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

Welcome to another episode of Video Boot Camp for Real Estate Professionals with Kim Rittberg. Kim Rittberg is an award-winning video marketing expert. From the hundreds of real estate agents she coaches, she’s realized the biggest hurdle is getting on camera. Why? How do you fight that? And once you fight through then what?  What should you make? Plus – if you want to totally revamp your social media and easily attract clients over just 4 days – Kim has a really exciting Video Boot Camp Summer Intensive. She’ll teach you how to sell more houses through video! From stressed to totally in control and easily growing your client base. Spots are filling up so you can apply here! If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Don’t forget to grab Kim’s Free Download – 10 Tips to Amazing Video <here>  and follow her on Instagram. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and Modwell. To get a $250 credit on your first Enhanced 3D Listing click here.

Sarah Stone real estate expert and a top producing broker with Douglas Elliman’s Manhattan office, talks about her transition into real estate business. Sarah talks about the lessons from her past job and how she leverages them for her job in real estate. Next, she discusses the importance of being a good sales person for her. Last, she talk about the value of relationship with the clients. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Sarah Stone can be reached at 917.693.0957 and sarah.stone@elliman.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today we’re going to talk to a top producer who built an amazing business in New York City. Then life changed and she moved out to Connecticut and had to start all over again and built an even bigger 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 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 podcasts made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with top producers Sarah stone. Before we get to Sara, if you want to continue to help our show grow, we just ask that you do really well three things I guess I’m going to ask for a lot today. One is telephone think of one other realtor that could benefit from these episodes. You know this is a tough year for realtors, especially if you’re working with buyers. So let’s help our fellow agents as much as possible please let them know about the show I appreciate it also support our sponsors, they pay the bills and we love our sponsors and we choose them very specifically only if they if I think they can add value to your business so please support them as well. And then third, follow us on social media. Almost every day we post short form video clips on all the major social platforms Facebook, Instagram, tik, Tok, LinkedIn etc. Where we post little best of clips from our episodes usually 60 seconds with an actionable strategy. So find us anywhere, any social platform just search for keeping it real, we appreciate it but enough about that let’s get to the main event my conversation with top producer Sarah stone Okay, today my guest is Sarah stone from Douglas Elliman, she’s in Fairfield County, netiquette Greenwich, Westport, and also in New York and Westchester as well. Let me tell you more about Sarah, Sarah. This is really an impressive biography. So I really want you guys to clue in on this because we’re going to touch about a lot of what I’m about to mention here. So Sarah was a top producing a broker at Douglas elements Manhattan office at 575 Madison Avenue for a decade. She was Rookie of the Year during her tenure there in Manhattan. She sold many many high profile properties including 65th East 76 800 Park Avenue and the world famous Dakota Building which is at one West 72nd. She has now taken her experience knowledge and famed sales experience expanded it from New York into the Connecticut suburbs specializing in the purchase and sale of fine homes in both Fairfield and Westchester Counties. Sarah also has a finite for exterior interior design. She’s an expert in staging and decorating a home she she’s resided and raised children in both Bedford, New York and Greenwich, Connecticut. She is the perfect guide to find or sell your own suburban splendor. A former nationally ranked tennis player which I would love to ask a few questions to improve my own game. Sara spends her free time playing tennis and also pickleball and I do want to talk about pickleball because I am the noise of it is my only issue with Pickleball is noise. But it is a fun game. In one of Greenwich, Greenwich his most beautiful town parks or clubs Sara can also be spotted driving around in her vintage Mercedes convertible I want everybody to follow Sara on her Instagram she has an amazing Instagram following Sarah stone style so s s s Sarah with an H stone style we will so at Sarah stone style. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes and also a link to her Douglas Elliman website definitely check her out on social she does some really super cool thing. Sarah, welcome to the show. Sarah Stone 4:57Well, thank you that was an extremely ordinary intro, I really appreciate that. Thank you very much. D.J. Paris 5:03We really appreciate you coming on. Thank you, we appreciate you. And coming on our show is a big deal for us. We know just how busy top producers like you are. And it’s been the biggest and lovely a surprise for me as starting the show like five or six years ago in thinking, Oh, none of these top producers are ever going to have time for this. And yet here we are, like 500 episodes later, and still being able to get top producers like you to give us some time that I know is in short supply for you. So thank you. Thank you. Sarah Stone 5:35Absolutely. My pleasure. D.J. Paris 5:38Let’s start at the beginning. So how did you get into real estate and why? Sarah Stone 5:45So my journey to real estate actually started, I’d say fairly early on. Relatively speaking, I graduated with a degree in economics from Tulane University down south. And I I, at that time, my goal was let’s let me get a job that will make me the most amount of money, the quickest. I wasn’t like, oh, what’s my passion and what am I good at? And you know, not I was like, let me get into Wall Street and let’s get cracking. And that’s what I did. I worked for a mutual fund called Lord Abbott. That was my first Sure. Sure. At that I was in the GM building on 58th Street, right across from the Plaza Hotel. And I got my series seven, my series seven and 63 I D.J. Paris 6:51had those both as well my first job as a financial advisor, so I know that world. Yeah. Sarah Stone 6:57So I was working as I was selling working with regional managers to sell our various funds. And I did that for a little bit there. And then I moved on to another bank DLj which is back from that sort of a 90s was a boutique kind of bank back then that was bought by Credit Suisse First Boston while I was there. When when I as I was working at DLj. You know, I worked as a registered sales assistant for the bigger brokers retail brokers there. And it’s it’s very fast paced, high pressure. male dominated, D.J. Paris 7:47especially sell sell sell. Yeah, Sarah Stone 7:50business and frantically paced, although, you know, not not to say that this business isn’t. But it was just, you know, it was something like, oh, is this really did I pick the right thing for me. And this is when my introspective examination of of my, my thoughts and goals to really and truly were and, and this is another bit of diversion, but I was always into I wanted to be into acting theater modeling, and that kind of thing. So I said, Okay, you know, I’m going to try, I’m gonna go for all that stuff. I’m gonna go for my dreams, but the pay isn’t so great. When you’re starting out. So I said, I’m going to subsidize that with I’ll be I’ll sell some real estate on the side, you know, I had gone through the process of, of renting an apartment in Manhattan and I saw I got a little bit of of a window into how all that worked. And I saw my I asked my broker a lot of questions. And in Manhattan, especially, I mean, you’re paying back then you’re paying a 15% commission to the to your broker. And D.J. Paris 9:15yeah, let’s let’s talk about this. Let’s Let’s pause for a second because this is a very important distinction. What Sarah’s like, oh, okay, I really am acting modeling. I want to pursue that and I’ll do some real estate on the side. What what she What if you don’t know real estate, if you don’t know rentals in New York City, one of the things that she’s explaining right now and I apologize for being rude and interrupting but I want to make sure everyone understands is very different from pretty much every major other major market, maybe Boston’s a little bit this way too. But Boston and New York I think, are the only two markets that do this where oftentimes the renter, the renter pays the Commission, which is a tough sell, right? That is hard. Oh, by the way, I need an extra $5,000 Sarah Stone 9:57Yeah, on top of I mean, You know, D.J. Paris 10:01on top of first month, last month, first month Sarah Stone 10:03last month and your security deposit, and here’s another, you know, 15% of it of the years rent. So, yeah, definitely, it was something that that I made note of when I was going through the process like, oh, doing the math, you know, let’s see if, and this is just rentals. You know, I wasn’t even thinking about the sales game then. So, I had a friend, I had sort of a connection at Douglas Elliman and, and they walk, you know, they said, let’s give it a shot, do your thing. And that first year, I made 10 times what I made doing the acting modeling gig in real estate, so amazing. I found that I really had a knack for it. And not only that I really enjoyed, I enjoyed, get up because I just love New York City so much. And I found that I really had so much passion for just checking it all out and getting to know all the different neighborhoods. And you know, and like, how great is that, like, my job is just kind of cruising around the city and checking out all the all kinds. I mean, especially in those early days, you wouldn’t believe like, what I was, wasn’t all glamour, trust me, it was, you know, I was trying like to sell this studio that was above Subway sandwich shop. Unknown Speaker 11:39Now like smell like bread all the time subway Sarah Stone 11:42bread, I still to this day, I burned my son’s memory to Subway, I can’t do it just takes me back to like, you know, I was probably I must have shown that thing over 50 times. So I spent a lot of time in that department. But that’s sort of like how it was. It was definitely the money was great at that time. And, and it was, I found that I really enjoyed it. And it was something that I was really good at. So it I just sort of morphed more and more making that into my full time occupation. D.J. Paris 12:21And so so you really built your career in the city, and then you’ve then made eventually made a move. And so essentially, I mean, it wasn’t like you moved across the country. So it was neighboring, but still far enough away, where it’s a different world, at least a bit of a different world. And having to sort of start over essentially, is incredible. It’s almost like, it’s almost like an attorney who passes the bar in New York, and then all of a sudden is like you don’t think I really want to live in Arizona? It’s like, well, they don’t have to, they don’t have to go do it all over again in Arizona, right? You know, and so you essentially had a similar kind of experience where you were moving from Manhattan, which is insanely, a challenging market to be a realtor, and whether you’re doing rentals or sales. I’ve interviewed tons of people, even from your firm who work in New York, how challenging Of course, we all know how challenging it is. And then to then go somewhere else and say, Oh, I’m going to like start all over essentially. And I understand it’s not completely starting over. But essentially it is. So that is even more amazing is that you’ve sort of you were Rookie of the Year in New York, and then you know, back into the suburbs as as your life changed. And so what was that transition like like going to a new market, a new area and trying to build your business again? Sarah Stone 13:38Um, well, it was it I was I’m very grateful for my firm Douglas Elliman because that the fact that they’re the biggest mover of real estate in Manhattan, and and they had, they had opened up a an element office in Greenwich about five years prior to my joining so they have nice established referral thing going on, on their own. I stepped in with some a lot of pre existing relationships with brokers that I had worked with in Manhattan while I was there, and when while I was in the city, I should mention I was you know, I worked in three different offices while I was there, I was a 575. But I was also on the Upper West Side for a little bit. I worked at nine at Madison for a little while. So I really got to know a lot of brokers and and and in this business you’ll find I mean, people go 20 years in this business easy. So there’s a lot there was a lot of people that are still very much active in their careers that I have worked with back then. So it was a very I was very lucky to be able to light up those relationships and Knock on you know, not call call people up and say, Hey, I’m back in the game, what have you got? Let’s go. And and it was the timing couldn’t have been better obviously with that the start of the the pandemic and the major shift the demographic shift that we all saw from the city to the suburbs. Yeah, D.J. Paris 15:21was that really was good timing. Actually, it wasn’t it was accidentally good for you. Yeah. What a fortunate what a fortunate thing. And, and yet still, there’s still a lot of competition, of course, where you are, and there’s a lot of great realtors. And so, you know, you, you, I’m assuming you were able to take a lot of the sort of habits and disciplines and that you learned, you know, we’re Yeah, Sarah Stone 15:46I mean, I think, you know, being a good salesperson is being a good salesperson, you know, like, you remember the, the, the Wolf of Wall Street. And that last scene, you know, he had gone to, to the federal prison for for, you know, his his tax evasion and fraud, wire fraud and all the stuff that he had done. And he got out and then he was giving seminars across the country and holding, he said, D.J. Paris 16:19Sell me the patent. Yeah. Right. Sarah Stone 16:23And like, and that’s sort of the that that’s the spirit, you know, like when if you have this skill, it can, it can really work across a lot of different platforms. So while I was doing it, and I was, you know, a realtor in Manhattan selling coops and condos, it my skill set was very applicable as far as as selling homes here hear up in the suburbs. It’s just you know, we didn’t have to happen septic tanks, and we didn’t worry about that, like, sewer sewage and all that stuff, roof. There’s a whole other aspects of, of real estate that goes on here that isn’t necessarily I mean, that in the city, you have to worry about Co Op or packages, which forget about it. I don’t miss those whatsoever. D.J. Paris 17:15I always loved when my sister bought a condo, or sorry, Co Op, in the West Village, many, many years ago. And my sister’s kind of a little superstar in her own in the industry she’s in and she was certainly more than qualified to buy this Co Op. And she you know, they got the offer accepted. And I this is like a million years ago, and I didn’t know anything about real estate. She’s like, Oh, now I have to go for my interview. And I was like your interview. I was like, what is that and so if you’ve no one’s ever dealt with coops before, you can obviously look this up. But there’s typically an interview process to make sure that the because coops are slightly different its ownership share. So everyone’s kind of owning everything to a degree. So they want to make sure that you’re not some total Bozo who’s gonna screw everything up for everyone. And so oftentimes, you do have to go in front of the board and forget about forget about that you put 100% down or whatever. They’re not evaluating that they want to make sure personality wise that you’re not a total joke. Sarah Stone 18:13They want to know who your best friend was, instead, they want to know your blood type. They want to feel your bank accounts. I mean, they they want to know every little detail about you and you have a package about that thick in front of you. D.J. Paris 18:27Did you ever see Did you ever have a deal go south because the personalities didn’t line up? Did that? Sarah Stone 18:32Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was I learned that that game very quickly. It was a the my very first one of my first Co Op deals, I remember I was dealing with a building on the Upper East Side. That was a very snooty you know, consider themselves quite a an established and and you know, prestigious buildings a 50% down require you had to put down at least half and then you had to have at least three times the amount of the apartment in liquid assets D.J. Paris 19:13in liquid assets. Sarah Stone 19:15Yep. On. So I did have like $4 D.J. Paris 19:17million sitting in cash. Sarah Stone 19:20Yeah. And then my I had a client who was like, I’m paying all cash. And PS I have $50 million in the bank account. Let’s Let’s rock and roll. The board came back and said, Okay, we’d like to do the interview in on July 15. They my client said nope, July is no good. What do you have in August? So that was all they needed that that was that? That was Yang. D.J. Paris 19:52Sorry. You’re not a fit. We need you to come in July. Yeah, I’m amazing. Sarah Stone 19:57That was that they said if this guy’s If that’s how he’s gonna play it for you, I mean, you have to as though you’re approaching you’re, you’re getting an introduction with the queen. I mean, that’s how you have to think of it like you have to be so honored. You have to like, if you’ve got plans, forget it. You don’t care. Let’s go. Like, isn’t that D.J. Paris 20:18amazing? Oh, yeah. Sarah Stone 20:19Different world you come? I learned that very quickly. Yeah. And you probably D.J. Paris 20:24have to have to then prepare your clients for those interviews and say, like, Okay, here’s, here’s some suggestions about like, don’t speak unless spoken, you know, or whatever. But, uh, you know, only give the right answer don’t, whatever, whatever the you know, that same sort of thing, if you’re going in for like being deposed by the attorney, don’t say anything. Sarah Stone 20:43But, like, happy and affable, and, you know, talk about your golf handicap and the tennis match earlier that day. And that’s about it. D.J. Paris 20:55So moving out to the suburbs, moving away from the co ops the condos, more of single family homes, and really kind of learning a new inventory, I’m guessing, you know, is going out there and really trying trying to learn that. Real quickly, though, just curious. I want to go just briefly back to your very first year doing, you know, rentals and maybe some sales in in the city in New York. How do you think or why do you think you did so much better than so many other rookies that year? Was there anything that that you can say, you know, I was really good at X, Y, or Z, or I just did things that other people wouldn’t do. Just curious in what you thought made the difference for you? Sarah Stone 21:36Well, for me, it was I worked as an assistant to one of the top producers and a legend and I was very lucky to