Think Bigger Real Estate

Justin Stoddart
Welcome back to The Think Bigger Real Estate Show. Today we're talking about momentum. How do you get into momentum? How do you maintain momentum and trust me, momentum is everything when you're trying to succeed at high levels. Today's guest is going to tell us all about that. We'll be right back with a full introduction to her.

Justin Stoddart
Today's guest, Jenny Wolek, she's out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ladies and gentlemen, this gal brings the energy. She's a leader, she's leading other leaders. She's someone who is an expert really on this topic of helping people maintain momentum. But before we can maintain momentum, we have to get into momentum. Jenny Wallach, thank you for being here today and helping us get into this amazing topic that everybody needs to hear right now.

Jennie Wolek
Oh, my gosh, thank you so much, Justin, I am so honored to spend time with you. I always love our time together. And I know others do as well. You know this is such an interesting topic. It's such a great word I actually named this new membership group that I've created, maintain your momentum because it's so important. We can talk about it. And yet, sometimes it's hard to get going in it. And really, it just starts with baby steps and getting into action and getting into action on the right things about that.

Justin Stoddart
You know, I love it. It's a great premise for the show. I want to tell a story. You've heard this story before. I had a basketball coach right now it's like for those that are watching it live right in the middle of March Madness, right. We're seeing some teams succeed go on and defy all odds. Other teams, we're seeing the struggle, my head basketball coach who was actually voted at one point to be the top high school basketball coach in the country. So this guy's really good. He would always tell us he would say, we have to get big mo on our team. He said if you can get big mo on your team, we win. And Big Mo was momentum. He knew that it was like having another player off the bench. When you start to get the crowd into it, you start to get your own belief into it, your own energy into it and all of a sudden, like things, get a lot easier. It's like the court all of a suddenly tipped downhill. And the other team is struggling.

Justin Stoddart
And so I love this topic of momentum. Because the real estate industry can be a tough one. Right? You can really have. This seems like a lot of stuff is trying to stop your momentum. Right. I know we're in a tight market right now. I don't know exactly what Tulsa looks like. I know Portland's pretty tight, right. Talk to us a little bit about how you're teaching people in a tight market how to get momentum, you said it's doing the right things, doing them consistently, maybe even not even expecting to see the exact result right away, like what else should people be trying to do in order to get big mo on their team?

Jennie Wolek
Oh, my gosh, you know, as you were just talking through that story, it reminded me of so many great examples that I've seen in my life. I've been in this business for 20 years, Justin plenty. And I don't know if you saw the news report yesterday that there are more real estate agents than there are active listings on the market in the United States. And so that's a topic that real estate's freakout real estate agents freak out about, they're like, Oh, oh, my gosh, so much competition with the other agents. And I'm so old and have done this business for so long that I just know, I need to focus on what is most important for me, my team, my community, and stay on purpose and can't get distracted by others around me.

Jennie Wolek
But first real estate agents, I think, make a big mistake of getting into this business. And they don't know why they're in this business. They don't have a purpose or a mission or a plan for their lives, let alone their business. And so momentum can be picked up over time by doing the right activities. The number one job description of a real estate agent, whether you like it or not, is lead generating. And that means talking to people connecting with people. And if you're not doing that every day, then you might as well quit, because that is your job. And so you have to get into action.

Jennie Wolek
Now today's conversations may not lead to a piece of business tomorrow. And yet it can build a relationship that produces future opportunities and connections and relationships for a real estate career. That's how over all these years, 20 years in the business I'm you know, grown a team that last year, we got to about 173 families and half of those come from our local database and 30% come from agent relationships. And all those relationships are based on consistency. And predictability comes whenever you stay consistent on what matters most. So we got to practice every day, you got to do what you're supposed to do. You got to have the skills to perform at the highest level. And you got to have systems and checklists to have a systematic approach to your business so that you don't forget when you get really busy and you get distracted by all the things going on in today's world, you got to follow your schedule. So there you go.

