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

Brandon Brittingham the CEO and Team Leader at The Maryland and Delaware Group of Long & Foster Real Estate talks about the start of his career in real estate industry. Brandon and D.J. discuss the importance of good customer service in the industry of service providers. Brandon also emphasizes the importance of building partnerships with other businesses to provide the best experience to your customer. Next, Brandon discusses teams and shares suggestions on what should new agent look for when joining one. Last, Brandon and D.J. discuss property management and Brandon shares tips on how to start a business in property management.

You can buy Brandon’s best seller book “Converting Units To Dollars” here.

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

Brandon Brittingham can be reached here.

This episode was brought to you by Real Geeks.

D.J. Paris 0:00
Have you ever wondered what a top real estate team in a particular state did to grow their business? We’re gonna find out today and guess what? It’s different than what you think. 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 solutions 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 Brandon Brittingham, who has the number one team in the state of Maryland and the number five real estate team in the entire country out for production. And we want to learn exactly how he did it. And he’s willing to share it all with you. Before we get to Brandon. Just a couple of quick reminders. Please tell a friend about our show. The way that we grow is by you telling other agents about the value you get from our show. So please continue to do that. we’d greatly appreciate it. And also leave us a review. If you’re listening to us on a podcast app. Whether it’s iTunes, Google Play Stitcher, Spotify, please let us know what you think of the show that helps us get more visibility and also improve. But enough about that. Let’s get right to it. And now our interview with Brandon Brittingham.

Today on the show we have Brandon Britton with Long and Foster in Maryland. Let me tell you a little bit about Brandon. Realtor Brandon Britton Hamm is the CEO and team leader at the mayor at the Maryland and Delaware group of Long and Foster real estate based in Salisbury, Maryland. His real estate team, which is one of the best and busiest in the country, was ranked by real trends as the number one team in the state of Maryland, and number five in the nation in 2021, as well as number one in the entirety of Long and Foster four homes sold. Brandon started as a solo agent back in 2007. Right away, he made a commitment to himself to be the very best in every aspect of his profession. He wanted to offer the very best customer service possible to each of his clients and it worked. In incredibly short time span Brandon rose to become a top seller on the Eastern Shore Peninsula, a popular real estate region spanning two states, which is Maryland and Delaware. Today, Brandon is the CEO of his own team, which has 25 agents, which is incredible for a team. He is a sought after speaker, Coach and Trainer who mentors agents in buying, selling and overall career development. He’s taught 1000s of agents across the country, how to strategically build their businesses using his inspiring go getter, entrepreneurial spirit. He also oversees 19 Plus real estate related companies. He’s an active real estate investor. And he’s built a property management business of 1200 doors in a short period of time. He’s a real estate superstar. And please everyone visit Brandon on his website, which is Brandon’s brain.org. There is a link for that in our show notes. Once again, Brandon’s brain.org. Brandon, welcome to the show.

Brandon Brittingham 4:26
Thank you. I don’t know how I follow that introduction.

D.J. Paris 4:31
It’s well, I mean, jeez, we are so impressed and thrilled to have you because you have really done so much in this industry and in a relatively short amount of time. It’s just so impressive. So I always like to start at the beginning, because our audience is always wanting to know how did you get to where you are today from where you started? So can you tell us about why you got into real estate and how that happened?

Brandon Brittingham 4:56
Yeah, so you know, it’s kind of you know, it’s funny, I got into real See by accident. So I wanted to invest in real estate like that was my whole thing I wanted to buy investment properties. And I had come from, I had another business that I was very successful at, and not to paint everybody with the same brush. But the first couple of transactions I had with realtors wasn’t the greatest experience. So I went and got my license, and I only to represent myself on your own transactions, I really didn’t care about being a real estate agent. And then just there was a lot of things in the industry, when I got in that. I just thought I could do better. So I said, Hey, I’m going to try my hand at being an agent. And that’s kind of what got me into being an agent, kind of the rest is history.

D.J. Paris 5:49
So yeah, it’s it is funny, I have had, we’ve done about 350 of these episodes, so far. And it is not uncommon that someone gets their license, either they were buying a primary residence, and they were not very impressed with, with the realtor they used or they were buying investment properties like you, and also felt like hey, maybe I could do this better, or at least save on the commission. And so I’ll go ahead and get my license. But that is a pretty big jump from, you know, doing your own investments to then becoming a traditional, you know, working with buyers and sellers, realtor. What was it that how did you make that determination that that’s kind of what you wanted your career to be.

Brandon Brittingham 6:28
So I think it was kind of like I came from a business before where it was kind of customer service centric. So I like dealing with and working with people. And I just I thought there was a lot of gaps in the industry as far as what I saw of how transactions were being handled. So I kind of just wanted to get into it, because I thought I could provide a better customer experience. And you know, when I got into it, and I kind of learned the business, then I was like, man, there’s a lot of things we could really improve on. And then I think I can build this and teach other agents how to do it. And so that was kind of how we transitioned or how I transitioned into building a team. And that’s kind of where I’m at how I ended up where I am today was just trying to improve the customer experience.

D.J. Paris 7:15
Yeah, it’s interesting, too, I was just at a, I just got back from a an event where some top producers were speaking. And they were talking about the customer experience. And that is such a huge part of overall business strategy. No matter what sector or industry you might be in right now I’m I’m myself, I’m on a advisory board for user experience or customer experience, organization. So I’m familiar with, with why it’s so important and why organizations often have on staff, even consumer experience, people or customer service specialists to then train. Because I know that and I just went through this process myself buying a property like a year ago, and it was not my first time mine. But I remember, really, I had sort of forgotten the experience of buying a property and had been a while. And I forgot just how stressful it was even for somebody within the industry, and how important it was that somebody was there to call me down. And keep me keep my head a little bit more level as I navigated some of those troubling, you know, times, you know, and there’s there’s peaks and valleys in any sort of real estate transaction, there’s always some sort of, you know, ruffle or wrinkle that happens. So, and I know that that’s a big thing that you coach agents on your team and and also agents elsewhere in the country about is really helping their clients navigate through through those through the difficulty, the emotional difficulty of of a transaction, can you speak a little bit more about the importance of, of a realtors role during that during the transaction?

Brandon Brittingham 8:56
Yeah, so I mean, I think it’s a couple of things. And I think it’s, it’s honestly almost become a lot Lost Art in our industry. And if you look at like, some of the big tech that’s coming after the realtors role, I think they’re banking on. Frankly, they believe that a lot of agents don’t do a good job and the customer experience and the customer service. And they don’t do enough of they don’t do well enough of a job of solving the consumers problems. So and if you look at like an Amazon as an example, you know, they completely disrupted multiple industries, because they said we’re going to solve all of your problems when it comes to shopping and one singular experience. And if you look at real estate as a whole, it’s pretty archaic and siloed of the different parts of the transactions. So kind of what I thought about a long time ago was I had situations where I just knocked it out of the park from my customer. And something in the transaction that I didn’t control made them have a bad transaction, right and they They weren’t, they weren’t mad with me. But they remember at the settlement table, they were upset. So one of the things that I started really looking at and changing a couple years ago was trying to control the entire process and the entire transaction. And for those people that are in our industry that don’t want to go, as far as we’ve gone, you still really have to master and understand the customer experience. Because for a lot of people, this is such a huge deal. It’s not a commodity to them, they’ve raised their children there. During the mean, mom and dad may have lived with them there. It’s an emotional experience. And I think our industry has gotten away a little bit of looking at it from the consumers lens. And the other thing too, is like you’re not competing with whoever you work for, you know, you’re not competing with kW, or exp or cola banker, you’re competing with Starbucks, you’re competing with Amazon, you’re competing with Uber, where people are having good customer service experiences and other experiences of their life. And then like you just said, you forget how stressful it is. And something always goes wrong in a real estate transaction. That is just, it’s going to happen, bad things are going to happen. And for you, as a consumer, that’s it’s painful. And it’s scary, and it’s stressful. And we’ve got to do a better job of taking care of the customer and taking that stress off of them.

D.J. Paris 11:22
Well, you just said a lot, and it was all gold. And I one of the things you said that I want to sort of highlight because I haven’t heard anybody say it. And all the years I’ve been doing the show. And I think it’s a really, really intelligent insight, which is that Brandon said, we’re not just competing with the other realtors, the other real estate firms. You know that that’s our most immediate sort of competition that we see as agents. But we’re also competing with every other experience that person has with a service provider or product provider. So and I’ll give you a really great example that just happened to me this morning, I subscribed to Blue Apron where you know that get those meals delivered. And we cook them and, and it might my package didn’t show up last night. And it really wasn’t that big of a deal. Because I actually was brought up in a way it was better than it didn’t show up, because we’re kind of overloaded with food at the moment. But it was still annoying because I went looking for my package. It said it was delivered, and it wasn’t there. And so I contacted Blue Apron. And I had a really great customer experience, which was I had a problem, hey, my package didn’t show up. I message them. And this was at 9pm. At night, I got a response within about 20 minutes with their ticketing support system that said, Oh my gosh, we’re super sorry. It says it was delivered. We understand that that you’re saying it’s not. So can you please just wait for about another 30 minutes, just because sometimes it could show up a half an hour from now. It’s possible. We’re really sorry. And then when it didn’t show up, I they actually messaged me back 30 minutes later and said we just wanted to touch base, did your package arrive? And then it didn’t? And then I said no, I actually didn’t get to until this morning. So this morning, I said no, I’m sorry, it never got here. And they said, Oh my gosh, you know, this is a huge problem, we’re going to take care of it. And I was so impressed with just basic good customer service that here I am now telling you know, 1000s of people about it. And, you know, in Blue Apron can’t control, you know, FedExes challenges with delivering or maybe they can but but the problems happen. And I was just like, wow, I didn’t have to wait 24 hours. I didn’t get a you know, I did. I didn’t have to follow up, they followed up with me. So you’re absolutely right, that that is a very sort of common experience. We all buy things. And sometimes packages don’t show up or they get stolen or whatever. And we then have to then deal with customer service. And it isn’t always the best experience. So I just wanted to share that because you’re right now, I would assume that everyone listening, you know, I was I’m sorry, I’m going to switch gears for just a sec, because I heard a great a great thing this morning when I was listening to a top producer speak at this event where he said, you know, if you’re going to be if you’re running five minutes late, of course, you want to be telling your client Sorry, I’m running late. But you also want to tell the other realtor because their time is just as valuable as yours. But the whole point of it was good, good solid customer service kind of wins the game. And I’m going to stay with Blue Apron because they gave me great customer service. There’s a lot of other meal providers that do the exact same thing. Blue Apron does. But I want a company that doesn’t never make mistakes because of course everybody makes mistakes, but that corrects it instantly. And they boy they sure did. So anyway, sorry to take over a bit there but I just wanted to share that experience because we are talking about it. Let’s let’s talk a little bit about when you said you wanted to control more of the the actual transactional experience for the consumer. How did you go about thinking about doing that and what does that mean?

Brandon Brittingham 14:59
So before we jump into that, know what you said was great. And I think everybody that’s listening to this, you need to understand this, because this is so important when the highlight that you just made is the consumer mindset and the behavior, which is what we need to understand this industry. So another thing that I like to tell people is think about when you travel to a city that you’ve never been to, or maybe you’ve been to, or whatever the case is, but you get off the plane, and you caught you know, you, you get on your phone, and you hit you hit Uber, right. Now, if Uber is more than four to five minutes, the average person gets frustrated. Now, I want you to think about that, from the time before when you would go to a foreign city, and you’d have to hail a cab. And what that was like, now you’re getting into an Uber, they got gum, they got waters, they got cell phone chargers, and you as a consumer, three to four minutes, five minutes, whatever it is, you’re frustrated. So we as agents have to understand that that’s the type of experience that you are competing with. And we forget that. So that’s the consumers expectation now, and that’s why you have to do a good job because the world is getting faster. And the attention span of people is getting shorter. And the people, it’s not just like speed, its speed to information, people want everything right now. So our business is archaic in that nature. And frankly, the Zelos of the world and everywhere else exist because our industry was scared to give information. And we hoarded the information. And now all these cottage industries were built around it. So if you’re not good at your customer experience, you will be extinct, or you will go out of business. And back to the question, you’re asking, I’ll never forget, I sold this million dollar house, you know, early in my career, and I’m sitting in the NFL quarterbacks house, and I’m sitting at settlement, and his parents were involved in it. And his mom was in tears, because the moving company had put the lawnmower upside down with gas in it, and it spilled all over there. It spilled all over their stuff. Oh, no. And, you know, that got me thinking, there’s so many parts of the transaction that I want to control, so that I can control the quality experience, and I can control the consumers experience, right. And the thing about it is that, you know, home inspection, you know, wherever the case is, when we refer people to a consumer, they have an expectation. So I looked at it as if I can control all these different silos of the business. If anything goes wrong, then the consumer can hold me responsible. And that’s what I did a few years ago, we got into just about every silo that Trent that touches a transaction. And I was able to provide a better customer experience by doing that. And that’s why I think we’ve done so well. And we have so much repeat business because someone literally, we’re like Amazon, you press one button, we’re gonna figure the entire transaction

D.J. Paris 18:12
out. So you will even coordinate the move because you’re like, I have the movers or it’s either your company or you have a partnership with or just a referral. But you know, these movers are not going to turn the you know, the the lawnmower upside down.

Brandon Brittingham 18:27
Yeah, so we got into just to give you for everybody listening, so you understand, understand, we got into partnerships on title mortgage insurance, we have the construction services, if something goes wrong in your home inspection, I need to fix it up for you. If before you list the property, you need renovations done, which right now it doesn’t really matter because you can put anything on the market and will sell. But in a lot of cases, you know, in the past, people needed it. Were in the construction business, new home construction, too. So we control that process, because that was one thing that I was frustrated with was dealing with, you know, some of the builders out there. So we created that business. Also, we are in the property management business as well. Commercial real estate, pretty much almost any vertical that touches a home sale, we’re involved in it so we can control it and ultimately provide you a better service.

D.J. Paris 19:23
It’s really, really smart. And I think that agents oftentimes don’t think about all of those ancillary parts of the transaction that yes, the realtor typically doesn’t get involved with, you know, and so I guess your advice would be to agents would be to build those partnerships and really just bring the best people on your team. And then and then and then how are you communicating that to the buyer or the seller? How, what’s the how do they know that you’re We’re going to take care of everything.

Brandon Brittingham 20:02
So we do put some marketing around it and have those conversations we try not to over confuse them of oh my god, you guys do all these things. But it’s more of, you know, in the conversations of, hey, here’s all the problems that you that we solve. And honestly, I think where you’re having such a push from the tech world into our business, and just the landscape is changing of real estate, like, I think that if you don’t figure out solving people’s problems, it’s going to be hard for you to compete. Because you have more and more companies out there that are saying, we get paid too much money, we don’t solve any problems. And I think that if if you don’t figure out how to solve problems and take care of the customer, then your Commission’s definitely going to suffer.

D.J. Paris 20:54
I agree, I think that is, you know, the days of just throwing something up on the MLS, although right now you can sort of do that and get multiple offers, because of sort of just the environment we’re in, but probably a temporary thing for now. But you’re right, the realtors that rise to the top really do it. And that’s been my experience, because I only talk to realtors on the show that are in that top 1%. They all are very similar in that sense where they know all of the best partners, and they provide that and they have a great vendor list. And as a result, they become the Amazon to their client have the home transaction, where they just go, Oh, my agents got it. That’s a really simple and yet, but it’s not, it’s not easy, but it is a simple idea is that really start. So I think that’s a great action step for all of our listeners is started. And it’s not just developing the relationship with the lender and the attorney. You know, of course, every realtor pretty much does that, because that’s so tied to the transaction, but then also looking out towards things like insurance, transportation, moving, all of those all of those ancillary things that become really important, because you’re right, you know, I would have, I wouldn’t have been happy at the closing table, if I had found out that the movers had, you know, turn, turn the something upside down and spilled gas all over my furniture. So I understand that. And while you can’t prevent that, what you could what you can do is say I know the best, the best people, because I just went out and found my own movers, which is what most people do, I’m sure.

Brandon Brittingham 22:34
Yeah, absolutely. And again, that goes back to, you know, the thing that I struggled with and that I wanted to change is, I didn’t want you to go figure it out. I want to figure it out for you. Because then long term, which I’ve seen in my business, now I’m on third generations of people’s family, right? Sure. And you become a client for life, because somebody’s gonna say, you know, I worked with Brandon’s team, and they figured everything out. And then by chance if they go to interview another agent, you know, in the agent, and they say, Well, you know, my last agent, did the punch list, renovations helped me with moving helped me build a new house, blah, blah, do you guys have the capability to do that? And probably 97 to 98% of people in our industry are going to say no, that makes you immune from disruption.

D.J. Paris 23:26
Yeah, you become so incredibly, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s the same, I was gonna say valuable and I cut myself off, but it is it’s about becoming valuable and so valuable that you can’t be replaced very easily or hopefully at all. And you’re you’re absolutely right with the Amazon metaphor, because most of us listening purchase, probably the majority of our online purchases are made through Amazon. And that isn’t by accident. And it’s because they solved a really important problem, which is where do I go to get x online and they just said, oh, we’ll just do everything. And as a result, they captured all of our all a huge chunk of this economy’s purchasing, sort of, you know, behavior. And you’re absolutely right, that top Realtors really get their hands dirty, in dirty and and I don’t mean that in a pejorative way, in a very positive way. But they, they they are on the they are involved in every part of that transaction. The other thing that I know is really near and dear to you, because you have built a super impressive team obviously as I rattled off the stats earlier at the beginning of the show, but teams are on everyone’s mind right now. I know our listeners write us about it a lot have an individual agent, should I start a team should I join a team? And I know that you have very specific thoughts about how that works and when it makes sense and when it doesn’t. Do you mind talking a little bit about sort of the role of a team and and you know, can individual agents even really compete against teams, you know, these days? Well,

Brandon Brittingham 25:05
I, you know, I don’t I don’t want to sound negative when I say this, but I think that it’s going to be harder and harder for the individual agent to compete, because of the consolidation and the growth and the changes of what teams have brought to the industry, right. And then if you just look at the day to day as an agent of the amount of things you have to handle, and if you’re going to be good, and you’re going to really grow your business, it’s just it’s going to be hard. And, you know, if you don’t join a team, you should consider starting one. And that doesn’t mean you got to have 50 agents. But you know, you got to have some admin, you got to have some marketing and things of that nature. I just think in all honesty, it’s gonna be hard for a single agent to compete. In the near future, I mean, I just I really do when you look at the landscape, and again, of the demand of the consumer, which is just look, the consumer is going to win, you know, we can all have our own ideas of the way things are going to be, but the consumer always proves the market, right. And they’ve done that time and time again. And again, the reality of it is, is that you’re competing with these companies that logistically figure out all these pain points and make it easier for the consumer. It’s just going to be hard for an individual agents and compete that doesn’t start a team or doesn’t join a team, because you’re going to be outgunned and outmatched in most situations.

D.J. Paris 26:33
Yeah, I think I think that’s right, for everyone out there who is an individual, you know, solo practitioner, it’s something to just keep in mind, because there’s probably parts of every solo practitioners business that they shouldn’t be spending time on, because it’s not business building activity, or maybe they’re not particularly good at it, or they don’t like doing it, and they put it off, and then they have to fight with themselves to get certain things accomplished. You know, this is where even if you’re not in a traditional team, I mean, gosh, the the rise of the virtual assistant, you know, if that’s, you know, if that’s all you can afford, that’s a great place to start. And technically, that is sort of a team. It’s not a team in the traditional sense of having more than one realtor on it. But it’s really a great idea. Now we live in such a global gig economy, that you can hire people from all over the world that are specialists that you know, are very affordable, that can help take some of that workload off. But, um, but But I we get a lot of questions on the show about from agents who are newer, who then say, well, I want to join a team. Maybe I don’t want to create my own, I’m not quite at that level. I’m, you know, maybe I’m a newly licensed agent, or I’m in my first three years. I’m wanting to join a team, what should I look for? And I’m curious if you have any suggestions for those people who are trying to figure out if they should join an established team?

Brandon Brittingham 28:00
Yeah. So it’s a great question. I mean, number one, look at market share, look at the team’s dominance in your market. That’s certainly a barometer to look at. But I think more importantly, the biggest thing that a team can give you is training. Yeah. And teach you how to build your business. I think, another mistake we make in this industry. This is just my personal opinion is people chase splits, you know, they’re, they’re split drunk of who’s gonna pay me the highest split. And I will tell you from being a new agent, I would have given up a ton of my split in the beginning to go sit with somebody like me in the position I’m in now, to just be able to teach me how to do it every day. Yeah. And there’s a huge value, in my opinion, in doing that, I pay all kinds of money to go to all kinds of conferences and sit in the right rooms to loot learn for people to compress time, right. So I think the biggest thing is the training. In the onboarding and the mentoring are the biggest value, you can get leads, all that kind of stuff split, you know, none of that matters if you are not being trained on how to build a business. And that’s really, really important. And back to what you just said, because I think this is important too, about the single agent is you can be a single agent and be really, really good. And that’s great. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I know a ton of them. We got friends that are that do that. But here’s the thing, if you’re a really good agent, and all the income is dependent on you, you have a job. If you build a team where you can eventually leverage yourself out of out of sales, you have a business. And you need to understand in this business that there’s two very very distinct lanes, there’s a job and there’s a business. If you want to build a valuable asset that you can leverage yourself out of sales one day, you need to build a business And if you’re a new agent, and you’re coming into this, the biggest thing that you can find is someone that’s going to teach you and mentor you and train you. And that’s the team that I would look for.

D.J. Paris 30:10
You just said a lot again, and I want to want to really tread thank you for that, by the way, and I really want to transition based on something you just said into another topic, because it just so perfectly segues, which was you were talking about, you know, look, real estate brokerage, you know, working with buyers, sellers, renters investors, traditionally, as a realtor as a transactional practice, right, we get paid when, at the closing table, and only typically at the closing table, I have, I don’t think anyone’s yet figured out how to, you know, create a different fee structure where maybe people are paying a yearly fee to get access to an agent, I suspect somebody’s probably tried that before it hasn’t caught on yet. We’ll see. But for now, it’s largely a transactional practice, which, which was sort of to your point as like, Hey, if you’re a solo practitioner, this is your job. This is what you do is is there value, can you sell this business, maybe, maybe not. But if you run it, like an actual business, then it builds some, you know, build some additional value to it and increases the valuation. And one of the ways in which that you’ve done that is through these different partnerships, different, different verticals that you’ve explored. And I really am mostly interested in talking about the property management side, because to me, I’ve always thought of that as as a way to sort of annuitize or to add some, you know, a more predictable stream of income. And you’ve done that incredibly fast and short amount of time. I’m a part owner and a property management business. So I have some experience with knowing how challenging it is for us. So I need to hire you to help me because we’re not at 1200 doors yet. But let’s talk about how that works in the sense of why an agent may want to start adding that into their business.

Brandon Brittingham 32:12
So um, it’s a couple of things for me. You know, my, my biggest interest in real estate, initially was always the investment side, right? Yeah. And so for me now, I’m I’m very, very deep into the investment side, I own apartment complexes, single families, Airbnbs a lot of different things, right. So I wanted to get in that circle of other people who did it. I wanted access. And one way that I saw to be able to do that was property management in the property in the in the apartment world as an example, your multifamily apartments, most of the time, they never ever touched the market. It’s like this kind of secret society of stuff gets sold. No one knows about it, things of that nature. Yeah. It’s kind of it’s very, very interesting. No

D.J. Paris 33:03
one even knows who owns the buildings, right? Kind of this invisible owner. And and yeah, and transaction. Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Brittingham 33:09
And they trade ownership and stuff like that. And so it was a couple of things, right, it was like, I really wanted to learn it at scale from other people who had done it at scale. And then, you know, probably my third year as an agent. I had a really, really good year, you know, not a team yet. And I remember, you know, like, at the awards and everything, which again, there’s nothing wrong with this. But this was the epiphany. And it’s like, you know, I got this, this, this great plaque. And, you know, it was like, Well, what else? And it’s like, you start over in a couple of weeks.

D.J. Paris 33:43
Now, you’re back to zero. And I was like,

Brandon Brittingham 33:47
you know, that just I don’t know, I mean, that was just kind of like a gut punch, like, yeah, you know, so wait a minute, if I don’t run at this pace, or I don’t produce at this pace, you don’t I mean, then things could change for me very, very quick. So I was like, Where could I get residual income and solve a lot of problems. And then I saw that the property management and property management in our business gets a bad rap. And people don’t look at just the amount of business and silos that come out of it. Last year, we sold 900 ish homes, and a good amount of those came out of the portfolio that we managed, right? So we’ve built in this huge silo of sellers, this huge silo of buyers, right? renters. Renters? Yeah. And then I’m trading inside that portfolio left and right. So you’re, you’re a property owner, you call me Brandon. I want to sell my 50 units. I go call another one of my property owners. And I’m trading the portfolio in and out and then I’ve bought God I don’t even know. Probably five this 600 doors consecutive out of my own portfolio that we managed from the owners because I knew the product, I knew what I managed, I knew the books, I knew everything. And it creates so many other just avenues, the property management business as a business, it’s skinny, right? You can make it work and you can make it profitable. But your average profit per account is skinny, you have to do it at scale for it to make sense. But there’s so many other things that it contributes to that make it really, really makes sense. And then the other thing that I did not like in the beginning of my journey was I’d sell somebody five or six rental properties, and then they would go manage them with somebody else. And it wasn’t always a guarantee that I would get those back to resell them. So that’s what this solved also. And by the way, even though it’s not like huge amounts of money, like commission per deal, or whatever, when you amass 1200 of them in every month, that’s coming in regardless, it’s truly is residual. So that’s the other thing that I like about it as well.

D.J. Paris 36:12
And that becomes a sellable sort of business at that point, property management is probably a more sellable business than a real estate brokerage, quite honestly, right? I’m just saying that I don’t know if you would agree or disagree, but depends on the brokerage, of course, well,

Brandon Brittingham 36:27
you’re right, you are you are spot on on that. And I will tell you from experience, that five or six years ago, I had a company tried to come by us, right. And I say, you know, here’s all of our businesses. And they’re like, all the other stuff you do is complex, we can figure that out. But we’re more interested in your brokerage and your property management. And I was very surprised of the valuation they gave me on the PM. And when I when I kind of probed and they said it’s predictable, like it’s only going to move up and down so much, it’s predictable. So we can put a basis of value around it. So you just made a really, really good point.

D.J. Paris 37:12
Yeah, and it’s like, we’re, we’re really Realtors often. And I hate to say it this way, because it sounds negative. And, and I don’t mean it to but I think we need to be honest, where we’re really trading hours for dollars. Oftentimes just doing the buy sell side of the transaction, the rental side, bringing in property management, which by the way is and I’m assuming it works this way in all 50 states saying I probably should have looked that up ahead of time. But if you have a broker license, or at least in Illinois, where i where i, where I am, we call everyone who’s a realtor, a broker here. But if you have a if you’re a realtor, you have the ability to do property management. And this is an opportunity, I think, to think about creating residual income. So if somebody is hearing this and thinking, Well, that sounds cool. I’d like to have a, you know, a predictable stream of income coming in monthly, you know, what are some of the steps they might take? Maybe they’ve not done Property Management before, which I know is there’s a learning curve, of course. And also, actually, let’s go all the way back to the beginning is how do you? What are your suggestions? Obviously, if you’re purchasing or property, then you can that you can manage that’s one thing, but going out and finding property management opportunities. Do you have any suggestions on how agents might consider doing that? Yeah,

Brandon Brittingham 38:30
let’s give them the shameless plug. I actually wrote the actual manual on it, I actually literally wrote the book. It’s called converting units to dollars, it’s on Amazon, it actually made Amazon bestseller in a couple of weeks. So kind of to your point, one of the things that when I started to climb and grow this, and get in the room with a lot of high producers that you talk to, I was like, Man, you guys need to start the property management business. And then all these people asked me how. So I created I, initially, I created a training course around that, which is we still have that. But I was like, Man, I want to do a book about this. So I essentially took the training course turned it into a book and then publish the book. So because I think that if you run a good business, you have a strategic advantage from a real estate standpoint, because you’re going to understand it. Because what I saw in the property management world was a lot of people in the property management world weren’t good operators, like coming from the real estate world. Yeah, it was kind of like if you already run a good business or a good team or you’re a good agent you already have you’re so far ahead, because most of your competitors. Listen, if you you’ve dealt with property management, you understand this, No one wakes up in the morning says I want to do property management.

D.J. Paris 39:53
That’s just not how it’s an unsexy business,

Brandon Brittingham 39:56
right? Yeah, people don’t wake up and hey, let’s go do some property management. That’s Exciting, like real estate sales is sexy and exciting. Yeah, property management, it’s not. So I decided to kind of put that all together and turn that into a book.

D.J. Paris 40:09
Yeah, so we should mention, Brandon mentioned this, but go on Amazon look for converting units to dollars. That’s Brandon’s book and purchase, it will have a link for that in our show notes, as well. But, but this is really interesting, though, because I think that you said something earlier that I just want to touch base on, which was around multifamily units and saying a lot of them, a lot of the transactions never hit the market. So you know, it’s really its own sort of culture. And depending on where you are, it’s a different set of players. Oftentimes, realtors are not involved, or people might have their broker license, but they’re not traditional realtors. This is a whole different area. And, you know, we’ve had the BiggerPockets guys have been on our show. And that’s a great resource to start learning about sort of that world and a lot of those people congregate there. But what other suggestions would you have for somebody that wants to get into understanding investment properties, understanding property management, things like that.

Brandon Brittingham 41:13
So one huge point to make is which This baffled me when I got my license was how many people in this industry did not invest in real estate? Yeah. And I thought it was the opposite. So there’s all kinds of and I won’t go into detail on this. I actually do in my book, though, if you are an agent, and you’re a teen, whatever, if you’re considered a real estate professional by the IRS definition, there are all kinds of advantages for you to own real estate. I’m extremely bullish on real estate, you know, I invested way back when things were really bad. And thankfully, that really helped me propel a lot of different things that I do. But I think everybody in our industry should buy in real estate, as you said earlier, and we talked about, you know, do you want to, you know, just having a job, buying and holding real estate can create residual income for you and can create real wealth for you later in life. So I think that’s, it’s, it’s super important that you understand that. And that should be a part of your business model, regardless of where you’re at and what you do, like, you really should do that. And I think that you should really understand and figure out and educate yourself on the investment side. And then if you want to get into the apartments and things like that, the largest sale I’ve ever had in my life was a $7 million apartment building. And I ended up being on both sides. And I ended up buying that apartment complex, by the way. But I think it’s it’s a whole different world of investors and multifamily and things like that. But it’s a very lucrative world. And it’s a world filled with people who have wealth. And you know, the the average deal size is a lot bigger. And you have to make a decision from an investment standpoint, do you want to be passive or active? Well, if you’re in real estate, you’re probably going to be a little bit more active. But it’s a place where like, again, the investor side, a lot of times agents looked at that as the underbelly of real estate. Yeah. And it’s kind of like if you get into that, and you really figure that out, that can be extremely lucrative for you long term. And then if you go the track of multifamily that can get super, super lucrative.

D.J. Paris 43:36
I’m curious, so your team’s sold 900 homes, approximately, what percentage of those came from the relationships you had on the investors in the investor world, we’ll just say, like versus traditional, you know, young, young couple buying their first or, you know, are selling a property

Brandon Brittingham 43:55
last year was probably about 20%. It’s amazing. Yeah, it’s

D.J. Paris 43:59
absolutely amazing. So what a huge jump, and and so now you, you now have a business, you now are not just a realtor, you’re an investor. You’re a property manager, you have title, you have mortgage, you have the title lending, probably insurance. I’m guessing. Brandon’s nodding his head, everything I’m saying? Because Because he as he said, at the very beginning, I want to control every part of the transaction because yes, it’s lucrative and it results in the best possible customer experience. So it’s actually wins all the way around. The downside is now you know, you have to start learning about all these other different avenues. And probably now’s as good a time as any to start that journey.

Brandon Brittingham 44:48
Yeah, but see, here’s the thing. Well, think about this. You know, you you’re touching a mortgage transaction, you’re touching a title transaction, you’re touching insurance transaction in most situations. So it’s not as difficult as people think. I mean, you, you got the legal side and RESPA and all that stuff you got to figure out. But it’s not as difficult as what people think. And initially, when we started some of these companies, it was more of, you know, if they if, if they break even, and it provides a better customer service, we’re happy with it. But then when you got into some of these other verticals, and you realize the customer service of the competitors in that business stuff, too, then it was like, we got more and more market share in different silos of business. So if you run a good business, the things that make you a good business person translate into any business.

D.J. Paris 45:44
Yeah, and I would also like to mention, Brandon has a book we talked about earlier, it’s available on Amazon, and everywhere else books are sold, converting units to dollars, link in our show notes. Also, I want everybody to visit Brandon’s website, which is Brandon’s brain. He’s also a coach, he does property management training, he teaches this stuff, so and I might, I might end up hiring Brian. In fact, I should hire Brandon, for for some of our own business verticals as well, because we need we need a boost as well. And I want to learn from the best. So I want everybody out there to visit Brandon’s website, Brandon’s brain.org. And that’s Brandon with an S at the end Brandon’s brain.org. And it really has everything you want to know about Brandon, he look, he’s a sought after speaker. He’s an author. He’s been on a lot of podcasts. And he does coaching. And he’s just a heck of a nice guy. And he’s oh, by the ways, basically, the most successful real estate team in all of Maryland. So that’s a lot of really impressive accolades. And we are grateful to have grabbed an hour of your time, because I know that you don’t have it, and you’d still found it for us. So we want to thank you. So on behalf of the audience, we want to thank Brandon for coming on our show just incredible, really impressive, very inspiring. And hopefully some good actionable takeaways, about agents thinking a little bit beyond the next sale, let’s let’s think a little bit more broad. Let’s think about this as a as a business as opposed to a transaction. And don’t get caught up in the cycle of transactions or don’t only get caught in a cycle of transactions. Because soon as that, like Brandon is you said earlier, as soon as you start stop running, the money stops coming in. So this is a way to to further diversify and also annuitize the business and maybe make it valuable enough to sell one day, which wouldn’t that be nice. So ever on behalf of the audience, Brian, and thank you so so much. On behalf of Brandon and myself, we also want to thank our audience for continuing to listen and support our show, we just recently crossed over a million downloads. So thank you for everyone for that. And we ask everybody before signing off, just to listen for a few seconds before hitting the pause button or stop to help. If you want to help our show the two ways to do that just one tell a friend. Think of one other realtor that could benefit from hearing this great conversation with Brandon and send them a link to our this episode, you can just send them over to our website, keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done, can stream right from the browser or if they’re a podcast person, just have them pull up a podcast app search for keeping it real, and hit the subscribe button. And then also, please leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show. This helps us get more visibility with a different search engine or the different podcast directories but also tells us what you like and what you don’t like so we can continue to improve our show and create a better experience. As Brandon is a big fan of for you the audience we don’t know unless you tell us please, please tell us let us leave us a review. Let us know what you think. Brandon, thank you so much. This was such a great conversation. I love to have any on and boy and I love that you have a very calm, you’re very calm person or I’m a very hyper person. So you got me calm down. I had a little bit of a fire that I was putting out just before we got on the show when I was frazzled, and boy your voice is just very soothing. So if you ever want to go into like a hypnotherapy business, you could they could use your voice for it for sure. Got it. Awesome, Brandon, thank you so much. We’ll see everybody on the next episode. Thanks, Brandon. Thank you

Ralph DiBugnara the President of Home Qualified talks about the beginning of his career in the mortgage space. Ralph describes how he built his business and emphasizes the importance of building relationships. Ralph discusses supply chain issues and how he educates his sphere on this topic. Next, Ralph short-term rental market, primary residence and investment. Last, Ralph talks about his Disruptors Network Podcast and how he started and built it.

Please subscribe to Ralph’s Disruptors Network Podcast here.

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

Ralph DiBugnara can be reached here.

This episode was brought to you by Real Geeks.

D.J. Paris 0:00
On today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the biggest issue facing real estate agents today housing supply shortages and what that means for your business now and through the end of the year. 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, and I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment, we’re going to be talking about housing supply issues and what you can do about it, what it means for the future of the industry and also your business. We’re going to be speaking with Ralph debug Nara from New York. He’s amazing. He’s got lots of insight into this particular issue. And we’re all dealing with it. So very excited. But before we get to Ralph, just a couple of quick reminders. First, please remember to tell a friend about our show. That’s the way we grow. We’re so grateful to everyone who’s listening. So please any other agent that you think could benefit please send them a link over to our website, keeping it real pod.com or pull up a podcast app search for keeping it real and have them hit that subscribe button. And then last please, please please leave us a review and whatever podcast app you might be listening that really helps us continue to improve the show and give you guys better content so you can even get more value. But enough about that. Let’s get to our interview with Ralph debug Nara.

Today on the show we have Ralph de Bognar, let me tell you about route. Now. Ralph is a Brooklyn native and he’s also the president of home qualified, which is a digital resource for buyers, sellers and real estate agents as well as also being the vice president of Cardinal financial, which is a national mortgage loan company behind 28 billion of closed loans. Now he’s Ralph is a recognized real estate and mortgage expert. He has over 20 years of industry experience specifically working with the millennial demographic. Now prior to being at home qualified, Ralph served as vice president of retail sales at residential home funding RHF, where he established the Consumer Direct division which was created to service RHF customer’s needs through a variety of affiliate programs that offer special values and discounts based around the someone’s profession or association. He’s also a competitive athlete, and he’s been battle tested in boxing rings, and Spartan courses. Ralph is also a radically innovative mortgage banker and real estate expert. He applies the same relentlessness and fraud and ferocity for winning, to helping new homebuyers find and finance their dream homes. He’s an entrepreneur at heart, Ralph builds businesses and advises individuals to create wealth through real estate, personal branding and their own business ventures. Please visit Ralph at his website, which is Ralph debug narra.com I’m going to spell that for you. Ra LPH and then DIBUGN A R a.com. And also please follow him on Instagram at DIB ug so the first five letters of his last name di be ug Ralph, welcome to the show.

Ralph DiBugnara 4:32
Thanks. I really appreciate you having me. It’s a great intro. Thank you.

D.J. Paris 4:35
We well we’re excited to have you as well. I know you’ve have a lot of experience in this industry from from an investor perspective from a financing perspective. And also I definitely would love to hear about the athlete part of you and and also learning if there are habits and disciplines that you have, you know that you would have to have to be competing at the law Apple you are physically and if that translates over into the business world, but I would love to go all the way back to the beginning and really learn about how you got into real estate in the first place if you don’t mind sharing?

Ralph DiBugnara 5:11
Sure, yeah. I think my story is like a lot of people I got in a little bit by accident and a little. So in 2001, I had graduated college, kind of because I had you not because I wanted to, I just kind of made it through what a finance degree but I wasn’t really thrilled about being in school. I think the last day I ever showed up at my college was the last day my last class, I never picked up my diploma. But I remember being a really stressful time because I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. And I didn’t know where I was gonna go at work. And I had a friend who was in mortgages at the time. And I, I was selling copiers for Canon like door to door at that moment at that moment in Manhattan, which was Wow, nightmares, to be totally honest, it was it was not an easy to knock on, you go into a building, you just knock on doors, and so somebody would talk to you. So I was like, I need to change. And I was looking at, I think enterprise rent a car at the time for their like a training program. And my friend was like, Hey, I’m in mortgage, I’m doing really, really well. It’s a new startup company that gonna go public. I get into the sales training program, it’s a month training, and they put you on the phone. You didn’t have to be licensed at that time, is it you’re not going to rent cars come do this. So I got in, and it was a really good time to get in at the time. It was it was a tough job market because the at the time that.com bubble had just burst. Yeah. And it’s eerily similar to what’s going on now with tech stocks that were very over inflated.

D.J. Paris 6:32
I have I can I pause for a second, I have a great I, you know, I don’t know how many of our listeners were around back then. But I do. I just want to mention I, this is this is such a funny thing. I have a letter that. So I’d graduated college in 99. So I’m about the same Yeah. And so in 1999, the tech bubble had not yet burst, right. And so my friend who was taking over or becoming an apprentice to his father’s financial advisory business, and anyway, sent me a letter because I said I should probably I did my first job out of college, I was like, I should probably put some money into some outside of my 401k, maybe just a few bucks, you know, a month into some sort of investment strategy. And he goes, I have this letter he sent me this is back when we wrote letters. And he said, I have these great tech stocks last year. They were they were I’m sorry, they were tech mutual funds. Because last year, they were up like 87%. And so I kept the letter, because obviously the next year, it all went away. And I said, Can you believe you wrote this letter to me? Because oh my god, I’m so embarrassed that I ever. So anyway, sorry. It just reminded me

Ralph DiBugnara 7:41
what it was? Yeah, it was it was it’s a little similar to what’s going on this day and age, but there weren’t a lot of jobs. So I kind of got into mortgages, because it was what was available to me. And there weren’t a lot of other jobs. And it was a good time to get into mortgages. And that’s how I got started. Sure.

