but every I think we’ve done 420 Some episodes of the show they can hear all of them just by going to keeping it real pod.com please tell a friend we really really appreciate it But enough about me and that thank you and now on to our interview with Oliver Graf.

Right today on the show we have Oliver craft with big block Realty in California. They are also expanding out to other markets and other states. But let me tell you more about Oliver now Oliver is a four time Inc. 500 entrepreneur, co founder and president of Big Block realty is big buck Realty has been recognized as one of the fastest growing independent brokerages in the country. He’s an active real estate investor. He is also host of his own podcast called founders Club, which is a top podcast dedicated to real estate and entrepreneurship. He is also the co founder of closing table a high level real estate Mastermind along with Sam Cora, man and I may be mispronouncing that, so you’ll have to correct me and Roland Frasier and he’s also the manager and CO creator of real closers, the second largest Facebook group for realtors. He’s also a husband and a father to two awesome sons. He’s a dedicated surfer and OGN artists on top of that he does it all. And to learn more about what big block Realty does, and we’re going to talk about that as well on the show. Please visit big Blake big sorry, big block realty.com We will also have a link in their show in the show notes so you can check them out. Oliver, it is such a pleasure to to have you on the show.

Oliver Graf 4:04
Yeah, thanks for having me. DJ very much appreciated. Sam correllian That’s my business partner. Thank you. It’s a tough last name. But yeah, appreciate the great intro and very excited to be here.

D.J. Paris 4:19
I have to tell you, Oliver is a bit of a like a hero to me in the marketing world because and I never really talked about this but we the the firm that that I’m at here in Chicago is called Cale Realty we big block Realty and Kol Realty have pretty much identical business model or commission and fee model, which is what we call 100%, which we will certainly talk about and I realized in the bath 400 episodes we’ve done I’ve never once talked about commission models. We talk a lot about top producers how they build their business and I’m certainly want to want to get your insight there too. But we’ve never really talked about brokerages and different options. And the reason I’m saying Oliver’s a hero of mine is not just because they’re firm has about 1500 agents, which is amazing. Like we have 800 agents total. He’s he’s got almost double that. But that’s not even the impressive part. But that is impressive. But what’s really impressive is their marketing. They, their videos for recruiting are the very best I’ve ever seen. And in fact, Oliver did know this, because we’re just, we’re just meeting now, but I had told him, before we started that one, this one of his videos was an inspiration for us, because we tried to be a little silly and funny in our marketing efforts. But these guys big block really, really does it just so perfectly well. So you guys are an inspiration to us. And you were trying to get to your level of marketing with your videos, which will have a link to some of those videos in our show notes. So you guys can see what big block does. But before we get to, you know all of that I want to learn more about you. How did you get into real estate? If you don’t mind me asking?

Oliver Graf 5:56
Yeah, so first thank you for the kind words we’re we’re very passionate about marketing and and creating videos and not just our our, our big tagline is we’re not your grandpa’s brokerage. So we do everything in a way that’s designed to stand out designed to be, you know, different and kind of forward thinking. But to answer your question, my partner and I, Sam, we met in college, and we’ve had many businesses over the years, you know, we have a entrepreneurial graveyard, so to speak of things that we’ve tried since the early 2000s. And then eventually, we both kind of made our way into real estate, we were cell phone salesmen in college, that was the way we used to pay the bills. And so we developed a kind of passion and real love for sales and the sales process. And so we thought to ourselves, if you know, if you’re gonna go into the sales profession, the best thing you can do is sell something expensive, because then the Commission’s are higher. And so the three most expensive things we could think of were jets, yachts, and houses. And since we didn’t know anything about jets, or yachts, we’d have we decided that houses would be the best way to go. So kind of transitioned, we ended up selling a few people inside of our cell phone store was T Mobile, inside of our, our, our boss at the time, bought a house, then the assistant manager bought a house and they were nice enough and had faith in us to help them with those transactions. So when we got those paychecks, we thought, hey, you know, this is this is a lot better than what we were getting at the time at the cell phone store. So that kind of started our transition into real estate. This was about 2006 2005 2006. And from there, you know, the market started getting pretty rocky at the time, we ended up doing a lot of short sales, that was the big thing going into those years, and really kind of did that heavy for the first three to four years. And then about 2010 is when that kind of dried up. And then from there, we decided that we wanted to start a brokerage. But we didn’t again, we didn’t want to do it the way that it had always been done. And that was kind of the basis for big block Realty and kind of how we wanted to build it.

D.J. Paris 8:42
And let’s talk about big block Realty and how you’re different because again, the 100% model, while it’s probably technically been around for, I don’t know, probably 20 years by now, it hasn’t been as popular as I mean, it’s probably more popular than ever today. And I think there’s a lot of our listeners who are maybe not familiar with it at all. So do you mind sharing sort of how from a commission and fee perspective how you guys are different? We can talk more about other things, too, but curious just to set the table so that people know what we’re talking? Yeah,

Oliver Graf 9:14
yeah, definitely. So you know, there’s a lot of ways that brokers add value to their agents, right, you know, that you give them leads you, you know, you have great culture, great support, great training these things. And then there’s obviously the commission split. So when we were kind of deciding which direction we wanted to go, we were big on the Robert Allen books at the time and creating multiple streams of income and recurring revenue and things like that. And so we built the brokerage on what is now the 100% Commission model, which essentially means that we pay our agents 100% commission when they close a deal and in exchange For that they pay us a monthly fee to be a part of the brokerage. So essentially, it’s more of a membership model than a traditional real estate model.

D.J. Paris 10:09
Yeah, so we have the same same exact model here. And I always refer to it as you have as either membership or subscription. And this idea of, you know, being able to offer a higher commission confuses a lot of agents. I know, it maybe not as much today as it did when when not as many people knew about this as an option in a lot of major markets. But so people pay a subscription fee, and I’m guessing a transaction fee, but essentially get to keep almost 100% of the Commission on every sale.

Oliver Graf 10:45
Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right. So for the most part, if they’re doing, you know, a decent amount of business, they’re almost guaranteed to make more money with us, which is great. And what we found at the time is there were other brokerages that were offering kind of the same type of thing. But when we were doing all of our research, what we found is that they were very low on support, and very low on service and had a very like, don’t call us, we’ll call you type of mentality. And so we wanted to flip that on its head, and really deliver not only, you know, a high commission split and a high profit, so that they can take that money and put it back into their business, but also really over deliver on service on training and support.

D.J. Paris 11:35
We we learned that we have that same philosophy here, we, when we started kale Realty here in Chicago, other firms had attempted to do this 100% model. Prior to us, we started doing it in about 2011 2012. And they’re just again, they weren’t a lot of firms, that there weren’t any really successful firms in the city here that Ed had done it. And I think the mistake that was made by some of these other firms was this idea of Sure, we’re going to pay you you know, almost 100% of your commission and charge you a very low fee. But we’re also going to get to kind of not be there for you when when you need us. You know, that’s the trade off. We felt Well, nobody’s going to stay at our firm, people are going to be more than happy to to give 30% of their commission away at a traditional brokerage commission structure if they’re getting the support and the training that they need. By is, which is evidenced by the fact that there are 1000s and 1000s and hundreds of 1000s of agents who are at those kind of firms. So we knew that just by offering the highest commissions and lowest fees that wasn’t necessarily going to create a line of people to come in. It certainly brings in some people, but I always say the 100% thing is maybe not it’s maybe the reason why people join, but it isn’t necessarily the reason why they stay curious to get your thoughts because we learned we have to provide, we think just as much support and training as everybody else.

Oliver Graf 13:01
Yeah, yeah, no, that’s That’s exactly right. I would echo that same sentiment. I think that, again, you know, when people build their brokerages, they have to figure out what their value proposition is. And then once you figure out what your value proposition is, it’s how do you deliver that in the best way possible? Well, we didn’t want to be as a rental broker where you know, there’s no support, there’s no training, there’s no nothing, it’s just a place to hang your license and maybe close the deal every once in a while. What we wanted to do is really build a culture of people that love to be around each other share the same vision. We were we’ve always been really entrepreneurial. So we’ve always wanted to go after the more entrepreneurial agents. And again, that’s why we felt the 100% commission structure was best for us. Because we’re all about, you know, we don’t have mandatory meetings, there’s no floor time, there’s none of that it’s really about helping the agents build their own business, their own brand, their own identity, you know, and that’s the way we believe we can help them succeed in the, you know, in the landscape of all the different broker models that are out there.

D.J. Paris 14:15
Yeah, makes perfect sense. I’m going to ask you the question that I’ve been asked a million times, and I’m sure you and your team have as well. So what’s the catch? Right? That’s right. That’s a question that sometimes like, or a different question with the same probably answers. How can you afford to do that? So those are the two questions that I’m sure you’re familiar with, as well as I am. Yeah, but let’s answer well, Mattis will answer them. So what’s the catch? Right, so I feel this a lot. I’m sure you do. How do you answer that?

Oliver Graf 14:46
Yeah. What’s the catch? And how do you guys make money? Yeah. So you know, full transparency at the very beginning. This was a lot harder of a question to answer but now that we’ve proven concept and we have as Any agencies we do, there really there is no catch, right? It’s it’s a volume game for us. And just like Costco offers better deals than the traditional place, but you have to be a member to get that take advantage of that. It’s the same thing with us. And then in addition to that, we’ve also built a series of revenue streams around the agents. So we have closing services, transaction coordinators, different things that are all value adds for our agents that also become profit centers for us. So by them, helping us our, you know, network of service providers, that allows us to pass on more savings to them, and again, ultimately put more money back in their pockets. And that’s kind of how we approach it.

D.J. Paris 15:49
We do it the same way. And when we’re talking about, you know, alternate alternate streams of income, other revenue sources, you know, we’re looking at things like title, possibly mortgage, you know, just different relationships with other providers that and we explain it this way to our agents, too, it’s like, you do not have to use our title services, but by using those title services, that helps, you know, keep us in business, and helps keep our fees low. And the funny part is, pretty much every other firm has ancillary stuff anyway, right? Like, it’s not even unusual. Now, because I’ve been looking that the app, there’s really not much money in traditional brokerage, whether you’re at a typical real estate commission firm, where you’re gonna have a split, maybe an annual fee, you know, versus 100% model, it’s, it’s really, we’re, all of these, these, these big companies are now realizing the money is more in the ancillary because commissions are going up. The firm’s are going to have to be more competitive. We’ve I’m sure you’ve seen this with with firms coming in, and even buying agents and giving them cash bonuses, and giving them great commission splits. And they have to make up that money somehow.

Oliver Graf 16:59
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, I think it’s 80, there’s 87 different service providers that touch a real estate transaction. So what we actually encourage this, I know, there’s a lot of agents listening as well. And so I want to make sure they get a lot of value. And, and what I would encourage them to do is not only focus on their business, but they can also create either revenue streams, affiliate relationships, or even acquire or start businesses that are, you know, involved in that ad set that tree of 87 different services that are involved. So things like moving companies, or, you know, surance, insurance, solar, like out here in California, solar is a big one solar companies, they’ll pay like $1,000, per referral, you know what I mean? Like, if you create those extra relationships, and those extra revenue streams, then all of a sudden, you know, you send three or four referrals their way. And that’s a couple of three $4,000, that you’re making an extra revenue. And there’s a lot of different things out there, if you start getting creative, and we can go through some of those if you want. But there’s there’s a lot of opportunity outside of just closing the transaction.

D.J. Paris 18:19
Yeah, there is. And so I think what I love about firms like like ours, aside from being very attractive from a cost benefit perspective, the hurdle we all we jump, or I shouldn’t speak for all of our of course, but the hurdle I jump is oftentimes just making sure people know that they are going to get more than they probably would expect. And we’re always, you know, pinging our agents and serving them to say, like, anonymously, like, how are we doing, because if we’re not doing well, you’re gonna go back to that traditional firm, you’re gonna be happy to give up the 30 or 40%, whatever it might be, to get better support and training. And we better have our training and support on point. And I would encourage anyone who’s considering, you know, looking into a model like this, see if a firm exists in your in your area. It’s harder to do in smaller markets. I’m from Peoria, Illinois. And we first thought, well, maybe we’ll open an office down there and there just weren’t enough agents to support it. So you know, certain markets may not have that Madison is a great one. We actually looked at Madison, I’m glad we didn’t go there. Since you guys are there. We actually looked at Wisconsin. There’s one in Milwaukee I know, but one or two maybe. But anyway, I applaud you guys for for continuing to evolve and expand. I would like to pivot just just briefly to talk a little bit about you know, with the number of agents you’ve seen funnel through your company and who are still there and really just killing it. We’d love to hear what you see as some best practices around top agents. You know, where do you see agents having a lot of success? What are some of those, you know, those strategies or disciplines?

Oliver Graf 19:59
Yeah, slowly. So in terms of kind of what separates the top agents and the most successful people from the rest is, to me, it comes down to three things. It’s, it’s number one, we’ll call it the nuts and bolts, right? You got to know the contracts, you got to know the business, you got to know conflict resolution, and just kind of the A to Z on how to be an agent and what to do when problems arise, because they will arise. And then the other two is advertising and sales. I think that the better you are at advertising, let’s call that lead generation, whether that’s cold calling, whether that’s buying leads and converting them through a funnel, whether that’s setting up referral sources, I mean, there’s probably like seven or eight methods of advertising, I think it’s really honing in and getting good at one of those. And then also, on the other side, it’s the sales piece, and then that, you know, really just understanding what a good salesperson is kind of understanding how to be a good listener, as opposed to just verbally vomiting on someone and trying to close sales that way, but really understanding their needs, getting on their side of the table with them, and then helping them through it by you know, asking the right questions and things like that. So it’s really down to those three things, and we can expand if you want.

D.J. Paris 21:27
Let’s talk I would love to talk about advertising. I don’t often talk too much about advertising with my guests. And I should and let’s let’s talk about it. What are you seeing that’s working for your agents right now with respect to advertising. I want to pause for a moment to talk about our episode sponsor are one of my favorite companies out there follow up boss. Now after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country for this podcast, do you know which CRM is used by more than any other by our guests. Of course, it is a follow up boss. And let’s face it, following up is the key to taking your business to the next level follow up boss will help you drive more leads in less time and with less effort. Do not take my word for it. Robert slack, who runs the number one team in the US uses follow up boss and he has built a one and a half billion dollar business in just six years. Follow up boss integrates with over 250 systems, so you can keep your current tools and lead sources. Also, the best part they have seven day a week support. So you’ll get the help that you need when you need it and get this follow up boss is so sure that you’re going to love their CRM that for a limited time, they’re offering keeping it real listeners a 30 day free trial, which is twice as much time as they give everyone else. And oh yeah, no credit card required. So you can try it risk free. But only if you use this special link visit follow up boss.com forward slash real that’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial follow up like a boss with follow up boss. And now back to our episode.

Oliver Graf 23:03
Right so um, let’s I can go a couple different ways. With that, I think I’ll give you my favorite one first, my favorite one is referral sources, not just, you know, staying in touch with your database and getting referrals from them. But creating referral sources that can give you multiple, multiple referrals per year per month. So that’s things like, like attorneys can be a great source of leads. And by simply working let’s say all the top divorce attorneys in town, or bankruptcy attorneys in town or probate attorneys in town, if you simply start advertising to them the same way you to advertise to your database, so send them a monthly mail piece and call them go to their events go to the events that they’re at and meet them. And if you just create one or two really good referral sources, from an attorney, or a CPA or someone like that, or like here in San Diego, we have a lot of bigger companies and those bigger companies, they have relocation specialists. So if you can get in there and create the relationship with those people to where you’re the trusted go to person. I mean, that can literally be the difference between doing five to 10 deals a year and 50 to 100 deals a year, just off a few good referral relationships. So yeah, just

D.J. Paris 24:37
just to add a couple of ideas as you were talking, you know, financial advisors, another great right. They oftentimes may be the first people to know that, you know, the client, their client might be considering a move. Of course, you mentioned divorce attorneys. That’s great insurance agents. We talked about another great, great one. And yeah, there’s the accountants, there’s a lot of ancillary Businesses that aren’t necessarily directly related to real estate, but touch people who are making those kinds of decisions that they now become aware of. And they can pass that to you, and you can pass things over to them. I’ve always, I’ve always been surprised when I talk to agents. And I say you should call some accountants, you should call some financial advisors, say you’d like to develop a really good relationship and send them some leads, and, you know, offer to help their clients as well. It’s done by I would guess less than 1% of all the real deals out there. But it’s a heck of a good idea, isn’t it?

Oliver Graf 25:33
Yeah, it really is. And, and back to the initial point is, once they give you a referral, and you do a good job for them, now you you’re in line to just get referral after referral. And if you set up a few of those relationships the right way, I mean, it could really it can, it can 10x your business over the course of a year. And so some ways that I would go about targeting those people going to the places they hang out, right, like here in San Diego, there’s a place called the University Club. Anytime you go in there, it’s, it’s 50%, attorneys and accountants. So just simply going to those networking events and building the relationships, and then calling them and following up and sending them regular marketing collateral, just like you would your past clients and database, and just working those. And then also, you know, a big part of our marketing mix that we teach is doing events, in person events, whether it’s socials and trainings. So for example, let’s say you have a financial advisor that you want to work with, well, why not offer to host an event where they can be the speaker, so they benefit they have, they don’t you cover the costs, you fill the room, you put the butts in seats, and all of that with your database and your marketing. And you know, there’s lots of different ways to fill a room. But if you fill a room full of interested people that are, let’s say, learning about a 1031 exchange, or how to buy their first home, or whatever it might be right you get those referral sources involved in those events, invite them out to your socials, then all of a sudden, you know, they become your go to source and you become theirs.

D.J. Paris 27:16
Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s so it’s almost deceptively simple, right? It’s one of those things that it takes about 30 seconds to explain to somebody, and then they have to put the work in to actually build those relationships. But boy, you know, if you’re only focused on as you said, your sphere, well, that’s a great place to focus. And you should, because those are probably the people most likely to use you. But we have a limited sphere, right? All of us, you know, unless we all know, 1000s of people were limited. We know probably a couple 100 People at most, as we get into this industry, and then we’re like none of them want to buy or sell, it’s like well, okay, they’ll they’ll come around when they come around, but you can proactively go out. And, you know, you don’t have to necessarily just purchase leads from different lead providers, although you certainly can do that, too. And so I think that’s great strategic partnerships around not just referrals, but also, you know, generating additional income, as you mentioned, you know, even with different utility providers in your area, there may be affiliate relationships, you can set up with your local energy company or your local internet and TV provider, cable provider, you might you could get paid, you know, 50 bucks, 100 bucks, you know, or sell every time somebody signs up one of your clients. And, you know, these are they’re going to need internet and TV and or at least the internet, maybe not cable, but internet for sure. And they’re, they’re probably also security services, like, you know, the the different, you know, security providers are also affiliate oftentimes have those relationships that you can build. So even if you Yeah, you know, let me

Oliver Graf 28:51
let me let me give you two more on that note, these are these are really good ones, because they generally find out about someone wanting to, you know, make a move far before everybody else. And that’s general contractor’s number one, because almost anybody that wants to sell their house, they’re going to do a little bit of work first. So it’s a great way to kind of get upstream before everyone else knows about it. And then the other one is property managers, because most people are going to tell their property manager, if they’re thinking about selling, if it’s an investment property, like hey, you know this after this lease, I’m gonna don’t worry about rehabbing. I’m going to sell the place and then you know, they can put you in the front of the line for that type of transaction.

D.J. Paris 29:37
Yeah, it makes all this boy general contractors, I never would have thought of that. That is that is absolutely really a wonderful tip. Because number one, every realtor wants a great GC to refer to their clients. And we know that great GCS are, you know, not always easy to find, and then the GCS want, what more work as well. So of course your how Helping them but yeah, they’re the ones that probably do get the first oftentimes first notice of, hey, we’re about to make a move here. And the GC could say, hey, you know, I worked with so and so you should talk to them. They’re really good realtor and they might be able to give you a, you know, an idea of what your place is worth, etc. So what a great i That boy that so much. That’s amazing. I’m shocked that nobody else has ever mentioned that in the history of the show. So I appreciate you bringing that to us. Awesome. I also want to talk a little just going back a little bit to your marketing specifically, because I am I’m such a fan of your marketing. And I think our our listeners could really benefit. Now a lot of times, firms are advertising directly to brokers to get them to join. So we would call that like a b2b sort of business to business kind of type of advertising. And of course, realtors are typically more business to consumer advertising. But I think what you guys do that our listeners who are more probably B to C can take away from is really injecting humor, sort of silliness. Funny, you guys are doing that in a way that is incredibly authentic. It’s not funny for the sake of being funny. It’s funny, because that’s clearly your personalities. And pretty much nobody else does that right? Maybe individual agents might do that, because they’re kind of silly. And you’ll see some silly individual agents stuff, but you don’t typically see silly brokerage stuff. And I love that you do that. And I imagine it separates you from virtually everybody else.

Oliver Graf 31:31
Yeah, yeah, that’s true. So I think the marketing approach is the same in terms of how we do it as a broker and how I would do it. If I was an agent, I think the the first step is really understanding who your customer avatar is. So what I mean by that is, who if you could pick your ideal customer? Who would that customer be? What are their attributes? What do they like? What do they not like? Where do they like to hang out, you know, and then go from there. Because once you understand who your customer is, it makes marketing to that person, you know, a lot easier. Because what I think a lot of people make the mistake of doing is they try to market to everyone. And by marketing to everyone, you’re kind of just marketing like everybody else, and you don’t stand out to that person. That’s your ideal person. So what we did is we identified that we wanted people that are entrepreneurial, we wanted people that are fun, we wanted people that again, back to our tagline of we’re not your grandpa’s brokerage, like we, we are different, we want to be different, we want to do things different. And we want to attract the people that kind of fit into that model. And so then you can kind of reverse engineer all your marketing from there. So let’s say I’m the opposite, right? Let’s say I’m a suit and tie person. And I’m very serious all the time. And the marketing message would be a lot different. And I’m looking for, or let’s say in another scenario, I’m looking for high end luxury clients, right, the high end luxury client is a completely different avatar. And so you’re probably going to want to wear the suit and tie and you’re going to want to have, you know, the Louis Vuitton belt and all of that stuff that you can kind of show off and, and put into your marketing mix. So I think it’s really just understanding who your customer is, if you could pick your ideal customer, and then working the marketing backwards from there.

D.J. Paris 33:37
Yeah, that makes so much sense. And a lot of times, I think we we focus on the fact that, and I do this too, because I’m on the recruiting side. And so I’m always thinking about our agent pipeline isn’t full enough. Or if you’re an agent might be thinking, Oh, my client, I don’t have enough clients right now nobody’s buying or selling, and maybe taking a step back and saying, Well, if I could design my ideal client, or in my case, or in your case, in ideal realtor to come work for us, what what might that look like if we could wave that magic wand and then saying, Okay, well, now we know who we’re looking for? Where do those people hang out? Where can I reach them? What kind of messaging Do they like? You know, where do they hang out online as well, not just in person, you know, and what, what do they want? Right? What are they all about? And you’re right it? It’s not easy, but it’s simple? I guess in that sense, I guess it’s simple and hard because then you have to create the marketing that will actually hopefully attract those those agents but or consumers. I would love to talk about tools. I know you’re a big systems guy. I would love to you know what tools are you seeing agents having success with whether it’s CRMs or you know, graphic design tools or any any tools that you think really help leverage an agent to greater success?

Oliver Graf 34:56
Yeah, so, back to the marketing and making Your stuff look good and kind of coming up with a cohesive brand feel I like invento market. So if you just Google it, you can find it, they basically, you can buy like packages of pre designed, fully branded, fully customizable marketing packages. So what that could mean is it could include a listing presentation 15, social media, templates, letterhead, folders, and that way you can just go and you can buy that whatever, again, is going to resonate to you and to your, your, your ultimate, ideal customer. So that’s one, I really liked that I also really like Canva. That’s kind of I know, a lot of people use that it’s kind of an obvious one, but a lot of people don’t. And I suggest that everybody does, because it’s really cheap. I think the paid plan, they have a free plan. And the paid plan, I want to say is like 10 bucks a month. But you can make really great graphics, YouTube thumbnails, I mean, they have all the templates already in there, and they’re very plug and play. So you just upload your pictures, you can design flyers, you can do all that stuff. It works just as good on any device, so it’s easy to use. So stuff like that.

D.J. Paris 36:21
I have a quick can Canvas story just tell you, because we use Canva as well. A lot of our audience, of course, is familiar. If you’re not, it’s basically Photoshop, when when you don’t need any sort of photoshop skills, or even the Photoshop software. It’s a web web application. It’s super easy, as Oliver was saying, when I was going to tell, you just reminded me of something. So one day, we were we were surveying our agents going, you know, what, if we could wave a magic wand? What would you what would be a tool that we don’t currently have that you might want? And somebody had said, Well, you, you guys do a lot of training our firms, we do a lot of training on social media marketing, and how to brand yourself on social, but you don’t really provide us any content to post the agent. The agent was telling us and it was the kind of that’s Hey, that is kind of a problem, isn’t it? We don’t really have content. So to Oliver’s point, I actually I know that advance of the market, I use it all the time. But actually when an Etsy, which I didn’t think those kinds of things existed on Etsy, and they do, and we bought, like 850, social media templates that looked really fun and cool. And they were all sorts of different whether it’s just listed just sold or, you know, more informational, or more like, hey, this, this is learn more about me as the agent, all sorts of, you know, different trivia questions, all sorts of cool ready made posts, that you can customize, make your own in about five seconds, and then push out. And I think it cost us about $100 to buy these templates and use them with with our agents. So it’s not even a high cost thing. And then you now have, again, assuming that it resonates with with your own person with your own personality, you now have ready made content that you can use on social media and definitely so we did this to separate ourselves from a lot of other firms that also didn’t provide social media content that agents can use. And we’re like, oh, well, just I don’t know if anyone uses it, but it certainly a nice easy thing to implement for our agents. And if you’re an agent whose firm doesn’t have that, well maybe consider looking at other firms or, you know, you can purchase those yourself for very, very little money.

Oliver Graf 38:19
Yeah, yeah, they’re all very cost effective and, and fairly cheap. But all everything we just mentioned. Another one that I’m a big fan of is is lumpy mail. So lumpy mail is mail that comes to your inbox and isn’t like a flat postcard or a flat envelope. It’s something that’s lumpy. So it sticks out in the mailbox, it’s almost guaranteed to get open. There’s a website called red paper plane, or red pepper planes.com. Check them out, they have a ton of different really cool lumpy mail items that you can send out to your clients. They have like, foldable houses that when you open it, it pops up and a house pops out. And you know, they have all kinds of different really cool things again, to stand out. One thing we’re big on is we pattern interrupt, and being different. So for us, you know, back to the marketing, if you’re sending out the same postcards that every realtor sending out, you’re not doing anything to stand out. But if you have a sphere that you’re marketing to regularly, obviously send them the postcards and all that but maybe once a quarter, send them some wild send them some crazy that stands out that, you know, send it to him in a FedEx envelope that they have to sign for an open right. Just doing things like that to be different is a is a great way to stand out.

D.J. Paris 39:45
Yeah, and it’ll cost a little bit more than doing a traditional, you know, postcard mailer. But if you can get your open rate up by at least 50% Or at least your read rate by 50% on a lumpy piece of and Oliver is exactly right, who doesn’t open a lumpy piece of mail because you’re trying to figure it out with your fingers and find the corners and you’re like this, this could be very cool. And especially if it opens up into a three dimensional house, yeah, that maybe that costs $5 per card. But boy, I would certainly expect I would get a few a few transactions out of it over time. I also used to do a presentation when I would sometimes speak at events called nobody wants to read your newsletter. And while I don’t think it’s a bad idea to send one, I’m sort of being silly by saying that, and I don’t mean to disparage we, we tell our agents to send newsletters, but we say don’t just send a newsletter, right, do other things that really make you stand out, and a newsletter is fine, no one’s gonna read it, but I guess they’ll see your name. And that’s a good thing. And if you send a postcard, you know, they’re gonna see your name, and that’s a good thing. But maybe you could do something a little different. And so I love the fact that you guys are, you know, you know, really into some of those alternative ideas that, you know, just get better results.

Oliver Graf 40:58
Yeah, another one, just on the male front is, is a site called mailbox power. What I what I, you know, what we teach to our agents is creating a post closing Follow Up campaign, because I forget the statistic exactly, but it’s over 50% of people forget their Realtors name after the first year. And so if you can create a follow up campaign, and with mailbox power, they’re all greeting card style, they come with a real stamp on the envelope, they they’ll do handwriting fonts, and all that. And then you can also attach gifts. So anything from just like a $2 pack of brownies, all the way on up to you know, all sorts of other gifts that you know, towels and tumblers, and all the all the stuff. But if you create a campaign inside of mailbox power, you only have to create it one time. And then every deal you close, you have one for buyers and one for sellers. And you just put those people into that campaign. And you set it and forget it. And now for the next five years, there’ll be getting mail pieces from you at least once a quarter, sometimes maybe once a year, on their clothes, aversary you send them a you know, you attach a thing a cookies or something. And that’s just you know, that’s that’s what separates you from the rest.

D.J. Paris 42:22
Yeah, it’s really funny. I have a lot of different service providers in my life as you do, I’m sure accountants, attorneys, financial advisors, etc. dry cleaner, you know, it could be a dentist, I’ve never received any sort of ongoing little thank you other than maybe a card that you know, at the end of the year, which you get, you know, dozens and dozens, but I don’t ever get a you know, and I love my accountant and I’m not in any she will she’ll never hear this. So I don’t I’m not disparaging her, but I never got like, hey, you’ve been with me 13 years, here’s some cookies. You know, I would love that. So I guess the point of me saying that isn’t to say, you know, so many people are doing it wrong. But if you want to add that kind of value, and you should, because you’re absolutely right, my parents, they sold a condo in Myrtle Beach, it took them five years to sell it because they sort of bought it at the wrong time. And they held it for too long. And anyway, it was very difficult condo to sell. They eventually sold it and the guy was kind of a hero in our family. And six months later, I said, Hey, Dad, what was that guy’s name? I wanted to send him a referral. And my dad goes, I have no idea. I’d have to look that up. I don’t remember. And isn’t that amazing? Yeah. And they liked him. They really liked him. They didn’t, they thought like, this guy’s our hero, and they couldn’t remember his name. And it’s not because my parents are forgetful they are, they are very loyal to people. And so it’s a great example of staying in touch after the sale. You know, we haven’t talked about this at all, I don’t want to pivot only because I know we’re gonna wait, let me I’m

Oliver Graf 43:49
gonna add, I’m gonna add one more thing just to bring it full circle, because I think that was a really good point you just made, but also back to the vendors, right? Why not create a mail campaign for the referral partners that you’re targeting. So that once a month, they get a gift card or whatever it is from you. And then not only that, but you can include them in your post closing mail campaigns. So you know, if it’s a CPA around tax time, you should say, hey, you know, it’s your favorite realtor, Oliver. I’m just sending out all the best. I know this time of year is tough for a lot of people. It’s tax time. Here’s my referral source. Hope that helps, right? You’re not asking for anything, you’re delivering massive value to that CPA. And then they in turn, you know, might come back to some business with you. So that kind of brings the loop full circle.

