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

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

In this episode, Gogo and DJ discuss how to develop and nurture referral relationships in other states in order to widen your business. Gogo also provides tips on how to use hashtags in order to be found by people easy and quick. Next, Gogo describes what Gogo Social Bootcamp is and how she developed it. Last, Gogo emphasizes the importance of consistency in the process of building your business.

For more information on Gogo’s Agent Attraction Bootcamp, click here!

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

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

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

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by gogos bootcamp Are you a real estate agent looking for the very best media training program on the planet? Gogo Beth key is considered the top Instagram Realtor in the country and her step by step training program will take your social media game to the next level, keeping it real listeners receive a special discount. So please visit Gogo podcast.com That’s Gee oh gee Oh podcast.com for your special discount and now on with the show

Welcome to 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 today is our monthly series called Social bootcamp with gogo bath key. Now gogo bath he came to the United States in 2003. To build her American dream. She was broke, she had no real estate experience no sphere of influence, barely spoke English and only had $6 to her name. So that left her with nothing other than Facebook to help build her business, which is where she started. She created go-go’s Real Estate and began her real estate career. Now with the power of social media gogo has sold over and I know this is an old number, so she will probably correct it. But it’s she sold over 75 million probably close to 100 million now in real estate transactions and she shares the good, the bad and the ugly of real estate and her honest snippets into her daily life on social media has earned her 10s of 1000s of followers and in the real estate community, she has earned the nickname The Queen of social media. Now after being asked to present at various conferences and events with realtors. She built her own social media Bootcamp for realtors, which is called Go Go’s boot camp. Today she has a team of over 600 agents nationwide that might also be an old number. But her goal is to help as many agents as possible make a name for themselves in real estate utilizing social media. Now if she can do it, this girl from Transylvania, Romania with no formal US education, no sphere of influence, no money, no experience and an accent, then anyone can do it as well. Please follow gogo on Instagram at gogos real estate that’s Gee, oh, gee, Oh, s real estate. And also, please consider investing in her bootcamp. She has this incredible social media bootcamp, it is absolutely worth the cost of admission. And even if it only nets you one new sale, one new client, which it won’t, it’ll net, you dozens and dozens and dozens. It pays for itself, even just with one transaction, like five times over probably or more. So please, and we have actually a special link just for our podcast audience. So please go to Gogo podcast.com. To learn more about her social media bootcamp. It’s the only social media program for realtors, we recommend we endorse it, we love it. And we’re glad to have gogo once again on the show. Welcome.

Gogo Bethke 2:59
Well, thank you so much for me for inviting me to be here again.

D.J. Paris 3:03
Well, we are thrilled to have you again, because every time you come with a great idea, so gogo, and I were just talking and about what we would discuss today. And she said, Hey, have we ever talked about being a referral agent? And I said, I don’t think we have. But this is the now that everybody is so used to meeting virtually, there’s probably never been a better time to really add that to your business.

Gogo Bethke 3:27
Yeah, I had occurred to me one time, this is way back. And I was like, What if I get pregnant again? Like I wouldn’t want to open doors, I wouldn’t want to sit open houses pregnant, I wouldn’t want you know, there’s a certain part of the job that I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing. So I was like, how am I going to condition so that’s when it occurred to me. So this is way back. But today with social media, it couldn’t be any easier than that. So here’s what I would do. First of all, of course, everything that I suggest it’s done off of your Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn, okay, like you have to have these accounts. If not, it’s not gonna work. So here’s what you do you have all of your accounts. So here’s what I would do. Okay, so just get into the habit of maybe once a week, or maybe once a day, in your stories, you could feature a state now, think about it this way. Assume that your clients don’t understand that you can refer because most clients don’t understand that you are licensed in the state that you’re licensing, and that’s about it. So let’s say you’re in the Chicago area, your clients are not going to be calling you because they want to buy a condo in Delaware. Okay, they go on Zillow, for example, or whatever site they’re gonna go on, and I’m going to find a local agent. Okay, so So it’s your job to let the world know that you could help them in any possible state. Now, would you be like on the ground? Or would you be the one personally opening the door? Absolutely not. But yeah, you can hook them up with a rockstar agent who will treat them the same way than you would. So what I would do is take a story style video every single day and just kind of say, Hey, guys, did you know that I can help you in Kentucky? And then what you do most importantly in that post is that you swipe up and then to tag a location, you’re going to go location and tag Kentucky. Why? Because you want the people in Kentucky to see that video. So your goal is to notify everybody that already follows you that you can help them in Kentucky. And then it’s also your goal to make sure that people who are in Kentucky who don’t follow you yet see your posts, so then they can follow you and see everything else that you do. So here’s the way I look at it. Did you What do you think the average commission is nationwide?

D.J. Paris 5:26
Well, let’s see. Let’s say the let’s say the average home price is what like 300,000. Is that probably we fair?

Gogo Bethke 5:32
And right around there is 300. Yeah. Commission is probably 7500. nationwide.

D.J. Paris 5:38
Yeah, that’s two and a half percent of that perfect. Yeah.

Gogo Bethke 5:41
So if you do 7500 nationwide, would you make a phone call for what is that? $1,800.17? Something? Where would that come out? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, 5%.

D.J. Paris 5:51
Yeah. So So I would, I would make that call, I would make that video all day long, and make that call. And when somebody says, hey, I want to move to Delaware, then hopefully, by then I’ve already contacted and found a great Realtor in Delaware, or wherever Annapolis, or wherever they might be the DC area. And here’s a little tip from me. And gogo might have a different strategy. But if you’re like, Well, I don’t know any realtors in that area. Well, Zillow is your friend for this particular instance. Right? So you go on and you look at, take a look at who’s got the most reviews, right? That’s a good place to start, or who’s got the best reviews, or go to Google type in Delaware realtors, and see who’s gotten great reviews, and just start interviewing a few and say, Hey, I’m gonna start doing some, some marketing for my my sphere of influence, and my social media audience, and I might be sending some referrals. Do you accept referrals? Of course, they’re gonna say yes. And you know, you can negotiate whatever the split might be 25 30%, whatever. And so yeah, it’s really easy to find realtors, that’s not going to be the problem. Yeah, so

Gogo Bethke 6:53
if you do that, I think on one transactions, it’s 1750. If you do that, let’s say four times over one a week, that’s seven grand a month.

D.J. Paris 7:00
It’s unbelievable. It’s

Gogo Bethke 7:03
a real job, like seven grand, you made four phone calls.

D.J. Paris 7:08
And it costs you probably only just a little bit of time to make your video and your your story. And here’s what you could do. So I was just interviewing a top luxury agent in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And he works with celebrities. And like his average price point is like 5 million, because they have all these ranches and lots of land. And he was saying he goes most people who move here who buy that kind of property, it’s not their first home. It’s their second, it’s their third, he’s a high end luxury agent. And he said, you know, now again, most of us don’t have a lot of clients probably in that in that that bracket. But, you know, I might he said the population growth has exploded out here. Because with COVID and working at home, people now we’re like, I can kind of work anywhere. So maybe that becomes the focus of your stories where you start to say, hey, for all you people thinking you may want to go somewhere else. And why remotely?

Gogo Bethke 8:00
There might be another reason I think, Delaware if I’m correct, one of those states that don’t have income state. And as he says, that’s one of the other reasons why people move to Delaware.

D.J. Paris 8:11
Huge. And especially for a corporation, there’s lots of corporate tax benefits in Delaware. But you know, what you might want to start doing is create a little, a little series where you’re like, hey, thinking about moving here’s a couple of cool places to check out. So you do a little one minute video about Jackson Hole or delta or you know, Ocean City, Maryland or wherever Nashville any and you like, but Google what Google says really important. You want to make sure you tagged, use hashtags that are going to be found by people who are interested in those areas. Do you have any hashtag tools that you use for research? Or do you just do you take a look yourself on Instagram for what people are using? Or how do you determine which has hashtags to use. So

Gogo Bethke 8:53
of course, if I’m talking about Delaware, I’m going to use the hashtag Delaware, Delaware and Delaware real estate or real estate in Delaware homes for sale in Delaware or realtors or Delaware Realtors realtor real estate, like all of those things that are tied to you always want to do the home for sale in, you know, whatever city Brighton or things like that or state. So the same thing, like I use hash tag in two different ways. Number one, I use it so it allows other people to find my post. But if I’m searching for something, I’m going to search for that hashtag. So if I want to see you know, who’s an awesome, cool Delaware realtor, I’m going to put in Delaware realtor and see what comes up. And then I’m gonna go to profiles and be like you, you look like you and we could be friends. So let’s work together. So then I’m going to call you and be like, Hey, I just checked out your social media profile. I kind of like what I see. I started working on referring referrals to Delaware. Would you like to partner with me and at 25%? Would you be interested if I send you all my Delaware leads? When do you think they’re gonna say no?

D.J. Paris 9:52
Right? And the other thing you could do too is you could do like a fun little interview with them. And you could take snippets of it and post it you know, you can Do a little zoom meeting where just the two of you and you’re like, hey, tell me why people are moving to Delaware. Tell me what’s cool about, you know, the area you serve as tell me what makes you special as a realtor except blah, blah, blah. And then you can cut that thing up. I mean, anybody can do it. And now you have content that you both could share. Right? And then so Yeah, boy, what a great idea. I love that.

Gogo Bethke 10:19
The only reason I wouldn’t want to do that is because then they’re gonna find the other agent directly. And there goes,

D.J. Paris 10:25
Oh, good point, let’s, let’s, let’s rethink that one. See, this is why go goes here. She tells me Hey, you don’t want them going directly.

Gogo Bethke 10:33
I want to be nice. But I want to get paid for what I’m going to generate. Let’s strike that last comment. I would have absolutely right, the agent. And then I would ask, you have the conversation. Yes. And I take the knowledge. And I learned from that. I’m going to land repeat it on the video. And I’m going to post it on top people just reach out to me because I have the most amazing local agent for you. Let me hook you up.

D.J. Paris 10:56
It’s such a great idea. And we know people are moving. I mean, just think about how many people have left New York City. And certainly we hope they return because New York is such an important city. But a lot of people have left and I met when I was on a trip, I met four different couples who now just travel around, and they work remotely. And they work in other countries. And eventually, one guy we met goes, you know, I rented out my place in New York, and I’m moving, I’m moving to Boulder. And we’re like, he goes I just love I love being around the mountains. And he doesn’t get that in New York. So he’s, I don’t know who his agent is. But I smart, I should have gone I have an agent for you in Boulder. I didn’t think about it because I was on vacation. But if I was smarter,

Gogo Bethke 11:37
vacation mode brain,

D.J. Paris 11:39
I was on vacation. I was a mess.

Gogo Bethke 11:42
You were drinking a mimosa. And

D.J. Paris 11:45
it was i Yes, and it is. But it is such a great idea. This, this is I think going to be and we should also mention gogo too. This is part of your you don’t really go out recruiting agents because you attract agents, but you attract agents from all over the country with your content. So we’re really talking about kind of a similar thing. You’re doing it to work with more agents, and your agents are doing it to find more clients. It’s really the same exact strategy. And you can

Gogo Bethke 12:14
do Yeah, just the same thing that you’re doing like now, when you generate all of these leads nationwide is I will I cannot do that transaction, right. I just generate and delete. That’s what I’m good at. I’m good at marketing. So I’m good at generating the leads. Now I get to feed it to all of these agents that decided to partner with me. Yeah. So it helps absolutely everybody. So you can look at it from the perspective of like, I’m kind of building a team, I’m building a nationwide team, then I help them I generate leads, I feed their family, they pay me a percentage. And you might be able just to live off of referrals. As you said, you had a guy you were talking to last week who does 100% referrals and never sold the house or planning on selling another house? Yeah,

D.J. Paris 12:50
we that episode will be coming up shortly. But I interviewed my first agent who this is their full time thing now. And they just scheduled zoom meetings with clients from all over the country, learn about them and say, Okay, I got somebody who you can talk to, and then they pass it off. And this I think, is really going to be a very important thing going forward. And what’s so great about it is Realtors often work so hard on their own the deals that they have to service. And we know how hard our listeners, you know, our listeners know how hard they work. This is a way to generate more income with doing very little work. And you just pass it off, earn 25 30%, whatever. And all you have to do is create the content that attracts those those clients. So yeah, so

Gogo Bethke 13:37
and this is specific, a little bit to exp but who knows, we could have hundreds of agents on here who are listening. We have a certification program that’s called a global marketing agent certification, which we just did the training in timber go today, which allows you listen to this. Because all the referrals we are mentioning here, it’s only in the 30 states right about three. Let’s do the math again, in four states. Okay. The reason I said 30 Because we have agents in 30 states and team that really came from but there’s marketing. So the global marketing agents certification allows agents to take a listing in Dubai, like I could take a listing in Dubai oh wow, that’s a pretty good thing in I don’t know Spain or the French Riviera or Mexico take a hotel and Mexico and listed so now it allows agents to not just think here in the United States where you can actually track a commission but it will give you a marketing rights which will then give you payment for that marketing right so set so it’s not technically a commission commission because you’re not the listing agent on the property, but it’s a marketing agreement where they compensate you for your marketing. So it’s just another way of doing it.

D.J. Paris 14:42
I love it. Let’s talk about the the bootcamp real quick before we let you get on with your day because that is such an important cornerstone product and service that that you provide. And it is the only thing out there like it in the industry and there’s Gosh 1.6 million realtors and they all need to have this boot camp. So what tell us about the boot camp and let us know why our agents should, or our listeners should be should be involved in it?

Gogo Bethke 15:10
Well, you know, when I started out in real estate, as you can hear from my accent, I didn’t have a sphere of influence. So I didn’t have cousins and high school friends and somebody, anybody that’s gonna buy a house from me. So I realized very early on that I have to work with strangers, and we’re strangers, they’re on Facebook, they’re on Instagram, they’re on LinkedIn, they’re on any of these platforms. And I can reach somebody that I don’t personally know. And that’s I checked, everybody needs a roof above their head, right? So I looked at everybody’s like, they are my potential client. That’s my potential seller right there. That’s my potential buyer right there. So over time, I became really good at this social media game because I was not good at anything else with an accent and my reonomy being you and I could not cold call, okay, like, and then everybody calls me here and gogo in the US. So that’s just the wrong one. 800 number, okay, so I was like, cold calling is not for me, I’m five foot two little blandy I’m not going to do online. That’s stranger danger. You know, I couldn’t afford to spend not even 40 cents on the stamp to me allowed 8000 mailers, I didn’t have money for that. So I had to figure out a free version of marketing, this go goes real estate thing, so I can make it in this industry. So that’s how the social media bootcamp pretty much happened is because I turned my knowledge into video based series. So you can log in any time when you purchase the program, you get access to the program for life. So as the industry changing as social media is changing, because I don’t mark it the same way in 2021, than I did in 2011. Right, because it’s different, even though it’s social media. It’s different than what it was before. So as we are adding on to the course everybody who is a member of the course they just automatically get out there remember for life. Now some of our Oh, geez, as we like to call them, they paid $49. And they have full access to a boot camp, the boot camp price is going up. Here soon it will double ish. So keep that in mind. But the price is today, you won’t have the price ever again. And it’s hundreds and hundreds of videos pretty much explaining anything from the very, very basics of social media, why you do things, how you do things, when to do things, those kinds of things, all the way down to how to use Zapier for integration, how to build a team how to hire virtual assistant with the power of social media, pretty much absolutely anything that you can think of that that took me to where I’m at today, from where I started from basics up, I call it your social media house, okay, I cannot possibly teach you the roof unless we had a foundation, then we’re going to build the house, then we’re going to put the rooms and all of those different systems in it. And then we’re going to put a roof on it. Right. So it starts out very basic, very boring, explaining what your name is, why you should have a picture and what kind of picture you should have all the way down to how to link your accounts together and how to run ads and you know, all of those things that you could possibly have. So I teach the organic side of social media marketing, because I’ve never run an ad myself. And then now I have a business partner named Sammy. He runs all of my ads. So when you see those No, I didn’t do that. So we did that. Okay, and then Sammy teaches the advertising. So think of it this way. We have so many agents actually one of our agents just messaged me last week, and she and he says I fired Zillow. He learned to build a brand and lead generate with his own name where he no longer needs to spend $4,000 a month on Zillow. Imagine that. Imagine when you know how to fish, I like to call it fishing. So if I’m ever going to give you a fish, I mean we give leads out all the time don’t look at don’t think of it that way. But the goal is not me to feed you let the goal is for me to teach you how to fish and put food on the table. So that’s what the social media courses, anything you need

D.J. Paris 18:35
social media 1000s of hours of content, by the way, and it is an absolute must buy. We could not be more supportive of this product. And I guess it’s really more of a service. Because it teaches you everything you need to know like Oh, God says how to fish and create your own social media sort of presence so that you can attract more clients versus doing the mailers and the door knocking and all the cold calls that really none of us want to do. Let’s be honest, right. And there’s nothing wrong with doing those things. But social media is probably the gentler, easier softer way. And it and we’re all on social media all the time. The other thing I just want to go back real quickly to your idea of the referral thing. And by the way, for those of you that are thinking should I do tick tock? Why not? And if you can take that same content that you’ve used to create your stories for referral business, as we mentioned earlier, you can also put that on tick tock hashtag get this exact same way and see where you get the

Gogo Bethke 19:31
cross-pollinate you don’t want to create the video four times over you created one time and you posted on everything.

D.J. Paris 19:37
Awesome. Well, I want to visit perfect place to wrap up because it’s just a great actionable thing. Every one of our listeners go out and start creating this content. Content is king. Content is king. And do you have

Gogo Bethke 19:50
to stay consistent, you can do it one week and then I do it ever again. So create your schedule and say you know what? I feel like every Tuesday morning I could feature a different state. So let’s say this Tuesday you We’re talking about New York and why people move to New York or move away from New York or whatever you want to talk about. And then you swipe up you take New York, in the meantime, you research in New York agents, when those leads are coming in, you know exactly how you’re going to send them to. So there’s no time delay. The next week, you’re going to talk about 10 Taki. Okay, the week after that, you’re going to talk about California and the week after that, you’re going to talk about Florida. But by that time, you know, next week, you’re talking Florida. So you have all this week to research a local agent, and research what the heck you’re going to share about Florida, and then you’re going to tag the location done. So you have to be prepared, I’m a very organized person, if it’s not in my calendar, it doesn’t happen. But if it is in my calendar, I will honor it. So this is what my calendar looks like. And this is what your calendar should look like. So if you’re going to do this referral thing, then you’re going to do it every whatever day at whatever time, you’re going to do a post about it. And then you know, it’s done, you move on and you do next thing.

D.J. Paris 20:46
And if you commit to creating and sticking to that schedule for a year, you will be shocked by the end of that year at the growth and you might not see a ton of clients immediately. But within that year, I guarantee if you do it right, and you follow gogo steps, which are at on her boat, or bootcamp, so you will have success, I can guarantee that. So please visit and we have special pricing for our podcast audience. So please visit Gogo podcast.com. And you can learn all about her social media bootcamp. Gogo, thank you once again, you are crushing it how many people are on your team, now you have to know 624 on believable so at our firm, we just you are catching up. So we have about 800. But only here in Chicago gogo has team members from all over the United States, which is by the way, did she ever cold call even one of them to say Come join my team? Not even once. That’s what I do. I have to cold call everybody. I have a team that cold calls. Go Go attracts. So I need to take a live stream

Gogo Bethke 21:48
and talk about that we have a whole other bootcamp. Did I tell you that? No. Is it an agent attraction boot camp? Yeah, so we have now a different boot camp because I became really good at this. I like to figure things out. That I don’t know. And then when I do set my mind on something, it’s full blown. It’s 100. It’s 1,000,000%. Really. And so now I have my systems and all of the trainings and the mentality and you know, everything that it took to agent attract the 624 agents. So now we have, of course on that it’s over 80 videos, I think. So it’s pretty much everything from one hour more, because we just added on to the agent retention side of things. Because after we did the agent attraction portion, from the moment that you start talking to an agent, walk them through the process until they decide to join you and become active, I realize is most of the work starts after they become active.

D.J. Paris 22:37
Attracting agents just step one, yeah,

Gogo Bethke 22:40
likely that did they join us they know what you know, like, that’s when all the celebrations start and adding them to all the groups and all the coaches and the trainings and the boot camps and the leads and this and that. So then we create an agent retention side of the bootcamp. So again, everybody who’s our students automatically got the agent retention side of the course for free, and then everybody else was purchasing those paying a higher price. So I like to, how do I say this I, the people who have they’re trusting me through time before the product is even full, fully designed. If they already trusted me on day one, they get everything usually for free as we are coming out as we are adding on to the course. So we don’t charge it within the course for more. So does that that’s agent attraction, I have to give you the link for that one as well.

D.J. Paris 23:24
Yeah. So for now, everyone, just go to Gogo podcast.com, to learn about her social media bootcamp. And also, you can just Google her agent attraction program as well. And that’ll pop right up, as well. And we’ll probably have a special link for that coming shortly for our listeners. But Google thank you once again, for being on the show. Before anyone signs off, please, we ask one thing and one thing only tell a friend, think of one other agent that could benefit from hearing from Gogo. And that amazing tip about how to generate out of state referrals. By the way, how great is that you don’t have to go to showings, you don’t have to, you know, deal with the 10pm phone calls. You just have to make an introduction and then you get 25% of a deal I would.

Gogo Bethke 24:06
I did the math while you were talking. If they do one a week, so they continuously posting once a week, a different state. Let’s assume that they’re just gonna get one measly lead one. Okay? If they do that, if you do one measly lead a month, that’s one to $1,000 extra income that you didn’t have. But if you do that one a week, because you do that every Tuesday featuring a different state, that’s $84,000 income and all you did is made phone calls.

D.J. Paris 24:31
It’s kind of the closest thing we have to passive income as a real estate agent. Doing transactions. It’s really like the closest thing to earning money while you sleep, which isn’t exactly true, but sort of kind of is

Gogo Bethke 24:45
the Okay, so let’s say how long did it take you to make the posts and research Florida and make a post about it? an hour, maybe an hour? Okay, that’s gonna take you another five minutes to call an agent and be like, Hey, would you like to take my referrals and gather information? So let’s say it’s two hours Each week, yeah. Would you do that for 1750?

D.J. Paris 25:04
Unbelievable. Yes, all day long.

Gogo Bethke 25:06
It’s pretty much a $900 an hour. hourly rate, like, doctors don’t make that much.

D.J. Paris 25:11
Yeah, it’s awesome. And if you really want to get cool about it, you could find in a virtual assistant to research those areas for you for maybe they spend an hour on that in a costume. I don’t know. $10 $15 Whatever. And would you pay $15 to save yourself a little bit of time? Yeah, I would. So anyway, Coco teaches all of this stuff in her bootcamp. So go to Gogo podcast.com and tell a friend about our show, send them to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com or have them pull up any podcast app search for keeping it real and hit the subscribe button. Gogo. Thank you so much, once again, and we will see everybody including gogo on the next episode. Thanks, Gaga.

Gogo Bethke 25:52
Thank you. See you next time.

Latham Jenkins from Live Water Jackson Hole talks about Jackson Hole, Wyoming and what makes it very attractive for people to live there. Next, Latham talks about the beginning of his career in real estate business. Latham describes how valuable aesthetics are and how to story-sell properties. Latham also talks about the buyer’s side and how important it is to understand their needs before showing them any property. Last, Latham talks about the what the luxury market looks like in his area at the moment.

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

Latham Jenkins can be reached at 307-690-1642.

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by gogos bootcamp Are you a real estate agent looking for the very best media training program on the planet. Gogo Beth key is considered the top Instagram Realtor in the country. And her step by step training program will take your social media game to the next level, keeping it real listeners receive a special discount. So please visit Gogo podcast.com That’s Gee Oh gee, oh podcast.com for your special discount, and now on with the 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 Latham Jenkins from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Before we get to Latham, we want to announce to everyone that we are just about at our 300th episode, which is very exciting. Because when I first started, I never thought we’d get to 300. I wasn’t sure that anyone would be all that interested in this podcast. And thank goodness, I was wrong. Because here we are. And our audience is as big as it’s ever been and continues to grow. And we are so grateful to everyone who is listening right now. And to celebrate, we have a contest coming up. So it’s not fully cooked yet we’re in the process of working on it, but it will be in partnership with the closed.com. So we have a special prize that we’ll be giving away. And we’ll be announcing the details and rules for that contest very, very soon. So keep your eyes and ears open for that. And also, please remember the best way you can help us grow our podcast is by telling a friend think of one other real estate agent that could benefit from hearing from top 1% producers like Latham Jenkins, which were who were just about to speak with and send them a link to our show. We are so lucky to have all of these top producers sharing exactly how they grew their business, so that every other realtor who tunes in can learn from these Mavericks. So again, thank you for supporting us all these years. Thanks for the first 300 episodes, and we’re gonna keep making them and we’ll hopefully have another celebration at the next 300 But for now, on to our interview with the great Latham Jenkins.

Today on the show, our guest is Latham Jenkins from live water Jackson Hole in Jackson Hole Wyoming. Let me tell you about Latham Latham Jenkins is a leading luxury and lifestyle real estate broker in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He’s worked in that position for many years, and has sold luxury homes to many individuals including a list celebrities, and high net worth individuals looking to get out of the big city and move to a quiet neighborhood. Uh, Jenkins is known to push the envelope to set his listings apart from others, his properties span across and the homes have vast histories one of his recent properties being 110 year old real estate or sorry, estate aspired by the Navajo Indians. Latham takes pride in his unique ability to help his clients find more than a home, but a way of life. Please visit Latham at live water Jackson hole.com And you can see some of the properties that that he’s working on and learn more about him as well. Uh, Latham, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.

Latham Jenkins 3:42
DJ, thank you. And thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.

D.J. Paris 3:46
Well, we are really excited Jackson Hole is been a place where about every year, my Well, my girlfriend and I say we’re going and then for some reason, of course COVID Prohibited some of that last few years, but it’s one of those few places where I everybody that has that I know that’s visited and spent time there in the summers or the winters just absolutely loves it. So before we talk about you, just for any one of our audience that isn’t that familiar with Jackson Hole? Can you tell us just a little bit about that area?

Latham Jenkins 4:16
Sure. You know, we live in a place that has this unique combination between national parks, great air service, the Wyoming tax benefits of being the most tax friendly state in the nation. 22 million protected acres of which only about 3% are private. So we have this great scarcity of private land for us to live on but yet surrounded by a wealth of just state and federal lands that protect the habitat the big views. You know, all the reasons that people first fall in love with Jax and to then only realize what a phenomenal community and the people that have come to make life here and all the creature comforts you know, you can literally Safari During the day with big animals and climbed mountains, and returned back to a five star dinner at night, so, you know, we’d like to think it’s a very nice balanced quality of life.

D.J. Paris 5:09
Do you mind sharing with our audience what you mentioned to me about how you woke up this morning? Speaking of a big game animals? Yeah,

Latham Jenkins 5:16
I mean, especially in the fall time, you have them in your yard, and I was, you know, asleep, and I heard this crashing noise, you know, and I look out the window, and it’s a bull moose who has been just scraping, you know, has antlers in the trees. And, you know, even funnier, like last year, they love the kids toys in the backyard, like lacrosse bounced back and the trampoline, and they push the trampoline, the Bull Moose did all the way up against the neighbor’s house. And so, you know, particularly in the fall time you wake up, and you just look around and see what’s happened throughout the night, and who might still be in the yard in the morning. It’s a very special time

D.J. Paris 5:51
at Wyoming to I mean, it’s it’s been popular, of course, Jackson Hole area has been extremely popular for a long time. But I know that Wyoming’s really exploded in popularity, I believe, in the last few years, because with COVID, and people being able to work remotely, I imagine there’s been a population surge of people moving to the area.

Latham Jenkins 6:09
Sure, we, you know, we’ve seen a lot of newcomers come in, you know, COVID was basically an accelerant on the trend that was happening before with the ability to work virtually, and, you know, pre COVID, we were still traveling a lot. So our service was was most important for folks that still need it to get in and out of the valley. You know, post COVID Not that we’re through it yet. People aren’t having to travel, but they’ve been freed up to work virtually. So. Yes, lots of newcomers, you know, young families. It’s not what it was traditionally, which were baby boomers, you know, retiring here, as empty nesters, it’s folks realizing, hey, I can live in a great place. And why not try Jackson Hole?

D.J. Paris 6:49
It reminds me of sort of the Denver boom, where young people I don’t know, 3040 years ago, decided to go, hey, I want to live near the mountains, and I want to live with this sort of perfect climate area and Jackson Hole and lots of different parts of Wyoming seem to sort of fit that, that exact same criteria, let’s talk about you tell us or our listeners would love to know how you got started in real estate.

Latham Jenkins 7:13
You know, I my approach was really, really from a love of just storytelling, you know, at large. And I always aspired to be a professional photographer. And, you know, during college, I wrote to National Geographic, just asking, Well, you know, how do you ever get to do that be a photo journalist, and they sent me this great letter back and said, We don’t hire photographers. We hired historians, we hired economists, we hire, you know, paleontologists, what have you we hire people that really understand the topic. And photography is a tool. And so you know, it always kind of frames storytelling, for me from the standpoint of, kind of zooming forward to where I am today is still a magazine publisher, and a real editor that, you know, in essence, I’m constantly telling stories to various audiences, as it relates to real estate and my entry into it. You know, it was, it was really a desire to build a frame a house in the right light and help people see it as they would as if they were living in it. You’re around, you know, a lot of times we’ve come to showings in the middle of the day, it’s the worst time to see the house lights harsh, no animals in the yard, what have you. So this love of storytelling kind of drew me in because I honestly believe every house has a story, every property has a story, you have to spend time figuring that out, and then understand how you’re going to generate a story from it, that will resonate with that buyer. And so, you know, my entry was a little different, really, from the standpoint of saying, Look, I want to tell stories about properties.

D.J. Paris 8:44
Yeah, it’s so interesting. You mentioned that I’ve interviewed other luxury agents on the show before oftentimes, who are dealing with high net worth individuals who, maybe this is their third home, or their fourth even or even more than that, and they echo that same sentiment about storytelling. And I even had someone on the show not too long ago from Florida, who said, I almost rehearse an entire monologue, so to speak in my mind, and I break it up into different acts. And, you know, she really thought of it from a theater sort of point of view. And that was her background. And she goes, You know, when I meet the team of people that might be coming under the property, I know exactly, you know, how I’m going to tell this story. And storytelling is oftentimes I think, an underutilized tool in a realtors sort of playbook. And I’m curious to know, you know, as a magazine publisher, let’s talk about your magazine to tell us about that and then show you how you made them.

Latham Jenkins 9:44
I published to in Jackson Hole I published the travel guide so you could imagine that people you know, coming here first come as travelers and leave pre COVID You know, I had plenty people in COVID Never had been here just bought a house moved in because their neighbor said it’s you know, great but no a more traditional market, you come here as a traveler, you know, experiencing whitewater rafting, horseback riding, hiking, and then you kind of, you know, you’ll play pick your head up and say, wow, we really enjoy it here, we’d love to buy a house. So, you know, my love of sharing the stories here first kind of starts with walking through what it’s like to be a visitor in the community. I, you know, a traveler, and, you know, telling deeper stories about the people behind the restaurants, the people behind the rafting companies and kind of their journey in life. So that, you know, when people are traveling here, they have a greater foundation for understanding what makes this place tech. And, you know, I think anywhere you travel, it’s a travesty not to ever understand that it’s why we do travel is coming to appreciate other places, whether we, whether it resonates to move back there or not. That’s part of our journey and learning. So the travel guide has been where I started, just 25 years ago, publishing that. And then I augmented the travel guide, as I noticed, so many of the advertisers were architects and interior designers, not having another medium at the time to advertise. And I started, you know, it’s called a shelter magazine. But for us, it’s titled homestead magazine, which is art and architecture in Jackson Hole. So it works out perfectly. Because, you know, as they progress into the buy cycle, I have a magazine then to start calling out who the professionals are in the community, and helping the audience understand, you know, which type of work would resonate with them? You know, are you looking for a modern architect, or traditional one, a blend of the two with mountain modern. And so, you know, I ended up, I guess, working with over 400 small business owners in the community. And as my real estate clients need anything, I have a great kind of, you know, base to fall upon to make recommendations and connections with and it kind of goes back to what I was saying, you know, I really, I share stories of Jackson Hole and, you know, as relates to real estate, tying them even closer into the house, so they can understand the context of the house where it lives, and you know, where it sits in the community and the types of activities you would do from that part of the valley. So, yeah, it blends together really well.

D.J. Paris 12:13
That’s incredible. I imagine your connection to all things real estate in Jackson Hole is is is a, I would I would guess, guessed that you probably have more connection based on your magazines. And, and obviously you’re you’re working in real estate to to that industry, where you become, I would think very valuable to people who are interested in in pursuing, you know, a home there, whether it’s a primary residence or, you know, something they visit a vacation home or an investment property seems like, you know, all the players, for somebody who wants to build a home or even service it or I imagine that that the magazine probably, you know, indirectly brings a lot of business your way on the real estate side?

Latham Jenkins 12:58
Well, it does it you know, it’s one of the credibility builder, you know, you think about you’re buying a property in an out of area market. It’s a much, you know, the need basis for the buyer is much much different than if you’re just buying you know, a subdivision over or suburb over in Seattle, shown anywhere, do you understand the greater context of where you are, you don’t have those kinds of 101 questions that an out of area buyer will have. So you when you work in a resort mark, and I kind of like to refer to it as a lifestyle market. You know that finding a house is the easy thing. It’s more of walking them through what makes this place tech and whether or not that connects with them. I don’t want to pretend that Jackson holes for everyone, no places for everyone are we flooded with people, right? We it’s 20 below the wintertime here I’m not going to tell you it’s not. But for those that it does connect with, you know, I do have an ability to help them understand what life is like here, I’ve raised a family here. And so I find that part of this kind of journey for them, you know, wanting to, to fulfill this inspirational desire, this aspirational desire to live in a lifestyle community, a great way to connect with them and build a deep and meaningful relationship. You know, I ski with many of them, and help them understand what a day is like, you know, skiing, I take them fishing on the river. I take them on the white orders. So I’m able to kind of integrate them into my life for which they can see a parallel to which might be of interest to them. And it’s yeah, I find that that’s a very genuine approach because these are things that I do anyway myself. And I think it builds a level of confidence with them that this is bigger than just buying a house. This is moving a life to a place that we’ve never lived before.

D.J. Paris 14:43
Yeah, I agree and you you sort of live eat and breathe Jackson Hole and you’re immersed in so much of the culture and and the artisans there and the different service providers. So clearly you’re just this hub of of knowledge and information And you yourself are also a resident, of course, and have raised a family. So, you know, I was just thinking that maybe with, with the remote work trend that that is likely, I would assume to continue, although maybe that’ll pull back a bit as people start feeling more comfortable returning to, you know, private workspaces. But if they are able, if their employers allow them to continue to work remotely, I imagine there’ll be almost a whole other industry in real estate about Connect, you know, a local agent connecting with an agent and a vacation area or a lifestyle area, such as Jackson Hole. And you are like the perfect example of the guy where you would want, if you had a client, if I had a client here in Chicago that was looking to, to move out there, I would just instinctively say, Oh, I know someone there and he lives and breathes it. So I’m curious if if you’ve seen an increase in that sort of traffic your way, as you become more well known. And hopefully this podcast will help in that, in that sense, do

Latham Jenkins 16:03
you why, you know, DJ, it’s an interesting thing that I don’t feel like I’ve been successful in reaching out, nor feeder markets, building relationships, so that when their clients, you know, happen to mention to them, oh, we’re going to Jackson Hole, you know, it triggers a thought of, hey, let me make your connection with you. And, you know, if you play our demographics out there, they’re very, I can tell you, where our guests are, you know, our buyers come from, and I think it’s a real opportunity, you know, Chicago, New York, San Fran, LA, Houston, Dallas, Austin, Atlanta, I mean, these markets, which basically represent the direct flights in the Jackson Hole, sure, big feeder markets. And I think there’s a real opportunity to do a better job networking with my peers, in those feeder markets, and hopefully gaining their competence for the referral. You know, we all covet these, these clients, and we protect their privacy of being in our fold. But at the same time, you know, I guess we ought to be thinking about how it’s to serve them. And, you know, in our outreach, you know, just making, making it aware that, hey, if you’re traveling to Jackson Hole, or Aspen, or Palm Beach, or what you wherever they’re going, you know, let me know, I have great connections that can guide you. Because, you know, a lot of these folks, they don’t buy on the first trip. So I played tour, and I helped to make sure they have a very positive experience, and one that’s, shall I say, a little deeper and more meaningful than if they show up here. And they don’t announce that they’re here. Because it’s like being a tourist, you know, you’re going to make all the mistakes the first time to then only come back and know exactly how you’d like to go through it. So yeah, I’d say that’s a work in progress.

D.J. Paris 17:44
Well, I was just thinking about as a magazine publisher, and also a realtor specializes in the luxury market, you obviously have a very specific aesthetic that I imagine, is important to you. So when you’re showing homes that you know, your clients may want to purchase, or maybe you’re listing a property to put on the market, how important is getting the aesthetic of, of how you would see it, versus, you know, similarly to maybe putting a layout together for your magazine, how important is getting the aesthetic, right? If it’s your listing, for example, and going in and saying, here’s what we need to do, here are the changes we may need to make to get this place ready to list.