D.J. Paris 7:57
Yeah. And so and getting into mortgages, is I think it’s such a tough business, because you really have I think, loan officers, it’s tough because they, they really have to serve a lot of different masters, right, they have to make sure that every person involved in a transaction is happy and satisfied, including the client, the realtors, the attorneys, you know, the title companies, again, depending on what, you know, what state you practice, and, but also, just from a marketing perspective, I think, you know, realtors, loan officers, really have very similar jobs as far as trying to build their business. Um, can you talk us tell us a little bit only because I think even for our audience, which are predominantly realtors, I think just hearing about how you built your business would be super helpful. Like, were you were you partnering with realtors? Were you going directly to the public? Were you trying a little bit everything.

Ralph DiBugnara 8:51
So from where it started to where it is now a completely different options, the opposite end of the spectrum, but I you know, I started really in a lead model, where we were getting leads every single day. And it was easy at that point. And to be totally honest with you, for my first three years in the business, most of my business would refinance business, because it was the first real drop in the market. And we would do and refunds were easy. What I learned now, you know, hindsight is 2020 is that, you know, buyers and realtors are really the key to building a business that’s long lasting, and it’s a better quality of life than being stuck to your desk and answering the phone all day. So for cold calls, but essentially, so you know where it starts where it is now. Now my contribution really is built around bringing value to mostly and real estate agents, for better or worse, and some mortgage guys will admit that some are still the best source of business there always was a business right? So trying to bring value around Realtors at this point is really my main function every single day as the head of and we have about 250 salespeople between myself and my partner as our mortgage division. We did about 6000 loans last year for around 2 billion. So it was a lot of business. And I would say 75% of it is realtor referral base from realtor. So a lot of what we do now is still really based around that as our as our main partner and I’m a consumer. So what you said is very, very true. It’s not only making sure the customer is happy, it’s making sure that the realtor has a value partner, that’s making sure one of their Commission’s are protected one. And secondly, that they’re adding something that’s not just the same as the next guy is doing. And I think we, I tried to be unique in that way, whether it’s through social media or to marketing, or it’s through specific campaigns that each realtor is adding value to help them build their bid to help them build a business and not just the pipeline, right, like how we help each other build businesses long term and not just building your pipeline today.

D.J. Paris 10:41
Yeah, I think that’s that seems to be what the most successful Elos loan officers that I’m aware of do. And they’re they’re very generous with, you know, partnering and saying, How can I help you build your business? And I’m curious, how did you go about, you know, I know, you sort of you have your own firm, how did you go about making the transition from being sort of a worker bee and being on the front lines to saying, Okay, I want to manage, you know, a whole team here and kind of build it up. Obviously, that’s a very challenging thing to do. It’s a super competitive landscape, although maybe, maybe not if you had all these great relationships built in advance. But I mean, it’s still competitive, of course, but just curious about how you made that transition to sort of, you know, becoming an entrepreneur.

Ralph DiBugnara 11:27
So it kind of went up and then down and then up again. Oh, oh, 1207, I was a loan officer for a couple of years. And I was promoted to Assistant Vice President with a company that eventually became Deutsche Bank, a pretty big, large company, and then they got rid of us in 2007. So when they got rid of us in 2007, I was this manager, who really only new people within my company, which is my first mistake, because I hadn’t really built a network outside of my company. So when I lost my job, everybody else lost their job. So it was a rough three or four years for me. Besides losing everything, I was really starting over. And I, what I went back to being was a loan officer again. So I went from being this person who was running a very, very large group, too. So the only thing I could really earn money at the time was being a loan officer again. And it took a little bit of a, a year of getting humbled by the market. To me, for me to go back to doing that, again, I was trying to avoid it at all costs, which I was telling the young people in my office yesterday, actually, in hindsight, hindsight, being 2020, again, was that that was stupid, because it’s somebody who’s a direct sales person, whether you’re a realtor or a loan officer, you can have a network that’s yours that you own forever. And the truth of the matter if I was, if I stayed a loan officer throughout that market crash, and all that stuff, I would be much more insulated from suffering that I was as a person in management, because I would have had these relationships that were mine. And people still have to close on loans. So there’s always business there. So when I started to rebuild it again in 2008, and then nine and 10, when I realized that I had to get out and I really started trying to tackle relationships, and around 13, or 14, I started putting myself out front, through social media and outlets like that to generate more value on myself. So even today, what I really lead with to run a group of people, and you’ll definitely understand that cuz you have 700, realtors, 800 realtors, is I have to provide some kind of value to them, that they’re not getting someplace else. And my value always starts with relationships. So it’s my relationships that helped me get business from realtors, it’s my relationships that helped me grow my the people around me on social media through it, getting them more exposure. So I really try to lead with that value proposition. I’m the person that you can be in business with. And I see myself as a partner, even for the people that are underneath me, like they have to get something out of the relationship, just like I have to, and how can I help you grow your business, and I really do that through a lot of people coming to me to give me the business and then me dispersing it to other people. So that’s really the black and white, what’s helped me grow the business, it always starts directly with the our direct consumers and our direct referral sources. And I tried, every day continue to grow those no matter where I am, in my business, I try to grow those every single day.

D.J. Paris 14:07
You know, as I was thinking, when you were thank you for sharing that I think that is it’s it’s something that isn’t as common as one might think with, with loan officers. I know, like we, we tend to recommend, there’s there’s a great loan officer here that we work with locally, that we tend to push a lot of business to as most as best we can. However, I was just thinking about this, when you were mentioning that we have, you know, close to 800 agents. I was just realizing I don’t get these phone calls anymore than I used to. And I’m kind of like in charge of the marketing, sort of for our company. And I certainly used to get these phone calls from mortgage lenders who would say hey, I want to, you know, get in front of your agents. And I just realized I haven’t had one of those calls in years and I just realized how shocking that is that you would think that I’m getting would do get calls every day saying, you know, hey, you guys have 800 agents, I would love to get in front of your agents almost never do we get those calls. And it is shocking because there’s got to be at least 1000 ellos, here in Chicago, probably more. And so I think this, this point to your saying about partnering with either the brokerage or with the agent directly, is so important. And the good news is to so if you’re an agent that’s listening, you might not be getting those calls, either, right? So I know I’m not getting them. And so this is an opportunity, I think, to really, you know, think about who do you Who do you like on the ELO side? And who do you want to partner with that can actually help you, you know, whether it’s through social media or through doing events or, you know, branding or or, you know, physical mailers or whatever it might be? I don’t think there’s that. I think agents oftentimes have to go looking for those opportunities with loan officers, as opposed to waiting for that phone to ring and saying, hey, I want to help you build your business.

Ralph DiBugnara 16:01
Yeah, and you know, so two points that you just made me think I think the first thing is because the Mark has been so busy for the last three years, that a lot of loan offers loan officers that I’ve seen it within my group have gotten used to the phone ringing and fire hose, they and they got away from what they’re going to need now again, which is they need to go out and bring value to get the business out of Realtors, because you don’t see officers at open houses anymore, either. And I preach to my people, every single weekend, you should get a zip code, you should look at every single open house, you should show up every single day doesn’t say, hey, I’ll work you up. And, and you know, to be honest with you, our best leads still come from open houses, those are people who are actively looking, they still the best leads. And so we make it a point to work open acid and make a point to still have events that are gonna bring value to the realtors, we’re still doing all that stuff. I think that’s where the mortgage people have gotten away from, and you’ll see it come back because now they needed it again. But when they didn’t need it, they didn’t have the foresight to say, Hey, I still have to be adding referral partners every single month to make sure because you may have an agent. And again, you’ll understand because you have any agents, you have an agent to get one deal a year from but that it’s a valuable deal. Because if you have enough of those people, it makes sense for you as a loan officer. So I think people just got away from the things that were working. Because it was so easy to do business.

D.J. Paris 17:17
Yeah. It’s funny, I was I was thinking back when you started to that was kind of the era of incredibly low rates, interest only loans, you know, times where I remember somebody refinanced. I wasn’t in this industry, but I just remember it, it was like 2%, the two point something it was based on LIBOR. And I don’t know if rates are still based on LIBOR, but, but it was it was just a whole different world. And then, of course, the collapse. And now, you know, in the last couple years that we had a bit of a rebound, because of course rates being so low, and people just have more buying power than they’ve had. And but then we also have the other side of it, which is a supply shortage. And I know that that’s something that you’re really passionate about sort of coaching people through. Can you talk a little bit about how you see sort of supply chain issues or housing shortage, supply issues and what you’re doing to sort of educate realtors or the public about how they can sort of participate still.

Ralph DiBugnara 18:16
So So I saw an article last week, I read a market watch, I think that it had some alarm, it was maybe two weeks ahead, some alarming statistics. And it was this physics work done by a company called alto, she’s like a market research company for real estate anyway, there’s only 274,000 homes listed in the whole entire country right now. The country so and a healthy average nationally is somewhere between 800,000 and a million. So we’re about 600,000 homes short of a healthy average, which means it’s the same reason there’s not going to be a real estate crash again, no, definitely not now, because we’re so short on supply, and so high on demand and that shortage, you know, you’re you’re from Chicago, around that area, I’m from New York City, they’re not building we can’t build here, right? So it’s like, you know, some of these markets, you’re not going to be able to address that shortage with buildings. So that’s the first thing so I think you’re going to have a very, very low low supply for the foreseeable future. I think to deal with that as as a buyer there’s two things that we’re looking at as the first thing is is that the other thing you’re going to start reading and everybody’s reading now already is that rent had the largest raise last year that added forever and I think some cities were between 20 and 30% higher rents right? Fixing in your mortgage horse right now it’s worth going through the pain of bidding wars and overpaying a little bit and all that stuff because just being able to fix your mortgage cost right now you’re locking in value for calm and affordable yeah yeah so I think you know you see the all these Wall Street firms BlackRock and all these big Wall Street firms a buying single family homes in bulk right now, they’re doing that in my opinion, because they see a single family rental market that’s going to continue to increase they know there’s a lot of value there. So if you if you need to be on the same train I think is up Are you here to buy now and lock in your home, your home costs for the most part 90% of it to be locked in, besides your taxes, insurance, so you don’t you’re not affected by the market for the next 20 to 30 years, right? I think it’s very, very important right now to, to deal with that pressure of being in a market low supply to low cost,

D.J. Paris 20:20
I bought my first condo in 2005. And I can’t remember what my rate was, it might have been the high threes or low fours, I just I don’t remember it was a million years ago. But I was pretty happy with whatever it was, I was like, Hey, this is this is pretty low. And then I just bought a place about a year ago. And I have like a two nine, something, I think a 290 or so. And I’m just like, I get that for the next 30 years. And even though now rates have increased in anticipation of the Fed, you know, maybe mid threes, high threes, even depending on credit and everything, that’s still amazing. Like, that’s still absolutely incredible. And you’re right, it’s actually worth all of the headache. Because you’re basically a hero as an agent to a homebuyer if number one you can find them a place and get get them get their deal approved, but locking them in at that kind of a rate. I mean, it’s so funny, we’re seeing all this news about rates are going up rates are going up. And it’s like, well, yeah, except they were almost historic lows. And so it’s like, it’s still really attractive. And you’re right, you’re gonna be locking someone in. And I think the education piece is really important to to to buyers really making sure they understand, we are in a really fortunate time rate wise, and this is this is the time to really consider pulling the trigger if possible. Because, boy, yeah, you’re going to maybe you’re going to overpay, but you’re going to lock in a real nice rate for the rest of your, you know, probably adult life.

Ralph DiBugnara 21:46
You ended on the head. I mean, that’s why I was born. And I think that’s where people get frustrated. And, you know, I was saying yesterday, I was like, you know, I know it’s a bar, it’s very, very frustrating to get outta bed all the time, and you’re waiting on line to get open houses. But it doesn’t feel like this, but you’re getting an education, right, that house that you didn’t get gives you a better idea of where the market is where the price has to be, how quick of a decision you have to make and what you really need what you really have to have, right cuz you’re gonna compromise in some way, shape or form. So I think that losing all these houses is actually the best education you can get to make you a more schooled buyer and shopper when you’re going to look but it doesn’t feel like that a lot of times because it’s, you know, even for me, I’m very active in buying in the market. And I have I know all the secrets, and it’s hard for me a lot of times so I can imagine how frustrated people have got. Have you

D.J. Paris 22:31
had just out of curiosity for your own investments? Are you doing anything more creative than then maybe you had in previous years to try to either get offers noticed or just to find sellers? I know. on the investor side there’s there’s almost an art and a science to all sorts of different ways in which you can sort of find opportunities that aren’t on the MLS or, or you know, and I’m not asking for, of course, your secret sauce. But I’m just curious if if you’ve had to get bit more creative, because of the supply shortage, just trying to find these opportunities. Are these the sellers?

Ralph DiBugnara 23:07
Yeah, I mean, I think you know, from my side, you know, to be totally honest, I wish I was better at getting stuff that at discount, but I’m not getting stuff at discount right now. Like, you know, for the most part I’m paying but what I am doing is I’m going in with a very, very strong case that I’m the buyer they want. So I show up with a what I call a TBD commitment letter. So it’s it’s a to be determined the dress, but everything else on the commitment letter is been done already. So I’ve actually been my my case has been in front of an underwriter, they’ve looked at my income and looked at my assets, I’m qualified to get the loan. So it’s not a pre approval, I’m showing up. And lenders do this, we do it as a company called null. And a lot of lenders do this, I shall put an actual commit letter, which is really as good as cash, it’s okay, for sure. All I need is appraisal title and homeowners insurance. And we will we will be good to go. So So I’m showing up that way, as far as the appraisal and inspection contingencies go because I know that to become a hot thing to waive that. I’m not waiving them. But if it’s a competitive property, I’m, I’m telling the seller that I’m going to do them still, and I reserve the right to back out of the deal. But I’m not going to hold you to anything that I find. So at least I say, Hey, you’re not going to have to do any work. I’m not going to try to negotiate the price. But I’m going to do it for my own informational purposes. And I reserve the right to back out of the deal. So I’m kind of being a little bit aggressive on that end. And, you know, I will even waive an appraisal contingency because as long as I have a mortgage contingency, which says that I cannot get qualify for a mortgage, I can get my deposit back, that I will waive the appraisal contingency because I know that I still have a backup of the mortgage. So I think I gotta be as creative as I can making the offer look as attractive as possible when I go in. Because you know, at least I’m in the game. And the other thing and this is close to you could probably speak to this even better than I can is that I’ve learned more than ever. It’s important to work with a realtor who’s very very familiar with the area I’m looking in and knows the other agents in the area. Because I found that when I’ve used agents that are outside of the areas that I’m buying in, or don’t know, everybody that I’m not getting bids, you really have to have an insider, depending on where you’re looking, I feel like to get the property. So So agents that know their market and know that people in their market are super valuable right now.

D.J. Paris 25:18
And I think it’s a huge, thank you for saying that, I think that’s a really important thing that isn’t talked about as much on our show. And it’s really important, because those relationships are, you know, I know, like, especially in these competitive bidding environments where the listing agent might have, you know, 20 Plus offers, and, you know, probably just becomes dizzying after a while, but at least when they see a familiar name, and they like, Oh, I know, I know that person. That’s, that’s a great agent. And I know that that agent isn’t bringing me a garbage client, you know, this is probably, you know, it because that agent is going to make sure that it isn’t written by, you know, a lending institution that isn’t, you know, reputable or can’t close or, you know, ones that they know, are quality. That’s really, really important. So I think for everyone listening, if you’re an agent who’s newer, or in the process of building up your business, and you’re like, Well, I don’t yet know all the, the agents in my area, go to that book, go to the broker, open houses, go to the regular open houses, introduce yourself, and say, Hey, I just wanted to come by and see this in case I have a client that you know, might be interested in, I want to just meet you in person. And I mean, that you were saying, that’s what your ellos do. And it’s it’s one of those sort of lost arts, that is so important, because you’re right, in those relationships. Look, we’re all human nature, we’d like to see people’s names that we recognize, and we like, and you know, those people, they shouldn’t get preferential treatment, but just due to human nature, that might give you a slight edge over another similar or identical offer, where they’re like, Oh, I know that agent, I’m gonna go with that agent, because I know that, you know, they’re going to probably get this deal close faster, or on time or whatever. So I, you’re right, relationships are so important, whether it’s between ello, and a broker, or I guess, in New York, not everyone’s a broker, but, you know, we’ll say real estate agent, and then real estate agent to consumer as well as is having, having, and then real estate agents, real estate agent, knowing people in your area. So this is why it’s always crazy to me to that agents who are newer to the industry aren’t being told, ask other agents in your office, if you can sit in open houses, you know, because even if you’re not allowed to keep those referrals, which most I think people would let you keep the referrals, but even if they don’t, it’s like you said it’s an education, you get to see how another producer, you know, greet somebody, when they walk in an open house? How do they let them browse around? How do they get their information, so they can stay in touch, I mean, the education there is invaluable. And in most cases, the agent will say you can keep those leads because you own them. And you’re right loan officers really should be at every single open house that they can, because and in fact, I was just talking to somebody who said that loan officers oftentimes have a higher closing percentage than the actual listing agent who’s doing the open house because a lot of times, people feel a little bit intimidated or like you just like you when you walk into a clothing store, and you see the salesperson Beeline right for you, and you’re like, oh, just leave me alone for a few minutes. Get my bearings, but the loan officer typically doesn’t do that. So I’d say if you’re an agent, bring a loan officer with you. Because then it’s not their open house. They’re just there. And and I think the it’s become sometimes a little bit easier for them to communicate with, with people walking in, because I know my guard goes up as soon as somebody approaches me in a store, not because I’m not friendly it just because I just want to be left alone a lot of times.

Ralph DiBugnara 28:47
Just let me shout. Yeah, I agree.

D.J. Paris 28:52
But I think that’s pretty cool. Because a loan officer Ken can can be at be there and say, Hey, I’m a partner of so and so this isn’t my listing. But But isn’t it cool? And they can sort of pretend like, like they’re they themselves are so impressed with the property, not pretend to hopefully be authentic. But but that puts them more on the same side is that as that buyer versus maybe the realtor who they might think, Oh, that’s a salesperson I want to start to stay away from. So it’s, I think it’s a really smart, smart idea. So for everyone listening, find a loan officer who’s willing to meet with you at your, at your open houses. And then if you don’t have any listings to do open houses, ask other agents in your office. We have, like I said, we have almost eight or you mentioned we have almost 800 agents. I don’t know how often our agents are reaching out to our other agents going Can I sit and do an open house for you and what a huge missed opportunity.

Ralph DiBugnara 29:42
Yeah, I agree with you. I think it’s I think it’s the biggest opportunity, especially in this market is the open houses is if you actually get to the point where there is an open house. They’re super busy most of the time. So it’s That’s right.

D.J. Paris 29:51
Yeah. I would love to talk to talk to you about millennials. So I’m not tech Typically a millennial but but I find that these are people who are buying homes right now, right this is this is the demographic that is either has already bought their first home or is considering it. And I know the age keeps going up for people buying their first home, especially, of course places like New York where it’s just, you know, difficult because of the pricing. But in most other markets, millennials are a key demographic to really approach and for any agent that isn’t sort of feeling like they have a lot of visibility with the millennial sort of group. Any suggestions about how they might want to go about sort of penetrating that market getting getting exposure to that market? Because it is probably a little different than you know how somebody like I was saying, I I’m not a millennial, but I would love a phone call from from a wall. I already have our ello relationships here, but but I would think I’d be getting a lot of those phone calls. I don’t I don’t get the emails or phone calls. But I’m curious if you have suggestions about how agents could could reach some of these, you know, younger buyers who maybe wouldn’t necessarily think to pick up the phone and call a realtor. You know, they’re going to Zillow, Redfin wherever, and just doing all their browsing there. And maybe they fill out a lead form online, and they get called by a bunch of Realtors, but but these are millennials aren’t typically people that talk a lot on the phone as well. So just curious if you have some suggestions about how to how to get in front of those people. I

Ralph DiBugnara 31:26
don’t think he talked on the phone because I think it’s a more educated buyer, right? Because they’re, they have access to old they’ve grown up online. And if any grew up online, that they’ve asked us to look at the stuff online. But I think for the most part, they still have very traditional values where they want to buy a house, they think it’s the foundation for building their life or family, whatever it is. So I think that they still have very traditional values. And that’s something you can hold on to right like a, you’re looking into a house, it’s an eye, they’re more investment savvy. So I think speaking to millennials about it being an investment, being a long term investment, it being the safest investment, proven over time, but now more than ever, in a volatile market, where we don’t know what stocks are going we don’t know what crypto is going. We don’t want NF T’s are going right real estate, something that’s of low supply. And people like to talk about cryptocurrency, that there’s only a certain amount of cryptocurrency in circulation? Well, I can say the same thing about real estate, right? There’s a home’s listed and there’s only a certain amount. So I think that if you if you speak to him, from the stance that this is a long term investment, it’s a grow your long term wealth, this is going to they still a very, very, they’re very interested in that because they’re also people who came of age during a market crash. So they have a little bit of a scary picture of the housing market. It’s still at this point that maybe they’ve never got past, right. So talking them as like how real estate estate the test of time since 1980. It’s outpaced the stock market as far as return on investment two to one, that’s a real stat. So I think that I reach people a lot that way would saying, Hey, this is how I’ve worked to grow secure long term wealth. And I really feel like it’s the way to do it. And because you’re financially savvy, because you have a 401 K and because you understand investing, we can really leverage that to get you into the right property that helps you in the future, either buy more properties, or just make the right buy for yourself, however that it’s going to be so I always try to leave it that when it comes to that, that that group of people.

D.J. Paris 33:27
Yeah, I think learning the lingo is really important to like, if anyone out there is not familiar with the term house hacking, get familiar with it, because it is the the term Millennials are using to, you know, live in a living maybe a three flat and rent out the other two units and have it sort of cover to cover the cost. And if that’s something that you’re like, I don’t really understand the investor world. I think Ralph Ralph is absolutely right, you’re going to be missing out on business, because you’re right, that millennial and younger generations these are, they’ve been online or essentially their whole lives. They know how to get information faster than us older people. And this is, you know, we, we I remember growing up and not of course, not having access to the internet until I was, I mean, the Internet was technically really around since since the mid 80s in any sort of real capacity, but only a very small percentage of people even even knew how to do that. But but as far as like having a browser to use that was like 9495 and there just wasn’t much content even available at that time. So and nobody really knew how to use it. Google didn’t exist, the search engines were kind of crappy. So it was it was difficult wasn’t really till till the very end of of you know, maybe 9998 where we started out okay, we can we can really get information here. But Millennials have always known how to do that. And so you’re right, like you have to know as much as they do at a at a minimum. And the good news is, you know, their knowledge is is really not that deep. It’s It’s It’s vast, but it’s it’s shallow. So They understand. And then you can come in and, and create that that additional depth. But I think that’s something that you really have to make a concerted effort for. If you’re just like, oh, I don’t deal with that, boy, I cannot tell you how many young Realtors get their license. And then they maybe they’ll join our firm and, and they’ll say to things like I really want to I really needed to do some house hacking. And I’m like, wow, I for the first eight years. As somebody who recruits realtors, nobody ever talked about it to me. And now it’s it’s really common. So, you know, that’s just one example. But you’re absolutely right, this whole investor side is this is the time to start getting educated. So that you can introduce a different stream of of clients into your business.

Ralph DiBugnara 35:45
Yeah. And again, I think that age, and I’ve gotten very heavy to the short term rental space, so Airbnb VRBO. But, and I see more and more of those people, whether they’re families that are doing it, or couples that are doing it, or they’re very interested in that space. And the younger generation is definitely looking at it because they have different character, you know, Gen Z, because they have different characteristics and different needs. But even the millennial generation now work from home and virtual learning. And that’s changed the market completely. And a lot of these people who grew up on technology can work from anywhere, right? So they’re going to live anywhere. So even more so with that as a realtor to getting to understand that that they’re willing to live anywhere, possibly to use the houses as an income source, and use it part time and live someplace bustle part time, but this the last COVID, and pandemic and all that stuff has really changed the world. As far as real estate goes, as far as I’m concerned.

D.J. Paris 36:42
You’re right. And I think too, you know, I I’ve been I traveled quite a bit during COVID, I was lucky enough to still be able to do that, you know, when it was safe to do it. And, and I met a bunch of people overseas, just randomly, who had, you know, decided to either sublease, if they were renting, you know, whatever major city they might have been in, and then just traveled sort of full time. And we met people in Croatia and Poland and, and other places, and even other places in this country where they weren’t from there, they don’t really live there. They’re just there for now. And, and they I think, you know, now being that the millennials, Gen Z are, you know, obviously spending a lot of time on tick tock Instagram, obviously, Facebook, they’re just seeing a lot of other opportunity of places to be and now that their jobs, don’t chain them to a particular desk, you have this opportunity to explain to them, Hey, you can travel around, and maybe you’ll even just rent wherever you go, if you’re just sort of going from city to city, but let’s get you some sort of permanent investment here, in your in your home area where that’s going to be generating revenue, or at least, you know, giving us some nice tax advantages, while you, you know, sort of find yourself, you know, all over the country or internationally. And I think, again, that’s just such a cool idea to bring to a millennial, or a Gen Z, or anyone really, is to say like, Hey, are you planning on staying here? And even if you’re not, well, you still probably want to invest in real estate. And here’s why. And having that conversation, you don’t have to live here kind of thing is, I think, really interesting, and probably doesn’t get discussed as much, from realtors to younger clients.

Ralph DiBugnara 38:27
Yeah, man, I think everybody, you know, everybody can be a digital nomad these days, right? You can really work from anywhere and I, I, you know, I travel a lot, I’m on a plane, once a week, you know, sometimes more than that, but I really don’t ever miss a step at this point. Because my communication can be done over zoom, I can do everything on my phone, I can really travel, do everything I have to do and never miss a step. And I think that people have learned that that’s a lifestyle, and that they can own, you know, again, for the short term rental market. And this is something that I recognize that there’s more revenue on first of all, than long term rentals. But secondly, it’s so it’s so multi use for me because I can use the homes to travel to for my my family for vacations and it’s still earn on them or it’s not, it’s not, it’s an asset still, and it’s an earning asset. So that’s great. I can bought homes in states that I either want to grow business in or can help me expand my income and or tax benefits. So it just like it’s a whole new world as far as that goes. I think if you’re a realtor in a place where you know, that makes sense, and you seem Airbnbs pop up or you’re seeing people be trapped. I think it’s something to focus on at this point. Okay. Because a lot of the realtors I reach out to and speak to them about it don’t necessarily know as much as I do about being an area that’s kind of on the come up for those reasons. Some of them do, some of them don’t. So I think that that’s in some places, if you’re a realtor who’s in any market that even looks like that a little bit. I think it’s something to definitely focus on because it could be a really good source of business for you.

D.J. Paris 39:56
Yeah, definitely. And it’s also just a way to separate yourself as an agent being able to have those conversations and I think having the tough conversations about things like is a primary home. Hey, mister, is it an asset? Hey, Mr. Mrs. buyer, who wants to look at their first home, you know, let’s talk about what an asset is. And let’s talk about, you know, the benefits of buying a primary residence living in it. And let’s also talk about investor, you know, sort of opportunities as well. And, and, you know, what is an asset? And and I think, you know, if you don’t have a good comp, comprehensive answer for is a primary residence and asset and I know, that’s a debatable topic, but somebody is going to come along and tell that person, hey, you know, because a lot of people don’t see primary residences as as assets until the day you sell them. And then they’re an asset. But But I subscribe to that model to I don’t look at my primary home. I mean, I’d love it to be an actual asset, I hope it appreciates, and I, but it’s all a guess, right? Like, I have to live somewhere. It’ll either go up or down, it doesn’t generate revenue, until the day I sell it. And then oh, by the way, I gotta reinvest all that money into the next place. I, I buy so so I don’t see it as an asset. Although, you know, maybe I’m maybe I’m thinking of it, you know, narrow too narrowly. But But yeah, invest in investments that can generate income, or at least cover expenses, or hopefully, or they just about do. And that’s, I mean, it’s such an important conversation. And I think that’s the more education and you know, agents can have and for anyone listening, he’s like, how do I get started learning. And by the way, before, I mentioned that Ralph has a podcast and I totally forgot to mention this at the beginning. We’re gonna post a link to this in our show notes. So if you’re listening on a podcast app, you can actually subscribe to Rob’s podcast right in our show notes. But he is the host of disruptors podcast sorry disruptors network podcast. So can you tell us just a little bit before before we move on about the about the show?

Ralph DiBugnara 41:56
Yeah. So it was originally something that we were doing a lot of live events before COVID happened. And then it turned into a virtual event. So the virtual events turned into me trying to have fun people like you, you know, you people who built businesses, and we’re showing people how they did it authentically. So it started the podcast started around that. And that actually turned into a TV show that streamed on everything last year, Amazon, it’s on YouTube, it’s on. It was on Apple TV, or Roku, and we’re having our second season on DirecTV, which called disruptors network. So the podcast is really turned into a mixture of that. It’s week, two weeks. One week, it’s a guest that we speak to and I’d love to have you on. We’ll talk about that. Yeah, that’d be fun, somebody who bring value. And then the next week, I do a part of the podcast called the growth project. And the growth project is all about how do you buy real estate? How do you get started buying properties? How do you invest? How do you grow a real estate portfolio? So there’s there’s that on there too, for people who are interested in strictly that? We do. I did an episode this week on red flags, red flags in a seller’s market. So I’m trying to address specific problems people are having with actually buying real estate. But that’s what the podcast is about.

D.J. Paris 43:01
I love it. And that’s called the podcast disruptors disrupter network. And by the way, you can access that as well right on Ralph’s website, which is also linked to in our show notes. And also, I want to talk about you as an athlete, because I think this is something I meant, oh, I was gonna say, by the way, one thing I forgot to say, all over the place, if you wanted to start to learn about investments, bigger pockets is really the place that you need to be aware of as an agent, because it’s the place where the vast majority are the it’s the number one spot that investors go to learn. It’s the number one online community for investors and so agents really need to be familiar with what they offer. So if your clients as I was reading this thing on bigger pockets, you’re like, I don’t know what that is. That’s the one website to know. It’s the one community to really become aware of because they are they’re the kings of teaching people how to do this and it’s just this nice little not little to large forum community and they do podcasts and other things. So definitely start bigger pockets you know, check out Ralph’s podcasts and TV show as well. But let’s I would love to talk about your, your, your your sort of athletic career, tell us a little bit about you know what that means to you and what you do there.

Ralph DiBugnara 44:14
I played sports growing up, I was always really an athlete at my worst years of being out of shape or during the market crash I think I was just in survival mode for years but I never forget I stopped that at some point but I bought competitively in my 20s You know, averages stuff, you know, turn pro but you know, Golden Gloves and stuff like that and then I got into being running races and I got into the Spartan Races or our obstacle races. And they found that I was pretty decent runner, which I didn’t realize until that point, and I was ranked pretty high up they have a pro circuit and I was ranked. I was ranked at least in the top 50 for like four or five years running and I was top 15 and 2017 I think so I haven’t won Since COVID, but I’m probably picking up again. But I think that in general for me is, I’m a morning, I’m really a morning person, I’ve naturally it’s not a force thing. And I think that everybody has their own energy when it comes to that, and I don’t think mornings is for everybody thinks I’m gonna get a better night’s and people, but you know, I’m just good in the mornings. So I really need exercise early in the day to kind of center me, or I’m all over the place. So I really do, I’ve always used fitness as a way to kind of keep me sharp. And that’s what the competitions were about. And I needed so I always kind of need something to try to train for. But what I’ve realized over life now is that I don’t need the competition’s necessarily trained for that I need to continue to be better and trained for life. Right. So I think my whole role for that at this point now is I want to do everything on a very, very high level, even that, but just to be healthy, I get up every single day and do it and I still train like I’m running races, even though I’m not running races anymore. So

D.J. Paris 45:58
well, well, it’s you know, it’s interesting I was I just before this podcast, I, I work out just three times a week, and I did it right before, before coming on the show today, right? So I do it for me, it’s in the middle of the day, just because it’s a nice break, I’m lucky enough to be able to do that. And it’s just a few blocks from from my office. So very easy to get to. But for me, I’ve always had the gym nearby. And I wasn’t doing it for years and years, I play tennis, and it’s a tennis club as well. But I wasn’t really working out. I was just playing tennis. And I had to realize that I guess 146 So I think I was about 44 When I said I think I have to get a trainer. And that was really depressing to me because I thought, gosh, I just can’t get to the gym on my own. And the reality of it is I can’t get to the gym on my own. I don’t do it. And so I thought okay, well, it’s an expensive problem to have, because then you have to hire a trainer. But but, you know, I was thinking about it too, like athletes have coaches. Right. And, and, and certainly, I mean, look just about every not not every agent I’ve ever interviewed on the show, but a lot of them have coaches as well who are big, massive producers. So this is also a great sort of thing to think about in your businesses, do you have a coach, you know, whether it’s, you know, for your physical body or for your business, I think at the very least you should have one for your business, but what I was gonna say about about getting in shape. And I have a similar similar goals to you, which is I just want to be healthy, I don’t really care how much today was lower body day, which is my least favorite of all the days. So I don’t really care how much I deadlift or squat or whatever. In fact, we change up exercises all the time. So I don’t even know what I’m really supposed to, you know, look for, as far as you know, my trainer figures all that out. But, but it has really changed the amount of energy I have. And of course, we all sort of know that. But I didn’t know it until I actually did it. And then I went well, I hate every moment of it, because it’s just pain. And it’s hard. And it’s I’m kind of a baby about it. But if I just show up and do the work, I have more energy for my business. And so and I mean, that’s like, of course that’s like basic health one on one, but boy is it made a huge difference. All the pain that I experienced in the gym today was a particularly painful day. It ultimately it’s just even just cut for stress. And and so but but yeah, it’s, it’s really important, I really encourage everyone out there, we all talk about wellness and, and everyone knows, yeah, I should work out. And I must have been saying that for the last 20 years. And then I finally just said, I’m not going to do this unless I get a trainer. And even though it’s crazy expensive, it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. And, and it also pushes me to earn a slightly higher income so I can keep paying for that. So I encourage encourage everyone to really think about their physical body and and also Realtors loan officers as well get get pulled, it’s tough to set boundaries, when you’re you know, dealing with somebody’s you know, primary home and it’s one of the largest investments they make, maybe the largest investment they’ll ever make are certainly up there. And they’re going to be really stressed. You know, the client is going to be stressed the agents going to be stressed. You know, there’s always a wrinkle, there’s always something that goes wrong in a transaction at some point. And the best thing you can do as the agent is have an outlet for that stress. So I imagine is that helpful for you as well? Does that help get rid of some of your anxiety? Or? Yeah,

Ralph DiBugnara 49:10
so much? Yeah, I mean, I think that’s how I work with a lot. I think that’s how I’m able to deal with the amount of stress that comes with the job right? Like I that really puts me and, you know, you said something about a trainer. But I think what you said is really, really important. I you know, I have accountability partners, and in some of its fitness related and some of its I said accountability traps myself, right. So what I wear a Fitbit every single day to track my steps because it just keeps me accountable to know I have to move a certain amount every single day. And I have a goal in there that I’m supposed to cross every single day and when I don’t cross it, I’m aware of it. I have a sleep tracker, and I use that to because I know I need at least six hours of sleep. That’s kind of like my sweet spot. So you know, at the end of the week, I get my report and it’s like you know, my sleep is no good last week, I have to get myself to it. So I have little reminders to keep myself accountable. Because I know if I do those little little tiny things and it Even some cameras with little tiny things, that I’m a much better person and it helps my earning potential and everything else. And it just makes me feel better. And I have an eight and a six year old and a lot of my time goes to them at this point now but you know more than anything I want to be have the energy to when I get home to give them as much attention as I’m giving everybody else during the day.

D.J. Paris 50:19
Yeah, I struggle with that a little bit myself is and I’m sure a lot of our audience can listen and just so people know, I really have a more traditional nine to five type job. So I’m not out there producing like our audience is or, you know, your your salespeople your company are. And again, you know, I have a I get to sort of mousse for the most part sort of shut down around five, six, maybe seven o’clock at latest and I don’t have to do much in the evening. But Realtors oftentimes do and loan officers do. And you know, they’re constantly, you know, people are working during the day. And so their clients are messaging them at night, and they’re getting emails and texts and trying to figure out those boundaries is not always the easiest thing. But But you’re right, like, I’ll come home, and I will have blown all my energy during the day. And then I don’t really have as much energy for my partner, my girlfriend as I as I should. And so it’s a constant sort of dance of like, yeah, how much how much but but I would have a lot less energy if I didn’t work out. And and now I’m at the point where it’s like, okay, now I have to lose a few pounds. My strength is way up, but my, my fat is way up as well. So now it’s like, oh, that I have to stop snacking. And there’s always little tweaks to make to the formula. But but you know, the physical side of it is the better and shape you are, you’re just going to have a better you’re probably just gonna have a better career. I know it’s really that simple. And you’re gonna have more energy for the people that you love in your life like your family and because because this this job is exhausting. It’s an exhausting, not my job. But But realtor, you know, job and ello jobs are. It’s tough. You’re dealing with people’s emotions and a lot of money and a lot of stress.

Ralph DiBugnara 51:59
And it’s a runaway train. Sometimes you don’t know how your day is gonna go with depending on a lot of moving parts. So yeah, for sure you need the stress reliever.

D.J. Paris 52:07
All right, Rob, I really appreciate you being on our show. This was a lot of fun for us. We really had a great conversation with you. I want to remind everyone to please check out Ralph at his website. Everything that he is involved in is right on his site, a site that’s Ralph de Bognar. att.com and that’s Ral Ph. D. Ibu G and ara.com. Also, that’s in our show notes. And check out his podcast, the disruptors network, you can find it anywhere podcasts are served, just do a search for disruptors network and you’ll find it and then also, what’s the best way that is for them to find your show as well is that that’s also on your website, I assume

Ralph DiBugnara 52:44
it’s on my website. And my Instagram kind of has everything in it that that debug and I still answered all my messages there. So if you have any questions about this, or real estate or short term rental buying or anything like that, that’s a good place to get me I answer everything over there.

D.J. Paris 52:57
And it’s really funny, right? Before we started, I had one of our newer agents, he had just passed his licensing exam and decided to join our firm. So this is just really kind of interesting timing, literally, right? Before we got on the air, he came in and he goes, Hey, I have a problem, I have a two flat, and I and this is in Chicago, and I don’t, I need to get approval from the city to be able to do short term rentals. And he said, I got denied, or this property got denied. And I had to go to the aldermen. And I had to, you know, try to, you know, get things he’s like, I really don’t know what to do now. And, and so, you know, we pass them over to our support team who can help them but but even eight, you know, this is something that agents, you know, really need to get familiar with, especially on the short term rental side, because, as you were saying earlier, millennials not only are interested in this, they’re using Airbnb, they’re using VRBO that these are, these are the services, I mean, we’re all using them really, at this point. But this is an opportunity to really, it’s, it’s one of those things where I’d say as an agent, if you can spend the next two years, spend 1520 minutes a day just looking at understanding invest in the investor world, and how investments work in two years, you’re going to be an expert, or at least you’re going to be a lot further along. And you’ll be able then to service those clients and this is why also you want to partner with a loan officer who actually is really familiar with with these types of investments in these types of loans. And that way, you know, either you can just pass it right over to your your trusted lender, or you can have that lender train you on what you need to know and this is such a great you know, we’re sort of coming into I know the markets picking up because it’s after Super Bowl now and everything’s kind of kind of gaining steam, and the rental season is upon us as well. And that’s huge. But I think you know, just carve out 1015 20 minutes a day to to master this or learn this and within a few years you’re going to be leaps and bounds above 99% of the other realtors out there.

Ralph DiBugnara 54:52
Agree? Yeah, and I 100% agree with you. I think it’s a I think it’s a great space. I think it’s the next thing for sure. So I it’s something that I’m heavy on right Now,

D.J. Paris 55:01
well, I want everyone to check out Rob’s podcast, which is called the disruptors network, we have a link to it in the show notes or just search for it. Or you can access it right on his website, Ralph de manera.com. Ralph, on behalf of all of our audience, we want to thank you for spending time with us and educating our audience on on things like investments and just you know how to reach sort of a younger demographic and some just best practice ideas from somebody who’s done it, and now runs a huge team that does it. You know, and, and also, on behalf of Ralph and myself, we want to thank our audience for continuing to listen and support our show. want to remind everyone before you sign off, or after you sign off, just help us do two quick things. One, tell a friend, think of one other realtor or real estate agent or loan officer that could really benefit from hearing this particular episode, Ralph, shoot them a link to our website, if they’re not a podcast person. And you can find us right at keeping it real pod.com. Again, keeping it real pod.com, every episode we’ve ever done is there. They can stream it right from their browser or pull up a podcast app having searched for keeping it real cert and hit the subscribe button. And then the last thing, so please tell a friend and then also review our show, we really, really use that data and that feedback to improve and continue to get better and give you guys more of what you want from this show. And we just crossed over a million downloads a couple days ago. We’re super grateful for that. And we want to hear what you want to see different we want what you like about the show. So whatever podcast app you might be using. If you’re using one, leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show. We read every single comment and let us know how we can continue to keep getting better. Ralph, thank you so much for being on our show. I’d love to be on your show someday. So definitely reach out. And for everyone else on Ralph, we thank you and we’ll see everyone on the next episode.