work for this man. His name’s Robbie Brown. He is he’s no longer with us. He passed away a couple of years ago, but he is a legend in the industry, and an incredible guy and, and not at all, like a typical broker, like he was laid back, he rode a bike around the city, you would ride a bike to, you know, to your listing appointments. He was he was so cool and casual about it. But that was on the exterior. Meantime, he was hustling like nobody’s business, you know, he was he was a great networker. He went to every party, he went to the opening of an envelope, you know, he was there. He He nailed the world, you know, he had people working for him that he just grind at it to send, you know, postcards out, blanketing the city with with mailings. You know, like that old age old adage that we love so much, if you throw enough shit on the wall, some of its gonna stick type thing. This really applies when it comes when it comes to this. And the other thing that I learned from him is the value of relationships. She had certain clients that that he worked with that it like it always goes back to the you know, it being a referral business. Right. So like he had certain people that he that he worked with that that was provided a pretty steady flow of of listings. And one of those sources was from a state attorneys D.J. Paris 23:39huge, huge deal. Yeah. Sarah Stone 23:41And and I, I thought, you know, when I saw when I went out on my own, I emulated him to the tee and I first thing I did was I targeted attorneys are so smart. And I did and it didn’t take that it didn’t take too many you know, I had probably two or three estate attorneys and I have one divorce attorney kind of that I really worked on developing those relationships with I would show up in the their office with lunch I would send you know bring donuts in the morning I went around introduce myself dropping business cards saying hello to everybody in the office you know to the point where they started throwing me some listings you know smaller ones at first and then when those would go well it would they give me the bigger ones and that’s that’s how I ended up getting that Dakota listing was through this estate attorney. Yeah, so it really is it you know if you have if you think about it, it makes all the sense in the world if if you have a loved one that had died and owns a Manhattan apartment, of course you’re gonna go with who your attorney recommends you use, especially if you’re not if you you know, if you’re the benefactor of the estate, you don’t live locally or you just hand it right over. And so I would have to say that that was really the most, that was a critical move that I made that that differentiated me from the rest of my of my pack. Let’s call it my incoming class. D.J. Paris 25:31It’s funny, because I’ve, I’ve certainly heard of attorneys calling divorce attorneys and of course, estate planning attorneys make all the sense in the world. I don’t know why that wouldn’t have occurred to me. But I think you might be the first person and all the hundreds of episodes we’ve done that have mentioned estate planning attorneys. So I’m, I’m almost thinking they may be a bigger opportunity in certain ways, because a lot of agents maybe do think I should call a divorce attorney and get and you should do that, of course, should build those relationships, but estate planning attorneys maybe go a little bit a little bit forgotten Sarah Stone 26:03about the radar, but yeah, absolutely. That’s brilliant. Yeah, that’s 1,000% that even more so than divorce attorneys, I’d say because, you know, divorce can get complicated. And, and typically, especially if they’re two people that are two parties that are have vested interest in in that apartment, usually, you know, somebody knows somebody, they lived in the town, they’ve got somebody they want to use, you know, you’re they’re less likely to need the referral than an estate attorney rate D.J. Paris 26:37point, because a lot of times when mom and dad pass, and the kids now are to deal with all the estate stuff, or one of them is people are either moving, or they living in different places kids live Sarah Stone 26:50in Wisconsin. Yeah, they don’t want to know from that they just, you know, it goes to the probate court and goes through probate probate, I should say, and, and they’ll, they’ll trust their attorneys to handle it for them. And that’s a really good spot you if you have a few relationships with with some very, you know, successful attorneys that have quite a few clients or estates that they handle it. Definitely that that is a huge place for for inventory. D.J. Paris 27:28I could see I could see two people, realtors doing webinars or in person, you know, events, where it’s like, Hey, if you haven’t done your estate plan, I’m gonna bring my my my estate planning attorney, and we’ll do a little combo of like, you know, a little present. Right, right. I could see that being Sarah Stone 27:46that shares. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, totally. Definitely, that that’s very much the case. Again, with you know, your with attorneys, you know, it’s you’re not supposed you can’t, technically you cannot get they are not entitled to a commission on that. So like, you can’t say, oh, well kick it back to you, you know, but you can in other ways, you know, tried you have had them benefit from from your business as you are from from theirs. And that is one way is bringing them in for something like what what you’re saying like a seminar or recommending them to your audience or your sphere of influence? You know, that’s definitely, D.J. Paris 28:31it’s actually even more brilliant in a way that I’m thinking, at least from my perspective, because everybody who owns a home needs a will. Right? So it’s like, every single person you work with could potentially be a referral to I mean, you know, depends on what that Estate Planning Attorney What kind of client they want. But like, every single person who owns a home should have some sort of estate plan in place, even if it’s just some, you know, easy well, that that they could do, but it’s a really smart because not everyone gets divorced. So it’s just like, Well, somebody’s getting divorced, I can certainly refer them to my to my, the attorney I like, but everybody needs an estate plan. So it’s actually you everybody, such as Sarah Stone 29:11a few things, you gotta pay taxes, and you gotta die. Those two things are D.J. Paris 29:16and we don’t know when. Yeah, yeah. Let’s let’s talk about I want to talk about the state of the market today, because you’re a huge producer. And the market is, at least I’m in Chicago. We have about 800 agents here at our firm. All I hear about in our agents are great. I’m not here criticizing them at all, but I hear a lot of people being nervous about rate where rates are with lending, obviously are higher than then. I mean, they’re always too high for anyone really, but they’re certainly higher today than they were, you know, two or three years ago. And you know, we’re approaching the sevens for you know, most 30 year fixes and fixed and then and then also inventory being because there’s This disincentive to move right now. Right? So if like, if I have a 3% mortgage, which I do, you’d have to really make a strong knot you but but a realtor would have to make a very strong case for me to go, I want to go from 3% to 7%. Like, that’s a tough, tough thing to swallow a tough pill to swallow. And what are you? What are you experiencing? And how are you coaching some of your clients through this, so that they so that there can, it can make sense for them to make these decisions? Sarah Stone 30:29Well, it’s, it’s been, it’s been tough, and that it really is a double whammy, because we’re just coming off of COVID, you know, the pandemic surge, where a lot of people that were sort of teetering are on the fence about selling, you know, it was in their five year plan, let’s say, and then this thing happens, that drives the value of their of their investment up some 20 30%. And you’re like, Well, gee, I better cash it. So we had a lot in the last two, three years, we’ve had a, we’ve seen a lot of that where people are, are cashing in their chips. So you’ve got a pause in, in the, in the action of of those, those people that would have been putting their homes on the market they’ve already sold. So we’ve got, we’re taking a hit from that side. And then we’re taking another from the interest rate side, because, like you said, to me, people are sitting, enjoying their two 3% rates, but they’re not seeing a dip in prices to incentivize them to if they if they want to, you know, downsize get something bigger, if they weren’t, you know, we’re just not, it’s just not, there’s no incentive for them to move unless you’re moving to an entirely different area. Or if you, you know, let’s say you’re in a certain zip code, because of the school system, and, you know, you want to move to a town where, or a different part of the country where the cost of living is much different. It’s, or it’s really, like, it’s not a choice, like you got to move because of your job or because of a divorce or it’s just, you know, one of those instances. So we’re really suffering with the inventory, and buyers are frustrated, it’s a really tough time. I mean, I can’t even imagine, you know, I have I’m working with buyers right now that are in, you know, in, I’ve got buyers that are in the 5 million plus range. And then I’ve got several buyers that are in the like, one to three range. And the one to three range is just D.J. Paris 32:58for get it is so much competition, Sarah Stone 33:02so much competition and they’re in they’re going in, they’re putting in offers, they’re waiving contingencies, you know, mortgage contingency appraisal, contingency inspection contingency, forget it, you know, we’ll pay, like, we’ll pay all cash, we’ll close when you want. Well, like, you know, we’ll, we’ll put a statue of your family in the backyard for the rest of us for the end of time for us to worship at your feet. I mean, but you’re, you’re going against 30 other applicants, like there that you are in a bidding war amongst, you know, there are literally got, we’re going against 2025 different bids. So how do you win? I mean, it is so so tough. So a lot of times like right now when I’m dealing with my buyers, as I’m looking at, you know expired listings, and I’m looking at you know, I’m knocking on doors, I’m I’m trying to go off market, because once you get involved with all of that craziness when when you are first to four weeks to market on the MLS, if you’re priced appropriately, it’s going to be a madhouse, I mean, if you’re overpriced, you’re overpriced, and that’s that you can’t do anything about that. But like if you’re, you know, your listing and that the one to three range, it is going to be an absolute zoo and you’re competing against the same people over and over and over again. It’s incredibly frustrating. D.J. Paris 34:39Are there any any tips you have to stand out in those offers? Any suggestions of you know, obviously, you don’t have a ton of control over all those multiple offers, but just anything that has helped you get a little bit of an edge when you’re submitting, you know, an offer that you know is getting a dozen or more other offers. so Sarah Stone 35:00well. So again, this is where relationships do play a big part. Because when you start to do a lot of business and a certain market, you get to know all the players, right. So like, if I know the listing broker, I know I’ve got an advantage because I can I can talk or, even better yet, if I’ve done a deal with that listing broker and we know each other, we can trust each other, then I know that I can go to I can, I can talk with that listing broker more frankly, and get more information for my client than then some than an unknown. So that’s where experience really is crucial. If you want to work with someone who’s been around the block a few times to know, because knowing the landscape, knowing the players really makes a huge difference. Because if it’s between you, and your client, or you know, Joe Schmo that, from some firm you’ve never heard of, D.J. Paris 36:02with the exact same offer, you’re gonna, you’re gonna win Sarah Stone 36:05equal, right, you’re gonna get it. So I would say that, that does play a part, for sure. The other thing I recommend doing is, you know, the family resume always helps like that. Cheesy, kind of, like, we love your house. And we like the love letter. Yeah, right. And the photos with the family and like, you know, because people, you know, homes are very, they’re very sentimental, meaningful things to people who who’ve raised a family and a home and spent decades of their life caring for this home, they really want to make sure that that home goes to somebody who’s going to do the same thing. You know, that’s just, it’s almost like, there is such a powerful emotional connection to, to a home that you’ve lived in and raise your family. And you really, you don’t want to sell that home to like a developer, you know, or some investor, like, you know, somebody representing like a, some guy in, you know, in some Russian oligarch, or something, sorry. You know, like, like, if you’re a nice, nice, you’re nice people that that have, you know, like you, you want to be like the school system, you’re a nice family, you absolutely want to present that to the sellers. And there is you can get an edge. I mean, I just, we just experienced this recently with a, with a deal that I’m doing in the moment at the moment in Bedford, New York, and in Westchester County. It was between my people. And, and, or it was gonna go to this developer who actually had put in a higher offer than we did. But this is, you know, they’re young couple, they want to raise a family in this home. They love so this was, this is another thing that that’s this is a tip that people love getting compliments on the work that they’ve done or the upgrades that they’ve done on the home. So you know, knowing like, this was a 1930. Just almost, it’s a gorgeous home that but they did so much work to it, upgrading it, decorating and painting and the moldings and the chandeliers, they did all the fireplaces over they, they really did a wonderful job. So we wanted to just throw, we wanted to tell them what a brilliant job that they had done how much we love the the the materials that they used in their kitchen, we love the the kitchen island that granite is, you know, get detailed. People love that stuff they love like, they like, you know, why do we do anything? Right? Like why do we renovate our kitchens and bathrooms and put all this all the stuff on the wall? Because we want people our guests to come in and say, Ooh, wow, great to have you like that’s why we do it. Right? So like to get that recognition to get that kind of like that’s going to get that’s going to work in your favor. People do what D.J. Paris 39:39what percentage, what would you guess because you are up against multiple offers, of course in the price ranges you’re at. And you know, you’re coming in with some of the more human parts of it. They’re like, Oh, we really love what you did with the kitchen, the blah blah, you know, and you can talk about that or even maybe the by a couple can record a little video or type out a letter or, you know, hey, oh my god, it’s so amazing. What percentage of offers Do you think Do That? Is? It’s kind of it’s it. I know it was more popular during the pandemic, when there were so many offers where it was like you had to do something to stand out. But now that that’s subsided, but inventory still low in there a lot of multiple offers now, is that a common thing? Or is that just something that like, I imagine most Realtors don’t do that they just put in the offer? See what happens? Sarah Stone 40:30Yeah, I guess it depends, you know, on the deal. It depends on you know, like, for example, if I’m representing one of those states, from the, you know, referral from a state Attorney, like those kids in Wisconsin, they just want, they want to divvy up the money, they got it, split it four ways, they don’t care, or something. It doesn’t work all of that that’s not sure. Not all the time. I guess it’s it, I would apply it as needed. It’s a situational kind of vibe, vibe out, you got to suss it out and see when it’s appropriate and where it’s appropriate. And of course, like, if it’s appropriate for your client to be, maybe you’re not representing a really nice family, like maybe you are representing, you know, an investor or somebody that wants to put a subdivided or do all or gutted or who knows. So it really, it’s that sort of a Yeah, apply as needed is what as is how I would phrase that. And that’s, that a good broker can can vibe out, especially if you are, if you’re, if you’ve worked with that listing broker before, you know that that’s in the, in the due diligence information gathering stage, a good broker should be able to guide you through that, D.J. Paris 41:56ya know, for sure I love that tip is, is if we think that the sellers have an emotional attachment to the upgrades they’ve made, that can be something that the agent can ask the other agent, hey, my client really loves what you guys did with the kitchen. And then they can configure out how much you want to oppress that in the in the offer. But certainly, people are always loved to be complimented on their work. So that is, you know, even even if it doesn’t win, win the bid, it certainly is a good practice to compliment people on what they’ve done right with their house. Because also, if they’re like most of us, I think most of us like we look in the mirror, and we see the little imperfections in ourselves. And I think most people think about that way with their home as well. It’s like, Yeah, I did this project. But then there’s like 10 Other projects I had didn’t get to. So most people look at their home. They’re like, Ah, God, I have so many things I have to do, and I haven’t done and then when somebody comes in is like, oh, that thing you did is really cool. It’s like, oh, yeah, that’s right. I did do that thing. Yeah, that’s really it’s a nice little reminder. Sarah Stone 43:05Yeah, I mean, at home, your home is your an extension of yourself. It is a representation of yourself. Absolutely. And just like you said, we look, we, when we’re living in it, we don’t see how fast we look and see the flaws. And we think everyone’s gonna come in and say like, Oh, that is like the wall color. She pin. Oh, like that, you know, I remember when I first got my first apartment on the Upper West Side, and I stayed the floors really dark. You know, so it was like this pre war apartment. And like, the walls were this really high ceilings. It’s like these moldings, beautiful, like, classic six apartment on the on the Upper West Side. And I stained them. Like, I just went for it. I stand in like ebony color, you know, so really shiny and kind of contrasted the white walls and everything. But, of course, I was like, Oh, God, is it like so? Is it too dark? Like did I pick the right shade? And I remember like walking, I would pray I would walk in to get my first impression of the place and then walk back out and then walk back and to like, get a fresh like, I must probably do that 20 times. And you know, my, my husband at the time was probably like, oh my gosh, she’s she’s totally gone berserk. But it was that first friend that came over. I remember her name is Eve we went to college together. She came over and she said I love your floors. D.J. Paris 44:47And then you never