Latham Jenkins 18:25
Sure. Well, you know, if we talk about, say, the cell site first, we might work in the in the magazine business, also kind of overlay, owning, and still having a small part of it is an advertising agency. So we don’t want it when I think about telling the story, it always goes back to what we use in advertising as a creative brief. And you know, when you think about populating a creative brief, it triggers all the right thoughts that you have to capture on paper, you know, as simple as saying list out the key selling advantages of this property and boil it down to something very simple that will resonate and that might be three to five key selling points, which then frame the story and then it frames which visuals you’re going to go after. So you know, I see myself although I am actually a photographer and I love shooting video and I you know, I’m not the world’s best but it enables me to, to fulfill the vision that I have. And what I like to say to others is that the role of the realtor really is that of a producer, you are producing a story so although you might not be technically inclined, chances are if you’re not you’re gonna hire a photographer someone to help you with video, but you own the story. And and you must enable them to be successful through having you know this creative framework ie a creative brief to share with them which gives them guardrails, gives them focus and keeps everyone on the same page. There’s a term in advertising called coherence, and basically that everything fits together and the great brands that we love in our life have done it so successfully. But yet real estate you look at what we do And we just stumble over ourselves at times. And, you know, it’s because we’re not really thinking that, hey, I’m not a producer, what do I know? I’m going to contract that out. You can’t contract it out that photographer you hired needs direction, the video person needs direction, the story, right? I mean, the, I use a writer to capture the narrative, which is where we start to then figure out what supporting visuals are needed, and then what time of day, you might need to be in there. But again, it’s all in the creative brief. And if you really commit to using a creative brief and go get your friends and advertising to tell you what it is, it’s a game changer.

D.J. Paris 20:36
Wow, you know, it would be so easy to move on from this point. And I’d really rather sort of step on it a little bit, because about 300 episodes we’ve done, I haven’t really had this exact conversation yet. And I just realized, as you were mentioning it how valuable it is to our audience, which whether it’s a luxury, a sort of lifestyle property, like like the ones that often you are promoting, or showing to clients. Or if it’s just a first time home in, you know, the downtown of Chicago, there’s still there’s still a story there. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be an impressive sort of story of that has lots of exciting variables to it, but just understanding what are the main features of this property. And if I’m listing it for sale, how I mean, the idea of even just telling the photographer hears, you know, I’m really want to highlight, I want people to feel these three emotions, or I want to highlight these three features. I suspect 99% of realtors have never thought to do that. In fact, they’re oftentimes not there when the photographer is even,

like, go get some photos.

Boy, you just you just said something that is so incredibly valuable just to understand, and you don’t have to be a marketing or advertising expert. But you do need to know your property well enough to say, here’s the story, I want to tell. And in your your idea of hiring a writer for you know, to tell that narrative is probably worth its weight in gold for whatever that writer and that you I don’t know, if you do your own photography, since you’re a photographer, but whatever you’re paying these service providers to to, you know, sort of construct that that story. I imagine that is so valuable, because I know buying a home or maybe a vacation property, you want to know that story. And you want to feel emotionally connected, especially when it’s a secondary, you know, sort of property to your primary life. And, and, boy, that is such a smart idea. So I applaud you for being able to sort of communicate that to our audience. It’s very, very big,

Latham Jenkins 22:41
right. And one more thing, like a homeowner, interview the homeowner, you’re like, you don’t know that brand. And when you show up, you mean you make a listing presentation, you think you know what’s going on. But if you don’t come if you don’t find ways to inform yourself about, you know, in this case, the home or were vacant land, or whatever it is that you’re promoting, you know, you’re acting from an uninformed base, and the best place to start are the homeowners and ask them how they move around the property where they like to have breakfast, where they finish the day? Is there a light that comes to the house at a certain time that just, you know, warms your heart? Or their sounds? Or neighbors? Or you know, take it out? Like where do you go for a walk when you leave the property? All of this is very important and boiling down, you know, what will be something that’s unique in the way that you go about telling the story. And, you know, I think all too often my colleagues don’t see it like this, they want to focus on granite countertops, and in you know, the pool in the backyard, like alright, well, those are checklist items, but you got to show how labs and the best person is the seller, like spend time with them?

D.J. Paris 23:49
And that’s right, too. And they’re going to know the cool little intricacies that aren’t obvious in photos or in the description.

Latham Jenkins 23:57
Yeah, you know, and that just informs everything. So it always starts with a homeowner interview. And you’ve got to spend some time on your questions, you know, because you got to dig deep, that you know that a lot of times they’re emotionally detached at this point that are straw, they’re having a salad or for whatever reason, but then they start, you know, when you ask them that question a everybody loves to be asked, give me your opinion, right, it kind of confirms it. And then B, they see that you care and you’re taking time to talk about their property. And, you know, they realize by listing the house, their neighbors are looking into their lives now. So they want to be seen in the great in the best light possible. And so set them up for success. And they can be very informative in the process.

D.J. Paris 24:45
And they will also I am I’m not going to speak for you but they’ll tell you the story right. They will give you the story that you will then communicate so you don’t have to create the narrative in most cases they’re going to tell you and all the really big talking

Latham Jenkins 24:57
points things that they love times of day A to be in those rooms to take pictures. No, it’s very, very important. I feel like if you don’t engage the homeowner, you’re just, you’re throwing darts at a dartboard blindly like you don’t know really what the story is that you’re trying to tell, and you could miss it completely. And, you know, the difference when you take this step is it’s very meaningful and the outcome you’re going to, you’re going to get for the homeowner. You know, in many cases, they you know, they often ask for that photo book afterwards. You know, it’s a story that lives on about a property they love for a point in time in their life. And, you know, when you show up with these books that listing presentations, it’s very hard for people to say no to you if they go, yeah. Okay, I see how you do this much differently than your colleagues.

D.J. Paris 25:49
I was I just recently purchased a condo in here in the city, and I have a rooftop space on the on the rooftop. And it’s beautiful, because on one side, you can see the entire downtown skyline. And then on the other side, which is facing west, it just looks like you know, sort of city, city life, nothing spectacular, unless you come at sunset, and you see the sun fading away. And it’s the most beautiful array of colors. And you’d said something earlier that I just now connected, because I myself am not a producing agent. I am sort of work in the Office of our all of our agents. But if somebody went to see my property, if I was to sell it, I would only bring them there at sunset. And I would say you got to see what this because you watch the sun go down on one side, you turn around and you can see the city as the sun goes down, you can see this light reflecting off the buildings and then how beautiful the Chicago skyline is. But I just realized you wouldn’t really know about that unless my if I had an agent trying to sell it. I was like Do not bring anybody here unless it’s, you know, maybe bring them twice, but bring them for sunset. And you were saying that earlier with a property where you said the light was kind of harsh at that particular time of day. But that’s where you that’s great information to get from the from the seller to understand, hey, what’s the best time of day to like, what are the really cool things? Boy, you just mentioned a lot, a lot of really important things. I know, we’re kind of getting stuck on this one topic, but it’s such a valuable topic. But we talked about the sell side, let’s talk about the buy side. So when you are then taking buyers around, are you then speaking to the listing agent saying tell me the story of this property? Or are you asking the listing agent to meet you at the property to sort of tell that story? Or how does that work?

Latham Jenkins 27:33
Yeah, it’s good question, you know, that first thing I do with the buyers is obviously as much research as possible. I mean, Google is a good friend, you can try and just, you know, build a foundation of what you know about them, even if you don’t mention it to them. Soon as they get in the car, you know, I’m always asking about the family dynamic. You know, is it just a single person? Is it a married couple as a married couple with kids? Is it a married couple with kids? And now have grandkids you want to mean like, like, you know, we have more generations here? And, you know, I love the question, you know, you know, What does Christmas morning look like in the house? How many people are going to be in this living room that you need to accommodate? And, you know, as they start answering these questions, it’s informing me and then I, you know, I’m asking about how often they’ve been the Jackson Hole, which can be a very intimidating place to those from the outside, you know, a lot of times people come in to Jackson Hole, it’s a male oriented, you know, driven scenario, they want to ski they want to fish, you know, maybe they want to hunt or something. And their wives are a little more timid about it. Because they’re like, Oh, my Gosh, it’s cold, it’s snowy, like, what are we going to do here. And that’s, that’s not the case. So I really try and figure out their level of sensitivity about buying in the market, and then start, you know, practically addressing the concerns. I’m always very straightforward whether you never want someone to move in that this is just not the right fit. But with that being said, you know, you’ve got to help them understand how to survive a winter here. And it’s not surviving. It’s thriving and wintertime, because in the wintertime, there’s never a down day, you know, it doesn’t rain here it snows and you can go do anything in the snow. But back to what you’re saying, you know, you create a base level of understanding of what they’re looking for, and then start orienting, you know, your behaviors around that. You know, a lot of times they think they want to go look at things because the price points are right, but you can already tell it’s not a right next, you know, you’ve got 12 people on Christmas morning, it’s got two bedrooms, why are we looking at this? You’ve said that you’re not moving resident tax residency here. So chances are, you might want to consider buying in an area has short term rental opportunity so you can make an investment property and take advantage of the write offs. The the level of questioning is, I think key to helping them realize exactly what they’re looking for versus thinking you have all the answers. You don’t you know, and they don’t know what they’re doing. aspiring to buy either you have to spend some time with them. And so you get to the, you know, you get to showings quite often and, you know, some agents are really informed and others are, you know, they’re still looking at their spec sheet to answer questions. And I feel like, you know, that’s where it gets hard. I think Additionally, when you buy in a kind of a resort, lifestyle market, it is absolutely critical that you understand what you do allow on the property. In other words, where the hiking trails are, where do you take off on your bike? And what might you go ride? Where might the kids go to school? And how long a drive would that be? You think of you think of it’s where it’s positioned in the community, relative to the lifestyle, these clients are looking to live, you know, I always like to ask, tell me what a day is like in your life? Do you get up and go to the gym every morning, and you need to find a great coffee shop. And you know, times old by New York Times, you know, I need to understand how you live and then I can help orient you to, you know, still having many of those creature comforts around you. But yet, buying in an area here, that’s inspiring.

D.J. Paris 31:12
I wonder how many realtors out there, when they’re talking to their buyers? At that conference, maybe that first or second consultation, say, walk me through your typical day, and maybe an ideal day, if you were to move to another, you know, do you want to be near a coffee shop or hiking trail or grocery store or a gym. And I suspect that people of course, realtors know to talk about schools and, you know, various sort of more obvious things that the buyers are interested in. But understanding lifestyle is, Wow, what a great tip for audience is really having that conversation. And whether you’re in a rural or more urban area, you can you can start matching people in Chicago, we have public transportation called the owl. And you know, and other cities have have their version of that, and some people need to be right there. And others say I don’t care, and just understanding sort of what somebody’s day looks like and how they want to move around. And, you know, where are the closest parks? And do is that important to them? Boy, that’s, that’s such a great tip for our audience. And one last question I had for you was how what does the luxury market look like these days? Have you noticed any change in the last, you know, several years? Or is it sort of steady and consistent?

Latham Jenkins 32:35
Yeah, well, and you know, that’s a harder one. So we’ll, you know, let’s break down a little bit, let’s just say demand for luxury properties, has remained very, very high. In fact, you know, we’re burdened in Jackson Hole from a deal buying perspective, because only 2.85% of this county is private. So that’s about 15,000 deeded parcels. So, you know, the great scarcity of inventory, even in a in a down market will when we see more come online, you know, we’re dealing with very few options to show people at any one time, which is, which is always a challenge. You see many people here, DJ that have had a very successful business exit. And I had a dream to come and buy a property here in Jackson, you know, I can sometimes it stumbles on for years until they find the right property. And, you know, these budgets aren’t constrained, it’s just our housing options are. So Jackson all benefits through the scarcity that we have, and also benefits because of the be in the most tax friendly state. So you take those two items together, and it just it just pops up demand for us year after year. The you know, as far as pricing and where we are, you know, as of September 14 2021, our pricing is starting to stabilize, versus the great run up that we’ve seen 20 to 40% over the last 1214 months, I hear a lot of people saying hey, I’m gonna wait, I think the pricing is going to come down domain coming down or mismatch properties with the pressure, you know, sellers shooting for the moon, because they saw it, their neighbor just got there like, well, I could get that I guess I am a seller, but otherwise, you know, on a standard market value and I do believe that this focus on more risk rather than resort I refer to them as lifestyle properties, it’s going to be a growing trend in our virtual work enables that and why not live in a place that’s fulfilling to you wherever that might be. And so all of these things will continue to enable the luxury market to go forward and successful way and then you know, the other trends that we see, you know, the home that my parents would have built, chances are is not the home I’m looking to occupy. So you know, they might have been happy with an 8000 square foot wall at home, you know for for for buyers coming in and their, why don’t we just say on average in their 50s, they’re looking really for that mountain modern to contemporary architecture. And sure, you know, we’re seeing a lot of home conversions in that direction. So I think the products having to change to meet the market. And when I say that so much of our vacant land is built out, so you’re buying existing homes, and considering how am I going to retrofit this to suit my taste, because I don’t want to look at long walls, which some people love them, and some people don’t. But you know, there’s always a great way to kind of balance that. So I think this demand will be persistent and foregoing, and I don’t suspect any great downturns.

D.J. Paris 35:42
Well, we should mention to our audience, and thank you for that perspective on sort of the Jackson Hole area, we should mention to our audience, which is nationwide, and even in other countries that if you have clients that are interested in considering Jackson Hole, and you would like to refer to a realtor who lives there, publishes there and also has raised a family and in that area, what’s the best way one of one of the listeners to our show should reach out if they have somebody that’s interested in purchasing in your area?

Latham Jenkins 36:16
Yeah, well, thanks for that. You know, being in sales, we all love that tee up. But um, I actually published a third magazine, one that’s called the outsized reasons why you will love living in Jackson Hole. And that’s a starting point for any buyer. It’s a very deep community magazine about what makes this place tick. And it’s a great starting point to align people as to whether or not this is the right lifestyle decision to be here, but also tells a very deep and meaningful story about Jackson Hole and one that most people would never figure out, you know, for years after being here as 30 years of being here for myself. You know, I’m still learning every day. So, you know, I invite people to come to my website at live water, Jackson hole.com, I invite them to connect with me on Instagram. It’s Latham Jenkins real estate is my username. And you’ll see just your ongoing story. And when the time is right to move forward to consider buying, of course, reach out, and we’d love to host him here. Maybe we ski for the day, maybe we fish for the day. But we get to know each other and informs me so that I can make the best use of their time as they’re looking for real estate.

D.J. Paris 37:24
Wow. Well, thank you so much for this great interview explaining to us how you go about working with buyers and sellers. I’d like all of our listeners. And by the way to the magazines that Latham produces and publishes. We’re going to have the links to those in our show notes. So if you’re listening on a podcast audio episode, just look in the show notes. And that will give you access to those publications as late the mentioned, but please visit him on his website as he just mentioned, which is live water Jackson hole.com. Or follow him on Instagram, which is Latham Jenkins and Latham is l a t h a. m. Jenkins real estate again, we’ll also have that in the show notes. Latham, thank you so much for being on the show. He provided tremendous insight for our audience. On behalf of the audience. We thank you. We know how busy you are. And spending time with us on a busy Tuesday is very appreciated, for sure. And then on behalf of Latham and myself, we want to thank the audience for listening to this episode and continuing to support our show. Before you sign off everyone, please just do one thing. Tell a friend to think of one other real estate agent that could benefit from hearing this great interview with Latham and send them a link to our show. Easiest way to do that you can send them right over to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done, they can stream right from their 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. Latham on behalf of the audience. Thank you so much. And we will see everyone on the next episode.

Latham Jenkins 38:58
DJ thank you and to all those that have given you know a few minutes of their time to listen to what I had to say.

D.J. Paris 39:04
It was very it was very appreciated and very actionable. And I’m hoping our audience will start doing some of those things that are our guests. Do that separate them from other agents. So thank you so much.

Chris Bello talks about how he started his career in real estate. Chris discusses how a client’s expectations of meeting have changed because of the pandemic and the benefits of using technology. Next, Chris explains how you can use the pareto principle to determine where to spend your time. Chris also describes how he’s delegated much from his business and how he makes it work. Last, Chris discusses work/life balance.

Please check out Chris’ Entrepreneur Motivation Podcast by clicking here.

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

Chris Bello can be reached by booking a 15 minute Zoom meeting here.

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by thumbs up. Here’s a cool fact 50% of consumers rely on their social network to help them make purchasing decisions. So let me ask you how many more referrals and great leads would your business receive if all your happy customers took the time to post their experience and endorsed your business on social media? While I’ve got great news, thumbs up does just that. Thumbs Up is designed to help businesses create great social media posts, with pictures and personalized quotes that customers can easily share with their social media friends in just two clicks. These personalized posts help your customers celebrate their new purchases or service like the dream home that you just helped them buy or their shiny remodeled kitchen while simultaneously endorsing your business to all their connections. Check them out at get a thumbs up.com Again, that’s good a thumbs up.com Thumbs up referrals without asking and now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with top producer Chris Bello. Before we get to Chris just a few quick reminders. Number one, please help us grow by telling a friend think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from top producers like Chris and send them a link to our website that’s keeping it real pod.com They can stream every episode we’ve ever done right there. And also please follow us on Facebook you can find [email protected] forward slash keeping it real pod and for everyone that is going to the NAR conference this November in San Diego, I will be there. Now I’m not speaking And I’m not part of the the expo hall but I will be walking around so if you’re a listener and you’d like to shake hands and or I don’t know if we’re shaking hands anymore, right? But if you’d like to say hello We would be honored to do that. So myself and one other member of our team will be there. So just shoot us a message let us know and we would love to meet up and say thank you for being a listener in person and now on to our show with Chris Bello.

Right today on the show, we have Chris Bello, host of entrepreneur motivation podcast and also real estate expert Chris bello is a college graduate that quit his corporate job three years in, he wanted to take hold of the reins of life and write his own story. After struggling with one’s side hustle after another he went all in on residential real estate where he has quickly caught momentum. Chris is also the host of the top rated business podcast entrepreneur motivation podcast, which has just crossed over 1 million downloads. And as somebody who has a podcast who also is at that about that number. I know how hard that is. So Chris is doing something right, everyone want everyone listening. To check out Chris’s podcast again, just do a search for the entrepreneur motivation podcast, or go to Chris’s website, which is Chris bellow.com. And Chris’s motto, by the way, is less dreaming more doing, Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Bello 3:32
Thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be here today.

D.J. Paris 3:35
Yeah, I’m excited too. I apologize for anyone watching. I’m beet red, because I was. I’m blonde haired and fair. And I have really no business being in the sun by the fall of that yesterday. And I was captain of our team. So I was had to stay on there the whole time. And so I apologize for anyone looking I was trying to fix it with lighting but now I’m but But Chris looks great. And we’re here to talk to him anyway.

Chris Bello 4:03
But Chris and I never

D.J. Paris 4:05
Yeah, thanks. Thankfully it does. My funny part is last night just because I was going off to bed. My I think I sprained my kicking foot. I hadn’t played kickball since I maybe fifth grade or sixth grade. And I was like, Man, am I that old? Right? Like I play kick roll your foot or just bruised it or something. And I was dragging it like an old man who’s like had a game plague. Thankfully, it’s better today but I’m still so I’m all beat up. I’m sunburned. I have a bad foot.

Chris Bello 4:39
Well, you made it here today. That’s all that counts right? Shall I battled.

D.J. Paris 4:43
Thankfully sitting in a chair is something I can still do. So I was good. But anyway, we are we’re here to learn more about you. But tell us a little bit about how you got involved with real estate. You sort of said goodbye to the corporate world and and wanted to take take a ownership of your destiny. So tell us about that.

Chris Bello 5:02
Yeah, absolutely. So I think a lot of people can resonate with this feeling of going with the flow going with the motions, kind of doing what your friends are doing and what your parents want you to do. Right? I joined a couple of clubs, you know, I was in like the Hispanic Student Union, I can’t even remember it’s been a while since high school in those days, but went to a high school that most of my friends went to like an all boys Jesuit prep school, then I went to Texas a&m university, I was just going from one thing to the next and never really thinking about what I wanted to do in my life, and got a supply chain degree because I took accounting and management. And I was like, I don’t like those classes, let me do supply chain, and got the job in oil and gas thought it was my dream job. I was so excited. I remember, I’m like, Oh my gosh, I got this job. And a few years in, I started to wonder like, why am I not feeling good? Like, is it just me? Do people like actually being here all day? Like I don’t, I don’t, I’ve just checked out in meetings, you know, wasn’t very interested in what I was doing. Definitely not the ideal employee. And I don’t, I don’t know, I just didn’t have that employee mindset of like, let me go work in Excel all day, and give it to somebody because the deadlines at 2pm. And then it sits in that person’s inbox for a week, because they’re going on vacation. I’m like, Why did I have to do this by by this deadline, this artificial deadline, and three and a half years in, I just decided, you know, hey, I want to quit and try my own thing. I had saved up some money. You know, no kids single at the time. And I had no debt or anything like that. So I was able to take more risks, and travel the world. That was kind of my thing, like I wanted to go on a trip. So I booked a one month trip to Asia without really having a plan. And it wasn’t directly going into real estate. But I’m kind of getting there, I tried a few things out, I spent a lot of money like 40 grand on an idea that pretty much just disappeared. And I learned a lot. It was an invention idea between intellectual property and try to manufacture stuff, it got expensive, fast, and then kind of put my tail between my legs and wound up working for a house buying Investment Company in Houston. And it’s like a wholesaling company, if anyone’s familiar with that you go to distressed homeowners and whatnot. And my job was business development, I was going to bring in Chick fil A and food and doughnuts to realtors, or Realtors rather. And everyone’s like, it’s not real, it’s realtor. And I started to make friends with real estate agents that were top producers to try to tell them like, Hey, if you got distressed homes, you know, homes that smell like cat pee, like, please bring that to us, we will take care of them and pay you 6% Commission. And it wasn’t too long before I realized like I need to get my license because yeah, some of these agents bringing us deals are making it easy 6%. And I’m over here like doing the work and trying to find this investor, buyer and stuff. And there’s a lot of great stuff that happens in both industries. But I basically got my license in 2019. So I’ve just over two years of having my license. And I guess I don’t know what the numbers are to hit top producer status. But I’ve been hitting awards in my office. And as we talked about, and I don’t wanna give away the whole story, but that’s how I got into real estate, I joined Dallas buying company realized I needed to get my license, and then I stuck with it. You know, I make fast friends, I make real relationships, and everyone would tell me, you’re gonna be an awesome realtor, you know, you make friends so easily. That’s that’s like being a realtor, right? It’s the personality type. In most cases. It is.

D.J. Paris 8:15
And it’s that sort of willingness to serve, I think to that idea of customer service as being sort of more important than talent, I would even say, not that talent, or skill isn’t needed. Of course it is. But that can be developed over time. But but it seems to me that after the hundreds of episodes we’ve done with top producers, customer service well and of course having systems and discipline and all of that but but once you get beyond that, like what actually makes them successful beyond just being a really hard worker, it seems to be that they just love to stay in touch with people and make sure that the clients know what’s going on throughout the day. I’m just curious to get to get your take on how important customer service has been to or follow up maybe is maybe a better way to say, you know, to your business,

Chris Bello 9:04
as a follow up is obviously very important. A lot of real estate agents that I know myself included, I’m great at being a people pleaser, making friends like hey, I’m always here if you need me, but I’m terrible at getting things done on time. We’re not done on time, but like organization, right? Yeah, I have all these ideas. I’m the idea, that visionary person but when it comes to like, oh my gosh, we got all these contracts and documents and showings and the open house and you know, listings to manage. I had to go get help quickly. But the way that I get around that is I let my clients know like I’m just I’m a friend and I’m available. Hey, I’m always here. If you have any questions, let me know. Like if the ball gets dropped somewhere, whether it’s my fault or someone else’s, let me know. And I will jump on it right away. I make myself very available. And that alone clients are so happy to know because when you talk about customer service, I think it’s just being willing to be there and being willing to fix anything that happened Ideally you want to get in front of it. But if in when things do happen, being able to make the phone call and deliver the news like, Hey guys, this happened a recent listing, front door glass broke during some of the showings somehow. And an agent on the last showing sent me the picture like, Hey, I think someone tried to break in or something. And I’m like, Okay, I don’t know how this happened, or who did it, but I’m going to own up to it and get ahead of it. Send a voice message to my clients. Hey, guys, no big deal. Front front door glass broke, I’m going to take care of it. Don’t worry, just wanted to let you know. Right. So before they could even get upset, I offered to pay for it and just cover it. And that is how I get ahead of it. And I think that’s what is so important with customer service is just letting your clients know, as things come up. I will be here for you. That’s all they want to know.

D.J. Paris 10:45
Yeah, it’s so funny. I have what a what a great example of getting in front of solving a problem before the person even knows it exists. Because I currently am going through this. So I have a SIM a totally different situation and a really dumb sort of anecdote, but but something that I think will people can relate to on the show. Our listeners can can understand this. So I have tomorrow Crate and Barrel is the we just had a dining room table delivered. And there’s a little defect that needs to be repaired. No big deal. So I bought a five minute repair, I’m guessing. And so they’re supposed to come tomorrow morning. So that was all scheduled. Great. No problem. They sent me an email. They called me yesterday to confirm and they sent me an email. And just today saying, hey, just reminder tomorrow, where we’ll be there between these hours will actually realize, Oh my gosh, I can’t be there tomorrow during these hours. So I and I hate to do that after you know, we’re really at sort of the the last hour, but the 11th hour, but I said okay, well, I’ll just call them to reschedule. It’s no big deal. So I called and I was on hold for 25 minutes. I couldn’t get through and Crate and Barrel is a pretty sizable retailer. I would I would. So I’m sort of surprised that that it took this long. And then I eventually had to just leave a voicemail because I couldn’t get through. Then I tried on their website, their chat feature, which they have a live chat. And I tried doing that couldn’t get through. Eventually, the live chat just said just email us. So I emailed them. I have no idea if the service man is going to be coming tomorrow. And honestly, I don’t really care because I feel like made an attempt. Yeah, well, I’ve tried but I still will feel a little guilty if the person because it won’t be that person’s fault if they show up. And I’ll feel bad that they made it to my place. And I can’t be there. But my point is, is I’ve spent like an hour on this today. And and it shouldn’t be that hard. And it just sort of took up time. Whereas in the email, it could have just said, Hey, if you need to reschedule hit this button, and we can take care of it immediately. But literally, they don’t have that. And I’m like how is that? So So again, there’s a problem, I can’t, they haven’t given me a way to easily solve it. And I have no idea if it’s actually solved. So that’s a really great example of what you gave is, all I want to know is the problem is solved. Or any anything in my life. I just just want somebody if I’m hiring somebody, or if I have a service provider, just say don’t worry about it. We got it. And likely, it’s so what you said was was so was really, it was such an experience I want which is I just wanted to reply from Korean girls saying hey, we got it. Don’t worry, we’ll call you next week. Don’t worry, we got that email or call yet but not not to pick on Crate and Barrel. I think hopefully they

Chris Bello 13:37
don’t show up. But yeah, like you said, you try. The whole thing is just being available and being responsive. And I use a lot of automation tools even for my clients, you know, like, hey, book a call with Calendly. For example, it sends automatic reminders for the Zoom call. Hey, it’s in an hour. FYI. If you need to reschedule, there’s a button there. Like you said, you can reschedule I don’t care if people can’t five minutes before the meeting, as long as I know. Because sometimes I look and I’m like okay, how this call in five minutes with my client. Oh reschedule reason kids had soccer practice. Okay, cool. We’ll do it tomorrow. I just don’t want to be sitting there for 10 minutes waiting for you to log in. And then, you know, where did the miscommunication happen? Like if you automate and have the right systems that no longer becomes an issue. So thanks, for example.

D.J. Paris 14:21
Well, your your example is great. I want to just make sure that our audience knows So as Chris was mentioning, Calendly Calendly sorry. And we’ll we’ll maybe we’ll provide a link to it here in the show notes but it is a low cost and possibly free I forgot if it’s free. Yeah, they have free versions, I think premium but I’m shocked at how many agents I know we have 800 agents in our company. I bet you 95% of them do not use a scheduling system and Calendly is like free or almost free. And it is amazing. So exactly what my issue right barrel doesn’t have a system like that, and they are a multibillion dollar company. So this is a super easy way for for your clients to be able to schedule and reschedule. And whether it’s an in person meeting or a zoom, call a phone call, please use some sort of scheduling software because it will automate the reminders.

Chris Bello 15:20
It’s like $10 a month for the premium unlimited meeting types. I mean, it’s it’s like a no brainer, it’s, it’s my best tool that’s transformed my business personally, I’ve given them a lot of kudos. But literally, I think I’ve used them for a year or two. And it’s just transformed my life. I’m not doing calls at 6pm on Friday anymore, because my link doesn’t allow people to book that. Right. So it’s on my schedule, it pops up, it sends reminders, it’s very difficult for someone to forget that a meeting is going to happen, because there’s all these safeguards and automations. And reminders in place where I don’t have to be like, Oh, crap, I forgot to call my client at two. Like I said, No, we’re going to be sitting there ready for the Zoom call, because we all got reminders multiple.

D.J. Paris 16:02
Yeah, and let’s talk about having zoom calls with with clients being obviously COVID accelerated our, our use of of zoom, of course, and now pretty much everyone at least here in America is pretty accustomed to using video, video meetings, Zoom being probably the most prominent one. On work, Chris and I are speaking via zoom right now, of course, as well. And let’s talk about the how the expectation of the client has shifted from the in person meeting, maybe at a coffee shop or at their home, if you’re listing a property, or you’re meeting them at the at a property they’re interested in buying, to having that initial conversation, you know, virtually,

Chris Bello 16:43
yeah, the virtual thing. I mean, as a millennial, I embrace technology, I learned things very quickly. And I have met a lot of top producers, they kind of jokingly refer to themselves as boomers like, Hey, can you show me I’m a boomer, I don’t know how to do anything on Instagram, for example. There’s a top guy that I know who’s killing it in Houston, and literally, I’ve gotten to his house to show them how to post on his story and share and link it to Facebook, you know, all these different types of things. But with technology, and obviously with with COVID going on, more and more people have, you know, adopted this technology, they kind of assume that it’s going to be on Zoom, like, it’s almost weird for me to even be like, Hey, can I meet you at your house, like, I don’t even think to ask that anymore. Because zoom call is convenient. They have their computer, I don’t have to like turn my laptop to show them my screen, I can just share it here, I can record it like we’re doing now. I can stream it to Facebook, I wouldn’t stream a buyer consultation to Facebook. But if I had some sort of informative thing, I can easily stream it to pages, and you’re just unable to do so much more have multiple people join in, maybe the husband is at work and the wife’s at home, they can both join at the same time, right. And so you’re able to do a lot more. And I think like you said more and more people have had to adapt and start to use this technology. So now that hesitancy is no longer there. Whereas a couple years ago, maybe like oh, I don’t have zoom, it’s not on my phone, it’s not downloaded, like can we just do a phone call, and three way or whatever, you know, add the call merge the calls, that’s kind of outdated. Whereas here, I know, when they’re on a zoom call, they’re gonna have someone looking after their kid, they’re gonna put their dog away, they’re gonna sit down and have their undivided attention for the most part. Occasionally, you get the person who zooms in from their phone, and they’re like driving or walking around. But you’re able to clearly communicate, you can record the calls. And if they forgot something, you said, Hey, here’s the recording of our call. We talked about that in 10 minutes in right, so just changed the game entirely for my business.

D.J. Paris 18:36
Yeah, I agree. Same, same with me. And I will say that, for those of you who think, well, some, you know, some of my my prospects, or my clients don’t want to be on camera, because then they feel like maybe they have to look a certain way. You can always tell them in your introductory email, Hey, if you just want to do audio via on Zoom, just don’t turn on your webcam, no big deal. So you don’t have to use the video feature necessarily. So you know, just as something that I because I initially thought, Gosh, I’m sure everyone doesn’t want to be on video. And then I went, oh, I’ll just tell them they don’t have to be. But it’s such we’re also used to using video conferencing, whether whether our, you know, webcam is turned on or we’re just doing audio, it’s just so much easier. And you said something that I think is really important, especially in listing presentations or buyer consultations, which is recording the meeting. I mean, my memory is terrible. I don’t know about yours, but but I just I don’t remember anything and so saying able to record and go back and say gosh, I think they said this, but I didn’t forgot to take the note. so valuable.

Chris Bello 19:45
Yeah. And I’ve even done this with training like with showing agents when I’m trying to get leverage and I offer to do some mentorship if they can show some houses or do some errands for me regarding listings. And one one question came up when I was teaching something about how to You showing time or how to optimize because I have the supply chain background. So I was doing this nerdy way of like optimizing your route. So you’re not driving in zigzags on showings, you’re, you’re going in the straightest possible route. And two weeks later, she asked a question like, Hey, how did you say you did that thing? Again, I didn’t spend five minutes telling her I’m a big productivity nut. I said, here’s the dropbox link to the video, it starts at seven minutes in or whatever the time was, that just saved me, it took me 10 seconds instead of let me give her a call and walk her through this again. And now she had the answer she needed, she could see it on my screen actually happening, what buttons to press. And it just, it’s just total game changer, right? You’re, you’re not duplicating your work anymore. It’s like one and done. Once you record it, and you document it, you can automate it and systematize it.

D.J. Paris 20:50
Yeah, it’s really so important. Because as an agent, our listeners, I’m sure get a lot of those similar questions over and over and over again. And even if all you ever did was create a Google Doc, or some sort of, you know, database of questions and answers that you could copy and paste into an email, or in the case of a video explanation, you just, you know, you have those YouTube clips, or you have them time stamped or whatever, you just do that you are going to save a tremendous amount of time, or even better. Prior to the person like Chris was saying, with, with the example of the broken glass in the front door, is solving the problem in advance, which is, hey, Mr. or Mrs. Buyer, before we even meet, here’s a whole bunch of stuff we’re gonna go over if you want to learn a little bit more about my process, here’s what we’re going to talk about, you know, all of those are systems and the idea of systematizing really is just going to save you so much time, I have to my dog is going to see the an ophthalmologist, which I didn’t even know there were ophthalmologists. And I shouldn’t really be joking about it, because it could possibly be something that’s, that’s that’s not not so great. But anyway, this just happened today. And and, you know, thankfully, I was able to get in. And I was very lucky because the the the ophthalmology center for the stock said, Oh, my gosh, we have one spot open on Monday. And if you can’t make it, we won’t be able to get to you until October. So I was like, okay, good. So I got it ago. And they immediately sent me a giant questionnaire because they want to know everything about my dog, and they are already going to get the history from my vet, like they already are going to have 13 years of history from my bet. And they still want me to go through a pretty serious questionnaire. And then the question is like, Well, why do they want that? Well, they want all that information before they meet me. So that and it’s a system, they automatically send it to me the moment I made the appointment. And they even had different ways where I could complete it, whether it was just by paper, or they have an interactive form. But the point is, is it’s systematized so that just like a consultant would go into a business and say, Tell me everything that’s going on with this business. And I’ll come back to you with a solution. They want to know everything before they even see the dog so that they can very efficiently get me in and out of there. So they can see more patients and make more money and just be more effective. So even though my appointment is 90 minutes long, which is a crazy amount of time to see to see a doctor for for a pet. I imagine the bulk of that time is going to be doing things that they can’t do if I’m sitting there filling out paperwork. So in fact, they require me to have it finished a day before I even so I have to have it to them by Sunday in the morning. So they’re and they’re like, Yeah, and also they’re like, take it or leave it like we know we’re good. I mean, they didn’t say this. But But anyway, my point was I was you know, doctors do that all the time. And I think that that’s a really good way to think about as agents, how can we systematize How can we solve problems in advance. But let’s I want to talk to you about something that that gets brought up a lot on the show, and I’m not so sure that we’ve really defined it as much as we ought to, which is something called The Pareto principle. And I know this is a big deal to you, and tell our audience like what is the Pareto principle? And why should they care about

Chris Bello 24:19
that? Yeah, so that’s a great question. The Pareto principle, I’m sure many people have heard of it, or maybe listened to it in some sort of book or another. It’s basically saying that 80% of the results come from 20% of the actions are the inputs or even the activities that you’re doing in real estate. So we all can do a million different things a million different ways. You can knock on doors, show houses, do open houses, you know, print flyers, hand them out, but what’s really moving the needle and it might be different for everyone, right? So if you can drill down and identify what are those two things that are bringing 80% of my leads? Is it pop buys in doing first time homebuyer seminars like if that’s what’s working for you. Double down and focus on that. So Pareto principle, you can apply it with anything. I even did this with my credit card spend just to monitor like, what am I spending my money on? I did, I pulled all the data, I kind of updated my Instagram story and show people how to do this. And you can do like a Pareto principle with your data to see, alright, I’ve got 500 lines of stuff, or 200 lines of stuff, but really 20 of these lines account for 80% of the spend, I don’t care about the little $5 stuff here. $10 stuff there. What did I spend two grand on, you know, I got engaged recently, like a big chunk of that was like, you know, the wedding ring, and then congratulations, thank you, thank you, you know, all the wedding expenses in the deposits like photographer videographer, that was my Pareto principle was all those deposits were putting down. So I don’t have to focus on all those little things like, oh, I need to cut out this $5 coffee that I went to twice last month? No, what are the things that I’m spending a lot of money on. And so you can do that with anything, whether it’s lead generating or managing your expenses, or even how you spend the time in your day. And so I really get very clear on what are the activities that are working for me, let me focus on those and ignore the rest. Because if you get those, right, a lot of the other things on your to do list, they just fall off magically.