D.J. Paris 44:39
And it does and I want to stay on that for just a moment because you just got me excited because I started thinking what so so now we start at the beginning, right? So now we’re like, wow, that’s a great idea. And now how do we implement it? Well, we go back to Oliver’s first point you pick up the phone and call some CPAs or if you have your own CPA Of course you can start there. But you can call them and say hey, I’ve got an idea. I have a big, pretty big sphere of influence. And I’ve also got past clients. Around January, people start thinking about taxes and getting you know all of their documents in order. And, you know, if you’re looking for more clients, I would love to send something out every January, maybe even in December to saying, Hey, this is my preferred CPA, if you guys don’t have an account, and you need one, or you want to see this, this person’s amazing. And, you know, and say, Hey, would you be open to that? I’ll even pay for everything if you want, if you wanted to cover the cost as the agent. I can’t imagine any CPA would turn that down.

Oliver Graf 45:34
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And not only that, you can even take it a step further, you could add a page on your website that says, These are my preferred vendors and just list them out. Now they’re getting more exposure. A lot of times, they’ll even offer to pay half, you know, most of our mailings that go out most of the events that we sponsor, our vendors are helping pay for those and bringing the cost down for us. So that makes it more of a win win for everybody. You know, if as long as you’re delivering value for them, they are going to bring the value right back.

D.J. Paris 46:10
One last question about real estate. And then I want to talk about your podcast, and we’ll wrap up here. I was seeing some of the books behind you, which some suburb lives I’ve read. And I wanted to ask if there was one book that you would recommend, above all others that an agent really should read? Do you have? And I know this is a tough question to have, you’ve read a lot, but any particular book come to mind.

Oliver Graf 46:35
I’d say probably the most impactful book I ever read was 48 Laws of Power by Robert Robert Greene. Yeah, it’s just an incredible book on the dark arts, you know, how to close deals, how to blend in how to strike when the iron is hot. I mean, he really covers the full gamut on on the Laws of Power and becoming a more powerful person. And that, you know, that helps with sales that helps with ideas for your marketing mix, and just all the way across the board. But that’s yeah, highly, highly recommend that one,

D.J. Paris 47:14
I own that book as well. And Robert Greene is not like a self help guy. He’s actually an academic. This is a this is I think he’s a college professor or he was, and he has thoroughly researched some of the most powerful types of personalities and with with lots of examples throughout history. I have not thought about that book in a long time. I’m going to pick it back up. So thank you 4848 Laws of Power Robert Greene with an E at the end, I believe. So we’ll we’ll post a link to that in the notes. And then we you have a podcast and we haven’t talked about that at all. Let’s talk about let’s talk about founders club. So tell us what founders club is. Yeah,

Oliver Graf 47:51
so founders Club was really designed to be a high level podcast for real estate entrepreneurs. So I’ve had people like Robert Kiyosaki, Grant Cardone, Chris Voss, Elena Cardone, Ryan serhant, a lot of top top people. And we really take a look at not it’s less about, you know, everyday real estate practices and more about building a big real estate business. And so we talk a lot about some of the stuff we’ve talked about today, you know, adding profit centers to your business, scaling up different tools, different things like that. But it was really just, you know, my way of giving back originally just to our agents, I wanted to just interview great people, and so the agents could hear. And then we started putting it out there. And it was really well received. And it’s been growing ever since. So you guys can check that out at founders club.tv. All the links are there. For anybody that’s interested in.

D.J. Paris 48:55
Yeah, I really encourage all of our agents as you are sorry, our agents, well, yes, our agents here at kale and all of our listeners, which are probably all agents, but they’re certainly not my agents. Everyone listening, this is the kind of value that Oliver brings in founders club. So if you’re listening to my show, you probably listen to other shows too. And as much as I would love to have no other shows out there, this is a great one for for our audience to pay attention to because think about, you know, just even the contributions he’s made in this last hour, given us a whole bunch of great marketing and advertising ideas, tool ideas, and you know, just ideas about how to really think about your business more from an entrepreneurial standpoint, versus a agent in the trenches, trying to make deals right trying to really strategize and he’s talking to business leaders who have done this in all sorts of different fields. So yeah, founders club is where you go and founders club.tv Is that does that right? Yeah,

Oliver Graf 49:53
they just yeah, if you just search founders club on your favorite player or YouTube, you’ll you’ll find us

D.J. Paris 50:00
Perfect. Well, I think what a great place to wrap up. And I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention if anyone is out there saying, Boy, I’d love to work at a firm with a guy like Oliver. And by the way, you should want to do that unless you live in Chicago, and you should work for us. But outside of Chicago, I’m just being silly. Of course, I am the biggest fan of big block Realty. And if you are an agent, and you’re not getting maybe the attention or or that you want at your current firm, maybe you’re not getting the support the training, or maybe you just want to see what else is out there and you want to explore other options, big block Realty, they’re in California, and they are expanding to other states, other markets. So they may already be in your area, they’re in Wisconsin right now. They’re looking at other states, Florida, I believe in a bunch of other places. So even even if they’re not there today, they might be there soon. So reach out. And the best place as an agent you can learn about big block is right on their website, big block realty.com. Check out their marketing, by the way, it’s great, their videos are just outstanding. And I think you know, we all have heroes in this in this industry, Oliver is unknowingly one of mine simply because of the way that they have conducted their marketing efforts. And, you know, you know that that’s going to bleed down into what they provide for their agents. So if you are exploring other options, couldn’t more highly recommend big black boy, they seem like a fun group, and Oliver. So thank you for being on our show. We really appreciate your time we know how busy we have about half the agents you do and we know how busy it is to even find time to do these kinds of shows. And you have your own show on top of that and a million other things that you do. So thank you on behalf of our audience for being part of our show and providing a tremendous amount of value. And on behalf of Oliver and myself, we want to thank our audience, the people listening, thanks for making it all the way to the end, we we appreciate you. And we ask that you just do two quick things as you sign off. One is to tell a friend I think of one other agent, maybe you know an agent that would needs to join a firm like big black, let them know about that. But also send them a link to this. This episode. You can find us right at keeping it real pod.com. And then, just like Oliver said, Any podcast app, search for not only founders club and subscribe to them, but also search for keeping it real. So let somebody else know about both podcasts and about big block Realty. And then last thing, leave us a review. We really appreciate it. The way that we get better is by hearing from our audience. So whatever podcast app you might be listening to this on. Let us know what you think of the show and we want to continue to make it better for you, Oliver, thank you so much. And we will see everybody on the next episode.

Oliver Graf 52:27
Alright DJ, thanks again. Appreciate it. We’ll talk soon

In our September episode of Monday Market Minute, Carrie McCormick from @properties discusses how she uses the data from the weekly market activity report issued by the Chicago Realtors Association to pivot the current shifts in the market. Carrie also discusses what to do as real estate professionals during this time to make the properties you represent attractive. D.J. emphasizes the importance understanding where you are as a realtor at the moment and the importance of a realtor’s cooperation with loan officers. Last, D.J. explains what a holding company is and how real estate agents that are thinking of exiting the market can use them.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Carrie can be reached at [email protected] or by phone at 312.961.4612.

Please follow Carrie on Instagram by clicking here.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks, Reblie and FollowUpBoss.

D.J. Paris 0:00
How does one of the top Realtors in the country use market statistics to stay ahead of the competition? We’re going to find out today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this next year? And do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads into interested buyers? And are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? We’ll find out why agents across the country come to real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering Realtors a real estate sales and marketing solution to generate more business. Real geeks is easy to use. Their websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for the end user. Real geeks is mobile friendly delivering an excellent user experience on the go. Real geeks includes an easy to use CRM. So once your leads sign up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up triggers. Real geeks is loaded with tons of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase your brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. This episode is also brought to you by readily aerial maps. An aerial retail map can sell a commercial listing before it investor ever sees the property. But creating retail maps takes hours robbing you of time you could spend selling real estate. And if you’re tired of spending late nights scouring the internet for retailer logos to populate your commercial real estate map or you’re tired of paying a designer hundreds of dollars to do it for you. While you’ll love rapidly. Now readily is a real estate map generator that lets you create custom designed professional aerial retail maps for your commercial sales buyers and listing appointments in minutes not hours. Simply enter the subjects property address, auto populate nearby retailer logos with the click of a button and download your aerial retail map readily turns the headache of creating commercial property maps into a quick five minute task so you can spend less time making maps more time making money. So get your first aerial retail map for free today by visiting readily.com. That’s REBL i e.com. And sign up for an account no credit card required. And now on to our show.

Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made for real estate agents and by real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show. And today on the show is our monthly series called The Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick from the Cary McCormack Real Estate Group. With that properties here in Chicago. Now Carrie is a top 1% producer with over 20 years of experience helping buyers, sellers and investors. In fact, in the past 12 months out of 46,000 real estate agents here in the Chicago area, she is in the top 15, not 15%, the top 15 out of that entire 46,000. She’s a true superstar and expert in everything from first time homebuyers, veteran investors, and luxury properties. She also works with a lot of developers and is often chosen to represent their high end developments, please visit Carrie at our website, which is Carrie McCormick r e.com. Also follow her on Instagram at Carey McCormick real estate. Both of those links are in our show notes. Carrie, welcome once again to the show.

Carrie McCormick 3:50
Thank you as always.

D.J. Paris 3:54
All right. Well, what’s what’s happening right now? It’s, it’s now the end of September. Last quarter, and what are you what are you thinking about? Like, what’s what’s big in your world right

Carrie McCormick 4:07
now? Yeah, so obviously, you know, we’re headed towards the end of the year. So there’s always a big push to, to finish out the year strong. And as everyone’s been talking about, we’ve had a significant market shift. So, you know, those of us who’ve been in the industry for a long time, I’ve been in the industry for 22 years, you know, we know how to pivot, right? And it’s important that we pay attention to market and we do that. One thing I do consistently is you know, research on the market and reading different articles and different you know, facts about it. And one thing I just wanted to share with everyone that’s here in Chicago is I we have the Chicago Association of Realtors, of course and we have these, what we call faststats These are very informative, you know stats on the market and it can drill down to all over Chicago to specific neighborhoods and I always find that these are A great resource of information. And it’s interesting, I was talking to a colleague, when I usually pull these all of these numbers, you probably can’t see him. But you know, we’re all these big pluses of inventory. And you know, the amount of contracts and pricing, it was always these double digit, plus numbers. And now I look at I pulled it this morning, they’re all negative. So we’ve got, you know, negative listings coming in the market, we’ve got under contract is down, home for sale is down. So we’ve got, obviously, you know, indications of shifts in the market. But instead of focusing this time on this market shift, I wanted to talk about what we can do as brokers during this time, right. And as we hold on to our inventory, and we’ve got our inventory here, some of the stuff is not moving, right, some of our listings are not moving. So what can we do, and I think the number one thing to do is to do a price change. And all of us know, when we approach a seller and say we need to talk, you know, they know that we’re coming to them with a price change. But before we go into the price change, I always like to make sure that we’ve exhausted every other avenue. And you know, part of it is going to be the number one thing is communication, right? So all along from the start of your listing, you’ve got to communicate with the sellers on what is going on. Because again, once you get to the point where you do need to ask for a price change. There’s been the communication with them. So you know, one way to communicate with them is through current CMAs is give them an update of what’s happening in the market, what is selling what is not selling, so that they are engaged with what’s happening in the market. Also, feedback from all of the showings is, you know, after showing, obviously, you have immediate feedback from the buyers, but follow up with that agent, you know, one or two times to find out, you know, where did they buy? Why did they buy this house? What is it and communicate that information over to the sellers? Again, the more information you give to them, you know, makes them feel like they they’re engaged, they know that you’re engaged in their listing, and that you’re trying everything possible.

D.J. Paris 7:16
I love that I’m sorry, I just wanted to say I love that because this idea of keeping the sellers informed and saying, Hey, I’m going to chase these agents after the showing and make sure that I have a good sense of what they liked, maybe where they thought we could do some improvement, if any, and just their overall thoughts. And we’ll start to see if there’s some trends that emerge. I think that’s amazing.

Carrie McCormick 7:38
Yeah, so that’s, I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s easier said than done. But I do think it’s an important part of it. And then ineffective marketing. So sometimes, you know, we launch a marketing plan for a home and then after a few weeks, it kind of dies down. So you really do have to relook at your marketing and see what’s working and what’s not working. And part of that is reevaluating, sometimes the photos that are being used. You know, I just reordered the photos in one of my listings, because one of my listings has a beautiful view of the lake. But the way I initially set up the listing was it went from the foyer to the kitchen to the living room. And once you get to the living room, that’s where these beautiful views take place. Right? And I thought okay, so obviously I’m not capturing someone online, why are they not coming to see this property? So I reordered the picture to put the view first, even though it didn’t make sense, you know, when you walk into the home, but that is that that million dollar view. So I switched up the order of the pictures, I switched him up in all of my marketing campaigns made that view that first and foremost picture, guess what we had a showing this morning, you know, so you know, people’s attention, as we know is very short. So if they get to picture four, and I’ve not engaged them, they’ll swipe right Next, go to the next property. So we have to think about, you know, how is our marketing resonating with the buyer, and really just kind of taking a deep dive into each of your listings of you know, why why are buyers not calling or why are they not buying this property? So again, sometimes it’s good to set it and just go but if it’s not selling you got to change something right? So marketing is is one of them.

D.J. Paris 9:29
i That’s a really good one too. I was thinking about this because interiors can always be modified, right? Like whether somebody likes the paint or the flooring or the fixtures or whatever the furniture in the in the pictures that all can be changed and altered. But if you’ve got a million dollar view, what’s the harm in putting it you know, right outside like the first photo is typically the exterior second photo, a million dollar view, and they’re gonna get to the interior after that anyway, I think that’s a really smart smart play. Yeah.

Carrie McCormick 9:59
The other thing is, is when there’s interior or exterior condition issues, meaning there’s flaking paint, or you have dead grass or cracks in a window or something, you know, there’s defects in the property. When a buyer comes in to see that, you know, sellers sometimes say, Oh, well, we’ll fix it once the house is sold, or we’ll get to that, you know, a seller has lived in a home for years, and they just don’t see what we see coming in. And that could turn off a buyer, you know, a buyer doesn’t look at it so much as Oh, no, I’ve got to replace the grass, or I’ve got to paint. Sometimes they think, Well, does this seller take care of this house? Right? You know, and okay, they’re not taking care of their lawn, or they’re not taking care of the broken window, what else are they not taking care of. So even though these are small fixes are easy fixes. It just, it leaves a bad impression with the buyer. So my recommendation is always just get it fixed. Just get it taken care of. And I know that’s a hard one, because I too have sellers that just don’t want to do it. You know, they just don’t want to fix it until the house gets sold. So you know, if there is something like that, I just like to hit it off, you know, right when the buyer comes in is that the seller is aware of these items, these are the only items that need fixing, we’re going to get them repaired. So at least I hit it, you know, head on that they’re not that the seller is not going to take care of it. But again, I think it’s very important just to have the Home Show to its best on that first showing.

D.J. Paris 11:37
That makes so much sense. I was just thinking about this. Because when buyers walk through even a perfectly man manicured property inside and out, the buyers are still looking at things going, Okay, we’re going to need to change that there already is creating a list of things. And the last thing you want to add to their list is Oh, and look, the paint here is chipped. And yeah, we liked the paint. But now I have to add that to my list of having to deal with that once it’s over. Yeah, that’s a really, really good point is don’t add to the buyers lists in their mind, I guess.

Carrie McCormick 12:08
Right. And again, you know, all of these little things kind of add up in the buyers mind. My last thing is here in Chicago, especially we have a lot of condos and with condos, we have HOA fees or your assessments. And we’ve got some nice healthy taxes here are two in Chicago. So we have to think when pricing a property or presenting a property into the market, you’ve got to add all those together, because that’s the cost of ownership, your HOA fees, again, your assessments, your taxes, and then you have your mortgage, and then you have insurance, right, so all of those calculate to that buyers monthly costs. So we do have to think about when pricing a property or comparing our comps to take those into consideration. And with interest rates doubling since last year, right that plays into how much affordability someone has. So we do have to start doing a little math now when we’re pricing our property and at least again, communicate that with the sellers of that’s how buyers are looking at this purchase of you know, putting all the fees together. So making sure that we communicate that to the seller. And then with all of that you know with communication with your marketing your photos, getting any condition you know bad conditions in the home, cleaned up and fixed. If the house is still not selling, then it’s your price. Then you gotta go back down to the price. But again, if you’ve exhausted all of these, your seller will know that you’ve tried everything I want to

D.J. Paris 13:42
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thing. So I have a couple of suggestions. I’m sorry, Terry, did you have more? Because I wanted to get your opinion on this. Yeah. Okay. So I need to get your opinion, because so right now, our listeners and most Realtors I know, I have actually two things to talk about today. I’ll try to keep them short. But my first one is probably the most important, which is understanding where we actually are as realtors in this market for our buyers and sellers. And what I mean by that is yes, we know and we know, inventories down in most markets, of course, we know rates have basically doubled if not more than doubled in the last couple of years. Not a super fun place to be working when you’re working with buyers or sellers, really. But maybe it’s not a terrible time to buy a property. Now, here’s what I mean by that. And I don’t like to make blanket statements, because of course, it all depends on a million factors. But if you’re thinking, oh my gosh, rates are up, inventories down terrible time to buy. I’m not so sure that that’s objectively true. And here’s what I’m saying. Two years ago, when and even up to a year ago, we people were buying homes sight unseen for hundreds of 1000s of dollars more, maybe millions of dollars more in certain situations above asking price, you know, a lot of things, you know, trying to get deals pushed through at that time was almost impossible. So if you’re talking if you have buyers who are like, well, rates are in the sixes now and I really wanted rates to be in the threes. What you could do is go back to the properties that maybe they would have been looking at during that time and actually see what they closed for. And then actually running sort of the analysis of well, that property, you know, the properties that you were looking at before, you know, we’re selling for $150,000 more than what they go for today. And yes, rates have maybe doubled. But, you know, you you can basically what they call date the rate marry the home. So rates can be refinanced. Right. So at some point do we assume rates can should come down? Well, I certainly hope so. At some point, we don’t know when, but it might actually not be as as devastating to the buyer as it seems, because now they’re getting a cheaper price point. Yes, the rates higher. So maybe they pay higher monthly payments for a few years, or however long before the Fed cuts rates again. But boy, it just seems like I so my point is, is talk to a mortgage, talk to a loan officer, a Lending Officer. And actually, somebody I imagine has a calculator that can figure this stuff out. And it would be a really cool thing for an agent to think about. So that when somebody says it’s just a bad time to buy, you could say well let’s let’s actually run some numbers and I actually it might not be a bad time to buy and if you can demonstrate that through data, I think people will can calm down. So I’m just curious on what your thoughts are.

Carrie McCormick 19:30
I agree with that. It’s funny that you said that term data rate marry the home because someone just said that last night and I thought that was such a great thing and it was came from a mortgage lender and he said that to your point is just get the home that you want get it the price that you want rates will come down and you just refinance on you know out of that rate. So I always think to is a homes are so special, you know, I mean you have to live somewhere and no, just don’t Don’t cut yourself short by just looking at again, if the payments $200, more $300 more a month, is that really going to change your life? Are you really going to pass up on your dream home? But again, when you do that calculation, it’s probably not as bad as you think. I mean, I would rather pay a higher rate than pay $300,000 over the price of a home personally to app. So I mean, I guess maybe we should do that poll of like, which would you rather have? Would you rather pay $300,000? Over? Or would you rather have a 4% rate versus 7%? Rate?

D.J. Paris 20:32
Right? I really love this. So so everyone who’s listening who’s a realtor, which is probably everyone who’s listening, this is a good thing to to talk to a loan officer about, see if there are any calculators or or say, Hey, I’m running into these issues when I’m dealing with buyers. And I want to actually compare more apples to apples. So can you help me figure out what the data is? Or just at least anecdotally know how to talk about this, like Carrie just did, which really makes all the sense in the world? You know? Yes, we’re seeing the news. media’s is of course pushing, you know, they’re things that are, you know, negative, like rates are up, inventories down, of course, everyone’s seeing that. So as a real estate professional, you need to be able to make sense of that information and bring that back to the client. And it might actually be a really great time for, for your buyers to buy. But you need to run the numbers. And I think this is, this is a great time to develop better relationships with loan officers, and put their feet to the fire, because they’re the ones struggling to write if you don’t bring them business, they’re not likely to do well. And they’re going through the same issues you are. So this is where I think you reach out to them and say, What are you guys telling people? You know, what, what are you? How can you educate me, so I can educate my clients. So just an idea, maybe the sky? Well, the sky certainly isn’t falling. But if it feels like the sky is falling, this is an opportunity then to get some more information. So that and really, it’s your job as a realtor to know this stuff. Anyway, so but I just talked to a lot of depressed Realtors these days. So I want everybody to get undepressed Talk to your loan officers and find out exactly what the real shift is to the to the you know, really, homeowners really only care about how much money they they spend a month on their mortgage. Right? That’s really the end of the day, the most important thing and, and if it’s only a couple $100, and that doesn’t break your client, you know, then seems like, like Carrie said, a bad time to pass up on a dream home, it’s always a bad time to pass up on a dream home if if the pricing is reasonable. This leads me just to one other thing. And again, I apologize, this is gonna be a little negative. But I think there’s an opportunity here. So we’re seeing this in in here in Illinois, we’re seeing that there are real estate agents that are exiting the business, because activity has slowed, of course, you know. And so if you are considering exiting the business course, I would encourage you, our whole show is about teaching you how to flourish. And we hope that you do stay in but if that just isn’t possible for you, then in many states, there are what are what are called holding companies. And here’s really all the holding company is it’s a company where your real estate license is active, but you’re no longer practicing real estate as an agent, your license is active, but you’re just not really using it. And the reason why people can do why people do that is because what they can still do in a holding company is refer business. So we have a holding company here in Illinois, we have about 800 800 agents in it, and what they can do, and this is all state, almost all states can do this, by the way. So what you can do is you can park your real estate license, you’ll avoid paying all your MLS fees, and your association dues and all of the brokerage dues. But you can still earn referral commissions. So if you have clients that are coming into your life, even though you’re not practicing, you can refer them you can refer them to somebody like Carrie, right if you’re in the Chicagoland area, and you can still get paid a referral split. So how it typically works is you would if you have a buyer or seller, you then reach out to someone like Carrie and say, Hey, I’ve got this buyer, I’m not practicing right now. But I’d like to take a referral, split on it. And then you and the other agent would work out the referral split, and then you get paid when the transaction closes. So I know people that have actually made this their full time job where their don’t practice at all. And all they do is refer business to other agents and they have a tremendous amount of success.

Carrie McCormick 24:25
Yeah, actually, it’s funny that you are bringing this up because I received that exact call this morning for someone that’s was never in the business super full time. They were part time and this market shift is really just pushed them out and they want to focus in another direction, which again is is great. And again, we don’t want to ever talk negative, you know, we want to keep everything positive, but everyone’s got to do what they have to do. And this you know, they asked me to be their referral partner and you know, I think it’s such a brilliant way and we we obviously want to service our clients and keep things moving. So I think it’s a brilliant idea to support everybody.

D.J. Paris 25:05
Yeah, it’s one of those things where maybe people who are listening are thinking about even just taking a temporary pause right? Sometimes people do that. So if you’re going to take a temporary pause, or maybe a more indefinite pause, maybe you’ve just accepted a full time job somewhere else, and you want to explore that opportunity, but you don’t want to lose your license, put it in a holding company and then find someone to refer to and yeah, it’s not why you got in this business we get it, it’s not fun to sort of go a different way when you really wanted to be a full time realtor, but if you’re struggling right now, and he can’t find a way forward, there’s kind of a an opportunity to to regroup and save some money and figure out your next step. So that being said, we encourage you to stay in the business and also because lots of people are going to be exiting right now. Lots of agents will exit and that’s just the reality of it. So if you’re in and you stay in and you weather through the tough times, you’re going to be sitting really well when when the market recovers so I don’t think it’s a good time to get out of the business quite frankly. But if you are considering it, there are options. So I think I think that’s a good place to wrap up I’m sorry, I had to wrap up with something a little negative but it’s really still a nice opportunity if you are thinking of leaving for a temp for a period of time and but if you follow the some of the suggestions that you hear from people like Carrie on our show, you will thrive in these in these instances and you’ll actually become stronger and better because so many agents will be you know will be exiting or or they’ll just be depressed and sort of and I think that’s what’s happening to Kerry I don’t know if you’re seeing that from from people you know, who just seemed to be like a little bit down right now realtors are struggling I think,

Carrie McCormick 26:48
ya know, but we’re all here to support each other. So whatever we can do.

D.J. Paris 26:53
I love it. Awesome. Well, for everyone who is listening, please that well first of all, thank you for making it to the end of our episode. We love you we are we just crossed over 400 episodes we’re so grateful to everyone for continuing to support us please support us by continuing to listen and also telling a friend think of one other agent that could benefit from hearing from from people like Carrie and send them a link to our our website keeping it real pod.com Also, if you I want you to watch the best thing I can always say about Carrie is not only is she an amazing realtor and really a true like icon here in Chicago so if you ever have any clients that are moving here, or you want to partner with another agent here in Chicago Carrie is amazing. On top of that she’s also does incredible work with her social media. And I think that if you’re an agent looking to do more with social media and you absolutely should follow what she’s doing use that as inspiration for what you could do to help your branding. So follow her on Instagram which is at Kerry McCormick real estate. That’s a link is in our show notes and Kerry if anyone out there is wanting to partner with you or work with you directly what’s the best way they should reach out?

Carrie McCormick 28:06
Always call me 312-961-4612 Or you can email me at Carey [email protected] Or like you just said you could follow me and DM me as someone probably just did so put that down.

D.J. Paris 28:22
Awesome. Well Carrie, thank you. She’s Kerry’s been with us for years. We are so grateful to have her she is an insane powerhouse and somebody that you want to follow because you will never feel like you’re having a bad day in the market when you follow her especially on her Instagram. She’s always pivoting making changes and having a lot of success. So we’re glad to have her on the show as always, and again. Thanks to everyone listening. Thanks to Carrie and we will see everybody on the next episode. Guys

Brandon Zellers with Spears Group talks about his path into real estate. Brandon describes the strategy he uses for the cold calls he makes everyday. Brandon also talks about his other businesses in luxury car rentals space and his streetwear line. Next, Brandon describes how he prioritizes his day and how he’s been able to get a market share in this young age. Last, Brandon discusses the role of social media on the success of his business.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Brandon Zellers can be reached at (850) 736-1168 and [email protected].

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks, Reblie and FollowUpBoss.

D.J. Paris 0:00
How did a 28 year old close $33 million of real estate in his first year in the business? We’re going to find out today? Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this next year? And do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads into interested buyers? And are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? We’ll find out why agents across the country come to real geeks as their technology partner, real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering Realtors a real estate sales and marketing solution to generate more business. Real geeks is easy to use. Their websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for the end user. Real geeks is mobile friendly delivering an excellent user experience on the go. Real geeks includes an easy to use CRM. So once your leads sign up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up triggers. Real geeks is loaded with tons of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase your brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. This episode is also brought to you by readily aerial maps. An aerial retail map can sell a commercial listing before an investor ever sees the property. But creating retail maps takes hours robbing you of time you could spend selling real estate. And if you’re tired of spending late nights scouring the internet for retailer logos to populate your commercial real estate map or you’re tired of paying a designer hundreds of dollars to do it for you. While you’ll love rubbly now readily is a real estate map generator that lets you create custom designed professional aerial retail maps for your commercial sales buyers and listing appointments in minutes not hours. Simply enter the subject property address auto populate nearby retailer logos with a click of a button and download your aerial retail map readily turns the headache of creating commercial property maps into a quick five minute task so you can spend less time making maps more time making money. So get your first aerial retail map for free today by visiting rubbly.com. That’s REBL i e.com. And sign up for an account no credit card required. And now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with top producer Brandon Zellers. But before we get to Brandon, just a couple of quick announcements. As always, we first want to start off by saying thank you. Thanks for being part of our show. Thanks for listening. Thanks for supporting our sponsors. And also thanks for telling a friend think about one other realtor that could benefit from hearing from a top producer like Brandon, who by the way, closed over $30 million in his first year and he’s under 30 years old, which is just incredible. So I’m super excited to get to Brandon but please let other people know about our shows, so that we can continue to provide these kinds of conversations to you. So just tell a friend that’s all we ask it. Also leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show. If you’re listening on Apple podcasts, you can just do it there or Spotify, Stitcher, Pandora, Google Play you know everywhere else podcasts or serve leave us a review we read them and we make adjustments to better the show for you. You know what, that’s it guys. Let’s get right to it my conversation with Brandon Zellers?

Today, my guest is Brandon Zellers from the Spirit group with compass in Destin, Florida, also the 30 a corridor. Let me tell you a little bit more about Brandon. Now, this is incredible. And a lot of times when we have guests on, you know, our audience tells me they sort of tune out during someone’s bio, but I really want you to tune in for this because so much of what we’re going to be discussing today is is really woven into this particular bio. So, Brandon is 29 years old and he has been long interested in every facet of real estate from interior to architecture, but initially chose a different career path. Like so many of our listeners, Brandon had worked in sales roles over the years include locally and in his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. He made the move to medical sales and began investing in real estate properties. Brandon’s entrepreneurial spirit eventually compelled him to strike out on his own, earning his real estate license and turning his investments into a full fledged career. Now, he joined the spirits group as a sales associate in 2020. Right and a very difficult time, I think, to become a realtor. And he closed over 33 million in his first year as an agent. I don’t know anybody personally that has done that. So he closed 33 million in his first year and he is 29 years old today. So that means he was 27 or 28 when that happened. But that’s not all he does, which is even more impressive in his free time. He operates Dr. Destin, which is an executive luxury car rental business, and has his own streetwear clothing line called sky sky, sorry, Sy sorry, cyc Syke, sorry, Sy ke the brand partners with organizations committing committing to abolishing slavery and trafficking around the globe. If for more information about Brandon, you can always find him at the spears group. website, which is the spears group.com. Brandon, welcome to the show.

Brandon Zellers 6:21
Thank you for having me. And thank you for that intro.

D.J. Paris 6:24
It’s it’s it’s a I love reading people’s bios, and I love putting them together. And yours really, really stands out. Among the 400 Plus episodes we’ve done, I am, I am really in awe of what you’ve accomplished. And I’ve had, I’ve had Jonathan spears, who runs the spirits group on our show before, I think I’ve actually had him on twice. And he is he’s just been a wonderful guest. And I’m so glad that we’re having you on. What I always like to do is to really start at the beginning, because you’ve done a lot of different things in you know, a short amount of time that you’ve, you know, been working as, as an adult. And I’m really interested to hear about, you know, your, your path into real estate. And I know you started out as an investor. But tell us about that, like, how did you even get started as an investor.

Brandon Zellers 7:16
So I’ll take you, I’ll take you back to 2019. I was in Kansas City. And I really just was struggling overall with you know, I had some alcohol abuse and was at a super, extremely low point in my life. And I decided to just kind of make the jump about one way ticket came to Florida. And I was like, I’m gonna figure it out. I got but I needed to get my mind. I needed to get my mental health back on track. Sure. So I came out here. I knew growing up, I was going to be in sales one way or the other. I thought medical sales would be incredible. So when I slowly, you know, got to recovery, got my mind, right, I started attacking some of these medical sales companies. And you know, putting my name in front of them. I eventually landed one I was there, it was an incredible opportunity, I was able to, you know, get a couple investment properties. This was right whenever COVID was happening. And so I got a couple investment properties. And realized, you know, my true passion is is real estate. I just I loved it. I loved every every piece of it really in the fashion. So the interior design, it goes hand in hand as well. So from there, I was like, Okay, I need to just bet on myself here. So that’s whenever I went and got my real estate license. And I think it was day three of real estate school. I picked up the phone and I called I called the broker or called spheres group. And just as like, Hey, I’m getting my license, I really want to be in real estate. I saw you guys sell the most expensive properties. I’m really interested. And mind you, I’ve never sold a piece of real estate in my life. But I was no I mean, I was determined. I tell people like I was at such a low point in my life, that I was willing to take risks, you know. And so whenever I got on the phone with them that third day, they were like, Yeah, we don’t hire new agents, and kind of went on that. That’s how the phone calls started. They left like 10 to 15 seconds. And I pitched myself as much as I could to the point they were like okay, let’s sit down next Monday. So went up and sat with them had lunch. And one thing led to another and I got on with the spirits group which was you know, one of the biggest opportunities in my life, but that’s how I got into the real estate space.

