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

Welcome to our monthly feature Unpopular Real Estate Opinions with Chris Linsell. In this episode, Chris and DJ discuss how the situation evolved around the cooperative commissions. Chris discusses what buyer agents should do when they are faced with a zero cooperative commission rate. Last, Chris also discusses the approach that buyers agents should take at the moment. Please check Chris’ profile on LinkedIn. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and Apply Design (get 15% off of your first purchase using real24).

Caira Button a 30 Under 30 2023 laureate talks about her initial plan when she moved to Chicago and how that lead to her career in real estate. Caira shares her tips and tricks for starting a YouTube channel and also discusses how she built her own channel. Caira discusses her process of writing, editing and publishing a video on her channel. Caira also talks about how she built her team. Please check out Caira’s YouTube Channel here. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Caira Button can be reached at caira.button@compass.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and Apply Design (get 15% off of your first purchase using real24).

Shahar Plinner a tax expert talks about how he got into taxes. Shahar discusses ways agents can structure their entities that enable them to save on taxes. Shahar also discusses how to keep a clearer picture of your taxes by keeping separate accounts. Shahar shares tax deductible examples for agents to leverage. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Get a complimentary business evaluation by clicking here. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and Apply Design (get 15% off of your first purchase using real24).

Brad Boeye talks about how he got started in the real estate business as the third generation in the business. Brad discusses his perspective on the market right now and where it’s headed. Brad also discusses branding and what he’s doing to maintain his brand. Last, Brad talks current market and the importance of good relationships. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Brad Boeye can be reached at bboeye@bradboeye.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and Apply Design (get 15% off of your first purchase using real24).

Award-winning video marketer and coach Kim Rittberg shares tips on blending personal interests with professional content on social media for real estate agents. She emphasizes the importance of using personal experiences like dancing to connect with the audience and enhance authenticity. Learn how to create powerful visual metaphors that resonate with viewers and grab a free download for tips on creating revenue-generating videos.

Michelle Berman-Mikel the CEO & Founder of Beyond the Method™ and Berman Media PD talks about how she got involved in social. Michelle discusses what do realtors get wrong about their Instagram and also how often should agents post and what should they post. Michelle also breaks down the types of posts they arrange for their clients for every day of the week. Last, Michelle discusses the importance of using media to connect with prospects. Please check out Michelle’s Beyond the Method – online course and her Coffee and Questions Podcast. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Michelle Berman-Mikel can be reached to set up a call here. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and Apply Design (get 15% off of your first purchase using real24). Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today we’re talking with one of the top Instagram prospecting coaches in the country for realtors. Get excited and 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. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by apply design Welcome to a revolution in real estate presentation brought to you by apply design the leading Virtual Staging solution tailored for forward thinking realtors. Now in today’s fast paced market making a lasting impression is everything. With applied design you unlock the full potential of every listing, transforming empty spaces into stunning buyer attracting homes all with just a few clicks. And in just a few minutes. Choose their DIY staging available for as low as $7 per image, or save time with their auto staging feature for as low as $10.50 per image plus experience their service firsthand with a trial image absolutely free. Their intuitive platform empowers you to bring visions to life ensuring your listing standout Captivate and sell and for listeners of keeping it real apply design is offering an exclusive 15% off your first purchase. Simply use the code real 24 That’s our EA L two four at checkout. Elevate your listings enchant your clients and achieve faster sales with apply design. Don’t let your properties blend in make them shine with applied design. Your success story starts now visit them at apply design.io Again, that’s applied design.io remember your first impression is the only impression. And now onto the show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents 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 Instagram prospecting coach Michelle Berman. Before we get to Michelle, just a couple of quick reminders first support our sponsors. We love them. They’re the reason we can do these episodes and pay our staff so please check out their services and products consider investing in them. We vet our vendors, our advertisers and only pick ones that we know are actually going to help your real estate business and second, leave us a review let us know what you think of the show whatever podcast app you might be listening on us to right now. You know let us know what you think and we read every review and comment helps us make the show better and better. Alright guys, let’s get to the main event Instagram, let’s talk with Michelle Berman. Today on the show our guest is Michelle Berman. Michael and Instagram prospecting coach for real estate agents. Let me tell you more about Michelle. Now Michelle is a nationally sought after Instagram prospecting coach, speaker and owner of Berman media PD. She’s also the creator of beyond the method, which is an online course that teaches realtors and loan officers how to tap into the brains of their ideal clients and leverage the data it provides to actively prospect on the platform of Instagram. Her specialty is helping agents see the platform as a viable lead source so that they could scale their relationships but also build credibility in their local markets. Michelle is also the host of the coffee and questions podcast. And Michelle is an expert in understanding and utilizing psychology to help people tap into the power of Instagram and its ability to be a lead generation source for your business. To learn about Michelle’s course and all things Michelle visit her website Berman media pd.com. I will have a link to that in the show notes and also follow her on Instagram which is Berman media social br M A N. Berman media social link to that as well in the show notes. Michelle, welcome to the show. Michelle Berman-Mikel 5:20Thanks so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here. And I’m so excited. D.J. Paris 5:24I’m so excited to have you. We rarely ever talk about Instagram, and I am not particularly skilled at Instagram myself. So I am excited to learn along with our audience. But tell me more about you. How did you get involved in social? Michelle Berman-Mikel 5:39Yeah, this is my absolute favorite story to tell. So thanks for starting with that question, for sure. But I actually got into the Instagram space way back in 2014. So when that when that started, at that time of my life, Instagram was much more about sort of the influencer space, right in the sense of, you know, not necessarily holding a pretty hot product and getting paid to do it. But more so I was the broker between the large brands and the Instagram accounts that we were placing content on, or buying ad space on. So really what happened was I was sort of in the middle of these huge brands trying to promote product, trying to drive website clicks and trying to drive views. And honestly, at that point, buying things off Instagram wasn’t really a thing yet, you had to go to a website. So I was in between the brand and in between the accounts themselves. So in that process, I personally purchased several large Instagram accounts to do this on my own. So I was selling ad space of my own, I was working with the brands to create all the ads writing all the copy, deciding on which pages to put their content on to hopefully drive sales. And what I learned in the process was really, really quickly how to see through the crap, right? Hope I can say that that way, but fake views, fake likes, fake everything that’s on the platform, right? Yes, it was my job to sniff it out. Because if a company was paying me a large sum of money to help them produce more money, and we put we chose that Instagram page to put their ad on and it didn’t produce anything, then that ultimately fell back on me. So in the process, I just had to really be able to sniff that stuff out. So with that being said, I got very good at understanding what worked, what didn’t work, what kind of content was going to resonate with an audience and what wasn’t, what kind of copy was going to actually get someone to take action. So long story short, I face planted into the art of human psychology and sales psychology and have those two worlds merge. Fast forward to today, I run a very large Instagram prospecting company. So we specialize in teaching real estate agents and loan officers how to actually actively prospect on Instagram, versus what a lot of us know as passive prospecting, right, which is, traditionally what Instagram has been, which is sort of this platform of just post content, make good videos, write good captions, make sure you show up in your stories consistently. But then you just sort of sit and wait for inbound messages. So you’re sort of living in this reactive space. And I have spent the better part of you know, close to five years since launching beyond the method, trying to flip that upside down and showing people that Instagram is not just a placeholder for great content, it’s a platform that can actually replace a lot of the outbound prospecting that you have to do or that real estate agents tend to do in the form of like cold calling, and, and all kinds of other things. So that’s the fast way to go from 2014 to today. D.J. Paris 8:47This is real, I’m really excited to dive into this because I, I really only know to look at Instagram, from a research and development perspective from an agent. So an agent can follow all of their clients and their prospects, and learn about their lives and then use that as reasoning to reach out, Hey, I saw you went on vacation, I saw the picture of that fancy dinner you made. So that’s and that is not about posting content. And so I’m really excited to learn more about sort of best practices with content and also relationship building. But the only thing I know to do with Instagram is be like, Oh, I saw somebody did this and maybe I could reach out and develop, you know, a stronger relationship that way. But there’s so much more, of course to developing a content calendar really thinking about what kind of content somebody can somebody can produce and promote that actually drives business in a way that’s authentic and and not salesy. So yeah, let’s talk about it. Well, maybe the first thing to talk about is what do Realtors get wrong about their own Instagram accounts like what are they doing that you just go gosh, I if I could wave a magic wand and tell them all not to do this, what were what are they doing that you wish Michelle Berman-Mikel 9:59they Oh my Got, how much time? Do we have DJ all the time. There’s a handful of them. And I’m gonna do my best to keep it Switzerland as far as how I would describe this. But there’s really two big ones that jumped out at me as someone who spends all day every day consuming real estate agents content on Instagram. First and foremost is they’re leveraging boilerplate templates, right? So what that means is that they’re using services that are producing the same type of content for every person that’s using the service. And the problem with that is for you as the real estate agent, right? You’re like, Yes, this is easy. It’s cheap. Cool. Now, I don’t have to worry about it. I checked my social media box. But the problem is that there’s no person there. There’s no brand built into that. There’s definitely no like, who is Michelle? Or who is DJ invest involved in that content. And the problem with that, for me as a consumer is I’m not hiring you as a real estate agent, because your content says that you’re the top 1% in your area. I’m hiring you because I like you as a human. There’s something psychologically that’s connecting us, right? Oh, you’re into CrossFit, too. So hi, my husband runs ultra marathons. Wait, so it is mine. Right. And now we’re building this like very intentional and very authentic relationship. And then you as the real estate agent, I hire you as the vehicle to get me from, I want to buy a house, but I’m, too I now own a house. But I’m choosing you because I like you, and then you just become the mechanism to get me there. Right. And so I think real estate agents think that Instagram is a place for them to show off. And it’s it’s sort of overproduced, and it’s like this big giant production of content. And I have had, in my almost 10 years, I’ve probably had a videographer follow me around like maybe three or four times on one hand, right? So 95% of the content that I produce on a daily basis is from my phone. That’s it, right? So D.J. Paris 11:59so we’re so we’re just about understanding correctly, we’re talking about, for example, the kinds of boilerplate content that Realtors often will fall back on is closed, closed sale, or I just won this award or I just got, you know, I’m in the top, as you said, 1%. I just again, it’s it’s achievement here are all my achievements, or, and you’re right, that doesn’t really speak to what I mean, anyone other than your parents might want to see or your maybe your best friends. But Michelle Berman-Mikel 12:30yeah, boilerplate content. Also, second, to your point there, DJ, because yes, absolutely. But the second part to boilerplate content is, if you’ve ever seen those sort of stock images that go out, sure, right, where if you’re, if you’re paying, you know, 150 bucks a month, and it posts on your behalf, and all it does is slap your photo on it, but it’s the background is a kitchen that’s not of one of your listings, or it’s not like that type of stuff, right? It’s very unauthentic. It’s definitely not organic content. And it’s usually when rinse, wash, repeat, right? So I have a friend that I’m talking to on Instagram right now. And he recommended another person to me, and he’s like, Hey, you gotta go look at this guy’s Instagram. And then you gotta yell at him. Because I know him. So tell him I told you to yell at him. And I was like, What are you talking about? And I pulled up his Instagram, and every single piece of content was one of the stock templates. And the only personal photo on the entire account with over 200 posts was his profile photo. That’s it. So that’s the problem, right? It’s like if I click on this gentleman’s account, I’m like, Who is this dude? Right? It’s just says his business business business or quote template. So D.J. Paris 13:41should should we think about Instagram as Yes, a way to demonstrate what we know and maybe some of our achievements, I certainly feel there’s a place for that. But most importantly, would you define Instagram as a way for people to get to know me or the agent as an actual individual both professionally and whatever degree of personal somebody wants to expose Michelle Berman-Mikel 14:07Absolutely 1,000,000% And there’s certainly a great point there that you just mentioned that I don’t want to skip over which is you know, how personal Are you willing to get you know, I have a private coaching client who he is not comfortable posting his children on Instagram. I have no problem with that right? I have a two and a half year old so any of you guys who see my Instagram you’ll see him he’s the best thing ever, but I love talking about him I love posting about him. But not everybody is that comfortable? Right? When you when you have things like hunting or shooting right like my husband is medically retired Greenbrae so we shoot a lot like we have we have we own several guns in our home. And for me, that’s just part of who I am. But that’s not going to go on my Instagram, right like maybe a video of my husband and I going to the range for like a date night, but I’m not going to be posting other content related to the gun piece right now. But D.J. Paris 15:00is the reasoning for that that is the reason for not posting gun content because you feel that’s a fairly polarizing topic or, Michelle Berman-Mikel 15:10but at the same time, I’m not going to diminish who my husband was, and the fact that he serves or served our country. And is, is that incredible shooter like, and we have a lot of fun going and doing it. But it’s also like another big one is the religion piece, right? Like, can we use? Can we use that in our content? Yes or No, right. But I have clients who, for example, they’ll say, like, Michelle, we love hunting. So how can we post about hunting without it being this polarizing thing. And what I always say is, maybe we don’t post a dead animal, but maybe we just post pictures in front of our car in our camo, right, like getting ready to go. So there is certainly a way to be able to talk about anything and everything that you want to talk about in a way that is designed to be comfortable and consumable. But Instagram as a platform as a whole is designed to be a place where someone gets to know me as a human, and gets to see how credible of a XYZ, I am, right? In this case, we’re talking about real estate agents. So I don’t care as a consumer, if I’m your first house you’ve ever sold, or your 100th house you’ve ever sold. Because if I don’t like you, I’m still not going to hire you. Even if everyone is saying you’re the number one person. So that’s where the active prospecting piece of what I teach specifically comes in, because in order for me to determine, as a consumer, that you’re the real estate agent that I want to hire, there’s some some sort of qualifications, if you will, that are going to make me feel the need or sort of the urge, if you will, to reach out to somebody via social. D.J. Paris 16:46That makes sense. I’d like to ask a few other questions that I that are coming to mind that Realtors often ask me about social and I’m not an expert at all. But one of the questions and I know this isn’t an easy, quick answer, but how often to how often to post or write. And we’ll start with their how often to post. So I know this is part of your program. And by the way, we should really be plugging Michelle’s program because she goes through this in step by step details. But beyond the method, it’s been around for five plus years, she updates it all the time. And you can find that at Berman media pd.com. And we’ll have a link to that. But as far as sometimes agents are like, gosh, I don’t have all this time. So what what is your first sort of answer or response to somebody going? How much? How much time is this going to take? And how many posts should I be doing? Michelle Berman-Mikel 17:37It’s such a big question. And it’s so loaded, what I what we do for our clients, we have a 30 day calendar, right? So we post 30 days out of the month. For me personally, if you can see my content, I post once every two or three days on my grid, and I am in stories constantly. So stories is for me personally, as someone who’s you know, on Zoom, I don’t even know how many times a day way too many hours by end of our monthly zoom report would be really bad. You know, like your phone tells you like your screen time report, it’s up 60% or whatever. Yeah, I would be worried or nervous to see my Zoom one. But so for me my focus and my emphasis is on my stories consistently every single day. And then my feed content is very intentional. It’s very planned. It’s very thoughtful, and like it just be real, right? Like, if you don’t have something to post that day, then don’t post it. But at the same time, you can strategize and build that out to the place where like in my phone, I know what my next four or five pieces of content are already right now, it comes down to do I have time to write the caption, right. So today I wrote the caption and was able to get it out. And so that’s why there’s a new piece of content out. But for our clients when we are helping do this for them, or when we are coaching it for them. We tell them 30 pieces of content on a monthly basis. But more importantly, that 30 pieces of content is or what’s important about it is what it is broken down into, right. So what are the four categories that make up the 30 pieces of content? Because I believe personally, that there’s this big sort of 8020 rule that’s floating around in the social media space. And I by no means am like saying, you know, these other individuals are not correct. I’m just simply saying that our strategy is a little bit different. In the sense of, of 30 pieces of content a month 15 of those are personal. So half of them are Who am I as a individual, right? And then the other 15 are broken down into three different categories. Each of those three categories are business related. But you have three different categories of business. So you’re not shoving one specific conversation or one specific type of content down somebody’s throat multiple times a month, right? So that 30 pieces of content if you’re producing 30 consistently What I will say is, if we’re doing it for you, you’re gonna get 30 a month. However, if you are the one doing it, don’t stress out over, oh, it’s been two or three days in between, just stay consistent with your calendar of what kind of content you should be producing. And having that in place, like I know what’s coming next, I just have to be able to get to it. D.J. Paris 20:20And one of the cool things about Instagram that I think often gets forgotten was we tend to link Instagram and Facebook together, they’re obviously same company, and, you know, one sort of birth the other in a sense, and we tend to think of them as similar platforms, they’re really not, because what you can do an Instagram are one of the major advantages is people can find you very easily. And they can find you through demonstration of some of your hobbies, your interests, your personal stuff, as, as Michelle, as you were saying, and so you know, through hashtags through through content, you can actually find other people that are into the same stuff you’re into. And guess what people who share experiences people who share hobbies, passions, they tend to want to work together. So this is it’s fun. So whatever it is that agents do, maybe in their off hours, even as boring as it may be, if you’re into reading, like that’s okay, that that for some people. I mean, I don’t think reading is boring. But I understand that read writing content about it, you can say, well, how do I do that? Well, you could do a video of a book review of something you just read, that really blew your mind. Or you could just talk about this the best book I read this year or whatever, there’s lots of fun ways to take someone’s passions and interests and produce really easy content, for sure. Michelle Berman-Mikel 21:39For sure, for sure. And that those hobbies and those interests, that is how you prospect that knowing that about you about yourself, is how you prospect. So you, you actually sort of started to say a DJ without even probably realizing that you were but those hobbies, right? Like if you’re into reading, right, I’m super into reading I my husband and I love our quiet time when my son’s asleep on the weekends. He’s still naps for a solid two, two and a half hours. So we get our books out. And it is like quiet time. Don’t touch me. Don’t talk to me like we are reading, right. But it is our favorite time, I just finished the fourth wing series, Rebecca Jaros, who came out with those two books. And I’m now reading the Left Behind series, if anybody’s familiar with them, but I’m a diehard reader. I love real books. I don’t I’m not a huge audible person, I’d much rather hold it in my hand. But what where I’m going with this is when you are actively prospecting on the platform. So many times I hear people will say, How do I do that? Where do I start? Who do I interact with. And there’s really some structure to that. So the way that I teach this quite simply, is it’s five days a week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, each of the five days are associated to a specific category. And that category is designed to help you talk to the people that are ideal clients of yours that also share those mutual interests. So I’ll do this as fast as possible. And I know we won’t have time to like dig into each of the categories specifically. But Mondays, for example, is following day. So what that means is you’re actually interacting with the people who are following you, not the other way around. Right? So for clarity, when we open Instagram, and we look at our accounts, or when we open it and we see our grid or our feed, right? Both of those are going to show us people that are already I’m sorry that we’re following, right. So we’re going to see the same people that were normal or used to seeing, right, but if we flip that upside down, if I have 10.5 1000 followers, right, and I only follow 1400. I’m not worried about the people that I’m following on this Monday day, right? Because I already know that I’m consistently interacting with those people just naturally. So on Monday, I’m focused on the 10 and a half 1000 that are following me that I don’t know, right? So if I’m scrolling that list, and I’m like, yeah, here’s a realtor. I don’t know, here’s a loan officer, I don’t know, right, I am initiating contact with them. So I’m gonna go to their account, I’m going to see if they have a new piece of content, I’m going to see if they have a new story up, and I’m going to create engagement. There’s some structure around how many and all of that, but I won’t get into that. And the beautiful thing about Monday, is, if you’ve ever heard of like the one two or three degrees of separation, right, we all know the person would somehow based off of that up to six degrees, or I guess six degrees of separation Max is how far we would have to go before we even know somebody, Instagram literally hands that to you on a silver platter in this sense. Because even like you and I getting connected DJ, how did that happen? Right? You interviewed somebody that I knew. So I clicked on her profile, did the suggested accounts button, got this big drop down of all these other accounts and then boom, here’s this, keep it real podcast with DJ and I’m like, Oh, well, I go on podcasts all the time, right. So here’s an opportunity to create a relationship and that relationship was built on via all I did was interact with a realtor that had started following me that I didn’t know. Right. So that’s, and here you are. I mean, here we are right um, which is beautiful. But so Mondays is really easy in the sense of Mondays focus is on the people who are following you, they’re there for a reason, right? Give them a reason to stay by being interactive with them. So that’s what. So D.J. Paris 25:23just just to make sure I understand. So Mike, I think this is gold. This is so important. So Monday’s, what we’re doing is we’re going into our feed we are looking or we could go into our follower list, I guess, what would be the best way to figure out if we follow the person or not? Is it literally just one by one? Or do you have like a special word, we’re only Michelle Berman-Mikel 25:42focused on the people who are following us in this case. So what you would do, however, many people are following you, and mine is 10 and a half 1000. Right. So I would literally just click on that number, and I would just scroll through the list go down. And we have a tracker, it’s a big, really, I kind of lovingly say it. It’s a very sexy Excel spreadsheet. But really, it’s just a big Excel spreadsheet. But it’s all color coded and pretty and whatever, right. But on Monday, you’re going to end up adding anybody that you interact with, you’re going to add their name to that list, and then you have a tab specifically for it that will grow. Because obviously, you’re not going to be able to interact with every single person that’s following you every Monday. It’s not reality. So yeah, D.J. Paris 26:22so the the reason and the reason that we’re interacting with our followers content is the people that follow us is because they are going to notice that we’re interacting, and we’re talking about engagement, like writing content, comments on their posts, maybe sending them would a DM categories, classify or Okay, so any any content, any contact with their content or themselves. Yeah. Michelle Berman-Mikel 26:48And keep in mind, right, like, if somebody starts following you, and you don’t know them, they obviously are following you for a reason something created the desire in the other individual to start following you. But if you don’t show up for them in any form of reengage, right, meaning if you start following me DJ, and I just let it go, and I just never go to your profile and engage back with you. You’re sort of kind of a lurker follower and you’re like, Oh, well, I’m following Michelle. But now I don’t really know where and eventually you might stop following me altogether. Right? So how do we create a stick factor? And then how do we create an opportunity to have a conversation with someone as it’s happening, sort of striking, while the iron is hot, if you will, or the concept of that when someone starts to consume us? Now, we’re not saying to somebody, like if you start following me right now, I’m not going to go and send you a DM and say, hey, thanks so much for following me like absolutely not, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to engage like a normal human, we’re going to go look at your content, see if you’ve posted something that I can resonate with, and then I’m going to re I’m going to react or respond to that. D.J. Paris 27:54So yeah, I think you were you brought up a really good point. So what we’re what you just talked about is the dreaded linked in connection, because what happens sometimes when we accept a Yeah, we know this, you accept if you accept somebody, I don’t know what they call it, the more connections I think, in LinkedIn, when you accept a connection friend, so to speak, you know, sometimes you instantly get those automatic DMS inside of LinkedIn saying like, Oh, by the way, I want to sell you X, Y, or Z, or be your service provider. And nobody likes that. Literally. So if you if someone follows you don’t just write them a DM, thanks for following me. Would you like do you need a realtor? That is not how humans interact? And it is not how people I mean, maybe once out of 1000, you might get lucky, but everyone else will just be turned off? Because that’s not you haven’t demonstrated that you are interested in getting to know that person at all. Michelle Berman-Mikel 28:44Well, and that ties into the second big mistake that from your original question. Like we just magically got to this place where I feel like it’s perfect to bring this up. Don’t have an automated message in your DMS. Yes. And I get so many of them, right like if I and I just got one right now while you and I are recording live, I got one where I sent a message a while back and literally just got an auto responder. So she obviously has many chat or something timed to send out an auto responder at a certain time. Some people have on set automatically so as soon as they get a message, they automatically send out an auto responder. So for For context, right let’s say for example, DJ you posted in your stories, a picture of you holding a Dutch Bros that you went and got in the morning on your way to work, right? And I comment or engage back in that via story reply, aka DM right. So if I respond to your story, and I say oh my gosh, I’m a huge Dutch bro fan. I have recently been getting the protein coffee. What did you order question mark send in you then have an auto responder that kicks back and says thanks so much for reaching out for to me for all your real estate needs. Here’s my cell phone number please call me like I’m instantly turned off and I’m definitely not responding to you but you Even more important than that, you are not going to ever see my message, right? Because now Instagrams not going to tell you that you have an unread message. Right? So the amount of time that’s going to lapse between you even seeing that there was that message from me in the first place to you responding to me is going to be way too long for me to be to, for me to stay engaged, if that makes sense. D.J. Paris 30:22It totally. Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. And I also think, too, that in this as, as a man, I can only think about this from my perspective, and maybe the male perspective is, you know, there is such a thing as called sliding into someone’s DM. So as men, male realtors, we should be mindful of that, you know, in particular females, I guess it never happens to me, I never get any, any unsolicited, sort of romantic things inside of Instagram, but women do and so can we just really quickly talk about if we’re going to DM somebody who follows us and, and we’re not as familiar with them, we’re going to send them, you know, Hey, I saw you got this coffee or this thing? And I’m really into the same thing. How do we do that in a way that doesn’t come off as flirtatious or non professional? Do you have any just general guidelines there? As a woman who probably gets those kinds of messages often? Michelle Berman-Mikel 31:18Yeah, unfortunately, I do. And when my husband and I first got married, we’re actually about to celebrate five years. But when my husband and I very first got married, we used to make fun of it together, like I would get the messages, and then I’d run into the other room and show him and he would respond, and it would just be fun. But now it’s not as funny anymore, because I’m a mom. And you know, I’m very happily married. And it’s sort of just annoying. But here’s the thing I will say is when I can very quickly tell intuitively, when it’s a message that is worthy of my response, right? So if someone just says Hi, H i, and that’s it not responding, right? If someone is sending me a message saying, Hi, beautiful, did all of this obviously not responding? Right? If someone says, Hi, do you have a few moments for us to chat? Not responding to that? Right? Yeah, D.J. Paris 32:09that’s the one. I hate that one, too. Hi, Michelle, Michelle Berman-Mikel 32:12do you have room in your day to take on more clients? Like, obviously, you didn’t look at my profile? Like if that’s what you’re right. So I think the number one thing I can tell every single one of you guys that are listening to this and how to how to deal with that is use your intuition. Right? Men have it women have it, we have different versions of the same intuition. But you can tell right, and my my pet peeve, if you will, is when a lot of the older generation will say, Well, I just don’t want to I don’t know. So I just respond to all of them. I’m like, no, just because I’m 33. And you’re 50 doesn’t mean that I’m 50, I’m not going to have the same intuition that I currently have. Sure. Right. So I think it’s just a matter of like, using your intuition and allowing using D.J. Paris 32:56your best judgment. Yeah. Yeah. And also as as men understanding, we don’t get those kinds of messages, but women do. So being extra mindful. I mean, literally, I’ve never once gotten one of those messages. But which is, which, you know, is just the different experiences that men and women have Michelle Berman-Mikel 33:13fans on how you initially engage, right, and what you say on your side. And so there’s a message structure that we teach, I’ll give you give it to you very quickly. But story replies, when you’re doing a story reply, it’s designed to be in three parts. Now, any of you guys have ever read what to say, or the art of conversation, or any of these really, very, very good sales psychology books, is that is how I formulated all of this. So it’s not just theory, right? This is truly like how it actually works on a day to day basis. But a story reply in those three parts. So again, all of these three parts is one message, but that one message is broken down into each of these sections or segments. So part number one is acknowledgement. So what is the person on the other side desire by using social media in the first place, right to feel her to feel seen to feel acknowledged for who we are and what we’re doing? So if I’m responding to your story about Dutch Bros, and I don’t acknowledge the fact that you’re holding a cup of coffee or that you are holding Dutch Bros coffee, I’m missing the boat there, right? I’m doing you a disservice. And I’m doing myself a disservice in trying to build our relationship. So acknowledgement first, so I’m going to acknowledge quite literally, hey, it’s awesome that you got Dutch Bros. I’m a huge Dutch Bros fan, too. Then part number two to the message comes in, which is subliminal business play. So this has been tried and tested over and over and over again. And the best way to do this is to tie it into your clients or the fact that you have clients or the fact that you’re actively working. So what would that sound like for you right? Like and let’s pretend I am the real estate agent Michelle, and I’m prospecting new DJ in my DMS right so I see the story of you posting, are you holding Dutch Bros? I’m gonna say it’s awesome that you got Dutch Bros. I’m a huge fan of Dutch Bros as well. I’ve been getting the protein coffee recently, and then the subliminal business play might be. Dutch Bros is actually my favorite place to take clients for coffee before we go look at houses. That’s my civil middle business play. So I’m not prosper, I’m not selling them directly, right? I’m simply acknowledging the fact I’m bringing to light subliminally, the fact that I have clients, right? Yeah, D.J. Paris 35:31so your your, your, your your telling, instead of selling, you’re basically talking about an experience that’s related to your business without saying, and you might be the next person that I want to take. You’re just saying, Oh, hey, I love Dutch friends, I take all of my clients there. Before we go, I’m so glad to see another Dutch brother fan out there or whatever. Michelle Berman-Mikel 35:51And then And then the third part is ending it in the question, right, ending it in the form of a question. So my final segment to that message that I’m sending you would be something like what’s your go to order at Dutch Bros? Or how often are you? Are you stopping at Dutch roses? You know, I go three times a week and my husband hates it. Ha, right. So anything in the form of a question is designed to get engagement, right? So if I’m ending it in a question, I’m anticipating you responding to me, and then when someone responds, so let’s say you do respond, my job at this point is to keep the conversation going as long as I can, right? We all know that in sales, the number one thing that we need to do is capture attention for as long as possible, right, the longer we can keep it, the more likely we have the opportunity or will have the opportunity to convert it. So my number one suggestion in your DMS is live in the land of curiosity, meaning ask questions all the time constantly, never respond in the form of a statement, or something that is a rhetorical question, right? In that sense, questions that are designed to continue the conversation is key, because we have to get through the four to seven touch points. That traditionally is what a real estate lead takes anyways, to convert in the first place. D.J. Paris 37:08And there’s also transition sort of ways to transition from the sort of the statement about the post into the question. So I was thinking, as you were saying that, you know, what I would probably add, if the roles were reversed, as I would say, like, hey, Michel, you know, after saying your Dutch Brothers, that’s awesome. I love Dutch Brothers, they take my clients there. Hey, funny timing. I actually am looking for a new order. I I’m kind of getting sick of my regular order. Do you mind sharing what you ordered? Would you recommend it or something like that? Where I’m Yeah, yeah. And I’m just sort of a little bit more, you know, slowly and gently squeezing us into, hey, by the way, tell me tell me something about you. Michelle Berman-Mikel 37:51Yeah. And I love that. And that’s the thing about it is every single one of us, no matter who you are, you’re going to do it a little differently. But the beauty of it is that you have to do it the way that you would do it and that there’s no magic one to this question is the number one question if you ask it, everybody’s gonna respond, right? It doesn’t work that way. So being able to just be intuitive, I think is the key and most importantly, living in the lane of curiosity and your messages. And I think the biggest thing that I want to make sure we don’t miss is prospecting is not a if I get to it, I’ll get to it type of situation, right? Especially when it comes to Instagram. So I prospect on Instagram every single day, I don’t prospect in the form of cold calling at all anymore, zero, I haven’t had to cold calling yours. I’m very grateful for that. But and if you’re listening to this, and you do cold call, that’s you keep doing it, right. But designate a time of your day or time block it, which is I think the phrase that most people use, right time block a hour of prospecting in your morning or in your afternoon or if you don’t have a solid hour, you can designate maybe it’s a little bit in the morning and a little bit at night. Right. But it has to be a non negotiable and I think that that’s the problem with with Instagram right now is people are seeing it as if I if I have time, I’ll get to it when I get to it. Versus this is an opportunity for me to truly never have to cold call again. If I do it right, because I can build a relationship digitally first work through the touch points and then get on the phone with them. Hello. Never having that weird, gross cold call feeling ever again. That’s super intrusive, feels very invasive, you’re catching them at the wrong time. They’re like, why are you calling me who are you? I’ve already talked to five other realtors. Right? Like, we want to avoid all of that. And so avoiding that feeling is literally why I developed the prospecting part of the Instagram platform the way that we do it because I know how that felt many many years ago, and it’s awful. I don’t know anybody that enjoys getting on. D.J. Paris 39:56No, it’s It’s terrible. So Monday is for reaching out to our followers and initiating some sort of interest in their activities, their passions and seeing if a conversation emerges from there, at the very least, even if it doesn’t, what we’re doing is demonstrating care and that we’re interested in someone else, and that we’re paying attention, which is the most one of the most flattering things that any human can experience is somebody’s paying attention to them, like you said, being seen being heard, most importantly, being acknowledged, and that’s through the content or the comments, or the DM is, Hey, I saw you did this thing. Awesome. That’s really cool. What do we do on Tuesdays? Michelle Berman-Mikel 40:37Tuesdays, and thank you for pushing us along there. I intend to go on tangents when I kept asking No, no, no, D.J. Paris 40:43I could talk about I could talk about it for hours. And I’m like, I got I better remember. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. Tuesdays are Michelle Berman-Mikel 40:49Tuesdays and Thursdays are actually the same. So well, they typically have different categories. But the theory behind Tuesdays and Thursdays is the same. So what Tuesdays and Thursdays are is when you’re not at home, or when you’re not at work, where do you go? What hobbies do you have that you could potentially be having conversations with individuals about real estate, and I have a client, I’m gonna use her as an example. She is a plant lady, hardcore plant lady, every closing gift for every client is a really beautiful, real plant. Right? I told her, I was like, I can never hire you to be my realtor, because I will kill the plant. But I love it. I love plants. I have green plants all over my house that most of them are not real. But when she brought that up in that context, she was like, Well, how do I add? How do I make that a category where I can talk to other people about plants on Instagram, and have it be in my area? Right? And she was shocked at how fast I was able to find flow. D.J. Paris 41:46It’s so easy. There’s uh, yeah, you could go to any any florist. You could go to any plant person that’s local. You could you could say, hey, let’s jump on an Instagram Live, I’ll promote your business will you promote? We can talk about real estate and talk about plants. I’m just throwing ideas. Michelle Berman-Mikel 42:03You’re doing my job for me. Like that’s exactly what the idea behind it is. So when it comes to finding them, right, like, we did this together on a Zoom meeting her and I literally Googled plant shops in her area. She actually she happens to live in Connecticut. But so we googled plant shops, and the only thing that really came up was Home Depot and Lowe’s. And we’re like, no, no, right? So I showed her was a trick that you can do on Instagram. And I said, Sarah, go find your plant shop that you go to on Instagram. She’s like, Oh, I already know their account. So she goes to their account. And then in their profile, if you see the contact button, and then right next to the contact button, there’s this little tiny button that is a person with a plus sign. And if you click on that, it’s going to give you this huge drop down of suggested accounts. And Instagram is saying that based off of following this plant shop, you might like all of these, right? And we went through all of those, so many of them are either other little plant shops, coffee shops that also sold plants in her area. bloggers that blogged about plants in her area. I mean, like the list was endless. And she was like, Michelle, my town is so small, How is this even a thing? And I’m like, Thank you Instagram, because you just created a community for yourself in your hyperlocal market. Right? And I really want to hit on that in your hyperlocal market. Yeah, we’re D.J. Paris 43:23not finding plant shops from all over the country, which anybody could do. And that doesn’t really necessarily speak to the local community. Correct, Michelle Berman-Mikel 43:31right. But like Instagram, if by using that suggested button, right, Instagram is literally giving you what you are asking for, right, which is I want to find other people who are into plants and other plant shops or other bloggers or whatever, in my area. So to go back to your original question, and to keep the flow of the tracker happening, Tuesdays and Thursdays are designed to be these types of days right so you’re focused on Hobbies specifically, or things that you enjoy outside of work. Now this can be at home, right you can I have a client who’s really into homesteading, right? If that’s you, there’s a whole community for that on Instagram. If you’re into like knitting or arts and crafts, or if you’re a mom, right, I have a hockey mom client that I adore her. And she’s like, Michelle, I don’t do anything other than go to hockey, like every single day we go to hockey. And I was like, that’s a day on your tracker, because all of the different arenas that your son’s play in all of the different teams that have their own Instagram accounts, all the different small businesses that support the hockey community, aka SEL hockey stuff, all of the coaches that have their own Instagrams, right, the list goes on and on and on. And the beautiful thing about all of this, so Tuesdays and Thursdays, you can have different categories for each of the days, right? So if you have multiple hobbies or multiple different things, but the idea behind Tuesdays and Thursdays is that you are talking to people about things that you also share a passion for or an interest in. And if I’m commenting on if I’m my client, that’s a hockey mom, right if I’m Like, if I’m sorry, if I’m commenting on a hockey teams post about them winning a game or winning a match, right? Guess who’s gonna see my comment, all of the other moms or all of the other people that are into hockey that are probably following that Instagram account. And the idea is that they are going to see my comment, they’re going to see my interaction, they’re going to click on my profile, go and see if you’re doing it right that you are posting about hockey and that you’re posting about your kids being interested in hockey too. And now there’s this connection. And then the subliminal part of that happens, which is we’re showing all of our real estate content are showcasing our credibility through our testimonials and all these other things. But the connection is initially made via mutual shared passion or interest. D.J. Paris 45:49Love, it’s we’re finding local people as best we can in our community. And just that little tip, that really cool tip that I did not know about is look for the little icon. So look for an account of a business or a page that that your Instagram account that you’re into, that’s shares your one of your passions. And then you can see a little icon you click on that, and it will show you suggested accounts that are very similar. And you can start looking to see if you can find also, you can other find other accounts in the area, you can also there are Instagram, you know, there’s search functionality to and Instagram. And so you could also start searching via certain hashtags. And obviously look for hyperlocal things like if you’re, if you want to find we do this here in Chicago a lot where there’s so many different neighborhoods and suburbs, that there’s all these, you know, for example, Mom groups that talk about activities for children, very common. And, you know, there’s certain hashtags for that, and, you know, etc. Okay, so Tuesdays, and yeah, that’s Michelle Berman-Mikel 46:49the tracker when you build it out. And thank you for saying all that because you again, you’re you’re doing my job for me, DJ, good job. But uh, the the tracker when it’s built out, right, you have it broken into three categories. So you have hashtags accounts, and geo tags, and each of your days of the week is separated that way, with the exception of Mondays and Fridays, or Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, which we’ll talk about here in a second. But so Tuesdays and Thursdays, you have hashtags, you have accounts, you have geo tags, and then we teach a trick called the wormhole effect, which is simply if you click on one of those hockey pages, for example, you find the the hockey arena that your kid plays out consistently. And you click on their most recent piece of content, let’s say they have 30 likes, if you click on the people who liked it, you then start interacting with those individuals, right. So that’s the wormhole effect. With the idea behind that being you’re connecting with more and more people that are actively using the page or consuming the page and just getting your name exposed to those who are interested in the same thing in your area. So So D.J. Paris 47:49quick question about that. So you just said something very powerful. So again, let’s say we’re, we’re our passion is being a hockey mom. And we are looking at the account for the rink, the arena that our child plays at. And we see all of the other, you know, hockey moms that might be following that Instagram account, how do you encourage people to interact? Because this is going to be people that don’t know you, but that have a shared interest? You’re both into hockey being hockey mom, and you’re going to the Serena, what would you say is a great point of engagement. How do you how do you sort of Michelle Berman-Mikel 48:26it goes back to the exact same the same methodology, right? So the same three prong initial response, which is acknowledgement, subliminal business play, and then in the form of a question now, if that’s her story, replies, right, or DMS story reply, a DM is the same thing for those of you guys listening that that don’t know the terminology, they are the same, right? So if you’re responding to a story that ends up being a DM, but if you’re commenting on someone’s content on their feed, it’s a little bit different, right? It’s a little simpler, you don’t need to do a full three prong response. But you do need to do have acknowledgement, right. I will tell every single one of you if you are commenting on a piece of content, and your comment doesn’t stand out to me as the person that produced content or produced the piece of content, I’m not responding to you, right. So if you’re like awesome content, great photo, this is really cute, or your son is really cute exclamation point. It’s like that’s what everybody says right? And not to be facetious about it, but to simply say, in a sea of a bunch of comments, your job is to stand out. So if you see somebody’s posting of their son’s playing at the same hockey arena that your son plays, right, I acknowledge it. Oh my gosh, this is awesome. I had no idea that you guys also played hockey here. I’ve been coming here with my son for the last five years. Period. Right? And that could be something that’s going to stand out. Now if you’re responding to her story, that individual story that posted that photo of her boys in front of the hockey arena and you’re like, Well, how do you break the ice? Same concept right the three prongs were Have a reply applies, which is acknowledge subliminal business plan and in the form of a question. So your final question to that could be something like, I’ve been coming here with my sons for the last five years, how long have you and your boys been playing in this arena? And you can even go one step further. Like, when are you guys there? I would love to like say hi, right, like, say hi, yeah, you know. But it gets a lot easier when you have that shared connection or that mutual interest. And then the thing about that, which is funny is to your point, DJ, which is, there’s a degree of separation, where you even realize that you already knew that person without even realizing it, right? So you may click on their profile and be like, Oh, that’s the life of this person, or, Oh, that’s the best friend of this person that I’ve never talked to. Right, and it becomes so easy to start a conversation. So Tuesdays and Thursdays are that right? And I always say, it’s just think through that and your everyone’s like, Well, I’m really boring. I don’t do anything. No, that’s not true, right? You have interests, you have passions, even if you don’t leave, D.J. Paris 51:04even if it’s a TV show that you watch it I was doing this the other day, I was watching the curse, which is a show on Showtime. And it’s one of the most uncomfortable shows I’ve ever seen. It’s purposely written to certainly activate someone’s anxiety and interpersonal sort of challenges. It’s, it’s, it’s really good, Emma Stone and Nathan fielder. It’s very, very good. But anyway, it’s very hard, I find it very difficult to watch. There’s a lot of symbolism in the show. And I go, I am going to the Reddit forum, or the Reddit group for the subreddit for the curse, and there is one. And I’m like, I think they’re trying to portray him as like a Jesus like character. And anyway, I wanted to see if my theory was was accurate. And sure enough, other people had the exact same theory. But you could do the same thing on Instagram, you can say I just saw the ending of episode so and so with, with this, you could even post content about it and say, I don’t really understand what the ending means. If anyone has seen this, if you have, you know, ideas, or you could search for other people’s content about that particular episode, say, Hey, I just found your content. I’m a little confused about the ending. Here’s what I think. But what do you think? I mean, it doesn’t have to be something you even go out and do. It could be something you consume, like, you know, like coffee, or a TV show or Michelle Berman-Mikel 52:18book or anything. Yep. And the easiest. The easiest way to do it if you’re like sitting struggling thinking of ideas for topics is if you’re like you’re in Chicago, right? But Chicago is freaking massive. So the thing about that is five subsidies or five sub sub not subdivisions, but so five subsidies within the city. So I live in Clarksville, Tennessee, right, but my husband and I live in Sango, which is a subsidy within the Clarksville zip code. But here in Clarksville, if I were to say to a mom or somebody at the gym, or whatever. Oh yeah, we live in St. Louis. Everybody knows what that means. So if you go to Instagram, and you type in hashtag Sango, Tennessee that is going to come up. So if you’re going to do it on a Tuesday or Thursday, what I would recommend is pick your top five subsidies or cities specifically that you sell real estate in or want to find hashtags find geo tags, find specific accounts that are related to those cities. So here in 10 are here in Clarksville, we have a Instagram page called Local Clarksville, which is basically the page that shares anything and everything restaurants, mom’s stuff, bookstores, coffee shop, everything right for Clarksville, and that page becomes sort of the springboard to all these other pages that could give you ideas of who to be engaging with in different types of accounts. So Tuesdays or Thursdays, you could just do it what we call small business day, which is you’re using those five subsidies and just looking at their hashtags, looking at their geo tags, and then just go into town. D.J. Paris 53:47So yeah, there’s a there’s a, for example, as a gene store I go to that just happens to be a block from where I live. And it’s really, I think, probably the only good gene store in Chicago, certainly one of few. And they have, it’s tough, it’s tough out there as a small business owner, and then all they sell are jeans. And yeah, they sell very expensive jeans, and you have to be into expensive jeans in order to like want to spend the kind of money to do that. So they are struggling like every other small business. So one of my first calls would be like, Hey, I know there’s other guys like me out there that probably don’t even know you guys exist. So I want to make sure that people know you exist because I love having you in my neighborhood. And by the way, I’m a realtor and I do these things. But what I really want to do is focus on promoting your jeans because I wear them I’m a big fan. Can I come in and do a quick, you know, five minute interview with you. Obviously, there’s no downside for the owner unless they don’t want to be on camera. Somebody will do it. It’s free. And you’re going to tag them. They’re going to tag you you promote it, they promote it. Everybody wins. You could do that. Yeah, twice a week. Easy. Michelle Berman-Mikel 54:49Oh, easy, easy. And obviously the hobbies is the key focus with the small business sort of being that backup to that. But for sake of time I want to give you guys Wednesday, so Wednesday is what I call CRM day. So this is a very important day that I can tell you right now, I’ve been doing this specifically for beyond the method and my program for five years, and people still don’t do this, which I’m assuming that’s probably why I’m still in business, obviously. But but it’s I say that funnily but what Wednesday’s are designed to be a CRM day. So what that means is you are taking your database and your cold leads, right? So if you’re paying realtor.com leads, so flex leads, why Lobo, whatever red X whoever, right, you’re purchasing data from, find them on Instagram and find them. Oh, D.J. Paris 55:36that’s brilliant, I never would have thought to do. Michelle Berman-Mikel 55:41Right. So like in your Excel doc, on Wednesday, you have a tab at the bottom, you upload the CSV file out of your CRM. Now depending on what CRM you use, like something like follow up boss, right, for example, they will link a Facebook profile to that individual, it doesn’t link Instagram yet, for whatever reason, I don’t know, tell him to work on it. But it’ll link a Facebook profile, you can go look at that person’s Facebook, or try to find and see if it’s the right one, and then cross check it to Instagram. Now the reason for that is most of the time, a person is going to have the same profile photo on Facebook and Instagram that they would on one or the other platforms, right, we typically do that. Smart, that means that you’ll be able to confirm or deny this is the same person, especially because a lot of people, especially if it’s individual personal accounts, they’re private, right. So in order for you to send or follow them on Instagram, you’re going to have to send a follow request, they have to approve it. So if you’re going to do that, you want to make sure you’re following the right person and confirm that based off of seeing them on Facebook first. So on Wednesday, there, it’s two parts, right? You’re uploading your CRM, you got 500 names, 1000 names, whatever it is, and you’re working through the list, you’re finding them on Facebook, you then cross check, find them on Instagram, and every Wednesday, you just keep working through that list and make sure that you consistently are talking to the people that are on that list. So you take the first 45, then the next Wednesday, you go do the next 45, you just keep working through until you repeat at the top of the list. In the process of doing that, you’re obviously going to start having a lot of really good warm conversations. So eventually, that person is going to get moved off of Wednesday, onto another day of your tracker, aka Friday, which is what we call reengage day. And I know that this is getting somewhat confusing, but visually it’s a lot easier to see. But that’s what that’s what Wednesday’s are designed to be the cold lead part of it is if you get a if you’re buying leads in any capacity, right? Zillow leads is a great example. Because when Zillow calls you, or when you get a lead from Zillow, they’re just calling you Right? Like you don’t have time live transfer. And no like, Oh, this is Michelle from Michael calling me this is her Instagram, she has a dog, she has a two and a half like she you don’t have that access that fast. Right? So the beautiful thing about that side of it is when someone calls you like that you get this inbound lead your job as the real estate agent moving on from that are in moving on from right now to every conversation you have moving forward is on the phone with them. Let’s say it’s you DJ, right. And I you and I are you are inbound calling me. I’m the realtor. You’re the Zoli coming in. So I’m gonna say hi, DJ, this is Michelle Berman. Michael, great that you are calling Bubba ball go into my script, right? But then here’s where this gets important. At the very end of the conversation, it is your job to make sure you are connected to them on Instagram, right? So at the end of your call, you will literally say hey, DJ, this has been an amazing chat with you. I’m really looking forward to seeing you on Saturday when we go to your xyz property or on Friday when we go meet for coffee to talk about your house, blah, blah, blah, right. But before we hang up really fast, I want to make sure we’re connected on Instagram, because that’s my primary platform that is the primary place that I communicate with all of my clients. So what’s your Instagram account really fast? Yeah, D.J. Paris 58:58it almost doesn’t even give them the option to say no, because you’ve already qualified it by saying, Hey, this is where I communicate most effectively and most consistently. So yeah, if you know, I wouldn’t even ask if you don’t mind. I would just say what’s what’s like, just like you said, I Michelle Berman-Mikel 59:12had I had a client and I’m curious what your thought is on this TJ because I had a client who was like, Michelle, is it weird to say that, like, if somebody’s gonna think that that’s weird, and D.J. Paris 59:21it can seem weird. Yeah. But the way that you said it was not weird, you qualified it. You explained why you were asking for it. And it was a perfectly logical reason. Yeah. So I think if you just said hey, what’s your Instagram? Then people can have all sorts of thoughts in their head about why are they asking for this? Are they are they flirting with me? Are they you know, who knows? But I think by saying by qualifying at the way you did, it gives really no reason for somebody to say no, Michelle Berman-Mikel 59:50you’re just having a conversation with someone and you’re quite literally saying, This is my primary method of communication. I know we had discussed meeting on Friday for coffee. So I just want to make sure we’re connected there. So that if you have any questions between now and Friday, when I see you, you can message me. Right, perfect. So and then once that happens, once you start following them, or they start following you, they obviously get added to your tracker. So you can track that that individual is now following you so that you can stay consistently in front of them. Because I will say realtors are notorious for terrible follow up. I think everybody would say that, that they are, even if they’ve been in business forever, right? They’ll say like, my biggest weakness is not like closing the loop. Right, closing and working the lead until you get a hard No. And so that’s certainly a way to make sure that you can track it. But yeah, so that’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Friday is simply reengaged day. So what that means is quite literally reengage anybody that you’ve had a good conversation with. So if a conversation comes to a natural stopping point, which it will they all do normal, it’s very normal, you simply reengage them. And then the way that we do this is we track and we color code them, right? So if it’s the first reengage, if it’s the second, reengage, etc, we can track that. And then once we’ve gotten to four or five, really solid back and forth, and really solid touch points with that individual, then it’s our job to for the ask, right, your job is to get them on the phone or attempt to set an appointment, whatever that looks like for you zoom meeting, Calendly, Link, whatever, whatever that is for you. But you have to attempt to go for the ask at that point. And then Friday basically gives you the opportunity to stay in front of all of your warm leads. D.J. Paris 1:01:32And then what are we doing on the weekends? Are we taking the weekend? Michelle Berman-Mikel 1:01:35I don’t engage on the weekends. And that’s, that’s me personally, I want to tell everybody is the tracker that I’ve designed is Monday through Friday. If but it’s what I mean by that as it’s five days, right? So it’s five days designed Monday through Friday. However, if you want to do it Tuesday through Saturday, I don’t care. Right. If you want to do it Wednesday through Sunday, I don’t care. There’s no better day or worst day, it’s a matter of like what are the five days for you that are going to make sense. I also know that real estate agents notoriously are the busiest on Saturday and Sunday. So asking them to prospect and spend an hour in their DMS or an hour on Instagram specifically doing what I’m teaching is going to be harder, right? Mondays, there’s no reason most most real estate agents are used Mondays as their admin day or as they’re like, chill, I’m going to catch up day because of a crazy weekend. So but that’s just how it’s been formulated. But if your schedule is completely different, and everything I just said doesn’t apply to you as far as days, then do it do the five days on the days that makes sense for you. D.J. Paris 1:02:38So just to sort of recap the the way that I think you’re telling people to approach Instagram is really as a connection tool, not as much of a consumption tool. So we’re either going to use it to unwind and sort of just have, you know, entertain ourselves with other people’s content. But for us, it’s for our for our business, we want to be super intentional and think of it as how do we find how do I find people who are into the same things I’m into? And how do I engage them on a regular basis so that we can share our passions and connect that way? And then we can naturally lead that into Hey, oh, by the way, I’m a real estate agents etc. Yeah, so so we really for the if we’re finding people we don’t already know, we’re really looking for shared interests. We’re connecting that way. And then we’re moving on. Michelle Berman-Mikel 1:03:28At some point here connection. Keep that in mind. Right, right. Yes, thank you. Because a shared connection is equally as powerful as a shared connection. I’m sorry, as a shared passion or hobby, right? Yeah. Because some of my closest friends in the industry today, right? I don’t know if you’ve ever interviewed Kyle Draper DJ, but if not, you should write but Kyle and I became very good friends because we accidentally found each other on Instagram. And we’re like, hey, we were both on the same show. And now anytime I’m in Dallas, I am always having dinner or meeting up with Kyle. We’ve also spoken in events together. We’ve done podcasts, all the things right. And what’s funny about that, as I met Kyle during COVID, when clubhouse was really big at the time, so I heard Kyle’s voice went Instagram found him realize we had all these connections, and was like, Oh my gosh, I just gotta send him a message. So I did. Fast forward, you know, three plus years. Here we are. So I think it’s just as much about mutual interest or shared passions as it is actual just straight up connections, right and what those degrees of separation might be that could turn into a business opportunity or in your guys’s case on the real estate side, specifically a lead right like oh, you you worked with so and so that I know or Oh, I know the owner of that place. How often do you go D.J. Paris 1:04:50Yeah, it’s funny I always think about this with because this podcast we interview mostly a top 1% agents from all over the country, and I work route agents. So if I were not hosting this podcast and some other buddy, somebody else was doing what I do, I would be calling those agents that, you know, were interviewed in my area that were featured on any podcast, whether it’s mine or someone else’s, and be like, Hey, by the way, I just listened to your interview with such and such podcast, you’re exactly the kind of agent we want. At our firm. If you’re ever thinking about, you know, this idea of, you know, using media to find people to find prospects to connect, is really just the way that we think of it mostly as a consumption model. I’m going to consume other’s content, or I’m going to just post you know, stuff about my business. We’re not really thinking about it so much in the terms of connections. So I love that that’s like, the major focus for you is how do we actually connect? And let’s we want to make sure that if you’re loving what Michelle is saying, and I don’t know how you wouldn’t be because I’m learning a tremendous amount. And I’ve had Instagram experts on our show for a long time. And I’ve not learned ever this much before. So if you’re liking what Michelle is saying, and you are, please go to please consider investing in beyond the method you can find that at Berman media PD, that’s Paul David so Berman media pd.com link to that in the show notes, of course, and learn more about this because Michelle teaches all of this and literally gives you a step by step sort of template and an idea of how to authentically connect with others on Instagram and turn that into your number one prospecting source and I am now thinking about it as from a recruiting perspective for agents about how I can do the exact same thing from a recruiting person you know, from from recruiting, and of course I can there’s no difference. So I am going to I’m going to consider taking this course but this we could talk for hours more but we don’t want to. Certainly poor Michelle is already given us a good hour and 15 minutes. So what we want to do is we’re going to we’re going to end the episode here but guys, if you liked what you heard the best two things you can do. First of all, go to Berman media pd.com Learn about Michelle’s program, follow her on Instagram as well. She She doles out all sorts of great advice and tidbits there that are always going to be helpful to you whether you invest in her program or not. That’s Berman media social on Instagram. But please consider investing in this program. Because if this becomes your number one recruiting source or recruiting i Sorry, I’m in recruiting mode. So this becomes your prospecting the same thing prospecting recruiting prospecting mode, this is going to be the best money you ever spend. Instagram is not going away. And this is still the number one platform that people are really wow. Yeah, it’s it’s the number one platform people are using that you are going to want to find for clients. It’s really the best prospecting tool there is for real estate agents. prospecting, I think I think Facebook doesn’t quite cut it for this. Facebook’s got its own great things about it, you can do wonderful things there. LinkedIn has some some great things. But Instagram is still kind of the place where you can find other people much more easily than you can and other other areas, other social platforms. So this is the the time that 2024 is the year to really get into Instagram. So Berman media pd.com is where you flirt about all things Michelle, and beyond the Method program, guys, it’s absolutely amazing. And the second way is let us know how much you liked this episode, because we got a lot more to talk to Michelle about and if you guys loved this, let me know. So we can have her back on the show more regularly, maybe she comes on as a as a repeating guest so that we can continue to provide this content to to you guys. So Michelle, I will not keep you captive any longer, you have been so generous, and really spilling all of the secrets that that you could and you know, 75 minutes, which is really impressive. And again, that really also speaks to who Michelle is as a person. You know, these these, she gave you really some incredible strategies, guys, by the way, you probably should listen to this episode a second time just to cover, go through and get everything and Michelle talks fast. I talk fast. But she had a lot of great content in there. So I’m not saying it to our view count by double, although that’d be great for us. But really, I’m doing it because I need to go back and listen to it again and make sure I’ve got a lot of these fundamentals down and then consider investing in Michelle’s program. So on behalf of our audience, thank you Michelle for taking, you know a good chunk of your afternoon to to talk all about Instagram. I’m so glad you found us and I’m so grateful to have you on the show. Personally, our audience I’m speaking for them as well and on behalf of Michelle and myself thanks to the audience. Thanks you guys for sticking around to the very end. We appreciate you again consider investing in Michelle’s program follow her on Instagram, Berman media social is her account and also a I’ll tell a friend to think of one other realtor that is thinks they should do more on Instagram. By the way, pretty much every realtor feels that way. So anyone you can think of that is looking to do more with Instagram this year. That’s basically everyone shoot them a link to this episode. That would be a huge thank you to me. And, Michelle, let’s spread the word. And also leave us a review. Whatever you’re listening to us on or watching us on. Let us know what you think of the show. We do read all the comments, even the tough to read ones. And we make adjustments because the show is for me, it’s not for Michelle, it’s for you. So let us know what we can do to continue making the show better and better. All right, Michelle, thank you so much. We will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks so much, Michelle Berman-Mikel 1:10:41guys. Appreciate it.