had to think about it again. Sarah Stone 44:49It’s like, Oh my God. God bless. Like, yeah, it just yeah, you need affirmation. we all we all love and need affirmation. D.J. Paris 44:58Well, I have I Have an all white condo, everything’s white, or like white and black, the fixtures are black, you know, but like the countertop stuff, the floor is light, all the walls are white, and I can’t wait for like 10 years from now, somebody will walk in and go, what were they thinking? Because everything changes, you know, at some point, like the all white thing will just not be cool anymore. And everything is going to look goofy at some point in history. So it’s funny. So you know, I just I’m looking forward to that kind of, because I remember when I bought my condo before in 2005, and we were doing certain things with granite. And that was real popular. And now it’s like, we look at those goofy granite. Some of the goofy or granite colors were like, what were they thinking? It’s like, No, that was in back in 2005. And now, you know, the white thing has kind of been in for the last five years, and it’s probably Sarah Stone 45:52leached floors that was that how to run or it was like, you know, those like bleached wood and Nantucket II kind of shingles and that like everything’s just like, been in the sun for too long, kind of D.J. Paris 46:07it is it is funny, but it is it’s important. I think agents sometimes forget that that like, there are real if you’re representing buyers, there’s real human beings on the seller side. And if you have a good relationship with with the listing agent, and and that’s where it’s really important to play nice in the sandbox, right? It’s like always, and look, I know, especially I think women get I mean, I don’t want to generalize based on gender, but but I think women get this much worse than men is that there’s just a lot of jerks that are realtors in the industry too. And I know a lot of women who are who are very successful in real estate, who are like, you would not believe the way I get spoken to by other realtors on a regular basis. Like Nice, nice. You see, you’re nodding your head. And it’s like, Well, how could I ever be mean to Sarah, she’s like a lovely, sweet person. Oh, she has to deal with this too. And the reality of it is it only is ultimately going to hurt the other agent if they’re a jerk to you. Because you’re not going to forget that. Sarah Stone 47:02Yeah. I mean that especially like the whole like listing broker buyer buying broker dynamic. Like if you’re the listing broker, you are like too cool for school like you are, you know, you should be grateful if you get a return phone call from the listing broker. Like, it’s just that’s the, that’s the market that we’re in right now. It’s a seller’s market, right. So like, you if you want to be on the sell side, and like, we’re on the buyer side, we’re all sweating away, and can we show it please? Oh, you’ll let us like, you just have to be so nice. And, you know, catch more flies with honey type thing. And the listing brokers stuff. It’s like, it’s like, can we just lose the attitude? You know, like, I, it’s just like, please, I don’t understand it, you know, like, it’s one of those, like, you know, when there’s like an event for a cocktail for brokers or networking event for brokers, and people are like, Why am I gonna go to that I don’t want to meet a bunch of brokers, like I’m not selling to brokers. And it’s like, Ah, no, you go to those, you go to all those cocktail parties, you you meet everybody, you handshake, you throw cards up, because you never know when that relationship is going to be important. And the network, you know, the more that that business is going, it’s going to inevitably build, if you put it out there, it’s going to build D.J. Paris 48:35Yes, and you could not be more more accurate there. And I’ve just heard that said over the years on the show, by just about every person we’ve ever had on is, is be really, really nice to other agents, and also realize that other agents might be having a bad day too, and give them a bit of grace when they falter, and maybe are less than professional, even though that’s never acceptable to be less than professional, but it happens. And it’s one of those things where, you know, the the top agents, I know, kind of learn how to grin and bear it a little bit more. It’s not quite as personal to them, when somebody’s awful to them. And obviously that sucks. We’re to ever have somebody be awful to anybody. But this idea of like, I’m just going to catalogue that I’m going to remember that and, you know, maybe in the future that maybe won’t serve that person that was crappy to me, maybe maybe, you know, and and we all want Sarah Stone 49:34karma happen. It’s a karmic situation, it happens and especially, you know, in a market like Greenwich where, you know, it’s it’s a big market, but there are a few very strong players that you’ll you’ll see again and again. And, and you know, and that’s the beauty of our business too is like a deal has a beginning and an end right like you can tolerate anybody for it through the length of time that it takes to, to sign a contract and get to a closing, it’s not like you’re gonna have to go to a nine to five job and see this person every day for the rest of your life. You know, like it, they when the deal is done, the deal is done. And that’s what I love. I love like the sense of, of completion, this the achievement of finale, you know, it’s over. So you can move on to the next one, but you just need to make it through that to make keep everybody happy. So we get to the finish line. D.J. Paris 50:38I agree. I think that is that makes all the sense in the world. One thing I wanted to mention, because I know we’re kind of running coming up on near the end of our time, I was thinking about your, you know, what your Oh, I know, I wanted to ask you, it was about what you do in between your deals. So you just talked about, like, there’s a beginning and an end to the relationship. You know, some a some clients are easier to work with than others. Some you’re like, I can’t wait to be the this person’s friend forever. And others are like, you know, that was a nice experience. And we don’t need to, you know, keep keep, you know, keep keep communicating. But what do you do in between those transactions, so that the clients don’t forget about you? Right? Like, obviously, you can’t be friends with everybody. But are you doing because, you know, if somebody’s only really utilizing you every, let’s say, five to seven years, or whatever the cycle is in your area? What are you doing so that they don’t forget? Oh, who did we use five years ago? Not that you’re forgettable? You are not forgettable, but let’s assume that we’re all forgettable? You know, we’re all we’re all forgettable. And and so, you know, what are you doing to make sure your clients don’t forget you. Sarah Stone 51:49I mean, you got to do all this stuff to stay top of mind. Right? Like, we all know the stuff, it’s just there. It’s, it’s a, it’s not, this is the gritty pain in the ass stuff that we all it’s like, we’re not looking forward to it. We don’t love coming up in your inbox all the time, and being so annoying, and videos, you know, like being in your face type thing, but it really it matters. It’s important, like you have to stay top of mind. And that means continuously marketing yourself reaching out, you know, to to your network. blasting out those emails, sending postcards, social media, obviously is incredibly important. And I always say it’s, it’s more like, it’s not like your I personally don’t get my my phone’s not ringing off the hook from my social media, you know, it’s not like someone’s looking at a tick tock that I made and like, Oh, my God, Sarah, like, it’s you, you are the one you have to sell our house. But what it does provide is like it’s a, it when they go to do some due diligence on you, and they go to check you out would be client, they’re gonna see all that stuff. And they’re gonna feel nice and safe and snugly found that they’re in good hands with with you like, so that stuff all really it accumulates, it makes you as the time goes on, and you’ve got more and more history, it’s all the better. So you really just, you can’t be afraid to put yourself out there. And I know that that’s so it’s not easy to do. It’s, it’s like it’s really it, you got to take the good with the bad when it comes to that stuff. But you really it’s in this day and age. And it’s crucial to not only maintaining your business, but really growing your business you need to stay relevant to the conversation. D.J. Paris 53:56It also gives people access, right? Like, it allows people to feel like they have a connection with you. Even at three in the morning when you’re asleep. If they’re awake, scrolling through Instagram, or wherever. And they’re now seeing like, oh, that’s maybe I know Sarah or maybe I don’t maybe I’m being introduced to her through a tick tock or whatever. But it allows people access to you more about you, without you having to make pick up the phone and you know, call make these cold calls, which you’ve done, you’ve done cold walking, you’ve done a lot of these more difficult, you know, sort of cold introductions, whereas, you know, social media is a great way for people just to remember might be reminded of what you do, right? So it’s like you can continually pump out content about all this cool stuff you’re doing in real estate in sort of the thought that like the right people will see it. My followers might see it they’ll at least be reminded I’m still in the game and doing XY and Z for for as a realtor. So I think for it’s it’s a lot of just a branding thing, right? It’s like it’s not it’s more than that, but I think from a branding perspective, it’s, you know, we know most people scroll, you know, scroll in some sort of social media channel once or twice during the day, might as well be one of the things they come across. Right, Sarah Stone 55:12exactly. And I mean, if you’re not doing it, somebody else is doing it, I can guarantee you that and like, the more that we are in, in an online business, you know, I mean, I think Zillow is a real game changer in the way that we, we have the availability of understanding your market and knowing what’s on the market. We didn’t have this pre 2000. I mean, the the client had to solely rely on the realtor to show you what was available on the market at that time. So now, they have access to pretty much almost every platform that you do. So how are you going to add value to that person? You know? How? How are you going to enhance that experience for them or provide, provide them an experience buying or selling a home that a different agent can’t, you know, yeah, so that’s really, you got to find exactly that your brand, your vision. D.J. Paris 56:24And what’s really cool is you get to lean into that now, whatever your thing is, like, could be outside of real estate, even maybe you’re passionate about something a hobby or, you know, particular belief system or group or whatever, you’re just into x. And what’s really cool. As an agent with social media, one of the good parts of social media is you get to not only find all the other people that are into x. But even if you don’t have a community of people that are into the same thing you are, you can start posting about that on your real estate page. If you’re really into something maybe it tangentially relates to real estate, or maybe it doesn’t. But if you’re into surfing or whatever you might be into, you know, you can do that. And then people start to feel like, Oh, that’s pretty cool. This, this is what this versus that do. And you’ll you can start attracting, you know, surfers or people who are in that space, simply by posting a lot of good quality content that a surfer might want, or that somebody that’s into cross stitch or whatever it might be. And you you get to be yourself, which is really cool. Below, up Sarah Stone 57:26and down an entire different demographic that you wouldn’t have had access to. And that’s like this job. You’re always working even when you’re socializing, and just generally having fun yet, like you’re actually what you’re what we’re working, you’re always you’re meeting people, you’re interacting with people, it’s an opportunity to let that person know who you are and what you do. You know, so that’s why it’s so important to I mean, obviously, we’re working your your career is important. But when I’m you know, playing tennis, or I’m playing pickleball or even if I’m going to you know, an event, a fancy Greenwich gala or something like that, that’s always an opportunity to connect with somebody and to grow your business. So like it’s a kind of a cool way to not feel guilty sometimes, like sometimes when you know you’re doing something that’s not work, work, work work, you’re like, oh, but really, when I’m, I mean, I’ve gotten a lot of business from playing tennis, because we women love to chit chat when we’re playing a double match, like we’re on the on the changeover. I’m like, Who doesn’t love to talk about real estate? You know, like, D.J. Paris 58:49everyone’s got to live somewhere. Sarah Stone 58:51Right? And like, it’s such, it’s so easy to casually be like, Oh, my God, you guys, the showing that I had earlier today, let me tell you, and they’ll lean right in they though they want to know. And my goal is always to make sure not don’t ever leave any social situation, without them knowing that I’m a realtor. Like, that’s all I have to do. That’s all you have to do. I don’t I don’t need to push it down. I don’t want to ram it down their throat and ask them where they live. And are they interested in selling in the next five years? You know, I all I need to do is have them register that somewhere in their peripheral that Oh, I played tennis with this lady and she’s a real estate broker. And you just don’t know how that’s going to germinate. You know, you just D.J. Paris 59:44it might. It might be that like that person’s brother is a realtor and so you’re not going to get that business but they might say oh my friend, you need to talk to my friend. She would be awesome because you know, so yeah, you’re right. You never know where it’s going to germinate. I love what you just said every Your job is, as a marketer, part of being a realtor is to make sure that everybody who you come across that you interact with understands what you do for a living, it does a great pushing is always, to me, I’m not a big fan of people. But I want to know, I want to know what all of my friends do I want to know where they work. Like I haven’t I have an interest in that when I meet somebody, you know, oftentimes what they do for a living might be the least interesting thing. But I still ask, and I still am like, Oh, what are you into? What do you do? That’s really, really important, we shouldn’t be again, and also everyone’s got to live somewhere. So they’re going to need a realtor anyway. So you might as well it’s not like you’re trying to sell them aluminum siding, or something that they may or may not need or want, right, you’re not selling something that’s not important, you’re actually like, well, you’re going to use a realtor anyway. So it’s a good idea to make sure that people know that that’s what I do. So I want to end with that. Because I think that is such an important, great, important thing. It may for everyone listening, let’s make it a goal that everybody in your life this year is going to get some sort of reach out from you in a gentle way to remind them that you are in the business. And you can figure out the best way to do that everyone’s got their own individual style. Make sure that everybody in your end that you’re consistently dripping something on them, maybe not every week, every maybe not every even month, but few times a year, at a minimum, they’re getting some sort of reminder that you are a realtor. So Sarah, thank you so much. And I also want to say for everyone before Before leaving, don’t leave the chat because I would like to remind everyone that Sara is always speak we talked about having relationships with other realtors, Sara is gets a lot of her business from referrals because she’s just that good. So if you have any clients that are moving in and out of Connecticut, even parts of New York, it doesn’t even matter where just reach out to Sarah she can’t help you. She’ll know who to refer to but she would love to connect with you specifically around you know, Connecticut, parts of New York as well. So for talking Fairfield County, Greenwich, Westport, Westchester County, Sarah Stone 1:02:07Westchester County right outside the city. Those Those are my wheelhouse is and I I love referrals. I think you’ll even I never chintzy with referral fees. D.J. Paris 1:02:22And, and Sarah’s clients oftentimes have other homes elsewhere or move. So if you are in an area that people may be retired to Yeah, you know, or Florida is the big one. Yeah. So let’s, let’s, you know, this, this is a two way street sort of scenario. So definitely reach out to Sarah also, if you’re a realtor in Connecticut, and you’re like God, I would love to work with someone like Sarah, I would love for her to be on to be on her team and learn from her. She learned from one of the best you can learn from her. She’s one of the best now. So you know, right now she obviously she’s they she can’t take everyone. But if you think you could add value to her team, or if you think you know, she could add value to your business, reach out to her this is let’s let’s build a relationship. So Sarah, if there is another realtor who wants to connect with you either for referral or maybe they’re interested in looking at Douglas Elliman or your team? What’s the best way they should reach out to you? Sarah Stone 1:03:17Well, they can always they can find me, my Insta, which is at Sara stone style. And if not that, you know, I my cell phone my email, which I don’t know if you can provide that in the notes. But But yeah, always reach out. My website is element.com/sharath stone. And there I will be and I would love I would love to connect with as many listeners as I possibly can. And really, this is fun. I would love to do this again sometime. Totally a total pleasure torture. I could chat with you all day. D.J. Paris 1:03:52Yeah, it was it was so much fun. So everyone deftly follows Sara on Instagram, Sarah stone style, we will have links to her email, also her website on in the show notes. So please feel free to connect with her. She’s super easy to find and make a connection with her and let her know what you thought of the episode. And also, you know, maybe you guys could do some business together so or maybe could join or two. So anyway, Sarah, thank you so, so much for your time. Sarah is a huge, huge superstar. We’re so grateful to have you on the show. So on behalf of the audience, thank you, and on behalf of and we want to also thank the audience too. So on behalf of Sarah and myself want to say thank you for listening and supporting our show support our sponsors. Thank you for watching and listening, please just tell one friend about the show. That’s the only thing we asked. You know, I guarantee everyone listening knows one realtor that could use a little bit of help this year. It’s a tough year for realtors. So let’s send them this link to this episode. Maybe it’ll help them get to the next level in their business. So Sarah, thank you so so much. We will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks, Sarah. Sarah Stone 1:04:54Pleasure. Thank you so much.