Justin Stoddart
So something that stood out to me that you said there. We love sound bites, right? As a society, it's like, let's go to the news. And let's see what the soundbite is. The reality is most sound bites aren't good, right? There are very few times you go and you're like, oh, my goodness, that's amazing, sometimes, depending upon the news source, but I would say, in general, the News's job is to inform us their business is to keep our eyeballs on their content. And the reality is that eyeballs stay on their content if there's something alarming. And so whether it be real estate news, whether it be national news, you identify this component of the fast way to get out of momentum and stay out of momentum is to constantly be watching the news bites, because you think, okay, there's fewer listings, than there are agents, oh, my goodness, the sky is falling. That means every potential listing that I have in my Hopper, I've got how many other agents competing, like you just start to bring all the world's problems into your lap, and you're like, please, problems hang out right here inside my brain, right? And I think you can't like so much of this is mindset. And of course, I'm a mindset guy, right?

Think Bigger Real Estate exists for a reason is that most of the problems that we face, begin in our heads. And I think having the ability to weed out the stuff that doesn't serve us, and actually being able to identify what is serving me. And I would just encourage everybody to take Jennie's advice there and be very careful about the things that you hear that were designed to keep your eyeballs on that right on those things are not designed to help you get into momentum. If you want momentum. Be very leery of consuming, internalize, and worrying about national news, right?

Jennie Wolek
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm a, I'm also a mindset person. And I'm also a systems freak. I love systems. And I also know that we have to build them based on our goals, whether they're our personal goals or our professional goals. And I think a lot of agents are just willy nilly with their day like, well, let's see what happens.

Jennie Wolek
Well, you know, when you build a perfect calendar of the perfect life of a real estate agent, that should already be a time block, Justin, I know you get up early, I start my day at 445. I go, I go and the same time. I exercise, I think I plan, I prepare for my day, I am proactive, I am already prepared for anything that can come my way.

Jennie Wolek
And I take care of those most important things in the morning that are my busi...

Justin Stoddart
Welcome back to The Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I am fired up about today's episode. We're going to tell you everything you're doing wrong with YouTube, which may be the fact that you don't see how big the opportunity is. Today's guest is phenomenal. I can't wait to introduce him to you hold tight. He's coming right up.

Justin Stoddart
Today's guest Jackson Wilkie. He's been in real estate for two years. He's already out of production. Yet you heard me say that right? Two years. And he's already out of production. How in the world did he do that? I'll tell you this. It wasn't by buying leads from Zillow. It was by creating his own lead source from YouTube. Jackson Wilkie, thanks for coming on the show today.

Jackson Wilkey
Thanks, man. pumped to do this again. You know, when I first started, it was just getting going on this now. It's it's a full revolution of things working for me.

Justin Stoddart
Yeah, yeah. I can't wait to hear. Let's let's dive right in. Right. I think first and foremost, I want to help agents to see the opportunity. I've been, you know, working with agents and I, they tell me that that Zillow used to be a really great opportunity. Like the leads were were were strong, they were good, the conversion rate was pretty high. I haven't met anybody, in all my conversations that says that they're as good as it used to be. And there continues to be a kind of a downward trend of the quality of leads and how much Zillow is charging, and even the demands that they're putting on you. In certain environments that require you to call back even before these leads are vetted. It's a total waste of time, in a lot of respects, definitely not a place where you can go to really build a long term career with strong margins, it's going to allow you to serve your clients at the highest level. You're a big proponent Jackson of the fact that people can own their own lead source, as EMI right, the upstream model was was really designed around this concept of getting to the customer before big tech portals. You guys are doing that through a beautiful way through YouTube. Talk to us about how you stumbled upon this idea or how you really uncovered the fact that you could create your own Zillow, right? You could cut out all of the big boys, you could become your own Big Boy, I talked to us about that.

Jackson Wilkey
When we talk about you know, funnel systems. When you think about the Zillow, the Redfins of the world, these people are already shopping at home. And so what what YouTube and the way that we've uncovered, you know, lead generation for us is, first of all, it's 100% conversion rate these people are calling us but secondly, we're so far above Zillow and Redfin because before anybody searches for a home, they're searching for where to live. And so we've unearthed that where to live. And so they are going through and watching these videos, and I'm talking, you know, I don't shoot videos under 20 minutes anymore 20-30 minute videos, and they will just go through all of my videos and they'll watch it and then they reach out and call so what happened was, it's all pain points.