Sheila Alston with Healthy Home Media talks about her journey into wellness real estate. Sheila describes what wellness real estate is and how to promote it. Sheila also talks about her magazine and how it can help agents differentiate themselves from other agents. Last, Sheila discusses current trends of the home wellness space. Please check out Sheila’s magazine here and get $50 off of your first purchase using real50. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Sheila Alston can be reached to book a strategy call here. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and Apply Design (get 15% off of your first purchase using real24). Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Stop prospecting and start attracting. Today we’re going to show you how stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now onto our show. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by apply design Welcome to a revolution in real estate presentation brought to you by apply design the leading Virtual Staging solution tailored for forward thinking realtors. Now in today’s fast paced market making a lasting impression is everything. With applied design you unlock the full potential of every listing, transforming empty spaces into stunning buyer attracting homes all with just a few clicks. And in just a few minutes. Choose their DIY staging available for as low as $7 per image, or save time with their auto staging feature for as low as $10.50 per image plus experience their service firsthand with a trial image absolutely free. Their intuitive platform empowers you to bring visions to life ensuring your listing standout Captivate and sell and for listeners of keeping it real apply design is offering an exclusive 15% off your first purchase. Simply use the code real 24 That’s our EA L to four at checkout. Elevate your listings enchant your clients and achieve faster sales with apply design. Don’t let your properties blend in make them shine with apply design. Your success story starts now visit them at apply design.io. Again, that’s applied design.io Remember, your first impression is the only impression. And now onto 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 Parris, I’m your guide and host through the show. And we’re going to be speaking in just a moment to my guest, Sheila Austin about wellness, real estate. What is that. But before we get to Sheila, just a couple of quick reminders. First of all, if you’re new to the show, welcome. We appreciate you and hope that you find our episodes really helpful for your business. Give her a returning listener. Thank you. Thank you double thanks. And please continue to listen, let us know what we can do to improve the show and also tell a friend about the show. And last thing I’ll ask if everybody out there could just take one minute, leave us a review on whatever podcast app you might be listening to us on. That really helps the show out gets us in front of more ears. So thank you to everyone also check out our sponsors. They keep the bills paid for us. So please check them out. We love our sponsors. And we also of course love all the listeners. So let’s get right to it. My conversation with Sheila Alston. Today on the show we have Sheila Austin from Healthy Home media. Let me tell you more about Sheila. So Sheila Austin is a trailblazer in the real estate industry. Now she has walked the agent path, but ultimately understands the challenges of lead generation and the struggle to differentiate oneself in a crowded market where everyone sounds the same. But here’s the exciting twist Sheila has discovered a unique approach to leverage your skills and more importantly, has empowered agents nationwide to do the same. And on this episode, she unravels the secrets now brace yourself for a transformative experience, as Sheila reveals how you can shift from chasing leads to effortlessly attracting leads you The key demonstrating genuine care for your clients. By the way, something we have been saying for years and years. So we are so excited, Sheila is with us. But by leveraging a little known industry to growing trend like crazy that you probably don’t know. So I know that got jumbled up at the end there. But we’re going to talk about something that is a growing trend that real estate agents need to jump on immediately to really help their marketing attract more clients. We’re going to discuss that in just a moment. So if you are intrigued, stay tuned. And join us as Sheila unveils the art of flipping the script on lead generation, please follow Sheila at her website, which is media.com My apologies, she was helping me out there because I just closed the tab by accident healthy home media.com. And also please follow her on Instagram, which is wellness agents. And on Facebook healthy home media, we will have links to all of that in the show notes. So you don’t even have to listen to what I said. But we’re gonna please click through and check out because what Sheila’s offering is very, very cool. Sheila, welcome to the show. Sheila Alston 6:06Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here. D.J. Paris 6:10Thank you, and happy to have excited to have you because this is a topic that we haven’t even even announced the topic yet. But it’s a topic I’ve never heard of. So I mean, I’ve heard of it. But I’ve never heard of it in relation to this industry. So I am as a marketer, somebody who is very excited to chat with you. But before we get to kind of what we’re here to discuss, let’s tell talk a little bit about your journey. Our audience always likes to know, you know, sort of how are our guests to have progressed in their career? Why real estate how they got in, and I know you were an agent. So can you tell us about that journey for you from you know, being an agent to then, you know, switching pivoting to really helping agents with their marketing? Yeah, Sheila Alston 6:50well, sure. I, I became an agent in 2018. And I guess a lot like other people, you know, is kind of a second career for me. You know, I was a stay at home mom, and my kids were getting older. And before in my business life, I had been in marketing, I’d studied marketing, but I had also done a lot of interior design. And I had become a certified health coach, but I didn’t I for some reason, I didn’t want to be a health coach. And my husband and I had flipped a lot of homes. And so I always just had this passion for real estate. So I thought I’ll become a realtor. And maybe I can combine some sort of, you know, interior design with that, or do some staging. And I really wanted to not waste my health coaching background, I thought, gosh, there’s got to be a way to integrate healthy something, how can I how can I do that? And I just stumbled upon wellness, real estate. And it was a term I hadn’t heard before. And I thought what is this? Why is nobody talking about this. And then I found NAR screen, sort of designee and so I, you know, got my designation, and I was like ready to tell everybody about how it was as wellness agent. And people were like, What are you talking about? What is this? And so I just kept deep diving into this. And I thought, okay, nobody, this is something it’s just maybe too far out there. I’m just going to keep plugging along, but maybe my, maybe my stitch will be, you know, interior design and that. And I just found that, gosh, I was living in a luxury market. And being an agent in a luxury market, I’m gonna have a lot of affluent friends. But I didn’t want them to feel like, you know, they were practicing with me, right? Like, they they’re gonna want to hire the best agent in the area. Why would they hire me even if they’re friends and I didn’t want to like pressure them, I wanted to provide value first. So of course, I work for a top broker, I worked on a team and I did do some great sales. And but what I found was that it’s just being a new agent. And even my friends who had been agents for a really long time, this whole lead generation was really a pain point for a lot of people because, you know, you know that you are great with clients, you know that you can walk them through the transaction. Great, but how do you talk about your business with people without having them? You know, run away? Because if it’s just literally How’s the market? And you know, in talking about interest rates, like, I don’t know, everybody’s friends with like, 10 agents, right? So if you’re saying the same thing, everybody else is saying, you know, they’re just, I don’t know, I just have so many friends who became secret agents like they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t talk about their business at all. And that’s not how you grow your business. Right. So in the back of my mind, I was learning all these things. Meanwhile, I was diving deep into wellness, real estate, and we’ll get into what that is. But I just thought, well, I’ll create something that will differentiate myself. And I ended up sharing with sharing it with tons of realtors and they loved it so much that I realized that’s my true passion. So even though at the time I was making a little bit more money, or a lot more money, selling real estate I thought well Oh, this is this is going to make a bigger impact. And I’m going to be able to help more people this way. So that’s my journey. D.J. Paris 10:06And you’re kind of at the forefront of the wellness movement with respect to real estate. So I just want to recap a little of what you said, just to make sure our audiences is on board. Because this is new to me. This is even relatively new to Sheila, although she’s been doing this for a while, but we’re want to make sure everybody has a good awareness. So here’s the problem we’re solving for. So the problem is, as a realtor, as Sheila said, so elegantly, everybody knows 10 realtors, and in fact, they probably want in every family just about, or extended family at least. So not only are you competing with all the other bozos that your friends know, who sell real estate, but also potentially realtors in your own family. And also, yeah, you know, what are the questions that agents get when they’re at a cocktail party, and someone introduces themselves and finds out? You’re a realtor? Well, yeah, you’re just like you said, how? What’s going on with interest rates? What about inventory? Basically, what’s going on with the market? Is what people hear. agents get that question a lot. And so we what we want to do is really give you RMU, with something that would really differentiate you from essentially all the other agents in your marketplace by actually providing value to your prospects and your clients and Sheila’s stumbled across. It’s kind of I’m like, a little bit jealous, because I actually, I’m like, I should have come up with this idea. It really, really, I’m actually, like, a little mad at Sheila, that she’s okay. You can promote it to like, it’s, that’s true. That’s true. And by the way, we do have a special code, we have a coupon code for what we’ll share with you towards the end of the show, where you can actually take advantage of this opportunity. Guys, I really do think it’s a no brainer. It’s very cool. But let’s just dive right into it. What are we talking about? Sheila Alston 11:49Well, just to use, you mentioned something that I thought of, and as when you’re at a cocktail party, and people say what do you do for a living? And if someone says, you know, I’m a realtor? That is the worst thing that you can say, D.J. Paris 12:01what insurance agent? Sheila Alston 12:03Did you know why? It’s because they just whenever they think about realtors, they dump you into that box. Now you are one of them. So if they don’t like realtors, they probably you know, D.J. Paris 12:16I have a friend who is a luxury car salesperson. And he does not say I sell cars, because he doesn’t want to be lumped in with you know, look, you know, not every car salesman, or car salesman, just in general, maybe don’t have the rep always have great reputations, and I’m not in any way being disparaging to that industry. I love car salesmen. I just We just know that how people think about them. So he says ideal in luxury auto. And I was like, Oh, that’s interesting. What does that mean? He does. And he really does. He’s like, Well, ideal and Bentley’s and whatever, you know, whatever the cars are. He doesn’t say I sell cars, because nobody really wants to talk to a car salesman. But if you’re talking about luxury, Ooh, what’s a Bentley? Like, you know that? Well, Sheila Alston 12:59he’s creating curiosity. And that’s the whole point. So if you have, when someone asks you what you do for a living, you need to say something that creates curiosity. And that’s usually either leading with the problem or being a little vague with what that is where people like, Oh, what’s that? So don’t say that your realtor. What you’re going to learn from me is that you need to leverage this growing trend that we just mentioned, which is wellness, real estate. And so maybe before I tell you how to do that, I tell ya, let me tell you what wellness, real estate as well. So I don’t know if you’ve heard of the global wellness Institute, they are the ones who track this wellness growing trend around the globe. And they have identified wellness real estate as a pretty large segment, that’s already $275 billion. And it’s projected to grow to be 870 or 850 billion by 2027. Like it’s growing like gangbusters. And what it is, is it’s forward thinking developers who are building communities, residential communities that are centered on wellness. So it’s not just let’s add a pool or community center and build this and say that you can have, you know, this great luxury lifestyle. It’s not that it’s I’m intentionally building this community to support healthier living, and how can I do that? How can I bring people together? How can I get them motivated to go on walks? How can I get them eating better food? How can I bring more natural light into their home? How can I use energy efficient building practices to make the home more safe, and more, I mean, bring more fresh air and bring more natural light in. All of these things are things that developers are thinking, even before they’re building anything during the planning stage, and that’s what makes the difference and you’re seeing these communities pop up kind of all over the globe, really, but there’s so many that are coming all over the country and it’s pretty exciting. There’s communities called Agra hoods that are centered on an organic farm. And so that’s kind of like farm to table living. And I’m here in San Diego. And there’s one being built in Encinitas, which is just a mile from the beach. So it’s not like you have to be out in the country to live on a farm or have and they’re going to have a five or six acre regenerative farm, they’re going to have a local brewery on site that actually uses the local produce, they’re going to have farm fresh eggs, I think. And they’re going to have a coffee bar that uses the beans roasted or they’re growing on site. And they’re gonna have edible walking trails, and they’re going to have green space for music festivals. And so you can have this walkable community, that’s pretty much in the suburbs. That’s really normally a car dependent area. And it’s offering just a different kind of way of living for for people so that they have another option to just be healthier, which is awesome, I think. D.J. Paris 16:02Yeah, I think, you know, the wellness trend, certainly Millennials have embraced and even younger generations, of course, we understand the importance of physical Well, being mental well being etc. And, you know, we although we Americans, I think I just saw this statistic is very depressing. It was like 70% of Americans are overweight. So I’m not here to address why that’s, of course, you know, there’s a lot of factors of why that is, but the point I’m making is overweight, people are also thinking about their health and what they can do to correct it now, you know, correcting ones, ones, you know, health is not the easiest thing. But it is something that is in the zeitgeist, we are constantly a huge industry, wellness, and taking care of oneself getting in better shape, and having the environment around you to help support that. So I, I’m a big fan. So let’s so keep telling us more about how to realtors fit. So Sheila Alston 16:59that’s the thing is like, I just here’s this trend, developers are building this stuff. And nobody’s talking about it, right. And so and then you also have all of these other small businesses that are coming up with like, no VOC carpeting, and got certified fabrics and all of this stuff, that’s kind of healthier options. And then I think with the pandemic, and people being stuck at home, they’re really realizing how their environment is. And that’s why you know, people moved around a lot, but you can get sick from your home environment. So there’s all of this stuff swirling around and I thought, Gosh, why aren’t Realtors talking about this? We are the ones in people’s homes. We’re the ones who are recommending contractors, we’re the ones that during home inspections are making people feel okay about remediating mold or being scared about it. You know, we’re the ones that are kind of guiding them to find a home that checks these boxes, right? But why couldn’t we be the ones that also you know, connect them with healthy home professionals and help, you know, not be the Healthy Home expert, but let them know that it’s an option so that they can make some better informed choices that are going to empower people to be live in an environment that supports healthier living. And, you know, when I first started this, I thought that you needed to become a wellness agent. And really, I’ve been doing I have my magazine that I created has been around for three years. And the agents who have found me first are the ones who are trying to do that. But what I’ve learned is that wellness real estate really is just a bridge to have more conversations about real estate, because it’s not How’s the market, how our interest rates, it’s like, this is a new and exciting trend. Let me tell you about it. And here’s the magic words, that I teach all my agents. So not everyone can live in these wellness, lifestyle communities, but everyone deserves to live in a healthy home. So what I teach my agents to do is connect with These Healthy Home professionals in your area, go find them, because most agents don’t know about them. You know, most agents just have their title lending. You know, a few contractors who can do stuff at home. That’s your list. If you have a long list of client past clients that have small businesses, you might refer to them, but you don’t have you know, who’s the EMF person who’s the air quality tester who’s the water filtration expert, who’s the you know, the green appraiser. You know, there’s a lot a long list of college psychologists, eco designers, wellness architects, biophilic designers, there’s lots of people that are experts in the home environment, that if you just connected with these people and started talking about them on your Instagram page, and just shared you know, I care about you, I want you to live in a healthy home. Let me be your connector for everything home. I’m expanding my knowledge and network and that’s what I want to be for you. D.J. Paris 19:55I love all of that. So basically you’re at a cocktail party What I would say, based on what you told me, my, my head was swirling, a lot of the things you mentioned, by the way, I don’t even know what those are. And I get my getting I’m getting excited to learn about color. And, and what you know, this reminds me to have people get very confused about. And they should be confused, like, let’s just talk about solar for one second. So solar is an interesting industry. And I’m not here to cast any aspersions on the industry or be pejorative towards them. But it is very confusing. If you want solar, just call three different companies and give you quotes and you will get three wildly different quotes most likely, and you will be more confused than ever. So people, but people are checking this stuff out, they want to know their air quality inside their home, they want to understand, you know, what sort of harmful things might be there and how to increase their overall health inside inside of the home. So and outside the home. So if I was at a cocktail party, and someone said, Hey, what do you do say, Hey, I’m a realtor. And you know what I’m really into right now, I’m becoming really fascinated by this growing trend called what wellness, real estate, let me just give you like, me tell you what it is because really cool. And then you just mentioned a couple of data points, like like you had mentioned, and say, what I like to do is obviously yes, I help people buy and sell homes, but I really want to help connect them with professionals who can help make that home as healthy as possible, because you’re probably thinking about this stuff anyway. And nobody really knows who to trust and how to do it. So I’ve got all these connections, and we want to, I don’t want to just sell your home, anyone can do that. I want to actually sell you a home where you feel where you thrive. And it feels really healthy and isn’t Sheila Alston 21:42rambling, that’s so much better. I mean, the one liner I teach my agents to say is really just to start with the problem and say, you know how so many people are realizing that the home environment matters, and that there are toxins that are coming into your home, I don’t know if you know that. But like you can create a home that supports healthier living. And so I am a real estate agent, and I am wellness focused real estate agent, I really just want to give goodwill and share how to create a healthier home. So I’m expanding my knowledge and network to include these healthy home professionals so that I can be your connector for everything home because I believe that everyone deserves to live in a healthy home. And then people are like, what, you know, tell me more? Can I follow you? You know, like, I’m D.J. Paris 22:24Yes. So I see this being, you know, as you said, you can really use this in a number of areas. Number one, you could reach out to all your existing clients, you’ve helped sell homes for say, Hey, if you know, I have been studying this, this, this new thing, I have this network of people that I I want to introduce you to if you’re feeling like the home could use, you know a wellness upgrade, you know, there’s ways to do that. You can also as you mentioned post video content, as you learn about this, this could be your part of your Sheila Alston 22:53value added content, right that you’re doing D.J. Paris 22:56value added content. And then also, you can use this again, when you’re talking to prospective new clients. So to me, this would be this would be a absolutely wonderful way to to really differentiate yourself. Now let’s talk about the magazine because there is a physical or a digital component to this that you have put together. So talk us talk us through what you provide for agents and how they can utilize this serve. Okay, Sheila Alston 23:23well, so if you’re just talking about wellness, real estate, I feel like you know it can at first it can be like what is this? Sure you have a great conversation, but how are you actually helping people and and how can you do this without, you know, adding more work to your plate because I understand how agents are already really busy, right. And so I created this magazine, and at first it was called Wellness real estate magazine. Now I have three different covers to choose from that are all the same magazine, but one is healthy home and one is wellness at home. So it’s a branded magazine that’s branded to you. So you can join my digital membership and you’ll get the digital magazine every month. It’s it’s not like any other, you know, generic magazine that you get to brand. It literally is written by healthy home experts. So I have a biophilic designer, I have a wellness architect who writes monthly, I have a building biology expert who’s also a home inspector and she writes monthly, I have the green building design summer who will write occasionally. And I have a organizer. And I also have a celebrity chef. That’s all there’s always the recipe in there. And she specializes in allergen free foods. And so I just feel like it’s a really unique piece of content that you get to share that you can feel proud of saying, hey, you know, let me share this with you because everything that’s inside here is going to help you live healthier. And they’re going to learn something for sure that they you know, haven’t seen before or haven’t learned about and they’ll look forward to getting your content. So if you join the digital members You get a branded mobile feed issue, and then you get a digital unbranded flipbook that you can share. And you can embed it on your website to drive traffic there. And then for $25, more, you get a whole bunch of social media stuff that I create, I create reels that have prompts, so that you can, you know, you can personally read what I say, and everything that I talked about is about, you know, how to create a healthier home. And it’s meant to be value added content to kind of add on to your local real estate content so that you have more of a well rounded, you know, social media feed and marketing campaign. And then I also now have direct mail. So you can actually get a physical copy, you can farm your local neighborhood, you can promote your business partners or your, your healthy home professionals that you find in there. So I have lots of ways that you can even print these magazines out and have them at events, and that are going to differentiate you and I have a good story to tell you about that, too. D.J. Paris 25:59So what we’re what we’re talking about is a solution. So we think about providing great value, a value added content to our prospect list our sphere of influence, you know, we think about other realtors for a second, what are they sending out as far as content on a regular basis? Well, it’s going to be market updates. It’s, you know, here’s what’s going on in your neighborhood. All of that stuff is great. Does it differentiate yourself from other agents? Probably not. Certainly, you know it, there’s a lot of that already floating around out there. In fact, a lot of brokerages do it for their agents. So you know, you, you may that may be getting those people may be getting a lot of those emails every month, but are they getting anything about wellness and real estate, almost certainly not. So this is an opportunity to to not have to put that information together yourself as the agent, you can lean on Sheila and Sheila’s got a team that writes, puts and edits these this publication which can be in a digital format, or even a printable format. So she’s got different pricing for both, you can of course, you know, brand yourself in the magazine. So that it’s your you know, you’re you’re putting you know, the your brand there. And she’ll even said you can even add your own experts in different ways there as well. And on top of that, she’s going to give you exact social media, content to film and produce for yourself. So with comes from you, she’s going to tell you exactly what to say how to do it, you literally follow the instructions. And now you’re putting out content on social that nobody else has. Sheila Alston 27:33Yeah. And let me give you an example of how this works. Right. So I have this agent, Terry Brown. She’s a Coldwell Banker agent in Atlanta. And she went to her Church’s Jazz Festival last month. And she said she got a table and she was right across the aisle from another broker who had two agents there. And she was like, Oh, God, and she brought a little house plant with her. And everybody was looking at her like, Why do you have a plant, and she had my magazine that was branded to her. And she basically just talked about the home environment and how plants help clean the air and how she really wants to help her clients live, healthy. And so basically, she shares this magazine that helps you create a healthier home. And if you wanted to join her email list, she would send you the digital copy every month, and she got 25 people to join her email list. I don’t know about you, but most people don’t want to join a realtor’s email list. And so the fact that she got 25 in one afternoon, and then she got a listing two weeks later. So that’s the power that this you know, vehicle has to just create more conversations and connection with people. It’s pretty powerful. And I have another agent who actually is she’s branding herself as a holistic agent. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that. I D.J. Paris 28:49think I’ve had her on the show before if we had somebody who considers himself the holistic agent, I can’t remember that. Well, maybe it was Christie Sheila Alston 28:56Woodford but um, but Tori McGee is one another one in Atlanta and she has a great website. And she’s basically she was telling me, you know, so many people have brokerage websites, or they just have websites and everybody’s saying the same thing. Let me find your dream home. She’s like, people don’t go to agents websites to look up homes anymore. They just don’t do it. They go to Zillow. Right? So you need to have your website be your calling card of how you’re different. Like, what are you providing, and if you haven’t taken the time to look inward and find out what your differentiating things are like, you need to do that too. But then also, if you talk about what’s trending, the magic is that all of a sudden in people’s eyes, you’re an authority. You are a forward thinker. You care and you’re not really you don’t really have to do anything extra but already be the connector that you already are and just connect with some different people. And the minute you talk to a business professional that is working so hard to try to create a healthier home for people whatever that businesses are. And you say you’re the first realtor that comes to them and says, Hey, I love what you’re doing. Can I share what you’re doing on my Instagram, you’ve got like a new best friend. And you know, and you’re so you’re helping out a small business in your area, and you’re promoting healthy living, and you’re being a forward thinker, and you’re being the connector for everything home, and you have a whole bunch of new stuff to talk about with people. So it’s just such a win win all around. D.J. Paris 30:23It’s a win win. And most importantly, I think it’s what the clients are interested in anyway. So I always think about this as an example, I remember, let’s just go back 30 years, whenever that was 30 years, and I never saw an air purifier in anybody’s home 30 years ago, like unless maybe somebody had extreme allergies, and their doctor gave them some sort of prescription for this air purifier that they bought. That was this big clunky thing. And then you know, 20 years ago, Dyson comes out or whatever the the big air purifier company is realizing everybody wants an air purifier. So and now they’re most people, I don’t know, most people, but a lot of people have them in their homes. This is a thing that people are thinking about. They’re already buying plants for these reasons. They’re already thinking about air quality and mold and pollen. And I have cats and cats, you know, can you can get very sick from like toxoplasmosis. And that, you know, pregnant women can be around cats. Anyway, there’s lots of things that people are exploring. And with the rise of Tiktok, and Instagram reels people are now getting access to this information at faster speeds. So they’re already knowing about this, and you get to be their, their connector to actually how to how to make it. Yeah, Sheila Alston 31:39I mean, imagine, imagine, so you’re supposed to be cold calling people right or not cold calling, but you’re supposed to be connected with your network every day. And you’re supposed to call them and what do you say? So so many agents don’t want to do that? Because it just feels cringy to just keep talking about you know, the market? Hey, do D.J. Paris 31:53you want to sell your home? Sheila Alston 31:54Do you know anyone looking to buy or sell like, oh god, yeah. But imagine you knew someone who’s going to remodel their home and they have a young child that has asthma. Imagine now you get to be the one that says hey, I want to connect you with the green design center. Because they have a whole bunch of flooring options and paint options that can help you mitigate the VOCs that are going to be in your home. And you’ll be able to pick healthier choices so that when your child is rolling around on the floor, they’re not getting off gassed in their face with all these toxic chemicals. So you’re helping a family live healthier. Now all of a sudden, you’re getting out ahead of things instead of chasing leads and asking them Are you looking to buy or sell, you’re being their home connector already, right. And people don’t remember what you say, they remember how you make them feel. So if you’ve connected with them, and they all of a sudden feel like, wow, thank you so much, you just made this wonderful for my family, you just connected me with someone who’s going to help my child live healthier, or help us live healthier, you are in their circle of trust. Now, you know, when it is time to sell their house for sure you’re gonna get a listing appointment, you know, because you showed that you cared ahead ahead of the are you looking to buy or sell? You know, I D.J. Paris 33:12love it. So the magazine is what’s the publication frequency? How often are you creating new newest, so Sheila Alston 33:19I do it every month. And so every month if you you know, if you have the digital issue, you get your own URL, you actually get to have a little feature article about you, you there’s a place for you to have a coupon or something about your listings in there. And that’s just auto updated every month, the social media also is updated every month, you’d go into my portal and you can find it, if you wanted printed issues, we’re really flexible on that you can send them quarterly, you can send them by monthly you can send them monthly, I do take the date off of them. So if you sent them quarterly, they usually will last two or three months. And I do feel like so many agents have had such success printing them out and hand delivering them from people like during the holidays, it’s such a good gift to be able to have conversation instead of just you know putting your name on a calendar or putting your name on pins or you know, whatever and just sending that out. Wouldn’t it be better if your calendar had health you know how home maintenance tips for how to live healthier or just something like that instead? Or the magazine right so D.J. Paris 34:24I love that. So if you have a you have a direct mail version of this as well where you can actually physically so so people can always subscribe to the digital they can always print out and have those available but if it was me I’d want to have the print the professionally printed magazine because just looks better. So tell us about that as Sheila Alston 34:51well. Well it’s a magazine people will keep because it’s not like every magazine that you see right and so your face gets printed on the cover inside you There’s a little note that I write and you can completely change it. Like I literally send you a Canva template that you can customize. And then you get an inside back cover template the Customize. So it’s not, you know, I love reminder media, they’re great. But when I was an agent sending reminder media, even though it’s customizable, it’s not it’s limited, right. So when I created mine, I want it to be a little more flexible than that, because everybody’s brand looks different, you might want to change the colors. And you might want to completely change the whatever’s written there. And so you’ll get the inside back cover for whatever you want. And also the back cover. But here’s the exciting thing is the publisher that I work with. If you send 1000 or more copies, we can hyper localize it for you. So we can put your town name on the front. Not only do are the addresses exclusive to you, but you can also add, you can mail some to your sphere, and some to address as you don’t know, you can, we can actually normally it’s for 2500 or more. But if they mentioned you, and they want to sign up and send 1000 or more, they can get a feature article written about them inside the first issue. So we could literally put their face on the cover of their hyperlocal. And it’s such a way to build authority is having a, you know, magazine article written about you and you’re on the cover. So you’re just not, you know, it’s not just branded to you, but you’re in the magazine. D.J. Paris 36:30You know, it’s so funny, I was thinking about magazines the other day because I received the Costco connections magazine, which for all people who who are Costco members, we all get this magazine once a month, and it’s literally the only magazine I get. I never look at it. But I always think because I, I just I’m not I don’t go to Costco that often. But and I don’t really care. But I do look at it. And I do I don’t really thumb through it. But I do look at it, I see what’s on the cover. And and then I toss it. And I’m always like, I wonder why they do this. And then it dawned on me recently, because it works, it clearly works, they must know what they’re doing, they’re not wasting all of this money on this Costco connections, because it doesn’t generate business for them. They’re not stupid. They’re obviously at the top of of the wholesale sort of, you know, you know, retail space, that’s them. And they published this printed, you know, magazine. And then I thought about realtors and I go, who has a printed realtor magazine. And I was like, nobody, the only printed realtor magazine in our marketplace is like a third party company that is just like talking about the industry in general and features, you know, agents and different articles. And it’s cool, it’s really great. But nobody has their own magazine. And I was like, This is so cool, because it’s going to be like nobody subscribes to magazines anymore. So this is also going to be something that they noticed, it’s not going to be stuck between Elle and Vogue and all the other magazines that people you know, used to subscribe to that. Let’s just be honest, they’re not anymore. This is something you’re going to be sending them. And not only is it okay, I’ve got this magazine that no one else has. But it also is something that I actually would thumbed through, why don’t I thumb through the Costco connections, because it’s all the same stuff in Costco every month I yeah, just not a big deal to me. But I would I would thumb through this, because guess what, I have two kittens now. And maybe there’s gonna be an article on there and how to keep the home, you know, free of toxoplasmosis from from Kenya someday or just here’s to how to improve the air qualities when I walk in, I don’t always just smell the litter boxes. So the point is, is this is stuff that people do care about, they are looking at wellness, I would suspect that almost everybody on social media follows some wellness accounts in some capacity. Right, we all follow somebody, I follow a guy called knees over toes as a workout guy. So I’m following them, everyone’s following them. This is a way to have your own physical. And by the way, the physical, you know, the physical issues are more expensive, of course, you gotta mail them and print them. And you don’t have to do this, right, you could go strictly digital, I would encourage you to step up, though, and do the physical mailer because people are going to be even if they don’t read it, they’re gonna be impressed. They’re gonna be like, Wow, my agents got something going on. This is really cool. So I’m, I’m well, and we have Sheila Alston 39:18such great pricing, if you’re sending to 1000 or more, it’s 329 An issue, which is a really good price. But here’s the thing, we have a partnership program, where if you give us your list of vendors, and we can call them to get ads, or you know, we’ll call them and say hey, would you like some exposure in this Realtors magazine? They they wanted us to call you because they refer you a lot. And if we sell an ad in their magazine, we’ll split the revenue with them and we’ll create the ad and it helps to reduce the cost of the magazine. So depending on how many ads they get, they could literally get it down to where it’s the same cost as a postcard but they’re sending this beautiful magazine and We like to call the mailbox moment really the mailbox moment. And I think you know, for years Top of Mind used to be a thing, like, you know, top of mind works for Costco because you go to Costco already, you’re already a customer, you’re like, oh, yeah, I need to go to Costco. And it used to work where it’d be like, okay, yeah, oh, I need to sell my house. There’s a realtor. But that doesn’t work anymore. Right? Like, you get so many realtor ones. And you can easily go on Google and find who’s selling the most on your street. So how can you be memorable? That’s what we like to say, instead of just being top of mind, how can you be memorable. And if someone sees this magazine, and sees what you’re putting out there, and, you know, of course, it represents your values and what you think is important and that you care you are, you’re being that memorable, because you’re providing value. D.J. Paris 40:46Absolutely at the website to see all of the different options, digital and print healthy home media.com. You can, the pricing is on there as well. And you can you can schedule a strategy call, but you said something that I just want to go back to this idea of having partners help compensate or pay for the cost, right? So you could have lender and attorney and inspector you can have people who want to get exposure as Sheila was mentioning inside the magazine, and that could help be how you afford to do the print the printed material. So, you know, think about if you could get the price down with a few partners who want exposure to you know, $1 an issue printed or even possibly, who knows how low it could go? Boy, that’s a no brainer. Yeah. Because as you said, yeah, and the Costco connections thing. Yeah. It’s always like who reads this? I don’t know who reads it. But it does remind me, oh, yeah, I gotta go to Costco soon. So even if they don’t thumb through it, when they they are likely to thumb through it. But even if they don’t, they’re going to see, wow, I’m getting this physical magazine from my agent who is clearly into healthy living. And I think that is, again, it’s an ultimate differentiator. So I am such a huge, huge fan of this. Where do you see, Sheila? Curious? Are you seeing any additional trends in the home wellness space, that are kind of exciting, and, you know, new sort of things that that, you know, different? Different industries are coming together to? Sheila Alston 42:22Well, I think, you know, when I hear about my, you know, the wellness architect, when she talks about the wellness kitchen, I was like, oh, that’s kind of exciting. What’s the wellness kitchen. And it’s simple things, but it’s just about organizing, you know, your kitchen so that healthy things are easily reachable, right. But then also, you see like appliances that are coming out, there’s a whole new steam oven. So and there’s an air fryer, right, so that you don’t have to use that microwave oven that’s putting radiation in your food, you could use a steam oven and a convection oven, an air fryer, and you could still you could get wonderful tasting food that’s going to be way healthier for you. You’ll notice that designers now there’s eco designers that specialize in, you know, getting new things that aren’t from overseas and sprayed with all those toxic chemicals like fire retardants, anything that is got extra chemicals on it, you don’t want it like I had an interview on my podcast with a got certified carpet person. And she’s an interior designer. And she said she sells these organic, beautiful wool rugs that are totally toxin free. And then she says the designers just don’t know. And she saw one of these designers who bought this for a client. They’re spraying all that scotch guard all over it afterwards. And then the kids are playing on it. She’s like, Oh, gosh, you just ruined it. You know, she’s like, not every homeowner knows about this stuff. But every designer should write and I was like, you know, realtor should, too. Because you’re the ones recommending people. And it’s not that you need to become a healthy home expert. just expose yourself to this stuff, start meeting some new business people and start sharing what they’re doing, you’re gonna learn about it, you’re going to be helping, not only them, but the people that you’re connecting them with. And, you know, in turn, we’re making a difference because you’re helping people live healthier. And I just feel like that’s a ripple effect that you can be proud of. D.J. Paris 44:19Yeah, and I’ll give the audience a quick story of my own. So I was just thinking about this, as you were saying that so about five years ago, a friend who was in the real estate industry came and to me, just as as I say, Hey, what’s going on with you? And he said, You know, I am starting a magazine for realtors, and I went for a magazine for realtors. And he said, Yeah, and this was like, you know, 2018 Maybe. So I went, Oh, that seems like the world’s worst idea. No one reads magazines anymore. And he goes, No, no, no, I’m in and he said it’s going to be exclusive are only going to send it to the top 500 realtors, and I was like, nobody is going to care about this. And I even said that to him like nobody cares. Like, you’re better off just making a digital magazine, and I don’t even think anyone’s going to care about that. But good luck, I wish you the best. And I thought for sure he’s gonna fail. Five years later, the magazine here in our local market, Chicago is as big as ever, it’s just for realtors. And agents are getting, like, steamrolling over each other to try to be featured in this magazine. So people do want physical marketing materials these days. And, you know, flyers, brochures, all of that’s fine, but really coming up with something unique, that actually provides value. What this magazine actually did, this one I’m referencing, why it became successful is because they would interview these top agents, they would learn about how they grew their business, they would provide articles for realtors in there kind of similar to what we do on the show. And people do read it, I was featured in it once people read my article reached out. So I was like, wow, I guess I was totally wrong. And I was. So guys, you know, please, please don’t think of this as another newsletter. Don’t think of it as think of it as a way to really differentiate yourself. And you can get people to pay for this, you can reach out to your vendors and say, hey, I want to do something really cool for all of us, we’re going to include you in this and we want you to help contribute to it so that we can get you more business as well, Mr. or Mrs. You know, vendor. So I’m a huge fan of this idea. I’ve never seen anything else like it on the market. And I really encourage agents do and it’s not that expensive. By the way, if you even if you’re just doing the digital one, it’s, it’s, it’s remarkably cheap, I won’t even go into the pricing because it’s so inexpensive. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s it is so worth so much more than what you’re charging such as Sheila Alston 46:45wanted it to be such a no brainer. And I wanted every type of agent to be able to leverage it. So I wanted a new agent who doesn’t have a home sale yet to just have it be a no brainer to just be able to share the digital issue. And then for anybody who’s already doing farming, you know, we want to we want to just have you switch from whatever you’re doing and try this instead and make it competitive price wise, but then also just add more value to our customers who are the agents. And D.J. Paris 47:12I do love that story of the agent who went to the church Jazz Festival and had these issues sitting on her table and a plant and then really saying, yeah, so of course I can help you buy and sell a home. But here’s what I’m really into right now. And isn’t this cool? Would you like to be on the list? So you can get these tips and tricks? Who would say no to that? No. And then you can market to those? Yeah, you can market to those people forever. And like you said, 25. I mean, that’s like, that’s like one of the most successful open houses of all time, if you can get 25 names. Yeah, that’s incredible. And so yes, and by the way, the cost for the digital is I just calculated it, it’s less than 1/4 of one month of my gym membership. That’s how cheap this is. So this is what Sheila said, it’s a no brainer, guys, it is a no brainer. Do this before everyone else in your market has Sheila Alston 48:05well, and I will raise prices eventually. But I’m just keeping it low, you’re gonna have to, you know, I am I’ve had the magazine for three years, but I haven’t. I’ve been busy building it. So I haven’t really done an exposure sales launching things. So really, if you get in now you’re just an introductory pricing basically. And if when I do raise prices, you’ll never your price will go up, you’re always locked in. So it’s a good time to get in now. D.J. Paris 48:31Kulfi home media.com is where you go and we have a promo code if you use the code real 50 R EA l five zero, you will get 50% off $50. Sorry, sorry, $50. Yes, yes, not 50% Because you could be making a $5,000 order and she needs to stay in business. But $50 off. And guys, that is a crazy, what do you see the pricing for this? That is at least for the digital one, it’s almost free. So let’s let’s go ahead and support Sheila guys. This is what your your audience wants to hear about and read about. And it’s a way just to make yourself unique in the marketplace. So healthy home. media.com is where you go. But if you’re not yet convinced, if you’re like I still want to kind of check this out, follow Sheila on social media and actually see what she’s putting out there. So you can get a sense for whether it would be a good fit for your business. And I can assure you that it will be but the way that you follow Sheila is on Instagram wellness agents, agents, plural wellness agents on Instagram and Facebook healthy home media. Again, we’ll have links to all of this in the show notes. But if you do sign up, please use the promo code real five zero and you will get $50 off one month essentially. And Sheila this way I really I’m super excited about this. I rarely ever get excited about a product or a service because you know I just, I don’t see a lot of unique sort of things entering the market in the space. This to me is extremely unique. So I was couldn’t be more excited to talk about this with you today, on behalf of our audience want to thank Sheila for obviously creating this product and opportunity for agents to differentiate themselves. So thank you, thank you for coming on our show to talk about it. And on behalf of Sheila and myself, we want to say thank you to our audience for sticking around to the end, the best way that you can help us continue to grow is to tell a friend, I think of one other realtor that could benefit from hearing this great conversation with Sheila, and send them a link to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com. Or just have them pull up any podcast app search for keeping it real and hit that subscribe button. Also, if you’d like to leave us a review on whatever app you might be listening to us on. We appreciate that. So iTunes, Spotify, wherever, please let us know what you think of the show. And lastly, support our sponsors. They’re the ones paying the freight they keep the show running, please check them out and support their products and services as well. We’ll Sheila, we appreciate your time today. We will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks. Yeah, thank Sheila Alston 51:10you Can I say one more thing is their time. I just wanted to give one more free resource. So if you do go to my website, and you click on free resources, I have a whole bunch of downloads that are available for you to check out like conversation starters, workbooks to help differentiate your brand, create your one liner, all that sort of stuff. And I also didn’t tell you, but I am just now going to be launching a new app for your phone. And it’s called Boost your real estate brand. And I literally haven’t launched it yet. But if you go it’s available now. So you’re kind of one of the very first and I have a whole free course called the wellness advantage so you can learn about it. And so if you just search your Android Google Play or go to the app store and look for boost your brand or boost your real estate brand you’ll be able to see it and they can download that free D.J. Paris 51:59awesome booster real estate brand on your app store download it check it out and Sheila has a tremendous I’m so glad you mentioned this because I forgot to mention it because I actually was looking at your free resources on your website. I was like wow, there’s some really really cool stuff here. She has after closing checklists, what does that mean? Check it out. This is a way to stay in touch. After the closing guys. She has all sorts of cool things how to brand yourself green staging ideas, you know marketing tools, social media ideas, it’s all free so check it out healthy home media.com click on free resources and get on her mailing list as well and most importantly get that magazine Let’s become the first person in your marketplace to be the wellness agent and wellness expert and and you know blit trait blaze the trail Yeah, so anyway, Sheila, thank you again. We will see everybody on the next episode healthy home. media.com is where you go. Thank you. Thank you.