D.J. Paris 26:11
They do and the and for the items that can’t fall off, that have to get done, but they don’t fall into this. While these are the two activities or three activities that really drive my business forward. You know, we all know that there’s just a lot of customer service in this industry, that isn’t necessarily going to generate new business, it’s going to just maintain my existing clients because they expect a certain level of service, or replying to emails or answering phone calls are the things that we have to do. And Chris is right, there are many things that just will fall away, and you won’t have to deal with them. And you’ll sort of be like, Wow, I had no idea I did. There was I had always heard and I don’t know who who came up with us. And I don’t even know how true it is. But I’ve I would read at one point in a book, if you’re in like, a big corporate sort of, if you’ve worked for a big, large corporation. And if there’s lots of layers, like you were saying in your first career, if you let an email sit for 21 days in your inbox, you can probably just delete it like nobody even remembers or cares if you had some deliverable. Yeah, and I I’ve only really worked in those kinds of companies a few times in my life. But I’m like, I that’s got to be pretty close to true. So Chris is a lot of things will fall away. But for the things that can’t fall away. Chris is a big fan of delegating. So can you talk a little bit about how you delegate some of the tasks that either you don’t enjoy? Or aren’t really the main drivers for the business? But you still need to get done?

Chris Bello 27:46
Yeah, so I’ve had to become a master delegator, because like we were talking about before we started recording, I moved to Denver in March of this year. And I still have a business address and my signature saying Houston, so a lot of people don’t even realize they see me checking in from Houston on deals that I’m closing remotely. And they’re like, oh, Chris, like you’re doing so well. Like we got to catch up and grab a coffee. How do you? How does your schedule look next week, I’m like, Hey, I actually moved to Denver months ago. And I’m still closing deals remotely. Because I’ve delegated everything I have showing agents who show buyers houses, I’m like, Hey, putting you in a group text, they want to see these four houses, can you show it, we feed back and showing time or whatever service and then I’ll reach out to the client and we’ll write the offer through my transaction coordinator. I feel like my transaction coordinator, she goes above and beyond. She probably does like 90% of my job. She emails clients, she emails, title companies, she reaches out to the other agent to follow up on documents that we haven’t had signatures on from both sides. And I’m just the client facing person, right? So in terms of Pareto principle, to tie it back to that, I’m focusing on my zone of genius. All I need to be doing is podcast interviews, meeting new people, business development, bringing in new business and listings. Cool, you want to list your house, here’s my transaction coordinator, she’s gonna send you all the paperwork. Oh, you want to go look at houses. You know, Kelly is going to show you these five houses on Saturday. And if you want to write any offers, let me know. And I’m just paying the showing agents $25 a door. So for $125 I could essentially go under contract on a $400,000 house and not have to split commission or anything.

D.J. Paris 29:24
That is That is incredible, because I assumed you were you know, you were probably splitting commissions. But you’re right. You’re we live in a gig economy, right? So what a gig economy means is is doing gigs for pay. And you’re absolutely right boy, what a smart idea to to have have a list of showing agents. And I guess eventually if if you if they if they wanted to take a larger role and the client, then maybe you would work out a different arrangement for them. But but we have this at our own company. So we have about 800 agents. I don’t know why this never occurred to me but we have a private Facebook group for agents to kind of chat back Come forth. And you know, we do support on there and everything. But people do it all the time where they’re like, Hey, I’m going out of town and need somebody to help to show

Chris Bello 30:06
this house. Yeah, yeah, when you find out whenever

D.J. Paris 30:09
exactly, but they never have it in advance, right? So Chris has was really smart, because he built a team that is, you know, basically ready and willing to do these type of short notice on short notice,

Chris Bello 30:22
which is what you need. When a buyer sends you five houses that just came on the market in this crazy market where things are only on the market for a few days and get multiple offers. You need someone who was able to go show it that evening or tomorrow. And so if you can find that person ahead of time, like you mentioned, you’re golden, I have someone who I trust, she’s done a great job. She’s been there on time, every time. She’s the first person I text every time and if she can’t make it, I go to you know, my my not be player, but like number two on my list of showing agents and just pay them via Venmo or Zelle. Afterwards, and boom, you’re done.

D.J. Paris 30:56
Yeah, it’s so smart. And this really allows you and you I believe, are the first just scanning my terrible memory. But I think I think my memory is accurate area. You’re the first agent I know, that is really has moved and is still closing deals without physically being present. And of course, we know during the height of COVID, you know, everyone was sort of working remotely anyway. But But now things have, you know, well, who knows where they are right now? Yeah, yeah, we’re sort of back to a bit of normalcy. Although, I was just on vacation for for some time and came, I was out of the country came back and I was like, Oh, we’re all wearing masks. Again. I

didn’t. I just missed the memo. I’m like, wait,

I did. So I don’t know, maybe we’re not back to normal fire away all my masks. And

Chris Bello 31:43
then literally, I saw people wearing them again, I’m like, I have like one left. You know, I gotta go buy more something, I guess. So it’s, it’s a weird world we’re living in now for sure. And like every day is something different. But being able to do stuff, quote, unquote, safely or even more efficiently, right? Zoom calls, I love that every day of the week, because I’m not driving 30 minutes to meet someone at a coffee shop anymore. And then they’re running 10 minutes late. And now I’m stuck in traffic, right? I can do way more calls, throw a podcast in there buyer consultation, listing consultation, and a call on clubhouse, all from this seat that I’m sitting in right now. It’s incredible to me. So just leveraging technology, and kind of using where we’ve gone as an excuse to just do that for everything going forward.

D.J. Paris 32:25
And the genie is out of the bottle on web conferencing, we are not going backwards. Yes, of course, people still like to meet face to face, you know, there still is that percentage of people that that want that. But we have now all been conditioned to have these types of interactions, and also to feel good about them. Because for the last, you know, year or two, this is how we’ve communicated with friends family. It you know, it’s not maybe a lot of our preferred mode. But it’s super efficient. It’s super effective. And it’s become very comfortable. And so you can have very positive experiences. I love it when I have a doctor’s appointment. Now sometimes with doctors, of course you got to go in because they have to examine you. But if it’s something that doesn’t require that I cannot tell you how excited I get like, obviously for this my dog going on a Monday I have to take but but when I go when I have to see my primary, now if I go in for a physical, she needs to see me to drop LEDs. But if I just have, you know, a general question, or if I normally I’d have to go, I’d have to get my car drive to the appointment. Now. It’s it’s Yeah, exactly. Now it’s all online, and an online video conferencing. And I love it, I’m so grateful. So agents really should start realizing that just because we can meet in person doesn’t mean you have to. And versus Chris is even living proof. You’re living proof that you don’t even have to be in the same area. And it doesn’t impact your ability to to help help that client. And that’s the most important thing is, you know, look if Chris was in another state and he now couldn’t service his clients as well, well, then we wouldn’t be talking about this because it wouldn’t be in the client’s best interest.

Chris Bello 34:09
But it wouldn’t be working. I’d be getting bad reviews. Exactly. And

D.J. Paris 34:13
Chris is living proof that this absolutely works. And so let’s talk about you know, and then well, I want to actually shift to work life balance because I know this is a big, big topic for you. So can you tell us a little bit about like what that means to you and how you how you would encourage our agents to start thinking about their work life and their their non work life, we’ll call it

Chris Bello 34:36
work life is such an important thing to me. And it always just I had that cognitive dissonance when I worked in corporate because I just had a call with someone yesterday I was doing like a free productivity coaching call to see if I want to try some coaching on top of real estate. And he’s been working, you know, like at NASA, I believe he worked at NASA for four or five years and he said his biggest constraint right now is time. And he’s a single young guy, maybe 20 The eighth or something, and he has no time for his hobbies, and he probably has time in there. But like, I remember the feeling of commuting to work in 45 minutes each way, and I don’t get home till 530. And now I gotta make dinner and I want to go to the gym and like, maybe watch one Netflix episode and then go to bed. Yeah, and you have no time. And so I was constantly fighting for that freedom. Four Hour Workweek was a very big book for me to just shift my mindset, oh my gosh, how do I live that laptop, laptop lifestyle and be that digital nomad closing deals across the world and having a business that operates without me. And so the seed was planted in my mind years ago. And I don’t have any kids or anything like that. Now I am engaged. I have two cats and a dog. So things have changed since I was a single guy, you know, making 70 or 80 grand a year in oil and gas. But time has always been very important. I want to be able to control my time. And this is even more important for those who are listening who have kids, and they’ve got soccer practice. And you like to play piano like how do you fit it all in, if you’re always working, always grinding, you know, all the time, 80 hours a week or whatever. I see people. People are so proud to brag about how much they work these days. But a lot of times they’re doing stuff, they’re working hard and not very smart. They want to be the one showing the clients, they they’re showing clients six hours on a Saturday, and they’re doing two open houses on Sunday. I’m getting the same result, my clients are happy. And I’m not doing any of those things. So I really challenge your listeners to shift their mindset. Because a lot of times we feel like as real estate agents to best represent our clients, it has to be us doing everything. No our clients hired us they want us showing the house, they want us doing the open house, know your clients want the result. They want that great house that they’re trying to buy, they want you to sell this house without any issues without fixing things that break you know, those little things. If you get them the result, they don’t care how you necessarily do it. And so from shifting my mindset that way, it’s allowed me to open up my schedule, but just determine what’s important to you. Right? I live in Denver now. 15 minutes for the mountains, we bought kayaks and bikes. I go riding my bike at like 2pm sometimes because I can and I have no appointments that spontaneously pop up. What is it for you? Do you want to be able to go play golf on Fridays? Do you want to take off on Sundays, I’m the realtor doesn’t really work weekends. You know, it’s funny, my parents made that comment, like, are you got anything going on this weekend? I’m like, No, we’re going to we’re going out of town. We’re going to Colorado Springs for like two days, you know? So hopefully that kind of answers the question, it’s gonna look a little different for all of us. But we have to be very intentional about what is our perfect day look like our perfect life. And if we’re not there now, what makes us think we’re gonna magically get there in five years, if we don’t build it into today’s schedule.

D.J. Paris 37:49
I couldn’t agree more. And I’ll give a personal example of something I’ve been thinking about. And you’re just sort of inspired me to actually take to take action on it this weekend. Awesome. So Chris was talking to you, thank you, I really I really owe you for this.

Chris Bello 38:03
Let’s do more doing.

D.J. Paris 38:05
That’s true. So So Chris was at the beginning of our episode was was talking about the Pareto are sort of the middle of the episodes talking about Pareto principle, and taking a look at like finances as a result, like where am I spending the bulk of my money. So really, what we’re talking about his budgeting, right, and making sure that you know, our finances are in order. So Chris was just also mentioning while work life balance, so there are also parts of of your life where you’re just avoiding them things, you’re not actually doing that, you know, you should do that you just don’t want to do. And so it’s not that it’s really affecting your work life, but you’re just not getting certain things done, which is going to create stress, because then you’re going to be like upset with yourself for not, you know, attending to certain matters. Well, this is perfect for for me, because speaking of like budgeting, I do not do a good job of recording, for example, for finding out where I’m spending the bulk of my money, I have software, I use a service called UNITA budget, which is absolutely amazing. If anyone has not checked them out. It’s the best budgeting software I’ve ever seen. But you have to go in and record all the all your things every day. And really, they automatically pull from all my credit cards. So it’s really easy. I just have to go and, you know, categorize each thing. And then the reports are right there. But anyway, I pay for the service. It’s great. And it maybe takes five minutes a day to do it, but I just don’t do it. So what could I do? Well, I could hire somebody to do it once a week for me, and I’d have to give them access to some of my financial stuff, which really they just need access to you need a budget, which wouldn’t really, you know, be a privacy issue. But

anyways, any of your data? Yeah,

I mean, yeah, I mean, and, you know, whatever. But But yes, it’s something that needs to get done. And I just probably not going to do it, but I need to do it. And I don’t want to do it. And so if I hire somebody and we live in this global gig economy, so it’s not even that I have to pay somebody locally here to do that, although that would be great. But I can find people from all over the world who are really financially minded who are, you know, the people like Chris was saying who he didn’t want to look at spreadsheets all day. But he was a person who does, yeah, find a person who does and say, Hey, for an hour a week, do you mind just going through and categorizing and maybe sending me even a report about where I’m spending my money? Yeah, and you know, maybe that would cost me $10 A week? Is that worth $10? A week for me? Oh, my God, it’s worth a lot more than that. So. So there’s parts of our life that, you know, we just don’t we’re just not good at it. And it’s okay to delegate or we just don’t want to do it, or we’re just not, you know, we’re not, we sort of avoid it. Just get someone else who lives to do that. And we’re so fortunate, because you might say, Well, how do you find somebody? Well, there’s, you know, from from all over the world? Well, there’s lots of websites where people congregate and are looking for these kinds of jobs. It’s how I found my producer for my podcast who lives in Kosovo. And she is amazing. And I couldn’t do the show without her. Yeah, I would, I would never have met her. I tried to find a producer locally for years. I just couldn’t find somebody reliable. I found somebody in Kosovo. She’s would been with me for years now. And she’s incredible. And totally she like Chris was saying, with his business, she does 90% of of this, this whole podcast is really because of her

Chris Bello 41:30
right? You just show up and perform and record the episode. Yeah, she handles the rest. That’s the way

D.J. Paris 41:36
she can. Absolutely. And so I used to do, I don’t know if if you were this way, you’re probably smarter than me. But I did every part of the pie just

Chris Bello 41:45
to I made my thumbnails in Canva, it would take 45 minutes, and it will look terrible. And then I found someone who makes them way better for $5 a thumbnail. I’m like, Why did I do this for two years? So I like to think of myself as smart. But when you’re stuck in the weeds, sometimes you know, you can’t really get that bird’s eye view, because you’re so busy in the work in the business, E Myth. If you read that book, it talks about it. You’re so busy in the business, that you’re not working on the business. It’s not even a business. It’s like a buy yourself a job at that point.

D.J. Paris 42:13
Yeah, and there’s so much of being a realtor, that is for lack of a better word, busywork. There’s, you know, and so we have already all these solutions, we have transaction coordinators, I know you, you use them, they can handle everything from list to close with respect to paperwork, timelines, you know, important dates, just chasing signatures digitally. I mean, there’s so many things that and I know, like, a transaction coordinator service that we recommend to to our agents, it’s what do they charge like, $300, a sale

Chris Bello 42:45
at closing, right. That’s how mine operates at closing, where if we don’t exactly I don’t pay, I’m like, this is incredible,

D.J. Paris 42:53
incredible. And so just think like, if if if you went to a doctor and you had an ailment, they said, you’re only going to pay me if I can get you, you know, basically better, which is essentially what a transaction coordinator does, it says, I’ll get you to the finish line, and then you’ll pay me and if you don’t make, we don’t make it to the finish line, because you know, things fall through. And I don’t

Chris Bello 43:10
understand that. But I’m like, Hey, I don’t get it either. Please don’t ever change it, because I love it. But personally, I’m like, gosh, I’d be so bummed if I’m writing five offers, and I don’t get paid until we get something accepted and closed. Like what if it takes time to do that? Right? So sometimes I’m sensitive. If we’re writing a lot of like lowball offers for an investor, I might just be like, Alright, I’m watching Netflix, I’m gonna write this one myself, because I don’t want to, I don’t want to send her too many that I know, we’re not going to get because I value her time too. So I kind of play play that by ear, you know?

D.J. Paris 43:42
Yeah, that’s very true. It’s just Christmas is so right is you have to take inventory of your day, and your week and your month, and just just look at your activity and write it down, you know, create a journal of you know, here’s what I did for these hours. And, and I always like what Brian Buffini. And I assume he still says that this is many, many years ago. But he said, you know, if you have an eight hour day, and this is kind of before pre gig economy, so maybe this isn’t as applicable today, but I think it probably still is, he said, you know, seven of those eight hours are probably doing customer service. And you’re probably if you can spend one hour a day prospecting for new business, boy, that’s great, but that probably the other seven out of the eight hours is probably taking care of your existing clients. And maybe that’s just the way it is. But boy, you could probably carve out half of those hours to push to someone else. And then you can focus on what you’re best at which in your case is business development and, and interactive meetings. And yeah, all of those activities. You said you’re not really strong. Organizationally, I’m the same way.

Chris Bello 44:48
And this thing is like getting a contract that my TC is like, Hey, you didn’t check the box on that thing. And I’m like as just the survey, whatever. It’s like 400 bucks. We’ll figure it out. And I’m okay with that. If you move fast and break things I think Mark Ducker burgers, somebody said that you can handle those little things like I want to make sure the sales price is right. And we’ve got an inspection period in there because that’s important. And I don’t want to put earnest money on the line. But occasionally if there’s a mistake, and I’ve got to cough up $100 to make it happen, but I go get three more deals. In the meantime, like, Isn’t that worth it? It’s kind of like the VA question you asked yourself, you would pay way more than $10 a week to get someone to look at that stuff. So just doing that Pareto principle with everything where if you focus on, a lot of people step over dollars to pick up pennies, I’ve heard that quote before, right, you’re stepping over all the opportunities to save a little bit of money here. If you just go out and make more money, you can afford to make a little bit of $50 mistakes. $100 mistakes, right? So that’s kind of the way I think of it, maybe, I don’t know if maybe I need to adjust my mindset. But it’s been working for me

D.J. Paris 45:46
so far. No, it’s It’s brilliant. And I always heard Brian Tracy and I don’t know if he’s the one who wrote this quote, but he I heard him say it, which was prospecting solves all problems, which I’ve always thought fail, I’d love to find out. I’d love to find a hole in that sentence. But and of course, it doesn’t solve all problems, but it solves a lot of them and a lot of it it allows you to then delegate even more.

Chris Bello 46:13
So business then how do you automate anything else? You’ve businesses, like the prospects are everything right? That’s the lifeblood of your business.

D.J. Paris 46:21
Yeah. What other productivity? Do you have any other productivity tips for our listeners? You know, again, realtors, you know, grinding it out. We know we know how hard Realtors work, we honor you for all the work you do. And we know that your data is not necessarily not saying Chris but but our listeners day doesn’t easily start at five and start at nine and stop at five, it can be almost a 24 hour type of job. But talking to you just talk about, you know, what’s helped you sort of, again, create that work life balance, I know delegations important, finding people to help with those tasks that that you really don’t want to spend time on, because takes away from other things. Anything else, any any systems or actual tools that you use, I’d love to hear, share to share with our audience.

Chris Bello 47:08
I’m a big tool and productivity person just overall with a background in supply chain. So I love talking about this stuff. And even with non real estate agents, because I can get nuggets from other industries and other people in sales roles, for example. But like I mentioned earlier, honestly, Calendly has changed the game for me so much, because it forced me to write down on pen, you know, pen to paper, what is my ideal schedule, and I had an inspection review, call it like Friday at 6pm. And I’m like, I never want to do this again, like, you know, if you want to say just got home from work, and she was like she was a girlfriend at the time. Like, I don’t want to be doing this at 6pm. Why can’t this be on a Saturday like 11 After I go to the gym, and I’m prepared to have this conversation, because we ended up talking till seven or 8pm reviewing this inspection report that really, I probably shouldn’t even have done but I get it first time buyers are sometimes a little hazy on that. So when you use a booking software, it forces you to be very, very intentional, where I thought to myself, in my perfect schedule, what would I do, I wouldn’t work on Friday. So I’d be able to go do fun stuff like indoor skydiving or go on a long weekend trip somewhere or just spend three hours getting a 90 minute massage and you know doing something else getting tapioca for example, I have a lot of free time and my fiance has a day job. So I have to go find things to do during the week. But if you have a booking software, whether it’s Calendly, or something else that frees you up because you push your clients to schedule a call schedule a showing coffee meeting, here’s the link for that lunch appointment. Here’s the link for that. So you never you no longer get people. Hey, do you have time for a quick call? Or how does lunch tomorrow sound? Once you operate on a schedule, and you align that and integrated with Google Calendar. My schedule is done for me. I wake up in the morning, I see we have this podcast in the afternoon. This is my only appointment on Fridays, because I don’t ever really do appointments on Friday. So happy to be here with you. But that honestly has taken care of so much because I can see what’s happening next week. What’s happening the week after that. If I don’t have enough stuff on the calendar, I gotta reach out to more people. Hey, who wants to do a quick call who needs to talk about sending referrals to each other. So Calendly is great. But if you have a team, Asana a s a n a.com project management software, I use the free version of that. It’s a game changer because you can assign things I can put a checklist and say, Hey, John, can you edit the podcast by this date, medium priority, kind of important, you know, like to get this episode out, and someone else makes the thumbnail so I’m not doing that in Canva anymore. And so it helps you get the ideas out of your head, instead of sticking it on a sticky note that you never look at again. And you can assign it to people where they get automatic emails and reminders. Hey, FYI, this is due tomorrow. So in terms of software, it’s a Calendly. Asana. Another great one for communicating with multiple team members is slack. We all do text messages and phone calls and emails. I’ve gotten pretty bad Email where I’m like, I’m gonna check like once every five hours because anything in there is not urgent, right? If you have something that’s urgent with a team member, if you can go through something like Slack, where that’s the only notification you see on your phone, and you turn off the little bubbles for everything else. Now, you know, that’s the bottleneck, you need to answer that as fast as you can. So that your TC or your VA, your virtual assistant can get that next thing done. So hopefully, that’s helpful. I know, it’s not anything groundbreaking for my CRM, I just use an Excel file. I track everything from deals to how many pages I read a day, it’s a little, it’s a little intense. But I’ve got pivot tables and things if your audience is familiar with that, you can learn 10 minutes, 20 minutes on YouTube, figured out how to make a pivot table, store all your data in there, I’ve tracked everything from net worth to how many times I meditated day, which is to how many times I work out a week, it starts Simple, right? Start with one thing a day and start to add things on. Right? You don’t just wake up and read 20 pages a day, drink a gallon of water a day workout three times a week, right? You, you start by working out, then you start adding the water and then you start doing some fasting, it builds on itself, just like with real estate. So are there any other top software’s that get mentioned a lot on here, I’m sure like CRMs, and stuff like that.

D.J. Paris 51:19
There are and there’s so many different solutions that, that I know people can get overwhelmed with all the different software providers that exists. Simple. I do too. And I’ll tell you from a to do list perspective, and I use a to do list. So to do list is a wonderful to do list system. And again, you just put it in there you say you know, there’s a lot of different ways you could organize it, but it’s ridiculously inexpensive. You can probably get away with the free version. But that’s the that’s the one I liked the best. Chris uses Asana for project management. And really, project management could be an entire deal right from start to finish. For our podcast, which we treat each episode like a project. I use Trello, which is similar to Asana. It’s a little bit more visual that Asana is great. I mean, Trello is great. It again, cards. Yeah, the cards, we use Trello. Yep, has the card system. We’ve been doing that since day one. And this cost me $0. And it is it’s awesome. And there are so many great little software providers, again, my you need a budget for budgeting, except that only

Chris Bello 52:29
a year, right? I just signed up for the 30 day free version to try it out. And it’s amazing. For sure. It’s

D.J. Paris 52:34
It’s amazing. And it’s a great, it’s a great tool. But but the point is is is you know, there are all these software tools. And like Chris was saying, he’s a he’s a kind of a tech forward guy. And he’s like, I just use an Excel spreadsheet for my CRM. And there is nothing wrong with that. If that works. And it does work. I know top producers who are the same way they’re like, you know, I was using top producer or you know, fill in the blank CRM or whatever, exactly. And nothing against those solutions. They’re awesome. It’s just whatever works for you. And if you’re like, I just don’t like, for example, I was I talked about this a lot on the show where I say you need in your CRM, whatever CRM use, you need to know everyone’s birthday, if they’re married their anniversary date their kids birthdays, because then it gives you a reason to reach out from time to time be like, hey, kid’s birthday, congratulations. Happy birthday. And if you don’t know that, and now you’re like, Oh, my God, I have I have 200 clients that I don’t know anything like that. hire somebody to contact those clients on behalf that information. Yeah, exactly. You don’t have to do it all yourself delegate. And and boy, imagine if in your CRM, and again, I’m not talking to Chris, but our listeners if you had everyone’s birthday, anniversary date, and in your calendar, if every morning, it said call so and so it’s their wedding anniversary, or it’s their birthday, or it’s back to school time, maybe a good time to reach out and say How are your kids doing or when school started and you know, just the life events, that somebody’s home buying anniversary or home selling anniversary? If you have those in your calendar, you will always have a reason to pick up the phone and call people and say hey, how’s it going? Instead of hey, where are you? Are you buying or selling a home? Or do you know anyone that nobody wants those phone calls? And so we know that that’s a daunting task to go and get all that information. hire somebody to do it. It was worth its weight in gold. So that Chris he wakes up every day he goes there. That’s my calendar.

Chris Bello 54:31
I know what I’m doing today. Yeah. Boy, I

D.J. Paris 54:34
love it. Chris. Well, I could talk you know, I’m gonna have to have you on regularly because I love

Chris Bello 54:39
I know. I’m like, gosh, we’re out of time. I have so much more I could share and I love talking about this as well. So maybe next time,

D.J. Paris 54:45
I will say that everyone who’s listening, please go subscribe to Chris’s podcast just called entrepreneur motivation podcast. We will there is a link in the show notes. So click on you can go right there or you can always get to it by just pulling up a podcast. asked app searching for entrepreneur motivation, it’ll pop right up, hit the subscribe button, or go to Chris’s website, which has links to everything that Chris is involved in, which is Chris bello.com. That’s Chris with a ch. And then bellow b e l l o.com. So Chris bellow.com. And think about this before, you’re like, Well, I’m not really an entrepreneur, if you’re a real estate agent, you’re an entrepreneur. So you don’t have to, you know, you don’t have to be the Mark Zuckerberg in the tech space, or Elon Musk, in all the different areas he’s in those, those are different, you know, those are the most public entrepreneurs that that we can think about. But everyone who has a real estate license is an entrepreneur. So don’t you don’t don’t we all need more help with motivation, and systems. This are the kinds of things Chris talks about in a show. And I can tell you how hard it is to get a million downloads, and for Christmas, to do that. It’s It’s incredible, incredible, incredible achievement. So thank you. That’s just proof that the his show is excellent. We’re big fans, and we encourage every one of our audience, go subscribe to entrepreneur motivation podcast, Chris, thank you. So so much for your show. You This was a lot of fun, and I couldn’t be more appreciative that you are on the show today. For everyone who is listening. Before you sign off, we just ask that you do one thing, tell a friend think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing these great tips from Chris and send them a link to our show. There’s two easy ways to do that. The first send them to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com all of our episodes are there, they can stream it right from the website. Or if there’s somebody who likes listening to podcasts and already is involved in doing that, just have them pull up a podcast app search for keeping it real and hit the subscribe button and also subscribe to entrepreneur motivation, which is Chris’s. So thank you. And also one last thing, everyone who if you’re not already part of our Facebook page, please subscribe. You just find [email protected] forward slash keeping it real pod. Right now as Chris and I are talking it’s being broadcast live on Facebook. Otherwise, if you’re listening through a podcast app, you’ve now waited two weeks to hear it which is fine. But if you wanted to hear these episodes sooner than that, subscribe to our Facebook page. As we record them we broadcast and live you can see some behind the scenes stuff as well. So keeping up sorry facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Chris, thank you so much. On behalf of Chris we want to thank the audience for continuing to listen and support our show and on behalf of the audience. I want to thank Chris for his time thanks not work much on Fridays and he took time out of his busy day to be here with us we’re so grateful for

Chris Bello 57:35
I guess it wasn’t that busy of a day right?

D.J. Paris 57:39
But but but life life stuff is really important and for you to take time out of your your your sort of, you know, work light day to help our show. We are super, super grateful for it. I

Chris Bello 57:51
really love being here. Thank you once again for having me.

D.J. Paris 57:53
Well, thanks, Chris and we will see everyone on the next episode.

Chris Bello 57:57
Sounds good.

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

Ryan talks about what takes to make somebody great in any industry. Ryan focuses on the love for grit and grind and how success is a choice. He emphasizes that effort is way more important than ability in your path to success and also focuses on the importance of being coachable. Last, Ryan discusses how finding your “why” connects you to the energy to push you through to success.

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].

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by gogos bootcamp Are you a real estate agent looking for the very best media training program on the planet? Gogo Beth key is considered the top Instagram Realtor in the country. And her step by step training program will take your social media game to the next level, keeping it real listeners receive a special discount. So please visit Gogo podcast.com That’s Gee oh gee Oh podcast.com for your special discount and now on with the 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 today is our monthly coaching moments with Ryan de April. This is our series we do if you’re not familiar yet with Ryan de April, or if you’re new to the show, a Ryan comes on every month to give our listeners and our viewers a coaching moment and a coaching session. So let me tell you about Ryan Ryan April is a progressive thought leader focused on providing for his agents and 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 he has offices in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan with hundreds and hundreds of top real estate agents. Table Properties is 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. If you’d like to take your career to the next level, or if you’re just not getting the attention you need check out the April properties visit D April properties.com. That’s D A p r i l e properties.com Welcome once again, Ryan.

Ryan D’Aprile 1:56
Thanks, TJ and guess what we’re also now in Florida to by the way

D.J. Paris 2:00
that funny funny story we ran into each other in the airport as you were going down there to to solidify that deal. We happen to be on the same flight so

Ryan D’Aprile 2:11
yes, you did. Yeah, your girlfriend let me a mask. I was in trouble. I walked around like oh my gosh, I forgot a mask. Remember that. And

D.J. Paris 2:20
that’s right. That’s right. We did. Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m glad. So you guys are now so now I have to include Florida. And where is that? Where are you guys located in Florida? Miami, right.

Ryan D’Aprile 2:31
Yeah, we’re starting in Miami. Yeah, so we’re really excited. Got a great crew down there. A wonderful leader. And yeah, gosh, I don’t know when that was I think that was in the spring when we ran it. It was so so that’s exciting. And I’m waiting for the weather to turn so I’m going to quote unquote have to get down there a lot for work

D.J. Paris 2:50
it’s it’s my sister lives in Tampa and so we go down for the the major holidays in the winter, because why not? And great reason to get down there just to avoid although we’ve been having here we’re Ryan and I are really headquartered here in Chicago. And we’ve been having some just amazing weather lately. So I’m excited to face

Ryan D’Aprile 3:13
it is before it is awesome in Miami still rich and culture. I just love it. Down there. I love it I in every part of love tampons, Yes, over there. And I love also you know, Naples and the golf course your tables, they all and then you get up to Jacksonville, that beautiful St. Augustine area, or oldest city in the country. It’s just, it’s got a lot to offer there. And just like anywhere, you know, you find you find what you look for in life, man, there’s a lot of beauty out there. And so we’re down there and just looking around, oh my god, this is a great place to be.

D.J. Paris 3:46
Yeah, my parents are going to be staying in Clearwater for the second straight winter. Right on they have found I’ve got a place right on the beach. And that is like in their live stream. So I mean, who knows, maybe one day I’ll end up down there with my sister and my parents but but for now I’m here in the Midwest with you. And but we have listeners all over the place. We have lots of Florida listeners as well as people from all over the country trying to grow their real estate practice. And Ryan, this is what he does. He works directly with his coaches, and he coaches agents as well. And so if you’re new to the show, this is our sort of, not our sort of this is our coaching moment that we do every month. So what would you like to talk about today? Yeah, yeah. And then

Ryan D’Aprile 4:29
on top of that, I think my hello to my South Dakota listeners because I had a couple from South Dakota call me and I’m coaching them a little bit here and there and it’s a massive reach. Yeah, and I you know, I think you’d have said for him very reachable. You know, you’re you’re an agent anywhere and you just want a little advice or whatnot. You know, I’m just like you just pick up the phone. Give me a call. We’ll talk it out. What do we want to talk about today? You know, what I think would be a good point. It’s, I was in Chicago this morning and I’m driving again. I’m heading up to another one of our offices but this morning They had me do a big coaching session and I talked to probably a roomful of 30 agents, combination of brand new agents in the industry and veterans that have recently joined us. And they bring a man just and have me do a coaching session for about two hours with them. And kind of my over arching theme for today, and I figured, why not do it on today’s call as well? Is really effort over ability. Yeah. And I think if you really pause and you think about that, I tell people all the time, I can’t coach drive, I can’t coach effort. And I would take effort, over ability any day of the week. And that’s an empowering statement for anybody listening. Because I think we all have so many limiting beliefs that hold us back. And quite honestly, it’s are you committed to the grind? And are you committed to, you know, having grit like Angela Duckworth book, grit, you know, spells out for us. And again, if you guys haven’t read the book, just YouTube, her lot of similar underlying principles in that book, as in many other books about ability over or excuse me effort over ability. And I figured that we make that our theme here, why don’t we talk about you know, what it is to make somebody great in their industry, be it real estate, mortgage lending, insurance? You know, whatever, I actually, you know, I feel like DJ, we appeal to many different industries on your podcast, not just real estate, but obviously, our listeners are real estate agents. But what they more are, they’re entrepreneurs, or as people call them solopreneurs, right? You’re on your own, you’re doing it. And that’s what it is, when you jump into real estate, you your venture out, you’re opening up your own business, and you’re gonna do that, man, you better have grit, you better have effort, you better have desire. And you better have a big why behind it. And I figured, why don’t we just kind of touch on that?

D.J. Paris 7:04
Yeah, I think that’s great. I just got back from the gym, speaking of grit, and I have with somebody who, for most of my life, almost all of my life really never had a regular workout routine. Because I am not naturally somebody who wants to go to the gym, I know, maybe people would laugh and go, Well, me too. But there are people that love to go to the gym and are able to ease it more easily get themselves there. And it was always a struggle for me. And so I got a coach, in this case, a personal trainer. And all she said is when I first went to see her, she’s she said, All you ever have to do is just do the work, she goes, I will correct all of your form, I will correct all of your ability, but you you have to do the push ups and you have to do the pull ups. And all of the things that she goes you if all you do is just focus on the effort, I will I will correct the I will get you to the ability. And you know, a year a year goes by and I look in the mirror. And it’s not I’m no Adonis, but all of a sudden, I have muscles that I never had before. And I still am the guy who doesn’t want to go to the gym, I don’t want to do the work because it’s hard and painful. But I’ve made it a practice and I have accountability. And so just shoving in another quick point. So then I just recently went on this very long, very, very fortunate to go on a long vacation, I was gone for about three weeks, and I really wasn’t able to work out. I mean, I guess I could have shoehorned it in but we were so busy, I just wasn’t, I didn’t do it. And I knew I as soon as I came back, I would be I would be in pain and I came back and within three weeks of off of my routine, I have lost probably half of my strength. And that’s how quickly you know and how important effort is and if I would have just done 20 Push ups today I probably would be in better shape now and I’ll be back within a week or two. But I’m always amazed at how how much results you can get if you apply you know consistency and grit but that how quickly as just a warning to everyone how quickly it can dissipate when you get off of that schedule. So anyway, just throwing on that little anecdote, but I am back to the gym so hopefully I’ll be strong again very shortly.

Ryan D’Aprile 9:14
Well you know what I did that you know is similar to a brand muscle and you know, as real estate agents, you know your your brand has equity it has strength or it doesn’t a lot of agents you know, a lot of agents also fall behind their company brands and they get drownded out and they’re kind of missing the point you are the brand and you need to brand yourself and branding can happen in many different ways as we talked about you know being in flow with your your networking focusing on the relationship and deepening those relationships. And then your your marketing efforts such as you know your advertising your direct mail, you know your digital marketing, your email marketing, and then your local outdoor marketing in your neighborhood. Where are you are you present? Are you omnipresent? You bet To be, you know, if you want to, you know, be at the pinnacle of your career if you want to take your, your business to a whole new level and you know, I think about you being gone for three weeks and this is just an off the cuff question, I gotta ask a DJ, but did you miss work? And did you miss working out while you’re gone,

D.J. Paris 10:17
I did not miss working out because I am not naturally inclined to want to do that I did miss work. However, I one of the one of the smarter things I’ve done in my life, because I knew I’d be away for as long as I set up systems, to where I have virtual assistants who were checking my email my voicemail, and we created a system where every day I would check in with them make sure nothing fell through the cracks. And so three weeks went by, and I came back and I said far as I know, nothing fell through the cracks, right? And they said absolutely not. So I had a system. So that allowed me to take a little bit of a break, I was still checking in daily, but I did miss being present with my business. What I do is recruit agents. So I did miss that. But thankfully, it seemed to not more as my muscles took a hit from not being exercised, I was still my systems for work were still in place. And I think we kind of moved along pretty, pretty smoothly, which I was grateful for.