In our February episode of Monday Market Minute, Carrie McCormick from @properties talks about competition in the buyers market and the very low inventory. Carrie discusses the inflation and purchasing power buyers have now. Carrie also explains why the percentage of new listings is low in the Chicago market. Next, Carrie shares her perspective of what she’s learned working for 2 decades in the real estate business. Last, D.J shares his own tips for homeowners and renters.

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.

D.J. Paris 0:00
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 keeping it real the largest podcasts made for real estate agents and by real estate agents My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and today is our monthly series called The Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick. She is from the Carey McCormick Real Estate Group with at properties Christie’s International. Now Carrie is a top 1% producer here in Chicago with over 20 years of experience helping buyers, sellers and investors. In fact, in the past 12 months out of almost 46,000 Real estate agents Carrie was ranked in the top 15 Not 15% The number 15 Top realtors in all of Chicago. She is true superstar and an expert in everything from first time homebuyers, veteran investors and luxury properties. And she also works with a lot of developers and she’s often chosen to represent their high end developments. Now please visit Carrie at her website which is Carrie McCormick r e.com. And also especially follow her on Instagram she has one of the most trafficked Instagram accounts for Chicago realtors, so Carrie McCormick real estate again so on Instagram, Carrie McCormick real estate and she does all of her own posts herself. So if you want to see what a successful agent who does all their own postings on social and gets a lot of traffic, and a lot of engagement, check out Carrie McCormack real estate on Instagram. Carrie, welcome once again to the show. That’s the

Carrie McCormick 2:46
best intro I wish I could call you every morning. Here that that’s so nice. So thank you and I love being here.

D.J. Paris 2:54
Well, thank you I’m I enjoy having having you on the show and our audience really loves having you on because you have been a top producer here in Chicagoland area for gosh, forever, essentially. And you’re so well respected and your time is very valuable. So we appreciate you spending some time telling our audience what you’ve learned. And I’m so what do you want to talk about today? You will you and I were talking about just beforehand about inventory and how that is, of course, at least here in the Chicagoland market, but most likely in other markets that our audience is paying attention to. We’re dealing with a shortage, and we just are and it’s it’s affecting everybody. So anyway, I wanted to find out what you wanted to chat about today.

Carrie McCormick 3:37
Yeah, so we’ll just talk a little bit about inventory. I know everyone’s kind of tired of probably hearing it. But just you know, I’m here in Chicago, and just like all of us around the United States are having this issue. And I think going into 2022 People were excited to have a new opportunity, you know, since they lost out in 2021. But we’re still having challenges now the inventory is at its lowest we’re at 910,000. At the start of this year. It’s the lowest since 1999. According to Well, that’s according to the National Association of Realtors, just so you know, competition is still fierce. It’s It’s really crazy out there. But now in 2022 We’ve got inflation we’ve got soaring sales prices, we have mortgage rates that are pushing up a little bit so what it’s doing is it’s reducing the person purchasing power for clients. So for example, I have a client last year we’re just going to use the number of a million dollars just for a round number. You know they were looking at a million dollar homes last year we couldn’t find what they wanted or got out beat and then this year we’re back in the market but because interest rates have ticked up a little bit and they wanted to do some renovations and those costs have gone up you know now their buying power is is less so now we’re looking at nine $100,000 homes. But again, with this inventory, it’s just it’s, it’s, it’s been just a little, it’s been tough. But as brokers, you know, our job is obviously to guide our clients and be creative with how we’re presenting offers and finding properties there.

D.J. Paris 5:16
I want to jump in for a sec, because I was just thinking about this from a psychological perspective that this idea of your purchasing power going down, because you there isn’t enough inventory to really find a place right now. And rates are raising rising. And I was thinking that, you know, it probably will all be fine. If we start getting more inventory and prices come down, maybe that’ll adjust for the fact that rates rates are going up. But psychologically, it’s got to just I was just thinking of myself, if all of a sudden somebody said, Well, now you can’t get the million dollar home. Now I can only get 808 $100,000 home, even though logically that might still just work out fine. I don’t, it doesn’t feel good to hear that news. I’m almost wondering, for agents, that’s something that to realize there’s a psychological hurdle there that somebody needs to be soothed to hear that information. Because it is a, it’s a bummer. It’s like, well, you can’t get that anymore. Now, you know, you have to go down a tear, even though the down tear might not actually be a down tear. So I just think that’s a good point that people have to there is a little bit of a loss, a feeling of loss there, even though it might be invisible, that that aid that clients need to sort of be explained that, you know, don’t let this sort of throw you, for sure. I

Carrie McCormick 6:37
mean, I love what I do every day. I’ve been doing this for two decades now. And I’ve never seen a market like this. And it is I mean, I want my clients to be happy. And you know, that’s what the goal is. So it’s it’s been challenging, and I understand their frustration. So I wanted to also share with you just kind of where again, we’re in Chicago is where our inventory is here. So new listings in the city of Chicago, right now are up 0.7% for single family homes. But this is an interesting number the what we call attached properties, which is the condos and the townhomes. That inventory is down 27%, which is a huge number. And again, that just goes into the inventory realm, I think to the challenge we’re having here again, just like every market is is that sellers don’t want to sell their home because they have nowhere to go. And DJ and I were just talking about this. I’ve got clients that are making unsolicited offers to people that their homes are not on the market. And if I were to get an offer on my home, I love my house. But if I were to get an offer on my home, I don’t think I would sell it, you know? And I was thinking like, what number would would someone have to give to me? And I was just joking around saying if someone even gave me, well, I shouldn’t even say if someone gave me a lot of money. I don’t think I would move because I don’t know where I can go to so. So when we see the new listings up, you know, the single family homes up 0.7% It’s because they you know, people just don’t have anywhere to go.

D.J. Paris 8:18
Yeah, it’s interesting. And you’re so right that people are getting these offers these unsolicited letters in the mail, or maybe they’re getting phone calls or emails, because inventory is so low. But you know, it’s really interesting. So this is just kind of a behind the scenes thing. So Kerry happened to represent the developer, sort of just coincidentally, of the place that I ended up buying. So which is really fun and cute. And I got to get a place from from carious. Actually, this is before Before COVID, or rather right when COVID was was starting. And we didn’t have as many of these issues. And so I got sort of lucky and timing. But you know, what’s funny is I was thinking about this, I just celebrated a year here are about to celebrate a year here, I have received no, not only not any sort of letters, and this is a new development, and there’s new construction. So maybe I’m not on the radar as much right now. But I’ve not received any letters, any of saying, Hey, we know you just bought your place. But are you interested in selling? And I’ve also not received any marketing materials from agents, which is kind of remarkable. If you think like, obviously, yes, somebody who just moved into a new development probably isn’t moving a year in, but I would think I’d get something even a letter that said I am actually I’m just surprised, I would have just thought somebody would have gone you know, this guy’s probably five years out or whatever the you know, the he’s not moving for a while, you know, five to seven years, but I’m going to start the relationship now and nobody has done that to anyone in our building because I asked our agent or the other owners, so just a little marketing Tip there, obviously, it’s a long term strategy. But a great opportunity is to really start, you know, relationships with people that move here, because we have even people in our building that moved from other states because of job opportunities. They’re here. They’re new to Chicago. They, they just used an agent, probably, but who knows, maybe they didn’t like their agents. So just an opportunity to think about you know, and the reason I’m thinking about this a lot is I was Carrie has a colleague, or somebody she’s worked with, I’m sure many, many times, who was a guest on our show years ago. His name is Michael Rosenbloom. He’s a Chicago based agent. And he really became he built a good part of his business by just blanketing certain buildings that he wanted to really big condo buildings. And he, he became very, very popular in buildings by just saying, sending out mailers. So I just was thinking, you know, somebody could, you know, who isn’t who hasn’t started doing that, if you have some spare time on your hand, start blanketing some of these buildings, you know, every month with a little mailer. And you know, over time, probably two, three years later, you’re gonna get some leads from that, for sure.

Carrie McCormick 11:07
Absolute thing, you know, also, just kind of what we’re talking about is I read this article about FOMO fear of missing out. And he always thought about that, as far as you know, social but it’s, it’s now kind of hit the real estate market, just like you were saying is that, you know, you know, if something’s not selling in the market, you know, if you have a house, it’s not selling people, the sellers or buyers mind selling, I hear all these articles, or a buyer can’t get a house, they feel like they’re missing out. So it’s, it’s become a real thing in the real estate market now.

D.J. Paris 11:38
Yeah, there’s just it’s people are just really desperate. And it’s I know, even from a support perspective, because I’m really on the support side for our agents. We’re getting so many more questions after hours and on nights and weekends than we ever used to get before from our brokers. Because now the urgency is just it’s so much more present. It’s like I gotta get this offer in right now, even though it’s nine o’clock on a Sunday. They’re like, Oh, okay, so, so everyone’s being being taxed a little bit more. But I know you’ve been in the business for, you know, over two decades, and I know you are also going to work on some are going to share some tips of just things you’ve learned over the years. We’d love to hear those,

Carrie McCormick 12:18
ya know, I’d love to share those with everybody. Because again, when you’re in the business, for a long time, it’s it’s interesting, because every year just is very different. And you look back and you think of, you know, what was it that made me successful? Or what? What did I learn, and I would just kind of love to share my perspective of, of what I’ve learned, and the number one, not the number one. So number one, though, is just keep learning. And I know that sounds very simple, too. But it’s sometimes you just stop growing, or you you think, you know, you’ve got it all figured out. But I will say that this industry after 20 years, everyday is very different. And I’ve always, you know, I take the time to read different articles or different or listen to podcasts or you know, whatever it is, but really just continued to learn because when you stop learning, you stop growing, and your career will begin to decline. So really just always keep an open mind. listen to other people talk to other people. Just keep doing research. So learning is is one of my my number one tip number two. Success comes through hard work, and a lot of people will ask me, you know, what did you do? Or how did you do it? And there really is no shortcut to what successful people do. And it always does come through hard work. I never met a successful agent that didn’t outwork everybody else. And there’s some point in our career that you just I mean, then that’s what I feel like I did is I just, I just you know, outworked everybody and I will continue to carry that through my career. So number two would be there’s no shortcuts to success always have hard work. Number three is and I love this one because I live and breathe by this one is Be your own brand ambassador. And what I mean by that is when I started in my career I and I think this is a good thing to do. But as I looked at other agents and said, okay, this person is successful, what are they doing this person successful? What are they doing? And, you know, to be honest, like I did the balloons on the open house signs I you know, bake the chocolate chip cookies, I ordered the pens with my name on it, because that’s what everyone else was doing. And it just really wasn’t working for me or at least it wasn’t like authentic to me, you know, it’s just kind of kind of robotic, doing what I thought was the right thing to do. And I really stepped back and I decided, you know, what is my client looking for and what’s authentic to me and that’s kind of where my brand came from is it truly is What’s authentic to me, and, and I support my brand 110%. So everything I do is about my brand. But more importantly, it’s about my client experience. So my tip number three is Be your own brand ambassador. Number four is patience. And this is something I do not have. Anyone that knows me knows, I do not have patience whatsoever. But patience is so important and not patients in in the sense that we normally think of patients. But just about being successful, I think we’re in an era of everyone wants everything right now and they want an answer, they want this and that is 100% how I am. But again, if you want to grow your Instagram account, or you want to grow your business, or you want to grow whatever it is, you’ve got to have patience, because I think if you don’t, you end up making rash decisions, you make poor decisions, you just want things to be here and now. And when things are sped up too quickly, I think they just they they fail. So just have patience in your business. I’ve got three more.

D.J. Paris 16:12
So no, these are all gold. I love them.

Carrie McCormick 16:14
I think I’m on number five. So number five, is listening. And I always say that I think listening sounds like such an easy thing to do. When you know, we’re salespeople, we like to talk. And listening is such an important trait. And I will tell you, I’ve a lot of my clients come back to me, and they thank me. And they say because you really listened to what I want. And you really took the time to pay attention to me. And I thought you know, after you hear that several times, it’s really been a really good lesson for me. But now as things change, too, I think listening in a digital era is very different, right? So we’ve got just social media, for example, or, well, social media. So now you’re listening, you have to listen to your audience. And it comes in the form of likes, or emojis, or clicks or views or whatever it is. So not only You’re now watching, you know, the engagement of your social media, but that’s listening. It’s listening to what your clients want, or listening to how they respond to your posts. So it’s become a little more complicated, but I think, you know, stepping back and looking at your business and looking and listening to what your clients want is important.

D.J. Paris 17:34
Can I jump in for a sec, I’ll give everyone so I recruit Realtors all day, that’s what I’ve done for the last, I don’t know, 11 or 12 years. It’s really all I do. And after. So we have two companies. And I think we have a total of about 14 or 1500 agents total. And I’ll just give you guys a quick tip on how I’ve recruited a lot of agents. And it’s not there’s no secret. But it is one thing that I do consistently. And it’s something anybody can do, whether they’re talking to their buyers or sellers. And you know, I don’t work with buyers or sellers. I work with realtors, but one, but the principles are the same. And the most important part of the conversation I have, which is almost always over the phone. Somebody says yeah, yeah, there’s a million other real estate companies, you want me to join yours? You know, why are you know, what do you guys have going on? And my instead of me wanting to immediately say, Oh, here’s why you should join us. We’re the greatest and we’re the best, which I don’t do anyway. But that’s what they’re expecting. They’re expecting a pitch and what I do instead, I mean, ultimately, I do tell them about our firm. But the first thing I say is, hey, if you were to think about moving firms, which I don’t know whether you’re actually wanting to move right now or not, what is it that you would be looking for, and then I shut up? And I just listen? And they say, Well, I’d like more training, or I want a better split or whatever the criteria is that they would actually want to consider moving. And I, I asked them, Is there anything else, you know, and so I get a little list of three or four things. And then I literally repeat it back and say, okay, just to make sure I understand correctly, you’re looking for more training, a better split, you know what, whatever. It’s so simple, and so easy. And people go Wow, thank you. Yes, that’s exactly right. And all you’re doing is verifying what they’ve already told you. It sounds simple, but it’s it’s it’s a bit of a lost art. And I encourage everybody to do that with their sellers and buyers too, is to say, okay, based on what you told me, here’s what I heard. Is this right? And then have them confirm it. Yeah.

Carrie McCormick 19:34
No, it’s good. And it’s it is interesting how we just don’t listen, you know, because

D.J. Paris 19:38
you probably get pitched a lot. Obviously, you’re a top producer. I mean, I don’t know how, maybe maybe people leave you alone at this point. Because they know you know, you’re happy where you are. But when you get pitched by other firms, they’re well I don’t know, I don’t know what it’s like, you know, sort of at your level, but do you get a lot of people that want to just say hey, come over to our firm, we’re the greatest or is it is is it more of like, Hey, I’d love to hear about what I could do to help grow your business. I’m just curious on,

Carrie McCormick 20:04
I’ve gotten recently by two companies. And what I’m not going to say is, what one was phenomenal. And they, you know, it was just like you said, it’s What can I do? What can I do for you? Yeah, what could we do for you and send. And, you know, the issues that I have, obviously, is really just time as I don’t have enough time in the day. But, you know, we sat and strategized and talked about ways to, to alleviate that and to solve my problems. And it was such a great phone call. And, you know, so appreciative and if they’re listening, you know, who you are. And then I got pitched by another company. And it was over text, which I, first of all, it was a terrible method of pitching somebody. And then it was, this is what we can do for you. And I responded and said, you know, thank you for the text message. Because I, of course, always want to acknowledge everyone. And I said, you know, your company reached out to me before, and they were not able to give me what I was looking for. And you said, Okay, thank you.

D.J. Paris 21:14
Goodbye. That was

Carrie McCormick 21:16
like, Oh, I mean, you know, it just I don’t know. So it’s, you know, and again, that’s why I talk about whether it’s, it’s, you know, a phone call to someone and really listening with your ears, or it’s digital social media, text messaging, whatever it is, it’s a different form of communication, but you still need to listen. And it’s how those responses are that can make or break your relationship with someone. And that second relationship to me, it was completely broken. And I just thought it was very poorly executed. So anyways, listening is extremely important. Two more. Next one is ego. So this is a very interesting and again, we’re salespeople, I think it’s an ego driven, if you’re in real estate, it’s your it’s an ego driven industry. But I think what I had to do early on is set my ego aside and realize that my job is about servicing my client, it’s not about me. And I will tell you one quick story is, I call it the number one versus number three story. And what that means is I was the fourth real estate agent, to go interview with this particular seller. within the first minute of me sitting down with the seller, the seller says, Let me guess you’re the number one agent in Chicago, you’re won all these awards, and you’re gonna tell me how great you are. And it just seemed like he was really kind of fed up, I was really upset that I was the number four agent. I actually said to him, I said, I’m not number one. And I’m not going to tell you, I’m number one. I said, But I’m number three, you actually laughed at it. And I actually had the stats of all the brokers with me not for this meeting, but just I just have it with me. And I showed it to him. And I said, I’m not number one. And I’m not going to tell you, I’m number one. But what I’m going to tell you is what I’m here for, and I went through, you know what I could do for him and how I’m going to sell his house and how I’m going to do this, you know what I was going to do? And he was so happy. But you know, the interesting thing is that the three agents that were before me that said they’re number one weren’t even on that list of 10 agents. So and the purpose of me doing that wasn’t I don’t know who the other agents were. But you know, my purpose wasn’t to do that. But it was just to show it doesn’t matter if your number 1234 Or five, it doesn’t matter. What matters is how you service your clients. So you know, I really put my ego aside for that meeting, and he was so happy, you know that it wasn’t coming in. They’re like, I’m number one, and look how much I sold. And so you really need to set your ego aside, you know, in this business, I think, and my last tip to everybody, and I truly believe this it again, it’s another one that sounds so easy, is kindness. I will tell you that saying that goes kill them with kindness. Is this such the truth. And I found that kindness is been my biggest ROI in my business. Because whether you’re dealing with an inspector and attorney, another broker, a buyer seller, anyone that impacts your business, if you are kind to them, if you are nice to them, if you’re a professional, I’m not talking like you’ve got to go out and buy them gifts. It’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about just be a true professional and, you know, just be kind to everyone it’s been it’s been the nicest gift back because obviously, being kind of people makes you feel good about yourself and you know it’s giving but it comes back to you And if they choose not to be kind back to you, that’s to me, that’s their problem. But be kind to everybody. And I think we’re at a point in this world that everyone just deserves and needs a little more kindness.

D.J. Paris 25:12
I agree, I was at an event recently with a top producer who was speaking and He made a big deal. He was talking about a different something else. And he goes, You know what, I’m gonna stop my talk now, because I want every This is a roomful of Realtors, there’s a few 100 of them, he goes, I really want to make sure everybody hears this. And please, everybody do it. He was saying, if you’re running five minutes late to a showing, you, of course, should be telling your client, hey, I’m running a few minutes late, you know, but he goes, the second text you should make is to the other agents. And you should say, Hey, I am so sorry, I’m running just three minutes late, even if it’s three minutes, and he goes, you’d be shocked how few few times agents will do that. And he goes, their time is just as valuable as yours. And you’re in Yes, everyone runs late, we all understand it. It’s not the end of the world. But letting people that’s a kind, compassionate thing to do. And I one time, interviewed someone on our podcast, and I won’t mention who they are. Because this, I’m gonna say something possibly a little bit negative about them. But then go then talk about how what a wonderful thing they did. There’s somebody I had on my show years ago, who is a very intimidating person, and I won’t even mention where they are. But somebody who’s whose reputation. Well, as I had heard, it was this person is going to be difficult. And this person was running about five minutes late to our podcast, and about 15 minutes before the show. This person emailed, I’ll just say it’s a he emailed me and said, I am so terribly sorry, I am running a few minutes behind. I know your time is valuable. I just wanted to let you know I’ll be there three or four minutes after. And I do the show 34234 times a week, sometimes. Very rarely, if anyone’s late, do they ever tell me even if it’s just a few minutes, and I thought that’s why this person is successful? Because that’s a kind and compassionate thing to do. And it made me really feel so much warmer towards this individual. So even like, it’s always little things, right?

Carrie McCormick 27:20
It is it’s it’s always the little things, but it’s to me, it’s what stuff our parents taught us to do right now? No, it just it does. It goes a long way. And that’s why I say that’s your biggest ROI on your business. Because it’s, it’s simple. It’s free. It’s easy to do. And I will tell you after years of doing it, you know, it just it does come back and people do appreciate it.

D.J. Paris 27:46
And did we have one more tip I think, or was that the last one? That’s it. That’s all I think I have a few tips. So thank you, Carrie, those tips were really good. And for everyone listening? Yes, be kind, you know, she had a lot of great tips in there that seem really simple. And they are simple. But they’re that’s why they’re that’s why their tips and the fundamentals almost always win the game. It’s always the simple things executed over time consistently. That win the race. The I had a couple of things that were I was thinking about. So I was mentioning earlier in the show that I am coming up on my one year anniversary and of this awesome condo that I happen to purchase from Carrie who represented the developers and boy, people who walk into this place. It’s called ALC. By the way, if you’re a Chicago person, I think they have still have a few units that are still available. Rucker Park, it’s unbelievable. Yes, it is. It is really a cool place. I mean, this is a great place. So I am very happy. And it’s so very fun to talk to Carrie because she’s the reason that I even learned about this place. And here I am. Now I get to live here. But I will tell you, there’s no but everything’s great. I love it. And, and I’m in the industry. And I’m sort of not in the industry to because I really don’t practice real estate. So I’m one of those dummies just like all of our clients who goes to Zillow and goes what my home’s worth these days. Even though I’m a licensed broker, I can technically go on the MLS and run a CMA except I have no idea really how to do that. So I said, I’m just gonna go to Zillow because I’m feeling lazy. And I’m just curious if my place is appreciated. Not that I’m looking to move, but people just want to know what their assets are worth. So I went on, and I saw a pretty impressive number and I went, ooh, I felt good. Now it’s an invisible number doesn’t really mean much. But it made me feel good. And I thought if I’m doing that, and I’m in the industry, I would guess that a lot of people are doing that as well. A lot of, you know people that that every one of our listeners knows whether they’re a client or just a friend. So I would think a good marketing opportunity right now. And I look and I had to I looked at the number that the Zestimate gave me and I thought, boy, that doesn’t seem right that seems way higher. Then what it should be, but maybe my home’s appreciated, I don’t know. So it was a very exciting number. But remember, when people go on Zillow and they look up their own home, you don’t get notified about that the agent never knows. That’s it. That’s a something that somebody just does. But I’ll bet you a lot of people are doing that right now. Just Just out of curiosity, what’s my homework? So if it was me, and I was maybe in between clients, right now, I had some spare time, I would consider everybody in my database running a Zestimate, which takes two seconds and saying, Hey, I just looked on Zillow. And it shows that your home is worth X. But I didn’t know if you’d seen that. But then I also ran a more thorough analysis. A proper CMA, which is through the system that we use here in Chicago is one of the ways you could do it is called Cloud CMA. That’s the one of the tools that all the realtors in Chicago have access to, which is almost as fast as Zestimate, really, but it’s a little bit of a probably more thorough investigation into it. And so you can do that. And yes, you’re gonna do a lot of them and they take time. But boy, I would be doing that for all of my sellers right now and saying, just so that, you know, here’s what I saw on Zillow. Here’s what I think your home might be actually worth today, if you want to talk about it, we can certainly have a conversation. So I was just thinking that would be because I just went on Zillow. So I was thinking probably people are doing the same.

Carrie McCormick 31:24
Right? That’s awesome. I love that.

D.J. Paris 31:27
Yeah. Because as the agent, you’re just not going to know. And if somebody all of a sudden sees their home as appreciated, too, like mine. Well, I won’t I won’t share the numbers. But but it was it was sizable. It was a sizable increase. And I was like, Well, I’m not moving. But I wonder if it’s really worth this. And so then I started looking into it. And then the other tip I have is around rental. So in the Chicagoland area. And I get I know, all of our listeners are not here in the Chicagoland area. But this is the beginning of our rental season. You know, the march to sort of March to September, October time is when people usually move for apartments here in Chicago, probably the same all over the country. But right now we have inventory shortages. But we still do have pretty low rates for people that maybe aren’t, you know, like Carrie was saying, people who have been trying to buy a place, they’re not probably appreciating the rate hike, but for everyone else who’s renting that might be thinking of buying. So pretty low rate environment. So I would definitely be having conversations with renters right now and say, Hey, I don’t know, if you’re going to rent for another year inventories low, it might be a good idea to do that. But we should start the conversation. As rates start to inch upward, we should start looking at least. And now’s the time to have those conversations as leases come do. So there’s that time in the spring. And there’s a time in the fall when leases kind of tend to come due. And this is a great opportunity, even if you don’t want to do rentals just to talk to people that are renting, and say hey, what’s the goal? You know, what are you looking at? What do you want to do in next couple of years, and then start having those conversations right now. So great opportunity to talk to everyone who owns a home, and a great opportunity to talk to everyone who’s renting right now. Love it. Awesome. Well, I also want to give Kerry a very appreciative thank you on behalf of our audience. I don’t know if Carrie even knows this. But we recently within the last three weeks, we crossed over a million downloads. And so we’re very grateful to Carrie for specifically because she was the very first partner we ever had. On our show. When we started she helped take a lot of the heavy lifting off of me so that she could make her voice be heard. And we could put out more episodes and she was the very first person that ever came on our show to on a regular basis. And here she is all these years later. I think it’s about five years now. And she is just a warm hearted wonderful person that loves to give and here we are now a million downloads later we’ve had over 115,000 individuals have listened to at least one episode. So this has made some sort of impact on the real estate. Real the realtor podcast sort of space and we are so grateful. So Carrie on behalf of everyone thank you for all the years of service to us. And we are excited to continue on into the future and for everyone listening by the way, you really should be following her carry on Instagram, the carrier McCormick real estate so that’s her Instagram also you can visit her website which she is oh by the way, Carrie is actually looking to reach you should we put out the the feelers because Carrie by the way has like one of the greatest websites ever. And she’s actually looking to redo it so I encourage everyone to check it out. But if you know of anyone Carrie was asking me Hey, who do you know who does great realtor website so if anyone out there has a good leads. Carrie McCormick R e.com is her website and it I don’t think it needs a facelift at all. because I love it. But she is always looking to grow and change. So if anyone knows of a great developer out there that can build cool websites, definitely reach out to Carrie. But Carrie, if anyone out there also has a question for you, or maybe wants to, maybe have you speak or maybe has wants you to represent them in buying or selling a property, what how should they reach

Carrie McCormick 35:20
out? Always call me 312-961-4612? Or send me an email at Carey CA, rr ie [email protected]. And yes, please keep sending the questions coming and get a lot of interaction from brokers all across the United States. And I love it. And I’m a giver. So I’m happy to you know, talk with anyone and like you said, speaking events, I’ve been doing more speaking events, which I love to do. So happy to be a guest and any speaking event for free.

D.J. Paris 35:54
And I will also say that this is something very exciting. And also another thank you to Carrie, because we crossed over. I mentioned a million downloads about maybe three weeks ago, maybe four weeks ago. And we’ve already crossed over 1,000,001. So it took us five years to get to a million. And now we’re already at 1,000,001. So on behalf of Carrie and myself, we wanted to say thank you to everyone listening, thank you for telling a friend, we spend no money on marketing, this podcast to other agents, which maybe one day we will do that. But for now, we seem to be growing organically. And we’re so grateful. And we really have the listeners to think for that, as well as our guest hosts. So Carrie, thank you so much on behalf of everyone. And on behalf of carrying myself again, thanks to the audience for continuing to tell a friend so everyone who’s listening before you sign off, we just ask that you do two things on one, tell another friend, please tell a friend about our show, let us let them know, I had a very funny experience. And this is not it did sort of it’s an ego experience. But it was it was a cute one to have. I sat I went to an event last week. And I sat down at a random table with two realtors who I did not know from a different company and they said we recognize your voice from from your podcast. And I thought that was very cute. And and then I got to meet them. And so I was really honored that people do listen and just random people and that happened at National Association of REALTORS as well. And it’s not about me because I just kind of facilitate the conversation. But I’m really grateful to this community people are so kind you were talking about kindness being a skill. That kindness goes so far and every person on our show is that we’ve either had as a guest or we’ve had on as a host like Carrie. They’re just kind lovely people and this is an industry, if you’ll look for it full of kind, lovely people and I really encourage everyone listening to get involved with their local association to meet more of those types of people because really helps the when it’s stressful. It’s nice to have good people to be able to communicate with and carry works for a great company at properties. Who has lots of that and add properties. For those of you who don’t know, is a major major powerhouse here in Chicago, the probably the top real estate company as far as volume here in the Chicagoland area. Now they’re expanding to other markets, they just moved out to California as well. And there they have their slogan is one word love. And I think that is a amazing as a brand, and an amazing thing that they have done and they attract agents who really are kind, lovely people. So we’re big fans of that properties. We’re big fans of Karis coming on our show, but we ask everyone to please tell a friend about us. And then also leave us a review. Tell us what you think of the show. So whether you’re listening on Apple up well now it’s called Apple podcasts used to be called iTunes or maybe you’re on Stitcher or Spotify or Pandora or google play anywhere you’re listening to podcast. Let us know what you think of the show. Give us a review. Tell us what you think that helps us improve and also gets us more visibility so we reach more agents. But anyway, that’s enough about me. Thanks, Carrie for a million downloads and being here for all these years. We’re so honored to have you and we will see everybody on the next episode.

Carrie McCormick 39:20
Awesome. Thank you guys.

We are excited to announce a new voice to Keeping It Real! Top producer, author, coach and podcast host Krista Mashore will be coming on twice a month to give our listeners Little Sparks of marketing help and strategies to take your real estate business to the next level. Krista has sold over 2,200 homes and has been a top 1% agent for over 20 years. Welcome to the Keeping It Real Podcast family, Krista!

Please subscribe to F.I.R.E.D. Up podcast here.

D.J. Paris 0:00
Hey, everyone, it’s DJ over at the keeping it real podcast, I’m your host. But today is a very unique announcement for us. And this is not our normal episode. It’s a short episode. But I’m very so incredibly excited. I’ve been working on this podcast for since the beginning, which was almost five years, and we are now in a position to expand and grow our, our reach. And we’re going to do that by adding on a new voice to the show. So you’re used to just hearing me probably sick of hearing me. So we wanted to bring on somebody that is amazing. And really somebody who’s out there in the trenches, right. So I’m, I sit at a desk all day. And while I work in the real estate industry, I’m not out there helping buyers, sellers, investors, renters, etc. That’s what you guys do. And you really deserve some, you know, some additional perspective on what that’s like from somebody who can actually speak to that. And so that’s where, why we’re having this announcement today. So I am so incredibly excited because we have a new show on our network. And the just so you know, you don’t have to do anything. If you’re already subscribed to our feed, you’ll get these episodes, but let’s tell you what it is it is called little sparks. And it is with crystal Mae shore. And we did an episode with Krista, we were so impressed with her. We just fell in love with her instantly. And we said we need to have you on our on our network. And she already has a podcast, which is amazing. It’s called fired up. And you really should listen to it. But in case you don’t know about crystal, let me just tell you what she’s going to be doing on the show, she’s going to be speaking directly to you the audience, maybe she’ll have a guest once in a while. But the reason why she’s going to speak directly to you is this is what she does. Let me just give you a few of her credentials. She’s a top 1% Realtor nationwide, not just in her local market. She’s been that way for 20 years. So she knows what it’s like she knows what it’s like to start and to get to the top of the mountain. But she also knows what it’s like to teach you guys how to do that she is a real estate coach. She’s also Oh, she herself by the way has sold over 2000 actually over 2200 homes in her career personally. So this is somebody that knows how to do this. And she’s also a real estate coach. She teaches other agents how to do this. And she’s a digital marketing specialist. She does it all through marketing, which is the number one question that we get from our listeners is how do I do marketing better that’s what Krista is going to be on our show twice a month and we decided to name her show little sparks so it’ll be little bite sized nuggets of of really actionable insight and strategy to help you guys actually take your marketing to the next level. Krista is awesome. And we just said Do whatever you want talk into the microphone because everything she says is gold. So I just wanted to introduce her and she’s going to be coming on in just a moment and we also just wanted to say thank you please please tell other people about this addition to our show, Krista is amazing. Also subscribed to her show, which again is called fired up and we’ll have a link to that in our show notes here. Don’t worry though, that the my version of the show is staying we’re just adding on we’re not subtracting we’re adding and we’re so proud to have Krista on our network. So without further ado, let’s say hi to Krista

Krista Mashore 3:18
everyone let’s keepin it real in real estate podcast is joining with Chris Demacia and fired up and so this is my first individual podcast I’m gonna be doing and they’re going to be having me come on two times per month on the keepin it real podcast. So I I would use today to kind of tell you a little bit about myself and kind of have you get to know me a little bit

so, I have been in the real estate industry for over 21 years, I’ve sold over 2300 homes in my career. And I have been the top 1% of Realtors nationwide pretty much every year that I’ve been in the industry. Also, I specialize in digital marketing. In fact, I have done over $34 million online income that we’ve made over the past four years. I’ve left full time being a full time realtor, real estate agent about four years ago, the year that I left real estate I had sold 154 houses that year myself without a big team. It was just me, a transaction coordinator and an assistant and that you’re actually trained my brother Josh to come in and partner with me so I could teach him how to basically be me so I can exit my business and start coaching and training real estate agents and mortgage professionals across the country how to utilize digital marketing and social media and video to dominate their areas. So that’s what I do like I love marketing. I’m a wizard it I absolutely understand what real estate agents are going through, what their fears are, what their challenges are, what you know how like best marketing practices, I basically was you for you know such a long time so I understand exactly where you’re at and what you need. I I also know that many times in real estate, we are not taught, like how to actually have how to treat real estate like a business, right? We’re not taught how to become business owners or that we’re entrepreneurs, we kind of the barriers to entry, enter your real estate throughout the country is so so easy to do that it makes it difficult for real estate agents and lenders, and mortgage professionals to really think about their business like a business. So I kind of want to talk to you about some of the things I’m going to be talking about when I come on. And I, you know, I know that they’re really wanting me to talk about digital marketing. And I actually am going to talk a lot about digital marketing. But what I wanted you to understand and really, really get is that I’m also like a really big mindset person. And so you’re gonna see me intertwining mindset, and marketing and social media and video, and digital marketing, into the things I’m going to be talking about. Sometimes it might seem super strict, smore, strategy driven summers, it might be more, you know, tactics. But I’m gonna be doing a lot of mindset because I believe that mindset is more important skill set. And so anytime somebody starts doing a podcast, it’s really important to kind of understand who that person is and to learn as much about him as possible. So I figured I’d kind of tell you guys a little bit about me, so you can kind of understand where I come from. I have just created wild success online. In fact, I’ve written four best selling books on digital marketing. One book is called sell 100 homes a year by Krista Miescher. Another book is the ultimate lead gen playbook that we’ve done also three clients in 30 days, and then fire, financially independent, retire early, there’s the books that I’ve written, you can find them on Amazon, and it talks all about digital marketing and social media. But here’s the deal. I want you to understand a little bit about me personally, so that you understand that. Just sometimes I think we look at people and we see that they’re successful. And we think like, oh my gosh, that person’s, you know, successful because Chris has done a lot of energy, or because she has those pretty fake white teeth, or, you know, we make assumptions as to why people are successful. And we tell ourselves things that quite frankly, are just not true. We tell ourselves things like, Well, Chris is successful because of x, or, you know, we just say things that aren’t right. And what I want you to understand is that in most cases, that’s just really not the case. In fact, like I know, DJ, there was times that he’s gone through stuff, right, and people can DJ, they just think he’s able to keep it real podcast because of insert the reason. What I want you to understand is that we are all human, we all go through things, we all have challenges, we have marital issues, sometimes we have problems with our kids, we have problems in business with our brokers or, or people that work under us or aside from us. And there’s so many challenges right now with what’s happening in the world. And we all have them, right. And so I kind of thought I would tell you a little bit about my story. So that when as I start talking to you about things in real estate, and about marketing, that you’ll understand that I’m just like you, I’m just a human, and I’ve got a past. And because of how I’ve chosen to attack my past, and how I’ve chosen to really, you know, move forward with my past, has really, really made me who I am today. So mindset is more important in skill set. Remember that mindset is more important in skill set. And the more that you can control your mind and your thoughts is, is what you’re gonna is when you’re gonna see like your life and your business explode. And so we say things to ourselves, like I can’t do it, or it’s too hard, or I don’t have enough time or I’m too young, or I’m too old, or I’m too new, or I’m too inexperienced, or I’m too heavy, or I’m too thin, or I’m not good with technology, we tell ourselves all these things that quite frankly aren’t just true, right? We

say these things. But the brain, what happens when we say these things, and we think think these things, the brain says okay, you’re right, you’re too young. You’re right, you’re too young. You’re too You’re too inexperienced, you’re right, you’re too inexperienced, or too old, you’re right. Whether you say you’re right, or you say you are wrong, you are right. So I want you to really, really be cautious of the things that you’re saying to yourself and what you’re, you know, how are you? What are you thinking, what are those thoughts coming up, and when you have negative thoughts about your energy level about you know, not having enough time or whatever it might be, be cautious about what you are saying, and saying out loud and repeating to yourself into your mind because you are right. And the brains job is to get you more of what you think. So if you think if you notice what you’re doing well, and you celebrate your successes, and you celebrate what you’re doing, right, the brain goes, that feels good dopamine is being produced, let’s do more of it. But if you focus on the ladder, like all the things that aren’t working, what you’re doing wrong, the brain goes, Yeah, you’re right. So let’s figure out all the things that we can do and think about that are gonna help us get to the success that we want. And for some of you this might be hard, right? Maybe you have difficulty childhood or you’ve been in an abusive relationship, or maybe you’ve got PTSD or maybe you’ve got some depression going on or you’ve had physical abuse, maybe sexual abuse. I know I’m getting kind of intimate right now. But I get it I had I had some physical abuse happening when I was younger. I am so happy this I’m very, very close to my family right now my dad is one of the most precious people in the world. And I love my mom. So, so much. And this has been something I’ve had a hard time talking about until just the past couple of years. And there was some physical abuse happening in my home with my mom. And because of that, I went to bed until I was 10. I could not read in second grade, they realized I couldn’t reach they put me in a special education class for reading. I had massive, severe anxiety because of the abuse and, and a massive learning disability, right. So when I was 13, I started running away from home, I couldn’t handle it anymore. And my dad didn’t know what was happening because it was happening when he was at work. And quite frankly, was almost like really have two legs. We had this happy, sweet, amazing life. And we went to church, and we were having this great family and going on vacations. And we went, you know, we did things together. And then and then there was this, you know, other part when when there was issues with my mom, there were some physical abuse that was happening with me. And it was hard, right. And so when I turned 13, I started running away. And I ended up running away for over a year back and forth being taken back home. And then they put me in juvenile hall because finally I broke the law. And then I got sent to a group home in Cottonwood, California label Hidden Hills group home for girls. And let me tell you, there was nothing hidden about it, I got dropped off every day in this big huge green bus basically with the label of your screw up. So kids chastise us. And they were mean to us. And they kind of braided us and didn’t talk to us because we were like the weird kids, right. And so I spent a year there. And then I got sent to a foster home. And I spent the remaining years in foster home until I turned 18. Now with that being said, there’s a lot of mental mindspace that comes on up here, right. And I’ve learned the ability to be able to take those thoughts of inadequacy and of not being loved or being liked, or the anxiety ridden. And the thoughts of I’m not good enough, like who am I to sell 100 homes a year, who am I to coach people, you know, to do what I’m doing, who am I to coach these agents and lenders across the country. And I’ve had to work on who I am and my belief system, my thought process. And because of that, you know, the year I left real estate, I think we get around over a million dollars in commission, right. In fact, last year, we did around $1.4 million in gross commissions in real estate. And I only was working on my business around four or five hours a month, I’m the face of the business, my systems and processes and my attraction based marketing is what is what generates visits, my brother now acts as me. And I have been able to build that business along with my coaching business. And we do between one and $2 million a month in coaching for realtors and lenders. And the reason we’re able to do so well is because I’ve been able to master my mark my mindset and my thoughts and the things I say to myself and the things I’m doing. And I’ve I’ve learned to overcome that link limited negative voice inside that comes up that keeps you from getting and believing that you deserve anything and everything. And I believe more than anything that you deserve and believe and can achieve anything and everything that you want to in life. So that’s the kind of thing I’m gonna be talking about. When I come on this podcast twice a month, I’m gonna be teaching you about mindset tactics and strategies, digital marketing, how to use video, how to attract business,

I’m gonna teach you about things I’ve done well, and things have been wrong. And I’m just going to help you have a better life. Because I believe that, you know, if you want to have a great real estate business, or a great lending business that you first need to have a great life. And when I talk about having this, well, this awesome, financially rich, this financially abundant life, I also mean, I want your life to be abundant, right? How you feel about yourself, your relationships, your energy level, you know, I want you to be a positive force of energy. And I want you to learn to be to be excited and to really be that positive energy giver, and a people because if you do that, you’re going to make more money and you’re going to have more confidence and you’re going to show up better to the world and confident cells, enthusiasm cells and energy cells. So that’s the kind of thing that I’m going to be talking about on this podcast. My name is Kristen shore and I own the company Kristen, we share coaching. I also own homes by Krista which is a my own personal brokerage with exp I’m with exp Realty. And that’s the kind of thing we’re going to be going over in this podcast. So I’m gonna leave you with one quick trick. So I call this the stop, snap and switch trick. Okay, what this is, is our brains we have between 60 and 70,000 thoughts a day that goes to our brains. And because of everything going on many times they’re negative, right? Like, it’s like that negative voice it’s the bad wolf in our head telling us that we can’t do things and all these negative stuff. Those negative thoughts and the things we say to ourselves they turn out to be what our life is like right? Whether you say you can or you say you can’t You’re right. So I want you to say that you can only to say that you are that you do that you you’re worthy that you there’s plenty to go around, you’ve got enough energy, you’ve got enough time there is enough money there is enough inventory right? There are plenty of buyers, your stuff is getting accepted, you are attracting you deserve a full price commission. So how do you do that stop snapping switch anytime a negative thought comes into your Head, there might be like, I’m too old. I’m too old to learn technology, you’re gonna say, that wasn’t gonna stop recognize it, snap, snap the bracelet, you’re that. And I’m going to switch it over to the other hand, I’m going to say, my age is going to help give me more perspective. And it’s going to it’s given me more experience, I’m absolutely the right age to be doing real estate. I’m going to stop snapping switch, anytime a negative thought comes into my head, I’m going to recognize it, I’m going to turn that negative around that limiting belief around and I am then going to start, I’m going to switch it and restate the statement into a positive one, stop, snap and switch. That’s your assignment. Now let me ask you a question. What limiting things are you saying to yourself? What limiting beliefs are you putting out there? What things are you saying to yourself about your business, about the economy, about real estate, about marketing about you know that how many deals there are out there about lack of inventory? What are you saying to yourself, recognizing limiting beliefs recognize these limiting statements recognize these things? And let’s stop. Okay, let’s stop. I’m Kristie Ray. Sure. I’m so excited to be here with you. I keep it real. You can also follow me at fired up. Just gonna fire it up with Chris Demacia because I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to be fired up. So don’t forget everyone. It’s great to listen but if you’re not implementing nothing will change in your business and I cannot wait to see you next time. Have a great day.