Lisa Troyano-Ascolese talks about how she got into real estate business. Lisa discusses what she thinks about 2024 and what are her plans for her business. Lisa discuss the future of brokerage and what is she doing to encourage her agents to do to keep busy this year. Lisa also talks about the marketing strategies she thinks work right now. Last, Lisa shares her thoughts about agent commissions. Please check out Lisa’s Breakfast with Brokers Podcast here. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Lisa Troyano-Ascolese can be reached at 201-213-2617 and Lisa.Troyano-ascolese@evrealestate.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today we’re going to be speaking with a broker owner who purchased a brokerage and then within five years tripled the production of the agents in that brokerage today she’s going to tell us exactly how she did it. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now onto 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 gonna be speaking with Lisa Triano. Aska Leesy before we get to Lisa, just a couple of reminders. By the way if this is your first time checking us out welcome and if you are not if it is not your first time, welcome back. We appreciate you the best way that you can always help us continue to grow two things, three things. I’m going to ask for three things one, of course, tell a friend about the show. There’s lots of realtors that don’t know about us, so please let them know about keeping it real. Another way is by supporting our sponsors, they help keep the bills paid. We love our sponsors and every sponsor, we hand select with specifically really wonderful tools and services to help your real estate business. And third, leave us a review wherever you’re listening or watching this episode. Please let us know what you think of the podcast and helps us continue to get better and better. Alright, enough of me. Let’s get to the main event. my conversation with Lisa Triano Eskalene easy. Today on the show, our guest is Lisa Triano askeleen She’s a broker owner is a podcast host she’s a top producer. She’s a speaker. She’s a total superstar in Hoboken as well as in Jersey City. She has two offices there they service New Jersey. And but let me tell you more about Lisa because she’s really really an amazing guests that we are able to have on the show. So Lisa describes herself as a serial entrepreneur. She is the sole owner licensed partner and broker of record for Engel and Volkers Hoboken and Jersey City real estate brokerages as well as the my Hoboken real estate team leader she recently released the first to market mobile staging app called restaged with the hopes of helping with the planet’s rising furniture waste issue. She’s a podcast host a public speaker and a decorated award winning entrepreneur. Lisa thrives in purpose search sorry, Lisa thrives in purpose searching and business creation with a Bachelor of Science in marketing and management from Siena College and a partial MBA studies. Lisa has risen in multiple organizations before leaving corporate America and following her dreams of working for herself. She began a career in real estate over 10 years ago utilizing her strong background in online advertising, sales and marketing for several Fortune 500 companies to sell. Some of New Jersey’s most prestigious properties or clientele is included professional athletes, prominent members of the entertainment industry, among other high net worth individuals. She’s known for her unbridled enthusiasm, unique marketing techniques and knowledge of the real estate market as a whole. Lisa continues to win awards for both real estate and entrepreneurship to see all of the super cool things Lisa is up to please check her website which is LT a endeavors.com. Literally everything she does is on there but also I want you to follow her on Instagram my home book and so it’s like my Hoboken but H O me instead we’ll have a link to that as well in the show notes. Also subscribe to her pod cast, which is called breakfast with brokers, which she does weekly, and she interviews agents and basically talks about the market. Lisa, welcome to the show. Lisa Troyano Ascolese 5:08Hi, thanks for that intro. That was awesome. D.J. Paris 5:10You do a lot of things. Lisa Troyano Ascolese 5:12I do a lot of impressive. Yeah, D.J. Paris 5:14exactly. Yeah. Well, yes, I can appreciate that we, we have one brokerage here you have two brokerages, I can’t even imagine doing two, we have one with just under 800 agents. And that is keeping us very, very busy. The idea of having to just oh, that just makes my head spin. But you not only are doing that you’re also hosting a show you also entrepreneurs, speaker, you do it all. And most importantly, you develop agents. I want to talk about this because one of the most important or impressive things I saw from you is that not only did you purchase angle and Volkers in you open these these two offices, but you also tripled the production of those offices. And let’s be honest, that is not easy to do at angle and Volkers is already an amazing brand. We have them here in Chicago, clearly a name that people respect and admire, certainly one of the white glove firms. But to triple the production of any office, regardless of the name that’s on the sign out front is I mean, we I would love to triple our agents production. So tell me what what you’re doing or what you did, because I think our show is all about agent development. So tell us how you think Well, before we get to that, I’m so sorry. I gotta go with my first question. We will get to agent development second. Sorry, tell us how you got in the industry? Yeah, Lisa Troyano Ascolese 6:38so actually ties well into your second question. I was in online advertising sales in Manhattan, working for several Fortune 500 companies. And I worked for an incredible man who was had an open door policy. So I literally sat next to the CEO of the company in this giant loft. There were no doors, it was just he had this great open air policy basically come in pitch me whatever idea you might have. And I’ll I’ll critique it, I’ll give you my feedback. He was like he was a serial entrepreneur and just off the charts. Brilliant. And I had this idea for like an event planning company. And I went to him. And I remember sitting across the table from him. And he’s going through my business plan. I’m like, What did I just do? I just gave my boss my exit strategy. Like, this is the dumbest idea. I fell right into it. And like, he closes it up. And he was like, you know, what’s the problem? That’s great. And I was like, Well, I have a job here. And he’s like, I’m laying off half the company tomorrow. No, you’re never safe when you work for someone else. And I was like, that’s true. I flat out said I loved his honesty. he flat out was like you don’t make enough money. I’m not laying you off. But half the company will not be here tomorrow. Yeah. D.J. Paris 7:47And that’s it’s important thing, by the way to realize that if you for people that do have corporate jobs, or maybe you’re thinking about getting into real estate, I was one of those people who was very highly compensated at a tech firm. Prior to this, I had just gotten a perfect review, I’d gotten a raise. And then I got laid off a week later, even though all signs pointed to I am doing great. But because I was so highly compensated, I was very easily they could get rid of me pretty easily. So that’s a really strong point. Yeah. Lisa Troyano Ascolese 8:19And when I went on to go through like six or seven rounds of layoffs, and then finally they closed my division of the company, and I was out on the street, they had no money left. They didn’t give me any severance. And I remember being like, I’m gonna just get my at the time my late mother was a realtor. And I was like, I’m just gonna get my real estate license all my friends, we’re moving to Hoboken, I’ll do a couple rentals and it’ll pay the bills. And I remember jumping into it with I had the the event planning company that I was starting and kind of started doing them and I had to make a decision worth my time and kids one side or a million dollar condos on the other. And I was like I’m going for the Cocteau’s. So I close my company and I start time as a mom and pop company eventually bought the remaining owner out and and here we are. So real estate, yay. Unbelievable. D.J. Paris 9:10It’s amazing. It is it’s it’s funny how people get into this business, and then some, you know, ultimately become, you know, broker owners. So let’s talk a little bit about agent development, as we were, as I was getting to at the beginning and realized I hadn’t properly sort of gotten your story. So how do you think about training again, angle and Volkers is is really a brand at least here in Chicago and I’m guessing in most parts of the country where it’s I don’t know that there’s a lot of brand new agents who joined angle and Volkers I know it’s a lot of like, hey, once you get to a certain level, you know that’s that’s a place and again, maybe they do train new agents as well. But regardless, as a broker owner, you are always wanting your agents to do better production, more production. And of course, you’re there to guide them. So How do you think about that? And, you know, tell us like kind of what you’re talking to your agents about right now is 2024 just started, we had a tough year last year, at least here in Chicago. I know we did. Probably you guys dealt with the same high interest rates and low inventory that everywhere else did. So how are you thinking about this year? Lisa Troyano Ascolese 10:19I’m cautiously optimistic. If you asked me that question, I think three months ago, I would have told you that in the hatches and grab your helmets, and that’s it. But I have to tell you, I think I mean, our markets a little resilient in that regard. Like we get the word five minutes outside of Manhattan, you can get into Manhattan from Hoboken and four different ways like train bus vote, you know, Uber, we’re right across the river. So for us, we always bounce back a little bit quick, and we’re about nine months out of Manhattan’s market. So our nine month lag, I should say for Manhattan’s market. So we have a nice, like people are always moving in and moving out and moving in moving out. So there’s always like a decent amount of transactions for us. That being said, when we closed last year, there were 53 properties on the market for 60,000 people, and there’s 1011 realtors that identify as Hoboken as their market. So the math is just not mapping. So it’s, it’s one of those situations is where I think we’re gonna continue to see low inventory, anything that comes on the market gobbled up with multiple offers over asking. And I think the low inventory is really what’s keeping us going and keeping that that steady. But a lot of parts like we start with North Jersey, a little bit of West and we some South Jersey as well. Not all those markets, but certain pockets of those markets. And, you know, we’re seeing it across the board. So I think as long as demand remains that high, we will continue to to to have, you know, a healthy situation. We just need we need a little bit more inventory. And I don’t I’m sure you guys are seeing the same thing by us. The issue is, you know, we have everybody that is stuck in these two, two and a half percent interest rates. And during COVID All of the pricing shot up. I mean, our single family market in Hoboken went up 24% In two years. Wow. So now, you know, that brownstone that was 1.8 is you know, significantly higher. Now you can’t get anything decent for under two, five. And, you know, again, the math isn’t happening. It’s like people are like, Well, I’m just gonna stay on my condo until these rates come down. So it’s I think if we see, if we just see a five if we just see 59999 And like, a just a five, I think we would have like a wild spring. But I don’t know. I mean, now they’re talking about D.J. Paris 12:32no one has the crystal ball. It’s funny, I hear everyone’s got their own number when it comes to rates like your 6.3. Obviously 5.9 would be amazing. We don’t know, I’m actually going to see Lawrence Yun, who’s the NAR Chief, Chief Economist. And next week, I’m just lucky enough that he’s in Chicago, because I think ours here. Despite all of their problems, we’re still having this market. I know we won’t go there. There was the I don’t know if you saw there was news yesterday about I’m very curious to see what that’s about. But that’s just the gossipy part of me. But anyway, I will get to chance to to come back and do an episode on what Dr. Yoon soo predicts for this year. He’s usually fairly accurate. But this is a big problem. Right? I think it’s 85%. Yeah. 85% of us homeowners with a mortgage have less than 5% rate. Yeah. So as you’re saying, I mean, I’m at 2.9%. Like, I’m not moving. Yeah, yeah. So so it’s a problem. But is there does the math work? And this is I guess, the question and it’s market specific. But I’m curious, does the math sort of work when rates are where they’re at now? Just because oh, we are dealing with cat a lot of cash offers I bet. So that may that may sort of negate what I’m about to say. But for non cash offers, I think now might actually be a decent time to buy because anytime rates do drop to the low sixes it’s going to be an it’s going to be so much competition. I just wonder if people are going to be gripped vastly overpaying if they were to buy today, lunch curious. Lisa Troyano Ascolese 14:10I’m already on like three group chats with friends and family like talking about my in laws have a house that went up across the street from them. They live in a modest block back up to it. commercial districts like not a cul de sac like not like, you know, everyone’s like, the house just hit for two, eight. And it’s like, what? D.J. Paris 14:28It’s everyone’s already overpaying. Lisa Troyano Ascolese 14:31Everyone’s really overpay but I also think that like to your point right now is a great time to buy because you have a little bit of leverage. And, you know, whatever still sitting on the market right now might not necessarily be bad. It just might be, you know, it was mispriced or, you know, it’s not the typical you know, all white modern farmhouse everyone wants like it just might be a little different that you can change I think, I think to your point, it’s a great time to buy. D.J. Paris 14:58I also want to talk A little bit about brokerages. So this is something we don’t ever talk about on the show. And being somebody who’s in management at a brokerage. I think there’s a lot of times a disconnect between what agents maybe expect from a brokerage and also just how brokerages work. I think. I think one myth that I’d like as a broker owner you can I probably appreciate dispelling is that the margins for brokerages are high they’re really not. And you know, brokerages are in competition with other brokerages, of course for commissions and everything. So you know, we’re at a situation where I think agents continue to split clients squeezed the agents, the agents squeezed the brokerages. You know, things are changing a bit. Do you think there’s going and of course, the lawsuits with respect to commissions? Do we Do you think there’s going to be like a massive change in the next several years with how agents are compensated? Obviously, it’s a crystal ball question. But just curious about, you know, how it’s all going to is, are things going to fundamentally change do you think? Lisa Troyano Ascolese 16:02I mean, I think yes, I think I think frankly, we’re the last agent, the last agency, the last industry that hasn’t been shut up, right, We’re the last ones that, you know, taxis had Uber and blockbuster had Netflix, you know, We’re the last ones that really haven’t had a major shake up. So I think, I think yeah, I think something’s coming what that is, to be honest, I have no idea. You’re absolutely right, the margins, the margins are very thin for brokerages. I mean, I only have 33 agents across to brokerages, and that’s kind of by design. Sure. Cuz, you know, but to your point, more agents is more money. Right? So it’s like, it’s, I think we, we, the power of the brokerage was diminished with certain models that emerged, you know, not naming names, but the Catholic model. And, you know, a lot of things were dangled in front of agents faces like, you should come here, you can make 95% of your commission. It’s like, right, but now you have a bunch of people running around the industry that don’t know what they’re doing and have absolutely no one to call. I mean, there’s there’s a brokerage that again, I would never call anyone out. But there’s a brokerage, where it took me two months to find the broker to month on where to send the check, like, yes, it’s, I mean, really, it’s so I think, to a point, and this is a good segue into your other questions, I think everything’s gonna go back to some level of basics. And you hear Tom Ferry talk about it, you hear Buffini talk about it, but there’s going to be some level of back to basics. And I think what, what we offer and what I’m sure you do as well is, you know, you need some sort of guidance, you need somebody I came up with a mentor perspective where I could call that person at 9pm. Or I can call them at midnight, or I can call them at one in the afternoon, and he picked up and that’s 100% why I became a successful agent quickly, because I had answers to questions. Yeah, D.J. Paris 17:47I can’t think of anything more important for an agent who’s newer or just looking to increase production is having somebody who’s either doing slightly better than they are or who’s just an industry veteran, who can say like, here’s how to do it, call me when you need help. And brokerages I think are a lot of them are starting to move more towards the team model, which teams a lot of times can pick up the slack of, of where a brokerage, maybe smaller, maybe doesn’t have as much support or training. I’m seeing that a lot happen here in our, in our market here. A lot of we’re seeing a lot of brokerages step away from training and kind of put that in the laps of the team leaders. So that’s kind of interesting. But again, there’s there’s quality control issues with that, I’m sure depends on the team, of course. But the idea of just having a mentor is so critical, we are actually finally putting a true mentorship program together this year at our brokerage, it’s taken us a long time. And it’s really tricky. As you know, mentorship programs are tricky because you know, you don’t want to give your your agent that just joined you a bad experience at the same time. You’re putting a lot of trust into the whoever the mentor is. And at the same time, you have to figure out how you’re constantly communicating with both to make sure that everybody’s happy and getting what they need. And of course, you know that but that’s what a brokerage should be doing. That’s literally part of the job if that’s something they offer, or if they don’t offer that you know, they should have Hey, if you call between this time and this time, you’re gonna get one of us on the phone, we’re here to help you. We you know, we are we’re here to help but not every brokerage is like that. I will say this to anyone listening. If you are somebody who is calling, and you don’t get good responses, this is the year to maybe explore other options, see what other firms offer because mentorship support training, these are the things that you are paying for for your brokerage please please please take advantage of them. Yes, if you’re going to a firm that doesn’t have these things, but they offer you like the highest commissions. Okay, fine, you get that that’s a trade off, but really understand that there are other solutions out there, and maybe it makes sense to earn less commission if you’re getting better, of course better training and support. What are you encouraging your thought about fundamentals? What are You encouraging your agents to do this year, just to sort of stay busy. You know, we can’t control the interest rates or the market inventory, but we can control our actions. So just curious on what you’re seeing successful agents do right now? Yeah, I Lisa Troyano Ascolese 20:15mean, I think we’re actually approaching it from like a three prong approach. So basically, we’re looking at the people that actually have to move. So I’m encouraging them to develop relationships with, you know, attorneys that might handle trust and estate work attorneys that might handle divorce, you know, really get in touch with old, like retirement communities, let you know, if you have somebody moving in, they most likely have to sell something, I mean, really acting as an advisor for these people that are going through a very scary transition in their life. Like, I think this country doesn’t do a good job of kind of protecting our elderly people. And it’s a scary time for them, right. And they’re saying, I just saw another podcaster. I don’t remember the name of but it was like, they’re calling it the silver tsunami. And it’s like, most of the transactions that will happen in the next five years are people over 65 cashing out. And I think the best thing you can do, or any agent can do is really start to make relationships in that realm. That’s certainly something I never knew anything about. And now I have wonderful relationship, friendships with divorce attorneys, and trusts and estates attorneys. And you know, that sort of thing. I think that’s going to be key going forward, because they so many of those baby boomers are cashing out in the next couple of years. Oh, D.J. Paris 21:27yeah. Great, great, great point, Lisa. So everyone listening, if you do not have relationships with divorce attorneys, estate planning attorneys, accountants, financial advisors, these are all people that deal with a lot of times someone’s entire net worth. And so they know that they understand the situation somebody is having a life event change, or inheriting a bunch of money, maybe from a parent who is, you know, passed away, they need boomers, baby boomers are going to be transferring a Trant on trillions of dollars down to over the next handful of years. To, to to their their siblings, or sorry, their offspring. And this is the time to build those relationships. So that when it maybe even becomes a tax advantaged reason why somebody buys or sells or put something in a trust, that you’re their person. So now’s the time to start reaching out to those providers and start saying, I want to build a relationship with you, I want to learn, you know, how can I send you business and you know, here’s what I look for. And you can also to Lisa Troyano Ascolese 22:29be like, to be I’m sorry to interrupt you, but to be ethical about it, you know, it’s a scary time, I think they’re, you know, that generation is very ones out to get their money, you know, so it’s one of those things to like, to really approach it from, like a place of assistance and a place of helping and be like, we’re gonna make sure that everything’s safe, and your kids get everything and you’re happy. And, you know, just being an ally in that process. That is, to me sounds terrifying. You know, I think that’s gonna go a long way. And it’s actually doing something nice with what we’re doing, you know. So I think it’s a great, great option. D.J. Paris 22:59It’s an amazing option. I’m so glad you mentioned that because it we are fiduciaries. So we are responsible for making sure we’re doing what’s in our client’s best financial interest. And as Lisa just said, it’s really the right thing to do. So I would say in every conversation with or every client conversation at some point, say, Hey, by the way, do you have somebody managing your estate? Do you have a will? Do you have some of the setup it not that you have to get involved as the agent, but you just want to say I just want to make sure everything’s protected, and that we’re doing things in the right way, even if it’s just to show that you care, that even just saying that demonstrates I care about your situation. And I know people that can help with this, if you need that you have a good accountant, do you have a good financial adviser? Do you have enough insurance? Are you covered in everything? Even though yes, we’re selling homes, we want to make sure that this home fits into your financial plan. I bet if if an agent would say that to to a potential client, and maybe they’re interviewing three or four other realtors as well, I bet those other agents probably wouldn’t bring up those kinds of things. Because it gets it gets tricky, where you don’t have to answer those questions when they’re like, Well, what about this as I, Hey, that’s not my area of expert expertise, but I have people that can help that can help you with that. Or let’s just get everyone on the same page. Yeah, totally. From a marketing perspective, because that’s your background, I want to talk about what marketing strategies do you see working like right now? What what do you see agents doing that successful? Maybe what do we see agents doing that you sort of shake your head and go, you know, not a good idea? Yeah, Lisa Troyano Ascolese 24:34I think, you know, this whole concept of, of agents having to be their own social media marketers. I think some are born for this. I think some need to hire someone. It’s I think it’s a long the, you know, I think you have to find a place and this is one thing that we do offer is like that you can stand out right. And I think a lot of agents there’s a lot of ego involved in this business. I mean, I’m sure you you’ve seen it, you know, and there’s part of that that’s actually really great. They because it allows these agents to kind of, you know, create this persona and they create this whole business surrounding that ego and it’s wonderful, it can also go in a very bad direction. So I think it’s, I think it’s one of those things where find, find a way that you can create a platform for yourself where you stand out. Because, like I said earlier, we have 1011 realtors that identify with Hoboken as a product, that’s insane, were one square mile. So you really need I think 7078 of us do the most work, you need a way to stand out. I mean, social media is still free, which is crazy to me like that. I mean, the fact that people aren’t diving into that, diving into AI in certain ways, like, there’s so that’s the fun part of this, I think, like come up with creative videos, come up with creative videos for yourself, not just for properties, you know, market yourself through video, if you’re sending don’t just send emails, what’s an open rate for an email now, it’s like nothing, you know, if you, you send it with a video on it, that’s someone interesting are directed to that person. So we’re doing a lot of that we’re doing a lot of very targeted marketing, we also utilize our network. So Anglin Volkers is in 33 countries around the world. And we actually work very well together. You mentioned the one in Chicago, I think we just sent him something a couple of weeks ago, like we we work very well on the referral side of things. And we double down on that because we do have a great relationship with the shop. So I think you know, kind of find your niche and then get it out into the world. I also think and this is a buzzword, so I hate to I can watch my agent Tom Worley rolling his eyes right now, if he’s ever listened to is the term authentic. I think we were being authentic before authentic was cool. And I think that’s key like you’re this is, you know, we did this all the time, we’re doing multiple transactions a month, all that stuff, but we forget that a lot of times this, this is like the most important transaction for someone. So out there renting a Bentley and driving around the street, like acting like, you know, that does nothing for anybody. You know, it’s you want to authentically present a home authentically present yourself and kind of cut away with all that craziness. Like, I think that’s a big trend that’s gonna go haywire is the days of you know, rolling up to the estate in the McLaren. I think you’re done. I think it’s you got to do something a little bit more authentic. D.J. Paris 27:13I think you’re right, and good riddance to those days. My opinion because because, well, and there’s nothing, you know, again, everyone’s different. And cheers to the people that do that. And I’m not here to disparage them. But But I think authenticity, the way I think about it is skills are well, honesty and skill. So it’s like, are you actually telling the truth? Are you presenting your actual self? And are you good? Are you actually useful to the agent and the useful agents always do business? It’s funny, it’s an you guess you have to have a good marketing plan. And you have to, there’s more to it than just being good. But being good is really the most important thing. And it’s this is the year to sharpen skills, because as I’m sure you’re seeing this in your market, you know, yeah, there’s 1000 agents who identify, you know, as Hoboken, but I’ll bet you by the end of this year, there won’t be 1000 agents, I’ll bet you there’ll be a lot of a lot fewer. And the agents that are still around and doing all of those things to sharpen their skills and keep their marketing strong, are going to gobble up market share. I mean, I certainly hope that’s what happens, because we certainly could use in this industry. But you know, some agents probably do need to leave the industry not have you know, have their own fault. Maybe they were never trained, well, maybe they don’t, it’s just not really their job. But we’re gonna see, I mean, we’re already seeing it, we have a holding company for agents that don’t actively practice, we started like 10 years ago, just like, as a kind of as a goof like, well, I guess we should have a holding company started with one agent, now we have 1000 agents in there. And the last in the last year, we’ve seen 200 People join our holding company, not not like from our firm Obrador, holding just in the in the whole state of Illinois. So we’re seeing huge people leaving, which should be very actually both scary and very exciting to anyone listening to this, because exciting, because you’re gonna have more opportunity, scary because it could happen to you, too. So I think it’s important that if you just keep doing the right things, and learning, I don’t see any reason why somebody wouldn’t be successful. But I like so we talked about social media, yes, of course videos. But you know, in right now, I think we think about how do I be useful on social media, there’s all sorts of ways to do that, you know, pick a micro market at some sort of geographic area and do videos about that area and highlight the restaurants and I mean, you could do all sorts of fun things that are really useful to the community. And then you could then go into those like restaurants say, Hey, I just made a video about you guys here. I just wanted to let you know I’m gonna tag you, you guys. If you want to send it out, that’d be great too. And there’s all sorts of ways to get immersed in the community but I I think that’s that’s going to be the key is getting back to those basics of, of getting involved in the community learning your skills, but but I am curious, you know, what, what are you know, are you seeing anything else like, are you seeing Traditional mailers, for example, I’m hearing agents going back to doing a lot of physical mailers. To Lisa Troyano Ascolese 30:06me the mailer thing, I’ve never, I’ve never got it, I’ll never be a proponent of it, I know their success with it, I know you have to do it, like 45 times upside down. And from a lock of hair, I don’t know, everybody talks about it. Like, it’s the God’s gift to our business. I don’t get it. I have agents that do it. And I support that I love it. To me, it’s so much money. It’s just, it’s just litter, like, and I’m not, you know, I’m not saying like from an environmental perspective, it’s just, I mean, I personally get like six a week. So if I’m an agent, so it’s like, to me, I don’t know, I don’t get the mail or thing I get that it works. And if that’s your if you swear by it, by all means die on that hill. But for me, I don’t get the mail or thing personally, I think you’re way better. Utilizing video and unique ways. I sent out a text Yesterday, I went through all of my old landlords and gave them a video just saying, Hey, you may have made a lot of money. Like let me you know, let me know if if you have any interest in selling because this is the difference of what you can make. And here’s a net proceeds worksheet, blah, blah, blah, I have like six meetings next week just from doing that. And it’s I don’t have a ton of landlords, you know, I have maybe like 2020 to 30 landlords and I have six meetings. I mean, that’s a huge return. So I feel like that sort of thing. I think we need we’re gonna need to get creative. And I think we’re going to need to learn how to surf and videos. I think video and social or anything you can do from text messaging is fantastic. D.J. Paris 31:35Yeah, and I love that with text messaging with systems like Bom Bom or loom where what’s really cool if you if anyone listening hasn’t explored those. What’s really neat is if you know somebody with one of those accounts, have them send you one just as a test, because what’s cool is they’ll take a video, and and this really, you can send it if you’re like iPhone, iPhone, or I don’t know what it looks like for Android. But what’s cool is it will literally take the video that you make and create like a little gif, three second GIF, and then it’ll send it to the person and then you know, it’ll, they’ll see that they have a video for them right in their text message. And they’re more likely to click on it, we sent an email, we send an email to all 700 plus of our agents announcing we have a new managing broker, which is a very big deal for us. And so we sent out an email on Sunday, which is not the best day to you know, send out an email. But it’s all of our agents say, hey, just FYI, this big, long thing, here’s our new managing broker, welcome, etc. And then we sent an SMS on Monday to say just with a video, and we were curious to walk out the higher open rate, we knew text messages were would but it was night and day difference, we had almost a 50%, almost 50% of our agents clicked on the link in the text message, about 15% of our agents clicked on the link in the email, or open email, even open the email. And maybe that says more about how we communicate via email than anything, but it’s just the way it is. I mean, people are, well, you know, this, nobody reads their email, you’re a broker owner, you know. So this idea of utilizing SMS in a way that’s not invasive, that’s not overly communicative. But like providing value is amazing. It’s such a great creative way. And people don’t probably want to take your phone calls all the time, either, right? So that’s a great way to sort of have a conversation without having a conversation and you’re like, Hey, I just you know, here’s a you know, let’s take a look at your property and see if it’s a good time to sell. Lisa Troyano Ascolese 33:33Yep, 100%. I mean, even if you like from a brokerage