Welcome to the June episode of Learn with a Lender with Joel Schaub of Guaranteed Rate! In this episode Joel discusses the current situation in the real estate business. Joel and DJ discuss the strength of the correct pre-approval letter. Joel explains the buy-outs and 2-1 rate by-down and discusses how do sellers explore by-downs. Last Joel talks about interest-deductions for first-time home buyers and how to explain it in real simple terms and mortgage insurance rates. 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 0:00There’s a secret strategy known by top Realtors on how to get their buyers lending rates down. Right now we’re going to learn about how to do that today. 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. 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 today once again, is our monthly series called 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. 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. Now last year alone, Joel gave back over $300,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with him. And that puts Joe’s volume in the top 1/10 of 1% of all loan officers nationwide. In fact, out of 400,000 lenders in the country. Joel is currently ranked number one 137 last year. Oh, you know, I deleted Joel’s numbers from last year by mistake, but he did an incredible amount of production last year. But this year, he closed has closed already 137 transactions for just shy of just under $60 million in loans. If you’re ever looking for a loan officer, we could not more highly recommend Joel he’s the very best we’ve ever worked with. Joel can be reached at his email, which is joel@rate.com J oel@rate.com. Or you can shoot him a text message or call him at 773-654-2049. Let’s say hello to the biggest Cubs fan. I know. Hey, Joel. Joel Schaub 3:04TJ, thanks so much for having me on again. And now we feel like summer is in full effect. And I’m really excited to be sharing what’s going on behind the scenes and mortgages so that the listeners can either close one more transaction on the buy side or maybe get one more listing. And it’s always my favorite time of the month when we connect together. D.J. Paris 3:24Me too. And you know, this is a time when it seems like there’s a lot of activity in the market. And the two major grumbles or complaints that I hear is low inventory, and rates not being where we would like them to be. So I’m curious to sort of get your take on what’s going on today in the market and how agents can take advantage of any opportunities that you see. Joel Schaub 3:49And the third grumble, right. It’s just my stomach before I have breakfast, right? It’s gotta be the third one, its rates on right lack of inventory. And then maybe the days where I skipped breakfast, but no, DJ, you’re exactly right. I feel that it’s strange that these rates being as high as they are, you know, just below 7% Right now, haven’t scared off buyers in the sense that we’re seeing two out of three homes go into multiple offers, you know what I mean? It’s amazing. And so when you have these properties that are actually hot, and they come on the market, there’s multiple offers on these. And it seems like it’s the dichotomy, right? There’s properties that sit and they’re listed incorrectly or they’re the ones that are priced correctly. And buyers are still saying I’m going to pay you 20 grand more than the listing price 30 grand, and with rates being this high, it’s not the way it should be. But there’s a major lack of inventory in all the major metropolitan markets. D.J. Paris 4:49Well, and this is an opportunity for realtors to understand and communicate to their buyers in particular, that you know, sitting on the sideline is is fine if your will Looking to lose a property, but with with restricted inventory, and the fact that there is multiple offer situations going on at, you know, sub, you know, high the high sixes in the lending rates? You know, I think realtors have to readjust their own expectations and make sure that when they communicate to clients that they’re saying, Yeah, I know that seems like a high number for an interest rate. But you know, going back to something you always say about dating the rate marrying the home and understanding that, you know, yeah, we may pay a slight premium, maybe we’re paying over asking, or maybe we’re paying a higher interest rate because of where rates are currently. But we’re going to be able to, you know, adjust that interest rate down, most likely when when rates do in fact, come back. But this is, I don’t think this is a time to sit on the sidelines, because there’s just not that much inventory out there. Joel Schaub 5:50And the ones that are jumping in, and what we really need to do is design offers that are going to win, right? How many agents out there listening, are submitting offers, and we’re losing, right? We don’t want to lose if we’re gonna go try to help our clients, we want to win offers, and we don’t want to be the one that is always coming in with the highest offer. All right. So I wanted to just share two strategies that we can do right now. And when we hear that dreaded, I’m calling for the highest and best, right, it seems like agents are doing that. The day they put it on the market. They’re saying, Okay, here’s an offer. And the agent comes back and says we’re looking for highest and best. So it’s the second word, it’s the best, right? So I don’t always want my clients winning by being the highest, I want to go in and say that we’re better than the other offers. And one of the ways that we do that is the strength of the pre approval letter. Right? Having the financing look as strong as possible is going to help you win here, are we going to be able to compete with a cash offer? Probably not. Right. But I just had one last week where we were not the top offer. We were really strong on the financing. And the most cash, the highest cash offer was about 10 grand less than ours. So we won even though we weren’t the highest financed offer, we were better than the cash offer. And it’s because we showed a strong downpayment, the property address on the pre approval letter. In other words, we were buttoned up, when all the other offers weren’t as strong, we looked like we were the easiest option for the seller, that will get to the bottom line. And so D.J. Paris 7:25not all three of not all pre approval letters are created equal. Right? Like, it’s important to to, you know, read, if you’re working with a lender, and you know, they’re going to be putting out pre approval letters, you do want the actual address of the property on the letter, that’s a significant thing. Because of course, that that that communicates a message to the seller, Joel Schaub 7:52the seller actually called because they do good sellers do if you’re listening, you know, you call and the other bank had a stale letter from over four weeks ago, they had an old rate, they weren’t convinced the buyers and even been in contact with the bank recently, where our letterhead, today’s date, it had the property address, it was all specific. And it encouraged the listing agent to actually reach out to me if they had any questions to make sure this deal went through. So working with a lender that will do that. And you guys have mortgage partners right now that are just dying to help you. So make sure that when you’re submitting your offer, you’re calling back that mortgage professional that you’re working with. And having them put today’s date on the letter, having them put the property address so that you can put together a nice package with a bow on top that looks better than every other offer. And I’m telling you that is better than coming in 50 grand over with a stale letter that doesn’t really match up. D.J. Paris 8:50Yeah, because if it’s a stale letter, and you know, it doesn’t look to be specific to the property or current, then then you have to investigate. Now the seller has to do homework and now they have to reach back out go, is this still is this current is this the right rate is still valid. And you never want a seller, especially in a multiple offer situation to have to do extra work because you didn’t you and your lender didn’t, you know, have an updated sheet? Joel Schaub 9:19Absolutely. And so what we’re doing now is I speak to the borrowers about what is the maximum amount that they would be comfortable putting down we need to stand out. So the idea right now, or 20% down being enough, maybe it is, but I’ve won a lot of deals recently where the buyer put down 30 or 40% on the pre approval letter not really stands out. It’s really saying look at this buyer, look at how strong they are. And I’ll remind you that if you have a pre approval letter that says that you’re 40% down, it doesn’t lock you into having to put 40% down on the loan. Okay, so if you can put your strongest offer forward, and the contract comes in, the borrower could still decide to get loan for more than that. You’re not lying, you’re not doing anything wrong in terms of the contract, but it helps you get this offer accepted. So being strong, finding alternative ways to make sure that you stand out, is the way that you’re going to submit offers that are designed to win. It makes perfect sense. Yeah. So let’s talk about buy downs as well. Okay, so we’ve touched on this before. But right now, one of the big chief complaints that buyers have is, I don’t want a 6.5% rate this is, you know, I currently am in a mortgage that the rate is 3%. So it’s a major change for me to go from 3%, all the way up to six and a half percent, right. So what we’re having a lot of sellers do is fund a to one rate by down. So I’ll give a quick example here. A buyer that’s let’s say, let’s say they’re buying an $800,000. Home with 20%, down at a six and a half percent rate, that mortgage payment is $4,102 4102. Okay, the same buyer could literally go up and buy a $936,000. Home. So DJ, almost 150, grand more, if the seller did a to one buy down for them, they literally would have a mortgage of 3910. So they would be less in terms of the monthly payment. And the seller is the one funding the rate by down. So it’s just a big strategy right now, not all sellers are going to do this for you. But if you can get in the habit of finding out what sellers would fund rate by downs for your clients, it is a big win for these buyers that are kind of maybe sitting on the sidelines, right? D.J. Paris 11:41How would you encourage a seller to explore the buyout option? Joel Schaub 11:46Well, it’s all about net dollars to the seller, right? There’s no magic in this right now. So if a net buyer down on that scenario for that $936,000 purchase, ended up being about 18 grand and credits that the seller needed to pay, and that would be about a little over 2% of the purchase price. In these hot multiple offer situations, you’re probably not going to win. If you come in and submit an offer that needs a seller funded by down they’ll probably laugh at you. They’ll say why would I want to go with this when I have three other offers that aren’t being complex. But this is a situation where maybe there aren’t any other offers DJ, and our buyer says I’m willing to pay the listing price if the seller funds rate by down, okay, so if you’re an agent out there, this is not an offer. It’s not a strategy for multiple offers. This would be more where you know that there’s not any other offers, let’s submit an offer as close to the asking price, but ask for some concessions. D.J. Paris 12:45Yeah, that makes sense. And that’s a good good thing to realize, if anyone out there who is dealing with listings that are sitting and are not not getting enough attention from buyers, this is a great strategy to start talking to buyers, sorry, started talking to sellers about to present that option to a buyer, this idea that we can we can help you with this uncomfortable, you know, mortgage payment, basically, for the next year or two, I think that is an exceptionally creative way to help people or, you know, bridge that sent days. And now we’re in the sixes. Joel Schaub 13:23And so the strategy here is, instead of just taking 18 grand off the price, because if the client was able to get an 18 grand credit to fund the buy down DJ, they would have also been able to pay 18 grand less for the home, right? So let’s actually just do the math on this for a moment. So if you’re listening 18 grand off, the price would be somewhere around 160 to $170 a month cheaper in terms of payment number 160 or 170 grand. But if you actually took that 18 grand and use the temporary rate by down strategy in year number one, the rate going from 6.5 down to 4.5 saves the client 910 bucks. D.J. Paris 14:07Right. And that’s a monthly number is the number that they care about. Right? We all look at our monthly out and in with respect to income and expenses. And so yeah, being able to cut a smaller check for a few years and hoping that you know the rates change and fall favorably during that time to where you can then refinance into a more comfortable long term strategy. Joel Schaub 14:32So let’s be clear, this is not a strategy where we’re not comfortable with what the payment is Anyway, okay, because this is not an excuse to get in over your head. Okay, let me be very clear. This is not a strategy where Oh, I absolutely need the seller to fund the buy down otherwise I’m uncomfortable. Okay. We don’t want to put our buyers into a bad position ever. We want our clients comfortable with the payments where the rates are today. We want to see if the seller wants to fund a buy down instead of taking A price reduction. And if so it’s hundreds of dollars in the clients favor terms of a monthly payment. And so it’s icing on the cake. All right, that’s the idea behind the to one rate down strategy, because I hear it all the time they go, Well, what happens in two years the rates are gonna go, your payment is going to be higher. It’s not like an adjustable rate mortgage, where all of a sudden, we’re afraid that rates are gonna go up. We know what the rates are, we’re locked in, this isn’t a way to get a reduction for the first year or two. And if we can get that paid for by the seller, everyone smiles. D.J. Paris 15:38Yeah, it definitely makes sense. If you were an agent right now, Joe, what would you incorporate? What would you encourage our listeners to start doing? As like, you know, a regular exercise to help keep the business moving forward? Joel Schaub 15:53Yeah, I mean, right now, you gotta literally look at what the client’s bottom line number is. That’s the big thing, right? You’re so right, when you say they look at what the payments are per month, right. And there’s a payment shock right now, just a traditional like first time homebuyer that’s buying a three or $400,000 home, their mortgage payments from being in the low threes or below to where they’re at now. They’re eight or $900 more a month for that home, that’s going to keep certain people on the sidelines. Okay? So you got to see if you’re a seller that has a property that’s not moving, doing a price reduction is really not going to move the needle much. We just talked about that. Right. So exploring the ways that you can say, seller to buy the rate down, people are all talking about rates right now. So if you can get in that language and say, reduced rates for the buyer of this property, you can put it in the MLS. It’s just another way to get interest in the property. And you got to understand that though, you have to understand what that to one rate buydown is. So that’s why I wanted to go slow and walk through how that worked. And make sure that sellers can maybe use this strategy to move a property that’s not moving. D.J. Paris 17:05Yeah, I also think to like, it’s an interesting time to reach out to homeowners, and to talk about the lack of inventory in the market. Because being that we are seeing multiple offers, it’s it’s a heck of a good time to consider listing a property, it’s it’s a difficult time finding a new property. So there’s there’s push and pull to all of this. But a good loan officer can sit down with a current homeowner and say, well, let’s figure out with your realtor, what we think we can get for this property based on current market trends. And then let’s figure out based on rates and availability of an inventory, what our next move is our next biocide transaction is. And it might make sense because, again, there’s just, it’s just one of those things where you have to kind of run the numbers. But this is where you really need a really dedicated a loan officer who’s able to sort of crunch those numbers to see, hey, it is a good time to actually list the property, even though we’re in high interest rates, low inventory, you’re gonna get more for your sale, it’s going to even out possibly on the buy side in the future. And then maybe you can even find a buy down situation if the seller is willing to do that, too. But I guess the point is that it’s we need to be very careful not to just say rates are high inventories low, like Yes. And it’s that old, you know, way of, of doing improv, right? Yes. And, yes, that’s true. And, and we can still find opportunities here and that people still need to move. And sometimes it makes sense to sell when there’s not much inventory, even though the rates are high and inventories low. Joel Schaub 18:47I gotta Yes. And for you, that makes perfect sense. The client says rates are high and inventories low. And you’ll say, you know, I don’t want to pay a six and a half percent rate and you’ll say, Yes, and your rate right now on rent is 100% interest because you’re paying every single dollar right to your landlord. And I like the idea of paying six and a half percent a lot better than I like being 100%. You put it in those terms, it’s really starts to sink home, what somebody’s paying for rent versus what they can actually get when they start owning a property. D.J. Paris 19:18I think I think there’s such an opportunity for because I didn’t know this until I owned a property. Nobody. I don’t know, maybe I’m just a dummy. And, uh, well, I’m a little bit of a dummy. But I suspect there’s a lot of people like me, so I’m not the only dummy out there that literally didn’t know about mortgage interest deduction when it comes to tax time. I didn’t know when I was renting because no one ever told me and I’d never had that experience. And then all of a sudden I got the nicest gift. You know, the next April after I bought my first property a million years ago. It’s like, whoa, what’s this? I get some money back and that’s something that I know that’s not necessarily going to get somebody to want to buy a property just for that alone, but that Here’s a nice benefit that I feel doesn’t get talked about enough. If you are taking out a loan. Joel Schaub 20:06I always break it down in this in real simple terms for a first time homebuyer and numbers that agents can repeat. Okay, because it’s hard to understand this interest deduction what what the hell? are we actually talking about interest? Taxes, right? Are we talking property taxes? Are we talking federal income, right? So, here it is, in a nutshell, if you’re an agent, and you want to be able to recreate this and explain it, and so we’re gonna use a real small numbers, we’re gonna say, a buyer that’s making 60 grand on a W two job, right, that now takes on a mortgage. And let’s say they have $10,000 of interest that they paid in year number one, well, before they had the mortgage, they paid federal income taxes, DGN, all 60 grand of their income, all right. But next year, since they’ve already paid $10,000 of interest, instead of paying taxes on all 60 grand, they’re only going to pay taxes on $50,000 of income. And this is not a CPA answer, right? This is not the exact numbers but this is the way that you can explain it so that you’re coming across educated, okay, and making sure that you’re teaching buyers exactly what interest deduction is in real simple terms. D.J. Paris 21:20Yeah, basically reduces your tax liability for income. And it’s it’s a fantastic thing, thankful thing that we should be very grateful for to our country, because it does make us all a little happier come tax refund time, but it’s also something that I get, I think that most renters are unfamiliar with. So it’s a nice little sort of add on to making, you know, the point that homeownership historically is a much better investment than renting, which we know is not an investment. Joel Schaub 21:56DJ, I’m so glad you said that. Because there’s so many people that are buying right now and and before we wrap up, I really wanted to hammer home the idea for buyers that they don’t need a large downpayment. All right, and I wanted to talk a little bit about the changes in mortgage insurance, because there’s so much misinformation out there on this. Okay. So most people think you need to have 20% down, right. And a lot of people have learned that maybe you don’t and agents out there, we all know that