Jackson Wilkey
When I got in I was brand new, I was your job right title rep for escrow. And I came from North Idaho as a, just a just blue blue collar worker, journeyman lineman, and then I'm thrown into escrow sales. So now I really don't know anything about real estate or escrow sales, but I just had a knack to get in front of people and then within 1011 months, I'm like, I'm going to jump into real estate. So here I am in a brand new market, brand new job. I don't know anybody except for realtors. And so I start doing what every real estate agent and what every Digital Marketer like Gary Vee says, hey, go do it via digital mayor because I knew I was going to do video right? Go be a digital mayor and shoot all these restaurant shop interviews because you'll just dominate the market. So I did I'm gonna go get her so me and my business partner Jesse doubt we started shooting these videos. I couldn't cold call I couldn't do I even landed one appointment. Justin cold calling. And for listing like I actually with the scripts, which sucks, landed and I didn't get the listing because I was that bad. So I started doing these videos like crazy because I was like, this is going to be the way I'm going to get business and man, I have the Beaverton Police Department. I had this schools, I was shooting videos for schools. I mean, I would walk around people like oh my gosh, you the video guy thought it was working to this day, basically two years, I still haven't received one deal from that. So I

Justin Stoddart
Here real quick, because I think that's where a lot of agents make the mistake. They say, Okay, I need to put out content. And I need to go highlight all the business owners in my community. And what you're saying is, Hey, guys, heads up. We tried that. It didn't work. It doesn't produce leads. It might make you like locally famous you might be the digital mayor, but it's not actually putting you in contact with people that are buying and selling. Is that accurate?

Unknown Speaker
So it's 100% accurate and it's painful because I hear it every day like in the Clubhouse and all these all these agents talking. Yeah, you need to go shoot these and then I go look and they don't even they don't do it. Or be they don't even have a real estate YouTube channel and I'm like, why is everybody teaching this when It's not the truth. And I've done the pain. So I like telling people right up when they start doing it, don't because honestly, here's the thing, and this is not rude to say, but what happened during COVID like the service industries got hammered restaurant owners. I mean, basically they're shutting their doors. So helping them I and that's the thing you hand out your cards all the time and it feels good and they Thank you up and down and I love the feelers you know the feeler so it felt good, but you don't get business from it. Maybe you get a onesie twosie but is that like we're building teams, massive teams is that scalable and global, you know, if you can only get one or two reach out. I didn't get any and I was doing it at a high level and I put it to YouTubes and Facebook's and Instagrams and everywhere. And it just was not something but that's what turned me into I actually found this gal over on the East Coast Karen Carr. She's a boss I call her the OG she she was doing this YouTube stuff, but also the pain point was she wasn't doing it the way I would, you know, escrow process and inspections. But she she unearthed the SEO aspects. So I started getting crazy and SEO and then started going to YouTube and doing these videos. But you know, the thing that happened was all the videos we were told to do restaurant interviews escrow, you think about it just if I do an inspection video or an escrow video, that person's already in escrow, or already closing on a home, so their realtor, it didn't make sense to me. So I started doing this keyword research basically using tools like TubeBuddy, you know, and I realized and in your market, obviously I moved from there. I live wherever I want now because of this. Beaverton, Oregon was searched 31,000 times a month in Google, it was search 375,000 times a month and YouTube and I'm like, Oh my God. I started looking at Milwaukee, Oregon Tualatin, Oregon, Hillsboro, they're just 10 times 15 times more a month in YouTube than Google. And that's where nobody in the world was teaching actual YouTube for real estate wasn't being done. So I called up Jesse, my business part. I'm like, dude, I got it, man. It's this vlog, we got to go out into the cities. People want to see this. They don't want to read about it anymore. So he and I, again, I'm in a new market. So I don't know anything. They I'm like, Jesse, why i...

Justin Stoddart
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host, Justin Stoddart and I'm thrilled today to bring someone to you who's going to help you create a real estate legacy. He's done it himself, he's helping others do it, he can help you do it as well. He's gonna lay out the blueprint of what that looks like.

Justin Stoddart
Before I fully introduce him, let me remind you that inside of the Think Bigger Real Estate Group on Facebook, we take these topics that you're hearing, and we invite you into the learning, we learn best when we engage in it. And that's what the group is for is to take the topics of this podcast this show, and drive them deep into your life so that you become the future self that you want to become.

Justin Stoddart
Back to today's guest, his name is Pat Hiban. Many of you know him as the founder of the very popular podcast that was one of the very first things I listened to when I got into the industry, Real Estate Rockstars. He's also the author of Six Steps to Seven Figures, this book that I absolutely loved a more recent book, which is called Tribe of Millionaires where he talks about his path to surround himself with amazing people. He's done that through building the group Gobundance, many of you have heard about that.