perspective, even recruiting, I mean, my I have a great relationship with some of my best agents, and they show me the text messages, they get these campaigns that these are crazy, it is wild. I mean, you’ll have like, Hey, want to work here. And they’re like, no thanks. And they’re like, hey, but you really should work here. And they’re like, no thanks. And he’s like, Please work here. It’s like, Oh, my God. And it’s just it’s like, relentless. I mean, to the point where I think it almost turns them off, like, totally, you know, it’s, I don’t know, I think there’s an art to it. And I think that’s, that’s really going to separate, like, who makes it through this next transition is who can figure out what that art is and how you can do it authentically to yourself. And and really utilize these because there are so many tools that I mean, I don’t even know if you’ve dove into AI at all, but like, I try and do like a little each week, because it is the stuff you can do it that is incredible. D.J. Paris 34:23I mean, II, you know, the most obvious application, or the first one I had heard of was dropping your listing description, and it’ll rewrite it and or, you know, you’d tell it to rewrite it in a particular way. You can also tell it to abide by, you know, whatever rules are applicable in your particular state or federal rules around making sure it’s not a housing violation. But But yes, you can do that. That’s sort of I think most people know about that stuff now. But what if you were like, I don’t have anything to do for the next two days, because I don’t have any client appointments. You could literally as Chad GBT. Hey I’m a realtor, I have the next two days free. And I My goal is this, I want to reach out to 10 new people or whatever. And please give me ideas about how to do that it will literally give you ideas. So you don’t even have to come up with your own ideas anymore, which I think is so cool. And yeah, so utilize AI, I think if it is like, I don’t remember if it’s the Odyssey or whatever, there was the oracle at Delphi, I think, maybe for the Odyssey, but anyway, anyway, whatever is the old Greek mythology thing, but the Oracle Delphi was this thing, you know, you could ask anything for and it would tell you the answer. I feel like Chet GBT is our version of that. It’s not perfect, but it can do a lot of cool things. So you start talking to it, and start asking questions and asking for help, like, hey, help me market this property? What? Oh, there’s something really cool. You could do that. I’ll mention real quick. I just learned about this. You can put it I did this for myself, because I wanted to see, the building I live in is only three years old. It’s a brand new development or new ish. And so I said, I wonder what chat GBT, which I don’t even use the paid version. I have like the free version, which only goes back to like, 2020 or something. So it scours the web. But it only scours that I think through like, 2020. I don’t think there’s anything more current than that in in its database. Although I may be wrong. Anyway. I said, I wonder what chat GBT knows about my condo unit or my building. And I said, Hey, I live at this address. Tell me everything you know about it, which I was just interested to see, it knew what kind of countertops I had. It knew the pricing was wild. Because what it did is it it probably scrape the website that was for my building, when it when building was selling units, or I don’t know where it grabbed the data from it didn’t say, or it, maybe it did, but I didn’t look. But regardless, it knew everything. And I thought, if I was an agent, practicing, I would put this in F before every listing, because maybe there’ll be some fun little facts and things to know about the property that you would never know. Or maybe even a listing agent doesn’t know. And you know, you’ll just learn it knew when it was built, it knew it just knew everything. It knew what the average price points were, I was so cool. So you know, you should do that before every listing just to find or if there’s nothing that if it doesn’t know anything about the property, I would say, well tell me some cool things about the neighborhood that maybe a prospective buyer would want to know. Like, where’s the cool restaurants, whatever, it could be anything. So yeah, AI? Absolutely. Very cool. Lisa Troyano Ascolese 37:19It’s very cool. It’s very scary, but it’s very cool. D.J. Paris 37:23What do you think there’s going what do we think about commissions? Now I know New York, New Jersey, you know, your your you guys have a very unique market there. But do we think agent commissions are going to change? Do we think do you do you? Are you seeing a trend where listing Commission’s are coming down going up staying the same? Just curious. Lisa Troyano Ascolese 37:46I mean, we what I’m seeing, or what I ended up finding out what we started to see where the buyer’s agents were only getting 2%. So usually in our market, it’s a five or 6% listing. And we usually split it in half, two and a half to the listing agent, two and a half, Green Rovers. What I started to see was more and more 2% listings. And it coincided around the time that all these lawsuits happen, which don’t even get me started on those. But so when all that so I was like, oh, maybe it’s a reflection of that maybe people aren’t willing to give it out and up when you actually looked at the HUDs and the closing disclosures, you were seeing that this listing agent was keeping three and only giving out two. So I think there’s going to be a little bit I think listing agents are probably going to have a little bit more control over where that distribution lies. And we started doing it here for some properties, because to be honest, there was so much like tumultuous, like fighting over over deals. I don’t know it was a post COVID thing. I don’t know if everybody was just inside for too long. I don’t know what happened. But like, there was like two months ago, I spent the entire day arguing over a refrigerator. This guy just took his subzero refrigerator and just rolled it out the door was like it’s not like a refrigerator. It’s a $10,000 item. Like we have a problem here. I was like Sue me like it was just it’s so like contemptuous. So I think that if you as the listing agent have that option, you know, okay, well, here, I’m gonna give him like 2000. And Mike allows you to kind of control the deal a little bit more and keep things going. I mean, I think the other thing is to listing agents, it’s not a slam dunk, now, you know, to sell or it won’t be. So I think we’re going to have to do way more marketing. I think we’re gonna have to do way more, you know, higher end videos and higher end promotion. And so that is costly. So I could see that being more of a shift that I’m not necessarily worried about, but vigilant of whether or not there’s not going to be buyer’s agency. I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s really doing the whole industry a disservice and the seller a disservice to just eliminate buyer’s agency being paid. I think people think that Realtors get paid too much but if they actually saw what was going on in the back end, they would be appalled. I had multiple people this year be like I don’t know why You do this? Like, what? And they couldn’t, you know, my clients know how hard I work and they’re happy to pay the fees. I haven’t honestly had pushback on fees and years. But who knows, you know, the more that these crazy lawsuits get published, it’s it’s a it’s a sad state of affairs, I think they you know, people? Well, I’ll leave it at that. I think it’s, it’s, it’s more along the lines of like a mental situation or a mental health situation than it is anything else. But I agree, I think people that I’ve really worked with a good realtor, really know how much work is done and how much we do to keep the deal together. So I think in the end, I think that’ll prevail. I do think we’re gonna go through a weird time of justifying our fees. But I think at the end will be fun. I D.J. Paris 40:46think so too. And I think this is where skill just kind of wins the game. If you’re if you’re worried about if you’re, if you’re getting pushed back on your commissions. To me, I would see that as an agent, I would see that as feedback that maybe I’m not communicating my value proposition as well as I could be. And really saying, here’s why, in fact, if I was an agent, I would just say, I would explain to you how I get paid. I want to explain to you exactly how it works. And I want to explain why, why it’s worth it, why believe it’s worth it. And, you know, you don’t have to have that conversation every time. But for anyone that’s on the fence. I mean, this is kind of the lawsuits were kind of about this where, you know, commissions were kind of nebulous and kind of confusing, and nobody really understood them except the agents because it wasn’t super obvious who was paying the Commission’s and how it all worked. But this is a great opportunity to get ahead of it and really just explain it to buyers. Okay, technically, you’re not paying a commission, except you are paying a commission. And let me explain how it’s all baked into the price and everything so you get a better sense of where it comes from and how it all works out. I think I know, just agents explaining things better is always a win. And I think that to your point, I think they’re not You’re not going to get as much pushback. I think when it’s more confusing. I think that’s when people are like, wait a minute, what am I paying? Like? It’s like when I go into buy a car, which I like never do, because it’s such a bad experience buying a car, or at least I feel awful. Yeah. You always feel like you’re getting ripped off. Like nobody ever is like, here’s Okay, here’s what I’m going to make if I sell you this car, like, I’m happy to say if somebody’s like, Hey, I make 400 bucks each time I sell a car, I need to up this by 400 bucks. So I can make, like I get it. Like, we can have that conversation. I’m not I’m not a monster. But if I feel like you’re ripping me off now I’m not and I don’t trust you. Or if I feel like I don’t know the real story. Now I’m like, Well, now I don’t know who to believe. So I think with realtors we don’t thankfully we are not we are not cars. There’s nothing wrong with car salesmen. I love love good car salesman, but we know that the stigma in that industry is I don’t think I’m getting ripped off. I don’t know. So we don’t want that, you know, that same stigma here. And I think a lot of it’s just explain, explain, explain, explain. Tell everybody how it works. There’s no secrets anyway. I mean, it’s not anything to be embarrassed about. Who Lisa Troyano Ascolese 42:56isn’t looking at the hood. And notice that like, Yeah, I mean, like, obviously, were a massive line item. But it’s also like, like, what I started to do now is literally lay out before I start working with someone exactly what’s going to happen, the entire transaction and exactly what we’re going to do for you on each side. And I like I said, I’ve never had anyone pushback ever, ever the past like three or four years when it’s really been a question, you know, but to your transparency. D.J. Paris 43:25I agree. We should also mention, I didn’t do a great job of this on this episode. But I do want to mention that Lisa, you know, look, she owns two white glove brokerages in Jersey City and Hoboken angle and Volkers if you don’t know them, they’re amazing. They’re really, really at the top of the, at the at the top of the mountain for these, you know high. They attract very high producers, they also develop people into high producers, it’s just a good company. So if you are in those areas, and you’re an agent, now again, company like ours, we hire tons and tons of people. But Lisa is a little bit more. She’s she’s she and her team are very careful about who they bring on board because they want they want to develop you or they want to bring you on and find a solution for maybe an issue you’re having at your current brokerage. So if you’re like, I would like to work at a place like that, where by the way, when Lisa came on board, she tripled production. That would be pretty cool if you’re an agent. So how about checking out what Lisa has to offer? So Lisa, if there is an agent out there that’s interested. And by the way, guys, I want to also talk about if you’re a New York agent and just a second, but if somebody’s thinking about maybe making the switch, Lisa what’s the best way they should reach out to learn about your brokerage? Lisa Troyano Ascolese 44:39Yeah, I mean, you could reach out to me personally, it’s info at my home boeken.com You could text me 201-213-2617 Or you could actually I’m on social constantly. Obviously like I said earlier, it’s a big focus for us so you could DM me at at my home boeken so m YHOMEB o ke dot com. And then our if I’m sorry, our brokerage account is at EV, Hoboken JC. So you can do that one too. But either way, we’ll have D.J. Paris 45:10links to all that in the show notes. Thank you for that. And also want to mention, too, that for agents that are in other parts of the country that have clients that maybe move to New York, I mean, Hoboken and Jersey City are really considered New York at this point, it’s becomes, you know, a very desirable area, regardless of what somebody’s price points may be. Those are included in the sort of Manhattan sort of market. So if you have clients that are moving into New York, reach out to Lisa, because her team focuses on the Jersey side, do you guys do New York as well, or just the Jersey side? Lisa Troyano Ascolese 45:46We have a great relationship with our New York office. So we actually have, we can end our Brooklyn offices. So we actually we can help you, you know, if we could actually do like a 360 approach, we can give you some options in New Jersey that we think are comparable to New York, and then you know, we can send you to New York agents and they can handle it as well. So yeah, by all means, if I’m the starting point, I’d that would be great. So D.J. Paris 46:05it can if you’re if you’re somebody where people from those areas move to retire to probably going somewhere further south and warmer. If you are in one of those markets, where are fed from those areas, another good person to reach out to to say, Hey, I bet you have people that are moving, let’s figure out a way to mutually benefit each other. So I’ll reach out to Lisa, Lisa Troyano Ascolese 46:26and overseas. I put nine families overseas last year nine Wow. While we have an overseas component, like we always do a decent amount overseas. Nine is insane. That’s D.J. Paris 46:37incredible. So reach out to Lisa also, I want you to subscribe to her podcast, which is breakfast with brokers, you can find it anywhere podcasts are served and follow her on Instagram on all the social platforms my home boeken will have the link to that in the show notes. Lisa, thank you so much for being on our show. We greatly appreciate your time you’re raising a total superstar. Lisa is the person watch. We’re gonna have to have you on again, because you have a Virtual Staging app as well that I certainly we didn’t even get to, which is called restage. Check that out. It’s available on on your app store. restaged. It’s a Virtual Staging app. That’s hers. Check it out. Lisa, thank you so much. On behalf of the audience, we appreciate Lisa for spending an hour with us and on behalf of Lisa and myself want to thank the audience for sticking around to the final app for the final minute of the episode. And also please tell a friend think of one other realtor that could benefit from hearing this great conversation with Lisa send them a link to the show. We can you can find us everywhere. So Lisa, thank you so much. We will see on the next episode. Lisa Troyano Ascolese 47:43This is great. Thank you so much.

Erica Campos with Coldwell Banker in Chicago talks about how she ended up with a brand new career in real estate. Erica discusses what she did to be this successful in her first 6 months in the business. Next Erica talks about open houses – how she organizes them and her follow up procedures. Erica also discusses social media and her goal for 2024 in that regard. Last, Erica talks about cooperation with vendors and creating good relationships. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Erica Campos can be reached at (630) 291-5971 and erica.campos@cbrealty.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today we’re going to be talking to a brand new agent. She’s in her seventh month, and she is crushing it. She’s going to tell you exactly how she’s doing it. 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 a another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, I’m your guide. I am your host through the show. And in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with new top producer Erica composts. And, by the way, if you’re new to the show, welcome. We’re glad you’re here. If you’re returning thank you for coming back. Also, as always, please tell a friend about the show. Let other agents know about us. I just got back from a market outlook here in Chicago where we had the National Association of REALTORS chief economist Dr. Lawrence Yun speaking on his predictions for 2024. Perhaps I’ll do an episode on that myself. But it’s going to be a tricky year. So not as tricky as last year, hopefully. And he was actually fairly optimistic. But you know, we’re still going to see, you know, relatively high rates this year. You know, maybe dipping down into the lower sixes by the end of the year was his prediction. But regardless, this is going to be a tricky year just is. So let’s help each other tell other agents about our show. Let us know if there’s agents in your market where you’re just like, I wonder how that person is doing it. Somebody who’s really crushing it, well reach out to them or they can reach out to us. But we want to always continue to help our audience. We have the record number of listeners right now. So thank you for being here. Thank you for telling a friend and let’s just get to it the main event my conversation with Erica compass. All right, today my guest on the show is Erica composts with Coldwell Banker in Chicago. Let me tell you more about Erica and this is actually a really sort of unique episode for us. I’ll tell you why in just a moment. But with over two decades of experience in insurance, finance, sales and customer service, Eric Campos brings a wealth of knowledge and unique expertise to the table. She’s a full time realtor, member of National Association Of course Chicago Association and the resident real estate counsel. She’s affiliated with Coldwell Banker in Oak Lawn, Illinois, she services Chicago and the suburbs. Now, Erica’s at 40 years old Erica decided just recently to take her own leap of faith and dive headfirst into the world of real estate, leaving her nine to five behind as a financial literary coach. She joined Coldwell Banker with a fire in her eyes and a relentless dedication to succeed. I should mention that Erica just started practicing in the last Erica was in the last eight months, I believe. Erica Campos 4:10Yeah, about that, like six, seven months it was back. D.J. Paris 4:13Sorry. I was giving you more experience than you have. So six months? Yes, six, six months and change. I want to tell you more about Erica. I really shouldn’t have asked her a question just yet. But I did. But I want you guys to hear this because this is really cool. Within her first six months, which she just just cleared six months, Erica closed an impressive four transactions as most of us remember our first six months. We probably didn’t close for transactions, so congratulations to her. But this really proved her quick grasp of the real estate market and her ability to connect with clients. She didn’t wait for the new year to even start making waves. Already this year. She closed a deal. By the way, the date that we’re recording this is January 5, so she already has a deal on the books closed for 2024. Congrats That’s to her. But also I want to also mention this because I think this oftentimes gets overlooked and forgotten about by realtors, the longer they’re in the business. So Eric has really dedicated herself to education in that first six months. So this are some of the accreditations that she has earned just within the last year. So she already is a pricing strategy advisor. She is also a property management trainer. She’s gone through property management training Community Investment Corporation. She’s a real estate investing working with investors. She is a financial literacy coach, as we mentioned before, and she’s a lead renovation, repair and paint sort of expert so she is doing a lot of different things and we’re gonna talk about why she’s adding all of these designations and what how they’re helping her with her clients, but I want everyone to follow her on the various social channels Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok LinkedIn. You can find her while LinkedIn you just search for Erica compost. But for all the others she has realtor dot Erica ca MPLS. And you can find her we will have links to all of Erica social media in the show notes. Erica long intro but welcome to the show. Erica Campos 6:10Thanks, CJ, thank you, thank you for having me. I am super excited that I that I got a chance to be on. I’ve been a fan of your channel for such a long time. Even before I decided to even enroll in real estate school. I would listen to your podcast and it has been a true motivation for me to get my license finally do it really well. I Yeah. So while I was studying, I listen, just to get everyone’s perspective and what is going on in the real estate world. And again, it was just very motivational and inspirational and oh, good motivation. So why I decided to just go for it. Well, D.J. Paris 6:51that I am. Boy, you’ve you’ve you’ve I am very surprised. I did not know any of this. So wow, that was that was a lot to take in. Thank you. It was a real, it’s a it’s a real honor to hear that. So thank you so much for sharing that I was not expecting that. And we should also mention, too, that you are the what you really threw me off my game with that one, that one that one hit that one hit me pretty hard. Congratulations. Well, I’m really proud of you as well. Because, you know, people don’t usually have this kind of success in their first six months. And it wasn’t handed to you. These are things you all earned. So I am but I’m glad to hear that maybe I was a small part of that over over the journey. And what I really want to talk about, I want to start with why the switch to real estate first. So you had this sort of, you know, traditional corporate life before. Why the switch? Erica Campos 7:46Well, it all started when I was 17 years old. I I’ve been in a I was an insurance agent for local State Farm agent all state. And then eventually I went to work for brokerages, bigger companies, but I fell in love with the industry back then I was 17 years old started part time still finishing high school. And once I turned 18, I you know, became licensed for both property casualty life and health pass them all the first time same as my real estate license, which I know is a it’s a very difficult that test. So, you know, again, I fell in love with the industry, I was always in contact with realtors, and with loan officers and lenders. And I think it also comes naturally to me to understand this industry, you know, and I would always get on the phone with loan officers and processors and ask them well, what’s the what’s the interest rate now what’s going what kind of conventional and FHA programs are happening. And so throughout my career, I learned a lot about risk management. So I would go out and inspect the property to make sure it will go through our underwriting, make sure that the house is not falling down that we are ensuring you know, good structure for both the insurance company and for our clients. And I think that goes a long way now as well with when I am looking at houses with my clients, I’m able to detect, you’re gonna need a new roof in the next two years, you’re gonna need this furnace. It’s it’s a goner, you know. So I think my clients definitely you know, love that about my experience. And then along the way, of course, you you have to be a good salesperson because I was also hourly plus commission, and then you have to provide great customer service because you want to build that trust, and you want them to continue coming to you as the expert. So I did that for about 1718 years. And in the midst of all of that I also was an educator. So I was building a little side business. Basically I could say it’s it was life skills like life skills, educator teaching, life skills and financial literacy. since back then, and so I have a big education background too. I started teaching all over Chicago and high schools as well, financial literacy and life skills, education. And I think all together with my experience and being so detailed and analytical and the plus the education piece, I feel good that it’s helped me transition into what I am now. And my last job, I was a Financial Literacy Coach. And I taught all over underserved communities, and young adults reentry, folks. And that pretty much led me into real estate again. So I think it was just a leeway into that. And once I got licensed, and I started doing open houses, and I started getting clients, right off the bat, I realized, okay, I don’t know if I can juggle these two. And I don’t like working for other people. I like to, you know, work for myself. And so I told my husband, listen, I really would love to focus on real estate, I know that I can hit the ground running, give me six months, if in six months, I don’t so one thing. I’ll go work for somebody else, I guess. And six months out, you know, for for transactions, and then the fifth one this month, and I have a couple more in the pipeline. So I guess the insurance and financial has always been in my life. And I think I missed it for some time. And now back into that industry. So it’s, I love it. I really love it. Yeah, D.J. Paris 11:41it’s it’s very interesting, I think a lot about previous careers and how they relate, I’m always interested in thinking about, you know, how to somebody takes skills from from maybe, in this case, you had somewhat related careers, but still weren’t specifically, you know, super real estate focused. But the idea of customer service, and being either a financial literacy coach, or an insurance agent, these are all about these are really service jobs. In my mind. I know, they’re technically considered sales jobs. But I always think, you know, the best agents are the ones that serve the clients most effectively. And I think that does translate really well, customer service. So I imagine that skill that you honed over almost 20 years, probably served you very nicely when he stepped into real estate, Erica Campos 12:27you know, definitely did I know that for me, my clients come first, I will always go above and beyond for them. If I don’t know something, I’m not afraid to say you know what, let me get back to you. Let me find out. And so then I, they’ll go ask someone from my brokerage. Sure, my managing broker, but it’s very important to me, it’s my reputation. But it’s also important that the trust, I don’t want to be known for, you know, real estate agents, we don’t have a good reputation a lot of times, right, some some some agents have made that for us, unfortunately. So I, I make sure that I go above and beyond and even those clients that I’ve already closed deals with, I still contact them, I still ask how their house is coming along, I send them you know, congratulation cards, Christmas cards, holiday cards. For Thanksgiving, I know it was only four. But I personally dropped off pumpkin pies with a thank you note and my business card to each and every one of my clients. So and potential clients. So you just got you have to go above and beyond. And one of the things that I’ve listened to in your podcasts and that I mean, I know myself is that 20 ins can easily forget who their realtor was, you know, even who sold them their first house, I’m not going to be that agent, you’re gonna know who I am. So even if I’m like, I don’t want to come across as a pain in the butt. Right. But, you know, again, the holidays, birthdays, so I make sure I collect good information so that I can you know, continue to communicate with them in more than just a business way. Like personal. Yeah, D.J. Paris 14:10you just gave an idea just sprung forth from what you just said. So I want to share it with our audience. But I really going to credit Erica with this because it was her words that that brought this up in my mind that I was thinking about when somebody moves in, especially when you know somebody’s buying a property. And whether it’s their first property or not. I don’t think it matters for this idea. But the idea that you were saying about how you’re staying in touch after the sale so they don’t forget about you is critical. Obviously we all know that. But sometimes it can be tricky to think about why to call somebody and and so I was just an idea that popped up as you were talking Was that pretty much in every home there’s always an unfinished project of sorts, right? There’s some sort of, you know, whether it’s there you have to redo a room or you want to do a bigger sort of thing or just cleaning out a closet or whatever. Project there’s, of course, everybody has lists of projects that are unfinished in there, wherever they live. And I think too, that would be a fun thing for agents to do once you sell them the home is reach out, you know, within that next year and say, Hey, how’s it going? How’s the home is, as you had said? And then I probably would say, Hey, do you have any projects that you’re working on for the home? Just curious what if you’re doing anything or things you want to do, because the reason I’m asking is, if you need any referrals, if you need, you know, if you’re looking for a particular handyman, or somebody to help you with this particular project, I’ve got people to talk to, or at least I’ll find good people for you. That would be a great reason to reach out and everyone’s got a project that they need to do. So you just you just spurned that within me. So I just wanted to share that. Let’s and I also want to say to you are the I believe the newest agent to ever been on our show, I should have mentioned that at the beginning. Because you are only six or I guess you’re in your seventh month now. So this is really a fun one for me, because all of a really a lot of our listeners, it’s not so much whether they’re new, but they love you know, our audience really loves sort of the new person’s energy, right? The new Realtors energy because, you know, life has not kicked them around enough yet. So there’s still a lot of optimism and excitement, but also you’ve just really hit the ground running. So tell us how you did it. You mentioned open houses was that sort of the first thing you did once you once you you know, join Coldwell Banker was that a big deal to start getting out there and talking to clients or prospective clients? Okay, Erica Campos 16:31well, one, I will say that I’m known to break records. So I’ve opened another record here and all my other sales careers I have broken records and have helped companies reach numbers that are impressive. So you know, not broken another record. And my goal is to break Coldwell bankers record as the first you know, newest stages bring in so many at a certain time. I would like to hit Rookie of the Year, which I think I have one more transaction, and they give you a year, right, two months to do it. And I’m doing it hopefully in seven, eight months. So I’m hoping that to record there. But um, so how did how did I start? Well, one, I have a very big sphere of influence. I always say that because in one of my prior businesses, I’ve met 1000s of people and I made the followed me all through all the social medias. So I’m very consistent as much as I can. And so when I decided to go into real estate and sign up for schooling, that is when I started posting, like, Okay, I’m studying for my real estate exam. This is what I do this is, you know, I started giving out advice on how to study. And then when I passed, I took a picture of me celebrating downtown Chicago, you know, with a hot Chicago hot dog. And so, it you know, so I think what helped me too, is just announcing it out there like being consistent about what I’m doing. And believe it or not, people are watching, you know, you do make a difference. You do empower people you motivate and inspire others. And like I said, you didn’t know, you know how you inspired me. And so this is why so we don’t know until we put it out there. And so I think that helped me a lot. Because again, before I even decided what broker I was going to join, I already had people asking me to be their agent, you know, and so, so then, for me, I had already been interviewing a couple of companies, and I decided on Coldwell Banker Realty and Oak Lawn, it just felt right, you know, sure we community is so important. So I needed and wanted in office environment that I can go into to talk to other agents, I’m very talkative and I love sharing my experiences and learning from others and vice versa. So that’s what I needed. That so I interviewed there. And I really I really fell in love with their mission and, and their support for newer agents and their programs. And they’re, you know, CBU universities what they call a or CB University. Amazing training, you know, so that I believe also helped me hit the ground running Coldwell Banker is political banker is very well known. And I also wanted to make sure I joined a well known company as well. So, yeah, I mean, just just walking and just inviting my sphere of influence, to follow me through this journey, I think has helped me quite a bit in addition to my experience and expertise. Yeah, D.J. Paris 19:35I think that’s right. So you did what everybody is told to do. And most people don’t do which is start telling everybody that you’re a realtor and start conditioning them which takes time because they were used to seeing you in different capacity, obviously, the finance world and insurance world, but certainly not the real estate world specifically. So you had to educate. We I guess this goes back to education, really, you had to start educating not only the people in your life to know that you’re a realtor, but then you started educating them about real estate. So that’s what’s what’s what’s really great. And social media is such an effective medium to to do that with. And so and then, okay, so you told everybody you know, from all your different previous careers, your sphere of influence your friends, family, of course, previous clients, which is amazing, because, of course, you know, with your background in insurance, Boy, that’s a lovely, you know, group of people to say, Oh, by the way, I am doing this other thing, too. And everyone’s got to live somewhere. So I love that. Well, I want to talk about open houses, because I