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

Fee Gentry a coach and author talks about how she got into real estate. Fee discusses what you can do today to future proof your business. Fee also discusses the importance of positive mindset and what agents can do to protect it. Last, Fee widely discusses additional streams of income for agents and how they can leverage from their actual position. Please follow Fee on Instagram here. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Fee Gentry can be reached at 512.766.3255 and fee@feegentry.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Are you concerned about what the future may hold for realtors stop being concerned because today we’re going to talk about how to future proof your business. 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 solutions so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. I’m DJ Parris, I’m your guide, and host through the Show and welcome if you’re new, welcome back, if you’re returning, and as always, please tell a friend about our show. Other Realtors need to know we we have a huge audience 10s of 1000s of you listen to every episode, there’s like 1.6 million realtors, and I’m gonna put it on you guys, you got to get me in front of all of them. I’m just teasing. But that would be awesome. Just tell one person about us that would really help us and it would make make our audience even bigger. So thank you in advance for that. Also, check out our sponsors, guys, our sponsors are awesome. They’re so sweet and nice. They keep the show rolling, check out their products and services. They have awesome stuff. So please do that too. But let’s get to my main event. Today we’re talking to fi gentry and this is a real true superstar in the industry, not just the top producer. This is somebody at the highest levels of the industry and she is now consulting with agents and teams to help them take their business to the next level. So you really want to check this out. It’s very cool, but let’s just get right to it. My conversation with V Gentry. We have V Gentry on the show as our guest from exp in Georgetown, Texas. Let me tell you more about fee. A fee Gentry is a dynamic figure in real estate. She excels as an entrepreneur and investor a speaker, a coach and an author. She’s the visionary founder of the black exp network, a co founder of the one exp initiative and a former director on the board of EXP world holdings LLC since 2004 When she became a licensed Texas realtor. Her mission has been helping women and underserved individuals achieve financial independence through homeownership. With over two decades of entrepreneurial experience fee is the driving change both within and beyond the real estate sector. She’s currently the CEO of live better ventures running a business incubator and hosts the fellowship on YouTube. Now to for all things fee we want you actually to go to her Instagram which is at fi Gentry fi Welcome to the show. Well thank you DJ man, like when you read that I was like Who’s he? Who’s he talking about? Was that amazing? Lady really sounds like she sounds she’s a little superstar. Well, you are a superstar and I am excited to number one. You’re such a sweet person we were just chatting backstage and I’m really really excited to speak with you. But besides being just a pleasant and lovely person I really want to you have some really great things we’re going to talk about today specifically money that realtors are leaving on the table and also with the talk of AI and and just technology always you know increasing and trying to edge out Realtors what we can do to future proof our businesses. So we’re going to talk a lot about that. But before we get to, to that to that let’s talk about you and I’d love to hear about how you got into real estate because you have done a lot so tell us about that journey. Fee Gentry 4:51Man Real Estate DJ was like Plan F for me like I had it was nowhere on my radar. Actually I was in physical therapy school, so I had, you know, my goal was to be a physical therapist, and I, you know, so I went to PT school, you know, I did post rehabilitation. I mean, that was in fitness. That was my career. And D.J. Paris 5:10we should mention for anyone, I’m sorry to interrupt your your lovely story, but just to make a big deal about this. PT school is often talked about as being just as challenging to get into as pre med because there’s there’s fewer actually PT schools than there are med schools. And I don’t know if that’s still the case, but it is a big deal to get into a PT program. And so yeah, I’m sorry. So tell us tell us. Yeah, Fee Gentry 5:32so I was Yeah. So it was in the number one physical therapy program in the state of Texas. And I just, I just said, this is not for me, like, because I had, it was just weird. And I was, I’ve always been an entrepreneur since the age of like, 910 11 years, I’ve always had businesses. So I read this little book like a lot of people have write that book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad by keister in the in you know, that one little sentence says that 90% of people with millions of millionaires or people who have wealth are in the real estate business. I didn’t see the sales part I just saw in the real estate. So silly me, my mom was building a house in Central Texas sight unseen. And so her realtor was like, and who also happen to be the commissioner of the state of Texas was like, we I came to meet, you know, check on check on the house and meet with him. And he said, you would be really good. In real estate. He goes on to introduce you one of my friends who happen to be the, and she was there. I didn’t know who it was avis woocash happen to be the commissioner of the state of Texas made like you could be top 1%. And I was like, you know, I just didn’t even listen to them. And I blew it off. And I thought about it for a while. And I started having all these people recruit me into the real estate industry. And I promise you DDJ I did not know a, you know, a listing from a lockbox. When I got in the business, I had no clue. And so first year, I sold 39 homes, unbeknownst to me, I thought it sucked. I didn’t I was like, because I got this backup, this little bronze metal. It was it was at the Big Red company, kW. And I got this bronze medal. I was like, Oh, I don’t how do I get a silver? I D.J. Paris 7:02mean, how do I get a bronze, that’s the worst of all the metals. barely made it on the podium. Fee Gentry 7:07And, and if you don’t know this about me, but like, I’m 511, almost six foot tall. So, you know, former collegiate athlete love sports. So I’m, like, very competitive. So that’s how I got in the business of real estate. And so I just grew from there. So I went from being a solo agent that I grew that I became, like, I was in a smaller town, I was living up north. And so let’s come like this medium size fish in a in a small pond, and start growing a team of people and then wanted to start, I wanted to, you know, own a franchise. And that didn’t work out. Thank God because 2008 then happened. Oh, good. Sorry, my saved myself. But I still I mean, I still took a bloodbath like everybody else. But um, but yeah, so that’s how I ended up in business. Yeah. Wow, D.J. Paris 7:49that is, that’s quite a story. And your story doesn’t end there. Because from there, you went on to serve and in management capacities at the corporate level, you know, with exp in particular, and just, you know, continually coaching consulting, writing. You, you do it all, and it is, it’s it’s so impressive, and there’s so much we could talk about. And I think, you know, being that you were so connected to agents, I would love to talk about, you know, 2024. Now, this episode might not actually publish until early January, or potentially late December. But regardless of it’ll be, you know, 2024 is on everybody’s mind will no matter when this actually drops. But people had to tough 2023, or at least the eight most of the agents I knew. And every so often I talked to an agent and said, I’m having my best year ever. I was maybe 1% of agents I talked to so. So for for most of us, it was it was a tricky and difficult year. And I think, you know, for somebody like yourself who’s so disciplined, so focused, so just committed to finding solutions. I really do want to talk about what agents can do in 2024, just to help keep their keep stay in business and keep their business rolling forward. So just any advice or guidance that you might have for what agents should be focusing on right now during the winter months when we know things are slower anyway, but how they could set themselves up for possibly having a better 2024 2025? Right. Fee Gentry 9:19That is an amazing question. I get that question a lot. And I and I talk about that a lot. We wish we’d have started in October. So the people that I work with we say let’s start in October that 90 day window right? But since it since we can’t do anything about it, let’s start today like so what can you do today? And I always talk about what do you need to do right now to future proof your business right for 2024. So that so my goal here for your audience is just to help set them free, right, free from you know, worry about artificial intelligence taking over free from, you know, the text from these major, you know, institutional investors and I want to set them free from any other outside forces because the first part that The we have talked about is let’s sit there, let’s let’s get their mind in check, right? So I want them to I don’t want to be a victim of the economy, I want them to, you know, first of all, let’s talk about your mindset, you have to make a decision. So that’s the very first thing I talked to people about, make a decision that you should thrive in 2024. Number two is to have a plan, like and not have people keep writing business plans, but I’m talking about an action plan because we we all feel good about planning. Oh, well, I wrote my business plan for 2024. Well, what are you going to do? What are the action steps that you’re gonna take in the first 30 days, and, and I always talk about this, is keep it simple. We write these elaborate business plans, and I’m just talking to people about in 2024, we’re going to just have to keep it simple. Like and go back to the basics and the fundamentals of of everything, yes, we need to leverage artificial intelligence and learn how to use that. But we need to leverage it in and I’m calling collective capitalism is or collect, you know, or collaborative capitalism this year, that’s what people should be focusing on 2020, for who it’s not what you need to do, or how to do it, who do you need to connect with, in order to get through the next year to two years, and possibly even three years, because I believe, Mike, this is the you know, according to fee disclaimer, right? These are just my own thoughts, beliefs, I believe that real estate is going to substantially change in the next 24 to 48 months, whether it’s from the Department of Justice, you know, the court cases, or whether it’s, you know, technology, or, or the consumers who’ve just decided, we’ve just, they’ve got a different feed, and they want to, and they want to do something or the the collapse of nor I mean, I don’t know, we don’t know, I have a crystal ball. But either way, like I said, my goal is to set your audience free to, to do something different this year. Thank D.J. Paris 11:46you. And I think, by the way, a wonderful goal and very appreciative to you to come on here and and share some of your wisdom and knowledge. And we should, you know, I was thinking, as you were saying about keeping it simple. So I recruit agents for a living and I, our audience, a lot of them don’t do that. But I think you can pause our audience can possibly relate to this little quick story. So for years and years, every week, we’d have a management meeting, and it would they would say, DJ, how many people did you hire this week? And that was our measure of how well DJ I was doing. And I’ve been doing this 13 years. So that’s just a standard metric. It’s like, how many sales did you get, you know, that kind of thing. But it was how many people that I recruit. And then we finally realized that what we call our key performance indicators. That’s just the end result of me doing all the other tasks. And so, you know, assuming that I never get better at recruiting, what is the actual driver? It’s how many conversations do I have on a daily basis. So it reminds me of that Brian Buffini, old Brian Buffini thing that where he would say, you got to meet two to five people every day, if you’re a realtor, and just add them to your database. And and I was like, well, and there’s a lot more to it, of course, but if we’re looking at the most basic activity that a realtor should probably consider if they don’t have enough business right now is keep adding people to your database, keep having conversations, meet new people, get them into your CRM. And so for me, I don’t focus on how many people are recruited anymore. It’s how many conversations that I have this week with agents. And then you know, we track my close ratio, and all that. But really, what we’re finding out is we know DJ needs to talk to 20 different agents a week if he’s going to get, you know, five people to join or whatever. So, so I really appreciate you saying that, because we can look at the end results, sales, you know, deals closed and go. And then we can go, that’s a lot of stress. If we go back to just I gotta beat a whole bunch of people, and I go, that’s not the only thing anyone needs to do. But it’s it’s a way to think about scaling back your, you know, what do I actually need to do on a daily basis? Fee Gentry 13:45Absolutely. That’s the one. If you do nothing else, that’s it. D.J. Paris 13:49You never improve your skill set. I mean, this is what I always say to like, with me, if I never become any better as, as a recruiter, if I just double the number of people I talk to, in theory, I should double the number of recruits that I have. So and of course we everything. But But yeah, so So let’s, let’s talk a little bit more so. So thinking about, yes, there’s all of these outside factors. You know, you mentioned technology. We talked about the rise of AI, the flight to teams, there’s lawsuits, there’s all these things that and I want to go back to mindset just for a moment because I I was curious of what your advices for you talked about first making a decision that I’m going to have a good next 12 months Yes. How do you protect that mindset? Because we know that it’s, it’s, you know, when things are good, it’s easy to have the mindset and when things are strong, are challenging, it’s harder. So do you have any, any any suggestions to protect that mindset and really guard it so that some of these outside influences don’t start to color it in a way that we now are? Oh my gosh, oh, this isn’t gonna happen. Yeah, Fee Gentry 14:55I am. 100% my own The best critic, my own best person that that number one, I always do is like, turn off the television, get off social media, and then get away from negative people in what will all those three things have people. It is kind of weird, like, we’re supposed to talk to people. So like, so like, want you to have conversations, but with the right type of people, right. But it’s so but in the other thing that I do is I have, you know, I have a lot of my friends or colleagues, we’re all learners. So we’re we’re, you know, we’re staying on top of books or reading books on money on mindset, on you know, manifestation or money, your prayer, whatever, whatever it is that you believe in, find something that you can do every single day, that takes you out of this crazy world and brings you back inward. Because we keep looking at these external forces, everything we need is already inside of us. And so that’s the number one thing that I really recommend is for people to go inward when everybody else is being crazy. D.J. Paris 15:56Yeah, and also we can get crazy too. And so this idea of, of having a practice of some sort of discipline, like you were saying, prayer, meditation, whatever it is, something that takes you a little bit outside of the craziness that you that we all deal with inside our own heads to this is it gives some additional space in our lives to be able to say, You know what, there’s, there’s more than just me out here, I’m somehow connecting with this, you know, greater thing, that that’s not just me. And it’s it’s a nice respite from sometimes our own struggles that that we have. So I’m a big, big fan of that and big believer in that as well. And also, I think it’s the birthplace of creativity, I think, when you can get quiet and listen to your intuition. Like you were saying that sometimes in a lot of times the answers bubble bubble up, but if you’re not quiet, I don’t if I’m not quiet, I don’t hear them mean Fee Gentry 16:54either. Yeah, yeah, I just, I absolutely just like, I’m, I do that twice a day, I just get quiet twice a day or something, you know, and I always recommend, I always recommend finding that piece. For me, it’s like either putting my feet in the grass, looking at water or something like that, like connecting with nature, connecting with your inner, you know, your, your source, whatever, I need to do music, but just find like, find that internal peace is really, really key. Yeah. Yeah. D.J. Paris 17:20And the other thing too, that I think about I’m curious to get your take on it is this. It’s an old expression. But I think it’s accurate, at least for me that the journey is really is really where it’s at the destination is nice, and it’s nice to celebrate. And, you know, when we when we have these major goals we accomplished it’s great for a day or two to sort of celebrate and, and then I don’t know, but I often watch out. For me, I often get depressed when I when I achieve a goal and I wish I didn’t know is very common. I can get really, really depressed because then it’s like, oh, now Oh, okay, now what? You know, and then it’s like, I gotta just, if I if I were to think about Yes, the goal is nice, and we should celebrate our wins. And then we should realize it’s all about chopping wood and carrying water just consistently doing the work. Yeah. Yeah, that’s, Fee Gentry 18:10that’s it. DJ, I’m glad you mentioned that because i It’s the mamba mentality. And there’s a lot of especially in the real estate industry, or like they just said, you know, as it being an athlete or something. So I think about Kobe Bryant is that, you know, after the championships, he goes back and he’s looking at game film and shooting 1000 shots after he’s won a championship. I’m that girl, you know, I’m that girl too. And so, the journey as I’ve gotten older, and in I’ve started learn and appreciate patients and enjoying just the little things like the just the habit of practice, we’re just practice, right? Just practice it enjoying that journey. But man, it took me three years plus, it’s taken me a long time. D.J. Paris 18:50I was talking to my personal trainer the other week or two ago, and I was saying, I’m just going to have to throw myself in the way of pain, physical pain for the rest of my life if I want to be fit. There’s nothing pleasant to me about like lifting heavy weights, it’s painful, it hurts, it’s but he the results are pretty cool. But I have to be willing to go through the discomfort and the willing, I mean, how muscles grow. It’s how we grow as people. So this idea of like throwing ourselves into discomfort is not fun, but it seems to be the only way I know to do it. So this idea of of getting into habits, you know, and just like I don’t like working out but I do it. I don’t I don’t have to like it. I just do it. Fee Gentry 19:33Yeah, it’s about happier. It’s about creating habits. So when I was talking about you know, when you’re making people making plans and goals, no, you need to develop habits. That’s the number one thing James clear. His book is probably one of the books that I recommend more than anything is atomic habits. Long read. And in the way he builds that book. It’s creating a habit right I mean, whether we even lace up a book so yeah, it’s creating habits a man like you said it sucks, but you just you just do it. D.J. Paris 19:58And here’s here’s the good news. I was thinking about this with exercise. So I don’t like exercise some people do. I truly I know some people actually really do love it. So I’m only speaking for myself, but I never did enjoy lifting heavy weights. And, you know, even doing cardio is not my favorite thing. But if I want to, if I want to live a long life, I probably have to do those things. So I finally just said, Well, I got to do it, I don’t have to like it, I just have to do it. And so if you have parts of your business that you don’t like to do, but are critical, then you can start to think about do I have to force myself? Sometimes the answer may be yes. Or it may be I can leverage other someone else to maybe do something for me, because number one, I don’t like doing it. Or number two, I’m not good at it. And there’s all these ways now to get people to help you. We have a global economy, we have this gig economy that we can tap into and get help from people in other places that, you know, maybe charge less than what people locally would charge to do similar work. And if you’re having problems staying on top of your habits, yeah, well, maybe get some help or get an accountability partner. But let I want to talk a little bit about future proofing one’s business and this idea of having leaving money on sorry, leaving money on the table, because I think this is something that most agents don’t think about at all. They’re just focused on the next transaction, the next client, and there are a lot of opportunities I as somebody who is in management at a brokerage. You know, this is a huge focus for brokerage owners right now. But it also can be something that teams agents, they really should be thinking about additional streams of income. So let’s talk about that. Yeah, Fee Gentry 21:38so this is probably one of my favorite things to talk about. And I’ve been talking about it for a long period of time. So DJ, most real estate professionals are renting their careers. Let me say that again. Most real estate professionals are running their careers, they’re going from transaction to transaction. They’re doing you know, they’re there. They might be at a brokerage where they have unfavorable terms, and then the other parts of the money that they’re leaving on the table. So I want you to imagine this that I always kind of do this exercise. Put draw circles if somebody’s watching this, do this as I’m talking about it, write a circle put your name in the middle of it. What do you wrote most real estate agents do? Like how many people how many people get paid during a real estate transaction? So let’s let’s just start naming them who gets paid in real estate transaction, the realtor, the realtors, both the buyer and seller D.J. Paris 22:28side the buyer sellers the brokerage gets paid the title, title company gets paid, the lender gets paid video inspector home inspect the utility companies get paid if if sometimes movers, Fee Gentry 22:43movers, movers, yeah, you videographers stagers the sign companies state, the state the state, you know, the state records county clerk clerks. So DJ, when I do this, I have found that on one single transaction, so up to 41, people get paid off a one transaction and guess who’s in the middle of that transaction? Yeah, the agent, the agent. And that’s what I talked about leaving money on the table. We are now when you talk about that gig economy, we have the ability now, as entrepreneurs, we have to stop being self employed, I’m talking to people about be going from solo to CEO or being self employed to a real estate business owner. And a lot of people think they’re real estate business owners and they’re not they are self employed. And so the entrepreneur of the future is going to have to stop leaving money on the table in there are, you know, compliant ways for you to get paid, especially from title from a from a mortgage company and for mortgages, because you’re watching the brokers do it. I mean, our brokerages are doing it in the models of you know, so now in the future, and it’s nothing new, but it’s a different way to look at it. Look at it, if you keep saying that your lender, my lending partner, if your lending partner is not providing you a resources or an ability to get paid or something that’s not your partner. That’s just a vendor. And so we have the vendor. Yep. It’s just a vendor. And so there are so many different ways to get paid on the table. If you’re we have you know, we have real estate professionals who have you can own a vending company, we have real estate, I mean, you know, I’m sorry, staging company we have we have real estate owners who own who can become, you know, property managers, you know what, you know, yeah, check, check your little bit, but there’s so many Sure, sure. I’m looking at right now, in this country. We have 30,000 Baby Boomers retiring every day in June who wants to be a YouTube star. He doesn’t want to own a plumbing company, ah, bet company. He doesn’t care about being a property manager. But we have the ability to go ahead and buy our cashflow. We as real estate professionals can buy our cashflow. We keep creating these companies and doing these transactions. But we can create we can buy cleaning companies we can buy move out companies. I mean, there’s so many different ways right now for us to make money and we’re leaving 1050 Getting $20,000 a month on the table. So that’s what I’ve been doing lately is either buying into equity, so creating equity positions with companies who, who already serviced the real estate industry, their handyman companies or their landscaping company tile and grout company, all those get paid off of a real estate transaction, by the way. And that’s where that’s where there’s the opportunity. And so, especially those in the real estate businesses, like who are, you know, bigger teams, you’re already utilizing these services, you know, the moving services, moving trucks, I mean, moving companies, there’s, there’s so many opportunities, like we talked about the 41 ways that people up to 41 ways people get paid off with one single real estate transaction. That’s how you’re leaving money on the table. D.J. Paris 25:42I love that. And this idea of investing in, you know, taking some of your capital, your, you know, commission money, for example, and reinvesting it into another business where you have an equity position. And, yes, there are all sorts of ways that agents can align themselves and get paid in, you know, legal, legally compliant ways. RESPA compliant, Fee Gentry 26:04right, was right. But DJ, most of it most of the ways I can teach you, I mean, I’m teaching, I’m doing it with like, sometimes you’re doing with no money down, because real estate, we’re real estate professionals. So like, we’re we’re they may suffer and don’t know how to market, or they don’t have a CRM, they don’t understand, we already got to do that as real estate agents. That’s what our that’s what our job is. We know how to connect people we know, we know how to do social media, I mean, all think about all the tools that we have in our tracks as real estate professionals, it makes total sense for us to, like you said, we can just we can, like I said, do some earned equity with within those positions. Yeah, in revenue share. That’s what I know. Yes, it’s revenue share. D.J. Paris 26:45Yeah. So for every vendor that an agent has, they absolutely should reach out again, making sure it’s, you know, violating license law. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, find out, find out what what the rules are in your local market and state, and then reach out to, you know, the, the attorneys reach out to, and some people are able to help you in certain ways, and some aren’t. But if you’re sending business to somebody, you should be asking them to do the same at the very least, or saying, how could I help you, for example, if you’re very good, if you’re strong, like you were saying, at social media, if that’s your thing, as an agent, you’re really good. Well guess what most business owners aren’t. So you have, you know, relationships with inspectors, you know, all these ancillary sort of services, you then can go to those and say, I can help you with that, or let me at least just fire some business off to you. And then let’s work out an arrangement where, you know, where we can both party, you know, both participate in the profit. So I love that. Yeah, Fee Gentry 27:47that’s, that’s, that’s the new way way of doing real estate businesses, you know, how do you make money in between the Commission’s that’s this is what it looks like, looks like right? Because unless, you know, unless you as a solo agent, or even as teams figure out a way to earn multiple streams of revenue, it’s going to get tough, it’s going to continue to get tough in terms of gaining market share. These are blue ocean strategies that are out there and like I said, one out of every 12 business owners are just going out of business and we’ve seen that in COVID in so that’s why we’re having a hard time finding a handyman reliable handyman that’s where we’re having a hard time finding that Christians H back you know, plumbers videographers you know, we’re having a hard time finding those people so D.J. Paris 28:30be really encourage everybody to watch South Park just did a in the last month or so they did a special called enter the pan diverse and I one of the plots one of the subplots of it was that we are so used to having things done for us that these trade positions, these skilled skilled labor positions, handyman plumbers, etc painters, you know, people don’t assume a lot of younger people don’t aspire to those positions. They weren’t like you were saying want to be you know, more and more involved in technology be on YouTube or whatever. They’re not necessarily wanting seeing that as a viable you know, sort of career even though it is a viable career. And so as a result those those trades are really suffering and but the need is still there. So you’re absolutely right, like if you think handymen are going out of business oh my gosh they’re probably having their they are going to do better and better and better and better because less people are learning those skills and we all need a handyman so So you’re absolutely right these these trade jobs are off they’re so critical. Yeah, Fee Gentry 29:34yeah, they are so critical especially for us in like said in our industry because like yeah, it’s and I talk you know so I get to talk to these you know these handy guys and these trade men and it’s it’s been it’s been really really fun talking to them and working with their businesses Yeah, yeah. D.J. Paris 29:50What at the end of the South Park episode the handyman and the these the trade positions, they become the celebrities now because they become the wealthy people. So it’s great Very cute story but but it’s got a very strong point is, is, you know, we there are opportunities here to think about, you know, sort of services that are not going out of business that are not you know, a handyman is basically future proof at least for a long time until robots come in and do it all that’s a long ways away so yeah and maybe it maybe it will never happen and there’s always going to you know, in Realtors too, you know realtors are worth their weight in gold if their skill set is high enough if their skill set is actually valuable about Zillow or or any of the other, you know, tech providers coming in Redfin. Redfin is a better example. Not just slight Redfin, I like Redfin, they’re great, but they have not really disrupted the market as much as we thought maybe they could. And it’s not because of anything, you know, negative towards them. It’s just people want to talk to agents who, you know, and again, they have agents, but we understand it’s a little bit of a different relationship there. So, yes, so So what you can do, if I understand is, you can help agents identify these opportunities, and then help create a plan to actually generate, you know, some of these relationships, is that, is that right? That is Fee Gentry 31:15correct. So I help real estate professionals, mostly teams, brokerages, you know, title companies, lenders, especially those of us who are getting up who either who are getting up in age, and they don’t have a transition plan to how to get out of their business, and, or those who are growing and want to add multiple streams of revenue to them. And so I have partnerships and jayvees. And so I, I help these companies create the plans, I help them acquire, acquire either these new businesses, or I help them where I help them put in relationships, so we can create up create the financial streams for them. So that’s what I’ve been doing for like this last year, is just because of the price like, well, let me use the buy relationships with, you know, some of the top lenders, title companies and doing it in a RESPA compliant way. And it has been amazing, especially for people just like I said, who have been running their careers, and just, you know, most real estate, people think they’re gonna be able to sell their businesses and they’re not right. They’re just, you’re just not going to. And so I teach them how to transition out of it and keep that keep that income stream coming in. And that happened. Started from exp I learned that from you know, it’s just a different business model. Yeah, yeah. D.J. Paris 32:22Yeah, it’s funny. So one of the things I started, we started doing here as a recruiting tool. And for any of those, any of those who are listening who are either brokerage owners, or team owners who are looking to expand their team and hire, I’ve got a great tip for you, that you could start doing this in your local market is offer free headshots, and invite the agents from other firms that you’re looking to recruit or bring on your team or whatever. And here’s how we do it. So because this is exactly to your point, basically, what you’re doing. So here’s how we do this, we hire, we get hire this photographer, and then I said, Well, I don’t want to pay for all that myself, because it’s quite expensive. So instead, so now we have an insurance agent that hangs out during the party. We have like a PA headshot party, we have an insurance agent, we have an attorney, we have a lender, we have an inspector, and we have a financial advisor. So we have everybody that would love to talk to all of these people, we all share the cost. This is a strategic partnership. This is exactly you know, basically what you’re saying is yes, these they’re not paying me but we’re all paying the photographer and I only have to pay the photographer a little tiny amount now because and I get to do this event that is pretty cool. People get free headshots. So my point is is is this is a way to do a version of that like you were saying is building these these partnerships where you know you’re getting in front of the people you want and then hopefully, you know either sharing the cost or having somebody even compensate you for some of those efforts and you absolutely could do this just to talk about title for one second and I know every state’s a little different so I don’t want to throw numbers out there that because they wouldn’t be applicable to any anyone unless they were in our situation but I will tell you as a brokerage owner at least in the state of Illinois, it is major major revenue for a title deal and other states it’s less but regardless it’s still something and you if you’re not figuring out a way to beat to participate in that way you are absolutely leaving money on the table here in Illinois it’s big big money and in other states it’s not as big but it’s still money on the table Fee Gentry 34:24right and it’s in his for doing the things that you already do anyways and that’s what I keep you know people like well I don’t want another job but I don’t want to go run a handyman service business No, I’m gonna teach you I’m teaching you how to do this without you’re not going to go pick up hammers you’re not gonna you’re not gonna you’re not gonna go you know, have to become a virtual assistant yourself or anything. This is like these are ways that you can do this with with up you know, with operate operations, Operation line operationalize control, right like, like, it’s just people put butts in seats to to make sure that work gets done because that’s what your job is to do is, you know that if you’re a team leader, just it’s your job is to make sure the work gets done. Yeah, it’s quarterback. And D.J. Paris 35:01so as an agent to, you know, you should be cultivating these relationships with your vendors anyway and talk about saying, Hey, I would like us to be a more strategic partner and figure out how we can help each other next year. So yeah, I’m happy to continue to send you business, Mr. Mrs. vendor, and I’d like you to be more part of the team as opposed to just a vendor for me. So what can we do together, where, you know, we can both participate in, in the success of this, and I’m going to refer every single person who comes my way to you, and I’d love to hear about, you know, maybe what you can do on your end to help facilitate more deals for me, or maybe some marketing dollars or whatever, again, is RESPA compliant and you know, licensed law compliant. But there are ways to do this. And agents are oftentimes not as confident to to ask, they don’t know exactly what to ask for, you know, I think most agents understand well, I can ask my lender to help me with like a seminar or webinar signs are, we understand that because we, we’ve been taught how to do that, but we haven’t been taught how to do the other stuff. And this is where you come in, because this is what you teach. Yeah. Yeah, it’s critical, because this is why you would go to fi because you don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Don’t try to learn it all yourself, go to somebody who’s already figured it out, like fee and have have her help consult with you and give you some suggestions. Because she already knows how to do it. Fee Gentry 36:27Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s been amazing. Yeah. People think of it outside. Yeah, yeah, there’s some, you know, there’s some nuances and intricacies. But we’ve now done it, you know, done it across the country. And now, and it’s, it’s Yeah, and you’re right, it varies from lot a lot, you know, from state to state. They’re different laws about different things. But yeah, love to help anybody who’s, who would live, you know, open to talking to anybody who’s interested in in, in looking down that path. Yeah. Yeah. D.J. Paris 36:50And there is really, even if the, for example, even like, even with utility companies like cable phone for people that still use cable and phone will still do and they do. Yeah. And you know, this is an opportunity to reach out to the cable company and be like, Hey, can I get a spiff on every time I send someone over to you? And, again, whatever the rules are in your area, fine. But most most of them be like, Sure, I’d be happy to solar is another one. There’s lots of of, you know, for home, renovators, staging companies, etc, have so many opportunities, Fee Gentry 37:27I’ve got a price list of the average of those. And so the ones that you’d be just most shocked on was like utilities. It’s the average household for utility, and I don’t even have to here but I think if I remember off the top of my head, and like the state of Texas, is is $1,300. Well, you get a referral of that they’ll give up give you up to 30 or 40% referral on that. Think about that. I mean, you don’t mean just like, yeah, people weren’t paying utilities. I mean, there’s so many, like you said solar, oh, my gosh, if you know if they have solar in your in your state, but it’s it’s being compliant, right. It’s the RESPA compliant ways and and how you build it? Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s, it can be very, very, it’s very, very lucrative. And attorneys D.J. Paris 38:03have been doing this for years and years and years. Attorneys have referral relationships with other attorneys who are in different specialties. Obviously, realtors do this, all my clients moving to Florida, and I live in Illinois. So I need to find someone in Florida and I’m going to take x percentage of the commission by handing you know, you an agent down there the deal. And yes, you can do similar versions of this. And I love the thing you were saying to about this hyperlocal where you could go to businesses in your local market and say, Look, I have I have a following on online of people that you know, know, like, and trust me, they listen to my suggestions, and I’m happy to sort of drive business to you, Mr. or Mrs. Business Owner? Would that be okay? Of course the answer is going to be yes. And then. And then the question is great. Can we either workout a relationship where maybe, you know, I, maybe there’s a revenue share, like you were saying, or maybe we can reciprocally send each other business. But I think, you know, business owners love this idea of, oh, you’re gonna help me grow my business? Awesome. Let’s, you know, they understand the nature of the the reciprocity. Fee Gentry 39:13Yep, exactly. Yeah. And there’s, and there’s so there’s three ways that people can generate business that way. So I call it like one being an affiliate, right, like we talked about, like you could possibly get income to being we call just a connector connector, like where you you, as the real estate professional look really good by being able to offer that higher level tier of services on it, and you may get a discount yourself. And then three is like absolutely, you know, you’re going to when you become a professional you are sharing and revenues or you might own or you do performance guarantees, you get some performance bonuses on stuff and in the revenue share. So those are three different tiers. And I’ve got about four other tiers of way you can ways you can, you can do that. Yeah, I D.J. Paris 39:54mean, we’re in what are we talking about sort of bottom line on a transaction if Have a and again, I, you know numbers are gonna vary wildly. But we’re talking about possibly adding 1000 or more dollars in revenue in profit to even a transaction? Possibly, possibly, or more. So, or more or more. Yes, yes, I was being very conservative, because I know, I know even what title gives us per deal here in Illinois, but which is which is 1000s. Right? Fee Gentry 40:27Something that title, just just, yeah, just just just a title mortgage. If you just think about we talked about when we set up to 41 different ways you can get paid on a transaction. Okay, let’s just say you got paid on three more. Just just mentioned, you got just paid on those, just three, the basic, the basic core three, let’s just say it’s mortgage, handyman services or housekeeping services? I don’t know. I mean, you know, you pick three, it’s way more than you did before, and it’s doing the exact same. D.J. Paris 40:56You’re all right. You know, we all like it’s funny. I, I have a how do we find are the people that, you know, we hired to clean our homes on a regular basis? Well, yes, we could go online and try to find, but we usually ask our friends, right, we go, Hey, who’s your cleaning person? Are they good? Okay. Yeah, right, yeah. But those people are worth their weight in gold, when you can find a good cleaning. Anyone, any vendor. That’s, that’s excellent. We’re like, oh, my gosh, and and, you know, people just freely sort of give out those referrals. And that’s awesome. And you should do that. And you should also say, Gosh, I want to help build your business, you are such an excellent vendor, I want to help you. And that’s where you start is how can we help each other? And agents are just not used to asking that question. And this is the question and fees going to help you not only identify all these opportunities, and possibly becoming an equity partner in some of their businesses, or some sort of, you know, affiliate or referral relationship, whatever, there’s ways to do it. And whether you’re getting paid, maybe you’re getting paid in sweat equity, maybe you’re getting paid that in physical dollars, but services for your business that can be you know, maybe there’s a by the way, accountants, those are pretty important people. Right. So accountants is another opportunity, you and I know they’re on your list. You’ve identified everyone. So this is exactly guys, I think this is a perfect place for us to stop because if you haven’t built some of these strategic partnerships and relationships to earn more than just a commission on a sale, and yes, that’s we understand that’s how agents get paid. But there are other avenues and fee is going to help you figure out how to do that, how to identify and how to approach those businesses and what to offer them and what to expect in return. And guys, like he was saying you’re already referring people to other vendors anyway, you might as well see if there’s an opportunity to work together. And you know, it’s you just you’ve opened my eyes actually because we’re I’m kind of a business owner myself. So I now have to start looking at our strategic partnerships and realize oh yeah, maybe I’m I’m leaving some things on the table. In fact, I know I’m leaving. In fact, I’m going to ask for you to take a look at my podcast and tell me how I’m leaving things on the table because I totally 1,000,000,000,000% and leaving money on the table. So I’m doing it guys you’re doing it. We’re all doing it Fi is here to save us all so find for all things fi just find her on Instagram she’s she’s she’s easy to find search fi Gentry online, there’s not there’s one fee gentry and that is her. Which is one of the cool things about having a name like V Gentry is a name that you certainly remember and is unique. And fee is really the real deal again but on the board of directors and exp she she’s she’s that she’s the real thing. Author coach, athletes and a top producer and brokerage owner just everything she’s done it all so please reach out to her because she knows where this business is headed. Because she has been at those upper levels and Management at really the highest levels of some of the biggest companies out there. So guys, she she knows she knows what’s coming and she wants to help you future proof. So find her on Instagram at fi Gentry Fe GE and try and we’ll have links to all of these ways to get in contact with us in our show notes. But I would just want to thank fee for spending an hour with us we so much appreciate you You’re such a wonderful guest and you have such a passion for helping agents which is exactly what the show is all about. So on behalf of the audience, thank you thank you to fi This is a wonderful way for me this is my last interview before the before I go on holiday break. So what a what a fun interview for me to have. So selfishly thank you for you. But our audience also thanks to you and then on behalf of Fi and myself. We want to thank the audience do you stuck around to the very end we appreciate you we honor you This is for you. So thank you. Tell us how we can improve the show number one leave us a review let us know Good, bad, indifferent, let us know what what we want more of less of tell me to shut up, whatever. Let me know how to make the show better, but also support our sponsors. They’re the ones that pay the bills. So please check out their products and services. I promise you we I do not allow vendors to come on and be advertisers. Unless they have unbelievable services for agents, and telephones. Please tell a friend about our show. Another agent in your office, they need to hear this by the way, you’re owner of if you’re an agent and you work for a brokerage, instead of being the brokerage owner, send this to the owner because the owner needs to know about this as well. The owner needs to know or the team leader needs to understand there is opportunities and they already know it. They just don’t have the strategy about how to get there Fi is going to help them do that. So reach out to fi she’s awesome. We’ll have her contact information in the show notes. Find her on Instagram at fi Gentry fi have a wonderful I’m just gonna say have a wonderful holiday season and you’re here. Fee Gentry 45:55I know I can’t wait I don’t have anything good plan. I plan on traveling but I’m gonna be actually just focusing down and rebranding and doing some new stuff. So yeah, D.J. Paris 46:03well, by the way, too, like fi has I was we were joking about this before I the fi is the best voice ever. She was just the self soothing voice. So I said if you’re going to hire a consultant, you’re going to have somebody work with you. Wouldn’t it be cool to have somebody with a voice like fee? Well, you might be directly so in fact I need a strategic partnership with FIFA. I’m only teasing. But I am happy to promote fi because she She’s wonderful and very, very skilled. But she also has a wonderful voice and she hosts shows and she does it all. So reach out to her she will get you on the right track fee. Thank you so much. We will see everybody on the next episode. Fee Gentry 46:39Thank you so much.