D.J. Paris 9:53
It’s an amazing story because so many brokerages our own our own include I’m here in Chicago that I work at, you know, we’re always looking to hire agents, whether they’re newly licensed or experienced. But not every firm is like that. And the spears group, for those of you that aren’t familiar, are one of the top producing real estate teams in the country, actually. And certainly within compass, which is the brokerage that that they work with, and Jonathan Spears who runs that team is in his BS, 31 years old. So the fact that he’s even accomplished all that at such a young age is is beyond remarkable. But also that yeah, they’re getting calls, I would assume every day from other realtors going, can I join your team? You guys are crushing it, I want a piece of that pie. And I have to imagine they have to play deep. I imagine they play defense a lot going well, you know, we don’t, yeah, you’re new and we don’t have time, we’re too busy. And they made time for you. And they saw something in you that maybe they you know, maybe they saw in them in themselves as well. And the fact that that they were you were able to pitch yourself in 10 to 15 seconds. I think that’s really important. And I almost want to spend just a moment on that. Having a that’s really what we call an elevator pitch, right? This idea of Do you have a way to present what you know, to somebody, you know, in an elevator setting where you only have 10 to 15 seconds before, you know the meeting ends? How what what did you if you don’t mind me asking What did you say if you don’t? Do you remember what you said in that time?

Brandon Zellers 11:27
Yeah, so I mean, I really talked about. So we live now in Destin is a beach town. So you can only imagine, you know a lot of people here. They work but they also spend a lot of time at the beach. But I’m coming from Kansas City, it’s a lot more fast paced, it’s a lot more Hustle day to day grind. So I just really, you know, talked about my mentality, bringing that that city life mentality to the beach is really advantageous that and, you know, I’m a blank, I’m a blank canvas to them. I don’t have any bad habits when it comes to real estate when it comes to sales in this space. And they can almost create, you know, the agent that they want me to be by handing me the tools.

D.J. Paris 12:13
Yeah, that’s true. However, it is a ton of work, right? They have to put in a ton of work. And obviously that investment paid off, because you know, you did 33 million in your first year, which I don’t want everyone to assume that Oh, well. He was just handed, you know, the 33 million and leads, which, you know, I don’t suspect is the case. And I know Jonathan pretty well. And I don’t suspect he is nice guy as he is. I suspect he’s not just handing you the deals. But but the fact that you did get to learn from somebody who’s had so much success. And it was literally a phone call that you made, you made one phone call. You know, and I’m sure you may be called other places too. But just this idea of, hey, I want to work with you guys. You’re the best. That is. That is that is a really, really impressive thing. So what was it like in your first year? Because you were I guess surrendering to their process, learning their process? Sort of going, Hey, I don’t have I don’t have any bad habits. What was it like to did you find that you didn’t also have some of the maybe the limitations that you might have thought in your mind of what was possible in your first year? Like I suspect most people don’t even assume that that’s even possible to do that kind of production in year one.

Brandon Zellers 13:30
Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll go back to you know, about the lead the lead generation and everything. So out of that 33,000,020 8 million was off of cold calls alone. That was strictly cold calling. I mean, I really, you know, I really focus on my processes my systems every day, I go to the exact same spot at the beach. I sit in the parking lot for four and a half hours every single day. I make X amount of calls. And I mean, it’s really just staying consistent with the basics. That’s that’s really all it is.

D.J. Paris 14:07
Wherever you sit I this is this is shocking to me, I need to I need to unpack this. You drive to the beach, which is beautiful and gorgeous. And why not? You live there, right? You might as well. And I had a beach day on Friday here in Chicago and I thought it was going to be just as a quick aside, I thought it would be really busy because it was in the 80s and I was like oh Alaska day for beach. So we went out and we were literally a block away from the downtown but but nobody was out there because it was a workday It was a Friday and and it felt like oh why don’t I do this more often? Right? And so anyway, you drive to the beach, but you’re there to work. So you literally just sit in your car and power on the phone.

Brandon Zellers 14:44
In my car. Yes. It’s it’s incredible. It’s weird. I think it’s weird to hear it but I mean it works like all beach ambassadors that walk back and forth like the ladies are all like my best friends. Now we talk every day. You Here’s your regular. Yeah, I get there like six 7am. I just like to start my day there. It’s very therapeutic, just looking at the water, you know, for sure. And getting in that zone.

D.J. Paris 15:11
I mean, that’s your that’s your office, that’s your own personal space. And it’s actually kind of brilliant in a way, because not only is it relaxing and enjoyable when you’re about to do some really difficult stuff, making four hours of calls every day is not easy for anybody to do. Right? That’s hot. That’s hard. And so you might as well put yourself in a situation where it’s at least a little bit enjoyable. also eliminates distraction, right? Like nobody. I mean, right? Yeah, I guess you could, you know, take breaks when you want to, and go talk to people, but like, no one’s knocking on the door going, Hey, what are you doing in there? What was so is that one of the reasons to is it just gives you that that private time to just get your work done?

Brandon Zellers 15:53
Yeah, the isolation, I’m really not an office person by any means. I like to, I don’t want to say like, have control of my space, but have control of my space. You know, I like to just get in my car, have my go get my coffee, go get my breakfast. It’s very routine based. That’s how I operate. So once I, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So I started started working. Like why would I stop now. So I still do that to this day. I am

D.J. Paris 16:22
in awe of that. That is that is remarkable and smart. And really something that anybody could do who owns a vehicle, right? Like, anybody could go do that. And it’s it’s a great way, if you find yourself being constantly interrupted by people in the office or at home. It’s like, Hey, I’m going to work. I’m going to a park. I’m going to the beach. I’m going, and I’m just going to Yeah, that’s Oh, man. I’ve never heard anybody say that. I absolutely just love that. And then let’s talk about those cold calls. Because I know everyone listening is going like what kind of cold calls is he making? So what what Who are you reaching out to? I’m just curious.

Brandon Zellers 16:56
I’m reaching out, I work primarily with a lot of investors. So we’re in a second home market here very vacation rental base. We have one of the great best returns in the whole country, when it when it comes to an annual, you know, return 10 to 12%, you can’t on a $4 million house like you’re not finding that anywhere else, except for Destin, Florida. So it’s pretty incredible. Which makes, there’s a lot of buyers always coming in as a lot of sellers. So I’m usually just trying to play matchmaker with that I’ll either have a buyer that is looking for a great return property, or I have a seller or I’m calling on sellers, to see if because I know this house is 4000 square feet, eight bedrooms, X proximity to the beach, it should do blank. I’m looking for those properties, if they were purchased 2019 2020. And I’m calling them I’m cold calling them and I’m asking, you know, what’s your price? conversation started.

D.J. Paris 18:02
This is really interesting. So you see yourself, maybe as much of a like a matchmaker as a like, you’re looking for opportunities, and then you’re looking for people to put those opportunities. Who would be interested in those opportunities. So when you say cold calling, you’re probably calling Are you calling other realtors as well to say, hey, you know, I know you work with these kinds of clients. Are you calling about just big, big investors from all over the country? Like, like you mentioned, I’m just curious, like, what type of people are you reaching out to?

Brandon Zellers 18:33
Yeah, so occasionally, it’ll be agents, especially if I have, you know, a hot property. And I’m looking to flip it quick. I’m calling all the agents who, you know, are in the same space as me when it comes to the investors and seeing who they have for the property. Because all of our a lot of our, you know, buyers aren’t just buying one and they’re done. They’re buying 1234 If there’s a good deal, they’re buying it, which is awesome. But I just tried to I tried to add value on both sides. Sure, kind of how I look at my day to day work. And

D.J. Paris 19:11
you’re also doing something really sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off, but you’re doing something really, really smart that I think anybody could do who had people purchasing properties, you know, two plus years ago, where, you know, maybe the value depending on the market, of course, not every market is up anymore. But some markets are and some properties are and you’re basically calling people who bought and saying hey, your place is worth more now. And I’m curious if do you find that the agent that helped them buy the property at first, has you have you found that that those a lot of times those agents aren’t staying on top of their clients and aren’t going hey, by the way, you’re up like 20% You know, from from two years ago, we should you may want to sell this thing like are you running into people going I already have an agent Have you run into a lot of people going? Yeah, I haven’t heard from my agent in a long time. I want to pause for a moment to talk about our episode sponsor are one of my favorite companies out there follow up boss. Now after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country for this podcast, do you know which CRM is used by more than any other by our guests, of course, it is a follow up boss. And let’s face it, following up is the key to taking your business to the next level follow up boss will help you drive more leads in less time and with less effort, do not take my word for it. Robert slack, who runs the number one team in the US uses follow up boss and he has built a one and a half billion dollar business in just six years. Follow up boss integrates with over 250 systems, so you can keep your current tools and lead sources. Also, the best part they have seven day a week support. So you’ll get the help that you need when you need it and get this follow up boss is so sure that you’re going to love their CRM that for a limited time, they’re offering keeping it real listeners a 30 day free trial, which is twice as much time as they give everyone else. And oh yeah, no credit card required. So you can try it risk free. But only if you use this special link visit, follow up boss.com forward slash real, that’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial follow up like a boss with follow up boss. And now back to our episode.

Brandon Zellers 21:26
That is what I had to figure out with my approach. You know, if I approach it with, we just sold the house next door? Would you would you be interested in an offer that kind of just piques their interest? You know, sure, and I can just get the conversation started. Usually I do have somebody. But there’s often times where they aren’t interested. But their price is literally 30% higher than I anticipated it was going to be it’s going to have to play a game like okay, is this even worth exploring? Or do we just kind of keep doing move on? But occasionally, obviously, we do have the sellers who are dedicated to their previous agent, which is, which is fine. But we just got to make the call, that’s the most important thing. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 22:15
I guess it is because you know, a lot of these people who have, you know, second, third, fourth homes that they use themselves, or if they’re investors who are looking, you know, for opportunities, they probably oftentimes don’t care who makes the call, they just want the deal, right? So they’re, it’s probably like, whoever gets to them with the deal is likely to maybe, you know, has a good chance of closing it too, despite whatever their previous relationships might be.

Brandon Zellers 22:42
Yeah, 100%. And it’s, it’s weird, because as you know, in real estate, it’s the only industry where you’re collabing and competing with the same people, you know, like it’s it makes it it makes it an interesting, dynamic. But the collaborative part is very important. So there are some I mean, there are times you don’t want to, you know, rub anybody wrong or step on anybody’s toes, either. You’re always just treading lightly.

D.J. Paris 23:10
But I love that idea of I have a friend who did a very similar thing to what you were talking about. And she just sold a six point something million dollar property here in Chicago, because she literally the the buyer, she had a listing, that was 6 million and the seller pulled out at the last moment the seller was like a little wacky, and anyway pulled out after our contract was already signed. And I’ve gone through attorney review and the seller just says like we’re canceling the deal. Well, she was on the listing side. And she was like mortified, because this was her biggest transaction ever. She’s professional, she’s very well respected, respected, and the seller pulled out. So what she did is she knew that the buyer was still wanting to buy something. And she literally walked next door to the property that was also worth $6 million, and said, Hey, I was representing next door, you know, it didn’t happen. If you’re looking to sell, I have a buyer for you. And it wasn’t even her client. Right? It was just, you know, whoever the buyer was, who was gonna buy the original property. And she said, I don’t know, I don’t know who you’re, you know, who you normally work with. But I think I can get x for your property if I can get that for you. Would you sell? And they were like, yeah, totally. And so she ended up salvaging that. And it’s the same thing you were talking. I mean, it’s really the same sort of opportunity. And nobody had gone to that person and said, If you sell right now, you could probably get 6 million or whatever it was. And so my friend did it and got the deal. And I go, do you know who the realtor was that originally was on the buy side of that original transaction. And she’s like, Oh, I totally know who it is. But they just dropped the ball and didn’t stay in touch. Yeah.

Brandon Zellers 24:50
It’s, I mean, it happens to all of us. You know, we all so it’s what comes around goes around But what we call that is, you know, prospecting with purpose. That’s what we like to wear, we already have the one side, we know exactly what they want. We go after that directly. And then when you because when you’re making those calls, it’s not as cold. I mean, it’s still cold, but it’s not as cold. Because you do have, it’s not hey, would you be interested in selling? We can list it for you. It’s, hey, we just sold this house, we have x amount of buyers who are also interested in the same type of property. You have it? What how do we make this work? How do we get this deal done? What’s your prize?

D.J. Paris 25:38
That is a brilliant, that is a brilliant strategy. It’s very simple to but it’s, it’s this idea of having a reason to call and not. It’s not like, hey, I want to build rapport with you. And I want to, you know, over time, win you over it. And of course, if you want to do that, as well, but this idea of leading with it’s kind of like, every year when I get to tax time, my accountant says hey, I need all your taxes. And, and I love my accountant, I’m in no way. This is gonna sound like I’m like being disparaging towards her. She’s wonderful. But you know, what I would love is if she called me and said, Hey, here’s like this new tax thing just changed. And what I really want you to do is think about this for next year, so that you can, you know, again, bringing an opportunity to me, right? And look, I’m not saying she’s not supposed to she doesn’t have to do that. But boy, I’d love it if she did because every year I Google, I go with any tax law changes I should take advantage of. But if somebody were to bring that to me, I would be I would be indebted to them. So I love that prospecting with purpose have a reason to call somebody not just a hey, what’s going on? Are you thinking about buying or selling? You know, that’s really, really smart. Now you do more than just real estate. So you didn’t just and by the way, 33 million in one year, even if you did that on one transaction, which I know it was many, many transactions. That would still be a full time thing. Yeah. And on top of that you operate Dr. Dustin, which is luxury car rental. How’d you get into luxury car rental?

Brandon Zellers 27:04
on accident, honestly, it’s kind of a funny story. I when I was in the medical sales space. I’m obviously moved down to the Florida there’s a lot of people with jeeps, I thought needed a Jeep to Jeep Wrangler. I had a Mercedes Benz CLA 250. That’s the car I bought from Kansas City here. And I had I had someone who was actually going to purchase the Mercedes. So I went ahead and bought the jeep. She backed out of buying the car. So I was sitting right with two cars. Awesome. I put it on. I put it on. There’s an app called Turo. It’s like, Sure, it’s essentially Airbnb for vehicles for renting your vehicles. I put it on there. It does. 3,001st month on a car. I was like, wow, hang on. Like, hang on.

D.J. Paris 27:56
That’s all my payments for a year or more.

Brandon Zellers 28:01
I was like this. At that time, I was only one of six vehicles on the whole, like in this area. It was relatively new here. And so I was like, this is interesting. Kind of that was the end of 2020. Are you Yeah, at the end of 2020. And then in during 2021 is when I really you know kicked it up. And it’s I just copy paste, copy, paste, copy, paste. It just kept adding, adding adding. I hired a director of operations from Kansas City, he moved down here, because now we’re up to 20 vehicles in this full plot. Yeah, I mean, we have it started with that Mercedes, but we have, you know, BMW IA, with the doors that you know, come up like that really cool. Some BMW M six, lot of Escalades because there’s a bunch of families that travel like in packs. So the asteroids are amazing. And you know, there was a there was a rental car shortage at airports, so people will just Uber. But there’s also a shortage of that here because everybody wants to go to the beach. So they’re quickly they’re calling us like, after one day, again, this is everything isn’t going to work. You guys have any cars. And so it’s kind of cool, how it’s how it’s worked out, I’m looking forward to, you know, continue continuing to grow that just to see what happens. It’s a fun business that allows me to, you know, drive multiple cars, I love cars. So it just allows me to have multiple cars that are kind of paying for themselves and switching in and out of them. It’s it’s cool. It’s cool. I love it.

D.J. Paris 29:38
I had a Jeep Wrangler many many, many years ago and here in the city of Chicago, which people oftentimes are like it it was it was a manual, it was a you know stick shift and I remember people thinking like oh, that just sounds terrible. And I’m like well it’s not great in the winter but because you know we like maybe I’d get the hard top on in time for the for just for ease or something, but what if I didn’t then it was it was fun. But I know man, rank. wranglers are super fun vehicles to and certainly in a beach town, they’re just everywhere. And so I love that you have these like this luxury fleet and you like building that business you saw an opportunity. I also want to talk about your, your streetwear. Why psych because there’s a you know, you talked about prospecting with a purpose, you know, there’s a real purpose and mission behind what you’re doing with with clothing, your clothing line about, you know, dealing with sex trafficking, slavery, things of that nature. How did you get involved in that.

Brandon Zellers 30:36
So that that actually goes back all the way to 2017. My uncle, and I actually, were just sitting, sitting in his basement. And like I said, I’ve always been into fashion. He’s always been like, my business mentor growing up, I just watch him being entrepreneur. And so here I am, like, young kid, like, hey, let’s start a clothing. Let’s start a clothing brand, not realizing it’s like literally one of the hardest industries to get into, like competing with

D.J. Paris 31:06
dickless big boys who get all the shelf space, they get all that. I mean, if you’re talking about retail, it’s like, the hardest thing to ever break into.

Brandon Zellers 31:15
Yeah, like it’s, and so it’s kind of our, it’s become like more of a lifelong mission. Like, we’re just never gonna give it up. We slowly grow it, you know, every year and my end. But the I once held, I can’t say the Fashion Week, I did a runway show for for the brand. And it was really cool, because it goes back to, you know, abolishing the sex trafficking and all of that it’s we we had like the models with their hands tied up like very, you’re making a statement? Yeah, it was, it was a very statement, which it did exactly what it needs to do. It was an incredible experience. And that kind of, you know, put our brand up there a little bit in our city, which was really cool. And we’ve kind of just been keeping keep going with that. We were very, we were very involved with a 21, which is a huge, you know, campaign for all that. And it’s Yeah, I mean, it’s fun, it’s something we’ll just do forever. I don’t think it’s ever going to be our, our priority business. I wish one day it would be that’d be awesome. If I if we had a massive brand, that was just helping, you know, global issues, like that’s incredible. But on top of that, we also have a wholesale a wholesale side of it as well. Sure. So we do merch and fulfill orders for a bunch of companies. So I love it. It’s kind of just a well oiled machine now. So yeah, I

D.J. Paris 32:51
I also wonder too, and I don’t know, if you talk about that with your clients, that oh, by the way, I have this this other thing, I’m not I’m not sure the pros and cons of talking about other businesses when you’re, you know, working with somebody on a real estate transaction, but I suspect if they were to hear the mission, and oh, by the way, I have this other thing. And here’s what we’re trying to do with it. I mean, who’s whose heart wouldn’t melt a little bit, you know, and sort of, you know, feel both sad and also grateful that that you’re out there trying to, you know, make some of those changes. So, I’m curious, does that ever come up when you’re working with clients? Or do you more keep that you know, more low key?

Brandon Zellers 33:31
Um, I usually wait till there’s a good segue, organically. Sure. And client to client, depending on because a lot of my clients are, you know, friends now. So, some of them, I definitely do bring it up, but it just, it. It differs on who it is, I

D.J. Paris 33:49
guess, of course, yeah. Well, I just I just applaud you for trying to make a difference and giving back and, and I wonder how much of this idea you talked about the beginning, like going through the surrender process of, you know, dealing with your own, you know, issues and challenges and sort of surrendering and saying, hey, you know, I’m going to make this better. I’m going to get the help you know, that that is needed and then going to the spirit group saying, Hey, I’m new, I need help I you know, I’m, I want you guys to mentor me and and here you are, but question more about prioritization, because I think a lot of us have struggled with that. So you know, not you know, not many of our listeners probably have, you know, a rental car business as well as as well as a fashion line. But but they have other things. They have families that are taking care of children, they’ve got other jobs. How do you prioritize your day? I know you’ve talked about hey, you know, you’re spending at least half a day or so. You know, at the at, you know, at your real estate job. Probably more than that is my guess. But how do you figure out where to spend your time?

Brandon Zellers 34:56
At the beginning, I’ll be honest, I didn’t. I would just try to do it. everything. And that’s why I mentioned how I had to hire someone to, to move down here and help out with the business because I had to give some of that away in order to grow. And so that’s kind of been a huge value add in terms of my business and priority prioritization, because now I’m able to focus on, you know, the bigger projects that will, you know, in the end help everything else that I’m working on. So that’s really, it’s for me, real estate. I’ll check in on Drive and stuff. But we have that that system is beautiful right now. It’s going great. We’re still growing it. And then Psych. Like I said, it’s with a couple partners. So we all that’s like a weekend thing we get together once or twice a month and chat about that. But I just like to keep my mind I like to keep I like keep going. I like to keep my mind busy. I like to see what all I can explore. I’m hoping to, you know, start on a couple new adventures as well. So this this upcoming year.

D.J. Paris 36:05
Amazing. Do you well, you know what we’ll leave that for? We won’t, we’ll leave that for a future episode. Because I’m curious, I don’t want to, I don’t want to spoil whatever secret secret of cool stuff you’re working on. I’m just excited to watch it come to come to be. But I do have question about this idea of competition, because again, for anyone listening, they just thinks, wow, they live in this vacation area, lots of wealthy people come and go. It’s just you know, handing out money and opportunities, which we you know, I’m sure is not the case. But there’s also fierce competition, because it’s not like you guys are the only brokers in town, right? Are the only actors in town, there’s probably 1000s. So you’re competing against people who have been doing this 3040 years who have really established impressive, you know, histories, right? These are not, you know, not Bozo, you know, who just got their license and you know, 55 years old person, this is somebody who’s B, these are people who have been working in this area for a very long time doing very well. And you guys come along, and you are grabbing up market share? Why do you think you’re able to do that at such a young age? Is it strictly because as you said, you prospect with purpose, you you have a reason to pick up the phone and call someone? Or is it more than that?

Brandon Zellers 37:22
That’s definitely a piece of it. Another piece is, you know, Jonathan has really pioneered a big part of this market, you know, him coming in at such a young age, and accomplishing everything he’s accomplished, you know, over a billion, that he hit that three years ago, you know, in his career, that’s, it’s incredible. So he’s really set the stage, and we’re just blessed to work alongside him and leverage his success to help us and help our brand. You know, that’s part of it.

D.J. Paris 37:52
Yeah, I guess it’s funny, he’s only 31. But he’s sort of like the big he’s been the big deal in that areas for years now. So I guess he’s, he’s not the new kid on the block. But at some point he was and, and this idea of being able to, you know, out, come out compete, you know, some because again, when I guess when you’re dealing with with multimillion dollar properties, you know, I’m guessing that, you know, a lot of times the buyers and sellers it’s not they don’t interview just one agent, they probably interview Yeah, many agents. So how do you, you know, how do you feel like you compete? When you’re up against other agents for one transaction? Like, what is it that you think you do, that’s maybe a bit different.

Brandon Zellers 38:33
So we focus on being proactive, as opposed to reactive, and building the relationships over just having a transaction, those two things alone will set you apart from 99% of your competitors, you know, truly getting in having great conversations with the seller, or the buyer, whoever you’re being interviewed with, and adding value will win every single time. And just we’re authentic. We know the space really knowledgeable on the area on the on the properties on the pricings. And it’s, it’s something that we’ve found success and just following those simple steps. So

D.J. Paris 39:16
yeah, it is funny. It’s like, when I first started working at the company here, I did not have a real estate background. And my boss said, I said, What do you think that because he was like, the Rookie of the Year, his first year and he was in his? I don’t, he might have been 30 years old, maybe? No, late 20s. And he was Rookie of the Year in Chicago. It’s kind of a big deal. And it’s a really big deal. And I said, Why do you think it was because and and Nick, our owner is like the nicest guy ever. He’s not particularly salesy, and he’s just a good guy. And I said, What do you think it is? Why do you think you had so much success in your first year? He goes, I don’t know. He goes, I only had one rule, which was I never wanted a client to have to call me first. Right? I wanted to, I wanted my clients to be like, I don’t have to ever call like they’re calling him Yeah, you know, he’s calling them going, Hey, here’s what’s going on. And he was my realtor. And I thought back because he was my realtor years before. And I thought back to my experience with him, and I had never had another experience. So I didn’t know it was anything special. But I went you right? I never had to call you when I was worried about a particular thing in my transaction, you always called me first. And it is funny. You’re right, it probably that in and of itself, being proactive versus reactive, probably does separate you from close to 99. Even if it’s just 90% of the competition. That is nine out of 10 people who are in you know, I want I’ll say finish to this. But I interviewed the one of the top, I’ve interviewed actually a bunch of the top Realtors here in Chicago. And one of them said the exact same thing. She goes, I call every one of my clients every week. And I was like, and she goes, No, that’s about it. Like, is that it? She goes, Well, there’s more to it. But that’s the thing. I do that like no one else does.

Brandon Zellers 40:52
You gotta you gotta touch them. Yeah, I mean, you have to, you have to be top of mind.

D.J. Paris 40:58
And curious about social media. Because you’re a young guy, you You certainly are no stranger to social media. Have you? How much is social media played a role in in the success of your business? Or has it not? I don’t know, if you’re, if you’re the investors and buyers and sellers, are checking you out on social or just curious what what if you’re utilizing that?

Brandon Zellers 41:21
It’s funny, because I thought that none of them were checking me out on social because they don’t follow a couple of them over the past month, you know, have mentioned that? Oh, yeah, I saw you. I saw you on Instagram, Facebook, and I was like, okay, they are watching. And I don’t know if it like, I assume that it’s helping. You know, I like to my clients say that I’m annoyingly persistent in the best way possible. And I think that’s one of my biggest strengths, because I’ve heard that multiple times. Because I just, you know, persist without exception. Regardless, like you have to just push through, oh, you can hear no, a million times. And you have to follow up. I think a big piece of this is you have to follow up. But I mean, I link all of my socials in my virtual business cards and everything. So they it’s they always have access directly to it. It’s hard to say if it I would, I like to say that it that it helps. I know there’s a lot of agents right now who think they can post on Tik Tok when video and they’re going to be selling 100 million, when it’s really still not that not that simple, especially with the market shifting. You have to, you have to maintain the fundamentals and the basics, which means you’re going to have to pick up the phone one way or the other. You can post the videos, I post the videos. But you have to stay true to the basics.

D.J. Paris 42:44
Yeah, you know, I almost forgot to ask this question because I oftentimes we ask all of our guests ahead of time, a few questions to kind of give me some things to talk about. And I almost never get to this question. And the reason I’m going to get to it isn’t so much that it’s as funny as it is one of the smartest things I’ve ever heard for for real estate. So I really want everybody to pay attention. I honestly, truly believe this. So one of the questions we ask is, what’s your funniest real estate experience? And so I’ll just tell the quick story. But I want to talk about how you solve the problem versus the actual story about the problem. Because the problem was you were brand new in one of your first showings, and you were on your way to the showing and you blank or maybe you were at the showing, but you blanked on all the information. Right? You didn’t have it memorized, which I mean, who does Right? Very few people do. So tell me about how you saw that? Because well, actually, I’m sorry. Tell us the story about how you blanked on the information. I do I actually do.

Brandon Zellers 43:42
This was at the very beginning. I had already. I mean it’s it’s nerve racking. We’re in multimillion dollar properties. I just started, you know, like, I don’t know really what I’m doing. But I’m here, like, no owl, but here we are. And so I’m like, you know, trying to fake it till I make it until that gets real without a showing and I’m sure know how, how tall the ceilings, what, what kind of lights, what kind of floors, and I’m just like, oh my gosh, like just unprepared. I thought I was prepared. I was unprepared. I wasn’t ready at all. And it was the most embarrassing thing by far in my real estate career. And from that moment, like I would just either walk through the house and talk in my phone. So I had all the information or I’d go on the MLS, type out a bunch of notes. And then what I would do is I put like a text to speech. And so basically you just copy all everything you wrote. And then you can have like a Siri voice basically play it back. So then like for if I knew I had a big showing coming up, I would just if I’m representing the buyer, I would just you know, drive, put it over my radio and just let it Repeat. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Just so that I knew. Yeah. Like just the system. overload, but then when someone asks a question, you’ll subconsciously like know the answer, because you heard it 4500 times.

D.J. Paris 45:08
I mean, it’s it’s sometimes they always, you know, sometimes the what’s awesome is razor the most direct solution or the simplest solution is oftentimes the most effective and, or something to that nature. I probably did not sort of quote that correctly. But But we understand the idea. And that is a brilliant and simple idea, right? It’s like, yeah, how cool is it to be able to walk through a property when a client asks a question, you don’t have to go to your phone, and you don’t have to, I suppose suppose you could, if you really needed to, but you’re like, I already know that because I’ve heard it replay over and over again, on the car on the way down. I’ve never heard of another agent doing that. So that is, I’m so glad that you shared that with me.

Brandon Zellers 45:48
Absolutely. I have some weird, weird things, driving to the beach and then driving and listening to MLS bios.

D.J. Paris 45:56
You know, though, but that’s really, it’s smart. It shows preparedness, it shows this idea that I take this very seriously. And I’m going to go to the beach because I like the beach, but I’m going to work and I’m going to work and I’m going to sit in my car and make dials. And I don’t know how many people make four hours of dials a day, I suspect it’s less than 1/10 of 1% of Realtors, it’s probably essentially nobody and, and you’re doing it and you close 33 million, and you’re a nice guy, you’re not you don’t seem to be a pushy salesy kind of guys, that’s not your personality. And, and it’s not the Spirit groups personality, either. I know, I know some of those guys. And they’re just nice, easygoing people, but they work hard, and they’re smart. And that’s a really smart thing to do. And it’s in it’s hard work to, it’s not easy to sit in the car and power on the phone all day long, trying to put deals together. So how much of how much of your success is just just the discipline of

Brandon Zellers 46:48
it? I would say, you know, a large majority, definitely is, you know, sticking to the processes. You know, Jonathan said at the beginning, when I started that, that was the most important thing, you have to you have to get a system in place, you have to get in process. And then you have to stick to it, you have to, there will be days that are worse than others days that are better than others who allow them knows, and you have to learn from your failures. Like I’m not afraid to fail, because I felt like I failed in the past. And I’ve you know, overcome that. Yeah, 10 fold. So, you know, back to like the drinking and then overcoming, I’m sure you’re sober now as of two weeks ago, so congratulations, and little things like that just one day at a time. And then taking risks. I mean, you have to take risks.

D.J. Paris 47:40
I think a lot of realtors could probably benefit from some of the lessons in the 12 step programs in particular, you know, for those of you that aren’t familiar with with 12 Step programs, one of the one of the sort of biggest things in them is is this idea of, of structure and having like, if you’re a meeting person, there’s meetings and you go to them as regularly as possible. And that in and of itself, just people going to these meeting rooms and saying hey, I’m I’m struggling, or I’m here to be of service, oftentimes helps keep them on track just going somewhere and doing it and you’re you know, you’re sort of saying the same thing, I go to the beach, I pick up the phone and I start dialing and some days, it’s easier than others. And some days, I you know, I strike gold and other days I do not. And but I’m just going to keep doing it. Because ultimately, you know, there’s a track record of it working for other people. And so I think there is something to this idea of structure routine. Obviously, discipline is, you know, like anybody would disagree with how important discipline is. But it is remarkable that you were able to sort of rebuild, at at a time when, you know, alcohol in particular can really take somebody down down for the count, you know, you probably, obviously are aware of that, and people, most people who have that illness do not recover. And so this idea that not only did you recover, but you’re thriving is truly truly impressive. And I wonder if you hadn’t have gone through that experience. I’m curious, would you would you be as successful as you were today? Like, if you were still able to do it all? And you know, continue, you know, with some of the the behavior that maybe wasn’t so how healthy? Do you think you’d be able to keep it all together?