Ryan D’Aprile 11:17
Right, it’s and that’s what I was, you know, and what I was speaking to this roomful of agents this morning, is the love for the grit and grind. Yeah, and I tell everybody, success is a choice. And it truly is, yes, it is. You absolutely have to chosen to be successful or not. You’ve chosen to be successful, or you’ve chosen not to be and the best. The best part of this business is the independence but it comes with a huge price. And that price is self reliance. And, you know, a lot of people don’t, you know, like hold themselves accountable. And people don’t like placing blame on themselves. But in this business, there’s nowhere to hide, and it comes right back to you. Now you’ll have the financial freedom, you can, you know, you can control your own destiny. But the price tag that that comes with is self reliance, and you’ve got to be a self starter, you have to be able to hold yourself accountable or find somebody to hold yourself accountable. And coming full circle back to the choice part of this. You got to choose to be in love with the grind.

D.J. Paris 12:30
And you have to choose it you have to reach use it every single morning, in my opinion, you know, it’s something that you have to really go every day, what is my why, like you always talk about why am I doing this? And do I like doing it. And I’ll tell you when it comes to the gym. I don’t like working, you know, doing push ups until I collapse. But I liked that I did the push ups until I collapse I’m proud of myself. So the thing I like about it is just being the pride of knowing that I did something really hard that was healthy for me. Whether it’s my business, or exercise or spiritual stuff, or hanging out with friends or something that’s difficult, but hard. I just love the fact of how I feel after I do something that that I’m proud of.

Ryan D’Aprile 13:16
Yeah, and if you look at top performers in athletics, right, and, and, and, and you look at them practicing and how hard they’re pushing their bodies, there is no way that they can say I don’t like this and do it right. They have to choose. And they have to convince themselves that they love it. Maybe after retirement, they’re not doing it anymore. And they’re not pushing themselves anymore because they they naturally don’t love it. But I have trained myself to love the grind. It’s hard for me to say it’s not, it’s not easy. And when I do go on vacation with my family, I start to lose purpose and fulfillment. I mean, again, I’m having fun, my wife, my girls, you know what I mean? But yeah, four or five days in a row on a Caribbean island does get a little mundane, and it just takes me out of my element. But that’s because I chose to be so focused on my end results that I chose to love the get up and go at it. It’s hard. It’s not easy. But psychologically it has made it a lot easier made it a passion for me, because I chose to so there’s a lot of psychology in this you guys. And it’s not like a turning a switch like this is it’s a marathon it’s day in and day out. And every day, week, month, quarter and year that you commit to doing this, the more and more becomes natural for you. The more you fall in love with it and the more you realize when you’re gone. You start to miss it and then you look at those top performers. You know, there’s no way Michael Phelps. You know what naturally love doing 500 laps in a swimming pool. But I would bet all I have that he convinced himself to love it. Sorry, I’m honking at somebody who’s in front of me here.

D.J. Paris 15:14
No, but but but what I’m saying is, what you’re saying is really important because I, what I did miss when I was away, and it wasn’t exercising, and I mean, we were hiking and doing other things. But as far as strength training, I missed, again, how good it feels to exercise because I don’t have natural ability and talent in that area. And I think this is a good metaphor for and you basically just said the same thing, which is, if you can fall in love with the grind, and I don’t even like the word grind, because people think that’s a negative thing. If you could fall in love with this the discipline, right? The but

Ryan D’Aprile 15:50
it isn’t gone.

D.J. Paris 15:52
I’m sorry, you got me? Oh, no, I was just No, no, I was just gonna say that if you can fall in love with the hard work. And it it’s hard isn’t doesn’t mean unenjoyable, it just means a difficult, but everything in life that’s worthwhile is difficult. So if you can just get in your mind, and if you’re doing something hard, then you don’t have to worry as much about your talent, you have to just worry about the discipline to get better, you’re going to get better if you put in the work. Well,

Ryan D’Aprile 16:19
and that’s the whole point of this. And for all the listeners here is effort over ability. And so everybody has all these limiting beliefs. And they think and they classify themselves, and they compare themselves which, right, it’s a thief of all joy yourself to others. But you know, they think one person has this than the other person that has that, at the end of the day, you can have it all if you’re willing to put in the effort. And there are so many people who are afraid of failure, that they don’t do it. And then they tell others that they don’t really want it, they don’t care about it. And that is the worst thing to do to yourself. Nobody’s watching you. Nobody, nobody’s judging you. I mean, everybody is so wrapped up in their own insecurities and their own self doubt that they’re not focusing on you, you got to take that in. And I’m telling him I’ve coached 1000s of real estate agents. And I’ve, I’ve seen all kinds and I’ve seen there’s, there’s a there’s a there’s, there’s a kind out there that pretends not to care and, oh, I don’t want to be that top agent, I don’t want to be that that’s bullshit. That is a protection that you’re doing for yourself, you are protecting your ego, and you’re not doing yourself a favor. Because if you put in the effort, you’re not going to fail. There’s no way I’ve never seen anybody put in the effort to the principles that I’ve discussed in previous podcasts, the very simple activities that you have to put in and that you’ll get out byproduct you’ll get out of it. None of that is going to come down to ability or even really skill set it all is, are you committed? Are you committed to putting in the effort getting you where you want to be? And you know, in all these little cliches is like life begins at the end of your comfort zone. I mean, that’s it’s real, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Now. You know, I’ve talked about being in flow with your, your network. And I’ve also, I’ve preached that don’t call your network and ask for referrals, it’s going to cheapen relationships. So that’s at the, that’s at the comfort part that I’m talking about. I’m talking about, Are you uncomfortable having a routine? Are you uncomfortable, like getting up and starting your business day at night, and we so many real estate agents, you know, quote unquote, work from home, and they end up doing their laundry, their housekeeping, you know, driving their kids around and doing whatnot. That’s, that’s not, that’s not going to work? You know, and, you know, I sent the message to all of our, you know, real estate agent we have, I think we have 15 offices, and we’re opening up like four or five more, and my offices that we’re opening up, we’re going bigger versus smaller, because as I walk through all my offices, I see the usual suspects there all the time. And you know, they are DJs,

D.J. Paris 19:03
the top producers,

Ryan D’Aprile 19:05
the top, the top producers, they leave their home, they got they’re not they’re not there nine hours a day, but they’re there all the time. They they’re there for five days a week, they’re there for two hours. And when they’re there, they’re purposeful. They, you know, their, their attention, right is focused on what their intention is. And they’re doing the things we discuss day in and day out two hours a day. And because of that, they have the financial results that they have, they have the accolades that they have. They’ve got the brand recognition within their community in their network as being a top producing real estate agent. And they got there through that ugly word, grind and grit. They got there by putting in the effort. And for all of those you listening here, you know, I You have talent joining our organization every day. And I tell our leadership team, give me effort over ability, because I have seen all the ability in the world, all the natural given ability, they got the socio economic ability, but they do not have the effort.

D.J. Paris 20:21
I can’t tell you how many, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve interviewed on my podcast, who are top 1% producers from In fact, this happens more often than not, from all over the country who say, when I started, I either moved to the city and I didn’t know even one person, I had no sphere of influence. Most of the top producers I’ve interviewed in this business. And it may be It’s just luck that they reach out to us. And they’re all very similar, but I don’t think so I think this is pretty consistent. They weren’t handed a book of business. Now there are people whose parents were in the business and they inherited and that happens, but but very rarely

Ryan D’Aprile 20:59
show you far, few few and far between less than

D.J. Paris 21:03
1%, I’m sure of the top agents are Yeah,

Ryan D’Aprile 21:07
it is in the top agents made it on their own and actually look at their background, they had a desire to be there. I do think that you are at a benefit in this country. If you have if you come from a more fluid background in this business, you have a better network. But the funny thing is, is those tend to be sometimes the laziest people out there, unfortunately. And it’s the ones that that want that and they have the grit and they have the grind. And I tell my wife, I’m like, I’m nervous, you know, we’re getting our children, a beautiful lifestyle, you know, and my mom and dad gave me a great lifestyle. But I’ll tell you, we were the we were the poorest family on the block. And I grew up with friends that were insanely fluent, and I want it so I’ve got that grit and that grind for it. And, you know, my children have been raised, I will say in the lap of luxury, but I’m going to beat that message down to them is that you know, 80% of the top 20% of this country has made it in their own lifetime. You know, 80% Let me say that again, for the listeners 80% of the top 20% wealthy in our country have made it in their own lifetime. And whether you like it or not, that is the beauty of capitalism. And a lot of people right now don’t like that. But because of it, you know, you can come from the ashes and make I mean look at all of the individuals and do a little test for yourself. Name the wealthiest of the wealthy that you know, and you might get a handful of second generations say I don’t Pritzker is right or what’s not second, the highest What’s that family? The What’s that Hilton’s? Right? Yeah, it was I’m struggling to figure second generation. But now let’s see Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey Will Smith, Jay Z. Michael, Elon Musk, a Warren Buffett. All made it in their own lifetime. You know, that is what’s so amazing about this country. What’s also so amazing about this country is that we are so wealthy of a country is that I think people have a jaded reality what what what we really got going on here. And honest to God, everyone knows individuals from Jay Z to Will Smith to Elon Musk. I will I tell you right now, it’s an it’s effort over ability goes by Ryan.

D.J. Paris 23:29
I interviewed for those of you who are listening who are Chicago based agents, the top one of the top agents in Chicago. His name’s Matt Larose. He’s always in the top five producers. And we have about 45,000 Real estate agents here in our area. He doesn’t. He doesn’t work hard at all. Yeah. So he I asked him, I asked him, I asked him, Hey, Matt, why do you think you’re, you know, usually number one or number two, how did you know what’s the secret? He goes, he goes, I want it more than everyone. He goes. He goes, I work harder. He’s he doesn’t even see I don’t think competition. He just goes I just wanted more. He goes I said and he goes no, that’s it. I just wanted more.

Ryan D’Aprile 24:13
You could see it a mile away. Yeah, it there’s no way what that guy does is effortless. Now he grinds his he does. You know what I mean? It’s so to the other top producers from Martin and Chicago right from Mario Greco to Emily sacks. Want to? Oh god, what’s the other guy in Roscoe village does an incredible business. Anyways, you know to Don McKenna, right. Yeah. These people weren’t, you know, they’re not lucky. People work their asses off. Well. miles at the top. They’re not stopping.

D.J. Paris 24:58
No and Every day, and they do appear to be lucky for those that don’t have a closer insight. And the reality of it is, if you just put the effort in luck favors the ball, like luck will come your way. But you have to put in the hours, you have to put in your 10,000 hours, as Gladwell would say. But anyway, I’m sorry, go ahead.

Ryan D’Aprile 25:21
No, it’s true. And and again, you know, I, I’ve been saying this over and over again, I can’t coach drive, I can’t coach effort. But what I’m starting to do is I’m trying to bring it to the top of everybody’s consciousness. Yeah, that is a direct correlation to your results. It’s, are you willing to put in the time and the effort that it takes, and then the excuses, well, this person’s got that and that person has this, that’s not going to get you anywhere you put in the effort, your output will be just like anybody else’s. And I’m telling you, those top people that we just mentioned, from Matt, to dawn tomorrow, all right, they they’re not stopping there, their efforts there now. It’s getting easier for them. But I think if you walk in their footsteps, and for a day, if you’re new at this, or your next year, you’ve been doing it for 10 years, but not the level, it’d be exhausted, because they’re so used to putting that effort in. And I bet you anything that they would tell you that they absolutely love it because they taught themselves to love it.

D.J. Paris 26:26
And the moment they stop, like you were saying four or five days on a vacation, I was out for three weeks now thankfully, I was pretty connected. But But I still noticed it my muscles, atrophied my business to a small degree atrophied because I wasn’t in the office eight hours a day. And I have a great anecdote that I’ve heard that I’ll just quickly mentioned about how quickly once you stop doing the hard work, and you can immediately correct course, correct. Anytime that happens, and we’re all human. And there will be times when we don’t, you know, find the the courage to keep going and or we get off of our routine. But I heard Pavarotti who passed away some time ago, one of the, maybe the greatest singer in our modern history, he said, if I stopped practicing for one day, I notice what are you doing his vocal practicing his singing, he said, I noticed after one day, after two days, my coach, by the way, best singer in the world has a coach says My coach notices, after three days, the world notices. So that’s how important it is to to just every day somehow find that grit that drive to just keep going.

Ryan D’Aprile 27:35
It’s right. And then again, you know, I’m going back to the Toyota manufacturing system, which I had talked to you before about, which is what our dashboard is built on. You know, you need to have the tools to visually see your flows, and you need the tools to be able to visually see your actions. And, you know, the tools to see results is great. But having that transparency to measure your activities is incredibly important. And knowing that people that have the tools at their fingertips and they say you know, Ryan, I don’t you know, I do it, but I don’t record it, then that’s just not doing it. That’s like my my eighth grader saying that I did my homework, I just didn’t, I didn’t write the answers on this sheet. Right now. It’s, it’s, you know, these excuses are bullshit. And we all just kind of learn to call ourselves out on our own bullshit.

D.J. Paris 28:24
And this is why I think it’s really helpful to have a council of people or at least someone in your life, who you allow, whether it’s a coach or a friend or a mentor, or you know, your managing broker, if you’re a real estate agent, or a trainer or somebody who can say, Hey, I am going to tell you the uncomfortable truth sometimes and nobody’s perfect. So there’s always going to be things that you’re not doing. Because, you know, we can’t all do everything ourselves. But you need to have people in your life that you listen to and say, Hey, I’ve noticed you don’t seem to be doing X, Y, or Z, or who is tracking your performance and saying, you know, let’s let’s figure out how to get you back on track. And that’s, it’s okay to fall off the track. We all fall off all of our, you know, our tracks from time to time, whether it’s our relationships, or our business, or our eating, or exercise or spirituality or whatever. We all know, nobody’s perfect, but you need to have people in your life that can can push you back towards, you know, the right path.

Ryan D’Aprile 29:26
Yeah, yeah. And that’s, you know, that’s what we tried to do in our organization. It’s where we are a, a coaching company for all type from, you know, $50 million a year producers that get in at $5 million producing loan officer annually to you know, a new agent doing three, four $6 million in production a year. Everybody, you know, again, in our business, the double edged sword to this is, is the freedom that comes along with it. But then with the freedom comes a total lack of accountability. And that’s why the failure rate is so incredibly high in this industry. And And I think the fix is is the surrendering and the vulnerability and looking at either a hired coach or an organization that has coaches in house and saying, Hey, I’m gonna look at you as my manager, I’m gonna work for myself, I’m gonna work for myself, I’m gonna control my own financial destiny, but I’m gonna look at you as my manager, it’s my coach, you know, put whatever word you want to put in there. And I’m going to come report to you once or twice a week, and then we’ll tell you how I’m doing and where I’m at. And by having eyes on me, it’ll help me feel that whatever you want, it’s the guilt, the pressure to do an activity they need to do. Give me that person you’re gonna see a top producer in a year or two.

D.J. Paris 30:44
Yeah, being coachable, I know is a huge part of of your philosophy of success. Because you guys are coaching institution and you coach your agents, and the results are there. How does somebody know if their coach called coachable or not? Just out of curiosity, because you obviously I’m sure, met people who aren’t coachable?

Ryan D’Aprile 31:07
Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is, it is a tool, right? Our tool is our proprietary dashboard that we created. And it brings transparency to the table. And it’s like, Hey, we’re gonna dedicate an hour, we’re gonna tell you what to do. Here you go, here’s some tasks, see in a week or two weeks, and then you have those that do it. And like, Alright, Coach, what’s next? What’s next? And he was like, you know, what, I had this and I was here, and I didn’t get back, I didn’t do this. And I’ll get to it, you know, and after three, four or five times, then you have the conversation. Okay, what’s the point, we’re just having coffee with each other, right. And it’s a hard conversation to have with people, it’s like, hey, you know, my hourly rate is $1,000, I’m given to you at no cost here, if you’re not going to use it, then hey, you don’t have to be coached at this company. You don’t have to be, you know, um, and when you want to be come back, it’s here. But hey, we’ve done this four or five times, and you’re not doing it. So this is kind of pointless. When you’re ready. And you’re in that mindset, we are here for you. So you know, it’s something you know, for everybody to understand. I guess within our organization, we have people that are a company that are amazing, Lone Wolf’s, and they come in every once in a while they’re not coached, some of them are top producers, and they’re wonderful additions to our culture. Then there’s individuals that are top producers and their coach all the time. And there’s individuals, they they want to get coached to show up, but they don’t can’t follow through. And we just have to have that, you know, that expression that come to Jesus say, when you’re ready, we’ll be ready.

D.J. Paris 32:39
I agree. And, you know, this is where finding your knowing your why. And maybe that’s what I said earlier about finding grit everyday, maybe the pathway to that is revisiting your why because grit is, is it’s tough, sometimes it’s tough all the time. And if you like I know, Ryan, you have for all of your businesses and the way you’ve grown your business, you it is the reason for building those businesses isn’t to just build businesses and keep expanding, you have very specific personal reasons that you know, goals for yourself that are maybe not necessarily financial, but you know, with a result of having the businesses grow to a certain size allow you to achieve your why. So I don’t any I’m not I wouldn’t ask you to share your personal why. For for all your businesses with us. But can we talk about how finding your why connects you to that to the energy to then push through the tough times?

Ryan D’Aprile 33:39
Sure, yeah. And there’s, there’s different I feel that there are different levels of why. Okay. And your baseline, why should be based on fair, here’s what I mean. Yeah, you’re motivated by one of two things. Pleasure, or the avoidance of pain. Okay, so pleasure and award an award right, or reward, excuse me, or avoidance of pain. I think your baseline y should be the avoidance of pain, I think 90% of us are motivated by the avoidance of pain. And, you know, if I were to go back 16 years, when I jumped in the real estate business, you know, I was I was I almost would say I was depressed, having a boss. I was I was depressed with the face time and the suit and tie every day and, you know, needing to go to grad school to get to my promotion. You know, to me, it just felt like a cattle on a cart. It just, it felt like grade school, in high school and all over again to me. So, I got a real estate license, and I started making a living like, you know, on the side while I had my corporate America, by the way, my boss in case he ever listened to this. My former boss was such a great guy. I mean, I love them. Alright, So it wasn’t like anybody’s being mean, to me just it was my ethos was I was, I was building, I was depressed doing it, I had a ton of success, and I was making a ton of money. But you know, getting on a plane and, and being in North Carolina when my corn was at home, and then going to grad school at night when you know, my wife and newborn were having dinner, like, fuck that it wasn’t for me. Sure. And so my baseline, why was a fear of having to go back to that. Sure, my baseline Why is, you know, my beautiful parents who gave us a beautiful life, who fought over money and like not far, but like, you know, our hard times, it was over money, right, five kids, you know, dad sold, you know, spark plugs and fan belts and made 25% profit margins on it. You know, um, you know, my dad saw his neighbors driving Mercedes, and my dad was driving in 1994 1978, beat up Lincoln, you know, and that scared me. You know, and that’s my baseline, why in the beginning, now, my other wise have evolved. Alright, they’ve evolved greatly. But I had to start with the first baseline, why of avoidance of pain. And you can bet your bottom that that is still deep down. In me. I, and I think that is why the majority of the top 20% of our country are self made. Because Oprah came from that background. Smith came from that background. You know, Warren Buffett, even I mean, prominent, you know, middle class family, but like, really look at everybody, their, their, their baseline, why probably came from avoiding a pain.

D.J. Paris 36:46
Yeah, you know, it’s funny too, because we don’t like to think about pain as a positive motivator. But I will tell you, thinking that, you know, my boss could fire me at any moment, which he absolutely could do. And it helps to get me out of bed a little bit earlier in the morning that I might want, might want to get up. And it’s not, I’m not terrified, I don’t walk around, stressed out all day that I’m going to be, you know, let go. But certainly having a healthy fear of, of, you know, a negative implication in my life, which would be paying my bills, and I just bought a place. Boy, the avoidance of that pain gets me up a little bit. Now I also have things I’m, I have that pleasure that I’m shooting for, too, which is I want to earn a certain income so that I can provide for my family, but a little bit of pain and pleasure, I think they call that a propulsion system. Something that pushes you from behind and pulls you towards a goal is a good thing. So I am curious on your thoughts about having both the pain that pushes you away from you know, some sort of catastrophe, and also the pleasure and sort of they move sort of in the same same direction at the same speed. So if you can sort of get in the middle of that. I think it’s it’s the carrot and the stick. I guess I’m curious on your thoughts.

Ryan D’Aprile 38:02
Yeah, I think if I’m ever really honest with myself, deep down, I mean, you know, I admire people I so admire people who are content in life. Because I’m not because I’m scared.

D.J. Paris 38:12
I mean, either. It just,

Ryan D’Aprile 38:15
it what it comes down to, and I push myself. And I’ll open up for more offices, and I’ll hire you know, you know, five more people in a specific department, you know, and, you know, I have I have a team of software engineers that now work in my firm that have families, I’m scared. I gotta serve, I gotta support these people. Yeah, so, you know, I’m scared can be a harsh word, but you know, I’m motivated, because I never want to have to say to them to say, Guys, we can’t make payroll. And that’s, that’s my motivation is avoidance of that pain. So I’m up and I’m at it and I’ll tell you something like, it doesn’t sound that sexy or appealing to say, oh my god, this guy’s successful because he’s afraid. But the flip side of it, man, I crave life. I travel my wife, a trout, my kids, I you know, I spend the summers in Lake Geneva. I’m able to coach their teams and be where they are. Why because of my fare. I work my ass off. And because I’m disciplined, I am busy being productive versus Busy just being busy. And round. Robin Sharma says the best suppose we were just busy being busy. You know, I’m laser focused. Why? Because I’m afraid that if I’m if I’m spending my time, not wisely, I might have to regress back to working at an auto parts store on Cicero Avenue and Chris and Chris way you know, it wasn’t like torture horrible it’s just again it’s like it’s not where I want it to be. And so it drove me

D.J. Paris 39:42
Yeah, fear is a good thing fears the you know what keeps us you know, in our lanes while we’re driving our cars and, and and the fear of bankruptcy or the fear of not paying our rent or mortgage. These are good things because we have to be you know, you have to be in touch with with that and if that’s your main motivator, and as long as it’s not negatively impacting your health, or your your family life, then yes, I mean cheese, be afraid. But realize that that fear is going to give you everything you want, if you just, you know, the if everyone hasn’t heard of this book, it’s it’s traditionally used for creative people. But I encourage everybody to read it. It is called The War of Art, not the Art of War, which is Sun Tzu, which is an interesting book, but The War of Art. And Steven Pressfield is the author and he talks all about resistance. He says, the biggest enemy in your life is resistance. And if you can just conquer resistance, you’re gonna have everything you want. He talks, the same thing, talents, not necessary, but hard work and discipline is.

Ryan D’Aprile 40:46
Yeah, yeah. And that’s it. And I think that’s what I wanted our listeners to get out today and said, you know, you can’t coach effort or desire, but you know what, you can create it within yourself, and I think you need to make it. You know, your number one focus is, am I putting in the effort? And do I have the desire? And am I waking up every morning? In this business, realizing? It’s me, nobody’s going to do it for me.

D.J. Paris 41:09
Real last question. I’m just curious, because Ryan, for those of you who aren’t maybe here in the local Chicago area, who who are in Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, etc. Who might not be as familiar with Ryan and his companies, Ryan is obviously incredibly successful, which is why we have him on the show, because we highlight successful people. But I am curious, if you were to honestly, when you evaluate yourself, we talked about talent at the beginning, do you consider yourself a talented person? Or not just with your businesses? Or our Do you consider it mostly just a lot of hard work? Or is it a mixture of both?

Ryan D’Aprile 41:45
I I think it’s hard work primarily. I mean, you know, it’s, it’s a tough question to answer. I mean, here, I might have said this in the show to you before I, you know, I went to high school to see my school and my daughters are going to, you know, and I went to high school in 1990, as a freshman, for four years, you know, I walked into freshman class as a freshman, as a 14 year old and 1000 kids, we all had English, math, science, social studies, and whatnot. But next to each subjects were letters. So you’d be in, say, social studies, H, which stood for honors, or you’re in social studies, S which stood for superior, or your social studies arch that for regular, or you’re in social studies, G, which stood for I thought, good, because every subject I had was G next gen. And so for BI PhDs, right? Our superintendent was a doctor or Dean was a doctor, and academics. I was told by all of them, I was below regular in every single subject. I had to take an AC t score, and I have nephews and friends and nieces that scored twice what I got my second attempt on it. So I don’t know what to tell you. But I could tell you what I was labeled. Yeah, and that has never gone away. So I don’t know, I found that.

D.J. Paris 43:24
I found that to be, I found that to be true with essentially everyone I’ve interviewed where they do not. Notice how Ryan very uncomfortably sort of like, because he’s obviously become extraordinarily successful. He’s a great coach. He’s a great business leader. But he hesitates to call himself talented. And that isn’t to say that he isn’t, but that is not what primarily has, has driven you that the talent maybe has come as a result of all the hard work, you know, and obviously, you do have tremendous talent anyway. But but just being able to work yourself up is is all the talent you need. Right? You just need to get up every day and do do your push ups, whatever that looks like in your business, do your business push ups and your social business you know, your social pushups and your relationship push ups and and all of a sudden years years go by and you’re like, wow, look at that. I’m strong. You know, and I so I imagine everybody I asked never says talent they always say yeah, I have a little bit of talent I guess but it’s really just I work hard. And and how exciting for the rest of us to hear that from top leaders like yourself.

Ryan D’Aprile 44:36
I think that’s what that’s that’s the lesson. We have Michael,

D.J. Paris 44:39
Michael Jordan, what didn’t make the varsity team until he was in high school when he was like a junior or something. And gone went on to you know, be probably the greatest of all time. And there’s lots of examples of that. The Beatles put in Beatles put in 10,000 hours before they playing live before they ever did an album The greatest rock group of all time, most, you know, most of us would agree. So there’s there’s lots of stories like this where talent wasn’t wasn’t obvious. And

Ryan D’Aprile 45:11
it isn’t, you know, again, with the school situation, I think I’m a, I don’t want to say jaded, but I’m a little motivated to be outspoken on that. I think, you know, we, you know, our, our society is interesting too, because, you know, you have the division of the haves and the have nots, and then, you know, you have this conversation of, of taxes and all this stuff. And I gotta tell you something, I think the biggest different middle class wealth is these $50,000 a year college tuition and say these kids are going for, and they’re learning the same stuff that they were learning in high school, and it’s overnight, people say it’s a great life experience. I don’t know if it’s worth the papers right now. Now, maybe if you’re going to be, of course, you’re gonna be a doctor or an engineer. Sure. But I, you know, I don’t feel like academic has got it figured out at all. And, and I think it puts labels on all of us, I was just lucky enough to say, bullshit, I’ll show you. But unfortunately, there have individuals say, This is who I am. So this is where I belong. And I want people to break through that mold.

D.J. Paris 46:20
Yeah, yeah. And if you don’t have belief in yourself, now, it’s okay, you can develop it, if you just do the work, the belief in yourself will come, because you’ll start to see results. So if you are thinking, Well, I can’t be a top producer. Okay, so you you think you can’t be a top producer? What if you just acted like one? What if you just did the work that one did and then check in in a year and see how see how it’s going? And I’ll bet your opinion will change because it’s all just hard work. And again, you were saying, Don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outsides. You’re always going to fall short, always going to fall short.

Ryan D’Aprile 46:56
Yep, that’s exactly right. This is a

D.J. Paris 46:59
great place to wrap up for this week, Ryan and I could talk about this for hours and he is too busy. And I am too busy for that. But we are so grateful that despite the fact that he runs four or five company, how many companies do you run now?

Ryan D’Aprile 47:12
I think we’re on five companies right now. But five companies,

D.J. Paris 47:15
yes, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of agents and loan officers and, and admin and support. And now developers, I have toured Ryan’s compound, one of his compounds and where he has workers, and it’s just absolutely incredible what he’s built. So if you are a realtor here in the Chicagoland area, or Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, in Florida as well, if you’re looking to work with a coaching real estate firm, that isn’t necessarily going to say, here’s all the leads you need, but we’re going to they’re going to show you how to generate and create a business and coach you so that you can you can be in charge of your destiny, deeper properties is a fantastic place to check out in. And if you just go to Depot properties.com, you’ll see all the links to how to contact them. I’m a huge fan of them. Of course, that’s why they’re on our show. And if you’re looking for or if you’re just not getting the attention you need from your current firm, check them out, talk to them, learn the why coaching is is their sort of differentiator. They also have amazing software and they built their own systems, which is beyond incredible. But just the coaching alone is is what most of us need, I think so check them out Depot properties.com. And they’d love to talk to you. Thanks, CJ. Well, thanks, Ryan. It was a pleasure having you on again before everyone signs off. If you if you’re still listening, please tell a friend think of one other real estate agent that could benefit and I was just at a kickball event for realtors yesterday and I had three people come up to me who I did not know and really tell tell me how much the show is helped them. And, and certainly that’s nice to hear for my ego. But I really, really believe that that this can help agents such as telephone, it’s free. We do this to help agents. So tell somebody you know who might who could use this, this wisdom that Ryan just shared and send them over to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com Or just have them search for keeping it real in whatever podcast app they use. And we would appreciate it and then of course, let’s support Ryan, you know, tell any agents you know or loan officers to check out D APR they have they have a title company, they have a loan lending company, they are a real estate firm and much much else other things as well. So reach out to them D APR properties.com And Ryan, we will see you on the next episode. Looking forward

Ryan D’Aprile 49:49
to it. Thanks, DJ. Thanks, Ryan.

Deidre Joyner with Red Oak Realty in East Bay Area talks about the beginning of her career in real estate and how she got her first big break. Deidre emphasizes how important it is to be honest and forthright with your clients and how this has brought business to her. Next, Deidre also talks about the importance of knowing and understanding the data around the property before meeting your clients. Last, Diedre discusses the funniest and unusual experiences of her career until now.

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

Deidre Joyner can be reached at 510.693.4253 and [email protected].

D.J. Paris 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with top producer Deirdre joiner before we get to Deirdre just a couple of quick reminders. As always, the best way you can help our show is by telling a friend think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from top producers like Deirdre and send them a link to our website, they can stream every episode we’ve ever done right from keeping it real pod.com Again, that’s keeping it real pod.com And also please follow us on Facebook, which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And last, I am going to be at the NAR conference walking around as a participant like probably a lot of our audience. And so if you’re going to be in San Diego this November for the NAR event, please let us know and I’d be happy to say hello to you in person and thank you for being a listener and supporter of our show. And now on to our interview with Deirdre Joiner.

Today on the show we have Deirdre joiner from Red Oak Realty in East Bay in California. Now Deirdre is a 17 year veteran realtor selling over 350 homes totaling over 300 million in sales volume, dirties production consistently ranks her as the number one or number two agent at Red Oak Realty year after year and she was born in Berkeley to a musician and a teacher who became an East Bay realtor. They lived in a funky rental that cost $165 per month. The neighborhood was flat friendly and kids were out playing until the streetlights came on. And in 1979 their little rental went on the market for sale and their folks decided to buy an ugly fixer up in Oakland. For a few months they stayed at their grandmother’s home as they weekend warrior that bartering music studio time for construction labor. Fast forward to now 9099 Dierdre was a young mom and a wife and her husband and her decided to buy a 1951 major fixer up in Redwood heights. And it was the perfect call to sack location blocks from the same elementary school that her mother, her aunt, and she attended. And it fed into her fervor for mid century architecture. In 2004, she left the restaurant industry and became a realtor. She’s from the generation in which True Grit determines destiny. She started with no leads no clients and a fantasy and she built her business on the philosophy of working hard and thinking outside the box grounded in customer service. Please follow Deirdre on Instagram at Dierdre j so that’s D I D R E and then the letter J. Again di d r e j dears. You’re welcome to the show.

Deidre Joyner 3:46
Wow. Thank you. I sound interesting.

D.J. Paris 3:49
You are you’re super interesting. And we are so excited to have you on the show some of the best interviews we’ve done over the last, in my opinion, of course, over the last four or five years. And again, not just counting any other interviews we’ve done, but some of my favorite ones have been people from the Bay Area. I don’t know why maybe it just attracts a more interesting type of realtor to our show. But we’re so excited to chat with you. And you have a very interesting backstory which I was so happy to share with our audience. But yeah, let’s let’s start at the beginning. You know, I always ask our guests how they got into real estate and I know you’ve been doing it now for 17 years. But can you kind of take us back to that and what prompted you to make this your career?

Deidre Joyner 4:35
Um, well, I was in the restaurant industry and I had two young kids and I remember distinctively that my son was home with a high fever and I was given a lot of crap by my manager at the time, and I said to myself, this will be the last holiday season, I will be working in the food industry. You know, my family, obviously is important and I shouldn’t be made felt to feel guilty for taking care of a sick child, it’s really hard for women so many times to be a mom and a working mom. And my mother’s said that I should consider real estate which I thought there’s no way I want to do what my mother does right? Now, just on general principle, right? In your footsteps, no way. So my husband encouraged me to maybe pursue it. And I actually went to my local community college, and took my classes. And that’s where I took all of my classes for real estate and, and then took a leap of faith and gave me notice, and that was in 2004. So

D.J. Paris 5:58
yeah, we should also mention, just for anyone who’s not familiar with sort of the the Bay Area in general, but I and again, I’m, I’m not not a practicing realtor, myself, but I live in Chicago. And I know, we have lots of Realtors at our firm. So I think I have a general idea of the difficulty here in Chicago, I would say the difficulty ramps up significantly, maybe exponentially in the Bay Area, because pricing of courses is so extreme, and probably a lot of competition as well from other agents. And you started, you know, back when I guess the market was was really starting to heat up. But But still, you know, I had to be difficult with no leads. Sounds like you didn’t have a huge sphere of influence to draw from. So I’d love to hear about how you got started and how you did start to succeed. You know, what once you began?

Deidre Joyner 6:54
Absolutely, because, of course, at the time, my mother was a working real tour. And I couldn’t tap into her sphere of influence, because that wouldn’t be right. And, you know, I think like most people, your friends and family, they love you, but they don’t want to necessarily use you until you get a little experience. Right? You know, they’re like, Yeah, we love you, but we’re not gonna allow you to cut your teeth on us.

D.J. Paris 7:24
We’re gonna screw up screw up with someone else and then then come to us.

Deidre Joyner 7:27
Exactly, exactly. But my mother was in a position to refer me a few buyer leads. And of course, I did pay a referral fee. It was strictly business, but I did a lot of open houses. Um, and you really have to put yourself out there for Oakland open houses. And I remember, I thought, well, what can I give someone during the open house? Like I can give them information, I can give them my time, I can answer questions. I remember we had, like a Sunday open home guide that are a little local ad review, which is this little private company that kind of publishes all the open houses, the hours open, etc. And I would print that out, and I would staple my business card. And I said, if you want to receive this every week, I can email it to you if you give me your email address. And so I was like, Well, I want to give them something of value. Or, you know, if you’d like this, you know, I’m happy to look up some other options for you. Because really and truly knowing cares about you. It’s really them and their process. At the same time, there was this huge amount of kind of cheerleading from my office, which was trying to jumpstart some new agents to do door knocking. So I do remember doing some door knocking. I hated it. But I was like, Look, this is what I have to do. This is what I have to do. I started a blog. I mean, I blogged about the most hideous things starting out like because I had really nothing to say no experience. Draw. And I mean, I had to go back and kind of delete some of those because it’s like, wow, that’s pretty bad. But open houses I really kind of chalked up as a numbers game, and I will say that it’s probably different than it is now back in 2004 or 567 Less people came to open houses with realtors already. You had an opportunity to be in front of people who were unrepresented. I think now because technology has grown so fiercely. A lot of people are doing a lot of research and finding agents ahead of time online through Yelp. through other avenues, but at that time, that was a really good avenue for me. Um, and that really helped. I remember one of my big breaks in real estate was there was a veteran agent who had a listing interview in a neighborhood that’s not far from mine. It’s called the Laurel district of Oakland. Sure. And she said, Oh, let me pick your brain, you know, that area. I don’t know that area. So I gave her a few little things about the neighborhood. And then I followed up with her. See, that’s like, the whole key, I feel like in real estate is following up just with everything. And I said, How did your appointment go? And she says, Well, I think it went well. But I did have to ask directions to get back to the freeway. I was like, wow, that’s not a good luck, you’re trying to sell their house, and you don’t know how to get to the freeway, boom, okay. And she said, I tell you what, maybe I’ll refer this to you. And you can help them. But I have to tell you, I will want a referral fee. And this is already referred to me. So you’ll have to pay two referral fees, no willing to do that. I’ll refer it to you. And

D.J. Paris 11:19
so you’re basically the third realtor down the line, but you were hungry, and it was worth it.

Deidre Joyner 11:25
It was worth it. And you know, a month later, I got a listing around the corner. And then there you go, I have two listings in a neighborhood that’s very specific, and you can build on that. So I think it’s great. And it’s it’s really, you know, putting in the time, and knowing that one day it will come back to you, but you don’t know when and you just have to have that face.