Tara Meier a real estate marketing technology expert talks about how she got into the real estate business. Tara discusses the importance of online presence and also shares tips on how to utilize AI in your everyday work. Next, Tara talks about the best way to create content. Tara also discusses her thoughts on sharing personal life vs professional life on social media. Last Tara gives tips on how to use paid ads on social media. Please follow Tara on Instagram and on LinkedIn. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Tara Meier can be reached at (623) 253-6257. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Curious about how to utilize AI in your business for 2024. 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 on to our show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. Welcome if you’re new, welcome back if you are returning, and in just a moment, I’m going to be speaking with top producer Tara Meyer. Before we get to Tara, just a few few quick announcements. Number one, let us know how we’re doing tell us, the best way you can tell us how we’re doing is by leaving us a review. So whether you’re listening to us on Apple podcasts or Spotify, or one of the other million places you could find us let us know what you think of the show. We take your feedback into account and we make changes because this is all about you. And one way you can help us in addition to that is also by telling a friend think of another realtor that could benefit from while you’re about to hear an amazing conversation with Tara and send it over to somebody because everybody needs to know about AI and we’re going to be talking about that a lot today and also online presence and how to build your brand via social. So we’re gonna talk about all of that stuff. So please tell a friend and also support our sponsors. That’s the last thing they’re the ones who pay the bills they keep our show rolling and we love our sponsors please love them back check out their products and services give them a try. I promise you won’t be disappointed. But alright guys enough pitching for me. Let’s get to the main event my conversation from with from my conversation with the great Tara Meyer. Today on the show, we have Tara Meyer from my home, which is in Chandler, Arizona. Let me tell you more about Tara. Tara Meyer is a seasoned real estate marketing technology expert with over 20 years of industry experience. She’s known for her entrepreneurial spirit and Tara also excels in leveraging innovative marketing technology to enhance visibility and productivity. Now as a coach and consultant she specializes in brand and identity development, online presence and online presence and reputation management and social media strategy. Tara’s expertise extends to AI and automation. That’s what everybody’s wanting to learn about. We’re going to talk about that today. Also digital advertising CRM implementation and transaction management systems. Her focus is on driving growth and efficiency for real estate professionals through cutting edge strategies and tools I want we’re gonna have such a fun conversation today with Tara. But before we do I want everybody to follow her on Instagram. We have a link to this in the show notes but it’s underscore Tara T Ara Meyer, m e i e r underscore so underscore Tara Meyer underscore, don’t worry. We’ll have a link to it. You can find it there. And please follow her on LinkedIn as well search for Tara Meyer. We have a link to that in the show notes as well and go to her website, which is Tara meyer.com We to learn about all things Tara? Tara, welcome to the show. Tara Meier 4:30Thank you. Thanks for having me. D.J. Paris 4:31I have to say my very first real girlfriend in life was named Tara. And so and I haven’t thought of that name in a very, very long time. So I’m having these weird flashbacks to my early 20s of going this this painful relationship that was a million years ago and actually she’s she’s she’s a lovely person. Everybody’s first relationship was was terrible. I think so. But it is it is funny. I I I haven’t talked to too many terrorists since then. And I was I had a moment where I was, I was like, why am I thinking about my Oh, that’s right. They have the same name. So just kind of a cute story. But she’s married has kids, she’s doing great. But anyway, let’s talk about some fun stuff today. Because I, I’m a marketing person as well. You’re a marketing person. You’re about systems and branding, and marketing. And we’re going to talk about all that fun stuff, as opposed to just how’d you grow your business, which is what I do on every other episode, which is really fun and exciting, too. But people really want to hear about systems and marketing. So let’s talk about that. But before we do, I do want to find out how you got into the business. How did you start in real estate and why? Tara Meier 5:43Yeah, so and 2002, I found myself at the front desk of a title insurance company. I spent 10 years at first American Title kind of doing various positions I, you know, grew from, like a set of receptionist, I did escrow disbursements and signings, and finished off as an examiner on the title side. Shortly after that, I was recruited by a an agent who liked my title background, he was focused primarily in REO at that time, so that was around 2010. And I, you know, helped him with it. I mean, he was a one man show running like, you know, 30, various 30 to 50 Reo dispositions at one time. So it was all things vendor management and Cash for Keys and some of those, you know, not so sexy things. And then from there, I transitioned, I got my license in Arizona in 2012. I was a, you know, a successful agent, I think I did, roughly around 150 transactions between two 2012 to 2019, when I also got my broker’s license, and then I quickly decided, I decided I wanted to pivot and do something new. And so I went into prop tech, that where I was a supervisor and a Program Manager for Zillow offers, and you know, I learned all things, you know, scaling and how to, you know, operate with, well manage people, as well as work with some of the most top producing agents in in the western United States that were affiliated with Zillow offers at that time, they unfortunately went through a wind down, which everybody knows. D.J. Paris 7:31We all know, we all know, Zillow offers this is no, by the way, by the way, I know a lot of people have strong feelings about Zillow in general, I do not have those same strong feelings. I am, I am a big fan of tech companies, Zillow, I don’t you know, will they ultimately try to replace agents? I guess, you know, they say they won’t. But regardless, I think Zillow really does act to really help agents more than than and I know that not everyone agrees with that. But I am a fan of Zillow. Actually, they used to be a sponsor of my show, and I used to have them on the show all the time. So I’m a big fan. Yeah, Tara Meier 8:05it’s it really, it was a great company to work for, I learned a lot about culture and, and just like how to operate at a in a high capacity. So I really valued my time there. It’s unfortunate that it ended but you know, that’s things happen for a reason. D.J. Paris 8:19Bad timing, that not you but the it was just timing with the market and everything and, and it wasn’t the only company the only, you know, company like that to go or division of a company like that to go under pretty much most of them did. So it wasn’t exclusive to Zillow. But um, so So you pivoted you, you were doing that, and then that ended. And then where do you go from there? Yeah, so Tara Meier 8:42then I was picked up by another prop tech company actually called the orchard and I was the general manager and launched the Phoenix market here. And they also went through a wind down. So I was there for about a year and a half. So my, my tenure in Prop tech lasted about four years. And then I was like, Okay, I need to do something different. And maybe I just need to go back into real estate. And so I was kind of playing with that and trying to relaunch my, my indie career, at the worst time, probably possible. You know, while we were kind of going through these high interest rates, and everything of 2022 and 2023. And then I was actually approached by or I followed a friend of mine, Aaron Lacey, who’s also an MTD for my home. And he had, you know, kind of sent out an SOS like, I’m looking for somebody who’s really into marketing and can help me kind of grow what I’m doing here. And so I, you know, reached out to him was like, Wow, this sounds really fun. And I don’t know if I have like the chops for it, but I’m willing to give it a try. And, you know, it just made sense, because it was like, even throughout my entire like real estate career. That was the thing that I focused on the most was the marketing technology piece. I was in charge of doing the websites I was in charge of, you know, doing all of the lead gen of setting up our online presence of doing all of these things. So I have a knack for it and a passion for helping others. And you know, I’m also this kind of side by side side hustle, but I’m also a crossfit coach. And so I Yeah, so I love helping people like just lifting them up and and helping them navigate, you know, complex, complex things, whether that’s you know how to do a snatch or clean and jerk, or navigating how to figure out how to put together a Facebook post. So I, D.J. Paris 10:30I have one CrossFit question for you. I don’t know that this is a CrossFit move necessarily. But I in fact, it’s funny, I was telling Tara, I gonna have to leave at two o’clock. And the reason I have to leave is I have a personal training session, not not CrossFit, but I do like a weightlifter workout. But when I was going to ask you, because I’ve only seen CrossFit people do this. And for everyone else who’s listening, like shut up, get to the real estate stuff. But I just want to ask one quick question is, can you do a muscle up? Is that is that a? Do you know what a muscle up is? Those are insane. You can do one? Tara Meier 11:01Oh, yeah, I can do them on the rings. And I can do it on the bar. So D.J. Paris 11:04so so I want everybody to know what Tara just said, mean, she is the strongest person to have ever been on this podcast, because she will tell you, it is one of the hardest things you can possibly do as an exercise. And literally I’ve had on NFL football players on the show that cannot do that. So that is incredible. So you are a very fit person. That is incredible. Tara Meier 11:26Athlete, yes. D.J. Paris 11:28Yes. Oh my gosh, that is amazing. You guys, if you don’t know what that is, Google muscle up, it doesn’t look as hard. Just give it a try. And if you could even anyway, alright, let’s get to the fun stuff. But the reason I’m saying this is my trainer just got her did her first muscle up ever it took her a year to get there. So and she’s like the strongest person I know. So that’s really, really impressive. So discipline is not a problem for you is guessing Tara Meier 11:53no, it is not a problem. I love trying to figure things out, whether it be you know, a muscle up or walking on my hands, or you know how to get somebody to look at my, my website. So D.J. Paris 12:06let’s start with online presence. So realtors, I agree, most of them have little to no online presence with the exception of, Hey, I just sold this home, or I just listed this property and I’m gonna throw, you know, pretty boring post on Facebook or Instagram. That’s usually about it. Let’s talk about what agents can do in 2024 to really provide value to their followers on social media, because and I want to get your opinion on this, I believe the best way to really garner interest is to, you know, provide some sort of content that isn’t all just about look at how great I am. But more about here’s some maybe questions or some answers to questions that you Mr. or Mrs. Follower might have. Or here’s some content that you just would find interesting. So I’d love to get your overall philosophy on online, you know, branding, especially with with social media. Oh, Tara Meier 13:04gosh, yeah. So, so much to talk about there. So first and foremost, my, you know, online presence is, is probably the most important thing that a real estate agent can do. I mean, you know, 90% of people are going online and Googling you whether you are a referral or whether they see a postcard come in the mail, they’re going to be Googling you. They’re going to be checking out who you are, what you stand for what your online marketing looks like, before they decide to pick up the phone and call you. And so by the D.J. Paris 13:36way, also, also your friends are going to do the same thing. So don’t assume that just because you work a referral based business, meaning your clients refer or it’s your sphere of influence, those people are also going to search you. Tara Meier 13:49Yeah, yeah. And that’s, that’s, you know, a common misconception right now is that referrals will just pick up the phone and call and that was maybe true five years ago. Now on average, it’s taking them two to three weeks of research before they actually decide to pick up the phone and call. So online presence number one is showing up consistently so that it’s not confusing, you know, all of these online platforms like zillow.com, Redfin, realtor.com homes.com, they’re all going to create profiles for you, whether you like it or not, because they are fed from the IDX feeds. And so it’s important that you go in and you take control of what people see from you. And so that means updating, adding a profile, photo photo, if there is an opportunity to showcase a banner, like in realtor.com, you should do that. Make sure your bio is up to date and accurate and not outdated, and also ensuring that all of your links work to your various platforms. Google business is one that’s, you know, I think way under leveraged right now for real estate agents. And it’s so important because you could drive all of your reviews there and it’s the first thing people see when they go Will your name and there’s a lot of ways to optimize it for hyper local type content. And we talked about content, you know, whether you’re posting it on social media. So if you’re into doing Facebook, YouTube, tik, Tok, Instagram, all of those, I think it’s great. I personally don’t think that you need to be an influencer on any of those platforms in order to have a successful business. But what I do think you need to do is you need to show if you decide to show up on one of those, you need to be present, and you need to engage on a consistent basis. So you know, we look at different platforms like they are going to give you kind of either a positive result, a neutral result, or a negative one. And profiles that you have kind of out there, like maybe you have a Twitter or now known as X platform that you’ve had for five years, and you don’t do anything on it. It almost kind of gives that like negative Wow, does she open get D.J. Paris 15:57rid of it? Get rid of it, if you’re not using it? Because nobody likes to see last post? 2018 you’re like, well, it just, it just appears that you’ve abandoned something, right? Tara Meier 16:08Totally, totally. And, you know, you know, there’s there are certain, there are certain things that are good about having some of those platforms, but like I said, if you’re not on there consistently using it, posting consistently, then get off of it. And then with regards to content, I’m with you. Like I think that, you know, gone are the days when just posting a house for sale is going to be exciting. I mean, I’m to the point, I don’t know about you, but if I see it, I just scroll right by, and now people, people want to, they want to be entertained, they want to be informed, they want to be inspired. And so you really kind of have to identify your audience. Number one, that’s probably when you venture into this content producing realm is you need to identify who your audience is going to be. And that includes like uncovering like, what are there? What are their consistent struggles? What are their problems? What are what do they want to know? What are they asking online, and there’s a ton of different resources for you out there to kind of figure that out. Like chat, GBT is a great resource. You can you can use it to help you identify your audience in your niche. Or if you have a niche, like what are some of those common questions that you can maybe answer in some of your posts? And so So identify your audience that’s probably like, the biggest thing Yeah, yeah. So D.J. Paris 17:38I just jumping in just because you said a lot of really great stuff there. So here’s what guys if you’re like, Well, I, I sort of don’t know my audience. What my target audience is, well think about if you’ve worked with clients in the past, who did you enjoy working with the most? Was it a certain demographic, maybe an age range, maybe a certain type of buyer or seller first time versus maybe an investor or whatever you enjoyed, you know, and you can literally then type that into chat G but for if you wanted to work with first time homebuyers, for example. And I would want to know what’s the average age of a first time homebuyer Okay, well, that you can ask chat JpT that, and then I would say, hey, chat, GBT. What are give me 10 common concerns that a first time homebuyer has or hear 20 questions that a first time homebuyer may have, or what might a first time homebuyer be searching for on Google or Facebook or Instagram or YouTube. You can literally just ask these questions to chat GBT. And it won’t always be perfect answers, but you will get a lot of good data that way. Tara Meier 18:39A ton of good data. And I would say don’t be afraid to reiterate your question, the original question that you asked, because so many people I hear, you know, like, yeah, I answered a couple of questions. And it kind of came back with gibberish. Like you have to there’s a science and an art to the prompt. You have to tell it who you are. So I’m a real estate agent in this specific area. I want to know what, you know, what homebuyers first time homebuyers are struggling with in the Phoenix area. So and then give me 10 or 10 ideas for content to use on social media. So you have to be very specific. Otherwise, it will, you know, go off and who knows what kind of direction? Yeah, D.J. Paris 19:21but it is really cool too. Because if you think like, Okay, if one of the questions comes back with chat up saying, hey, neighborhood selection, or suburbs selection is one of the biggest challenges for new first time homebuyers like, Oh, that makes sense. Well, guess what, guys, you can now create content going. Here’s how people choose neighborhoods or here’s or here’s let’s do a tour of a neighborhood or, you know, the content is really endless. What you really want to find is how what really all you’re doing is answering the questions first time homebuyers or whatever your demographic is past. Tara Meier 19:55Mm hm. And I love that when it gives you the 10 ideas and then you say okay, I want to live Write on number one. And then it’ll give you like 10 More ideas or you can break it up into like a script for YouTube. You know, you can just continue to get more and more granular as you go down the chat until you get like, you know, get to the gold I guess. For D.J. Paris 20:16anyone who’s looking for the free version of chat, GBT? Yes, you can you can Google it and find it. I personally, if you’re not going to pay for it, you don’t probably have to at this point. Down the road. Yeah, there’s going to be some additional functionality you want to have access to, but I personally, I never search on Bing, but Bing, Microsoft owns chat, GBT. So inside of the Bing app, they have the chat. GBT is in there. And it’s pretty well updated, I think to 2022. So it’s pretty current with information. And you can literally just speak to it. So if you don’t have the Bing app, download it just to use it for chat. GBT. That’s sort of my pro tip. Sorry, territory. Tara Meier 20:53Awesome. No, I love it. I love it. I think that I was at the end of my gonna answer all of your questions. D.J. Paris 20:58I think so. Yeah. So so the idea is, you know, now now we’re really talking about AI. I was telling this to Tara. Just before we started, and I’ll make this very quick, because this is really about Tara. But I found a really cool application for AI. This this weekend, I was set. I wonder what’s a AI knows about my condo. And I just put in the building. It was built a few years ago, and it knew everything I just wrote, tell me everything you know about and I gave the address. And I go, Oh, my God, agents could do this before every single listing they have they just on their way, you know, use the Bing app, talk to it, say tell me everything you know, and let’s say it comes back with nothing. Let’s say it’s like, I don’t know anything about this home. Okay, fine. Then say give me five fun facts about the neighborhood or the city or the suburb or that whatever. You can use it to get information that you know, or give me things first time homebuyers in this neighborhood might be curious about or, you know, where’s the nearest grocery store, things like that you can get really, sort of, you could just ask it things that you can then use in your conversations. Tara Meier 21:58I love that one of my favorite features of chat, GBT, I actually have the paid version, just because I do a lot of training on it. But with a $20 a month version, you get an option to upload a photograph. And you can upload a photograph of the listing that you’re doing, and it will give you like, you don’t just ask it for a listing description for this property that I’m uploading a photograph of, and it will give you give such a great description of not only the architecture, but it will also go into what is surrounding it, because there is I believe the metadata that’s attached to the photos. Sure, yeah, yeah. So D.J. Paris 22:34that’s really smart. So it’ll know that it’ll know the coordinates of that most likely, if you have your, your, your, your metadata in there, and then it will just look for for other information, kind of, oh, that’s brilliant. I love it. Yeah, Tara Meier 22:46and I’m sure it takes into consideration to other listings that are around the area. So it kind of like you know, triangulates, all those different things and just really gives you some really juicy stuff. D.J. Paris 22:57So for $20 a month, if I was a brand new agent, and I really didn’t know much about architecture, or I hadn’t learned that yet. I would before every listing, just upload one picture and say, Tell me everything you know about this particular photo with everything that you can, you know, surmise, and this way guys would say, Oh, this is a Tudor home and, or whatever it may be. So Oh, that’s such a great suggestion. I love that. Tara Meier 23:21Yeah, yeah, any you know, and it’s not just limited to like, kind of listing and everything, like AI can really help you craft like a really compelling bio, it can help you build your brand. You know, it can help you draft copy for your websites for you know, all of your social media posts and everything like that. So I use it all the time. And you know, I will say that, yes, you definitely have to, like look it over. But as far as like getting, like the creative juices kind of flowing and making, you know, getting things started on the path to creativity, like it is a block remover, like so, use it, it will, it will change your world. D.J. Paris 24:02Yeah, it really, it really will. I think ultimately, over time, there’ll be applications developed into it that are very assistant focused, where you’re going to be a it’s going to know you it’s going to know your schedule. It’s going to know you know, your you know, your challenges, and it’s ultimately going to start you know, helping you but now for now you can just manually ask it everything. And as Tara was saying, you know, you can start talking to it and telling it who you are, hey, I’m a realtor. I’m this age. I have been in the business this long. The more specific information you give it, the better answer, it will it will give you and I’m looking for first time homebuyers in this area. What you could even ask it, what suggestions do you have for me to find first time homebuyers in this area and it will give you it will give you all sorts of suggestions. Let’s talk about so what I think what most agents know about AI today is listing descriptions we know we can throw or listing description that we write in, or we don’t even maybe AI will write it for us. But if we have one, we can have it write a more persuasive one, or you know, and you can even tell it to avoid fair housing violations. So you can always say, Please rewrite this in a more persuasive way or more emotional way or, or whatever. And please make sure to avoid, you know, fair housing violations. And it’s, again, you want to double check everything, but you can add that in at the end. Mm Tara Meier 25:27hmm. Yeah, for sure. The other I mean, it, you know, it’s not limited to just listing descriptions or branding, even if you are utilizing like a CRM, and you want to put together some kind of open house campaign, or, you know, texting strategy, you can use it to, you know, navigate that as well and come up with, you know, email templates, texting templates, anything like that, that you want to add into your CRM in order to you know, nurture your clients. So, D.J. Paris 25:56yeah. And also we you can use it let’s I know, very popular thing for agents is doing some doing webinars or seminars where you’re, for example, Hey, I’m gonna help you buy your first home or, you know, from renting to buying what why you would consider that are investing in real estate or whatever the particular topic might be? You can have chat, GBT, right, you not only, you know, descriptions, for every every slide, they can actually create the slides for you as well. So it’s really very, very cool. If you’re like, I’m not good at graphic design. I don’t use Canva or Photoshop. Yes, I mean, you still may have to tweak some things, but it can put a pretty decent first draft together for you. Yeah, Tara Meier 26:38for sure. For sure. One of the, you know, things that have come up recently, like with the team at my home is, is putting together kind of seller, seller education classes, and like, you know, initially those types of things, they seem like a really big elephant to have to swallow at the, you know, right off the bat. And so, it, if you start it and do it systematically, you can really, you know, any take it just one step at a time, you can develop an entire like course, to, to teach on, do the presentation, and then also put together a marketing strategy to help people bring people into your classes. So, you know, it’s, it’s just, it’s very holistic, I mean, you can just do the whole, the whole thing, and it makes it very doable for just your average, you know, average individual who needs to generate some business and make some contacts. D.J. Paris 27:32Yeah, if you if somebody’s you know, if ever if our listeners are thinking, Okay, I want to create great video content on social media this year, but I don’t really want to write the scripts, and I don’t, you know, it’s hard for me to come up with topics. This is what you can use chat GPT to do as well. Say, Hey, create a create a 62nd, you know, script for me, specifically talking about, you know, X, Y or Z. And, and then give me five different versions of that, or five different, you know, five different examples altogether. And literally, that’s your script, or at least a good first draft for a scripted, you just saved yourself hours. And now you just have to turn your phone around and hit the record button. Yes, Tara Meier 28:15yes. And you know, you have so many resources out there as real estate agents with regards to market data. And, you know, everybody wants to do a market update, but nobody want knows what to say. Or sometimes in some cases, you may not even know how to interpret some of the data that’s coming through. And so use things like chat GBT, or even cloud AI is a really good one for consuming large amounts of data. So you can get some like 10 key takeaways on like a really hefty document. And then you can ask it to generate you a scripture just like he just like Did he was saying and it will even go into as much detail as giving you like the cutscenes and what should be incorporated like on on screen as far as text is concerned. So it does it just it saves you so much time and leaves you way more time to actually connect with people and your families? Like I mean, this is going to be like the biggest time saver I think and we’re really going to see some some leveling up. I feel like in the real estate industry, thanks to AI. Yeah, D.J. Paris 29:12do you want to be at the front part of the curve here because once everybody understands how to utilize it, it becomes a little bit less significant for the individual agent, because everyone’s going to be utilizing these tools in in different ways. But you really want to be at the front end of this because this is the time to really explore AI. I would love to also Tara ask you okay, we should mention by the way, Tara does consulting and coaching for real estate agents. She talks a lot about audit, marketing, automation, branding, AI systems. This is her specialty. She is a marketing guru. So if you’re interested we have caught Tara’s contact information in the listing description. Please, please please reach out to her and she can let you know what her different training and coaching are. shins are terrible. Let’s talk a little bit about batching content, because we know like, in an ideal world, I’d film a video every two days, and maybe a 62nd video on on, you know, Instagram or Facebook. But we know that that’s pretty difficult to do when things are flying at an agent, you know, at any given time, and maybe every two days isn’t realistic. So could you batch the content? And do you recommend sort of batching versus individual, you know, doing it every two days or so. Tara Meier 30:30I personally love batching. I have tried both ways. Both, you know, doing it on the fly, and trying to, you know, juggle a million things at once, you know, even just like when in my regular job, I mean, I have other clients and everything that I have to work with too, just like real estate agents. And I have to set aside like two to three hours a week for planning, and, and recording. So I may have a day where I do just kind of like the plan, I find my audio I do, you know, kind of all of the background, you know, write out my caption and do my hashtags. And then I have another day where it may just be super simple. And then the recording is just like one and done. And I’m, I’m scheduled and I’m and I’m done for the week, I love that it makes my week so much less stressful. And so if you can do that, I, I highly suggest it you could use anything from you know, Google Sheets to organize kind of your plan for the week, to tools like Trello or Asana, both of those are very easy to use and free. Actually, all of those are easy to use and free. I personally like Asana, I have tried everything else. And that’s the one that kind of works best for me and for what I need. And, you know, it really just takes a lot of the pressure off of the posting piece too. Because I mean, how many times have you gotten to a point where like, Oh, I’m gonna do this real and, you know, and, okay, maybe I don’t want to post it after all, or a post it and then you delete it because you’re like, Oh, it was really embarrassing. Or I didn’t think it was going to do well. If you schedule it, and then you just don’t think about it, and you just let it go. You know what I mean? And you kind of you just have to be okay with some are gonna flop and some are not. And, and, and, and batching really helps I think not only with time saving, but also with like your mindset as it pertains to getting content out. D.J. Paris 32:29Yeah, and also to, let’s remember everyone that just because you post something on social a video, for example, a very small percentage of your audience is actually going to see it. So it’s not like every single person you know, is going to watch this video and then have a judgement about it, whether it was good or bad. You know, it very, very small percentage. So don’t worry too much about, you know, that part of it of like, oh, my gosh, this isn’t perfect. I don’t think anyone’s expecting perfection out of your content. I think what they’re expecting is good quality information. curious to get your thoughts on them. Tara Meier 33:03Yeah, no, I 100% agree. And you know, it’s important to kind of come up with some guidelines for yourself with regards to what it is you’re going to be posting just to kind of keep your guard rails your bumpers on, so to speak, so that you don’t get too far off. And, you know, law lands. And, and it also makes it easier to plan that way, you know, and people want information, they want it, like I was saying earlier, they want to be entertained, they want to be inspired. And so coming up with some common themes for yourself that makes sense and resonate with who you are and who you want to be as a brand is going to be an important first step even like back when we’re talking about you know, creating and identifying who your audience is. Because you can’t please everyone. And so, it’s important that you’re talking, you know, you have to narrow down who it is you’re talking to, and not care about who you know, like like you’re saying your your friends and your sphere. Yes, they might see you but only only a few of them will and you know the the reason that you’re doing social media and you know, reels or Tik Tok or anything like that is to reach new followers. And so you want to be speaking to them. And if you don’t raise your hand and be yourself and let people know what it is you do, then they’re not going to find you. D.J. Paris 34:20So I have a question about personal revealing personal details about your own life versus just professional details. Right? So we could we can talk we can have a brand that is exclusively, I provide great information about buying and selling homes, real estate stuff. And I also know a lot of agents want to show parts of their personal life as well that people could find maybe interesting because it shows what that agent is passionate about. For example, you’re you’re a workout person, a CrossFit person. So I’ve seen agents who are CrossFit people post you know, little Quick videos of their workouts, do you have an opinion? And again, everybody’s temperature around sharing private, or personal, you know, sort of information is as different. So obviously, there’s no correct answer. But what’s your overall thought on professional content versus personal content. Tara Meier 35:19So I think a good mix is always a good idea. People, they want to know the person behind the profile. And I think how much you share is really your choice and dependent on how much how comfortable you are doing that, and whether that’s something that you feel is important. So, I mean, I’m, I try to be a mix, you know, I kind of think of like stories is kind of my place to engage with the people and share kind of, you know, silly memes about my husband or something like that. And then, you know, I tend to kind of keep my reels a mix of personal, inspirational and business. And I think, you know, it’s important to share who you are outside of business, because I don’t know, I personally, I built a lot of my business around CrossFit, when I was actively selling, and had I not done CrossFit and not like, let those people know what it was I did, then I probably wouldn’t have been as successful as I was. So people like to connect with, like people. So show who you are and what you do outside of just real estate. Did D.J. Paris 36:29you end up working with CrossFit people who would be attracted to a she’s a CrossFit person, I saw our videos. So they would start to think, Hey, she’s like me, I want to work with people who are into similar things to me. Like I imagine he probably did work with CrossFit people. Tara Meier 36:43I did. Yeah. A lot. D.J. Paris 36:46Yeah, it’s funny, I used to, when I used to see Realtors showing their workouts, I always always was like, I don’t really get it, like, Do people really care. And then I sort of like watching people work out now, like, I don’t know why, even if it’s just for a few seconds, there’s something kind of inspiring about it for me to remind me to continue on my physical health journey. But also, it’s like, oh, that person’s, you know, really disciplined. And also, and I’m not saying everyone has to work out in fun, like workout videos, but whatever it is, you’re passionate about any part of your life, you can feature it. And, again, that might just speak to somebody who also has those same passions, and is like, God, I wish I had a realtor that was into some of the same stuff that I’m into. Or I’d be more comfortable with a realtor who was into some of these, you know, I’m a, if you were like a big Harry Potter fan, I’m not. But if you were, I would be talking about I mean, that’s an old thing, but whatever, whatever a newer version of Harry Potter, that’s your thing? I would I would talk about it all the time on social media, if that was your thing, because you’re gonna attract those people who have that same passion. Tara Meier 37:48100%, D.J. Paris 37:49do you have an eye? Do you have a suggestion for a mix of personal and professional? So in other words, hey, here’s some information about buying and selling homes, or I just bought, you know, I just had a client do this or that. And here’s what I got going on in my personal life, do you have like a suggestion for a mix of maybe what percentage should be each? Yeah, I Tara Meier 38:08personally think that it’s like, you know, two thirds, you and 1/3 business, especially for real estate agents, you know, and it’s, it’s more like, who you are with a sprinkle of real estate, kind of in there. And if you can relate what you do on a daily basis, like maybe you’re at the park working, and you’re like, hey, getting work done, while I’m, you know, watching my kids throw, throw a baseball or something like that. So, you know, there’s subtle ways for you to do it. on a consistent basis, it’s just kind of figuring it out and making, you know, you have to just do it is really the strategy, you have to just figure it out what’s gonna work for you. And, you know, make sure that you’re paying attention to the analytics and the the data that’s within the system. So you can kind of see what’s getting, you know, the most engagement and maybe what’s not so you can shape your content. That way D.J. Paris 39:01we can we talk a little bit about digital advertising and beyond like, we’re talking about creating content. Do you have specific thoughts on agents who are thinking about doing Facebook ads or LinkedIn ads? Or Instagram ads? Any specific? Have you seen agents have success with that? Or is that is that a tough mountain to climb? Just curious, your thoughts? Tara Meier 39:24Um, yeah, so you know, Facebook ads, bulk of the population is on Facebook. I mean, it’s got the biggest audience out there. And so if you are just going in and boosting posts, posts, like randomly, like, you don’t have any strategy behind who it is you’re trying to target. I think you’re pretty much like throwing spaghetti at the wall, just kind of seeing what, what, what sticks. There’s, there are ways to be much more strategic about your ads that you’re doing on Facebook, Instagram. And you know, and I’ll talk about LinkedIn in a second. But with regards to Facebook and Instagram, there’s a lot of ways to kind of layer your farming So if you are farming specific areas, you can layer some digital ads on top of that. So utilizing phone numbers and email addresses that you may have from your farms, you can create custom audiences and target them in more than one way. So you may be sending them a postcard in the mail. So they’re getting that. And then they’re also starting to see you online. So they’re like, oh, my gosh, this person is everywhere. I think that that’s probably the most strategic way to do any kind of Facebook or Instagram ads at this point, especially for real estate. It’s just being, you know, strategic, you could even you know, download your, your contacts from the cloud, and Google and you know, so that way you have like your sphere, and some people that maybe maybe maybe you’ve worked with in the past that you may not have contact with anymore. So there’s a lot of ways to do them. D.J. Paris 40:47That’s a really good point, too. So basically, what Tara was saying is, you can take your CRM and export all of your contacts and upload those into Facebook as a custom audience. And what Facebook is going to do is try to match those email addresses and the names with accounts that they have. And it isn’t going to be a perfect match, always. And it might not find everybody, but it’s going to find a lot of people. And if you upload all your clients, for example, you probably wouldn’t want them to receive an ad that says, hey, buy your buy your first home, right? Assuming that these are people that have already bought a home, right, they might want to get up, think about are you looking to upgrade to your next property, you can make a specific ad for that or looking to make a change, that kind of thing. So you can get really granular about this. And there doesn’t have to be a million different buckets. But there may be a few buckets of you know, this isn’t yet a client. This is a client that I’ve already worked with. And you can have different ads going in this way. And guys, I used to Facebook used to come on my show every single month corporate and talk about and they would say do not Boost Post, do not Boost Post, if you’re a realtor, they would literally just tell us to do, it goes back a few years, but the head of the real estate department and Instagram or Facebook would better would say do not boost posts, guys, you want to be way more strategic. And so Tara can actually help you with all of this stuff, too, and help you figure out what your audiences are. It is a little complicated, but she can help you get get set up that way. Tara Meier 42:12Yeah, 100%. And with regards to LinkedIn, So LinkedIn is actually has been named like one of the like, you know, top things to do for 2024. As far as ads are concerned, you know, there’s a lot of opportunities there, particularly with people who are doing like commercial, and agricultural things that are more business to business. But also on the luxury market. Like there’s a lot of contacts you can make, you can do some some targeting, with regards to job titles, things like that, to kind of make your targeting a little bit more specific and segmented. And, you know, I personally have not run any ads on LinkedIn. This is just kind of done my research. So I’m excited to dive into it on my own and see what it could do, some of my colleagues have been working on it. And they’ve been just, you know, singing its praises. So if you have not taken an opportunity to check out LinkedIn for your marketing efforts in 2024, that’s definitely something to start keeping an eye on. D.J. Paris 43:16And it’s also the social media platform that I think realtors use the very least, it seems to be not used at all by realtors, and it is used by literally every other industry. So this is a place where I would spend a lot of time for example, if you had a client that worked at at a corporation in your local area, I would go into LinkedIn and see if I could find like the head of HR for that particular organization, if it’s big enough to have that, or the owner and say, Hey, I just worked with one of your, one of your employees, I help them, you know, buy, sell or whatever. And I would love the opportunity to come and bring lunch for the audience for the office. And you know, reach out and do a free webinar about you know, working with a realtor or whatever this is what you can use LinkedIn to do is you can actually find this information and use it in a hyperlocal way. So it’s not just about making as many connections as you can on LinkedIn, which is great as well, or posting great content to LinkedIn. But you can actually use it for research and development to find opportunities for you to reach out to, you know, because every every corporate person I know they use LinkedIn, they love LinkedIn, they use it. Realtors don’t usually use it. So don’t be don’t be fooled into thinking oh, no one uses LinkedIn. They do. It’s just realtors. Tara Meier 44:29Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I’ve I’ve used it more in the last like four years than I ever thought I would. But it’s amazing, like the number of connections that you can make on that platform. You know, it’s great to just stay up to date on a lot of different market trends because that’s where it’s a great place for you to also share your insights as far as like what you know about the market. So just be strategic about what you’re sharing there. And, and I and you join groups. There’s there’s all kinds of things on there for you to put participate and engage. So, D.J. Paris 45:01yeah, I’m a big fan. We’re actually streaming live to LinkedIn right now as well. So we streamed, yeah, we streamed out to all the major platforms. And and that’s guys, you know, that’s kind of what you want to again, the whole point is, should I be on Facebook? Should I be on Instagram? Should I be on LinkedIn? Tick tock? Where is your audience hanging out, that’s where you want to be, where and also what you enjoy, like, if you hate LinkedIn, don’t, don’t do with it. If you hate tick tock, don’t be on tick tock, because it’s not going to work for you as well. You want to be on something that you feel comfortable with, but also that your audience your your preferred audience is hanging out at how do you know where your preferred audience hangs out? Ask them send out a survey to all of your clients and say, Hey, I’m working on my marketing strategy for next year. Just curious, where do you spend the most time? What you know what, what social media channels, if any, do you spend time on that will tell you we found out in an organization that I saw that I helped that unrelated real estate, that LinkedIn was the number one place, I would have never guessed that I would have guessed Facebook. But for this organization with 1000s of members, LinkedIn was the clear winner. And we wouldn’t have known that had we not asked. So we put a lot of our resources into LinkedIn at that point. So great, a suggestion there is just reach out to your audience and say, Hey, can you help me I’d be curious on where you’re spending a lot of time. And that’ll give you some guidance. So Tara Meyer is our guest. And I want to make sure that we tell everybody that she is a coach she can she is a digital strategist. She is also a marketing strategist, and most recently AI and she’s a systems person. So for example, if you wanted to learn how to deal with transaction management, and maybe not have to do all of that, all that work, she can help you figure that stuff out as well. She’s a systems person, and she’s very, very effective. So if anyone out there is like, gosh, I would like to work with someone like Tara, maybe she could help you know, take my marketing strategies or my systems to the next level. Or just learn more about AI and automation. Tara is your person so you can find her Tara meyer.com You can also follow her on Instagram underscore Tara Meyer underscore will have links to that, as well as her LinkedIn profile and all of her social channels as well as YouTube. We will post all of that in our link in our description. So please, please, please follow her. Tara, I want to thank you so much for coming on our show. This was really great. We I counted 10 different suggestions that you gave throughout the interview. So guys, if you miss some of them, please go back and re listen. And the best way you can help us is just tell a friend about the show. Tell another realtor that struggling with I mean everyone’s struggling right now guys, it’s just a tough time to be in real estate. So everybody needs as much help as possible. Do do a good deed tell a fellow agent about the show that helps us grow. Also support our sponsors and support Tara follow her on Instagram, LinkedIn, reach out to her Tell her how much you appreciated her her appearance today and also maybe reach out to her about coaching. She would love to chat with you. So, guys, on behalf of the audience. Tara, thank you so much for being on our show. I know how busy you are. And thank you for spending time with us and on behalf of Tara and myself. We want to thank the audience for sticking around to the very end. And thanks again for supporting our show and telling a friend. We will see everybody on the next episode. Thank you so much, Tara. Tara Meier 48:24Thank you for having me. It’s been a blast.

Janine Sasso the Hyper Local Agent with Coldwell-Banker in Chicago talks about how she got into real estate and grew her business. Janine discusses the role open houses played in the beginning of her career. Janine also discusses how she addressed her youth to make people comfortable to work with her. Next, Janine describes how she built and perfected her mailing list and how she grew her farm. You can buy Janine’s “Success With Real Estate Mailers” book here. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Janine Sasso can be reached at (847) 754-1835 and janine.sasso@cbexchange.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00I’m gonna blow your mind right now. Did you know that in 2023 the ROI on mailers, physical mailers is 10x? Guys, we’re gonna make the case today why mailers are important and you need to be doing these in 2024. 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 on to our show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with author and top producer Janine Sasso. But before we get to Janine, just a couple of quick reminders as always support our sponsors. We love our sponsors. And they are helping us continue to produce episodes for our show. So please check out their products and services, I promise that they will only select sponsors that will actually help you grow your business and continue to tell a friend think of one other agent that could benefit from hearing like great agents like Janine says, so we’re about to hear from and send them a link especially this episode. Guys. Just wait until you hear what Janine is about to say it’s pretty wild. So anyway, it even blew my mind and I was like, really? We’ll just wait. It’s awesome. All right, let’s get right to it. My conversation with Janine Sasso. Today on the show we have author and top producer Janine Sasso from Coldwell Banker in Chicago. Let me tell you more about Janine now, Janine Sasso is on a mission to impact more agents with young children to earn their dream income. Now forget about time blocking and say goodbye to expensive mailing companies or mailer companies Janine is going to share her proven lead generation tactics that have been ranked the number one lead generation technique for decades. But with a modern twist for today’s busy agent, Janine was tired of choosing between a career of being a mom and discovered how geographic farming has allowed her to scale her success quickly, mainly with mailer marketing, and community events. And before you go, I don’t want to do mailers. I am telling you, you want to do mailers. Stay with us. We will convince you in this. This conversation why that’s important. To learn more about Janine I want you to go visit her website. There’ll be a link to this in the show notes. The hyperlocal agent.com is the hub of everything Janine, you can also find her on all the different social channels except Twitter. She is She is not a Twitter person. I don’t even know who is Twitter person anymore in real estate but she is on every other social channel including Tik Tok. We will have links to her social channels in the show notes, but just do a search for Janine Sasso and find her and also she has an amazing book that I want you to check out called success with real estate mailers. And that is on Amazon. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes. Janine, welcome to the show. Janine Sasso 4:20Well, thanks for having me and introducing me to your audience like this is going to be a fun one. Because we’re going to convince people right convince people have done direct mail is not that. I D.J. Paris 4:32hope so. So I am holding up right now a a handwritten card, which if you’re listening, you won’t hear this from one of my last guests. And I we were talking about we were talking about mailers, and in this case, handwritten cards. And I was saying to him, he because he’s a big fan of writing handwritten cards that I know we’re gonna be talking about something slightly different, but just sending things through the mail. And I said, how often how many cards do you get a year from anybody? You know, outside of your birthday outside of, you know, the holiday, I mean, just like random, hey, I’m thinking about you cards. He goes, I get about one a month. And I was like, you get one a month, I get like one a year. So I’m holding one up from the guy who I actually said that to and he, after the thing, maybe he was just trying to be funny. He wrote me one. And so I got my one for the year. But this is how big the opportunity really is to send mail. I mean, I don’t even get junk mail anymore. Like it’s amazing. Like, my mailbox is usually empty. And it is certainly the mail I do get is not real is not from realtors, it might be like a catalog or something. But that is about all I receive. But Janine, let’s start. Before we get to mailing. I want to start at the beginning and sort of learn your story and how you grew your business and how you came to be. So how did you get involved in real estate? Janine Sasso 5:47Alright, so here is my fabulous story. I was born and raised in Germany. So I didn’t grow up here. I didn’t go to school here. And when I came over, I have an early childhood educator education degree. So that was where I thought I was gonna end up and I started looking at daycares. I had a three year old at the time that I finished my degree. So I started looking at daycares. I interviewed thinking, well, at least I can bring him with and I can be with him. And after the first interview, I was mortified at the working environment, I was mortified at the pay. Mind you, I had to figure out how do I go back and visit my family as a first generation immigrant in so many words. And you can really not afford a you know, flight ticket back home to Europe, if you are on that kind of salary. So it posed a big, like obstacle when like, Okay, I need to find something else. My husband’s mother’s and my mother in law has been in real estate. And she was the nudge that said, why don’t you give it a try. I started going to evening classes knock that out in like, eight weeks, I believe and got my real estate license. Wow. D.J. Paris 7:09And so being an immigrant in in the Chicagoland area should also mentioned I think I said this earlier, but Janine here is here in the Chicagoland area along with me. But it’s not the easiest, you know? Yes, we have millions of people who live here, however, you’re not from here. So your sphere of influence, I assume was almost nothing or very small, maybe limited. Was your husband from Chicago? I guess he’s from Chicago, Janine Sasso 7:32I guess. Well, so that was my, you know, a little caveat there because my mother in law is still a licensed and active agent, my husband’s referral business in so many words. I wasn’t even going to touch that. Because unless I wanted to have a really awkward Thanksgiving conversation was hey, you sold and Judy’s house, I was my deal. Right? I wasn’t gonna go there. So I’m like, Okay, so there went that. No family here didn’t grow up here. No school, my kids were too little. So I didn’t have any school, PTA sports, all of that good stuff. I had nothing and okay, this is gonna be interesting. So I started literally with zero. I did open houses. So that was my start. I’m like, Okay, let me figure out something. And open houses was where I got my feet wet in real estate, you know, leads, per se. D.J. Paris 8:21Yeah, that makes sense. It’s something that we hear from literally almost every agent we’ve ever had on the show. And we’ve done over 515 episodes. Everyone says I started doing open houses. And then, you know, people listening are like, Well, what happens when you don’t have a listing, you beg everyone in your office to allow you to do a listing? I’m guessing that’s what you did. Janine Sasso 8:45That’s what I did, in addition to rental leads, so our MLS does allow rentals. And because of that, I’m like every rental lead, I was like, me, me, right? I mean, my email folder, because it wasn’t for this transaction. It was always, hey, I have another rental lead for you. Right? So and D.J. Paris 9:02we should also mention, too, that Chicago is not known as a huge hub for Germans to emigrate to. We have like a large Greek population, we have a large Polish population. We have lots of cultures that are here. But German, there’s, I mean, maybe there’s a large German constituency here. I don’t think so. But, but but it’s not like you could just go oh, I’m just gonna go sell to all the German people. I know. I’m assuming that that wasn’t as easy to do either. No, Janine Sasso 9:28that wasn’t on the, on the table either. And we blend extremely well. So most often people need to listen to me for like, a little while before they catch on to an accent. So you know, it’s one of those things where we we blend in. I’m like, I can’t even tell I mean, and I get polish a lot people are like, Oh, are you polish? I’m like, no, yeah. D.J. Paris 9:45But well, the country is a very close, close proximity. So yeah, so the accents are similar, but you’re right. Yes, you do blend in, especially here with the large Polish community that we have. So the bottom line is you have to start from zero Go and tell us how did you so open houses were a key. Tell us more like, how did you really move forward? Janine Sasso 10:07So the first year, I tried everything that, you know, you see these Facebook posts of like, hey, I really have to get a deal in the next 30 to 60 days, what should I do? And you have 365 different answers. And you try to do as many as possible. And that’s what I did, right? I tried the open houses, I looked at cancelled listings I looked at for sale by owners, but just what happens when you look at a little bit here, a little bit there, right? You don’t really get that traction. And my first year, I am not your average success story. I’m like, my first year, I made $15,000, which is not terrible, but it’s true. It’s one five, so one, five, that was it. And for a career that I thought like, oh my gosh, I’m gonna be you know, I’m gonna be rookie of the year or something. It was really eye opening, that there was a lot of things involved to learn. And the main one was running a business. Again, I came from an employee mindset, right, you show up, you get paid for your hours, you go home. So it was really a crash course of you could work 24/7 If you really wanted to, it’s crazy. D.J. Paris 11:21Yeah, and trying to figure out what’s the what are some of the best sort of strategies to build a business and there are so many different strategies, like you said, and we were just talking about this with a friend the other day, she was saying, you know, my, she goes, I think my parents made a terrible mistake when I was a child. And they put me in every sport in every activity. And I said, Yeah, parents do that I kind of the same thing sort of happened to me. And, and I didn’t look at it as a negative. And she’s like, it’s very well intentioned, like, it’s a good, you know, it’s a lovely thing to do that for your children. But she goes, what it didn’t do is it didn’t get me to hyper focus. And one thing that I really, really enjoyed, and I could have really done something special in, you know, whatever, whatever she was was talking about. And it was just a good reminder that like, oh, yeah, when we, when we try, when we do try to do everything, we end up not really specializing in anything. Yeah, Janine Sasso 12:19so one of the things that again, my first year was very similar, I tried so many different things. And now one of the resources that we have on our website, that hyperlocal agent is 35 plus free lead gen strategies. And the reason that, you know, there are so many different ones, the basics that everybody talks about, but a they’re free, you can do them literally with $0, because that’s where I started. But you have to find something that connects write something where you’re like, I can get up each and every morning, and I can do something with that. And for me, that was geographic farming. That is where I decided I can be happy here. D.J. Paris 12:58And what’s great about geographic farming is it is focusing you into one well, obviously you can’t farm everywhere. So you have to just by default, choose a geographic area, or could be more of a demographic farm. I guess if you were like only going after doctors, you could buy a list of doctors and I guess you could mail to them. But geographic farming seems like it makes the most sense. Because of course, it allows you to then really hone your your skills on the inventory and the needs of that community. Right? You you’re going to learn over time where the best starter homes are for families moving maybe out of the city into the suburbs, where the best school districts are you this is just going to allow you to really build a brand around a particular geographic area is that is that fair to say? Janine Sasso 13:44Right. So once I started to get hyper focused on that being my you know, preferred way to get in front of buyers, as well as seller leads, everything just became easier, because it wasn’t like I was you know, I was like flailing around before trying all the things. And now it’s like, okay, you had to focus you’re like, did it serve my purpose of becoming a better known name, a better known person, people will refer and trust because the other part I had to overcome when I started I was I was in my early 20s. So I had to figure out, right? How do I make them feel like I have all, you know, the know how that somebody in their 50s or 60s Probably has, even though they might be licensed for two weeks, as you know, fourth career versus somebody that decided to make this the career in the first place. So again, it’s just things in my head, probably but people will have a certain perception. So D.J. Paris 14:42I don’t think that’s yeah, I don’t think that’s in your head at all. I think that is a 100% absolutely logical sort of objection, right? Somebody goes, Hey, we’re gonna buy an $800,000 home. Do we want to give it to the 22 year old Right? Like maybe not only because not that the 22 year old couldn’t be the Greatest agent on the planet they could be. But if we’re playing the odds, maybe that would be a hurdle to overcome. I’m just curious, before we move on, how did you address sort of your your youth your age, in a way that was allowed people to still feel comfortable, you know, giving you those transactions? Janine Sasso 15:17Knowledge? I mean, honestly, that’s what it came down to. When you started having a conversation with me at the open house. It was a very detailed conversation, right? It’s like asking the right questions. Well, tell me like, What were you you know, thinking for your ideal home? And it’s like, okay, like, what were you thinking in terms of downpayment? What was more important, those specific questions? And, and then you start also demonstrating all of a sudden, they were like, Oh, I didn’t even think about that. That was interesting. D.J. Paris 15:56Yeah, that makes sense. I’m curious to you were your I think your net was going out a little bit, but you came through just fine. Your video is was frozen, which is no big deal. I have a question, though, for any of our audience that hasn’t yet chosen to geographically farm. How? Or maybe up, here’s a bet maybe a different question. Let’s say we picked you up and dropped you into a city where you didn’t know anybody, which is basically what happened to you in the Chicagoland area. But let’s say we did it today. And we moved you to another area knowing everything, you know, now, different city, you know, nobody, and you don’t have to choose a new farm, what would you look for? In picking the geographic farm? How would you make that determination of where Janine Sasso 16:38so my first farm, the one that, you know, I still farm to the state i i lived in. So being close to home was, you know, one of the first things if I get dropped in the middle of a new place, I hope I’m gonna have a house over my roof, or, you know, a roof over my head. And I would probably start there, right, just because it’s close to home. And one of the reasons that I did decide to farm was, I didn’t want to drive 30 minutes to a listing appointment, I didn’t want to drive an hour for showing, right. I’m like, call me call me crazy. But I’m like, my time is not really well spend getting to and from appointments, one of the reasons being, I have to hire a babysitter to kind of make sure my kids don’t have to tag along, right. And I have this rule, I’m like, kids do not belong on listing appointments, they have come to open houses, they have come to buyer appointments, they have come to, you know, office events, they they’re pretty much there half the time, all the time, but not listing appointments, and not brand new clients. Like that’s my Sure, D.J. Paris 17:38of course, I want to make I want to make a quick point to because also choosing an area, that hope that you live in is also beneficial, because you get to say to everybody, by the way, I live down the street, or I live just you know, a few blocks over this is this is my area. This is where I live, this is what I know there’s something powerful in that versus Oh, where do you live? Oh, I live in the city 30 minutes away, or I live, you know, in another suburb? Which again, all of that is fine. Maybe not everyone lives in an area that they want to geographically farm. But if you do, Boy, that’s a powerful thing to say to somebody. It’s like, oh, by the way, this is where I choose to be here. And this is why I want to work with eight people in this area. Yeah, Janine Sasso 18:18so one of the biggest things on that one is my home value is directly tied to the listings that I get, right? If I give away the listings in so many words, it’s not going to do my own house any good. Now, if I want to fight for the best possible price that they can get, it’ll benefit my my own home as well. Right? D.J. Paris 18:39Oh, that is a very Hold on a second. Well, we’re gonna start we’re gonna pause that that is brilliant. You just said something really, really, really smart. And kind of it’s kind of a cute thing to to say it’s sort of almost as a little bit of a humor to it. But boy, that is I just don’t I want to slow that one down just a little bit. Because that is something nobody has ever said on the show. So Janine just basically said, she also gets to say, you know, if it comes up, she can say, Hey, by the way, by me getting you the very best price on your home, Mr. And Mrs. Seller, that’s actually going to help everyone in the community, including me, because I’m in your community. So I am incentivize, not just for my commission, but I at some point, I’m going to leave, and I want to sell my home and I want to make as much money as possible to obviously she’s not going to say quite like that. But you get the point. That’s a very, very good point. Janine Sasso 19:28It doesn’t, you know, I mean, you will not find the hardest working agent for that reason alone inside your hyperlocal area. Now, if you live there. Now, you might say, Okay, well, I don’t live there and I don’t you know, I can’t use that one. That’s true. However, if those are your stomping grounds, you then have to face the next seller that you sit down with and say, Well, what did you do over at Mary’s house because you gave it away? Right? You will not do that. You will say I fought the best I could for Mary’s house. So I can sit here today with you. And I feel really confident to tell you I did a super amazing job over there. And I’ll do this Same here because for me, it’s my reputation. And that part, right? It’s an easy one. D.J. Paris 20:07And how big is your farm? Meaning? Is it a certain number of households? Is it just a particular area? Like, how do you think about that? Janine Sasso 20:14Okay, I’ll take you back through my farming journey, because when I tell you my number right now, it is over 5600 homes. So that’s a lot. That’s where I started, I started out with 100 printed flyers, and 100 printed flyers, I decided to invite them to a neighborhood garage sale, out of that 100 flyers. After two years, I finally decided there has to be a better way. And I graduated into my first mailing route. So I use a service called Every Door Direct Mail through the United States Postal Service, when I started. And that’s where I graduated to my first route, I want to say in 2017, it was 400 houses, I felt so proud of me that I can like you just push a button and there’s like, postcards going out. Right? And I was literally heading to the playground and the mailman working his nine to five would deliver it. So I could still be at the park. And I could still do the mom things I do. Sure. And things were happening, like I had leads coming into, you know, my email inbox as I was pushing them on this way. So I’m like, I need to do more of that. So one route led to a second one, a second to a third and third or fourth, I believe I’m at Well, for more at this point. So D.J. Paris 21:38yeah, so when you first were doing the flyers, were you hand delivering them? Were you putting them on people’s doorsteps, that kind of thing? Yeah, Janine Sasso 21:47so I I’m not a door knocker. So I will, you know, try my best not to encounter people. I’m an introvert by nature. So just you know, striking up a conversation with strangers might be also partially a cultural thing. Everybody is into the small talk about the weather, especially in Chicago. And having you know, somebody in the elevator tell me hey, yeah, nice weather today, right? I’m not sure. What’s happening, right? Used to those little cultural quirks. And you know, now I talk about the weather just like anybody else in Chicago. But it’s one of those things where I just made flyers, I put them in door hanger backs. I took my kid, but I get in the stroller, and I just hung it on the neighborhood, right? took a walk, like that’s what I did. So when D.J. Paris 22:35you were doing 100, let’s just talk about how long it takes to actually start to make an impact and get results because we know that one mailer is basically no mailer, right? If you just do one, you might as well don’t do anything, because the odds of you getting a success, there are obviously very low, but over time, and with consistency, those numbers increase. So when you were doing 100, flyers, you know, how long did it take before you started getting any reach outs? Janine Sasso 23:02So that first flyer I did was actually an event invitation, I said, I would love to do a neighborhood garage sale. So I would like to coordinate a date I would be helping with advertisement. And if this date works for you, go ahead and send me an email that you’re in. And then I’ll just send you the details. And that flyer 100 flyers out I did get 10 responses back. D.J. Paris 23:27Wow, that’s sweet. You were offering I want to make sure I understand. So you’re offering to promote someone’s garage sale, but you don’t know that they even want to do a garage sale. You’re just saying, Hey, if you’re thinking about a garage sale, I’m going to help you is that basically it? Janine Sasso 23:43That’s basically it. I don’t know, you remember, I’m in the suburbs, right? So people love to have things to do Sure. On door. And that event for me. So garage sales, for me was always like, fun to look through other people’s right junk. And like, I love it. It’s like one of those things when again, you find something that you love. It makes sense. I’m like, okay, rather than now going from like, you know, different different houses all over the area. Why can I have a garage sale in my own neighborhood where I can literally just go from house to house to house to house and have it my way right? So that’s what we did. D.J. Paris 24:20So how would you help them with their with their with their garage sale? Janine Sasso 24:26So the garage sale itself was obviously for me if you think about garage sale. Why do people have garage sales? Obviously the first one is right, too much stuff or kids have outgrown things. But then you also have the people saying like well, we’re actually getting ready to downsize. Right so the first one was like, oh, that’s D.J. Paris 24:45brilliant. I never Oh my god. I have net well I look as a not look. When people when people ask me when people I don’t I say I’m in marketing when people ask me because the moment they ask when I tell them I’m in real estate they’re like Oh, how’s the market? I’m like, No, I don’t practice real estate. So I am always the lat the last one to the to the to the party. You what you just said is so brilliant. And I have I and by the way, I don’t think anyone’s said this on the show ever before. So this this is something that I imagine a lot of our audience Yeah, guys, people have garage sales might be moving. Brilliant. Janine Sasso 25:19Well, you’re welcome. So thank you, it goes back to mentality, right? I mean, it goes back to know your audience know your crew. And when you look at our baby boomers, right, when you look at the people that are currently selling based on Nar stats, or whatever your you know, report you look at, these are the people that have the equity, these are the people whose houses are paid off. Those are also the people that come from a generation of war, it’s like it was really hard to accumulate the things that they have donating the things that they paid, like the dining room set 1000s of 1000s of dollars for and you just now give it away. That doesn’t make any sense, right? So it goes back to understand who you are serving. So for me, it was like, okay, I can have somebody come to their house to a driveway, and then give them even a little bit of money for the dining room set that nobody else wants anymore. Anyhow, right. They’re happy, they see me drive traffic in terms of marketing, they understand that’s what I do for a living and I get hyped. D.J. Paris 26:17So you would basically say I will help try to drive traffic to your to your to your garage sale, maybe you provide some signage, things like that. How would you actually market how would you sort of attract people to go to the to go to do that? I keep saying open houses the garage sale, Janine Sasso 26:35but that one evolved, right? So but same principle for the open houses, the marketing principles behind it are all the same, you find the person that you think will be aligned with what you have to offer? Might that be a garage sale, might that be an open house might be a listing, right, you find the person, you find what they need, you find the right messaging, and then you just bring them in. So in this case, it was a very simple one for Hey, you love garage sales. Not only do I have one, I have a you know, neighborhood garage sale to promote where you can just hit 10 houses in a matter of a day. And you don’t have to drive all over the place. So it eliminates that time constrain, right. And you bring them in. So for the open houses, same scenario, you have an open house you like, Hey, if you’re looking to get into the open house, you don’t want to wait for an agent to schedule a showing perfect opportunity. We have an open house on Saturday, right? Come on by. And then same for the listing, I’m sure you’re tired of seeing all the crappy listings on the market. Good for you, I have the perfect one. It’s, you know, hitting the market tomorrow. If you want the details, let me know find the right audience, find the right message and get it done. D.J. Paris 27:41And you know, I my marketing wheels are spinning because I was now thinking basically what you’re doing is going into a neighborhood and saying I’m going to organize a neighborhood garage sale and whoever wants to participate can participate I’m gonna leave a flyer on is that my understanding is you basically come in saying, hey, I want to do one for the entire neighborhood or get as many people as possible, because there’s strength in that that’ll help everyone. Oh my gosh, this is I love this ever. By the way. We’re gonna pause, go get this book, because this is what she literally wrote a book about success with real estate, mailers. It’s on Amazon. It’s got great reviews. Please go there’s a link to that in our show notes. I’m sorry. Continue. Good, you good. So let’s Janine Sasso 28:21break it, I guess down for the mailers because they might be like, Okay, we’re talking a garage sale. And now we’re going back to a book like where’s the connection? So I’ll break down the connector for you guys. When it comes to mailers, you have three calls to actions, right. And I kind of have them described as a stoplight. So if you think about red, orange, or yellow, whichever color you want to have there and green. Red is the hardest call to action you can have which is come schedule an appointment. Yet every single agent puts on their mailer, something along the lines of Call today for your free consultation. D.J. Paris 28:56Who does that nobody calls nobody gonna call and I Janine Sasso 28:59don’t want to consultation, right? It’s like a timeshare. I’m like, No, I don’t want to sit through a free breakfast so I can use all the timeshare. I don’t want it. But it’s hard, right? It’s hard to get an appointment booked from a mailer, a piece of paper. So the second step and that’s the one I use for the garage sales strategy is registrations. It is not quite as difficult to get people to say, hey, I’ll register for that. Because if something changes, they can just say, hey, something happened. I’m gonna have to back out. Okay, no problem, right? We have that happened was our seller sometimes. Well, I was scheduled a listing appointment and then we get a message like, Hey, I forgot about this appointment or hey, can we you know, again, it’s okay. They registered and now I can continue on with my follow up, right. And then the easiest way, by far when it comes to postcards is simply Hey, I already went ahead and put you free home value report. And you can get it right over here and we Just drive them to a website to offer them a free home evaluation at the push of a button. Right? Three o’clock in the morning, three o’clock at night. It doesn’t matter they can get. D.J. Paris 30:13Yeah, I like that. I like that I’m with you on the red, the red light part about call for a free consultation that just doesn’t appeal to most people. The other two options seem much, much, much stronger. But I love the idea of say, hey, just get a free home evaluation. But doing it via postcard, as opposed to where most people will do those is via email. And that’s okay, too. But it’s a little bit. It’s a little bit easier to ignore on email, I believe. And that’s my my guess. Because we all just get flooded with emails, we don’t really get flooded with mailers anymore. It just doesn’t happen. And I was going to ask you why you chose postcards over you know, envelope types of mailers. But I’m guessing it’s because it’s one less step. And it’s cheaper? Janine Sasso 31:06Well, I actually do both. So postcards was just you know, what everybody ended up knowing me for. But it’s really the the print marketing behind it, right. So we do have microphones we work for, you know, people that have been in the house for 15 years or more like some of them will get a note card, we do a color like a color coded system. So we can like batch create them and then it just like, Okay, we just send out based on color. So it’s really simple to keep track of a lot of the things, postcards, they are just simply the easy button of you know, somebody like we have a local printer. And we do recommend everybody typically does go with a local printer when it comes to EDDM mailings. Because it will cut down on shipping costs and the local printer oftentimes can also drop off directly to the designated mailing office that it needs to go to. So local printers have always been my recommendation for agents to utilize on that. And it’s like it’s just easy, right? You just design the front, the back, you send it off to print, and then from there, it gets delivered. It doesn’t have that extra step like you said. D.J. Paris 32:14And so but you do both. So let’s talk about the envelope mailers as well. So you started with postcards, and now you’re doing both. What do you do for the open meat, you know, kind of mailers? Janine Sasso 32:27That opened me? Okay, so that one is bought off my follow up? When somebody asked for a home evaluation, right, there has to be a follow up. And the cool thing is was a geographic farm, I really don’t have to worry about too much about what do I do next. Because as I’m concentrated in my geographic farm, I’m always going to have something going on, right? There’s going to be there an event maybe there’s going to be another mailer. Like there’s always a follow up that is already taking off the hassle of whatnot, what’s the next step? Right, because they get to lead people get a leader salary, and they’re like, I got to sell a lead. Now what it’s like and even if I was to drop the ball on the follow up, I know something else is in place, which is fantastic. So little peace of mind there. But the envelope, for example, we use them for a follow up every single month after you say, hey, I want to know what my house was worth. Chances are you’re not going to list with us that day. Sure, what a week, and probably not that month, sometimes you do. But sometimes you don’t. We’ve had people in our follow up for two years. And again, if I just send them one envelope a month, at you know, 66 cents right now for a stamp. Again, I was in office where I can print and the envelope cost me about 11 cents, I think so my follow up to that person 77 cents. And, again, for me to get my name out to make sure I get a listing, I do track it. I don’t have my numbers for this year, I can give you 2021 I was looking at a 10x ROI. So based on I sent 60,000 mailers, I want to say it cost me about 24 grand and 2021 2022 each individual year and well over $240,000 in Commission received. So one to 10 as a return. I’ll take it I keep D.J. Paris 34:25mailing Do you know I have lived at so I’m in a new development. And I tell the story all the time. So I apologize to the audience if they’ve heard me say this a million times. But I’m gonna keep saying it because it is exactly what you’re talking about. So I’m in a new development. When I say new it was built three years ago and I was one of the one of the first people to move and we’ve got 40 Some units. Not one, not one mailer have I received in that three years now. You can make the argument well, yeah, you just moved into a new development. You’re not moving. You don’t know that and seven Real people have moved Believe it or not, to at least two couples have these are not my resident, but but some of them are million plus dollar listings. And two of two of those people have actually moved in within those three years. And not there’s 46,000 realtors in the Chicagoland area. Not one of them has sent me a mailer crazy. Well, Janine Sasso 35:23I mean, it’s really not that crazy, because everybody is so focused on the social media, right? And that’s like, one of the things that I tell people, it’s like, okay, you have two choices to make, you can continue to go where everybody else is going, right? Because it’s it’s allowed container. If you want to be noticed online, either, you’re going to do something really, really crazy. We all seen the listing agents standing butt naked in front of their listing, going viral and then getting kicked out of the brokerage. Right? We’ve all seen that one. But either you do something really crazy, or you go somewhere else, where it’s not that hard to get attention, right? Because it’s either you’re going to do more, or you’re just going to do it a little bit smarter. So D.J. Paris 36:03yeah, and what’s funny is, you know, 30 years ago, mailers, what was everybody was doing, and they moved away from it to go into social because technology has pushed us all in that direction yet, you’re right that that is a much you have to scream pretty loud and social to make any sort of impact, or you’re going to be just creating content, constantly just constant content. And boy that that can be I mean, for a working mom, that’s difficult. So yeah, you’re a single person in your 20s. Yeah, you can make content all day, you can probably do that. But for and I’ll tell you, every postcard I ever receive, I at least look at before I throw it away. I don’t always open every envelope, especially if I know it’s junk mail, like, Oh, this is my credit card company pretending that it’s not my credit card company, you know, one of those, those things where it’s like urgent, open, and you’re like I know this is this is not an urgent open situation. So I toss it, I don’t open everything. But I look at everything that’s a postcard. So that’s also a really, really great point. And it’s also the most inexpensive way. For people that are thinking, Oh, mailers are expensive. Well, are they I mean, if you’re getting a 10x return, I’d like to get a 10x return on any investment I ever make. So I mean, that’s an incredible return. So yes, this is awesome. So tell us, let’s get to the specifics. How often are you mailing? You talked about the follow ups at least once a month? Is there? Is there more to what or is it the same message every month? By the way? Janine Sasso 37:26No, I mean, the message itself depends on what’s going on to you, right? I mean, especially like COVID is a prime example. There was a lot going on during that timeframe, our messaging has really, you know, depending on what is happening, like the interest rate being what the interest rate are, right? I mean, that becomes a message message is really dictated by market happenings, and where your prospect is your ideal person. So if you are focused on families, for example, and you’re going back to school, like you’re going to have a lot of other things on your plate, and if you are a retired person looking to downsize, so it goes back to No your ideal person, right? So if you are looking at okay, what is it that that I do? First up, I do not believe, like, you don’t have to mail monthly, like, I’m just gonna put that out there. I do have a big thing where I think you really have to think about who’s telling you, you have to mail monthly. D.J. Paris 38:23And people who have the mailing stores Janine Sasso 38:26telling you exactly these people will sell you on a 12 month contract, because then they don’t worry about getting another customer for the next 12 months because they just have one. It’s like you have to mail at least 12 months in order to see a return. Now I’ll give you the story for my brand new farm. So I recently expanded into a brand new area. I walked out of it with a listing within the first 30 days. Now, do I have to mail monthly? No. So I personally mail about roughly eight times a year. So with the Chicago market, we do have a little bit of seasons going on. So I have more activity more signs on the ground in the summer. So you will typically see me mail more towards like the later part of the year over the winter when nobody wants to set foot outside into the spring market. Because it’s not my decision to say you know real estate sale to you around it’s matters, what the consumer thinks. And if the consumer things Super Bowl Sunday is the day the spring market kicks off. I just have to come to terms with that. That that is their thinking right? Me trying to explain to them that they’re wrong. It’s going to take much more effort than me just saying okay, fine, you’re right. But we should start in October to talk because otherwise you have missed the prep time and your beautiful spring pictures of your beautiful yard because again, I’m in the suburbs, we put a lot of pride into our you know, curb appeal and our yards. And you can see them in February when it’s all snow covered and blah and all the leaves are gone. So it’s one of those things where you just want to make sure that you really understand your market, which, again, every agent, I’m sure knows their market that they’re in. Right. And then you just act accordingly. So between the eight mailers, and one event, initially, I have since branched out and added a couple of other events for December right now, for example, we are doing letters to Santa for the community. And it’s just again, you make a child smile, and that goes back to my early childhood degree. So again, I’m, you know, I take more to the kids sometimes than the parents. But when you have, you know, little campaigns like that, that make the children happy, and they help the parents take something off their plate, your name just comes along with the goodwill that you’re demonstrating for the community. And that alone, and it needs to be genuine, in my case is very, very genuine. It needs to be genuine. You can’t just do it for the money, right? I could get nothing out of it and still be happy that I’ve done something nice for the community that I live in. D.J. Paris 41:01Yeah, I want only because I don’t have children. I just and this is my ignorance. Probably people will ask me what is the letters to Santa things? Explain that to me. Janine Sasso 41:12So when I look at the letter to Santa, right, it’s like every kid writes a letter to Santa. And we have put up a mailbox inside the community. And we tell our parents drop it right, make sure you scan our QR code, because in that QR code will now lead them to a Google form. And we just say, hey, we want to make sure your letter doesn’t get lost at the North Pole. So let me know your name. Or your children’s names, let me know where the response letter is getting mailed to. And this year, we added actually a certificate. It’s like Do you want a nice lifts certificate? Or do you want a warning letter off like come on little Johnny Coronavirus, you know, turns up behavior. I love that. Um, so that’s what we added this year, and they just fill out the form. Okay, so we get their email, we get their we get their address, they subscribe themselves to our email list with that. And we just send out a letter and continue growing our you know, hyperlinks away, D.J. Paris 42:11I just want to put a I just got to get to the end of this. So the letter goes out and it says it’s to the child back from Santa saying, Hey, we got your letter, like what does it say in there? Other than that, Janine Sasso 42:22yeah, it says like, hey, thanks so much for your letter. You know, me and Mrs. Claus are really excited to come down and you know, visit your house soon. Rudolph was excited, I know, you’re probably going to leave me a cookie, something along those lines. And if we have a parent, adding something in the special notes feels like, Hey, can you mention like he’s been really good was his new baby, you know, baby sister, we squeeze that one in there, we customize it a little bit for them, and then we’ll send it up in the mail. And they love it. They love it. D.J. Paris 42:56You know, I was just thinking as a child, I wrote a lot of letters to say no, because that’s what you do. And I never got one back. So that is awesome. I, I didn’t even know that was an option. So I am I am. I’m being educated. But guys think of how exciting this would be for a child to get a letter back. And probably unless, unless I would just my parents just didn’t know about these things. I never got one. So I imagine a lot of people didn’t. So you’re right, even even if it doesn’t translate into a deal. It almost certainly will at some point, because you’re doing something that is very, very special for that family. And it’s not expensive. It’s really pretty inexpensive. Yeah, Janine Sasso 43:36I mean, the the letters to Santa last year, we brought just over 100. So you know, I’m looking at $66 that I spent in postage. Again, this was not an expensive campaign, but it had a huge impact of just having somebody really feel grateful for having you there as a community expert as a hyperlocal agent of choice. And then again, if they have friends looking to move into the neighborhood, if they are having parents that need to sell, right, that is that part of goodwill, we were like, Hey, you should talk to Janine right? And you should have a conversation. Or you should at least interview her. I know you have your best friend was an agent, but at least maybe interview her right? It gets our name out there with them. And I can it’s easy to do because I don’t have to worry about when do I do my follow up. I could do my letters to Santa and just get them out at 11 o’clock at night. Like I can do the activity itself. Regardless of you know, the working hours per se, again, when you go back to being a mom. You know, I know we tried to schedule this episode and I’m like, Well, I’m driving my kid. 12 o’clock comes along. I’m like, my kids going to school and I’m the designated driver. Right then three o’clock rolls around. I’m like, all of a sudden there’s pick up again. And it’s like, my day is spent in the car a lot and I know I’m not the only one which is why postcards and envelopes and mailers have been so fun. Giving, just this week I put a post up. And it was all about my calendar mailers. And I said, what other lead generation activity lets you do this at, you know, 11 o’clock at night, in your rubber ducky bathrobe and get developed eight leads out of it. Like there’s not many other lead gen and you can do it during normal business hours, of course, right. But it’s like, it’s the flexibility that it allows, you know, as parents who want it all, because I know I’m not alone, when I say I want to have a really good career, I also want to be there when it comes time to pick up my kids from school to make breakfast could be there for dinner, right. And so it’s like trying to fit all of this into a 24 hour period is sometimes a little rough. But this is why postcards and mailers, emails have really afforded me that lifestyle. I know other agents can have too, which D.J. Paris 45:53versus doing things on social, which really requires more attention, more energy more time, because social media is really best done in as a two way communication, right? You might post something, someone writes you back, you’re gonna want to continue to engage with them. So that of course, you build a relationship from there, but postcards are really a one way. And that frees up your time to continue to do mom activities work on other parts of your business, and you’re not constantly you know, 24/7 Checking your Instagram and Facebook. Did I reply to every comment that I did? I it’s it’s a lot of work. Janine Sasso 46:32Well, it’s that and it’s like, every time I have like this content creation worthy moment where I’m like, Oh, I gotta you know, I gotta get it on camera. I’m like, my kid sits there. And he was like, you know, talking to grandpa on the phone on my phone. So it’s like, my phone is occupied, because he needed to FaceTime his Papaw or, you know, he was just because I’m still working at like, are trying to work and do something at four o’clock. I’m like, hey, here, watch a YouTube episode, right? Or where we’re out running errands, and he’s got my phone. I’m like, I can’t even record what I’m doing. Because my phone is occupied. I’m a little guy. So there’s a struggle there. Oh, D.J. Paris 47:11quick question about when you identified your farm, then you had to collect the data of that community? Did you? Do are there certain services? You recommend to pay for that? Or how do you recommend sort of collecting all the neighborhood information? Janine Sasso 47:28You have MLS access, right? So you know what’s happening in your areas, you have tax record access. So for those listeners that do not have anything like that, obviously there is the title companies, there’s really no need to pay for a service giving you data. And I’ll, I’ll give you the example for my email list. I do not purchase an email list for my neighborhood, I compare it to when we as real estate agents get messages, hey, I have a new healthcare quote for you. Do you want it? I am very annoyed with it. If I personally do not like it, why would I want to do that to somebody else, and I don’t care if it’s an SMS, if it’s an email, if I do not seek out the information from you, and you just decide to buy a list from somebody and then start spamming me, you’re gonna put a certain taste in my mouth that I personally don’t like. It is a little bit more effort to collect the emails on your own through open houses through the Senate, letter to Santa campaign. But your open rates will be better, your click rate will be better. And with that, again, it’s not about you know, those vanity metrics of I have 3000 people on my list, it’s like, you could have 300 people on your list and be extremely profitable, more so profitable if these people actually want to hear from you. So it goes back to vanity metrics on social media. It’s the same for geographic farming, right? I’ll get scooped up on those. So D.J. Paris 49:00you so you wouldn’t purchase a list of a geographic farm and just start mailing out? You? Janine Sasso 49:06Well, so purchase a list of emails and phone numbers. D.J. Paris 49:10Okay, so I know you don’t do that. So you’re only directly digitally marketing to people that you’ve had some sort of connection, you’ve met them. Now for mailers you do you would buy a list of of that area. Janine Sasso 49:23So for mailers, the EDDM is an app service available through the United States Postal Service, right. So that part is readily available, there is no need to, you know, have any secret connection, it just you can you can do it as an individual agent. And that part alone has helped me. Now if I go and find individual addresses and say, Hey, I only want to look at people who’ve lived in their house for 15 years. And I want to send them something a little bit more specific that states Hey, after having lived in your house for such a long time, you know sometimes the thought about moving comes up I just want you to To know that I am here, whenever you’re ready, if you’re not ready to move, that’s fine. You live in a perfectly amazing neighborhood, you and I both know that, you know, wishing you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever it is. But if I look at like these types of marketing campaigns, we have tax record access, or title company, depending on you know, where you’re listening from, we really don’t need to pay anybody anything to get that data. And then it’s just a matter of Oh, yeah, that’s a fair bit of a right and sweat equity. Which one do you want to put in? Do you want to pay a service to get it done? Or do you want to stuff the envelope themselves? And put in spec? S, but equity? So? Yeah, D.J. Paris 50:42it’s a good question. And I you just brought up a really strong point for anyone listening who’s like, how do I get access to this kind of information, reach out to lenders reach out to title companies, attorneys. Between those three resources, somebody will be able to get you the data that you want. And title companies, attorneys, and lenders all want your business. So they want you to be successful. So yes, leverage your relationships with the other professionals. Janine Sasso 51:14Absolutely. So I mean, obviously, then there are other ways. And right now we’re exploring a CRM that will have an integrated postcard, you know, service with it. And I tried it. So far, loving everything about it. So you know, I’m in the middle of getting all of this built out. It is really, really powerful when you are starting to have QR codes, and then you add those to your mailing pieces. And I was sharing that in one of my groups yesterday, I send out a mailing to 90 or 75 homes roughly. And I had a QR code on there that was trackable per house per address. So far, I got two scans back. And it states the name of the person, it states the address of the person the campaign of came from. So these are now leads that I can follow up on based on a QR code scan. Right. So super powerful direct mail has evolved. So so much. And it’s not just paper anymore, it is smart paper. And people need to see where the gaps are for the attention, and then go after that one. Don’t go down the mainstream of AI, right. I mean, yes, I use AI to a certain degree in my business, it is not to create 365 pieces of content for the week. Right? It is it this is what everybody is trying to do more and more and more. Don’t go where everybody’s gone. Go the other way. D.J. Paris 52:39Yeah, and, and go where people will have enough attention to see your message, social media, you’re fighting, you’re fighting a lot of different people for that attention, mail, you’re not fighting that many people. And you know, you’re fighting a couple of catalog companies and a few credit card companies that’s about it. I mean, I don’t even get I don’t even think my banks and I don’t even think my bank sends me statements. They have it for years, you know, in the mail, so I literally get almost no mail. So I get excited when I get a postcard. Or, gosh, a handwritten note, I’d probably fall over some, I get just a couple of those a year or two. That’s another amazing thing. Now that’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work to do it, but boy, you want really great return, you know, but if you’re getting a 10x on you know, doing an audit through an automated system that’s a pretty pretty strong that now for people that you don’t yet know that you’re sending stuff out to you haven’t yet met them. How are you? Because I know that people that you have that are in your lead list are getting about eight mailers a year. What about the people who aren’t yet who haven’t yet raised their hand, but you’ve you’ve put them into your you know, into your mailing Janine Sasso 53:53actually it’s the reverse weight so people that I have not you know, people in my farm all of them about eight mailings a year people that have raised their hand they do not go on a monthly D.J. Paris 54:07got it so they get more got it Janine Sasso 54:09they get a little bit of I love it. So you know they raise their hand they took the next step so now it’s up to me to take my next step and and that again builds that relationship right there I’m watching from the sideline they might have seen my sign they might just watch and see you she actually able to do it she actually gonna sell it and it’s like oh they’re so sold writer she did it you know what the sign came down? You know what it’s time for her to come over to my house and have a conversation people need to form trust D.J. Paris 54:39Absolutely. And and now with QR codes like you were saying on the mailers everything can be tracked you so I think well we don’t really know what the return or the return on investment necessarily. It’s kind of hard to how many people even you know, check this out. Well now with QR codes, everything’s trackable. So that’s to say Janine Sasso 54:55so I know we’re gonna have a recording on there. So I guess sometimes the video people get a little bit of an X One. So this one here is just, you know, I’m holding up a screenshot right now showing what the QR code messages look like. So if you have that video, you know, you can see it, it’s just the name just like I described it, it has the name, it has the address in itself, you get real time notified real time notification. And the interesting part is, these people did not complete our opt in form. So all they did was they scan, and then they stuck. They’re like, Oh, I have to enter my information. I’m not gonna do that. That’s okay. You don’t have to anymore. I’m already there. So I already know, what D.J. Paris 55:33does each person have? It’s their own unique QR code, or is it just what? Oh, Janine Sasso 55:40I getting fancy for 2024. So that is fancy. It’s, it’s starting to take shape. Again, that’s part of what we’ve been working on at the hyper local agent to make it more affordable and accessible for real estate agents, who are not mega teams who do not have a marketing budget that is bazillions of dollars. And it’s like, putting data back in front of the agent that you know, should have it and not the companies was holding that information. It’s our little thing we’re working on. I D.J. Paris 56:15love it. And Janine has all sorts of courses that you should check out at the at. Sorry, Janine Sasso 56:21I got asked so many questions. Over the years since I started sharing what I’m doing. Everyone’s like, how do you do this? And every now and then there’s a course that comes out for it. My Calendars. For example, my garage sale is on there, because people ask what do you do? Or how do you do it? There is a process because I actually, you could have seen me on TV was the garage sale, I had Fox 32 news report on my garage sale about two years ago, because we had 180 sellers, and it was wild. And the streets were packed. And it was crowded. And it was amazing. So D.J. Paris 56:58yeah, I love that. And so guys, I think this is a great really a great place to wrap up because I really want I think we’ve made the case mailers work in 2023 2024. We anticipate being just as successful with these because why shouldn’t they be and no one’s doing it. So let’s start doing it. And it’s it’s not as expensive as it sounds. And yet, you may need to give it a couple of years, you may need to think, Hey, I’m going to be doing this for a couple of years. And you know what, faster? Well, Janine says no, Denise says it’s, you’re gonna get you’re gonna get results faster than that. But I am telling you even even if you just keep doing it, you will, you will get absolutely results because you’re gonna follow Janine method. And you’re going to do that because you’re going to pick up her book, which is success with real estate mailers on Amazon, or you’re going to and or you’re going to also check out all the different courses. She has some really cool ones. Like, what if I want to do a fun comic, like comic book style mailers, she has a course on that, like, that’s cool, right? That’s fun. She has some a bunch of free stuff as well for different lead gen ideas, how to do garage sales, how to do you know all sorts of geographic farming quarterly newsletters, green screen course how to actually use green screens for video stuff. And anyway, she’s got really, really cool stuff. She has even monopoly style mailers, you can have really a lot of fun. So she’s got a lot of it’s for free. And some of it costs money, but it’s all worth your time, and your resources. So if you go to the hyperlocal agent.com, you’ll see all of her different courses. And again, the book is success with real estate mailers, which is available anywhere books are sold to certainly on online as well as Amazon, we’ll have a link to that. Now. And I also want to say for anyone listening who is like, this sounds pretty cool. But maybe I could partner with Janine and maybe I’m a local Chicago agent, and I kind of want to do what Jeanine is doing and maybe I’d be a good fit for her team. So if you are somebody that wants to geographically farm and maybe want to partner with Janine, in particular, in any way that makes sense, you can reach out to her. Also, if you’re an agent who has, maybe you don’t live in Chicago, of course, most of our most of our listeners don’t. And you want a good agent to refer business to if any of your clients are moving to the suburban area, Janine would love the opportunity to develop a referral relationship with you. And of course, she has people you know, here in Chicago guys is as people get older, they go south, a lot of them leave and they go to Florida and Arizona and Texas and lots of places where it’s a lot warmer, so she has referrals that she needs to start sending out as well. So wouldn’t be the worst idea to reach out to her and maybe put her on your mailing list and start mailing her ever I mean, honestly, it’s not the worst idea. Natalie like, because Janine is going to get honestly about 50 people who reached out to her after this after we published this episode, so stand stand apart. But you know whether You’re not you reach out to Janine and partner with her or just will read her book or go to one of her courses. She’s the real deal. I think she’s proven that in this conversation, she’s super, no nonsense, here’s exactly what to do. And it works. In fact, Ginni, and I want to invest with you. And I want to give you all my money, because I want a 10x return. So I may just deposit money into your bank account. And you could, you could do the heavy lifting, I teach you how Janine Sasso 1:00:25to because you are in charge of your business, right? D.J. Paris 1:00:28Oh, darn it, I gotta do it myself. Janine Sasso 1:00:31And you can train the assistant, it’ll be the best asset in your business promise. D.J. Paris 1:00:35And you’re absolutely right, with a 10x return, you can hire an assistant, you can have somebody basically stuffing envelopes, doing some of the heavy lifting, or just designing it or whatever, when you’re getting that kind of return. It really frees up even more of your time because you can then delegate. So that’s the Janine Sasso 1:00:53biggest part. You don’t have to scale, you can just increase the quantity increase the money, and it scales beyond anything else. You don’t have to hire additional isas. You don’t have to do anything else other than scale up, which is really D.J. Paris 1:01:06Janine, I’m gonna, I want to ask you one last question, because I recruit Realtors for my company. And this is just such great timing, because we have planned our 2024 How are we going to recruit agents? And yes, of course, we’re going to email everyone you have to you know, of course, we’re going to be sending a monthly email with a cute little whatever. But our main focus is not email and it’s not social media. It is mailers. Funny enough. Now I want to ask here’s my question to you. How many recruiting emails do you get from other brokerages? Because look, the reason I’m asking telling this and I want you everyone to stay tuned while I’m while Janine is answering because everyone’s you know, right now, people are exploring other brokerages or they’re thinking of creating a team, or they already have a team and they want to grow their team. So recruiting is going on. Outside of people like me who recruit for a brokerage, you might just be wanting to start a team or build your team even further. So you probably get a lot of recruiting emails, I’m guessing. So Janine Sasso 1:02:06the recruiting is one of those things where, you know, I like to look and see how I feel after I got to recruiting. I’m not a feely person. But it’s like, it’s interesting, because we will feel first before our brain kicks and analyzes. Right? So I always see like, how do I feel about it, and I do have like, a lot of them actually come in via SMS. So they are paying services, I will say the SMS are mediocre at best. So they are getting deleted right away. There’s people that I actually know, since I am a trainer, there’s also like I said, a lot of people that I have relationships with, and that I’m now on a list. So I feel like it’s very impersonal. So you know, the, the SMS, not connecting. And D.J. Paris 1:02:54by the way, nobody really wants to get an SMS from somebody they don’t we just don’t share Janine Sasso 1:02:58anything. You know, it’s like, hey, no, you cannot. It’s very impersonal. It’s, you know, I didn’t ask for that. So it’s you know, D.J. Paris 1:03:07so you get a lot of too Janine Sasso 1:03:11many emails, it is just the emails, the way they are presented, the more polished an email looks, the faster it goes in the in the spam folder, right? So the emails I send are more like newsletter or not newsletter more like journal entries, right? It’s like a little life update on like bringing people into my story. So there are different, which is also why my open rate on my emails is typically about 50 to 60%. And it’s one of those things where you really just think things through, like, how do you feel about it? What do you want the person to feel? Right? And when you look at recruiting from a piece of mail, it’s gonna stick around longer. Make sure you have a really good call to action, not just sign up was my brokerage today. Right? D.J. Paris 1:03:53Yeah, cuz no one does that either. And, but how many mailer recruiting mailers Do you receive as an agent per year? Zero, she just showed zero, guys. So this is my point. Nobody is doing this. Whether you’re trying to find for your own business and find clients or you’re a guy like me, who needs to recruit for your team or your brokerage? This is the missed opportunity. Yes, it’s a little bit more expensive, although not really, actually now that I think about it, it actually isn’t because I pay for email services, I pay for people to help with content. All of this costs money, it’s really probably not that much different from mailing. Janine Sasso 1:04:32That’s not and your attention is going to be much more focused on it. D.J. Paris 1:04:36Well, guys, everyone should be mailing in 2024. Janine Sasso is the queen of the real estate, mailers. I dumped her that. So that’s not an official title, but you’re actually not the Janine Sasso 1:04:47first one who came up with a title so you know, I’ve heard it before interest. Maybe you should make this my thing. So D.J. Paris 1:04:53could be your brand. Well, you’re the queen of it on our podcast. How about that? That for sure. So Janine Has woke up to send her a tiara and a sash. Janine Sasso 1:05:05So I will go. D.J. Paris 1:05:07Oh gosh. Now I have to go get a tiara and a sash. All right. Well, everyone, please go out and get yourself real estate, mailers, the sorry success with real estate mailers, the Book link to it on Amazon. And if you’re not a want to read books, she’s got all sorts of odd video courses as well. Go check it out and written courses. She’s the real deal. She’s also an instructor, and that’s her backgrounds education. That’s what she’s good at. So why not reach out and partner with her? Check out her? All of the resources, the hyper local agent.com is where you can find everything Janine, funny. It was funny at the very beginning. Before we started, I asked you and I go, what social Do you want me to promote? She’s like, No. And I was like, oh, yeah, of course. You’re the mailer person. So it was it was real. But she is also on every social platform. She’s she’s all over social. So sad to say hi to her there as well. But certainly check out for 2020 forecast, let’s let’s all have a better 2020 More than 2023 2023 was tough. It’s tough. It was a tough year this year. But you probably weren’t doing mailers. So next year, probably going to be tough, too. So let’s go ahead and try to make it as easy on ourselves as possible, especially those of us with part time jobs or our our moms or dads, you know, raising children. Your time is valuable. And you know, just posting content of you at the gym every morning showing how fit you are. Yes, that’s cool. And yes, that maybe might get you a deal or two. But that’s not really really what people want, right? People want something that is specific to their particular needs. And Jeannie is going to show you how to do that through her mailing system. So All right, guys. Janine has to run up. She has been amazing. On behalf of everyone listening. Janine, thank you for your time. Janine is a very, very busy mom. Thank you. Thank you. And on behalf of Janine and myself, we say thank you to our audience. Thanks for sticking around to the end. Please tell a friend, please support our sponsors. Please support Janine and reach out to her tell her that you loved her on this episode. She would appreciate it. All right, Janine, thank you so much. You are amazing. I will see everybody on the next episode. Janine Sasso 1:07:08I’m keeping it real.