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

Chris Linsell from TheClose.com discusses how should real estate agents prepare to work with Generation Z, how the should industry adapt to this generation and in what ways this generation is different from other previous generations. Chris and D.J. discuss the importance of values about GenZ and how to differentiate yourself from your competition and the importance of sharing the same values. Next, Chris shares tips on what to do to get ready for GenZ when they enter the real estate market. Last, Chris talks about TheClose and the services they offer.

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.

D.J. Paris 0:00
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 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 today is our monthly series called closing time with Chris Lin sell from the closed.com. This is a partnership between keeping it real and the clothes and 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. 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, please visit the closed.com That’s th e c l o s e.com And subscribe to their newsletter so you get notified every time they publish an article. And by the way, they just redesigned the website, it’s actually cleaner and even easier to sort of navigate in and although it was always pretty, pretty easy. But they’ve given it a facelift. And it looks really cool. So definitely check it out the clothes.com and with us, as always is crystal Ansel, he is a staff writer and a real estate coach for the close. Chris is the closest resident expert on real estate topics ranging from marketing, lead generation transactional best practices and everything in between. He’s a licensed agent in the state of Michigan. And Chris has been part of hundreds of real estate transactions, ranging from modest 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 theaters production. And also spending time with with his two little ones and his his wife, Chris, welcome once again to keeping it real. We’re excited to have you,

Chris Linsell 3:01
DJ always good to be chatting with you. How are you?

D.J. Paris 3:05
I’m good. I’m good. And I am really excited to Chris came up with a with a great topic for today that I hadn’t thought about as concretely as he was a succinctly really as, as he was talking about it. And I’m so grateful, Chris, to you for this, because I think this is an ongoing challenge. And I’ll tell you to sort of set the stage of how I’ve, as you were talking about it, one thing that popped into my head, and we’re like, what are we talking about yet? We haven’t said, but I will say if you are a real estate agent. And I am technically even though I’m not a practicing one, but I get all the emails, the same emails that real estate agents get. And one email that I have been getting over and over and over and over again over the last I would say year, I guess maybe two years to be fair, because my My memory isn’t isn’t so great about when this started, but certainly within the last two years. And it actually got one this morning, I’m getting these random emails from people I don’t know who say, Hey, I am generating a lot of leads online. Would you like to have some more appointments for your real estate business? And I think probably everyone listening can recognize these sorts of, you know, emails that come seem to come out of nowhere. They’re clearly spammy. However, I suspect there’s a real person behind it saying no, I really am delivering lots of these. I’ve never engaged with these but but anyway, the reason I’m bringing this up is a topic we’re going to talk about today. And I’m wondering if there’s a connection between the rise of those emails and our topic today, which is how to real estate agents. And I have to give Chris absolute credit for this topic. I’m taking a lot of fire from Chris on this but but we’ll get to him in just a moment. But how do real estate agents prepare to work with Generation Z and how does the real estate industry begin to adopt adapt so that not only can you know The Gen Z group want to engage with real estate agents, but also possibly become real estate agents? Is this a problem? Are we seeing some disparity between how we’re doing things now? And what we would need to do to actually connect with those individuals. And just before Chris comes on, I want to explain what Gen Z Generation Z is. For those of you listening going, I know what that means. But I’m not sure what that what gears, somebody would would qualify to be in Generation Z, anyone who’s born between 1997 and 2012, which basically means anyone from the age of 10, to about 25 is in Generation Z. So at the high end of this age range, we have people in their mid 20s, who are going to start thinking or possibly thinking about homeownership. So Chris, that was a horse a big long update on I hopefully didn’t steal too much of your thunder, but wanted to set the stage for our conversation.

Chris Linsell 5:51
First of all, I thought that was a wonderful setting that well, that really well, I think you laid it out very, I am very curious, as I hope other listeners are about this conversation. And I just want to, I want to put a little bit of a fence around what DJ said, before we before we embark on this journey together. So I want everybody to think if you’re listening to this right now, I want you to think about who your typical real estate buyers and sellers are. Right now, if you are an active agent in the business, if you’re full time if you’ve been if you’re just part time, who are the typical people who are buying and selling? Obviously, everyone’s business is different. So everyone’s answer is going to be a variation. But I bet it’s a variation of the following factors. We’ve got Baby Boomers, who are spending their retirement money, and are often purchasing this is like the fourth or fifth or sixth home, potentially that they’ve purchased or sold their experience. They’ve got the budget you we know how to market to Baby Boomers. At this point, we know how to create business with baby boomers. And then a part of that is because a lot of real estate agents are baby boomers, this is a generation we connect with. And then just below that, we have got the next set of generations. And we’re not going to go through one by one here. But we’ll just baby boomers were kind of the target for real estate agents as far as the ideal client for a long time. And they are no longer the biggest cohort or likely the most influential cohort, because you’ve got, you’ve got the the Gen Xers you’ve got the millennials, you’ve got The Inbetweeners, you’ve got the Gen Z folks, there are a lot of people who are buying and selling or soon to be buying and selling. And quite frankly, the real estate industry is still focused a lot in the ways that we we market to and focus on Baby Boomers. And this could be a problem, this could be an issue, this will be a problem and an issue because I want you to imagine all of what you know, as a real estate professional, the ways that you connect with your clients, a lot of the execution of that connection is going to change. And it’s going to change in ways that we don’t quite know yet. In fact, there are ways that we are going to have to conduct our business in order to close transactions that we may not have even discovered just yet. And for a lot of real estate professionals who have made their bread and butter doing it one way to one group of people rinse and repeat. This can be scary. So let’s talk about this Gen Z. Do we have a problem? Or do we have an opportunity? And I would DJ I want to ask you a question about this. But first, I just want to start by prefacing it with with a another question. When do you think for GE like the cell phone service 4g, the fourth generation of cell service? When do you think 4g became available in the United States and guesses? What do you think? Yeah, I sort of remember I’m gonna go with 2014. Somewhere around there. You’re close, but it was even longer ago than that it was 2008 or 2000. Now, oh my gosh, that 4g came out. So let’s put that into perspective. There are members of what did you say the four What did you say the Gen Z bracket was born between when and when? 97 to 2002. Okay. 2000. And sorry, I apologize. So the Gen Z folks, these are folks who 2012 Sorry, who anyone born between 97 2012

Yeah, so these There are folks who have virtually have no memory of what it’s like to live their life without a high speed connection to all of the information in the world. These are folks who likely had their first Amazon Prime delivery, and it was their diapers. These are people who have likely considered purchasing not just a toy car online, but an actual car. These are people who may have gone through the design process of designing their own car without ever driving it, and hitting the order button on line, like they were buying a pair of shoes from Amazon, the consumer expectations of Gen Z, are significantly different than the consumer expectations of just about any other generation. So I want to ask you, DJ, if you are, let’s say you are a successful real estate broker in the beautiful Midwest City of Chicago, and you have are looking at your business planning for 2020 to 2023. And somebody comes into that meeting and says, you know, there is going to be a group of people who are going to be considering buying and selling in the next year or so that you have no idea necessarily how to communicate with Excuse me, how do you go about tackling this problem? One of the questions you ask yourself, if you say to yourself, shoot, I don’t know how to talk to these people. How do you start planning for this problem? Any ideas on that?

D.J. Paris 11:42
Yeah, a few ideas. Number one to think about what we’re really talking about is is you know, marketing, branding, and sort of the first rule is, you know, learning as much as you can about that demographic. And so my questions would be things like, where do these people congregate? Where do they congregate in person? And where do they congregate virtually? Where do they go to learn about about larger purchases, like cars, mattresses, real estate, you know, insurance, some of these, these more significant purchases? Where are they going to? How are they doing their research? Where are they learning about it? And how are they what are the what are the steps that they take to actually make a buying decision? How often are they talking to another human being? before pulling, you know, the the lever on I want to purchase that? Who are they chatting with to help make that decision? So there’s a lot of questions that I would be trying to figure out, you know, how they do it differently than how maybe my generation would do it. I

Chris Linsell 12:51
think you’re right on the numbers there. And I want to put, I want to put a little onus on those who are listening, if you lived and there’s no shame in this, okay, guys, and there’s nobody, there’s no test at the end, there’s nobody that’s sitting in your car or in your in your air pods right now. That’s, that’s gonna hold you accountable to this. So you got to hold yourself accountable to this, I want you to raise your hand, if you ever made a purchase decision based on what was in the yellow pages, or based on what you saw on the front page of Yelp. Without really reading into the, the the little bit more than just the first couple of reviews. If that is you guys, this podcast is for you. Because frankly, Gen Z doesn’t operate like that. Gen Z. This is the generation of cryptocurrency. This is the generation of virtual learning. These are kids who have likely spent some of their formative years interacting almost completely online. These are people who rely on social verification on community, community think in a way that we have not seen before. And as real estate professionals, we need to adjust the trim of our sales in order to meet these new wins. And so for a lot of professionals, if you’re thinking to yourself, Okay, I want to build my business and the next 10 years are going to be critical to me reaching a place in my career, that’s important to me. You need to start thinking to yourself, how am I creating a business that can be verified by a community online? How am I creating branding and a marketing package that doesn’t rely on somebody driving by and seeing my sign in the ground as my primary means of marketing? Because guess what? Gen Z is not driving by at least not on purpose. They’re not going to your open houses, at least not as often. And frankly, they are not well Walking by the brick and mortar, storefront of your brokerage and deciding to just pop in and work with whichever agent happens to have floor time that day. These are agents who are looking or these are these are consumers who are looking for realist estate professionals to work with, that they can identify as somebody who is commensurate with their values. That is somebody who is demonstrating that they know what they’re doing, they have experienced in what they’re doing, and they can help them achieve their goals. And that these are people who communicate in such a way that you can facilitate an effective conversation. If you are a real estate professional, or if your brokerage and all the agents through which you are shepherding is not set up to manage these expectations. The next five years are going to become tough, and the next 10 years are going to be very tough.

D.J. Paris 16:03
And I’m gonna throw in a practical reason why even for those listening, who think Well, that’s not my generation, I don’t really understand it, but my business is solid, because I work with people outside of that generation, I understand them better. And I really don’t need to introduce another way of doing things to hit this younger demographic, I’m gonna give you a practical reason why you may want to challenge that is right now we have baby boomers who are nearing retirement, and we’re going to have this incredible transfer of wealth. As as you know, baby boomers retire, they’re going to be passing and passing away as well, there’s going to be a lot of money being handed down to the younger generation, this includes Gen Z, it also includes other generations, not just Gen Z. But if you if you want to think about the future, you know, if you’re working in a specific demographic, you know, you need to look towards those other generations.

Chris Linsell 17:01
I totally agree. Absolutely agree. And frankly, this happens every time there is a kind of a passing of the torch financially and kind of buying power and selling power wise in the real estate market. Another aspect of this as well is just like there have been changes in the ways that previous generations have bought and sold, we will see fundamental systemic changes in the way that real estate is bought and sold with this next generation. But the the twist on this is the the next set of changes will likely be very technology heavy. And what I mean by that is it is within spitting distance like within the next Highwoods My prediction is the next five years. Other more conservative predictions have said the next 10 years, but I believe in the next five years, we will have a sanction. Easy to understand, I say easy in air quotes easy to understand method of using things like cryptocurrency to make real estate purchases, we are going to be having discussions around real estate. And as NF Ts. In fact, the first, the first legitimate NFT real estate auction in the United States just took place. This is something that’s going to become more mainstream than we than we anticipate. And if you are not ready to have conversations with your clients about these topics, they will go to somebody who is and that includes your baby boomers that includes the financially literate, and they the more sophisticated buyers and sellers from every generation, these are going to become instruments of our business. And just because you have built a business in the past on this doesn’t mean that it is a guarantee for the future. I mean, we built all cash businesses for quite a while until it started to become a thing that you could use a credit card in a score in a store. And I guarantee you there were retail locations in the United States are like credit cards, what do I need credit cards for I’ve had this all cash business for the last 50 years. I don’t need to start messing with that. And those are people who ended up doing something else with their with their business time because ultimately these these changes will happen and it’s just a matter of who’s going to keep up.

D.J. Paris 19:43
Well, I’d like to talk about some what we have what we have observed about Gen Z. Just it you know Chris, you and I and we can maybe give some tips about ways in which agents can start to think about their presentation whether It’s an in person presentation or virtual type of presentation, whether it’s just someone’s social media, you know, daily postings or videos they might be making or not making. But I just wanted to Chris, throw a couple of of what we were talking about Gen Z, I started thinking about what have I witnessed from people in that age range, what’s important to them, and I came up with a with a couple of things. And I’m, I’m sure there’s a much more exhaustive list we could find. But a couple of things came came to me and I’ve noticed this values, they Gen Z cares about the company that they’re purchasing from, or the individual that they’re going to be using, they care about what those people’s values are, or more importantly, what values they are sort of talking about or demonstrating. They care about things like mission. And what is that like? Well, what are you doing this for? Why are you a real estate agent? What’s your mission? What’s your, what’s your story, as far as what it means to you to be a real estate agent, they’re not as interested, I think in things like, Hey, I’m the number one producing agent in my area, and I’ve sold X amount. I think there’s an inherent mistrust of numbers like that, I just think it doesn’t resonate as well, with with the younger generation, they want to know what you what you care about. They want to know that you have things like empathy, that you’re demonstrating empathy, compassion, there’s much more of a I, you know, as an agent, I hear you, Mr. And Mrs. Client, I understand you, I’m with you, I feel when you feel bad, I feel bad. And I’m, you know, I those are some of the things I’ve noticed. And also one last thing, how do you give back? I think Gen Z expects the service providers that they use to to be very philanthropic or at least have some something that they’re doing to better the community world. And that needs to be so so those are some of the qualities that I’ve seen in Gen Z. Curious if you have any thoughts about that.

Chris Linsell 22:08
100% and I like remember, Gen Z is the is the generation I one of I call Gen Z a lot of a lot of different monikers. But one of the things I call them as the et Cie generation this is the group who they didn’t go they don’t go to art fairs, they go to Etsy, and if they want like a custom, let’s see here, like a custom leather wallet, there are literally hundreds of artisans on Etsy that can provide you with a custom leather wallet, it is not something you have to hunt endlessly for, you have literally hundreds of options. Does that sound like another market we know of? It’s the real estate market. If I want to buy and sell I literally it especially in major metros, I have 1000s of agents who can execute essentially the same duties. These are people who are legally licensed to show me property to negotiate on my behalf to walk me through a transaction to help me with the contracts and to make sure that I close there are it to have a real estate license qualifies. Everyone Everyone with a real estate license can execute on that. So how do you differentiate yourself? How do you not just be leather wallet seller number 64. And actually be something that someone says, Okay, I want to work with you. Just like you said it is a value proposition. It is a does this person identify with the same things that I identify with is what’s important to them. What’s important to me, is that expressed through how they associate and build community. That’s the fill in a part of the philanthropic conversation you are having. And then also is this person, someone who is uniquely equipped to deal with specifically the things that are important to me because even though there are 100 people who make leather wallets on Etsy, maybe I want a leather wallet with my initials embossed on it. And maybe since you know I’m a I’m a trout fisherman, maybe I want a little fish stamped on there as well. I am going to be looking to work with somebody who maybe has some of the same experiences that I do that can identify with why this is important to me.

D.J. Paris 24:38
Because you just said something really, really important, which is we all have passion. Hopefully all of us have something that we’re passionate about whether it’s only work or it’s outside of work. You mentioned, you know, trout fishing, I know you act as well. You have a lot of a lot of outside interests and what I think the Gen Z you know, we think these are People who watch a lot of Tik Tok and what are they watching on Instagram and Tiktok they’re watching people play out their passion. Maybe it’s their their work or their play, but they’re watching it. People demonstrate, here’s what I’m into. So I think I think this is a really good point that whatever it is, I think Gen Z is less impressed by the bench back ad. And I’m not saying that because it’s a it’s a billboard or a bench back and we all go okay, well, maybe those aren’t as useful anymore. But but even if they are useful, what I’m saying is they’re less impressed by the perfect image of somebody airbrushed, who says, you know, hey, I’m a I’m a top agent. I think they’re more interested in seeing that top agent doing something that they’re really into, possibly on social media. Now, you don’t have to do that. But I think the younger generation is is conditioned to sort of see like, what are hey, I want to invest. For example, I want to buy that wallet. Hey, wallet company, what are you guys into? Why are you doing this?

Chris Linsell 25:56
Absolutely. Yeah. So I totally agree. And you know, frankly, this is an example I am, you know, not to not to get too far down this rabbit hole. But as a, as an angler, as an outdoorsman, and an conservationist, I spent a lot of time outside, I will regularly shop with the company Orvis because Orvis donates 5% of their profits back to causes that I also directly contribute to and you know, what, if you’re going to be a supporter of Trout Unlimited, that’s great. I’m also a supporter of this, this organization, it matters to me that some of your dollars are going to those places. Now, this is not to say that real estate agents need to be spending 50% of their salary or their Commission’s rather, donating to causes if that’s something you feel led to great, but what the point here is, in the coming generations, it will be more important than it has been in the past, for people to be able to identify with the people they do business with, as a person that they would want to invite to lunch like that this is a person that they are okay with as a human being. We are real estate professionals, for a long time have been lumped into the transactional kind of durable transactional professionals in the same way that accountants and lawyers and doctors have been in the past. And I can understand where that comes from now. But frankly, at this point, our consumers are going to be expecting more from us. And this is ultimately why I want to bring this back to what we said at the top like, is this a Gen Z problem? Or is this an opportunity, because real estate professionals who can lean into these changes, who can develop an authentic brand and marketing push that demonstrates how they connect to their audience. Those are agents and teams and brokers and managing brokers who are going to accelerate and who, frankly, are just are going to be unstoppable. And we can already see it happening. And it’s not just because they’re the kind of the cool kids in the room. The idea like the the ethos behind brands, like app properties and compass is, is that they build brands around people not around product, it is we are not building brands around the word compass. We are building brands around campus agents. And this is something that the monolith style real estate brokerage, where it was all about the name at the top of a 50 story building. That’s what got buyers and sellers in the door. That is that is changing. It’s not the name on the top of the building. It’s the name on the individual doors inside the office buildings. And so if you are structuring your business to build an authentic brand around you, and the things that are important to you, you’re going to accelerate through this, this is an opportunity to capture a new market in a way that really has not been presented before. So if I’m an older agent, or just outside of the Gen Z demographic, which I am, I’m 46. And so

D.J. Paris 29:25
how how might you suggest that I work on you know, we talked about things like authenticity, you know, but what we really haven’t talked about is what is the vehicle that are what are some ideas of ways in which I can reach this demographic. You know, they’re not going to walk in the door. We know that they’re probably not picking up the phone calling me unless it’s a referral. Maybe they’re probably not even emailing. Right. They’re there their instant messaging or they’re online. They’re they’re learning I mean, my girlfriend Is is outside of Gen Z. But she still gets a lot of product recommendation. And this has never happened to me in my life where I’ve seen a product displayed on Instagram and I went and purchased it, I only follow other people, I don’t follow brands, my girlfriend follows brands, and she becomes uniquely aware of new product offerings because she cares about certain companies enough to follow them. So that’s a world that I don’t I don’t even know, I’m the one that Google’s you know, when I want to buy something, you know, show me which has the best reviews and and I’m going that route, she’s she’s being fed that information, I have to seek it out. So I’m curious about suggestions about how an agent who isn’t that immersed in that culture can can really penetrate and start to get a presence?

Chris Linsell 30:51
Well, I think that there are two big things. If you aren’t on the outside looking in here that you can that you can think about. The first is how are you augmenting your existing strategies, rather than just throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because that is not what I’m suggesting. I am not suggesting that existing agents who are running successful businesses completely turn their strategies on their heads or throw them out completely and start from scratch. Rather, I’m suggesting, you need to start augmenting what you’re doing that is already working to account for some of these new priorities. And so here’s a great example of this, let’s just say that you’re not going to be getting the sort of walk in traffic that you might have gotten from other generations with Gen Z. And let’s just say they’re also probably not just going to pick up the phone and call you. So we need to create opportunities for these people to interact with us. And those opportunities often exist on social media. So if you don’t, if you’re not active on social media, you need to get active on social media. And if you don’t quite know how to do that, or what to do there. You’re not well, first of all, you’re not alone, there are plenty of resources to help you with that you can visit the clothes.com We have a ton of really great social media strategy guides for agents just like you in that position. There are also some really great companies that help augment your marketing push to include this because they recognize there are tons of agents in your shoes, some good companies to work with on this. And you can find a lot of these folks, I’ve written content about them on the clothes, so you can check them out. They’re companies like coffee and contracts. This is all about how to create effective social media content that’s going to connect with your audience, a company called our Turin, which is again, a social media marketing company, they’ll help you come up with the content, they’ll let you know when to post it, how to follow up. Also, there are companies that provide isa like inside sales agents services, that focus and include connection platforms like Facebook Messenger, or Instagram, DMS, where they will actually interact with and qualify and engage leads on these non traditional platforms. So if you feel completely lost, and you want to learn about it, there are plenty of resources to educate. And if you want to outsource and create this augmentation via outside resources, and this is especially I think, appealing to agents who have an established business and you’ve got your calendar pretty well locked up with the clients you’re working with right now, you don’t necessarily have to hours to learn how to be social every single day. But you might have the budget for it. So go ahead and work with some of these outside consulting firms to be able to develop that side of your business and create an opportunity for you to once the ship is in the water and going in the direction you want, then you can take over on that wheel doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You’ve got resources, so work with them. And

D.J. Paris 34:10
also, if you are just unwilling to make those adjustments, but you still want to have a presence for that the younger generations, you can always partner up with a younger agent who’s in that generation or just outside of that generation. Yeah, I think that’s also a really good idea for agents who are going you know, it’s hard enough managing my own clients. Now I have to, you know, be more present on social media if that does not appeal to you. If that’s not your in your wheelhouse or just something that’s scary or embarrassing or just, you know, whatever reason you choose not to do that. Find someone who maybe is younger and consider partnering because you guys are going to hit different demographics. You’re going to have different types of clients and you You know, maybe, maybe you would both win the same types of clients, but probably not. So this is an opportunity to partner up with someone that can do something that you feel like you can’t do or don’t want to do.

Chris Linsell 35:14
Yeah, I totally agree. And, you know, I think that statement is, it kind of leads me very nicely to I think the last thing I want to say, which is kind of a word of warning here, which is, remember guys that if these are our changes that you decide not to adjust to keep in mind, that not only is the next crop of buyers and sellers on their way right now, but also, the next crop of real estate professionals are on their way right now. In fact, the oldest Gen Zers, are likely in the business for a couple of years already. And these are people who natively communicate like this, who who already have the kind of the built in knowledge to be successful, and the dynamic, the the social dynamic, to be able to engage their peers in a way that you don’t have, right now, you’ve got an advantage on these people, everyone who’s listening to this, if you’ve got some real estate experience under your belt, you have an advantage on these people, because you have experience in the industry, and a track record to be able to speak to transactional success. If you wait a few years, there are going to be plenty of Gen Z years who also have that track record of success, and can natively engage with this cohort that you have no idea how to talk to, those are folks that are going to put you out of business, because they are people who have both experience and know how, and they realize what’s important to their peers, because they know what’s important to them. Right now, experience agents have the advantage of experience, the advantage of, of knowledge and process, that experience won’t last forever. So if you want to remain relevant, now’s the time to start making adjustments.

D.J. Paris 37:19
I just wanted to make one one final point about maybe anyone watching or listening who might be thinking, Gosh, this sounds like no, I have to do all this extra work. Because now I have to reach this other generation. And yes, in theory, you will have to do different type of work, for example, if you wanted to promote yourself more in social to to really connect with that audience because maybe that’s where they’re congregating. Oh gosh, no, I have to produce videos. And I have to create content online. And, and yes, you may have to have the hard look in the mirror saying that’s probably what I need to start considering. However, the upside is that those same people who want to see who you are online, they also are going to do a lot of the legwork for you. Because they’re already used to getting information at a moment’s notice. They’re very adept at searching, they don’t need you to help them find a property. They already know Zillow, they don’t want if and they the Trulia, they’re already ahead of that. They don’t need you to find them a place, although obviously that’s part of the job, they’re going to make that part of your life a heck of a lot easier. And so I think don’t worry too much about now I have to work more. I don’t know that it’s working more, I think it’s just like you said at the beginning, Chris, this isn’t really a problem or an opportunity. It’s just a thing. And we can choose to embrace it. And we can choose to do something with it. Or we can choose not to and that’s fine. But if you want to think about a longer term strategy, this is a great way to sort of go, Okay, it’s going to it’s going to feel uncomfortable for a while for me to adjust. But at the end of the day, these these Gen Z people are incredibly resilient. They’re they’re able to get information at a moment’s notice. And you probably won’t have to do as much information transferring as you maybe would with older generations.

Chris Linsell 39:11
Yeah, you’re 100% Right. I like to think of this, of this scenario the same way a friend of mine when I was a kid, a friend of mine, his father was part owner of a ski resort in northern Michigan. And he was fond of saying the father was fond of saying because this I should preface this the ski resort also had had a golf course and so they did golf in the in the warm weather and and skiing in the in the cold weather. This wouldn’t happen to be Iron Mountain by any chance. Not Iron Mountain, but very similar similar Scott. So my friend’s dad used to say, whether you look at winter as an opportunity, or a burden, it’s gonna get cold either way, so you can decide what you want to do with it because My friend, he always like he was kind of indentured labor into this, like he had to work no matter what. And he really liked working with the golf course because it was warm out and he got thrown on the golf carts around and all that. During the ski season, he had to work outside and it was cold and he didn’t like it. But his dad always used to say it’s gonna get cold. Either way you can treat this is an opportunity or a burden, it’s up to you. And real estate professionals should have the same attitude here, guys, it’s common, the winter is coming not not to get to Game of Thrones about this, but Winter is coming, the winter of Gen Z is coming, you can either be longing for the golf course or strap on your skis and and hit the slopes, but one way or the other, it’s gonna get cold. So might as well make this into an opportunity and create a place for your business to accelerate rather than trying to hold on to something that is frankly not gonna last forever. Perfectly said in the last few minutes. Let’s talk about the clothes. Yeah, that sounds great clothes. Guys, if you haven’t visited the clothes.com Come check us out. We are. You know, in my humble opinion, the real estate, the real estate epicenter for all things in terms of strategy, best practices, technology reviews, even some what I call edutainment, if you want to learn and also be entertained, come check out the clothes.com we’ve got articles, ranging everywhere from reviews of the latest lead generation product to walkthroughs. And behind the scenes tours of education platforms. We’ve even got guest contribute contributions from authors like the broke agents, authors like Shawn Moe, Drea, and and more and more. So we’ve got a really great set of content, including some awesome videos and a brand new website for you to come check out. It’s really cool. It’s beautiful, easy to get around. If you want to upgrade your experience, we offer the close Pro, which gives you a chance to get even more content, offer access to our premium courses access to a huge resource library and access to one on one coaching. If that’s something that you’re interested in, closed Pro, it’s 199 bucks a year, we have a ton of stuff that you can check out on there. And we would love to see how the clothes can be a part of your real estate success. So 99% of what you find there is free, you can upgrade your experience and go premium if you if you so choose. And we also have a vibrant social community, including a Facebook group with 1000s of people in it. Lots of stuff happening on Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook and even find us on Twitter and LinkedIn from time to time. So if you’re not part of the close community, you’re missing out 95,000 plus other agents are and we really hope that you come join us.

D.J. Paris 42:53
I really encourage everyone to go these are long form articles specifically designed to help you grow your business. These are not five best practices at an open house that none of those five are actually helpful tips that you don’t already know this is all stuff you don’t know. Or you’ll get confirmation from real journalists who really thoroughly research these particular topics to come up with their their goal is to be the best. well researched and well written marketing advice, not just marketing advice, but just advice for realtors. And boy do they deliver, check out the clothes.com I highly encourage everyone to also subscribe to the clothes Pro. I mean for $199 a year if it helps you get one additional sale obviously it more than more than pays for it. And it’ll do more for you than even that. But as always want to say thank you to Chris for coming on our show. He’s been with us for years, we’re honored to have him and hopefully you can tell he is if you like what Chris is saying. I’m definitely read the clothes.com. And so on behalf of Chris, we want to say thank you to everyone who has made it all the way through to the end of this episode, we hope this was helpful for you. It’s always fun chatting with Chris because he is he thinks beyond the present, which is always exciting to hear about what we believe is in store for the future and how agents can adapt for that. And on behalf of Chris and myself we want to say say thank you to everyone who has made it to the end here. And we ask that everyone goes to visit the clothes.com. And also you tell one friend about this episode, just let them know especially anyone in your office who maybe is nearing retirement or who just is wanting to connect with a younger audience and maybe they’ll get a few ideas from this episode. Please let them know about our show. All right, Chris. Well, we will see you next month. And thanks again.

Chris Linsell 44:44
Thanks again. DJ. I can’t wait to talk to you soon.

Justin Ball with The Jessica Ball Team RE/MAX Traders Unlimited (Ball Homes LLC) and RE/MAX Traders Unlimited Commercial Division describes how he and his wife started their career in real estate. Justin discusses how they started helping retiring agents come up with a succession plan and how to transition their sphere of influence to their successor. Justin discusses the importance of building the skills that makes the retiree stand out into the successor for future success. Justin also shares suggestions for younger agents on how to build relationships with potential retirees.

Please check Jessica and Justin Ball’s book “Succession Planning for Real Estate Agents” here.

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

Justin Ball can be reached at (309) 256-1576.

This episode was brought to you by Real Geeks.

D.J. Paris 0:00
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 convenient 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 and succession expert Justin ball. Before we get to Justin, a few quick announcements first announcement is I have a cold. So if you’re hearing my voice sound a bit different from normal that is expected. Or at least I I assume it’s going to sound different, because it sounds different to me. And I appreciate you listening throughout. And of course this week, we’re recording four episodes while my voice is pretty shredded. So I will do my very best, I’ll probably maybe I’ll shut up more than normal, which I think will be appreciated by our audience. So you can hear from our wonderful guests who share these amazing secrets of success in it. Also, I wanted to say thank you because we just crossed over a million downloads several weeks ago. And we’re really honored about that. And thank you to everybody for helping us get there. And we we’ve actually had 115,000 unique visitors or downloads I should say. So 115,000 people have downloaded at least one episode of the show, which is really amazing. And we’re so grateful like wow. So, but there’s a lot more people that need to hear it. So please just tell one more person. Think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from top producers like Justin send him a link to our website. Website is keeping it real pod.com We can stream every episode we’ve ever done right there. And last, please leave us a review. Tell us what you think about the show. If you’re listening on Apple podcasts or iTunes or Google Play or Spotify, Stitcher, Pandora, wherever podcasts are served, let us know what you think. Leave us a review. Tell us what you like tell us what you don’t like so we can keep improving because this show is for you. And now on to our interview with Justin ball.

All right, today on the show. Our guest is just involved from the Jessica ball team with REMAX traders unlimited in Peoria, Illinois, which happens to be where I grew up. also author of the book secession planning. I’ll say that again, secession planning for real estate agents I have a hard time with secession. But let’s tell you a little bit about Justin. Justin ball is a realtor and a commercial broker with the Jessica ball team at REMAX traders unlimited also ball homes LLC and REMAX traders unlimited commercial division. Now his wife Jessica founded the team in 2017. And after several years of Justin being the highest performing the lowest paid unlicensed assistant around he finally got his real estate license in 2021. Justin and Jessica are getting ready to release their book succession planning for real estate agents monetizing your business in retirement, which is coming this month. The book is a strategic and tactical guide for agents looking to retire or grow their business and sponsoring broker owners wanting to keep their retiree sales volume and former clients business in their brokerage for agents working to grow their business This book will help you navigate becoming a successor to a retiring agent, Justin’s background in customer relationship management, CRM systems, marketing, lead gen and sales funnels support the team as it continues to grow. And as the industry of real estate changes faster than it ever has, with the introduction of new technology, I’d like everybody to take a look at the succession planning book, which you can find by visiting the website ar e succession.com. And I’ll spell that just in case you might not have a direct access to that, by the way, we will have the link in our show notes, but it is R E S U S, sorry, let me start that over R e su CC e s s io n.com. Once again, our e su CC e s s io n.com. You can learn all about the ideas of what you can do with your business when you’re nearing retirement, and also how you could possibly look for other people that might be retiring and work out an arrangement with them. Justin, welcome to the show. excited to have you.

Justin Ball 6:01
I’m really glad to be here. Glad to be joining you.

D.J. Paris 6:03
Well, I was I was pleasantly surprised. Oftentimes, embarrassingly enough, I don’t always do a tremendous amount of research on my guests. I know the talking points. And I know approximately, you know what I need to go over in the course of the interview. But it’s one of the things I often forget to do is check to see where people are from sometimes I know. And other times, I have to just a few minutes before I go live, go, Oh my gosh, I have to figure out where they’re located. And I was so pleased to find out your Peoria person, you and your wife because of course, that’s where I grew up. It’s near and dear to my heart. I really enjoy pyaari I think it’s a was a wonderful place to grow up. And I’ve even I’ve been in Chicago for 20 plus years, I I still really love Peoria. And I’m glad to be speaking with an agent there and also an author and you and your wife. So thanks for coming on our show. And the first question I always like to ask, although we sort of know a bit about your story, but maybe you can even talk us through the entirety of of how your wife and you got into real estate. But I’d always like to go back to the beginning. And then how you guys got started, you know, obviously talked about helping your wife as she was growing, growing her REMAX practice, and then eventually deciding, hey, we need to write a book about succession planning, which to my knowledge, and we get pitched by publicists who are representing authors in the real estate space, almost daily, by the way, and I have not yet seen an AI maybe there are books that tackle this topic. But we’ve yet to be approached by anyone. So we’re so excited to chat, because I think this is a topic that our audience definitely would like to hear. They’re building this book of business. What happens when they retire? And oh, yeah. What about people who are retiring now? What can you do to maybe, you know, partner up with them. So really excited to chat with you. But can you start us all the way back to the beginning, and how you guys got into real estate.

Justin Ball 7:53
But so my wife was in federal law enforcement and probation. And once we started our family, she said, I’m ready for a new career. I have several people in my family who are realtors, and really sat down talked with us about the business that seemed like a great fit for my wife. And she started her team and things really took off. And every year has just gotten a little bit better. I like to think I play a big role in that as an unpaid unlicensed assistant bringing all my marketing and CRM expertise into things. But she has this incredible empathy and compassion for working with families during these major life decisions going on. And time and time again, we would get these emails within the brokerage and it would say, So and so is retiring, please come to a happy hour cocktail party to see them off in style or to have cookies or whatever it may be. And I thought, where’s their business going? Like just what happens? Because in these cases, it wasn’t that, you know, please contact so and so for referring people to them or their area of expertise. It was literally just people who were locking the door and turning the lights out. And this is really an opportunity to do succession planning. That’s great for retirees to earn money, great for people who are looking to build their business and expand their business and then really for brokerages to keep that business with in their brokerage. And so I said to Jessica would when we were talking to someone thinking about retiring, let’s set up a program and a contract to generate referrals and start to work on taking over working with their sphere of influence because they were a really well connected individual in the community. And we went out and started looking for how do you do this? And just like you said about there’s nothing out there. There are handshakes and contracts and things that happen behind closed doors and privately but there’s really no information publicly about how to plan a succession plan, how to really transition that sphere of influence and book of business from a retiree to their successor. are and how to monetize that in retirement and make money from those referrals as a referral network agent. And this is where the book was born, we literally just started from scratch. And the more that we started to dig and talk to contacts across the country, and even just here in Peoria, Chicago, we found out people were writing these contracts all the time, and there was no consistency to them. And so we sat down and started the two year process that was really writing the best practices for an agent who’s retiring to earn money for referrals. And for an agent who’s taking over as their successor to really get the most out of those referrals and providing continuity to their book of business.

D.J. Paris 10:43
Yeah, wow, you said a lot there. And I want to just set the stage before we get into any sort of detail about first, just this myth that you have obviously talked about in the book, which is this idea that real estate, because it is largely transactional in nature with respect to commissions and fees, everyone listening knows, there hasn’t, I don’t think anyone’s figured out a way to do a fee based model where, you know, somebody pays you a percentage of something every year, which is typically how financial advisors do it, which when we look at like the financial advisor model, which used to be more transactional, and it was stockbrokers. Now, it’s assets under management, and they typically charge a fee, typically a percentage. And so when a financial advisor retires, it’s a pretty obvious thing, because they have this built in, you know, whatever it is 1% of fees of all the assets under management coming in sort of no matter what. So it’s, it’s a real obvious sort of transition, you could say, why can give this to somebody, and maybe you work on an arrangement where you keep some of it and, and, and but the money is automatically coming in. But then there’s this idea that, well, wait a minute, real estate is transactional in nature. So how do you actually have a business to sell? Necessarily, and I know that there’s a lot of people listening that think, well, I didn’t realize I was I was building something that actually has value once I leave. So I can we just dispel that myth, to to get started and just first set the stage that there is a business to sell or transition.

Justin Ball 12:18
Yeah, there absolutely isn’t. In my other life outside of real estate, you know, we talk about buying businesses and determining their value and their EBIT and multipliers and this, but for your average real estate agent, or small team, the business is the sphere of influence, and the book of business that they built all of those relationships that are out there, and people who think of them as their realtor and who refer them out there. And so the work that an agent has done for 1020 3040 years, and building this book of business, and these clients has a value, and they can continue to earn on it through referrals to the book of business that’s there. And I think, you know, right now, there are a lot of real estate agents who pay a lot of money to generate leads. And I loved listening to your episode with crystal Mesa where she was talking about not paying big companies for leads and generating your own leads. And this is exactly what that is low acquisition cost of no acquisition costs to get new leads in and then paying the referral fee on the back end. So you know, when we talk to agents thinking about retirement it is we build these contracts with their successor. And as they refer business or businesses made from their sphere of influence, they’re paid a referral fee and a retirement or referral network for things and there is value business, even agents who are only doing 12 transactions a year, there is still money to be earned and justification for keeping their license and a referral network.