you don’t need 20% down. But it is crazy to me the number of first time buyers that still have this as a fallacy. Okay, sure. The next fallacy is that if you don’t put 20% down, let’s say we are a first time homebuyer doing a $300,000 purchase, and we’re going to put 15 grand down is my favorite kind of buyers, they’re going to buy, they don’t need anywhere near 20% down. And they’re always shocked to find out how low their mortgage insurance is because the online calculators overestimate this sure like crazy. A mortgage insurance for a $300,000 place with only 5% down might be 70 or $80. Okay, but everyone, everyone in their mother, everyone in their brother remembers when mortgage insurance was three or $400 a month. And so they’re hearing two different things, you got to put 20% down, because the mortgage insurance is too high. It’s really truly not the case, mortgage insurance rates have continued to go down. There’s a lot less volatility with people defaulting. And when there’s less defaults on mortgages, because values are going up, the rates are lower. And so you would be hard pressed to find a mortgage insurance that costs three or $400. So it’s a really good thing to sit down and talk to your mortgage guy that you’re usually working with, and have an understanding of how much mortgage insurance is for the price point that you’re at in your market so that you can speak intelligently to buyers because that objection will come up DJ. D.J. Paris 24:02There is yeah, there is a lot of resistance. You’re right there is a psychological hurdle to accepting privatized mortgage insurance. And I know when I when I got my first condo, I couldn’t afford to put 20% down. And this was back in 2005 or six and, and so I did have to pay PMI. And I remember there was a little bit of like, Oh, I’m doing this wrong, I’m doing something wrong. Because my ello at the time my loan officer was was not particularly skilled at like walking me through like, No, don’t worry, it’s no big deal. And it really was no big deal even back then. But it so I think I think there is like a lot of education that needs to happen. And this is where the realtor and the loan officer can step in and help you know Coach the client through because I remember feeling like a little bit of shame that I couldn’t put 20% down because I had been conditioned to think that was what you were supposed to do. That’s what a responsible homebuyer does and the real Aldi about Joe’s Joe’s. laughing because he’s like that has nothing to do with responsibility. You know, either you have the money or you don’t. But there are creative ways to do it. And so I had to do it with a second loan to cover the PMI. And it really did not negatively affect my lifestyle or, or my homeownership in a negative way at all. But I had that psychological hurdle to jump over. So as realtors, we need to recognize those hurdles when when they come up in buyers and recondition them to explain that you’re right, you don’t, you don’t need 20%. And not only do you not need 20%, it’s not necessarily a horrible thing that you don’t have it. Joel Schaub 25:41And there’s so many times where I talked to the parents of somebody who’s buying a home. So they’re young, first time homebuyers. And maybe the parents are giving a gift DJ. And they remember when mortgage insurance was high, when it really was throwing money out the window. Sure, okay. So they’re not wrong when they tell their son or daughter, oh, you’re talking to a mortgage guy, and they’re telling you to do mortgage insurance. Oh, so they were right for their time, mortgage insurance used to be on a $300,000 loan three or $400 a month. So when they’re being told all their son or daughter is told to go get mortgage insurance. Of course, it sounds like a scam. Of course, it sounds like I want to give the downpayment money and help them but I talked to so many of them. And what they find out is when they actually see the mortgage insurance numbers that they wouldn’t be presented, they no longer want to give the big gift to their son or daughter. So then then they end up loving me, because times change. And things change and need to be what’s current right now. And mortgage insurance rates have continued to come down. And that’s something that a lot of people that bought 10 years ago or 20 years ago, just wouldn’t be privy to. So now you are on this and you’re listening now, you know, as well, that mortgage insurance rates are as low as they’ve been. D.J. Paris 26:58Yeah, it’s, it’s a good time to, it’s the best time to not have 20% If you don’t have it. And again, these are all just little norms that we have to challenge from time to time. And this is why having a relationship with an ello who can keep you up to date on the current trends and keep adjusting a realtors understanding of what’s going on in the lending world is so, so critical. So this really brings us to a great point, Joel and his team send out a weekly recap of what’s going on in the mortgage world so that you as a realtor know, some data points, some some quick sort of, you know, tick tock style, you know, sort of quick and easy and important, you know, sort of little little data points to be able to explain to keep you and your clients up to date. So Joe, what’s the best way somebody can get on that mailing list? Joel Schaub 27:49Well, yeah, DJ, the mailing list actually just did three weeks ago talked about the mortgage insurance, I got a crazy amount of replies for agents to say, I did not know that I’m still in the old school thinking in terms of mortgage insurance being a lot higher. So you can email directly to me, and I’ll put you on the list. It’s Joel JOE l@rate.com. So really easy, Joel at r a t.com. And even if you’re just on your phone right now listening to this, you can drop an email. And in the subject line, it just says please add me, right. And then in the body, it’ll say, please add me to your newsletter. And it’ll be very straightforward. And then you’ll be able to have dissect double easy tidbits that you can share on a weekly basis without getting so caught up in the minutiae of the mortgage business. It’s something that you can speak to and say, every week, I learned something, and it’ll help you grow your business for sure. D.J. Paris 28:45And if you are also interested in partnering with a loan officer who’s going to actually help you grow your business, Joel and his team, this is really what they do exceptionally well. So if you’re looking to form a partnership, and see if you guys can coordinate together to improve both production on your side and on the loan side, reach out to Joel he and his team would love to speak with you. Guaranteed Rate, of course, is is eligible to practice in all 50 states. But Joel, what is the best way someone should reach out to you if they want to work on a partnership? Joel Schaub 29:21Yeah, you can email me directly and then you could even phone me 773-654-2049 You’ll be shocked that we actually answering return phone calls, and the buyers that you refer over, I can waive the fees for them. So I’ll give a $1,500 closing cost credit. And now as an agent, you’ll say I have a lender that’s in my corner that will help the buyer pay no points get their lender fees waived and the only expense that they would have to do their first transaction with us is the appraisal cost. So it’s a big win for you. And it’s a good way for us to start building a relationship. D.J. Paris 29:57And guys the way that you can help Joel be able to continue to offer those kinds of discounts is by helping our show grow and reach more listeners and viewers. So please tell a friend about the show. Think of one other realtor, maybe somebody who’s maybe a little bit pessimistic or negative right now there’s, there’s a lot to be pessimistic and negative about. But this episode might just, in fact, turn their mindset around. So tell other agents about our show just how one other agent is all that we ask. And also sign up for Joel’s newsletter by emailing joel@rate.com. And get that weekly update and reach out to him as well. If you want to partner and do some cool events together, nobody does events like Joel and his team, they’re incredible. And they’re, they’re here in Chicago. And Joe’s team is really nationwide. But here in Chicago, I get to get to go to some of Joe’s events, and oh, my goodness, are they a lot of fun, and they work for everybody. So reach out to Joel, if you don’t have a good relationship with a loan officer, or if you’re looking to see what other loan officers can do for you reach out to Joel and guaranteed rate because they’re just they’re just top top of top class. And so I couldn’t encourage you to do that more. So please do that. Tell a friend about the show and a great place to wrap up. So Joel, on behalf of the audience, thank you for coming on. Once again, you’ve been with us almost since the very beginning, we I was going to read a fan letter, but we will get to that on our next episode. I wanted to share it because we do get fan letters and I never read them. So I wanted to share that next time we come on we’ll do that. And but I wanted to thank you on behalf of the audience because the audience is so grateful that you do come on every month. And I want to make sure that we acknowledge droll. And then of course we want to acknowledge you the listener for coming on listening and absorbing this information. And hopefully, it’s helping you increase your business and making you more productive and hopefully more money as well. So thank you to the listeners. And thank you to Joel. We will see everybody on the next episode. So thanks so much. And Joel we’ll see you next time. Joel Schaub 31:57Thanks so much for having me on DJ

Welcome to another episode of Video Boot Camp for Real Estate Professionals with Kim Rittberg. You’re putting time and effort into making the videos, you’ve done the work — how do you actually get people to watch it? How do you make it more interesting so people stop scrolling? And Kim has a really exciting Video Boot Camp Summer Intensive – where she’ll be teaching you how to get more clients and sell more houses through video! In just 4 days you will go from stressed to totally in control. Spots are filling up so you can learn about it and apply here! If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Connect with Kim on social. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00You already make videos for social media to attract more clients. But how do you get people to actually watch your videos? We’re going to talk about that today. 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 1:32I love being here with keeping it real I have so many friends from across the country. I know when you follow me on Instagram you always say hi. So keep the notes coming and as you search hung up on video, please tag me at Kim Rydberg I will cheer you on. I will give you encouragement, I will give you tips. And I want to let you know I have a video bootcamp Summer Intensive coming up July 24, you will go from feeling overwhelmed and confused to totally in charge, confidently attracting your ideal clients getting homes listed, getting lots of clients interested in you. And it’s really about becoming the go to expert in your neighborhood. I give you all the tools, all the information. It’s gonna be an amazing group, and you’re gonna learn so much so fast from me, an award winning video strategist and expert. I spent 10 years in TV news. And then I was an executive at Netflix, Pop Sugar People Magazine and now I speak at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. I taught at their national convention, I spoke at the Women’s Real Estate Investment Summit, I guess teach at Syracuse University at NYU. So I know what I’m talking about anyway. But this is not about me. It’s about you and helping you grow with video and podcasts of don’t be afraid of them. Today we’re talking about, you’re putting in all this time and effort into making videos, right? You’re making content, but then how do you actually get people to watch it? Like what are some tricks that you can use. So that’s what we’re talking about today. And I want to remind you, a lot of times maybe 50 75% of the people that I see, getting on camera is the first hurdle to get over. So I have a video from keeping it real, maybe a month back about how to be confident on camera, you can also check me out on Instagram, you can check out some of my tips there and grab my free download as well. But if you’re struggling to even get on camera, that’s step number one. So make sure to get on camera, get yourself out of supermodel mode, and get into teacher mode, meaning stop thinking about how you look what you’re wearing how your voice sounds, and just start thinking about the message that you’re bringing, which is letting people know what an expert you are letting people know how much you want to help them in this amazing purchase or rental that they’re working on with you and that you’re the person that they should trust. So it’s all about creating that know like and trust when you’re talking about real estate and these huge investments. So here are some tips about what you can do to get people to watch those incredible videos. So first, I want you to start thinking about hooks, you can have a great video. But if it takes you about 10 seconds into the video for someone to realize what you’re talking about, or why they should want to watch, you lost that chance. So let’s say you have this great video about how to renovate your kitchen in under $300. I mean, I live in New York City, so that’s pretty cheap, but maybe it’s even $100 how to upgrade your kitchen in under $100. I would absolutely watch so I think that’s a really good idea for video. But if you start the video and we’re talking about short form video, okay, if you’re talking about long form video, it’s a little bit different. But if you’re talking about a short form video, a minute, and it takes you 20 seconds to even get into what you’re going to say you lost people. People are scrolling on their phones, they’re multitasking, they’re grabbing their coffee, they’re getting their soccer ball in the car, they’re putting their dog in the car, they’re getting their kids, they’re doing a lot to really have to grab them in those first few seconds with an amazing hook. Let’s say you feel like oh well my video is not that interesting. Like how do I make a good hook a hook is like the thing that grabs them, it can be the headline could be really beautiful visual. Even if your content isn’t like an amazing sunset, or a crazy bonfire, you know, something like really visual, maybe it’s just information, you have to merchandise it, you have to market it in a way. That’s interesting. So let’s say you’re commenting on the market. And maybe instead of just saying, Here’s my market take, you could give more information about your market take why you shouldn’t buy a home. Now, I would be surprised by that. Because I would be like, Why is this agent telling me not to buy a home? I want to watch. So it’s really about thinking of how do you entice someone to be curious? How do you pique their curiosity, that’s a really important part of getting people to watch your video. So we’re talking about a hook or headline. And again, with hooks and headlines, you can package them together. So you can see five tips to list your house. Five tips to win a bidding war. The biggest, like the biggest tip to staging your home successfully, so anything that feels really concrete, someone’s not like, Oh, I’m gonna have to read like a 400 page article on this topic. Like they know they’re gonna learn something really, really quickly. And then of course you deliver on it. We never have clickbait we never lie to people. So that is one way is have really clear and catchy headlines. I promise you, and I’ll challenge you, if you if you are making a video right now, or make a video now please do make a video. alter your headline the text on the very first frame, or start your video with something really, really visual. And tell me if you feel that you feel like in your numbers. Tell me if you’ve got more views, more engagement on that video, because it started with a big, bold headline of what’s to come. All right, message me on Instagram, I’m also on LinkedIn, I have Facebook, I use it less for business, but I still use it. And the next one is trying to think of catchy ideas. Now, a lot of people are gonna say, of course, I’m trying to think of catchy ideas. I’m coming up with a creative brainstorm. But I would say more often than not people really start recording and they’re not necessarily we’re not always pushing ourselves to think of like, what’s a new peg for this? What’s a new idea for this? So you can think of things that are related to pop culture? Is there a real estate show that you want to weigh in on? Is there real estate in a big TV show. So for example, I love succession. I live in New York City, so obviously successions in New York show, but I worked with one of my agents, and we did a succession based pop culture video, which basically, we showed the actual apartment and then we’re like, would you spend $50 million on this, because they talk about buying it for a ton of money. So you can relate your opinion, to a pop culture event or a moment, I just drink some water, obviously, you can hear my drinking water related to a pop culture moment. Again, you can also Like Comment on homes that you’re not listing. So if there’s a home in your area, that’s really cool. And you want to talk about it talk about it doesn’t have to be the house that you listed just and you’ll start seeing that the more you start watching other people’s videos, you’ll realize you don’t need to be the listing agent on videos to feature it and to get use of it. So we talked about hooks, about really catchy ideas. And then another thing about really catchy idea. So think about a real estate show or a home renovation show or anything like that, that you love. Thinking about what you love about it, like actually just analyze it a little bit more. So if you think about those renovation shows you love the before and after. It’s very satisfying. And sometimes you love a sledgehammer, sometimes it’s satisfying to just see something be smashed. So start with a fresh eye on to your own work. Are you showing any homes that are brand new? Like are you working on a property, that’s a new development, see if you can get photos or videos that are before it was built, and then maybe the next shot can be the after? That’s very satisfying for people because you don’t often get to see that level of progress. You’re normally walking to a host and you’re like, Oh, here’s the house, here’s the apartment. So to be able to see that. And think about other things about renovation. Little quick fixes to renovate everyone’s always interested in renovating their home but on a budget or quickly. So if you have tips like that, or if you have homes that are that’s happening at you don’t always by the way have to be doing it. If you have ideas that you’d recommend to someone but you don’t have the footage of like it happening in a house. That’s okay. You can offer those tips. You just stand in like a beautiful home, stand with a nice background, make sure you’re always well lit, and that we can hear what you’re saying. But you can give advice, even if you’re not showing it. So those are some other tips, having relating it to pop culture. This is not real estate related but one of my students in my video bootcamp class, it was just the Super Bowl and Rihanna had to has revealed her pregnancy in that amazing red latex dress. And I had sent out an email immediately and let our video bootcamp people know earlier than that, that they should keep an eye out for pop culture moments based off of any big event. Super Bowl is a very big event. And so she posted a reaction to Rihanna announcing her pregnancy and her reaction video, it wasn’t crazy. It wasn’t over the top, it wasn’t even like scandalous or anything. Or like salacious or funny or whatever. It was really just her observation about that Rihanna must have slept really well that night because she was pregnant and like performing. And you know, that she was just basically crushing it on the stage. And she did it at the right time. And this role was happening. And that video got 13,000 views. This is someone whose videos were getting like 100 views before. So when you tie yourself into pop culture, you open yourself up to being discovered by more people, that’s called discoverability. Meaning people who don’t follow you, people who don’t know you can be shown your feed. So that’s a good thing to start thinking and trying to do is jumping on pop culture moments. So that’s one way to do it. And then the other thing is pop culture moments. Again, like I mentioned with succession, if there’s like a TV show that’s wrapping up, and it’s in some way related to your industry, that