Kelly Carlson talks about why she switched from a consulting career into a real estate career and discusses the challenges she faced when she made the jump from one career into the other. Kelly discuss the importance of open houses in the beginning of her career in real estate. Next, Kelly talks about social media and her marketing plan for 2024. Kelly also talks about the tours around suburbs of Chicago she organizes for her prospective clients. Last, Kelly describes what is she doing now that the market is down to keep busy. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Kelly Carlson can be reached at 630.632.3908. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today we’re talking to a National Association of REALTORS 30 under 30 award winner about how she’s becoming a top producer in her 20s. 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 solutions so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide, and host through the show and in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with top producer, Kelly Carlson. But before we get to Kelly, just a heartfelt thank you from the entire podcast team here. We just recently crossed over 3.3 million downloads. That’s a very big deal to us. So thank you for continuing to support our show. The best way you can help us grow of course, tell a friend and also please support our sponsors. They pay the bills and we love our sponsors. And we only select those that actually have products and services to help you grow your business. So check them out, keep listening. We are so thankful and now let’s just get right to it my conversation with superstar Kelly Carlson. Today on the show, our guest is Kelly Carlson with Kelly Carlson homes at properties Christie’s international real estate here in Chicago. Let’s tell you more about Kelly. Now Kelly Carlson is an award winning broker with add properties in Christie’s international real estate in their Western Springs office that’s a suburb of Chicago. Now after launching her real estate career in the city, and 2020 After four plus years and consulting Kelly was named angle and Volkers Chicago Rookie of the Year and more recently recognized as a member and this is such a big deal of the National Association of REALTORS 30, under 30 Class of 2023. Just to let people know what that is, every year, the National Association of REALTORS wants to find the agents who are in their 20s who are doing really exceptional things in the industry and having exceptional success as well and highlighting them and she was one of the award winners this year with a love of interior design historical homes and do it yourself updates. This career is the perfect blend of her passions and professional background. And she’s no longer doing the consultants Monday to Thursday fly out and then back on the weekend. So she gets to stay here in Chicago more often. Please visit Kelly at her website, which is Kelly Carlson homes.com. And follow her on Instagram, Kelly Carlson homes, Facebook as well. We will have links to both are all of her social media in our show notes. Kelly, welcome to the show. Kelly Carlson 4:06Thank you so much for having me, DJ, this is such a pinch me moment when I was in the process of getting my license. I was binging all of your old episodes in 2020. So very cool. full circle moment to be here. D.J. Paris 4:19Well, it is a it’s an honor to have one of our listeners on the show. And yeah, it’s excited to to chat. It’s always fun when when people find us or we find people. And I’m just so grateful that you’re here and you have done some really exceptional things. I am also curious. So I know you’re a University of Illinois grad, did you go straight into consulting right out of school? Was that kind of your path? Yes. Kelly Carlson 4:47And it was kind of one of those you get recruited in the fall of your senior year and then started in October after graduating so had a nice long summer vacation, and then it was really time to get to work. D.J. Paris 5:01Did you have that consultants life where you were traveling to clients during the week coming back on the weekends? Was that kind of how you started? Kelly Carlson 5:09I was not every Monday through Thursday. But my particular consulting group did have a lot of special projects. So it took me to a lot of remote locations across the US. So had great airline status at that point. And that is probably the one thing I missed. Yeah, D.J. Paris 5:28no, no more. No more first instant first class upgrades. My sister lost that as well. She’s now with a startup prior to that. She wasn’t a consultant, but but she used to travel for different jobs. And now she’s lost all of that. And she still occasionally gets an upgrade, but it is we laugh and go, Oh, great. You’re just like the rest of us now which. So why the switch from consulting to very few people, I think, get out of consulting, because it is such a really, it’s a wonderful career and track. It really, truly is. It’s not, of course, the travel stinks. But ultimately, a lot of people stay in it. So I’m curious what was so why did you get out and why real estate? Sure. Kelly Carlson 6:10Well, this story kind of goes back to, I want to say high school college because I had always had a love for architecture home, I took every CAD class at my high school went to a pre architecture camp at U of I. And ultimately, when I was kind of in that phase of applying to schools, it was still end of recession, residential architecture was not necessarily the place to find a job at the time. So I thought, well, I liked math and science, I’ll do civil engineering, which is a complementary fields to architecture. And so did that at U of I, great kind of versatile degree, I knew I didn’t want to do traditional design engineering. And so I started looking into consulting, which is a route that a lot of engineering graduates go into. So that seems to be a nice mix of getting to work with people client services, but also relevant to my degree. And so yeah, I did that for four years, starting at a big four firm and then moved on to a smaller boutique management consulting firm, I could not think of a better place to launch my career, it really taught me the value of exceptional client service, and how to be professional, how to manage a very demanding schedule and still meet deadlines. But it got to a point where I, you know, I’d been at two firms, I didn’t see myself in it for the long haul, and didn’t think that going to another company was going to, you know, solve what I felt like was missing. And so it kind of brought me back to that place of you know, I’ve always loved real estate architecture that is just always fascinated me. And the voice in my head previously had always been that you went to school for engineering, and you’re a consultant, and this is what you do. But I started to think about it differently. In terms of how could I leverage this experience in the corporate world, to differentiate myself as somebody, you know, I didn’t have a sales background, but I had a lot of transferable skills for a totally services business. And so I did it, I quit my job in October of 2020, got my license, and got hit the ground running in January of 2021. D.J. Paris 8:33Right, right smack dab in the middle of the pandemic, Kelly Carlson 8:36perfect timing. D.J. Paris 8:40That is incredible. And then for you to have enough success to catch the eye of the National Association of Realtors, for their 30 under 30 is quite a big deal. I know many, many people, friends of mine, who who have not made that list, and I’ve tried many times, a lot of my friends have made the list as well. But boy, it’s a big feather in your cap. So congratulations. I’m excited to learn more about maybe what they they see in you as well. And I think civil engineering too, is a really nice transferable skill. And I know again, that wasn’t really your career, but it was your your field of study and interest. Because civil engineers, you know, people don’t really know what that is. Just 111 thing that civil engineers do is they they’re really good at visualizing. So they can see like two points of land and they can visualize a bridge across or like if there’s a river in between or something they can they can visualize things that aren’t there and then they can bring those things to life. So I imagine even just that skill along with your architecture, knowledge and love of of homes, and interior design probably is pretty helpful when you’re maybe walking a client through a home saying I you can probably see things that maybe I wouldn’t be able to see for example, I’m just curious if that ever comes up where or maybe it’s a renovation, you’re able to maybe visual lies that more effectively than, you know somebody without those skills. Kelly Carlson 10:03Yes, that has definitely been helpful. The renovation friends, the home that we’re sitting in, I’m sitting in right now is actually the home that my husband and I just bought, and did not look like this a few months ago. And there was a lot of work to get into this place. And so something I was able to do for myself, but then also for my clients, who are maybe struggling in the current low inventory market, not able to find that move in ready home, or they’ve got to kind of grow into it, knowing what is in place, and what can be done. Over time. Yeah, D.J. Paris 10:40it’s funny, if you’re watching this, you’ll see you’re probably listening. So you won’t see this. But Kelly has an all white kitchen. I also, although you won’t see this on mine, because I’m at the office, but I have an all white kitchen. And we were talking to sort of laughing about that earlier. And I just I have all white everything white walls, white, you know, I’m like, really all white, white and black. And I’m thinking like in, it’ll be funny in like, 10 years, when people are like, Why were people doing all white? Like what you know, like, it’s cool now, but it won’t be cool forever. So it is kind of funny how styles evolve and change over time. But let’s talk about how you built your business? Because yes, I think the consulting background, every consultant, I know, in the Big Four, you know, professionalism, hard work, meeting deadlines, and just being of service, you talked about customer service are really sort of the main pillars. And being a good listener, think consultants are great listeners as well. But they you know, those are really important skills that obviously transfer over into real estate. But you still had to build your business people see you as I saw you as a consultant that was your your profession and a very well respected profession. And then you know that that was your path, and then all of a sudden, you’re pivoting. Was it challenging to, you know, introduce your sphere of influence to your new career or was like, what was that process like? Kelly Carlson 12:02Sure. So as you know, after I got licensed, I started interviewing at different brokerages and met Jennifer Eames, who is a Top Producing Chicago agent, also the licensed partner of angle and Volkers Chicago and Linkin Park. And her and I connected and she had had a previous career prior to real estate as well. And so once I did get my license, I was so excited to come over to her company. And, you know, unlike a lot of new agents, they start out on a team, and they learn from that team member and they help out and it’s a great way to get experience. But the unique thing about angle and Volkers at the time is there a boutique firm, and Jenny had told me she’s, you know, if you come over, you can be a solo agent, and we will help you, we will give you those tools. And so that was something that, you know, I was so grateful for her mentorship and being able to get started as a solo agent. But under, you know, having the experience of getting to cover open houses. And that was a huge part of building my business outside of, you know, making sure, and this was a big thing that I had been taught and don’t, don’t be a secret agent, like make sure that your sphere of influence knows you know that you are in real estate. And this is a full time serious career for you. So I think I took advantage of, you know, social media and a newsletter and just connecting with people, I now had more time to be able to call up friends and people I knew from college to go grab coffee because I wasn’t traveling. And so it was kind of a mix of just offering out all of my weekends to do open houses, for any agents in our office and then working with, you know, friends and friends of friends. Over time. You know, I say that first year was a lot more friends and family, open house buyers. And then over time it kind of, I think, you know, I had done a good job with those friends that they felt comfortable referring me to their friends and family. So over time, it’s become more referral based. But I’d say you know, if you’re a new agent, like don’t be afraid to let your people know that this is your career. D.J. Paris 14:26And letting you know you talked about open houses I feel like agents don’t do do or agents may not know depending on what firm they’re at or who their circle is that they know of other agents. But if you work in an office where there are agents with listings, and I you know not there are small firms with just a couple of brokers so this might not apply to everyone but if there is someone in your office with at least one listing, I would go and ask beg, plead and and do anything you can to get in their good graces if you’re a brand new agent to I sit in open house. Can you tell us? That’s my suggestion? What would you recommend? Do you agree? Or, you know, what is your experience with open houses? Kelly Carlson 15:09100% I actually my first buyer client was from the first open house that I’ve held. And that’s not how it goes every time, you know, there are gonna be times where you sit in an empty condo for two hours, and, you know, scroll your phone or check emails. But other times, you might connect really well with somebody and I’d say, just, you know, asking questions, trying to get to know a person, see what information you can learn about them. Because then when you are following up, you aren’t going to be like that false agent who is sending them the same email saying, Do you want to buy this kinda? Or do you want to work with me on something else, I think trying to create some kind of personal connection is, is, can can make a difference. And that was the case with my first buyer clients, they were so impressed by how much I remembered from our five minute conversation. So it goes back to that listening, I think, yeah, D.J. Paris 16:09I think you’re right. And that’s something to consider. So the first step, of course, is getting getting an open house when you don’t have a listing, which, you know, beg the people in your firm to help you do that. And then when you have people walking through the open house, Kelly, what I heard from you is pay very, very close attention to what they tell you and maybe even take notes after they leave. Because and I was thinking about this, as you were saying, I was like, why would you be the eighth person that maybe another real eight other realtors might be? And I go oh, because they’re going to other open houses? Like it just occurred to me? Oh, yeah, of course they are. And so of course, they’re going to get eight follow up messages from thanks for coming to my open house. And if you can add in, you know, whatever the conversation was, yeah, all of a sudden, now you’re, you’re you stand above everyone else. Kelly Carlson 16:56Definitely. But it’s a win win for the listing agents, too. Because, yeah, like you said, they’ve got maybe multiple listings, and they can’t be in two places at once. So it’s never good to ask, D.J. Paris 17:06it doesn’t hurt to ask. And also, in many cases, it really makes the seller look good to the or sorry, makes the selling agent look good to the seller, or the listing agent, I should say. Because I technically the selling agent is the one who buys anyway. I don’t know why they we do it that way. It’s too confusing. Buy side and sell side. Yeah, but anyway, I don’t make the rules. So sorry for the confusion there. But yeah, for anyone who, for anyone who, you know, is a listing agent, you know, we know that oftentimes by asking a listing agent, Hey, can I sit in open house for your property, they get to then say to the seller, hey, we’re going to do an open house. And of course, that just makes the seller think that the listing agents doing stuff. And that’s a good thing, too. So it really is a win win for everybody. Obviously, for the agent sitting the open house, if nobody shows up, you know, that is always a bummer. But it happens. But the important thing is, these are where people do come in to open houses. And I know that you know, we live in so much of a virtual world now. But I really encourage everyone if you’re if you’re if you’re not slammed with appointments these days, I would be asking every listing agent I knew in my office, can I please please, please come sit in open house? And okay, cool. So let’s talk I want to talk about social media. Because I’m 47. And I used to be I used to feel like I was a young guy, I’m not a young guy anymore. But I would you know, social media is just kind of a different animal for people who are in your case, you’re like about 20 years younger. Tell us a little bit about how you’ve built your business on social. I’m just curious on what’s worked for you. How do you think about content? You know, what, how are you in the you know, how are you posting? Tell us about that? Kelly Carlson 18:46Sure. You know, initially I had thought you know, you have to be on every single platform and just, you know, reach everybody from every direction and I started to learn that I think age is a big part of figuring out what your where your demographic is. And for me at 29 I save most of my fear and people my age are still on Instagram, Facebook, not so much tick tock I don’t have I probably should but I just am afraid I get too addicted. But that’s been kind of the biggest social media piece for me. I have a business account, but I like to mix in still some personal with that. i You will probably never see me post a just listed or just sold post. D.J. Paris 19:39Well, hold on. What why is that? Why do you not post those? Kelly Carlson 19:43Because you don’t I my kind of thought process as I’m deciding, you know, to put together some form of content. My question is, is this adding value to the consumer. And when I saw those, and when I see them, you know, it’s kind of as it doesn’t do much for me, however, if I see, you know, a picture of a couple in front of the house, and there’s a story behind it, I’m interested and it gives me more of the taste of you know, who that agent is, and how they work. And so I love, you know, on occasion to share clients stories in that way. And yes, sure, it’s showing that you are, you know, selling homes and you know, you’re successful and all that, but it’s not so in your face. So I think it goes back to the is it something that is adding value, as we are fixing up a 1920s tutor, I have been sharing some of our renovation journey. Because I personally love seeing before and afters, I think that’s content people generally enjoy. And what it’s kind of evolved into is going back to kind of helping people see what they can do with a space. And also, you know, doing things, depending on what your budget is, you know, here’s places to splurge, here’s places to save. So, I found that to be kind of complementary with, you know, posting normal real estate stuff, too. But I don’t have a great, you know, like talent or anything of what I do, I just, when I have the time, I, you know, come up with an idea and, and post away. I think D.J. Paris 21:22that’s really, really great advice. I’m not a fan of the just listed just sold stuff, either. I think it’s perfectly okay to do. It doesn’t do much for me, it doesn’t necessarily turn me off when I see it. But it doesn’t light me up either. Like when I see somebody do it. In this, I’m sort of not a good example, because I see all my friends having success, and I’m very excited to see them when they get there just listed just sold. But if I was just a consumer, not in this industry, I’d be like, I mean, it’s, it’d be like the equivalent of you know, somebody saying, I just got a, you know, I just got this big sale at the company I work at I close this big deal. It’s like we don’t do that, really, we might tell our friends and family and just close this big deal. But we don’t necessarily broadcast it, but Realtors do broadcast it. And that’s fine. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, but it shouldn’t. I don’t think it should be the primary, I don’t think anyone would say that should be the primary driver for what your content is, I think people you write are more interested in the story. They’re more interested in learning about you, and kind of what you’re into. And also, if you want to see really cool DIY before and afters, I encourage everybody go to Reddit and subscribe to the DIY subreddit. It is awesome. And there’s like, I think there’s millions of people subscribed to it. And you get to see all sorts of projects in there. And there’s a reason why millions of people are in they’re not everyone’s a DIY er that’s in there, but they just love lurking and seeing. So if you are somebody who does projects, check out the DIY subreddit, whether it’s a home renovation or just something outside of real estate, you could document a lot of that stuff, put it in social and it just shows people that you have passion and interest, and that you’re kind of doing cool stuff. So I’m a big, big believer in that as well. So that’s interesting. So you’re you’re an Instagramer more than anything tick tock is not your thing. I stay away from tick tock, I post our videos there, but I don’t browse tick tock for the exact reason you mentioned is I’m way too, I have way too much of an addictive personality, and I would get lost in it and hours would go away. So but whatever social media platform that that, you know, I think somebody is on, it’s probably the one, the one that they liked the most is probably the one where where they should spend the most time. But let’s let’s talk about so you had this great apprenticeship, sort of, you know, mentorship with one of the top producers here in Chicago. And then you had to make a transition because you and your husband just bought this place out in the western suburbs, you’re not all that close to the city as you used to be right in the city. And was that a bit of a trends, a transition as well for your business was it was the majority of your business in the city prior? And how is that shifted as you’ve moved out west? Sure. Kelly Carlson 24:04You know, it’s interesting, because at my age, late 20s, a lot of my clients, I think COVID kind of said this up. We’re moving out of the city maybe earlier than they had would have been in the past. And so I having grown up in the western suburbs, Clarendon Hills, I already had a pretty good knowledge of many of the western suburbs so I was able to help several buyers and some sellers out that way. So for a good portion of my time in the city, I was splitting my time a bit between western suburbs and the city. So I’d say the transition wasn’t it hasn’t felt you know, crazy, but I am now in a very, you know, hyperlocal market where most of the agents who do the business here live in town and Part of that I started to learn very quickly, it’s how many of the deals are happening off market, they don’t even hit the private market, they are happening, you know, just because there’s word of mouth in town. And so it kind of got me thinking that I would want to find a more local brokerage, I had such an amazing experience that angle Volkers and have nothing but amazing things to say about Jenny and the whole team. But I quickly realized that, you know, being kind of the new girl in town and being with a brokerage that had a very strong local presence would be an important piece for establishing myself here long term. So I’m still trying to figure it out. It’s, it’s still somewhat new. But I’ve got a really great business plan for 2024. And Trisha, Roberto is the managing broker for at properties, Hinsdale and Western Springs. And she’s been so wonderful at getting me ready for this next year. So D.J. Paris 25:59yeah, let’s talk about this next year. So what’s what’s on the marketing plan? I am always interested on you know, and again, I know you talked about with social media, you don’t necessarily have a training calendar, or sorry, a content calendar. But I’m curious on what kind of marketing efforts you plan to do to to find additional buyers and sellers in 2024. Kelly Carlson 26:21Absolutely. So my kind of big marketing campaign for 2024, I’m calling it going west, buying your first home in the western suburbs. So you know, there’s a lot of, you know, Chicago residents, their homeowner, maybe they own their condo, or they’re renting, they’re ready for that move to the suburbs, but they don’t, they’re maybe not from the area. And so they don’t have that knowledge of you know, if schools are important, where you know how to navigate that commuting to downtown, if they’re still going to work in the city, how to make that as easy of a transition as possible, what, you know, what are the things they like to do in the city that they can still find some version of out this way. And so so my focus is going to be helping with those first time suburban buyers. And that’ll be, you know, through kind of educational content on Instagram featuring different suburbs, local businesses, etc. But then also, something I’ve started implementing is suburb tours, where I will take a client out privately, for a couple of hours, and we’ll toward maybe, you know, five or six suburbs will drive around, I will share, you know, kind of my take on how that local market is, things that are notable about that town. And I think it’s a great way to get to know somebody before you start looking at homes. But it’s also, I think, a better way to get somebody out here versus maybe trying to drag them to a happy hour at, you know, of downtown bar in Western Springs. So that’s, that’s a big part of me. And in addition to kind of my typical, you know, newsletter, you know, I like to do quarterly client events, at boutique fitness studios, or maybe a fun, local Happy Hour spots, things like that. D.J. Paris 28:20You just said something that really, really sort of piqued my interest, because I was trying to think, as you were saying it, just like we’ve done over 500 episodes, has anyone ever said this before? And I don’t think anyone has. So I want to go back to something that you mentioned about these tours. I think this is a brilliant idea. And I’ve we we did not I did not know you were going to talk about this. So I’m so excited. Because now I just got to collect my thoughts. Because here’s what I was thinking. I’ve never heard of anybody doing this. So typically, you know, you work with a realtor, when you’re ready to buy, you already know approximately where you know, the city, you know, maybe even the subdivision if you’re out in the suburbs, or the neighborhood, if you’re in the city, whatever, you have a general idea. And we all hate when we get those buyers who call and they go, I’m open anything and you’re like, Oh, now we got to pick this out. But what I love about what you’re doing is you’re helping people make a decision of where they want to live, not the home itself, which you’ll do step two, step one is probably the most challenging of the steps is where should we live? And people normally go on that journey themselves. They do not usually have a guide with them. Yeah, maybe they’re watching YouTube videos, learning about different suburbs, but they’re not necessarily even being driven around to different suburbs going well, here’s some cool things about this one. And here’s some, you know, maybe not so cool things. And here’s this suburb and I mean that in Chicago, we have kind of I don’t know how many suburbs like probably more than 50 Altogether, villages and suburbs. So it can be really I’ve lived here 21 years and I still don’t really understand the suburbs. And so that’s what that would be Incredibly helpful for me if I was going to move out in the suburbs, and I’m in this industry, and I don’t know, I don’t know if you know anything about the suburbs. And so that is such an important thing is really what here’s what I heard you do. You thought about what the need is, what is the need? Well, people who live in the city, a lot of them move out to the suburbs, because they want to start a family get more space, whatever, lots of reasons. People typically move from urban to rural, and so great. So she Kelly knows this happens. That’s where you grew up, as well. And she thought, well, what’s one of the challenges with that? Well, picking up picking a place picking a an area to live to move in, and there’s so many different options. So I’m going to do these tours, I am so impressed with that, because that is an incredible service to provide. And absolutely I would be I would be thrilled if I was living in Chicago. And I was like, Well, I gotta move out to the suburbs, I need more space. And then I have to go out and I gotta figure out, I gotta look at all the suburbs I got as a huge thing. And so for you to take somebody around or take a group of people around for a few hours. Amazing. I can’t imagine is I’ve never heard of anyone else doing that I’m sure other people do. But it’s got to be it’s not like a unique thing that you came up with. Kelly Carlson 31:14Yeah, I was, you know, I was really struggling to brainstorm, you know, how do I get that type of person? You know, they’re not going to take the train out here to come to an event of mine. But I think I think like you said, just kind of what is that need? And how can I steal that? Ensure you are spending upfront kind of a lot of time upfront with a person. But you know, I think when you invest in somebody like that, they’re more likely to want to invest in you. And it also I think, can save some time on the back end, because you aren’t spinning your wheels, touring 10 different areas, because they have no idea what they want. D.J. Paris 31:54Yeah. And if you even if you video, some of it, and not necessarily videoing the client you’re taking out but if you take some quick little shots, you can then put those together and create clips of like, hey, we did a tour today we toured these four suburbs, we showed, you know, we showed them the downtown’s and the schools, whatever. And you could actually make that into content as well. And I would think, you know, that’s a tremendous value that an agent can provide is, you know, this idea of being the gateway to the actual house, I think is devalued a little bit right now, because we have the ability as consumers to find properties on our own, we really don’t need a realtor for that. It’s good realtors are worth their weight in gold. But it’s for I think it’s for a lot of stuff like what you’re talking about, I think it’s really like, Hey, can you help me figure out where I should live? Like, that’s the really, that’s value. Anyone can search Zillow and find a property. So I love the fact that you do that I’m I’m sort of stepping on this point a little bit, because I want our agents to know like this is the way you should think about it is what are the needs that my clients have? What is something that maybe is a decision that they are going to have to make? That’s a challenging one? And how can I make it easier for them before they even know that they want to use me, because before you buy a home, you got to figure out what area you’re at. So you’re actually doing a step before they’re even thinking necessarily about calling a realtor. So I really want to give you kudos to that. Because that is really an impressive and impressive thing. Let’s talk about when the market is slower. So right now the market is slower. Interest rates are higher than anyone would like inventory is down. What are you doing to stay busy? Because and also, by the way, majority of your friends probably aren’t moving out to the suburbs, or I don’t know, you know, majority of your city friends are probably still in the city. And maybe they’re renting maybe they’re buying but I imagine you know, not a lot of 29 year olds are probably purchasing right now. So you know, your, your peers. So what are you doing to sort of stay active, stay busy in a down market? Kelly Carlson 34:01Sure. And one thing I do want to clarify is that I even though I live in the western suburbs now, I’m still working on my city business too. I’m sure that might change over time. But I think especially with having at properties be all over the city, I’ve got access to, you know, the River North office and the Western Springs one. So I’m still, you know, keeping somewhat busy with that, but it is a down market things are slower. And I think it’s easy for agents to immediately freak out and my brain has gone to those places too. But I really have tried to think of it as an opportunity of, you know, this is the gift of time that I don’t have in the spring market when I’m running around with like a chicken with their head cut off. No time to breathe, and all those projects that I wanted to do I now have the time to So an easy one. for this time of year is, you know, if you’re not sending out a holiday card, you absolutely have the time. You know, whether it’s handwritten, or it’s a cool, you know, personalized postcard, I’d say, spending the time and truly writing a nice note to your clients, your vendor partners, friends, family, etc. So that’s something I’m working on these next couple of weeks. But on top of that, I think just keeping up with my CRM, and I live and breathe by that. So that is my reminder system for reaching out to everybody from past clients. And just checking in and seeing how people are doing, inviting people to go get coffee and lunches again, it’s the stuff that I didn’t have the time for that I am doing now, in addition to just really fine tuning that business plan for next year. D.J. Paris 35:54Yeah, let’s Kelly Carlson 35:56broker tours to, you know, go yes. This is your time to do it. Yeah. D.J. Paris 36:03Agreed. And the reason why people should go to broker opens, there’s a lot of reasons. One is to learn inventory in the area, but also to build relationships. You know, we are, we are human apes. And we, we like connection, we’re interpersonally wired. So we’re wired for connection. We’re wired for also familiarity. So if you are going to broker opens, if you’re participating in the industry, if you’re making friends, if you’re going to events and you know doing Association stuff, you’re just going to meet a lot of other agents. And guess what happens when they receive an offer for one of their listings from your buyer, and they see your name. They’re like, Oh, I know Kelly Kelly’s awesome. Does that influence maybe their decision? Well, in a perfect world, it wouldn’t. But does it? Of course it does. Of course it does. So you want to make as many relationships as you can. With other realtors, obviously, you want to play nice in the sandbox. It is a cooperative commission. But let’s remember that these are little little ways that you can give yourself a slight psychological advantage you want when somebody sees your offer coming through, you want them to be like, Oh my god, I love Kelly, I’m so glad her buyer wants to buy this. Right. That’s, that’s the reaction you want from the listing agent. And I think you know, not enough is really said about that. And yes, obviously, the listing agent wants to do the very best for their seller. But it definitely doesn’t hurt to see a familiar face from that buyer’s agent. So guys, really great suggestion there, go to the broker opens, go to the open houses, go to the events, make friends, it might just help you win a deal that you don’t know, in that you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Especially if maybe you come in at the exact same price and conditions as some other agent they go. I don’t know the other agent. I know Kelly, right. So that might be just what ends up winning you the deal. So really great suggestion. Really great suggestion there. I also wanted to you mentioned your your you do newsletters and you do some time. Oh, I want to talk about your CRM. So I know what I I wanted to ask, I want to drill down just a little bit because pretty much every brokerage has, or at least you know most brokerages offer a CRM or you can go out and purchase one on your own. What is your How does your CRM tell you what to do? In other words, do you have it set up so that every one of your prospects or clients gets a certain you get a reminder to call them on a certain day? Or email tax? Like how does that work for you? Kelly Carlson 38:34Yeah, so I, and I’ve worked with a few different CRMs over the years, paid for one, you know, had one to end and now I’ve got one in app properties. And I think the what makes the most sense to me is, you know, first you categorize your different groups of people into maybe, you know, your A, B and C. And so those A’s are, I’m getting a reminder, at least monthly to reach out to them. If it’s, you know, a new Open House lead or new buyer referral, etc, they are getting much more frequent reminders like that, at least, you know, a couple of times a week during that first, you know, first month or so after the introduction. But then I’ve got you know, my VCs who maybe will work with, maybe not everybody is on my newsletter, so everybody will get that monthly, but those, you know, B and C’s, they’re getting, I’m getting reminders quarterly to reach out to them. So I think spending the time it does take some time to organize your CRM and that way I think has saved me so much time nowadays, because I’m not going through everyone individually and saying I don’t really need to reach out to that person. The system just does it for me. So it’s helped me prioritize the big ones. Yeah, D.J. Paris 39:53yeah. So you categorize you, you. You put each one into a particular group A, B, C, etc. And then you have a particular number of touches that you wish to do over the course of a certain period of time a year, whatever. And so every day you wake up and you have a list of to dues that’s kind of automatically generated for you to keep you on track. Is that my understanding? Kelly Carlson 40:15Yes. And yeah, so I don’t have it, like sending out emails for me, I, I don’t, I don’t like the automated stuff. But so it just, I can decide that if I want to text the person or call them depending on the relationship, or if I saw something on their social media recently that I want to congratulate them on. But it’s just a reminder, to have some kind of touchpoint. D.J. Paris 40:39Yeah, do something with so and so. And whether it’s comment on a social media post, pick up the phone and call them, write them a note, text them, whatever it is, almost doesn’t matter, just that you’re doing something that lets them know that you’re thinking about them in some way. And you know, as simple as this is, I think the vast majority of agents don’t set up their systems this way, where you don’t really want to wake up every morning and go, What should I do today, that’s just too much to the candle. It’s too much to try to figure out as a realtor, it’s, you got too many responsibilities, there’s too many just options. What you really want is somebody to hand you, you know, virtually a little thing that says, These are the 10 people you have to reach out to today. And then you go okay, I just have to do that. And it just chunking your life into that’s what a CRM for me is just can make life a lot easier for just says, All you got to do today is deal with these, these 1015 things and then you never have to worry about losing touch with somebody, you don’t have to go Oh, when’s the last time I called so and so because you will let you know, unless you fell behind on your CRM tasks, you will know exactly when the last time you chatted with that person and how that worked. And again, this is all kind of like customer service slash marketing 101. But it is also something that’s easy to forget to do. It’s you know, I call these like the push ups of real estate, it’s like, it’s really hard. It’s hard to do it. But it’s a really good idea. And it’s super simple, right? So it’s super simple to pick up the phone and go, Hey, I was thinking about you how you doing? I am on a couple of realtor friends of mine, a couple of I must be on a few of their CRMs, I get a call from a friend. Every single month, he calls me, and it’s the sweetest. And I’m not, I’m never gonna be a client of his I’m a realtor as well. He calls me once a month and goes, we’re not. I won’t mention his name. But we don’t go out socially. I mean, we have before but we’re not that close. Every single month, he calls me and he’s like, I was just thinking about you. And I’m sure it showed up on a CRM to call DJ today. But you know what, it makes me feel special, it really is a nice thing. And he’s a sweetheart for doing it. Because I’m never going to be his client. But he’s, he’s, he’s still putting me through that system. And, boy, I got a call last night from him. And I was like, God, I love that you do this, even though it’s not going to benefit you directly in your business. You’re just a good dude for doing it. And I’ll tell you, people, people know that stuff. So if you can just be somebody who’s, you know, a lot of a lot of my people, service professionals in my life, don’t contact me, outside of business stuff. And I you know, I think it’s a great idea. If you don’t have a CRM, as Kelly said, now’s the time to sort of put that together. You’re not as busy right now. Now’s the time. Kelly, what other suggestions would you have for somebody who’s in their 20s? Who got or 30s? Or it doesn’t matter? The age doesn’t matter newer to the business? And it’s going oh, my gosh, this is such a hard market? Like what do you would you recommend? If you had to start all over today and you knowing what you know, now, what might you suggest open houses? We talked about? Organizing your sphere of influence? Are you putting everybody you know, in, in your, in your database? Is it like, hey, even the dry cleaner? Who knows my name? Am I putting those people in? Like how detailed do you get with yours? Kelly Carlson 43:51I probably should be better at adding everybody under the sun. I know, I know everybody in it. So I, you know, have scrubbed it at one point. And I didn’t know, you know, a number of emails that like you know what, that’s just taking up room and space. So I’d say I know, of at least every person in there, but I probably should get better at just adding in because it’s so easy to add somebody to a newsletter drip campaign. If they unsubscribe, they unsubscribe and that’s okay. But you never know. They might read something that resonates with them. And that’s, you know, happened a few times where I’ve not even knowing that person was subscribed and they replied, You know, I wonder newsletter, blah, blah, blah, I have a question for you. So I think leaving those opportunities open is a good reason to have them in your CRM for sure. If D.J. Paris 44:44you didn’t have a big sphere of influence, and you’re a newer realtor, how might you expand that? How might you start to add people to your database? If you were what would you suggest to a new agent? Kelly Carlson 44:55Yeah, I mean, I’d say obviously open houses kind of keep going back to that. But I mean, you got to be diligent. And after that, you might get a list of names and sit down and organize them nicely into your CRM, that’s a great way for me to build my CRM over time. Sorry, I hope you can’t hear my dog in the background right now. And then also getting involved in various organizations for maybe join an intramural League, or, you know, whatever it is get involved in your condos, one of their committees, and I think it’s a great way, you know, you’re getting to know these people. So you’re not like spamming and stealing their email addresses. But chance opportunities, where you are getting to meet a lot of new people. And there’s a way to, you know, contact them, you have their information, I see no problem with adding them. And that’s a good way to build your CRM as well. Yeah, I always, D.J. Paris 45:56I always love it, Brian Buffini had said that he goes, if you really want to be successful as an agent, and you’re newer, he goes meet two to five people every single day, which is not an easy task. But if you can meet two to five people a day be like, Oh, by the way, I’m a realtor, oh, if you know, if you give me your email, I’ll stay in touch with you or something. If that’s all you did, and you just met two people a day, and you did that, let’s just say 200 days out of the year. So that’s adding 400 people to your database. Within a couple of years, you’re going to be flush with business. Kelly Carlson 46:27Absolutely. And yeah, and for those that are building, and it’s a smaller pool, like really cultivate that, and make those people feel, you know, important and connected and taking good care of that small group of people, they’ll naturally want to, you know, introduce you to their friends and family. So I think it kind of goes back to adding value to the consumer. Yeah. D.J. Paris 46:58Have you run into ever any issues where you know, and again, you’re, you’re a younger person, you have a youthful look, as well. So curious if that’s ever been a challenge for you, as you’ve been growing your business as it’s like, Oh, you look so young, you know, maybe too young to be a realtor, I’m not suggesting you look so young, too young to be a realtor. But has that ever come up? And is that ever a hurdle that you’ve had to had to work with? I Kelly Carlson 47:23get that all the time. Still, I am sure when I’m a little bit older, I will appreciate it. But it is a challenge when you’re younger agents, and you are competing against very established brokers who have been doing this for 20 plus years. So I’d say the first thing is being willing to learn. So if you don’t have that listing, yet, like offered to help, and learn every aspect of the listing process and the buying process, and once you have data that you can price, the experience, I think that is what speaks for itself. You know, obviously doing the research, if you are up for a listing, and really, you know, getting into the data and really proving yourself that way, I think that can be helpful, but I think experience is a big part of it. And it’s hard to get that experience when you are young. So I really think the best way is just offering to help even if it’s you’re getting paid to $25 to cover a showing or $50 for an inspection or whatever it is. It’ll just make you more confident when you are in the moment with a client’s. But it can also I think, help to demonstrate, you know, your value and, and your experience. D.J. Paris 48:45Yeah, I couldn’t agree more, just do as much as you can do as much activity as you can don’t worry about getting paid as much as getting experience. Really a great, great place to wrap up. I also want to remind all of our listeners if you have clients or you have friends that live in the city of Chicago, or the suburbs, but specifically if they’re in the city and thinking about making that move to the suburbs, but maybe you don’t work the suburbs, or maybe you’re not an agent in Chicago, maybe you’re an agent somewhere else, but you’re one of our listeners, Kelly is would be a great resource for those clients. I again, I just love the idea that she takes people on tours to help them figure out what suburb is the best fit, you’re going to such a cool thing. So if you have clients that you don’t may have that experience in any one to refer to Kelly or you have clients, you know you’re in a different state and they move here and they’re thinking about making that trip out west. Kelly B Kelly would love the opportunity to chat with you. So definitely reach out to her. And the best way to do that is you can find her she’s all over online but you go to our website Kelly Carlson, it’s Kelly, ke ll y Carlson homes.com. We will have a link to that in the show notes. Also follow her on Instagram I’m Kelly Carlson homes, you can see some of the cool, non bragging stuff that she does on there about about her projects that she works on in our interests. And also, we want I want to thank you, Kelly, on behalf of all of our listeners, for coming on our show. This is really exciting for us. I love chatting with younger realtors who are really making a huge splash. Not that’s not my opinion. That’s the National Association of REALTORS opinion about you. So I’m really grateful that you came on our show today because you really are somebody that agents should be following, even just to see what Kelly’s doing. So maybe you can get some good ideas and replicate some of that success for yourself. So follow her on Instagram, Kelly Carlson homes, go to our website. And if you think you might be a partner for Kelly, or guess what guys, people move out of the suburbs too. And they move to Florida and in Arizona and lots of places from Chicago. So maybe you’re in one of those markets. And he will say hey, Kelly, I want to know when one of your clients is looking to move, reach out to her, she would love the opportunity to chat and see if there’s a there’s a fit there. So, Kelly, on behalf of our audience, thank you, thank you so much for coming on. On behalf of Kelly and myself, the audience, we love you. We are so grateful that you stick around to the end of the episode, please tell a friend about our show. Think of one other realtor that could benefit send them a link. And also leave us a review that really really helps us with our cert with just being seen in the various podcast directories. So let us know what you think of the show. We take your suggestions very, very seriously to heart. We want to always make the show better for you. So tell a friend and leave us a review and we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks Kelly. Thank Kelly Carlson 51:44you so much DJ, this is such a treat.

Need some fresh ideas that will get clicks? Learn from Video Boot Camp educator Kim Rittberg 3 easy and impactful ideas you can make today! If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Connect with Kim Rittberg on Instagram. Kim’s Video Boot Camp: Apply now for her winter coaching group. Grab her free download – 10 Tips to Make Better Video in Less Time. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today our resident video expert Kim Rydberg is going to show you three easy videos you can make today that will get people to click. 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. Kim Rittberg 1:33Right today, we are talking about three easy videos that people will actually want to watch. And not just people, the buyers and sellers and potential clients. Hey, everyone, I’m Kim Rydberg. I’m an award winning video marketer. And I have my signature video bootcamp program that has seen so many agents come through. I love teaching agents like you how to grow your business with video because your phone right there is the most cost efficient way to market yourself. And the thing you need to do in 2024, if you haven’t done it yet, you’re not too late ish, sort of just kidding, but it’s never too late. And I really want to focus today on the three videos that you can make easily that people will actually watch. And I don’t mean that in a snarky way. But a lot of people are making videos that people don’t watch and it ends up being frustrating. You’re wasting your time you’re wasting your money. So I’m gonna advise you on what videos you should make that will be fruitful that people will click on you will connect with people and then you will actually sell more houses. How did I get here, I have in the past year have spoken at the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices convention, the women’s Real Estate Investment Summit. Before that, I was a TV news producer for 10 years writing and producing stories about all types of different topics. And I launched the first ever video unit for Us Weekly magazine, or to People Magazine, Netflix. What you need to know is that I love storytelling. And I really understand how to make good content that makes people want to buy from you. I shifted from journalism into branded content, which then brought me into real estate specifically, and I’ve had hundreds of agents across the country, take my video bootcamp course and work with me one on one to actually bring in clients. So I’m gonna sprinkle a little of that. Oh, and if you’re on the video, you can see I got some trophies in the background because I’ve won some awards for my video work, but it’s not about me. It’s about you and how I can help you make some money. So one idea that actually I was it’s on my list, I did my video bootcamp course I have a workbook that I give you all these great story prompts. And we were talking about in a brainstorm one video is a great video that I think every real estate agent who has any stories to share should be making is a story about a crazy moment in real estate. So real estate is known, you know, for it’s up, it’s down. It’s crazy. You you you think you’re seeing a beautiful farm you walk in, you’re like, oh, you know, someone, someone in my video bootcamp said they were going to do a showing, and they walked in, and someone was like, in bed, in bed during the showing. And, you know, the deal didn’t happen. But that’s a really, really funny story. These sorts of stories where you’re showing people who you are your personality, that you’re like a really good person, a cool person, a relatable person. It also shows people sort of subconsciously through the backdoor, that you are someone who sold a lot of homes, because if you have crazy stories, it means you sold enough homes, bought enough homes so that you have stories, right. So we’re kind of like backdoor bragging that I’m a successful real estate agent. But on top of that, people will click on crazy stories because the stories are funny, like any sort of crazy story people want to hear. They don’t know how it’s going to end. It has an element of surprise those are really good storytelling tools. So number one, a great video to make is sharing a crazy real estate story and it doesn’t have to be like the most epic thing but it could just be like something funny that happened. And this is something to remember, this is the sort of video that will appeal to anybody who wants to hear a funny story but also other agents will chime in engagement is engagement, you really do want people to weigh in and get that engagement going. The more people comment, the more people other people comment. So it really does help out a lot. And another, this is funny, another one of my agents shared a story where like, they were selling a property to a celebrity, and it just like went totally haywire. And the person came in, I think the person was like, really tall, the ceilings were too short. Anyway, that was funny. And so number one crazy real estate story, make sure to share that. And the reason why that is important. And same as with these other ones is, when you’re thinking about what videos to make, you always need to step back and build a strategy. And that’s something I do with all of my students, my clients, before we ever hit record, we really build out that strategy. What am I consistently showing up and talking about? What am I consistently showing up and teaching being really steady and consistent with that, so someone goes to your page and knows who you are immediately. So you’re building the know like, and trust factor making someone trust you, like you relate to you on a personal level, because this is going to be a big transaction, right, you’re going to be their partner in all of this, it’s very important to remember that. And in addition to in addition to the crazy real estate story, a behind the scenes of a deal. Could be a great, great, great video, one video I did with one of my real estate agents, he, you know, one, a good way to start to give ideas is just start writing down moments that have happened, moments in deals, things that were challenging things that were interesting, big wins. So one of his wins, he had done a letter writing campaign to get someone to sell. And he ended up bringing on his house selling it went really well. He got a good commission. So what I thought was alright, let’s turn that story into how I turned 55 cents a stamp or whatever stamp was at that point, how I turned 55 cents into $50,000. And it’s taking the idea that you can write a letter and all it costs is the cost of the stamp, but you’re making this huge commission off of it. That hasn’t really good headline in it. So bringing people behind the scenes of your deal, did it almost fall apart one of my other I have these two ages. I love them. They’re based in Westchester, New York, they by mistake killed a blueberry bush of when they were getting the house ready for sale. Instead of hiding behind that they just had fun with it. And they sort of talked about it like the time we killed our clients, blueberry bush, and they just kind of had fun with it and made it like not such a big deal. That’s a great idea. So the behind the scenes of a deal. It could be did the deal almost fall apart? How did you salvage it? Did you end up selling it for a lot more than you were expecting? Was there a bidding war? Did you show up and you thought it was x? And it was actually why like whatever is happening, bring people into it because people love to hear stuff that they don’t know. People are voyeurs. That is why they’re online. Alright, so we got the crazy real estate story or behind the scenes of a deal. That’s idea number one. All right, the next one, as I mentioned before, I worked in TV for a long time, and I worked at a news magazine show called inside edition, and a lot of their segments are like, you’ve never seen a room like this. I’m like, oh, what’s in the room is it like, filled with spiders, and you know, kind of selling it as this wow factor. So you can sometimes isolate a thing in a house or apartment, an area and focus in on that one thing. So selecting something that’s really big, or really small. It’s not the words not hyperbolic, I’m forgetting the word. But making something like on a big scale. So here’s an example. One of my clients who went to this, the showing it was I don’t even think it was his it wasn’t his property, he just went to the showing. It had a bed, that is remote control bed that Phil that comes down from the ceiling. I mean, that’s very, very cool. So the video was just about the bed. That video got millions of views. So when you’re thinking about how you’re going to present, not every video inside a home has to be a tour. Sometimes you can go to a place and there’s like something really interesting. And you can just zoom in on that moment. And make that big, right? It could be another one of my agents was telling me about that. People are really wanting plunge pools, like really cold water plunge pools. So that could be like a reveal. You know, I think she and I built together that idea is the number one thing clients are wanting right now. A plunge pool and how you can make that video is you can either just film the actual thing you’re talking about, or you could film you’re getting into it, right? I mean, I hate cold water. So I’m not gonna volunteer myself, but you could be getting into that pool and you know, expressing like, oh my gosh, it’s really cold, but it feels so good. I feel really alive. So when we’re talking about the next one, it’s something big, something small, something on the extreme. It’s on the extremes. And again, it doesn’t have to be your own property. This could be someone else’s property, but picking something out, it could be something amazing on the ceiling, right? It could be like an old tin ceiling. And likewise, you could also pick out something similar to this in your town or your city, right, as a real estate agent, you are the expert, you are people’s part, you’re like the tourism office, right? So you can be highlighting those factors. And as I mentioned before, actually, several of my agents have been keeping it real. So you might have heard them. Kathy, Jessica, Josh, Debbie, Steven, anyway, a lot of my agents have been on the show, and they’ve talked about the things that they show how they market what they bring in. So something really big and something really special is a great way to really highlight that. Now, the last one that I think is super important that people overlook is something personal, a video that people click on something personal, that you’re revealing. I’m not talking about like the deep dark secret that you like, have never shared with anybody, I’m not talking about that. But when you’re online, you’re really allowing for people to get to know you through any door, the front door, or the side door or the back door or whatever you want people to just know about you to engage with your content. So not every single video should be home tour. Not every single video or piece of content should be you and your dog. Okay, so we step back and we create a really, really great big strategy. That’s what we do. In my video bootcamp. And in my in my client work, we always sit down and create that strategy. But a big part of that strategy is connecting people to you as a person. So one video you could do is five things you don’t know about me. And it’s just you can get video of you doing work, walking through a house, walking your dog, the footage can be whatever you want it to be. And you can either voice it over or add text, but bring in those factors like so for me. Something you don’t know about me. I would maybe say, Hey, I’m Kim, some things you didn’t know about me. I backpacked I took a gap year and I backpack for a year. I used to play lacrosse. I am a certified scuba diver. I speak Spanish. I hate olives. And I have two children. So it’s kind of a mix of things that some people can connect with me on. And other people are like, Oh, that’s interesting. So maybe if someone has kids, they might say, Oh, how old are your kids? Maybe if someone’s a scuba diver, they’d be like, Oh, I snorkel or I scuba dive, you know, and they want to comment on that. Weirdly, people always comment about my olives. They’re like, how can you hit all of your horrible evil person, but it’s true, I do hate olives. So again, you’re really trying to bring people into your life. And we’re not again, that one is not about I won this award, I close this much deals, I earned this much money. This personal video is not about that. It’s really about bringing people in to get to know you as a human. So as we know, you’re trying to expand your sphere of influence. And so some of your deals are gonna be coming through friends, family, cousins, former colleagues, people, you just met other business owners in the area. So when you’re putting out that personal video, you’re allowing people to pull back the curtain and get to know you a little bit. You will also see, as you make the video, put that video out, people will show up and comment that you did not realize followed you at all or have been active. And so that’s a really a good start to continue to engage with people, people you haven’t seen in 10 years, people you just met last week. Don’t forget that. The social media world is an online coffee shop. So don’t treat it like, Oh, I’m gonna post this no one’s gonna comment or like, I’m not going to look I’m going to I’m too weird. I feel weird about it. I’m just going to post in running, go get my coffee, no, post it, come back later. See who liked it. You commented on it respond to every single comment. That’s true for every post. But people will comment on a personal story in different ways that aren’t going to comment on your home tour. I’m not saying don’t do the home tour, I feel very strongly about home tours. You need to do them. Sometimes you get business from them fine. Sometimes, they’re not building you up as this amazing expert, you need to layer on other content on top of that, and Home Tour should not be 90% of your content. It should be some percent, but not 90%. So we are talking about those three videos that will get people to click let me talk about I already told told you why people will click on each one. The craziest real estate story. Oh, I want to go back sorry about personal. So this is something I think is really, really important. And I’ve been working with more of my agent clients to push more of them out of this. So one of my agents, Jessica, I love her. She’s a great personality and she has kids and I’ve been pushing her to include more content of her as a mom and like in her regular life and being more of like every person all of us I think kind of our in our professional world. And so pushing ourselves to open up more and show more of that and she’s gotten crazy engagement sky high engagement so much more than before. One of my other age I just had this great video about an inspirational motivational video actually about changing their life. They went, I think they had a huge weight loss and like change their lifestyle, but they did a video about that. And it works because I think that’s a part of your story. And that’s a part of who you are, that really lets people get to know you better. So the personal can be very powerful when layered in with professional as a part of a strategy. So I don’t want to see dog walking photo dog walking video, and then like beach vacation video, and then shopping video like that doesn’t that doesn’t necessarily connect as a strategy. But when you have when we work together, we create the strategy. Some of its professional and some of it is personal but tied together. Alright, so we’re talking today about the three easy videos that will get people to click we have sharing behind the scenes of a deal or a crazy real estate story. Awesome. These are great ideas, they will get a lot of people to be like, Oh my god, are you kidding? All of these ideas. Don’t forget to engage with people who comment on them, ask a question, connect with them in a real way. So we got the craziest real estate story that you have something really big, something really small, just like zooming in on a special factor. And then a third video is something personal about you. Now, how do you make these videos, you can make the videos however you feel comfortable doing it. A video when you make a video, it can be as simple as you talking to camera. Don’t forget to add captions when people watch without sound they can follow along. You can also show footage of what you’re talking about. So when we’re talking about something really big, or something really small, you’re filming that item, you’re either talking over it or adding text for the personal video. For the Personal about you video, you can either share photos of yourself from different parts of your lives. Or, or you can film yourself doing something related to that, like if I’m going to share that I speak Spanish or but it’s not as visible that I hit all this, I might have like me picking up balls and throw them in the garbage. If I have a video, if I mentioned that I love to travel, I would probably put in a photo of me in Cambodia when I was younger. And so I would really want to bring that story to life. Again, if you’re not super comfortable making the videos. Don’t worry, in my video bootcamp class, you’ll learn how to do that. But keep it simple. I always say Keep It Simple until you’re ready to do a little bit more. So I want to see you make these videos and even if you can’t make a full video, do it as just an Instagram story. If you’re on Instagram, you record it, you post it, it goes away after a day. So if you don’t love it, that’s okay, record it, post it and tag me in it. You can always reuse the story later. Make sure to tag me I’m at Kim Redburn KMRITB RG and I mentioned before video bootcamp, I run this video bootcamp course for agents across the country. They’re all seeing higher engagement more client leads, they’re opening new business through it. It’s fantastic. It’s a live coaching class. So message me on Instagram. I also have a free download 10 tips to make videos that make you money in less time. More money in less time. That’s like key. So I have a free download and you can grab that in the show notes. You can grab that from my Instagram. And if you’re just joining me for video bootcamp, make sure to message me again I’m at Kim Rydberg K IMRIT, t b e r g and I love helping you unleash the power of video. To grow your business. You really can supercharge your business with video it’s just about understanding how exactly to do that. I love to keeping it real people to make sure to tag me message me on Instagram or Facebook wherever you’re at, and I hope you have a great day.