D.J. Paris 13:50
Yeah, and it’s, it’s interesting, and I don’t know how it works in every state, I imagine it’s state specific. But I know here in Illinois, we have in fact, we, we have one here at our own company, which is called we call it a holding company, which is for which all a holding company is in Illinois, at least is a managing broker who is not a member of a local association, which means that all of the brokers underneath that managing broker also cannot become a member of the local association of wherever the agent might be listed. And what it basically means for everyone listening who’s unfamiliar with this term, is that an agent can keep their license active, but they can’t practice real estate. So they can’t represent buyers, sellers, renters, but they can still refer business to other agents from anywhere in the country and still get paid on those referrals. And it’s very popular here in Illinois, I think our holding company that we have has, I think we have about 550 agents in it. I imagine most states have some version of that. So that is something to think about. As you you know, maybe you’re nearing retirement Do you want to figure out a way where you can still earn income, you know, have finding or finding a brokerage that’s somehow just willing to hold your license. And maybe you don’t have to join a local association. There’s certainly those those firms as well. But But I know that that we built our business, we built a holding company strictly because we saw an agent or a need for that. And so that’s a great, I’m sure that’s a part of one of your strategies is once you get to that point where you’re no longer practicing, but you still are able to earn but my question, my first real question is, for everyone who’s listening, who might be younger, who’s like, well, retirements, a good deal aways away, this is an opportunity for for the younger agent to even make relationships with retiring agents, or people nearing sort of that stage of their career where they might want to consider succession planning, and start to maybe even present them with an idea that says, hey, you know, let’s talk about retirement. And I’m curious if that’s a major part of the book, where you’re talking about how do you go out, by the way, and also, if you’re on the younger side, and still sort of, you know, build these relationships?

Justin Ball 16:03
Yeah. And so that is exactly a chapter is about how to choose a successor. And if you are a younger agent, or an agent that’s still growing their business, how do you become a successor. And I think oftentimes, there’s a lot of agents out there who are retirement eligible, who aren’t pulling the trigger, making a plan or setting a date, because they don’t have a plan for what things look like after that, for how to care for their, their family, their their, you know, provide this continuity, again, that’s out there. And so talking to your managing broker about who might be a good fit, identifying some people that you could possibly build a team with, in the interim, the data from NAR is staggering. And I just had to share that and I wrote it down here, please 300,000 realtors in the United States over the age of 60, and 65,000, don’t expect to be selling real estate in two years. So in our home state of Illinois alone, there are 7000 people who don’t think they’re going to be selling real estate in two years, and 2400 of them are over 60. So the the future is ready for these succession plans to be happening. And I don’t think we’ve ever approached someone about a succession plan. And they’ve said like, hard No, leave me alone. I’m offended. You ask? The worst case scenario is I’m still going to work for another five years come see me in three or four years. Yeah. And that’s fair. Yeah, absolutely fair, there are some people who want that. And there are others who just said, this has been on my mind. And you’re giving me a really good reason to start to put pen to paper and create a tangible plan for doing this. And so for those younger agents, or those agents who are still growing their business, this is literally a chance to acquire a book of business that you’ll pay a referral fee on for one, two, maybe three years. That’s generally the type of contracts that we build. And then this is your sphere of influence to work for a lifetime. And, you know, you hear so much about the lifetime value of clients and the fact that it isn’t just one transaction, it’s one transaction now a transaction and five years a referral for other family members. And so this is an immense chance to grow your business through someone else without paying for these leads, and the leads that come through as referrals. Close most of the time. I mean, I would say our close rate on these is probably 85 90%. Because someone has done the work the retiree of priming the pump of I trust this person, I’m giving your referral to Justin, he and Jessica are going to help you buy your house, sell your house, downsize, upsize, sell off your investment portfolio, whatever that may be. So it’s

D.J. Paris 18:47
interesting, I see there’s so much opportunity here for either the retiree, or the upcoming retirees perspective, that they can go out and start, you know, either talking to their managing broker saying, hey, who in the firm would would be a good person to partner with as I sunset out, or on the other side, the younger agents looking towards some of the older agents, like you were saying here in Illinois, 1000s. And 1000s of them have this ability to, to possibly retire and I don’t suspect either side, the younger agent, or the older agent are getting a lot of phone calls about this right now. So it’s a real opportunity. And it probably there’s probably a bit of an education component to it. But I would imagine it’s a pretty interesting phone call and I know if I were a an agent, I don’t know if I would do it if I was a brand new agent, although that’s possible too, because then you could become somebody’s like apprentice or work with them specifically with the intention of, you know, learning all their skills so that when they when they sunset out you’re the person but it’s a real opportunity on both sides to start, almost prospecting other agents, not to try to recruit them so much as as to partner with them. And this is a huge opportunity and I’m curious once you find somebody who on either side where you’re going, Okay, we’re gonna work something out. I’m curious on what you recommend, because you said, Boy, the close rates are so high 85 90%, which is pretty incredible. If you think about this, like, there’s really no other lead source that doesn’t come from your direct sphere of influence, which is not what this isn’t someone else’s sphere. I mean, it might be part of your sphere, but most likely, it probably isn’t. And to get an 85, or 90%, sort of, you know, hit rate on someone else’s book of business is pretty impressive. So I’m curious once you find somebody, and you do work out some sort of financial arrangement, which I know the book goes into different models for how to do that. How do you recommend that the older agent start to introduce? Or do you recommend that they somehow introduce their successor, what’s sort of the process for getting their sphere of influence aware of what’s happening and who you’ve chosen to be your person?

Justin Ball 20:59
Yeah, this is incredibly important. And this is where the magic happens. The contracts are formalities, the ability to transfer trust and brand from a retiree to their successor is really what it’s all about. If you know, if I said what’s the best practice 18 months to two years is ideal. Because that gives you time to really start co marketing and CO branding, on all of the postcards and farming and emails and client parties that a retiring agent is doing while you are ready, you know, preparing this transition in there. And for them to say this is my team. So when people call if they’re buying their second home, getting ready to move to Florida and retirement, those people aren’t surprised when it’s getting handed off. And they start to see this as a coherent package of people in there. But really the client events and you know, if there’s a client who is a repeat buyer, or investor or does any of these things, having the chance to shake hands and introduce the successor to those clients really put your personal stamp on them saying, This person is on my team, when you call my phone number, you may get my team member doing this, you should have great confidence, they’re going to treat you like this. And we talk a lot in the book about when you find that partner, that successor and retiree that want to work together. What makes the retiree an amazing agent, is that they’re compassionate, and they sit down and they develop these deep relationships, and walk people through start to finish is that they are an incredible marketing and have a great marketing program to sell houses, is that they are deeply analytical and help evaluates rental properties and flippers and people who are doing long term buy and hold activities. And how do you really instill those things that the person sphere of influence loves about them, and respects about them to the successor, and it takes all shapes and sizes. That’s why it’s not a one size fits all, it’s really finding a pair and a match that works out really well and then transferring that trust over to him.

D.J. Paris 23:13
I love that. And I and you know, you said something earlier about starting the planning or announcing to the clients that that you’re you know, you’ll be heading out to the into the sunset, you know, 18 to 24 months, and that gives the, the the successor time to get introduced to the sphere of influence. But also it gets the successor really acclimated to how that producer does conducts business. You said, as you mentioned, talking about things like what qualities do they do they demonstrate because at the end of the day, that’s probably the most important thing is can I duplicate or replicate those experiences for this person’s book of business? Can I do I have that the ability to to be as empathic as as the person who their clients know and love and trust? And I imagine, you know, probably I’m curious if you think like even taking a personality assessment might be a good idea, like a DISC profile or something to that extent to where you could say, Okay, I’ve got this I’m in theory, I’ve got the same skill set, or the same qualities personality, because I imagine that’s just got to be critical.

Justin Ball 24:26
It is. And it really it’s why getting to know someone asking your managing broker and talking with them about are they a good fit? reveals? Are you good to work together and that transition time? I would say some of the worst or the least productive succession plans we’re doing is where someone says, I’m moving in two weeks here is the box of all of my signs and my database and my paper files. And we don’t have that time to sit down and say what are your clients love about you? What would your sphere of influence say makes you really great ones Someone makes a referral to you why are they making that referral to you directly as a person? And then how do we begin to replicate some of those activities or build that skill set? And I think what’s been really fascinating is, those skill sets may not always be up to speed with the time. So how do we change something like, I’m looked at as a great resource for this neighborhood? And how do we bring new technology into, alright, we’re gonna use brevity as a CRM, and we’re gonna send everybody in your sphere, this price evaluation tool, so that we’re taking the work that you’ve done to another potential level, with the ambition of our future earnings and that continuity of service.

D.J. Paris 25:46
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I also think it gives, you know, with the sort of 24 month, ideally 24 month, lead time, it gives the younger agent, the ability to develop some of those particular skills that the retiring agent, you know, already has and mastered. And I’d say, you know, if you spend two years focused on, you know, a certain set of skills that maybe you feel weakened, you’re going to be a heck of a lot stronger than two years. And I think you’re right about if possible, being able to even join the team of that agent, before they retire really helps set the stage for, you know, sort of just trust because that group in your case, you guys have, you know, the Jessica ball team with REMAX traitors unlimited. So this idea of of ideally, they would, they would join your team, and then you could slowly roll out, here’s my new team member, just so everybody knows, when they when I when I retire, you know, so and so is going to take amazing care of you. He’s he or she is going to be around for the next couple of years absorbing everything really making sure they understand you know, how I take care of my my clients. But it is it is such a neat idea. And I think that so if I’m a younger agent, how might I go about maybe working to secure one of these relationships? Do you have suggestions about how you may want to approach a retired or a broker who may be considering retirement or maybe isn’t considering retirement, but technically, could if they were brought an idea to let them know that they could still earn income while they go out of production?

Justin Ball 27:24
I think it’s really important to approach those conversations with a sense of empathy and a sense of respect. coming in saying I’m looking to take over your business starting point. But say, you’re an agent who I’ve watched, who is working from referrals and who I really respect for the book of business you’ve built? How can I learn to develop this? And have you ever thought of mentoring or bringing someone on as a teammate or thinking about succession planning when you’re ready to retire? And I think that opens the door for the conversation. People may say, I’m not interested in mentoring, I’m not interested in doing this. Or I’ve been pressured by my wife or my husband to begin thinking about retirement. And this is a perfect time that we may be able to do something over the course of the next two or three years because I really am ready to make this decision and plan my own retirement.

D.J. Paris 28:18
Yeah, it’s such great. And I want to also mention the book website. Again, for everyone listening who’s who says, gosh, I had no idea that succession planning can exist in the real estate sort of brokerage model. And the website is our E succession.com. Those be a link for that in our show notes. But there’s a link directly to purchase the book on Amazon. And also they’re going to have very shortly a an audiobook format, as well as a paper, a paperback version. So definitely check out our e succession.com. But let’s talk about two. This is something that is not really being discussed at the brokerage level, I suspect, managing brokers don’t really understand because it is a transaction. I’ll give you a perfect example. So I have I have a very close friend who is nearing retirement. He is a home inspector. And he is very well respected in his in the Chicagoland area. Very busy. But his he himself. He is a one man operation. And he has a couple of years left and then he’s going to retire and I had said to him, Well, how do you how do you transfer that business you built up over 40 years goes, boy, I don’t think I can because I don’t have an apprentice. I don’t have somebody. And really, if somebody were to partner with me, you know, they just would be buying a phone number basically and the phone would ring and you know and so he is even unaware that the same sort of process could happen, where he could bring on somebody start introducing them to his referral sources which are real realtors and start saying, Hey, here’s my guy, or here’s my woman who’s you know who’s going to be taking over, they’re going to be shadowing me or, or doing this. And I’m going to mention this book to him because even though he’s not an agent, although maybe he technically is an agent, but he’s, you know, his business is being an Inspector, he has a couple of years to really get this figured out, and his phone rings all the time. So I know I would, I would love to have that. But But I think you’re right, it’s critical that the retiring agent really introduces the apprentice or the person who would be taking over as early as possible. And as often as possible, just making sure that everyone understands sort of, you know, what’s happening here.

Unknown Speaker 30:41
And I think to this is, this is one of the other fascinating things when people call that agent and they’re referring business back to us. Some of the clients appreciate that it’s a team, other clients don’t even realize that those folks who have moved from Peoria across the country, Randy, you literally just say, Oh, this is excellent. What I’m going to do is I’m going to send my team member Justin to help you with this. Continuity is invisible in that, and the trust is still there. And the brand is still there in that sense. But I’m, I’m really worried, too, you know, you talked about your friend, that’s the home inspector, this is the reality, I think with a lot of baby boomers, and this is where there’s a lot of information out there. A lot of these service businesses are going to be ending in the next five to 10 years, and there aren’t these plans for how to do it. And they’re really critical to our economy and for the real estate world. In general.

D.J. Paris 31:37
Yeah, it’s, it’s such a great, a great thing to to talk about. And again, it’s just not really being talked about. Because we think, as it’s so easy to dismiss the idea as all my clients, you know, they like me, and you know, but if they like you, and they understand that, at some point you’re unable to service them, or perfect examples you gave is, hey, I moved, I’m now only in, you know, my local community half a year, or I’m a snowbird, you know, I do the Florida thing during the winter, or I just retired all together, but having somebody that you can refer to, and then I’m curious on when, when you do find this partnership, whether on either side of the transaction, making sure that that newer agent really understands not not just the qualities, you know, the things like empathy and compassion and calm and, but also understanding the expectations around how much or what actual activities that person engages in while they have a client, right, like making sure that if the retiring agent calls every single client of theirs, while they’re in the middle of a transaction every two days, you know, some agents have those kinds of policies where it’s like, I make sure I call everybody once a week, whether we have any news or not about their particular transaction, and then bring on a new agent, making sure that those those two agents really understand what the expectations are, I think is like you were saying, you go through the qualities, and I’m sure you go through the activities as well and say, you know, what are you doing on a daily basis, because that new agent is likely going to have to duplicate, you know, those those behaviors?

Justin Ball 33:19
And then those are the kinds of questions that we asked when we kind of match people up? Do you text your buyers and sellers? Do you have these regular emails that you send out? Are you a person who goes to people’s house and sits down at their kitchen table and has a cup of coffee? And engages? Or are you really high tech, and you do everything through transaction management digitally and remotely? And really, you know, again, identifying what makes your brand so that we can begin to replicate some of that brand, or at least the best practices of it?

D.J. Paris 33:54
Yeah, that’s a really good point, too. And it could even be as simple as how late do you respond? How quickly do you respond to a client request? What happens if it’s 11pm? And you’re up and you see the little SMS message or an email or phone call come through? Do your clients expect me to answer that phone call? Or do they understand that I’ll get to it first thing in the morning? Or what’s the expectation really understanding that so that the agent that’s coming in, really has a clear set of guidelines around here’s what’s expected, and I’m agreeing to do XY and Z. And I imagined the more detailed and written out and agreed upon by both parties it is the clearer and better probably smoother it goes.

Justin Ball 34:39
It is and again the the time to plan and learn that is critical. I don’t know that I can say that two years or 18 months is like the optimal amount of time but certainly having the ability to work with someone for six months up to that point so that you’re going out on visits, you can shadow them in the office and you can Learn what you don’t know. I mean, this is this is an opportunity to pass down the legacy of the secrets of real estate agents made agents amazing over the years. And it, it just kills me what I see people retire, and the brokerage loses that business and the clients go with the first realtor that they find online. And really the secrets of service that are going to withstand the test of time are lost in that transition and transaction.

D.J. Paris 35:30
What type of financial arrangements do you typically see? So the the retiring agent, you know, you were mentioning, maybe they, they, they actually exit out from actually receiving referral commissions a certain number of years. But for that, in that first year, once the agent is out of production, maybe their licenses in a holding company, like we mentioned, but they’re still able to earn referral commissions. What type of financial arrangements Do you Do you see is sort of most common. So what’s the split? What are the splits typically look like from the retiring agent to the the person taking over the book?

Justin Ball 36:06
Yeah, so as we write the different types of contracts, and there, what we see most often and what we recommend is three years of paying out specific referral fees. And as you can appreciate, we don’t have a standard set fee or a course royalty in there. But as we talked to agents across the country, I would say we saw referral splits as high as 40%. And referral splits broadly around 25%. As we recommend, or as we work with agents, putting those together, we oftentimes say, because an agent could refer to anybody, and we’re making this exclusive contract, let’s front load the amount a little more in year one, and then reduce it gradually over time. Although we do have tools in there for valuating a book of business, if you’re going to pay a flat rate to an agent for taking over their book of business as opposed to referral fee, or in a lot of cases and incentive pay. And I really like using that instead of pay after your one of, you know, we’re gonna if you, if we sell more than 2 million, or 4 million or $5 million worth, we’ll give you $5,000, or we’ll give you 10,000, or 2000, or whatever the number may be, especially because it varies region to region based on your average home sale price and average commission, but it keeps the retiree hungry and engaged. And so that they really are being diligent and sending those referrals, every opportunity that they get. And we as the successors are really being diligent and following up in there. So three years tends to be a really good amount of time, I like seeing incentives in there. And we generally will write in some additional features about if you’re selling your personal property or real estate discounts on those things, because they may be keeping a home here, or selling off a package of investment properties or any number of things.

D.J. Paris 38:02
It’s really interesting. That’s such a such a great answer. And thank you for sharing that I was just thinking, in a previous career a million years ago, I was a financial advisor, and we were a fee based model. So we would take as I sort of was mentioning that earlier, the idea of collecting someone’s investment portfolio, and then charging them a percentage of the assets under management, which is pretty much how almost all financial advisors do it these days. So you would have in that industry, and I’m sure it’s still happening there, those books of business were very valuable, because even if there wasn’t an obvious transfer of power, the firm unless the client cancelled their, you know, took their investments out of the portfolio, didn’t really matter who was who was managing it, as long as those fees kept coming in. And so those were tight, those financial advisors who are retiring, are very valuable. And they are getting called by financial advisors everywhere. And I used to fantasize of, of getting one of these calls from one of these retiring financial advisors saying, I’ve got this book of, you know, $300 million. And I want to, you know, share it with you. And we’ll figure out a, you know, a way to compensate us both, but it never happened. But it’s because it’s so common, that there’s whole industries built in the financial advisory world of trying of helping people with succession planning, because it’s so incredibly lucrative. This is a kind of a newer thing that isn’t really as widely understood in the real estate side, because again, we think of it as transaction focus. And of course it is, but there is that so I guess my point is, if I was a financial advisor back when I was and if I would have started calling. You know, if I had a list of people who are financial buyers who are nearing retirement, they probably would be like, you’re the 25th person that’s called me Get lost. I don’t know you. But I suspect that real estate agents who are nearing retirement aren’t getting these phone calls. So So I think this is such a huge opportunity that number one, most retiring agents haven’t really thought about succession planning, other than maybe chatting with their managing broker about like, you know, do you have an idea of what I should do, but there isn’t any real formal process around this. And that’s what you guys really have created in the book succession planning for real estate agents. But also you do that you do consulting work as well for agents, is that correct?

Justin Ball 40:22
It is. So if you are a person thinking about retirement, or if you have identified a successor already, we offer consultation services to come in and help you set up that contract, help go through those activities of transferring trust and introduction to clients. We do presentations to brokerages, which I think is where a broker owners can really make hay because, you know, providing this presentation to their agents who are both, you know, retiring and aspiring to grow their business can set those up and keep the business in house. But I think one of the things, you know, some of the things that we do that are so far beyond what we’ve just talked about are the value of things like a domain name, the value of things like website content, the value of things like, investor lists, a lot of these assets that are a little less tangible, in the sense, and really how important the CRM or the database is of the retiree. And so we talked about, you know, there are probably some really nice clean succession plans where it’s, I’ve downloaded my nice comma delimited spreadsheet to give to you to import it. And there are the here’s my file cabinet for the last years. And there is even another level of I really don’t have anything, I just pick up the phone when the phone rings, and we have to recreate an entire database from brokerage history and activities that are there. I’m curious,

D.J. Paris 41:56
without obviously sharing, you know, any confidential information about people that you’ve helped set these up? What kind of income have you seen? And again, it all depends on the amount of transactions and obviously, where somebody is located and the price average price of properties. But you know, I imagine there’s a lot of people who you’ve helped who are retiring? Who, yeah, they can always refer business, and maybe they would, but they don’t have a real structure for, you know, taking taking their book of business and keeping it moving. With with the the newly licensed agent, it’s just yeah, if my phone rings, I’m retired, I’ll pass it over to you. But that’s not really what we’re talking about. We’re talking about an actual plan of, okay, here’s how you’re going to introduce your clients to me, here’s how I’m going to gain their trust. Here are the expectations on both sides, and what kind of income you know, and I know it’s a wide range, but we’re talking about a lot of income, that that retiring agent could still be retaining every year, just based on putting a plan like this together.

Justin Ball 43:01
Yeah. So it is really hard when you talk about such different types of people. But I’ll give you kind of a summary that we talked about in the book if you average an agent’s last three years of production. And let’s say that on average, they produce 15 million a year and gross sales, you can expect that out of that first year of business to do about 1/3 of that through their referral network. So if somebody is saying I average 15 million a year in sales, we can generally expect to close $5 million of that through their referrals in the first year. And then we just see it dwindle a little bit each year, is there a little further removed from the process. But I think that this brings up a really good point, you kind of set me up for this one, which was really good. You what you don’t want to do is let your your average annual sales decline, decline decline because you’re putting off the planning. And you’re maybe mentally checking out a little more. Yeah, sure. The time to do it is when you still have this robust book of business that people are still hearing from you and engaged with you to be doing that transitional work and keeping it high. And it’s it’s really challenging when we see some great agents who, maybe five years ago, were averaging 1015 7 million, whatever it may be, and that when you look at their last three years, the average is 3 million because of just the natural decline of their engagement in the business and the amount of time that they want to be working versus if you had that partnership setup. Even before they retired, they could just be referring the daily business that they can’t handle or don’t want to handle to their partner.

D.J. Paris 44:48
I am really, really excited about this. I rarely in all of the episodes that we’ve done, I think we’ve done 300 And a close to 50 I believe I’ve yet to tackle this particular topic. I just see so much opportunity for somebody either retiring or somebody, you know, in the process of building their business and making these connections. Again, it’s this is this are these are phone calls that probably that retiring agent are not getting a lot of. And so this is a great, especially if you’re young and you don’t have a huge sphere of influence it you know, you can work out an arrangement with a retiring broker, but you have to, you’re probably gonna have to approach them first. You know, if you’re lucky, they may approach you. But I always assume I’m not that lucky. And I certainly wasn’t that lucky when I was a financial advisor. All those years ago, maybe I wasn’t very good. But I certainly wasn’t getting those kinds of calls from retiring agents. So I think this is this is something that you have to go first, no matter what side you’re on, whether you’re the retiring agent, or you’re the younger agent, you’re trying to find a partner, you really got to got to think about it. And you got to start making connections. And I think you’re so right, is think about the agents that you meet out at showings that you like, if you can’t think of anyone in your immediate firm, or maybe you’re just a tiny firm without many options. Boy, I’m sure there’s agents out there that you like, and probably agents that you don’t get along with as well. And finding those people that you go boy, that I bet it’s uh, you know, they really seem to treat their clients while we all sort of know who those agents are. Those are the agents to chat with, I would think at a very minimum place to get started. But again, I just don’t think most agents get these kinds of phone calls. And I know you’ve written a book on it, but and you guys don’t appear to be nearing retirement yourself. But, you know, I just suspect most agents don’t get these calls. Is that Is that accurate?

Justin Ball 46:40
I would say 100% accurate, as we’ve talked to some brokers and as we’ve talked to agents, and as we’ve gone through this several times, it is never even on people’s radar generally is is a totally fresh conversation. And like you were saying about approaching agents that you respect, it comes off really genuine, if I were to say, I really respect the work that you do, I would love to be at a you know, a point in my career, where I’m doing the level of business getting the referrals you are and not paying on the front end for all of X, Y or Z and the services. And people generally, what if you’re the successor approaching a retiring agent? Generally they’re flattered? I would say, Absolutely. And they may say, you know, I’m planning on bringing my son or my daughter in and creating this sharp plan, or I’ve already talked to x person. But that’s, that’s the worst response.

D.J. Paris 47:36
So thanks, but I already have someone,

Justin Ball 47:40
the sky’s the limit. And the worst answer is no or not right now. With

D.J. Paris 47:45
there’s nothing more flattering than that sort of phone call. And but a you know, assuming it comes from a genuine sort of place, and, and I gosh, I just see all the opportunity out here for that. And so for everyone listening, just consider think about your current book of business. And do you have some, you know, do you have some free time? I think in particular, this is really helpful for people who move to a new service area, maybe where they’re not as familiar, they don’t have a sphere of influence, or somebody that is ultimately familiar with that market incredibly well knows the agent knows the agent feels, you know, feels like they could definitely take over those responsibilities. But either way, I sort of see it fitting just about anyone, unless you’re just so incredibly busy, that you wouldn’t even have time to take on someone else’s book. And that’s its own problem. Good problem, I guess. But still, you know, you could still figure probably figure out a solution for that. But I almost wonder if we’ll start to see teams, even dedicate somebody to you know, going out and finding these relationships, you know, because as you mentioned, so many baby boomers are retiring, and nobody’s talking about this. So I really want everybody because I’ve been talking a lot about it myself on this on this episode. And when I get really excited about things I talk a lot, so I apologize for that to Justin. But guys, I am telling you, this is a huge, huge opportunity. Please go get the book visit our e succession.com. Again, that’s our e su CC e s s i o n.com. It’s called succession planning for real estate agents available on Amazon. It very shortly there’ll be an audiobook version and other ways of consuming this content. But you can also reach directly out to Justin and his wife, Jessica’s team. They do this for agents, they will help you. What’s the best way Justin that somebody should reach out if they go gosh, I would love to consider doing this.

Justin Ball 49:44
Yeah, certainly our our email addresses and our phone number are on the website. Mine is [email protected] you’re welcome to use the website there’s a request information form. We’re avidly On Facebook, Instagram, Jessica ball homes. If you also have any referrals for the Peoria area, you’re you’re welcome to reach out to us. And we would be happy to treat your clients wonderfully as well in there.

D.J. Paris 50:14
I think it’s great. And I’m just excited for after all these years of doing the show to have my first hometown guest on the episode, which is a very exciting for me, because I have very fond memories of Korea. So if there is anyone out there who either has clients looking to move to Central Illinois, or maybe you already live in central Illinois, and you’re looking to work with a top agent, Justin and Jessica, from from the from Remax traitors Unlimited, would be honored to speak to and we also found out that their office, there’s a, I used to see a doctor, actually in the building that Justin and Jessica work at, which is particularly cute for me to remember. But guys, this, this would be a team that that I would consider partnering with. And also whether you know whether it’s a referral, or even just if you’re looking to find a great Realtor in the central Illinois area, they are your team. So definitely reach out to them. And you can also find them on their website, Jessica ball homes.com. But definitely check out the book. This is the first of its kind. This is a conversation that as soon as brokerages start thinking about this, you’re gonna hear a lot more about it. So I feel this is a great opportunity to get ahead of the curve. And I also we’re launching a new show on our podcast in the next couple of weeks. And I can’t really I don’t want to reveal it quite yet, just because we’re the name may change. But it’s going to be a news focused show. And I’m really excited to be announcing that shortly. However, I want to get you guys back on that show, because I want our journalist to do a deep dive. And he really, he’ll he’ll be a great, great asset to have a better even deeper conversation about this topic. So again, succession planning for real estate agents is the book, visit our e succession.com. also reach out to Justin and Jessica in the event that you want them to help you figure out succession or finding a successor. Also, just reach out to them. If you have any sort of business, they would love to earn your referrals, just Cabala homes.com. Justin, thank you so much for being on the show is really a lot of fun to talk to a fellow purion. And also just love the love succession planning. I’m so excited that for you guys. And I hope that we can sell a lot of books for you, because I think this will end up making agents on both sides of the transaction, a tremendous living. So definitely keep it in mind and on behalf of our audience want to thank Justin for showing up providing a tremendous amount of value. And on behalf of Justin and myself, we want to thank our audience for sticking around listening to our episode and we ask that you just do two quick things to help us continue to grow. Number one, tell a friend I think of one other real estate agent that could benefit from hearing this great conversation with Justin, maybe somebody who’s nearing retirement, or maybe somebody who’s brand new to the business who could use a mentorship or an apprenticeship, send them a link to this episode. Best way to do that is just go to keeping it real pod.com all of our episodes you can stream right there. And then also please leave us a review we could really really, it really helps it’s helpful for us to understand what we do well what we could improve upon. So whatever app you might be listening to this in if you are listening via some sort of app, leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show. It really helps us get better and better. So Justin, thank you so much. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Thank you

Can you believe we just hit our 1 millionth download? To celebrate this event we’re announcing a new show on our network (drumroll, please!). Thanks to everyone for helping us grow! We love our listeners!

D.J. Paris 0:12
Hello, everyone, and welcome to keeping it real. The largest podcast made for real estate agents buy real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, I’m your guide and host. Today is a quick and special episode, we do not have any guests, or any major topics of discussion around how to build your real estate business, or how to learn from top agents who have already built their business. So what are we doing today? Well, we just wanted to spend a few minutes and give you an update on some things that are going on here at the show that I think are very exciting. But I know if I were a listener, which I’m sort of not because I’m the host, but our listeners I suspect would like to know about. So this will be a very quick episode, I appreciate you sticking with us through it, because I think it’s some exciting and cool stuff. But I sorry, at first that you downloaded this episode thinking you were going to hear from a top producer, and this one you’re not, you’re just going to hear from me. I am definitely not a top producer. I’m not a producer at all. But I am wanted first on behalf of everyone here at our show to say thank you. We do this a lot. We say a lot of things. But we really, really mean it. And the whole reason we do this show is because we have listeners, right? And we started the show, we actually had to go back and look it up. Because people asked me how how old is the show. And I’m like, I don’t know, five years, something like that? Well, it turns out, it’s four years and nine months old as of today, which we’re nearing the latter part of February of 2022. So it’s almost five years old. And we I never thought that I would continue with it for as long as I have, because I just didn’t think anyone would be that interested, quite frankly, I’m so grateful that the audience has continued to grow. And in fact, in the last six months, we also just looked up some of these statistics, our audience size has grown by almost two times. And we’re just and we don’t spend money on advertising. So this is strictly because of you guys. So I have to say thank you, because you’re the exact reason why we have got to almost 350 episodes in that amount of time. So thank you for continuing to tell other agents about the show. And that’s the only thing that we really ever asked of our audience is to tell other agents about us. We also want to say thank you, of course to all of our advertisers and sponsors, who support our show and help keep the lights on. Without you, we wouldn’t be able to keep doing this. And we have added additional members to our team based on some of the revenue that we receive from our sponsors. So please, everyone listening support our sponsors, they support us, you support us. They’re great sponsors. We handpick them, we’re so so honored to have sponsors on the show, because it allows us to do more shows. So thank you to all of the sponsors. So thanks. Also to our staff, I really have to single out zonna, who is our producer and our casting director, she’s behind the scenes, you probably don’t know her, unless you’ve been a guest on our show, or that you’ve maybe reached out to our show, she answers all viewer mail or email or different social media communication, she coordinates all of the interviews, she does the pre interviews, once the episode is over, she then post produces the episode, she creates a video version and audio version. And just really honestly does about 90% of all of the work that is needed to put out the show. And she gets very little fanfare credit. So on behalf of all the listeners, we want to thank Donna, she’s amazing. And she’s really helped keep me on track and taken our podcast to the next level. But the real reason that I there’s actually two reasons that I’m doing this episode and it’s, well, we’re always want to say thank you. But these are a couple of very special things that we wanted to talk about. The first is and this is more of a self serving thing of patting ourselves on our backs. But we thought it would be kind of cool to let the audience in, we recently crossed over a million downloads. And for a show that does very little marketing, very basically no marketing. This is why I’m so grateful to our audience to everyone listening because you’re the reason that we got to a million downloads. I could have I could create an episode every day. But if nobody listened, we would never be aware we are now so we are so excited to cross over million downloads. And just to give you another statistic that we thought was really cool. So, again,

we’ve actually crossed over a million downloads before in the past. We’re not exactly sure when because the statistics of podcasts are really goofy. It’s really hard to track but we know for sure that we have eight official over a million downloads. We think we’re actually a lot higher than that. But either way it’s a major accomplishment for For us, and, and it doesn’t really mean anything, we’re going to keep doing the show, even if we never got to a million downloads. But it is kind of a cool little number that we’re very proud of. So thank you, again for continuing to get us to that number. And hopefully, we’ll be at 2 million and who knows how long that’ll take, but we’ll keep making episodes. Also, we had the other statistic I thought was pretty interesting was that we’ve had over 115,000 people download a at least one episode, whether they listened, you know, on a mobile device, or via our website, or, you know, maybe they saw it on YouTube or wherever, over over 115,000. And I’m assuming most of those people are realtors. So if we assume that most of them are realtors, you know that that’s, you know, I don’t know, maybe 7% of all realtors have checked out our show. I don’t know if that’s exactly true, but it’s probably true enough. And we’re really grateful to think that so many agents have found value in our show. And again, thanks to you guys for telling other realtors about us. We don’t hardly do any marketing. So the only way that people find out is by you know, typically than they find us online. We’ve been blessed to be featured on I think over 30 best real estate podcast lists online. And so people find us that way. So thank you to anyone who ever wrote kind word about us online.

So anyway, that was those were pretty exciting. But the other piece of exciting news that I wanted to get to is we have a new show that we are launching and the first episode should be available either this week or next. I have to ask his honor, because I don’t pay too much attention to when the shows actually air. But we are really excited. We recently had on a guest chris Christie Mae shore, who herself has a podcast, which I really encourage everyone to check out. She does it three times a week. It’s called fired up. And it is excellent. And because Christa Mesa is excellent. She’s a top producer. She herself is just a powerhouse of marketing, and branding, and teaching agents how to grow their business. A lot of it’s through virtual means or social media ways of doing things. She’s unbelievable. And if you haven’t listened to her episode, which was like, I don’t know, five or six episodes back, definitely go check it out. It’s awesome. And we got such incredible feedback from it, that we and because our audience has has really grown, and we have great sponsors, we’re like we want to expand the show. So we offered an opportunity to Krista to partner together and create her own show where we’re going to give her carte blanche to do anything she wants, she’s going to talk to you guys and her whole Oh, I should tell you what the name of the show is. So it’s going to be called since Chris, this podcast is called fired up, we thought we should come up with something that’s kind of adjacent to that. So we’re calling it little sparks. So little sparks with Chris Demacia is going to debut on our show and by on our network. But it’s also going to go through our our own feed. So if you are a subscriber to keeping it real, you don’t have to do anything. You’ll continue to get all of my episodes, and then crystal will be doing regular episodes. And it’ll just come you know, just as my episodes show up in your in your feed, they’re going to be shorter, bite sized and chock full of just great actionable content. If you know Krista, if you listen to the episode, that is what she is all about. And she is awesome. And she has way more energy than I do. So she is just a powerhouse of talent. And she’s just killing it. And so she is such a nice, lovely person we are could not be more thrilled to invite her to be a half her own. This is actually the first time we’re giving somebody their own show. And so be excited for that. I hope everyone’s excited. I know we are. So the first episode, like I said will go live either this week, it’s already been recorded, because Chris does that kind of person. And it’s already ready to go. But they were waiting on me to do this announcement. So here I am. So the first show that we’ll be launching is called little sparks with Chris Demacia. It’ll be coming out shortly. And you’ll have to let us know what you think I already know you’re gonna love it because I wouldn’t bring anyone on this pot network who wasn’t unbelievable. And she is awesome. I’m a marketing guy. And I just think she’s got a lot to say. And it’s all good stuff. So anyway, very excited. And we’ll be sending out more information on that. And I’ll tease you a little bit we have actually two more shows that are almost ready to launch as well. So I won’t tell you much about them. But they’re going to be very different from Christmas show. As we realized how much more traffic we were getting to the podcast, we wanted to introduce additional points of view. Right. So I have my own point of view, but it’s kind of limited, right? I I just I mean I don’t have the experience of somebody like Krista and so we have a couple of other people that we’ve been eyeing for years now. And we now have the ability to expand the show and so we have a couple of other shows that These are not going to be DJ. And so and so these are going to be their own shows, and they’re gonna be very different from what I do, they’re going to be real estate related or real estate. Well, they’re always gonna be real estate related, but the topics are going to be different, but we think it’s exactly what you guys want to hear. So we are really excited, I can’t reveal the names of the other two yet, just because we’re still getting it all figured out. But they are basically ready to go as well. So be on the lookout for me to make a few additional announcements. And we are so proud to be partnering with some of these industry titans. To come up with new shows for our network, it’s turning into a network, which is so funny to us. Because it was just this idea that I had, you know, five years ago, I was like somebody needs to do a podcast where they interview top producers, and I guess it was me who did it. So anyway, I just wanted to say thanks again. And if you do want to continue listening and supporting our show, please continue to tell a friend, I’ve already said that a million times today. So thank you in advance. Also, really, this really, really helps us. And it’s actually even easier than thinking of a friend to tell about our show is just leave us a review, go on whatever podcast app you might be listening to. And let us know what you think of the show, we check that stuff, we read the comments, we hope that you really like it and want to give us five stars, but we understand that not everyone, people have constructive criticism and say, Hey, do less of this or more of that, that is so important to us. So um, feel free to, you know, read us a review, it also helps to with podcast directories. So the more reviews just like with Amazon or other sites that sell things, you know, the different podcast directories, they don’t know what shows are good or not. They just look at how many people are listening and who’s writing reviews and what the engagement is. So the more engagement you can show for our show, the more people they’re going to share it with. So again, it’s a three second thing, but we really would appreciate it if you would go into whatever app you’re listening to the show and right now and leave us a review. And also please contact our show directly. Again, we get you’d be shocked we at this point, we don’t really go out and ask for guests, because we’re fortunate enough to, to receive a lot of inquiries. But a ton of the people that we feature on the show are because listeners write in and they say you have to talk to this woman, she’s killing it, or this guy or whoever. This person is really doing things differently. So please let us know if there’s anyone in your local market or just somebody that you’re really, really excited to hear their story. And maybe you don’t feel like you could ask them yourself, I will ask them. So let us know if there’s anyone we should be reaching out to. And also check out our website, you know, very few people ever visit our website, which is keeping it real pod.com. And that’s a place where you can contact zonna through our contact form and let us know maybe you’re a sponsor and you want to be part of our show, or maybe you just have a guest suggestion. Or maybe you just want to listen to episodes, you can do it all right there.

Alright guys, well, you’ve listened to me long enough. I appreciate you guys so much. And when I say guys, of course, I mean, every single person that listens to this show. We are so honored to serve you. And we hope we can continue to serve you well on into the future. So check out Christopher shores, little sparks, which is coming out this week or next, and be on the lookout for these other shows. And again, just Thanks from all of us. This is really fun, and we hope that it’s fun for you as well. All right, we’ll see everybody on the next episode.

Cody Tuma the founder of OfferForm talks about the beginning of his career in real estate and about his first sale. Cody also talks about how he built his production which led him into building his team. Next, Cody describes the way he establishes rapport with leads which helped him develop a successful business and how he started systematizing his business once it started to grow. Last, Cody discusses how he started OfferForm and how it helps agents write better offers.

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

Cody Tuma can be reached at (541) 406-5296.

This episode was brought to you by Real Geeks.

D.J. Paris 0:00
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 Cody Touma from offer form. Before we get to Cody. Just a couple of quick announcements one. Thanks for listening to our show. Thanks for supporting us. If you want to help us keep growing, we just ask that you do two quick things. Number one, tell another realtor about our show. Think of one other agent that could benefit from hearing from top producers and innovators like Cody Touma, send them a link to our website keeping it real pod.com. If they are an avid podcast listener, just have them pull up their podcast app search for keeping it real, hit the subscribe button, we would appreciate it and second, please review our show that really helps us number one, learn what our audience wants and also how we can improve but also helps us with the search engine visibility in the different podcast directories. So if you’re listening to this show on Apple podcasts or iTunes, Google Play Stitcher, Spotify, Pandora wherever. Let us know what you think of the show. Leave us a review. We really appreciate it. But enough about that right? You’re not here to listen to me ask for things you’re here to me to interview our guest. So right now let’s bring on Cody Touma.