could work. So that person who’s commenting around as she is a coach, actually leadership coach. So it’s not necessarily like she’s so specifically connected to Rihanna. But if there’s any type of pop culture show, with real estate apartments, homes, that’s a really great way to like wedge yourself in if it’s the finale of something, or the premiere of something. So that’s a great way to try to get new people to learn about you. Now, house tour, I see so many home tours, I’ll be honest, I get a little upset when I only see just listed and just closed. The reason why I get upset is because real estate agents, y’all out there, you work so hard, you really distinct points of views, you do it because you love it. You all have opinions, like I’ve never met a real estate agent who’s just like, I don’t know, I just take the check. You know, you you are here because you believe in it. And you know how to talk to people, right, your salespeople, you know, I didn’t meet people, you know how to talk to them. The reason why I don’t like social feeds full of just listed and just closed Is that all it does is try to sell one house, but it doesn’t try to sell you as an agent. And I’m very, very nice about it. But I’m kind of tough about it. Because I think that, yes, you get to show your expertise in that, hey, look, I have sold some homes. So I think that’s good. It’s better than nothing. But it really doesn’t advance your goal, which is to become the go to expert in your neighborhood. And how do you become the go to expert in your neighborhood, by showcasing your expertise, your personality, letting people get to know you the opportunity to let people get to know you through video and podcast while you sit in your office is unbelievable. I’ve seen it for myself. I’ve seen it from my clients, one of my real estate agent clients, we did a YouTube series. And we focused specifically on raising him up as an expert. He got a multimillion dollar home listing from that. My other agent, he really focused on getting his Instagram looking more professional and sophisticated having more of a strategy. And he got a text message from someone, hey, haven’t seen you in five years, want to grab lunch, he got brought in on a new development listing, specifically because that person has kind of re re connected with him from Instagram. So these things are happening all the time. My other agent, she’s from South Carolina, she got a referral sent to her in Charleston, from an agent who she didn’t know who had been following her on social media. And she is somebody who’s really pushing her humorous side forward, she’s showcasing that she like has fun and, and will write funny little captions and do dancing or lip synching, which you don’t need to do. But it is about showing up and being yourself. So for some people that is walking around town and eating pizza, or drinking wine at the places in your neighborhood for other people that is being funny. For other people that is being very financially savvy, whatever is unique and authentic to you is what you should be doing. All right. That was a little bit of digression, but still learning. So it’s totally fine. When we’re talking about House tours, I want to remind you, you don’t need to just run a house store. You can also put in your own point of view about the house store. So let’s say you have a home and you have the video of it. You can also put in what you like about it, what struck you. You also can give tours of other homes, even if you’re not listing them as long as the listing agent says it’s okay you can come in and film it and put it on. And again, this is just a way for you to reach new people, for you to showcase your knowledge for you to showcase how you see the world how you see the real estate market. So again, we’re always really trying to elevate you as somebody who people go to for knowledge for expertise, or for partnerships. So it’s very important to not really just think about your Social Feed as oh, here’s a place to show houses that I’m listing or here’s a place to like, show houses that I would say, here’s a place to do anything you want related to homes, you could show up, you can give tips about buying homes, you have tips about selling homes, you can give, you can share your opinion on the strangest houses you’ve ever seen, in real life, or on TV. There’s a lot of really creative ways to go into this, especially because real estate, when you really think about it, almost everything in the world and pop culture is like related to shelter. Shelter is one of our basic needs. So I just realized that right now loud, so I’m probably gonna write that down and think about that more as a blog post. But shelter is really one of our basic needs. So everyone thinks about it has it rent buys something. So there’s a lot of different creative options to think about with that and tap into what you love. I have some of my agents love renovation. I’ve other agents love design. I’ve other agents who love the market. So whatever really makes it unique to you. That’s what you should be tapping into. You should be thinking about what are the things that I love to talk about? What are the things that I get asked a lot? What do people ask for my advice on? That’s really what you should do? You know, I sometimes get clients and they start asking me questions about like, their business strategy. And I’m like, I do have thoughts on business strategy. But like, that’s not really you really want to get into my zone of genius, you really want to know what I’m amazing at. Like, it’s showing you teaching you how to show up constantly on camera, is teaching you how to message, figure out what your message is, and make amazing video. So yes, I have intelligence other areas. But like, that’s not really what I show up as because that doesn’t really make sense for how I bring what I bring to the table. So I would encourage you to step in a little more and say, what is really unique to me, what is my perspective about that other people don’t have? What do I love talking about. So those are my tips about how to get people to watch your video one, amazing hooks and headlines, really, really, really clear hooks visually on the video, then come up with catchy ideas, those can be pop culture related ideas. They can be fun ideas, but a little outside the box, we’re not talking about just listed just close, right. And then house tour is putting in your perspective on that home, both your own listing or someone else’s listing. So you can show a home. But you can also say what you find really interesting about it, and maybe a history of the building. Also, you can bring a little more depth into that. Lastly, I got to tell you, very hard to make people watch your videos if you’re not engaging. So social media starts with the word social. So you have to give to get on social media, meaning you need to be in there and communicating with other people. It’s a really big shift from the normal world where you would not walk over to a stranger and start talking to them about something random. In the social world, you have to start thinking about it as like a coffee shop. The people who are choosing to be on social media are choosing to be in that digital coffee shop. And so if you can interact with other people, both from your real world, and people you don’t know, but maybe or in your community, you can build actual real world relationships, which can actually convert into money through that. It’s a huge shift. Because I know people feel weird, it feels weird popping into someone’s like, feed and commenting. But if someone posted a video or a photo of something, and you have an actual opinion about it, let’s say someone mentioned the new opening of a restaurant in your in your area. You could pop on there and Bill and say, Oh, that looks great. What kind of food are they serving? Or what was your favorite dish? Something that does sound normal. If you said it at a cocktail party or in a coffee shop. We’re not spammy. We’re not selling people immediately. But we are starting to crack open those conversations. Also, don’t forget anyone you connect with in real life, connect with them online. Because engagement begets engagement. So if you’re right, if you’re commenting on someone’s post, they’re going to maybe comment on your post that gets more people to look at it. The more people comment on your post, other people will comment on your posts and see your post. This is true really for every single one. Certain platforms have different rules about it. So like LinkedIn, it shows me so if you commented on Kim Rydberg that’s me. If you commented on camera Burke’s post, your friends will see Jane Doe comments on camera Berg’s post. John Smith liked Kim’s post. So again, that is a really public endorsement of me, right? That’s pretty good, right? It gives me more credibility when you see people commenting on it. And even if it’s not as public as that on the other social platforms, it sends messages, it sends signals to the social media platform that people are interested in this. So it’s very important to remember that. All right, so now you have some tips about how to make that amazing video gets seen now, if you’re still like, you know what? I love Kim, I need to learn more from her. Well, I am hosting a video boot camp up, some are intensive. So in just four days, four short days with two hours each, you are going to go from clueless or maybe not clueless, but super confident. Video Creator, you’re going to get scripts and templates, you’re I’m going to give you a really great setup that’s going to make you look super professional. And I’m gonna help you get lots of ideas, tons of ideas to connect with your ideal audience. It is super fun. You can read all the testimonials from people who’ve taken it, they said they’ve learned so much they say I am such a great coach. I am very encouraging and supportive. And they also say that they’ve gotten referrals. They’ve gotten clients. That’s what we’re here for. Right? I see it for my clients, I see it for myself. So anyway, make sure to click, you can check out my website for the application form. It’s at Kim rydberg.com kimrittbrg.com. And it’s summertime. I know you don’t have time, neither do I. So we’re gonna learn together quickly and crush it together. It’s going to be so fun. So connect with me there kinrick berg.com, you can apply for my video bootcamp, you also can grab my free download fr EE free, there’s a free download how to make incredible videos, and also how to be more confident on camera. So lots of free goodies. And as always connect with me, drop me a hello on social media. But keeping a real audience is like probably the best audience in the world. You’re all friendly and nice and send me really cool notes. So keep it going. And if you post a video, using one of my tips, you post a catchy headline. Maybe you make a video related to pop culture. Maybe you engaged maybe you started to engage with someone shoot me a note. tag me in your video I will totally cheer you on you rock get out of that supermodel mode and get into teacher mode. Put yourself on video. You’re gonna grow your business and it’s gonna be awesome. Thanks

Jordan Cohen the #1 RE/MAX Agent Worldwide shares his transition from insurance to real estate business. Jordan talks about the importance of creating a dominant listing presentation and having the confidence in yourself as the realtor. Next he discusses transparency with your client and how important it is to explain the process in detail to them. Last, Jordan shares how he believes that every agent should think of themselves as stars and they should work hard on promoting themselves. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Jordan Cohen can be reached at 818.435.5220 and Jordan@JordanCohen.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and Modwell. To get a $250 credit on your first Enhanced 3D Listing click here. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:01How does an individual agent produce over $300 million a year on average with no team? We’re gonna find out today. 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 into interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? We’ll find out why agents across the country come to real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering clients a real estate sales and marketing solution to generate more business and real geeks is super easy to use. Their websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for the end user. Real geeks is also mobile friendly delivering an excellent user experience on the go. Real geeks includes an easy to use CRM. So once your leads sign up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up triggers. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase your brand awareness. Do yourself a favor and please 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. This episode is also brought to you from manuel.io who can take your listings and quickly virtually renovate them to show prospective buyers what’s possible, making your sales much faster. And for higher price points. Guys, this is awesome stuff and I’ll be telling you more about Manuel halfway through the episode but for now, go visit manuel.io That’s mo d w e. l l.io. And now on to the show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, welcome to the show. If you’re a new listener, welcome back. If you’re returning we love our listeners. We’re just about to have I’m just about to have a conversation with the top REMAX agent in the world. His name is Jordan Cohen he’s going to be on in just a few seconds. Before we get to Jordan. Just a quick reminder, guys, we have a new social media what we’re actually publishing on social media now more content for you almost every day. Our actual my videographer can’t quite always do every one every day but almost every day we’re posting short form video links, sorry video clips to all the different social media channels including Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. And we’re posting these little 62nd clips from our episodes kind of the best moments of Best of if you want bite size that we show them in reels on Instagram and Facebook, tick tock of course it’s all video. So it’s there there you can easily find us just whatever social platform you use, just do a search for keeping it real, hit that subscribe button and then if you can make sure that you’re checking that page because almost every day we’re posting these clips just in case it doesn’t naturally show up in your feed. So again, we have you know, depending on which social platform you use, you know we have different handles but just search for keeping it real and hit that subscribe button and get even more content from us on a more regular basis. Alright guys, enough for me. Let’s get to the main event my conversation with Jordan Cohen. Today on the show our guest is Jordan Cohen with REMAX in Southern California. Let me tell you more about Jordan. Jordan Cohen is an this is an incredible guest for us guys. So please Please pay attention to this bio here is really amazing. Jordan Cohen is the sixth time number one REMAX agent worldwide closing over 314 million in sales annually. How big is this team you might ask it as a team of one 314 million in sales annually. A team of one Cohen specializes in luxury estates and has been recognized in many publications including unique homes dream homes international Dupont Registry, and the LA Times. Because of his clientele of celebrities and professional athletes, he has been featured on ESPN. His listings have been profiled on extra and Access Hollywood. Jordan has also represented more than 150 professional athletes, actors, entertainers and Hollywood executives and he is a author and his newest book The agents edge secret strategy make your fortune selling real estate is is available now for everyone to purchase. And guys, if I was wanting to learn from the best, which of course this podcast is all about, I would buy Jordans books awards, all go buy Jordans book The agents edge, we will have a link to that in the show notes. You can also buy Jordans book directly by going to Jordan cohen.com. That’s Jor da NCOHEN. Just like it sounds Jordan cohen.com For all things, Jordan, also follow him on Instagram. his Instagram account is Jordan Cohen, number one or just one. So Jordan Cohen one we will have a link to all of that in the show notes. Jordan, welcome to the show. Jordan Cohen 5:41Man dj, i was i was a hell of an introduction. Man, I appreciate it so much. Thank you, D.J. Paris 5:46you’re a hell of a guest are excited to have you. Jordan Cohen 5:48I’m very grateful and humbled that you said such kind of stuff, man. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. D.J. Paris 5:54Thank you for for making time for our show and our audience. We appreciate it. And you know, you are known as a sort of the guy at the top of the REMAX mountain. But I our audience is always interested in hearing how people climbed the mountain first. So I would be curious to know how did you get into real estate? Was it something you always knew that you wanted to do? Or was this like a career change? So love to hear that story? Jordan Cohen 6:20Okay, sounds good DJ. So, no, I, it was kind of the opposite of what I wanted to do, because my parents had done it. But they, they kind of struggled, they were always kind of deal to deal when I was growing up. So it’s kind of the opposite. But I was a terrible student. I graduated from college with a 2.05 GPA, achieving my way through. And therefore when I graduated, I didn’t have any big corporations knocking down my door or anything like that. So the only thing I had going for me, I thought was a good personality. So I knew I would go into some sort of sales. But in truth, I wanted to be an insurance guy, because I wanted to be opposite of real estate. So I wanted to be insurance. But then there was a guy named Jim, that worked out at the gym that I work out at, and he carried business cards in his socks. And when he walked around, everybody scattered away from him, because he was Jim, the insurance guy. So I said, you know, I don’t want to be that guy that just went up the people who’s trying to sell insurance, not like there’s anything wrong with insurance. We all need it. But I didn’t want to be that guy. People ramp up. So basically, what I did was, I started a little business when I was in college called property promotions, where I did real estate advertising for my parents or for other realtors. So I saw I met all the realtors in the San Fernando Valley where I’m from. And most of them kind of struggled, but there was a few that did well. And there was one guy that in those days were going back 3334 years ago, there was one guy, that was the number one guy who’s making 400 grand a year, his broker told me that that’s more than NFL players made. I didn’t know anybody can make that kind of money. Huge, huge way sounds like oh shit. Real Estate isn’t such a bad thing, man. So I went into real estate right after college once I learned that somebody can actually make that kind of money. I started in entry level housing. My average sales price was under 200,000. For the first seven years of my career, it was 150 200,000. You know, I haven’t done many deals under 100,000. And then after about seven years, I got my first pro athlete, and he said, Hey, man, he just signed with the Philadelphia semi Sixers and he goes, Hey, man, let’s look in Westlake Village. You got to remember, this was before the internet DJ. So right. I didn’t really I’d never even been to Westlake Village. I didn’t even know where it was. And he goes, Hey, I think there’s some, you know, million dollar guard gated communities like, oh, man, there’s some amazing guard gated communities. I had no idea DJ I didn’t even know where Westlake was. So no one out there. I quickly learned that there were some guard gated communities. I did that first deal with him, which was I think it was around a million and a half dollars and I got that lottery money. I’ve never seen a paycheck like that. But for me, the interesting thing was, I met all the realtors that were selling these million dollar homes, TJ and I, they were all very nice. But I remember thinking man, they’re not any better than just because they’re selling million dollar homes and I’m selling $200,000 homes. I thought I could compete with them. So I did that deal. packed up my shit. I told my wife. We were just married, been married for 30 years. I said man, if these people can sell million dollar homes, I think I could do it too. So I packed up started all over. D.J. Paris 9:32It is interesting. I remember I talked to a guy from Texas one time on on our show years and years ago and he started out selling $300,000 homes and then he eventually got to a place where his average price point was 3 million. And I said what’s the difference in selling a $3 million home and a and a $300,000? Home? He goes psexec say it’s the exact same thing because it’s just it’s just a different clientele. And he said he goes I realized that at some point in his career now Now maybe when you get into the, to the higher echelon properties, it is a different process. But for 300,000 to 3 million, he’d said, he goes, I wish I wouldn’t have it not that there’s anything wrong with, of course, frightening service to $300,000 homes, those are wonderful. And in your case, 100 to $200,000 homes and even less. But did you find that it was actually a similar amount of effort to sell the million dollar home to the athlete versus, you know, some of the smaller properties that you were doing? Jordan Cohen 10:28It’s actually easier because the sellers, it’s not their first time around, so you don’t have to explain what liquidated damages and arbitration is. So it’s actually easier to transact a multimillion dollar home, the harder thing is to actually win the listing. That’s the challenge, because you’re competing against great realtors, there’s great Realtors at all price points, make no mistake, but you’re you’re dealing with people that are just more financially stable. So they’ve again, they’ve done many deals, so that’s more competitive. So it’s difficult to get those listings, it’s difficult to get those buyers, but the actual transaction, it’s probably easier than it is selling the entry level. D.J. Paris 11:09That’s a really strong point. So the competition of course, would be fierce. For those those listings, what are some of the, the techniques or the strategies that you would employ to separate yourself from other competitors that were also vying for those same deals? Jordan Cohen 11:28Well, that’s everything, DJ. And that’s, that’s the bulk of my book, to be honest with you. I don’t want to sound like a car salesman, but my book is there’s like seven chapters on that on listing presentation. So I’ll tell you how I became passionate about that. And this is the truth. So when I started, my broker at the time, told me to, you know, pick my geographic farm, which was in a city called Canoga Park door, knock, give away all the door magnets and notepads and, and then hopefully, you’ll get some listing appointments as time goes on. So I did everything he told me to do. And then I actually got my first two listing interviews, and the differences. I went into those listings and basically did what I was told to do, which was talk about comps, price and about my company. But I lost both those listings, and both those listings would have paid me about six grand each, which would have doubled my net worth, it would have gotten me out of my bedroom, my parents house and, and hit me at that moment, I’m like shit in that one hour, that hour and a half window, I gotta get better, I got to win those listings I dedicated, really my whole life at that point, to never feeling uncomfortable. Again, never feeling never, I wanted to have the most competence, I could, in a listing, interview a presentation. So I started create language with a bunch of seminars or pick a line here and there, but mainly create my own language that would enable me to win, that’s when my business took off. That’s when I enjoyed calling expired listings. That’s when I enjoyed pushing for those listing interviews. Because I felt I could beat anybody, I think the most important skill set a real estate agent can have is a dominant listing presentation, because everybody talks so much about lead generation lead generation. But at the end of the day, two or three people are losing those lead opportunities, those listening opportunities, I like to I want to have as much I want every seller to have as much confidence in me as I have in myself, that I’m the best realtors. And that all stems from a powerful listing presentation. So that’s, that’s everything. So that’s the tip I give every realtor, I say, prepare, have your listing presentation, practice it, be competent in it, and truly believe you’re the best Realtor in that interview situation. Once you have that skill set. Real Estate becomes fun, and it becomes a whole lot more profitable. D.J. Paris 13:52Yeah, I love that this what’s the Boy Scout Motto? Always be prepared, right? It’s this idea of you know, it is interesting, because listing presentations, you know, you’ll talk to some some agents who go I show up with a legal pad with nothing written on it. And I go in blind, right? Some people go in with literally no presentation, they go in to take notes, and they and that’s one approach. And then you have on the extreme other end of you know, a multimedia sort of, you know, presentation with slides and various devices. And you know, it’s interesting, everyone does it a bit differently. What’s your What are your take on the characteristics of a good listing presentation? Like what are some of the things that have to be there? And by the way, let’s just first address the question. The idea of going in with a with a blank legal pad and and saying to a seller, alright, let’s talk that being a listing presentation. What’s your response to people who do that? Jordan Cohen 14:52Well, first of all, I was trained when I first started in real estate to just talk about price and about the company so That’s, I guess that’s the reason why, you know, I’m very fortunate and humbled to say that I win or, you know, many more times than I lose, because most Realtors go in unprepared like that. So for me, it’s, it’s about saying, and how you say the same thing that we all do. How do you describe how do you get people excited about photography? How do you get people excited about just listens how to get people excited about social media, I call it like, my tools, right? My tools in my toolbox, it’s, everybody’s gonna say we put your home on Instagram, but it’s how you explain that to a seller in a powerful way, not about how many followers you have. But the benefits of that, to that seller, every seller, they don’t care so much about what you’ve done in the past, they care about what you’re going to do for them, right? So it’s, it’s knowing that, so explaining all the things you’re going to do for them in a very fluid, confident manner. That’s gonna, that’s gonna bang and then come. Okay, so I’ll give you like one of my good lines, TJ right. So I, I like to think outside of the box all the time. So I’ll tell you, because you asked me to do to give some takeaways, right, so I’ll give you a couple of days. So. So for me, one of the clauses that I always do is I say, Mr. Seller, I want you to have the same amount of confidence in me, as I have in myself that I am the best real estate agent, what I’m going to do is I’m going to talk about everything that I’m going to do for you. Because really, the job of a realtor is to maximize the exposure of the home to get as many people as possible to become aware of your own to truly maximize your exposure of your property, then get those people excited screen of them show up properly, and then get them to make the commitment to buy your home. That’s the job of a realtor. I shake my head, yes. And they get 10. I’m excited about that. Then I say now I’m going to tell you how I’m going to expose your home to not only real estate agents, but to the general public. And then at the end of the day, you have to choose the realtor that you think is the best one at exposure and of course salesmanship. Now, if you say things like that, the way that I just said it with confidence, fluid and power, it’s pretty hard to beat that. Right? Versus oh, let’s let’s talk about cops, you know, cops to the top, D.J. Paris 17:19you know what I you know, what I love too is is you you’re meeting the client, you’re really focusing on what the client’s experience of actually choosing a realtor is, you’re not, you’re doing something actually quite brilliant. Because you’re saying Hey, Mister, mister seller, you’re going through this process right now. So I am now on the same side of the table as you because I am repeating back the process you’re going through, as you’re evaluating, you know, different realtors. And here’s what I’m going to do for you. And I understand this is a tough thing for you to figure out who you want to end up using. Here’s what I’m gonna do for you. It’s a subtle little thing that you added in there. That was brilliant, because it puts you on the same side of the table as them you’re like, Yeah, I get it. You’re you’re you’re interviewing people, here’s what I’m going to do. And here’s what you know how to make the best decision. I love that that was subtle, but brilliant. Jordan Cohen 18:11Thanks. Do you also say like, listen, I appreciate the opportunity to interview for the for the job of working for you. I never say working with you. I cringe when realtors say that all the time. Oh, I’m so excited to work with you. And, and but it’s not the case. They’re hiring us to do a job to work for them to sell their home. So I say that put my ego aside. I say Mr. Seller, and I say it all the time. Thanks again for the opportunity to interview for the job to work for you. Thanks for that. But it would be an honor to work for you to be and I say that, because I still think human nature is people like to hear that they like to hear it because it’s the truth, especially people that aren’t a boss. They’d like to hear that they’re hiring somebody and they are the boss. So all even one of the lines I say, this is pretty good. Because I use this all the time. I think a lot of realtors can can take this line alone and say I say Mister Mister seller, kind of like an agent for an athlete and agents job for an athlete is to not only negotiate the contracts, but to get their clients and off the field money. Athletes love that Pizza Hut money, they want that shoe deal. They want all that. So a great a real sports agent is going to be on the phone all day promoting their clients to get them that off the field thing. It’s the same with me. I’m a real estate agent. The difference is I’m on the phone all day promoting my star, which is your house, your house is my star. So a good real estate agent is like a good sports agent or a good movie agent. We’re behind the scenes and we’re promoting our stars, which is your house so your house will be my star and I’m gonna spend all day every day that I can to promote your home to get people excited about Joe. That again, if you say that properly is a very powerful listing line. Not line but fact but it’s a powerful and relatable thing for a seller to hear D.J. Paris 19:59this episode Keeping it real is brought to you by Manuel. We’ve all been there you can see the potential of an outdated property but your buyer can’t and the opportunity is lost. You wish you could snap your fingers and transform the space. 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So I asked them to do something special just for our listeners. And they came through with a $250 credit on your first enhanced 3d listing, just use our special link live manuel.com, forward slash real. Again, that’s live manuel.com forward slash real, choose them for your very next listing help your clients see the future. And now on to our show. You’re absolutely right, everybody wants a concierge experience as a consumer, right, we want the the top level Hi, white glove experience as a consumer. But we don’t often get that unless we happen to be, you know, wealthy enough to have some of those experiences. But everybody wants the experience whether they ever get to have them or not. And what you’re really doing is you’re bringing that top top shelf white glove service to all of your clients, and you’re treating them all as equal, but you’re treating them all as if they are the most important client in the room or in your in your, you know, which of course they need to be forward to or need to feel that way about you. And I think I think that is a really, really smart way is to make sure that the that your seller is actually you know what their needs are emotionally so that you can be there to support them. Jordan Cohen 22:36Yeah, that’s a that’s a good point, too. That’s strong. Yeah, I totally agree with that. In the interviewer, real estate’s very competitive DJ, there’s, there’s more Realtors than there are listings, I think the last that I heard, there’s twice as many Realtors as there are real estate agents. So it’s incredible. So the better skill set you have of being able to walk into a room and interview against two or three other realtors, someone’s going to get that listing, someone’s going to get paid. So the more powerful your presentations going to be, the better you’re going to win. For example, I never talked about price until the end, when I first started, I was trained to talk about price in the beginning by a big trainer. And he says if you can’t agree on the price, get out of there more listings, do you have more phone calls to make you are prospecting to do so if you can’t agree on the price? If you have an illogical sell or get out? Well, then what would happen is I would see that I did that. So I would go and talk about price couldn’t come to an agreement on the price and I believe, and then I’d see that property actually come on the market at a right price. And I question myself, I said right, how come I didn’t pray. And then I realized I wasn’t giving them any reason to listen to me to believe in me, they switch. So now I give my powerful listing presentation. Always before I talk about the price, I want to establish the credibility DJ I want them to go. My goal on every listing interview, is to not to have them want to hire me, but to have them need to hire me to accomplish their goals, or at least believe they need me they need a guy like me to maximize exposure and to get their home sold for their money. Once I could get that and I could see it in their eyes. I could hear it in their voice. I gotta this is mine, then they’re gonna listen to me better and respect my, my evaluation of the price of their home. They’re gonna respect my opinion, once they trust me. And the way you earn that trust is by delivering a great presentation. D.J. Paris 24:35And you’ve done your Jordan Cohen 24:37DJ, how are we doing man? D.J. Paris 24:41doing amazing, by the way, because I My mind is just being flooded, because there’s so many realtors that will show up to a listing presentation. And, you know, maybe maybe they don’t feel that there’s a lot of competition it maybe there isn’t competition in this particular listing presentation. So they’ll say things like well, okay, what price point do you want? Mr. Mr. And Mrs. Seller, okay, well, we want to sell it at x, okay, well, we can try it at x. And let’s see what happens. You don’t go in that way you will win with you’ve done your homework, you know the price point you want, and you’re not really worried about the price. Because what because you are the expert, you need to first defend and impress upon them, what all of the accrued all of this sort of, you know, reasons why they should trust you, the price is going to work itself out once they trust you, because your whole mission is. So that’s really, really smart as price is at the very, very end. I love that. I think that is brilliant. It’s a truth. Jordan Cohen 25:36In fact, if I, if I’m not even have to compete with another realtor. So if a seller says, Hey, Jordan, we’re not even interviewing anybody else, you’re the number one guy in the county. And obviously, you’re the top guy in our area, you’re a good referral, all our friends have said, You’re a great, all this kind of stuff, you don’t even have to interview, we just want to come in basically it come listening, right? I gotta tell you, DJ, I still do my presentation, it’s a 30 minute investment for me, to be able to have them respect what we do as realtors, we work our asses off, right, I want to and we invest money. Notice I didn’t say spend money, invest money, we invest time, money, passion and energy to properly expose a home and get home. So So I want them to know that because I know I’m going to have more control of the escrow, I’m gonna have more control on the inspection process, and have more control on the pricing. So I still want them to go, wow, I didn’t realize you were gonna do this, that and the other two were, you know, to benefit me and the ability to sell my home. So thank you. So I give my presentation always, even if I don’t have to give it. I know a lot of realtors are hearing this God, why would you do that? Why would you spend 30 minutes I just explained why. Because it helps you earn their respect even more. D.J. Paris 26:54And it’s professional. And we’re in a professional environment. And even if it’s your best friend, who’s going to be your client, treat him like a white glove. It’s like if I walk into let’s just say like the Waldorf Astoria, which I once in a blue moon, I get to go to a place like that. It’s a different experience than walking into a lower priced hotel right there. There is an experiential component to this, that you that that top places have. Jordan has that and he applies it to all of his clients. And that is absolutely brilliant. Because of course, going back to our earlier point, everybody wants to feel special and important. Actually treat them as if they are because guess what they are, they actually are important. Jordan Cohen 27:37You know, I love the fact that you just said the word professional, I asked myself that I get asked my assistants every day I see is this professional is this look professional, I don’t put my picture on anything, DJ, I don’t put my picture on ads, I don’t put my picture on, on my signs, I don’t put my picture on anything. Because I always say to myself, when the day comes that lawyers start doing that, or doctors start putting their picture on their cards and things like that I get some do that I want to do that I want to make I want to build my brand is professional classes, I can’t so that’s amazing. He says I tried to be as professional as I can clean lines, everything clean and versus like, you’re never gonna see a picture of me holding my dog and real estate advertising or pretending like I’m on the phone, you know, nothing that just kind of looks, you know, to me doesn’t look as professional. It’s just a classy. So that’s D.J. Paris 28:27it everyone knows by now how inauthentic it is what do you drive, you know, down. In your case, you know, you’re driving on pch, or whatever. And there’s a billboard with a you know, with a lawyer with his sleeve rolled up going, I’m gonna fight for you. And he’s showing you his bicep and you’re like, Yeah, okay, we get it. We understand I want to see in the suit, though, when he gets into the court. But let’s talk about you know, we were so quick to shoe old ideas for how to you know, old sales ideas or marketing ideas. And I love the fact that you have actually taken some old techniques and actually made them not new again, but made them important again, and the font that we’re talking about fundamentals. So I’d love to hear how you you’ve taken some older ideas and made them into sort of cutting edge strategies Jordan Cohen 29:15100% a dj i i That’s exactly what I do. And I take time tested stuff that has worked for decades and decades and decades. I just explain it better. And I like to think that I use it better and I elevated so for example that’s a great question man. Just Listed right so every realtor will do a just listed right helps build your geographical farm and all that kind of stuff. But how do you explain those on a listing presentation so I’ll tell you what I do. So first of all, I elevate it so the way I got established in my farm and I continue to stay ahead of the curve in my marketing area, even like compete against great Realtors I say ahead. I do it bigger and better. I do different shapes, different sizes, better quality. cardstock but then the way I explained it on a listing presentation, so I’ll say to Mr. Seller, so the job of realtors to maximize exposure, we need to cast a wide net. So in order to cast a wide net, I’m going to blow it up with print, I’m going to blow it up with social media and blow it up with email blasts, and all the other good stuff that I do to blow it up internationally and nationally. However, sometimes the buyer is going to come from drunk just dropping the line in the water. And the way I’m going to do that is these epic, elevated just listed brochures. Notice I don’t say postcards, because it’s not just a cheap postcard that someone’s going to throw away. I like to invest in elevating it. So hopefully, a buyer that isn’t online all day, every day searching Zillow for a home actually lives in your area, or one of my other. That’s also on my my mail list that isn’t on the computer all day every day, you know, just swiping through Zillow. But they’ve always said, you know, if the right house at that single story home with the pool in the view, which is what you have Mr. Seller comes across my desk, or in my