Pieter Hanson talks about how he transitioned from a banking career into commercial real estate business and finally to residential real estate. Pieter discusses how his health struggles have impacted his life and priorities. Pieter also talks about today’s real estate market, how agents can stop exiting the business and what are the useful skills for agents even in the era of AI. Last, Pieter discusses keeping in touch in between transactions and how he does that. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Pieter Hanson can be reached at 563-529-4000 and PIETER@PTHANSON.COM. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Can a realtor be successful in both residential and commercial? Well, a lot of people would say no, but we found somebody who would say yes, stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with Peter Hanson. But before we get to Peter, just a couple of quick reminders. Actually, I have something new to say. I normally say the same things every time but I have a new thing. So it was coming to my attention that via the different podcast apps that only about 300 of our 515 episodes show up that is a limitation of what’s called an RSS feed. It’s not we would love to have all of our episodes available. So we actually do but you’re only going to see the top the most recent 300 in you know, whatever podcast app, you might be listening to us. And so if you want to actually go back further, and many people do, because the idea was to create this library of content that would really be applicable anytime. So I’d love for you to grieve and go back into the archives. Well, how do you do that? Well, you can go to our website, keeping it real pod.com every single episode we’ve ever done is there and that’s probably the only place you can find all of them until they update technology and allow for more than 300 episodes to pass through a fee. But anyway, you guys can go to the website if you want to. We’d love to have you check out the website. We’re very proud of it. And you can listen to every episode we’ve ever done. So thank you for that. Also, please leave us a review and tell a friend but let’s get to the main event, my conversation with Peter Hanson. Today my guest is Peter Hanson with real broker in Quad Cities which if you’re not familiar with the Quad Cities, this is what borders Illinois and Iowa there’s four cities as as you might suspect, two on each side. This is like the northwest corner of Illinois, and the northeast corner of Iowa. But let me tell you more about Peter. Now after high school, Peter joined the US Navy after his time in the Navy and then he went to college. He actually worked in retail and also then private banking. In 2007. He resigned from the bank and opened a bar and grill that is still thriving today. 18 years later, congratulations for making it through the pandemic also amazing. But that’s not all. He then got his real estate license in both Illinois and Iowa in that same year. So he worked for a local hometown broker in their commercial division from 2007 to 2014. And to 2014 he transitioned to the residential division, where he practiced both commercial and residential real estate and in 2022. If that wasn’t enough, he partnered with a local microbrew and opened another restaurant just this last October I guess last October to October Scott. He has a long term girlfriend named Julie also my mom’s name, who owns a dog kennel with her sister and live and they live on the property. He enjoys golfing, fishing, hunting and casual Jeep and or Harley riding on the weekends. He has one daughter and three grandkids who live here in my hometown. Well not my hometown, but where I live Chicago. Please follow Peter out his website which is Peter Hanson. realtor.com Peter spelled p i e t e r so Peter with an eye at the beginning p i e t Are Hansen realtor.com You can also find him on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, we will have links to all of that in the show notes. He’s probably the only Peter Hanson, which is p i e, t r, so you can find them really easily. Or you can click the links to his social media, right from our show notes. Peter, welcome to the show. Pieter Hanson 5:18Thanks for having me. D.J. Paris 5:21Really excited to speak with you. It’s amazing, all the things you’ve done. And I think the a lot of what you what you’ve done in your career are some of the hardest professions I’m really, really impressed. Usually people have success at one thing, you are consistently having success and a number, a number of buckets. And I am always so impressed by talking to people who operate at a high level. So tell us see, so from what I understand your story correctly, you went into the Navy, came out, went to school, then had a couple of jobs in retail, and then and then in banking, and then why the switch to real estate just out of curiosity. So I Pieter Hanson 6:05opened up the bar and grill at the same time I got my real estate license, and the bar was always a dream of mine to do I had an opportunity, I liked my job at the bank, and the bank is still a great friend of mine and a great resource and, and a great community bank here in the Quad Cities. But I was getting more and more responsibility that I really didn’t like, I was having to work later hours and, and I just thought you know what I’m gonna do this bar thing I’m gonna get out of the bank, and I need some income. And, and I thought, you know, I’ve always thought real estate, people who are successful were successful because of not necessarily how smart they were, but how many people liked them. And I felt like I had a pretty significant sphere of influence, a pretty great background from the banking and, and the retail side and how to deal with customers and people in the public. And so I thought, hey, I’m gonna open this bar, and I’ll ease into the real estate thing. So that’s kind of how it worked. It’s D.J. Paris 7:11amazing that you took on two things at the same time, both of which required tremendous activity. However, maybe one feeds the other in a certain way, I suspect, it’s probably been times where patrons of the bar have ended up becoming clients as well. I’m assuming that happens once in a while. So Pieter Hanson 7:33to your point, I got into real estate, if you people can remember, 2007 2008 was probably the worst time to ever make this change. And I told myself, that if I can survive in 2007, and 2008 going forward in real estate, if I can survive, then I am going to be positioned perfectly to survive when times are good. And we know that that’s a cyclical thing. And it’s going to drop and up and drop and down. And so I chose that as a challenge and an opportunity to thrive. And I do think that there are some parallels between the bar and real estate. However, when I went into real estate, it was in the commercial division. That’s right. Yeah. And around the Quad Cities, the commercial division is a good old boy network, if you know what I mean. I mean, I were in Chicago, too. I was a newcomer with no experience. And I really had to scrape and fight for everything that I got. Having said that all these people that I’m meeting through the bar, and and all these new relationships I’m establishing are asking me if I can help them buy a house. And I thought to myself, I if I can sell a million dollar building, I can I can sell a house? Well, my broker didn’t allow that. The commercial broker that I work for said, You’re a commercial agent, you refer all those. So I started referring those leads. And finally in 2014, I actually added up the commission that I would have received had I not referred them and I thought this is dumb, I got to get out of commercial and into residential. So that’s how that worked. D.J. Paris 9:18Wow. And now you do you do both. And now Pieter Hanson 9:22I do both. Yes. So one of the things that when I when I got my license and I worked for a local broker, one of the things and I and I actually went from the commercial broker to the residential broker was the same broker. But the policy the company policy is that that you can sell residential and commercial but you say it can’t sell commercial and residential. And the way they explained it to me was that if you went to the ER to get your fingers stitched up because you cut it with a knife, you’d let a thoracic surgeon so your finger up right. But if you went to the emergency room for How to Have a heart transplant, you wouldn’t let an ER doc do that. Right? And so they kind of compare that that, you know, if you can do commercial, you can handle residential, but the same does not always work the opposite way. D.J. Paris 10:14How do you feel about that? Now? Do you agree with that? I will tell you my my opinion, it depends again, on the sector of commercial because certain sectors are certainly more complicated, and, you know, industrial buildings and land development. And some of those things, to me are like almost like Alien and foreign. But I don’t totally disagree with that. I think there is some intelligence there that a residential agent ought to, in many cases refer to a commercial broker, but a commercial broker, certainly, I think the training tends to be a lot stronger for commercial, there tends to be a just a lot, you’re serving a lot more masters in a deal. There’s a lot that can go wrong, and you just are exposed to a lot of different things. But I’m curious what what are your thoughts today on on that policy? Pieter Hanson 11:01I do agree with you. 100%, a commercial agent, you know, commercial is Buyer beware. So there aren’t as many disclosures and cover your, your rear end kind of documents, but at the same time, it’s a slower sales cycle. And you really have to learn to think outside the box, get creative and understand spreadsheets and, and how accountants feel because a commercial decision, commercial building is sold on a financial basis based on the numbers not Oh, I love this building, I have to have it. Whereas a house is a very emotional decision. And, and as long as you qualify can make it happen. That’s D.J. Paris 11:41amazing. I have my brother in law is a commercial broker in Tampa, and he works with a lot of retail, and shopping centres and things of that nature. And so, which is a little closer, I guess, in some ways to, to residential, maybe. But it’s, you know, he can work on deals for two or three years before they close. And then when they close, it’s a wonderful day, but it is a lot of hand wringing and sweating for those three years. Well, yeah, for sure. For sure that residential provides probably more stability. And also just, you know, there’s just maybe just more opportunity there in certain markets, Pieter Hanson 12:21well, in the train, the transaction is way more fun to you know, there’s nothing more satisfying than helping a first time homebuyer or, or helping somebody find a home for their new family that they absolutely love. And you get to work directly with them. And it’s, it’s not as intimidating and it’s just a it’s a it’s it’s more stressful in certain certain circumstances. But it’s also more fun. D.J. Paris 12:47And by the way, we should also mention that, you know, you had a health challenge in the early in the mid 90s, which I’m curious if if you’re willing to share a little bit about that, sort of how that has impacted you, your life and your priorities. I didn’t mention that, of course earlier. So, so Pieter Hanson 13:07I was working at a local clothing store, which was a, you know, for those people in Chicago, the old Mark shale type of of store and high end clothing store and the gentleman that owned it was about 10 years older than me and was an amazing mentor, when it came to customer service and work ethic and doing the right thing at the right time. So I worked for him for 12 years, and towards the end of my tenure there. I got very sick and ended up having a bone marrow transplant at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. And and that was a pretty scary experience because the mortality rate at that time was wasn’t super great for for what I was going through but, but I survived. I’m here and the lesson that I took out of that is that one never give up and always have faith that that things will work out to never worry about stuff you have no control over because you just it’s not worth your your your sweat equity. And three, live every moment like it was your last and take chances and work hard and it’ll all work out. D.J. Paris 14:16I couldn’t I couldn’t add on to that at all. That sounds pretty like a pretty great credo to live one’s life. I want to talk about your success in a sense of, you know, achieving the goals that you set out for not necessarily anyone else’s measure of success. You do a number of different things you do them well. And I’m curious in in real estate, sort of. If you know for our listeners, what are some of the things that you or activities or thought processes that you have that you think separate you from maybe other agents that aren’t having that kind of success or what might you coach somebody to start doing or do more For over 2024 Pieter Hanson 15:02One of the biggest things is commitment. And, to your point, when we were talking about the other business that businesses that I was in, I was married to that first bar that still thriving today 24/7 I, I was always there, I had to be. And so the real estate, you know, my first couple years, in real estate, my transactions were four and five, because I wasn’t dedicating myself to the real estate, but it was allowing me to have this in the background, do as much as I can when I can. And then as I got further along in the bar and grill and, and had a management team and could step away from that a little bit, lo and behold, my traction, my transactions went from four to eight to 18 to 28 to 36. And, and the more transaction I have, the less time I spent at the bar. So commitment, commitment, I think is committing yourself to it is the biggest thing. The second thing is having a support network at home, that allows you to answer that phone call every time it rings, to leave somewhere on a Sunday afternoon when you’re watching the football game, and show a property to to stay up late at night and put multiple offers together and to solicit the help of your family. If in fact, you need some help to get something done. So the family network has to totally understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and be committed to your success as much as you are. Yeah, D.J. Paris 16:39that’s a really good point. Realtors tend to be, it’s tough to set boundaries as as an as an agent, it’s tough to set a schedule, because of course, things fly at you in real time. And they often seem very urgent, and sometimes they are urgent. And so it becomes challenging for agents. And I think back to what you said about sort of being a part time agent, initially, and I think, you know, it’s one of those things, which I hear this a lot because I talk to a lot of new people who just pass their exam. And they say, Hey, you know, I’m just going to be part time for now I have this other job, I need the steady income. And I always say I completely understand I mean, I you have to pay your bills, you have responsibilities. And I say it’s just a harder path. It’s a tougher path. Because you’re you’re now having to do these two things, which both are really full time jobs, even if even if you think the real estate thing is just part time, it’s still going to come up when it comes up. And it’s going to be not probably in alignment with your other job schedule. And, and there are lots of people that will say just quit the other job and do real estate full time. And that would be great. In an ideal world for everyone who is, you know, wouldn’t be too much stressing about paying the bills. But that’s not the majority of us. So I’m glad to hear I love hearing success stories where people because it’s so easy to tell somebody will just quit and do this all all and you’ll be fine. And maybe you will and if you do the right if you do the hard work you probably will be but boy it’s a stressful tough but a few years as you get into real estate as you know, foreign foreign five transactions does not make much of a salary. But yes certainly gets gets you on the path. And yeah, but it allows you to then probably find the confidence to or the the reasoning to go, you know, I can do this. And now I can have somebody helping me here at the bar at a bar restaurant. So So yeah, the part time versus full time thing is always such an interesting conversation because people get very adamant about their opinion one way or the other what somebody should do, and I always say, hey, you know, your financial situation better than me. But, you know, hopefully, in an ideal world, you’d get to a place where you can do this full time. But it but it’s a tough path. I mean, it just, Pieter Hanson 18:52I liked it. I like the people that that say to me, you know, hey, I’d love to get into real estate, what you know, how do you like it? And I tell them that about it? And they say yeah, I’m just, you know, I’m just really looking for more flexibility, a more flexible schedule. And I kind of I react the way you just did. And I’m like, Well, you’re right, you do get some flexibility. You’ll never miss your kid’s Christmas concert. You’ll never miss their ballgame. You’ll never miss their First Communion. But guess what? When it’s over, you’re going right back to work if you’re gonna do anything. D.J. Paris 19:24Yeah, that’s a really good point. It’s, it’s how, you know, I was talking, I was just at the gym just before I came here and I have a trainer and it’s kind of funny. It’s, it’s similar to what you just said, we were talking about training. And we do like weightlifter style workouts. It’s a lot of heavy weights, resistance, things like that. And I was telling my trainer been with her three and a half years and I was kind of laughing because it is kind of funny. I said working out is all about how much pain can you tolerate and pain maybe isn’t the right word discomfort, I guess is maybe a better word. How much discomfort can you tolerate and are you pushing against resistance? And that’s how you build muscle. And it’s pretty much as you know, of course, and our listeners know how you get better at any skill, really. But you have to be willing to tolerate some discomfort, you have to be willing to go to the, you know, go to the child’s recital and then go, I gotta race home after this, and I’ve got work to do. And yes, that is not fun for anybody to do. But it is certainly what is required. And so, you know, realtors, you know, a lot of times only learn that once they’re in, and then they’re like, Oh, I didn’t realize the commitment. For sure, would love to talk about, again, back to sort of your success, you know, being dedicated, fully dedicated, and understanding what is required. How well actually, let’s talk about this year, because we’re talking you talked about the market, of course, being cyclical, we are in a difficult market, I would assume in most, our sorry, difficult time to be a realtor in most markets in the country. Occasionally, I talked to somebody who’s up 50% for the year, and they’re, they’re the unicorn, most people are struggling, at least our agents, our agents are struggling here, we have almost 800. And, you know, most almost all of their productions were down for this year, which of course, is is not fun. But I think you brought up a really good point, when you said that you started in 2007. For those that again, don’t remember, that was a very difficult time. Now in a in a in a way, though, it was really the best possible time for you. Because as people were exiting the business, you were getting in, and you were like, if I can survive this, then it’s gonna be really not as scary the next time when it’s when it’s a market. And I’m curious how you view today’s market, I we’re seeing a lot of agents exit the business, we have a holding company, which is for agents who don’t practice, we went from like 800 agents in our holding company, which is just, you know, a place to hold the license to over 1000. Within this year, just so many people leaving from from the industry. Curious, like if you know what you think about that? And how agents could, you know, stop, you know, exiting the business. I Pieter Hanson 22:12feel like if and I don’t know this to be true, but I suspect this to be true that if you looked at the jump that you made in the past year from 800, to over 1000. If you looked at those agents, my guess is that a majority of those agents have not been Realtors for five years. And so yeah, I feel I feel like they got in the business when times were great. And deals were being thrown at people at a crazy rate. And you had to be an absolute idiot not to get some deals done and make it you know, but now now they’re actually having to work there. And you’re having to market themselves. They’re having to, to work weekends, do open houses do things to get creative, and they’re like, God, this sucks. I’m, I’m working way too much. And so and so that it’s almost like attrition, you know, they just get the retention going and get out. And I think that’s, that’s probably and I’m down this year as well, a little bit. But, you know, I opened a new restaurant last year, and we opened a new brokerage and I left the old firm and started the new firm. And there’s reasons for that. But I feel like those of us that have been in the business for, you know, 1520 25 years are a little bit insulated, because we’ve got our residual clients and our reputation. And so I feel that the the economy does affect it some but but we’re the veterans are a little more insulated than the newcomers. Yeah. D.J. Paris 23:34And speaking of a veteran in a different way, forgot to, of course, thank you for your service as as as a Navy man, to our country, and to all of our listeners here. So thank you. Awesome. Thank Pieter Hanson 23:47you. Well, so D.J. Paris 23:49yeah, let’s, let’s talk a little bit about activity. So if you were a brand new agent today, and I want to sort of set this up. So Peter was was talking about, you know, a lot of these people who have like in our, in our case, our other our holding company. Yes, he’s right. The vast majority of people who have joined our holding company recently are people who either were nearing retirement or just like I’m done, or they were within their first few years, not doing well, and realizing they didn’t want to pay their MLS dues going forward. So, of course, that all that factors in but if I was a brand new agent today, I would actually be excited, because I would there are people leaving the industry, which means there’s market share to pick up. And I think now is the time where agents should really step on the gas in their marketing efforts in their outreach efforts to try to pick up some of these, some of these these clients that you know, maybe they’re not buying right this moment or selling right this moment. But you know, they will be at some point and their realtor may be exiting and leaving. Or just, you know, not working as hard right now. That’s another thing that happens. Even successful agents in down markets tend to, to relax a little bit more. So I think now’s a really good time to get in, although not certainly an easy time. Curious, your thoughts. So Pieter Hanson 25:10I couldn’t agree with you more regarding that. I do feel that when it comes to work ethic and marketing and timing, you know, when in 2007, when I got my license, Facebook was just kind of a brand new thing. And the kids today that are starting to be realtors, and even the, you know, late 50s, early 60s, agents like myself, are having to adapt to the digital age, that computer isn’t going anywhere that Facebook is only going to get stronger marketing and digital media is incredible how you can get your, your name out there and shoot high quality videos. And if you can embrace that, and you can run with that you will be successful going forward. I struggle with that a lot. But, but I happen to have a team that is very good at it that we collaborate together and they’re helping me succeed in that arena. But I feel like agents today are poised way better than, than those of us that used to look in an MLS book, literally a paper book. No, no online stuff, you know, and now, your client comes to you more educated than you sometimes on a property because of the information that they can find. So I feel like the agents today are really set up for success if they if they take advantage of the digital because if they don’t, they’re going to be left behind and the AI for that matter. That’s a whole nother issue. But how amazing is AI and as scary as it is, it’s going to be incredibly helpful in our industry used properly. D.J. Paris 26:53I used chat GPT this morning to calculate the probability of i I’ve met my producer for this podcast is a lovely woman zonna. She’s been with me for four years she lives in Kosovo, she’s originally from Albania. It just so happens that I met another woman unrelated to Zonta independent, who is on I’ve never met in person we meet for we we talk almost every day virtually, of course, he lives in Kosovo. And I met a woman recently, who not only knows Ana, which is complete coincidence, went to school with her worked in the same office as her at the same company, even at one point, and now lives in Chicago. And I said I wonder what the probability of that is. And so I put chat GPT to work and and it didn’t come up with it gave all sorts of interesting equations and eventually said it was one in four quadrillion was the probability which I suspect is probably I don’t even know if quadrillion was an actual word. But I guess it comes after billion trillion, I guess, quadrillion, but regardless, it’s a very low probability. But I love that chat, GBT could figure out some estimate of that. And I think as as realtors, you know, the AI is is going to be really cool, because it will allow us to be more persuasive in our listing descriptions that already does that. It allows us to maybe give some great marketing ideas. You know, if I was an agent, I go, I don’t really know what I should do today. I would go straight to chat GBT and say Hey, can you give me five activities that I could do right now, as a realtor? That might be a good idea for outreach or meeting new people, or I want you to add more people to my database. Where should I go? You know, and there’s all sorts of great suggestions that a chat GBT can have. I have a friend of mine, who’s a CEO of a digital storage company. And he doesn’t have a chief marketing officer because he has built one inside of chat. GBT. So I’m our chief marketing officer. So maybe my jobs on the line. But he’s doing that now. So there are some really cool things coming. And I’m curious, I all this being said, I the My question is, where do you think the important skills that a realtor is going to need or needs today or needs for the future? If it isn’t, hey, I’m the gatekeeper to this building or this property? Yes, they’re going to they have access to pretty much all of that data and information now, Zillow basically changed changed that whole dynamic, but what are the skills that you think realtors are still valued and useful for today? Pieter Hanson 29:26The every, every deal is different. And even though it might be cookie cutter to a certain extent, there’s certain steps that need to happen. People don’t know how to negotiate first of all, they have no clue. They talk too much. There’s a lot of things that a realtor does if he educates his buyer seller properly to ensure that that is going to transaction is going to go smoothly and that everything is anticipated. I like to find myself a prop One find her not a problem solver. I want to find the problem before it happens. And so I don’t have to solve it on the spot. And I think people that try to do this on their own, leave money on the table, frustrate themselves and inevitably lose deals because they don’t know what they’re doing. And everyone thinks with the internet, they can they can handle it. And you know, some people probably can, honestly, but I think the majority of the general public needs us desperately. Yeah, D.J. Paris 30:31I think there’s a lot of soft skills or interpersonal skills that come up that are really important stress management, emotional regulation, under understanding how to deal with adversity, and urgent, bad news that comes up. And in every transaction, there’s some bad news that happens at some point, and it’s going to come up a lot of times unexpectedly, and then it’s about how do I make sure my client is able to remain stable during this? Or what can I do to keep my, my, my client moving forward, or at least understanding sort of the gravity of what’s going on, without succumbing to, you know, sort of, you know, being completely stressed out, because, of course, nobody wants a stressed out client, I went, I bought a condo three, three or so years ago. And even though I’ve been in this industry, I mean, I’m not a practicing agent, but I am licensed. But even being around top realtors, like you and all the agents, here we have about 800 agents in our company, you would think I would have handled that a lot better. And I did not I was stressed. I was like, convinced I was making a horrible decision. I had to I had to basically at some point, I sort of went to that philosophy of an attorney who represents himself has a fool for a client. So I said, I’m not going to represent myself because I am not, I am not the the most objective party here and I’m just getting too emotional. And it made me really appreciate realtors that are excellent at keeping things, you know, decoding the information that’s being sent from the other side, putting it in a way that doesn’t make me completely nuts and or the client completely stressed out. So I think those interpersonal skills check GBT hasn’t yet solved for that maybe it will someday, I don’t know. But certainly, the you know, the the human skills are really, really important. And it made me realize that after my last purchase, well, and Pieter Hanson 32:33I and I think I agree with everything that you said. And you know, I aligned myself with real, because of those technology options between the Knowledge Library, their, their revenue, share their bolt, their AI, or their AI, this company is leading the industry in, in what’s happening in the future. And, and as much as I am a hometown guy, and as much as I am a local shop local, be local, I own businesses, I want people to support me, in this industry. I just don’t feel like the local brokers have the funds and to keep up with technology and provide their agents with life changing financial, security and future that that everybody’s going to need and need to have if they’re going to succeed in this industry. D.J. Paris 33:27Yeah, I agree with you. 100%, as well, I would like to talk about customer service, actually not customer service during the sale. So we’re going to talk about customer care, I guess maybe it’s the better word. I’m not sure what the official word is. But keeping in touch in between transactions. So we know somebody buys a home, depending on your market, they may be moving five to 10 years, who knows every markets a bit different. But you know, there’s some predictable patterns there. So you’re going to have this period of time, where likely they’re not going to actually need you day to day to help them with a transaction. But what are your suggestions for making sure that the client doesn’t forget who you are number one, and we say that sort of is a bit being a bit facetious. But people there are there are amazing studies out there that will show there’s a certain percentage of people who like their realtor, if the transaction closes, and then two years later, they’re like, I don’t remember who our realtor was. It’s a much higher number than then I’ve ever thought happened to my parents. They sold a property and out east and great realtor and then two years later, I go What was I per Realtors name? My dad’s like, I have no idea. So that is that happens. And so I’m curious on how you think about making sure that that doesn’t happen, of course with your clients. So Pieter Hanson 34:47I tend to if you see something, say something is my attitude. If I think that I need to call DJ, I haven’t talked to DJ, I just pass DJ on the interstate, I saw him at the grocery store. I used to think to myself, Oh, I gotta call DJ. And then two days later, I’d run into DJ and I’d say, oh, DJ, I was just gonna call you and DJs. Like, yeah, whatever. Well, I pick up that phone and I make that call. And Julie knows that sometimes I sit in that garage for 45 minutes after I’ve been home at night, because I made that quick phone call to DJ and we struck up a conversation and talk for half an hour. So if you need if you think about something, call them one. Two, I send out postcards because I like to run into DJ at the grocery store and say, Hey, I got your Thanksgiving postcard thanks for thinking of me. Boom, I know, it’s corny the mail is is somewhat antiquated, but I still use it. I’m older, I’m comfortable with it. The the the most important thing that I think is front of mind, you know, all the avenues that we have with Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, posting things online that aren’t asking necessarily for someone to respond, but but maybe giving them a little knowledge about the community, hey, this, you guys have seen this bank building forever. This was built in the 18th, you know, front of mind stuff. So so people say themselves, oh, there’s Peter, there’s Peter without actually going out of their way or opening a piece of mail or answering the phone. So and I need to get better at it myself. And then lastly, Card Writing. I go through spurts where where I’ll write out 40 cards, and I’ll mail you know, 10 of them a week. And, and then there’s times where you know, I haven’t done that since September. But I need to do it again. And I’ll get motivated. And I’ll have a day. And I’ll just knock out a bunch of them. That I think is impactful too. D.J. Paris 36:49How many handwritten cards do you receive? Not once you’ve sending out? How many do you get in just estimating in a given year? 10. Okay, so less than one a month. Mine is much less than 10. I think I meant like two to three a year. And again, I’m not complaining it’s I’m but I’m so honored when anybody spends two minutes to write me a card. I don’t know what it is about receiving a card in the mail, a handwritten card, but boy, it just, there’s a tangible feeling there. That is way beyond a digital, Hey, I saw that you went on vacation, a little, you know, Facebook, like or whatever. Those are great too, of course. But there is something really, really powerful about somebody wrote this card, they put a stamp on it, they addressed it, they dropped it in the mail, as a lot of steps there that are super obvious to somebody when they receive that. And I think it’s kind of baked into the experience. So I am with you. You talked about mailers. I am a huge fan of mailers. Number one because most people aren’t anymore, as you said, you know, people are more digital, of course there, which is exactly why mailers should happen because you’re not getting that much mail anymore. I’m not getting much mail anymore. Even the junk mails is toned down. I’m like what’s happening with all these companies, a catalog companies, I guess they’re all online, but but I don’t even get a lot of the catalogs anymore. And so I’m like, wow, my, if somebody were to send me a postcard, I would absolutely see it now, maybe 15 years ago, when the mail was just, you know, insane. Maybe it would get lost in all of the catalogs and junk mail. There’s not as much anymore. So I think it’s a perfect time to send a mailer. And to your point. This is a way if you’re sending mailers once a month, once every few months, it’s pretty hard for somebody to forget about you, even if it’s just a postcard, because your names there. They might they you know, every realtor sends out an email newsletter. And I’m not saying that’s a bad idea. It’s a great idea. But everyone also does that. So you want to do things that maybe are a little bit more than just that. I’m not saying don’t do an email newsletter. But I love that and handwriting a card. I don’t know that there’s a better way to tell somebody I care that even just hey, I was thinking about you, I hope you’re doing well. Whatever. Well Pieter Hanson 39:06buy, sell, build, get buy, sell, build QC, you know, between Sarah and Andrea, my partners, we’ve got things planned into the fourth quarter of 2024. Whether it’s mum delivery, like we did this year, we bought 500 mums, and the back of my truck was filled for two days delivering these mums and people just absolutely loved them. You don’t need to say hi to them, put it on their porch with a sticker on the thing and a postcard in it. And they would text you and they’d say, Dude, we’d love the mom, thanks for thinking of us. You know, I mean little things like that. And our brokerage does those things extremely well. What’s D.J. Paris 39:44really fun about that stuff to it. I talk a lot about these kinds of fun activities that realtors can do. They don’t have to be expensive. They don’t have to even cost anything really picking up the phone and saying hey, I’m thinking about you. How are you doing? What’s going on? You know, and not necessarily Hey, I need to buy or sell right now I’m your guy, but calling and just saying, Hey, I was thinking about you, how are you? And or I saw this thing on LinkedIn, maybe it looks like your company just did this something big or you got a promotion or whatever there are, those are always the things I think that win the race. And also at the very least, even if it doesn’t necessarily lead to a transaction, you’re going to feel good about yourself when you do something nice, like drop off a mum or two on someone’s doorstep. And then they find it later. Boy, I mean, you can’t you almost can’t put a price tag on on how successful that kind of campaign is. Because people will be talking about it. Like who gets just random flowers from people, nobody, nobody only from your spouse or partner or boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. Those are the only people giving anybody flowers. And so the idea of even just doing a little thing, like mums, and mums are cool to their unique. I love that idea. Yeah, Pieter Hanson 40:59we have we have a good time doing it too. And it’s a big collaboration in the office and it gets brings everybody together to work under under one roof for a common goal. And it’s it’s great team building. And it’s just fun. D.J. Paris 41:13And you know, it’s funny, we should probably talk about this only because it’s the end of the year. And this is you know, holiday cards and holiday gifts. And agents always struggle. Should I do something for my clients? There’s pessimistic people that will say, Well, if you do it once, you’re going to have to do it every single year forever. It’s like, well, I don’t know, that doesn’t sound so bad. But for some people, they struggle with this. I’m curious on your thoughts about end of year, sort of stuff with clients? Do you do them? Do you wait until a different time of the year or, you know, just curious, Pieter Hanson 41:45traditionally, some of my partner’s that had a holiday party. And they’re really expensive. And people look forward to him every year. And they say, Hey, are you guys having your party this year and, and I personally don’t do that. I like to reward the client. At the time the transaction closes. And depending upon how close they are, the size of the deal, whatever dictates, you know what, what I might do for them. But I always do something for them. The remaining time is I might single handedly call someone invite them to dinner with Julie and I. And as much as she sometimes doesn’t like doing it, we tend to have a pretty good time hanging out with someone that we don’t normally hang out with and learn something about that person that we never knew. Generally, that’s our takeaway. I never knew that about it, you know? So we try to do a little bit of that, but I don’t do anything it a certain time of year to reward them necessarily. Yeah. Well, D.J. Paris 42:46I think that’s very encouraging. For everyone listening who goes, Oh, my gosh, I didn’t do anything for the holiday season, December holiday season for my clients, it doesn’t really matter, do something throughout the year. And then at the end of the year, not as important, of course. But I love this, this idea of customer service and customer care, really, to me and hard work and discipline and all of these these things, but Customer Care is just the the key, I think it’s really making sure that people when they think about you go wow, my agent knows what’s going on in my life stays in touch with me. And is is is, is doing some sort of ongoing communication. And you said something very important, I just want to want to end on which was, now we have mobile devices, these super powerful, you know, almost magical devices in our pockets that shoot near perfect video, and for essentially for free of the cost of the device. And you can you know, learn a little bit about a building or maybe a local retailer, if you want to support local businesses, or maybe even interview a local business owner and say, Hey, I’d love to just learn about your business or your building or whatever. And you could post a quick one or two minute video on social media about that. And you could do that every single day of the week. If you if you didn’t if you weren’t slammed with clients, and what does that do for your public the people that are following you? They they think, wow, this person is really into real estate or they’re supporting our local community. They’re active, they’re doing things. So I am such a fan. I just I know you said it sort of quickly. And I wanted to go back to talk about the importance of providing value on social media as opposed to just hey, look at this cool this home I just sold, which is fine. I just don’t think that should be the only thing because right after I see that stuff, I was going I don’t care. Pieter Hanson 44:36You got to start somewhere and you’ve got to do something even if it’s wrong, you’ll learn but what content becomes so important and so impactful when it comes to people enjoying it and not being annoyed by it. I D.J. Paris 44:51couldn’t agree with you more and I think this is a great place to wrap up before we wrap. I want to make a mention we have Gosh 1000s and 10s of 1000s of listeners, we’re so grateful for them for sticking with us for as long as we have. But Peter Hansen, he he works for his brokerage, his real, great brokerage, national brokerage. And he and his team are always interested if there are any, any talent that in that area, any agents that think they might be a fit for Peter and his team, please, please feel free to reach out, they’re always looking to to expand their reach. Also, if you’re an agent that has clients that move in and out of the Quad Cities area, but maybe you don’t practice there yourself, certainly reach out to Peter. And if I were an agent, I would be looking to see where people retire from if they move from the Quad Cities, and then I would be reaching out to Peter, if I was in one of those markets going, Hey, I would love to talk to you about when people leave your market, you know, talking and connecting. So Peter, of course, would love the opportunity. He’s a commercial agent, residential agent, he can do a lot. So if you have businesses that are going in and out of that area, or people going in and out, or if you are an agent and want to maybe join his team and perhaps provide some value, he would love to opportunity to see if they you guys would be a fit. So what’s the best way that an agent could reach out to you if they want to partner with you in some way. Pieter Hanson 46:17So certainly, the email address Peter at Pt hanson.com is a very effective way. Certainly, you could reach out to me on Instagram or Facebook as well. Those digital media’s provide some privacy yet get the message across and I could get back to you. Certainly, if you were to ask me for any of my cell phone number, contact number that way, I’ve certainly would provide that for you. And, and if you’re any good at the internet, you can probably find that through Google yourself. So any of those ways would be a great way to get a hold of me. And I’d love to sit down and, and tell you the real story and tell you my story. I D.J. Paris 46:58love that. And remember, Peter is p i e t er, so he’s super easy to find. If he was Peter Hanson, without the without the AI, it’d be a little harder. So this actually works in his favor. So he’s very easy to find. And he’s a wonderful, wonderful man, and very successful in a lot of different areas. And if I were an agent, I would want to talk to you because I feel how do you do it all? What’s the word of the secrets we got through some of those today, but boy, somebody that, you know, I would certainly want to be mentored by so if you’re an agent in the area, or if you have clients kind of going in and out of that area, please reach out to Peter, he would love the opportunity to connect. And also please reach out to Peter and thank him for his service to our country we our military is is grossly under appreciated, I believe on a regular basis. So even if you’re just want to reach out and say thank you, that would be appreciated for him as well. Peter, thank you so much for your time. today. Thank you for coming on our show spending an hour with us and really giving us a lot of insight into your business and how you juggle many different businesses, but doing them all really, really effectively. And I love that Peter Hanson realtor is the website that’s P e t e r h a n s o n realtor.com. We’ll have links to all of his social media as well as his website, on on our show notes. So please reach out and on behalf of our listeners want to just thank Peter for spending time with us today. And on behalf of Peter and myself. We also want to thank the listeners and the viewers, you guys are the reason we do the show. And if we are planning speaking of Peter talking about his planning for 2024, we are planning for 2024 as well. So if there is a top agent in your market, we don’t really look for guests anymore. Because of the popularity of the show. We’re really, really lucky that publicists usually come to us. But that means we miss a lot of people. So if there’s a superstar in your market, we might not know about them, let us know we’ll reach out and see if we can get them on the show. So think of the most successful agent in your market as a listener and go I want to know what that person does. Let us know who that person is. We’ll we’ll do the rest. But thank you so much, Peter. Really great conversation. And hope everyone I don’t know when this episode will be released. It’ll probably be before the end of the year. So if so everyone have a happy December holiday season. Happy New Year, all of that. And Peter, thank you. We will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks, TJ.