Brandon Zellers 49:23
I had to say no, not definitely not. My growth wouldn’t have been as quick as it. Yeah, that has been in the last two years. I mean, it’s, I just thank God every day because it’s, it’s, I look back and I’m like, That is crazy. I see old pictures. I mean, I was 70 pounds heavier. Whenever Yeah, so and I always I remember at my old sales jobs in Kansas City, like I would always still be like a top producer. But I there was so much more I could have gave and like this is you know the fruit of that like I’m seeing that I was right because I always be like that You got it, you got to calm down, you got to chill, you got to relax, you got to get better. And like, because when I had laser when I was sober, like I had laser focus, I thought I could conquer the world. And so that’s how I feel today. And so it’s it’s literally I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t go back for anything. Marathons continues, you know, like we’re still, we’re still pushing one day at a time.

D.J. Paris 50:24
One of my favorite quotes is, it’s an old Zen. I think they’re called Cohen’s anyway, Zen saying, maybe it’s not Zen, but somewhere I stole it from somewhere. But it’s, I thought it was a Zen thing, but it’s a great one and it’s Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water, after enlightenment, chop wood carry water. This idea that the works goes on, right? But at least at least your your mind is clear. And you’re able to give more of yourself to, to the things that you that you’re involved in and and want to do, versus the things that you find yourself doing to cope with with other things. So I think I think that is is just remarkable and a great place to wrap up. So we want to give a shout out to not only Dr. Dustin but also psych if somebody’s interested in renting a luxury car in Destin. We do have listeners who of course vacation there. So what’s the best way they can learn about your your car rental?

Brandon Zellers 51:23
Yeah, so they can go to att drive Destin, just like it sounds. Drive destined.com. Or honestly, you can type in rentalcars. Destin, and we’re right there. So yeah, there’s multiple, or they can come and DM me at BS LSB. Ze ll A S? and I’ll hook them up for sure.

D.J. Paris 51:43
Awesome. And then if anyone wants to help support the psych, brand and mission, what’s the best way they can do that?

Brandon Zellers 51:52
So on Insta on Instagram, it’s sy Ke, just for letters, and then the website is site brand.com.

D.J. Paris 51:59
Awesome. Well, we will post links to both of those side businesses, because we want to support that. And we honor your time today. And you know, Jonathan, I believe if I might have this wrong, because I My memory is garbage. But I think he had reached out to us and says you got to talk to this guy. He just joined my team. I’m pretty sure he did. And we are we are so honored. Because again, not a lot of people have had that level of success that quickly. And not not that you haven’t been, you know, successful and other things. But just that in and of itself 33 million in year one is absolutely remarkable. And I honor you for that. I’m excited to see your new your new ventures excited to see how your real estate career continues to evolve. And, you know, we’re big fans of the spirits group and what what you’re doing as well. So thank you, Brandon, on behalf of all of our listeners who want to thanks, thank you for your time, I know how busy you are, this is not an easy time to find an hour to speak to us. So I appreciate you doing that. And also, on behalf of Brandon and myself. We want to thank the listeners and the audience for sticking around to the end. We appreciate it. Let’s support Brandon let’s let’s check out oh and by the way any realtors who have investors or buyers or sellers who might be looking to move retire invest down in the destin you know 30 A area they would love to talk to you right? You probably get calls from Realtors all over the country who are like, Hey, I’m looking for, for a team to refer business to so what’s the best way that anyone who wants to either work with you or refer business to you can reach out?

Brandon Zellers 53:32
Absolutely. So just at these Ella’s again, on Instagram, or at Spears group, either one. And if you just want to call we can chat doesn’t have to even be about real estate, we can just you can just call I talk on the phone all day long. It’s kind of my thing. Well, I love it. And next,

D.J. Paris 53:52
he would love to connect. So we will put Brandon’s contact information as well in our show notes. So thank you, Brandon for being on the show for everyone listening, please. Yeah, look at and for anyone out there who is who knows somebody who is struggling in their first couple of years. Or even maybe they’re not in their first couple years and they’re struggling. And then maybe they’re losing hope, right? This is a great episode to send to them that to see what’s possible, when you just put your mind to it and buckle down and really, really just get to work. And so feel free to share this with anybody out there who’s a real estate agent that could use a little bit of motivation and to sort of reset their mind and what’s possible. It’s easy right now I think to to get bogged down and rates are up, inventories down. It’s tough. It’s tough. It’s scary. It’s and yeah, so it’s nice to hear some of these success stories with people who are thriving during, during otherwise a pretty challenging time I think and in real estate. So, Brandon, thank you again. But for everyone out there listening, share this with a friend. Just send them over to keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done could be streamed there. And also leave us a review for listening on whatever platform Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Pandora app, Amazon, wherever Google, let us know what you think of the show. We appreciate it. All right, Brandon. Thank you so much and we will see everybody on the next episode.

Welcome to our quarterly feature, Social Bootcamp With Gogo Bethke!

In this episode, Gogo goes through the process of starting and building a team based on her own experience. Gogo also discusses what positions you need to hire first when deciding to start the team. Next, Gogo describes how she runs her own team from distance and what her expectations are from her team-members. Last, Gogo and D.J. discuss Gogo’s bootcamp and what it offers.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Gogo Bethke can be reached at [email protected] and at her Instagram account.

Purchase Gogo’s Bootcamp by clicking here – Keeping It Real Podcast listeners get a discount!

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and FollowUpBoss.

D.J. Paris 0:00
Thinking of building your own real estate team. Where do you start? We’re going to talk about that today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our show.

Welcome to get real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show and today is our regular series called Social bootcamp with gogo Beth key. Now gogo Beth key came to the United States in 2003. To build her American dream she was broke, she had no real estate experience no sphere of influence barely spoke English and only $6 to her name. So that left her with nothing else but Facebook to help build her real estate business which is where she started and she created gogos real estate began her and began her real estate career now with the power of social media gogo has sold and I this number is old and it’s I know she’s gonna correct me because this is way low, but has sold at least 75 million in real estate. It’s hundreds more at this point. But she shares the good the bad, the ugly of real estate and her honest snippets into her daily life has earned her 10s of 1000s of social media followers. And in the real estate community. She’s earned the nickname The Queen of social media and after being asked to present at various conferences and events with realtors. She built her own social media bootcamp, which is called Go Go’s bootcamp. Now today she has a team of Gosh, eight 900, maybe 1000 agents we’ll find out less than 1000 agents nationwide. She has 1000 agents on her team. Her goal is to help as many agents as possible make a name for themselves in real estate utilizing social media. Now if she can do it, this girl from Transylvania, Romania with no formal US education, no sphere of influence, no money, no experience, and an Eastern European accent that anyone can do it as well. Please follow gogo on Instagram. That’s the best place to learn about gogo as she is at gogos real estate. And please also consider investing in the bootcamp I just mentioned, which is called gogos boot camp. It has dozens of hours of instruction to help transform your social media into a lead generation machine. And for a special discount just for our audience, our listeners or viewers. Please go to Gogo podcast.com and go go podcast.com By doing that, it helps support our show and also you get to Go Go’s unbelievable program Coco Welcome once again to the show. Oh, thank

Gogo Bethke 3:43
you for having me. I missed you.

D.J. Paris 3:45
I miss you as well. And I this is this is funny. If you’re watching me you’re seeing me in the shadows because my blinds I have these super fancy blinds that are electric, except the battery ran out so I can’t shut them and I’m staring at the sun. So I’m in the corner. So if you’re looking at me, you can’t really see me but you can focus your eyes on Gogo. She’s the guest anyway. And she’s probably more interesting to look at than me anyway but it is it is good to see you. And so what tell us what’s going on what do we want to talk about today?

Gogo Bethke 4:18
Well I was thinking you know, usually get bring social media but I feel like social media is just the basics right? It’s how you you start building your business and continue building whatever business that you decide today I will not in companies right? But I also feel like that’s also false like the umbrella of technology and leveraging your time and building systems and processes so that you can have time freedom, location freedom and financial freedom is pretty much what all builds off alright, initially all started with social media and all works in social media for me. So I figured today I run a small local business or a small local team in Michigan, but I live in Florida. So I thought that we could talk about what it’s like running a team and not even living in the same state like what says And then processes and weekly meetings and things like that we have in places in order to make sure it’s all working properly and and you can have your cake and eat it too.

D.J. Paris 5:07
I think that’s a really great topic because we’re seeing it, you know, this trend towards teams, the last couple of years teams are becoming more and more powerful, more and more than norm. I think, you know, it’ll be interesting to see in like five years what that looks like, I think I, my guess is a lot more agents will be on teams, or now is the time to maybe think about even creating a team. So this is really interesting, because I have now talked to people like gogo, of course, which we’re talking to you today. But I’ve also talked to other agents who work in other states, and, and literally don’t live in those states anymore. So it’s very, very interesting. So yeah, let’s talk about it. So I

Gogo Bethke 5:47
started out as a as an agent, right, like everybody else selling real estate. I started with social media. And that’s why today out of necessity, right? Today, people know me as a social media cleaner real estate. But the idea is not for you to be on the hamster wheel for the rest of your life. Right? When you were trading time for money, you’re going to hit a ceiling. And when I hit my personal ceiling, I was like, Okay, I have a couple options. I can sell more homes, which requires more time, which I already didn’t have. Right? Or I could sell more expensive homes, which was also not necessarily an option because guys at the time I was in an area called Pinckney, Michigan, good luck finding it on the map. They have a population of like 9000, I was already selling in the low four, hundreds, average price range locally was 275. So my next option was to like break into the gated community. And we had like two of them in like a 20 mile radius. So it was like, Oh, that’s not gonna be an option, right? Because yeah, you can break into the communities, but the turnover rate is much less because your pool, the pool of buyers that you have, you know, the top 1% You’re talking 1% of the buyers, how many of them are on the market, those homes usually sit on the market longer, yada, yada, long story? Yes, I would make higher Commission’s but less often. Right, so that wasn’t an option for me either. So I was like, Okay, the next option is I have to create a bunch of enemies. So since there’s only one of me and only 124 hours, then how can I make possibly more money without trading more of my time that I already don’t have is by creating a bunch of other Minimes, then I can leverage their time to make commission. This is where comes in a team, right? You can also do it, you can start off with referrals, if you don’t have enough transactions, right, where you can justify hiring someone full time and to your team. And also depending on what brokerage you are, what their qualifications, what you need to hit in order to qualify to start a team, right? So at our brokerage, it’s a $6 million production to start a standard team. Right. So if you don’t have that, you might say, Okay, I’m not I don’t qualify to start a team just yet, but I don’t want to work as much as I’m already working. So then what you can potentially do is go into corner, just go

D.J. Paris 7:45
just go go saying that because she’s seen me slinking away from

Gogo Bethke 7:50
his winking at me and going to shake

D.J. Paris 7:55
up. My girlfriend’s listening, I am not winking.

Gogo Bethke 8:00
He does have one eye closed, because that’s what the,

D.J. Paris 8:03
if your husband is listening, I’m not waiting. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Gogo Bethke 8:07
I closed that. You know, what is that. So then what you want to do right is multiply yourself so it’s time for you to create a bunch of meaning use, if you don’t qualify to start a team, you can join it with an agent and just say, Hey, listen, the overflow that I have, I’m going to give them to you at a 5050 transaction fee. So now think of it this way every listing that you have, especially I want to look at your production. Right and look at let’s say the 20 deals last year, I want to see out of the 20 deals, how many were listings. If you are more than listing heavy, right, and it’s time for you to to hire a buyer’s agent for multiple reasons a because if your listing heavy, you do not have the time that it takes to babysit those listings. Each listing should bring you two buyers, one is going to buy the house one is going to buy something else in the same price range. So every time you have a listing and you didn’t get yourself to buyers off of that listing, you wasted your own time, which means if you’re a listing heavy agent, you can go ahead and hire yourself a buyer’s agent and their job is to hold your listings open and follow up with those potential buyers so you can close a salad and double dipping and V get another buyer for your team right and yourself to then go ahead and you know buy something else in the area for the same price range. So let’s assume that you had a $300,000 listing, right that should bring you to $300,000 buyers, and a commission commission on 300,000 If you charge 3% is nine grand even if you have a 5050 split that $4,500 for the buyer that’s going to buy the house and another $4,500 when a buyer is going to buy something else in the similar price range. So now you are the one listing you created yourself a $9,000 commission on the listing side and 240 $500 Commission’s on the buyer side by splitting the opportunity with the buyer’s agent. So now you turn that $9,000 Commission into $18,000 and you created someone an opportunity they just close two deals they would have not been able to close otherwise.

D.J. Paris 9:53
And you know I think you you’ve said this I just want to make this a point to is these are people that can hold open houses for you for your listings if they’re in the same area.

Gogo Bethke 10:02
Exactly, exactly. So you got it. So now that you understand the math right, now the next thing you want to get done, actually, let me just do something very quick. The next thing you want to get done is work yourself up to a team. Because when you work yourself up to a team, right, now, you’re going to be able to give an opportunity to the agent with a reduced commission versus a full commission. Think of it from the agent perspective, if the agent can go ahead and have a reduced commission or half cap, right in our case, why would they give you 50% of their commission if they don’t get a reduced cap, right, because they still have to reach a full PCAP. So the idea of starting the team is not only going is unofficial to you, but it’s also beneficial to the agent, because now they’re going to be able to sorry, now they’re going to be able to pay less into the company and make more money and take home. So the likeliness that they’re going to stay on your team for a long time is much higher.

D.J. Paris 10:56
Yeah, we’re talking about creating stickiness by giving opportunities at a reduced Commission, which makes perfect sense, because you’re providing so much incredible value to the team member. And it’s really what most the reason most people leave the industry in the first couple of years is because they don’t have enough opportunities, they can’t find enough opportunities on their own. And so this idea of even finding somebody who might be struggling in their first year or two and saying, hey, I can help get you out of the struggle. And you workout in arrangement, it creates incredible stickiness, they get to learn from you, and everyone wins.

Gogo Bethke 11:27
Exactly, you got it. So that’s the idea of starting it right. And then eventually you’re going to but before you get yourself a buyer’s agent, though, I strongly recommend to get a transaction coordination coordinator first, right? Because that is your lowest data entry is the lowest return on your investment for your time. Right. So that needs to be the first one hired out. If you can’t afford to have an assistant, that should be your second hire. And the third one should be a buyer’s agent. And eventually, if you’re really good at social media, and advertising, and you have more leads that can come in and if your buyer’s agents are not good at turning them into clients that you need to get an ISA, an internal sales associate, in case you don’t know what an ISA Yes, because I didn’t know what an ISA was right? It’s pretty much a call it’s calling center, they call on your behalf, they create opportunity, they plug that opportunity into your team’s calendar. And in return, they usually get paid a small percentage and maybe a small hourly rate.

D.J. Paris 12:21
Yeah, and let’s talk about you mentioned transaction coordinator and I we so rarely talk about that on the show. And I think it’s really important thing for people to understand. You don’t have to input everything yourself into the MLS, you don’t have to input, you want to review everything, of course to make sure it’s accurate. But you don’t have to go around chasing signatures through you know, dot loop or DocuSign, or whatever e signature platform you’re using, you don’t have to worry about setting up important dates related to the transaction that are coming up. You can hire somebody to do that. And it’s ridiculously inexpensive. You know, what, what are you seeing for prices for transaction coordinators these days,

Gogo Bethke 12:58
I mean, it’s a little different nationwide, right? Someone in Alabama is gonna pay different pricing than someone in California, right, just because the price per transaction, the regulations, and there’s way more work in California, there is in Alabama, but I would say somewhere from 250, all the way up to 500 per deal. Now in most states, you can also charge what’s called the transaction fee, right. So if you can charge a transaction fee, you pretty much justify your transaction coordinators cost by collecting a transaction fee plus commission, right, so I collect 3% on each side, plus a 595 transaction fee, which also covers our TC, our photography, all of the additional marketing costs, the broker opens all of those things that we do for our clients. Now think of it this way a TC only gets paid different that paid meaning if your deal falls apart, let’s say you have an accepted offer. And for whatever reason, buyers get cold feet, they walk away, right? Whatever reason that your deal is not going to close, you don’t owe the transaction coordinator anything. So you will lose absolutely nothing. You work for the same deal that they work for the same deal. If the deal doesn’t closes, you don’t get paid, they don’t get paid, they get paid pretty much when you get paid. So it’s an absolute no brainer. For us realtors, that should be your first hire. I mean, you should have got it done in the last few minutes when I was talking.

D.J. Paris 14:10
And it’s it I want to make this point there are not too many services in this world that I’m aware of that. If if something doesn’t happen, even though they’ve done all the work, then then they don’t get paid. But that is how the transaction coordinator services work. I don’t know what magic they have to where they can do that. But every service is kind of that way. So it there it goes at not much risk. And do you really want to spend hours chasing things your time is worth more than $300? Even if you if you spend, let’s just say I don’t know, three hours total on paperwork over the course of a transaction is probably more than that. Isn’t that worth 300 bucks? I think it is.

Gogo Bethke 14:49
i The easiest way to do it is by calculating your hourly rate. So most agents have no idea what their hourly rate is and that’s where they go wrong. That’s because they don’t know how much money they make in the hour too. Damn. Spending $300. It’s an expense versus realizing that if your hourly rate is $1,200, and here’s how you’re going to calculate it. Let’s say you made $250,000. Last year, let’s see, what, 40 hours a week, that’s 2080 hours a year, divided 250,000 by 2080 hours, and you realize that your hourly rate is 400 bucks. Now, if you’re making $1,200 an hour, should you be doing data entry, even if it’s only taking you three hours, that’s $3,600, you will be paying 300 versus saving yourself that 3600. Because that’s what it’s costing you if you do the work, right. Not only that, but if you hire that out, and you pay 300, which by the way, charge a transaction fee, so it’s not even a cost, right? But let’s say you hire it out. Now you create it yourself three hours to go get yourself more clients. So let’s say you get one client per hour. That’s three clients, what’s your average commission? Let’s say it’s 10. Grand, you created $30,000 worth of opportunity here in those three hours, and you paid out 300? If I told you give me 380,000, would you do it?

D.J. Paris 16:06
Every every I give you every penny I had?

Gogo Bethke 16:09
Exactly. I’m like, Can I do it again? How about? I want to wait, can I do it again, right? Like, of course anybody in the right minds, but people don’t start to understand what their hours worth. So because they don’t know what the how much money they can make. Everything is a cost.

D.J. Paris 16:24
Yeah, and I think to getting over this hurdle of, well, they’re not going to do it as well as I can do it. That’s, that’s, that’s what stopped me from getting virtual assistants over the years. And I wish I would have given that thought up years ago, because you can absolutely find great help. And you can coach and train them and teach them. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you hire somebody as coach and train them. And by the way, maybe they won’t do it 100% of the way that you would do it. Okay, but maybe they’ll do it 95% If 95% is acceptable, and it should be in most cases. Now, when it comes to paperwork, obviously, everything needs to be perfect. But if they can do 95% of the work for you, and you can just give them $300. And then you go off and go to a networking event or host a client appreciation event, or just call your database and say how’s everything going and trying to get leads that way? Boy, you’re gonna make money instead of wasting time, you know, making everything absolutely pixel perfect.

Gogo Bethke 17:20
You got it. I have like 40 of them. I don’t even know who does what anymore.

D.J. Paris 17:26
It is it is remarkable.

Gogo Bethke 17:27
What do I care as long as the work is done? What do I care, right and I full freedom to my, my VAs, they can do whatever they want from whatever they wanted. As long as the work is done, I always tell them, I don’t care if you’re on the beach or in the club. As long as when I message you get back to me and the work is done. You have Wi Fi and cell service. I’m good. Do it from wherever you can, right. And the other issue people have is like they have accents, right? And so it occurred to me one day, because I felt the same thing. And I occurred to me one day, I’m like, hold on a minute, I have an accent sounds like Ah, okay, so that is not an objection anymore. Because if I can build an empire here, right? With an Eastern European accent, they can certainly handle whatever job they got hired into.

D.J. Paris 18:12
Yeah, and it’s funny we’ve had we have six virtual assistants at our company who helped do administrative tasks for us. And they are constantly calling our Realtors at our firm. And they’re such a lovely people are our virtual assistants, that I don’t believe anyone has a problem with the fact that they live in the Philippines. And their accents are very minor anyway, but they’re just lovely, wonderful people. And I don’t think people care that much anymore about hearing an American voice versus a you know, a foreign voice.

Gogo Bethke 18:41
Yeah, I mean, we’re getting we’re getting used to it. I think I think COVID taught us a lot, right.

D.J. Paris 18:46
Yeah, yeah. Well, let’s talk about also like doing deals in other what when you live in another state, so let’s talk about that.

Gogo Bethke 18:55
So I moved to Florida originally, and my son is in Michigan, right? And we decided to one day, about two years ago, we were at a local mastermind, right? And I never forget and Jake, John kitchens, the coach said, go go and do it. Why are you guys still living in Michigan? You know, you’re not a tree you can move. And I was like, Oh, why do we live in Michigan? Like you only have one life? Why don’t you just go and live it wherever you want to live? Right? Yeah. And we love Florida. We love the seasons. We were kind of sick. I’m sick of the winters. We love Michigan in the summer where we were sick of the winters. So we decided to move so we came down during COVID We rented an Airbnb, we really loved it. I decided to make a purchase new construction took us 14 months. But then we moved down here. In the meantime, we built a team in Michigan, right? So I was like okay, I have two years to build the team remove myself 100% from production. And while I get to move my team stays the same transaction stays the same actually, they didn’t stay the same. They almost doubled which is amazing. Right? And that shows you that you can get it done from absolutely anywhere if you have the right systems and people in the places right. So we still do everything the same like if I was in Michigan. So we have a very structured, I have a contract with my team, I have a standard team. So the different forms of teams I’ve been the brokerage that I am with right mine is called the Center team, which means I’m a full capper. My agents are half cappers, just so you understand that. And then we have expectations. So the size of how everybody else likes to run their business, I have expectations since I built my business on social media. So they have to post they have to do analysis, they have to do all the things that I’ve done. When I was a full active agent, I’m no longer in production, I removed myself 100%. First, I stayed on the listing side, then and I gave all of my buyers away. And then one of my agents became really good, she became my listing specialist. So now all of my listings go to her, the buyers go to another agent. And that’s pretty much how we do it. We have a meeting once a week. With me, they have multiple meetings with me, they only have one meeting a week. So every Monday with all of my nine companies, I have a meeting. So I’m back to back to back on Zoom calls on Mondays. But in one day, I can get it all done. I have my meeting with everybody needs to have my meeting with for the week and I can go on with my week. Everybody knows what they need to be doing. So Mondays we have our team meeting and the team meeting, we kind of do it, we kind of have a flow to the meeting, right? We chitchat for a second, how was everybody’s weekend? How many open houses? Did you guys do, you know, do you write offers, and then what’s going on in the week, the deal is, and then we go into what we call the lead tracker. And if anybody wants a copy of my lead tracker, you can go to my Instagram, and go to my link. So if you go to Google’s real estate on Instagram, go to my bio, and in my bio, you find the links and in the links, you can find the free lead tracker, it’s my lead tracker. Now it’s a few pages long, and I walk you through it. It’s an Excel sheet. So I walk you through exactly how we use that. So an initial page is everybody that comes in there any lead no matter what source they came from, it’s a manual entry from the agents, right, I want them to get into the motion of tracking and knowing who they’re working with, right? Even though everything we collect automatically goes into our CRM program that we use Cavey core from there, the manual, one is where they actually had a conversation, and they are communicating with that person, right. So that’s our lead tracker is the first page everybody goes in there. And then all of our agents have the little drop down. So we know which lead was assigned to each agent. As soon as you assign it to that, in general, it automatically puts it over to their tab as well. So in the bottom, we have each agents has their own tab. So from the big screen, right on the very initial first stage, I want to see that we have $17 million worth of leads in our queue right now. Right, that’s our that’s our initial page. And then from there, it breaks it down to the agents. So I see that Clancy has 7 million of the 17, Kerry has 5 million of the 17. Josh has 1 million of the 17. Right. So it’s like it breaks it up. And then from there after everybody and then they also color coordinate there’s green means that they’re under contract. Right. So when you’re looking at there’s everybody that’s white on their own sheet means is that they are in communication in some shape or form. Green means that they are pending, they actually have an accepted offer. Red means they told us to fuck off. Can I say that on your show worse, and beep it out. So they pretty much tell us to go pound sand, we make them rad because that means that we are not allowed to contact them anymore. But other than that, if they are just not talking to us for whatever reason, we consider them that they are a future client at some point, right? So we stay in touch with them. So when they go pending, they all go green under the under on their tab as well. But it automatically goes over to the pending tab as well. So when I open up my initial lead tracker, it shows 17 million, but then I open up the pending tab, which was 5 million. I know that we closed about what 30% Right, so we have a 30% closing

rate. Now we have a little bit higher closing rate than nationwide average, I would say because we really only target warm audiences, meaning I don’t run ads, right. So the leads that come in organically come in, they pretty much raised their hand and they want to do business with us. They contacted us they went on their website, they went on Facebook, they commented on something that we posted. So it’s not like cold audiences when I’m running $5,000 ads a month and Joe Schmo was bored on Zillow and somehow found his way to the right, we don’t do that. So with that being said, Now, in the pending tab, I’ve see what’s going on what we are closing how many we have, what are the closing dates, who was the lender? Where did the leads come from yada yada? Now where the leads come from we also track because I want to pi? I want to see in the end of the year, where should we be spending our time? Where’s our referring partner? Who is our cheerleader? Right? That Where’s if I was to spend marketing dollars, where should I spend it? Which I don’t have to spend marketing dollars? Well, if I was to spend, where should I spend it right? You want to see where your leads are coming from? Is it your sphere of influence? Is it open houses? Is it a lender partner sending you new leads? Is it your ability to get it from your book club yoga man to man sales, whatever that is, right? So you have to create those categories, literally where those leads are coming from. So then you know in the end of the year where you need to be spending your time or your marketing efforts. Okay, so from the pending tab now goes to the clothes tab. Why do I have a separate tab for that? Here’s the reason why. How many leads we generate. How many are we able to put on contract and how many are able to actually save and close? Some deals are going to fall apart? Right? And I want to see what is our closing rate? Not our pending rate, what is our closing rate? Right? And from those mistakes that are there when pending, but we didn’t close we that means you need to learn a lesson and what is that lesson that we need to learn? Right, so then your closing rate can get higher? Because do we get paid for pending? We get paid for it almost.

D.J. Paris 25:25
Right. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, we’re talking about tracking, we’re talking about making sure that you know, not you go go, but our listeners know exactly what they’re okay, from, from warm to pending, we need to know what that close ratio is just to get depending. And then we need to know the the close ratio from pending to closed, and not only to be able to forecast. But as gogo just said, a really important thing is maybe my pending to closed, close ratio is only 60%, which means 40 of my pet 40% of my pending deals fall through. Okay, what’s going on? What skill do I need to develop to figure out a better strategy to get that up?

Gogo Bethke 26:03
Exactly. You got it? You got it? Yes. What? How

D.J. Paris 26:09
much of coaching in real estate is about teaching people. There’s two things I think I’m curious to get your thoughts on this. I’ve always thought, Look, it’s very difficult to go out and be a successful agent. I truly believe it’s not an easy job. It’s doable, absolutely doable. But it’s not easy. Most things in life that are worthwhile aren’t easy. So that’s not a big

Gogo Bethke 26:29
Hey, I always say if it was easy, everybody would be a realtor.

D.J. Paris 26:31
That’s right. And a lot of people try and a lot of people don’t make it. But I think it’s it’s really a couple of things. I think discipline, of course, and that’s something that, you know, everyone’s got to figure out how to find their own their routines, their discipline, what works for them. But then, this idea of tracking everything, it seems daunting at first, if you’re somebody who just kind of flies by the seat of their pants, and you’re aren’t used to really having a good awareness of what your numbers are, but it is actually freeing once you get in the habit, I

Gogo Bethke 27:01
love it. I love it because you can grow something you don’t track. Right? Nor can you learn a lesson. If it’s not literally staring at you in the eye on the spreadsheet of like, shit, like two out of 10 deals fall apart. Like what? And that’s not okay. Right? So I’m attract that I like to joke and say my trackers have trackers. Yeah, I’m the biggest numbers nerd you’ll ever meet. It’s so to me. It’s so exciting. Okay, so then actually have your trackers which you should have your trackers and I’m giving mine for free. So go and download it and make it your own right? Then what you want to do is you have to one your team lead right? People will drag you by the nose if you let them. I actually had to fire my nephew. Oh, no. Because I only want to work with people that have the work ethic you can work 12 years for building your reputation and someone can run it in three seconds. And I’m not allowing not allowing that no matter who they are even if their family right. So you have to honor the business how you want to build it, they have to, they have to agree to build it with you. Right and your way. So our team contract, first of all, you have to have a team contract. And in that team contract, it has to spell out what is expected of them that the leads have to be answered within five minutes. If they don’t answer the within five minutes, they’ll never get another lead again. Yeah, they have to do two open houses every single week, hour, out of four weekends in a month, they have to do two weekends, open houses, right. Our listings always have to be held open until they sell every single weekend, if they can’t have the open houses, and it is their responsibility to find a replacement. Right. So all of these things my agents have to post we have a posting schedule, which means it’s from my Cavey core, right that in Cavey core, they’re going to take the lanes Mondays, we do a listing Tuesday, we do all of our listings Wednesday, we do search for homes, Thursday, we do open houses and Fridays we do how much your home is worth. Now, because we have multiple agents, they take turns weekly, one agent one week, the other agent next week. So I don’t care how they divided up. But as long as we made a post every single day with featuring one of these properties, right? Because that’s how you’re going to generate those leads back to you. Because Cavey core has a lead capturing ability. That’s the whole point you’re doing it, you’re not doing it because we have nothing else to do. Right You’re doing it because I want more clients, right? Then those leads come in to our Cavey core from their first one who jumps on it, they put their initials on it, that lead becomes theirs, they have five minutes to contact them in some shape or form. We do a lot of video based, so they send them video style, selfie style video, right introducing who they are, they would love to under business, yada, yada. And then kind of they go from there every Friday. So the team actually one more thing. Wednesday’s is our team meeting our organizational mindset and production training, I should say, and it’s mandatory for them. So it’s mandatory for them to come to everyone’s a one o’clock training. It’s mandatory for them to go to the contract training, which our brokers do contract training, I think every Thursday at 930 and they have to go to them until they want to do all of the trainings. I’m not I’m going to teach you the contracts because guess what is it my time was spent? DJ, no, no, somebody else already doing it. So me as the leader, it’s my responsibility to make sure that you know where to go to get the education and to hold you accountable for it. But I don’t have to be teaching you the contracts. I’m not the broker they are, like, so we send you to contracts training, and they only have to go until they get to all of the contracts. And then every Friday, they have a meeting with my operations manager on Fridays is one they have another spreadsheet, right? And that check sheet is mostly like, Did you hold an open house this weekend? Which property? How many people walk through? How many did you contact? How many buyers? Did you get out of that open house? Did you send 10 messages to your fear of influence? Did you have face to faces? Or did you have face to faces, they supposed to we have this rule of Never Eat Alone. So they have to take someone out for coffee or lunch every single day. And that could be a local vendor, it could be a title, company or lender, like anybody that you need to form a relationship with. But also your sphere of influence the cousin that you haven’t seen in three years that a high school friend that just had a baby, and you’re thinking they have to upsize, right. Like all of those things. So Christie goes through that, that that spreadsheet, so we hold them accountable, make sure that they’re doing the actual thing that is expected of them. Did you make all of your posts all these things? So all this guess what I can only through Wi Fi? Or cell service?