Today on the show, we have Katie Tula 541 home sales also premier property in Oregon. And he’s also the founder of offer form.me, which is a revolutionary new way to gather offer information. Obviously super exciting to talk about right now with how challenging it can be for buyer representation to get offers noticed and written especially if you’re doing multiple offers. Anyone who’s working with buyers right now knows that struggle. And also investors tend to know that struggle all the time, because they’re always writing offer after offer. But let me tell you about Cody first. So Cody was raised and born, born and raised, not raised and born born and raised in Bend, Oregon. And he graduated the University of Oregon in 2015. He began his real estate career shortly after, and He’s doubled his production year over year, he started a team hired to admin in the last year, which has really helped him boost production even higher, he discovered another passion in real estate and has ventured into the investment side within the last few years. And his most recent venture is in the software space, which is offer form.me, which is a tool designed to help real estate agents write better, more competitive offers. So I want everybody except for the people that are driving right now to check out offer form.me To learn more, and we’re going to be talking about what offer form does. But I love the fact that we’re not just talking to a tech owner with a with a product or a service for realtors, but also an agent who is a top producer who said I need to build something to help with my own offers. So what to Cody, welcome to the show. We’re super excited to have you.

Cody Tuma 4:30
Thanks, TJ really appreciate you having me on here and excited to talk to you and your audience about kind of my career and kind of how I got started on everything and what what led me ultimately to offer form.

D.J. Paris 4:42
Yeah, let’s let’s start at the beginning. So, you know, and by the way, you know, this is you’ve really accomplished a lot in the I guess we’ll say seven years or so maybe six years that you’ve been been in this business. And now you’re starting, you know, this this tech firm, which I love because I think so many Tools end up being born out of necessity or frustration. And so I’m excited for us to start at the beginning, learn how you grew your business, and then to a point where you’re like, I gotta build my own tool, and oh, yeah, I’ll make it available for other agents to check out. So let’s start at the beginning. So you graduated school? And then did you know immediately that you wanted to be in real estate? Or did it take some time to figure that out?

Cody Tuma 5:21
I had absolutely no idea. Prior to graduating school, I was actually kind of running this online e commerce business. And it was just kind of like this side hustle. And then it just kind of turned into like a business that really wasn’t making much money, but I just liked in it, so I just kept doing it. And then it just kind of fizzled out as I graduated school. And then I was like, well shoot, what am I going to do now? Like, I don’t really want to keep doing that ecommerce thing. And I, you know, I’m probably going to move back to bend where I’m from just because, you know, I got friends and family there, and I’ll go back there, and I’ll figure it out. And I just kind of wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. And I started just kind of looking around and maybe getting a job somewhere at a startup or something. And I talked to a friend of mine who was actually a real estate agent. And she like I kind of like had picked her brain. I was like, you know, hey, look, you know, how’s this real estate thing going? You know, and she pretty much had told me she’s like, Yeah, you know, it’s great. You know, I make about $80,000 a year and I thought to myself, $1,000 You know, that’s, that’s not too bad. That’s not that I could do. Yeah, not bad. And, you know, I was asking her, you know, how’s the freedom is going and you know, you’re your own boss, you got all this flexibility. I was like, you know, maybe maybe I’ll just do real estate until I figure out my next move. And what I want to do next, because I’ve always kind of been drawn towards tech. That’s originally what I went to school for as I thought I was going to go to school and be like this computer programmer. And then I realized I didn’t want to do that. I was actually just going to get into like, the business side of things. So ended up just doing business. And then yeah, so graduating and talking to this agent. So I was like, okay, cool. Well, maybe I’ll try that. So I start taking my real estate license and takes me like, I don’t know, three, four months to do it. I just kind of keep putting it off. And it takes me a while and finally get the license. And then I ended up my brother, he tells me he’s like, hey, you know, I’m getting ready to sell my house, you want to list it? And I was like, nice. Absolutely. I would love to list your house. And so that was my first client with my brother. And I made 10,000 bucks off that commission. And I was like, wow, this is the best job ever. That was crazy.

D.J. Paris 7:24
With with family members waiting for you to

Cody Tuma 7:28
sell their house. And so I do that deal. And then about a month goes by and I don’t have anything in the pipeline. I don’t know how to generate business. I don’t know how to be more brothers, you needed more. I need more family members. And so I was just like, wow, okay, like how do I do this, I don’t really know what to do. And so I actually ended up you know, spending the next like four or five months just like not doing dollar productive activity things. I was like working on my business card. I was working on my website working on just all these things that don’t actually generate business. And so finally, I was like, Okay, I gotta do something different. So I ended up going to I was just like, independent. I didn’t have any sort of mentor I just before I listened to podcast, I literally had no clue what I was doing. And so finally I ended up going to a different brokerage, I was approached by somebody who was at like, this top brokerage, that is from Portland, Oregon, and they’re moving the band and like Cody, you got to be a part of this, you got to listen to this guy, you know, he’s got a huge team in Portland. And so I kind of got inspired by what by what he was doing and kind of like told me how he was doing his business and how he like had started his foundation on online leads and Zillow leads and all that and he’s doing like 80 million a year in production. And it’s like, yeah, come Come work for Premier Property Group. And you know, I’ll kind of take you on my wing and kind of tell you a little bit you know, what I’m doing and, you know, whatnot. So ended up going hanging my license up from your property group and this sky, Stephen Hisar, he just kind of like had inspired me to basically just do things a little bit differently than how I had been doing a little bit more structure. So I started ended up paying for online leads. So I was like, Alright, I’m gonna take all the money I have and dumping into online leads and I think I was spending like three to $4,000 a month on online leads, I was like, I’m going all in let’s see what happens. And then the leads just started just flooding in and one thing that I’ve always pride prided myself in as always being available for my clients and always picking up the phone. And that’s kind of what helped build my success is I get a lead that would come in off of Zillow, and I you know, talk to them listen to what they need go look at a house with them and then I would just stay in that constant communication with them and just always picking up the phone and one deal turned into another and another and like my, my first year you know, I’d only close like a few houses but then the second year, probably Epson started the pickup. And then in the third year, it was like, wow, okay, I’ve really got something rolling here. And I think my third year, I ended up doing 10 million in sales volume, just by myself as a solo agent started, like looking at different, like lead sources started branching out and calling expireds and fizz bows. And then it started to get to a point where I was like, wow, I’ve got, you know, so much going on here, I need to kind of expand this. So then I was like, Okay, how can I expand this, and I had heard, like, heard people like bringing on like, you know, assistants, and transaction coordinators, and I’ve always been of the mindset of, if I can do something, do it myself. And so like, I used to take all my own fists, all my own photos in the beginning, all my own videos like all that, and it would take so much time to take those photos. And those videos, and I started to learn the power of leverage. It’s like, okay, I can spend four hours photographing this house, or I can pay somebody you know, to do that, while I can be, you know, maybe doing some outbound prospecting calls, or whatnot, and have somebody else do that, while while I, you know, work on gathering more business. So, yeah, so I just worked on continuing building the team or building up my production and eventually started a team.

D.J. Paris 11:19
Yeah, a couple things I just wanted to touch on that, that I think are really interesting and important. First, just most immediately, that you were just chatting about, which is leveraging you know, other other people to help you with the parts of your business that, you know, whether you enjoy them or not, maybe you recognize is not the best use of time. And, you know, photographer, I think probably most people don’t take their own, most agents don’t probably take their own photos, because number one, they won’t do as good of a job. As you know, as a professional photographer. However, if you do have that skill set, where you’re taking unbelievable photos, it’s very difficult to then say, well, I want it, I want somebody else to do it, I’m willing to pay a few 100 bucks or, you know, and that was my problem. Well, sure. And that is a legitimate thing. So I think this is a really important conversation that I really would like to have on on a future episode, which is, how do you go from doing everything yourself, which you know, and I’m Cody, in particular, I’m sort of speaking to Cody, but anyone who’s listening understands this, because I struggle with the same sort of thing, which is, I know, when I do when I do certain things, and I’m going to do them better than I suspect, the vast majority of people that I could even hire to do it. And, and it becomes tricky to sort of let go of that, that control because you know, it’s going to be done correctly. But then that again, it’s like, you almost need like a third objective third party to look and go, Hey, that’s great, you like doing that. And that’s fine, except you’re spending, you know, four hours a week on it, or whatever it might be. And, you know, if you gave it to someone else, and maybe if they only did 80% as good a job as you is that good enough, which it might be it might not be, but if it is well, and you pay a little bit for that, boy, you just saved yourself, you know, a whole bunch of time, because you’re probably going to make more than $200 in doing business building activities in those four hours. So I know that struggle, I have it myself with certain parts of what I do. And so I think it’s really important for agents to always be objectively sort of looking at their time, and making sure that, you know, are they engaged because it can feel really exciting and fun, and fulfilling to do creative things that aren’t necessarily business building, like taking photos, videos. I mean, it’s fun, it’s exciting. It’s probably a passion of yours. So I understand. And there’s value in that. And there’s value in doing things that are really rewarding and fun. But then it’s like, okay, well, but I’m spending a lot of time on it, and it doesn’t really generate business. So I understand the struggle. So I applaud you for it has taken me years and years and years to even allow anybody to do any part of my business. Because I’m like, no one else can do it the way I can. And the fact is, that’s simply not true. But also, it just required me to like, you know, let go a little bit. So that that was one thing I wanted to mention. I’m just curious was that struggle for you to really sort of give up some of that control. And

Cody Tuma 14:17
it definitely was, and I feel like it would have been easier if I didn’t possess the skill set to do photos and to do video, if I, if I didn’t know how to do it at all, it would have been so much easier because I would have just hired it out from the beginning. But because I didn’t know how to do those things. I was like, Okay, I’m going to take the time to do it. Right. And all that other stuff. So it made it that much harder, I think.

D.J. Paris 14:38
Yeah, I also want to go back to lead generation. So what I think you’ve done is quite remarkable. And you got you sort of sort of went through this quickly and I want to step back and just slow it down just just for a moment because buying internet leads, you know, it’s such a people have such a intense response, you know, it’s either oh my god, it’s the greatest thing, or doesn’t work, you know, you get people typically on. And I think most people go well, it works for some people, it doesn’t work for me. But to me, and I’m not saying everyone should do internet leads, because I don’t think they’re for everybody, of course, but it is a skill set that can be developed. And what’s remarkable is that, you know, in depending on whether you’re getting exclusive leads, or if they’re sending them to three or four agents that you’re sort of competing with. And they certainly are difficult. But I’m curious on how did you find making those calls? These are people that don’t know, like, or trust you, at least for you know, on the first call, right? They don’t know who you are. Maybe they’re open minded, and you sound like a nice enough person. But did you find what was this? Not that you have to give away your secret sauce, but what did you find is the was sort of the, the way that you got through to some of these, and then we can get into fizz bows and expireds? Because to me, those are those are like jumping into a lion’s den without any clothing. And you’re like, please do not attack me. Yeah, because but but to have success in those people do they absolutely do. So just curious if you had any suggestions for what worked for you, and what works for you for dealing with online leads?

Cody Tuma 16:14
Yeah, for the online leads, I would say the single most important thing you can do above all else is call within seconds. As soon as that lead comes in, you press the call button. I mean, that is even if you’re terrible on the phone, the fact that you are getting back to somebody that quickly like I don’t know how many times I’ve called someone within seconds of them pressing the inquire button, and they’re like, Wow, that was really fast. And like, I think that alone shows people that like wow, this, this agent cares about his business, he’s on top of it, and he’s doing everything he can to make sure that he takes care of his clients. So that was the single most important thing that I did that really differentiated me and helped me stand out from maybe some other agents that work online leads. And then another big thing is when I get that lead on the phone is just, you know, finding some commonalities, finding some common ground, and, you know, building that rapport with that lead. And, you know, the my second biggest thing is, you know, once you know, we’ve kind of had a little bit of conversation is to, you know, if they want to look at a house, you know, even if they’re not pre approved, I didn’t ask them if they’re pre approved, I just want to get in front of these people. And I want to build that relationship with them right away. Because I think like being face to face, it’s easy to tell someone no over the phone, and go work with other people if you just only talk to them on the phone. But if you’ve actually shown looked at houses with this person with this agent, and you’ve taken the time with your client and whatnot, I think it’s a lot easier to build that relationship and someone wants to work with you a lot more if you’re, you know, actually getting face to face with them.

D.J. Paris 17:46
We used to have Zillow, in fact, they’re likely coming back and we’re very excited about that. But we had Zillow on the on our chauffeur for about a year, they’d come on every month and talk about best practices with dealing with their leads. And they said the best thing that anybody can do when they, as soon as the you know, for the live transfer leads, they already sort of pre qualified them a little bit on the phone, and then they pass them through with you know, this phone transfer. And then they would always say, just get the appointment scheduled at whatever they want to go see. Don’t ask them about pre approval, just exactly like you were saying, they want something, give that to them. And then you can always circle back to all the things that you need, and you can always cancel the appointment. That’s also the other thing. It’s like, Hey, by the way, oh, you’re not qualified. You know what, let’s let’s cancel it for now. Let’s get your pre approved and we’re going to rebook it or whatever. Yeah. And then I have one more question because to me, I just I love the courage of calling for sale by owners and expired listings, because and maybe I’ve just exaggerated it in my mind that they’re all just like, Screw you. Are you calling me? But I will tell you a funny story. So this just happened two days ago. So our owner has a property in Las Vegas. It’s a single family home. And they’re in the process of moving back to Chicago anyway, so they’re put there he’s and he’s an agent here in Illinois, not in Las Vegas. So he just for fun decided to put his to see what kind of offers he might get because the real estate market in Las Vegas is nuts right now. He decided to put his home for sale by owner think he has a friend that’s a broker out there. So anyway, he just they put it on as a for sale by owner and I go how many phone calls did you get within 24 hours because you know as as for our listeners, if you’re not aware, you can subscribe to services. There’s lots of them that will send you for sale by owners and expireds every single day. So he got put on the list for the next day for all those services. He said he got 34 phone calls from realtors and the Las Vegas market is particularly goofy so I don’t know that that’s representative of everyone in the country is experienced when they use when they go for sale by owner. But I’m curious what was what what works for you calling expireds and fizz bows which these are people who are either actively probably a little pissed off at their last agent if it expired, or there are people who said I don’t want work with an agent at all anyway, on the Fizbo side, so just curious on how you get through to those people.

Cody Tuma 20:05
Yeah, it’s kind of a similar approach to how I work might with my online leads, I want to sit down with them in person like I, I listened to their frustrations, you know, usually I’ll call them up, and they’ll tell me I’m not listing or, you know, they’re just, they’re just very angry because they had such a poor experience with their last stage. And either the last agent didn’t, you know, fulfill the expectations that were promised or, you know, they just dropped the ball somewhere. They’re very frustrated with real estate agents, but I think the statistic is like 80%, or something of expired listings will relist within like, the next 90 days, or six months or something like that, total. And, and so like, what I want to do is I want to be one of the first agents they talk to, or at least be in the group of agents that they talk to. So I just really work on just like, call them up, and you know, tell them, hey, basically, you know, give them my scale, hey knows, go to five for one home sells and notice your property recently went off off the market. You know, I was wondering, you know, what kind of, can you tell me a little bit about what happened, there is the property still for sale, and then just kind of, you know, just talk to them, and then just do whatever I can to just try and get that appointment and to get face to face with those people. And then when I get face to face with them, and then dive into more of the details, and then they really go on and tell you all their agent, blah, blah, blah, and they just really just lay it on. Yeah, and then I just kind of, you know, come from it from like a value out of you know, how I’m going to be different. And, you know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And it’s it’s it really is just, you know, having the resilience to just keep making the calls and to keep going on these appointments, because you’re not going to get every single one of them. But, you know, even if you’re you know, you make 100 calls and you get 10 appointments and five listings, you know, it’s five listings, it’s five listings it didn’t have, and in my market, the average price is 700 grand. So, you know, that’s a pretty decent sized commission check. And so,

D.J. Paris 21:56
yeah, it’s, it’s amazing. And you said something that I just want to sort of reiterate, because it’s quite brilliant, actually, what Cody just said, when when he makes the first phone call, you know, he does get really curious. And I suspect almost nobody says the phrase that you used, which is, Hey, I saw your home just, you know, for example, an expired I saw that went off the market, can you tell me what happened? That’s amazing. Because at that point, those people do you have a story to tell? And and like you were saying, usually it’s like, well, our agent wasn’t very good, or they dropped the ball or blah, blah, blah, whatever. They’re gonna want to vent about it a little bit. But just to say, can you tell me what happened is really an unassuming, disarming question, because you’re not saying, hey, I want your business, hey, what’s the deal? You want to work with an agent, but you know, you’re just like, hey, tell me your story. And I mean, that is a brilliant line, I really want to honor you for that. Because I think that sentence in and of itself is huge. So anyone listening, you’re making those kinds of calls, get get the story, and they’re probably way more willing to share that with you than going up and asking them for the listing. Write that in there. That’s really, really brilliant. I love that. So I just wanted to pinpoint that little phrase, because I think 99% of agents wouldn’t think to ask that.

Cody Tuma 23:15
Yeah, right. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And, you know, if I, I just been so busy with everything else, like I, I like a lot of agents, you know, you got to time block it, you got to put it on the calendar, and you got to set a time that you got to dedicate, you know, you’re gonna make your prospecting calls, your expired your physical calls, you know, every single day or Monday through Friday, or whatever, at a dedicated time period. Because honestly, like, when I sit down, and I dedicate, and I make those calls, I get about one to two appointments per hour. I mean, that’s not bad. So it’s incredible. Incredible, it just, it just takes the time, you know, you just gotta you know, just do it. And you

D.J. Paris 23:51
got to keep calling to Right. Like, if you don’t have a person right away, how long will you pursue them before just giving up entirely?

Cody Tuma 23:59
I’ll usually continue to follow up until they tell me not to.

D.J. Paris 24:04
Brilliant. So you probably have people that you have left a lot of messages for. And yeah, and if they’re annoyed by it, well, they’ll tell you or if they’re, they don’t want to hear from you. Again, they’ll tell you or they’ll just keep banking those those calls or messages and go. And this person is really persistent. And some people, some people really are impressed by that level of of attention and persistence. So anyway, I love that. But I know we want to get on to other things. But I just wanted to really honor You just gave our audience a tremendous amount of value, even in just the first half of this. And then I want to talk about you know, you mentioned sort of time blocking and now I want to switch over to systems and of course talk about offer form.me Tell us about you know the importance of systems and then how you came to develop

Cody Tuma 24:50
offer form. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So really where I first started to systematize everything that I do is when I thought about getting an assistant to help me with my production Um, and it was right after I did 10 million I was like, Well, you know, things are really starting to get busy for me, I probably should get a transaction coordinator, my broker’s, you know, hitting me up all the time saying that there’s things wrong on my paperwork, and I don’t have time to go fix it. I’m just like, not a paperwork person, I don’t like doing the admin stuff. I was like, Alright, it’s time to hire someone out, do the tasks that I don’t want to do, and I don’t have time to do anymore. So that’s when I actually looked at getting a virtual assistant. And I had no idea I’ve never had an employee before, I’ve never had a virtual assistant or anything like that. So when I got this virtual assistant, I pretty much was like, I need to systematize everything that I do basically write it down on every single step step that I do. And I used a project management tool called Trello. And I made sure it would list out every single task that I do from when I get a contract accepted, you know, to open up escrow to make sure earnest monies and some confirmations to buyer. I mean, there’s like 30 steps involved with, you know, with these different tasks, depending on what happens. So I basically just lay it out in the entire task list. And I would record videos for this virtual assistant on all of these different steps and all these things to do. And it just was a game changer for my business. Like I pretty much didn’t have to do any admin stuff. Any any paperwork that was all done by my assistant, and it just made my life so much easier. And I was like, wow, okay, this is this is amazing. And then the real estate boom of the last 18 months, it really started to ramp things up. And I’ve been a single agent up until this point, and I was just, I was working with so many different buyers and whatnot. And what I had started to notice is that I was writing up offers, for I have one client that we wrote 25 offers for this poor family. first time homebuyers before they were actually able to get into a house. And it was like the same questions that I was asking them over and over again, it’s like Alright, guys, what do you guys want to do for purchase price? What do you guys want to do for earnest money? Okay, do you guys want to ask for any personal property on this one? Do you want to do the appraisal gap clause? Do you want to waive the inspection? How many days do you want the inspection contingency to be I mean, there’s so many different data points and information that you need to gather when writing up an offer. Like man, you know, there’s, there’s got to be a better way to do this. And so I basically just went and made a basic form online to gather some of the basic information. And it was just like the basic stuff, the spelling of their name, the address and the purchase price, earnest money and closing date, some really basic questions. And I started sending out this form to my buyers, like, Hey, guys, you know, like, based upon what we talked about, please fill this out. And as soon as I get that filled out, I’ll get writing up the offer. And so I would start sending it out to my buyers. And none of my buyers, like said it was weird. None of my buyers complained about it, it was actually like, positively received. And I was like, okay, yeah, this is really, this is really great. And then it’s really helping me systematize the process, because I can send that form out to them. And then I can be showing other houses. And it was it was great. And then a friend of mine, actually my business partner in offer form is longtime friend of mine, he actually had came over to my place, and he’s asked me about my real estate business him and I’d always talked about starting a business together. And I was telling about kind of how I’m gathering up offer information. And he’s like, that is amazing. Like I have had such a poor experience on the buyer side with my realtor getting my information wrong, because we talked on the phone, or it’s just so much back and forth over texting, you know, upwards of an hour, two hours, there’s just so much back and forth. And he’s like, if this would have existed when I was in the buying process, this would have made my life so much easier. And he’s like, we need to take this. And we need to make a business out of this to help other realtors and other consumers with this. And that’s really where offer form was born. So we took that idea of what I was using in my business and really expanded upon it. And now what offer form is and its current Inception is this beautiful form tool that real estate agents can send to their buyers. And on these forums, it’s got all the questions and stuff that I was mentioning the buyers information, contact info, earnest money, personal property, if they want to have an appraisal gap class, all these different things on there. And what’s really cool and what I know as an agent branding is so important. On this offer form. The buyer or the the agents contact information is in the top right hand corner, it’s got their bio and stuff if they if the buyer were to click the agent’s Profile link there shows them their bio and all that information on there and anytime they can click to call their agent if they have questions on the offer form. And then we’ve incorporated so much education into each of these questions that like on earnest money. For example, we have like a 35 to 45 second animated explainer video explaining what earnest money is. I don’t know how many times it’s probably something I’m asked all the time. What earnest money is at And so what’s super cool though, so we know agents are lazy. So we had offer form designed all these templates to be totally out of the box ready to go, you know, you just send it off and it’s got all this education. But for agents that would rather kind of make it more personalized, I can come in there and on these forms like with earnest money for example, when I’m asking the buyer for earnest money, I can go in there, create a video of me explaining earnest money right there on the form. So I’m, you know, it’s my face me explaining it, you know, hey, here in the central Oregon market, we’re seeing about one to 2% of the purchase price for earnest money. It’s a good faith deposit for the seller, here’s how it functions, here’s how you can get it back. And it just was really personalized conversation explainer of what earnest money is. So as your buyers filling out this form, they’re seeing that they’re like, like, wow, you know, Cody is this expert, he really knows what he’s talking about, you know, in regards to real estate, and it’s super cool, too, because it allows the buyers to fill this out on their own terms, because buyers are super busy, everyone’s super busy nowadays. Because staff, normally you’re just texting back and forth, or you’re on this long call, then it’s like, oh, shoot, I forgot to ask them Do they want the washer and dryer. And so it’s like all this back and forth banter with gathering up this information. Whereas with offer form, they can just fill it all out at their own leisure and be able to input that and get it whenever and when agents are out showing houses. They don’t have to, you know, be back and forth texting either, because they can just get that link from their buyer and get all that information.

D.J. Paris 31:26
So this is really solves a number of problems. One being all the back and forth. We’ll call it more casual communication, phone calls texting email, where oftentimes we are working with your clients or by our clients in particular, although sellers as well. There’s just a lot of different channels of communication you have. Oh, wait, did they text me that? Or did they email it to me? Or did they leave it on my voicemail? And you’re just kind of going back and making sure you have the most current? sort of answer for what’s the purchase? What do you want to offer? What what do you want to offer for, you know, the price, the earnest money, let’s make sure we get all the everything spelled correctly. So I think it solves a lot of that. But it also allows the agent to not have to draw something up from scratch each time. And it also gives I think the buyer the sort of a an accountability factor, so that we’re both on the same page. We know the actual right data. So we’re not worried about old data, or did you know I did they left me a voicemail, but I missed it or something? Can you talk a little bit about what the workflow is? So I’m a buyer’s agent, I take a buyer out see a property, they’re like, let’s put an offer in. So how does it work from there?

Cody Tuma 32:41
Yeah, so how how it would work from there is I would go into my dashboard as a realtor and to offer form, let me log into my account. And then I would see that we have templated forms. So we have like a standard buyer offer form, which is like the standard questions a new buyer form, which might have a little bit more education for someone who’s never bought a house before, then we’ve got another template, which is like a competitive buyer’s offer form. So if you know you’re going to be writing this offer in a super competitive market, it’s going to have tips and tricks on how to get your offer more likely accepted with things you could do shortening, contingencies, waiving contingencies, appraisal, gap clauses, escalation clauses, all these things built into that form with the competitive buyer offer form, which in this market, I mean, it’s it’s insane. I mean, there’s some properties in my market, it’s got 20 offers on it. So you’re writing so many offers out for these clients. You know, being able to have a template like that would be, you know, fantastic. I feel like for agents. And so as soon as you select which template you want to send based upon the scenario, you send it off to him, you can either text it to them, or you can email it to them, and then your buyer gets a notification on their phone or on their email or whatever. And they pull up the form. And they see this beautiful form with your, your picture and your contact information. And then the questions that they need to answer with videos and explainer text within that, and then as soon as the buyer fills all that information out, and then you get a notification as the agent, hey, you know, John and Susie just filled out their offer form. Here’s the summary page, and then you can look at that summary page. Make sure all the information looks good, plug that into your state forms. And then you can also use that as a cover letter, or the listing agent that hey, here’s the summary of our terms. And so that way, the listing agent doesn’t have to go through 55 pages of contract and they see what the terms are right there. Are

D.J. Paris 34:32
you shocked at how many agents don’t use a cover letter, especially in a multiple sort of, you know, buyer offer situation, it’s having a summary page if you do nothing else, everyone listening, create a summary page, make it really easy for the other agent to go okay, I get it and then present it to the client. So what you’ve done to is huge because I just want want to make this point I’m sure everyone’s already figuring this out. But one of the things Cody has in his forms is explained trainers, so he has the option to have information about things like earnest money, different contingencies, so that he doesn’t have to. And not that you wouldn’t educate your clients. Of course you would. But isn’t it great to systematize? Things? That same question you get asked over and over and over and over again, hey, I’ve got a little explainer video here that you can access so that you get and if you have more questions, let me know. But I wanted to create this so that you could watch it, understand it at your leisure, that’s in and of itself, a huge time saver. Aside from all the offer, technology that that existed in filling out the form, which is amazing to just the ability to say, here’s how all of this works, is gotta be just amazing. Because your clients then are directed to do their homework and watch the video and learn about it. And then you can discuss things with them. But you’re not having to have that same exact conversation over and over with, with different buyers.

Cody Tuma 35:54
And what’s amazing too, is I feel like I work with a lot of different buyers from all sorts of different backgrounds, first time homebuyers investors, so on and so forth. And this investor client that I’ve worked with, for for many years, were really close friends. And I was talking about offer for him. He’s like, Oh, you know, that’s really cool. And, you know, I was like, you know, talking about like, earnest money and stuff. And they’re like, well, that’s cool. But you know, I wouldn’t really need that. I know what earnest money is. I was like, Okay, well, can you tell me what earnest money is? He was like, yeah, it’s your down payment. And I’m like, it’s not really your down payment. So I like had to like, really, here’s what it is. So I feel like there’s a lot of like people out there that maybe have bought one or two homes, and they just assume they know what earnest money is. And they’re too prideful to ask the realtor what it is. So maybe when they’re filling out this form, they can just click that little 3545 second video and be like, Wow, okay, that’s actually what earnest money is.

D.J. Paris 36:47
Yeah, and that’s a really good point. There are, everyone thinks, Well, my client knows what it is. They haven’t asked me about it, they must know. Or they Googled it or something. And it’s like, well, a lot of times people are just embarrassed. I truly to this day, we have 800 agents, this is this is a real embarrassing revelation. But I don’t practice real estate myself, I have a license, but I don’t use it. So if you were to ask me to really explain the purpose of earnest money, I would be a I would have, I would have trouble because I would go, I don’t even get why it’s necessary doesn’t really seem to matter, at least in Illinois, like you can still get it back. And it doesn’t really seem to do anything except everybody does it. So if a client asked me that I would stroke so I’m in the business. And so the idea have of having things like that where maybe people are a little embarrassed to ask about it or they feel well I’m you know, especially if you’re buying in a higher price point, maybe there’s a bit of like, I’m feel sort of stupid, asking questions, you have the ability for them to get the answers without them feeling embarrassed to ask. And that in and of itself is awesome, too, because you’re servicing the client without putting them in a position where they’re like, um, I know, this is the fourth house I’ve bought, but I don’t really remember what earnest money is, you know, and again, we don’t we wouldn’t think that was embarrassing, but it might be to that person, they might feel embarrassed. So that’s a huge win right there. Because so much of the buying process, even if you’ve done it over and over again, as as a non agent as just, you know, a buyer and a seller. It’s we don’t remember, you know, outside of being realtors, we don’t remember the process unless you’re just you know, constantly doing it. So I love that you have those explainers. I think that is so cute. Tell us about how does offer form work? So do you charge the agent using it? Is there a is it a subscription? Yeah, is it up for use fee? How does it

Cody Tuma 38:30
work the lap glad you asked. So offer form. And what I knew as an agent going into this is I understand that agents are cheap. And agents are being pay our agents are being hit up with MLS dues, lockbox dues, educational dues, website, news overstays. I mean, so many different fees, I was like, I have to design this in a way that can we can give this away for free. And so that’s what we did with offer form is it’s actually a free product, you can use every function within offer, offer form for free, you can create forms, you can customize forms, edit them, put videos and stuff on them, and all that and it has saved me so much time in my business by using this that and in my team. Literally since we started using this on my team, literally no one else wants to go back to using any other way of gathering this data. They just send out the offer form. So it’s really great. And your audience is probably wondering, Okay, that’s great. What’s the catch? And so the catch is we have it’s like a freemium model. So the only difference between our free model and our premium model is we have referral partners built into our steps. So we’re going to have a question that says, Would you like to get a home warranty? Here’s the benefits of getting a home warranty. And if your client says yes, I’d love to get a home warranty. We get paid by a home warranty company that we’ve partnered with, for selling the home warranty. And then we have another question that says would you like to get In a free quote on homeowners insurance, which the lender is going to require this anyways, so it saves your buyer time by not having to track down their agent. And if they do want to, they can compare the quotes. So we’ve got a couple partners that were able to, you know, get a little bit on the back end. But if your client says no, they don’t want to listen to or they don’t want to hear from a warranty company or don’t want to get a insurance quote, then it’s, it’s the same exact tool, it’s totally free and super powerful.

D.J. Paris 40:27
Wow, that’s amazing. And of course, you have to, you know, make money in this business. And that is a perfectly reasonable, I don’t even want to call the trade off, because most agents don’t even offer warranties to their clients anyway. So I think having affiliate relationships and you know, with some of those providers, which are actually providing good services, to those those buyers, is makes all the sense in the world and really uniquely positions offer for them to be that’s that freemium sort of model. And here’s the good news guys. You can go use this right now just go visit offer form.me. An offer form.me and test it out, use it, try it. I absolutely think it’s brilliant. And the fact that it’s free, you know, with with some of these affiliate deals attached to them, I think is still the deal of a century. Every other software provider I know has subscription fees. And I know that you might even have some premium options as well, that that you’re rolling out. But for now, this is this is how it works. It’s Free For All agents to try and use. And again, I just absolutely think it’s such an incredible value. Not just because it’s, you know, cost effective being free. But it’s also just going to save you and your time, and all the time it takes to to build all of these tasks that are not. I mean, technically that I guess they ultimately result in the commission, but they don’t result in business building activities. So I love it. So what’s the best way that somebody can test offer form out?

Cody Tuma 41:59
Yeah, so we are almost ready for people to start testing it, we’re not quite there yet, we have not officially launched yet. We are officially planning on launching this within the next one to three months, just depending on on how quickly we’re pushing our developers hard to get this thing out the door because we’ve got agents beating down our door basically to try this thing out. And people reaching out even from Canada saying, Wow, this sounds amazing. I want to use this here in Canada, and I and all that. But yes, if somebody wants to get on our beta list and get on our list for when we launch, just go to offer form.me, we’ve got a coming soon button there, you just click that, put your information. And as soon as we’re ready to get you to start using the product, we’re going to send you out an email and I can’t wait for to see all the beautiful forms that you guys create. And what’s really cool is we want this to be a huge big community. So you actually have the ability to share these forms with the offer form community with other users with your team. So if you create a really cool form that you think other agents would benefit from, you can share that with the rest of the outperform community or your team.

D.J. Paris 43:03
I love it. Everyone go visit offer forum.me Get on their mailing list, maybe they’ll open up the beta for you. And of course I here at keeping it real, we’re going to be announcing when it officially drops live. I think this is this is a real game changer in the industry. There are other offer companies, but I don’t think they’re you know, offer, you know, beautiful offer templates, sort of companies, but I don’t think anyone’s doing what you’re doing, which I love, which is really eliminating a lot of the busy work that goes into this and also explaining a lot in along the way to the buyer. So everyone go visit offer forum.me Sign up for their Beta adult keep you up to date with emails about when it’s dropping. And we’re big fans, we couldn’t be happier to be able to expose our audience to this. And everyone should be checking it out. So just hang tight for another month or three. And it’ll be dropping live, but get on their Beta list now. Because it might not be free forever as well. So that’s another good point. So go to offer form.me Sign up for their Beta and for their announcements. Cody, thank you so much for being on our show. This was a really fun conversation. I love people who build things and you are somebody who is doing that. I suspect you have other ideas coming. So we will stay in touch and find out how your business is growing and hopefully our community of listeners really takes takes offer form seriously and starts using it as soon as it goes live. Thank you for for being on our show.

Cody Tuma 44:30
Awesome. Thanks TJ really appreciate it and thanks to all your listeners.

D.J. Paris 44:34
All right guys. Thanks we I gotta run and so does Cody so we will see everybody on the next episode please. Two quick things. Please tell a friend about this episode you every single buddy listen to every single person listening knows another agent that is frustrated with working with buyers. Send them a link to this episode so they can learn how to better to write better offers to make sure that the information is accurate and also to educate their buyers along the way. So then the link to the episode and also, please leave us a review whether you’re listening on Apple podcast, formerly iTunes or Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, Google Play wherever. Let us know what you think of the show. Let us leave us a review that helps our visibility helps us grow. And also lets us know what you think about us. So it helps us improve. So thanks on behalf of the audience, we think Cody first time on behalf of Cody and myself. We also think the audience for supporting our show support offer form.me He’s a good guy. This is a great product. And oh yeah, it’s free. How cool is that? All right, Cody. Thanks so much. I’ll see we’ll see everyone on the next episode.

Cody Tuma 45:35
Awesome. Thanks, guys.

Dan Hellweg with @properties Christie’s International Real Estate tells the beginning of his journey into real estate. Dan discusses how crucial it is to build deep relationship with the clients in order to provide the best service. Next, Dan also discusses the importance of building good relationship with other agents. Dan talks about discipline and how it helps in building a successful career in real estate. Last, Dan discusses the behaviors he adopted in his journey that he attributes to his success.

Please follow Dan in Instagram here.

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

Dan Hellweg can be reached at 312.647.6102

This episode was brought to you by Real Geeks.

D.J. Paris 0:00
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 Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with the newest, youngest superstar we’ve had on the show in a while Dan hallwag. Before we get to Dan, just a couple of quick announcements. One, as always, thank you for continuing to listen and support our show. If you want to keep helping us grow and reach more agents, please tell a friend just think of one other realtor that you know that could benefit from hearing from top producers like Dan and send them a link to this episode. Easiest way is shoot them right over to our website, keeping it real pod.com. Or if they are a podcast listener, just have them pull up whatever podcast app, they’re using Ron all of them, and hit the subscribe button when they find keeping it real. And then also, if you could leave us a review in whatever podcast app you might be using, whether it’s Google Play or Apple podcasts or Stitcher, Pandora, Spotify, etc. Amazon, anywhere you find us. Let us know what you think of the show, even if it’s a one star review. Actually don’t leave us a one star review. No, I’m kidding. Leave us whatever review star that you think is appropriate and really helps us to not only know what our audience thinks about the show and how we can improve, but also helps us with visibility with the different podcast directory engines. So please leave us a review and tell a friend and that’s all we ever ask of you. But now enough about me let’s talk to Dan Halleck. Today on the show we have Dan Helic from App properties Christie’s international real estate here in Chicago. Now Daniel was born raised and currently resides here in Chicago and Dan Holic has a devout passion for the city. Unlike others as a third generation Chicago and with both his father and grandfather working for the city, Dan brings a unique perspective to his business. His approach to real estate incorporates a philosophical component regardless of buying selling or transaction type, which gives the control to his clients all while he guides maneuvers everything else around the deal. The greatest joy comes when he helps someone accomplish something they thought they could never experience, which for many is no surprise buying their first home now. Dan also trains for Iron Man’s he listens to Rick records while sipping whiskey and he enjoys time with friends family and that’s what he does when he’s not helping his clients buy and sell real estate. Please everyone up oh Dan, I apologize. I forgot to grab your Instagram everyone should follow Dan on Instagram which is a life with Dan which is there are periods between that is that correct?

Dan Hellweg 4:15
It’s periods between it but it’s get real with Dan sorry. Whoever this all life is forget that guy it’s get real with

D.J. Paris 4:24
that Screw that guy. Get Real with Dan periods in between we will have a link to his Instagram profile in the show notes. Hopefully I’ll fix that in post production as well. So we won’t sound loud sounds so unprepared. By the way, we’ll pull back the curtain just to see what kind of disaster unfortunately Dan has had to go through on because of us on our end. Not only that, so so we actually tried to record this the other day and we had for the first time in a long long I can’t even remember if it’s ever happened before the power went out in our office when we were about five minutes into the episode and and then We were like, well, what happens if it goes out? We could start it again. But what happens if it goes out again? So we had to reschedule Dan for today. So that was sort of problem number one poor Dan had to, you know, reschedule and he was so nice and sweet about it, then then today, I’m recording another episode earlier, and I get an this urgent message from my producer going, I think I put the wrong time on the schedule. Because I looked at it and I go, I thought it was three. And here, we’re doing a two. And so I go, Oh, my God. And so that happened. And then I just got danced, Instagram wrong. So we’re gonna make it up today, for sure. But we’re really excited. I’m really, really excited to have him on the show. Because Dan, I believe reached out to us. And you know, we love featuring younger, newer talent in the real estate pool. I think sometimes, you know, we over focus here at the show on people who are, who have made it to the very top of the mountain. And then oftentimes, those people, it’s harder for them to even remember that struggle of what it took to get up the mountain. And I think it’s so interesting to hear people who are on that way up, and are still dealing with some of those struggles, but have figured out a way to sort of persevere. And Dan is that guy, and we are so excited to have him. So Dan, welcome to the show. It’s all very long intro, but I did screw up your your Instagram, so I apologize.

Dan Hellweg 6:25
Okay, I feel I feel bad for the other person. They’re probably like, Hey, I got some extra people follow me who are?

D.J. Paris 6:32
Well, I did make Dan feel a little better. And I won’t, I won’t say but we just turned down a very important guest that just to have not not to have Dan on the show. But I told Dan, there’s been all these problems with us recording this episode. But I said, Guess we just turned down. So. So anyway, Dan is very special to us. And we’re grateful to have him. But tell us, Dan, tell us let’s start at the very, very beginning of your sort of journey into real estate, tell us how you got into it, why, and how you got to where you are today?