Welcome to Breaking Down Ali’s Systems mini-series with Ali Garced. In this mini-series Ali will be explaining how she built her systems both for buyers and for sellers. In the second episode of Seller Checklist series, Ali picks up on the pre-list part where she left off in the first part of this checklist. Please follow Ali on Instagram here. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Ali Garced can be reached at ali@garcedrealty.com and (914) 318-4918. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today on the show top agent Allie Garside is going to share with you more about her seller checklist that she uses to convert dozens and dozens of clients every single year. 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 on to our show. Ali Garced 1:34What’s up everyone again, it’s Ali Gorsedd ally, the agent. Coming back with part two of the seller checklist. Again, this checklist has helped the agents on my crew on my ESP crew earn six figures in six months, making like three times the amount that they were making. Previously at other brokerages, it’s so important to have a foundation, I’m not saying that you need to join me in order to make this happen. I’m saying you need to have a foundation and I’m giving it away to you. So if you want a copy of these checklists, here’s the checklist to get a copy of the chocolates ready. Number one, give a five star review to keeping it real on this podcast that you’re listening to. If you’re watching this on YouTube, number two is like and comment below saying anything that you’ve learned, however, the slightest bit that this may have helped you. I know this is going to help you a lot. But any comment will help. And number three is text me for the checklist will meet its will meet over zoom. It’s 520-341-2552. That’s my work, phone number text the word checklist to that number checklists, by the way, being one word, text checklist 25203412552. If you’d rather hit me on Instagram, I’m Ally FBI agent. So let’s begin last time I left off on the listing presentation. So let’s assume we got the listing what to do. So from here, we’re going to start on the pre list. Now, we’re going to make sure that we have a copy of the keys, of course to all the screen doors, the detached ad, use the garage, you know any anything and everything, the front door, the back or the side door, the window, the sheds, everything, have make sure that the sellers have an extra copy. And the garage openers, it’s they want to make sure that they I see that they keep it on their person. Because I just don’t like I don’t want to have to deal with any theft. So of course want to make sure that if they’re going to be living in the property, make sure that they hide their valuables stored in the safe or just take it out of the house or take it out of the condo. If the property is gonna be vacant, then they can leave the garage door openers or maybe you want to safeguard it for them. However you want to do that make sure you just do it the same way every time. So that way you don’t forget and think oh, I have the the garage door opener for 4712 North palisade but on this other house on North Street, I ended up keeping up the house, you’re gonna drive yourself crazy. So whatever method you want to do do the same thing every time and that is key consistency always wins. Okay. Then you want to tell them the the photo requirements and the staging tips. We tend to work with one photographer. We like them a lot. They are pricey, but they do amazing work. So they have their own photography like list. If you do not already have a go to photographer, reach out, reach out, you know, find some on Instagram, find some on Google and see if they have a list of photography, like tips for real estate sales. That way you can use their checklist. I’ll show you in my emails to my canned emails that I use my photographer’s checklist because why am I going to recreate the wheel just like with these seller checklists with my buyer checklist that I’m giving to you guys the referral checklist? I haven’t even gone to that section yet. Would Do not recreate the wheel, you should be just like adding to it and making sure that it’s as you know, as easy to follow as possible for your business. Okay. And then you want to make sure that they are the the sellers are working toward that photography, a checklist. Hey, have you mowed the lawn? Hey, have you pulled the weeds? Do you need a landscaper Dena contractor for that? Because I have you know, I know a guy. Okay, carrying on then you want to? Oh, seems like maybe my computer’s a little frozen here? Oh, no, there it is. All right, then you want to schedule the photographer. And you want to make sure that you have enough time in order to do that. Or rather that the sellers have enough time in order to do that. Sometimes as you know the house as soon as you walk into the listing presentation, it’s ready to sell. Sometimes it’s not. There was one time Oh, just a super quick rant, if I may, again. So this was the that same listing my second listing ever that I got off a postcard my very first round of postcards, and the one who lied to me about Hoa, he was a hoarder. And as I was walking upstairs to where he hadn’t been upstairs in probably over a year, a year, he hadn’t been upstairs, there was stuff everywhere I was I was going up the stairs, he’s I stepped on a gun, I stepped on a gun, which was loaded. I mean, I know how to I know how to use guns, you know, I was a federal agent for the Air Force for a decade. But just the fact that like I step again, just the point being some sellers are going to need some extra time, in order to get their house photo ready, some will need your help. Some agents already have this available to where they have, you know a cleaner to where the cleaner can help them. Again, everyone needs to sell no matter who they are, like what kind of background they have. So it’s always always good to have a cleaner or two in your back pocket. If you do not have a cleaner, I would suggest going on Airbnb and message some of the owners so as like a as a guest, I message them in the owners and say Hey, who do you use as a cleaner I’m looking for I’m looking for reliable cleaner they’ll give you they’ll help you. So because I think if someone were to message me on it on Airbnb, because I’m a I’m a landlord as well, I own about eight properties. And if someone were to message me, you bet I would share my cleaner. I want to help her. Anyway, here we go. Um, okay. So you want to make sure that the house is ready to go you this this goes into the specifics of which photography package we get. We do the same thing every time whether it is a luxury Well, luxury, of course is I think, subjective. But so whether it’s like a $700,000 house or a $200,000 house, we do the same package every time. Now of course we might add on the videography for the meet the middle package or the extra package like what I talked about last week. Or I might add on even more the 3d Home Tour The the the Zillow so that way connects to Zillow and it bumps your listing up on Zillow higher because you paid for that Zillow feature, the Matterport, whichever you want to do, we do the same thing every single time. Well, depending on the package that they choose, so you want to make sure that that’s labeled. Because always think about this, you might not want to be selling forever. This is the purpose of a checklist. I had a checklist that I was following this my first year in the business. And now this is the checklist that everyone that I refer to follows everyone in my crew, they have this foundation for them, they don’t need to think I didn’t want to think I just want to wake up and say okay, what part of the checklist Am I at Check, check, check. And it’s it’s just automatic. Not automatic as well to do it, but you get my boy. Okay, then you’re gonna have your TC send disclosures. A quick note on TC, if you don’t have a TC get one e me delete. I said that kind of weird immediately get a TC because they are oh my gosh, there were there. They are so worth it. For what even if the TC is charging like $500 for a transaction, the amount of hours that they’re going to save you for every single transaction and it’s labor upfront, and they only get paid if you get paid at the close of escrow. And if your seller cancels, they don’t get paid. I mean it’s a no brainer. So I do want to backtrack to what I said last week when I said that I have a $3,000 cancellation fee. Part of that $3,000 cancellation fee goes to the TC for her troubles, so I will give her her Porsche and not not I don’t think it’s like 100% of what she would have made had be continued with the sale. But I believe it’s like 50, maybe 40%. So I want to keep my TC happy because we’re sending her a lot of business. Okay, create showing instructions. This is super important. I really like showing time not all agents use showing time. Not all agents know it’s showing time is not all agents will even bother looking up showing time. I know that you know what I’m talking about. And if you don’t you might be, you might be the agents that refuses to use showing signs or refuses to comply. So here we go. I use showing time because it’s so it’s super easy to block out times for, you know, times where the house is ready to view and times that are blocked out. So this is super important for homes where the sellers are going to still be living in it. If the sellers are still living in it, I always have a CBS code on the Super box. I am pretty sure that everyone that has a Supra will probably have access to CBS. I don’t think that that would be Arizona specific. But I do I have noticed that not a lot of agents know what a CBS code is. So you know how there’s a super box, right? Like you need to have your phone you need to have Bluetooth on you need to punch in your code for your MLS and then pick an excellent you get the key is that having a CBS code is an extra layer of say, protection against privacy or for privacy, to where if to where agents can’t just roll up on the property after not having viewed showing time, not realizing that the sellers are in their home that they work from home, or that they’re having Thanksgiving dinner, or that they’re just having dinner. And so it prevents people from just being able to get access to the key after they sign in. And then it’s going to ask them okay, what is the CBS code. And I have sometimes agents will have the CBS code on the MLS, I always have the CBS code after they talk to me they have to talk to me, I never want to be in a situation where an agent who doesn’t read and you know what that’s all of us sometimes just rolls into a house while the seller is there with their family, you know, just gotten out of the shower. I work with a lot of military and military love their guns, I do not want to be responsible for any sort of shooting, you know, just to be safe. And it doesn’t even have to get to that extreme. But just to be safe. I want to make sure that my sellers have their privacy. So that way, as soon as I get a call or a text saying hey, what’s the CBS code? I’m asking them? Are you outside of the property schedule a call schedule a time through showing time? That is when the property is available? Oh, well, we’re outside. Okay, well, I’m so sorry. The showing time clearly says on the MLS use showing time. Again, this is the this is the process that I use. Not everyone uses it. This is because the a lot of the listings that I have are occupied homes, if they’re not occupied, I’m not going to have a CVS code on there. I want to have as little amount of friction as possible. And I just want anybody that rolls up. Sure. Go right on in. Of course after using the super box. So also another thing that I used to get a lot which I don’t get that often anymore. Are people saying that their Supra wasn’t working? Hey, I think maybe like my super box is or my phone isn’t updated. And I’m like, Okay, well then update it. You know, I My concern was how do I know you’re even an agent? Of course. I was looking them up online. So this is the story a lot of people I got quite a few amount of phone calls, saying hey, I’m outside your listing at you know, 4712 North palisade drive, and I can’t get in my go. That’s, that’s strange. There’s a super box to the super box die, because my side shows that it’s at no charge at 80% What’s up? And they’re like, oh, yeah, I think it’s a problem on my phone. I think I just haven’t updated it. I’m like, okay, cool. Well, the property is available. Let me know when you’ve updated it, and then you can head right on in some time, and I was getting some pushback sometimes again, you can never be too safe. I think. I would rather I would rather turn away a potential buyer than allow a stranger that with with bad intent into a house into a listing of mine. So you know, all day every day I’d rather turn away a buyer than put somebody in danger. So at that point, I would I wouldn’t have to look them up you know, like hey, if you were refusing to update your your, your Supra app on your phone, one your that’s probably the only house you’re at, you know, are you doing this at every single house that you’re showing? So I’d say okay, you know, like what’s your what’s your car number or your MLS NUMBER? Your your license number? I’d look them up. So So, anyway, that’s just a side note, make sure that you just don’t allow anybody all willy nilly, you know, into the property just because they say they’re an agent. So yeah, that okay, stepping off my little soapbox here, talk with the seller and confirm all the data that you’re going to be using the open house, verify that, because you’ve already you’ve already established this at the listing presentation. Either they either they’re, you know, green with open houses to go or maybe not, or they have dates where they know they want to stay in the house, they don’t want to be bothered, so no open houses, then. And then it’s your own decision, whether you want to host the open house, or whether you want your partner to or whether you want someone else to now, I do want to say this, as soon as you have a listing it that’s like, you know, at a higher price point for your neighborhood, oh, you’re gonna get calls left and right, the week that you put it on the market, from actually, you know, what, you’re not going to get calls, you’re gonna get text messages, the amount of text that I that I get for listings that are on the higher price point for Tucson, they’re like, they come at me with all sorts of grammar will say that, and they’ll say, hey, I want to do your I want to be your open house person this Saturday. And that’s it, you know, that’s all the text will say I’m like, Okay, hi. Which listing? What’s your name? Are you an agent? Which brokerage? You know, like, it’s, it’s so easy, I think to get an open house, if you’re looking for an open house, first of all, call them second of all send a voice or video text of them, showing them that you’re a real person that you’re not a bot, introduce yourself. There was one one person that was very, very, very seem shady and was like, oh, you know what, like, I you know, I don’t even it’s just started giving me like a little bit of attitude. And I was like, You gave me no information. I don’t know which property you’re looking to do an open house for? Why should I choose you? I’m getting six of these texts every day. Not that it should be any sort of competition, but just doing the bare minimum, say a phone call, you’ll stand out. Yeah, just do what other people are not doing and you’ll get for this business, you just have to be just a slight have a slight edge, if you will, if you’ve read that book, okay. Um, let’s see. As soon as you have the open house dates, this is why okay, this here we go. As soon as you have the open house dates, and they’re verified till the TC, make sure that it’s on the MLS, either have a VA, verify that it’s on the MLS, or you just take the time to make sure that it’s showing publicly and on MLS, drop the MLS input sheets, pages one and two, this is probably just Arizona specific. So I’m just gonna say make sure that your paperwork is done. Make sure that the sellers sign on all and they don’t finish on all the pages sign wherever they need to ask your TC for that, create a single property, squeeze a squeeze page and add the link to the description box of each of the sellers checklists. So I sell or I have I give my sellers homework. Right. So sort of from that very, very first phone call in the first series of the seller checklist. I give them homework, you know, I want them to look up the H the year of the H fact that you’re the water heaters what needs to be done? Why is it not a level 10 out of 10 What would make the house a 10 out of 10 Just start thinking you know, have a copy of the keys when I come and start working on the clue report. That’s their homework. And so then after that, once I get the listing, I’m going to I’m going to create this the property page, the squeeze page through KB core, again, it’s just two steps, you could probably just YouTube that or if you are with exp you know, ask your broker. So once I have that, that website, that is a website that I tell my sellers to share. There are some Facebook pages that I cannot post in because I’m a realtor, you know, like there are some pages where they can post in because they’re not a real estate professional, therefore they can post so I’m gonna say don’t share the Zillow listing share this website, this is the website that I want you to share. Because anybody that clicks on it, I get their information, I’m able to start the you know, Excel sheet or start tracking how many people have viewed the property and I can start that conversation, it’s a better chance of conversion to sell your house. I’ve never had any seller had any issue with that they’re happy to comply, unless they don’t do Facebook, which you know, that’s fine, then just email. So, of course at that point, we’ve got the listing so we want this the signs to be placed. Call your sign or sign company or go online and order the coming soon. If you do coming soon. I’m actually not the biggest. I’m not the biggest fan of coming soons because I’ve noticed that as soon as I do it coming soon. The intent is to draw more attention, right like ooh, like create a buzz and have it like on the mark Good and, and but what it does in reality in from my experience is it attracts the lowball offers for however long you’re doing the Coming Soon I think it’s like 14 days max for ours. I don’t even do that anymore. So I don’t even know how long it is i I’ve written coming soon it’s out. It it tries to lowball offers. And it attracts very aggressive agents, which I do this on the buyer side, too. I get it. But it attracts very aggressive agents saying, Hey, we can take this mark the property off the market if you accept our offer today. And that’s not what I want to do. Because of course, the sellers are like, Oh my gosh, we’re already getting offers great, yes, but they’re below us. And we can get more. So I don’t do coming soon as anymore. I just have it live, you can compete with everyone else. And I will know who is more serious because at that point, everyone has the same starting time. I want everyone you know the gates to open for everyone at the same time. Therefore, it’s the most apples to apples comparison I can make. If someone is presenting me an offer that says hey, I’ll order a order. I’ll offer an extra $10,000. If you accept today, we might lean more toward that if you know if everything else is even Steven, or if someone else, you know if all the offers are around the same but one person says we don’t want any seller concessions, our buyer will pay for all the closing costs. Wow, that’s great. Or my favorite, which I do with all of my buyers to get our offers accepted 99% of the time is we have non refundable, earnest money, take our money in case we decide to back out you get money, here’s 500 bucks, you know that? What does that do one as a buyer’s agent. This is a quick tidbit on the buyer side as a buyer’s agent that makes sure that your buyer is actually on board with selling with purchasing the property. And as a listing agent, you can present that to your seller saying hey, the buyer is so serious about this that they’re willing to lose $500 Just for the opportunity for you to take this off the market. This is this is brilliant. I mean it’s it’s every day that this happens in North Carolina. It’s never that this happens in Arizona. non refundable earnest money is on heard of in Arizona. That’s why you get my my offers accepted as a buyer’s agent. Because we don’t have to offer much we can offer 150 bucks. And then that way we can be under contract for two weeks. If for some reason something happens the seller the buyer is only out 100 of the bucks, but the seller walked away with something. So of course more is better. But um, anyway, back off my my rant here, add a lockbox Of course, if you don’t already have a lockbox, this is where I tell my my crew to go. Let’s see. Okay, next, write a description that’s not boring. There was recently a post that I saw that have a listing that was written I mean, like, like someone in Gen Z wrote it and it started with this house is busted. Don’t you think that is eye catching, you know, like, for better or for worse, like that property drew a lot of attention. And whether or not you agree with using words like bussing or popping or or I forget, man, it was a whole paragraph like a whole six lines of just Gen Z speak. And it was like it was nothing about the property, not any of it. And like no part of that said, this was a three bed two bath house in this type of neighborhood and says that this house is buzzing, no lie, no cap you don’t like that draws attention. So of course that might not be bring on brand for you that might not be on brand for the seller. Always ask your seller for permission before you do something like that. But that the amount of likes views just on Zillow, that that property had blew everything else, all of its neighbors out of the water. So don’t be afraid to be different, is what I’m saying. Show a sense of humor, especially like when you’re reading a listing, when I’m reading a listing agent as a buyer’s agent, and it has a sense of humor. I already want to work with that listing agent. It maybe that’s just me, you know, like if this was a normal, very boring, very dry listing description, then I’m like, okay, cool. Just another, you know, another transaction, all right. But if it shows any sort of personality, or like, Wait, this agent is going to be pretty cool. And I already feel like I connect with them. I want to work with them even more. Okay, so then you want to send your off off market property email to your buyers, again, that’s very similar to that to the email before which says I’m about to meet with the seller. Do you want more information? I can’t really tell you too much yet. But if you do want more information on this, as soon as I can tell you more, email me the word V IPE My throat is going a little dry here. Okay, then you want to create the Canva order postcard, oh, this should be in bold because I don’t do this, this is my BA. So you want to create the the postcards to be sent out, I use t pmco. There are plenty of other ways to send postcards out, this is just one that I got used to it’s pretty good price, you can have a sample sent to your house. And it’s a way for you TPM co.com, by the way. So that’s you have to create a free login. And you can create either like a radius around your listing, or you can draw the area that you want to send to you you can have I think like as few as maybe like 30 properties you can mail to or as many as you want. And you so you just upload a front and back of the postcard that you can create on Canva. I don’t create anything on Canva. I don’t even know how to log in, I don’t want to log into Canva I have my VA do it. I say hey, use these photos, use these words, make it pretty. And that’s it, then send it to me for review. Then I upload it to TPM CO and we mail it. So I said eight mailers throughout every single transaction. One is Hey, did you know that Bob down the street is selling and then those I just keep them updated throughout the throughout the entire transaction. And I tell them Be on the lookout for my next mailer when we go under contract. Be on the lookout for my next mailer. After the appraisal after the inspections are done. Be on the lookout like congratulate like what they do. The appraisals was run perfectly Be on the lookout for my next mailer after the appraisal is done. And then of course the closing the follow up, you know you want to send her just have as much traffic as you can to your property. Then I do a video on Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, I also include LinkedIn and threads, and I pay my VA $1 per post to post on six different platforms every single day. He is a virtual assistant out in the Philippines. I found him on online jobs.ph. And so I pay him $1 per platform. So $6 a day, times 30 days in the month, I pay him about $250 a month and I am on every single platform that I can think of is ever Pinterest. And I personally do YouTube. And I’m always top of mind. So anyway, that’s just a little side rant there. So I make a video on I throw it on all these websites describing the off market house. If anyone wants a private viewing before it goes live, let me know. And of course, keep in mind you have to make sure that you’re staying, you’re cooperating with the clear cooperation rules, then call all of their neighbors and go on our real estate Bible. That’s again, that’s only for my my exp crew but the scripts give away to find out what they say. Ask for a free CMA for what their home is worth. These are different social media posts to have. And let’s see KB core, this is the listing presentation. We already did this. A week before it goes live, call the signs or just do it online, have your VA switch it from from coming soon to for sale. If you did coming soon. Then you want to call again, make sure that that clear report the insurance report if your state requires this, that your sellers are working on it if they need any help help them if they haven’t already have the sellers send a copy of all the paperwork that they signed. At this point. If you haven’t already, if you probably should have introduced your TC to the old parties of the all selling parties. And yeah, just introduce them. You want to make sure that they save your TCS information so that we know emails get lost and share phone numbers too. If your TC is okay with that input photos and listed on Facebook marketplace and then boost it. I don’t always do this I used to the quality of the leads are not incredible. So I stopped doing this. You can also do it on Craigslist Craigslist is hit or miss depending on what city you’re in. And then if the listing date is pushed back, which sometimes it happens, sometimes the sellers aren’t ready yet they haven’t cleaned they haven’t. You know whatever it is, tell the tell, make sure that you you have that reflected with your videos. So for example, over here I have tell my lender to postpone the listing of the week video. Again to make sure that we’re staying in like you’re clear cooperation. But any any content that you want to make sure that you’re posting at an appropriate time. You want to make sure that your videographer makes the video and edits it with your at your with your with The Properties address your phone number, your logo, and upload the link to your YouTube. I am bullish on YouTube, I started heavy on my YouTube channel, Ali the agent or why EXP and that is what I’ve been hitting hard. I’m very very big on on YouTube because even though I had close to 70 transactions more like 68 transactions, my first two and a half years in the business, all through social media, well 94% of my business was through social media, I would have doubled those transactions had I focus on YouTube instead. Now, I can’t you know, I can’t really kick myself too much. I did pretty well. I made more money than I ever thought I would this this fast. But I you know, I whatever I can only do I can only control what I can control. I can’t control the past. So now I’m heavy on on YouTube. If you want to talk about YouTube, let me know. I’m all about right now. Okay, tell your TC, the super box info. Especially there’s a CBS code. And so tell them which serial number of your of your super box that you have for which property, the CBS code what is etc. Let them know that the showing time as well. So that way they can up update what dates are good still, what dates are not good for viewings, and have them double check the county parcel info or the lot info because sometimes it will be wrong, you don’t want to get a fine. And if you haven’t already get the TOS sets of keys from the seller want to keep in the Super box and want to put in a contractor lockbox, just one of those that you buy from Home Depot. Again, it’s just in the rarity that an agent you know, hasn’t updated their their Supra app on their phone and they are a legitimate agent and you verified it just in case you know all that fails, then you can say okay, this is the this is the lockbox code, and then they can show the property. So, if the house is vacant, or if it will be vacant during the inspection period, then tell the TC and you can that way the TC can just schedule the vendors whenever they want. If the house is not vacant, you want an end say like the well either way, whether the sellers work from home or if they go to the office, you they need to know when the inspections are. So you want to make sure that the TC doesn’t just automatically schedule listings or, or listings that they don’t automatically don’t just schedule inspections. So you want to make sure that they are that they’re good with that time. And the sellers, the sellers homework on helping advertise. Again, I give all of my sellers homework every single step of the way. But because this is a group effort, I’m not working for you, you’re not working for me we’re working together. So submit the photos, the description onto the onto the following Facebook pages that I cannot post on or they’ll delete it. The Davis you know any sort of local Facebook groups this is only gonna apply to Tucson so local Facebook family groups, spouses groups, knitting groups, soccer groups, everything and anything that they are a part of church groups, whatever, bowling, whatever it is how the posted everywhere, because if it were to come from an agent, you are going to be probably reported booted from the group. You don’t want to do that. But the sellers have a lot of leeway. So have them work with you there. And 24 hours before going live send that email with a subject line forward to a friend. This is not something that I came up with on my own this is from Tom Ferry, the subject line is going to be thorough to a friend. Now the in the body of this email it’s going to say we’re about to list a property in the next 24 hours that I believe will sell in two weeks. The home is located in Tanka verta Arizona, and will be listed for $500,000 forward this email to a friend who you know is in the market but hasn’t found a home yet. My personal cell is 914-318-4918 Yes, it is my my actual personal cell. They can call me directly and I can give them the details before it hits the market. Sincerely Aligarh said PS if I don’t pick up leave a voicemail or text me This is huge because it already starts that advertising for you. And it’s you’re telling them there’s there’s the CTA or the call to action in the subject line. Oh, I’m supposed to forward this message. I’m supposed to forward this email to a friend. Now this next section here I’m not going to cover because it’s very very specific to southern Arizona MLS only and it’s only to be done if you are doing the paperwork which I do not suggest you do the paperwork very different from me saying you shouldn’t know the paperwork You should know the paperwork, the contracts like the back of your hand, which by the way, which side is the back of your hand, I like never really knew that. But either way, know that know the contract that pays you money. Doing the contract does not actually pay you money, someone else can do that for cheaper and faster, with fewer errors. So I’m going to skip this. If you don’t have a TC, if you’re with exp go on exp workplace and look up. transaction coordinator Vegas, you’re going to find a lot interview them, also know that they are interviewing you, you want to make sure that you are a good fit, they do not just work for you do not treat them like they are just like they they’ll just wake up at, you know, at midnight to write an offer for you respect them. Otherwise, they will drop you they don’t need to work with you. Okay, the next section of the checklist for sellers one week before going live. So some of this is like not just completely in chronological order, but you get the point. So give the transaction coordinator, the property description, the showing instructions, we’ve already done this, the HOA information and ask the seller for the complete list of all dates and times over the next three months, where they will not be able to drive back to the house to let the dogs out the dates and times where the house will not be clean, say Thanksgiving dinner, that they do not want buyers in the house. That’s you’re going to tell the TC to mark to mark or block off on showing time. And then you’re going to send the seller emails, which I haven’t even gotten to yet but I’m going to end this video here. So stick around, I’m going to show you my canned emails that I send every single time. And the last section here is take a screenshot of the Zestimate the Zillow Zestimate before your listing goes live. And then you’re going to take another I’m giving you a little bit of a What is it foreshadow into the future? Take another screenshot of your listing after it’s sold. And of all the properties after you sell the house. And you tell them hey, this is how much your property increased after my listing on 4712. North palisade drive and Tucson sold. So this is why you do this before and you do it after that where you can start those conversations. Oh my gosh, this ally, the agent person increased my home value by $13,000. Maybe when we sell oh wait Barbara needs to sell? Maybe she needs Sally’s information. Yes, she does need Ali’s information. Okay, next section here is live on the market. Once you’re live, well obviously the first checklist item there is live. And again, I hope you’re watching this on YouTube. If this has been helpful so far, text me for the word checklist or text me the word checklist for the checklist. Text checklists 25203412552 If you’re enjoying this, give this episode a five star review. You can do it right now while listening to it it is for free guys. Did you know that that to leave a review it is free 99. And if you’re watching this on YouTube, give us a thumbs up. I super, super appreciate it comment below whether you want more of a specific topic within these checklists, or if it’s helped, I want to hear from you. Okay, carry on. So as soon as you’re live in the market, please ensure that you go on Sky slope, this is going to be exp specific. So just make sure that you’re following your rules for paperwork. And this is where it’s important to make sure that you’re also overseeing the TC. So you want to make sure especially with exp that your your transactions need to be uploaded into sky slope within 48 hours in order to become in compliance with Arizona Department of Real Estate. Don’t get in trouble. And then give the property tours, the property videos, tour etc. To the TC have them upload it to get ready to go live on the market. If you haven’t already done that, the Facebook marketplace any other Facebook, local Facebook pages, they are money guys, if you’re not on them, get on them right now. Join as many as you can. And make sure you read the rules. If for some reason you’re not finding any good groups create your own. Now that’s a whole beast and a half. Actually on my podcast, the aging Goldmine, we interviewed someone who has like 15,000 people in their Facebook marketplace, or the Facebook group. And that’s how they get all of their leads is just their Facebook group now and it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work to get people to respond and you have to do polls and like check in and constantly post. But if you don’t want to do that, then just write on other people’s Facebook pages but also make sure you abide by the rules or you’re getting kicked out and that will be the last listen you’ve ever posted on there. So put the just listed email send that out. We already did that that forward to a friend email remember, send out the open house email and along with the postcards to the neighbor’s door knock, invite them to the neighbor only, I do the neighbor only open house just 30 minutes before the actual open house starts sometimes an hour depending on the type of neighborhood that we’re at, if I think that they’re going to take their time, and really snooped around or really just want to talk for a long time, then I’m going to have that neighbors only for an hour. If I think that they’re that the neighborhood is little bit more hustle and bustle, they want to get in and out, they want to see, you know, what’s the condition of the property. Okay, that’s it, that’s all I want to know goodbye, then I’ll probably just do 30 minutes. The importance of that is because sometimes you never know what type of neighbors are going to come into your open house. So if you have the open house at just one time, the neighbors are gonna come in whenever they want, right, because that’s not the neighborhood only exclusive, you know, neighborhood VIP preview, that’s just for them. You don’t know the exact relationship that your sellers had with that neighbor. And you’re inviting everyone, right? Unless your neighbor unless your seller says, Hey, invite everyone, but you know, but Nancy across the street and never got along with her that I’m sure that’s happened to you guys before or at least happen to me like, hey, you know, because I’ve asked them, Is there anybody that for some reason, would not talk highly about your house? Because guess what, I’m not gonna go door knock that house. I, the last thing I want to do is invite that person to the house and have them crap talk my listing, and have them say, Oh, well, the sellers, you know, bash the sellers bash the property. That’s not what I want. And I think that’s a great reason why to have the neighbors only first to get their gossip out. And then we can shoot them along, say, thank you so much for coming. Now, I do want to follow up. But I want to make sure that the public has access to this house now. So they are able to view it with fresh eyes. And I’ll see you on the next one hearing it whatever it is. So because I think it’s even worse to have an open house and then have like that one neighbor that stays for the whole three hours, because I know that you’ve had this happen, or at least I’ve had this happen. And they’re just, they’re just oversee everything, you know, they want to know who’s coming in, because I want to make sure that I you know, I choose the neighbor, it can get very open houses, they’re a lot of fun. Are they okay? After every agent that views the home at Oh, ask them for feedback. So ask them what the what the buyers liked what they didn’t like. And what I’m looking for here is is stuff that that can be changed, hey, the you know, the plants out front are just too much, let’s move some of them to the backyard. Let’s move some of this over there. Or it actually smelled you know, hear which you should be able to tell unless you don’t have a sense of smell like me. You know, anything that the sellers need to know, it’s also really good to get that feedback. Because at that point, you’re getting more and more feedback that usually says the same thing. What do you think of the price? And if a lot of people are like, Oh, it’s a great price, then that’s excellent. But if a lot of people if you’re consistently saying that the that the buyer’s agent thought that the buyers thought it was way out of, you know, way too high, then that’s something that you can take back to your seller and say, hey, the the market has spoken. Four out of the six people that have viewed the house all thought that the property was listed too high. And at that point, you can have a price adjustment. It’s important to get that feedback and keep it in a spreadsheet, you can keep it in this Trello checklist put at the very, very top in the description. Okay, and then every single day send a bom bom text to the seller. And well. Okay, this is I used to have every single day back when homes were flying, right like COVID. But now that homes are maybe taking weeks, some depending on what area of the country you’re in, might even be taking months to sell. Maybe every single day, it’d be a little bit too much. Either way, you want to make sure that the seller knows how often you’re going to be communicating with them. So if you if you told them you’d be sending them an update every single week, do it put on your calendar for you know, Fridays at 9am to let them know what the recap was. How many people showed the property you know this week? Brett there were 14 people that viewed the views of house eight people left you know reviews or left feedback saying that and a majority that feedback said this one person said that we had you know XYZ amount of showings and and this is a great way for you to do the research every single week right before you send this bom bom saying there were two other listings that came up on the in our zip code or in our neighborhood and or this one house sold essentially what what went under contract, what sold what’s fresh in the market, essentially what’s our new competition, you always want to let them know. So I think something that’s really bad is when the sellers are the ones that are telling the agents Hey, have you seen this property? If that is, if you ever have attacks, you are so behind on it like you’re behind. And if you cannot handle that, then that is such an easy thing to outsource to somebody else. So hire a transaction coordinator, or I’m sorry, hire a virtual assistant. Or maybe even pay your transaction coordinator a little bit more to do that for you. Everything in life is negotiable. Man, everything, okay? Add a copy of the Supra of the key to the super box. This should be up for there. But you get the point. We’ve already done that before. If it’s been if the property’s been on the market for too long. Then at that point, with all of the feedback showing that you have proof, it’s not just you coming out of the woodwork all Boolean all willy nilly saying, Hey, we let’s come down on price. You can say, hey, out of the 3560 days that we’ve been on the market, we’ve had 14 showings or we’ve had 25 showings and out of those 25 75% of the buyers thought that the property was purchased was listed too high. I think it’s time to make an adjustment because the market has spoken. I suggest that we adjust the property the price to XYZ. Take a look that information below and let me know your thoughts. This should not be a text, any single piece of roadway good information or really, really bad information, Do not text that as a phone call. And that’s coming from me. I don’t answer phone calls. I don’t do phone calls. But you need to make sure that you are on the phone with them to be able to leave that phone call on the level that you want them to be. If you were to get this as a text, and you’re the seller, how would you think immediately you’re thinking, Oh, it’s it’s game on let’s we’re fighting, you know, like, you never want to leave something as big as this or the appraisal to a text. Guys. Call call call call. And I never thought I would say that slightly feel like a boomer but for that important stuff, you need to make sure that you’re that you’re calling them. Okay, once I have the photos of the listing, add them to the AEC Marketing Center, this should have already been up there. Um, you know what, I have a feeling as I have shared these checklists, I think some of this has been rearranged. So I’m now going to be sharing these checklists as a PDF, not as a seller, not as a Trello link. This was an order. It’s not an order now. I think maybe I took I was naive thinking that everyone knew how to use Trello and stuff is being rearranged. Okay. Open the super lockbox to make sure that it’s posted on the site and the front door, the side of the house that should have been done already. mailers, I mail 30, around 30 homes. So you can which is very, very small compared to a lot of people who get a lot of listings from mailers, you know, they send 100 300 500 I send 30 I sent 10 houses to the left that house to the right 10 You know, north south east west. And I say I have a QR code that is linked to a bom bom video, I use bom bom because I can track the how many people opened it, the percentage of people that watched it. And this is what I say, Hey there, it’s Aligarh said if you’re receiving this, that means that you are a neighbor of the listing that I currently have at 4712 North palisade drive, and they wanted to take advantage of this market, they wanted to sell at what they think might be the highest. And it’s a three bed two bath house, in case you don’t already know, it’s about 1500 square feet. If that sounds similar to yours, and you’d like to see how it goes. Follow along, I’m going to be keeping you posted throughout the way. If you happen to know of anyone that would be interested in purchasing the house. Like if you know if your Uncle Joe wants to move to the neighborhood. Hahaha, you know, let’s let’s discuss it, give me a call. My phone number is 914-318-4918 I’d love to talk to you. And that’s it. That’s it and I took one minute max. Keep it short. Keep it simple. Introduce yourself, add your personality. People are not going to call somebody that seems extraordinarily boring unless maybe they will. They’re boring too. That’s a match made in heaven. Either way, add your personality, everyone’s personality is different. And there’s an agent for everyone. There’s a client for everyone. Okay, and I’m sure that you’ve know you know this by now seven times is the magic number. Well, I’ve heard between seven and 14 times is the number for people to even remember who you are let alone list with you. So make sure that that you are getting in front of people and getting in front of people doesn’t always have to cost money guys, you don’t have to do postcards. I’m I’m not the biggest fan of postcards. Again, it’s because I haven’t stuck with it long enough. Anything that you stick with long enough will work but it the more that you do open houses and you’re to put 30 signs out all in a row with all you know your your face on every single one, people are going to see that if you send mailers people are going to see that with your face on it. If you drop off just you know your business card or that Zillow Zestimate saying, Hey, I think, you know, this is what Zillow thinks your property is worth. I love to hear your thoughts because I have my own call me. And you have your little, you know, photo on there. The more times you get in front of people, the more actually that people will think that they already know you. So, yeah, that’s, that’s it, okay. If the house is on the market for the average, or like or more than average days on market, then go to your seller and say the good news is that we now know what the buyers think your home is worth. This is something that we didn’t know when we listed your property because we didn’t have that information available at the time. And now we know what the buyers think your home is worth. And talk about the price adjustment, copy and paste the URL that goes to your single property squeeze page that you created. post is a post this again, this is a duplicate this, and this is bolded. So this is something that you don’t have to do your VA can log into your Facebook, and post that listing on on everywhere that they can give the sellers a squeeze link, this is a repeat. Okay. Oh, man, I’m glad that I have a duplicate of this that’s just on my own personal off to the side here. Okay. Marketing the property, tell the title company, go on business.google.com. Again, back to your business page. It is so so important. So add, I would schedule it to add one photo of each of your listings every single week, you always want to keep your your Google business page active. So don’t dump in all 40 photos all at once, dump in one, maybe two a week, schedule it out, put it on your calendar, put it on your BAS calendar, say hey, VA, I want one photo, the kitchen and you know, or just this is the link to all of the photos. These are the photos that I actually want up there. Can you post one every Monday and one every Thursday. And until until it’s depleted. Create a single property squeeze page we’ve we’ve been over this but this goes to a specific KV core, a good a good YouTube that I found on how to do it with kB core. And then create a video on YouTube shorts, depending on what you think about about shorts, but I love YouTube. I’m bullish on YouTube, like I’ve already said, so put your listing on YouTube, and partner with your partner with anybody if you have a good lender partner, or if you have a good title partner or attorney partner, you you can get in front of their audience who also works with buyer agents. And you can have them do a listing of the week. Or you can just do it on your own, send it to all of your buyers and send it to all the buyers in your office. If you have a crew send it to all of their buyers and say, Hey, this is the Deal of the Week. Why is it a deal with a week? Well, if you house hack this property, you could probably save you know, $200 a month, you could probably make $20 a month if you rented out these bedrooms, whatever it is just you know, put the property out there I love if you can’t tell already. I love digital social advertisement as opposed to paper. Okay, creating a video to run as a YouTube ad. This isn’t mandatory, but it is a way to put your property in front of masses. So I do have I found a couple of videos that it that where you can put your listing as a YouTube ad get in front of more people. And that also helps when it comes to your future listing presentations as well. Because because you can say hey, for my platinum package, we also run your property as a YouTube ad. These are our previous stats we’ve had, you know 14,000 People see this one video. So we got in front of 14,000 potential buyers. That’s a way to make yourself stand out because not many agents are doing YouTube ads. They might be throwing it on YouTube, but are they putting money behind it? Maybe maybe not. Okay then sellers homework to helping you advertise this is a duplicate we’ve already got over this. Okay. Next tele sellers This is again a duplicate Wait, this looks a little bit different here. Okay, the contractor This is backtracking this should be earlier but if they need assistance with anything if they want to fix you know, the you know, whatever it is you have connections if you don’t ask around and make sure that you befriend these connections because you’re going to need them a good contractor reliable contractor or plumber, insurance come person everything and then you’re going to mail out all of the Zestimates of the neighboring homes. Remember what the the list of 100 200 neighbors that your VA or you got a lot and you took a screenshot of those estimates now that your property is on the market you can you can use this as a way to Dornoch with something in your hand saying hey just wanted to show you that this is what Zillow thought your property is worth. I have my own thoughts but I’d love to hear yours you can just drop it off or you can actually snail mail it whatever you want to do have a call to action call me open house of course get their permission we’ve we’ve already covered open houses quite a bit so I’m going to skim through this portion. Decide on what dates and times work best make sure that it’s advertised create brochures ask your title company because our title company here I mean they’re great they have branded small water bottles with my photo with my name with my number on it. And then on the other side is their logo their photo their number and they pay for it they pay for little like you know personalized bags of what is called Oh cookies, yeah, they a little cookies. They could do the the brochure they can they can help with advertisement do not think that you are alone in paying for all of these advertising costs. There are lenders that you can partner with their title companies that you can partner with their insurance companies that you can partner with. And they will help you especially at this time, everyone needs to rely on each other even more, it’s no longer you know 2020 2021 Where houses are flying off the shelf. So use that partnership to grow together Introduce yourself doing a bom bom video, introduce yourself to the neighbors send out those send out those mailers and the day of the open house by or maybe the day before by some large balloons get put out your 20 At a minimum 20 signs making it very obvious for people will say that like don’t pay attention when driving on the road. Make sure nobody gets lost make sure everyone knows it’s so obvious where to go when to turn left when to turn right when it turned around when they’ve gone too far. So place your 30 signs out. Put the balloons up by Champagne, maybe you know however you feel about alcohol put out the branded information put out your branded pens, the sign in sheet whether you want to do that paper or digital I liked digital but I found that people weren’t too comfortable putting it digital or war they were putting in wrong information. So I just went back to good ol ink and paper pen and paper. Okay, five days before the open house you want to make sure that you’re telling the sellers to clean up giving them any last minute to dues if you want to do a face to face time say hey just want to make sure like if if you’re comfortable with it if you want to have a double but just verify that the house is in good shape let’s let’s do a FaceTime whenever you’re ready so that way I don’t drive across town or you know our agent here doesn’t drive across town sees the property and realizes no no this property is not ready for an open house. Okay and then I that’s when I hook up with my seller or seller with my cleaner if they need cleaning if they want to pay for cleaning then hey this is this is my my girl she’s a great cleaner and you can coordinate where I usually coordinate because she speaks only Spanish so extra credit print off all of the Coming Soon listings and the pocket listings that you know of plus any other properties that builders or developers are creating put it in a big big like three ring binder and with a title saying like off market do not show the public and don’t open that folder. It’s all it’s all about what what it looks like right like appearances are everything and we used to do this a lot as like federal agents for better or for worse, right i mean cops is all time they’ll come to a subject interview Victor, not victim, but Senator to interview, they’ll bring their B folders and it’s you know, saying Oh, pretty much giving them the psychological thought in their mind that oh my gosh, they must have a lot of evidence on me. I’m screwed. You know, like I’m caught I might as well tell the truth. But instead it’s just paperwork that we’ve had on the floor it’s just whatever we thought hey, who has a folder who has a folder good put it all together boom put on the market or put on the market put it on the on the table. But this shows your value Hey because you do have access to builders you do have access to to you know the built the developers you have access to off markets you have access to coming soon and that that’s a good way to pick up buyer clients from that. During the open house pace a place a pad of paper and pen to sign in or electronic already covered this portion. For clients with realtors with them just ask them to sign in just for because the sellers usually want that and then ask if they’d like the tour or just come back if they have any questions. For clients without a realtor, some people go very, very aggressive. Some people are very, very standoffish or not standoffish, but like, Hey, do you do your own thing? It’s whatever way you feel comfortable with. Some people are like, Oh, you are working with an agent. They step outside. They’re like, oh, where’s your agent? Then? Are they too busy? That I think that’s very aggressive. Some people are like, okay, cool. Well, then walk around, you’ve seen a house before. If you want the tour, I’m more than happy to give it to you. Otherwise, I’ll be here. I am going to ask you a couple of questions that will when you get back if that’s okay. And they’re usually like, okay, cool. So what questions do you ask them? When they come back? Say, Hey, what did you What did you enjoy about the property? I’m looking to give as much feedback to the seller as possible? And then what did you not enjoy? Like, don’t worry, and this is always what I say there. They’d never want to offend the seller, right? They’re always like, Oh, well, I’ll only say this this little bit, but I’m not going to tell him the truth. And that’s what I say, Hey, if you can be as brutally honest, they don’t know who you are. And I’m not going to tell them who you are. Don’t worry. And they’re like, oh, okay, cool. Well, I thought that the, you know, whatever it is, I thought that XYZ could be improved. Perfect. That’s really you can take that to your seller, and maybe fix that, or work on that or just keep that in mind. For if offers come through. That’s probably gonna show in the offer, okay. Then you’re going to add all the names, numbers, emails to your Cavey core of everyone that showed up that same day, you’re going to send them a bom bom or if you don’t have bom, bom. Just send them a regular text video of you video is important. The key word is video of your face saying, Hey, Bob, it’s Emily gar said we just met a couple of hours ago at the open house here. It’s the warmth of the pool in the backyard. I just want to say thank you so much for coming by the open house. If you have any other properties that you’d like to look at, I’m more than happy to show you. I actually have available tomorrow all day. So if you’d like to view any properties, let me know and I’m here for it. So, men, you want to give the debrief to the seller, given the numbers and leave them with either a feel good or maybe not maybe it’s not a feel good maybe the sellers need to know that XYZ needs to be fixed. So it might not be feel good again, they need to hear the bad, the good, the bad, the ugly everything they are they hired you to give them advice. So do not give them just what you think they want to hear which is feel good. That is not why they hired you. Okay, next is any new clients that you have follow up any of the agents that you met follow up saying it was great to meet with them because of course, you don’t want to be a butthead to any agents that you potentially might be working with. You might be working with them on that property or in the future. So always be nice. This is something that sometimes is so hard for agents and and I don’t want to call anybody out but man some there are some age groups that are very, very not nice. So and of course if you’re looking to recruit this is a perfect opportunity to be like, Oh man, this agent was killer. If you’re looking to expand your brokerage that’s perfect. Don’t ever be rude. Okay, go on na r dot realtor slash safety. For safety tips when doing open houses. Be very aware if you would prefer to do a buddy up you know, buddy system for open houses, a lot of our agents in our crew do that and they kind of just like one off like split the leads that come in, or work them together. 5050 And then you want to ask for referrals. So do they know if anyone else has been on the market that’s looking to sell right now? Do you know of anyone moving to any state at all? I can help them if I know of someone that that’s a good agent in that city. And then of course, if they’re usually gonna say, oh, no, not at this time. That’s when you can go one step further. Oh, okay. You don’t do not know anyone that has recently had a job promotion? Or maybe like, what about having a baby? Or maybe like a couple whose kids went to college already? They’re looking to downsize? Okay, still no? Okay. Well, I would love to if you could keep me in mind. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to be following back up in like about a month if that’s okay. Or whatever it is. Just be yourself. And then this is the last segment before I’ll cut it because I didn’t realize I had been babbling for 62 minutes. Here we go. If the property has been sitting on the market, remember if the house isn’t selling the price is not compelling. So let’s talk adjusting the price. If the house has been on the market for two weeks or dipped again depends on the on the days on market, the average ask the Ask the seller in case you haven’t already, what price are you no longer seller because say they only wanted to sell if they can get for 75 but they want to list that 500 But they you know at 450 They would rather just rent you you’re gonna want to have that conversation again. Because maybe it is the case where you do just have to cancel they would rather just rent the property and then you get your $3,000 cancellation fee and you wish them the best you connect them to a couple of good property managers if you know of any. If you know of any in Tucson, please message me at the agent on social media, and then yeah, okay so then the last segment here is going to say if again this is again if the property has been sitting on the market make sure you you do your weekly update updates to the seller you know what the days on market are week after week. If this is too much for you have a fellow agent do it have a VA do it for you. And say the market has spoken typically when there are buyers that walk through the property, but I’ve placed no offers. That means that the pricing is off. And sometimes it’s off between two to 5%. And if the house is listed, and there are no viewings, or no no showings and no offers, that means that their pricing is off by more than 5%. Luckily, we’ve had viewers that walked the properties but no offers. So let me ask you, would you like to lower it to two or five by two or 5%. And of course that’s after you’ve run the numbers to a more appropriate price. That’s going to be it for today. On the next video I’m going to finish the checklist as well as show you the canned emails. I never think of what to say in email. It’s the same email one through six every single time. Do not recreate the wheel. We agents do enough of that in their business. If you have any questions hit me up on Instagram. I’m Ally the agent al i. If you want a copy of the checklist, let’s meet over Zoom Text the word checklist to 520-341-2552 If you enjoyed this video, give this video like comment below and give DJ and keeping it real a five star review on Apple and Spotify in order to get the checklist. We’ll see you on the next one.