Justin Stoddart
There's also an opportunity to talk about a new group that he's created Gobundance Emerge, which is for the up-and-coming millionaires.

Justin Stoddart
Today's guests with no further ado, his name is Pat Hiban. Pat, thanks for coming on the show today, my friend.

Pat Hiban
Thanks, Justin, good to be here, buddy. Hopefully, it'll come through clear, I'm on my way to Charlotte, North Carolina in the car, so but I'm looking forward to digging deep with it.

Justin Stoddart
I'm excited to have you here. And I know from someone who's pretty close to you, who'd said, Hey, Pat takes whatever he's doing at the moment, he takes it very seriously. And he's currently in a bit of a retirement mode, he's taken a kind of some time to really focus on that. And, you know, maybe you can speak to that a little bit, but I would imagine that part of your success, Pat, has been just this ability to focus on whatever it is that you're doing at that particular phase of life. Is that true?

Pat Hiban
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, my goals, Justin was always to be able to work from anywhere, and it's cut the guy that checks his emails and, and counts his money, so to speak, know how to, like, look at different spreadsheets and talk to a player, property manager or an accountant, you're there, you know, that was kind of always my vision. And that's kind of my reality now on that, and of course, you know, go find it, some of their abundance with three other partners. And, you know, that's fastly growing up to 380 members suddenly COVID, just because to a whole new level, as for membership, and so, you know, that's, that's always fun to do and then meeting new people through that. So 10 to 20 hours a week nowadays of my time. So that's kind of where I'm at.

Justin Stoddart
So you've really taken I mean, after selling over a billion dollars in real estate, you've kind of taken and maybe retirement, is that the right term? It's more it's kind of a different phase, maybe more of a legacy phase of your career. Is that maybe a better way to put it?

Pat Hiban
Yeah, absolutely.

Justin Stoddart
So what I really want to get from you today, Pat, and again, I'm so appreciative of you being here, is if you were talking to an agent that had aspirations to not just build a great income, and a great business in this industry, but to really create a legacy to really create something that that, you know, stood the test of time that really impacted people in a much bigger way than just some zeros in their bank account. What's the blueprint that you would give to people? Like what are some of the key things that maybe people don't know about you? Or that maybe even those that are close to you know, that like, what, like what guidance? What advice would you give to those that really want to create that?

Pat Hiban
Yeah, that's a great question. I think that you know, if you ever want to create a legacy, I mean, here's the thing. There are millions of real estate agents, and unfortunately, most of them are the same. Right? Unfortunately, most of them are, you know, their career consists of a sphere of influence referrals. And working with clients and giving them the best possible service and, and having integrity, honesty, and knowledge of some cliches like that. And if you really want to have a legacy. I think you need to do something different. You have to do something for your markets. That's the fascinating thing that their agents are doing but you got to think outside the box.

Justin Stoddart
Okay, very good. Yep, it's Yep, I think it just got a little bit better. So what I'm hearing you say is is don't just be a carbon copy of the agent down the hall, right? Don't just say, Oh, hey, they had success, or this is what all real estate agents do that I should do it too, but start to put some sort of thought into both your value proposition as well as kind of the unique life that you want to have that that said,

Pat Hiban
Absolutely.

Justin Stoddart
Now, again, you produce at a very high level for a long time, right. And then you get into some ownership, how important is that you think for for agents to really take a look at it kind of starting to build equity, whether it be through real estate investments, whether it be through the franchise model, stock options, like what, how important is it you think, for people to really kind of take a look and say, like, I need to own not just rent, right? But own assets?

Pat Hiban
Very important. Very important, like, your false prophet if you don't, if you sell real estate, but you don't invest in real estate yourself.

Justin Stoddart
Yeah, yeah, no, that's great. False Prophet. If you don't, if you just sell and don't invest in real estate, it's awesome.

Pat Hiban
Yeah, so you know, I remember when I first got a visit, it was an agent in, in my office who fizbo their house and they and broker buyer, and totally, so I'm like, Really? So I mean, he had agents running or, you know, you should always be an owner, if you're gonna do anything yourself should use yourself, right. So, so yeah, and of course, it's, the majority of the really wealthy people in the world are real estate owners. They got rich through real estate. So. So that's something that I recommend to everybody. And that's something that I did, I always bought houses. And then it just did the monopoly model where you sell your little green houses and turn them into a big red hotel.