D.J. Paris 11:49
And I guess you really don’t know how either, right? Like it just in this. In this way, one of your listings came from a referral of a referral. And, and, you know, I’ve had, gosh, hundreds of people on our show, and I don’t think anyone has particularly, you know, mentioned I’m sure other people have been in that situation. But if that’s a way that you wouldn’t expect for a lead to come. And I wanted to just circle back very quickly to something I think you said that or that you said that I believe is very interesting and important to our audience, which was because open houses are still obviously, you know, quite successful, depending on your market. Certainly, it’s a, you know, an activity that most of the our listeners are probably involved in. But this idea of providing something of value, as I’m sort of cycling back through my memories of all of our different episodes and trying to remember if anyone has specifically talked about this, I’m not sure that anyone has. And it’s such a simple idea. But it’s so powerful. And I’m really grateful that you talked about it, instead of just, you know, hey, here’s the brochure, here’s my information, here’s, you know, whatever about you, or the home itself, which of course, I’m sure you had some of that material too. But this idea of, hey, I’ve got this cool thing that I can send you. And I’ll staple my car to it. In fact, if you just give me your email, I’ll do that every week. That’s a really brilliant strategy. I know, you just sort of said it. Matter of fact, but but I want to kind of just step on it a little bit. Because I think it’s really smart. Because now you have somebody’s contact information, whether they work with you or not, you’re going to be able to market to them in whatever fashion you think’s appropriate, really indefinitely. So that really is brilliant. And even if they end up not using you, maybe they get hooked on your content and the content you send them, and maybe they pass it around or you know, refer you to other people. So I know for you that was just probably a minor detail. But I think Gosh, what a great smart idea that I don’t think anyone else has ever mentioned on our show. So, so thank you for that.

Deidre Joyner 13:50
Well, absolutely. I do think that, you know, so many times I, you know, look at other people’s websites, I look at other people’s content, I look at how people sell themselves. And I think that’s great. You do have to sell yourself you do have to be your own advocate, you have to negotiate for yourself because, frankly, you have to prove to your clients that you’re going to negotiate for them and you’re showing that by standing up in negotiating for yourself but really truly it’s just like life, you know, you might date someone because they’re nice, but you like how they make you feel right? You like how they make you feel and and so you that same concept, I think really works well. And client relationships, right? Your client wants to feel well taken care of and someone wants to feel like maybe you have some insight and knowledge that they can’t readily get themselves. And so sometimes I have had clients call me or someone take my card and call me after the faxing, you know, you know you were talking about the market, you answered questions, you made me feel comfortable. I think that, you know, I want to talk to you about maybe being my real tour. So I think just providing something with nothing, expecting nothing in return is really the key. Yeah, I

D.J. Paris 15:19
agree. And I also know that for you, salesmanship, or, you know, sales tactics are just not part of your toolbox, which I love. Because I think most people, not everyone, there are people that I guess like to be sold, but I think most of us really don’t. And maybe that was different, you know, 50 years ago, when we didn’t have as much information as readily accessible. But now I think people just want good, honest information. And you basically just just said that as well. And I know that’s a big part of your business is just telling clients what they need to hear versus maybe what might help you win the listing or, you know, the contract.

Deidre Joyner 16:01
Right, right. I had a listing that I got, it was a referral. So one of my past clients recommended me, but I know that they interviewed three people. And the house was in general, in a overall good location walking distance to BART. In a high performing school district, check, three bedrooms, two baths, but it was on a highly trafficked Street and it was next door to a very big apartment building. And Zillow and Redfin had their house valued, much higher than I felt the value was, and a lot of people look at Zillow and Redfin. And they feel that those valuations apply to them. But they’re not always, you know, they’re great in some regard, but they don’t know some of the subtle differences of the property. And so I told them, I said, you know, I don’t think your house is worth anywhere near that, I would love to get that for you. But let me break down all of the solds in your area, and tell you how they’re different. And I thought for sure, they were gonna go with someone who told them that they could get the highest, a higher price, and they went with me. And thank God, I, you know, gave them the data and insight because they didn’t get anywhere close to that. But at the end of the day, they felt well taken care of well represented. And there was no surprise at the end. Right, as we started with that candid conversation.

D.J. Paris 17:40
Yeah, I Gosh, what a smart strat. It’s not, it is technically a strategy, but just being honest and forthright. It’s, I am shocked it isn’t done more often in this in this market in this industry. Not that people are intentionally deceptive. But I think in the case of this listing, you know, maybe you wouldn’t talk about the traffic on the street. Because it’s an you know, it’s a negative, it’s going to affect the value and then the apartment building next door, it’s going to affect the value and also having to discount, you know, Zillow and red fins estimates is also not fun. I just looked up this condo I just purchased about five, four or five months ago. And it’s it says on on Zillow, and I’m not picking on Zillow, Zillow as a partner on this podcast they come on every month are really lovely people. But it says that my place is appreciated almost $150,000 Well, that is just not the case. I would love for that to be the case. And maybe I’d even sell it right away, but the reality of it is isn’t and and so even I get excited when I see that oh, my place is appreciated, except that I actually think about them like actually it hasn’t. I know that that is that is a really important conversation because even though I’m in the industry I see that number that Zestimate or whatever and I go oh look at that. And then I go wait a minute, but But it’s important,

Deidre Joyner 19:05
it’s hard because with the low inventory being such a huge drivers for so for so long. Sometimes you’re looking you know, in a year’s time 812 listings and you have one that’s a complete outlier, a unicorn of a property that you see rainbows when you walk through the door and that’s gonna skew everything right so that’s the hard part. And the the other challenging per with real estate and to be able to articulate it well is you know, for most communities unless you’re buying into a condo building that has a lot of volume to analyze. Nothing is like unkind so you’re comparing Kiwis to grapes, right and you have to know the fruit and be able to explain In it, and that’s the thing that you that, you know, I think you have to do is really immerse yourself and educate yourself so that when you are talking to clients, you have the confidence to speak out based on data, because relationships are great. But there’s a lot of people out there that are analytical people who are like, Okay, you’re nice. Now show me the data, show me the analytics. And you know, you can’t just be one note, you have to really encompass the whole the whole picture.

D.J. Paris 20:33
And you also live and work in an area that is very tech focused as far as career and industry. And you probably have a tremendous amount of engineers and, and just different people that are analytical people in nature, and by nature, and really do want to pour over that information. So I imagine that’s very helpful. I mean, it’s helpful anywhere, because I think most of us one want the information to be able to review not every one, of course, sometimes it’s just an emotional connection. And we say, oh, that’s our realtor. But I imagine in your area that’s particularly useful. I’m, I’m stereotyping the Bay Area, but just

Deidre Joyner 21:12
You’re absolutely right. And you could be working with someone single, or someone in a partnership, and one person can be relationship person and one person can be an analytic, and you have to be able to talk to both. But at the end of the day, you know, immersing yourself so that you can be an export is important. And I also think it’s very important to kind of stay in your lane, if you will, and work areas that you know, you know, don’t go too far outside your comfort zone, because then you get yourself in a little trouble. And then you get out of your comfort zone. Yeah.

D.J. Paris 21:50
Yeah, that’s that’s a good point. I, I yeah, I think it’s you they what do they say? It’s the jack of all trades, master of none, right? Like, if you try to be everything to everybody, and try to work the entire, you know, geographic area that you know, in your case, it’s pretty vast, then it’s, it’s you’re going to, you’re going to have a situation where you don’t know how to get to the highway, maybe. And that doesn’t look good. You know, in a client meeting. I never ever get to this part of the interview. And I absolutely have to, because these two, these two stories are incredible. And I’ve made a promise that I will not be you know, running out of time before we get to get to these going forward, because they’re so great. After 300 episodes, I’m like, I’m never letting these past by again. Can you please, you sent us so two great stories, ones, your funniest experience and one’s unusual? Look, we let’s start with the funniest one. The I don’t want to ruin what it is. But the basically the $700,000 contract. Yeah.

Deidre Joyner 22:52
So this was about five years ago, it was great. I had this cute little listing. Just to give you some context in our area, people under priced listings anywhere from 10 to 40%. To try it. I know it’s it’s, it’s interesting, but it’s been like that for years. And but people are underpricing to kind of set the table for a lot of interests, multiple offers. And of course, you know, you want the bidding war for your seller. You know, when you’re a listing agent, you have a different objective than being a buyer’s agent. So this house was listed at 699, we knew that it was worth roughly around 800 ish. So say I say this to say it was a busy open house because you know, it 699 We had a wide audience. And the house was full. And a gentleman walks in and asked me how much the house is. And I said, it’s listed at 699. And he walks around and he comes back and he says, I’ll take it and pull out his publisher clearing house, you want a million dollar certificate and said, I’ll design this over to you. And I’d like to do the transaction right here right now. And meanwhile, I want to be sensitive and respectful to everyone. I just said, you know, I’m sorry. We have set an offer date. And you know, I don’t handle the finances directly. I’ll have to refer you to an agent. And you know, it was almost like you could hear a pin drop in the open house. Wow. But but, you know, I think that the bottom line is you know, I treated him with respect and you know, he didn’t like that he couldn’t buy the house right back then and there that he left and and and then we resumed the conference. Asians at hand with the open house, but it just kind of goes to show. I mean, I think it was, it was like, wow, I haven’t I haven’t encountered this before. But you know, at the end of the day, you do have to treat everyone with with respect and kindness.

D.J. Paris 25:15
And for those who are maybe younger and aren’t familiar, the Publishers Clearing House just explain what this is, was, every person in America would receive this letter in the mail that said, you may have one, but it would make you think that you had one because they give you they’d send you a mailer. And there would be like, kind of a fake check in there. And it looked real. And then eventually, you know, they were what were they selling magazine subscriptions? I forget what yeah, man, am I I was and then Ed McMahon would whatever the actual winner was, would they would do it live on TV, and they would big this big giant novelty check. And I was almost thinking when I when you first sent us that story that somebody walked in, it was the actual winner with a big giant novelty check. But this was somebody who came in with basically the same mailer that everyone else gets. And you you really were put in a tough position. Because yes, you’re in a room of other people, you certainly don’t want to humiliate somebody. And boy, what a funny, and not to poke fun at that person. But boy, that’s a funny situation.

Deidre Joyner 26:19
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think that I probably submitted that in my younger years to think that, oh, I might win this. I mean, I did two shows my age, oh, I might have done this.

D.J. Paris 26:35
I did the same thing. And then also I am, we have an astrology story. And and I, you know, it doesn’t matter when I think of astrology. But But I love this story. So please tell us your Mercury story.

Deidre Joyner 26:52
Well, um, prior to this year, I wasn’t very familiar with Mercury in Retrograde. You know, I had some clients and I met with them. And they said, you know, it’s really important that we get on before the next Mercury in Retrograde, I was like, no problem. I look at the calendar, I see the date. And I’m like, as long as I get the house on the market before that date, we’ll do it. And we are, you know, managing, managing, maybe 10 different things to get done also managing their schedule of work. So literally, we have maybe a four or five week window. And so I find out that they actually want it to be on the market and pending and everything negotiated by them. And I had to call and say, you know, I’m really sorry, I am not really well well versed in this Mercury Retrograde, I really just thought I had to give up on the day before. And they were disappointed. They were disappointed. I mean, I fell on the sword. I was like, What can I do? What can I do to make this right? Do you want to delay a month? What do you want to do? So we ended up going on the market, and we did negotiate a contract during Mercury in Retrograde. But we made it where they did not sign their final closing documents until retrograde was over. Because that was the actual documents and the contract to close. So yes. So now, I will completely understand if someone comes to me and says that they want to avoid those dates, that they mean that whole five week period or four week period that they don’t want to do any negotiations during that time. But it was a little embarrassing, perhaps I should have done a little research when they told me that but I was like yeah, no problem we’ll get on the day before

D.J. Paris 28:56
you know it, maybe you could you could you know, find some astrology, meet ups and go and say, hey, if anyone is if mercury, Mercury being in retrograde is an issue for anyone I have experience doing doing this particular type of transaction, but it really goes to the point that you know, different people have different beliefs and you have to respect and honor them, you know, despite, you know, your knowledge or or, you know, understanding of it, and you have to as you said, you know, take it on the chin if something doesn’t necessarily go go as according to plan but but but I think I think it speaks to your ability to you know, again, similar to the other story about the gentleman with the check and I’m not putting these people in that same category, but but having people who have different beliefs and having to say you know, I will figure this out I will make this work. And and you did and I think it really goes to your your ability to meet people where they are As opposed to where you’d like them to be, and I think that is got to be one of the keys to your success is is saying, Okay, you’re here, I will meet you here, I will do what you need. And I know that hard work. Would you say that that, you know, grit I know you’ve spoken about is that the most important quality you think that because it contributed to your success, or certainly maybe one of the most,

Deidre Joyner 30:21
I would say it is probably the one one of the top three, simply because people are busy. You know, here’s the thing, I am the biggest, sensitive person out there, you know, somebody doesn’t respond to me, I’m like, oh, maybe they don’t like me. I mean, it’s, you’re really putting yourself out there. You know, sometimes life happens and people are busy. And sometimes you don’t get a response for a month. So it really took a lot for me to go, okay, like I emailed someone last night in the subject line was like checking in, not to pester, like, Hey, I know you might be busy, I don’t know where you are, I would really love to work with you, if you decide that selling is the right thing for you to do. I’m here if you need me, and sending people maybe a second or third email that’s not aggressive, but yet supportive and trying to figure out that fine line and that voice where you can articulate, hey, I’m just being proactive. I’m not here to be pushy. I’m not here to talk you in or out of buying or selling. But I really did like you and I really do think I can help you. And doing that when you’ve got no response. And it’s been a month or a week or two weeks. It’s really like getting disturbed, discouraged, not getting a listing, losing a client and trying to start over the next day with with the faith and grounded in service. Really, that’s the thing, because it’s very hard to do this day in and out when you think about it. And I get a lot of business from Yelp now because I’ve been on Yelp for so long. But you think about it, let’s just say I sell 30 or 40 houses any year, I might have some people who’ve worked with me in the past who are like, I’m ready to sell and you know, there’s no interview, but I’ve even had past clients decide that they want to interview me and another agent or two because they’ve been told that that’s the right thing to do. So you might be if you sell 30 to 40 houses 100 Sorry, that’s okay. You might be um, I’m gonna put my phone on airplane mode. Sorry,

D.J. Paris 33:05
no problem. I thought it was my phone. I was like, Oh my gosh,

Deidre Joyner 33:10
you might be on 100 interviews in a year. Yeah, that’s right. And you know, you will get rejected, period, you will be rejected. And you have to keep going because that’s just the business. I mean, just think about it. You know, it how you live in your life, you might explore multiple restaurants to go to you might explore people, doctors, some doctors are not going to get selected some restaurants are not going to get selected. You have to tell yourself this is part of business.

D.J. Paris 33:44
It is and you obviously have done a tremendous job building your business through honesty through hard work through perseverance. And and also just you know, being a as you said earlier, following up it seems like such a simple concept, but I have interviewed so many top producers from all over the country, and most of them mentioned following up as if it’s not, it’s obvious to them, but they’re always shocked that everyone doesn’t do that. So I am I am so impressed with with how you’ve grown your business. And I want everyone who is listening to please if you want to learn more about Dierdre or if you’re a buyer or a seller or renter and investor in the Bay Area, the East Bay Area Dierdre would love to work with you she is with us. She is the top producer at her company and one of the top producers in the entire area. So if you are a realtor who wants to learn more about Dierdre and just see how she’s grown her business and see a little bit more about what she does follow her on Instagram. You can find her at Dierdre J That’s di d r e j you can also easily find her Dierdre joiner just Googlers She’s everywhere and also Dorado If there is anyone out there who would like to maybe consider interviewing you to help them buy or sell a home or rent, what’s the best way they should reach out to you?

Deidre Joyner 35:09
Um, I mean, I love a good text. But email is great because I can keep track of it. And I’m D I D R E at Red Oak. realty.com. Deidre Dei, D R. E at Red Oak realty.com. Thanks.

D.J. Paris 35:29
Well, for this, thank you so much for being on our show. We are huge fans of what you’ve accomplished and your success and the feedback or sorry, the information you gave on this episode is, is huge, because it oftentimes I found over the years that it’s so much about fundamentals, and you are like a master of fundamentals. And so you gave our audience some really great fundamentals today as a reminder of what to do to keep going and grow their business. So thank you so much for on behalf of Dierdre. And myself, I want to thank the audience for continuing to listen and support our show, please, we ask everyone who is listening or watching to just do one thing, tell a friend, think of one other real estate agent that could benefit from hearing this great interview with Dr. Dre and send them a link to our show. Easiest way to do that, send them right over to our website, keeping it real pod.com Or if they’re a podcast person, just have them pull up a podcast app search for keeping it real, hit the subscribe button, but please tell a friend and on behalf of our audience and myself, I want to thank you for taking time out of her crazy busy life of being a mom and a business owner and runner and a realtor for coming on our show and sharing her wisdom with everybody. So thank you Deirdre again, and we will see everybody on our next episode. Thanks for joining.

Deidre Joyner 36:44
Thank you. Appreciate it. Have a great day.

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

Chris Linsell from TheClose.com starts this episode with a quick tech check-in
software mentioning companies that provide recommended services to real estate agents. Next, Chris and DJ discuss what it’s like working with buyers at the moment and what are the lines that agents should not be crossing in this relationship. Last, Chris explains what The Close Pro is and what agents benefit by subscribing there.

To see what Chris believes every agent should have in their checklist, check his article on this topic in The Close by clicking here.

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

Chris Linsell can be reached at [email protected].

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by gogos bootcamp Are you a real estate agent looking for the very best media training program on the planet? Gogo Beth key is considered the top Instagram Realtor in the country and her step by step training program will take your social media game to the next level. Keeping it real listeners receive a special discount so please visit Gogo podcast.com That’s Gee oh gee Oh podcast.com for your special discount and now on with the show

right welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast paid by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and today is our monthly series called closing time with Chris Lin sell from the clothes. This is a partnership between keeping it real and the clothes.com Our favorite marketing and you know website and informational website for agents to learn how to further their business. But let’s tell you a little bit more 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 clothes.com That’s th e c l o s e.com And subscribe to their newsletter so you can get notified every time they publish an article with us as always is Chris Lynn sell he is a staff writer and real estate coach for the close. Chris is the closes resident expert on real estate topics ranging from marketing lead gen transactional best practices and everything in between. He’s a licensed agent in the state of Michigan. Chris has been part of hundreds of transactions from modest rural starter homes to massive waterside compounds. When he isn’t writing for the clothes you’ll find Chris fly fishing or performing on the stage of his communities theatres production. Chris Welcome once again to keeping a row we’re excited to have

Chris Linsell 2:18
you DJ, it’s wonderful to be back. Nice to see you.

D.J. Paris 2:21
Nice to see you. I stumbled a bit at the end because as soon as I was reading about community theater, I thought I wanted to ask you if you are if any of the the the the troops that you might work with are back to doing in person or if you’re working on any any new plays or just curious about your acting.

Chris Linsell 2:43
Yeah, nothing nothing at the moment. I have at the moment I have a six year old and a three year old and abandoning my wife for four nights a week for rehearsal schedules with to absolutely adorable firecracker don’t listen to anybody children and right now I think would get me a tent in the front yard so I at the moment I don’t have anything on the docket but I did just sing the national anthem at my local minor league baseball game minor league baseball teams game so that was always that was a moment of performance.

D.J. Paris 3:25
Was that your first time performing the the national anthem

Chris Linsell 3:28
or I’ve actually done it once before? But this was definitely yeah, I mean I yeah, I’ve done it once before. This was definitely a thrill and definitely a bucket list item for me. So tons of fun good to be back with a microphone in my hand and singing a little bit. Baseballs back baby. I was having a good time.

D.J. Paris 3:50
Let me ask you because I have I’ve played in bands, I’m not a best time I’m, you know, a harmony vocal person. And that’s, that’s being generous, but but I’ve always admire singers and in vans that I’ve been in the past, I’ve never been able to really be the frontman and sing much other than the backup stuff. But I am curious for you as obviously an accomplished singer. How scary is it to get out there? Is it scary? Or is it? Are you able to mitigate that that stress? I’m just curious, because to me that would that would be very scary because it’s it’s such a precise song. So I’m curious on and then hitting the high note at the end. Also seems to be terrifying. But I’m curious, was it I know this wasn’t your first time but was it as scary as the first time or you did no big deal to you? Or,

Chris Linsell 4:43
you know, it’s certainly not a no big deal scenario because I mean, it’s a it’s a I mean, for anyone who is out listening outside of the United States, the national anthem at a baseball game is kind of an institution I mean that every Buddy, you know, everybody stands up for it is a big deal. Everyone’s quiet the whole stadium full of people quiet listening to one person and so that you know, that’s a, that’s a big deal and I give that the weight and measure that it deserves. Personally, I don’t really get nervous about that sort of thing I never really have, because I’ve got a relatively diverse performance background. And that’s a situation I’m used to I have learned how to channel those nervous that nervous energy into performance and and use that to better what I’m doing. And so doesn’t really bother me as far as nerves or, you know, is it a scary thing, but I will tell you this, I will say, there, if you are in front of people, and your heart rate is beating as if nothing is happening, then I I honestly feel bad for you, because you’re missing an opportunity to experience something, something, some new energy, some new, some new dimension of the experience itself. And so your heart should be beaten a little bit faster, you should have a little bit more awareness of what’s going on around you. So I definitely feel that I mean, I feel my energy and my adrenaline is up but doesn’t doesn’t scare me. You know, I get Honestly, if I get nervous, it’s usually in a one to one scenario, when I don’t know what to say. That’s where I feel the most nervous, frankly.

D.J. Paris 6:34
Well, congratulations. I think a lot of us a lot of us listening, probably just hearing the, the the experience you just had of going out there probably felt our heart beating, or because it falls into that public speaking. But even a more nuanced version of public speaking, of course, with a different skill set that most people are terrified of doing. singing in front of an audience is probably even more terrifying. I know it would be for me. But I was just a good reminder to do scary things that are high stretch. And if you have a copy of that performance, we will definitely put a link to it on on the notes of this of this episode so that our audience can can can see. See your performance at that baseball?

Chris Linsell 7:23
Oh, I’ll have to I’ll have to take a look on that. That I’m not sure but I’ll have to take a look good. Before I move on. Jerry Seinfeld has an old bit where he talks about what people are afraid of. And he said, There statistically more people are afraid of public speaking than they are of dying. Which means that if you’re at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy

D.J. Paris 7:43
to go. That’s a good that’s a very good point. Boy, that’s great. Yeah. Well, moving on to real estate. I know you had a couple of things you wanted to discuss today First, if I remember correctly was about what we could talk about software I know the software topic and then also working with buyers like what are we doing with buyers? Yeah, let’s

Chris Linsell 8:06
let’s just do let’s just take a couple minutes to do a quick tech check in okay, maybe this maybe this could be part of our like a subsection of our of our episode together that the tech check in here. So I am you know, recently I’ve been doing some some research I’ve been writing some review content about some real estate platforms, some some software and services that are attempting to do something that is a little bit different. And that is they’re trying to become these all in one places. They’re trying to bundle different services that real estate agents and teams and brokers use into one platform one interface and provide you with essentially a solution for multiple needs. Instead of having you know kind of chopping up your your needs across different specialized tools. And I’ll give you an example. A while back I wrote a review for a product called property base. We were talking about this earlier. Yeah, property base. They are a CRM they offer a website they happen to own the lead generation company bold leads so they have a lead gen they have back office transaction management they have a lot of different things that are real estate agent who’s full time and busy often, you know leading their their market a lot of things that they need. But then the question becomes what is better for agents? Is it better to use one of these all in one platforms? That does everything pretty well? I mean, I’m not I’m not calling out property bass specifically here. I actually really liked their platform. But you know when you have these all in ones, all Often, you can’t, you can’t do everything on your dashboard at like the highest level possible, you have to sacrifice performance in certain areas in order to bring your overall medium performance up. And so this kind of begs the question, do I want six really specialized high performing tools that I have to use individually and figure out myself how to get them to work together? Or do I want a platform that gives me all six of those tools in one place? That’s a lot more convenient, but potentially not as high performing? And potentially, without the same sort of innovation that you would get if you were working tool, but individually? Yeah, what do you think about them?

D.J. Paris 10:51
Well, I’m the, I’m probably not the best person to ask simply because I’m in charge of all of our technology at our firm and selecting the technology and understanding. You know, I’m also the guy that runs our server and builds websites. And so for me, in my daily activities, which are different from a traditional realtor, I have many systems that I use. And yes, it’s complicated, it’s annoying. And I wish there was an all in one solution. But to your point, it is difficult to find an all in one solution that performs at the highest levels, across all categories. That being said, if I could find a solution that did, you know, 75% of what I needed, and it was an all in one solution. That would be very interesting to me, because what I worry about with individual software providers is this. I have found it and again, I’m speaking extreme generality here, there’s always, you know, I’m in no way an expert in the tech space. Other than that, I’ve just explored a lot of these options. What I worry about with these individual, you know, niche sort of companies is, are there enough subscribers to their service, where they’re going to continue to innovate, I’ve been seeing a lot of tech companies like property base, acquire other firms, we’re seeing that chime you are mentioning, you know, is done some of that as well. You know, there’s there’s other sort of all in one providers that we don’t need to list all of them but but I put a little bit more faith because I used to work at a tech company kind of similarly, in a different space. And I know that the more resources you have, the more cool innovation you can usually do. So long as your question, but I tend, I want to like the small guys, because they can do one thing exceptionally well. I worry about the small guys, I more, you know, sort of wanting to and so what when we decided for our agents, we chose an all in one platform that we would be providing. Yeah, that being said, we understand most of our agents probably don’t even use our platform we selected not because it isn’t good, just because they probably don’t use any platform quite honestly. Or they have another solution that they’ve found. But for an average agent who is focused on growing their real estate business isn’t necessarily a super tech savvy person, I would say an all in one solution is probably just the easiest way to go and will likely do most things. I’ll say one other idea. If you’re listening to this and thinking I’m not a tech person at all, I don’t, you know, I still work off of a Google sheet, you know, and just put all of my, my, you know, put them in a spreadsheet, put all my CRM information, and I, whatever works for you is fine, right? I don’t I don’t want to suggest I know top producers who work that way. They don’t have any automated systems, or impressive software solutions. They just work, you know, in whatever system that they’ve developed for themselves. That being said, the other thing that you can think about is, if you’re just somebody that you don’t really understand that stuff, there are virtual assistants that you can hire that will understand all of this, and help you manage and monitor it for maybe a lot less money than you might think. So I don’t have a really comprehensive answer other than don’t worry about it if it isn’t your strong suit, because an all in one solution would probably appeal to you. But also, even if that’s too much for you to sort of wrap your mind around on a daily basis. You can have somebody working, even if it’s just a couple hours a day on your CRM. So anyway, sorry long answer. Yeah. What do you what do you think? Well, I

Chris Linsell 14:40
totally agree with you. And I think just the last thing I’ll say about this is if an all in one solution sounds like something that you’d be excited about, if that sounds like simplifying your your real estate workflow, as I say, is something that’s going to benefit your business. There’s a couple of of providers to checkout. please chime is definitely one of them. Chime offers a great real estate, CRM website, lead gen platform. They have optional transaction management, team management, they even have broker management if you want to work on the enterprise level. Property base, as we mentioned, they have that kind of Trifecta with some some additional transaction management capability. Certainly, lone wolf technologies, which are, you know, a lot of people you may have heard that name but don’t know what they do. They are a tech company in the real estate space. And they’re kind of expanding via acquisition. They just purchased Lyon desk not too long ago. And frankly, I get some guff on Twitter for saying this but Zillow is becoming an all in one platform for a lot of AR Well, the Zillow CRM actually has made some kind of gamble. Am I gonna say this out loud? The Zillow CRM has actually made some marked improvement over the last six months that has made me sit up and take a look at it again. Obviously, you can do lead gen there. Zillow offers integration with loans with a whole host of things. So you know, if you are not religiously opposed to Zillow, like I know, some agents are, you know, that might be a platform that you might want to look into. Again, find me on Twitter and tell me I’m wrong. I’m happy to hear hear everyone’s opinion on that. But there are a lot of different all in ones. This seems to be a trend in real estate technology. And maybe, maybe it will this this will pass us by maybe this is a fad. But I don’t think so I think we’re we’re moving towards consolidation in a way that other non real estate tech companies have been doing for a long time. I mean, look at Google is not just a text based search engine, Google owns YouTube, Google owns massive ad platform, Google owns a ton of different things. Android as a Google product, like these are all, you know, companies attempts to bring more services under their umbrella. So it makes sense that real estate tech would follow that that trend.

D.J. Paris 17:18
Yeah, and I agree to, there’s so many different solutions, you know, that people are familiar with contextually is a really popular one. Follow up boss, top producer, there’s, there’s a lot and what I would encourage anyone to do if you’re in the market for some sort of software provider is two things obviously schedule, at least three demos, you know, from from three separate providers. But also, salespeople or salespeople. And demos are usually with a salesperson. And of course, they’re going to highlight you know, the thing, the features that that they know, get people to subscribe and make orders. However, I recommend visiting forums online that are populated with realtors, the most obvious largest one that comes to mind is labcoat agents has a Facebook group that has over 100,000 realtors in it, which is absolutely incredible. And they would love that question. And in fact, I’m sure that question gets asked almost every day on there, but you could join labcoat agents, a little plug for them, and, and start seeing what other agents in the field are using. And they’ll and what’s cool is, you know, Reddit, also, there’s a realtor group on Reddit, there’s, there’s lots of different places, you know, ask your colleagues, you know, people at networking events, but it really, my philosophy around all of it is, you know, just pick one at some point and and put your put yourself into it and realize that no software provider is really going to probably meet all of all of your needs. But boy, if you can get like 75% of your needs met with one provider. Think about how much time you’d save. Yeah, yeah. So thanks for that. That’s, that’s great. And maybe maybe in the future, we could even add a feature to the show where we highlight a tech provider, not not necessarily here with Chris, although we certainly could do it with Chris. But if that’s something that the listeners would like, you know, maybe we will, we’ll start featuring some of these tech companies. So now let’s talk about the thing that is probably most challenging to our listeners right now, which is working with buyers. Yeah, we’ve we’ve, we’ve been talking about this a lot on the podcast over the last, you know, six months or so with not just with Chris but with most of our guests. And it is just the topic of discussion with pretty much everyone whether they’re a top producer, or even the agents in our office who are new and starting out this is this is a tricky time. So Chris, let’s let’s get let’s get into

Chris Linsell 19:54
that. Yeah, yeah, so, just gonna throw out, throw out there a question, I guess. to just get started, when does your client’s requests become unreasonable? At what point? Does your client ask you to do more than what you’re obligated to do? Is there a line in the sand? What do you what do you think TJ? Is there? Is there a place where we have to say, like, I that this is just a bridge too far I this, I had recognized what you’re asking, but it just doesn’t make any sense. Is there a line somewhere in the sands,

D.J. Paris 20:35
I think the most obvious line in the sand is a pre approval letter. So so I just spoke to an agent this morning, who had is not at our firm was an agent, we’re looking to recruit who’s pretty much new. And she says, I’m really struggling because I keep taking out, I’ve taken out four buyers, but none of them, they end up not getting pre approved. And, and to me, that sounds like a training issue. You know, from whatever firm she’s currently at. So so that’s an obvious line in the sand that I think most of our listeners would say, Well, of course, you need that. But beyond that, but I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’m not sure. I’m not sure what the line is,

Chris Linsell 21:15
I think you I think you’re right in the same campus, as most people listening to this, watching this on social, there is no line in the sand that I know of other than, like you said, if somebody wants to see property that they’re not pre approved to purchase, that would be I think, a pretty clear line. If somebody wants to, you know, view property that is unavailable, like for instance, maybe there’s a maybe there’s a home that’s under contract that’s going to close in three days, and has said, you know, they’re very, very this, this wouldn’t be a fit for them. And that it doesn’t make any sense. I think that there’s some some rationale behind that. But beside beyond that buyer’s agents kind of find themselves in a tough position, because they often are working at the whims of their clients. And those whims don’t always seem to make a lot of sense. And I’ll give you an example. Right now we are in, obviously a very competitive market when it comes to being a buyer. If you’re a buyer’s agent, and you have a client who says, I’d like to see this house at 123 Main Street, and you call up the listing agent to 123 Main Street, say I’d like to schedule a showing for this and say, well, we’ve got 12 offers in already. And I can tell you, without revealing all the details, I can tell you that it is very, very likely that this property will an offer will be accepted significantly over asking price. And you return to your buyer client, you say, here’s here’s the information that I found out. And in your mind, you’re thinking as the buyer’s agent, you’re thinking, this makes no sense for us to see, this is not a house that we’re likely to be able to make a competitive offer on. This is an hour out of my time that I could be spending doing something else. This is going to set my client back because they’re going to come here, they’re going to say like, oh, this is a great house, let’s make an offer, even though you know that that offer is likely to be not only not accepted, but not even competitive. What do we say to these clients? What do we say as buyer’s agents? Do we say, No, I’m not going to show you this? Can we do that? This is a this is a challenge I think a lot of buyer’s agents are facing right now.

D.J. Paris 23:47
And especially with the accessibility to properties, where in the past the course the agent was, I mean, it’s not really even need to say this anymore, because it feels like so many years ago now. But now, you know, you’re not the gatekeeper to finding out what properties are on the market, right? Anyone can go to Zillow or Redfin or a million other websites to find out what’s available. And so I imagine we’re talking about a scenario where a client might even find something on their own, say, this looks pretty great. And maybe they don’t know it’s under contract, or they see it and say, Is there still a chance we could get it? And send that to you? I almost think and I know, this isn’t probably really a great answer. But I almost think it really that conversation needs to happen before any properties are shown in person. Whereas I think there’s an education session that could start at the beginning that says, you know, let me sort of explain the process. Let’s first give a state of the market here’s, here’s kind of what I’ve been seeing as an agent. Here’s maybe some expectations to consider when we see a property, the sort of speed the offer we need to keep in mind, we need to really be ready to make a decision as quick as possible, we need to know exactly what you guys, what’s the top level, you know, sort of bid that you are willing to put on any property so that I can kind of do my research. But also, here’s what happens if you’re, if it’s late at night, and you’re surfing Zillow, and you find something that you really, really like, there may be an, there may be a time where I tell you, I know you love that property. And I want to show you that property. But here’s why we might not want to go see it. I will show it to you if you absolutely want to. But I want to stress, you know, so I almost think all of those scenarios could. And again, maybe they’d be forgotten about right after that initial education meeting. And through two days later, the person saying I want to go see this thing that’s going to close in two days. But I think it’s gives you a better opportunity to not be blindsided and having to make that judgment call going. Why don’t want to let my client down. But this is really like Not a good use of their time. Okay, those are my thoughts, what are yours?

Chris Linsell 26:03
I totally agree with you, I totally agree with you. And I think it’s actually easier, it’s an easier call to make, when you are able to look at the situation objectively and say, this is or is not going to advance my clients best interests, because that that to me makes makes the call easier, it doesn’t necessarily make the answer one that is as palatable. But if you can save yourself, seeing this property or not seeing this property is going to be the better choice for my clients best interest than that, right there helps things unfortunately, we are in a world where it may be that seeing or not seeing that property will affect your best interest or your your bottom line in a way that you know positively or negatively, which becomes a real challenge for real estate agents, because you have these, you have scenarios where somebody’s like, Well, I really like to see this house, I know that I have no chance of getting this buy, I’m gonna accept all of that, yeah, I’m gonna take your Saturday, so that we can go look at things that I have no chance of buying. And you have, you know, as as realtors, we have a fiduciary responsibility to our clients. But we also have to make sure that we are using our time in a way that’s going to be ROI positive, you know, to, if you are a real estate agent, and you take somebody to see 100 different houses and they never write an offer, you are losing money every single showing, because you could be spending that time somewhere else. And you ultimately have to make a decision on whether or not this is a client that is going to, you know, return return the investment that you are making in them as well. And so, though you we you know, we can’t make these decisions based on those factors. Specifically, they are a part of the conversation and the kind of the thought process for a lot of real estate agents. And I’ll say, I’ll say this, one thing that I’ve been talking to real estate agents about a lot lately in this scenario is we have to think to ourselves, not just about this transaction, but about the referrals that this person is going to make. And about the if this is a buyer client, about, you know, depending on what the typical turnover rate in your market is a transaction that this person may or may not choose to do with you in five or seven or eight years. Because we if we are not servicing the clients to the best of our abilities, right now, the likelihood that they’re going to call us to work with them, again, is much, much lower. So I’m encouraging real estate agents right now to think about the long run to worry less about an hour or 90 minutes this Saturday. And think about making sure you’re doing everything you possibly can so that when the chips are down, you can say I’ve done everything I can to put you in a position to be successful. Because ultimately, that’s our first priority. Our first priority isn’t breakfast on Saturday. I love breakfast on Saturday, but if a client calls and this is the only time it can happen, this is the plan that we’re going to have to try and make.