Dan Hellweg 7:03
Yeah, I have like a couple of variations of talionis. So I want to try to make it the most impactful for people who are listening and that, you know, all too touchy feely. But um, let’s see, I worked for a company that we did kitchen services in colleges. And during that time, I was there for about 2010 to about 2017 2018. And I had the ability to provide or see how I want to put it, I just got to experience a lot of roles, right, I did it from account management, to HR to marketing, and it was a lot of seeing the problem and providing a solution, which you know, at the time, you just kind of take for granted, you think that’s like what people do when they’re in those positions. And very fortunate to have that job. Got to the point where you know, it’s kind of like the seven year itch, I think I just kind of was getting a little burnt out a little spent wanted some new challenges, new things. And, you know, I think I kind of opened it up to the universe to provide that opportunity. And unfortunately came in the way of me being like, Oh, I kind of butt heads with the operations director there at the time. But it’s funny, because everything really does work out. And I’ll tell you more about that later. But um, so you know, it’s day one, then you’re like, hey, what do I want to do? What, Where am I going with this. And my passion has always really been, like marketing in connecting communications. And so it was really day one, I went to a shared office space. And I was like, I need to just keep showing up to something, right? And started working on a few little projects here and there. But I’m like, You know what, there’s, I’m not going to have the dedication to this, like what I know it needs. And I’ve had some, you know, friends in real estate, one of my best friends who we’ve been buddies, since we were little, I mean, we are best friends, you know, through and through. He has always been kind of he’s in he’s been in real estate for about eight years. And, you know, at that point, I mean, it was eight years now. It’s been, what, 1213 years. And he was basically like do real estate man, like, come on. You’ve been saying you’ve been wanting to do real estate. And it has always been on the backburner. He used to take me to different trade events. And you know, I was at guaranteed rates of rooftop parties and meeting people who are you know, top producers now and it was kind of like me now, you know, doing the hustle doing the thing and trying to figure it out. And at that time, it was kind of like, well, I’ll do it eventually. And I think it was a little bit of having an ego back then. And just, you know, I was happy with what I was doing. So it’s you know, happens when it happens. And so anyways, fast forward, I, you know, was like, Okay, this is I think this is the time to do it. Why not? I things were kind of lining up. I think it’d be a cool profession to get into. And, yeah, you know, that was kind of the way I got into it. And now it’s been you know, a few years. So

D.J. Paris 9:55
how did you go about prospecting? I know you’re, you’re from here your family least from here. So you, some people would say, Oh, you have this advantage where you must have this massive sphere of influence, and perhaps you do. But I always like to get into that, because I think even with a huge sphere of influence, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the clients just come calling because you got exactly. So talk a little bit about how you went out and found clients.

Dan Hellweg 10:23
Yeah. So when I when I had the, you know, the piece of paper saying congratulations, you can real estate now. I, I met with a bunch of brokers, right, and managing brokers, from larger companies, to smaller companies to very boutique companies. I just wanted to understand what made a brokerage successful, right. And so I wasn’t what that property is, versus another one. And the very question, one of the questions one of masters like, what’s your, you know, how big is your sphere of influence? I’m, like, a sphere of what and? And I heard that before, but you know, in my mind, it was like, the super close people in your life, right? Surely, like just the ones that I can call up and be like, hey, it’s Dan, what do you got? And I didn’t really, you know, I think at that point, because, you know, where I was at, in my life, it was the communications I was having with these people. It wasn’t from a, you know, quote, unquote, business perspective. So when I got started, it’s it was it was, it’s, it’s like, difficult, right? Because you think you have this identity with people? And I would do the thing is like, and I still do them, and I love doing them even more now. But I write letters to people, I would text people, I, you know, give a book, pick up the phone. I mean, that’s like, the strongest thing nowadays. I mean, that is like, picking up the phone, calling other agents and that kind of stuff, whatever, but picking up the phone, and just being like, Hey, how are you? And, you know, it’s like, I don’t even know what to talk about. I’m just, I was thinking about you, I just wanted to see how you’ve been doing. And, you know, I think when you get into real estate, you hear from everybody, you know, there’s obviously these top producing, you know, coaches out there, you know, five calls a day 10 text messages, and you’re like, I don’t even know, like, you know, this is gonna be one week’s worth of people. But that’s when you’re like, okay, hey, I’m meeting new people. Like, I just started, like, you know, I went to that shared office, you know, I’ve made clients through that, you know, I’ve, you know, done different things with charity, and you help out and you, you know, you, you start off, I feel like, especially for newer agents listen to this. And I see it with newer agents, they do the thing, and I think I did it too, was you do it for a few weeks, and you’re like, Well, I got nothing from this. And you’re like, Okay, and let me step back. Like, why am I doing this? If I’m only trying to touch base with people, because I’m a business? Like, what? Like, why am I doing that, right? And I think you start to evolve a little bit, you know, and then when you do get a few, you know, transactions behind you, and you start to get into the lives of people. And you know, you go out on showings with people, and you just learn, like, Oh, my God, like, life, what happens and you’re like, Oh, my God, like, I need to help people, it’s not even a want anymore, like, this is going on in people’s lives, and I want to be there for them. And it just gets easier than because then when you do make these phone calls, you’re not coming from the lens anymore. Like I want business. It’s a genuine, you know, like, innate thing in you and you want to be able to help them and you know, so yeah, I

D.J. Paris 13:20
think I think we’re talking about intimacy, I think intimacy is really well, realtors have a unique ability to develop these deeper sort of connections with their prospects, their clients, you get to help them make pretty important financial decisions, right? Like buying, selling, investing, possibly renting, there’s a lot of people’s emotion and identity are tied into where they live. And it becomes as, as we know, everyone listening knows just how powerful that experience is, especially when someone gets to buy their first home. I mean, that is truly a remarkable moment. I remember the day I bought my first place. And I’m sure everyone listening who owns a place probably remembers that as well. And real estate agents are uniquely positioned to sort of be a part of that, obviously, you’re part of the transaction, but be part of the emotional component of it and the intimacy of it. And then, you know, people intimacy is really what gets people to want to, you know, you tell other eight title or their friends about you, and it’d be like, Wow, my agent really cares about me, my agent knows about me, my agent calls me and just checks in and sees how I’m doing or reminds me that it’s the, you know, anniversary date of my purchasing this home three years ago or things like that. And I think that is so cool, because all of that stuff. It’s not that you’re also not providing value and information about the housing market and maybe some strategies that they may want to consider. I mean, there’s a skill set that is absolutely needed, but there’s and just understanding what’s going on in the market and the news and Being able to relay that to your prospects and clients. But there’s also this like, like, even my financial advisor doesn’t really have an intimate relationship with me. I mean, they know what my finances look like. But they don’t really know that much. I mean, they know my life, but it’s not the same. They’re not walking through me in their house, they’ve never seen where I live. My account has never seen where I live, they’re super important people, but real estate has, has this sort of built in intimacy and, and empathy. I think that is really cool. And it absolutely binds people together. And that’s why the vast majority of buyers decide that, you know, assuming they had a good experience, they use the same agent over and over and over again. So I didn’t I didn’t mean to go on a rant there. But I just I just touched on that. And I think that’s really, really important.

Dan Hellweg 15:50
Yeah, yeah. And just, you know, on top of that, it’s, we all have things that have occurred in our lives from the moment I mean, even before we’re born, the things that happen to everybody else impacts that person, you know, we’re all just seeing and pushing against each other at the end of the day, right? And, you know, we go out, and I’ve had some people who they’re like, oh, you know, I either have seen a few plays, it’s like, okay, we’ve got to reset, like this. And that’s why I use that term philosophical, because it’s, there’s a deeper thing going on. And it’s, you know, you want to have you want to have emotions, you want to have happy emotions, good emotions, but especially, you know, if anything, like the last year is proven, you know, it’s, it was hard on people, because, you know, so many people I talked to, and they’re like, oh, you know, you must, like real estate must be going great right now. And it’s like, yes, and no, it’s it is, but it’s difficult, because, you know, when you’ve gone out, you know, 20 3040 places. And, you know, I was very, like I looked back at all my numbers, and I couldn’t, I was trying to figure out why I had such a great conversion rate. But it’s again, it’s it’s not even just working with your clients and getting to understand where they’re at what they need all those things. But once you’ve positioned them to that, it’s really connected with that other agent then, right? That’s when you know, you’re making those phone calls. I worked with, you know, and just kind of a quick story I was working with, with this couple, and you know, we saw probably like 30 places almost just kind of mixed around the city. Yeah, you know, nothing that was ever really hitting, but we were like honing in in you know, they’re kind of right. And they’re kind of like, you know, does what we want exist, I’m like it does, I’m like it’s a timing thing. I’m like, you know, the first few, you kind of get that contrast the next few, you kind of really see what you need, you know what you don’t need what you learned about yourself, then you start to hone in, right. And that’s where we’re at, took a little bit longer. And that’s fine. It takes as long as it takes. But of course, the one they went to was just a random open house. And they’re like, Hey, Dan, we went to the open house. And you know, as I asked him all these questions about how many people were there telling me blah, blah, blah. So I called the agent. And I’m just like, hey, so guess what? I usually, you know, get out there with my clients. They just wanted they popped in, and any kind of know where we’re at, because they’re interested. He’s like, Well, we had about 45 showings today. And I was like, Wow, I’m not Yeah, I’m like, not surprised. I used to get offers, we are okay. I’m like, well, here’s what I, here’s what I need to do, I’m like, I need to get in there, I need to get in there with my clients, you know, I need we need to see this place all together. I’m like, however, that means, you know, I’m the type of agent where it’s like, you can’t make it as a client, I’m going on your behalf, we’re gonna, you know, FaceTime, we’re gonna, we’re gonna make this thing happen, right? Because I need to know really what the weight is. So we can position ourselves, you know, and we learned about what the sellers wanted all those conversations with the other agent. And, you know, we want to offer and, you know, it’s knowing those kinds of things. And that’s where that, you know, as you just said, that intimacy, it’s, it’s crazy, because it’s, it’s the deep level of those people. It’s knowing where they’re positioned. It’s, it’s knowing everything, and they’re just, you know, I would, I could sit here and ramble for, you know, days about how deep this goes. But, you know, if you’re on the outside, if you’re not in real estate, or if you don’t have that view, I think it just kind of like on a level, it’s like, oh, it’s somebody who wants to buy a home. It’s like, you know, that’s, you know, it’s everything, but just that so

D.J. Paris 19:03
how important is it for you as the let’s say the buyer’s agent, in this example, having a good relationship with the selling agent, the agent representing the seller, I should say, because it’s, yeah, like, are you able to eat because we know that on paper, these are commissions are called cooperative commissions, which means the two agents are supposed to cooperate to close a transaction. But But again, the sellers right now are sellers, selling agents, listing agents are of course, I always get confused because in Illinois, we call a selling agent, the person who represents the buyer, I always think why don’t we do that? Why don’t we maybe I’m just so we’ll say buyer and seller. So anyway, and working with the listing agent, the seller, how important is it for you to have a good relationship with other agents so that not that they’ll do you any Take our favours, although that certainly could happen. But just understanding what it’s going to take to get this deal closed, understanding what the seller is looking for, you obviously know what the buyers are, how important is it to have that kind of relationship?

Dan Hellweg 20:14
Oh, it’s, it’s, you know, the pinnacle, it’s the highest thing, it’s the most important thing, really. I think, especially in this business, you know, if you want to go on with it, you get an identity, or you get, you know, this thing attached to you. And, you know, it’s I like to be as transparent as possible, right? Of course, you know, this is a game of poker, in a sense, I could be holding pocket aces, you know, the agents around me don’t need to know that. But how I play him, you know, there’s a way to do it. Right. Right. You know, you can’t just go all in and everybody falls, and you’re done. But with the other agent, you know, it’s it’s being on the same page. We’re all from different walks of life as well, you know, we’re all come from different industries. I know agents who just got started during COVID. And they, you know, like we’re talking about, you know, closing, isn’t it like you go to closing as well? Yeah, I always go to closings. And I don’t go it’s like, oh, right, because you start at a time where you couldn’t go, right. So going back to the whole relationship with the agent, knowing who they are, and how they view and interpret real estate’s very critical to me, and even so much that if I feel this, you know, some discomfort from them, like on just a recent if this was actually me being on the listing side, just recently, but I had the agent, you know, he’s got that they won the offer. And he was like, Okay, we’ll take it off the MLS. I’m like, just slow down, like, just, you know, like, you just, we just accept that, like, just, you know, Where’s this coming from? Well, you know, so why is right so quickly, like, he thinks that I was going to entertain other offers, and you know, I got that things happen again, you know, he got the earnest money Summit. I’m just like, you know, get me the sign count, you know, just all the things that you have to have crossing the t’s dotting the i’s. And as soon as he did that, he again, he messaged me, he’s like, Okay, go ahead, like, hurry up, like, take it out. I’m like, Oh, hey, free for a call now. And I call them up. And like, I said, Hey, how, you know, how’s it going? I’m like, Do you have a little bit of time to talk right now? I’m like, we need to make sure on the same page. I’m like, what has happened in the past? You know, has it what’s going on? Right, right. And he pushed back a little bit, and then all of a sudden, he opened up and he’s like, no, like, there have been times am I you know, and I’m like, Well, you know, I don’t want to slip up and say his name. But I’m just like, look, I’m like, I, we have both interests of both of our clients at stake here. And I need to make sure we’re on the same page. Because if something comes up through now, you know, there’s a lot of things that go on between kind of tried to close. And I’m like, if we can’t be on the same page, what are we doing for our clients? And I’m like, I need to know where you’re at. I’m like, I’m not here to change you in any way. But I just need to understand some agents that you worked with, like, I don’t know what happened. But you know, and I can tell you that I will do things a little bit differently until it happens, you don’t know, right? Because, again, it’s interpretation of the individual. But I go into it with that, because I have, you know, the saying that, you know, I tell my clients, I tell everybody, I like to sleep at night, and I know you do too. If I’m gonna go to sleep, you know, thinking like, Hey, this guy is kind of being a little you know, scatterbrained all, we’re all over the place a little worried, what’s going to happen, and then if something happens to the deal does fall apart at some point. And if I did feel that discomfort, how am I supposed to go back to my client and be like, well, I guess the deal died? It’s like, no, like, I you know, we had these conversations, we were on the same page, you know, if something has happened along the way, that’s, that’s understandable that maybe it’s beyond our control, we have to just position ourselves to deal with that. But I know, you know, I’m working hard to make sure I have that reputation with the other agent. And even if they they’re like, you know, whatever, and hang up on me or something, you know, they know, that never happens. But you know, if there was somebody who was like that, great. Now, I know, that’s how they view business too. So I get more information that way, too. And that goes for both sides of the deal, then.

D.J. Paris 23:46
I think that’s really interesting. I wonder how often agents really even view the other the CO broker, you know, as as an ally, in a lot of ways, yes. Yes, you you are representing your client’s best interest, and you’re looking to either get the highest or the lowest price depending on what side you’re on. And you are it is a little bit of a battle in that sense. But it’s a cooperative battle. And both both parties really want to get to the end goal, and developing good relationships with agents, it seems so like, well, doesn’t everyone do that? But a lot of people don’t. And so Dan, I think you did something very emotionally intelligent, which was when the person started having that request about hey, get this off the MLS get this off the MLS. And by the way, for stories like this, if anyone is probably almost all of our listeners are members of labcoat agents on Facebook, it is a perfect place to learn about how agents treat each other because every day there’s probably 30 examples of you’re not going to believe what these other agents said to me, you know, and it’s shocking and it’s like wow, um, playing nice in the sandbox is really a great skill. And I have a quick question for you. This is just a simple question. So you were talking about being on the listing side? How often with and we’re in this situation with, even now I know the mortgage rates just climbed again today, but they’re still crazy low. How often because we have so many people now who can afford things because of low interest rate environments that weren’t able to buy as much property as before. So you get, as you said, a lot of offers a lot of a lot of requests for showings. How often does an agent call you and say, Hey, I already read I’ve read everything on the MLS, I feel like I have a decent sense of this property. But can you give me a couple of key things to mention when I go to the showing, as the buyer’s agent? Like, do you get those kinds of calls? You know, where you’re like, Hey, Dan, helped me sell this home for you. Does that happen a lot or not that office? So

Dan Hellweg 25:57
you know, it’s funny. You know, I think a lot of people when they get a real estate, they do a lot more by side first, right? Sure. And then you start to pick up listings, and I think that just, you know, typical, but as listing I, I get calls, but I think it’s because I was doing, I was doing that I call up agents, you know, and be like, hey, you know, we’re gonna be going to the showing, I either have seen as to, you know, photography, or whatever, you know, this is something, you know, whatever keeps give me a little bit more insights, right? You know, I’m not asking for a lot, maybe if it’s something important to my client. And then it’s like, okay, they always are like, yeah, here’s your something. And I like, you know, if you give silence to people, they’ll usually keep giving you more, and then all of a sudden, it turns into, like, well, also, I just want you to know, the seller or the, you know, this, this seller has actually already moved and you know, they want to sell quicker, it’s like, okay, well, now I’m getting more information that other agents don’t have. But yeah, I think, you know, with my listings, I’ve been surprised because I get like, offers sent to me, and nobody even calls me and I’m like, I don’t know anything about you. Like, could you have least picked up the phone and be like, Hey, Dan, just wanna let you know, I submit an offer. Like, if you have questions, let me know, give me a call. And they’re just like, throwing contracts me in the email. And I’m just kidding. They were like, poorly written. And, you know, it’s like slot when I buy it. You know, I know me, it’s, you know, there’s a lot of phenomenal agents out there. I get, you know, where they pack it up nicely. Everything’s there. But, yeah, I just, I feel like some agents I’m not, you know, getting like that due diligence, and it doesn’t take a lot. And it’s not like you have to do it all the time. But just a quick, you know, hey, can you tell me a little bit more? Is there something about it, you know, my clients, I think they’re gonna really like this place. If we were to come in with an offer, possibly, you know, is there anything I can get them, you know, ready to roll on? So, but,

D.J. Paris 27:41
yeah, conversations can be had, especially right now where you can get really creative and you can talk to the other agent, assuming they’re, they’re available to talk and say things like, hey, what if What about a buyside? Contingency? Oh, what’s that? Well, let’s talk about that. Or, or what about a warranty or whatever, you know, there’s a million different little things you can put in. But that all happens with with conversation. And it is tough when you’re getting, you know, dozens scores of offers, right? But it is also the job, right? So it’s like one of those things where I want to talk about discipline, because you’re an Ironman athlete, and to me, there is no greater display of discipline, physical discipline than the ability to perform in an Ironman competition. I, I have a trainer, a personal trainer, and I work out three times a week for an hour, three times. And that is the only way I will get to the gym. It’s embarrassing, because I spent a fortune. But it works for me, because I do not have that discipline. So I am curious on what what, how the role of discipline has played into, obviously, athletics for you, but also how that’s translated over into your real estate business.

Dan Hellweg 29:02
Yeah, and it’s funny, so the Ironman thing, I did a full Ironman in Cozumel. Last year in November, it was my it was my first one, actually. So by calling him I still even saying like, I’m like an Iron Man, I am because I did the one. But you know, meeting other people there, and it’s very similar to real estate then because it is that it’s a lifestyle, right? It’s not just you don’t, you know, and my goal was to finish. I think, as most people who do an Ironman for the first time, you know, I’ve never even swam over two miles, my wife and I did do 2.4 miles in the ocean. And, like, it’s those things that live in you that right? And so it does create a new level of discipline, it creates a new, you know, ability to process things differently. And, you know, those are the kinds of things that when I signed up for it, I signed up for it about, what eight months before it and with real estate, there would be things like you know, making tough phone calls, or you know, having Long days or going out to, you know, scheduling, you know, and you’re going to do like 14 showings and it’s like, that’s, you know, pulling data on 14 places doing an analysis on 14 places, driving 14 places parking at 14 places working with client, you know, I mean, like, I’m not telling you anything agents don’t know, oh my god, like, it’s it’s not just physically draining, it’s incredibly mentally draining, you know, and those are different clients to you know, it wasn’t I mean, there’s no way I’m going to show one person 14 places we did like which one was that again, but, um, so it’s like they go hand in hand, but it is the ability to recognize that, hey, I have the right you have the right, we all have the right to move at a pace, you know, whether we, you know, hit the throttle a little bit harder, or we can, we can come back a little bit, I think to know, when you need, you know, whether it’s a day in real estate, where you take, you know, good, you know, half half day for yourself, and, you know, you just kind of relax and you read and you know, you move your blocks around and maybe you know, a few blocks on our client related, you know, move to another day, whatever it is, we have that right? And it’s that mindset, you know, it’s always as this, you know, the, you know, term for this, as you know, it’s like the show saying, Hey, we commute, we broadcast the 1% Well, to me, 1% isn’t the agent, it’s a mindset. And it’s that push to stay focused, you know, to, if there’s going to be something that stresses you out to just get it fixed, right, then whatever that might look like, but kicking the can down the road, not going to do anything. And then if you allow those things to keep happening, your mindsets just gonna fall backwards. And that discipline is gonna fall apart in similar to mindset or just similar to Iron Man, you know, you’re just going to start to, you know, to fall apart. So,

D.J. Paris 31:40
how important is it to know your why. And again, let’s relate it to the Iron Man. So the Ironman is, is a goal of sorts. I personally, I’m not a huge fan of goals, versus direction. For me, what works better for me personally, is pushing myself in the right direction consistently. Now, if I want to run an Ironman, I have to do whatever is necessary. Sorry, I shouldn’t say run I park to compete in Iran, I have to do run biking. So I have to do all of those things in a very disciplined way to be able to get to a place where I can then go to Cozumel, and, you know, part and participate in a brutally difficult, you know, physical endurance situation. So, that, but how important is it to know why is that important for your mindset? I’m just kidding. Oh, my God. Yeah, let’s, let’s talk about that.

Dan Hellweg 32:44
Yeah, the y is in Oh, my gosh, like, the Y is your that’s your little power plant. That’s your source of energy. And I’ve been trying over the last probably, you know, a couple of years, especially getting into this, you know, to figure that out. And it’s always I think some people depending on where they’re at in their life, it can be anything, right are wise are all going to be different. And I think for me, so like, my why to go to the Connect, it was, you know, over a decade ago, somewhere when my grandfather passed away, you know, the house that you know, my grandmother lived in, my grandmother passed away a few years before him. I always like dreamt of owning it, like I wanted it. I when I was a little kid and I go over there used to think like, I’m gonna own this one day. But you know, you don’t, like you don’t know the reality of the future. You just see the future as you are right now. And you’re like, everything’s be great. Like, I’m gonna Oh, my grandfather’s house, he’s still gonna be here. It’s like, well, that doesn’t make sense. But, you know, so when he passed away, I ended up buying it from my father, my aunt, who was left to then, and I did not work with an agent at the time. The transaction to me was, I mean, at the time, I’m just like, I’m gonna make this work, I’ll figure it out. But I was really I would not have like, if I would have been out on a search by myself. I would not have bought a home I would not have bought that home. There’s nothing in the whole lineup that made sense on paper, but I was like, I’m gonna make half because I wanted it. It was early on it was important to you. Exactly. It was but the thing was, it was 100% emotional purchase and you know, if you make any decisions with a with a background or with a push of emotion, it’s not going to turn out well usually even if it’s like a super high level emotion because that energy just fades away. It turns off because emotion just like you know, it’s a drug. So throughout that time, you know, just a whole bunch of stuff. You know, I obviously obviously things like his taxes because you know, he has senior freeze on it. And this was like an Edgewater. So you know all of a sudden I’m like getting hit with like these, you know, yearly taxes of like 8000 $9,000 I basically I kind of just taken a box of whatever money I had it just lit on fire and just been there would have been the same thing. I mean, you know, like but so you know, I fast forward you know, a couple years I would just spent on it everything man it maintaining a home by myself, you know, just, it was an emotional drain on me and you know you also If there’s other things that go into it and not to go into but, you know, then I felt like a failure on that. And you know, it just like, obviously then I felt bad. Like, I felt like I let my grandfather down. And then I had to sell and and that’s a whole nother level of emotion. So I saw both ends of the spectrum of emotions in the home, tied to me. So then when I had to sell it, I had to go through all that. And then of course, you know, when I bought it, you know, I didn’t have any agency support. So selling. I’m like, learning how a listing sell a listing agent works for the first time. And then just also to remind you, I bought it like, it’s funny. It’s funny, oh, eight. And I saw that like, and I saw, like, I bought it. Yeah, I bought it in 2008. And then they sold in 2011. So like, oh, yeah, just the worst times real estate to buy at a time and then to sell at a time, you know, that’s when somebody who was buying and they gangbusters in the future, but again, money aside, but um, I’ve looked back at that a lot, and to go to the power of the why it’s changed a lot for me now over the last few years, because I’ve seen it show up and other clients, I’ve had clients are like, Oh, my God, Dad, I need to have this house. And I’m like, Okay, there’s things here like, no, like, you know, and I, I’m, I come to the become the voice of reason for them. Right? Yeah. You know, and all of a sudden, like, Oh, my God, like, you, it’s, I, when I work with clients, I tell them, like, you see things right here, your present, I see the future, I don’t, you know, I’m not selling for right now, that goes for everything that goes for, you know, your referrals for selling with you in the future buying with you in the future. You know, if a parent passes away, I want you to give me that call. I’m not I don’t care about right now. But I also, you know, in, you know, when they’re like, We want to have kids, and I’m like, why are we We’re looking at a two bedroom home and stuff, like, you want to have a family, all that kind of stuff. But the y gets activated at different times, and it charges you and it’s really powerful, because I think it’s for a lot of us, especially as agents, I mean, we’re all probably, you know, our past lives are just, they’re crazy. A lot of us, you know, it’s we’re either spent and burnt out in corporate world, or we had a transaction similar to mine, were just like, I never want anybody else to feel that pain ever again. And so those are the things and you know, when that’s the why, and it could be for whatever, it’s when you really find it, it’s it’s becomes it’s it’s like magical. You know, it’s so hard to explain, but and that’s the thing, like it’s still happening, right. So

D.J. Paris 37:24
yeah, I think I think he just said a lot. And it’s really, really good stuff. Because I think the ability to really be able to bring ideas to your clients based on what you know about them that are outside of the Hey, Dan, can you help me go see this property? Which of course, you will and can do. But this idea of being like, Hey, by the way, you told me you wanted children, we’re looking at two bedrooms. Why are we doing that? That’s, that’s an amazing question to ask somebody, many agents, I think, are afraid to push back or confront and this isn’t a negative, it’s just challenge. They’re their customer, and just say, hey, let’s let’s think about this. What do we really want here? What do we want in three years? What do we want in five years? How long are you going to be here. And you then can also say, let me tell you a story about a decision I made. That ended up being emotional. And it was important that I’m glad I made it, it ended up not really working out. But I want to sort of like you even just sharing what you did with our listeners, is a story that we all can relate to. Now, we all haven’t bought our grandparents home. But we’ve all made decisions like that, that we went past that I really did it for the right reason. But I didn’t really have all the information. And I wish somebody would have guided me through that process. That I think is the cornerstone of a good agent, the ones that can say I see the future here. And it might not line up with what you actually want versus you love the home. We want to put an offer in great, let’s do it. And yes, you have to do that too. But I think you going one step beyond that and said, Well, yes. And this is going to let’s just hold tight for a moment. Let’s really think about this. How long do we want to be here? You know? And is this actually the best fit? Because emotionally it’s way more fun just to make decisions with emotions, right? Yeah, you get excited. You go, this is perfect. Let’s do it. We’re we’re seeing that now in the building I live in to new development. And we’re starting that we’re in the process of converting the ownership from or the board from the, you know, the developer over to the homeowners. And it’s so funny because we’re on this WhatsApp, this long WhatsApp chat of all the owners, and it’s just, and the owners are lovely, wonderful people. This is not a look at any of them, but they’re always talking about what’s wrong and what’s missing and what wasn’t done correctly, which is what owners do. And I mean, look, I do the same thing. And if you were to just read The text, this text thread that is never ending it, you would think, Oh my gosh, like the developer really must have dropped the ball. And it’s like, wow, that everyone’s so unhappy. And then and then you realize, like, emotionally we react to things. And then we want to talk about those things. And oftentimes, it’s like, no, 99% of what the developer did is perfect. It’s really, really great. We’re hyper focusing on this, these issues. And now it it feels like this is everything, like these little issues are the oh my god, are we going to have to sue the developer? Like, who knows? You know, there’s, there’s a lot of those those emotions that go into it. And and I think realtors have this unique ability, if they have the experience, and they’ve been around long enough to just go hang tight here. Here’s how these things usually go. And, and especially first time homebuyers, they’re the most freaked out. And of course they are I mean, I was, and and so I think then you what you’re saying is really important, which is, you know, you’re guiding someone through the process, but you’re also making sure that they that you understand, you can be their sort of support system as they go through this process. And the discipline of your business, I think gives you the freedom because you’re so disciplined. Dan is incredible. I mean, anyone who runs, I keep saying run, anyone who participates in Ironman, triathlons have to be obviously incredibly discipline, there’s just no other way to do it. So Dan has a discipline to his business. And that enables him to then learn continually learn he’s he’s always pushing the ball forward, and enables him to be there for his clients, where he’s not reactive. You’re a proactive, realtor versus reactive. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, what do you think as you’ve been in this business a few years? What are some? What are some of the behaviors that you’ve seen other agents do that were really impressive to you? Or things you’ve adopted into your own practice? Just Just out of curiosity?

Dan Hellweg 42:07
Yeah. Oh, man, there’s a lot and but one of the things is all these like concepts and ideas and practices and beliefs and things like that. It’s something that, you know, since I got into it, when I got into real estate, it was, okay, what do I like about, you know, this agent, what they’re doing, it could be the way that they communicate something, it could be a showing schedule, it could be like, you know, hey, we’re only going to do weekends, whatever. And sometimes I view it like, Okay, how is that beneficial to me? And how is that beneficial to them? You know, whatever. One of the things that it was actually brought up on one of your recent shows, and I think, actually a couple you’ve said it, but you’re like, there’s 46,000 agents in, you know, Chicagoland area, that means I am going up against, you know, you know, 45,999 people. Now, of course, they direct competition, no, but who, how we set that bar it is it’s in because even if I had an area that I’m in, or, you know, my niche of, you know, doing multi units or something like that, if I don’t stay at, you know, you know, my strive to become the top. If I’m not there, then you know, how am I helping the clients? How am I benefiting the industry? How am I helping community? So, you know, to answer that question, like, you know, what kind of things are out there? You know, it’s so it’s doing this, right? It’s telling my story, because I want other agents who are either thinking about getting in real estate, or currently in it, to understand like, you don’t, you don’t just show up and get business like, but you also don’t have to aggressively aggressively go seek it either. You’ve got to be you, one of my, you know, recent, you know, every year I come up with a monitor, I don’t do like resolutions. But I come up with something that’s going to be a nice reminder, last year was be better than any day, you’re having a bad day, or just, you know, situation a little weird to tell yourself be better. Like, what does that mean? In the moment you figure it out? This year, it’s show up, be you, you know, you’ve got to show up. And that’s like me coming to this office every day. I come every day, you know, even if like the day is like, not a ton of business going on a day, maybe I don’t have a lot of showings, maybe I’m not doing a lot of, you know, the act of work for things. But I still am, you know, sending out my Postcards, I’m still making phone calls. I’m still going out, you know, getting coffees or drinks or lunches with people. You got to just keep going. Right. And I think that’s like the biggest thing I’ve learned from agents who are successful. And it’s everybody has the ability to be successful, right? You know, you can’t just sit around at home because you can have a good day, a good day, a good day, then all sudden, a day that you’re just not really feeling it. What are you going to do? You’re going to turn on the TV, you’re going to do things you shouldn’t, you know, no business comes to you just sitting on the couch. So it’s like these constant reminders. And I know it’s kind of like I’ll run around to the answer, but those are the things that I’ve seen in other agents because I watch you know, who’s the ones come to the office, top performers who’s, you know, shocking, right? Like, you know, you got all these crazy Real Estate shows out there. But you know, the girls are selling sunset aren’t going to their home every day, they’re going back to the office and talking and you learn so much like my managing brokers on the other side, I hear him telling stuff. And, of course, none of those details are, you know, if he’s talking about a deal with another agent, like, I don’t even I will never know who it is. But I’m hearing stuff. I’m like, wow, that’s a great idea. Or like, oh, like after remember that? Or like, Oh, my God, like, that’s an interesting situation, you know, and they’ll, you can even go in and be like, Hey, I wasn’t I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, you know, but what’s going on? And like, well, you know, like, we’re dealing with this client who’s doing this and you’re like, oh, wow, like, didn’t know that. You know what I mean? And it doesn’t matter who you are, how long you’ve been in this business, you’re gonna come across something I just like, that’s different. And, you know, that’s where like something again, the pursuit of like, you know, making it like, do you ever really make it? Because even if you touch number one, you got to hold on to that. And what does that mean? You’re, you still gotta be pushing hard. So yeah, that’s, you know, again, kind of the runaround of the answer. But

D.J. Paris 46:00
right before I started this podcast, no, it’s a great answer. When I first started this podcast, I was actually doing a version of this for the agents in our office where I was funny, I was at home, I’m really I was raised in Peoria, Illinois, which is like Central Illinois. And but I I’ve lived in Chicago, pretty much my whole adult life. And so I was in curio and I was going through the paper. This is a million years ago. And I saw a name that I recognized for a realtor advertising. So you know, some property, or maybe all the properties. This is back when Realtors did newspaper ads. And I recognized the last name. And it turned out to be the brother of a girl, I a woman, I knew that I knew when she was in high school. And so I said, Oh, hey, your brother’s seems really successful. I just got into real estate, we have a bunch of agents, would it be okay if I interview him? To ask him about how he became successful? And he’s, she’s goes, Oh, he’d love it in. And so I talked to him. He’s the seventh highest producing Realtor in Peoria at that time. And he’d been in business a while and I said, What’s the secret to your success? And he goes, You know, I show up at the office every day at I don’t know, like, a reasonable hour, like it was eight o’clock, I think, or it wasn’t later than that. But it was around 8am. He goes, there’s 100 Some agents in his office, he goes, I’m the first one here. Or maybe he shows up at 730. I mean, what it wasn’t a crazy early, right wasn’t like a 4am person. Wasn’t he wasn’t that guy. And he, oh, by the way, he sells 100 And like 15 homes a year. So it’s a home every, like, couple of days, basically. And he goes, I show up at you know, 730 or eight, I do my calls, I bet but you know, he had his whole routine. And he goes, I see I start to see agents funnel in around 930. And then they’re out to lunch. And he goes, you know, if you just show up and, and time block and actually have, you know, sort of, you know, your your day scheduled. And you know, your why? Because his whole thing was he goes, You know, I just want to be available for my kids in the afternoons and evenings because he had young kids at the time. And he said, I want to be there for their events. And you know, real estate, oftentimes, you’re not there during those things. So he goes, I’m going to try to do as much as I can during the day so that most nights and weekends that I’m available, and and he goes and I saw 100 and some homes a year and it was just him. And I went I went oh, and he goes, it’s amazing DJ, he goes, the only people that show up at the office are the people that are in his office are the ones that are actually doing a lot of business. And he goes probably not a coincidence. And so certainly not suggesting that everybody listening needs to get an office space. But Dan said something also when he started and he was doing shared office space, and oh, by the way, other people are going to be there too. And that’s a great opportunity to interact and meet people and just go somewhere and do like if you want to train for an Ironman, you have to make plants, right, you have to know where you’re swimming, where you’re biking, where you’re running, probably for a full year, you got to have that figured out. Because at some point your that’s all going to be put to the test. So you can’t just kind of go well, I need to find a pool and I need like it all has to be really, really meticulously thought out. And I think Realtors Realtors oftentimes forget that, that building your business. It doesn’t have to be as intense as an Ironman, but it really is an Ironman. I mean it truly is. I mean, you’re putting that kind of time and dedication and and I mean look, finishing an Ironman is a perfectly amazing goal. Like that’s an incredible goal. And and one that 99.99% of people will never be able to achieve. Dan did it through small consistent action that you know, over a prolonged period of time, eight months, which is by the way, impressive, but But you know, that’s real estate’s kind of the same thing. And if you can just focus on those tasks. And as Dan was saying, the driver is the why the driver is, hey, I want to do this for these reasons, you know, for Mike Amelie for myself for financial reasons for freedom for whatever, whatever those reasons are, you can lock into that every morning and then the day’s kind of exciting. And then realizing that oh yeah, now I gotta go, you know, swim for miles or, you know, or whatever it is, it’s like, that’s the part that sort of sucks, but that’s what’s gonna get me to the goal. So the part that sort of sucks is actually, you know, nobody really wants to lift weights. Nobody really wants to pick up the phone and call 50 people, but it’s a good idea. And I remember just and Dan with picking up the phone. And just because I just mentioned it, I know you’re a big, I feel like nobody picks up the phone anymore. So we talk a little bit about the importance of of the phone just as a really practical tool for for our listeners.

Dan Hellweg 50:49
Yeah. Oh my god, it’s one of my differentiators. When people like ask, you know, what’s, what’s something that’s different from other agents? I’m like, I pick up the phone, I use the phone. You know, it’s something that when you talk to other agents, you know, it’s funny, because you get some other agents like, Oh, when I call people they don’t answer. It’s like, Have you ever thought they could be at showings and meetings, just busy eating lunch, they’ll call you back? You know, hey, this is the you know, leave a quick voicemail. You know, it’s, it’s Dan, I’m gonna you know what I usually do, too, for some people, if you know, you know that they’re going to be a little apprehensive using phone. It’s like, hey, you know, Dan, just wanted to discuss whatever. Give me a call any chance? Otherwise, I’ll give you another call. Maybe later at three o’clock? You know? Yeah. So now it’s like, if they hate the phone, like crap, this guy’s gonna call again, I want to just call. But you know, and then you get them on the phone, whatever it is, if it’s a situation, if it’s a deal, if it’s just making a phone call with somebody, you know, it’s usually you start talking a little bit, you get these people who’ll be like, I only have a couple minutes, I’m like, you probably have more if you answer that means you have the time, like, and I respect that. But then they start going on and rambling. And you know, they’re telling their whole life story, and you get off the phone, and you’re just like, well, now I know too much information. And that goes for anything. It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s like me right now, when you ask me questions, I just keep going until basically stop me, but that’s what we do. Yeah. It’s, you know, and that’s something I value, especially I think, as Israel tours, you know, we, we got to remember to listen. And when you call somebody and you pick up the phone, they’re giving you something they’re giving you first of all, they’re giving you time, they’re giving you information, they’re giving you something, and you have to appreciate that, you know, you don’t get that from, you know, you could send text messages, that’s great. There’s nothing wrong with that either. But then you’re getting in this dialogue, you’re getting this back and forth, you know, and you’re losing the emotion, you’re losing the value, people will set their phones back down. And, you know, they write it and they forget to respond, because now it’s not fresh anymore. It’s stuff like that. So you know, there’s another person that an agent choose, you know, and just, she was a little bit younger, and that’s fine. But she was asking, like 10 million questions, their email, and just like, just pick up the phone, you know, and then she like, we’re gonna write an offer. And I’m, like, awesome. And then during it, she’s asking more questions. I’m just like, Oh, my God, I’m like, you’re one of those people that are gonna say, you’re super busy. But you’re super busy, because you’re making things so much more difficult for yourself. You know, so, the phone, the phone is definitely powerful. And, you know, I also have some clients where it’s like, you know, you call them and they’ll never answer. So, couple text messages here and there, whatever. And I that’s fine, too. But, you know, I’m not, I also don’t want to put people in a position of discomfort for things that they don’t enjoy. But yeah, it’s, it’s powerful. So if you’re, if you’re thinking, you know, if you’re listening to this, and you’re like, Well, I don’t like picking it up. It’s like, just pick it up, make it start getting comfortable with it, call your best friend and start getting comfortable talking to people on the phone again. So

D.J. Paris 53:49
yeah, it’s becoming a bit of a lost art. I mean, I am shocked at how few phone calls I get throughout the year other than from my closest friends. I almost never get them from service providers, accountant, financial advisor, you know, insurance, person, realtor, I really don’t, you really don’t get many calls anymore. And I think it’s a really easy way to build intimacy, I think it’s harder to build intimacy on on text. It certainly can be done and there are people that prefer it that way. But, but I think, you know, going the extra mile picking up the phone demonstrates a level of care. That is really, really important. And obviously part of the secret of Dan’s successes, but Dan’s an Iron Man, you know, participant This is a guy who knows that if you do all these daily actions, you can achieve some really big things and and he’s doing that I really encourage everyone listening to follow Dan on Instagram. And that is get real with Dan. And there’s periods between that so let’s get period real period with period Dan. We’ll put that link in our show notes. The podcast episode. have notes, but get real real with Dan on Instagram, you can learn more about what Dan’s doing. Dan also goes to the office every day. I think that is just an amazing thing. Dan, this has been a great episode. I really definitely want to have you back on and we can talk more about. Dan’s just crushing it isn’t is just a few years, and he’s really doing well. He’s got great attitude. We absolutely everyone listening knows he is on the way up. So Dan, we thank you so much for your your willingness to share, be vulnerable. Also tell us some great suggestions about how agents can stay focused and stay busy, and really build better relationships with their with their clients. And so on behalf of the audience, we want to thank you for taking time, two different times now, because if you’re just probably not tuning in now, but Dan, and I actually attempted to record this a few days ago, we had a power surge. So Dan is a super easygoing, great guy. And he’s going to be a lot of fun to watch as he continues to, you know, go up that mountain of success in real estate. So on behalf of the audience, we thank you for being so, so diligent with us, and a pleasure sharing with our audience. And then also, on behalf of Dan and myself, we want to thank the audience for listening, participating. And also please tell a friend, that’s the best way you can help our show continue to persevere, is by letting other agents know about this episode. So I guarantee you know an agent that could benefit from hearing from somebody like Dan, so please send them a link to this episode. And then also leave us a review whatever podcast system or delivery system, you might be listening to us on Apple podcast, iTunes, Google, play, Spotify, Stitcher, Pandora, etc. Let us know what you think of the show that really helps us improve and also tells us what you think. And gets us more visibility. So we appreciate the help there. Dan, really great chatting with you. Thank you so much. And we will see everybody on the next episode.