Justin Stoddart
I think there's massive credibility in someone's book when the foreword is written by Gary Keller. And there's a testimonial by Barbara Corcoran, looking here at your book. And, you know, one thing that Gary teaches is to only sell the homes you don't buy, right. And I think that's kind of what you're saying is like, it's really hard to be a great broker yourself of stuff that you don't actually believe in, or that you haven't situated your life, and prioritized your life in such a way that you're an owner as well. It's good stuff, Pat.

Justin Stoddart
Talk to us a little bit about your group, Gobundance, and Gobundance Emerge. How much of a part have these masterminds, these groups, benefited your ongoing rise, right? Where you weren't just one of those agents who had a successful career and then kind of rode off into the sunset? Like, I feel like you're in a very robust chapter of your life. Now. 300 peopl...

Justin Stoddart 
Welcome back to The Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host, Justin Stoddart, very excited about today's guest. This man has some accomplishments, I'll tell you about some things that he's going to pour into us. Just in my little bit of time that I've known him. He's somebody who loves to pour into people. Today, we're going to be covering objection handling, and mindset for real estate agents. He's also going to share how he earned just last year alone $250,000 just through zoom with first time homebuyer classes. So if you're trying to get creative on ways that you can be very effective, regardless of the market, regardless of whatever situation we're in, this is your man.

Justin Stoddart 
I'm excited to have him here before I fully introduce him. Let me remind you that inside of the think bigger Real Estate Group on Facebook, we go deeper on these topics. The reality is you listening to us talk is going to help you a little bit you come in and engaging in the conversation and being part of the conversation is going to help you a lot a bit. So come join us there and Think Bigger Real Estate Group on Facebook.

Justin Stoddart 
Today's guests back to him. His name is Brad Van De Walle. He's out of Calgary, Alberta. He runs the largest REMAX office in the world. The man knows a few things about success. As I mentioned, his passion is coaching. But he's a high producer as well, Brad, thanks for coming on the show today.

Brad Van De Walle 
Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it. Looking forward to this.

Justin Stoddart 
Yeah, my pleasure. All right, let's dive right in. Because I know people that are big thinkers, they don't have a lot of time to mess around. They're here to get some information and apply it and start thinking big start creating some achievements in their world. So let's talk a little bit about first of all right away, talk to us about this first-time homebuyer strategy via zoom, how many people to attend? What was your strategy, give us some kind of nuts and bolts that we can apply today.

Brad Van De Walle 
This is literally my favorite thing that I've ever come across. You know, I'll tell you, if you don't mind. I'll tell you the backstory and kind of how we got to there. So I was doing first-time homebuyer seminars in brick and mortar at the end of 2019. And my mortgage broker came to me, he's like, we got to start doing these. I'm like, man, like, it's Canada, like, there are 10 feet of snow, like, nobody's ever gonna show up to these things, right? So people actually started showing up and we didn't know what we were doing. We just kind of posted something on Facebook. For those of you that know me, technology is my least skill, like next to running marathons and stuff like that. So like, I was just not my jam. But, you know, we found a company that that advertised. And we had people that actually showed up, and we're like, Okay, this is actually pretty cool. Can people maybe 15, but then, you know, was weather dependent. We had not the best part, like for parking, but then people have to drive across the city sometimes. So then COVID head, and then he looked at me and like Canada was locked down. Like I mean, 30 days, like you're not, you're really not going anywhere. It's a little bit different states. And he's like, let's start doing them via zoom. And I'm like, what, zoom? And I'm like, it sounds like it's never gonna work. He's like, No, seriously, he's like, I didn't know what it was like, zoom, you come on to do this. I'm like, Man, I'm not going anywhere. For 30 days, I'm willing to try anything to not go crazy. So we actually did the first one, we actually had about 15 or 20 people on, and we're like, really like, okay, so we kind of fumbled our way through that one. I ended up losing a couple of deals from it. And I'm like, there's definitely something here. Since we learned from that. We adjusted a couple of different companies. At one point we were getting between 20 to 25 people on and about 10 people would sign up for my mortgage broker. So I have it is we do our presentation. They all sign up with the mortgage broker at the end, the mortgage broker does the pre-approval, and then his team ships them off to me. It's beautiful. They do all the follow-up. Thank you, Josh. So you know, we were getting that many, and then now it's evolved. And then and then what's the production started going down? Or the sorry, the attendees started going down, and then our attendance rates, so that I started with this marketing company in Canada. And I'm like, Guys, I need more leads. I need more people there. Well, the first one that they did for me, I couldn't even believe it. We had 100 people registered and 80 people showed up. And I was like, I'm like, Alright, like now we're talking like now this is some severe stuff. And, and they actually for anybody that's interested. You can you know, get-go I'll pass the number off to you. It's a company that does it in Canada, they have secure spots, so they don't over-saturate anyways, it's the best thing you've come across.