D.J. Paris 29:24
I yeah, I 100% agree that those are those are great suggestions. And I feel the same way. I’m thinking though it is difficult to say no to a client and especially one that’s excited to see a property that you feel is really just forget about even a waste of your time. It’s just not going to happen for them for whatever reason, I think, you know, a way to break that to them is to first meet them where they are emotionally Which is to say, oh my gosh, I see how excited you are about this, I am excited as well. And nothing, I would want nothing more than to walk in and show you this property and hope that it’s your dream home, and then we can put it off. And here’s why I really am strongly encouraging us not to go see this property. And it’s not because I don’t want you to go see it, I want you to go see it. But what I don’t want to happen is you walk in and you fall in love with it. And then you absolutely you know, we don’t believe have a shot of getting it. That doesn’t feel good, because people fall in love with homes, often. Maybe not necessarily at first sight. But within even a first walk through, people walk out and they go, that’s the one. The other thing I wanted to mention, which is what you were mentioning at the very end, which is about thinking long term, I think this is really important. Because I know that the the times I’ve purchased homes, and I’ve talked to other people who have purchased homes, there’s always something in the home that once you move in, and you close, you move in, you realize, oh, I missed that. Whatever it is, there’s always something that you miss as the the inspector missed it, you know, the realtor missed it, the attorney, there’s always something maybe it’s a cosmetic issue, maybe it’s a defect, that whatever. And you always go, I wish my realtor would have seen that. And even though we know as realtors, we can’t find everything. But I think you want to minimize the amount of those experiences for the buyer after a sale so or after they purchase the property rather. So I think you really, really want to be careful. And you don’t want to just show homes that you think are not in their best interest. And I think you have to be willing to very politely but in their affirming way. Tell them why.

Chris Linsell 31:51
Yeah, that’s a really, that’s a really important piece of advice. And, you know, I would I think, you know, I tried to put myself in the shoes of a client who is you know, I’m really excited about a house I just found on Zillow call my realtor and I say, I really want to see this, I think this is gonna be the perfect house. For me. This is this is the place I’ve been dreaming of. If somebody if my agent then turns around and says it is a great place, I can see why you’re excited about this. Here are the here are the red flags that I see. And these are the reasons why this house, though it looks great on paper and on the screen might be one you might want to reconsider how you’re feeling about this. And here’s why. If I get that message from my realtor, I’m disappointed for 20 minutes. But I’m not I don’t regret my decision, you know, 20 weeks or 20 years later. And that’s really as agents that’s our that’s our real responsibility. It’s not to protect the feelings of somebody for the next 30 minutes, though we don’t want to be rude, you know, but the protecting the feelings of our clients is not our mandate, protecting the financial well being of our clients is so you know, don’t be afraid to speak your mind to use your experience and to say like, listen this, this isn’t the right place for these reasons, and it’s a heck of a lot easier to have that conversation. If the first thing you do when you create a buyer client relationship with somebody is to sit down with them and say, What are your musts? What are your must nots? What are the things that make or break your next property purchase? That’s great, just from a property search perspective. But when it comes time to have these conversations, already had that check in Convo early in your relationship, you can pull up your notes from that and say, Listen, this is what you told me. Here’s the here’s the things in this property that that go counter to what you told me, We need to have a conversation about this before we move forward, that makes that conversation a heck of a lot easier.

D.J. Paris 34:06
And just to tag on to that if you aren’t using a buyer intake process, a customer intake process where you’re capturing those answers to those questions of musts likes to have, you know, and various things. If you’re not, if you’re just and again, everybody does it differently. And I’m not here to criticize anybody’s process. But if you are finding yourself in scenarios where your buyers expectations over time, are not in alignment with your expectations about what how they should be thinking about buying. That’s probably a process issue for you. And and an easily solvable one, you can start finding, you know, there’s gosh, you guys I’m sure at the close. You might even have buyer sort of intake form questionnaires that you may recommend or certainly they’re easily findable online, but if you’re not used Seeing some sort of process where as Chris said, you, you know, you can capture that information upfront. And then when emotions kind of take over down the road, somebody gets really excited about something. And you have to share some news that you think might, you know, disappoint them. You can say the red flags. Are these based on some of the things also that you mentioned that you wanted or didn’t want?

Chris Linsell 35:21
Yeah, totally. I am just looking right now. Just so I can say it on.

D.J. Paris 35:32
Put you on the spot with it. Yeah.

Chris Linsell 35:35
No, it’s okay. We definitely figured you did this. Yeah, we have. Exactly. We have an article and I’ll send it directly to DJ so he can link it in the in the show notes. Here I will, we have an article all about the the must do’s for buyer agents, especially when it comes to intake. And it’s four must have real estate buyer agent checklists. It’s their mortgage pre approval, it’s successful house hunting, it’s open house attendance, its contract to close, it’s everything that you’re going to need about this. So I will send that to DJ so he can include this here. You know, the bottom line here, guys, is that as buyer’s agents, our responsibility is not to just push a contract forward through the process, it’s not to just get a number from our clients, put it on a piece of paper hand that to the sellers agent. It’s not to be a mouthpiece, our our, the bottom line here is that as buyer’s agents if we’re not actively advocating for our buyers best interest, and sometimes that means advocating back to them to say, Listen, this isn’t what you want, this isn’t going to serve your needs in the long run, then you’re not doing your job. And the fact of the matter is, when we’re in such a competitive climate, as we are right now, buyers are desperate, they want to see anything because they have written 12 offers and none of them have been accepted. And they’re like, Oh, well, I’m gonna have to resign my lease on my apartment, pretty soon, I’m just going to start looking at stuff that doesn’t fit my needs, because I need a roof over my head. And it’s your job as a buyer’s agent to say, you are better to go month to month on your apartment for the next two months, if you have to, then to buy a house that you’re going to regret in six months from now.

D.J. Paris 37:23
I’m always, I always love when I’m in a scenario talking to a salesperson, you know, or somebody who is is only really going to directly benefit if I purchase their product or service. I cannot tell you how much I love it when somebody says I can sell this to you, but you’re going to end up hating me down the road because this really isn’t going to meet your needs. I am so impressed with people that are willing to forego a quicker sale for a long term relationship. And I have to assume most most homebuyers feel the same way. So sometimes you’re going to have to explain why it’s not in their best interest. But I think if you tag it with, you know, what, here’s what I don’t want to happen in, here’s what you probably don’t want to happen. And I want to make sure you know and if they say I understand all of that I want to go see it, well, then you have a decision to make whether you’re willing to do that or not. And maybe in that scenario, maybe it makes sense, obviously, you know, everyone can determine that for themselves. But But yeah, I think the more education you can do ahead of time and running over every possible scenario, that’s, that’s relevant to their situation to say, Okay, here’s what might happen, you fall in love with the home, we put an offer in and then 10 More off, you know, explaining just what might go wrong, and what might go right. So that the expectations are there, I think is is the key to making sure your time is not is not overused by the client.

Chris Linsell 39:04
Yeah, I totally agree. Totally agree. It’s, it’s a balancing act.

D.J. Paris 39:08
It is and we would love to hear your thoughts about this as well because I’m not a practicing agent. I mean, we have I have eight almost 800 of them here in my office which sounds like I probably know a lot but the truth is, is that most of agents our agents aren’t talking that much about it. So I would love to hear your thoughts and Chris I’m sure what as well so please send us send us your thoughts about this and you know if you have a really specific take or something that works well for you, you know we might even feature it here on the podcast so you can always you know send us a contact us through our website or through Facebook or through Chris directly at the close itself and and Chris we should real quickly as we’re wrapping up. Let’s talk about the clothes pro dot sorry, the clothes Pro which is your subscription model for the clothes, which is a free website with unbelievable free content, but there’s also a Premium service, do you mind sharing just a little bit about that

Chris Linsell 40:02
100%, here’s 30 seconds on the close Pro, the close Pro is the premium option from the close that offers anyone who wants it a chance to get more and more in depth content. Similar to what you find on the clothes.com, go to the clothes.com 99% of what we’ve got there is totally free. We want you to use it, come download all the templates of the strategy guides, best practices, we publish there almost seven days a week. Now come check out what we got. If you want to take it to the next level and get access to courses to to Insider strategy guides from top producers across the country. We have the close Pro, it’s 35 bucks a month or $299 a year, as a part of this, you get multiple boot camps, you get video training courses, you get over 50 downloadable resources. And we’re adding to that every single week. And you get access to small group coaching. And so if you’ve got specific questions that you want answered, that you’re not finding the answers to on the closed.com. I’d be surprised by that, because we have a lot of stuff on there. But if there’s stuff that you want specific, personalized answers to come join the close Pro, we’ve got a ton of different resources. And not just you know, not just templates but but long form strategy guys, I just finished a strategy guide all about real estate farming, for the close Pro, that’s literally 60 pages long. So if you want to go deep into farming, I mean, I talk about postcard cadence, I talk about selecting the right neighborhood based on turnover and absorption rates. I talk about getting into the nitty gritty operations, like down 3456 decimal points, if you want to get that specific about your exploration of real estate marketing, strategy and insight. Come join the close Pro, I got all sorts of cool stuff there. Wow, well, we love

D.J. Paris 42:09
the clothes and the clothes pro everyone should check it out, get hooked on their content, subscribe to their premium service, if that fits your needs. And they’re about the only, you know, sort of platform out there that we have found that specifically really focuses all of their attention on helping you grow your business. From a journalistic perspective, it’s really very, very cool. We’re so honored to have Chris on the show every month. Chris, thank you once again. And Chris, we should mention we’ll be speaking at the National Association of Realtors and then you also have other speaking engagements. But he Chris will be in San Diego this November for NAR I will be there, Chris will be there as well. But Chris, do you mind? Want to plug some of your other appearances?

Chris Linsell 42:56
Yeah, you know, if you’re going to be on the East Coast, in December, come on over to triple play in Atlantic City. You know, if you’re in Atlantic City, New Yorker, excuse me, if you’re in Pennsylvania, New York, or New Jersey, this is a big event. Really excited to be presenting there, I’m actually going to be presenting a couple of different times there. One of them is going to be for CPE credit. So if you need continuing education, come get it with me. I’d love to. I’d love to help you out there. And a few other things that are going to be coming to the calendar that I can’t talk about just yet. But yeah, West Coast, come join us at NAR east coast. Come join me at at triple play triple plays and December NARS and November in between now and then go out and enjoy some summer weather because it’s beautiful out there.

D.J. Paris 43:44
All right, well, we will see everyone on our next episode, Chris, thanks. Again, thank you to our audience for continuing to listen and support our show. And please just tell a friend think of one other agent that could benefit from hearing this great conversation about software and also what to do with with buyers demands right now and send them a link to our episode, which you can find right on our website, keeping it real pod.com Or just have them pull up a podcast app search for keeping it real and hit the subscribe button. Chris, thank you so much. Again, I think I’ve thanked you for five times already at the end here but I’m so appreciative that you come on and we will see everyone on the next episode.

Chris Linsell 44:23
Thanks, TJ. See you soon

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

In this episode, Gogo discusses how to engage with other people’s content and how you can use your social media to build relationships with your potential clients. Gogo also talks about how you can use gifts to work for you in multiple ways. Next, Gogo and DJ discuss how virtual assistants can help you keep your social media accounts under control. Last, Gogo gives tips on how to use voice notes to send personalized messages to your clients and your sphere of influence.

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

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

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

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by gogos bootcamp Are you a real estate agent looking for the very best media training program on the planet? Gogo Beth key is considered the top Instagram Realtor in the country and her step by step training program will take your social media game to the next level. Keeping it real listeners receive a special discount, so please visit Gogo podcast.com That’s Gee oh gee Oh podcast.com for your special discount and now on with the 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 social bootcamp with gogo Beth key. Now BOGO gogo, Beth key came to the United States in 2003. To build her American dream. She was broke. She had no real estate experience and no sphere of influence and also barely spoke English. Oh, and also only $6 to her name. So that left her with nothing else but Facebook to help build her real estate business which is where she started. And she over the years she has created gogos real estate and her real estate career has flourished. Now with the power of social media. Gogo has sold over 100 million in real estate transactions. She shares the good, the bad and the ugly of real estate, and her honest snippets into her daily life has earned her 10s of 1000s of social media followers. And in the real estate community, she’s earned the nickname The Queen of social media. After being asked to present at various conferences and events with realtors. She built her own social media Bootcamp for realtors called gogos bootcamp. Today she has a team of 588 agents nationwide. Her goal is to help as many agents as possible build a name for themselves in real estate utilizing social media. Now if she can do it, a girl from Transylvania Romania with no formal education, no sphere of influence, no money, no experience and an accent than anyone else can do this as well. Please follow gogo on Instagram at gogos real estate again, that’s gogos geo gos real estate. You really should follow her to see what great real estate social media looks like. Also, consider investing in her social media bootcamp, you can find that we have a special offer for our keeping it real listeners. So just go to Gogo podcast.com Gogo podcast.com, gogo Welcome once again to the show.

Gogo Bethke 2:40
Thank you for having me again. I’m so

D.J. Paris 2:42
welcome back from your, your your trip to

Gogo Bethke 2:45
it was nice. I went home, anybody who’s listening. I’m originally from Romania. And because of COVID, and also an 18, I started a new business opportunity. And I was so busy with it, I didn’t go home, I figured I’d go home next year, and then COVID head and then he was still COVID. So the years that I haven’t seen my family and my sister and my mom and dad, so it was time to go home. And so I took five weeks off. Thank you for working with me on that. And I’m back. I’m so excited.

D.J. Paris 3:12
Yeah, and it’s it’s so great, too. I know that realtors have always been more mobile than traditional office workers, they’ve always had a bit more flexibility, although they may they certainly work more hours than traditional office workers, but they’ve always had a little bit more freedom to move around. But now, you know, I’m seeing just even my friends who had the traditional nine to five jobs now they’re vacationing for longer, it’s just nice to start to be

Gogo Bethke 3:41
allows us to do that, you know, most of the jobs now we are doing through a laptop, really no computer or cell phone or, you know, you can really do that as long as you have Wi Fi or cell service, you have an office.

D.J. Paris 3:52
And while you were gone, your business didn’t stop and your recruiting probably kept going. I know it gogo is incredible recruiter. But the beauty of what she does is very different because I’m a real estate recruiter. And we’re very proactive in the sense of we’re always calling agents in our area saying hey, come check out our firm gogo doesn’t do that. And she actually every the way that she attracts agents to her, her real estate group is the same way that you can attract agents or clients to your real estate business. And I’ve always found that to be so impressive. And the way that you do that is you’re not out there making cold calls, saying hey, come join my team. You’re saying I’ve got all this great content. And if Oh, by the way, if you want to join my team, you can but I want you to get this all this amazing content, which I think is you know, it’s just it’s the same thing you’re teaching your agents to do with their customers.

Gogo Bethke 4:46
And it’s a double sided started serving because that knowledge that I put out there for realtors, I mean it switched through the years initially the content that I put out there was for my potential client or my existing client to show the world that I am the local experts and and that kind of turned into that I did become the local expert. And now I was helping and using my knowledge to help the agents locally, nationally, internationally now, but then for you would think that the only happening the agent, but that’s also still making me the expert because now my potential future past clients, they also look at it as well if she’s the expert enough to teach other realtors, then she’s the best.

D.J. Paris 5:23
boy what a great thing. And it really, you know, it’s a good lesson for our audience to think about is how do you position yourself as a local expert, I was reading an article yesterday by Ryan Holiday who is in one of my favorite authors, he’s really into stoicism and taking personal responsibility. And he’s just a great guy. And he wrote this article called I forget the name of it, but it but it had to do with this old thought of fake it till you make it he goes, the problem with that is it’s complete bullshit. He said, You know, you’re basically just lying to people, you what you you know, if you fake it, before you make it, what you really have to do is develop skill. And so I think what you’ve done is such a great example of that is you became an expert, not just by calling yourself an expert you are, you’re actually an expert. And you’ve proven that to your audience, and your audience would see through it. If it wasn’t genuine. Anyway, you’ve earned that title versus just calling yourself that title. And so I think that’s always a good reminder for audience to think about, well, how do I become an expert on social? You know, in social media channels, it’s like, Well, you got to put out really amazing content about

Gogo Bethke 6:29
the local community, it’s okay to own up that you don’t know something. Because initially when I started, this thing’s like, I’m brand new. I don’t have any experience. I don’t have any clients to work with. I barely speak English. Like what like, I don’t know anything about real estate altogether, like what the heck excuse my French am I going to talk about own up to that on up to like, Hey, I don’t know anything about the title aside, I never know how I got a real estate license, like how they let me walk out with the license in hand, when they didn’t teach us anything about title. And I can close without title, right? In some states, it’s attorney states, but in Michigan, your title state, it’s a huge chunk of our real estate transaction, and you learn nothing about it. But you’re supposed to somehow you license, go sell a house and figure out a title work like, I don’t know. So then I started, I’m like, Okay, well, I’m gonna go and interview some local title companies. And then I owned up to it online of like, I don’t know anything about title, but I’m gonna go interview some local title companies, so I can learn about title. And then when I learned about title I’m going to share with you guys, and then when that knowledge comes out through your mouth, it makes you the expert. And then I took the people on the right of my career of like, I learned this today, what did you learn today? kind of situation, and it’s okay, I don’t want to say I do like the saying, they say that, you know, fake it until you make it. And that comes in handy. When you work in a brokerage and you don’t have listings, and they can, you can take somebody else’s listings in the brokerage and market and on your page, absolutely do that, you know, if they allow you to do that, absolutely. That’s where the fake you know, to make it kind of comes in, at your listings, but you kind of make it look like it’s your listing, sure, to use it, that’s fine. Because that’s going to allow you to grow and get you more business and get that potential client, they could have not gotten if you didn’t have access to that listing, I get that, but don’t, you know, don’t lie about things because it’s gonna come through, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s gonna come through, I rather you own up to like, Hey, I didn’t know that. That’s what I learned today. And then as you the more you learn, the more you become the expert.

D.J. Paris 8:22
And people really relate to vulnerability to the sort of idea of being honest about what you don’t yet know, or what you just learned, or, you know, something that maybe isn’t going perfectly in your life or that you want to share. People relate to that a lot. I mean, that’s what reality TV has sort of been so successful, as we’re seeing, well, it’s not always real. But but it’s some sort of version of reality. But if you can say, hey, you know, I’m, I just learned this today, and I want to share it with you guys. You know, that’s a great way. But I know today, but go go. and I were talking beforehand about what what sort of, we wanted to met sort of what our message was going to be today. And, and I was asking her about her thoughts on, you know, so I know Realtors wake up, and they think about social media, and they’re scrolling through everyone’s, the different, you know, different channels, Instagram, Facebook, you know, maybe LinkedIn, tick tock, etc. And we’re looking at all this content. And we may start to think, oh, I don’t, I don’t know that I have much to post today. I don’t really, maybe I’m not feeling creative, or I just don’t have any ideas. So we thought, okay, well, maybe in this episode of the show, we’ll talk about maybe the other side of it, which is engaging with other people’s content. So go ahead, go go. Let’s talk about it.

Gogo Bethke 9:35
But I think it’s equally important because it’s not all about you, you you it’s a two way highway. You know, I mean, so you have to build those relationships. Many people think about social medias and oh, I made a post and we’re the leads why they’re not coming in, like I posted today. Where’s the lead? Like it doesn’t work like that. Think about it like when you get a cold client so so you get someone’s information and you need to turn that cold lead, like massage them through the months and years and weeks or whatever to turn. Meet a potential client and then that potential client may be signed a contract with you, and then you get a closing table. So look at social media the same way, it’s your pool of people of potential clients. Everybody, I don’t know, a single human being who doesn’t need a roof over their head, I don’t care if they live in Alaska or Kentucky and you licensed in Michigan, it doesn’t matter because there’s this thing called a referral fee. So everybody in my mind is a potential client. So the way you want to do that is you want to have those relationships. So let’s start with the easy ones who’s a past client already. So you want to make sure because those are they you already you already earned their business. But now you want to support them for the future, to make sure that you can continue working with them, and that you will be the realtor of choice in their future as well. So number one, make sure that you follow your past clients, you also want to make sure that you follow your ideal clients, because we all have those people that we wish they would buy and sell with us. So do you have to make sure that you follow them. Now, here’s another thing, you want to be active on their pages. So not just expect them with commenting when you close or this and that, whatever you post that when you also take your time to follow them. And here’s what you want to do, you want to set an alert. So those that are your potential, ideal future clients, you want to make sure you follow them. And be you can set alerts on their profiles. So you can see when they’re posting that, oh my gosh, they just got a puppy, okay, or maybe they haven’t a baby. You know what happens when they’re having a baby, they usually need a bigger house. Or maybe they are getting engaged or getting divorced, or whatever the situation is keeping an eye on their account. And I make sure that you comment. Now here’s another thing that I like doing. We have a storefront, so literally an online storefront with a company called Modern laser. And they do all of our marketing materials. So all of our closing gifts come from modern leisure, all of our birthday celebrations, everything that we do comes from our leisure. And it’s pre branded, which means one side of the product already has Google’s real estate on it or it has the team dog organization on there at exp so whatever that we are using it for, it’s already on there. And it’s branded, what happens when it’s brand what something branded?

D.J. Paris 12:04
Well, you get to, they’re gonna get reminded of who you are and what you do every time they use the product.

Gogo Bethke 12:09
Plus, it’s a marketing cost for you, you get to write off of the gift, because it’s marketing. So when you keep your eyes on someone account, and you see that they just got engaged, you can send them something from there that has so one of hopefully my friend is not listening to this. Because I just ordered it. And I can actually show it to you guys, because you actually see this right? Yes. Awesome. So we just ordered this friend of mine just got married. And so we just sad. Can you see

D.J. Paris 12:42
it? Yes. That’s awesome. That’s a cutting board.

Gogo Bethke 12:45
Yeah, so it’s a nice big cutting board. This one I want to say it’s probably a lot of measurements are on there. It’s pretty big. 17 inches tall. Love it. Yeah, so it’s it’s it’s pretty big. And it says their last name on there, their first name and then established and you know, their wedding date. And on the back it says Google’s real estate team. That’s such a

D.J. Paris 13:05
great gift. Because that’s something I know for cutting boards, I probably use my cutting board five days a week, at least. And and most people are going to use that. And if they can be reminded that you have in this case you celebrate somebody’s wedding, that that something emotional that is attached to that, whether it’s Hey, they just bought a home through me. So I’m going to reference that or I’m going to reference an event in their life like a marriage, that’s going to just endear them to you. And it’s something they’re going to be reminded of from a branding perspective, every single time they say maybe not every time if they’re busy, but most times they’re going to notice that and be reminded of it. Guess what

Gogo Bethke 13:41
I was going to do? I’m sorry, what was that? Yes. What else they’re going to do when they get it? What else are they going to do? People usually buy you know, unbox it and then they post a video about it. Oh my gosh Coke was released they just send this to us thank you so much. And then they’re gonna share it and then people are gonna be like who is this Google’s real estate like well what is going on over here and then they follow us. And then you just grow and grow and grow and at that one little gift that you get to write off because it’s a marketing cause now is working for you in multiple different ways. A you have very happy past clients very happy future clients. And then they spread the world by taking a picture and showing you the world when they got from you for their wedding their baby shower. We even got and this was on the team Coco side where we had our babies first baby when first baby girl in the team Gaga organization and so we sent in little onesies that said teen girl go on with their little team go goes first baby girl team goes first baby boy you could be sending something like that literally of like congratulation you know first baby of the bat key family or whatever and then put a put your company logo on the back as long as your branding is on there that it’s branding its marketing cost to you. So you can think of like we just got two different mugs now for somebody else that’s getting married that says so and so’s husband and so it’s his wife so it doesn’t say their own name on the mugs. It says the spouses name and it husband and wife so why down the back, it says, Google geo city. So you can by keeping your eye on other people’s accounts, it allows you to stay a part of their life stay in front of them. It’s not huge marketing costs, we’re talking 20 bucks a piece, you know, I mean, so it’s not the end of the day, and then just go through every day, see who has what’s going on. Also, we have what’s called the Favorites list. So in our past clients, and if anybody wants it, I think it is in my Instagram profile. So if you go to Google’s real estate on Instagram, and you go to my links, you click the link. And then after you click the link, you’re gonna go to the Links button, there’s another Links button in there, there should be a thing that’s called the Favorites list. And download it from there. Here is how it works, guys. And when we get a client, we have them fill out the Favorites list with one of our buyer’s agent or listing agent, whoever gets the lead. And then they interview the client and says, Okay, how many children’s Do you have? What’s your anniversary date? What address do you live? And right now, of course, if they buy a property with us, we’re going to replace that with the new address. What are your birthdays? Do you have any allergies? Do you have a favorite restaurant? Do you have a favorite coffee shop? Do you have a favorite sports team? Because for example, or do you have a favorite band? Let’s say for example, I get an extra Bon Jovi ticket. And I’m like, I don’t know who to give it to when I go into my system, because I have the Favorites list. I know a lot of my past clients who loves banjo, and I’m going to call up and say, hey, just guess what? I have an extra Bon Jovi ticket and I see that you love banjo and would you like to go with me? And then Jessica would be like, Oh my gosh, yes,

D.J. Paris 16:27
or, or you happen to see in social media that someone posts about something that you might have access to. And then that’s another opportunity. So it’s basically the same thing you were saying. But you can also use social media as like a research and development to see what are my clients into? What are they doing, and then you can make notes and add that into your CRM be like, Wow, this, this, these people just came back from Mexico or wherever, oh, it seems like they go to Mexico every year. Now I know something and, you know, can, you know, think about ideas that might help them, you know, with Mexico trips or whatever,

Gogo Bethke 16:59
exactly. And then you could also maybe just as simple as taking their picture that they did on on, you know, their family vacation, or whatever, and blow it up and put your company logo on the back and say, Hey, I just saw this photo. And I thought, you guys look so adorable, turn it into a little camera, ship it to them.

D.J. Paris 17:14
I’m gonna give everyone a real tour, I want to get your opinion, I thought of this gift idea. I gave this to everyone in my family. And I just realized there’s, I guess you’d have to figure out a way to brand to brand it. But you know, even if you just put a sticker with your information on it, I’d maybe there’s a company that could actually officially brand it. But you just went on a trip, I’m about to go on a big trip. And the best tool that I have bought for anyone that goes on a trip is get a luggage scale. They’re like $10, a digital luggage scale. And you just didn’t like this big. They fit right in somebody’s luggage because we always worry. Am I overweight? My bag? Am I underweight? Nobody, you know, you have to step on the scale first, and you have to subtract your weight. And it’s a real headache to try to do it. I mean, to do it yourself. But this, you literally just hold it up an inch and weighs the bag in two seconds. And it’s like 10 bucks. I’m telling you, anyone who travels, if you see them coming back from a trip, send that to them. Maybe see

Gogo Bethke 18:10
granddad I’m sure you can read it and have it engraved or something. Yeah.

D.J. Paris 18:14
Yeah. So I was just thinking about that, since we’re on trips. And like right now my girlfriend’s like, where’s the luggage scale? I need the luggage scale. Because, you know, we’re freaking out about being overweight. So. So that’s a great one. So you can literally just look at social media every day. Anyone who’s just come back from a trip, say, Hey, I just saw you came back from a trip. I thought this will be helpful on your next trip. Easy $10. And you put your sticker on it, or you somehow get it branded? Easy.

Gogo Bethke 18:39
Absolutely. A couple other things, comments, you know, many people are? Do they love comments? Yes, because Instagram and any other platform, they rate your site based on how much interaction you have. So you don’t it’s not about how many followers you have. It’s about do they take the time of the day to leave your know, do they take the time on the way to watch your video in full detail, the time of the day to DM you. So you want to have interaction on your side as the most important. So when you get a comment, don’t just leave it at that respond back to them, the more back and forth you have, and that pose that you just made the battery’s going to perform number one to number two, don’t. And also take the time to go and comment on other people’s posts as well. So maybe you just take, you know, 10 minutes a day you sit down with your morning coffee, and you take the time and the effort to you know, go and comment on 1020 30 people’s posts because you know, they’re going to regret reciprocated and they feel the love from you, especially if they’re clients of yours. If you set up your notifications, then you’re going to get notified when the client posted something then you know to go and comment. So to you out it’s going to take you two seconds it’s going to notify you that so and so just posted something I need to do is go and comment. Okay.

D.J. Paris 19:45
And every single everybody on social media knows who comments on their posts. We all know who does it and we know who doesn’t comment on our posts. And most of us probably look to see how many likes we got and who liked the post as well. I mean unless you have a big one Asfa count you’re getting 1000s of likes, which probably not then looking through, but if you’re getting, you know, a dozen likes under 100 likes, you’re probably looking to see who did that. So definitely, like, like these posts as well. But commenting is huge. Because even if you don’t pay attention to who liked it, you know who comments,

Gogo Bethke 20:18
exactly, and the comment has to be at least a minimum of three words, it cannot be just cute little emojis because that Instagram and Facebook’s AI, it’s not a comment. So whatever you do, make sure that it’s, it’s thoughtful, and it’s you actually took the effort, and make sure that you actually read what they’re posted. You know, you don’t congratulate someone under dog dying, you know, those kind of things like just make sure that you actually don’t click

D.J. Paris 20:40
the like button if their dog died. Like, you know, I mean, like, for sure, it’s a sad face a crying I face if you’re gonna select that

Gogo Bethke 20:49
time of the day, the other thing is sharing their posts. So if you have a big platform that can help someone, let’s say they’re running a donation for their child children’s school or something like that, take the time and effort and share it over to your business page. So then they feel the love you help them, you know, get whatever they are working on, make sure that you donate, you take the time to you know, you spend, I am actually awful at that it does not come natural to me. It doesn’t even when I see those things, it doesn’t cross my mind. And I need to do that. I’m married to someone who’s amazing at that. Like literally, we just came back from Europe and one of our best friend’s son graduated, and we missed the graduation party. I didn’t think of it. Because in my mind, we already missed the graduation party. I didn’t think of it to still send the gift. Does that make sense about my husband? My husband did so if you’re not that thoughtful, then maybe marry one that is or, or hire one that that is? Or maybe just hire a virtual assistant who keeps an eye on your sphere of influence who reminds you of like, hey, so and so we have two birthdays this week on your Facebook. We have two anniversaries this week on your Facebook, someone’s mom just passed away this week on your Facebook, someone just got a new puppy this week on your Facebook. And then you know, Friday, maybe you assigned two hours every single Friday morning and that’s when you send your handwritten notes. You order your personalized gifts for everybody and then you good

D.J. Paris 22:06
you know that’s such such a great point you made said something I just want to spend just a quick second on gogo said, you know, we know as real estate agents, sometimes we’re working 80 plus hours a week, we’re not sleeping enough. We’re not spending enough time with our families, we’re trying to get deals closed. And we’re dealing with, you know, challenging clients sometimes or challenging Realtors on the other side of the deal, and just all the intricacies that take up our time. And we think, Oh God, now I have to go into social media and comment, you know, for 20 minutes a day, and I just don’t have time for that. Well, if you truly don’t have time for that, then go go just said something very quickly. But very important. You can hire somebody to monitor your social media, meaning monitor your your customers social media, and report back to you about major life events or anything that’s noteworthy. So if you’re like, Oh, God, now I have to figure out when people get back from vacation and where their kids are graduating, I don’t I don’t have that time. You can pay somebody and even if you just paid them for an hour a day. That’s enough. And then they report back to you. And that would be what maybe $10 If you hire somebody from from outside, you know, from from like a gig economy sort of scenario might be 1015 bucks a day. Boy, I do that in a heartbeat.

Gogo Bethke 23:19
So virtual assistants usually charge between four to six hours an hour, right? So think of it this way, even if they’ve worked for you, let’s say for five bucks an hour between the middle and they work for you four hours a day, it’s 20 bucks. You’re telling me that if you got one, let’s say they do that every day. So we’re talking 200 bucks a week. $400 a month? Okay. If you get one measly transaction out of it, what’s your average commission?

D.J. Paris 23:48
Yeah, let’s say it’s a $300,000. House two and a half percent. So $7,500 Total commission? Let’s say you’re at last 70% split. So I don’t know what’s that five grand or so something like that.

Gogo Bethke 23:58
So that’s your take home five grand, if I told you give me $400 And you can get five grand back could

D.J. Paris 24:05
I do that all day long?

Gogo Bethke 24:07
I’ll do I’m gonna ask you if I can do it 10 Times today and 10 times tomorrow. You know, I mean, so But most people look at it as an expense, they don’t look at it, that activity is going to generate results. So there is no freaking way than if you did that week after week after week after week. Then in four week period, you’re not going to get a lead that you can close.

D.J. Paris 24:29
So I’m going on a vacation for three weeks and I have a virtual assistant and she is monitoring my voicemails my emails well and she’s been on our team for years now. So she’s you know, more like a really like a true full time co worker, but anybody could hire her and they could do those kinds of tasks. So really think about it is what’s the stuff that you don’t have time for but would be great for you know, keeping in touch with your sphere of influence. Once and, you know, they can look through your social media, why not? I mean, mine, mine does that in a different way for social media, but she’s constantly in my account and reporting back to me, and she’ll be reporting back to me every single day I’m on this vacation with, you know what I need to know. So I don’t miss anything.

Gogo Bethke 25:15
Yeah, so in my case, we have multiple virtual assistants as well, I haven’t checked an email or a DM in any other platform. But Instagram is the only one that you personally get me on every other account, I have virtual assistants. But here’s the thing, I do not give them access to my account. So for example, my assistant has access, or we created one for her. It’s an actual Instagram account called Google’s assistant. So this way, you can create an account for your assistant that’s called DJs assistant. And they can keep an eye on your account, just like another user can keep an eye on your account. So he can she can say to you or he can say to you, oh, DJ, I don’t know if you miss this, but this person come into this, this and this, can you personally get back to them. Or if somebody’s trying to get a hold of you, or that then Marianna is my assistant says, Oh, hey, this is Google’s assistant. And it says Google’s assistant, you know, in her official profile as well and says, Hey, this is Google’s Assistant, I’m the gatekeeper to her calendar, I would love to give you you know, her time slots email me at this email address. And she then she takes it from there.

D.J. Paris 26:11
Yeah, and that’s a lot of virtual assistants. So that’s I have a similar setup where they don’t actually access my account, but they are admins on my accounts. And so they have access to our my pages and my groups and everything. And then they just go through it and report back to me. But yeah, you don’t have to necessarily turn over your actual login and password for a lot of people that are full. And be careful

Gogo Bethke 26:34
with that. Make sure all of your accounts have two step authentication, because you never know what’s happening. But there’s multiple ways how you can skin, skin a cat and get help. You don’t have to do all this on your own. And it’s absolutely work. You just have to like think ahead of like, why we’re doing this, what’s the report, the result we’re expecting. And even worst case scenario, if you get one lead that closes, you’re going to make your money 10 times and what you’re going to invest into that activity. So that’s that the gaps we talked about. So we talked about the wedding’s, the babies engagements, graduations. The other thing that I do then I think is just a little more special is a voice note. So instead of messaging someone back number one, my voice note situation started because I don’t have time to type up a two pager. If somebody asked me like a more detailed question. When I do have time, I’m probably in the car driving or I don’t have time, you know, I mean, so when I’m driving, then I don’t want to type it all up. So sometimes I just grabbed my phone, push that little voice Node button, and send a nice note that voice note back. And I just think it’s so much more special that you took the time of the day. So for example, let’s say that you see some past clients profile and it’s your birthday today. I’m not saying go ahead and post all Happy Birthday, blah, blah, blah, you know all that that you do miss you. I wish we can have a drink, kind of switch in whichever you post on your side. But then take the time and go send them a personalized voice note and say, Hey, Jessica, I see that your birthday today. I want to personally tell you happy birthday. Well, let’s see they got a new job. Hey, Jessica, this is go guy so that you get a new job. I just wanted to personally congratulate you. I knew that you wanted the job for so long. I’m so excited for you. Let’s have a drink. I mean, so did you took the time of the day number one, when you leave voice notes, you always call the other person by name. Why? Because they know that message would just for them write a message that I just sent out to 300 people number one, number two, people like to hear their own name. They live to feel acknowledged. So when you’re leaving a voice note, you don’t say Hey, this is gonna go I say Hey, Jessica, this is Gogo.

D.J. Paris 28:31
I love it. You know, it’s funny, you just reminded me this is sort of a silly thing to bring up. But it’s it’s a neat thing. So most of us are probably who live in the United States are probably familiar with the franchise, the restaurant franchise, Hooters. Right. And I won’t talk about what maybe we might think I’ll be talking about. But one of the things they teach the the servers, the traditionally waitresses at these restaurants is to if you ever notice if you ever eat there, and I haven’t eaten there in a million years, but but when I did, I remembered that they would write my name down on the, you know, they have like a paper tablecloth. And they’d always take a cran and write your name. And I always thought I wonder why they do that. And then I learned later. The reason why they do that is so that when they come to the table, they’re sick, they always say your name like hey, DJ, what would you like for lunch. And there is something very intimate about using somebody’s name, and it’s very connecting. And so it’s a really great thing when you’re meeting someone new. Also, if yet you’re meeting up, maybe it’s a zillo lead or referral from somebody that you haven’t met yet. And you’re meeting them for the first time, consistent, use their name a lot. So I’m just I just thought I’d throw that out there. That’s what they teach these Hooters waitresses to do. And it works. It works for people to feel comfortable.

