Ryan Young the Co-Founder and CEO of Fello and the owner of Young Team, talks about his transition from a well-known chef to real estate business. Ryan explains how working in a posh restaurant has taught him work ethic and discipline which is now serving him in real-estate. Next Ryan discusses the importance of calling FSBO and expired leads, and how they helped grow his business. Ryan emphasizes the importance of approaching people without judgment, listening more and talking less. Last, Ryan talks about his website Fello and explains how agents can best utilize it.

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

Ryan Young can be reached at (216) 859-1201 and [email protected]

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00There are 36,000 realtors in the state of Ohio and today we're going to talk to the number one team in the entire state. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren't converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment, we're going to be speaking with top producer Ryan Young. Before we get to Ryan, just two quick reminders. Actually three quick reminders. I'll keep them real short. First, please support our sponsors. You heard him at the beginning of the show. We also have them throughout the interview portion, please, they are the reason we can pay our bills and pay our staff pay our team. So please support them check out their services and products we only we only promote products and services that we think are just unbelievably great for realtors. So that's one second, please tell a friend about this podcast. That's the other way we grow is by telling other realtors about us. And the third thing that you could do it that we think would be really helpful for you is actually to follow us on social media. Every single weekday we post a short clip from one of our episodes kind of like a best of with an actionable insight or moment we post them every day or every weekday on all the various social channels even including Tik Tok and we're on like six or seven social channels so anywhere Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc Twitter, you can find us all those places just pull up any sort of social platform you use search for keeping it real, hit that subscribe button, we would really appreciate it. Alright guys, let's get to the main event my conversation with Ryan Young.

Today our guest is Ryan Young from a young team with Keller Williams in Cleveland, Akron and Canton, Ohio and also the founder of fellow which is a seller lead generation tool. We're going to be talking about that shortly. I should also mention by the way before I get into Ryan's bio that he I think it's in his bio but just in case it isn't he literally has the the most successful large team in Ohio so we're super excited to talk to him about his business fellow and also the young team as well. But let me tell you more about Ryan. He is the CEO of the young team recognized as the number one large size team in Ohio and the number 18 team in the United States by Wall Street Journal real trends, the young team this is insane. Last year 2022 completed 600 More than 600 sales transactions with over 200 million in production 600 transactions 200 million in production insane. Ryan's a third generation real estate agent with a real estate engrained obviously into his DNA. And the team has been at Keller Williams top 100 team for several years in a row in 2019. Ryan recognize the challenges faced by agents due to national prop tech companies and founded flash house flash house was a direct to consumer eye buyer that bought and sold over 500 homes in Northeast Ohio since 2020. And 2022 Ryan founded fellow which is high fellow.com hifelo.com link to that in our show notes, which since its launch in October of 2022 is quickly becoming the most powerful seller lead generation tool in real estate a coveted coveted place to be fellow is now being used by 35 of the top 100 Real trends teams in the country, including Rob to Ken ski, Jeff Cook, Robert slack, Andrew Duncan, and more probably many of the people that have been on this show us fellow so we're gonna talk about that. At his core Ryan is committed to empowering all agents with the tools and tech that has fueled his team's success to learn earn more about fellow go to high fellow h i f e l l o.com. Hi fellow.com for the seller lead generation tool. And if you are an agent in the Northeast Ohio area, this would be Cleveland, Canton Akron around there. If you are thinking about maybe seeing what other opportunities exist as an agent, I know I would be reaching out to Ryan, because I'd love to get, you know, on a team that did 600 transactions and 200 million last year. So anyway, reach out to them, you can visit them at the young team.com link to that as well in the show notes. Ryan, welcome to the show.

Ryan Young 5:39Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

D.J. Paris 5:42excited to have you. For two major reasons. Usually guests, we have one, we have one major focus in your case, we're going to talk about two of them. And I'm really excited. But before we get into you know the fellow and and what the technology that you've built does for agents, I'd love to hear your personal journey into real estate because you even though it is in your DNA and your third generation realtor. It wasn't how you started, you didn't start in real estate. You had a different career. So tell us about how you got into real estate and why

Ryan Young 6:13yes, so many don't know. But before I got into real estate, I was actually a professional chef. I graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, when I was 20 years old and thought I had a life all figured out right? Just like many 20 year olds, and I cooked all over the country and Chicago and Las Vegas in New York. And all of a sudden I got to my mid 20s and had a mid 20 life crisis and was like what am I doing with my life? I'm working hard. I'm making no money. I have no weekend's no holidays, I, all my friends that I graduated with are all going out and doing things and visiting each other. And I'm stuck, you know, in the restaurant industry working a lot. And so I was in Vegas at the time, I think I was 26. I reached out to my folks who were realtors in Cleveland, they had a team, just the two of them. And I called them and said, You guys are going to think this sounds crazy. But what do you think about me moving back home, I was in Vegas at the time and actually getting into the real estate industry. And really what I was saying to them is I have an associate's degree in culinary arts, I'm 26 years old, what can I do? What takes the littlest, the least amount of education littlest? Actually, that makes sense. When I'm saying least amount of education, the least amount of education. It has the most upside financial upside. And I was like, the real estate industry, you go to school for 120 hours. And next thing you know, you can sell people's largest assets. And so they said, you know, if you're going to do this, one of our core values is have a decided heart. And if you're committed to it, and move back home, so I moved back with them. This is 2009 and got my license and then started building from there.

Speaker 1 8:06It you know, you you have, you've made that a very condensed story. But we should I should mention that when you were working here in Chicago, at least only because I live in Chicago. Ryan wasn't just a chef here in Chicago, he was a chef at the very number one most exclusive restaurant in Chicago, or if it's not number one, it's number two. And we are where I am. and I were talking about this beforehand, where you know, Chicago has a lot of really, really great restaurants. So he was like, at the very top of the mountain I've actually been to the restaurant Ryan was at it's called a linear Google at some time, if you want to see the crazy molecular gastronomy stuff that they do. But but, you know, world renowned place. So Ryan was was not floundering in his career. But that's just how difficult you know, working in foodservice can be even even at the top. And so it's so amazing to me, that you were able to transition from what I consider I always think of chefs as being extraordinarily creative. I don't know, maybe that's maybe that's not always accurate. But I always think like, that's a different skill set than then doing real estate, but maybe it isn't, I mean, obviously, mechanically, it's different. But maybe the disciplines and the habits are similar. I'm not sure. So how was it making that transition from, you know, being a real professional chef to going and starting,