Justin Stoddart 
Now. It's read. So it's Facebook ads, I'm assuming that's how they're driving it or that

Brad Van De Walle 
yeah. So and I and I don't know anything about how they set it up. It's, it's super cool. And they do it at an extremely high level so that I know that they get them via Facebook, via Instagram, but it's their follow up system with high-level CRM, that really helps the attendance because our attendance rates were not great, but now we're at about a 75% attend tenants rate, but we're also at about a 90 to 95% retention rate. So our one of our bigger ones that we had, we had 125 people sign up 100 people showed up right on the dot and 94 people stayed to the end 33 people booked an appointment with my mortgage broker to get pre-approved. It's a brilliant strategy, isn't it?

Justin Stoddart 
I mean, you look at whatever situation is out there. There's always a silver lining. I hope if that's one thing that you take away from this is I don't care if it's a tight seller's market. I don't care if there are national lockdowns, the reality is somebody somewhere is figuring out some way to take advantage of that, get a competitive advantage and start winning. And you're like living proof that you had 80 people show up for a first-time homebuyer class. Right when the rest of the world was like, scratching their head thinking like crap, like, how am I gonna? You know,

Brad Van De Walle 
yeah. And then we took it to the next level to as zoom is going to be something people like realtors get hurt, like, Don't fight it. I don't understand it like this stream yard stuff. I don't get it. Whenever I do mine, I have my team. Like, if you don't know it, find somebody that does, because it's super important. Tech is not my thing. It literally gives me anxiety makes me shut down. That's just who I am. But sales amazing ideas. Amazing. I'm just not great with this. But you know, we're even at the point now, where a lot of people don't understand zoom is the way and it's super-efficient is what I love about it. Now what we're doing with our buyer's agreements and meeting buyers, we're doing it via zoom, we go over a buyers presentation over zoom. And then after that, we send them literally our buyers or buyers, our BRS or buyer's rep agreements, we have buyer exclusive via DocuSign. And we get them to sign in right there. So we do a zoom, they sign up with us move on, I don't have to drive half an hour to my office in case they don't show up. If somebody doesn't show up to a buyer's agreement, which is going to happen. Guess what I'm either at my house, or I'm whatever, I haven't wasted much time and I can get back on the phone and do something else. So ...

Justin Stoddart
Hey, and welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host Justin Stoddard, excited today to teach you specifically what you need to do in order to be successful in your first real in your first year of real estate, whether you're brand new, or whether you want to start over, like hit the reset button, let's do this again. I want my next year to be fantastic. I have the ultimate guest to help you do just that today.

Justin Stoddart
Before we go there. Before I tease you anymore with who this is. I'm going to remind you that inside of the Think Bigger Real Estate Group on Facebook, we go deep with these topics. The conversation continues after the interview to where you can engage and get your questions answered. So join us over there if you're not there yet.

Justin Stoddart
Back to today's guest, Her name is Shelly Zavitz. Not only is she an amazing real estate agent, best selling author. She's an amazing human being obviously adore love this lady. She's fantastic. And I'm honored to have her on the show today. Shelley, thanks for coming on. Again, the Think Bigger Real Estate Show.

Shelley Zavitz
Thanks for having me. That is so nice.

Justin Stoddart
You know I mean, you know, I mean that that that's not just... So you know, that's how I actually feel about you.

Shelley Zavitz
So yeah, back atcha.

Justin Stoddart
So for those who don't know, Shelley, again, I kind of give a quick bio here, shall he tell us a little bit about maybe how you got into the real estate industry cuz I think this will give some context to where you're coming from, and maybe why people should listen to you, which I think they have all the reason the word listening.

Shelley Zavitz
The jury's out on that, by the way. All right. I was in Canada in broadcasting for 15 years, I got married, I came down to Portland, Oregon. And one of the things that I decided when I got here was that I wasn't gonna stay in radio. And what was the thing that I really liked doing outside of that, and I used to remodel condos in Vancouver, BC with a partner. I was like, I really like real estate. I'm going to do that. And I went down the exact same road every single person does, and all the real estate agents watching this like, Huh, right. And I knew for people when I moved to Portland, and I was like, Okay, I'm gonna start a referral business. It's gonna be gigantic, I'm going to be amazing. And then I really I mean, to buy for across the face the reality of what it is to build a business, a startup business, in real estate, right?