Gogo Bethke 29:47
And also, are you the kind of person that people introduce themselves and you’re like, what it is in the name was right? Like, you know, like so many of us like, especially for me, because my name is so complicated. I concentrate on my name, and so I I mean a circle of people. I’m like, I got nothing. I have no idea what they said their name was. And there’s a trick for that, that somebody taught me. And I was like, Oh my gosh, any works. So when somebody introduces themselves and says, Hey, my name is DJ, and they shake your hand, instead of say, Hey, I’m gogo, you say, hey, DJ, and go go. As soon as you say their name out, it’s going to register in your name in your head number one, and number two, they feel acknowledged. Yeah. So I don’t say my name first ever again. So now when somebody introduces themselves, I repeat their name first smart, then I introduce myself, because that way we’re registered in your head. That’s Jessica. That’s DJ. That’s Adam. That’s Emily. And then I introduce myself, they get acknowledged, and I learned her name.

D.J. Paris 30:44
And that’s another thing you can do on social media that most people don’t do is when you’re responding to someone’s other person’s post when they’re back from vacation. Yes, of course, you can write awesome looks like you had a great trip. But you could say, Wow, Kate looked like you’ve really had a great trip. That’s just takes one extra word by putting their name and it will absolutely register more deeply than one without their name. So even when you’re replying to comments, you don’t have to do it every time. But it’s something that becomes just a slightly bit more personal.

Gogo Bethke 31:16
Absolutely. And then if you want to take it even more personal, leave him a voice note and say don’t anymore.

D.J. Paris 31:21
Yes, boy, so many great tips. I think this is we should probably stop because I know you could keep going for another hour. But you’re too busy for that. And I want to save stuff for the next time you’re on. So I want to thank everybody for you know, supporting and listening to our show. Of course we want to thank gogo she is so insanely busy. Go go real quickly. Let’s talk about your team. We almost never talked about this and because you’re you’ve never asked for this, but I want everybody to know that you are always looking for agents. Can you talk just a little bit about what your team offers with your with EXP and and I’m only mentioning this because I’m a recruiter, it took me 11 years to get to eight, almost 800 realtors and this is what I do all day long. Go go in about two years time has got to almost 600 agents. So we got to talk about this. Tell us, you know what, what is your real estate group? And why is it so popular?

Gogo Bethke 32:21
Yeah, so we call it the team go family. We literally are a family. We support each other. We call it a team. Even though it’s not a team as in real estate knows a team. I don’t take a cut. nobody owes me absolutely nothing. I’m not their team leader necessarily. We have agents broker owners with 20. Some agents I’m actually bringing now someone with 70 Some agents on their team. So we have all kinds of we are brand new agents we have husband and wives we have agents with multiple state licenses, we have many iKON agents. So we have anything from brand new with the ink hasn’t dried under license all the way to been in the industry for 40 years and has their own team and their own brokerage. So the team Gago, it’s more like a family and organization when I got licensed, they recruited me all the time, because I became not very quickly but about three, four years into my career became a top producing agent. And then I got recruited all the time. In the meantime, I got recruited on two teams, and I had a really hard time with the whole team thing because I didn’t understand I understand if you give me a lead and I pay you, right, I had a hard time of you’re gonna take a cut on my mom’s condo, right? You’re right, you’re gonna take on a cut on the things I generated on open houses, the things I generated on my own social media, I had an issue with that. So I personally joined a team because I didn’t never me personally felt the value in that. So now when I fast forward, I switched to even at real estate when I had a small little team, but I always had like a feeling in my gut. So and then I want to color and the same thing when I started my team and I had to take cuts on everything. I just like that feeling on my in my gut. So then I wanted to do something where I can help other agents where we can have this community where we can coach together and train together and do all this real estate thing together, we can support one another and refer most importantly to one another. Before we will refer to strangers, but they don’t owe me anything. I don’t take a cut of their transactions. They don’t owe me anything. They’re not building my empire. Nobody’s running under the Google’s real estate brand. Everybody’s building their own brand, but I am their business partner. So we are literally in in business relationship together like married in this real estate industry together. So we get to do this together more like a mastermind. We do trainings four times a week. Every Tuesday we do an icon series. That’s where our icon agents train the agents who want to become icon so they hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. Wednesday’s is production training. I’m really good with numbers. So we just did numbers this last week. Yesterday. Thursday’s is technology so anything from Google Drive’s to how to create your electronic signature to CRM programs, automated drip campaigns, whatever we do, and IT systems, any apps anything that I use Hi, I’m Christie my right hand who’s technically left hand because she’s left handed. She trains everybody on the nitty gritty of technology when it comes to real estate every Friday, we do an agent attraction mastermind, because many of our agents are building their own organizations and their own teams. So we talk about how to grow a team, nationally and internationally. And then all of my bootcamp so the goal was boot camp agent, attraction course. And then the Google’s became Social Media course. Both of them are included for all of my business partners. So all 600 of them, get it for free. My goal is to make sure that they reach their goal. And that’s pretty much advertising gogo is it’s a business partnership without you ever paying me as much as a penny.

D.J. Paris 35:37
I love it. And if you’re not interested in switching, you know, brokerages or teams, and you still want access to all of this great training, she’s got her bootcamp and we highly encourage you guys, it’s, you know, I was just thinking about it while you were talking. I was like, how much would I pay? Realistically, like, what would it actually be worth if I got five deals out of it? Right? So if I, if that’s all that ever happened? Well, that would be probably what $25,000 in commissions somewhere around there. So like, it would be reasonable to think, well, she charges you know, 20 grand for this service, but it’s way, way less than that. So check it out, go to Gogo podcast.com. And look at her boot camp. It’s a wonderful introduction into how to become better with social media. As a realtor, she uses the exact same strategies to how she became a top producer is the same thing she’s teaching. And you know, by the way, you could always join her team too, if you wanted more in depth, you know, sort of support and all the resources that exp provides through gogo, but check out her boot camp, even if you’re perfectly happy at your firm and not going anywhere. Her boot camp is absolutely worth purchasing. And even if it just does one deal. It’s probably like a 20,000% return on the investment. So guys, again, total no brainer. Go to Gogo podcast.com Gogo, thank you once again for being on the show. We’re so honored to have you come on every month, and we know how busy you are. So congrats on the wonderful trip with your family over back to your own land. And we’re glad to have you back in the US. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Please guys, before you sign off, just think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing this interview with Gogo. And guess what everybody in your office could benefit because everyone’s social media could get better. Send them a link to the show, just go to sorry, we’ll go to go go podcast.com To but also send them a link to our show, which they can find right at keeping it real pod.com So thank you so much, gogo. Thank you and we’ll see you next time.

Gogo Bethke 37:40
Thank you so much.

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

In this episode Joel talks about what’s happening in the lending world right now and what can agents do. Joel talks about the mistakes agent are doing when submitting pre-approval letters as a negotiation tactic in this current market. Joel once more emphasized the importance of educating your clients. Finally, Joel talks about the importance of building trusted relationships with the lending partner and how they can help you grow your business.

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

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

D.J. Paris 0:00
On this episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Joel Schaub at guaranteed rate. As a realtor it’s important to partner with only the most trusted name in mortgage lending. Joel has 1000s of satisfied clients and gives $1,500 of his commission. Back to your buyers on every closing. He is known for his ability to close even complex deals start to finish in only 14 days to learn what 1000s of others already know. Make a note to call Joel at 773-654-2049 or email [email protected] Guaranteed Rate is an equal housing lender licensed in all 50 States Consumer Access Number 2611. And now on with the show.

Welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is EJ Parris, I’m your guide, and hosted through the show. And today once again is our monthly series learn with a lender with Joel shop from guaranteed rate. Now Joel is the vice president of lending at guaranteed rate. He’s been doing loans at a high level since 2003. And it’s gotten to that level because of what he does specifically for agents, which is he gives back part of his commission to the buyer on every transaction making the agent look like a hero. Last year alone, Joel gave back almost $300,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with them and that puts Joe’s volume at the in the top 1/10 of 1% of all loan officers in the country. In fact, out of 400,000 loan officers Joel is ranked number 137. Last year, he closed 535 transactions that’s during a pandemic as highest amount ever for $195 million. Already this year, he’s closed, he’s almost already almost eclipsed that he’s at 408 transactions. We’re only in August, and he’s already done 166 million in loans. So this will be another record breaking year for Joel which is why we have him on the show. Because if you’re looking for a loan officer, we could not more highly recommend Joel he’s the very best we’ve ever worked with Joel can be reached at Joel at a rate.com That’s his email address again [email protected]. Or you can always call or send him a text message to his phone, which is 773-654-2049. Let’s say hello to the biggest Cubs fan. I know welcome Joel.

Joel Schaub 2:41
Thanks so much DJ and even with the Cubs trading off most of their players, where we keep the faith and we’re staying positive right?

D.J. Paris 2:50
That you know, it’s funny I am embarrassing ly ignorant to all things sports related in Chicago even though I live here and I know you are very tied into the Cubs, but I believe I heard they had traded was like nine players was that the big news last week,

Joel Schaub 3:06
it was needed. Okay, so I do a lot of mortgages for the executive. So the C level that are actually behind the scenes setting the team up for success and future years. And as sad as it is to see some of those big time fan favorites. Go to other teams, it certainly was needed. And just like in business, if something’s not working, you got to figure out what the steps are to make it work.

D.J. Paris 3:30
Yeah, and this is what it’s really glad you said that because this is a time where I think I’m starting to hear from our listeners and our agents here at even our own office where things are starting to feel a little bit more like they’re returning to normal. As I was leaving my my building today I live in a condo building, which of course you helped me finance. Mike my unit, I the developer walked by me who just they’re still working on things in the building. I hadn’t seen him in a few months, he reached out and shook my hand he goes he reached out to shake my hand and I said, Oh, yeah, that’s right. We can shake hands now. And maybe we still shouldn’t have even though we’re both vaccinated, but I was like, Oh, he goes, we got to start shaking hands again. So that was kind of exciting. But I think there is still, you know, I’m hearing some frustration from our own agents about offers, you know, what’s going on, this is still a low inventory environment. You know, we have a lot of cash that’s floating around out there that’s being you know, sent in as contracts and then you have traditional financing opportunities to, you know, what, what’s going on out there in the world of lending and how should agents be sort of talking about it with their clients.

Joel Schaub 4:43
The agents I’m working with right now are reporting that they’re staying busy. It’s just not the frenzy that we saw before. Okay. And the successful agents are finding ways to continue to stay busy and submitting offers that are designed to win and there is a lot of offers that lose was exactly like you said to want a cash buyer. Okay, how can we submit these offers as agents that the other side will see just as good as a cash offer. And that’s what I helped my agents do and go through and make sure that when you are submitting, you never know if you’re going to be competing against a cash offer, but you can let the seller side know these three things. Okay. The number one thing is finding that local lender that you’re really connected to. So if you’re an agent, no matter where you’re at, making sure that you have somebody that’s like your go to person that you can refer deals to, that actually cares, that knows what they’re doing and can get deals done. You’re right there stepping up above them just walking into their bank. Okay. Number two is actually making sure that the borrower submitted all of their documents upfront, okay. So that, you know, when you’re submitting an offer, that the letter of pre approval is better than just a piece of paper it’s written on, we know that the docs are in. And all we need to do is get a signed contract and an appraisal. So the number three thing is being very clear. You’re never going to win. If you have that appraisal issue, right? You need to be able to know whether or not your buyer has the ability to bridge the gap. Right? We talk about this a lot recently, right? DJ Gap coverage on an appraisal, right? You’ve seen agents talk about this?

D.J. Paris 6:27
Yeah, is it are you seeing as many of these appraisal issues where things aren’t appraising out due to the bidding wars, or is that started to calm down a bit,

Joel Schaub 6:40
we’re not seeing things that don’t appraise out. But what we’re seeing are agents that don’t know what their borrowers can actually do. And what I mean by this is, you cannot as an agent, assume that your buyer who hasn’t bought before or only bought once before, understands this market, okay? understands what it means if they do go 25 grand above list, and the property only appraises 10 grand above list, okay, it’s about setting expectations, and letting them know what the options are. And more importantly, having a lender that talks to them this way, so that they know, if this happens, these are the options so that your client isn’t set up for a disaster, you need to make sure that there’s a successful plan going forward so that you’re not just closing transactions, but you’re closing them so that they send you referrals so that they’re so happy with the service that you’ve provided, that they will go out and scream your name from the rooftops.

D.J. Paris 7:42
Yeah, that’s, that’s obviously the goal. And really, you know, I have always thought this job is is customer service, whether it’s you on the lending side or agents, you know, working with the the buyer or seller, if you provide great customer service, you get those people often that’ll shout from the rafters. That how great you are the rooftops. But we were talking before we started recording and I again, just shows you how little I know about the industry Joel mentioned a tactic that isn’t that, you know, we want to discuss that was maybe done in the past that maybe maybe not be as much in favor now, which was about pre approval letters as a really a negotiation tactic. When working with with buyers. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Joel Schaub 8:33
All right, agents, you definitely have done this. I know several agents that are listening that are still going to do this. And I’m going to tell you the wrong way to do it. Okay. Is it alright to be a little controversial? Is it all right? Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Okay. So a lot of times in as soon as I say this, you’ll say, Yeah, I think I’ve done that before. We have a buyer. And let’s say they’re approved up to $600,000. Okay, and the letter comes in, and we’re looking at homes at $600,000. And we see a property that’s listed for 550. And we’re going to come in way less than that. Now. We’re not seeing that much anymore DJ, but we’re still seeing agents that say, Well, I know it’s listed for 550. We’re going to offer 500. Okay, maybe in your market, that’ll work, but then they’re having the lender update the letter to say that the buyer is only worth you know, up to $500,000 and hoping that the seller side will lower their price, because the buyer can’t go any higher. That’s the wrong way to do it. That is the wrong way to submit an offer. Because you want to compete with strength in this market. You want to show the best buyer going forward that they’re approved for way more than the property’s worth. Now again, every situation could be different. But if you walk into a supermarket and you have $100 in your pocket, and you buy a loaf of bread for $3 The cashier does doesn’t say well, I know that you have $100 in your pocket. So we want you to pay more for that loaf of bread, right? But agents all the time they want to compete and tell the seller, well, we can only go up to this price. So will your seller come down to this price? It used to work used to work a lot. But in this market, I see that backfiring and I see the same agents doing that time and time again. And I see other smarter agents going forward and submitting offers and saying to the sellers, my buyer is approved for much more than this home is worth. However, this is the offer that we want to submit. So I

D.J. Paris 10:38
guess the message is to agents don’t be frightened, or don’t be frightened to, to submit this letter that’s going to show a much larger number that your clients capable of? Because yes, that technically does show a little bit of your hand. However, it’s really a strength, a strong hand, because you’re basically saying, Yes, we still want this property at this price. And we can negotiate. But here’s the good news is my buyer is legitimate, they have their their financing in order, and they are fully capable of making this thing closes. Is that my understanding that it really positions them as? Yes, of course they can, they could, you know, may adjust the negotiations a bit, but it also strengthens the buyers position, because they’re now seen as a real contender for the property.

Joel Schaub 11:27
You are absolutely correct. So Correct. Just flip this around now. So now we’re the listing agent. And now we’ve received an offer that’s less than we want, considerably less than we want. And we’re told we should take it off the market, because the buyer can only come up to this number. So now we’re taking less than we want. And we’re taking a buyer, that’s pretty much maxed out is what you’re telling me they couldn’t go any higher.

D.J. Paris 11:57
And that scares me as a seller. Absolutely. It

Joel Schaub 12:00
should scare you as a seller and as a seller’s agent, it’s not an easy conversation to have with the seller saying this is the offer that we want to take. So now let’s reverse this. Let’s take the buyer that does come in low. But now it’s a sure thing. Well, Mr. Seller, I know this isn’t the offer we want but look at how strong they are. They’re approved for more, they can close quickly. And they’re working with XYZ lender who we know personally to get the job done this, even though not at the offer that we want. This is a really good offer. So that helps us as a buyer’s agent, convince and help the seller sell the story to the sellers. And ultimately, they’re the ones that are going to make the decision.

D.J. Paris 12:46
Wow, you know, Joe, I have to stop for a moment because it’s I’m always I’m always so impressed. I’ve I always lavished praise on you as as as a loan officer, because I’ve worked with you personally know how great you are. But this is a really important thing you just said. And I’m so grateful that you come on our show once a month, because we’ve been doing this for gosh, how many years now and you start come up with great ideas. And this is a great idea. This has tremendous value. So talk with your lender, I guess I guess the message is find a trusted partner, talk to them about pre approval letters, find out what’s going on in your market and operate Don’t you know, talk to them about? What should we put on this pre approval letter? What’s the max number that we want, you know, to show a position of strength. And if you’re not with a lender who thinks that that would assist your buyer, then maybe it’s time to find another lending partner, because lenders really have these kind of this this knowledge that oftentimes realtors, you know, we’re stuck in realtor mode, we’re not really thinking often about financing. And these are amazing tactics and strategies. And it’s really, you’re actually by by showing the full amount that the client is capable of, you’re actually really showing strength in this market specifically. So yes, will you win every offer? No. You know, will it could you lose to cash offers? Sure. But at the very least you’re showing that you have all your ducks in a row and this person is absolutely, you know, ready to close? Should they accept the offer?

Joel Schaub 14:20
I wish I could take credit for this. This isn’t my idea. This is the other agents that are bringing me these scenarios, right. And so I challenge you if you’re an agent, I’ve seen this this is we’re doing hundreds of transactions annually, and I’m seeing what works and what doesn’t. So I challenge you if you have a buyer and you’re submitting multiple offers but not getting it approved, go back to the lender and say what are they actually approved up to? Can I get a letter that’s considerably higher. And then when you submit your next offer, you might be pleasantly surprised that the seller side sees your offer in a much better light even better than a cash offer. Because of how strong they are, and this goes in complete opposite of what a lot of agents have done in the past, for things that work in this market, showing strength is a really great way to have your buyers win deals. And again, it’s not about just closing this one transaction, how do we get to a point where we’re doing 50 and 60 transactions a month, it’s getting the referrals and doing such a good job on educating, teaching and helping them that they want to refer more business back to us. And that’s what I challenge you as agents to do is find the one thing that you’re really good at educating, you don’t need to be perfect at everything. But if you’re not leading with education, and helping, and you’re just selling, selling works when it’s busy, but when it starts to slow down, you need to have something to fall back on. So educating your clients and getting more referrals based on that is going to be the way that you continue to grow this.

D.J. Paris 15:59
Absolutely. And you know, I was just thinking about my car. So this is a sort of a quick colorare example of what Joel is talking about. So I have I have a car that you know, requires maintenance. I don’t know, once a year, I go in and get a tune up. And then I have them look at everything. And anytime something goes wrong with my car, I have a mechanic who I send for my tuneups, I send for anything that goes wrong. And I’m really grateful to have found this mechanic because they’re very well respected in here in the local Chicago community, where I live and where Joe lives to. But I always trust them. And I know that when I all I have to do if anything ever goes wrong with my car is I literally just drive it there, I drop it off, and I wait for the phone call. And whenever they tell me, I just go yep, I trust you guys. And I have gone my whole life without having that relationship up until a couple of years ago when I found these guys. So what I will tell everyone who is listening, who is an agent, is we know how valuable those relationships are, whether it’s an accountant and attorney, financial advisor, an insurance agent, you know, a lender, anyone in the service industry that you rely upon personally or for your business, we know how great is it to know, I can just send my car to the to the dealer or to the the auto body shop, they’re honest, I love these guys, they take good care of me, and they’re never going to do me wrong. And I don’t have to worry about it anymore. You should have that kind of relationship with with a lender. And Joel, I will tell you, Joel was was what you know. So full disclosure, Joel was my lender. And he absolutely the education piece of it is the difference that makes the difference for him. He legitimately will speak with your clients and make sure they understand everything. And most lenders sadly, or fortunately for Joel but sadly for the other lenders don’t spend that kind of time. So if you don’t have that kind of partnership, you need one, you need that kind of partnership. So you can just everyone that’s a buyer, you can just say I’ve got the guy and you send it and then you don’t have to worry about it as much as you might with other lenders. So if you are looking to work with with Joel and his team, and by the way, they are licensed guaranteed rate at all 50 states so they can accommodate you. And if they can’t, they’ll certainly let you know who else to speak with. But Joel, if someone’s looking to partner with you, whether they’re an agent looking for a great relationship, or maybe they’re just a buyer or a seller and investor who wants to work with you as well, what’s the best way they should reach out?

Joel Schaub 18:36
Yes, of course, DJ, they can definitely just email me. And they’d be surprised because each and every single week after I do this, I respond to half a dozen to 10 different emails of people saying, Hey, I just have a question for you. How did you do this? Or how did you grow your business to that level? Or what is your team structure look like? Etc. Joel JOE [email protected], that short for guaranteed rate so much easier emailed to remember. So just [email protected] and then 773-654-2049 is a direct line to me. But it’s not just me if I’m an agent, the number one thing that I would be doing is partnering with a mortgage professional, somebody that they got to know like and trust somebody that’s in their community, or somebody that is knowledgeable even if they’re not in their exact footprint, because it needs years of experience. It’s not just a relationship based on the fly by night. The lowest bank today are these flashy new products. You want to stick with something that’s tried and true. Somebody that’s been doing it a long time that makes you look good. And don’t forget somebody that’s willing to help. Okay, whether that’s co branding, material marketing For spending money now, mortgage guys all over are going to start yelling at me but it’s true lenders that send lenders I should say that you’re sending business to, should be helping, you should be finding RESPA compliant ways to spend money on your open houses, or any of the things you’re doing together. If you feel like you’re just giving to your mortgage professional, time to find somebody else, it should be somebody who’s giving back to you.

D.J. Paris 20:29
And, you know, we all probably receive marketing materials in the mail, whether we’re, you know, a homeowner or a renter or an agent, or a, you know, just a investor, we’re getting, we’re seeing some of these marketing materials. These are what lenders can assist with in a RESPA compliant way. So find a RESPA compliant lender that wants to help you grow. Joel and his team are perfect examples of that. And, you know, when you have this kind of relationship back to my car relationship, I never have to worry about my car anymore. And I haven’t had to worry about it first. And I know that sounds sort of silly, but think about all the parts of our lives, like my account, I Well, I hope I never get audited. But I don’t think I have to worry about my accountant because she’s good, or at least I believe she’s good. I believe my, my, you know, my autobody person is is is ethical and honest. And now I I can focus my energy on other things, get that kind of relationship in place with a lender that not only will educate your clients, but will also put some marketing dollars behind you. And Joel and his team would would obviously always be happy to chat with you about that as well. And he’s also just open to answering any and all questions, so please reach out to him go when I say he’s the best we’ve ever worked with guys. It’s not. I’m not saying that lightly. He is legitimately the best we’ve ever worked with. So please,

Joel Schaub 21:52
stop it. Stop. Oh my gosh, I’m gonna blush for all of you guys watching me here.

D.J. Paris 21:57
I always say you don’t need the business. But you’ll take the business. You’re very Joel is very successful here in Chicago, but he is open to speaking to agents from all over. So please reach out to him. If you’re looking to build that kind of relationship with a lender. I promise it will likely be the last relationship you’ll have to build. So [email protected] We’re huge fans always came came with it again today with a great tip. Couple of great tips. So thanks, Joel. And we will before we go please everybody before you sign off, just tell a friend think of one other real estate agent that could benefit from hearing from great conversations like the ones we have with Joel every single month and send them a link to our website, keeping it real pod.com They can stream every episode we’ve ever done, or just have them pull up a podcast app search for keeping it real and hit that subscribe button. Alright Joel, thank you so much, and we will see everyone on the next episode.

Joel Schaub 22:49
Thanks so much DJ

In our August episode of Monday Market Minute, Carrie McCormick from @properties focuses on first time homebuyers and why the number saw a significant decrease in the third quarter of the year. Carrie also discusses what she recommends to her own first time homebuyers at the moment. Next, Carrie talks about prices of real estate and how she’s predicting leveling up of the market in 2022. Carrie advises sellers to take the pictures now even if you’re not selling right now as the weather is good and they will look better. Last, DJ shares his marketing idea of the month.

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.

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by prac tina.com Are you tired of not receiving enough leads from social media prac Tina will help. prac Tina’s easy to use low cost system helps real estate agents outperform their local competition, connect with more homebuyers and become the face of real estate in their area. By simplifying social media marketing practices automatically informs your audience regarding new properties, open houses, and price changes on any and all of your listings. You can also reach specific new clients based on their location and interests, which will help your ads be seen by the right people on Google, Facebook and Instagram. And best of all prac Tina provides you with your own dedicated marketing specialists that will work with you one on one keeping it real listeners will receive a $50 credit by using the coupon code real Learn more today at practice tina.com That’s pra si t i n a.com And now on to our show

All right. 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 today on the show. We have our monthly series called The Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick from the Carrie McCormick Real Estate Group with at properties here in Chicago. Carrie is a top 1% producer here with over 20 years of experience helping buyers sellers and investors. In fact, in the past 12 months out of 44,000 real estate agents in the Chicagoland area. Carrie is currently ranked number 11. She is a true superstar and an expert in everything from first time homebuyers, veteran investors and luxury properties. She also works with a lot of developers and is often chosen to represent their high end developments, including the one I just moved into, please visit Carrie at our website, which is Carrie McCormick rt.com. But even more importantly, follow her on Instagram. She has one of the very best Instagram accounts that for realtors we’ve ever seen. So everyone grab your phone right now and search for Carrie McCormack or just type in Carrie McCormick with two C’s real estate Carrie McCormick real estate on Instagram and watch her post. They’re exceptional. And they’re a really good template and model for how I believe real estate agents should be talking about real estate on social media. Carrie, welcome to the show again.

Carrie McCormick 2:38
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. As always, this is one of my highlights of the month to do your show. So thank you for always having me.

D.J. Paris 2:46
Thanks for doing it. So what’s going on in the Chicago land market for real estate?

Carrie McCormick 2:53
Well, we’re in August. So it’s been an interesting ride this year. But I wanted just to focus on first time homebuyers because at the beginning of the year, we saw quite a bit of first time homebuyers come out and eager to buy a home. But the percentage of the first time homebuyer fell 31% In June, which is a huge leap forward to fall Yeah, it was the lowest level in more than three decades. And that number just so you know, came from the National Association of Realtors. So one reason or a few reasons actually why it fell so much is because there’s been so much cash injected into the market right now we’ve seen more cash offers than ever before, there’s been a lot of bidding wars. Obviously home pricing has been soaring. So it’s been making it difficult for these first time homebuyers to compete. You know, in this market, as you know, there’s low inventory. And it’s just it’s kind of put them in a place where they can’t win. So it’s a little unfortunate, but some of these first time homebuyers are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the market to level out or you know, become a little bit more normal what before they reenter the market. So I still think we’re going to see them, hopefully towards the end of the year, come back after all the bidding wars are done.

D.J. Paris 4:14
So it’s probably a good time to have those conversations with renters, telling them you know, look, it’s still a really low interest rate environment. It’s ultra competitive right now to win contracts. But maybe now’s the time to start looking and but setting the expectation that you know, cash is king and there’s a lot of cash floating around right now. So biddings is more difficult to win, but, you know, maybe it’s just a good idea to get them starting to look or do you recommend pausing until the fall for for new homebuyers?

Carrie McCormick 4:47
Well, it depends on your situation. And you know, as brokers, you know, that’s where we guide our clients. And each like I said, each client’s situation is very different and depending on what type of property they’re looking for or, and then also connecting them with a great mortgage lender, because there are some really unique programs that we can get them into to help them win some of these when some of these bids but you know, if they do want to sit on the sidelines and rent for a little bit, you know, we’re here for them too. So there’s always solutions to it is just finding what works best for the clients.

D.J. Paris 5:22
The other thing too, like I know, this, I was renting until I purchased my most recent property. And even though I own property in the past, I am sort of locked into this, this mindset. And I imagine a lot of renters are locked into the same mindset where it’s, well, I can’t move now, I still have four months left on my lease. Whereas all I had to do was reach out to my landlord. And I told him at the beginning of this was that was my third year with him that I’m going to be buying a place. So I don’t know exactly when. But I was able to negotiate an exit three, or I think it was four months early, which again, psychologically I’d kind of forgotten about was an option. I always like to honor my commitments. And instead, I was able to say, hey, I need to leave, can we work something out? And he was thrilled to work something out, there was no hard feelings. So maybe that’s another conversation to have with renters, who are like, Oh, I can’t do anything right now. I still have, you know, my lease.

Carrie McCormick 6:15
Right? That’s such a great point. And some of the landlords, like you mentioned are open to that, depending on what time of the year that it is. Yeah. So I also wanted to talk about just looking ahead, you know, we’re in August. And I hate to even think that we’re nearing the end of this year. But you know, we’re getting to the second half of this year. But we are still seeing that home value appreciation continues. So we’re seeing it, and I feel like we’re going to see it through the end of the summer, at least, you know, maybe through September, October, we’re going to still see, you know, prices tick up. But I think that if when we look into 2022, it’s hard to even think that that’s coming around the corner, that we are going to see things settle back down to a pre COVID pattern, I think we’re going to see prices start to level back out to normal. And we’re going to start seeing more inventory coming in to the to the market. So you know if for those buyers who are still in the market, and they want to find something, if they’ve got a little bit of time, I would just say Hang in there, we’ll get some more inventory into this market. And hopefully things will start settling down a little bit. However, if you are a seller, we’re nearing you know, the the end of this so I would get your house on the market as soon as possible.

D.J. Paris 7:34
Yeah, and there are financing options with a lot of lenders that I think they can be called Bridge bridge loans, I believe or are ways to, to buy without selling first because we know that things sell very quickly, and maybe take a bit longer to win buying contracts these days. So there are financing options. So if you’re trying to sort of, you know, dance that that tightrope, there are other other options. And that’s where you would talk to your lender and say, Kitt, is there a way we can can make this work. And there if you have good credit, there are thankfully lots of options around that. Yeah, there’s

Carrie McCormick 8:09
definitely a lot of continued confidence and strength in our housing market right now. So again, if you’re a seller, I’d get yourself into this market, especially and I think we talked about this last year is, you know, Chicago is looking pretty good. Right now from a weather standpoint, you know, the trees obviously are in full bloom, the grass is really green, the flowers are in full bloom, is get your pictures done now. So if you have any sellers that are on the fence about selling, you know whether they want to do it later this year, or the spring, get your pictures done now, so you can house those pictures and keep them for when your clients are ready to pull the trigger and get their house on the market.

D.J. Paris 8:52
That’s a really great idea. And from a marketing prospective, awesome way to create stickiness with the client now even if they don’t list until December, January or February, calling them and then saying hey, I know you’re going you’re going to want to list in the next you know, six months. Now’s the time I’m going to send a photographer over you don’t have to deal with it. And my suggestion would be for agents that can afford to do this is pay for this yourself. Just make it so easy. Don’t give them a reason to say no. And just send someone over and then send them the photos a day or so after you receive them and say look at how great your home looks. I can’t wait to get this listed when you’re ready. They’re not going anywhere else after that. I can’t imagine.

Carrie McCormick 9:32
Yeah, no, it’s it’s a great idea. And they’re just taking exterior pictures. So it’s super easy for the sellers.

D.J. Paris 9:39
What a great suggestion. I know you’ve given that Pat and past years but I always forget what a great great idea. And then my marketing idea of the of the week or the month rather, is very simple. It’s back to school time and, you know, now’s the time to go through your database. Categorize who and your contact list and your clients and your prospective clients have children, hopefully, you know, the ages of their children, if you don’t great reason to pick up the phone and call your client and say, Hey, I’m updating my database, have the are the kids back in school yet? Or, you know, when are the kids going to school? Hey, what grade are they in again, you know, you can make it more conversational, as opposed to, you know, specifically saying, what’s their age, what’s their birthday, all of that. But assuming you can find out the general ages of the clients, you can create little gift bag, or, you know, back to school gift, you know, gift bag kind of things. And you know, doesn’t have to be expensive. But anything you can help a mom out with, getting their children ready to go to school, even if it’s $5 worth of school supplies, is five is one less maybe shopping trip that mom has to make, or that dad has to make. And you know, it’s so easy and simple. And boy, I know that getting school supplies is a pain in the butt for parents. So really easy things just call your your contacts with children and say, Hey, I’ve got a little gift bag I want to drop off to help your kids with school. Like, you know, that’s it’s it’s simple, it’s not expensive, and can really go a long way.

Carrie McCormick 11:05
And every client likes a gift no matter what it is. It’s the thought that matters. So it’s great.

D.J. Paris 11:11
Yeah, I love that. And also too, if you know that the mom or the dad is carpooling, if that’s part of the process for getting their kids to school, you know, give them a couple of Starbucks gift cards and say, Hey, I know this might come in handy on those early morning drives, you know, back from the school or to the school, you know, a few Starbucks gift cards will certainly go a long way. But anyway, I think that’s that’s it for this this month. And I want to remind everybody, please, well, first of all, before we get to the very, very end, if there are any listeners out there who are buyers, sellers, renters investors, you’re looking to work with one of the top real estate agents in the entire Chicagoland area not because I’m saying it, but her numbers and all the accolades She’s won over the last 20 plus years will demonstrate that Carrie McCormack would love to work with you. So Carrie, what’s the best way someone should reach out

Carrie McCormick 12:04
to you? I always tell them to call me 312-961-4612 Or you can email me at Carey which is CA RR ie [email protected]. But before I let everyone go, I announced this last month, it’s gonna be working on a new construction 18 single family homes in the Lakeview neighborhood. We are rounding out finally the floor plans the pricing the finished package, but hopefully we’re going to be announcing it. You know, late August, early September. So if anyone has clients looking for single family home in the Lakeview area, we’d love to hear from you.

D.J. Paris 12:46
And there are not a lot of single family homes in the Lakeview area. So this is a big big announcement. So they can reach out to you and you can put them on a list where you’d be giving them information once it comes available. Absolutely awesome. And the other best thing you can do is follow Carrie on Instagram. So he said this at the beginning, but please please do and I promise. It is one of those Instagram accounts that you will just constantly be getting ideas from for your own business and that follow her on Instagram which is at Carrie McCormick again to seize Carrie McCormick real estate, Carrie McCormack real estate on Instagram. Well, Carrie, thanks so much and appreciate your time. As always, I want to thank everybody for listening and continuing to support our show, please, before you sign off, just think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from top producers like Carrie and send them a link to our show, you can send them right over to our website, keeping it real pod.com. Every episode can be streamed right from a browser, or if they’re a podcast listener, download what or just search for keeping it real in their podcast app and hit the subscribe button. We’d appreciate it. Well Carrie, thank you so much and we will see you next next month.

Carrie McCormick 13:52
Thank you

Jennifer Beadles the Founder and CEO of Agents Invest talks about the beginning of her career in real estate and how she built her business. Jennifer describes the process she uses to find investors. Jennifer also describes what characteristics she values in a city when deciding where to start investing. Jennifer and DJ discuss the importance of the local partners in building your business. Last, Jennifer presents her two upcoming events- the 4-week bootcamp in September and the 3-day event in October.

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

Jennifer Beadles can be reached at [email protected].

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by next stop. So check this out. There’s a new platform built to help doctors as they relocate all over the United States. And it’s built by a physician that was fed up with moving for med school, intern year residency and the first attending position without any local resources to help plan these moves. So next hop is creating a one stop resource for all physicians moving needs. From realtors to mortgage lenders to school information and beyond. The platform is called next stop a physician relocation guide. And they are looking for realtors interested in working with physicians and their families as they move from out of town. Now next up is extending its beta pricing for the keeping it real podcast listeners, there is a monthly fee of $100 to be included in the next stop beta, no referral fees none which means you the realtor are keeping the entire commission now they are creating a valuable resource for the physician community while highlighting local realtors. Next stop wants to be the go to resource for every physician move Find out more by visiting their website next stop dot guide that’s any x t sto p.gy D 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 Jennifer beetles from agent invest. And before we get to Jennifer, just a couple of quick reminders. Number one, please tell a friend to think of one other agent that could benefit from listening to our podcast and hearing from top producers like Jennifer and send them a link to our show, you can always send them right over to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com They can stream every episode we’ve ever done right there. Or they can pull up a podcast app on their phone, do a search for keeping it real, and hit the subscribe button. And also just want to say thank you for continuing to listen. And to be part of our audience. We really appreciate it. We couldn’t do it without you. And we are forever grateful that you find this content interesting and helpful. And please feel free to share your thoughts with us, you can always email us directly right through our website. So go to keeping it real pod.com Let us know your thoughts, any ideas on how to improve the show or guests you think we should be reaching out to those are always appreciated. And again, thanks for continuing to listen and now on to our interview with Jennifer beetles.