feel that, you know, whether you had a sphere of influence or not, and you did, but a lot of people don’t they move to a new city, they get their license, they’re like, well, that doesn’t relate to me. I’m not from here. But anybody can do an open house. And so let’s talk about how to do it. Because we have had people write in sometimes and say, Well, I know you guys talk a lot about every person you talk to you says I should do open houses, but I don’t have any listings. I’m a little bit too shy to ask, you know, other agents in my office, can I please sit? You know, do an open house for you? How did you do it? I’m curious, like, what was the process for you? Erica Campos 21:17Well, one, I know that that was one of the lead generation. I wouldn’t say I don’t know, like, tactic. I guess that is easier for newer agents, right? And it doesn’t matter if you have listings or not, obviously, especially as a newer agent, you are not. But so I’m not shy. I will ask you. And I’m not afraid of rejection, being an insurance industry and in sales. Rejection is nothing anymore, you know, all right, on to the next, right. So for me, I would write an email, introduce myself as a new Coldwell Banker realtor to our existing offices. So we have multiple offices all over Illinois. So I said, Hey, I’m bilingual. I have this experience sales, customer service, you know, I’m professional. And if you need help with your open houses, I would love you know, I would love to help you. And so I started getting people, agents reaching out, you know, from different parts of the city to I was willing, really, oh, yeah. And especially within your office within your company, you’d be surprised that agents are very, especially those seasoned agents, they’re so busy, they need help, right? And I was not afraid. So I did research on open houses. I also took a Coldwell Banker course, on successful open houses, how to do them to safety protocol, because safety is so important. You know, checklists, I even added my own little things. So I made sure that everything that I brought, had my logo, my name, my contact information. So I would make like these little, little sheets that I would put a stick on to the water bottles, my marketing. And and luckily for me, the agents would tell me, look, this is your open house. So you do whatever you this is your you take all your leads you so I’ve made sure that I do that. I wouldn’t give people the option to sign in. I would say let me sign you in initially would say, you know, oh, no, I Well, this is a requirement by the buyer, and for everybody’s safety. And I would not let them sign in, I would do it for them. So that tells me No, right. So then we have your name, your phone number, email address, are you working with an agent? Most of the times they are most of the times they’ll say no. So when they’re not, I would make sure that I would really follow up with those particular people. But they all went into my CRM. And so I would follow up, I would send them newsletters, even if they have an agent. D.J. Paris 23:58So let’s, I’m gonna let’s I want to, you just said a lot and all of it was great. I want to slow it down a little bit and kind of go step by step because this is this is really wonderful information for our listeners. So you Yes, you had the the logo giveaways, you, when when people walk in, the way that you get them to sign in is you say, Hey, let me sign you in this. And if they say well, you just go Oh, it’s a compliance. It’s a safety measure for us, you know, as as agents. I’m just need your name, email, phone number, whatever. And, and yes, that’s a that’s a really, really smart way just to not ever have any nose because who’s going to disagree with safety? Right? So I love that. And you, how did you promote the open house? No, Erica Campos 24:46good. Well, if I had about a week or two, then that gave me a chance to create my own fliers put it all together with my information posted all over social media. Do some door knocking kind of post them in the library in that area. So kind of like scouting the neighborhood and the sun’s talking to people. But I will tell you that for me, that was very rarely the case, most agents would reach out to three days prior. So now I’m like rushing, trying to put things together. But as I went along, I learned Okay, Erica, make sure you print several of these so that if you get an agent that contacts you, you have everything ready, you have your checklist, you have this, I made like a little in my truck, I carry like this little box with all of my Open House information, like things that I would need, snacks and tape, like everything you need, I have a whole checklist that that I use to make sure that I even booties you know, I make sure that there’s always booties and make sure I have you know, the sign in information to fly different flyers, I guess, a business cards, just, you know, just cute things that you can place. And of course, I go and purchase snacks for, you know, for people something that they can just grab, you know, and go. And then like I said a flyer with my information on it. D.J. Paris 26:11So person goes through the property. You know, either you know, they’re asking questions, or they’re they aren’t they leave you already have their information they’re walking away with, you know, a flyer or whatever, then how quickly do you reach back out to them? Erica Campos 26:25I reached out to them the next day. Okay, so D.J. Paris 26:29hey, it was nice meeting you like email phone call? How do you do it text, Erica Campos 26:32I do a text message. I start with text messages. And I thank them for, you know, for joining or for coming into our open house. And if they have any interest, you know, please let me know, I’d be more than willing to help you give you more information. And then I’d say you know, if you don’t mind, I would like to put you into my newsletter, it gives you great homeowner tips, buy guides, and I rarely ever get to know. So. So for me, it’s contacting them right away and kind of determining, okay, is this person like a green like, okay, they’re motivated, sure, have a realtor, do they not? And then bills are like, Well, I’m just looking you up. A lot of times you get people who are just just wanting to look around just oh, there’s open houses. Let me I’m just curious. Sure. Gonna get a feel for them while I’m showing them the house as well. Right. Well, I also try to D.J. Paris 27:22have I have a quick question. Hold up. Quick question. So while you’re taking their temperature as you’re walking them around the property, do you make a little note of it somewhere? So you remember, because I know for me, I would forget if I mean, if only one person came through, then you won’t get that. But if 20 people come through, I’m going to be like, who’s What do you take notes? Like, how do you Erica Campos 27:41so I have a clipboard, a cute little clipboard with the sign in. And then I have a comment section that I write notes, like, it was a couple that they’re buying the second home, or they’re trying to upgrade or down, you know, downsize. So I do have a note section and I write it down. Because yet sometimes you get so many you forget who they are. And so I definitely keep notes. Yes. And D.J. Paris 28:06you can even reference that in your text if you wanted to, if they’re you know, you don’t want to make too long of a text obviously, the next day, but you could say, hey, you know, thanks for coming through really excited that you’re looking at your second home or whatever, you know, looking, you know, this is exciting that you’re moving from the city to the suburbs, or you know, whatever. It’s always great when people I always love when salespeople reference that in their follow up something that they, you know, like I get pitched for a lot of technology companies for real estate. So I love it when I have a meeting. And then the next day, they’re like, hey, great conversation. Oh, by the way, this thing that you mentioned, or you know, is I always find that to be very flattering. And it’s like, it’s like, oh, they’re listening. That’s that’s a good thing. Like we Erica Campos 28:49personalize it. I know we can all copy and paste, right? I’ve made a mistake where I’ve copied and pasted forgot to change somebody’s name. And I’m like, Oh, I’ve done the same thing. No. So So that’s lesson learned, right? So I make sure that I take notes, and I personalize it. And that’s pretty much with all of my clients, regardless of you know, what transactions or where I met, I always want to make it personable. I always want to personalize it to our conversation. I think that that makes you stand out. And you know, they don’t feel like oh, they’re, they’re, they’re selling to me. Nobody wants to be sold to right. So it’s like, yes, that’s a great point that you brought that up. You’re D.J. Paris 29:27right. I mean, there are people that do like to be sold, but I think they are the minority of the public. I certainly Erica Campos 29:36do think it’s those that are in the sales industry that like to be D.J. Paris 29:40probably yes, I you know, like my boss. He loves to be sold. He just because he’s a business owner and he just he loves that whole process. Me. I hate it. I just go just give me the information. I mean, personality types, we’re all just definitely. And I’m like, give me the information. I’m a pretty smart guy. I’ll figure it out on my own. Just be there to answer my questions and And, and don’t try to push me into anything because I don’t I don’t like being pushed. But some people do. Most people don’t. So yeah, your boy, you’re doing that. And I know we’re talking a lot about open houses, but only because I don’t get to ever get this granular with it with somebody because you’re so new, like this is a major thing for you so Okay, so I think we covered open houses and oh, and follow up. So you basically are assigning you know, somebody a color or temperature, you know, hey, red hot, you know, who knows? Super cold, whatever. And then you put them in your CRM, how so they’re getting your monthly newsletter about real estate? And then how often are you reaching out on top of that, just to sort of make sure that they know, you’re not just, you know, somebody on their email list? Erica Campos 30:44So they’re green, I would say, I like to touch like, maybe one or every two weeks, I, you know, depending on what will how fast they’re looking if there’s an area there, not sure. So about one or twice, you know, maybe once every two weeks, I guess I would say on average, and then those that are still on the fence, you know, maybe a yellow, I would say then I met a couple at an open house, and they were considering selling their each of their own homes and moving in together and buying one. So me I’m like, oh, that’s three transactions, all in one, you know. So I, they were somewhat on the fence of they’re still thinking about it. So I put them in the yellow category. So what I did is I looked up their their current homes, and I sent out VMAs. And so I have them signed up for a monthly CMA like a market report. Awesome. And then I noticed that one of the houses, they were not getting any exams, or homeowner exams. So in my email, I wrote to her, and it was great meeting her. But you know, I am here to help not just to sell. And I noticed that there was no event that she could possibly apply for one so and D.J. Paris 32:03that’s money to their pocket. So you’re essentially giving them an opportunity to possibly find income, or find, you know, a bonus sort of so to speak, I had the same issue. When I bought my first home in Chicago a million years ago, I didn’t know about the homeowners exemption, and I had for years, I never took advantage of it. And after like two or three years, somebody was like, do you know about this, and I wasn’t in real estate time. And I said, No, I was like, I had no idea. So like, That is incredible. How do you? How do you look that up the homeowners exam, or that’s just a Chicago thing? I’m thinking, right, that’s not necessarily a nationwide thing. Erica Campos 32:40Here’s what I use. I use remind, remind you, I use remind and then you know, of course most will tell you, it’ll tell you right there, you know who the owner is. So I use remind quite a bit to figure out who the owners are, then sometimes remind will give you the contact information for who the owner is. You have to make sure that they’re not on Do Not Call list. But many you can mail all you want, right that’s, you know, you could do that. But then I checked like the deed as well, just to make sure. I’ve also found that I people have made mistakes, things have been filed under you know, a for instance, right now I’m working with the prospect, I’m hoping I’m able to list their condo. And I looked it up and I noticed that someone else’s name was on there. And so I you know, I asked him about it. And he says I have no clue that is Erica. D.J. Paris 33:35Oh my god, what else owns the property? So Erica Campos 33:37then I go to the title company, you know, Burnett title, who’s in Coldwell Banker, and I say, Hey, do me a favor, like just confirm, is this a mistake, we confirmed that it was a mistake. And then it was fixed a year later. But for a whole year it had somebody else’s name on there as like a deed in a deed. And so it’s so important that we look up our own properties, but also provide that value to your clients that’s going to tell them that you are ready to work for them that you’re serious and that you are an expert you know here I found this even if you don’t come with me, even if you decide maybe you want to listed with another agent that you’ve always worked with, but just know that I will go above and beyond and if maybe we can’t I can’t work for you. How about your refer business to me? D.J. Paris 34:23So here’s here’s what I’m hearing from from Eric from Erica just speaking directly to our audience and I hate to make it sound this simple, but I think probably Oh, I’m gonna say it’s simple but difficult. She basically outworks the competition meaning and I don’t mean necessarily more hours, although probably more hours that she puts in as well. But most importantly, she takes the professionalism of the business very, very seriously. She wants to really cover all of her bases. You’re very intentional about how your processes you have a process for open houses. You have a process I mean I want to I want to switch gears just for a moment because you went full steam into I need lots of designation process, and you knocked them out. And I want to mention this to everybody look, there’s a certain amount of marketing, that is benefit to, even if you don’t learn anything from the designations and you of course you will. But even if you didn’t, and it’s all a big, you know, just not that helpful, although it will be. But even if it wasn’t, it still looks really good. When you have all of these designations after now, nobody knows what they mean. And nobody knows, really, nobody cares. But what they do care about is that you’re dedicated to the craft, you’re dedicated to the industry, and you’re taking it seriously. And most people don’t have seven different designations, which I think you have or close to that. The only one I would recommend that I didn’t see on there, and I’m sure you’re gonna do it anyway. Because you’re you’re done all the others. Certified negotiation expert, I think is a good one. And I guess yeah, you’re not because of Erica Campos 36:03course. Yeah, that’s D.J. Paris 36:05Yeah, but but the point is, is this is a way to gain an edge, as in competition. And that’s not why Eric is doing it, she’s doing it, because it’ll better service our clients. That’s really the main reason to do it. But it’s a nice little side benefit to be like, Oh, by the way, you know, when you’re talking to other agents, they may, you know, she’s not going to say this, but they’re not going to have all of those initials after their names. So I absolutely, really applaud you, you’re probably the, probably the only guests we’ve had on with that many designations. And typically, when people go down that path, they can tend to get caught up in education, and then not production. And you’re doing both. And that’s what’s really impressive is you’re not like Well, I’m just going to sit in and do online classes all day. So I get designations, you’ve also closed six deals in you know, in your first six months, and, and even a deal already this year, which is, which is incredible. And you’re really just following the process, you’re doing all of the things that every single guest I’ve ever had on here says this is what you should do, and you’re actually doing it. So I am so excited to hear about your success. So let’s talk about so we talked about open houses, I want to also and we talked about after I what I call after care, which is just following up staying in touch, you’re calling these people or texting or emailing them every couple of weeks. You’re saying hey, just checking in, how’s everything going? You’re providing value to them? Let’s talk about social media. What are you doing on social to what what are you doing? How do you think about posting content? Are you doing mostly videos? Images? Both? Are you talking about yourself? Some? You know, some realtors are like, here’s me, here’s me at the gym this morning at 5am. Other others just do, hey, here’s this cool house I’m you know, doing an open house for or doing a showing at? What is the kind of content that you push out there? And how do you think about Erica Campos 38:02it, all of it. However, I need it. My goal for 2024 is to get better at being intentional with my social media. As far as you know, the content that I’m posting video is one that I am extremely afraid of. I don’t know why I’m a big public speaker. I’ve done it for a zillion years. But that camera hits and I’m like, like frozen, right? Like, or I feel like what do I say what? I think people want to see you naturally, whether you stutter, whether you mess up, or you know whether your hair is this way. I think people now I think that’s more acceptable. Because I never wanted to sit there and edit. You know, my videos, I just felt like why. So I have to get better at posting videos that are educational as far as in rates dropping, or, you know, program changes, or what I do on a day to day basis. That’s one thing I would like to show people is okay, this is what I do from the minute I wake up. This is sounds boring, but this is what is how I search MLS. This is how I organize, you know, my whole day of taking a client to two showings, you know, it can be boring, but that is something that I would like to show, you know, social media. Posting as well. I want to be a little more intentional as far as providing value more value. But I will say that what I have posted are pictures and of course of me studying when I was when I passed. And I have a lot of followers that email me or send me private messages asking me what advice can you give me for passing this exam? Right. So I had a little secret that one of my instructors gave us. It’s a guide that a lot of people don’t know is out there and it’s free. Every state has it. so that it basically walks you through, hey, this is how your test is going to be structured. And this is how many questions are going to be per topic? This how many you’re going to have? Where D.J. Paris 40:11do you find that, by the way, for anyone who might be studying, we can provide a link to that in the show notes when we publish the episode. But do you happen to know off the top of your head? Erica Campos 40:20I will say that I have gotten, I think over 20,000 views over it. And it’s been six, seven months. D.J. Paris 40:30Oh, you made a video about it? Yeah, well, Erica Campos 40:31there’s a video. There’s my video on my tic tock that’s there. But every it’s a handbook. And every state has its a candidate, Illinois candidate handbook. D.J. Paris 40:44We will we’ll link to the tic toc video for sure. I’ve never heard of that. So that’s amazing. Erica Campos 40:50Yep, on top of your real estate book, and you know, whatever else that right there is like the Bible of real estate to pass. So you know that that video got me a lot of comments and, and a lot of views, I think it’s 15 20,000 or more views, I think amazing, amazing. Well, so I post things, little things like that. I do post when I’ve done open houses, what what I’m doing, I definitely post when I am under contract, especially when I close my gifts that I take my clients, I always take pictures of my the attorney, the whole team that was involved in it. And I’ve gotten a lot of, you know, praises for Wow, you just started and you’re you’re on fire, I had closings back to back to back to back. And so you know, so just just sharing your wins. And even I have to get better at sharing some of my struggles too. You know, it’s not always easy. So 2024 I do plan on being more intentional with what I post? D.J. Paris 41:56Yeah, I think I think sharing the losses or the struggles is something that agents tend to be afraid to do, we don’t like to you know, nobody wants to post vulnerabilities that are, you know, challenging things that are hard. Of course we everyone’s going through hard things at all times. And I wish people were more more courageous to want to share that on social media because I’m I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of seeing all the wins. I love seeing the wins. But I know that life isn’t all wins. And so I think agents that are willing to be vulnerable which again takes courage and really not necessarily share oh gosh you know I’m going through a divorce or something. I mean, you’d want to create healthy boundaries to make sure you know you’re not giving information away that isn’t appropriate. But you know, if you’re having a bad day if you’re struggling if the deal falls through, you know, people want to want to hear about how you handle not you Erica but just I’m speaking to the audience. People love to hear about how people move through struggle because we all struggle and so I encourage everyone who who is only posting you know, here’s me lifting my max at the gym in the morning, show a time where maybe you didn’t have it and you couldn’t get to the gym that morning and you stayed in bed and you know and you ate bad food all morning and you know or whatever you did something that wasn’t perfect. And I think talking about imperfection is the most relatable thing on the planet. But you you talked about being afraid of video that is which you would never know that if you’re either watching our episode or listening because of course Erica is seemingly super comfortable in front of the camera super confident, very elegant and eloquent. But she is telling you something vulnerable it’s hard for her to get in front and film video so I would recommend we have Kim Rydberg is one is our video expert for our channel here for keeping it real. Kim Rydberg literally all she teaches people is how to do great video how to get comfortable. So a little shout out to Kim Rydberg we’ll have a link to her stuff as well, because we’re the biggest Kim fan. She’s out in New York. And she’s the queen of that she comes from the media background and knows how to knows how to do video. So she is she is a great, great guide for you. So definitely check her out. But yes, let’s let I want to finish up with challenges. So what is hard for you right now and I don’t mean, necessarily in your personal life, although you could share that if you want to. But I’m mostly interested in your professional life where you’re we heard about all these successes. Where’s the struggle right now? What are you What is hard for you right now? Well, Erica Campos 44:29what is hard for me right now, I will say being a new agent, it’s not having a ton of experience like not having, you know, sold or closed on 2040 5060 deals, you know, like some like some agents have. And with each deal, each transaction I learned something new, whether it’s something that I helped with or something I might have already known or a mistake. So I always say we learned from our stakes, right? So you. So you take that along, I’m very hard on myself when it comes to making mistakes. I am a perfectionist. And so I always want to make sure that I that I have the information that I know what I’m speaking about. But when I do make a mistake, or when there’s something that I don’t know, I’m not afraid to say, or apologize, you know, I’m sorry, I didn’t know that. But going forward, that always stays in my head, like, I will never make that mistake ever again. An example I’ll give you is, I also work with investors, my current clients that I’m working with, they’re in the pipeline right now. They’re, they’re newer investors. And so for one of them, she wanted to buy a multi unit property. So we went to go see one. And it was it was a very unique property very nice. It was like four townhouses together in one building. And I remember the realtor saying to us, well, I can only show you too have those units, because the tenants didn’t allow us to go into the other two units, even though we gave them 48 hour notice. All right. So my client fell in love with it. And they said, all those other two units are practically the same. So we went with that day of the inspection, we’re finally able to get into those two units turns out, yes, it turns out that, first off those two units look nothing like the other two units. And there was water damage from both, you know, ceilings, there’s roof damage, right? So inspector starts doing his thing. And he’s like, what, I would think twice about this. And I said, you know, yes, and learning that going forward with her. And I, me and my client, we agreed, we’re not going to be placing any offers, until we get to see all the units available, because we’re not going to this again. And I don’t want to put my client in a situation where she’s consistently paying for inspections, and then right for mistake like that, right. So it’s something I learned along the way, and I take bits and pieces of what I’ve learned in experiences throughout, and I, you know, just gets better, it’s just getting better and better. So, D.J. Paris 47:08well, I love that, you know, I think really what I’m hearing is embrace, as uncomfortable as it is embrace mistakes and embrace imperfection. Because it is, as you said, it is the effect, it’s the only way we actually learn, believe it or not. So we don’t we don’t learn when the stove is cold, and we touch it, we learn when the stove is hot, and we touch it. And hopefully, we only have to learn that once. Erica Campos 47:30We have to do as a realtor, even those who are very well seasoned, they still don’t know everything, they still learn something with a last change so much. So that’s why I’m so passionate about education and staying up to date with these laws, especially with Chicago, and then the suburbs, all these little suburbs and, and Chicago has their own laws, you know, regulations, the City, Illinois does as well. And you got to make sure you understand the contracts between Chicago and Illinois, which one goes with what, there’s just so much. I’ve also made sure I’m bilingual. So that is also something that sets me apart, I want to say 90% of my clientele are you know, Latinos, and I want to say, maybe, like 80% are Spanish speaking. So I made sure that the team I built and when I say team, I mean vendors, all were Spanish speaking, right, because as a loan officer, you need to be able to do your job, I can’t do mine and yours together, it’s just impossible. And it’s not my expertise. Same thing with inspectors. Same thing with the attorneys. So I’m always looking for good vendors that can provide that service to my clients. And, and also my husband, he is a huge support. He’s a electrical city inspector, very knowledgeable. And so whenever I run into a situation, you know, I FaceTime him, like, why does this look like this? You know, or what is this? And he’s like, there has to be certain apps. I mean, he’s so much help and so much support, and I’m so grateful that I have someone, you know, that can support me that way. And on top of that, I know you mentioned building like bent love vendor list in one of your podcast episodes. And that’s so important because he knows the trade. He has a lot of friends in different trades, right? So he’s an electrical guy as a plumber. He has a friend who also has his own electrical company. He has a tile guy, a flooring guy. So I’m always able to refer, you know them to my clients, which is which is good. But I’m also very tough on very particular on who gets to be on my vendor list. You should be D.J. Paris 49:46exactly, yeah, well, you shouldn’t be because you they’re your reputation. So if you send somebody so yeah, so let’s, you know, it’s really a great lesson to make sure our vendors are doing good job. And what I recommend is once when you refer not you, Eric, of course, just as general advice to our listeners, when you do refer an agent to, or sorry, a client to a particular vendor, what I would say is, hey, I’m referring you to so and so they’re amazing. If for some reason you don’t have a good experience with them, or if they don’t get back to you, or something happens, where you’re not happy with it, please call me immediately. I have other people, you know, and there’s nothing wrong with saying that. And I think that really sets it up so that because they might feel like well, I don’t want want to tell Erica, the person was no good because she, she’s really loved them. And I always like to set it up. So it allows for somebody to say, you know, I didn’t really have a good experience, or they didn’t get back to me in three days or whatever. So anyway, I think I was Erica Campos 50:46in the follow up, because a lot of times, they don’t want to tell you, right? And for me, I need to know, because it’s my reputation, like you said, and I have to also let them know, the courtesy like, hey, just FYI, this is what my client said, and you know, is that what happened? Or can you explain the situation. So that way, they also have the opportunity to fix the issue or whatever that time was unsatisfied for, or with. But I think having a good list of your vendors experienced as well, that makes a world of difference, especially the lender and the attorney. Well, this D.J. Paris 51:22is a perfect place to wrap up the episode, there’s been so much value you’ve provided Erica, I really can’t thank you enough for not only being a listener of ours while you were building your business, and still continue to be a listener as you’re building your business. I really thank you as just a podcast host for our listeners. And I also want to thank all of our listeners for paying attention and listening to this episode. Being a supporter of our show, it means a lot to me. And if you are somebody that’s like, I’d like to be on the show someday Erica had that dream. And here she is. And it’s funny, because I didn’t know that. And I was asking Erica, just when she came on, I go did we find you? Or did you find us because I don’t really do too much with the casting. And and then she said, Oh, no, no, I know about you. But But the idea is that you can also be on the show overtime. And Erica is somebody that you’re going to want to watch. She’s going to be Rookie of the Year this year, she is already crushing it. She’s taking this job extremely seriously. And for anyone who’s a little bit sad or depressed because of the condition of the market. Yeah, a lot of people are that’s okay. But you if you surround yourself with content from people who are just pushing through and doing the work, Erica doesn’t know that this is a hard market because it’s the only market she’s known. So to her. This is just what she’s doing. So if you’re a little bummed out, because things are harder now. Yes, I get it. I’m with you. We have 800 agents here. They’re they’re depressed to everyone’s dealing with this. But if you can connect yourself with accounts like Eric has, who’s consistently just pushing forward, it’s easier to be motivated to continue to do the same. So please, everybody follow her on the various social channels, Instagram, Facebook and Tik Tok. You can find her Eric I’m sorry realtor dot Erica composts and then LinkedIn of course just look for her name. We will have links to all this in the show notes. And if anyone out there is needs a realtor in Chicago, maybe you have a client moving, perhaps they’re Spanish speaking and they need someone to work with Erica would love the opportunity to connect with agents from all over the country. And by the way, Chicago people don’t when they retire, a lot of times they move they move somewhere warmer. So Eric has got people that at some point she’s going to need to push out and although I Erica might just get licensed in every state could knowing how seriously she takes the business but no, of course she’s gonna refer business out. So if you want to connect with her, What’s the best way Erica that an agent or maybe even a client can reach out to you? Erica Campos 53:51You know, my social media platforms, they can reach out to me there. They can also reach out to me directly 630-291-5971 or they can email me at Erica dot gambles at C B which is C as in Charlie biz and boy CB realty.com D.J. Paris 54:12link to those in the show notes as well stay in touch with Erica she’s got amazing energy, she takes the job seriously. And maybe, I mean, I’m gonna follow her because I need to be motivated sometimes too. And her energy is not only infectious, but she’s just one of those rising star stars that we can all learn from even if we’re 20 plus years in the business because she is really doing it. Erica, thank you so much for being the newest realtor to ever be be on our show. One of the first agents of the year to be on our show as well. And also congratulations on doing a deal already this year in your first five days. That is incredible. Please check out Erica follow her all over social media on behalf of the audience. Erica, thank you for reaching out to us. Thank you for being part of our show. Also. Thanks, Eric. On behalf of Eric and I think You the audience, thanks for gosh, I think we had, this was our sixth or seventh year, I don’t know six years maybe of doing the show. We have 500 plus 520 episodes, I think. So thank you for keeping helping keeping our show going, please tell a friend, please tell everybody who you know, especially new agents, they need to hear somebody having success. And Erica is doing that. And it’s not just falling in her lap. She’s literally making all of this happen herself. So send this episode to another agent who’s maybe starting out or one who’s just struggling right now and most agents are struggling. So this is a great opportunity to tell other friends about the show. We appreciate you for that. And also please support our sponsors. We love our sponsors. They are the ones that paying the bills for us. So thank you to our sponsors, please check out their products and services so that they continue to advertise with us. All right, Erica, thank you so much. We will see everybody on the next episode. Erica Campos 55:52Thank you have a good one.