Welcome to the October episode of Learn with a Lender with Joel Schaub of Guaranteed Rate! In this episode Joel discusses the changes happening in the lending world and also shares strategies for listing agents to get the most out of the changes in the loan limits. Next, Joel discusses why this is a great time to buy. Joel also shares his thoughts about the upcoming market. Sign for Joel’s newspaper by sending an email at joel@rate.com writing “newsletter” in the subject line. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Joel can be reached at joel@rate.com and 773.654.2049. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Did you know there have been changes to the loan limits for jumbo loans versus conventional loans? Or we’re going to talk about that today and show you some creative solutions to get around high interest rate environments. 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 on to our show. Welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, I’m your guide and host through the show today, once again, is our monthly series learn with a lender with Joel shop from guaranteed rate. Now, Joel is the vice president of lending at guaranteed rate. And he’s been doing loans at a high level since 2003. And he got to that level because of what he does specifically for agents, which is that he gives back part of his commission to the buyer on every transaction. So last year alone, Joe gave back over $300,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with them. And that puts Joe’s volume in the top 1/10 of 1% of loan officers nationwide. fact there’s 400,000 loan officers in the country and Joel is currently ranked number 137. Even in this down market. Joel has closed transactions this year for 102 million. So if you are looking for a loan officer, we cannot more highly recommend Jolie’s the very best we’ve ever worked with Joel can be reached at joel@rate.com. Again, Joel at jll@rate.com. You can also shoot him a text message or call him at 773-654-2049. Let’s say hello to the biggest Cubs fan. I know Joel sharp. Welcome back. Joel Schaub 2:55Hey, thanks so much for having me on. We have so many things going on in the market right now. These are usually my favorite time of month getting on here. Giving back and talking about things that really can help agents grow their business. D.J. Paris 3:10Yeah, thanks. We love having you. And even when you are either in your office or working Mobley you always make time for our show. And we absolutely appreciate that. So yeah, let’s talk about some changes that have been happening in the lending world. I’ve been hearing a lot about loan limits that have changed. Um, can you shed us some light to our audience of what is that and what do agents need to understand about it? Joel Schaub 3:40Yes, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve been seeing multiple posts from everybody talking about the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loan limits have gone up, instead of just talking about it. How does that help me as an agent what was not able to get a loan above the new limits before? Right? So the numbers, if you haven’t heard are up to $766,550 a mouthful, right? So the bottom line for this is that you’ve always been able DJ to get loans above it before but they were considered jumbo mortgages, right? So if you’re in the jumbo category, they were with higher interest rates, they were with more downpayment and typically a lot harder to get underwritten and approved. So now, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have said that loan amounts that go up to 766 550 now fall under their category, which means a lot more advantages for first time homebuyers, for example. So D.J. Paris 4:44now we’re we’re what used to be classified as possibly jumbo is could potentially be non jumbo at this moment. Joel Schaub 4:54And so think of it last year if you were buying an $800,000 home you couldn’t put down On 5%, if you were buying an $800,000 home, you are well over that number, that 5% down would have put you into a jumbo category. Well, now you’d go out and buy an $800,000. Home with $40,000 down. And now the loan amount there of 760 falls under the jumbo limit. So there’s some big advantages for first time buyers here. And that’s why I always like to, like get into the weeds with this, it’s not so much seeing the data and hearing the numbers. But if I’m an agent, how do I go out and market to my database right now to get one more buyer or one more seller. So think of this right? A lot of times, you’re right on the cusp of pricing a property, right, we’d ever want to price ourselves into a jumbo loan, if you can, right meaning now knowing that first time homebuyers can bind with 5% down in most of the Fannie Mae conforming limits. Think of that as a strategy in terms of how you would price the home, maybe you wouldn’t price it at 825, maybe price it down at 805. Knowing that a first time homebuyer would qualify. And that’s where they will be setting their limits themselves. D.J. Paris 6:14That’s an interesting strategy. So actually listing agents may want to consider if they have a home that is within these sort of like, if they have a home that’s 800,000 or above, this would be a great thing to consider when pricing. Joel Schaub 6:32Yeah, take it to the next step, what would have put somebody out of jumbo before, okay, so the jumbo limit last year was 726,000. That means if you had a listing that was over 907, everybody was 20%, Down, Right? You had to otherwise, you were in a jumbo without 20% down, and I won’t get into how that would really affect the rates being higher and mortgage insurance. But now that $907,000 listing is easily under the 766 number. So taking a little bit of time doing the math to see where you should price your homes. And then knowing this gives you a lot of talking points when you’re out getting a new listing or helping a buyer. Yeah, D.J. Paris 7:18you know, I’m thinking as, as what an agent might want to consider talking to their buyers about is maybe now is a good time to buy because number one, a lot less competition, a lot less buyers are flooding the market. So prices are relatively stable at this point. We know when there’s lots of buyers that flood the market, of course, supply and demand the pricing goes up. So what you can always do is possibly refinance your rate, but you can’t refinance. You know what you spent, what you bought the property for. So this may be a good time. So what you know, but at the on the other side of it is the public goes but rates are at seven plus or you know, maybe even higher. And yes, money is a little more expensive to borrow at this time. But with a lot less competition, you’re not going to be likely to overpay. And so to me, I think this end with these loan limit increases as well. This is what I would be educating buyers on if I was an agent working today I’d be talking about I know it seems like it’s not the right time, because everyone else wants a three to 4% You know, loan but those days those days have passed. And the good news is less competition and probably lower pricing. Joel Schaub 8:37I think you’re exactly right DJ with the rates this year. It’s been sixes sevens and even eights as of this month and buyers are still calling 80 to 100 a month, I’m actually overwhelmed by the number of people, especially where I live in Chicago, that the rents DJ are just so much where they’re still looking to buy even though the rates are high. D.J. Paris 9:02Yeah, and again, just remember to guys competition, right? We want to talk to our buyers about competition and when we have lots of buyers flooding the market, we know that influences prices, and you know your job as an agent is your fiduciary. So you are to do what is best for the client’s financial interests. So having these conversations with buyers about Yes, it’s a slightly more expensive time to borrow than it was in previous years. But I would much rather borrow at a higher rate for temporarily for to get a lower price on the home I want to I want to buy so we’ve seen you know prices are stable right now. So now’s the time to get the buyers off the fence and can you know encourage them to consider not waiting for those rates to come down. Joel Schaub 9:51You know I had an agent the other day asked me so they know what I do in terms of even in this down market doing $10 million a month and They say I want to get to $10 million a year. Howard, how is it possible that you’re doing it? So I shared one of the two, one rate buydown techniques that I talked to a lot of buyers about. And when there’s no competition out there when you’re actually submitting an offer, because rates are high, and you can ask the seller to fund a to one buy down, I like to tell them that, if you don’t ask, you’re not going to get all right. So if you’re not familiar with a way to do it, if you’re an agent, connect with your lender, ask them do you facilitate to one by downs, almost every lending partner out there, we’ll do this for you. And on a $400,000 loan, just asking the seller to give a 10 to $12,000 credit DJ will lower that client’s payment by almost $500 a month. Versus if they were just getting 10 to 12 grand off the price barely changes their payment by $88. Wow, writing. Yeah. D.J. Paris 11:01So this is a great a great option for sellers to even consider as maybe putting that in as part of their offering. Without waiting to have it as for say I am willing to work with you on your loan. And if a if a buyer down would make sense to get this deal closed, we will do it. And so it really becomes I think a marketing tool for both sides, obviously at the buy side, but it’s also something that listing agents should be aware of. So they could consider if that would make some of these these offers more attractive. Joel Schaub 11:37Instead of doing a price reduction, right, a $10,000 price reduction is probably not going to move the needle and we certainly don’t want to do a $25,000 price reduction on a four or $500,000 home. Therefore, if we could just give up 10 to 12 grand in price, and give it to the buyer that’s gonna make that buyer in that price point, make that home look so much better than the neighbor’s house, right? It’s about payment. For a lot of the first time homebuyers. Almost everyone asked me, not how much am I approved for but what are my payments if I buy this home? And so that’s the big deal if I’m a listing agent, and I know that it’s overpriced, and I don’t want to ask the seller and come back with that damn conversation about they can sign for another price reduction. How about we do a marketing blitz and show right now that with rates down there in the low 70s, I even today was able to lock in a 30 year fixed with the buy down where for the first year the rate was 4.99%. In year number two was 5.9. And then fixed for the 30 years, we were back to 6.99%. And that was all because the seller gave a 3% credit to our buyer. So we use that to drive the rate down and then use a two one buy down strategy to further give the client savings. D.J. Paris 12:59And these are the kinds of strategies that really do separate the top agents from the rest that agents who are willing to understand there are these creative solutions that 99% of agents aren’t that familiar with that this is how you get to become a specialist. And this is where why we have these these episodes with Joel because he of course is. And he teaches all of you the same stuff. So you know, just as a quick plug for Joel, he’s been coming on our show for five plus years, providing incredible value to everyone. So please, if you don’t have a loan officer that is bringing you these kinds of ideas, reach out to Joel, he would love to chat with you about that as well. Joel, I would also love to talk about your sort of thoughts about the upcoming market. So we know it gets a little slow in the winter months. And of course, spring is not far away. So do you have any thoughts about what we might be thinking what we might be seeing? I know it’s no one’s got a crystal ball, but what what are your best thoughts for for this upcoming spring? Joel Schaub 14:06Well, I have a hot take, okay, this is it might not be what everybody’s expecting. But this is gonna be an earlier spring market than ever. Okay, rates really did just come down in the last two weeks. Okay. And by all indications, we’re probably about a 48% chance that the Fed cuts rates and QE number one, meaning buyers are going to be out there hot and heavy. They don’t want to miss out and it’s strange, but it’s true. There’s going to be multiple offers if the properties are priced right. And I’m not talking March, April, May, I’m talking January, the start of the new year we’re going to start seeing rates, they might be down into the mid sixes. And if we see that we’re going to have buyers coming out of the woodwork that say finally, rates are no longer in the eighth they’re not in the sevens I can easily get into the six says, and then still use a buy down strategy to get a rate maybe at four and a half or five and a half for the next two years. There’s gonna be a lot of activity early. And we’re going to look back on this episode saying to him, Joel, you were right. D.J. Paris 15:16You know, I still just think there’s so much opportunity right now to convince buyers are not convinced, of course, they should do what’s best for them, but to encourage them to really consider the implications of if the Fed did drop. If tomorrow if the Fed decides, you know what, early Christmas present for everybody, we’re going to drop 200 basis points, we’re going to drop 2% of the rate on a rate. Can you imagine what would flood the market as far as buyers? Everybody who is on the sidelines right now, would jump back in because of course, it’s such a huge event. And this would be really, it would be a good and a bad thing for buyers. It’s good because it gets them off the sidelines bad, because now they’re all competing with each other. Joel Schaub 16:00You’re exactly right. This is the we’re gonna see early, but I think towards the q4. So it’s gonna be this kind of like a camel shaped recovery next year, I think we’re gonna see it really shoot up in q1, when feds are talking about rates, summer is going to be a little bit slower, but the feds are going to cut again. And so when we get into the fall market, there’s going to be rates considerably lower multiple offers, getting back to the tougher situations as agents that you better be ready for. And so TJ is exactly right. Knowing that this is coming, like they’ve outlined to the feds are cutting rates, why wouldn’t we try to go out and buy now when there is less competition, because once we own the home, the client can refinance that loan, and get the better interest rate down the line. We should D.J. Paris 16:51also mention too, that these types of strategies, you know, this goes back to sort of the stock market ideas. Buying when a stock is undervalued or underperforming, doesn’t feel as encouraging at the time of purchase. If you are, you know, just getting into the stock market, or like oh my gosh, this company’s down, I want to buy them when they’re not doing well. Well, yeah. Because then when they when they rebound, of course, you’ll you’ll receive all the upside benefit. So you have to I think, as an agent, really think about how do I start conditioning my clients that even though that rate feels a little yucky at the moment, don’t worry, it’s yes, it feels yucky. But here’s why it’s still a really good idea. I think if if if agents can start having these conversations with some of these bullet points that you share every single month on our show, they would get more transactions right now, I am absolutely confident of that. Because everybody talks about the rate and rate rate rate rates are high. Yes, yes, we all know that. And here’s why it’s still a great time. And having those conversations is is really doing the right thing for your client. And it’s doing the best thing for them from a fiduciary perspective, making sure that they know what everyone else doesn’t that it’s actually a great time to consider borrowing right now, even though that rate is higher than anyone would like, of course, rates are always going to be higher than anyone would like Right. Of course, that’s always the case. But we know that the Fed has Joel said is outlining an opportunity in the next year or longer to decrease rates to a more palatable time. You don’t want to wait for that time. Because by the time that happens, everyone’s going to be in the market. Joel Schaub 18:28If we can afford the monthly payment with the higher rate, think what happens. Okay, so now we’re buying a piece of real estate today, when it’s uncomfortable, right? Let’s be clear, like rates in the low 70s. Even if you get them down into the six, that’s still a lot of uncomfortability for a lot of folks when rates were in the twos and threes during COVID. Okay, but stick with me here and think of like in my market of Chicago, it’s not crazy million dollar homes. My my average client, most of them hundreds a year are four or $500,000 homes. And if you bought a $400,000 home right now when nobody else was buying, because rates were in the sevens, and rates get down to five and a half, you better believe that $400,000 home is worth more buyers are going to start paying more for homes when rates go down. So why wouldn’t we go buy something now when rates are high, only if we can afford it, we don’t want to get in over our head. We don’t want to buy a piece of real estate and it’s going to cost us too much money. But if we can comfortably afford it, and we know that rates are coming down, you know your home is going to be worth more and then you’ll reap the benefit when you refinance the loan. D.J. Paris 19:42I love that it’s so true. And we’re gonna keep banging the drum on this because once rates do start to really come down, this is all going to be a lot more obvious. And so we want to try to get you in on on the ground floor so to speak, so that you can do not only do what’s right for your client, but also To begin to, you know, really show your value as an agent, right value as an agent, why are they paying you as much as they are to help them buy or sell a home? It’s because of ideas like this. So thank you, Joel, for that I also Joel, Joel is what a lot of people who listen who might not know this about about Joel and his team, is they are exceptional at client appreciation events. Really, Joel and his team, it’s the best I’ve ever seen in this industry, with the amount of giving back that Joel does it he and his team. And I’m just curious to know, because you are always so on top of this. You know, it’s the holiday season agents are probably thinking about what they may want to do for their their clients in it, whether or not it’s you know, something for this holiday season or the future. What might you suggest because you always have amazing ideas for your own clients. Joel Schaub 20:57Well, I’m already looking ahead. Unfortunately, the December months have been booked and planned since July, right. So right now, as of this taping, what we’re talking about, we just did it with my team this morning, Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day, all right, and sending sending gifts on these off days. So it’s not just the events that we do if you’re an agent, trying to come up with ways to touch your database on off days, like Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, I do Presidents Day, I do National Pizza Day, I do all of these little cute things. Because if it’s Christmas or New Year, you’re lumped into the mix, there’s so many gifts, I stopped doing birthday gifts as well, everyone gets a birthday gift. And I know that boo, you don’t send out birthday gifts, I don’t I want to stand out you as an agent want to stand out, no matter how good your gift is to a client. Something better, right? You’re gonna send but when they’re not expecting a gift, when they’re not expecting something boy, they say that that came from my realtor, that realtor sent me this gift. So I encourage you to think of these off days where you can send out small tokens of value where you look different. And I know DJ, you were talking about events. And I just went on the tangent because I was just doing you know, D.J. Paris 22:19I really I really meant all sorts of marketing appreciation that you do, which whether it’s events or product, or you know, gifts. And I really miss it was my Miss misspoke. But But yeah, so of events are obviously always great as well. I was thinking more about the the actual gifts. So you were you were saying you were saying what I didn’t say. So thank you for that. And yeah, so maybe not focusing so much on the December holidays. As much as it’s kind of like this, we do the same thing for our holiday parties. I don’t know, if guaranteed rate does the same thing as we stopped planning them for December because we’re like, Everyone’s so busy, nobody so hard. Like we’re we just do it in January now. And we do that because number one, it’s kind of fun to have a party in January when no one’s expecting to have a party. So Joel is basically saying the same idea whether you’re doing a client appreciation event, or just a gift, you know, find a fun, cute thing that is on an off day where people wouldn’t be expecting those kinds of things. Joel Schaub 23:24I had a I did a kind of a pipeline review with an agent today. And so this was an agent that is in the city of Chicago has a big database. And they do a lot of volume. And I looked to see who their preferred lender was. And I noticed that they were only capturing about 5% of their business. And so during the presentation, I was sharing with them that they did last year to the tune of about 310 deals, but their person, their their person that they were so loyal to only captured about 5% of the business. And I shared with them that they’re leaving money on the table because out of the last 15 transactions. There are 14 different mortgage lenders on that list. And I said whether you decide to partner with my team, and I showed him everything that we do, and I said this is worth money, literally there’s RESPA compliant ways that lenders would pay to be your preferred lender. And on that example, it was about $48,000 A year is what I shared that I’d be willing to step up in a heartbeat and write them a check for 48 grand a year to apply to RESPA compliant things like silho and their events. And it kind of blew them away. They I knew we were valuable. And I knew that my preferred lender that they liked it was a high school buddy and he’s like, I know about grown to them and I really did need to you know they connected with me. They wanted to hear what I was doing with other agents. And the reason I bring this up is if you are listening to this and you do a lot of business, connect with a lender. literally doesn’t, you want somebody that’s local that you really like that wants to spend money with you? Okay? And this is where all realtors they’re afraid to go ask but don’t lenders will step up DJ, how often do you hear me talk about this D.J. Paris 25:14every single time and I love that you’re you’re you banging the drum about this is hold lenders accountable for helping you grow your business, they want more of your transactions? Of course they do. And as a result that that is worth something and of course staying within RESPA and and you know whatever association rules apply making sure you’re doing it the right way. But making sure you’re not undervaluing your business as an agent. You know, if you’re doing however many deals a year, and on the buy side, think about how many different lenders did I work with? And on those those lenders? What did they do to help me further my business? And what are they doing currently to help me further my business? And did they send me any referrals, and you know what, and that now it’s time to start interviewing loan officers. Joel Schaub 26:04So if you’re listening here, and you’re doing over $20 million of annual production per year, reach out to me for sure, I’ll show you what you should be doing. And how you can go back to your lending partners there and say, there’s somebody else out of state that’s willing to do this for me, can we even come up with something close to it. And if you’re doing less than $20 million, reach out to me and get on my newsletter. This is where I share with you the simple tips, tricks, and things that will make you sound smarter. Make you have real talking points in digestible little bites. So it’s just an email to me, it’s joel@great.com JO el@rate.com. And in the subject line, you can write a newsletter. And then that’s it. There’s nothing you don’t need to write me three paragraphs unless you want to tell me how much you love us. But it’s easy to sign up for the newsletter, you can unsubscribe anytime, and it’ll be action packed with things that you can actually use to grow your business to the next level. D.J. Paris 27:08Yeah, I really echo that get on Joel’s mailing list every Wednesday or so they are sent a sends out this great, super easy to read and understand and actionable bullet points about here’s what’s going on in the market. Here’s as an agent, what you should be talking to your clients about. You don’t have to wait for Joel to come on these episodes, although we hope that you continue to listen to our show as well. But don’t wait even for this, you want to know weekly what’s going on. So get on his mailing list, send him an email joel@rate.com There’s 1000s of people on this on this email list. Now it’s grown hugely popular, and it’s a nice service that Joel provides for our listeners. So thank you, Joel. And also again, if your loan officer is just not really helping you do more production, or come up with creative solutions for your clients in this market. Now’s the time to again, find the really good loan officers and guess what Joel is one of them. So reach out to him and if he can’t assist you, He will give you some great ideas of where you could possibly go but he and guaranteed rate they’re licensed in all 50 states they can of course help you as well. So Joel up, everyone emailed Joel get on his mailing list joel@rate.com If you are, you know doing more than 20 million also say, hey, I want to do a review of my business with you and see what Joel can and his team can put together for you as well. So Joel, another wonderful episode, it’s our last episode of the year for learn with a lender. So Joel, thank you so much for another year of service to not only me personally, and my team, but also every single listener, we had the most number of downloads to date. In our entire history. This year, we were up about 30%. So we are super grateful because it’s people like you that come on and give us this valuable information that keeps people coming back. So thank you to our audience too. You guys are the greatest this may be the final episode of the year. So I would be remiss to say thank you to everyone who’s been with us, either whether you’re new or that you’ve been with us since the beginning but we appreciate you please tell a friend tell a friend and by the way if you know another agent that’s like that, you know, their their preferred loan officer isn’t doing a good job for them. Send them a link to this episode. You know, it would do them a service as well. And just keep keep the love going let other agents know about our show. But on the in the interest of wrapping up this year, we will say goodbye to Joel and hello to Joel in January for a whole new year of content. So thank you to Joel and his team at guaranteed rate again, email him joel@rate.com guys he’s really that good. And I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t believe it. It he really is and he’s earned my business so he should he has let them have the opportunity to earn your business. as well, Joel, I need to become your pitch, man, maybe we can, we can work out, I could start doing commercials for you, I’ll be the I’ll be as your biggest fan, I’ll be your pitch tomorrow big Joel Schaub 30:10fan and everyone that. Remember, like the sky is not falling rates have already come down. So take away with this next year. If you’re in this business now stay in the business. If you’re new to the business, stick with it, there is so much that you’re going to be able to do when other people leave. So keep positive, know that rates are coming down. And know that no matter where rates are at if you work your sphere, work, the people that you know, and then do a great job. This business is for you, you’re going to do great now D.J. Paris 30:43is that now’s the time really that the good agents do even better. So this is the time because they take market share away from the agents that are falling behind. Don’t let that happen to you. Keep listening to our show, reach out to Joel he will give you ideas about how to keep moving your business forward. And please keep coming back and listening. So Joel, on behalf of everyone. Thank you on behalf of Joel and myself to the audience. We love you. Thank you for a great year, and we will see everyone in 2024 Thanks Joel.

Welcome to our monthly feature Unpopular Real Estate Opinions with Chris Linsell. Chris Linsell talks about the current situation in the real estate market. Chris discusses mortgage rates and why this is an amazing time to buy a home. Next, Chris talks about AI and its impact on the real estate market, an agent’s job, and the commissions. Chris also discusses how agents can evaluate the level of service they offer and what they can do to improve. Last, Chris discusses the importance of building a portfolio of expertise. 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 0:00is AI coming for your job? Well, yes, but also No. 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 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 Parris. I am your guide and host through the show and today I’ll return to keeping it real as our one of our favorite people that has been with us almost since well, almost since the beginning of our show certainly has been with us for many years Chris Lynn cell and we actually have a new title for Chris’s episodes that he’s going to be coming on regularly with us used to be called closing time, we came up with a with a different and kind of a more fun title we both thought, which is called unpopular real estate opinions with Chris Lin Sal, let me let me actually tell you more about Chris, if you are new to the show, if you are a returning guest or sorry returning listener to our show, you probably already know this about Chris, but let me tell you more about him to everyone who is new. Crystal Ansel 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. And 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 multi million dollar waterside compounds, and accomplished musician, actor and speaker Chris has engaged with audiences sized ranging from 30 to 3000. Most recently, Chris was just a featured speaker at the 2023 National Association of REALTORS Convention, which he just returned. Many of you listening may have already may have seen him speak there. But Chris, what oh, by the way, before Chris comes on, please follow Chris on LinkedIn, we’ll have a link to his LinkedIn page. He has writes great content there. And also if you are looking for a sought after speaker, either for a brokerage, maybe an association or a conference, Chris would love to chat with you. He is constantly traveling across the country speaking to lots of Realtors, Chris Lynn cell.com is where you can find his touring schedule and how to get in touch with him. Chris, welcome back to the show. DJ, Chris Linsell 3:57it’s great to be back, we might have to work on cutting that intro down a little bit, I realized I gave you a lot of info. And you know, most people that don’t care about that stuff, they just want to they want to get to the meat inside of the sandwich. So thanks. Thanks for having me back. It’s really a pleasure to be chatting with you again. You know, when I was or anyone who doesn’t know, DJ and I originally met when I was the senior writer for a website called the clothes and did a lot of content and and professional development for real estate professionals through the close hence closing time the former name of our segment but now that I am have moved on in the next chapter beyond the close, launching some new ideas here Unpopular Opinions perhaps man I’m looking forward to digging into it today. It’s It’s It’s good to be back chatting. D.J. Paris 4:56It’s very exciting to have you back Chris is very very important person, I believe, currently in the real estate journalist space. Chris is very, very well informed on what’s going on. From not just from a news perspective, but also from the perspective of working agent. And you’re also in direct communication with working agents as of course, you being a working agent yourself up. So let’s, let’s get right into it. What? Well, there’s a lot to go over. What do you what’s on your mind today? Chris Linsell 5:30Man, what’s on my mind today? Well, you know, there’s a lot of stuff, obviously happening in the real estate space right now. I think I think it’s important for for real estate professionals right now, to realize that we are, we’re currently I don’t know if you ever seen the video this, we’re currently standing on the beach, watching the water get pulled away from the shore. Like, like what happened in I think it was in Thailand, when there was this earthquake. You know, out in the ocean, everybody standing on the beach was watching the water recede, like there was waves that were getting pulled back like the tide was going out. And everyone was like, What the heck is going on? It’s pretty quiet in here right now. But there’s no water like we’re used to all of that water. In this video is building to a giant wave that’s going to come crash over the beach. And right now I have this kind of gut feeling that real estate might be going through that scenario. We’re all standing on the beach. It’s relatively calm. There’s, you know, it’s not perfect, but we’re not getting splashed right now. But pretty soon, we’re going to face some challenges as an industry challenges that we haven’t faced in a long, long time, maybe ever. And it is time for real estate professionals to start thinking about this, because we’re about to get wet as as the same would go. But I’m here to talk about why we might get wet and to tell people where they can buy their surfboards, because just because the waves are common doesn’t mean that you can’t be successful either. D.J. Paris 7:12Yeah, it’s funny I that I think that’s a really apt metaphor. And it makes a lot of sense, because it does feel very calm. Right now, certainly, the waters are murky. And, you know, there’s a lot that people are, at least the agents that I communicate with are unhappy about, but not as unhappy, maybe as they’ve been in recent, previous years. But there is obviously there’s there’s challenges with inventory and interest rates. I saw Jamie Dimon yesterday from from Chase, had basically said, Yeah, recession is coming. So um, that was that was depressing to see that usually. I don’t know, whatever Jamie Dimon says, I usually think is probably probably close to accurate. But he is not an economist either. So who knows, but he has a team of them working for him. But yeah, we would love let’s talk about where that kinetic energy is building right now out and out in the surf. And when it’s going to come crashing into us and what we can do sort of brace ourselves for it. Yeah. Chris Linsell 8:18Well, let me let me start by giving you an unpopular opinion, but not untrue, about the mortgage rates that you just mentioned. So it’s true that we’ve seen volatility in the mortgage rate sector, significant volatility relative to what we’re used to, right. Like it was not that long ago, that the status quo for mortgage rates was in the threes in the fours 4% for residential loans. What felt high at, you know, in recent memory, so to see rates where they are right now feels volatile, it feels like a shock even for those of us who have seen rates higher than this. It’s just been a long time since those rates have been that high. But let me set some, let me let me kind of set a straight here. It’s not popular for me to say this, but we are going to experience as an industry, a significant set of disruption. When industry went when our interest rates come down a little bit. And let me explain why. Right now, most people in most markets are experiencing what I would consider price stagnation. Relative to the interest rates, these high interest rates are not driving prices down. They’re just generally keeping them pretty, pretty pretty much flat. This is because these high interest rates, which usually would drive prices down are being buoyed by our lack of inventory, as you mentioned before, right like, even though you Interest rates are high demand was so high that now that the interest rates have come up, we’ve just kind of hit that equilibrium. But not down here where we want it, it’s up a little bit higher, this equilibrium is higher than most people are comfortable with. So imagine what would happen. If say, in 812 16 months, the interest rates drop two percentage points, and all of a sudden, we are seeing mortgage rates in the five percents. While all of this pent up demand for home purchases is going to explode onto the scene. And imagine what will happen when the buyer pool literally doubles in two weeks, when interest rates snapped down again, we’re going to see prices pop, especially in on demand markets, like major metros, tourist destinations, anywhere where there’s water, especially freshwater, we are going to see prices pop by 30% 50%, even in the span of a quarter, it would not surprise me to see interest rates go down, and prices pop by 20% 25. This D.J. Paris 11:12is a pretty this is a competition thing. We’re talking about 100% competition 100%. Chris Linsell 11:17Because you’re gonna have all of a sudden, all these buyers who had decided, I’m going to wait out the mortgage, the mortgage rates, I don’t have to move right now. But I cannot surrender my my 3% mortgage rate on my existing home, I can’t surrender that for an 8%. But I might be able to stomach it for 5%. So all of those buyers are going to flood into the market and all of a sudden, we’re going to see prices on homes skyrocket. And this is not going to be good for our markets in general, we’re still trying to find this balance between supply and demand. So an unpopular opinion, all that to say is the following. This is actually an amazing time to buy a home for buyers. Because if you have the capital to be able to temporarily brace the existing payments, thanks to the mortgage rates that are elevated, you have low competition and flat prices, which means your your your search process is relatively predictable. You could if you bought a house right now, if those mortgage rates like we’re all predicting, popped down by 2%, in the next 24 months, you can refinance that house, but you cannot refinance the price of the house. If you want to wait. If you cannot lock in today’s price, and then wait to buy it for two more years, you got to lock in at both places. But you can refinance that rate, even though it’s a little higher than you’re used to. Now, not everybody has that opportunity. I recognize this is another reasons unpopular opinion. Not everybody has the opportunity to go in at the higher mortgage rate because capital is tight, I totally get that. So this isn’t something that applies for everyone. But if you are working with buyers right now, it is time to start framing this situation as an opportunity because genuinely hate to say it, I don’t think it’s gonna get easier for buyers. In fact, I think it’s gonna get harder. And right now is the time that buyer’s agents should be counseling their clients to say, Now is the time if you want to strike on these sorts of things, it’s time to be active in the in the in the market right now. D.J. Paris 13:35I agree, I think that I would love to see a calculator. And by the way, if one of our listeners is so skilled in their in math to create this, but I would love to see based on some of the assumptions you just mentioned, what that breakeven point is for when it doesn’t make sense to purchase in a higher interest rate low competition environment like now which because and then assuming that at some point in the next several years, you may be able to refinance down to a lower rate if if rates do in fact decrease, which which we would hope they will. But you’re right, that the as the value or as the price. As the interest rates come down, of course, competition will be increased. So I think you’re right, this is, I think a huge opportunity for agents to just explain to their buyers money is just more expensive right now. It’s just a little bit more expensive. And here’s the good news. The bad news is yes, it’s going to cost you more to to you know, get a place currently, as far as the if you’re borrowing but you have not only less competition, as Chris said prices are relatively flat and a less competition. And then you know, as interest rates of course increase you’re able to or decrease you’re able to refinance hopefully in the future, but you know, you’re basically going to get a better price today. Just based on competition, Chris Linsell 15:01yeah, 100% 100%. Now, I want to layer in another unpopular opinion that goes along with this one we’re talking about, I mean, it’s easy to talk about the mechanics of our market. Because we’re all kind of watching we’re I mean, most most MLS is you can see what’s closing, you can see when it’s closing, you can understand the volume of your market, you can understand it relative to the historics. So most of us can see that stuff pretty pretty evidently, if we’re looking for it. But let me add in a layer of kind of unpopular opacity, if it will, something that kind of cloud things a little bit, which is the the added element of technology, specifically AI in this conversation. I know it’s unpopular to say this. But AI is common for your job. And let me be more specific, you’re not going to get replaced by AI, but you’re going to get replaced by somebody who uses AI very soon. Like, I’m not kidding, in the next 36 months, this is going to be a real consideration for people. And let me tell you why I think that this is true. We have seen an unprecedented acceleration in terms of the the path of AI, DJ, I don’t know if if you saw this or not. So if you if you did, I’m gonna give you a gimme here. And if you didn’t, then we’ll we’ll go from there. How long do you think we’ve been talking about chat? GPT? How long do you think this tool has been on the scene for us? How D.J. Paris 16:38long has it been on the scene? I don’t know. Yeah. How long is it? How long has it been in the zeitgeist? I’d say, year, maybe year and a half. It Chris Linsell 16:50just chat GPT became available to the public, just barely a year from when we’re recording this. It’s been available to the public one year and one day from today. It feels like we’ve been talking about this for a long time. Because I mean, a year is a long time. But we’ve also been really intensely talking about it. And one of the reasons we’ve been really intensely talking about it, is because it has developed so fast. Think about where we were a year and a half ago, nobody was using it was even thinking in the context of technology, how can I use AI to improve my real estate business? And now, I mean, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, I have spoken to literally 1000s of Realtors over the last just three months about how AI will affect their real estate business. And let me tell you, things are not slowing down, things are speeding up. It is very reasonable to believe that a year from right now, AI will be unrecognizably powerful relative to what it is right now. So if you are thinking to yourself, This is a technology that will not affect me and my business. You are akin to the realtors, who in the early 2000s thought now, there’s just no way that a company like what are they called Zillow, Zillow, zili, there’s no way a company like that could affect my real estate business. Of course, people are still going to want to come in my office and flip through the phone book that was the MLS, then if you are one of those people, you’re fooling yourself AI, and somebody who’s using it is coming for your job. And if you’re not prepared for that three years from now, you’re going to be doing something else. D.J. Paris 18:54Yeah, I mean, it’s even AI has even changed the way that I searched the web because now for the most part, I will well, I’m trying to think of if this is a true statement for me, it’s close enough to true most of the time, I will go to chat GBT with my query before I’ll go to Google. And that is only going to in Google’s developing their own. They have barred, they have their own AI. But eventually, we are going to stop submitting even search queries the way that we’re doing now. It’s it’s chat, GBT already has voice input, and that’s going to continue to develop and people are going to just start getting accustomed to talking to their devices and asking for information. I do it almost every day. i The way I think about it is you know, I don’t know if it goes back to the Odyssey but but this whole or wherever, whatever mythology this is, but the oracle at Delphi, this Greek mythology thing I have that now and or at least a version of that. And I speak to it all the time. And I’m curious and how Do you think that may impact a realtors job? Well, you mentioned? Yeah. Like how? What? Yeah. Chris Linsell 20:07Well, I mean, I’ll start off by saying, This is not an exaggeration. My children speak to and I don’t want to say it out loud. Our smartest speaker. Yep, my children speak to our smart speaker literally daily. And they ask it the sort of things that would have taken me a minute to get for them using the internet, and would have taken me at their age going to find somebody who just physically knew the information that I was asking. So my kids, this is this isn’t a learned behavior. This is an organic behavior for them. And it is for anybody who grew up using this technology. And the emergence of of artificial intelligence to pair with that sort of interface is going to, like I said, completely revolutionize the way that we think about information and execution of tasks. How will that affect real estate professionals? Well, there are two big things that I think we should consider. The first is, and I know, unpopular opinion here. But the first is if your value as a real estate professional is based on your access to tools, or your ability to execute procedural things, you’re screwed, I hate to say it, but this is going to change the way that we conduct real estate holistically, there will be no longer there will no longer be hours necessary for editing photos for writing listing descriptions for inputting and updating the MLS, there will no longer be hours necessary for sorting through and prioritizing communication on platforms like CRMs, there, frankly, will be no longer a need sooner than later to, to automate and even generate the sort of passive communication that just two years ago, I was on the close, trumpeting as an absolute necessity for building your real estate brand. Having email drips, creating the right social media content, making sure your website stays up to date, these used to be jobs that we did with our own fingers with our own precious hours, this is going away. In fact, I would be willing to bet 30% of real estate hours in our job will be gone and dedicated to machines. Within timing, I want to say 24 months, but maybe more like 18 months, 16 months even. I mean, it’s going to change the way that we think about this business, it is no longer going to be a to do list, it is going to be a list of important commitments. It’s no longer I have to do these 20 things to get my listing live, it is just two questions, how can I serve my clients and what is in their best interest? Those are the things that you will be responsible for. Can you imagine a world where you don’t have to post to Instagram or update the MLS? Or think about filling out the forms for your for your, for your local boards, license renewal, you don’t have to do any of that stuff any longer. Great, but also terrifying for those of us for those of you frankly, who hang your hat on the ability to do that stuff, because you’re not going to have to do it anymore. D.J. Paris 23:39Yeah, I sort of I sort of have a few thoughts about that. So what Chris is saying is absolutely right, it’s going to be wonderful thing for agents in particular with MLS input for listings and just you know, photography all of that is going to be much much simpler and it’s going to just be automated you’ve talked about you know, email marketing and different sorts of ways that that agents are spending their their man hours you know working on responses to clients a lot of that casual stuff or operational stuff will absolutely be automated I’m curious do you think Commission’s will be affected as a result of a lot of a realtors operational tasks being, you know, auto generated or automated to some degree is that going to squeeze commissions because typically when I hear about any when I hear about efficiencies that are, you know, technological efficiencies that are coming, I wonder how that’s going to impact the public’s view of a realtors worth and are they going to want to continue to pay you know, five to 6% to sell their home? Chris Linsell 24:52Yeah, I actually think it’s gonna bifurcate commissions and if my broker is listening I I apologize in advance for the argument, I’m going to start in the office in just a second. I think that Commission’s AI is going to affect Commission’s the following ways it’s going to make, it’s going to drive down the cost of somewhere in the neighborhood of 65 to 70% of real estate professionals, I bet you in three years, I bet you that most real estate professionals, 70% of them will be operating in the realm of what discount brokers operate in right now. flat fee, hourly, that sort of thing. I genuinely think, because there’s so many real estate professionals, frankly, who hang their hat on their ability to access the MLS and schedule showings, that sort of thing does not, that is not a resume skill anymore. So I bet to a whole chunk of those people are going to go down to the discount brokerage level. The other percentage, the other 1520 25, maybe percent of commissions, or a commissioned agents are going to get paid more. And let me tell you why. Because right now, these agents are kind of in the mix with everybody else here, it’s difficult to separate this wheat from the chaff. But AI is going to make it abundantly clear, who has the skills necessary to really serve their clients and their clients needs. On a personal and dynamic and individual basis, it is going to be the difference between a dedicated, like think about it this way, they like the agents who are going to be in this top performers. These are your personal physicians who know that your health and wellness inside and out, they know every square inch of your medical record, and all the rest of these people are going to be WebMD. So you are going to have the opportunity to either have the most premium service available, or you’re going to essentially have a self service experience where somebody is just facilitating access to the platforms that you need. Now, what are the downstream effects of that? It could be hate to say it, it could be a bifurcated experience for a lot of consumers, that only the rich get this premium hands on experience. And the whole, all the rest of us get the self service experience. But let me unlock this as an opportunity for anybody who is thinking about where they fall in here. There is an incredible opportunity for anybody who wants to provide that five star service to those who don’t think that they either deserve it or can afford it. Yeah, you have a chance to bridge that gap to become all of a sudden like, like think about when luxury brands all of a sudden create a line of products that are accessible on multiple price levels, but with the same level of service and integrity. It is it is a transformative moment for those businesses they quadruple or sometimes 10x their business, you could do that. It’s just a matter of understanding, how do I provide that level of service? How do I make it accessible to other people within the market? How do I make it so I am not just serving the elite of the elite? There’s so much opportunity there? D.J. Paris 28:48How would you recommend somebody Mayst would start to think about providing or increasing the amount of service they provide. We talked about, you mentioned the sort of white glove service this this five star service? How does an agent start to evaluate? am I providing that? And if not, what steps should I start to take to improve? Well, Chris Linsell 29:12I mean, I think honestly, this kind of dovetails very nicely with some of the conversations I’ve been having and other people have been having around the effect of these lawsuits that have recently been levied and, and, you know, I’ve hit inflection points against the National Association of Realtors. If you’re not in the loop on that you’re I don’t know where you’ve been. But long story short, National Association of REALTORS was found liable for promoting practices that were seen as uncompetitive or that were uncompetitive. That’s what that’s what the verdict was essentially that collusion essentially correct collusion collusion, a tie tied to the way that we pay by IRS agents specifically and just the Commission, the commission structure in general, promoted by the National Association of Realtors. D.J. Paris 30:09And let me see if I understand because I have a very rudimentary understanding of of why this system was set up the way it was, why it’s a problem. Now, I guess that’s maybe where we could start. So my understanding is that the way that this was set up for to encourage homeownership was to say, Okay, we’re going to, we’re going to do a basically you pay it when you leave scenario, so that as a first time homebuyer, which we want to encourage, in this country, we’re going to you’re the buyer technically isn’t going to shell out write a check for the realtors commission for to their agent, when they purchase a property that is going to be paid, technically by the seller who is going to write that check to both agents, if there are two agents, and then when that home buyer goes to sell their property, they’re then going to pay back into the system that they So my understanding is, it was a way to encourage or incentivize homeowners who didn’t want to or weren’t able to bring, you know, this commission to the table to close to buy a home, and then they’re gonna basically pay back into to it when they sell. Yeah, Chris Linsell 31:18that’s that’s certainly the the kind of the, that’s the National Association of REALTORS explanation for sure. Not to say that you’re, you know, like, you know, puppeting that, that viewpoint, but that’s definitely the argument that they used. I don’t think that that’s a perfect argument, nor do I even think it’s a really a fair characterization, frankly. Agreed. D.J. Paris 31:41Yes, it’s but I would say that was the idea, right, that the National Association of REALTORS will say is, is Hey, and the challenge with that is it’s not really how it works. Because the way that Commission’s yes, technically the seller is going to pay the Commission’s however, it’s all baked into the price anyway, so it really is being shared by the buyer and the seller, regardless of who’s actually writing the check. Right, Chris Linsell 32:06right. So, so thinking about this scenario, we can go, you know, into the lawsuits. In fact, maybe we have an entire episode where we just shrug into lawsuits, because I got a lot of unpopular opinions about both sides of this lawsuit. But as far as applies to kind of our, you know, anyone who’s listening to this, if you’re in the real estate space, and you want to think about how you can start preparing yourself to be on the correct side of that bifurcation of commissions, and make sure you’re not relegated down to the hourly employee, essentially, who’s just pushing buttons. One of the things that you can do right now is to start thinking about not just not just your Commission’s and your lead, you know, lead database, and the clients that you serve, not just thinking about these things as individual transactions, but about thinking about them as an overall building of your portfolio of expertise. And let me let me give you an example of what I mean here. It is rare, that you have a successful attorney who has on his card, something like John Q, attorney, good at law, all of it, you know, like, they don’t just that’s not the way that expertise is built. Same with your doctor, frankly, you do not have a doctor who’s like, John Q. MD, I know the whole body. And now you know, doctors they need to know the whole body. Generally speaking, lawyers need to know the whole law, generally speaking, but these are not the people you pay the big bucks to, nor are they frankly, the people that you would go to if you have a very specific question about a very specific thing, lawyer, medical or otherwise, you as a real estate professional should be thinking about this to each of the clients that you take right now should be a part of building this portfolio of expertise. Such that you have a reason to say I am John Q realtor expert in blank. It is no longer excessive or acceptable to say I am John Q realtor expert in real estate. We’re all experts in real estate. We all have a real estate license. You’re an expert, I’m an expert. We’re all experts. Okay, whether or not we actually have the definitional knowledge that’s a different story. But as far as the public goes, we’re all experts. What you need to start thinking about is separating yourself and your expertise by building a portfolio business the debt bounce traits, what the heck you’re actually good at. Yeah. And one way, a quick and easy way you can start doing this is when you take on new client conversations, let’s say you’ve got a lead who’s interested in buying a house, maybe an interested person is interested in selling a house, the first meeting that you have with them, and this is going to feel so unnatural, I realize this is going to tell me I’m crazy for this. But you need to say something along the lines of, well, I’m interviewing you, too, I haven’t decided whether or not I’m taking you on as a client, I need to make sure that your needs make sense for me as well, to start thinking about every client as an opportunity to build your portfolio of expertise. And if you have potential clients that are not going to work towards building your portfolio of expertise, these might not be the right clients for you. And again, I recognize this is this is first world problems, if you are in a situation where the rent is due, and you’ve got to get a transaction closed, by all means. This is a place where you say you know, I’m going to prioritize this next month. But if you are not in an emergency situation like that, if you if you believe that your expertise, for instance, is in waterside condos, and somebody comes to you with a piece of vacant land out in the middle of the woods, this is not your client. This is not going to help you build that portfolio. D.J. Paris 36:31I think you’re right in real estate. Real estate agents seem to be it seems to be we’re a little bit behind on some of these other specialized professions where, you know, yeah, you pass the bar, you get get your law license, and then you are really specializing in some version of law. Yes, there are general practice attorneys, and there’s general, you know, physician, physicians, general practitioners, and they can do some basic things. And what what they what they will almost always do is is refer out when it comes to something specialized. So I think you’re right, you know, I wouldn’t go to my estate planning attorney, if I had a, you know, a civil matter that I wanted to get resolved or criminal, or, yeah, I would, I would go somewhere else. And I think the opportunity is for each agent to really start to think about as, as you said, very bluntly, but I think elegantly at the same time is what are we actually good at? Right? Not not the collective we the individual, I what am I actually good at? What what service Can I can I provide? And how do I increase? Not only how do I increase my knowledge of that service? But how do I start to rebrand or, you know, just evolve my brand, to really start to focus in one to two sort of specialties. Yeah, Chris Linsell 37:55100%. And let me let me bring this analogy, full circle, the those like just kind of general practice attorneys and general practice physicians, those people play an important role in their field, I’m not gonna I’m not discounting that. But those folks are more akin to that bottom portion of real estate professionals that I was talking about, they are hourly, or flat fee, they are not going to do something specialized for you, they are not going to do they’re not going to execute a specialized task. And that is, Okay, if that’s the kind of real estate you want to practice, there’s ways to be successful there, too. You just have to ramp up your production, you got to be able to close, I mean, seriously, I think in four years, if you’re on the, on the lower side of that bifurcation, you’re