D.J. Paris 31:20
Yeah, you don’t have to physically be present. And I was just thinking about everything you expect from your agents. It sounds like a lot. And for those of you that there are anxiety went up with thinking about all this activity, it’s actually anxiety reducing, because once you know, at least for me, it would be I don’t want as much as I like to say, I don’t like to be told what to do, I absolutely need to be told what to do in my life. I just do. And I think a lot of us are that way. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s just knowing where, you know, look, I’m a creative person. So I don’t like structure, which is why I totally need structure, which is why I need every single day I have every just about every moment of my workday is completely planned out. And it doesn’t mean that I’m always proactive, I’m always active, but from like three to four today, I have blocked out, I just wrote busy and I’m going to relax for that hour because I am doing all these other things. But the point is, I know at three o’clock, from three to four, I’m shutting everything down. And I’ll come back online at four o’clock and finish up my day. But the point is, is I have to have everything structured, and it has been so freeing, and it actually has made my life a lot easier. And you just

Gogo Bethke 32:29
get it done. Right? Because when you don’t like people telling you what to do you also have this thing inside of you. I’m not gonna do it. Yeah. And guess who is going to not reap the benefits? Yeah, you. Right, so even my executive assistant who’s in Brazil, and she’s my assistant, I tell her all the time you’re my boss, because you can attack me where I need to be tomorrow. I love it. Yep. Right, you’re gonna make sure that five minutes before love, and you’re gonna compound to make sure I’m showing up. You can count on me, by the way, but they always still call to make sure that I’m showing up right. So they’ll absolutely structure will free you up. Because then I know that by 11 o’clock on Tuesday, I actually got it all done. Because this is what was on my calendar is good. As long as I’m doing all this, I’m going to continuously grow because one of my biggest fear is to stay at the same level. I actually got a board of directors because I’m not your typical agent. I’m not the person who’s going to make another 150,000 Next year, right? Like I literally did the math last week I was at an event in two of my businesses. Let me see if I wrote it in my notebook. Yes. So from 2019 to 2020 2021. Yes. So from 2019 to 20. I grew 89%. But from 2020 to 21. I grew 238%. Amazing, right? So it’s like and by the way prior to that every year, I doubled my business Double, double, double double. But now I want two and a half times because now I leverage. Right now I have a bunch of mini knees to do the things that you cannot possibly finish alone in the 24 hours. Do you think Tony Robbins is building? Like everything that he has today? Like he’s sending out that email that you got today? Stop it.

D.J. Paris 34:16
Yeah, he’s leveraging people you’re leveraging. And by the way, it’s never been more affordable, to be able to leverage help. It’s it used to be really cost prohibitive because we didn’t have access to people all over the globe who wanted to work. We had access maybe to just what was in our local market. And we all know if we’ve ever tried to hire locally, it can be challenging sometimes to find good help. And so now we have the whole world’s competing for your business. And so you have the opportunity to meet other people from other places who you know, like you said with a cell phone connection or Wi Fi can essentially do what it’s really it’s made us all step up our game because it means we’re all a little bit replaceable. So we really have to Step Up if we want to continue to thrive, but you can leverage some of these technological advances that we’ve had in recent years to make the make your life a lot. It’s not that it’s going to be necessarily easier. It’s going to be more efficient. And I think that’s,

Gogo Bethke 35:15
I think it’s removing things from your play that you suck at it. But you have, you’ve been doing it anyway because it needs to get done. It also it’s freeing you up and giving you time to do things that you love and you really good and it comes natural to you, right? Because I don’t work a day in my life. I feel like when you love what you do, you don’t work a day in your life. I get to do this. And the crazy part they pay me for it, they pay me to be me.

D.J. Paris 35:45
I want to pause for a moment to talk about our episode sponsor are one of my favorite companies out there follow up boss. Now after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country for this podcast, do you know which CRM is used by more than any other by our guests. Of course, it is a follow up boss. And let’s face it, following up is the key to taking your business to the next level follow up boss will help you drive more leads in less time and with less effort. Do not take my word for Robert slack, who runs the number one team in the US uses follow up boss and he has built a one and a half billion dollar business in just six years. Follow up boss integrates with over 250 systems, so you can keep your current tools and lead sources. Also, the best part they have seven day a week support. So you’ll get the help that you need when you need it and get this follow up boss is so sure that you’re going to love their CRM that for a limited time, they’re offering keeping it real listeners a 30 day free trial, which is twice as much time as they give everyone else and oh yeah, no credit card required. So you can try it risk free. But only if you use this special link visit follow up boss.com forward slash real that’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial. Follow up like a boss with follow up boss. And now back to our episode. Yeah, it’s really cool. I it’s funny. I’m I have the same thing like with this podcast, which started out as a passion project about five years ago, maybe six years ago now. And I was doing everything because number one, it was not a revenue generating sort of project. And also, I didn’t know, I didn’t even know who to ask for anything. Well, and so Okay, so I got to a place where I was able to eventually get some help. And I wish I would have done it years before even if it would have put me in debt a little bit. If even if I didn’t have the money to do it, I really should have knowing what I know now because and I never suggest people go into debt if if they can avoid it, of course. But I looked at our numbers for our podcast and our growth in the last two or three years has been exponential. I don’t even know what the number is because I’d have to calculate it. It’s so high because I hired somebody to basically do everything producing the episode casting it, you know, doing all of the production. And then also I have a marketing person from Bangladesh of all places Bangladesh, who is so incredibly good. I don’t know what he does. I don’t know how he does it. But our numbers are skyrocketing. It’s not because I’ve gotten that much better. It’s because I’ve leveraged people who know what they’re doing. And I wasn’t very good at promotion and marketing. That’s not what I’m good at. I’m good at hosting a show. So didn’t make sense for me. And now we have more sponsors we have we actually turn away sponsors and I’m not saying that to brag because I wish I didn’t turn any sponsor away but we only have so many sponsor sponsorship opportunities. Well I have somebody looking for sponsorship opportunities for me so now I have more sponsorships it pays for all my staff these are things that anybody could do it I’m not special GO GO GO GO would probably say she’s not special. She just has systems

Gogo Bethke 38:49
yes I’m just a little girl from Romania with no college education I didn’t even speak English you couldn’t pronounce my name if you tried my real name right with no sphere of influence no money, right I’m five foot two and they were like you need to do and I’m like I’m African. I’m this little blandy like no stranger danger. Have no right so if I can do it, consider that.

D.J. Paris 39:10
Well, this is a great place I want to talk let’s talk a little bit about about about your your boot camp. Tell us about Go Go’s boot camp for those of us who are new to it.

Gogo Bethke 39:19
So go was boot camp came about kind of necessity, right? Because figuring out social media and systems and why and algorithms and how to do things and posting and CRM programs and automated drip campaigns and Zapier integrations and you know, all of those things that social media might sound like it’s simple, right? But the goal is that you want to be able to generate use traffic from one platform, right? Like the Instagram, tic tac, Facebook, being able to take them over to something else, a website or a funnel or something that you have built where you can capture the information. But after you capture their information needs to dump into a CRM program, right? And then the CRM program needs to be automated to follow up on your behalf or you have to have people that follow up right away because if you don’t follow Put the lead within five minutes, guess what another agent already did and you lost them, or they forgot all together that they just messaged you, right? So you need to have the systems in place. So over time, I would go in and speak and people would ask me, Hey, can you come and speak and so that, and I felt like they asked me all the same questions. And I was like a broken record or a parrot repeating it just answering the same question over and over again. So I figured it would be easier if I record myself. And then I can just say, Oh, just go here, watch everything, implement everything you learn into your business, and you have the same results. So we created goggles bootcamp, initially, we had social media only. And then after I switched over to exp, I bought over 1000 agents and designed and built 1000 Agent organization. And then I built a course it’s called the agent attraction for people with the idea that if they want to build teams, right, and organizations or depending on whichever brokerage they are at, if they own their own brokerage, right, and I help them agent attract to their brokerage, because I don’t know the nationwide average for agents retention, but when you’re a broker or a team lead, you’re constantly losing agents because or they’re not good. And they’re going to leave the industry altogether, because they’re not hungry enough. And they don’t have the work ethic, right? Or they’re okay, and they’ll stay with you for a while or they’re really good. And then after they became really good, then they’re gonna go out to be an individual agent. And here you’re back in the hamster wheel getting the next agent, right. So agent attraction, we are doing that we are helping agents or team leads or broker owners to build their own teams and brokerages. So that’s that the next one we came out with, it’s called V conium. And that is virtual assistant. Right? So since I talk a lot about virtual assisting people ask me all the time, can you help in getting a virtual assistant, so we built a course around that, and I can give you a link on that in a little bit as well. And then we had a TC company as well, now I realized that I can’t really put my brand with other people’s work ethic. So if it requires other people’s work ethic, I have to be very careful of what and how I’m promoting, right. So then the transaction coordination company, they actually decided to shut it down. And now the white label that to a company who has been in the industry for a very long time with a very good reputation. So if you guys need a transaction coordination company, we can also going to my links on Instagram, Google’s gonna see that calm and go ahead and use them. Those are the ones that I was able to research and I trust them, they did a great job. And right now what we are going to do, which I haven’t told you yet, we are working on through the years, the social media bootcamp, for example, it was created for agents in mind, right? So it’s very real, that very it is real estate based. Now through the years going to all of the entrepreneurial events and things like that. I’m getting asked all the time. Can you help me? I’m a lender, can you help me on a title company? Can you help me have a yoga studio? candle shop? Right? So what we are going to do now we are going to create what’s called the Small Business boot camp and social media marketing. So then everybody can use it. That’s going to be more generalized, right explaining the Google My Business, the you know, all of the different platforms and how to generate leads, what’s your programs to use all of those things for pretty much any type of business. So right now we actually retired, the current goggles, we can social media is going to get a facelift. And when that’s ready, you’re going to have a brand new link. And then you can start promoting it to all of our listeners. It’s just going to be brought up to 2022.

D.J. Paris 43:11
Awesome. Well, we’re excited. As soon as that is, is ready to go live, we’ll definitely make sure we announce it. Well, what a great place to wrap up. So go go through a lot at us in this conversation. So if you need to go back and listen to it again, grab a pen and pencil because she speaks fast. But everything she says is absolutely valuable. And it’s what exactly what she did to grow her business. There’s no secrets here. But you need to know what to do. So go back and listen to this again. And also maybe you know, somebody who’s trying to grow a team or wants to maybe consider joining a team or maybe instead of joining a team, they could create one. This is a great blueprint. And gogo is the person to follow because she when I met her, she was just an individual practitioner. She didn’t have a team. And all these years later now she has 1000 agent, and it’s not that many years later what it’s like three years later, maybe in half. Yep. Three and a half. It took me. I’ve been in the business. 12 years, 12 years, about 12 years. I have barely I have barely 800 agents. So Google is crushing it. And I have a lot that I’m

Gogo Bethke 44:11
sorry to celebrate.

D.J. Paris 44:12
Yeah.

Gogo Bethke 44:16
I don’t have 800. Local like 800 Local is amazing, like beyond amazing goal that you guys have achieved that 1000s and 45 different states and in four different countries, right? It’s very, it’s a very different it’s much easier when your pool is 1.6 million to get 1000

D.J. Paris 44:35
Well, it’s still impressive regardless, and we’re both we’re both impressive. How about that. But we love Gogo. She’s been an amazing partner for us since the beginning and she came on here when we had no listeners and we are so grateful to be able to help support her but also to learn from her. She really the only reason she has 1000 agents is because her whole value proposition is really what most firms don’t do. Do which is like I’m actually going to show you exactly what to do to grow your business, not the skills to learn, although she does that to not how to be a good realtor legitimately, here’s what you do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and she and then you get her results. It’s really incredible. I’m so I hate to say proud of you, because I’m just in awe of you, I guess I should say in awe. I’m proud to be to be your friend, for sure. But I so

Gogo Bethke 45:26
I wanted to say on my camera, the friend, you know, through this, it’s like you took me on to your podcast, the same thing. Yeah, you didn’t have listener, but I was just an individual agent to write with a little bit of understanding of social media marketing, we have grown together,

D.J. Paris 45:38
we have grown together and and we want our audience to grow together as well. So when students Go Go’s new boot camp comes out, you can take a little bit of a preview at Gogo podcast.com, just to get an idea of what the previous version looks like the new version is coming soon, but you can at least go check it out. And also just tell a friend about our show. That’s the only thing we ever asked him to think of one other realtor that needs that is struggling with structure. That’s really what we were talking about today structure, struggling with structure, have them listen to this episode. By the way, they’re probably not getting structure from their current managing broker. And that’s not a knock at managing brokers. They

Gogo Bethke 46:15
grow them. That it is, by the way

D.J. Paris 46:18
we have it. We have an agent that just recently outgrew our firm. And she had been with us about 10 years. And the reality of it was we could not meet her needs anymore. And she’s the loveliest person and she was she was so upset. She goes, I feel like I’m betraying you guys. And we said, No, you have graduated to another company and we wouldn’t have been able to support her anymore. It was actually the greatest compliment. And so So anyway, the point is, is you can grow to right and maybe you’ll outgrow your existing firm. Go go by the way you can go you can join her company and her firm as well. Right. So unless you live in the Chicagoland area then join my company. I’m only I’m only teasing, join checkout Gogo. She does some really cool things, but she’s not just hey, look at me. I’m cool on social media. She’s like, here’s exactly what I do every single day to run my business. She’s incredible. She’s a powerhouse and you know exp is very lucky to have her so go go thank you once again for being on our show. Please tell everyone listening about this episode. And we will see you on next one. Thanks. Go go.

Gogo Bethke 47:21
And if I didn’t if I talked too funny, funny and too fast. You can always DM me on Instagram. That’s the only place that I personally answer messages. It’s Google’s real estate on Instagram everywhere else I have vas. Sorry, I know I did just dump some reason. And I don’t really bet so you can

D.J. Paris 47:38
you can Yes, go go go go to it’s go go real estate. Go goes real. Go go real estate or go goes goes. Go go. So go goes plural. Gio gos real estate on Instagram. We’ll have a link to that. By the way in the show notes you don’t have I didn’t even think about that. Just click on the show notes. Once this episode, once you’re listening to this episode, and it’ll be right there. So alright, go go. Have a wonderful day. It was great to see you and everyone else. Have a wonderful day too. We’ll see you on the next episode.

Gogo Bethke 48:07
Thank you guys. Bye

Welcome to another episode of Coaching Moments With Ryan D’Aprile from D’Aprile Properties!

In this episode Ryan and D.J. discuss Ryan’s technology company and what it offers. Ryan talks about how to prepare for the fall season and whether an agent’s ready for the spring market. Next, Ryan analyzes an agent’s sales funnel to get a clearer idea of what’s next. Ryan and D.J. also discuss how to maintain and nurture relationships with your network.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.590.6416 and [email protected].

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks, Reblie and FollowUpBoss.

D.J. Paris 0:00
Are you prepped for the winter and then spring market coming up? Well, we’re going to talk about exactly what you should do to get ready today. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? We’ll find out why agents across the country come to real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering clients a real sales and marketing solution to generate more business and real geeks is easy to use. Their websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for the end user. Real geeks is mobile friendly delivering an excellent user experience on the go. And real geeks includes an easy to use CRM so that when your leads sign up on your website, you can actually track their interest and have great follow up triggers. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase your brand awareness so visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod again real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business. This episode is also brought to you by really aerial maps. Now an aerial retail map can sell a commercial listing before an investor ever sees the property. But creating retail maps takes hours robbing you of time you can spend selling real estate and if you’re tired of spending late nights scouring the internet for retailer logos to populate your commercial real estate map or paying a designer hundreds of dollars to do it for you. Well, you’ll love really, really as a real estate map generator that lets you custom design professional aerial retail maps for your commercial sales flyers and listing appointments in minutes, not hours. Simply enter the subject property address, auto populate nearby retail logos with the click of a button and download your aerial retail map really turns the headache of creating commercial property maps into a quick five minute task so you can spend less time making maps and more time making money. Get your first aerial retail map for free today by visiting reedley.com and signing up for an account no credit card required. Again, that’s reedley.com REBL i e.com. Get your aerial retail maps done fast. And now on to our show.

Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host to the show today is our monthly series called coaching moments with Ryan de April. Now, let me tell you a little bit more about Ryan, if you’re new to our show. Ryan actually comes on every single month to give our listeners and our viewers a coaching moment and a coaching session. So let me tell you about Ryan Ryan de abril is a progressive thought leader focused on providing for his agents and staff at depot properties. His strengths are his motivational skills, coaching style and his dedication to training. He has 14 offices throughout Chicagoland and he’s also in Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Florida. Jaipur properties focuses on high customer service, managing and executing their agents marketing and transaction management for them, so that their agents can stay focused on their business. Now if you’d like to take your career to the next level, or maybe you’re just not getting the attention you need from your existing company, please check out depot properties, visit D APR properties.com. That’s D A p r i L II. Just like it’s I guess just like it sounds D APR properties.com. There’ll be a link to that in our show notes. We should also mention that in addition to running a real estate brokerage Ryan also has a title company, a mortgage arm. And also I feel like I’m missing one lot of technology arm as well. So Ryan really runs a lot of different companies in within the real estate space. So his perspective, when we talk about how to stay on target is not just focused around brokers. It’s really kind of a holistic approach. So we’re excited to have him on and get his wisdom. Ryan welcome.

Ryan D’Aprile 4:32
Thank you. Yeah, software are our software companies and nallo so it’s it’s a custom made just since you brought it up. It’s it’s a custom a CRM that integrates with the MLS and other providers out there. We’re actually going to market with it we’re going to mark first with the mortgage product. So we’ve had a lot a tremendous amount of success. I just started just started calling on individuals about three weeks ago and getting a tremendous amount of interest on it, but we’ve been running our businesses off For the past couple of years, it’s been really successful. So we’re really excited about that. So I appreciate you mentioned that.

D.J. Paris 5:05
And it also just sort of whet the appetite of of the listeners as this, you know, there’s a million different CRMs. For realtors in the marketplace, what makes yours in particular I find most attractive and interesting is that it’s really what I would call all event focus. So it’s able to identify reasons for an agent to then reach out to their sphere of influence their existing clients, it actually identifies opportunities, and really prompts the user or the agent to then take action, which a lot of CRMs are just like, upload your database, create some sort of strategy for staying in touch, and then it will remind you to do that, but yours actually identifies opportunities, which I think is so cool.

Ryan D’Aprile 5:46
Well, a lot of them I find have too much information, and most people won’t, you’re using about 10% of it. And so I try to you know, keep the you know, the acronym kiss, keep it simple, stupid, and just minimize it. So we actually could track our business be very well aware of it, be aware of where our businesses are coming for, we have a snapshot, or it tells you your main lead source, or where your primary amount of your businesses, anniversaries, and closing dates, all that kind of stuff. tie into social media connections with your network, so you can see what’s going on with them. track how you’re, but you know, you got to participate in it, right? It’s like, anything, you know, it’s your, you’re gonna get out of it, what you put into it. And, you know, so that’s why coaching is always so important. I was with a loan officer of ours today. And he said, I could spend four hours in this thing. It’s got so much Mike exactly, you can and they’ll tell you exactly what to do step by step, and then it becomes a process, not just a guessing game, what am I going to do today, you know, most of us wake up and we just react to the day where I I’d rather you have a plan laid out and just run that plan consistently.

D.J. Paris 6:57
Yeah, I encourage everyone who’s listening, this is the this is such a simple thing that everybody already knows. But I encourage you the night before, you know, to really go over your day, and maybe just identify the three to five major things you want to accomplish the next day, and then also revisit that in the morning because I even I knowing all of that I still have to remind myself Okay, um, before I go to bed, let’s take a look at tomorrow. And let’s identify a few things. So obviously, that’s a very simple obvious step, but something that is easily overlooked.

Ryan D’Aprile 7:30
Yeah, yeah. What do you want to talk about today? Well, let’s talk about the market. Let’s talk about, you know, we’re coming in pretty soon to the fourth quarter. I mean, it goes like that, doesn’t it? But how do we, you know, prepare for this fall season, which is upon us? And then, you know, more importantly, are you ready for the spring market? And what does your spring market look like? And

D.J. Paris 7:56
I want to pause just for a moment because I want to, I want to mention why I think this is so important, because I spend a lot of time with realtors, obviously, we have a lot at our firm, and then I am involved with our local association. So I even get to talk to a lot of realtors, outside of of our company. And even the most really the more successful realtors that I talked to, everyone seems to be really focused on what’s going on today in the market. Right? And we, you know, if I ask somebody, how’s it going? They talk about what’s going on today? Oh, inventories down rates are up. You know, it’s a struggle. And I don’t hear a lot about well, what else should I be thinking about today? Right. So I’m excited for us to provide some additional insight into maybe a different way to think about today. And you were saying, you know, let’s think about the spring.

Ryan D’Aprile 8:46
Absolutely isn’t in fact, I’ll I’ll even share my screen and see if I can show you how we look at it. Is that okay

D.J. Paris 8:52
with you? Sure. And we’ll just describe it for our audio listeners. That’s fine. Oh, yeah.

Ryan D’Aprile 8:56
Okay, fine. That’s right. It’s right. It’s a podcast and thing because we’re on video here. But let me see if I could pull this up. Can I Be careful some confidentiality here. So let me just think of how I can do this here. Um, I’m gonna make this little bit. Let me come over here. Okay, I’m gonna make this a little bit bigger. But let me show you how this works.

D.J. Paris 9:20
And I’ll do my best to describe it to our audience.

Ryan D’Aprile 9:24
Oh, you have to allow me to share. Okay, we’ll do that. Sorry about that. I just just came.

D.J. Paris 9:30
I always should be able to now Yep.

Ryan D’Aprile 9:39
Okay, so you may see my screen here. I can see it. Yeah. So I’m just going to kind of quickly through this. I don’t want to be on it too long here. But like, this is in leads. This is a sales funnel. Right? And I’m gonna make it bigger. So you don’t really see client names here. Okay. So is that okay? Yep. This is one of our agents, actual dashboards, right. You could, you know, here Er, this is the visual cues are incredibly important, right? So this particular agent has closed $90 million year to date $3 million, currently pending 5.6 million active another 5.6 of clients that they feel will close this calendar year that that comes from this here closing this calendar year. So, you know, in coaching and working with this agent, this agent can manage this themselves by looking at it, they can go and filter over here by this year. And it’ll show just individuals that you have going to share, so I’m not going to show their names there. But you could go through and calibrate like, Do I really have $5.68 million of leads not active clients leads, right, here’s active, that’s a totally different animal leads that will close this calendar year. And now there were like four and a half months left in the year that’s it’s gonna get tighter and tighter. So you’re you got to get more and more critical on these particular leads, and then shift on pay, are they more or next year? Or are you even certain that they’re going to transact a higher yield? So on this particular loan off, agents dashboard here, you’ll see there $18.9 million closing next year. That’s wonderful. So I’m going to click on closing next year, right, and you’re gonna see there’s a 33 leads. So I would come over to here and when to look at again, I’m doing my best not to show you the client name. Sure. But there’s a last note date right here. Right. So now I would organize like, okay, so of this net. And this is again, you could tell this is this, this, let’s just look this little this agent will do anywhere between 25 and 30 million in volume this year. Seven years in the business, and monitors or business takes it very serious what their day is they use this dashboard, consistently, this is another product. And now we’re teaching and coaching our agents that hate, make sure you close this $5.68 million in business this year, and you’re taking care of it. And of course, look at your network and make sure you’re in flow with your network. But look at all of this business that you have next year click on it. That’s 3333 individuals for a total of $90 million of business. Almost last time we touched base with him was last time we saw him for a cup of coffee and I was I suddenly went to dinner lunch with them. This is next year this year is over this year, we’re just maintaining and closing out what we got currently going on. You gotta be looking downfield what’s going on next year.

D.J. Paris 12:21
So have a quick question. So looking at this, describing it, there are we mentioned about just about under 6 million impossible closings this year that or that rather, the this particular again, it’s I know it’s a mortgage agent, but really, it’s a real city. This is a real I’m sorry, this is real estate agent, this organization was a little bit different. Yeah. So So there’s about, you know, 6 million or so that’s that we want to close this year. And you said better make sure they’re closing this year, or or updating it to maybe next year or removing them from right from the funnel. How do you how do you recommend somebody goes in to that group? And, and sees it you know, what’s the actual process of staying in touch to say, Hey, are you are you going to close without just asking them? Or do you recommend just asking the client are you planning on?

Ryan D’Aprile 13:09
Do you ask, you know, you focus first on relationship, but then you got to be direct and have conversation. Hey, when are we going to go out? When do you want to list your home? You know, where’s the hungry price that you that’s what you’re gonna ask internally, if they’re a buyer, when do you want to get out next? And you got to? It’s like, well, let’s get out. You know, let’s start looking in November. It’s September what? 13th today? So are 12 Yes, yesterday was September 11. So if somebody says yeah, no, right. Thanks for reaching out, you know, I’m thinking we’re ready. But we don’t want to get out to like maybe like right after Thanksgiving. I’m coming here. I’m changing them to closing next next year. Yeah, they’re not going away. It’s just when I come over to my snapshot, right in my snapchat saying, Hey, I’m forecasted. 34 million this year, I’ve closed 20 million. I got 3.2 million hours of pending, got 5.6 are active. But here’s the 5.6 that are starting to close. These are the leads. So this would go down this would go up. Right, here’s your needs. And so you could have your timeline 5.8 this year 11. On certainly one transact and 90 million for next year. Right. Here’s your lead sources you can see 50% from the network referring them 40% From network referral, then we have open house internet relocation leads whatnot. So in you do the exact same thing with your actives, you come over here and act as their act of actually exactly what active means you’re currently working with them, right? So he’s got $4.96 million of sellers and $735,000 with the buyers, which comes out to that 5.6 number which is happens to be very similar to what the leads are. They’re closing this year, but they’re two different categories. This is 1414 active clients will come over to Leeds $5.68 million and a total of Have 16 leads now. Now you close out your year. Now you calibrate it, you figure that out, you close it out. And then you look downfield and say okay, great, I got 90 million here for next year, which is 33 people, you better be in flow with those 33 people this next, you know, four months so that you are their realtor in 2023. What

D.J. Paris 15:26
you’ve worked with 1000s of agents over your tenure as as you were an agent yourself, of course, you now have a company with hundreds and hundreds of, of agents and loan officers and different different different sort of jobs within the real estate industry. But with respect to realtors, I wonder what percentage of agents know what their actual pipeline looks like? I bet it’s a pretty low number who actually know okay, well, they might know where they’re at for the year. But do they really have a good sense of what’s closing before the end of the year? Yeah, maybe what’s closing next year, that’s got to be even a smaller percentage of people who know this, I wonder just by just by forecasting this way, what this does to someone’s business, even if it’s, it’s kind of like I always heard, if you just write down your goals, you have a better chance of achieving them. Even if you don’t do anything, obviously, you have to do things to but I suspect this is a major first step, just getting it all down and reviewing the numbers.

Ryan D’Aprile 16:20
It really is. And I think the key is maintaining your business and and a lot of us, gosh, I would venture to say 92 to 94% of the real estate agents out there are are reactive and not proactive, and loan officers to like look, the past 20 years in the mortgage lending business. It’s been order taking, there’s just no, except for 2008. It’s been order taking, and it has shifted. Loan Officers have got to be out there, they got to be proactive, they got to be creating relationships with their sphere of influence their network and real estate agents. And, you know, it’s probably the worst mortgage lending business we’ve seen in 20 years. And but now you’re seeing 94% of the loan officers struggling real estate agents, or real estate market shifting too. You don’t have to struggle, the business is always there. But if you’re a reactive real estate agent, when the market dips, your business will dip too. There’s no doubt. Now if you’re proactive agent when the market dips, your business will dip as well. But not dramatically. In most cases, you’ll probably have an uptick versus a minor downtick. But in the mortgage lending business, we’re seeing loan officers businesses down 45 to 65%. Real estate agents, you don’t want that. But you will get it if you’re reactive. And and I

D.J. Paris 17:43
even think there’s little subtle, subtle ways to start the day that that sort of create more reactivity. I know for me, I had to stop checking my phone the moment I woke up, because I used to check to see what emails came through over the night. Not that you don’t need to look at that. Of course you do. But it put me in a reactive mindset. Literally, within the first moment of waking up. I was like I better see see what happened over over the over the night. And it’s really never anything that can’t wait an hour or two before I start my day. But I don’t do that anymore. Because it puts me in a reactive mindset. It’s like okay, now I need to react to this. Now I need to and I’ve like No, no, I need to first set my intention for the day and really have a good awareness of what my day is going to look like. Then I can go back and and I now just only allow myself to check emails a few times a day.

Ryan D’Aprile 18:30
Yeah, that’s one of the best things you can do. It’s not easy. It’s hard. That phone is a powerful thing. I was at Iowa with my daughter over the weekend we were talking about and I left my wallet at home. Oh no. Yeah, I’m wife wife was with me. But you know, but the tab came and I just asked the lady Do you do Apple page and of course they’re cute. My daughter said bad you soon won’t need a wallet or credit cards anymore. I said honey you won’t need a wallet anymore. Right I mean it’s it’s it’s a matter of time where you won’t even need a why hate why that lump in my back that

D.J. Paris 19:10
annoying? Yeah, stand it

Ryan D’Aprile 19:12
and so um but because of that I’m getting stupid Wall Street Journal alerts. I’m Gam factoring that shit off right? I’m getting I turned my email alerts off my text messages off. I’m so it’s me too. It’s like any boss, right? It’s like, you know, things like kryptonite, once it grabs you, you know, it’ll control your day. And you know, I heard this expression one time like if you treat the market like God, right? If you treat the market like God, then like God giveth God taketh away. That’s what’s going to happen to you. So you can’t treat the market like God, you got to take control of your marketplace and your marketplace is your network. And your network should be in a database and you should have a CRM and you should use and live in it’s here. I mean, there’s a lot of people that are part time passive in this business. They it’s their full income, right? But it’s uh, it just it’s a very passive approach to it. But the top of the top, you know, the guests that you have on these shows, they treat it like a business, they’re dead serious, they’re involved, they probably do know what they have closing next year, they probably do they know the name of the clients and, and their temperatures and whatnot. And that’s why I built this, I didn’t see anything out there like that. So that’s what he created for our company, I’m now going to start sharing it with others.