Welcome to our monthly feature Unpopular Real Estate Opinions with Chris Linsell. In this episode, Chris discusses his predictions for 2024 and what will real estate market look like. Chris also talks about what will happen with the buyer-side commission. Next, Chris and DJ discuss why this is a great time for buyers to enter the market. Chris also shares some tricks on how to unlock inventory in your market. Last, Chris discusses 2 things that will differentiate you from other agents and bring you success this year. Please check Chris’ profile on LinkedIn. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today we have one of the most sought after journalists and speakers to talk about his predictions for the real estate market and 2024 crystallin. Sal is our guest. 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 in interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our show Welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and today is our newest monthly series called unpopular real estate opinions with Chris Lynn sell. Now Chris Liddell is a real estate technology analyst and director of content at large. He specializes in new solutions to old questions, constantly exploring the cutting edge of technology in the real estate space. Chris also has many years of experience as a licensed Realtor in the state of Michigan and has worked as a marketer, a digital strategist and a trainer for major national brands like Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices of Michigan, and Coldwell Banker Schmidt Realtors throughout his real estate career, Chris has been part of hundreds of transactions ranging from modest rural starter homes to multimillion dollar waterside compounds, and accomplished musician, actor and speaker Chris has engaged with audiences sizes ranging from 30 to 3000. Most recently, Chris was a featured speaker at the National Association of Realtors Conference this past fall, and he’s probably done other engagements even since we are CEU. Oh, for all things, Chris, please visit his website, Chris Lynn cell.com. Also he posts a lot on LinkedIn and Twitter. We will have links to Chris’s social media profiles. You can follow him there, Chris, welcome to the show. Once again, DJ, Chris Linsell 3:03glad to be back. Thanks for having me. Happy New Year 2024. Here we are. Happy D.J. Paris 3:08New Year. And I would also just really quickly like to say thank you to our audience, I got a very nice holiday gift. I try not to bog myself down in the metrics of of our show. However, we did have our very biggest month ever, which I didn’t even know I don’t ever look at December numbers because they were always the lowest of the year. But my marketing person shared our statistics just the other day with me for December. I was like don’t show me and he goes no, you want to see these. And they were actually up. So thanks in part to Chris Chris has actually been part of our show for years. And we have a new feature for him now, which is very exciting, called unpopular real estate opinions. So we this is our second episode in this series. We’ll be doing this monthly. Chris, let’s let’s jump right into it. What’s what’s unpopular right now in your mind? Chris Linsell 3:59Oh, man, well, DJ again, thanks for having me back. I love that every every time we get together now I get to bring some of the topics that I talked about with people on social and in person. And I’m just kind of earmarking all the ones that people yell at me the most about so that I can share them with you. Because just because people don’t like it doesn’t mean it ain’t true. So I’ve got a few unpopular opinions that maybe we should chat about. The first is and, you know, take this with a grain of salt here. But the first is 2024 is going to be a terrible year for real estate until it’s not. And I know that sounds like a really weird way of saying it. But basically what I’m trying to get at here is that the beginning of 2024 is going to be challenging. We’ve got a lot of people who are proud masticating that 2020 For the new year, it’s going to be a brand new leaf. I don’t think so man, I think that the first half of 2024 is still going to be very challenging for a number of reasons. But the second half of 2024 is likely to be one of the busiest times in real estate that we’ve seen in a long time, a certain certainly compared to the first half of the year. So for agents who are looking to do some forecasting for themselves on this year, I wouldn’t be forecasting pretty lean until about June and then get your roller skates on, because that’s the only way you’re going to be able to get get to and from fast enough to serve us all the clients that you’re going to have. D.J. Paris 5:44Yeah, and I think I think you’re right. So it really will be sort of this diametrically opposed in your mind, sort of halves of the year. So we’ll have the half nots, maybe in the, in the first half of the year due to, you know, market construction, we’ve got high interest rates, we have low inventory, we just have less activity quite Chris Linsell 6:06Yeah. And you know, here’s the reason why this, this tends to be kind of a flashpoint issue for for folks, is ultimately some of the reasons why I think 2020 for the second half is going to accelerate, and not necessarily for the better of our clients, honestly, is, we have in 2023 experienced this incredible constriction of the market just in general. I mean, it was just it was a hard time to buy and sell a home in the United States. And I’ll even say, hard time to sell a home, even though homes are fetching record prices, it’s just a difficult time to sell because the markets feel so uncertain at the moment, and that’s making sellers nervous. We’ve just, we experienced some record constriction, in 2023. And 2024 is going to be the year where all of the pent up demand that occurred through 2023. And frankly, still some leftover pent up demand in COVID. That’s going to kind of break loose. And that’s going to be really exciting and interesting. But the reason why this is kind of an unpopular conversation topic is I don’t think this is necessarily to the benefit of our clients. Because we’re going to go from having quiet, challenging markets to extraordinarily hot and competitive markets, we’re going to see whiplash amongst our buyers very, very quickly. Sellers with unrealistic timelines. And then you’re going to layer in on top of all of that these lawsuits faced by NAR that are going to create a whole new level of uncertainty around commissions, which is not something that was a part of the conversation from COVID through 2023, I guess the second half of 2023. But it’s going to be a busy year in real estate. Real estate professionals need to keep their head on straight if they actually want to translate that busyness into benefit for their clients. Do D.J. Paris 8:19you believe that? That in the upcoming let’s say 24 Next 24 months, that there will be any reform to buyer side commissions? Right? Where are they going to have to come to the table with with cash? Is it going to be built into their mortgage? If they have one? Or is it still going to be all technically sourced by the seller and just maybe more transparently split? Chris Linsell 8:49Great question. Here’s a couple of things that I am confident it will not be. I’m confident it will not be built into a mortgage. The reason behind that is 99%, maybe 98 and a half percent of mortgages in the United States have, excuse me particular stipulations that regulate the only real property can be used as this this tool can only be used to finance real property. So though there are certain percentage level exceptions to that, that conveniently get applied by the banks and not by outside sources like you can you can actually roll in your closing costs and some loans into the mortgageable amount. Banks are happy to charge you interest on that stuff. Sure. But the other fees and costs associated with real estate, I think will be a very challenging hill to climb as far as rolling them into mortgages. to your specific question about whether or not I think we’ll see any reform. The answer is yes, but I think the reform will occur On our on the level of professional bodies, I don’t see the United States as a governmental body passing any kind of mortgage reform in the next 24 months. That is maybe a commentary on the state of politics in the United States, but just generally speaking, that seems like a no win issue. Because you have particular interests on the part of consumers that happen to also kind of come up at odds with the interests of one of the largest professional advocacy groups in the entire country, almost the world in an AR. So I don’t think there’ll be any kind of movement from a from a legal perspective there, but I do think NAR will likely in install some new internal professional regulations, but they are just going to be tweaks to the initial to the existing law regs, which basically says you can offer optionally to pay a buyer’s agent, it is not an assumed requirement, like like it is now basically, which, which is what got NAR in trouble before, it’s going to become optional, you can choose whether or not you want to offer a buyer side. And that just will become more explicit. What does that actually change? Pretty damn close to nothing. Frankly, I think we are going to and again, on popularly I understand this is going to be to the detriment of our consumers and to the detriment of us professionally, because it’s just going to extend the quagmire through which we have to wade through on this issue. 2024 is going to be a year where we have to explain to every single client, why that lawsuit happened, what the results were and what it means to them. And the real kind of sticky wicket clients are going to be insisting that things change, even though they don’t even know what they want them to change to other than they just want to pay less. So this is going to be a year where we should start rehearsing that conversation. Because again, first half of the year, it’s going to be pretty quiet the second half of the year, there’s going to be an incredible amount of activity. So you’re going to be having this conversation on a regular basis with people. So D.J. Paris 12:31if if we do assume that the second half of the year quarters three and four are going to be more active, more buyers, certainly as rates decline, which we hope happens and seems to be what the economists are predicting. Would you recommend as an agent today to really encourage the both sides buyer and seller or or just one or neither? To participate in the market before it gets flooded with competition? Chris Linsell 13:05Oh, big time 100% In fact, the real, like the purchasing power of dollars is going to be I’m sorry, let me let me rephrase that the purchasing power of buyers is going to be measurably higher in the first half of the year. And the reason behind this is you know, Lawrence Yun from from NAR Chief Economist from NAR has has publicly predicted that he expects to see interest rates, hold steady for the first, you know, quarter or third of the year and then start to trickle down that start that when we see mortgage rates trickle down, I am willing to bet I’m willing to bet the backyard on the fact that when we see four weeks in a row of trickled down mortgage rates, we’re going to see an increase out of out of that a disproportionately large increase in buyer activity. So the reduction in mortgage rates are going to be offset by this buyer activity. And it’s going to make it harder and more expensive at the end of the day to buy a house. Because even though that rate is going to go down, the competition is going to go up by a disproportionate percentage. So if you have clients who are waiting on the sidelines right now saying, Well, I’m not I’m ready to buy a house, but I’m not going to buy it until I have a mortgage rate that you know starts with 6.2. These are people who the banks are just salivating over because yeah, they might get a 6.2% mortgage rate, but the purchase price on their home isn’t going to be $410,000 Are whatever the median prices right now, it’s going to be $460,000, they’re gonna make more money, the banks will make more money at lower rates, if we see that trickle that slow trickle down. 2024 is going to be a challenging year to get the timing right. And whenever I say, whenever I’m talking to people about how to effectively service their real estate clients, when it comes to market timing, I always tell them, if you have a client who thinks that they’re going to time the market, this is somebody that you should refer, because this is somebody who will waste your time. And when it is actually time when they actually feel like they’re activated, they will never be satisfied, because the window for their success is non existent, despite what they actually say. D.J. Paris 15:54Yeah, it’s a very strong point. Yes. And that that being said, as an agent today, what would be I think, really beneficial is that Realtors start proactively contacting clients and having these conversations and having this explanation of, here’s why it might make sense to list today or to get into the buyer side. You know, in talking about their creative financing solutions, I know, we wanted to get into some some solutions to help help buyers a little bit more when it demonstrates are high, but also just having the conversation of it’s very similar to having the the buy low sell high conversation, when when you know, we’re talking about securities and financial advisors, you know, if they’re, if they’re worth their salt, they, you know, once a stock is up significantly is not the time to purchase traditionally. So but but psychologically, it feels like the time to buy because things are looking good in the stock market. So we know that logically, but emotionally, that’s sort of the hurdle people have to get over. And I think the emotional hurdle gets extinguished or gets cleared very easily with logic, but I think it has information has to be communicated. And that’s not necessarily the message that I’m seeing a lot on in the media. Right now, I’m seeing a lot of talk about mortgage rates, I’m not seeing a lot of talk about whether it’s actually a good time to purchase and what the logic behind that is, or to sell. And I think this is where a realtor can really earn their stripes by reaching out to their clients and saying, Hey, here’s what really is not being talked about. And if you have data to back it up even better to say, you know, let’s go back a couple of years when rates were below 4%. And let’s take a look at what the average prices of homes, you might be looking at purchasing, let’s see what they closed for. Let’s see what they listed for and let’s see what they closed for. And let’s remember what the what those times were, if you were an agent back then if not, the data is there, you can go back and look. And you will you will, you know we can all shutter from from a little bit of those times about how difficult it was to just do much of anything, if you’re on the buy side Chris Linsell 18:09100%. In fact, any agents I’m gonna give, I’m gonna give anybody who’s listening, if you’re feeling motivated by DJs, golden words of wisdom, which you all feeling motivated by her. If you are if you just made a mental notes that you need to start talking to your clients about opportunities relative to kind of the expected timing in this market. I’m gonna give you some ammunition here. And this is actually, again, I’m gonna I’m gonna use an unpopular opinion here. Everyone who’s listening to this, take it steal this put this in your quiver, as a provocative topic to get a conversation started. Real Estate and 2024 is not going to have an inventory problem. It’s got to have a mortgage problem. And what I mean by that is, yeah, it’s true that we don’t have enough enough inventory to service the needs of the buyers. But the root of the inventory problem is mortgage rates. And we were talking earlier, remind me what you said, what percentage of homeowners in the United States currently have a mortgage rate less than 5% 85% 85? I mean, that’s insane. 85 out of every 100 homeowners have a mortgage rate of less than 5%. And I would venture to guess I don’t have the numbers in front of me. Excuse me, but I would venture to guess there’s a sizable percentage of people with a mortgage rate of less than 4% right now. And so, this is a choke point in the inventory cycle. That is going to create havoc for for inventory issues. And again, it is this is a mortgage problem. If you We are, if you want to take DJs advice and start having these conversations open with that line, we don’t have an inventory, we have problem, we have a mortgage problem. And then you can, you can stretch out DJs suggestions around the sorts of things that you should do to facilitate that conversation. Take it a step further, we have data from just, I mean, from the last year and a half of what, what the price of homes were when that when they closed at certain mortgage rates, and we had we had a mortgage rate ascent. I mean, in the last two years, we had a section a couple of months, where mortgage rates were between two and a half and 3%. And a couple of months between the three and three and a half, and so on and so on and so on, you can look back to each of those sections and look at the median prices of homes that are closing in your market. And then you can use those those prices and adjust for inflation. And you can say, okay, here in today’s dollars, here’s where these homes were closing. If that then you have data, you are armed with data to go to your consumers and say, Listen, this is what we can expect if mortgage rates hit this amount. This is where the median price is going to be. And you’re going to have an incredible amount of competition here is this where you want to be as a buyer, what’s the perfect window for you? What is what is the what is going to serve you best. And if you are servicing seller clients, you can tell folks right now like where is based on based on what we expect this trajectory of this market to be what’s going to be the price is going to get you to your goals, because ultimately right now, servicing sellers is not about selling their house, it is that that is a relative conclusion based on the construction of inventory. Servicing sellers is all about finding them their next place. If you can unlock that key, if you essentially treat your sellers as buyers, because that’s what they are right now. Then you you unlock more inventory for the market. So take that advice. Use that line, we don’t have an inventory problem, we have a mortgage problem, that is something that we need to solve and start talking through strategy, you’re gonna get more people leaning forward into your conversations than sitting back and being passive. D.J. Paris 22:34I also think too, I talked to a lot of top luxury agents who get these massive listings for let’s say, you know, 5 million and above these just incredibly high net worth individuals who are playing at this, you know, top 1% level of income and, and, and, and just wealth. What’s interesting, and again, I’m as not as a nonpracticing agent, I didn’t know this until I told somebody told me years ago, but that when you sell a, you know, X, you know, million dollar home. One of the challenges is, is actually finding the buyer, actually listing it on the MLS is is oftentimes not that not as successful as actually reaching out to people who can afford those kinds of homes directly and saying, Hey, I’ve got this new listing, reaching out to agents who have worked in those same price points and saying, what buyers do you know, I’ve got this listing, you need to come see it. And I’m almost wondering if we’ll start to see a shift for even on the non luxury side, listing agents starting to reach out to homeowners who do not have their listing on the market and saying, I’m in the process of selling so and so’s home, they need a new place. And you know, it’s kind of similar to what real estate investors have done for years, where they just send postcards to these multifamily homes going, Hey, if you’re the owner, I’d like to buy your property. And they just kind of hope that somebody reaches back on I’m curious, we’ll start to see more of that this year. Chris Linsell 24:06Yeah, I am, too. I mean, it’s like, in again, in some of the weirdest ways it feels like 2024 is going to be a cycle of a lot of the things that we don’t do anymore, that maybe we’re gonna start doing again, and will it actually be effective? will we actually be able to test the effectiveness of these strategies? I mean, ultimately, what it really comes down to is there’s always going to be changes in every market, including real estate, you know, we’re a cyclical business. If if, if we never cycled, we would have a fundamentally unhealthy market that was based, you know, that is propped up on artificial things. We should cycle every market cycles. Ultimately, though, what is going to separate the real performers from the pretenders out Yeah, as real estate professionals are the ones who can anticipate the cycles and get ahead of, you know, kind of run to where the ball is going to be, instead of just always chasing after the ball. D.J. Paris 25:13Yeah, and I think this, we were talking about this offline about really figuring out since going back to mortgages being or the housing market having a mortgage problem this year, really thinking about creative ways to appease or solve for that. And there are there are creative solutions, there’s all sorts of, you know, solutions. And this would be, I think, a great time to really reach out to those top loan officers in your local market, and say, Hey, let’s let’s brainstorm here, you know, what, what ammo, can I come with? To convince a seller that it’s a good time to list? And how can we appeal most successfully to buyers? And does the seller help in that, and we know that, you know, to one buyer downs, for example, are are a pretty common alternative right now to, you know, incentivize buyers to get off the sidelines. Any what other suggestions do you have for agents who are just sort of unclear about what to do right now? Chris Linsell 26:13Well, I mean, ultimately, the most successful agents, especially when we’re trying to solve financing problems, the most successful agents are the ones who are going to do two things better than their competitors. The first is, they are going to leverage the best connections in their market, to professionals who do things that they cannot do. So like there is a limited amount it’s not, it’s not zero. But there’s a limited amount of value that you can provide to your clients, when they have mortgage specific questions. You can definitely provide a 30,000 foot view maybe even a 10,000 foot view of of the options of the strategy and the way to apply those different options. But at the end of the day, your advice can only extend so far, because you don’t have the ability to exercise and actually put into action, some of those financial instruments that will get your clients across the finish line. So there’s a I think 2024 is going to be a year, where your connections to really savvy and thoughtful mortgage brokers of all stripes, ones that conduct FHA and rd loans, ones that specialize in jumbo or luxury loans, ones that optimize for speed, I guarantee you, there will be somebody in your 2024 real estate world who’s going to need a mortgage in eight days. And it’s just there’s going to be a client, we’re just we’re just going to see that kind of volatility in the market. If you’ve got a mortgage person who can optimize for speed, you are going to be a winner. So these are these are the like kind of the base level. But there’s this whole other element too, especially for folks who are not going to necessarily be perfectly serviced by the mortgage industry, primarily because the interest rates are not where they need to be. If you have financial advisors who can generate ideas on how to use existing wealth, how to create loans from protect, perhaps existing assets, if you have financial managers who can, you know, if you are somebody who is fortunate enough to have like retirement savings or investment accounts that you don’t have to liquidate, but you can borrow against this is something I’m seeing begin to rise in the mortgage space, or in replacement of mortgages as people borrowing against investment accounts. Because the loans are processed differently, the interest rates are different. And it still frees people up to keep that money invested. They’re just borrowing against that money. The agents if you if you are struggling with answering some of these questions, get connected with the people in your market who answer these questions in other contexts, because these are going to be your best friends for generating transactions because ultimately, unless you’ve got a mortgage license and work for a bank, there’s only so much advice that you can give so connect with the people who actually can actualize that advice. D.J. Paris 29:39So we’re talking about accountants, we’re talking about financial advisors, CPAs financial planners, also estate planning attorneys really talking about this would be a great time to reach out to some of these professionals and say, hey, I want to give my clients the best possible opportunities this year for You know, moving and you know, we need to explore, I would love to explore some any any, any creative ideas you have based on different levels of wealth or net worth. There’s all sorts of solutions more, of course to Chris Linsell 30:13yeah, let me give you one other kind of alternative. A lot of people don’t think of this. But if you have clients who are looking to buy in HOA dominated buildings or neighborhoods or coops, I can tell you from personal experience, because I’m on the HOA of my neighborhood. That D.J. Paris 30:36is that is a thankless job, Chris, we appreciate on behalf of your association. We appreciate you guys Chris Linsell 30:43keep the roads plowed. And I’m not driving the plow, so I’ll help write the checks. D.J. Paris 30:48Sorry, I just had to I do appreciate you because I know nobody else does. Chris Linsell 30:52Well, honestly, I did. That means a lot coming from you. Thank you. No, but this is an under utilized resource. But most HOAs that were formed after 2008 require new residents to include in there to include in their initiation into the neighborhood, their financing information. And though there are different, you know, effort, every HOA has their own rules, most HOAs require the specific information around the details of individual residents to remain confidential. But there is nothing in most bylaws that say that HOA reps can’t talk about these things in aggregate. So for instance, if you’re looking to get into a neighborhood, like if you’ve got a client who’s looking to get into a neighborhood, and you’re struggling with how to solve the financing problem, go to the HOA board and say, Listen, we’re trying to solve the financing here, we want to make an offer we want to live here. How have other people paid to get in here totally. And there, they can tell you, in fact, most of them, they have a vested interest in you buying in there because they want to fill their slots, they want to they want to make sure that the HOA is solvent. So they can say well, 50% of people bought with cash 50% up to 30% of people bought with a with a conventional mortgage 20% of people bought with maybe maybe with a loan from from a stock portfolio. 5% of people were land contract, you know, whatever it is, I don’t know, I don’t I don’t know the specifics. But go to these HOAs, they have all this information, they can tell you this is especially valuable in major urban centers where you have buildings that have hundreds of units. I mean, they can tell you like, in the last 10 years, the percentage of people that bought in cash were x, I mean, it is that information is available, they want you to have it because they want you to buy in there. So they’re not going to tell you that the guy in two J, you know, bought in cash, but they can tell you X percentage of transactions that occurred in the last 10 years have been in cash or have been in traditional mortgages. So there are there are means to to get this information, you just have to figure out who is actualizing that information and go right to the source. I D.J. Paris 33:32love that. Well, I think that’s a great place to wrap up. So for those of us that have HOA opportunities, reach out to the HOA and say, Hey, we’re we would love to know what creative solutions people have used to to, you know, secure their, their their transaction. You know, how have people done this? Are there any lenders that you’ve seen time and time again come through the HOA that people seem to be satisfied with and maybe a unique way, the This happened in my own building, when when we were buying there was one lender who just seem to get things done in a really super creative way that other lenders couldn’t and talk. It happened among a lot of the people who were buying, we were all chatting with each other, which was very unusual. But we were all talking about it because we were all experiencing this one issue and somebody says oh, I’ve got the person. And we all kind of went to that person. And there’s you know, that person got a lot of business, but it was because they had a creative solution. So yeah, I think that’s a wonderful idea. Well, Chris, I think this is a great place to sort of wrap up for today. I know we could keep talking and I know there’s a lot more I certainly want to talk about. And I know this is near and dear to your heart in our next conversation about sort of vulnerability with with data, cyber attacks stuff. We know MLS is of uncompromised, and we know that that also the you know the real estate industry at least The National Association of Realtors and everything underneath it has struggled to keep up with with tech. And so we know there’s a lot of vulnerability there that we should probably talk about and how agents can sort of prepare for some, you know, some of that disruption because it enters that already it has already happened. But yeah, we will we will keep that for our next conversation along with anything else by the way. It please follow Chris on LinkedIn and anywhere else that he is posting on social we will have links because he posts a lot of these unpopular opinions. And if you disagree, and you have a differing viewpoint, please let Chris know and we will bring that up on our show. So I will be monitoring this stuff as well. So please follow Chris crystallin cell li n s e LL, again, links to his social will be in our our show notes. And please follow him on his website. crystallin sell.com. He is a sought after speaker he travels all over the country all year round speaking at conferences, all specifically real estate related and he is the guy to to talk about when it comes to predictions. He is tapped every year, for the last many years for National Association of REALTORS to talk about predictions. This is the guy so please reach out to him. He loves to speak to your association, maybe even your brokerage crystallin cell.com is where you can find and reach out him directly. Again, also follow him on social Chris, great to see you again. And we will we’ll be doing this every month this year. So see everybody on the next episode. A thank you to all of our listeners I wanted to I can’t remember if I said this at the beginning of the episode or if I said this just to Chris. But we had our biggest month ever in December sorry if this is I said this twice. But that was incredible to us. So thank you to everyone who has been following us and supporting us. Thank you to our sponsors. Thank you to Chris, who selflessly comes on here every single month, and of course to the audience who continues to tell a friend about our show. All right, I will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Chris Linsell 37:02guys. Talk to you soon.