Dan Hellweg 56:54
Yeah. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

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

In this episode Ryan talks about creative ideas how to handle low inventory and take care of your buyers in the process. Ryan also discusses the importance of building relationships with other agents in your area. Next, Ryan discusses the rates and the impact it may have in the behavior of clients. Ryan and D.J. discuss the power of direct mail and why agents should not ignore it.

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 was brought to you by Real Geeks.

D.J. Paris 0:00
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 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 then today is our monthly series called coaching moments with Ryan de April. Now if you’re not familiar with Ryan, or if you’re just new to our show, Ryan comes on every month to give our listeners and our viewers a coaching moment and a coaching session. But let me tell you more about Ryan Ryan de April is a progressive thought leader focused on providing for his agents and his staff at depot properties. His strengths are his motivational skills, his coaching style, and his dedication to training. He has 14 offices throughout Chicagoland and also has offices in Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Florida, with hundreds and hundreds of top producers on table properties as a coaching company with eight strategic coaches who work week in and week out with every agent individually focused on business planning, coaching, and accountability. Now, if you’d like to take your career to the next level, or if you’re just not getting the attention you need from your current firm, check out D APR properties, visit D APR properties.com. There’ll be a link in the show notes right there. Welcome once again, Ryan.

Ryan D’Aprile 2:33
Hey, CJ, good to be back. Good to see you,

D.J. Paris 2:34
buddy. Good to see you as well. So I know today we were thinking of sort of, you know, popcorn style, just coming up with some topics and some struggles that our listeners kind of report to us. And here’s what here’s what I’m dealing with. And the biggest one probably no surprise, is a more urgent sort of challenge. And it’s been an urgent challenge for a while for brokers. Or I should say realtors are called different things in different states, our agents are struggling with which is around working with buyers with low or lower or you know, decreased inventory and sort of having to manage the expectations for their buyers, and sort of just keep them happy with a process that you know could up could be very frustrating. So I’m curious on what you’re talking to your agents about and any suggestions you have for people dealing with us?

Ryan D’Aprile 3:28
Sure, absolutely. Yeah. So you know, it is it’s interesting, and every market has its own challenges. This one being the inventory. A lot of times I’ve I’ve coached people in the business and, and really emphasize, you know, emotional intelligence is probably one of the most important things that we have to face. But however, in a market like this, you really got to get creative. You really got to get into the weeds and help people find their mentor, you have to get the dialogue with them, you have to learn a dialogue with the entire network. There are some people that are thinking about moving, but they’re afraid to move, because there’s no inventory. So you got to educate, you got to educate your sellers on by side contingencies. Just like we have home sale contingencies. There are buyside contingencies out there, they work great. They can help kind of break up the jam. The logjam that we’re experiencing in our in our micro economies or micro markets a week or two of us working and and and then you know, spreading the word with the buyers you have within their marketplace, and then learning how to communicate with the other brokers in the market instead or not with your firms. You know, I’ve always I’ve said this over and over again. I think our industry is so interesting. I really don’t feel real estate agents compete with each other I think brokerages do and just a pure recruiting game. I mean, sure agents can call you know, six times a day from a managing broker down The Street in the office my Jesus Christ called your own agent that much. You don’t have to call our agents. It’s good point. Yeah, it’s like we are you there manager broker or are you just managing broker because all you’re doing is calling on them all the time. I’m like it’s so unproductive. But the point of my comment was, is that real estate agents don’t compete with each other brokerages do through recruiting. So as real estate agents are communicating with other realtors, that the other companies and you know, unless for that one, you know, those multi marketing real estate companies are going to try to recruit you all times. Just it’s exhausting. But I mean, literally speak with them and find out what’s going on in their marketplace. Do they have any listings there that are not yet on the market? You know, I’m also going to talk a little bit about analysis or talk about the inventory is this Zen list thing? Um, since since we’re on this topic, is it okay, for sure.

D.J. Paris 5:53
No, no, I think people tune in to hear any tips. So if he does a good job,

Ryan D’Aprile 6:00
I mean, then this gets me scratching my head. You know, it’s, it’s basically taking the private network in Illinois and opening up the public market. Well, the reason you have Zen list or excuse me, the reason why you have the private market is that the MLS came together to say some people do not want their homes blasted all over the public markets. They don’t want their home on Zillow, Redfin realtor.com, while they want to prepare their home for sale, and then all of a sudden, you know, real estate agents complain about Zillow, which I don’t think is the enemy, that their listings are out there and that they’re, you know, selling advertising space next to their own Zillow leads. And then they then at the same time to say, hey, can we get our properties on sand list? Well, it’s the exact same thing that you’re doing, you guys, you’re taking your inventory, you’re throwing out a public market, what your clients have asked you, Matt, to do. And so you know, I’m not I scratch my head, on the motivation for Zen less, I really think sometimes the private network helps us lead generate. And I think you put a pool that away from you, when if you are meeting, somebody said an open house or whatnot, you want to try to show them something else that’s on there, that’s just not on the market ever, where you can look to the private network, say, hey, there’s a property at 123 Main Street. But you know, you know, agents going to the brokers and demanding Senlis, you’re taking that tool away from an agent. Now that’s more on the lead conversion side of things. One, you know, when inventory is not an issue, so I didn’t mean to go down a rabbit hole on that. But, you know, this is where you pick up the phone, and you call the other agents or other companies and say, What do you not have on the market, and I’m not referring to the private network, what’s coming up what’s coming on. And then you got to go and work with your own network, right, and find out who wants to move what’s hesitant to move and start getting some inventory on there, you guys educate your sellers, on by side contingencies and how they can come into play. Then what comes next, which usually comes first is the emotional intelligence side of it, thanks. And just let everybody know, this too, will pass, this too will pass enough debt, the other expression, it’s going to get harder before it gets easier, rates are going to start going up. And as rates go up, you’re gonna see a mad rush of more buyers wanting to get in before it gets more expensive, all in all, making pressure, even greater and, and probably inventory even more sparse than it is already. So you know, we got some interesting times ahead of us, it’s all it will all pass. But there are many things you can do. There are many things you can do as an agent, representing buyers, right. to, to, to, to weed out, not weed out to bring the top some inventory that’s out there. But you gotta roll up your sleeves, maybe lead gen goes on the back burner for a little bit, not a big fan of that. I call that lead gen live flow. And you get down to the nitty gritty and you start really working your database, you work your database of other realtors out there. And you start communicating to people let even your friends and family know you’ve got inventory needs anybody that they know, to call you immediately.

D.J. Paris 9:21
I heard a guy, one of our guests recently gave an idea that it’s a very simple idea, but I’ve never heard it being said on the for the buy side. So I’m curious to get your opinion on it, which was if you have a client that puts an offer on a property and loses, you know, loses the deal or it sold before they can really put an offer and if it’s in a you know, maybe a more residential sort of rural style area where there isn’t a million homes right there. You know, starting some sort of campaign to reach out to those other homeowners whose homes are not listed for sale and say hey, just to let you know my client just was looking for a home in this neighborhood, put an offer and it didn’t get accepted or what you know, whatever sold quick We, so we just wanted to reach out and say my client would love a home just like yours. If you’re ever interested in exploring the option to sell it, let me know because I have an interested buyer. And I thought, boy, that is such an interesting idea. And

Ryan D’Aprile 10:13
that’s exactly what people should be doing it. But why would you say just a rural market? Why not even in, say, a three block radius of a city?

D.J. Paris 10:20
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, doesn’t matter whether you’re rural or urban, just pick an area nearby. And the same street, same block wherever you you shouldn’t

Ryan D’Aprile 10:30
be doing that if your client lost out on multiple offers. And while they’re in the negotiation process, you should be doing a direct mail campaign. And and that one and done I’d do it probably, I do it until the inventory showed up. I do probably once every two weeks, until something pops in the MLS or somebody called

D.J. Paris 10:51
me. I’d be doing right. This is what a lot of times I know investors do to try to find, especially like multifamily properties that oftentimes the MLS is they send out letters saying, hey, I want to buy your building. If you’re interested in selling, let me know and you go, Well, does that work? And it’s like, well, if it worked, you know, one half of 1% of the time, that’s a pretty amazing return on your investment.

Ryan D’Aprile 11:18
I think I think it even works more than that. And I think it is, but just so we’re not mincing words and our listeners here you need to be doing that. I mean, you having a list of buyers, and there’ll be no inventory and you’re not taking those actions, you know, you need to check yourself and what you’re doing, you’re out of your mind. You know, if you’re not campaigning, I think of some of our markets, you know, lakefront markets of ours, right? Somebody’s looking for a lakefront home, and there’s literally no lakefront homes for sale, you should be mailing every lakefront homeowner, every two to three weeks, I have a buyer, here’s the price point they want to stay under, please call me if you’re serious, this is not a solicitation to list your home, this is somebody that I’m representing that needs to buy a home, please call me very, you know, keep it simple, stupid, ship shit, don’t get too crazy on what the marketing material looks like, make sure your statement your sentence is the sick is what they see. And then be consistent and get that thing out every two to three weeks for the next 12 months, until your buyer gets the property.

D.J. Paris 12:32
And my advice to is if you’re sending those messages, because they will be perceived as possibly as as spam or they send this to everyone, at least sign it, you know, with your if you can, if it’s not, you know, if it’s not, if it’s doable, sign it with a pen, so that at least people think it’s it’s, it’s more personalized, because but it is a great idea. And Ryan said it you know, look, if you hit 100 homes, every you know, twice a month nearby, someone’s gonna reach out to you and just say, hey, is this for real? Do you really have some you know, or something, you’re going to get a conversation or two out of it at very least.

Ryan D’Aprile 13:12
Absolutely, it will work. But it is surprising. I see from a distance agents with a ton of buyer inventory, and they’re not doing the steps. It’s to you know, get it going.

D.J. Paris 13:25
Like I said, I just want to add one more thing too when you said to communicate with other brokers become friendly with other agents say, Hey, we’re all dealing with, with, you know, inventory shortages, let’s let’s help each other when we have a property, let everyone know what’s coming up. And, and I was I know, this is a great opportunity to one of the one of the advantages of working with one of the big, big large firms in your local area, whether you work there or not, is that oftentimes they have their own internal list. And so this might not be on the official private listing network, if they’re if your community has one, or it might just be internal to the company. And I know some of the bigger companies here in Chicago do have those. And so this is a great reason to become, you know, friendly with some of those people at those firms and say, Hey, I got somebody. Yeah,

Ryan D’Aprile 14:12
we have Yep, absolutely. of 600 agents, and we absolutely have that internal list that we have. However, at the same time, when an agent circulates I got a buyer three bedrooms, two bathrooms, this price point, our managing brokers have a list of all the agents at the other firms and then they will actually mail email on behalf of our agent to all those other agents. Do you have a buyer we’re looking at? So go to your managing broker. Yeah, and we all have those and say, Can you can you help me? I have this inventory, can you email all the agents in this community? And they should be able to we can facilitate that, you know, in 10 minutes time, they should be able to do the same thing. So

D.J. Paris 14:54
yeah, it absolutely and boy, those are some great creative ideas to handle. low inventory. All right, one more thing about rates going up, which I don’t think is is a huge challenge. The reason I’m bringing it up because rates are still amazingly low. The challenge is that this is what oftentimes, buyers and sellers, but in particular buyers are seeing come across their news feed. We know this is making news, the Fed might be raising rates two to three times a year, rates are already going up in anticipation of that. Not that I think it’s something that agents need to be hyper focused on the input implications of it, but more about, oh, that’s what my clients reading, I need to have a response to that in case it comes up, or I need to proactively educate my clients on what this means. I’m curious on on what you would say to agents who are, you know, are hearing those rumblings from their clients?

Ryan D’Aprile 15:48
About rates going up? And what Yeah, I think you know, okay, so with rates increasing, it makes me think about, you know, what is it? What is an element, a one of many, what’s one of many elements that causes a recession, or a boom market, and that is consumer confidence. And we are, you know, we are, we’re creatures, we’re hertz, right, we run in hertz, that’s how we, it’s how we, we as animals, right, we just run in hertz, and like, we’re like a packet cells. And so what you have this, this, this herd impact, you know, when when things happen? So you know, I remember the, the last recession, right, from the Great Recession, right, where all of a sudden gas prices were like at five bucks, that was the beginning of it, right? And then, and then all sudden, the banks started collapsing, consumer confidence, every play pulls back, and now you’re in a recession, the same exact thing happens when rates increasing, you’re going to have a panic amongst buyers, and in I truly do not think there’s any reason to panic, because, you know, I don’t know, let’s just make up a rate, right? Because I’m driving here, and I kind of keep my eyes on the road and thinking, but let’s 3% 375 really what the hell’s the difference? Right? I get it. Really, really, what is it but a couple 100 bucks a

D.J. Paris 17:11
month on a mortgage is about all it is. Yeah,

Ryan D’Aprile 17:13
if that’s right, yeah. And but it’s going to create, it’s going to create a surge of activity of buyers trying to get out. Now, what you need to do, is you really need to step back. And if you’re, like, 95% of the real estate agents out there, you’re working. And when I say real estate agents, I mean, residential real estate agents, you’re working as somebody who’s buying a home because they want to use the home, they want to live in home, it’s not an investor. Granted, we have investor clients, and it’s important to have investor clients, I’m not talking to that client right now. I’m talking to the person who’s buying the home for, you know, for their own use the highest and best use of it, which is, you know, going to be you know, you know, for their plight enjoyment for to raise their family or living there. And, you know, being in the city that they want to be for the entertainment, but they use it as their home. You got to then have your conversation around the why, and why are they buying it? And start talking about the why all this other stuff? Is my rate going to be three and a quarter? 3675? What’s it going to do? Is this a bubble? Are we going to have a correction? A lot of that goes to the wayside because somebody’s why the reason why they’re buying a home far outweighs any, you know, monetary impact it might have.

D.J. Paris 18:44
I think that’s I think that’s absolutely true. Is is getting your client away from the news of the of the moment, which oftentimes not not to be little it because it is something that to pay attention to, and to have a response to, but bringing them back to the why because you’re right. Money. Oftentimes cost takes a backseat to to you know, whatever emotion they’ve linked to that particular purpose. Yeah,

Ryan D’Aprile 19:10
yeah. I stopped my train of thought because I’m on 294 South driving from Michigan back to Chicago, and I got cut off and I just want to save my life there for a second. So sorry, it’s

D.J. Paris 19:22
perfectly fine. Save your life. That’s more important, for sure.

Ryan D’Aprile 19:26
Problem of doing these podcasts while Driving driving in Chicago. But yeah, so it does, you know, the money does take a bit a bad seat. You know, one of the expressions I’ve heard I love is that every one of us here has more money than we have time. And it’s something we got to remember, you have to remember that when you’re trying to hold your value. I mean, look, we work our asses off. We work so hard, it’s real estate agents. You really need to hold your line and get what you’re worth. There are gonna be people that are willing to work for Less than last and, and whatnot, but you know what, they’re the ones that get burnt out and leave the business because you’re, you’re making very little money at it. And, you know, we’ve come from a time where it’s somewhat of a race to the bottom look, the real estate brokerages themselves have been in a race to the bottom. Right. And at some point, that’s got to change. Because you go into business to make a living, you don’t go into business to work for free. Right. And so you got to remember that everybody has more money, the time, you can make more money, you can’t make more time period and the story, there’s nothing to discuss. And so, you know, what is the real value that you bring in to the transaction? One of the is bringing clarity to that, like, look, what is your decision really being based on being based on money? Or is it being based on time? Because two years from now, maybe rates all they think but two years is gone? You never get that two years back? That’s coming full circle, why are we doing this again? Oh, we’re doing this out? What about two years from now, when those two years have passed? You know, it’s, it’s incredibly important to keep that in mind. And that’s why this is not a commodity, our business, it’s not people have tried to commoditize it. It’s a service. And it’s, you know, it’s a lot of work. And it’s a great service. And one of the biggest parts that services bring in emotional intelligence, and stepping back and high level consulting, and helping somebody walk through why they’re doing what they’re doing. And then put it in perspective. You know, the impact of each one of the decisions being a to buy now, to wait. Example, I had a client. A mortgage lender, actually not at my mortgage company from another mortgage company, gray skies, but this mortgage company for 20 plus years and was buying a three flat in Chicago, and working with one of my agents, and I’m just kind of guiding him through it. And the three flat, he was going to move into turn into a duplex down and keep one rental above was going for like 100 something $1,000 over asking. Wow. And I talked about the transaction went Dude, what are you doing? You got to find where you are, you already got multiple properties. You’re buying this for a different reason. And it his wife really appreciated it. And I won’t get into the nuances of the deal. And I’m willing to overpay for property, because it’s what I want. But when we walked through his why it just didn’t make sense for them at the time. Yeah, I firstly overpaid for property happily overpaid, because I wanted that property for a particular reason. And that 50 to $70,000, more or less pain didn’t matter. Compared to my why that’s a service you got to provide as real estate agents don’t ever forget it. And it’s a gigantic guy, I didn’t get paid for that transaction. But I will get paid over and over and over again. Because of the level of service, the motional intelligence that brought to the deal. And the brand like what that does for me, as a consultant with those with that family, and how that ripple effect has within their community and their network.

D.J. Paris 23:31
Yeah, I want to I want to just mention this idea of emotional or rather tying, especially with with a purchase, I certainly can be done with it with on the sell side as well. But but on the buy side, we’re so lucky in this industry to have the home be such an emotional now as you were talking more about possibly even an investment decision. But but just even in a primary residence scenario, or someone’s buying the home, they’re going to live in with their family or just themselves. It is an incredibly emotionally exhausting, but also rewarding experience for that buyer. If they get the property they want to put price that they’re into. And we’re so lucky that we get to even the industry we’re in sort of touches on primal, emotional needs. Whereas like my accountant, who’s also you know, a service provider and a very important one to me, it doesn’t have as much juice, right? She doesn’t get to say tell me about your why it’s like well, I want to stay out of jail. I want to make sure that I don’t get audited. Those are my only two why’s for about paying taxes right I want to pay as little as possible without going to jail. And so of course like it’s just doesn’t have as much juice it there’s some fear factors there of like making sure I do everything correctly, but it works kind of the opposite way with with with things like you know, buying a home financial advisors also can get into wives, right, they could go let’s talk about retirements, talk about what that means to you. So other than financial advisors, and you know, realtors, those are the two big ones right like Like, maybe car salesman, I guess could could possibly, you know, talk about why things. But I think we’re so lucky, because it’s built into the transaction, all you have to do as an agent, is make sure that you talk about it with your client, because it’s already there, you don’t have to explain to them, you know, you just have to extract it out of them. And then, like you were saying, come back to that time and time again, when little issues come up in the transaction. Like, let’s go back to our why that’s really, really important.

Ryan D’Aprile 25:26
Yeah, and that’s one reason why, you know, real estate agents, you know, and there are there are books out there that talk about this, and I just completely disagree with that. Real estate agents to also I don’t feel have sellable businesses. Because of that, you’re not going to sell your book of business to another real estate agent, if you’re a real estate agent, you think you’re gonna take over somebody’s book of business, really go into this with your eyes wide open. Because, you know, if there’s an that connect, that’s why I talked about the lifelong auto flow, there’s not a personal connection, they’re going to go to somebody that they have a connection with. And so just throwing that out there, that’s why I just don’t really feel that a real estate business is a sellable business. Even a even a transferable business. Yeah, you know, I got, you know, young agents going to go join somebody’s team, because that person is going to, quote unquote, retire in a couple of years. Great. But guess what, their networks not going to work with you? You’re gonna do work for them for a few years, but their networks not going to work with you. It doesn’t work that way.

D.J. Paris 26:30
Yeah, unless the real estate industry ever figured out how to create a fee based model, where you earn a percentage, like financial advisors do over assets under management, or some sort of way to get paid every year on transactions, which they have not figured out a way to do that yet. Yeah, it’s

Ryan D’Aprile 26:48
right. And it won’t, it’s not annuity, it’s not like insurance or anything else. Or it’s, you know, it’s a one time it happens every seven to 10 years. And it is, you know, here’s the good thing. All right, for all of you listening here, all the all the all the PE firms and the companies that are publicly traded that I’ve tried to take the real estate agent out of it. I mean, you know, they’re, they’re not successful, they haven’t made money, and because of the emotional intelligence involved in it, that’s a great thing. And then your job is so secure, if you focus on what you write, and that’s the relationship. The double edged sword of that is, it’s not transferable, it’s not sellable. And guess what, don’t worry about it, we make gobs of money, be smart invest, buy real estate, yourself, have a good financial Player, Player and financial advisor, you know, put your money into a self directed 401 K or SEP IRA put up to $50,000 a year, be smart Build Your, your your net worth and build it in real estate and the equities and, and whatnot. But anyways, I don’t want to get to digest so many people, I, I’ve heard this time and time again, I do my best self, you’re not selling anything, it’s you can’t sell a real estate book or business. I’m convinced of it. And if anybody tries to convince me otherwise, it’s it’s I don’t know, I haven’t seen proof yet.

D.J. Paris 28:05
We talk about it a lot here at our firm too. We have a just under 800. Brokers, and you’d think and they pay us monthly fees and all of that. Yet, if we left, the management team and the owner owners all left and then a new crew came in. There’s other there’s other players in the space that have a very similar model to ours, right? It’s not, we have really nothing proprietary. Now maybe there just be some loyalty about or not even loyalty, it might just be I don’t want to move. So maybe agents wouldn’t move. But but our business even as a brokerage, it’s tough to sell a brokerage business, because agents are independent contractors, they can all leave at any moment, unless you have some sort of thing that prevents them from doing that which most firms don’t. So yeah, this idea that I’m going to build up a business and sell it is yeah, it’s maybe maybe not going to happen for an individual agent or even a brokerage. But the good news is we’re so well compensated along the way that a lot of sales positions, you’re not that well compensated, but you are in real estate, I feel and so you just have to

Ryan D’Aprile 29:07
Yeah, even even even the public markets don’t value brokerages, mortgage and real estate because of the people factor and how easy it is for people to leave. And you know, and then you got to see these companies rocket, right. It’s a mortgage company, sad technology company, but they’ll say they’re a technology competence company, you know, you know, compass and whatnot, they’re they’re trying to say they’re technology companies they all even call it time is trying to say it’s a technology company, right? It’s it’s because those are the companies are getting the big tech valuations. But it’s it’s not a tech company. We’re a service company, and there’s, you know, a double edged sword and that’s that’s just one of them. So not to and I’m not saying anything negative about composite great company, but in iPod $19 and cents a box and the reason being is it’s not a tech firm. It’s a real estate brokerage. It’s no different than real OG. Yeah, and I And the public markets are are saying that, yeah. And also, I think caliber or whatnot went public and they’re much below their IPO. Because the public markets because of what you just said, they don’t value because it’s, it’s so people driven.

D.J. Paris 30:16
Yeah, it’s, that’s your right, that’s a double edged sword. And the upside to all of this is your clients will never leave you, if they like you, they’re just never gonna go anywhere else unless, you know, they’re there, their son becomes a realtor, then maybe you lose the business, but they’re not going to leave you if you do a good job, most of the time,

Ryan D’Aprile 30:35
they won’t, they won’t, and that’s your business as a keeping maintain that relationship. So many agents can transaction on like, I was just added, you know, you know, just with a whole bunch of agents preaching this, it’s like, you’re just your business is your activities and what you’re doing, it’s not, it’s not the transaction, the transaction management stuff, you can, you know, you don’t need me to, to guide you through that I could give you some tricks here and there. But, you know, that’s, that’s almost the body activity. And, you know, you need you need more gun.

D.J. Paris 31:06
No, I was gonna say it’s, it were really, it’s really interesting that we live in this particular industry, you have realtors have access to largely the entire database of available sales. I mean, of course, there’s things that don’t hit the market, but I’m just just, if we just look at the MLS, every realtor who belongs to an MLS has access to all of those properties in their area. That’s not the way it works at pretty much any other sales. And I know this really a service profession, but the sales part of it, we’re really lucky, like even financial advisors typically don’t have access to every type of, you know, investment vehicle that exists there, they’re limited by what their company they work at offers, or the different companies that are partnered with, we’re really lucky in real estate that if you go to a like, and I’m using this as a car salesman, cuz everyone, a lot of us have bought cars, I’m not comparing car sales people to real estate agents, I think they’re very different. But you can have the greatest car salesperson that you fell in love with. And yet, you know, if you don’t like the particular lines they’re selling are the manufacturers, you have to find another car salesman at a different company, here, your clients will really stay around because you have access to everything, you just have to do an amazing job. And that’s really unique. We’re so lucky, in this industry, it’s it’s almost a bit surprising that there isn’t, you know, more privatization of these of listings. Now I understand why there isn’t, but we’re really, we should be very thankful for that. Because there aren’t a lot of professions where you have access to everything. My dad’s a paper salesman, he only has access to doing it for two years, he only has access to the mills he has access to doesn’t have access to every single mill. So sometimes his clients say, Well, I can’t you don’t have what I need. So this is, it’s a great reminder that yeah, you might not be able to sell your business at the end of your career. But boy, How lucky is it that you get to basically take the entirety of what’s available, and present that to your clients,

Ryan D’Aprile 32:58
you know, you got to keep in mind too, is that you are an advisor, and you’re an advisor, you should be positioning yourself as an advisor. And when I say that as don’t go around and change all your marketing senior adviser, just with people, you know, ask them what to do, because they’re going to turn ask what you do, they’re going to ask you about the market. And then you’re gonna be talking about you’re talking about, you know, a whole, you know, a 360 approach about life and life in general, it’s where my financial advisor doesn’t mean things to me, my goals, what I want, then he starts advising me and all different elements, that’s what we do is real estate agents, and it’s not transactional, you’re it’s three years prior to the client buying or selling. Let me say it again, it’s three years prior to somebody or network transacting, if you were engaged with them properly. That’s, that’s where you’re making your quote unquote, sale. Yeah, the transaction side of it. You know, that’s like the last 10%.

D.J. Paris 33:53
So wait, you just said something really important. I just want to pause Ryan just said something really, really critical. And just want to make sure you guys didn’t gloss over it or miss it, which is, when you meet somebody, you’ve got about a three year window on average before they transact. So you should have a really serious three are at a minimum plan of how am I going to touch base and Ryan, at his company, they have all sorts of tools to help automate some of it but having a plan for the next three years for every single person in your database, and well beyond three years, but at a minimum three years if they’re new to your database. And that might be a little bit of a bummer to hear. But the good news is all you have to do is stay in touch with those people for three years and care about them and demonstrate that you like them and and and then hopefully at that, you know when they’re ready there they choose you.

Ryan D’Aprile 34:46
Alright, and look, you know, I want to let people hear me out as well. Like you said kind of a bummer, right? Because it takes three years or whatnot. You know, I’m not here to say online web leads are the worst thing in the world either. Zillow realtor.com There is Pensieve go for it, if you need a quick sale, I mean, really, it’s, I am a champion of it, I think it’s a great thing to subsidize maybe 20% of your business. It might even be 80% of your business in your first year, you’re just you’re just not thinking long term. However, if you’re not coupling that with a strong net network, grand in relationship reinforcement plan afterwards. So I want to state for the record that I think those are great companies are great places to get into business. And yeah, it could be like, Wow, three years or sale? Well, that’s why there’s other ways, pretty good, quicker sales. But if you want to, you know, self sustaining, sustaining compound, interest earning type of business, you know, you got to think long term and are sent three years blink of an eye. And that’s every year. No, it’s nothing. It’s nothing. And, you know, that’s why you have to have a great marketing campaign. But you also have to have a great networking campaign, how do you network with your network, and you have to have a strategy to follow it. You know, and marketing you guys is not one channel, you need to have a multi channel marketing approach. You got it, you know, you need to have a direct mail, you need to have email, you need to have digital, you need to have a social. I do see a lot of agents doing just social hang, you’re not going to get the coverage that you need. If you’re just doing social. And it seems very 1980s ish. But I’m telling you, direct mail is still the best form of getting through to your market. time in and time out. Over and over again.

D.J. Paris 36:41
I have a quick suggestion for that. I was just thinking. So I moved into a new development. Almost a year ago, this is my 11th month. And I was just thinking about direct mail because as you were talking about it, I just realized an amazing statistic. It’s a funny statistic. I have received I was going to ask you how many how many letters how much direct mail I’ve received. Now again, I just moved in. So I understand an inclination for an agent to say like, Oh, that guy’s not going anywhere for a while he just moved into a new development. However, there’s 40 units I think in our in our building, certainly I’m sure somebody’s gonna get job transferred and need to sell but anyway, or maybe people know I’m in the business. I doubt it. I don’t think it when you’re doing direct mail you’re looking for, you know, other agents and pulling them out. But maybe, but I have not received even one message from an agent. Nothing, not a hey, congrats. You’ve just moved into this new place, which by the way, that information is public. Right? So congratulations. I just wanted to do this myself. I’m I live in Wicker Park. So it could be like I’m a Wicker Park person. I know you just moved in. You probably aren’t going anywhere. But I would love to just start a relationship with your or something. Right? I have gotten not one message and there are 46,000 realtors in Chicago. That is incredible. I guess my point is, nobody is really doing this, or very few people, I guess Ryan Ryan’s agents are, but very, very few agents. There’s not much competition in this space, especially in the direct mail space. So you have a huge opportunity to do this.

Ryan D’Aprile 38:09
Yeah, I mean, not too long ago, right. 2005 I get in the business and I started direct mail campaign to the Clinton Street lofts to 26 North Clinton Randolph place once expired North Clinton to full market, you know, 555, six, us four and 323 10 North Clinton, yada, yada, yada. And I just blew pass a police officer. All right, I’m okay. Anyways, um, you know, I didn’t get a call for 18 months, 18 months. Man, I dominated for four years after those 18 months. You know, it was me. I remember Sam Powell she lived in. I think she lived there. She might be canal play. And well, I shouldn’t say that. But my point is a great agent lover, and she was another person and I got I’m going back a long time. But like, there’s just a couple of us. You know, back then. And I’m telling you, the direct mail broke man and nothing’s changed. I have developed agents that do 2535 40 million a year that were not licensed five years ago. And that strategy still works today. And so but it’s not one it’s not just postcards, either. They got postcards, they’re in magazines. They’re digital, they’re in social. I just drove past a billboard and saw a group of our agents on one billboard and a group of loan officers another billboard. I mean, you know, you got to spend money to make money. You should be earmarking 10% of your GCI to be going back and advertising your brand new the business you should be less than investing a minimum of five to 10 grand and getting your business going five to 10 grand get another job if you can’t afford it. I mean, I’m back kidding. And that might be insensitive. You just met it’s, you know, starting a business and not marketing advertising is the way See your time? Yeah, I want to say, getting into business and not branding. And that’s funny when you’re wasting your time, you’re wasting money and monthly dues for the association, you’re wasting time. By just wasting time, you need to spend money. And once you a couple years, only 10% of your GCI should be reimbursed best back into branding. And I think that branding should be targeted primarily to your network.

D.J. Paris 40:25
Yeah. Yeah, you want you Look, nobody wants to call up their friends and ask for business, right. So what you can do is you can send them emails, direct mail, texts, jump on social, say, Hello, you can do these little subtle, even non real estate related touches, that just remind the people in your Oh, you’re still alive, you’re still checking in. And oh, by the way, you’re still a realtor. And then you don’t have to ask for business people will come to you, but you have to put the work in, right, it’s the reps, it’s the time in the gym, to you know, now to put the time in now. So by when the summer rolls around, you feel confident, you know, walking outside at the beach with you know, fewer clothes on, but you have to put in the time now. And just wait. And again, it’s not that crowded in your like I was going to ask you and I don’t know how familiar you are with the mail that comes in? I don’t know if you check the mail or, or if your wife or someone else in your family. But do you get a lot of mailers, you know, from other Realtors at your primary home?

Ryan D’Aprile 41:29
I get a bunch but they’re all from paper properties. Well, that you don’t need to put me on it, but they want it you know what I mean? But it’s fun. And it’s cute. Yeah.

D.J. Paris 41:40
What do you do? outside of your company? Do you get anything? Do you

Ryan D’Aprile 41:43
from one or two of the top producing agents and that’s it, I wanted to happen in our market. Shocking. It’s not because unfortunately, you know, even though the listeners here, you know, 20% or less of them are going to do what we’re telling them to do. And it just it’s there’s nothing you can do to change that Pareto Principle. Because I’ll tell everybody again, and again, again, success is a choice. It’s an absolute choice that you decide to make. That’s why I’m not a big fan of you know, that’s I’m a big fan of socialism. I like capitalism, you know, because I just don’t think that I want the choices taken from me. Right? I really, I really believe that. It’s a simple choice you make every day, most people just are not choosing. And I think a lot of them are just not aware of the activities that they’re doing. I mean, it is so easy to look at your text all day long on social media. That’s cool. But who’s ever texting you and whatever is on social media. That’s what’s in control of your life, not you. And so we’re all of us here, we’re on a journey together. And I think the journey and the battle is self awareness, and how do we, how do we get back to consciousness and being aware of all the time, we’re wasting? And we’re, as Robin Sharma says, We’re busy being busy, but we’re not busy being productive. Yeah. So it doesn’t surprise me just because I’m a, I’m a teacher on this. And it’s what I do all day long. And I, you know, and I’m doing this real time in real life, and it’s rampid. It’s all over the place.

D.J. Paris 43:14
Why a lot of great suggestions today, just to recap, some of them, we talked about getting creative with with low inventory and understanding in particular, we’ve heard of sell side contingencies, we want to talk about buy side contingencies, if you’re not sure what that is Google it, talk to your your trainer, your managing broker, talk to whoever or other agents, this talking about getting creative. You know, we also talked about this idea of sending out letters to people in that in those neighborhoods that your client would be interested in. And pitching, hey, I’ve got a buyer. lot lot of good suggestions there. Also the conversation around, hey, my clients are bothering you know, I feel so bad for my friends that are financial advisors, because I know they’re fielding calls whenever the market goes down, you know, they they feel the call going, what’s going on with the market? Or should I be investing in crypto and all of these things that financial advisors typically say, hey, take a breath, not a big deal. But you know, your clients are reading things too. So make sure that you have you want to get ahead of that stuff, you want to make sure to say hey, you might have seen some things about rates. Don’t worry, here’s why. Let’s run the numbers. It’s not that big a deal. Making sure that you are the are the advisor and the source of knowledge versus CNN, right, which I like CNN, but I’m saying the point is make sure that you know what your clients are into because they’re not they might not call you and say what should I do about rates rising but but they might be thinking it because that’s what they’re reading. So it’s a great reason to reach out and have conversations and then get creative about, you know, what you can do to sort of mitigate the fact that rates are rising if it’s a problem or the low inventory situation. And then we just talked a lot about marketing and branding, and having a process right process solves anxiety. I think I think process helps reduce anxiety. I shouldn’t say it solves it, but it certainly reduces it. Because if you’re worried three years from now Now, you should refocus on your process right now. So that when three years are up, and three years are coming for all of us, that you’ll go, I did, I did my workout for those those three years, which, you know, I sent out my mailers, I, I made my phone calls, and I watched the, you know, I sowed my seeds, so to speak, and I watched the harvest come in, just focus. And also remember tying everything back to the why, again, we’re lucky we get to really hit people emotionally, what would what their goals are in life, and this is what oftentimes somebody’s home’s their first or second or third largest financial transaction in their life next to retirement, maybe, do you have a child going off to college? So college as well, right, so you have college retirement, and buying home? Like those are three big big deals, you get to participate in one of those largest transactions, which oftentimes is very emotional. So tying everything back fine. Do you even know your clients why that should be the most important thing is not what they want. Because what they want is easy. Everybody’s going to know what they want, but are you going to know why they want it, and then you can help them when they get anxious. Also bringing them back to the why also reducing anxiety. So I was I always think, like, so much of an agent’s job is reducing their clients anxiety. And if you can become an expert at mitigating client anxiety, boy, you’re going to be a hero to your age your clients, because I just went through it a year ago, and I was anxious the whole time. So just a little

Ryan D’Aprile 46:27
drop the mic, buddy, you nailed it. Yeah, well, we’ll drop the mic, but

D.J. Paris 46:32
we’ll drop the mic, but only to pick it back up again, and remind everyone that if you are an agent in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, or you Iowa as well, or just I forgot if you’re Iowa, Indiana, Indiana, sorry, you have a daughter that may be headed to Iowa. So I’m thinking of that. But anyway, if you’re in the Midwest, we’ll say or down in Florida. And by the way, Ryan doesn’t just have the April properties. He also has a lending institution, he has a title company, you have a technology company, if you want to be a part of deeper properties as an agent, or one of the other businesses that Ryan is a owns and participates in. And I think they have I mean, just to brag a little bit for Ryan, they have an incredible number of full time employees like this is a real amazing operation. And I encourage everyone to explore it, if you’re not getting the help that you need at your current firm, go check out what Table Properties offers. I mean, I don’t work there. So I have no, I have no skin in this game. But I’m impressed as somebody who would, I would much rather they’ll come to our firm, but but the reality of it is what Ryan offers is really truly amazing. And you really should check it out. So if anyone out there is not getting the attention, they need go to Depot properties.com Set up a call with one of their leaders. And they can talk more about what they offer. And in particular, their main competitive advantage. As far as I can tell, and I don’t work there. But from what I understand is two things, coaching and real coaching, not just hey, we coach you because everybody says they coach you but real actual one on one coaching, as well as helping with the marketing and not just hey, we’re gonna put a flier out, making sure that there’s a process and you guys have the software and the physical sort of property as well, or the physical ability to do mailers. And so actually do that for agents.

Ryan D’Aprile 48:22
Yeah, let me chime in a little bit, cuz you make a great point. Because, you know, take coaching away and call it call it business planning. So a lot of our, you know, we got a lot of high producing agents that have joined us and loan officers. And we have different individuals that are focused on business planning. So it’s not so much coaching is just sitting back. And then business planning, then we have a VP of branding and marketing that meets with them and helps them create their brand strategy and marketing and then we execute it for them. So it’s almost like it’s an incredible branding organization with the planning department around your business. I think coaching people think I don’t want to be coached. It’s not. It’s not it’s business planning. It’s marketing. And of course, yes, we we have the software built around a model to help you continually stay focused on those daily activities and whatnot. So it’s all Yeah, and in listening, go to deeper properties.com Google me, give me a phone call. I’m very accessible. I would love to chat with you. If any of you find yourself in a in a fork in the road, and you’re and you’re looking for maybe something different gives shot we’ve we’ve impacted a lot of people’s lives.

D.J. Paris 49:27
Awesome. Well, Brian, thank you once again, and also want to just make one quick Ryan’s doing this while he’s traveling from office to office in his car. And I just want to make one last suggestion that if you are a driver, if you drive to and from work to and from the office to and from client meetings, make this year, the year that you take even just a small percentage of that drive, ideally a large percentage of it and designated for learning so there’s audible, there’s podcasts, there’s all sorts of ways to learn as you drive instead of just jamming out to your favorite tunes which you can do to buy But put a percentage of that time in learning and especially if you’re in the car every day, you’ll be shocked in a year you can become an expert in just about anything. If you just listen or read in between in between things, and especially when you’re in a car and you have to drive anyway, you know, get a subscription to Audible, you’ll you’ll be an expert in a year or two in a particular topic. And you think about how much more valuable you’ll be to your clients if you can develop some of those interests.

Ryan D’Aprile 50:27
Absolutely, right. Yep.

D.J. Paris 50:28
Well, thanks, Ryan. Really appreciate it. Thank you for taking time out of your crazy busy day. Just to come on our show and share some wisdom. We appreciate it. On behalf of the the audience. We thank Ryan once again for coming on for he’s been on with us for years now. We’re so thrilled he’s here we have on behalf of Ryan and myself, we want to thank everyone as well for listening and supporting our our program. Please continue to tell a friend just again, think of one other agent that needs to hear what Ryan said today. And believe me, pretty much every agent would like to hear we should hear that but just think of one send them a link to our show. We’d appreciate it and it helps keep us growing as well. So Thanks, Ryan. We will see everyone on the next episode. Thanks EJ