D.J. Paris 20:26
It’s very exciting. And I do think this idea of, you know, text messages, we could talk about this for a moment, because I would like to get your take on this. So text message. And I only bring this up because I hear a lot of agents talk about it is that the challenge with one of the challenges with having our devices with us at all times, aside from being Well, part of being reactive is clients text. And most people, I think, find that that’s a much bigger part of their business than it used to be people are more comfortable. And a text exchange doesn’t have a beginning or an ending? Well, it has a beginning, but it doesn’t have an ending really, right. So people can just continue on this conversation anytime, day or night. Really, when there are no boundaries around texts, really. So I’m curious and how you coach your agents to not let the texting become like because it can be infinite. And whenever. And you see that text come in and you don’t want to be reactive, you’re like, I’m only going to respond a couple times during the day. But how do you set about the right boundary? And how do you let the client know that I’m only responding? Or do you recommend going a different way with that? Yeah, no,

Ryan D’Aprile 21:30
I so Okay, so there’s two different things. So one, it seems like you’re asking how do you manage the client and your time, so you’re, you got to react to what they want. But so your old days not reactive versus proactive? And so you have to do got a time block? And you have to say, When am I going to be the one sending the text out? Versus texts coming in? We’re not going to be the one send the texts out, why don’t we where am I going to track it. And so that I know, hey, DJ Paris is in my network, I want to be in touch with him once a month be in his body. Because the reality is once every seven years, he buys and sells a home, and every single year for people in his network, buy or sell a home. So he’s got potential for referrals for me, right, that’s just how it comes down to. So if I have too many people in my network that I’m in flow with every single month, potential 800 referrals from my network, and 16% of them are going to transact. So that’s another 32 potential transactions. So where’s my business come from? Where do I make my money is being in flow with DJ Paris, who is not actually an active client? Right? He’s somebody that’s in my network. And then I go on, and blog. So that’s why I built this thing, kind of like the old you know, the the Toyota manufacturing system where it’s, you know, just in time to combine the visual flow, you have, you have different silos, right? You have one is your network, and there’s 203 interference, people in there, that’s my job, I’m going to be proactive with them. Then I’ll come over my next one, which my leads closing this year, closing next year, and that’s where I’m gonna transact those leads live in that network tab, I’m skipping over them because it says it’s in your funnel. It’s either in your leads, or you’re active, or you’re under contract, tab. So when I come over to my network, and I’ve been proactive, I’ll see DJ Paris, and I touch base with him in August 15. Of 2022. It’s over 12. And guess what, I sent him a Facebook message. And that’s the note I sent. So now I’m going to just do a little research two minutes, I’m gonna pick a phone and I’m going to shoot you a text message. That’s how I’m going to do it. Now, when

D.J. Paris 23:27
we’ve been talking about about monitoring that activity, social media activity in the sense of our, you know, hey, when’s the last time I proactively, you know, reached out to DJ? And what was the the way I did it? Did I do it via text via social media?

Ryan D’Aprile 23:42
Now, right, yeah, that needs to be tracked, that needs it. And that’s for you, that your borrower, your, your, your buyer, or seller, they’re not going to it’s for you, right. And again, it’s nurturing relationships. So I see DJ, and he was at Mercer recording this past weekend. And he put it on Facebook and said, Oh, my gosh, DJ, got to friends with siblings over misery accordion, we got a call from the bums outing every year, right. And also, because of that, I’m able to create immense, immediate connection with you. And then I move on to the next important person in my network. And that’s me nurturing that relationship. And that’s the proactive. Now when I go to text you that I might see five text messages from active clients, or leads, I gotta, I gotta move on. I got it. I gotta push those aside and go through mine. I got DJ, I’m doing seven a day. I got six more to do. I start at nine I’ll be done at 945 and now I could get over to those text messages. But before I get all those text messages, I go to the network. I’m gonna go to my leads. Okay, I got 45 leads of those 45 leads. Seven of them have not heard from me in three weeks. Great. Now just get seven to go. And then all 45 have heard from me within the past three weeks. And now you go to the React that let’s go file these active clients of text me to do The Gourmet flights, I got 15 active clients, and seven taxonomy, I’ll update that, and I will knock out the other eight. I’ve just accomplished an entire day work by 11 o’clock in the morning. And I can now do whatever I want with the day. Right.

D.J. Paris 25:14
And what we haven’t talked about is servicing existing clients, we haven’t talked about checking the market, we are talking about business building activities, which are staying in touch, in your case with this example of with your network, monitoring it so that you actually are tracking it rather, and putting all the activity in. So you know exactly how long it’s been. So that because people might be listening going, Okay, well, I know I have to reach out to these 30 people today, or however many people are on my show up on my CRM today. But now you get to get a bit creative with it. You don’t have to call 30 people you can or you can Oh, you know, you can see what they’re doing posting on social, Like Ryan said he saw that I was I was at an event this weekend. And so he might comment on that, that that counts, right? Anything counts, it doesn’t have to be Hey, when are you buying or selling? It just has to be some sort of reach out? In there’s lots of ways to do that. So it’s not like you have to call everyone and say, What are you buying? You’re selling? Because Ryan knows I’m probably not buying or selling for a while.

Ryan D’Aprile 26:14
Exactly. That’s exactly right. And it’s going to be more more focused on you and the relationship, right. And then that way you attract business instead of chasing business at some point, especially in different businesses that you’re in. So if you’re mortgage lender listening to the show, you need to ask for the referral. It’s more appropriate in a business to business environment that loan officers are in versus a business to consumer. Which real estate agents are loan officers, of course, are as well because they have to deal with the consumer. But you know, a lot of majority of us probably 80% of us or our sales calls are on those real estate agents.

D.J. Paris 26:53
So that’s thinking like, I was thinking it’s it’s that that I think it’s m Scott Peck wrote the book, it’s never crowded along the extra mile. That he might have been the road less traveled guy anyway, somebody wrote, actually, it was Robert Frost, the poet but anyway, the expression, it’s never crowded along the extra mile. I don’t remember who wrote who said that or wrote it, but

Ryan D’Aprile 27:12
less traffic up there.

D.J. Paris 27:16
That’s right, because I was just thinking, so I moved into a new development a year and a half ago. And you know how many postcards I’ve received from realtors? Now again, am I going to move anytime soon? Or people who move it into a development moving? Probably not, but a heck of a good time to start a relationship? Maybe we didn’t have good experiences with our Realtors, not everyone does, right? I have gotten exactly zero postcards. Zero. That’s,

Ryan D’Aprile 27:40
that’s so so that’s another point for all of our listeners here, right? I mean, the market shifting, you got, it’s going to be a flight to quality, you got to be on your game. If you want to have a similar year you had in 2020 and 2021. You’ve it’s not, it’s not going to just come you’ve got to be deliberate, you got to be proactive. One of the things that we should all be doing is in our database, right? We have previous sales, we should be looking at 2021 and 2020, sales and even 2019 We should be looking at data close. And we should be in tune with our past buyer clients on their home anniversaries, especially the ones for the immediate year. That’s where your highest degree of referrals are going to come from. But even the past three years staying, that’s where like that juicy referral business comes from. As you saw on the agent’s dashboard, I just had a $20 million production year to date. 50% was from his network. The other 50% was from his network referring him. That’s 10 hours or referrals. People had no idea. But the network he nurtured and took care of referred in that business. By the way, that average price point is just over $300,000 that $20 million producer. So that’s like 70 Plus units in a year. So it’s so for all the listeners across the country, right? You know, who start saying to myself, well, he’s in Chicago, they’re probably eight 900,000 hours not that person. That person is average price points in the mid three, in fact, 303,000 hours in Chicagoland average price and like the climbed up in the past year or so. But those numbers are attainable anywhere. You just got to get a database, you got to get a group of people, you got to create a network and nurture that network. You got to be consistent, you know, Denzel Washington, I saw a little clip on him, it was great. Like, if you’re not committed, you’re never gonna start. But if you’re not consistent, you’re never going to finish. So many people are just not consistent. I truly feel a database. A good CRM will bring you back to that consistency and, and don’t get distracted with all the bells and whistles because less is more, in my opinion to a good CRM.

D.J. Paris 29:48
And you know, doing the little it’s always the little things. It’s it’s remembering someone’s home anniversary. Well, it’s actually not remembering because no one’s going to remember that especially the person who moved in is probably not going to remember it either. But your CRM I’m just going to remember that and it’s going to tell you today so and so’s home anniversary, are you going to call them text them, send them a social media post, drop off a gift, send them a card, you’re going to do something. And

Ryan D’Aprile 30:11
that will help you with that as well, client giant, I can’t attest to them, because I’ve never use them. But my agents have, and they like it a lot. So I’m giving them a shout out, even though I don’t know them from Adam. But I’ve heard from a lot of agents to use it. It’s really good for buyer clients when you’re active with them. And then it’s also very good for like those anniversaries. It’s customized, it’s not branded, right, which is good. It’s like coming from you. It’s genuine. So that’s a that’s a good resource for you guys to be looking at. And again, that’s going to squeeze that orange and get you more referrals.

D.J. Paris 30:49
Absolutely. And so that’s really interesting. So you were let’s go back to the example of the person that we looked at just we don’t have to see any of the stuff. But that’s really interesting. So seven years in the business 30 million average price point is actually less than the average Chicago home. So it’s not like this person is playing in the ultra high net worth space, mostly. You know, they’re they’re working with average, people

Ryan D’Aprile 31:13
read out the 14 clients that they’re currently active with that he’s currently with 260,000 hours 285,000 through $35,000 $180,000 250,000 hours. 475 That’s a big one. 1 million we got a big one there. $400,000 275. I mean, it’s your I mean, besides the exception of that $1 million, one, but there’s another one for $35,000, that’s going to bring that back. Right? It’s, you know, sold, you know, 67 units, year to date, $100,000 to 30 $700,000 155 200,000 hours, 645 $80,000 363,100 45,000. That’s just a quick sample, I’ll stop going on and on. But I wanted to just, you know, for your viewers to hear, like, you know, this is an individual who sold $20 million year to date is still below 30 years old, you know, and

D.J. Paris 32:13
is probably going to close right around 30 or 28 or so.

Ryan D’Aprile 32:17
Yeah, I mean, it’s already at $24 million, with what’s pending, as well. If you had, if you had what they’ve closed, what he’s closer to date, what’s currently under contracts at 20, about 24 million,

D.J. Paris 32:28
that is a heck of a good those are, those are fantastic numbers for somebody in their 20s. Well, for any age, but certainly somebody who’s not even 30 yet. And for being seven years in the industry and for being in a year where there’s we hear a lot of doom and gloom. That is That is fantastic. So So what’s the secret to that person’s success? It just activity and consistency? Yeah,

Ryan D’Aprile 32:50
you know, here’s the reality. In my opinion, this this person has bought in to the system, the process that we’ve coached on right now, it didn’t fight it just kind of fall through, had mediocre first year had Okay, second year, came out third year stayed consistent. I have a lot of agents that are having great bang out years. But I know they got something else coming to them because they’re not being consistent. I’ve seen it time and time again. And so it’s just it’s are you consistent with it? Or are you caught up on the latest and newest fad, and trend and everybody’s going to is going to come and tell us here’s the future of real estate, this is direction is going to go? I haven’t in my 20 years seen real estate changed that much and not going to start believing now that it’s going to completely change to a different angle. Either it comes down to individuals strength or relationships. And you and I were talking about teams, I don’t think the whole industry is gonna go to teams. I really don’t.

D.J. Paris 33:53
That’s good. Cuz that’s that’s all I keep reading about. So I’m glad to hear a different perspective.

Ryan D’Aprile 33:58
It’s not

D.J. Paris 34:00
I mean, most people are individual practitioners. So

Ryan D’Aprile 34:04
it’s going to continue to be like that and that’s why I think you know, real estate agents you know, the concept of selling your book of business sure it’d be nice thing it’s okay excited about it. There’s nothing there you guys it’s through relationships it’s you’re going to ride out the sunset in this business put away max out that SEP IRA that or self directed 401 k be smart with your money. But you know, it is high unless you’re in a completely transient marketplace. And totally transient marketplaces, say like, Chicago, right? Downtown Chicago, or Miami York or New York, right? Yeah, eyeline leads are going to give you more there right you’re gonna be able to be more transient. You know, open houses are probably gonna be more successful because there’s not such tight communities right. But in the majority of America right there, suburbs or neighborhoods or communities be a part of that community. And those individuals are hiring you because they know you they like you. They trust you. They got a relationship with you. That’s how people I mean, it’s very arbitrary what how people pick real estate agents, it’s the person that comes to mind. Right? And they usually call him one person. And same thing you know, when times when you’re you’re building a home or you’re gonna get a remodeling project done, or you’re even hiring an attorney. It’s who the first person because I sure as I like you helped me. It’s just how it works.

D.J. Paris 35:35
I want to pause for a moment to talk about our episode sponsor are one of my favorite companies out there follow up boss. Now after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country for this podcast, do you know which CRM is used by more than any other by our guests. Of course, it is a follow up boss. And let’s face it, following up is the key to taking your business to the next level follow up boss will help you drive more leads in less time and with less effort, do not take my word for it. Robert slack, who runs the number one team in the US uses follow up boss and he has built a one and a half billion dollar business in just six years. Follow up boss integrates with over 250 systems, so you can keep your current tools and lead sources. Also, the best part they have seven day a week support. So you’ll get the help that you need when you need it and get this follow up boss is so sure that you’re going to love their CRM that for a limited time, they’re offering keeping it real listeners a 30 day free trial, which is twice as much time as they give everyone else. And oh yeah, no credit card required. So you can try it risk free. But only if you use this special link visit follow up boss.com forward slash real that’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial. Follow up like a boss with follow up boss. And now back to our episode. Yeah, I want to go back to that individual per se. I just realized something. And I don’t I just want to sort of put this in the mind of our listeners again. Somebody’s in their seventh year, still not 30 years old yet. And my head? I can’t remember. But yes, well, right around we’ll say right around 30 and seven years in and is basically closing a deal with every five to six days. He has a transaction closing something like that. He said he did about 7070.

Ryan D’Aprile 37:21
Let’s just look care. under contract. Yeah, about 70.

D.J. Paris 37:30
So this is somebody who’s closing a transaction essentially every week. That is remarkable. Write that in there. And that is somebody who the parent and by the way, half of his business came from his sphere of influence directly. The other half came from his referrals from a sphere of influence. It’s not like he’s even buying leads

Ryan D’Aprile 37:51
40% came from his network directly. Okay, so help me with my math, what’s four times 728? Right, so 20 deals from his network. 32% came from his network referring him so referrals for his network. Okay, so another 22 or so. Right? So what do we get total? What add those two together? 60 something or no? Yes. 70 to 73%. Then 30% came from for sale signs. 8% came from a lead from that listing. Right, amazing. Yeah. And then an open house. You know what I mean? It’s like it all comes down to the power that network and then once you start going you start getting listings second leads from your listings, and starts to snowball.

D.J. Paris 38:43
Yeah, I mean, this is somebody who has not been handed a lead. I have not heard Oh, he’s either purchasing leads or been handed leads by the company. This is somebody who literally just is nurtured their sphere of influence for seven years, is very profitable.

Ryan D’Aprile 38:56
And what he’s close here today is a half a million dollars in gross commission income. That’s a very profitable GCI. And there’s a lot of people that do that kind of GCI, but it’s not nearly that profitable, because you’re paying $10,000 a month for leads or more. I’ve seen it.

D.J. Paris 39:14
You know, that that is really that that case study of that individual that is a remarkable person, because it doesn’t it might not seem remarkable, but if we think about all of those numbers, they’re stacked together is that is a heck of a that’s a heck of a career right there. For somebody who’s about 30 years old.

Ryan D’Aprile 39:32
That person does not live in Chicago. Okay, he’s in one of our outlying markets. And that person is not originally from that area moved there. Seven years. And you just saw, it’s all from network and referral network. So anybody can do it. It’s just are you committed? And if you’re, if you’re not committed, you never start and there’s probably 80% of our real estate agents are like that. And then are you consistent because if you’re not consistent, if you’re not consistent, you’re not going to finish. So it takes To really tough, you know, tubes of iron in your body to be committed and to be consistent. And I applaud those that have consistently listened to your, your podcasts that go to coaching that go on to the next level. You know, there are some that will just come easy to do, and they’ll just continue to do it. But for those of us that it’s not that there are tools out there, they’ll tell you exactly what you need to do. But you kind of use them you got to be in um, it’s surprising what would happen to your business to be dedicated three hours to it proactively, versus four or five hours just being reactive all day long.

D.J. Paris 40:38
Yeah, I think you’ve really have to figure out a way to turn off the alerts the notifications, and put the blinders on like the horses have in racing and just focus on the task ahead. And it’s hard, because we’re all so connected. And it is it is a bit of setting up your systems to sort of make sure like when I go to the gym, I make sure everything’s turned off. When I wake up in the morning, I make sure it’s turned off when I There’s certain times of the day when I we want to do what’s called one mindfulness where you’re focused on one activity at a time, so you can give it its full attention. And you’re not pulled because we get a dopamine reward when when we’re reactive, because it feels like we just did something productive, we replied to an email, we, we and you have to do those things. We just want to structure it so that you’re doing it intentionally versus oh, it just came across my plate. And I, I really didn’t want to pick up the phone right now. So I’m going to deal with that instead of picking up the phone and calling somebody and saying, Hey, I saw you were just on vacation. Where do you go? Tell me about it? That’s being proactive?

Ryan D’Aprile 41:38
Absolutely. And then your focus more on your business than the news and the marketplace. Because if you listen to the news, you just watch the marketplace, you can go to a very dark place.

D.J. Paris 41:48
You, you you? Well, look, we know this about social media, I think you know, what you’ve said about social media, about it being the way to maybe the most healthy way to think about it from a business perspective is this is your your research and development. This is paying attention to what’s going on with your clients so that you have a reason to reach out to them, versus, you know, really trying to make a splash yourself by promoting yourself. But you should probably figure out a way to do that, of course, too. And I know you agree with that, but using it more as a research and development tool versus a you know, yeah,

Ryan D’Aprile 42:22
you shouldn’t be promoting yourself, you bet you should be putting equal amount of effort into nurturing your network. Now most people spend a person their time promoting themselves, and maybe probably less than 5% nurturing the network. If people got that to 5050, their business would just take off, which is absolutely take off. But you know, we’re still in that, even though Facebook and Instagram and tic tac and everything else been around for over a decade now. if not longer, right. But it’s still kind of new to us. You know, we’re kind of jumping into that and making that like our center point of branding.

D.J. Paris 43:03
Yeah, you have to be really careful because because as we as you and I know and I mean, the research is really clear at this point, that the more time you spend on social media absorbing it is you actually get you know, you’re unhappy or your happiness goes down, you’re you feel more disconnected. So there’s a lot of good reasons to stay away from social media as a an entertainment vehicle. So if you can then say, Okay, well, what’s really can be useful about it is knowing what’s going on in my clients lives and reacting to that, that is going to bring you business,

Ryan D’Aprile 43:34
you know, and it’s interesting, so Right, like, like, you know, we could I won’t name but we can name some high profile social media people, right. And their target market is national. Right? So a real estate coach, say Buffini or give me another one. Tom Ferry. Thank you. That’s what I’m trying to say. Tom Ferry right Surrett Am I saying his name right? Yep, sir. Hmm. Right, sir. Hi, right. Those guys right there targeting a national national network, real estate agents. You know, our clients are not national. It’s really local to our network, and how many of them are really living on it? And the reality is, it’s very difficult to boost real estate related type of advertising because of fair housing. Oh, I get did things adds denied all the time that have nothing to do with Fair Housing simply because real estate’s mentioned in the title and who you should be promoting that to as your network your friends and your friends of friends. Well, you can’t do that. So the reality is probably five to 6%. Your network may be seen, not seen, don’t do it. But you got to complement it with direct mail, email marketing, some outdoor marketing, but again, if you are like most real estate agents 5% Being involved with your network and 95% branding, networking and just being reactive, you get that bounce 5050, you’re going to do what that individual that I just showed you is close $20 million year to date. And I can take the individual and put them side by side with other real estate agents that I know, in different marketplaces. And there’s no way that real estate agent should be selling more real estate than the other agent. But he’s just committed and dedicated, being consistent. And that’s all comes down to it’s my job to make everybody crystal clear. That’s the only differentiator, any one of you can have when you decide a to start, and then be to be consistent with it and fall through it for a full year.

D.J. Paris 45:36
Yeah, if you if you just too well, it’s, it’s really you need a guide, I think you need somebody that can help get you out of the habits that you’ve created that aren’t helpful. And you need a guide, meaning a coach, an accountability partner, this is where coaching comes in. And this is where you guys, your firm in particular really helps it not that every agent wants that particular help. But boy, I know, if I was a working agent, I would want somebody keeping me accountable, making sure I have systems in place to make sure that I stay on target, because we all know that everyone listening, we all have parts of our life that we want to do other things that we can’t get ourselves to do. Right, maybe we want to go to the gym more, maybe we want to spend more time with our kids, maybe we want to be better about our finances, whatever it might be, or maybe work more on our business or whatever it is, and we just don’t seem to do it. And if you can get a coach to help you. It’s worth the investment.

Ryan D’Aprile 46:31
Well, we’ll also so even besides coaching, some people don’t want to coach you, but what we’ll do is we’ll take the transaction management and the monthly marketing off your hands, and provide that for you and have it done for you so that you’re more motivated, being engaged with that network, and then taking care of your CRM and tracking your business. You know, I will, you know, I’ll attest to my wife, she does 25 million in volume every year. And you know, she, I mean, her marketing is very simple. It’s done consistently, it consists of social media posts once or twice a week, which you know, are provided to her postcard once a month to her network in her farm, some Maggie’s local magazine ads in the neighborhood. And that’s it, and she doesn’t even touch that stuff. And she’s in flow with probably five or six people in her network a day. And therefore she is able to be a mom first and foremost, and focus on three girls and taking care of me and everything else while putting up tremendous numbers and not killing herself. Because she’s consistent with it. Could she do more? Absolutely. But she doesn’t want to. She’s great where she is. So my,

D.J. Paris 47:45
by the way, that’s a that’s a heck of a good full time income without all the other responsibilities. Right? Just being an agent, that’s a heck of a good income.

Ryan D’Aprile 47:54
Absolutely. Anybody can have it. Anybody can have it, but it’s again. Are you more on the MLS? Are you more in your transaction management software? Are you more texting and emailing active and existing clients? And are you just not prospecting? And when I say prospecting is that calling and asking for a referral, it’s calling and nurturing relationships. And following a system, it’s people choose to drive blind every single day with the most important part of their life, besides family and health. But you know, the third part business, which is income and financial health, it’s like it’s beyond me, you got to take control. Anybody could do, you could start whenever you want. And especially times now like now it’s the calm, people don’t realize how more more focused you have to be. It’s not just going to come to you, we can’t be order takers, we got to be very proactive. Gotta be very business oriented, and be very proactive versus reactive.

D.J. Paris 48:54
And what this whole will do, having structure and knowing exactly what your day is, you know, sort of looks like and I know things change, of course, but knowing that the approximate structure of the day will alleviate a tremendous amount of anxiety. Because what you’ll find is you’re not worried as much about when’s that important phone call going to come in with somebody who needs me to buy or sell you, you are taking proactive steps and you’re making your own luck. those phone calls will come in over time, like you said, Work this for a year and see what happens. And then just continue to work it forever. And there you go. That’s it.

Ryan D’Aprile 49:29
It’s that simple. Awesome. Well,

D.J. Paris 49:31
what a great place to wrap up I should mention for anyone who is in the show who lives in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida. You know, Ryan has company they’re not in every part of every state. But if you live in those states, and you’re interested in learning more about what Ryan’s companies do, again, they have real estate brokerage, they’ve got a lending. So if you’re a loan officer and you’re looking to see what other options are out there, of course speak to them too. They have title they’ve got a technology firm where they’re putting out software Um, but if you’re just, you know, most most of our listeners are going to be agents, if you’re really just wanting to see what other firms offer, you know, check out April properties, they really have a unique value proposition. They’re not just like all of the other firms, they really, really try to focus on what are the hardest things that agents struggle with. And they allow you to take that off your plate. And this has to do with some marketing and staying in flow and staying in touch so that you can focus on what’s best in your business, I’ve yet to really see a firm, I don’t know of any other firms that do it. So this is this, truthfully, that’s a really, really unique proposition. And you owe it to yourself to see what they offer and see if it’s a good fit for you. So go to Depot properties.com, their team would love to chat with you. And so on behalf of all of us here at the podcast, and all the listeners, we thank Ryan for coming on every month. He’s got four businesses to run. And we are and he’s got a daughter in college and two others in. So the other two in high school to I think, right?

Ryan D’Aprile 50:55
Yeah, Junior Senior. In fact, I have a coaching session here at three o’clock. I’m going to watch my daughter cheerleader, and then come back for 530 meeting so so he’s a

D.J. Paris 51:03
busy guy, and he takes time out for us. And we appreciate it. So Thank you Ryan. And on behalf of our Ryan and myself, we thank everyone for listening. Please tell a friend about our show and support our sponsors on the show support Ryan, as well as tell a friend and also leave us a review. Just let us know what you think of the show that will help us continue to improve. All right, Ryan, thank you so much. We will see you on the next step. See you next month.

Ryan D’Aprile 51:25
Alright DJ, take care

Welcome to our monthly feature, Close-ing Time – in partnership with TheClose.com.

Chris Linsell from TheClose.com and D.J discuss Chris’ article with “111 shocking real estate statistics” and go through some of these statistics together. Chris discusses hype shifts in the market seen in the last couple of years. Chris also focuses on the importance of agent’s activity on social media for their business. Last, Chris discusses 3 categories that bring success to agent’s marketing efforts.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Chris Linsell can be reached at [email protected].

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and FollowUpBoss.

D.J. Paris 0:00
Today we have some statistics that you need to know as an agent that will actually help transform your business. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our show.

buy real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host for the show and today is our monthly series called closing time with crystallin sell from the closed.com. This is a partnership between keeping it real and the clothes and let me tell you more about the clothes if you’re not familiar. The clothes.com is the kind of real estate website designed to give agents teams and brokerages actionable strategic insight from industry professionals. They cover real estate marketing, lead generation technology and team building strategies from the perspective of working agents and brokers who want to take their business to the next level. Now please visit the clothes.com to check out their articles. I also recommend subscribing to their newsletter, so you get notified every time they come out with a new article. And their articles are incredibly deep and detailed. And for example, if you were looking to some ideas of how to conduct a better open house, they are not just those some of those articles you might find by searching and you see these lists of a few different ideas that you already know these are deep dive articles. So definitely check out the clothes.com with us, as always is Chris Lindh Sal, he is a staff writer and the real estate coach for the close. Now Chris is the closes resident expert on real estate topics ranging from marketing lead gen transactional best practices and everything in between. So licensed agent Chris is a licensed agent in the state of Michigan, and he’s been part of hundreds of transactions from modest rural, rural starter homes to massive waterside compounds. And when he isn’t writing, you’ll find Chris fly fishing or performing on the stage of his community, local community theater. And Chris, welcome once again to the show.

Chris Linsell 3:09
DJ pleasure to be here. Glad to see you glad to glad to get into the real estate, real estate Convo today. Man, there’s a lot going on right now in the real estate space. So excited to chat.

D.J. Paris 3:22
Well, you’re not only our Sherpa in the sense of what’s going on in real estate news and technology and sort of actionable insight from market sort of conditions. You’re also my Sherpa for my new smokers. So Chris is also into smoking meats not that this audience is that interested in hearing us discuss that but i i Chris helps me I just smoked my first brisket and Chris was was helpful during that and helpful, everyone. So you have his he has a lot of knowledge. And we’re excited to have you again. So

Chris Linsell 3:54
well. Yeah, well, you know, whatever I can do to fill your brain or fill your belly, man. You know, you just let me know how I can help.

D.J. Paris 4:00
I love it. Well, let’s you guys just recently are you in particular just released a an article a couple of days ago on shocking real estate statistics that agents and everyone needs to know about. So I’m excited to get go through some of the standard by the way you wrote. This is how detailed Chris as a writer is as well as the close itself. There’s 111 Shocking real estate statistics and imagine as an agent, if you just went through there and picked out 15 or 20 that you could just have at the ready whenever you’re having conversations about real estate or the conditions of the market today. I would imagine that would be some nice expression with arrows in the quiver, right? Yeah, arrows.

Chris Linsell 4:45
Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, I want to make sure I give credit where credit’s due. It wasn’t just me that that worked on this. We have an amazing team over the clothes, including another one of our staff writers Jody and our marketing In manager, Becky, that both played a major part in making sure that this article was exactly as valuable as it is. So major kudos to those folks and a whole close team. But I will say, you know, there are a couple of things that are worth calling out here just at the jump. That, I think if you’re, if you’re listening to this, and you’re wondering, okay, yeah, okay, I’ll here’s some, some real estate statistics, because I think it’s interesting, but how does this actually apply to making my business better. And I want to just start by telling you, a whole bunch of the things in this article, and that we’ll talk about today will directly positively affect your efforts as a real estate agent, because a part of what you do, and a part of, of how you position yourself to create the business that you want, is by showing your community and your clients and your prospects, that not only are you experienced in the spaces that you serve, but you’re also knowledgeable about what’s going on. And you can take that knowledge and apply it to benefit your clients. So as an example, as an example, just right off the jump, I was really interested to learn through the research of this article that there are currently as of July of this year, there’s 1.6 million members in the National Association of Realtors, this is an all time high, never had this many people in NAR, which is crazy. I mean, so there’s a lot of people in the real estate space, there’s actually over 3 million people with active real estate licenses in the United States. So there’s a whole cohort of people out there who have real estate licenses that aren’t a member of NAR. So when you are talking to your clients right now, you can start with some of this information and say it and internally have this knowledge that you’re not the only game in town, there’s a lot of people out there who are competing for the real estate business. And when a client chooses you, that means that they have chosen you among other competitions. So be knowledgeable of that be thoughtful of the fact that they have choices. And you can you can kind of leverage that through your initial conversations with them.

D.J. Paris 7:18
Yeah, I actually think that’s a real positive because it reminds me of I think it was M Scott Peck who wrote this book although I could be wrong, which is the road The Road Less trap while he wrote the road less traveled. But I you know, it was he wrote this book, but the axle expressed it, I was gonna say it’s not that but it’s never crowded along the extra mile. Right. So I think this allows agents to step up their game become more valuable to their clients, and also separate from the pack.

Chris Linsell 7:47
Yep, absolutely. So I want to throw out just a couple of numbers, DJ, and let’s see if you can, we’ll play a little little rapid fire and I will not be looking at the article, don’t you don’t look? Okay. Okay. This is really sick, significant number here. 66%. What do you think 66% might apply to in the real estate space?

D.J. Paris 8:10
I would, I’m curious if it has to do with the amount of agents that have been in the industry for less than a couple of years?

Chris Linsell 8:17
Oh, good, good guests. But no, as of 2022, started 2020, to a full 66 actually a little bit over 66, almost 67% of real estate professionals are women. We are living in a world and working in an industry driven by women. This is a place where the success of the market at large depends on women. Now men certainly play a major role in this too. We’re all in this together. But ladies, if you’re listening to this, you are the driving force in our industry. And you know, we as an industry as a whole those of us who talk about and work through the industry, we got to take this into account because your the perspectives and the direction of women in our profession are the driving force of success.