Shelley Zavitz
So I did all the hurdles that you do in the first year and second year, and I really decided that I was like, I was gonna go big. So I wanted to be Rookie of the Year for my company. At the time, I worked for the Hasson Company, they were amazing to me. And of course, I mean, why couldn't I do that? Until I realized that you actually have to have a database to do anything. So I made it to the end of that rookie race and learned so much about myself about business, but mostly about myself and who I am in the world.

Shelley Zavitz
And I wrote a book about it. And it's a bunch of stories. So what I used to do was write for radio. So please, no, it's not. I'm not a serious person. I just, I don't know how to do that. So it's a bunch of stories to staple some points about the principles of building a business in real estate. And I launched that in 2019. I got a publisher of his Herrmann house that took me on it was great. And we sold out the first 1000 copies in two weeks. Remarkable, right? I thought, like me, and my mother would read it, and then I would like to send it to you. So thanks for reading.

Justin Stoddart
I did and I loved it, by the way. No, the book is new agent 365, like your first three to 65 days in real estate, how to be successful. It's actually not only super informational, and helpful, but it's really entertaining. You're a great writer. Thank you. Actually, I found myself oftentimes just totally laughing because it's you bring some of the funniest stories. It's like I oftentimes hear agents will say, I wish I would have written a book about my time in real estate because the stories are unbelievable and like you actually did and it's so good to hear the things that you're learning all interwoven into this internal dialogue versus like all these like hit your head against the wall here and learn this lesson here. Like it's really a great read so do that hasn't read it hasn't that doesn't have their copy of it. Please go find it. It's a fantastic book.

Shelley Zavitz
Thanks, Justin.

Justin Stoddart
And, and no, like, I used to write parody songs and stuff. Like it's not. I can't be serious. I do. I am serious in some parts. But I mean, we're, I think that we lose track of the fact we deal with a lot of money as real estate agents, but we lose sight that, you know, we're not doing brain surgery here. No one is going to die. You know, and we take it away. A little bit serious. So I thought we'd lighten it up a little bit. The response to the book was incredible. We just passed 10,000 copies sold since June 2019. And I started to get feedback from new agents. And they first were thanking me just for writing it because it gave them a sense of actually what they were feeling was acknowledged, you know, it's a rite of passage, the first year is terrible the end. Like that's just true. So you don't need to read the book there. We did, it.

Shelley Zavitz
So I started to pay attention to what they were asking me. And it was like, it was letters to my office, it was posted on Instagram, private messages to Facebook, just. And they were asking for more information not about transacting real estate, but it was about how do I build my business? And how do I be successful and I'm super scared, and all the things that we all feel when we start something new.

Shelley Zavitz
And I got thinking about it, and then I dive into some statistics. And I learned from NAR that 84% of agents start their business without any business, retail finance experience. So here we are, we're licensing people. And then what about the business part? Right. So then that led me to the program that I was talking to you about? I went to Stephanie Chamblee first and I said, Hey, you know, this is really weird that this is happening. This is the feedback that I'm getting. What do you think? Because I am not a trainer, right? That's not what I do. I sell real estate. But what do you think about finding all of the right people to teach? And I had, I had an idea of what 12 topics I felt should be taught to start up a business. And we went together to these people. And we said This is what we want to do. We want to make it super affordable for everyone. Because new agents, you know, you're starting a business. Anytime you launch anything, it's expensive. So how could we do it in an affordable way? Because we all know, training? I mean, come on. It's expensive, right? So we went to these trainers. And we said we want to do this great thing. We want to do 12 weeks of training for new agents to help them build a business like a blueprint of it. And then whatever brokerage they're with, they can build up on top of that, but how do we get the foundation there first, right? Because we can make a solid impact on the industry. If we just gave more information off the top? I think it's not a secret. Why are we keeping it a secret? So we went to those 12 people, every single one of them said yes, and its New Agent 365 Missions was launched in September like we did our first round, it was awesome. There's kind of a gaming component to it, which is nice. And, and I'm excited because I have to say that this is I get a lot of recognition about this. But this is a...