gonna have to close 100 transactions a year in order to, to make this you know, a real, a real career that you can scale and be successful in, relative to the, like, 11 that most people do right now. I mean, 10x in your business is not an easy feat. And we’re not going to have 10 to 10x number of transactions in the country. So you’re not just going to have to increase your business, you’re gonna have to take it from somebody else, which, you know, not an easy task either. So, all this to say, don’t be a real estate professional, who is just satisfied, filling out the boxes on the MLS, and just taken every opportunity that comes along. Like you know, and treating them all the same. This is your time right now. We are we are in relatively consequence free zone. We’re on the beach. The wave has not come in on us yet. This is the time to be figuring it out right to be putting sandbags up around the beach house so that when the wave does come in, it’s not going to wash you away. We have the time right now. If you’re not doing it right now. Uh, I mean, I guess, thanks for, you know, for me and mine, you know, we’re gonna be more prepared than you will be. But there’s room for everybody here if we can all get on if we can all get on board for sure. D.J. Paris 40:14Yeah, I’m just trying to think now of what are some practical action steps agents can take one of courses is defining what their actual value is for themselves, you know, really to sit down on a piece of paper and say, Why would I hire me? What is it that I can actually provide? And then how do I market that or two things? How do I improve those skills? Or continue to evolve those skills? And how do I? How do I market that and really start to get people to associate these particular skills, not just I can help you buy, sell rent, etc. But I am particularly good at x. And, and you know, you maybe you’re right, as you start thinking about, if anything is outside of that, it’s tough to say right now to people to do this, to maybe turn away business when the market is is, you know, not as apt not as active as anyone any realtor would like, at this time. But maybe it does make sense to start to think about what might I turn away? That doesn’t necessarily fit into my skill set? And and where can I refer that and still get paid a referral commission? Of course, just like, attorneys do this. I don’t know if physicians operate that same way. But certainly attorneys do. And, you know, just something to think about. Yeah, Chris Linsell 41:32for sure. I mean, one, one practical step you can do right now is, and let me be totally clear, I’m not suggesting that when I want, you know, my this strategy, I’m not suggesting that the strategy is exclusive, meaning this is the only thing that you should do. But one thing that you can do right now, is get together a collection of your colleagues who all specialize in different things to essentially create a referral chain, to be able to say, I’m good at condos, you’re good at vacant land, you’re good at luxury, you’re good at for at first time buyers, you’re good at first time sellers, we need an opportunity to create these referral relationships such that we don’t lose. It’s not about losing business. It’s about appropriately allocating the people who need a podiatrist, to the podiatrist and the people who need an optometrist and the optometrist. It is not a matter of like, of giving up business, it’s a matter of getting it to the right places. And if you find yourself in a situation where you’re like, Well, nobody’s sending me referrals. No, I don’t have anybody to serve us right now. It’s an indicator that your niche is too small for your market. If you do not have anybody that you are good, if there’s no clients for what you’re really good at, you have a skill that nobody is utilizing, that is not necessary for your market. And that’s a clear sign that you need to either switch, expand, or team up with somebody. And this is the kind of the last thing that I would add in the situation is I think we are going to see the emergence in the next three years of I don’t want to say a run, well, maybe I do. We’re going to see an emergence, a renewed importance, emergence of real estate teams, and how teams address the needs of their of their clients, both because it allows a real estate professionals to work together to be able to offer that premium service in a way that they wouldn’t necessarily be able to do individually. And we’re also going to see these teams emerge as vehicles for stability to be able to generate leads together to be able to use technology tools together to be able to share the burden of the business across multiple, multiple people. I mean, teams are pretty popular model right now. It wouldn’t surprise me if we see a dramatic increase in these people are calling team ridges, like brokerages that just focus or function as big teams. I think that might be a thing pretty soon. D.J. Paris 44:21Yeah, it seems like it should be and this idea of just sub specializing and merging, you know, different practitioners together into a team. It’s already happening. It’s been happening for years. And now with the additional sort of pressures of technology that are coming to sort of reduce the need for the general practitioner and increase the need for the sub specialist. I think you’re right that teams are going to start having it’s it’s, it’s going to be a lot of yes on my team. This is the first time homebuyer here’s the condo person Here’s the renter or the rental, you know, agent, etc. and commercial agents and all of that. That’s very, that’s very interesting. I do, I do see that coming, because we’re starting to see that even in our own brokerage, we’re seeing a lot of people starting to team up just to offer a wider breadth of services. And, you know, they’re basically their Commission’s are staying the same, but they’re able to provide better service to their agents. So I think that that’s a lot, you know, I think is a great place to sort of stop for today, because it’s really a lot for our audience to think about is really to start mapping out. What does if I were to specialize in in a couple of areas of real estate, what would that what would that look like? Where and what would I need to adjust? In my business right now to find more of that? How do I find more clients that are first time condo buyers in my market, or, you know, it could be also to like, I work with young families, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a specific type of transaction, it could be a specific type of individual or group of individuals that you enjoy working with, but But creating some sort of specialty, and really thinking about how do I, how do I penetrate that market, through my expertise, and through marketing. And, you know, I also think, too, if you’re not sure what you’re best at the best, because I think a lot of us, you know, we we may have either an inflated sense of self or deflated sense of self, but it might not be always the most accurate sense of how the world perceives us. So if you aren’t sure what your skills actually are, ask your clients, ask them, you know, in a way, say I would I’m trying to revamp my marketing, I would just love to know, if you were to think about why you chose me? And what was it about your experience with me that you know, that that led you to have a happy experience? I think if you ask them for that you will find out very quickly, you’ll start to notice patterns in the way that people respond. And you can start to organize that into a thought of okay, how do I specialize in these kinds of skills? I guess? Chris Linsell 47:09Yeah, 100% 100%. And, you know, the long the short of it is you can strip all of this conversation down to basically a single axiom, which is, do something really well and do it for your clients. If you can do that, you’re gonna be okay. But I know easier said than done. Reminds D.J. Paris 47:31me about something Adam Carolla has been saying, his whole life, he says, I never met a really, really skilled carpenter because he comes from the carpentry world, who was ever out of business, or was ever was ever lacking business. And he said, in really good carpenters are rare. And as a result, they are in high demand. And they are never, never at a loss for work. And you know, that is something to consider as well, as you were saying about, you know, if you have this specialty, but it isn’t being appreciated by your community, or you haven’t maybe effectively marketed it. Or maybe it’s just not that useful to your community. This is where you can start to think about, if I specialize in something, yes, it’s scary to then think I maybe I’ll turn away certain things. But maybe I’ll attract a lot more of my audience who really just wants X, and I’m the person that provides x. And I think that’s true. Like, if you’re good, it’s anything, you’re unlikely to ever be really out of work unless you’re you unless you have some particular skill that’s just not valued in the workplace. But certainly for realtors, everyone’s got to live somewhere, almost 93% of all homes, I believe this is accurate, as a whole. All homes sold, are sold through a realtor in the United States, something like that. So they’re still utilizing realtors. So now it’s time to think about what can I specialize in? And how do I get so good at it, that I’ll, I’ll never have to really worry about being out of work. It’s kind of like becoming become unfavorable if you have a boss. And the way that they say that is provides so much incredible value. I mean, it’s so simple, but it’s hard to do. But if you provide so much value at your company, even if you get fired, you’re going to get picked up by someone else who sees your value. So I think that’s just a really great thing. This time to increase skills, I guess is 100%. Chris Linsell 49:23And you said it perfectly become on fireable guys, we are our own bosses in real estate, become unviable from your own business. That’s that’s the I love it. That’s the best way to leave those blank. D.J. Paris 49:37All right. Well, Chris, we are so so happy to have you back. And we’re Chris is going to be coming on regularly as he was for unpopular real estate opinions with Chris Lynn. So for all things Chris to see his touring schedule to learn more about what his current thoughts are. Go to his website Chris Lynn cell.com You can also book him he you know if you work in particular if you are volunteering at your local association or state association or you’re part of the National Association. Chris has spoken to too many, many associations all over the country. So consider him for your next speech or if you have a brokerage. He would be happy to speak with you about that as well. Also follow him on LinkedIn crystallin Sal, just find him on LinkedIn. We’ll have a link to both of those his website and LinkedIn on the show notes. Chris, welcome back. We are so happy to have you. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Chris Linsell 50:32Thanks DJ

Jerry Wolking with Keller Williams Greater Quad Cities talks about how he transitioned from landscaping business to real estate. Jerry discusses his involvement with Graduate Realtors Institute and how important it is for realtors to seek similar courses. Jerry also the importance of knowing how to navigate your career when the market shifts. Next, Jerry talks about local association and its importance. Last, Jerry talks about how he got into commercial real estate and why. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Jerry Wolking can be reached at (309) 373-0373. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today we’re going to talk about a realtors most valuable resource. No, it’s not time and it isn’t your clients, it’s actually your reputation. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcasts made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show and in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with Jerry Woking. But before we get to Jerry, just a couple of quick reminders as we finish up 2023 The best holiday gift you can give us not that we’re asking you. But if you are so inspired and love our podcast, please do share it with a friend won’t cost you anything but please send them a link to either our website keeping it real pod.com Every episode can be streamed from any browser or send them a link to from Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you might be listening to this podcast and also please leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show. We appreciate it but I hope everybody has a wonderful holiday season we’re going to be cranking out just as many episodes this month as per usual and we have some really exciting things planned for 2024 So stay tuned for that but let’s get to the main event my conversation with Jerry Wilkin. Today on the show my guest is Jerry woking from Keller Williams greater Quad Cities, which is actually Illinois, and Iowa. So there’s four cities for those of you not in the Midwest and not familiar with, I guess Quad Cities was self explanatory, but it actually borders two states, Illinois and Iowa. But let me tell you more about Jerry. By the way, before I get into Jerry’s bio, Jerry is Alex Wilkins father, Alex is somebody we featured recently on our show, we were so incredibly impressed with Alex, if you haven’t listened to that episode, I really encourage you to do that. And Alex is like, Oh, I learned everything from my dad. So we’re like we probably should bring his dad on to who’s also a very successful agent for 30 plus years. But let me let me go through more of Jerry’s bio. Jerry has been in the business since April of 1993. That is 30 plus years. Congratulations. He started as a part time agents like so many of us and became a full time agent a year later in 1994. After selling his landscape company, he is licensed in Iowa and Illinois. And Jerry is one of these rare types of agents who is able to successfully boot residential and commercial. So we’re going to talk a little bit about how he manages both of those lanes. He is also a graduate of the realtors Institute and a certified negotiation expert, in my opinion, the most. One of the designations I think agents should explore because certainly it’s something you can tell your clients that you are a certified negotiation expert. I’m a huge fan of that. Also, he Jerry has served on the Professional Standards Committee, the Grievance Committee and the commercial committee and now teaches classes to realtors on various topics at his local association. Jerry Oh, I’m sorry, fine. You can learn more about Jerry at his website. We will have a link to this in the show notes and in the description, which is QC biz box QC bei zbox.com and goes over what Jerry is all about. Jerry, welcome to the show. Jerry Wolking 4:54Thank you, sir. D.J. Paris 4:56Well, Jerry and I just had we were just talking sort of back Stage, if that’s the right expression, and it was really a lot of fun because Jerry is your so much like, like your son, and he is just such a wonderful young man in this Chicago market. And we’re so grateful to have him on the show. And now we’re so happy to have you. So you’ve been doing this congratulations on 30 years, by the way. Yes, Jerry Wolking 5:21sir. Yes, it’s been a long haul, as D.J. Paris 5:26well, you know, right. Right. Now I well, actually, Jerry, let’s talk about how you got into so I know you were in landscaping, you had a business and why the switch from landscaping to you know, I guess, the way I think about it, landscaping is one of those industries that seems to never go out of fashion. And real estate say people have to live somewhere and people need to maintain their their properties, their lawns, etc. So why to switch from from landscaping. Jerry Wolking 5:57Thank you for asking. I’ve done many, many things DJ I’ve had, I’ve had a very I tell people all the time if I died tomorrow, I have lived a full life. I’ve been a drummer and a heavy metal band for a long time. I raced motorcycles, semi professionally i i sold life insurance, I was a welder at John Deere. I’ve been an auto mechanic. I’ve been a contractor many, many different things. And I found a love of landscape back in the late 80s, early 90s and still do a lot of it today. But you know, the body only holds up for so long. They don’t make a laptop that will plant the 400 pound tree so that that takes its toll after a while but I had always had an interest in real estate. And it here in the Midwest and landscape season is pretty short lived and when it gets November, December, all of a sudden there’s no lawns to mow there, you’re not planting flowers and and the ground is frozen for doing any planting. So the winters would be scarce very scarce. And I was actually working in a body shop and I was getting paid $100 a car to paint cars out in Geneseo Illinois, no heat had a little space heater. And this guy was flipping cars he gave me 100 bucks a car to paint them. I was miserable. And, and I was sitting in this little office and I happened to be reading newspaper on my lunch break. And it said a career in real estate reading in the newspaper. And I’m like, I’ve always had an interest in real estate to see what it’s like. So I had to borrow the money long story short, I was so broke, I couldn’t pay attention. I had to borrow the money to go to my real estate my real estate class started. And I get and went through it passed the class with flying colors pass my test. And then next you know, here I am a real estate agents and that was in April of 93. Still had my landscape company. And as you know real estate being a commission business, I’d never worked in a commission world before. It was scarce to start with, you know, because it is far too easy. Here’s my quote of the day, it is far too easy to get a real estate license it there are so many people in this industry who shouldn’t be in it. And let me preface DJ by saying I’m probably going to say something that offends someone today because I love your show. The name of your show is very fitting. So let’s we’re gonna get real here today. D.J. Paris 8:16Let’s get real. Yeah, Jerry Wolking 8:18there you go. So, you know, I started out like most other agents taking open houses from from the big producers who didn’t want to do them. And at the time, I was working for the one of the largest brokers in the Quad Cities that were the largest broker in the Quad Cities at the time. And we had this thing called floor duty, where you could sit at this table in this little office for two hour shifts. Each agent got two hour shifts, and any phone calls that came into the office inquiring about listings, went to the floor duty person and that was your business to capitalize. So I was taking as many floor duty sessions as I could get most of them in the evening hours five to seven, five to six, because I was out planting trees and mowing lawns during the day. And what had happened was I was getting busy enough after for duty in open houses that I would literally change clothes three and four times a day I would go out and mow two lawns, change clothes, Go show a house go out and plant two trees, change clothes go out and show a house that was going on and on for months. And the turning point for me was I had a showing at a condominium in East Moline and I was planting trees all day I was mud from head to toe and I was late for my appointment like 15 minutes late and I did not have time to go home and change clothes. So I drove to the appointment with my rig had my you know my mowers and everything sticking out the back. I’m in my landscape gear. I’m mud from knees down to my boots, dried mud and as I walk up to the showing and 15 minutes late and the gentleman is sitting on the front porch of this condo on the front stoop. And I said hi my name is Jerry walking. I’m the realtor here to show you the property and he just looked at me he He goes, Are you a real estate agent? And I said, Yes, sir. And I also landscape company. And this was the turning point in my career. This day, this gentleman looked at me, he had a very stern look on his face. And he said, I’m not interested in a part time agent. The next week, the next week, I sold the company, I sold the landscape company and went 100% in two real estate, that was a big jump, and I went five months, my first five months with no paycheck. And I had been used to, you know, having steady income, I had employees at trucks I had, you know, plenty of contracts to do, I sold my company to my dad who was retired from the military looking for something to do. He, by the way, today still runs that same company to this day, off of a lot of the same clients that we had back in the early 90s. But it was that push of that gentleman telling to me telling me I’m not interested in a part time agent that made me go, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t continue to go changing clothes three or four times a day. This went on for months. And it was wearing me out. And I wasn’t succeeding at a high level at either position. Now, you know, because I’m part time landscaper part time real estate agent. So it was probably the greatest slap of reality I could ever get for him to say that. And that’s when it turned and I started taking off from there. And I was lucky enough to have a broker by the name of Irene Romeo, who said to me, you’ve got great stuff, kid, you need to go to GRI now. That’s where you need to get so I did my my first full time year I started GRI did the I think he did a fall session spring session fall session I didn’t consecutively learn to not and it catapulted me forward on being able to get my business started and growing. So I’ve been surrounded by a lot of great people who helped me get started and saw something in me that was worth that was worth nurturing. So I’m very fortunate that way. D.J. Paris 11:54And for any of our listeners who aren’t familiar with GRI Do you mind sharing just a little bit about what that is? That’s Jerry Wolking 11:59a graduate Realtors Institute. One of the things I noticed today, we I’ve written several real estate classes. My partner Deborah and I, we’ve written classes, she does all the technical stuff, the PowerPoints and all that and we presented these classes to realtors, and now the Board of Realtors has picked them up. But GRI is a class is a segment of classes from everything about marketing, about personal growth, about the real estate industry about appraisal. It’s a great place for residential agents to go and get a lot of education in a short period of time because it’s like four and five consecutive days of classes. And one of the things that I’ve noticed is now is brokerages, at least in our area. And please know everything I’m saying is based on our area because that’s what I know. They’re fragmenting so much it used to be in the early 90s There were two 800 pound gorillas here in town. And they controlled everything one of them control 52% of the market at one time. So every other house was listed by this brokerage well as these other companies have come into play, Keller Williams exp, and all these other companies that are coming. It’s fragmented the talent. But what happens when you fragment the talent, unfortunately, is those startup brokerages don’t have the resources or the time to train those agents properly. And that that creates now we’ve got an industry full of the blind leading the blind. And it gets chaotic. And you can ask any veteran agent most of the time. It’s the new agents that are exciting to watch when they’re growing, but they’re also the ones that tend to get in the way it’s not their fault. It’s because nobody’s teaching them. That’s why I said earlier, it’s far too easy to get a real estate license because real estate pre licensed course they don’t teach you anything about the business. You know, it’s all law and agency and all those sort of things, but don’t teach you anything about getting through a transaction how to get through a bad appraisal, how to get through a bad home inspection. And in my opinion, commercial this is just my opinion, commercial and residential should be two completely different licenses. Why why are they able to do both is beyond me. They are two different animals. But so back to GRI what GRI does is takes for a small brokerage or brokerage who doesn’t have a training or mentor program, put those new agents through GRI put them through CRS, the CRS and the GRI courses will teach you years and years of knowledge that you’re not getting just by bumping and banging your way through the pinball machine. In you learn from you know, I’ve said I’ve gotten enough credit hours from the school of hard knocks that I could graduate with a master’s degree now. So but luckily I was at a brokerage that had a great training program. We had some we had a mentor program in place that was very, very helpful. So GRI CRS for residential agents starting up dad is one of the first places that I would go to start getting Your real estate training unless your brokerage offers D.J. Paris 15:03or even in addition to what your brokerage, what your Jerry Wolking 15:07I attended, what I see a lot of is a lot of training and exercise and efforts, put in the areas of lead generation, lead generation is awesome. But if you get a bunch of leads, and you don’t know how to convert them, or you don’t know how to keep their transactions together, you’re shooting fish in a barrel and are coming right back to life again, through another agent somewhere. It’s a bad experience for everyone all around when you don’t have knowledge and skills to close a transaction. D.J. Paris 15:32Yeah, let’s talk about the current sort of climate for realtors right now. So we’re recording this. So it’s we’re getting close to Thanksgiving 2023. We know interest rates are higher than buyers would prefer in relation to where they were three years ago, not in relation to historic averages. But the buyer temperature out there is cool to bid because of the interest rates, a lot of people are locked in or at least feel maybe locked in to a refinance rate they did years ago, I know I feel this way I have a 3% rate on my primary residence. And I don’t want to give that up. And so we have a lot of people like me, who are in a similar situation. So there’s not much inventory, obviously not as many buyers flooding the market. And also it’s the end of the year that tends to slow things down as well. So Jerry, you’ve been doing this 30 years, what do you know that people who haven’t been through this kind of part of the cycle of the business, maybe it’s maybe some part of a down cycle? What do you know that that? Or what would you say to somebody who’s who’s struggling right now? Yeah, in this area? Great Jerry Wolking 16:43question. So, so where I pride myself mostly DJs. In my I have, you know, I’m not one of the top 1% producers, as we talked about earlier, but but I can weather the storm, because I can wear many hats. Being is as well experienced in both residential and commercial as I am. It allows me to adapt in many different ways I can go where the hunt is, and I’m very comfortable going where the hunt is, there’s no conversation with any agent that I’m not comfortable having now, regardless of what you produce. I can I can hold that conversation with you. And there was times when, when I remember in down markets, it wasn’t so much. Where’s my next lead? Where’s my next deal? It was what can I learn to get me that next week? What can I learn to get me that next deal, I’ve always built my career on being the chase, not the chaser. And the way I’ve done that is by learning things and getting in depth knowledge on different ways to do things. So you know, when I came in the business in 1993, interest rates were still double digit. So when we hear people talk about now the interest rates are climbing, interest rates are climbing, my first house was 11.75%. And that was on a special lottery drawing rate. I had to stand in line at 530 in the morning to get a lottery ticket to get this special low rate of 11.75%. And I was one of the people chosen. So yes, rates have increased, they doubled from where we were a year or so ago in some cases. But when those things happen, like when 2008 2009 rolled around, that was a huge change foreclosures were coming on the market everywhere. So my adaption was if there is there’s foreclosures and things that’s coming on the market, that means the investors are coming out of the woodwork. So how do I get to work with the investors? I got to learn the investment game and I had some real estate investments before. But I dove deep into figuring out net operating income and what is the vacancy factor? And, and what’s what’s my cost coming in? What’s the cost outlay going to be for purchased this home for 36,000? What’s it going to cost to get it up to 110. So you can be profitable, learned about holding costs, all of those sorts of things, a lot of it, I knew already in the back of my mind, but it moved it to the forefront of the mind. So as the market changes, and it is changing, you need to look at other ways that you can be helpful that you can be of service to the public good. You can be of service maybe to other agents, because when you don’t have something to offer, there’s no reason for anyone to call you. So I just got I just got a call yesterday from a gentleman who wanted to fight his property taxes. His assessment went up considerably. So we took a look at his properties. And I called them yesterday and I said I said Chuck, you might want to keep your mouth shut. They got you assessed at 65,000 square foot. Be quiet. Don’t play that game because you should be higher than what they’re assessing you at. So it just that piece of advice and information alone was priceless to him because he showed up to spend $900 $1,000 on two appraisals. So just by giving that information, but he’s called me multiple times over the last three or four years we’ve done Two or three transactions with this gentleman. But so the point being, there’s always somebody buying something, there’s always somebody selling something, how do you get in front of those people? And how can you be valuable to that particular part of the market when it becomes an investor market be valuable to the investors if it’s a buyers market be valuable to the buyers. But it’s a seller’s market be valuable to the sellers in use constantly, ever changing. Adaptability, learning to be adaptable to what’s in front of you right now, I talked to an agent of a couple years ago. And when the 2008 crash hit, his business dropped dramatically. So he learned how to fight tax assessments. And he was charging people I think, $150 or something like that, to put together their tax assessment, though, he would give them all the information, and they would go to the board of appeals and fight their taxes. But that kept him alive, kept him in the game kept him relevant. And so then when those people, when the market started to turn, they come to list or sell. He’s the guy they call because he got them out of a bad situation, whatever. So I’m very big on knowing the game not just being in the game, but knowing the D.J. Paris 21:07game. Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more, as you were giving so many great examples there, I was thinking, you know about the current situation where I don’t know what the percentage is anymore, I want to say it’s 85% of homeowners in the US have a mortgage rate of less than 4%. That may not be true with a capital T, but it’s close enough to where we have a lot of these people like myself, you know, anyone who has a mortgage who’s refinanced or, you know, in the last several years probably has a pretty attractive rate. So I think there’s a huge opportunity for agents to start having conversations with people like me, people who feel trapped in not trapped, but locked into this low rate. And say, actually, there are some creative solutions. If you did want to move right now, there are ways we can sort of, you know, navigate through high interest rate environments like to like buy downs, for example, there are this is this, I think, is really were in a good agent is separating separate from, you know, really divides the good agents from from the not good agents, because the good agents will will will call somebody before they call them going, Hey, I’m thinking about buying or selling right now. Because maybe there’s lots of people right now that aren’t thinking about that. But if it was me, I would be calling everybody I know saying, Hey, I just want to give you my take on what’s going on right now. If you are thinking of a move, we do have some options and creative ways to explore that. But again, just establishing that, as you said, I’m just not in the market. I know the market. I know what’s going on. I think that’s so important. Jerry Wolking 22:44Yeah, it was to touch on what you said about the buy downs that there’s one of the things right there that you should be focusing on right now as an agent coming in, in the game, how does financing work? And one of the first things that I started learning about when I got into business, I would notice and remind you I was in the business before the pre approval thing was a big deal. So now it’s it’s pretty much standard. But I remember you could get pre approval letters and everybody that was like golden. But I sat down with a lender name was Brenda Wilde one day I talked her on the phone. I said, Brenda, what are my qualifying ratios when I’m talking to people? I want to know when I’m holding these conversations with people about buying debt. Yes, you can’t afford to buy so many times, EJ if somebody said, Well, I can’t afford to buy. Well, where are you living now? Well, I rent a little apartment. How much are you paying 1300 a month, or $1,300 a month here in the Quad Cities, you know, our market is about a third of what you that are there in Chicago $1,300 A month I’ll buy you 140 $150,000 house. And a lot of people don’t even realize that. So I’ve had a lot of success in converting renters into homebuyers, because they didn’t think that they could buy not realizing what it cost. They don’t understand downpayment, they don’t understand closing costs. So there again, whenever you’ve got storms like this happening, there’s usually programs that all of a sudden spring up to help keep the market of flow. So you learn about first time homebuyer programs. You learn about programs for veterans that veterans can use, there’s usually something out there to help people. So you have to go learn that program. Because let’s face it, if you’re doing 3040 transactions a year, and then all of a sudden that drops to 15. You need to make up that difference somewhere if you’re going to stay in the game. This is when we see markets like this is when we’ll see the agent count start to drop. It happens all the time. And as is the real estate market picks up all of a sudden everybody wants to be a realtor because they’ve watched HDTV and they like houses I love That’s my reason for getting in the business because I like houses. Okay, let’s see how long that lasts after you’ve shown 137 of them in four days. But anyhow, just learning where there’s always an apple to pick somewhere and is watching closely and learning to see what that is. There’s always nothing stops dead. There’s always some movement somewhere When D.J. Paris 25:00you said something really important earlier, which was about providing value being of service? And yes, that really is the name of the game and in my in my opinion, it’s yeah, it’s it’s really, I think it’s, it’s a creative fun thing to to consider for your business. Because you know, we have this database of customers we have or prospects, and we go, Gosh, I don’t why do I? Why Why would I, I don’t have any reason to call so and so well, you should have reasons to call them you should know a lot about every one of your contacts in your database, you should know what’s going on in their lives. And you if nothing else, if there’s nothing to talk about with real estate, you could at least contact them and celebrate things that they’re experiencing or or helping them with any like, you know, Jerry, for example, is, you know, he has been doing this 30 years. Do you think he knows the best Roofers in town? Of course he does. He knows the best accountant. He knows the best inspectors. So Jerry is is breadth of wide breadth of information that he gets to then reach out to his sphere and say, Hey, I’m your guy. I know these things. And of course, that takes time to develop lists like that. But if you can start to put your value proposition together, and start to think about how can I continuously add value, people only buy and sell when every five to 10 years, seven to 10 years, whatever it is. So you better figure out something that you can do in those seven to 10 year windows, where you’re going to stay in front of them. And it’s probably not just your real estate, email newsletter, hey, that’s fine, whatever, it’s fine. But you should be thinking about other things that those customers actually want to learn about. During that time. To obviously, just keep your name in front of them. Yeah. Jerry Wolking 26:43And being very involved in your community. That’s where Alex has had huge success. Being very involved in your community became become the the source. I just had a guy text me here last week, he goes, You’re my source, man. But I need something. You’re my source. So what a great compliment, actually, for you and I got online, I was texting a previous client who’s like, hey, I need somebody to put windows in Who do you suggest, you know, being that go to source that keeps you in front of people a lot of times, but being involved with your community is another big way. Because people recognize your name. And I’ve been around long enough now. I can be be anywhere Menards or Lowe’s and I’ll put down my debit card and the person go, oh, you the real estate guy. That’s awesome. To hear that they know you for that. But yeah, there’s this being involved on different levels and being of service to everyone around you. That part I think I’ve done very well. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to help a lot of people with a lot of things. And a lot of times DJ the business comes to me just because of those things. Not not not because I’m out, you know, pushing my Facebook post, or, or I’m the greatest realtor. And none of that is just because I’ve established a relationship on a different level through a different avenue. And they know you’re the real estate guy, right? Yeah. Why do you ask you buying or selling? What I’m thinking about selling my mom’s house, whatever. Next thing, you know that conversation is going whenever someone says to me, you’re the real estate guy, right? I always say, Are you buying or selling. And then we go from there to conversations things into something. I D.J. Paris 28:15love that it reminded me of one of one of the interviews I had a few a year or so ago, where a woman gave a suggestion that I had not heard before. And it’s so simple. And that, you know, if you have a local newspaper, for example, most most markets do. And you know, reach out to who’s ever in charge of the real estate portion of not necessarily the advertising. But if anyone’s you know, the real estate person to talk about what’s going on real estate wise in the community and start sending them stats, say, Hey, mister missus, reporter, I’ve got some stats about what’s going on out here. I thought maybe that would be helpful for you because they’re looking for content. And I said, Oh, that’s such a smart idea. Because people still read newspapers as much as we think people don’t some some people do, of course. And this is another way to get your name out there. And to be seen as an expert, when you can help a journalist with making sense of what’s going on out there. There’s a million ways to do it, to be of service and to be a value. And I want to make a big strong push, Jerry, with your help to encourage our audience to get involved with their local association. I want to talk about why that’s important, and how that can benefit the individual because I wish I would have done that. 14 years ago. I just started getting involved about five years ago. And I wish I could go back and get involved at our local level earlier because what it did for me and I’m curious to get your thoughts. What it did for me is not only did it did it, is it a lot of fun and we do a lot of good work and we’re here to support the industry, the real estate industry, and I got to make some wonderful friends along the way people who are like minded people Who want to see the industry succeed, and also just mastermind with all these great agents who also give back. And so I’ve learned more about the industry, I have a better social life. And and I’m doing good out there, or I think we’re doing some some version of good out there. So I’m just Just curious. And also, there’s so many great things the association’s offer, that the members oftentimes don’t take advantage of trainings, you know, all sorts of things. But just, I want to make a pitch for everybody to consider getting involved. And just want to hear your thoughts on that. Oh, absolutely. Jerry Wolking 30:30There again, when I first got in my career, I was so blessed to have Irene Romeo, who pushed me towards GTRI. But I was also still to this day, I hear this gentleman’s voice, I see his face. And I asked questions, sometimes I get into situation and I’ll and I’ll be to myself, What would Fred tell me to do? Fred Desso, the best broker in the business as far as I’m concerned, he’s just a wealth of knowledge. And and he always has an answer. Even if he has to make it up. He always has an answer, but I just love talking with him. He’s just full of wisdom. But both of those agents are very involved with the both those brokers were very involved with the board, they suggested I get involved with the board. And I did, I got involved with the board very early on with the professional standards, the Grievance Committee, the regional professional standards, sitting on different various committees throughout the board, and we have a dynamite Board of Realtors. But it teaches you not only do you get to know the players and who’s who in real estate, but you also see the adversity sometimes that people are dealing with from a whole different perspective. See, it’s very easy as an agent, you have a rub with another agent somewhere and you’re defending your position. But if you get out of yourself and get into what is that person experiencing. And by being on the board and hearing, especially on like the grievance committees and professional standards, you hear those stories and things going on, and then you start to have a little little more compassion for I get it, I know why they got in this position. But it helps getting yourself in that position, you know, at some point in time, and it just helps move the board forward as well. So I cringe a little bit when somebody complains about some of the board raise the rates again, well, of course, they did just look at the economy in general, that’s not the board trying to gouge you. The board’s trying to keep up so I get a little offended sometimes when people complain about a board because our board does a lot for us. We have a great MLS, we have great keysafe system, we have great leadership, we’re in great position financially. And that’s all from having good people sitting at the table. So you learn a lot from the inner workings of the business, when you’re involved at the board level as well. It’s not You’re not seeing it from your little perspective, but seeing it from the overall marketplace that you’re in. So highly, highly encourage getting involved with the board at some point in time. I D.J. Paris 32:59couldn’t agree with you more, I think I’d be shocked if it didn’t result in actually indirectly getting you more business, even though that’s not why you’re going to do it with Jerry Wolking 33:10us. Yeah, I think I told you earlier, a lot of the commercial referrals I get are from residential agents, even from other brokerages. They have their own brokers, and they’ll refer me people because I can speak their language or I’ve sat on a committee with them. And at some point in time, so I’ve established that relationship. You know, there’s a great dynamite agent here in the Quad Cities, his name is John locust and, and he’s told me once I saw him last year, I did a class I was teaching, and he said, you know, you have two reputations in this business, one from your peers and one from the public. And that is very true. That is very true. So D.J. Paris 33:45yeah, I want to I’m going to say that I’m going to say that for Jerry, again, we have two reputations in our industry, one with our peers, for remember is called a cooperative commission. Everybody cooperative compensation, and, and and with our clients as well. So those are two separate things. And oftentimes, the relationship between the agent and the customer might be different from the agents and to other agents and you want to have a good relationship with both because you both have to play in the same sandbox. Jerry Wolking 34:17Absolutely. And, yeah, D.J. Paris 34:20I want to I want to talk about the importance of learning the market. So when when people are newer to the industry, of course, the primary focus is on lead generation as it probably should be. And they also have to become good at the job which of course, we’re talking about skills. So I want to talk about actually becoming a good realtor. So there’s the marketing side, the lead gen side. I’ve talked about that. A ton on the show over the years, million ways to lead generate. I would like to speak to you and get some best practices in your opinion about if if I was a newer agent and I’m full could sing in a local area? How might I start to learn about the actual inventory? Price points? You know, what, what do you recommend? Because ultimately, you do want to be an expert in some some geographical area. Yeah, Jerry Wolking 35:14yeah. And, again, that’s where Alex has excelled. He’s learned his neighborhood just by walking the streets getting involved with neighborhood associations, those sorts of things. And myself area, because we’re in the Quad Cities, there’s a large difference between the Iowa and Illinois sides of the river. Valuation wise, big difference. In fact, the joke is, for a lot of us, it’s not the Mississippi rivers, the Mississippi ocean, because it there is a huge divide between the two sides of the states. If you’re an outsider, coming in, a lot of it looks like one big city here to us. But from those of us who live here, it’s very territorial. The difference between Iowa and Illinois and the islands, to try to get somebody from Iowa to come to Illinois is very difficult. Although there’s one little catch to that. But we there seems to be more people moving from Illinois go into the Iowa side, the property taxes are less those sorts of things. So by knowing your market is knowing not only the price of the home, the sell price of the home, how many days on market, that’s all stuff that you can get from your stats. And by looking at it. But knowing what makes those areas tick, what makes those neighborhoods work, like Alex talks about the neighborhoods and he’s worked in, he knows the historical, the history of a lot of those homes. He knows who owns those homes, he knows who lives in them. Now, those sorts of things. Same as myself, I look at things more from a I’m a very mechanical person, I’m blessed with the ability to fix or build anything. In fact, 20 minutes before I got online with you, I was I was putting brick and mortar on some columns. I’m building a site but I learned the neighborhoods from the architecture from the years they were built from the mechanicals that were used to build them like for example, a simple example would be here we have certain neighborhoods that have this sewer system called Orangeburg pipe. Not all four cities have the habit Moline hardly use it at all. Rock Island uses it a lot that dwarf the older parts of bettendorf used it Northwest Davenport used it a lot. It’s failing across the board, it’s getting old enough now that it’s collapsing, it’s not a question of will it collapse, just when so buy when I’m representing buyers, going to those particular neighborhoods, I’m asking that house in into we’re just Orangeburg pipe us there because that’s kind of set forth and inspection that maybe I would not use in Moline. So knowing your market that way, not only valuations and wise, but what makes that neighborhood work? Where are the city streets? Where’s their development coming bike, if you go to bettendorf in North Davenport, you know, to 53rd Avenue corridor, I know you don’t know what that is. But 20 years ago, that was cornfield. Now, it’s 200,000 plus per acre, to go out there. So if I’m leading an investor, and he’s going to be looking forward to long term buy and hold properties, let’s go where the growth is next, you know, so our cash flow may be a little less right now. But in the end result of property value increase. So it’s knowing the market that way as well. And not just average sale price and things of that nature. There’s so many other things in the intrinsic values is what I call it, what else is happening there? Are their school closings coming up, or their school boards and merging. Is there we just had a new Amazon development that come into town here this year. Where’s that? What’s gonna happen around that area, we have an area called the T BK that’s growing like wildfire out there. Those sorts of things. It’s knowing the market from from that aspect, as well as the dollar values and things of that nature, if that makes sense. D.J. Paris 38:47It makes perfect sense. I was just thinking that one specific example about the Amazon like a distribution center, or whatever’s coming coming out your way. That’s a really, it’s a really interesting sort of comment, because there is opportunity there because now we know they’re going to be hiring people to work at this particular plant, or maybe they already have people there. But just getting curious about what is that going to do? Where are those people going to come from who are going to work there? Where are those people may be live? What would their commute look like? If they are coming from further away? And maybe they now want to move closer to the facility? You know, where’s where are the school districts that are desirable for people, you know, understanding that, what the needs of those, you know what, here’s what’s coming? Situations, I think are making just incredibly valuable. You’re more proactive than reactive because, yes, I want to I wanted to also switch gears and talk a little bit about commercial because this is we have about 800 agents in our firm and boy, a lot of them who are really residential agents go I would like to dabble a little bit in commercial. And of course that’s like what does that even mean? Because there’s Lots of different sectors of commercial. And of course, it’s not just a, you can’t paint it all with the same brush commercial could mean lots and lots of different things. But you, you really straddle both, which is impressive and difficult. So I’m curious about how did you get into commercial and why Jerry Wolking 40:17being a bigger business owner in the past, commercial use was important to me. Because I needed space, I needed a shop space. And it’s probably one of the calls I get most is for people for shop space, but I guess had an interest in it and watching it. And I like math and working with numbers who work with numbers a lot. And I noticed there was a void. There was a void in that marketplace as far as people being serviced, and a lot of it was from intimidation. A person wants to start a business and they’re not sure where they’re going to find space. So they don’t know what a triple net lease is. They don’t know the difference between triple net and a gross, and they don’t know what cam charges are. And it wasn’t being explained to them on many levels. And and there used to be signs I remember seeing signs up that would say you’re in front of a space that would say available, what is available means it means for sales that mean it’s for rent, what is available mean? And I so I just started learning the language itself and managed to get into a couple of transactions and started learning from there. But there’s the difference DJ, I started learning, I didn’t just do the transaction and get a commission and walk away. I wanted to know the why. How does it work? So So you know, started doing a lot of reading leases, just just going through them and reading what does that mean calling an attorney say okay, this clause says this, what exactly does that mean? And took a CCI M course some different CCM courses, reading articles and realtor magazine, truly learning what it’s like or what it is to be a commercial practitioner, because I truly believe with the whole of my heart that commercial and residential should be two different licenses. And they’re not. And unfortunately, you know, I was really looking at one of your podcasts from another gentleman, I can’t remember where he’s from. But he’s talked about staying in your lane and referring out I think he said when he bought his own house, he referred to a residential agent to buy his own house, because he didn’t know that area. And unfortunately, our license gives us the ability to list and sell just about anything. And that creates problems. And you know, the commercial practitioners they get irritated with our residential person is trying to do a deal with them. And I can see why then that agent will call me say, well, he won’t talk to me and won’t give me the information. And it’s because you’re not going to know what to do with it even if they gave it to you. And if you’re going to represent a tenant, for example, let’s take a tenant that’s going to go and lease this space. And it’s $13 a square foot, you know, net lease and you got to canvass $7 a square foot and you can’t calculate that rent, or you look at their lease, and you can’t determine if it has an escalation clause. And what is that escalation clause? What is the escalation clause based on as far as the rent, increase those sort of things, there’s so much trouble that you can get a person into because you didn’t know how to play that particular game or didn’t know how to guide them. And you should really stay out of that, because you could think about it. I take it very personal as my responsibility. If I’m representing a tenant, and I’m getting D.J. Paris 43:26weak Jerry there for just a second. He’ll be popping right back in so bear with us just a moment. There’s Jerry. Okay, once. All right, we that’s okay. You we were just finishing up with we were just talking about commercial and how maybe referring out is, you know, staying in one’s lane and yeah, not necessarily practicing until you’re competent, so to speak. Yeah, Jerry Wolking 43:52exactly. So if you’re going to do a commercial Ted, you use the term dabble. I hear that all the time. Don’t dabble. And Don’t, Don’t dabble, your financial responsibility that you have for that client is huge. And it can be the determining factor of their business profitable, they’re not because you got them in a bad lease in a bad position or something where they made a bad purchase. And there’s so much more than just pricing and dollar per square foot and all that it’s what are the environmental, what’s the environmental outlay look like? You know, Is there potential problems there? I lost the listing once because I noticed the test spot on the building and I asked the gentleman about it, and he’s like, Oh, that’s nothing I meant nothing. Because across the parking lot, I see a trailer over there. This is environmental survey or something like what what is this all about? Come to find out he had been contaminated by a neighboring gas station and he didn’t want anyone to know that. So when I asked him to prove to me you’ve got a clean site. It cost him $5,000 But it made him angry and he pulled the listing from me and I was okay with that. I’m okay with that. Take that list right If can’t be honest with it, but yeah, so you’ve got to know the game is more than just making a commission because you can make huge especially in commercial, you can make some really big mistakes, and people are relying on you the expert, and you did not give them expert advice. D.J. Paris 45:18Yeah, I agree. So if you know, or at the very least partner with a commercial agent and be you know, their apprentice or be their shadow, while you are educating yourself on the transaction, just make make your life as easy as possible. Don’t, don’t take on clients that you can’t service, it’s, it’s just not gonna Jerry Wolking 45:42only make your life easy, but it’s take care of that client the best way you can and some way, you know, I would not go to my dentist to get my ankle operated on. They’re both in the medical profession. But you know, they’d be able to figure it out. Maybe, but no, I take that responsibility very, very personally, and I wish more agents would do. So there’s a lot to know in the commercial world and you need to learn that game. Yes, you can bang your way through. I’m happy to help anyone who will get through a transaction, but I don’t partner very often, I’ve been asked to do 5050, I’ve always turned it down except for one occasion. Because it won’t be 5050 It’d be more like 7525. And so I have offered it if someone wants to 5050 Look, I’ll coach you through if you want to try that. If you want to try the transaction, but you need to put in your time, you need to serve your pain, because there’s a lot to learn and it’s not gonna be as easy as you think it is. D.J. Paris 46:41Yeah, I agree. I think for everyone listening right now, there’s the you know, to sort of recap everything Jerry was was talking about on the show. We On this episode, I think we’re really speaking of his competence, and I think or skill development maybe is a better way to say it. Let’s make 2020 for the year of skill development. So what how are you going to do that? Well, you’re going to lean on your brokerage for additional trainings, you’re going to seek out certifications like GRI, certified negotiation expert like Jerry, who’s who’s does both? You’re going to reach out to your local association, not just to maybe serve on a committee, but also to find out what are they offering? What sort of trainings and support are they providing to agents, remember, we do pay our associations quite a bit of money. So there are lots of services I’m, I’m on our member care taskforce here in Chicago, I didn’t even know all of the benefits and services that we provide to our members. Until I now I’m the vice chair of the committee and I still don’t know them all by heart. So reach out to your local association, especially if you’re struggling and say, Hey, I’m struggling right now. Do you have any suggestions for classes I can take people I can talk to, you know, and also, as Jerry said, you know, we got to learn the market, right? So this is a great opportunity to really do a deep dive into your local market. Get that expertise so that when people do reach out to you, you have knowledge about what’s going on. Jerry Of course, does 30 years in the business. I think this is a great place to wrap up I do want to encourage anyone who’s a buyer seller and investor, commercial or residential who is interested in doing something in the Quad Cities area Jerry wilking is your man please reach out to him Jerry if there are any buyers sellers investors out there that would love to speak to somebody with your expertise what’s the best way the Jerry Wolking 48:34best way for me actually DJs to text me because I respond to texts we get so many bombarded with people trying to sell us Internet services and marketing services text me because then I have a greater chance of knowing that you’re real and that you’re legit but or email email me very well also. D.J. Paris 48:55Yeah, do you mind sharing your your number numbers 309-373-0373 Jerry Wolking 48:57and email is Jerry walking kw@gmail.com. D.J. Paris 49:08Well, Jerry walking Keller Williams Quad Cities the not only a 30 year veteran in the industry amazing reputation and has a now a son who is crushing it here in the Chicago market. This is the first time we’ve done a father son not combined episode but had a father and son on the show at different times. So it is it is no surprise how, why, how and why Alex is doing so well. Jerry, so congrats to you on your career and also on raising another realtor family who is not just not just surviving but thriving in thriving in this market. So please check out Alex’s episode and let’s send Jerry’s episode to anyone else in your area. Any other realtor that may be struggling right now guess what? Everybody’s struggling a little bit right now. So send them a link To this episode, the best way you can help us our listeners is by telling a friend just think of one other realtor that could benefit from all the great stuff Jerry said and shoot them over a link to this episode. Also leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show. We would greatly appreciate it on behalf of our audience. Want to thank Jerry, for coming on. We appreciate you, Jerry, thank you gave us tons of great strategic sort of objectives that we can do right now. And on behalf of our audience want to thank Jerry for spending his time with us today. We will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks Jerry. You’re Jerry Wolking 50:32awesome. Thank you, man.