D.J. Paris 9:07
I’m starting to see a lot more female only or female lead brokerages and fin teams in particular, I’m seeing a lot more of that than I did a decade ago when I got into this industry. And I’m I think it is it is very fun and neat to see that. And I think that, you know, boy, some I used to see a lot of teams that that had both men and women and a lot of teams do. But I do have a there’s a special place in my heart when I see a bunch of women collectively getting together. And you know, they do sort of run this industry in a lot of ways. And I think that ultimately is is a good a good thing for everyone. But I see I’m seeing like now’s the time for the for these women who seem to be taking more leadership positions and running things and I’d be curious to see how that all plays out. You

Chris Linsell 9:54
know, I totally agree. Okay, another question DJ, what would you guess the percentage Have Realtors actively United States who have had their real estate license for one year or less? I’m talking brand new real estate agent, right? What percentage of of agents in the US have had their license for one year or less? 15% is my guess. Actually, that would be a great guest last year, but this year 18% 18% of agents out there have had their license for less than a year. And here’s what agents and brokers need to know about this information. One, there is a reasonable chance like almost one in five, that the agent across the table from you, this may be their first transaction. Okay, so for those of you who are seasoned in the space, keep in mind, almost a 20% chance here that the person sitting across the table from you is brand new to this. So how do you need to adjust your communication? How do you need to adjust kind of the shared workload of getting transactions across the finish line? You know, in the real estate space, our competitors are also our colleagues. So how are you going to how are you going to keep that in mind. Another thing to think here is if you are a managing broker, or if you are a, you know, you own a brokerage, or an indie agency, or franchise, you got to know you have more new agents in the space than then historically you’ve ever had. And this means it’s time to step up your professional development, you have to be really thoughtful and conscientious about your training. And Holy smokes. If you are a team leader who has working with brand new agents on the daily, like they’re shoulder to shoulder with you, these are folks, you have more of these people in the industry who want to learn from you than ever before. So if you’re building a team, keep in mind, you got a lot of inexperienced agents out there. But that usually means you have a lot of folks who are ready and anxious to learn kind of at the feet, so to speak, of somebody who’s done it a number of times successfully. So yeah, it’s a little bit of extra work, mentoring and training. But the payoff could be huge.

D.J. Paris 12:09
So it’s really never been a better time for a team leader who’s looking to expand the team with new newly licensed agents and mold them. Now there’s just more of them out there. And also, remembering for everyone listening, if you’re not in your first year, you probably remember your first year and if especially if you were not on a team, and you were trying to build your business, my suspicion is that that was a pretty stressful first, actually, probably for several years for you. So you know, we think about reaching out offering a bit of a lifeline to these these agents who might not be getting the training they need. From there, you know, managing broker who whatever you can bring them into your fold. And you can also charge them a little bit for that with a percentage of their income. That’s totally reasonable and acceptable. The other thing I was thinking, as Chris was saying, What if you’re on the other side of a transaction with somebody who’s newly licensed, inexperienced, probably doesn’t know a lot of the nuance of how to get certain transactions closed or moved through. If you nobody, very few people will ever tell you. This is my first real estate sale, Mr. Cooperative broker and our Mrs. Mrs. Broker, and can you help me, you know, it’s an embarrassing and difficult and vulnerable thing. So most people aren’t going to tell you, but you can actually look it up. If you suspect maybe somebody’s newer to the business, while obviously you could call their managing broker just say just that curiosity, are they new? And can can we help them a little, or you could just go on to your state website. And I think the information is public in all 50 states and see when they were licensed. And then you can always reach out to them and say, Hey, I see that you’re newer to the business. I got a few suggestions about how to make this happen better for you, you know, being of service that way. Instead of just going like, hey, this person doesn’t know what they’re doing. Well, yeah, they’re in their first year. And you can look that up. They don’t tell you

Chris Linsell 13:50
totally, totally. So I want to pivot a little bit. I was particularly fascinated in this in prepping and prepping this article. Looking at some of the interstate migration data. People have moved a bunch is since since you know, the spring and summer 2020 COVID did a number on those things. This is I don’t know guessing here. I just want to throw throw out a stat here and get your reaction from July 2020 to July 2021. The State of Texas grew its population by 30 million people. And the state of Florida grew its population by 22 million people biggest growth of states all across the country. And this includes California, which has the biggest population at large. And so you know, that sort of growth in California might be you know, that just in California would be impressive but seeing that kind of growth in states Texas and floor Which, you know, not small states by any means. But by far record growth. Pretty amazing, isn’t it? Would you agree with that?

D.J. Paris 15:09
Yeah. And the Florida thing makes sense, because there’s a lot of baby boomers nearing retirement. And traditionally, you know, Florida is a destination that people consider. Also note, because of the state income tax situation, and other and weather and all sorts of other reasons. But yeah, so I think to me, what I hear when I hear things like, hey, client, people are moving to. And I, by the way, California, I believe, and I don’t know this, if this is true, true, but I believe they have a net negative, I think they’ve actually are losing people every year or the last couple years, at least, because of all sorts of regulatory issues and taxes and six, but anyway, Texas, Florida makes makes perfect sense. And Texas has favorable tax laws for businesses. I know lots of companies are moving there to but I guess the way I would interpret that or an action step would be time to develop relationships with brokers in those areas, because I now might have my clients may be moving, I’m in Chicago, but clients here, you know, my parents are probably going to retire to Florida as well. They’re gonna need a realtor down there.

Chris Linsell 16:13
Yep. 100%. That’s my my big takeaway for this. I don’t care what state you’re in. If it’s any excellent, I should say, if you live in any state, other than Florida and Texas, you need to run, don’t walk run to like a referral portal or like an agent database where you can connect with agents in those states and start setting up these referral relationships right now. Because chances are, you’re going to see folks who are looking to get to those states, at the very minimum to buy second homes for vacation properties, maybe to relocate in general, it is still, it would be statistically unlikely that you don’t experience that, you know, over the next couple of years. So be thoughtful about the fact that Florida and Texas are destinations right now, they’re likely going to be for the foreseeable future, in part because of what you mentioned. As as you know, we’ve got retirements for a lot of folks coming up, we’ve got favorable tax and regulatory environments for businesses. So definitely something that is worth worth keeping in mind. If you only have a couple of referral relationships, make sure you’ve got them. In Texas, and in Florida.

D.J. Paris 17:28
In Texas, I was gonna say in Texas, what that means in Florida as well is all the major cities are the major markets. You need to have a realtor in place for that. How do you find them? Lots of different strategies. I think we can all probably figure out ways to do that. You could Zillow reviews, you can ask if you have an internal network within your brokerage, you can go to labcoat agents on Facebook and ask about, you know, experiences that people have lots of ways to find realtors. I guess the point is Chris is saying build your database of referral partners. Yeah,

Chris Linsell 17:57
yeah. And, you know, you had mentioned retirement, which brought up another interesting stat that I’ve found since 1980, which I know feels like ancient history for folks who are, you know, in the, in the, the, you know, Generation Z or or nearby? For me, that doesn’t seem that long ago. 1980 just feels like you know, that’s that’s just a few years ago. But since 1980, the median sale price for home in the United States has increased by 781%, which is

D.J. Paris 18:31
of seven, almost eight times. Oh, I don’t know if that right.

Chris Linsell 18:35
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right, almost almost is you have seen an almost 8x increase in the median sale price in homes. And why i Why do I think this is statistically significant? Well, for real estate professionals who have a client based or a community, where you have a lot of folks who are nearing retirement age, or maybe they are have are now just past retirement age, and they are starting to think about kind of the, you know, kind of later chapters in their life. There, it will not be uncommon to see a lot of these folks who have been living in their homes since the late 80s, and 90s, and maybe even before, and what that often translates into, is are folks who, when they’ve been in their home for 30, or 40 or 50 years, many of these folks have just stopped monitoring the value of their property, because why would they they don’t need to think about how much this is worth because they own it outright, they’ll pay the taxes. They’re not looking to sell anytime soon. This is just their house. These are many of these folks are considering now what their next options are. And so, given all of this climate, if you have these folks in your market, it is a genuine possibility. They have no idea how much their property is worth. And so All right now I am encouraging folks that I coach and do consulting with, you should be spending time in the tax roles of your community, if you have public tax roles, and identifying people who have owned their homes for 20 plus years, because it is a very good chance that these folks don’t have an accurate idea of how much their home is worth. And the longer they have owned this home, the better because it is more than likely that they have even if they think they have an idea that they don’t have the complete, accurate idea. This is where you can step in and provide cold call or cold, a cold like letter value to these folks by saying listen, I ran just a really preliminary CMA on your property. And I think you’d be surprised at the results, I think your value might be and you can ballpark up higher, you know, just just a general price. And say, I’d love to give you some ad, you know, really accurate data, I’d love to just do a quick walk through the property provide you with some options. This is totally, you know, free of obligation and charge, I just noticed that this might be something that you might missing. There’s so much value you can provide for your community through this, and a ton of business that can be done as a result of it.

D.J. Paris 21:18
My parents built their home in Peoria, Illinois in I think it was 1980. Or we moved in in 1982. Not moved. These are not my parents are super, super tech. Not I mean for their age, they’re in their 70s. They’re super tech savvy. But are they going on Zillow and looking up the value of their home? They’re not? I assure you they aren’t. And they assume the next year or two are going to eventually get rid of that home, I am going to ask them how often they receive phone calls, emails, letters in the mail that say, Hey, I want to do a value, I bet you the answer is maybe one a year if that.

Chris Linsell 21:56
It’s an opportunity to right now, especially if you have good strategies for that initial approach. And that provision of value. And if you need help on those things, you can always visit the clothes.com We have a ton of resources for folks who are doing cold outreach on marketing, who are doing CMAs who are providing that sort of value to their community, lead with value, the business will come from that and a close can help you get there. I wanted to call out DJ a couple of kind of pre and I you know, I hesitate to call it post pandemic because we’re not quite post pandemic, but kind of pre COVID and kind of post COVID hype shifts that have happened in the real estate space, there’s got to kind of call these out popcorn style and get good and I want to hear your thoughts. Just in general. Number one, the the National Association of REALTORS increased their membership by nearly 50,000 people between July 2021 and the in July 2020 to 50 50,000 people join, they are pending home sales in June of 2022. We’re down over eight and a half percent over may as a direct result of these escalating mortgage rates and housing price changes. Mortgage rates are changing the way that people are shopping for homes big time right now. Another important one to call out with mortgage rates expected to likely stabilize close to 6%. Home sales are likely going to see if we predict out if we have some stabilization. 2023 may be a year that we start to see home sales stabilize and the markets balance a little bit as those as those interest rates kind of equalize a little bit. And then the last one I wanted to call out here was just the overall projection in home prices. Despite all of the craziness in the market, we are still expected to see home prices grow in 2022 on net, but 2023 There’s an expected decline in the average home price. Yeah, you know,

D.J. Paris 24:14
I think this this speaks to a I’ve always thought more of a It might even be a philosophical style question that is worth exploring, which is is a primary residence and asset. And the there’s there’s different debates about how to how to define an asset and whether a primary residence fits that criteria or not. It certainly is an asset on the day you sell it. We understand that. But I think this could be an opportunity for agents to have a deeper understanding of what an asset is and how important home value values are to somebody’s overall net worth. And you know it and I think having that in Information and being able to have a deeper conversation with somebody about the importance of home pricing today, where it’s going to be in 20 years, how it affects somebody’s overall net worth, I think is really important because I think people overestimate. So when I say people, the average buyer and seller probably overestimate the importance of where home prices go. Because it’s important when you’re buying something and when you’re selling something, and then there’s all this time in between. And, you know, do we do we want to look at a primary home as an investment? Or do we want to look at it or as an asset? Or do we want to look at it as just hey, we got to live somewhere. And and so there are different thoughts about this. And I encourage agents to have a perspective on this have a point of view, and be able to understand the different perspectives and be able to share that with somebody because I think re education or educating somebody is becomes really important, because you have to remember, buyers and sellers are going on Zillow, they’re looking at their Zestimate. They’re curious. Right? And that question is, yes, that number, whether it’s accurate or not, that’s also debatable, but people look at it, and they assign significance to it. Your job as the agent is to help them understand is, is this a significant number to you, Mr. or Mrs. Buyer and Seller? How does this fit in with your overall life plan? How it you know, and ultimately, what you might find is it’s not as important as we all in the industry think it is because we deal in home prices. And we’re always negotiating, I don’t know how important it is whether the home prices increase or decrease a little bit over time. I mean, I guess if you’re if you’re making a big giant bet on that something is going to appreciate, then yes, it is significant. If if you’re just hey, this is my family home for the next 20 years. You know, I understand having your clients understand what this asset actually does along the way. And what it does at the end, I think is a really important understanding for a realtor to have.

Chris Linsell 27:00
Yeah, I totally agree. And in fact, I coach people on a regular basis, to say, the only reason I want you to know what the kind of market sentiment and the direction of home prices is, it is it has almost nothing to do with the dollar values of the homes and almost exclusively has to do with you being connected to the sentiment of the buyers and sellers for which you are serving. Because those folks get emotionally affected by those numbers, you should only be objectively affected by those numbers, those those numbers should only change kind of how you process strategy for what’s the percentage that we should offer over or under the asking price and how many days on market, you know is you know, what’s the ratio of days on market versus versus list to sale ratios and all that stuff. Those are just objective measures for you. But for your clients, those are subjective measures. So you want to make sure that you are in tune with those market directions, in part are almost exclusively because your clients are emotionally internalizing those and you can’t be objective value to those folks without taking that into account. Right. Speaking of of kind of internalization and and kind of experience and I know we’re running up on time here, but I wanted to just call out a couple of interesting marketing statistics that we uncovered as a part of this article that I think a lot of folks would be surprised by. The first is in 2021, the closed did a survey of our readers and we found from our readership, that more than 30% of agents who we surveyed reported closing at least one transaction as a direct result of their activity on social media. One in three almost one to three agents said I got a sale because I posted on social media.

D.J. Paris 29:01
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Chris Linsell 30:22
So I thought that was worth calling out in the context of also, new data released by Mehta, who owns Facebook said that Americans and we are calling were, we are at the close, qualified some of this some of this data and took just portions of it to understand that Americans who are likely to become homebuyers or home sellers, so we’re not including folks, like under the age of 22, basically, in this, but folks who are over the age of 22, on average, spend up to 90 minutes a day, on Facebook, or Facebook connected platforms like Instagram and Messenger. These are your people, and they spend over an hour and a half a day on these platforms. And 96% of the visits to these platforms happen on mobile devices. So real estate professionals, if you are not on Facebook, get on Facebook. And if you are there, the content you are creating has to be it is not optional, it must be optimized for mobile consumption. If you are envisioning somebody opening up their laptop or logging onto their desktop computer to consume all of your wonderful Facebook information. And you are tailoring your posts to that sit down desktop experience and not to the mobile phone in the back of an Uber or on the subway or sitting on a park bench. You are wasting your efforts relative to somebody who understands exactly who is reading and consuming your content and how they are doing it. It is time to accept the fact that people are doing it on their phones. And they’re doing it a lot. In fact, the average American Facebook user clicks on 11 ads per month. So there is a lot of evidence to suggest that not only is your organic presence there important, but your paid presence can be very profitable, if you are doing it correctly and understanding the facts as they are.

D.J. Paris 32:42
And you know, there’s a couple a couple of things I thought about, as you mentioned that one is that it’s a great time if we if we know that 1/3 of every of all the agents who are online have have talked about getting at least one transaction for the year. Or maybe if we think about well, what is that worth? Right? So take your average home sale, and the average commission and obviously can figure that out pretty easily, then think what if I were to hire somebody to assist me with some of this? Would it be cost effective? If they could get me from maybe one Facebook transaction a year to three or four or five? Would it pay for their salary? Would it pay for their health, whether they’re part time full time, that’s another something to consider if you’re not super Facebook focused. The other thing I would say is, don’t neglect video video is how people are consuming a lot of social content. And you don’t have to have special lighting or you know, special devices, you can use your mobile device and literally just turn your phone around and at every show and go let me show you something really cool about this home. If that’s all you did. You can track your metrics and see if your audience appreciates that content. But it doesn’t have to be a lot more than that. It just has to be bite sized information that people find interesting. So now’s the time I agree with Chris to really put yourself out there on social talk about what you do provide think about value. What do my clients what are the questions my clients asked me and make videos or write articles specifically answering those questions.

Chris Linsell 34:18
100% 100% In fact, my I have another real estate coach named Sean modry, who also does some stuff with us on the clothes, specifically with our clothes pro product. And he and I have talked regularly about how successful real estate marketing especially on social really boils down to three categories. Evidence of success, evidence of knowledge and evidence of action. And social is such an easy place to demonstrate evidence in these three things. I love DJ I love your example of every time you were to show him just flip on your phone and say out. I’m going to show him I really want to show you something super cool by just doing that this 32nd video you are demonstrating action. Hey, you’re at a showing you’re a busy agent who’s out working, you know, about the inventory and the activity in the market. Oh wait, you know about the inventory. That’s evidence of knowledge. So you’ve got evidence of action, you’ve got evidence of knowledge. And what did I say? The third one was evidence of knowledge, evidence of blanken.

D.J. Paris 35:25
Knowledge, action and

Chris Linsell 35:29
experience, experience. Yeah. So these three things experience, you are literally working with somebody to accomplish the same sorts of things that your potential buyer or seller will want to accomplish. These three things are accomplished so easily on social with just this single piece of video, I tell you what, I follow a lot of realtors on Facebook, specifically those in my local market, because these are folks that I’m connected to, I want to see what they’re doing. I want to celebrate their successes with them. I’ll tell you what the most consistently successful agents in my markets are the ones that I see doing this constantly. And it generates a lot of conversation, because those folks who are doing this constantly are offering their audience a chance to engage at their on their own terms at their own pace. And it may be that the first 10 times you do this, you’re going to get no response from people, but I guarantee you people are watching. And it only takes one time for someone to say, Oh, I love bay windows like that, you know, I’ve always wanted bay windows in my house, then that single comment is going to lead to a text message or a Facebook Messenger message, it’s going to lead to a further conversation and it’s going to lead to another name and your CRM that you can then turn into a client.

D.J. Paris 36:51
You just gave me a great idea. I loved the bay windows idea. Because here in Chicago, we have a lot of our architecture for residential has a Windows and the windows are definitely like, I assume they’re still considered a premium nice thing to have. I had it in a previous condo of mine, I loved it. And if even if you’re just like, here’s everything you need to know about bay windows, and you do a little video or write an article about it. If that’s the thing that you’re into, or if that’s a thing people in your market are into. That would be incredibly unique content that a lot of people would or hate. What about the trend for all white? You know? I’m sorry, I’m blanking on on the term, but fixtures all white? You know, cabinets and countertops? What’s the deal with quartz versus granite? What’s that, like? These are things that when people are buying homes they care very deeply about and then they don’t care about them ever after that until they have to make another real estate transaction. So you could do these articles, you could go talk to a stone specialist and go say, tell me about Granite, tell me about quartz? What is it? What’s best for spills, you could go into a tile store and do that that’s content, you could it’d be super valuable. And I know you have to go Chris. So

Chris Linsell 38:07
Well, I do I did want to just attack on to that to two really quick little things. It’s that is content that is marketing, really valuable marketing assets. Also, you know, like Alert, alert, that’s professional development for you, as a real estate professional, you should know that stuff. And if you don’t know it, don’t worry, most of us don’t, you have to be active in learning those sorts of things. So you are actually bettering your business, your ability to advise your clients by going to learn that stuff. The end, you get to create marketing content. And I did want to throw out one example too. If you’re feeling daunted by by like you know that kind of like recurring video thing that we were talking about. I have an agent that I follow on my local market who is super smart about this. She is a lover of mid century modern furniture. So whenever she goes to a show if she spots something that is like the mid mid century modern style, she snaps a photo of it and she has a recurring thing on her Facebook and Instagram called the mid century mod alert. And she’ll share a photo of it she’ll share Oh, I was at a showing I saw this, this house is you know, this space is perfectly suited for this doesn’t get on video does it all in just in images and gets a ton of interaction as a result of that because it’s consistent. It’s something that’s attracted that people can be drawn to. And it’s something that she can do without feeling a lot of discomfort.

D.J. Paris 39:33
And you can do or totally agree that this is something you could find your own little niche. I mean Zillow Gone Wild the account on Instagram and Facebook if you’re not familiar, you need to be because this is mostly a non real estate professional followed real estate account, sort of poking fun at people’s design choices with their homes. Zillow Gone Wild is a perfect example because even though I don’t watch real estate shows on television I just I don’t watch the reality stuff with real estate. I follow Zillow gone wild because I am fascinated by what people do on the inside of their homes, especially when they do wacky things. And that’s, that’s what that sort of account is all about. You could go to every showing and find something unique. And maybe you don’t out the you know, the address of the property. But you can always say, you know, like you were saying your hashtag could be weird things, I find it showings or something. And that would be huge for people. Everyone loves to get a little everyone’s got something weird in their house anyway. So. All right, Chris. Well, this is so great. If you want to see, we’ve covered like five of these statistics, there’s 111 of them. This just came out. While by the time we released this episode will probably have been three weeks or so. But if you go to the close, and or, you know, we’re gonna have a link to this in the show notes this particular article about 111 Shocking real estate statistics you need to know but this is good stuff, guys, you can use this to reach out to clients right, deepen your connection on social all sorts of great ideas, build your team. So go visit the clothes.com they also have a premium membership called the clothes pro where in most of their content is 100% free you don’t have to subscribe but if you want to take it to the next level, they have premium content as well. It’s like $1 a day it’s totally worth it. The clothes pro when you go to the clothes.com Look at the clothes pro try it for a month see if you like it, I promise you will. Chris does a lot of coaching on there as well. And obviously he knows his stuff. So everybody visit the clothes.com They’re awesome, let’s support them. They don’t need our support, but they deserve our support because they are really the best source I have found for anything related to really deep dive non sort of non ideological or you know, basically just here’s the facts. Here’s what we find related to anything about building your brand or your business as a real estate agent. So check out the clothes.com guys You won’t regret it they’re the best. Chris thank you as always I will let you get on with your busy day but boy I wish I could talk to you for another hour with more of these stats because I find them so fascinating.

Chris Linsell 42:10
Well I’m sure we’ll connect on this and I’m gonna be smoking up pork butt this weekend. I’m sure we’ll chat about it. By the

D.J. Paris 42:17
way, Chris, if anyone out there who is into smoking you actually and I don’t want to put words in your mouth but before we go, you actually so brisket is often considered like the Holy Grail of smoking because it’s expensive. It sort of seems fancy it’s it’s it’s a cool thing. It’s not as common but I and I have now done both I’ve smoked pork butt which is pulled pulled pork for those of us not in the smoking community polpark versus brisket and Chris I believe you have told me that you actually prefer the taste of pulled pork over brisket if you had to choose one or the other. Is that that accurate?

Chris Linsell 42:51
Well, I mean, I don’t want to I don’t want to offend anybody and they like the like religious smoker community or anything here but their pork has a lot going for it when you’re smoking. A chunk of meat that size takes a long time you got a lot of good flavor in there. It lasts forever. Pulled Pork will last you forever in the fridge or the freezer and you can put it on so many things. It can be in sliders, it can be on nachos, it could be it could be so versatile. I’m not saying don’t go Brisket. Brisket is delicious, but give pork a chance people and pork.

D.J. Paris 43:26
It’s a heck of a lot cheaper. You can usually find it for a couple of bucks a pound sometimes. Whereas brisket I just did a brisket and it was like $13 a pound it was so I can

Chris Linsell 43:35
feed the entire barbecue with $25 with a pork butt. I can barely feed myself for $25 The Briscoe

D.J. Paris 43:43
well we will Chris Niobe will announce our smoking conversation. Smoker conversation podcast. But for now we will say goodbye. Maybe we’ll we will start giving some some grilling and barbecue tips. Yeah,

Chris Linsell 43:59
right. Questions about barbecue and grill. I I’m not I’m not I’m being totally serious here. If there’s one question from somebody about how to prepare meat on a smoker, I will answer it for you on the next podcast that I’m here with DJ I’m just I’m just calling out. Right DJ, find a way to get this question to him and I will answer your question. And by

D.J. Paris 44:23
the way, a grill or a smoker is a fantastic closing gift. And it doesn’t have to be 1000s of dollars you this is a great I mean assuming you understand what the family wants and needs. That is a heck of a good gift. So keep that in mind too. All right, Chris will chat with you next month Always a pleasure Chris Lynn sell by the way Chris speaks all over the country is constantly in demand. Are you have any upcoming speaking appearances? Yeah,

Chris Linsell 44:50
you guys are I you know this one’s gonna by the time this episode drops would be perfect time for conference planning during the State of California. I’ll be at the car Are reimagine event in Long Beach, middle of October. If you are in the National Association of Realtors, and coming to the NAR conference, I’ll be speaking at the NAR conference in Orlando in November. And if you are in New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania and coming to the triple play conference in December in Atlantic City, I’ll be presenting actually four different stage presentations in Atlantic City so you can literally have an entire day with me if you feel like

D.J. Paris 45:25
well, that would that that sounds like a dream for I’m sure a lot of our audience. I mean, seriously, I love I love hanging out with you. All right, yeah, we will. We will call it a day. Thanks, everyone for being being a listener and participant with our show. We consider our audience our family, even though we don’t get to speak with you directly. Hopefully, we’re speaking to you. And we want your feedback as Chris said, so let us know what you want more on the show. And also send us your your questions about about grills, smoking barbecued anything, we will answer it next time. Chris, on behalf of everyone, we thank you for being part of our show for as many years as you have been. Chris is a wonderful guy and obviously real a real asset to our show. And also on behalf of Chris and myself. Every single one of you that listens. This is the reason we do it’s because of you the person I’m talking to right now in your ears, that you are the reason we do this. So we need your help. Tell us what you want more of what you want less of it. Also tell a friend about the show, the more people who know about us brings in more opportunities for us to give you better content. So just tell a friend that’s all we ask. Okay, Chris, thanks for being on the show. We’ll see you again next week or next month. Thanks, guys.

Heidi Bolyard an Architect passionate about teaching realtors and other RE Professionals how to think as an architect describes how did she get interested in architecture and why she made it her career. Heidi discusses how she got into working with realtors in helping them and their clients make better decisions. Next, Heidi talks about the frameworks of SOLD, the main walkaways of her courses and how they help realtors. Heidi shares her tips to help agents think like an architect. Last, Heidi talks about the trends regarding renovation or home construction is she seeing right now.

Download Heidi’s guide on 3 things in 5 minutes to make more money as a realtor here.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

You can schedule a call with Heidi Bolyard here.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and FollowUpBoss.

D.J. Paris 0:00
What do architects see that Realtors often miss? Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with Heidi Bolyard, who is an architect and she is going to show you what architects wish Realtors knew and how to think and speak more like an architect with your clients. But before we get to it, just a couple of reminders. By the way, you probably didn’t know this. We just crossed over 400 episodes. We’ve been doing this for about five years now. And I want to encourage everyone who’s listening to please go back and listen to the early episodes. My intention, when I first started the show was not to really create even current, sort of here’s what’s going on today kind of episodes, and we do some of that. But the vast majority of what we do is really timeless. It’s talking to top producers about how they got started, what they did when they first got in the business, what they’re doing today and what they recommend agents who are looking to grow do so even though we’re pumping out two to three episodes a week now, please go back and listen to the old ones. I promise you there’s so much value there. And also just tell a friend, that’s the only other thing we ask of you is tell one other realtor, maybe somebody who’s struggling right now, it’s tough out there, tell them about our show, and that might just help them find their next idea to grow their business and keep it thriving into 2023. So enough about all that Thanks for being part of our show. Thank you to all the listeners for 400 episodes, we’re gonna keep cranking them out as per usual, but now on to the main event, my conversation with Heidi Bolyard.

Today on the show we have heightened boneyard from soiled by design. Let me tell you more about Heidi now Heidi is an architect by trade but is also extremely passionate about teaching realtors and real estate professionals how to think like an architect to get to the heart of what homebuyers actually want in a dream home. Now she started supporting Realtors when they began to hire her to do walkthroughs with their clients, I actually should have done that. That was that’s a really smart idea. But today she teaches real estate professionals how to ask questions with the same level of detail as an architect. And this the same detail that an architect needs to actually build the right home for someone. Now she received her Bachelor’s in environmental design and architecture from Ball State University and an associate’s degree in both construction management and art from Delta College. And when she’s when designing homes. Heidi’s main goal is to inspire her clients, nurture families and create more happiness and joy in their lives. Now, I want everyone to do this. We very rarely have non Realtors on the show. But this is a very special episode. So I’m really going to ask you to do this because I think it will really help your business go to sold by design dotnet sold by design dotnet. And there is a white paper I want you to download. You just have to give your email address and your name. And it’s titled Three things you need as a realtor to make money faster. But written from an architect’s perspective. This is a perspective you don’t normally get. Trust me it’s worth it. And anyway, also visit Heidi on sorry, on social media, which is at Heidi Bolyard and that’s Bo LYARD We will have links and by the way Heidi is at IDI. We’re going to have links to that in the show notes so you don’t have to Write that down, just go to our show notes. We’ll have a link to soul by design where you can download the white paper. And of course, follow Heidi Heidi, thanks for being on the show.

Heidi Bolyard 5:08
Thank you so much for having me.

D.J. Paris 5:10
We are I’m really excited. I never get to talk to architects, I’m always fascinated. Can I tell you the only architect joke? I know, it’s it’s, I think it’s a really good one to everyone who’s, who’s in architecture. Everyone else won’t get the joke, but it’s actually a civil engineering joke. So I’ll tell you, I don’t know many jokes. But I always thought this was great. So and I’ll explain it. Because I think it’s I think it’s a great introduction to what we’re going to talk about today. So it’s an old joke that some of you might have might know and architects might have heard it. But it has to do with civil engineering, where it’s like, what’s the difference between a civil engineer and a psychotic? And the answer is one pays better. And the reason why that’s funny, for everyone going I don’t get it is because what I love about architects and civil engineers in particular, is like a civil engineer will will look at like, a river, and then the two banks on either side and, and visualize a bridge going across and actually can see this bridge that doesn’t yet exist, you know, and much like a psychotic does the difference. The architect or civil engineer can actually build the bridge. But anyway, it’s probably not a great show. But I’ve always loved that joke that based better you guys are able to visualize things that don’t exist over

Heidi Bolyard 6:28
hired any and or engineer or architecture.

D.J. Paris 6:31
Well, I, I’m embarrassed to say that’s, that’s my only one. And I probably lost half the audience on it. So if you’re still with us? No, I’m really excited because I do not know anything about architecture. And I know that our audience is always looking for an edge as a real estate professional, to be able to go inside a home and actually provide more value. So I’m excited to chat with you. But before we get to all of that, I would love to hear about your journey. How did you get started? Did you grow up? I imagine a lot of kids grew up probably wanting to be architects. I feel like it’s one of those professions that could be a childhood dream. I don’t know if that was your childhood dream. So I’d love to hear about how you got interested in architecture, and then how you made it a career.

Heidi Bolyard 7:14
Originally, my childhood dream was to be a radiologist.

D.J. Paris 7:17
Wow, wow, that is highly specific. Yeah, you wanted to look at X rays.

Heidi Bolyard 7:22
Look at bones like you could see those cool pictures. And yeah, like, you can read those. Like, that’s fascinating. So now I read blueprints instead. So very similar polarity there, maybe, yeah. But I grew up in a fairly rural area. And we didn’t have a whole lot of opportunities for electives. So one of the opportunities I did have was residential drafting. Wow, I had taken that class, it just absolutely fell in love with it. It was so much fun. And then I ended up doing it for a second year, my senior year of high school and then from there went into architecture program.

D.J. Paris 8:05
So if I mean, that’s amazing to me that your school even had a drafting a program. I mean, I wouldn’t have even known what that was it when I was in high school. And there certainly was none of that where I grew up. So the fact like did you have like the the drafting table that’s at the

Heidi Bolyard 8:22
mechanical, like drafting where you went to school?

D.J. Paris 8:26
I don’t know maybe?

Heidi Bolyard 8:28
Like did the mechanical drafting, but I’m like, that sounds boring. I wonder like, draw something? Yeah.

D.J. Paris 8:36
So So in high school, you sort of caught the bog, you started understanding how plans, you know, are made visually. And then where did you go from there.