Today on the show, our guest is Jennifer beetles of agents invest.com. And let me tell you about Jennifer Jennifer beetles, who is the founder and CEO of agents invest is extremely passionate about helping real estate agents close more deals while working less hours. As a real estate agent herself Jennifer was working tirelessly, tirelessly, yet seeing meager results. Then she discovered the power of working with investors and soon earned enough to take control of her time and began investing in real estate herself. Through 14 years of experience Jennifer has honed in on the craft of searching for deals and working with investors and is now providing agents with the tools they need to scale up and build their wealth. Jennifer herself has sold over 150 million every year with over 150 referral transactions, please visit her website which is agents invest.com, where you can learn more about as a as a real estate professional how to begin working with investors. And also she has an event coming up that is a three day event which is 100% free for agents and if it’s from October 12 through the 14th It’s a three day event you can sign up and learn more at Investor agent summit.com. Again, investor agent summit.com. Both of these links will be in the show notes. So you can just scroll down there and and learn more about it. Jennifer, welcome to the show.

Jennifer Beadles 4:21
Hey, DJ. Hey, thanks so much for having me here. Great to be here with you today.

D.J. Paris 4:26
I am super excited. Can we pull the curtain back before we get started? And are we allowed to talk about where you are right now? Or is or do we want to mention Okay, I just want to keep your privacy intact. But can you because I think this this is so apropos to what we’re going to be discussing is is I asked Jennifer? I said oh hey, where are you right now because I just assumed she was she was somewhere here domestically in the United States. But she isn’t. Tell us tell us a little bit about what you’ve been up to.

Jennifer Beadles 4:59
Yeah, Yeah, so I’m currently based in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the the country in the Balkan region just came from Montenegro the country right next door a couple days ago. And then prior to that was in Croatia. So my family and I were doing about, I think three or four months over here in the Eastern Europe and just kind of Europe, Europe in general, for the summer. So yeah, we’re enjoying this passive income lifestyle, while kind of running my business remotely and enjoying it really, really great time here.

D.J. Paris 5:35
Well, and the really funny part is, it’s the weirdest thing, because I am going to Croatia, myself, with my girlfriend here in just a couple of weeks. So we won’t, we won’t actually pass each other. But Jennifer and I are sort of strangers passing in the night, sort of so to speak. But what a funny, funny coincidence, so she is exactly well, we’re driving through Bosnia. But we’re not, we’re not stopping there. But we’ll be in Croatia. And so she just gave us some great recommendations in Dubrovnik. And then she’ll be in Split Croatia before we get there. So she’ll be helping me with that too. But what a great small world. But again, it really speaks to what you teach, because most Realtors couldn’t fathom being away from their clients, their traditional, you know, first time homebuyers or just traditional, you know, residential clients who are aren’t on not on the investing side. And so I know that you really focus on building a life with a lot more geographic freedom and financial freedom. And there’s, you know, a small percentage of agents really, are even all that familiar with working with investors, and most agents don’t think about it. And it’s something that they really should think about, because it opens them up to a whole nother line of business, really, and possibly a passive income stream as well. So let’s start all the way at the beginning because Jennifer is really a Seattle, a Seattle person. But let’s let’s talk about how you got into real estate and how you got from from when he first started all the way to where you are now. Yeah, absolutely.

Jennifer Beadles 7:09
So my desire to get into real estate was really in buying my first house. So I was 21 years old, at the time working two jobs to save enough money to buy my first house. And it was this 1901 kind of half falling down structure and pretty much the cheapest property in town that I could afford. And I kind of noticed a couple things throughout that transaction. One is the realtor made a lot of money, but I felt like was a lot of money at the time being a 21 year old to kind of, you know, fresh out of fresh out of college. And and I just kind of really enjoyed the process of like finding a deal, you know, potentially taking this kind of almost, you know, falling down property, fixing it up and potentially doing something with that. And so I wasn’t quite interested in going the real estate sales track. And so I had actually gotten hired on with the builder developer. And so that was in the year 2007. And that was really good. The first year, the 2000 was summertime and 2008 happened. So Seattle is about to two years behind the rest of the country. And so we didn’t really feel much of a recession until 2008, when I think everyone felt it. And so I made the crazy decision to get licensed in 2009, when most agents were leaving the business, and I really kind of saw an opportunity prices were getting much more affordable. You know, I had now some knowledge and construction and building and development. So I got my real estate license, primarily so that I could let myself into properties. And what I found was that friends and family started reaching out. And in my first six months, I got licensed in May of 2009. In my first six months, I closed six deals. And I said wait a second, I’m kind of onto something here. I’ve actually made more money in the first six months of being an agent doing it part time than I had all year working for this builder developer. So I ended up I closed on another property. So I had like three properties when I closed as an agent. And the day after the property closed, I quit my job. And I said, Okay, I’m gonna be an agent. And what was happening though, at that time in Seattle, was pretty much like there was a ton of properties on the market. I don’t know, maybe nine months of inventory or or, you know, or what have you. And there was a lot of distressed sales. So actually, for my first two years as an agent, primarily, I was doing short sales. I was doing, you know, bankruptcy sales, foreclosures. And I didn’t know what a traditional sale look like for almost about two years. And so my opportunity that I saw was really working with investors. So in the first couple of years, I mean, I might have worked with 15 to 20 investors that were closing between, you know, five to 10 deals a year. And to me that was a great business. I didn’t have to go out I didn’t have to pay You’ve already advertised and how to do marketing, I didn’t have to do the things that traditional agents have to do,

D.J. Paris 10:04
right, you just had to

Jennifer Beadles 10:05
find opportunities. Yeah, I mean, I just had to find opportunities, and then email them to my clients, and then have them raise their hand and write offers. And so it was just really interesting. So I kind of had a different approach than most other agents who were really struggling. I mean, there were agents that I saw in my office who, you know, were used to making 50 to $100,000 a month, that were month after month, just not closing sales, or sales falling through or buyers, you know, deciding not to buy, they wanted to wait to see what happened in the market. And, and so for me, it was actually a really great time to get started. And I saw this opportunity, I’m very much systems and processes kind of person. And so I saw this opportunity, as you just said, DJ is to just, you know, kind of work with a funnel of real estate investors not have to really focus much on lead generation, that investors kind of came to me because very few agents work with investors. And so I’m thinking why essentially no competition, and abundance of deals, if I just focus on finding deals, and you know, having a consistent effort of putting those in front of my clients, they’re going to write offers. And so that’s essentially how I got started and how I built my business. It looks very different today. But But that’s, that’s really how I got started.

D.J. Paris 11:19
And for anyone listening, who might be thinking, well, that’s great. I don’t know any investors. I’d like to, and again, I’m gonna put my own narrative on this, and I want you to correct it or disagree or agree, because really, I just want to confirm on this the statement, or have a challenge, because I am I do, I am not a practicing agent, though. We have 800 agents at our firm, we have a lot of investor brokers at our art, because of the sort of the way we do commissions and fees attracts a lot of investors, who are who are agents, but so I’m just telling you, sort of relaying what they tell me. But finding investors I’ve heard is actually the easy part that the money shows up when you find opportunities. So well, I’m curious to get your your sort of again, I know it isn’t that simple. But you know, for anyone thinking, oh, gosh, all I know, are traditional first time homebuyers or just regular residential clients who aren’t thinking investors? I don’t know that world. You know, is it difficult to find investors?

Jennifer Beadles 12:27
No, that’s the easy part. So consider that 20% of sales in the US are happening with investors, which agents might think, okay, 20%. But think about all the agents that are competing for the 80% of deals, whereas maybe 1% of agents work with investors. And so in my opinion, I think you have the more ability to create recurring revenue, with fewer clients, you’re running a leaner business. So again, you’re not paying for advertising, you’re not having to really do much in order to generate new leads, you’re working with the same leads, who are gonna close multiple deals every year, right. So again, it’s just so much easier to run a, you know, highly profitable business when working with investors, but how to find them. Again, that’s really easy. So the way that we did it in Seattle is we started a local meetup group. And so meetup.com, you know, subscription to meetup.com, we post our event in bigger pockets.com Because that’s where all the investors hang out. And, you know, the first couple of months, maybe we had, you know, 10 to 15 people show up, you know, we would bring in a guest speaker or I would talk about a specific deal or a topic. And then at the end of every meetup, we would showcase deals in the market, we’d say, hey, you know, here’s a duplex in Everett, Washington, here’s, you know, something else that we found off market. And so we found that investors were coming there to kind of learn network, and then also just buy deals. And so every meetup, we were selling a handful of deals, and it was, you know, free lead generation for us. And, of course, you know, is a great sales opportunity. So that, in my opinion, that’s the number one way to get access to investors is to start a local meetup group. You know, bring your property manager in, bring your lender in, you know, tag team that you don’t have had the lender talk at one if you have a property manager talk at one showcase deals. But yeah, we weren’t getting I mean, anywhere 75 to 100 people showing up. Every single month, it actually got so popular that we ended up having to charge for it and have a ticketing system because we were running out of space in our venues. And so, so then we you know, with COVID, of course, we brought it online, and we were able to reach a whole nother level of investors all across the country. The second opportunity that every agent needs to be thinking about is within their own database. So a lot of our students inside the investor agent Academy are actually talking to their past clients and or people who are looking to buy a house right now. And talking them talking to them about House hacking, you know, maybe buying a duplex living in one half, turning the other into a rental. That’s a great opportunity to have you first time homebuyers that maybe can’t afford property. In this market, if they consider, you know, living in a multifamily property, they can use the rental income potentially to qualify. And so maybe if they were only pre approved for 200,000, but if they’re looking at a duplex with, you know, maybe $1,200 a month, in rents on the other side, maybe that could be, you know, 350, or even 400. So there’s a lot of opportunities to take existing clients, turning them and helping them in becoming investors, creating passive income streams for themselves. And, you know, again, just getting more potential sales opportunities, and helping our clients. So those are some really, really great opportunities to get investors. But I would, I would guess, that most agents that are listening, have investors in their database, they just haven’t asked if their clients are thinking about investing, or put investment opportunities in front of them.

D.J. Paris 15:48
Yeah, I think I think you’re right. And I also think this specifically around house hacking, obviously, if you’re, if you’re listening and aren’t familiar with that term, Jennifer, really just just sort of defined it. But if if you’re not familiar with it, it is becoming part of the lexicon, it’s becoming part of our lingo, especially skewing younger, that particular term. So anyone in their 20s, to really, you know, 40s, or 50s, may be starting to get familiar with that idea. And if you don’t have a good answer, as an agent, when you’re maybe you’re out showing homes, more traditional, you know, sort of you’re selling somebody a condo, or, you know, a single family home, that, you know, wouldn’t have the ability to do what what they call house hacking, there’s a good chance that question may just come up, you know, while you’re working with your client, and you should have a really good answer for Yes, I understand what this is, here are those kinds of opportunities in our market, or maybe, you know, right now, there’s not a lot of those opportunities, you just have to be familiar enough with it or, or even better, if you don’t want to get familiar with it, say, a house hacking specialist, another agent I can refer to, and I’m going to get you in touch with them so they can discuss with you other opportunities. And for anyone listening, if you’re like, you know, I don’t like working with investors, that’s not my skill set, then you really need to build a partnership with investor realtor who can, who can, you know, take over. And then of course, you can still earn referral commission. But what you should either make a goal to determine, you know, whether you want that to be part of your portfolio of what you offer clients, or build a relationship, so you can, you know, just pass it out. And we should also mention bigger pockets, we, you mentioned it earlier. But for those that aren’t familiar, just go to bigger pockets.com, it is the largest online forum for real estate investors to hang out and chat. It think of it as like, the Reddit of real estate investing. And you know, it’s I don’t know, maybe it’s 100 bucks a year or something, but it’s absolutely worth it. And you will get the best education you’ll ever you could ever expect to learn about the world of investing, specifically from the point of view of the investor. And they have podcasts and books and all sorts of things. But but definitely check out bigger pockets. If you’re, that probably be the first place I would recommend somebody could go. And and we’ve done interviews with some of the bigger pockets, guys. So we can always email our show, we can send you those those links. But so tell us about agents invest. So So what do you guys do that? Yeah, so

Jennifer Beadles 18:26
as mentioned, the business looks very different today than it did when I was just getting started in Seattle. And really how that pivoted and how it shifted is, you know, I found myself in 2016 with a huge investor database. But the deals in Seattle just no longer made sense for my clientele. And so And same thing, can

D.J. Paris 18:44
we I’m sorry to pause, can we talk a little bit about where your where your clients, and we should talk? You know, so investors tend to be one of one of two, sort of, we’ll say, residential investors tend to be in sort of one of two camps, either their fix and flips, you know, sort of quick in quick out or their buy and hold. They want, you know, a predictable cash flow. And And I’m assuming, what, what, what was your what were your investors looking for at that time?

Jennifer Beadles 19:11
Yeah, they were primarily looking for maybe an 8% cash on cash or higher, which is going to equate to maybe like a six and a half cap or so. And, you know, Seattle cap rates had come down to five, you know, in some cases, even four cap. And so I had a lot of investors that were thinking, Okay, I wish I had a huge buffer in other markets that I can continue to buy. Well, I myself as an investor was kind of thinking the same thing. You know, my, when I was building my own personal portfolio, I was taking, of course, you know, commissions off the side and putting them into rental properties, which I hope every agent should be thinking about and doing. But it’s, you know, so I built my own portfolio doing really well in Seattle, but then the deals just no longer made sense for me either. And so I decided to get into Indianapolis, Indianapolis and found an agent there from the property manager was really you know, pretty simple for me to just go ahead and you know, buy a duplex that was half the price of Seattle. And you know, the rents, I was able to get double digit returns right away. And so a lot of my clients said, Hey, can I get access to your team there? And I said, Absolutely, it’s really common. Of course, as agents, we know that we can refer business out to other agents. And so it was really fun. This agent was actually a newer agent, he had maybe been in the business for a year, maybe it feels like 10 deals or so. And I said, Hey, if I bring you a lot of investors from the West Coast, do you have the capacity and the bandwidth to take on all of these new investors, and he said, Absolutely. And so it was really fun. So one investor from California that I connected with him, closed on 10 deals in like, two months. So he’s like, keep them coming, keep them coming. And so um, and I also was kind of going through this my own kind of journey, as an agent, I wanted more freedom, you know, as Agent, it’s great, because we have freedom, but then we also don’t. So our freedom is dependent on how much we want to work, how many clients we want to take on. And as my business grew and grew, and as I kind of became known for this investor agent, I was getting more investors coming to me every day. And I wanted to kind of enjoy, you know, the fruits of my labor, I wanted to travel more with my family, I wanted to go and, you know, do different things other than just, you know, being on the phone all day long, and working seven days a week. And so I actually pivoted the business to what it is today, which is a referral only brokerage. So we will never have agents, you know, hanging their license at agents invest. It’s, you know, kind of a cloud brokerage based in Seattle, of course, here, I’m in Europe, you know, for the next couple of months. But what we do is we research the best markets across the US, we find an agent there that wants to work with investors, or has the knowledge of working with investors. And then we help put their deals in front of investors. And so, you know, in the past, we’ve actually done just the referral. So we said investors wanted to invest in Indianapolis great. And, you know, we would send all the referrals that way, and it actually became too much, it became too popular. And the agent said, I wish that there was a better way to do this. Because in some cases, like the example in Indianapolis, that agent would get 10 leads from us in a day. Wow. And he would say, I don’t have time to do all these calls. And so we said, okay, okay, why don’t we save you the time, and having to do all these investor calls, will kind of get the investors like pre approved ahead of time, we’ll kind of you know, get their criteria straight. And you send the deals to us and put them in front of the investors that our investors are ready to write an offer, they’re going to click a button, and you guys initiate the conversation there. And that changed everything. So now, you know, some really cool stories, we have an agent who joined us as a referral partner, and also as part of our agent Academy, in the Twin Cities, and very successful residential agent, but had never worked with investors. And within 37 days, he was able to I’m trying to remember how many deals it was, I think it was eight deals under contract in like 37 days. That’s what I think, I think was the equivalent of $56,000 in commission income, just from investors that we had referred to him because he put the deals in front of us. And the investor said absolutely, exactly what I’m looking for. And so So now he’s like, Oh, investors are fantastic. I don’t have to show houses.

D.J. Paris 23:12
No, not as emotional.

Jennifer Beadles 23:15
Yeah, it’s a click of a button, the investors are saying, okay, you know, maybe they have a couple of questions about the neighborhood or want to talk to the property manager, but they’re pretty much ready to go, you know, and these are all, of course, out of state investors. And so again, there’s no showings, you know, it’s maybe some video and again, just, you know, some dialogue about the neighborhood. But it’s really cool for us, because now we get to create wins on both sides. So now we get to help agents build and scale their businesses. And we get to serve our investor community, which of course, is you know, a passion of mine, I love to see people build passive income streams and, you know, have freedom and quit their jobs early, we have a lot of investors, you’ve done that. And then we get to be the connection point between the two. And so for me, again, it’s really exciting.

D.J. Paris 23:58
It is really exciting. And you guys do get to sort of connect on both ends. Because like, for example, if I had somebody I knew who said, Hey, DJ, you’re you’re in real estate, which I’m sort of I mean, I technically am, but I really am not. I sit at a desk all day. I’m a marketing guy. So sometimes people do say, you know, Hey, how’s the market? I’m like, I have no idea. But if somebody said, Hey, what’s the investor market look like right now in Chicago? Again, I’d say I have no idea. But I would, I would ultimately say you need to talk to you know, so and so who, who really does understand that market? And then they might say, Well, what about other cities and maybe Chicago is not a great spot for the kind of investment they want to do. And I would say again, I don’t know that’s what I would send that investor to you. You You’re so what you guys do is you really identify opportunities for investors, at least areas around the country which I was going to ask you how you found Indianapolis so actually would like to buy you know, how did you arrive at gosh, I we need to start an Indian I know you your self invested there. And then Obviously pushed a lot of your clients over to Indianapolis. What was it? How did you evaluate that city? And what was it about Indianapolis that that piqued your interest at that time?

Jennifer Beadles 25:11
Yeah, so I was looking for cities where the population was increasing the job. Outlook looked fantastic. Right. So there was a variety of jobs, jobs were increasing, I was looking for, you know, wage growth, and and also just, you know, price to rent ratio. Sure. So again, in Seattle, you know, the market is great for appreciation. I mean, some of my properties have, you know, more than doubled over the last couple of years, the rents are going up, but it’s really hard for an investor to get it. Whereas in Indianapolis, that first duplex that I mentioned, that I bought was $155,000. And the rents were almost $2,300, which is unbelievable credible. For somebody in Seattle, where the average duplex, you know, as 500, where was $500,000 at the time, I mean, I could buy several of those, right? And I couldn’t get those returns in Seattle. So I was looking for something that was very different than the market that I was already in. And then that just kind of opened up a world of opportunity. And then we said, well, what is Kansas City look like? And so I’ve kind of a data nerd, I mentioned that I’m a little systems and processes. And so it’s like, okay, well, Kansas City also looks really good. Okay. And then we, you know, went to some markets like Memphis, Tennessee, for example. There’s a lot of investors in Memphis, Tennessee. But when I analyze the market, I said Nashville, there’s more people moving out of Memphis and are moving in. And the rents aren’t really going up over time. wages aren’t really going up over time. There’s not really any appreciation came, maybe that’s not a market that we want to focus on. And so it’s been really kind of fun to find these, I guess, hidden gems, if you will, across the United States. And a lot of agents don’t realize that they’re sitting on a goldmine in their local market. Because to them, you know, again, I mean, we have one market about 4545 minutes outside of Nashville, Clarksville, Tennessee, population growth has been like 50%, over, you know, 2000 to 2017 50% increase in population. rents are going up, rents are up like 25 45% year over year. And the prices have gone up. And so to them, they think ads, you know, a little bit expensive right now, but you take somebody from the West Coast, and they see, you know, brand new duplex going for 200,000, where rents are going to be like 2400 Oh, I say I’ll take five of those. So so it’s really fun. So our partner actually in Clarksville, Tennessee, she closes anywhere from I don’t know, maybe 15 to 20 deals a month with investors. Just in her local you know, MLS deals again, we’re not talking about getting, some agents might be thinking, Oh, you guys are probably having to do a lot of, you know, off postcard campaign door knocking or postcard?

D.J. Paris 27:46
No. These are MLS deals. A lot

Jennifer Beadles 27:50
of them are MLS deals. Wow. And so agents

D.J. Paris 27:54
for everyone listening and I apologize, Jennifer, I just wanted to so that might be the other question. But the first question was, how do I find investors? Don’t worry about that look for deals, then the question is how do we find deals. And again, you can always partner with an investor broker who already knows how to do that. But it depending on your market that was might be MLS listed, they may be non MLS listed, which there’s a whole art and science to sort of getting in front of people who who aren’t already listed, you know, and finding those those owners and seeing if they’re interested in selling. But that’s where your partners come in. So you guys find these local realtor partners, who are who are either willing to learn like you said the Indianapolis person couldn’t have known that much about investments when he first developed a relationship but but boy, I know if somebody was feeder, you guys are kind of almost like the Zillow for realtors who want to work with investors. But it’s a good thing. Right. So you have you have you know, you have this this group. And and you’re right, like when you said, Clarksville, I was thinking why, you know that makes sense, because Nashville is exploded so much. That’s probably just continuing to spread out. Because you imagine if you would have known Nashville was going to turn into Nashville, you know, five years before it did. We’d buy but but but but but because maybe and I don’t know, the Nashville market, if it’s still highly competitive, I imagine it is. But now you have these surrounding markets that are popping up and and again, you as our listeners, you don’t have to know that. You just have to know where to go and say, you know, where are opportunities right now? You know, and that’s where agents invest what what you guys do is sort of educate the realtor enough to sort of to be able to sort of speak just a little bit about it, but then also to say, hey, we’ll take it from here. You just make the introduction to us. You guys sort of vet the investor and then you’re able to then sort of give them opportunities. Is that my understanding?

Jennifer Beadles 29:52
Yeah, absolutely. And so some of our best agents have maybe been in the business for a year or two. And they’re really good at negotiations, but When we can kind of apply the logic of you know, it’s more focused about the rents and the price to rent ratio, they can kind of team up with a property manager, get a good idea of what rents are in their area, we have a handy dandy calculator, it takes maybe 30 seconds to see if the deal makes sense. And so we have agents, again, that, you know, every morning, they spend maybe 90 minutes, just kind of scouring the MLS or scouring different opportunities, you know, maybe looking to see if it kind of hits that metric of that 8% cash on cash or higher, and then they just send the deals to us. And so a lot of our agents again, you know, it’s not unheard of, to have an agent that’s been in the, in the business one to two years, that’s closing, you know, five to seven investor deals a month is like extra business, right? So some of our agents don’t even work with residential clients anymore. Because they say, Well, why would I? Why would I work, you know, nights and weekends and show houses and do open houses and all these things. And it also works in really hot markets with, you know, another student in our academy, she got licensed in February, this is a Seattle cave. So like one of the hottest markets in the country, really, really, really tough market right now, just because, you know, lack of inventory, and she’s closed within 12 transactions, so far, you know, it is, and again, this is in five months, I meet with investors, and this is investors, right. So this isn’t even, you know, residential clients. So again, I may be making this sound really, really simple, but it really is. And so, you know, DJ, you’d mentioned, if an agent is listening this and thinking, I don’t really like working with investors, um, you know, remember, we are specifically talking about buying hold investors, right. So these are, you know, it flippers and developers kind of have their own, you know, kind of differences, but buy and hold investors, when you have the ability to help someone build passive income streams, you’re literally changing their life. And so as agents, I think we all have this kind of desire to help, and to help our clients, you know, build wealth than you know, and, of course, you know, further further their, you know, net worth and wealth building through real estate, but I want you to really consider working with buy and hold investors, because it’s really not that different. And in my opinion, also, having worked with, you know, traditional clients, it’s a heck of a lot easier. And you can potentially close more deals, and just have it be, you know, more of that recurring revenue that I that I love about working with investors, because they’re just gonna keep coming back to you. Because you’re, you’re adding value to them.

D.J. Paris 32:26
When you were working with strictly when you were doing your own deals with investors in Seattle, what percentage of the time? Did you have to? Did you end up showing in person, the property to your investor, like just estimated? Was it 50% of the time? Was it 10% of the time? You know, or were the investors like, I get it? Here’s the offer. I’m ready. Like, what, what percentage of the time? Do they need to see the property versus not? Um, I mean, gosh, maybe 25% of the time. Isn’t that incredible? So 75% of the time, they just go the numbers make sense? Let’s put it off for it.

Jennifer Beadles 33:03
Absolutely, no, of course, you know, we get under contract. And if it’s tenant occupied, then it’s, you know, subject to interior inspection. And sometimes we’d go in and we’d say, this is not the condition that we thought it was gonna be, you know, listing agent says, oh, turnkey rental, you know, and then you get in there, and you realize that it’s not. So sometimes that happens, right? But then you just negotiate it, of course, you know, as agents, we’re used to doing that. But, yeah, I mean, it’s, again, I feel like you can close so much more business and just do you know, really great things from working with this type of clientele. You also consider like, when working with investors, you know, love working with first time homebuyers. I’ve worked I have worked with a lot of first time homebuyers. But it can be a bit of a challenge, right? Because there’s a lot of hand holding, and there’s a lot of, you know, are they getting gift funds? Are they trying to do FHA? And then does the property meet FHA requirements, and you know, things like that? Well, with investors, I mean, again, a lot of also pay cash, we haven’t even gotten into conversation about how in some cases investors can close quicker, right, sure. And so so when you’re kind of dealing with investors, you’re also kind of dealing with you know, somebody that has a little bit more solid financials. And so it means the deals are often going to stick. So again, not to not to put down our first time homebuyers because love them, but it can be a bit of a challenge when you’re dealing with FHA and kind of, you know, a limited budget

D.J. Paris 34:21
and just the emotional ups and downs about purchasing a primary residence, which is I you know, I just did it myself, and I wasn’t the first time I’ve done it. I just did it myself a several months ago, and I was completely stressed out through the whole experience in which meant, and I didn’t, my boss helped me through the deal, but he had to talk me off the ledge a few times, and I’m in the industry, investors tend to, of course, it depends on the individual, but they tend to need a lot less of that. You know, this is a business proposition to them. This isn’t where they’re going to be hanging their hat and walking in every day and needing it to be exact to their living requirements on But let’s talk about the but for anyone out there who’s like, I don’t really know how to find these transactions, or how to explore my market, you guys teach this. And you guys do this through your agent Academy, which by the way, you can easily get to right from agents invest.com. But let’s talk about this, because this is you saying, I will teach you guys there. It’s a four week program. And I will teach, you know, these real estate professionals how to, you know, sort of source these deals, find them, and then connect with your investors. But can you talk a little bit about that?

Jennifer Beadles 35:34
Yeah, yeah. And so, the last couple of years, we’ve been doing this referral program with agents. And we started having a lot of agents reaching out to us or even team leaders reaching out to us and saying, Hey, I love what you guys are doing. But I don’t know where to get started, or can you teach my buyer’s agent, they’re new to the business, but they want to focus on investors. And so we put together basically 14 years of experience and working with investors, and really kind of bottled it up to just really the, you know, the top 20% that you need to know, I think as agents, sometimes we have this impostor syndrome. And so we feel like we need to know everything, or have done it before we can help our clients do something. And that is absolutely not the case. Like we need to completely remove this whole imposter syndrome idea. Because, again, you know, maybe 1% of agents are doing this. And so if you can even just have an intelligent conversation about House hacking, right? Do you do that you suggested in the beginning, or, you know, price to rent ratio, or just some of these, there’s really only three calculations that you need to understand is cash on cash return net operating income, and cap rate. Above that, I mean, the investors, obviously, you know, they’re gonna do their own due diligence, they know these things. And so yes, we teach agents how to build an investor database, how to find and pitch deals, because it’s really important that, you know, of course, if you have a great conversation with an investor, but you’re not out sending deals to them, they’re potentially going to move on to another agent that’s sending them deals. And then also just, you know, really kind of putting some systems and processes behind what you’re doing. We don’t want agents to spend, you know, hours and hours, you know, trying to find deals work with investors, we, a lot of agents actually do this kind of on learn this on the side, and then they realized that it’s actually a viable business opportunity for them. And then they actually refer out their, their residential clients, because it’s so much easier to work with investors. But yeah, it’s, it’s just a really great program, we’re having a lot of success with it from agents all across the country. So again, we have some who are brand new to the business, that want to just go straight into working with investors, because they don’t want to compete against every other agent and their brother was choose trying to get listings right now and do and do that sense of business. And then we also have, you know, more experienced agents who are just wanting more freedom, and you know, wanting to have a little bit more time back, and they see investors as the opportunity to get them there. And then we have a lot of team leads, who are, who are having us train up investor specialists on their team, so that they can add that leg DJ, as you’d said, Right? When you said, you know, partner up with an investor agent? Well, if you’re a team leader listening to this, maybe you need your agent on your team.

D.J. Paris 38:09
That is a brilliant idea. I really, you know, it’s funny, you mentioned that it seems like such an obvious idea, but I don’t think we’ve ever we’ve done about 300 episodes of the show. And I don’t think anyone’s ever specifically mentioned that. So if you are a team lead, or if you’re just on a team, or if you’re thinking about building a team, and you’re Hey, I am I like working with traditional home buyers and sellers, not not investors, and I really don’t want to do that. But boy, I’d love to add that to my portfolio, then consider bringing on an agent, and then you guys can teach them exactly what to do. And that’s what investor agent Academy, does. It’s a four week program. I know there’s one coming up here in September, you can get to it and sign up for the waitlist right at agents invest.com, you’ll see a link for the agent Academy. But can you tell us a little bit about what what did what will they learn in this four weeks?

Jennifer Beadles 39:02
Yeah, so essentially, everything you need to learn in order to build that investor database. Also how to find deals, how to pitch them, and then just how to bring systems and processes into your business. So most of the students that we have inside of our academy, they’re going to go pending on at least the first deal in the first 30 days. Now, if you’re anything like Mike, who is an overachiever, you’re gonna get eight under contract and 37 days, like I said, he made up he was bringing in, you know, 56,000 in commissions in that, you know, first five weeks or so. And then he’s also brought on some help now. So it’s really exciting. Now, he’s kind of taken over the lead, and then he’s got other agents that are submitting deals and doing deals for him. So it’s really, really cool to kind of see him scale up in that way. So yeah, we would, again, if you guys have any questions, you know, definitely reach out to us. As DJ mentioned, our next cohort is starting in September, and we’d love to help you get started. It’s going to work in any market so even if your thing Again, I’m in a really hot market or I’m in LA guys, there’s investors that are buying in every single market. So if you’re thinking I had probably can’t find a percent cash on cash flow in your market, it might be more for appreciation. Right. And so we have calculators and ways to kind of show you how to pitch the deal that’s going to work for your market.

D.J. Paris 40:18
And then we should also say, as we’re wrapping up here that there is a summit. So we have the four week boot camp, which starting in September, which by the way, everything you can you can learn about what Jennifer is offering right at agents invest.com. But there is a summit coming up shortly. And some of the speakers at least in previous years have actually been guests on our show. Avery Carl has been recently on our show Bree Schmidt. And so you have you what what this is a little different. So you bring in specialists, investor, brokers mostly, or people sort of related to this industry to bring it and teach and do a four day event, or a three day event, rather, tell us a little bit about what agents will learn at the Investor Summit?

Jennifer Beadles 41:01
Yeah, so the investor agent Summit, we hosted our first one in February, and it was fantastic. So yeah, we had about 1900 attendees that were participating in the investor agent Summit, and really is all about teaching agents, again, how to work with investors, and really why you should consider adding this to your business. Again, either through you know, bringing somebody on to be that specialist on your team, or you adding that as a service to your current existing clients. And so we have this next one that’s coming up, we’re gonna get a little bit different. So day one, is actually going to be all about working with investors inside your real estate business. Day two is going to be all about how you as an agent can invest in real estate. And then day three is our mastermind slash workshop day, that’s where we’re actually going to be kind of breaking down specific strategies. And we’re going to be kind of talking about different things that I like to bring content that’s not easily accessible or found at the brokerage level, you know, things such as like running, profit and loss, things about, you know, how to understand investment, property financing, you know, commercial financing, and, you know, residential financing. So, again, it’s going to be a really fun event, we’re super excited to host it, again, we’ve got a great speaker lineup. And we’re just really excited, again, to bring this content to more agents, because we’re just so passionate about the opportunity in working with investors, and then also seeing agents close more business and then get some time back. So they’re not always working, you know, seven days a week.

D.J. Paris 42:28
Yeah, I think it’s a great opportunity for the listeners to learn more about an ad this either as a an additional service that you provide to your clients, or, again, maybe you say, You know what, I just don’t particularly enjoy working on the investment side. But I want to make sure that I’m knowledgeable enough to then pass that off to other you know, people who make this sort of more about their business. And this is a great way to do that. So I would encourage everyone who is listening to sign up for the, for the summit that’s coming up here. And then also for the four week, bootcamp, is there, by the way is there a cost for either of those

Jennifer Beadles 43:09
Summit is completely free, we do have a VIP all access pass. So if you want access to all videos for lifetime, and also our mastermind day, then we do have a cost for that. So it’s $97 to get try to make this really affordable for you guys, especially for newer agents that are just getting started. And then our bootcamp so we’re running a small promotion, the doors aren’t actually open yet, but, but you’ll get a bit of a discount if you join the waitlist. And the doors are gonna open in about, I think two weeks from today. And so if you joined during that, that weightless time period for for that week, you’re gonna get a couple $100 off the price. But again, we’re keeping these just really affordable, because we really want to focus on adding value to agents, so that then they can put that back into their business and really just kind of grow and scale from there.

D.J. Paris 43:55
Awesome. Well, for everyone listening, please visit visit agents invest.com Check out the free summit that’s coming up. And again, there is an upgrade opportunity to to download some of the speaker presentations, if you’d like to, to have those sort of on demand. And then the bootcamp which is coming up which is the four week boot camp, you can join the waitlist, you’ll get more information about it to see if it’s a good fit for for your business. Jennifer, thank you so much for being on our show. This was really, really a lot of a lot of fun, but also really educational. I think I think you’re right. You know, you said something very powerful towards the beginning about probably 1% of real estate professionals are familiar enough to work with investors. So if you can, you know, improve that skill set a lot less competition, and you might find that working with investors is a lot more rewarding. I imagine I should have asked this earlier and I know we’re at the end. But I imagine your nights and weekends even opened up more when you started working with investors. Is that a fair a fair thing to say? say,

Jennifer Beadles 45:01
Oh, absolutely, I don’t even know what working nights and weekends looks like anymore. And I haven’t for a couple of years. So great, great benefit of working with investors,

D.J. Paris 45:10
well, if anyone is looking to recapture some of their time, and still participate, you know, with with transactions, and look, Jennifer is doing it from, you know, halfway around the world, and is able to travel. And, you know, she is the real deal. So check out agents invest.com, and sign up for the summit, sign up for the bootcamp. And you know, we couldn’t be bigger fans of agents and bass. So Jennifer, thank you so much for being on our show, we really appreciate it. This, this was a wonderful time that we spent on this episode. And we want to thank you on behalf of the audience for sharing time out of your vacation to do this with us, which we are so grateful for. And on behalf of Jennifer and myself, we want to thank all of our listeners and viewers for continuing to support our show, only thing we ask is that you please tell a friend think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing this great conversation with Jennifer about agents invest and send them a link. Think about any other realtor, you know, that is not working with investors and say, Hey, here’s an opportunity that you may want to check out to add this to your portfolio of services and send them a link. Easiest way you can do that, if they’re not a podcast person to send them to our website have sent them to keeping it real pod.com, which they can stream every episode we’ve ever done. They don’t have to be a podcast person, or a tech savvy person, they can just listen right from their browser, or if they are a podcast person, have them just pull up their podcast app on their phone and search for keeping it real. And hit the subscribe button so they can get this episode. Jennifer, thank you so so much. And if I if we ever are in the same city in Croatia, I will definitely say hello to you. Because from what I understand there are not a lot of Americans in Croatia, sort of one of these places on the Adriatic Sea. In fact, most of us are probably going where’s Croatia? Exactly. But it’s on. It’s on. It’s in the Adriatic Sea. And it’s kind of, you know, nestled above sort of Greece and, and I’ll be any enough if you other places, but anyway, um, did you find that when you were in Dubrovnik? Were there a lot of Americans or was it was it not wasn’t mostly Europeans?

Jennifer Beadles 47:18
There’s been very few English speaking people. Here English being spoken, we say Oh, from so yeah, but it’s great. It’s, you know, it’s a good time to travel right now, because there’s just not a whole lot of tourists out.

D.J. Paris 47:31
So I am I am excited. And again, if we’re if we if we’re in the same city, at some point, I will come by and say hi, and so we can speak English and have a nice moment. But anyway, enjoy the rest of your time with your family. I love that you’re still able to run your business I am I am going to be completely shut down. Well, not completely. I’ll have to check my emails and and stuff but I do not. I feel like I am more tethered to my job than you are and I really aspire to being able to do what you do. So I appreciate you sharing that with our audience. Jennifer, thank you so much. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks, Jennifer.

Jennifer Beadles 48:07
Thanks again. Thanks all