Heidi Bolyard 8:45
So from there, I had actually went to a community college where I was going to do like a two plus two program. Somehow that turned into eight years and four degrees. I don’t know how these things happen, but they just do. But yeah, I was in a, like a set an architecture associates program. And in that I was just like, I am basically taking almost all the classes I need for construction management. And I had a good friend whose dad owned a construction company. And he was just like, hate when architects don’t know what they’re drawing, they don’t know what they’re doing. And so he really pushed me to get a better understanding of construction, so that I would be a better architect. So that’s why I ended up getting an associate’s degree in construction management, which was fantastic too, because it gave me skills for managing and like owning a company. So that worked out later in life.

D.J. Paris 9:44
Yeah, that makes sense. It’s a nice skill set to sort of complement. The design side is like now I have to do some project management and understanding how that all works and the actual boots on the ground, labor part of it, I think, That’s so interesting. So as as an architect, I think you have a really unique skill set. That is, I think, particularly attractive to realtors, when did Realtors start coming to you saying, Hey, you’re really skilled, I want you to come either check out this development I’m working on or maybe it’s home, my client wants to buy or sell. I’d love to know how that those two worlds interacted.

Heidi Bolyard 10:23
Yeah, I have a client, that’s a real estate agent. And we had done some work for her home, just she hated like, it was a, I think like an 80s 80s or 90s. Home. And she was like, this was way before modern farmhouse was popular. And she was like to turn it into a modern farmhouse. And I’m like, Oh, this will be fun. So we that’s what we did, we like change the exterior of the home the facade to make it look like a modern farmhouse. And then after that, like she, she had ran into a few different times clients that were looking at several different homes in the area that they wanted to buy, but they knew all of them needed to be renovated. So they were looking at some older areas, in the Columbus, Ohio, area smoulder suburbs. So all of those homes tend to be closed off spaces, and just kind of dark, not enough windows. So I walked through the homes with them and just kind of talked through with them, like what possibilities were with the homes or even some of the homes I’m like, this is going to take so much I think it’s best unless you’re really, you have your heart set on it like best to look at one of the other outputs, or one of the other options.

D.J. Paris 11:44
It’s really amazing. I’m thinking now, like you have such a almost complete skill set, because a realtor is able to have you come in evaluate a property, and then you don’t just know aesthetically or from an engineering perspective, what’s what’s correct, what needs to be changed, what can be changed, you know, the possibilities, but you also probably understand cost, right? Because you have this construction background as well. This knowledge of understanding time and, and how how to actually make the plans from the drafting table, you know, come to life. So I think that is incredibly valuable to realtors, I think that is so interesting. I wonder how many realtors who are listening to our show, which is pretty much our entire audience are Realtors I wonder how many of them have ever thought to reach out, you know, of course, we know inspectors and appraisers and we know people that can do bits and pieces. But you have this really sort of well rounded understanding of how homes work. And so and so now you’ve you teach people this, which I think is so cool, I’ve yet to see any other architect, even think about, you know, teaching agents. So can you tell us a little bit about sold by design, I oftentimes, by the way, only, I’m only getting to this early in the conversation because I oftentimes forget. And then we get to the end and like, oh, by the way, she’s got these great courses. But I really want to talk about these because this is the only course I’m aware of that really teaches a realtor how to think like an architect.

Heidi Bolyard 13:10
Yeah, so we have, you know, a few different like things like the, the PDF, just to get some understanding of what the soul by design framework is that we have a four part framework, that’s called sold. So it stands for simplifying the process. And then the O is outlining your clients goals and dreams, the L is for laying the layout of the existing home in the D is for details of the existing conditions within the home. So really just that overview, from the from the initial point where I meet with a client that’s looking to renovate, or add on to their existing home, kind of starting at that point. So the one thing I always start telling when I’m working with real estate agents is tell them like, you need to go in and see your client’s existing home. So even though they’re not looking to stay there, like you need to know what’s working for them in the home and what isn’t working in what they love about the home. And what yeah, they would want to improve if they stayed there, just knowing all of those things about your client. And then also to like, I think so many of us can be challenged with communicating what we’re really thinking. So if you’re in their space, they can show you what they’re thinking. So it makes it easier for them to express to the real estate agent, what they’re really looking for in a new home.

D.J. Paris 14:43
So this idea of you going into someone’s existing property and saying, Tell me what’s working in here. What do you like? And I that’s a really interesting question itself. I’ve not ever heard anyone and we’ve done I don’t know 400 or so episodes. I’ve never heard anybody asked that. So cific question. I don’t, of course know every question that our guests ask their clients. But I think that is such a smart question. Because it’s not just Hey, what’s wrong? What’s broken? What what do we need to fix? What can we improve? That that’s important, of course, as well, but understanding what’s working, and even if they’re leaving that home and selling it and going to buy another home, I think really helpful information, you know, what do you love about this current home that you’re leaving? Or that you want to change it, you know, you’re staying put you want to change? So I love that. What do you think? What do you think Realtors miss, that they could pick up and I know your courses teach this, I don’t want to give away all your secrets. But we’d love to know what what Realtors oftentimes just aren’t thinking about that an architect would would catch and I understand we can’t teach somebody a skill over this, this episode. But some ways that you would encourage agents to start thinking about properties as they go in and you know, are there and witnesses?

Heidi Bolyard 15:56
Yeah, one thing I encourage agents to do is I know, you know, I know that with the current market, a lot of people have been not doing their home inspections. But when you have a home that’s having a home inspection, go and talk with the home inspector about, like, things that he sees, and like, issues and or potential issues and things like that, just because it’s gonna give you a better understanding of existing homes, and the clients already paying for them to be there. So you might as well take advantage of that free education.

D.J. Paris 16:31
That’s a really, really good point. It’s, it’s something that I don’t know that anyone’s ever said that either on our show, this idea of going to the inspection, you know, I think Realtors might think, well, it’s gonna make me look like I’m involved in the process. I’m there, I’m supposed to be there. You know, it’s my job to sort of be there to witness it. But from a skill perspective, yeah, the agent can pick up a lot of information, just talking to the inspector and saying, Hey, what what did you see over there? Did you know you mentioned this in your report, or you had mentioned that you’re writing it down? What did you see, I’d love to know what you saw. But I have an example. I bought a condo in the last year and I have this wonderful inspector. I know at the beginning, I was joking saying I should have hired an architect but but ours was a new development, there was really no reason to do that. And in my inspector was amazing. And just in case he’s listening, he was amazing. We I loved him. But one thing he saw that I would have never seen as he saw that one of my doors was warped in our master, but I’m sorry, the primary bedroom closet was the door was warped. I still don’t see a work door when I look at it. And I didn’t, but he was able to see that and so I was like Hey Mark, how did you hear today I still have a stroke I would still struggle to see it. But there are little tricks and tips that that you know people who are you know, part of that that world understand like yourself when it comes to design because you do so much designing what do you I think many realtors are just my guess would be they’re afraid to have those conversations. They might know the basics about okay if you you know want to renovate your kitchen or if you want to add on to the home, you know they have some general knowledge maybe even specific knowledge. But what would you what do you say? I would suspect that many Realtors just don’t really understand a lot of what actually you know unless they’re developers themselves really understanding the process from start to finish I’m curious on on where you see some of those disconnects. I want to pause for a moment to talk about our episode sponsor are one of my favorite companies out there follow up boss. Now after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country for this podcast. Do you know which CRM is used by more than any other by our guests. Of course it is a follow up boss and let’s face it following up is the key to taking your business to the next level follow up boss will help you drive more leads and less time and with less effort. Do not take my word for it. Robert slack who runs the number one team in the US uses follow up boss and he has built a one and a half billion dollar business in just six years. Follow up boss integrates with over 250 systems so you can keep your current tools and lead sources also the best part they have seven day a week support so you’ll get the help that you need when you need it and get this follow up boss is so sure that you’re going to love their CRM that for a limited time they’re offering keeping it real listeners a 30 day free trial which is twice as much time as they give everyone else and oh yeah, no credit card required. So you can try it risk free but only if you use this special link visit follow up boss.com forward slash real that’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial. Follow up like a boss with follow up boss. And now back to our episode.

Heidi Bolyard 19:52
I think like looking at existing homes, it’s looking at the existing spaces. So looking at what spaces are too big, what spaces are too small? Like, where could some things be reworked, but I think that going back to that first part of like seeing their home, like really understanding what your clients are looking for so important, because if you don’t understand that, you can actually walk into a home with them, and see how it could function for them.

D.J. Paris 20:20
Yeah, it makes sense. It’s like,

Heidi Bolyard 20:21
it’s like, really understanding the client.

D.J. Paris 20:25
Lots of lots of questions. It sounds like and I think that’s, but like lifestyle questions, it sounds that that’s part of it, too, right? Like, where do you spend the most amount of time in this home? Where do you relax? What is relaxation look like?

Heidi Bolyard 20:40
The whole family cooked together in the kitchen, or is it just?

D.J. Paris 20:44
Yeah, you know, and it’s funny too, because like, I cook a lot. And I was just thinking, as you said that, that every time I’ve bought a place, and the kitchens are always been fine. But for somebody who cooks a lot, they really need a different type of kitchen than somebody who’s not as inclined to, to, you know, use the stove, and the oven and the range, and just all of all of these things that I realized, like, I’m really my next home, if possible, if I can make this happen, I need to have two ovens. And I know that now, I didn’t know that before. And just because I cook so much. And so it’s something that that I’m now realizing, but I wish somebody would have said, Hey, do you cook a lot? Because if you cook a lot, what here’s what we should do, we should give up some of your counterspace or your cabinet space, and we should put in a second oven for you. And here’s why you want to do that. But I wouldn’t have I wouldn’t have known right? So I love this idea of of people coming in and asking me questions. And this is something that any any agent can do is really, and really you should be doing it anyway. Finding out exactly. So asking people about about how they interact inside the home, I

Heidi Bolyard 21:51
think asking all of those questions, you’re asking the client questions they’ve probably never been asked in their life. So they feel more heard, than they’ve ever felt. So especially if they’re interviewing multiple agents, before they, you know, select one to help them find their new home or even sell their existing home. Like, if you’re asking them all these questions. They’re, yeah, they’re gonna be really impressed that like, you’ve taken the time to really get to know them and learn about them and learn about what they’re looking for in their new home.

D.J. Paris 22:25
Yeah, there’s there’s sort of superficial surface level rapport building sales, 101 stuff, like you see some, they, they’re there, they have a picture of them holding them, you know, a fish that they caught, you know, you’re a fisherman and you can talk about that. That’s one way of building rapport. And it’s maybe more more surface level. And then there’s really getting into somebody’s desires, their likes, their dislikes. And that is, is very complimentary to somebody. It’s actually very respectful, I think, to say, tell me, like, you know, these kinds of questions, you’re right, I think that’s a much better way to build intimacy to build trust. Because you’re demonstrating care, you’re saying, okay, yes, I see that, you know, you fish. And that’s great. And we can talk about that, too. But

Heidi Bolyard 23:10
those things, too, if you guys have, like, there’s some common connection, just because then they, yeah, people, people work with people they know, like, and trust.

D.J. Paris 23:18
Yes, yeah. So, so you started creating a platform, you realize there was this space in the market, where there was a big disconnect between your skill set, and of course, you know, you have many degrees, and most of our audience are probably not going to, you know, enroll back at university, you know, to develop these particular degrees, but they can leverage some of your, your knowledge and wisdom and actually learn some of some of this framework so that they can come in, and just, quite frankly, be be like, you were saying, if you’re in competition with a few other realtors for a listing, you’re gonna go in and say, you know, look, the person behind you might have been super charming. And maybe, maybe that’s enough to win the business, but you can come in and actually win with skill. And I think it we’re in the day and age where charm is, is being demoted as far as importance. And I think skill is rising to the surface, a little bit more than it used to, from a sales perspective. So I am so interested in learning this, and I know if I was a practicing agent, which, which I, unfortunately, I’m not, I’m still too busy to do that. But that would be the first thing I would do would be to sign up for this. Because I want to have an advantage and an edge. So when somebody goes through your course, what are the main benefits that they get to walk away with once once they’re sort of I know you have many courses, but what is the overall sort of objective?

Heidi Bolyard 24:44
overall objective is really just, it’s honestly the same process that I use when I’m working with a client to rent, renovate, or add onto their home or even build a new custom home. So it’s really that initial step of outlining their or their goals and dreams for what they’re looking for. And then the design process of, you know, laying out the home and, and seeing that and then more detailed things like mechanical systems and the kind of some structural systems like I teach, like where how to locate bearing walls, as long as you can get to a basement like it’s, it’s pretty easy to determine that or even standing on a first floor, being able to see you know, oftentimes and in the homes, it’s just you see a straight wall going right through the middle of the house. And there’s your bearing wall. So

D.J. Paris 25:36
that and again, I want to pause for a second, I apologize, Heidi, for interrupting you. But you just really important because if I as a realtor can walk into a home and have a pretty reasonable idea where the load bearing walls are, I now at least know what isn’t possible, or what is what opportunities might have opened up from knowing this information. That is incredibly valuable, because you can go into somebody’s basement, for example, or any part of the home. And if you have a little bit of that knowledge, you can even just whet the appetite of maybe the prospective buyer, if you’re if it’s a by side transaction or less, I’d say hey, I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this. But one thing I’ve seen work is you know, we opening up a certain space, and I think this wall might be able to come down. Have you ever thought about that, you know, bringing those ideas is is really exciting to people I would imagine

Heidi Bolyard 26:28
when I think too, like walking into a home just because like the people that are selling it or using it as a dining room. Like if you know what their goals are like, Oh, well, they’re using it as a dining room. But what have you used it for this space that you wanted in your new home? Like just to help the client also think differently think outside of the box when they’re walking through the home with you.

D.J. Paris 26:50
And how many of us grew up with dining homes, that we ate him twice a year, three times a year. And they they’re beautiful. And they were not to be walked in and touched and all of that.

Heidi Bolyard 27:01
Or dusted? Yeah.

D.J. Paris 27:03
But how many of those rooms could have been repurposed for something more functional, that, you know, tradition would have, you know, not, people wouldn’t have been able to see another opportunity in that room. Because they’re they grew up in a house with a dining room, as well as living rooms, even more of a mystery to me, we grew up with a dining room and a living room, we were not allowed in either. I mean, not really allowed. We didn’t do anything in either of those rooms. And they just sat dormant. They were pretty, but they had pretty things in there. But I almost think it was a good chunk of our first floor what’s like, don’t go in and don’t use them like don’t,

Heidi Bolyard 27:39
early, early 90s, late 80s The great room that they had a newer home and they had a great room. And he’s like the great thing about it is we never have to clean it because we’re never allowed in their space to never use.

D.J. Paris 27:58
I think in today’s day where we’re working from home a lot of us are well realtors have always been able to really do that. But but a lot of you know non traditional work at home jobs are now working home jobs and and so you now have there’s a premium on, on on space. And so now it’s like, hey, that living room that we open, you know, holiday presents in once a year and we never go in with the piano that none of nobody uses it practices on maybe it’s time to rethink that room into a more functional and useful space. I’m curious and I would be remiss if I didn’t sort of bug you with this question, which I’m sure you get at every cocktail party or every social event you go to because it would be the first thing I would ask an architect and it’s almost maybe an interior design question so I apologize if it’s not totally in your wheelhouse, but I suspect it is but just about like trends like what What trends are you seeing right now that maybe our audience should really learn more about as far as you know renovation or even just home construction or with this move to maybe working more from the home obviously home offices are are more

Heidi Bolyard 29:05
effective in a lot of homes with two offices now just because oh, I’m work from home. So you know, converting dining rooms adding French doors so that it can be used as a second office. We see that a fair amount. And then the other thing is interesting like people are putting in these massive pantries to basically be their messy kitchen. So it’s like where there used to be like this nice kitchen, but like you just kind of serve food there. And then that’s the one where you prepare the food. So I feel like this keeps just getting like it’s been happening for years but I just feel like it’s just continues like people are putting countertops in there even like I know for me we have our blender in our pantry we have like a a convection oven that toasts and does all this other stuff which is nice because it eliminates appliances but like just to get like to keep the kitchen counters cleaner. Just so that we don’t have all of this clutter, I say clutter creates chaos. So I like seeing our kitchen counters more cleaned up. So that one and then one thing that we heard from a contractor recently is the homeowners want to have a Costco door into their pantry. We were like, What is a Costco door and it’s a door from the garage and it’s not a full door, it’s like half door and you open it and from the garage, you can like push like all of your, all of the the non perishable stuff you got from Costco into your pantry without having to bring it all the way through the home.

D.J. Paris 30:38
That is That is brilliant. That is brilliant. I love that like your your 21,000 gallons of mayonnaise, you can just push as opposed to you know, that actually is really, really incredibly functional. I’ve seen some really interesting things too. I’ve seen people build, recycling sort of shoots, where they just put push, like what used to be, although I don’t think we see these much anymore used to be those. I used to think it was so cool growing up, and there’d be these older homes that had just these little like, yeah, those little like little doors. Yeah, well, the quick hand crushers are great too. But like just those little chutes where you could throw your laundry and it would go down two floors, you know, and end up in a basket. I’m seeing I think people are really into functionality now. And I think this idea of like you were talking about pantries, I have a massive walk in pantry now. And we you know, probably because of Marie Kondo or whoever the the, you know, organization person is, you know, everything is now organized, we have, you know, these, you know, these these tubs that we use, that are labeled, and all of that, and we really keep as much of our stuff out of the kitchen. But again, I guess the point is asking somebody, Hey, are you the kind of, you know, family that likes to have, you know, your your convection oven, your toaster oven or whatever, out out and about, so you can use it? Or is it okay? If you go into the pantry to use it? Is it better to maybe put the microwave in there and put and keeping the area, you know, simple and minimal and clean, which is you know, more, you know, public facing, I guess to guests. And we’ve done that in our home. We’ve tried to remove all the appliances from the actual, you know, the exception of the built in stuff, move those into into the pantry and it’s like, oh, that why didn’t we think of that sooner? So that’s a those are some great, great tips. What about? So the idea of two offices is great, but again, this is all about asking questions, isn’t it like it’s really about that’s so that’s so interesting.

Heidi Bolyard 32:43
I have to talk to you people are using like that, like one of the offices a lot of people are putting like a Murphy bed in it just because you have guests like how many times a year like it’s, it’s like just here and there like put on a Murphy bed. And then you could just talk you’re like I’ve seen people almost build desks into like the closet space of an old bedroom, or a bedroom to really use and then they add they can close the doors when they’re not using it and pull the Murphy bed down. And so their stuffs tucked away and somebody can use it as a guest bedroom.

D.J. Paris 33:12
I am the biggest fan of Murphy beds. I am we were we were wanting to do this. I’ve also noticed that second bedrooms for new developments. You know, not primary bedrooms. But second, secondary bedrooms, especially in condos have at least here in Chicago have shrunk. It used to be that the secondary bedroom was was not quite as big as the primary bedroom. But it was it was bigger than it seems to be now. And now there seems to be more of a premium on larger living space, smaller bedrooms. And so we looked into getting a Murphy bed for that second bedroom. Because we yeah, we have guests three times a year. It’s my parents like to come and use it. My sister and her husband once in a while. And 99% of the Year, nobody uses it. And I was like I had my first apartment out of college when I lived in St. Louis had a Murphy bed, which was so cool. I thought it was the coolest thing. And then yeah, and then I didn’t see a Murphy bed until like a year ago. Like it was like about a 20 year gap where you just never heard about them. And now they’re all the rage probably because a home offices and

Heidi Bolyard 34:15
it is COVID push people back. So placed on

D.J. Paris 34:20
there. They’re expensive, but they are awesome. And that is we ended up not doing it. And just because the cost of the Murphy beds, one that we wanted was just was too costly, but we might still do it because it really again, having this information really allows you to go into a home as an agent and say, I have an idea for this home like do you guys have a lot of guests? Or would you rather have a space that’s more functional? Have you ever thought of a Murphy again, bringing ideas to people is great and so as far as the idea but I know pools have also become very, very popular especially since COVID.

Heidi Bolyard 34:59
And now Your living spaces. Yeah, as well. Just yeah, place to be outside of the home and still be able to have some, it feels like an extension of the home, it feels like additional square footage.

D.J. Paris 35:14
Yeah, I’m, I’m a huge, huge fan of, of, of outdoor living space. And again, there seems to be now more of a focus on creating more of a living functional environment in and outside the home versus just a place where we, you know, end up at the end of the day after work and try to relax and go to bed. This idea that we can actually have fun in the home is is is a little bit more of a newer idea. I think unless, you know, you were dealing with ultra high net worth people, as an agent, of course, they have a lot of space, so they can create, they’ve always been able to create specific rooms for specific things and, and the average person really usually wasn’t able to do that. I think now there’s there’s more opportunity, because there’s just more interest in converting rooms into into various things.

Heidi Bolyard 36:03
And I think like you said, with the fun space, I think, you know, with COVID as well, like, people couldn’t go anywhere. So they were like, Okay, let’s figure out what we can do in our space so that we have more like, you know, our own personal entertaining space. So.

D.J. Paris 36:22
So for an agent that wants to learn more about how to think like an architect, obviously sold by design.net is a great resource that she Heidi has courses. She is the real deal. She has a she is not a realtor, she is an architect, she has the drafting table, she goes in and out. And what type of projects do you do you work on? Mostly? Is it mostly residential? Do you also do commercial,

Heidi Bolyard 36:47
we work on primarily residential work, we’ll do a couple commercial projects here, and they’re mostly multifamily, but some other, you know, smaller commercial projects. But those are normally for savers for clients that we have that we did their homes. So but yeah, so it’s nice to mainly focus on residential work, we love doing whole house renovation projects, especially in older homes. So taking those early 20th century homes and converting them into functional living spaces for 21st century families.

D.J. Paris 37:24
And there is a lot of lot of sort of opportunities that again, the average consumer isn’t probably aware of unless that they’re studying this on their own, too. And so I think, you know, as an agent, you have a couple of opportunities here one, of course, you know, sold by design dotnet can teach you how to think like this. And I encourage everybody to consider those courses, because, boy, just imagine how much more sort of useful you’ll be to your clients when you’re able to sort of bring some of that architect knowledge in to a higher level. Yes, yeah, the 1,000%. And also, I think, if you’re not able to do that, you know, buddy up with an architect, somebody who’s wanting to do more renovation work or development and, you know, ask to take them to lunch or asked to have them come to a property, maybe pay them for their time is another option. And have them come in and say, What do I not know that, you know? What, what about? Are you seeing a lot of additions being so I’m interested in, in sort of renovation stuff right now, because last year, of course, his home prices were soaring, you know, and rates were so low. We were seeing a lot of that it’s changed a bit of course now. But what are you seeing on the renovation front? Is that still as popular as it was in the last couple years?

Heidi Bolyard 38:52
Where we are in Columbus, Ohio, it has not slowed down? Actually, we’re even busier than we were last year. So it’s, it’s it’s amazing. So

D.J. Paris 39:05
what type of renovations are you seeing?

Heidi Bolyard 39:07
Um, a lot of a lot of still like whole house renovations just looking to update the home because they don’t want to move they know like they really liked the neighborhood they’re in they like the schools their kids go to, they’re not looking to they don’t really want to move somewhere else. So they’re willing to just to renovate their, their existing home, we see a lot of people adding on more space, some more living space, like a bigger family room space just so that they have, you know, somewhere to go within the house that gives them a little bit more room to do activities. But then to we also see a lot of people adding on in law suites. So a lot of people have done that to bring family back into the home. So having multi generational households. So yeah, a couple years when people couldn’t see their or family, they’re like we want them with us.

D.J. Paris 40:03
Yeah, nearby. So that’s such a smart idea too, because it also frees up a space in the main home too, right? Like there’s, it’s, again, it’s one of those things that most people don’t, aren’t they they’re just not oriented homeowners to even think that way. I know, I’m not I don’t think that way at all, when when I bought properties in my past, I go, Oh, this is what I got, you know, and that’s why I’ve always bought things that looked perfect for the what I wanted at that time, because I don’t have the ability to see what isn’t there, or to see opportunities, that’s just not a skill set of mine. So I suspect real, producing Realtors probably are more oriented to to think about things like that, but most homeowners might not be because they’re, that’s not their, their area of expertise. So this is where you can come in as an agent, and really helped define your worth, like being able to not just sell the home and put it on the MLS and marketed property and negotiate and all of that, but actually come in and add lifestyle value, like I’m going to help your lifestyle within this this property. I think that is, I mean, wow,

Heidi Bolyard 41:12
we’re out there design skills, some basic design skills, just to really look at the space and, you know, help walk their clients through how that home could be their perfect dream home.

D.J. Paris 41:26
Yeah, it’s funny, too, because there’s a lot of trends that people really, you know, in order to stay on top of what’s going on. And this is what architects do. And whether it’s interior trends or exterior trends or design trends, you know, or construction trends. Like for example, it’s funny I was, I was chatting with an architect, or I’m sorry, an interior designer, because our place is entirely white. Like everything is white. And you know, today that’s really cool. In 10 years, it’ll be like what were they thinking? Why? Why would they do everything? Like, that looks so silly. But I did ask I asked them interior designer, I go, am I making a horrible decision? But my countertops are white, my cabinets are white, everything’s the walls are white, everything’s white. And in 10 years, is that going to be she’s like everything in 10 years is going to be looked at as oh my god, what were they thinking? So the idea, but understanding that, that there are trends that people are interested in and not not just design trends, but but understanding that is really what architects do. That’s what they know. And I think this is a huge opportunity to build that in, instead of just being like white walls are in right now. Understanding more Yes, yes. You know, that’s more surface level stuff. But understanding functionality, I think, is really what we’re talking about is is this like, how big is the master bathroom? Do you guys need a big master bathroom? Why do you need a separate room for the you know, the toilet? For example?

Heidi Bolyard 42:50
Yeah, water closet? Do you need two sinks? Do you need a linen closet? Like, what do you need in the spaces?

D.J. Paris 42:56
Yeah, yeah, it’s funny. You know, and there’s, there’s things that you know, architects can look for. And also, they can look maybe even, most importantly, is they can look at existing design and desist existing construction, right? And be able to say, Hmm, you know, there’s some problems here or this there was, there was a construction issue here that you probably wouldn’t have ever seen. So, you know, I imagine those can be incredibly helpful as well.

Heidi Bolyard 43:26
Well, yeah, like learning, like teaching we teach are real estate agents, just like things that you can look for within the house, like cracks up in the ceiling cracks in the top of walls around windows and doors, like what, you know, kind of figuring out what that is. And then also teaching, you know, just kind of assessing agent like the age of the furnace and hot water heater and Windows. So when I was looking for a house a few years ago, my real estate agent, she had, you know, we were walking through it, and she’s just like, just so you have in mind like this was built 93 She’s like, the windows original furnaces original water heaters original. And they’re all gonna have to be replaced there. Yeah, 30 years old. So. So that having that in mind that made me think through. Well, as an architect, luckily, I was just like putting some numbers together in my head. And I was like, well, once I do that, and we offer over listing. I’m not really Yeah, it’s not really what I wanted to spend. So so it was easy for me to make that decision because she gave me so much information. And then it also saved her the time of having to write an offer on the on the home that we eventually would have not fallen through on because then we would have realized later once we had the inspection that all of these other things would need to be done. So it’s really just thinking higher level for your clients to save not only them time and money of hiring an inspector but saving you time And as well,

D.J. Paris 45:01
I mean, can you imagine the, you just said something that was so, so powerful to me? Can you imagine how? Well I see both both ways it could have gone, right. So that best case scenario is the inspector sees these issues brings it to your attention before you, you know, close on the property before you go under contract, of course and say, hey,

Heidi Bolyard 45:23
you’ve already spent hundreds of dollars on. Yeah, the inspector.

D.J. Paris 45:27
Yeah, and that’s best case scenario. Worst case scenario is Inspector misses those things. And then as the realtor, you know, two years in your clients now are spending 50 grand to replace all the stuff that you as the realtor didn’t see, the inspector may have missed, and they’re gonna blame you

Heidi Bolyard 45:43
as the HS, because you probably, you know, referred sprint inspectors, but that’s the one who chose unfortunately, the inspector missed it, but they’ll still blame you,

D.J. Paris 45:53
they will still blame you and and just to be able to say, as a realtor, Hey, before we put an offer in this furnace is 30 years old, here’s what a furnace is going to cost, let me or let me do some homework, I’m gonna get back to you real quick, I want to find out what it’s going to cost to repair it, replace it. Rather, we need to think about that before we put an offer, because I don’t want you hating my guts in two years when you have to replace it. And that in and of itself is so incredibly valuable. And as an architect, and as somebody, I know, you do a lot of other things too. But like just even knowing that is going to make you so valuable to your clients, they’re gonna go, oh, we were gonna buy this property and a realtor talked us out of it, because

Heidi Bolyard 46:33
they saw information that we didn’t know Realtors knew. And then they’re going to refer you to all of their friends with maybe a real, a real estate agent, because they’re gonna be like a real estate agent was so knowledgeable

D.J. Paris 46:45
1,000% I’m sold, I this is a great place to wrap up. Because I don’t want to beat this point in any further, this is just really cool information that I don’t, I’m sure to, you know, there’s parts of it that you can find online and other places, but why not just go to one place and learn it from a respected professional in the industry. Heidi is awesome. Her company is incredibly well respected. And she has wants to teach this to realtors as well. It’s just a passion of hers. So go to sold by design dotnet, there’s a free white paper about three things that you need to know as a Realtor that will help you make money faster, help you start down the path of thinking, like an engineer thinking like an architect. And then there’s all sorts of other she has, she has courses she has coaching, she, you know, has all sorts of resources there where you’ll start to learn. And if you’re looking to invest in your business, you know, you can invest in buying leads, or you can do other marketing efforts. But how often are you investing in your own skill set? Right? This is a skill that varies, I would assume less than 1% of Realtors really have I’m just making that number up. But it’s probably about right maybe one to 5% of Realtors know how to think like

Heidi Bolyard 47:56
realtors that have been out there for a while. So just really state agents the opportunity to just jumpstart their growth. I love

D.J. Paris 48:04
it and really separate yourself from everybody else. So guys, if you’re thinking about increasing your skill set this year, and maybe maybe things are a little slower right now, because the market shifted. This is the time to invest in your skills. And imagine being able to say to your client, you know, hey, I’ve been trained by architects to look for certain things. So I’m going to ask you some some questions. So we can have a really, really great experience here together. And boy, that’ll separate you from everybody else. So everyone visit sold by design.net. Heidi and her team run by she is busy. She’s she’s doing development, she’s doing renovation, she’s doing home construction, she does it all. And she finds time to teach you guys how to think like her. So let’s use Heidi’s knowledge and reach out and learn like so that you can think like Heidi so everyone go to sold by design.net. Heidi, I want to thank you for being on our show. I was so excited to have you. This is such a unique episode for us. And I hope that our audience so much for having me. Yeah. And I hope our audience appreciated it as much as I do. I know they did. So everyone go to Seoul by design.net. And on behalf of our audience, we think Heidi, she is a busy architect. She doesn’t have time to do these silly podcasts. But she took time because she wants to help realtors and so we appreciate that. So on behalf of the audience, we say thank you. And on behalf of Heidi and myself, we want to thank the audience for sticking around to the end, please just we ask you to do two things for us. One, tell a friend think of one other realtor that could benefit from you know this particular episode with Heidi and send them a link to this episode. You can just have them, send them right over to keeping it real pod.com. And also, leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show whatever podcast app you might be listening to us on. Leave us a review. Let us know write us some comments. We want to always continue to improve to better meet your needs. All right, Heidi. Well, it was a pleasure to Adding with you we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks, Heidi.

Heidi Bolyard 50:03
Thank you have a great day.