mailbox, I’m open to making that move. So what I want to do is I want to mail these incredible brochures to past clients, sports agents, business managers, relocation companies, and all your neighbors. So they can open it up, not throw it away so quick, and say, Man, honey, we love this neighborhood, or our friends want to move in this neighborhood. Isn’t this the exact house that we would want to buy? So some but then again, they’re not on Zillow all day, every day, open up the mail, and they see something beautiful like this. And I could show it to a seller, I can hand it to him. It’s something that he can see feel, touch and appreciate. Don’t you think there’s a small chance, any chance that there’s a buyer that lives right around the corner from you that’d be interested in your single story pool with a view home? And they say, Yeah, and I say so it’s my job, the job of a realtor is to bring your home to them, not just hope that they find your home. So that’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to bring your home to people. So that’s an old trick, the old listing just listed. But if you do them, right, you elevate it and you explain them in a listing interview, you’re going to win, you’re going to sound like an expert. What I say makes sense. There’s some side benefits to it. Building your geographical farm, just representing the homes Well, representing yourself well, representing your industry and your business classy. But in reality, I sell homes every year as a direct result of those among D.J. Paris 32:40you said so much there. I am so impressed. I think there’s a lot of our listeners that you know it Look, guys, this isn’t a criticism of anyone listening, I’m certainly could fall prey to this as well. But let’s remember when we get a listing, it’s not enough just to drop it onto the MLS and let it syndicate out all over online and hope that someone stumbles across it. What Jordan is talking about is going oh, yeah, no, I’m going to do that. But that’s just like, maybe the maybe step one. And then I’ve got 25 other steps that I’m going to do to continue to cast a net and shoot this out to neighbors, I know which neighborhoods feed into this neighborhood. I know where the people who want to live here now where they’re currently living, I am going to send them a postcard to tell them about this Jordan Cohen 33:29postcard. Sorry. Sure. Brochure Unknown Speaker 33:34like a luxury brochure. Jordan Cohen 33:36It’s an invest not not a giant, you know, even though some might do that, but it’s a, it’s something that’s not so easy to throw away when you’re building your name as well as trying to sell the home. But even more than that, it’s a hell of a listing tool. If you use in franchising, and it is saying what I say you will win listings, just that way alone. That’s one of my tools. D.J. Paris 34:01The guy’s the book is the agents, Edge secret strategies to win listings and make your fortune selling real estate available everywhere books are sold, we’ll have a link to it in the show notes. Jordan, you are absolutely right. But this idea of when you get a listing everyone listening, you have to go out and find the buyers and you have to tell the seller how you’re going to do that. And Jordan is the king of doing that. He just basically are the king, the king of that and really think about how powerful that is. Most Realtors don’t really do that. They’ll say, Well, I will put it online and it’ll get distributed and every realtor will see it and they’ll tell their clients, what Jordan does. He goes, I know exactly where people who move who want to live in this. I know where they live now. And I’m going to make sure that they know that this place is available for sale. He did his homework. He knows his market. He is the king of his market because he knows where people want to live. And he goes out and says hey, the reason why he wins listings and he’s the number One REMAX guy in the world is he has a solution to all of the issues that may come up during the listing. He’s like, Don’t worry, I know where the people that are going to buy this place probably live right now I’m gonna go over to them and make sure they know about it like brilliant. That is a brilliant strategy for any homeowner. That’s all a homeowner wants to hear is where you got to find the buyer. And most listing agents go, well, we’ll put it up. We’ll see what happens. Jordan Cohen 35:23And yeah, thank you, man. These are from the bottom bar. Thank you for saying all those great stuff, man. It’s truly truly appreciate it. In fact, I’m kind of the the anti internet. So what I say is I say Mr. Seller, of course, you’re going to be on Zillow, of course, you’re going to be unreal as your.com and Trulia, those are automatic polls, you there’s no question about In fact, I, I buy the upgraded packages, because yeah, the internet is a great way to market and sell our home. But we only have 30 to 45 to an hour here for me to convince you that I am the best. And the way I’m going to do that is tell you everything I do above and beyond the internet, and above and beyond and better than the internet. But please, no, of course you’re going to be on Zillow with me as you wouldn’t be with any other realtor, I just want you to appreciate even more than I’m going to do to try to land that buyer. And then I go through my series of marketing tools. And just this is just one of them. Of course, I got many more that I talked about in the book for D.J. Paris 36:24sure. It’s incredible, it’s really treating this I get very excited talking to you because you take this very seriously you have a you you are prepared. This you don’t wing, this is a performance it is important. Right when you apply it. Yeah. Of course it is. And, and and it is so impressive. I love hearing and you know, it’s so funny, because this is this is how we distinguish people who are, you know, professionals from non professionals in this industry and, and people who are successful tend to be very methodical, and it is it is mostly about, you know, thinking three to four steps ahead. Like you know, this idea of of coming, you already know the price point, I’m sure that you think is best, you’re going to take that at the very, very end after you’ve already built so much rapport and so much. You’ve impressed upon them so much of your knowledge that they are now bought into you. It’s that they’re buying into your philosophy. And from there, then you can kind of steer the ship is Do I have that right? Jordan Cohen 37:31Yeah, totally. Totally get it. Yeah, absolutely. It’s very methodical. That was a great word that you said, and, and for sure. And again, this is just like one part of the book, right? It’s the listing presentation, I dive into how to turn open houses into listing opportunities not just to pick up buyers how to get listing interviews from I, I’m very I talk a lot about pricing, how to properly price it what language to use to try to control that aspect of or not controls, not necessarily the word but to earn the respect when it comes to pricing. I like to think I and how to protect your commission. That’s something I’m very proud of is how I present my full commission. I’m proud to say that I am a full commission agent, I earn that. And it’s what I say that how would I go about that? is in the book. D.J. Paris 38:19I love it. What What prompted you to want to write a book and give this out to this information out to other agents? Jordan Cohen 38:27To Great question, man, I, I was selling a home to an agent from CAA. So creative artisans. Yeah, it’s been big moving agent. And I sold him a home in my area that I work called North Ranch area of Westlake Village and I sold him a home there and then I listed his home in the Hollywood Hills. And he goes Hey, man, you’re so good at this. Yeah, to write a book ever thought about that. And I go, thank you. I go, I actually have I thought about writing. I’ve been doing this for 33 years, DJ, I’m at the point in my career where I actually like, you know, helping other realtors. It’s not a it’s not a corny thing. It’s just I dig it. Like I reply to every DM and email and call if I can help somebody make more money. It’s it’s a good thing. And I feel good about that. So I actually said, I’ve been thinking about it. He goes, can I connect you with one of our literary agents and like, oh, man, are you kidding me? Of course. So I did a zoom was with a literary agent named Anthony who CAA. And then he asked if you did he loved we got along beautifully. He said, Man, I love this idea of this book. It’s a business book, How to sell real estate. Remember, DJ this isn’t a motivation book. I don’t tell anybody to drink juice exercise, or a vision board. It’s not an energy book, none of that kind of stuff. This is a how to sell real estate book for real estate agents. So he said, so he said I would love to represent you. That was a win. Beyond DJ I couldn’t wait to tell my wife that I remember you telling me I have an agent because you man I’m a realtor. I’ve never been on that side. You work with agents. I’ve never been on that side of the table. So he’s absolutely, so I got excited. And then you write a treatment, but what the book would look like. So I did that. And that took me a long time because I wanted to be really good. And then the agent took that and that and he put it out to all the publishers, I had multiple offers. And I signed with HarperCollins leadership, because I just loved you know, Tim, and Cicely, who are the HarperCollins team, the leadership team, and we took it from there. Then I had a great collaborator who helped me put this in paper named Mark tab. And we wrote a phenomenal book that I’m very proud of. And the review, by the way, today is a very special day, DJ, today’s launch day. So all the people that have been pre ordering it, and there’s been 1000s of them, over the past few months, received their books today. So I’m already getting some amazing reviews. It’s a very, very proud moment. For me, it’s June 6, and, and I’m very grateful and humbled by all the great reviews. So that’s how the book came about. And I wrote it and I’m proud of it. D.J. Paris 40:59Well, the book is called agents edge secret strategies to win listings and make your fortune selling real estate. And it is available literally everywhere that books are sold Amazon, of course, Barnes and Noble target, online, of course, everywhere Walmart is, too so please, everyone go out and get their book. We’ll have a link to the Amazon store for the book right in our show notes. One last question, Jordan for you. Just out of curiosity. What’s the most satisfying part of being a realtor for you guys? Obviously, you’re you do this, you’ve worked on the smallest of starter homes to palatial estates. What is it that what do you enjoy the most about being a realtor? Jordan Cohen 41:46I DJ, you want the truth? Are you out the corny bullshit answer? That’s true. I want the truth. The best part is going to the bank after it closes, man. They put that money in the bank. That’s the best part about Listen, I’ve been doing this a long time. I just want to save as much money as I can. So someday I could slow myself down. I love moving people. I love having you know, happy buyers and happy sellers and watching people accomplish their goals. I love it. But for me personally, the best part is when the deal closes, and I get paid it I think I hope a lot of realtors that are listening to this Go man. I’m glad he said that because I think we’re all in agreement. It’s very easy for a realtor to say, Oh, I don’t care at all about that. I just want to make people happy. Well, that’s fine and dandy. But at the end of the day, we got a job to do, man and I want I want to I want to do as well as I can, man. So that’s that’s my happy moment is when it closes and I get to congratulate people and get that check. That’s the happiest moment for me. That’s the truth for I’m losing indeed. I’m losing you. You’re cutting out a little bit say that. D.J. Paris 42:56You guys. Yeah, I sorry. I love that. Jordan. Thank you. I know we’re having some technical difficulties. We’ll get that work done. Sorry about revenue. So sorry about that. Absolutely. Uh I can’t hear you at all. If those See, Jordan, if I can get better Hang on one sec. Sorry. Sorry about that. Oh, that’s okay. Jordan Cohen 43:25And then Claire now now. D.J. Paris 43:30It’s a little bit better now. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, sorry. I don’t know what’s going on here. Yeah, that was awesome. And I love that and I appreciate that. And of course, that’s the best part is is going you know, getting paid and going to the bank. And it’s it’s something that you know, we shouldn’t pretend it’s not the like a lot of times people will say everything but that Right? They’ll say oh, it’s about helping people and of course it is that too. We don’t we don’t tend to celebrate the financial part of it. And why are we in this business if we don’t want to celebrate the financial part? Yeah, Jordan Cohen 44:04I mean, I really love when when people close and close in a big one today. And I’m excited about that closing the big one today at the name drop out of my name. Drop it for Bret Michaels. You know from poison man, for sure. I love I get I get to represent them on a ton of deals. I love them. Every deal. And with that guy, it’s all about good karma. Right so I’m closing the good karma deal today. And it’s very exciting for me. So man, I love to see him happy. I’d love to see the buyer of his home happy I love everybody to be happy. But I’m going to be the happiest when I go to the bank at the end of the day and make my deposit D.J. Paris 44:39you can go red bandana to red is known to do that’s amazing, amazing. Jordan Cohen. His new book is called The agents edge secret strategies to win listings and making your fortune selling real estate number one, agent and real The Mac’s worldwide 300 million plus per year guys, how big is this team just him literally just Jordan Cohen 45:07made me and I got two assistants in the handle only one cell it. D.J. Paris 45:12It’s almost laughable. It’s so ridiculous because he’s that he’s that it’s laughable in like, oh my god somebody actually does this. And he does he’s incredible Jordan Cohen is his name, guys if you want to learn how to increase your your GCI and of course you do that, just while you’re listening to our show, you’re gonna you’re gonna need this book, Jordan Cohen, the agents edge, a super nice guy really fun, he’s going to actually tell you how to do things, not just why the how that’s the part that we need to get back to the house the strategies, he’s got them and they’re clearly working for him. And HarperCollins is an awesome publisher. So we wish Jordan the very, very best everyone go out and pick up his book. You can find it anywhere books are sold. But also check out what Jordan is up to. By the way, guys, he is also one of the most followed realtors and social media. If you go to his Instagram, he’s got over 500,000 followers. He’s He’s incredible. So follow him on Instagram, Jordan Cohen one and that’s I only looked at Instagram. I’m sure you’re on all the other platforms too. Now. Jordan Cohen 46:16I got Facebook for that and a little bit. Twitter, Jordan Cohen 21. But I like I really don’t on Tik Tok yet, but I really love it. So that’s D.J. Paris 46:25yeah, that’s the next frontier for you, I think. But yeah, he’s on Instagram and Twitter links to those both on his website, Jordan cohen.com. And it’s a really cool website, by the way, too. So that’s another great for agents looking for inspiration for how to create a great agent website. That’s a really fantastic example. So everyone go out and pick up the book. And we will on behalf of our audience, we want to thank Jordan for coming on our show giving us these amazing tips and tricks to help win more listings and, you know, just have a better 2023 And also increase the professionalism of the industry. I love it Jordans at the forefront of that. And also on behalf of Jordan and myself. We want to thank our audience for making it all the way to the end of the show. Want to thank our sponsors as well. So we want to thank everyone involved with helping us put the show together. So thank you, everyone. Jordan, thank you. We will see everybody on the next episode. Jordan, thanks so much. Jordan Cohen 47:25From the bottom of my heart DJ, thank you for having me. You have an incredible show. You’re an incredible guy. And it’s truly truly my pleasure and an honor to be on your show and I’m forever grateful. Thank you

Marisol Jusino with Coldwell Banker Realty shares her life experience as a victim of domestic violence and how she changed paths into real estate. Marisol discusses the difficulties she faced learning the real estate business and selling part and she emphasizes how important it is to stay loyal to people especially to clients. Marisol also explains the importance of learning new languages and how this helps you stay connected and gain the trust of your clients. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Marisol Jusino can be reached at (321) 202-3776. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Would you like to attract more Hispanic, Latino or Latin X clients to your real estate business? Today we’re going to show you how to 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 Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show and in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with top producer Marisol just so you know before we get to Marisol, just a few reminders please the best way you could always help our show two ways. Tell a friend think of one other realtor that needs to hear what Marisol is about to show you. And to tell you, which is how to increase the number of Hispanic clients that you have. And let them know that this podcast exists, send them a link to our website, keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve done can be streamed right from a browser. You don’t even need a podcast app. And then the second thing is please support our sponsors. We love our sponsors. They’re the reason we can pay our bills, pay our team and just with our team alone, we’re doing like an extra 100 episodes a year just because of our sponsors. So please, please please check out our sponsors don’t fast forward through we keep the promos short and trust me they’re great products and services that you can use in your business. Okay guys, you’ve heard enough for me. Let’s get to the main event my conversation with Marisol Justina Marisol just from Coldwell Banker she services Central Florida. Let me tell you more about Marisol. Now Marisol is Latina. She is a single mom. She is a domestic violence survivor and a realtor for the last 19 years actually 20 years. By 2010. She realized as much as she loved serving people Marisol did not have proper sales training, so she went on to timeshares for its training and in January 2013 returned to real estate once back in real estate while facing life continuous life’s continuous challenges, which at time has made it extremely difficult to work. Marisol realized that business kept on moving without doing much at the time, her phone was ringing and transactions were closing. And that’s when she realized she had learned to tap into a forgotten community within the industry, the Latino community, the largest growing minority in the United States. Marisol has been able to grow her agency and her confidence in ways she never thought possible. She is a top Realtor in Florida. Learn more about Marisol by visiting her website which is g 12. So the letter g 12. Professional group.com g 12. Professional group.com By the way, we will have a link to that in the show notes so you don’t have to type it in and please please please follow her on Instagram. That’s M Justino j u s t i n Oh, sorry. JUSINOMJUSIN Oh, the number one at Instagram again link to that as well in the show notes. So when I make a mistake, you don’t have to worry because you just click on it in the show notes. Marisol. We are excited to have you welcome to the show. Marisol Jusino 4:28Thank you. I’m excited to be here. D.J. Paris 4:31I am so excited to talk with you and talk about how you have grown your business and what our audience can gather from from you and it is a holiday weekend while we’re recording this so we are going to try to make this as light and breezy as possible so that if anyone is watching us as we record it live they can enjoy right into the holiday weekend. Marisol love to learn more about how you got into real estate. Tell me tell me that The process there, how and why? Marisol Jusino 5:02Well, they why was that I needed I needed to do something. I was in a domestic violence situation. And I knew I needed to get out of there. I didn’t know how. And as crazy as it sounds, years before I used to live in Ohio, I had a friend and she said, you know, she took me to a meeting with her friend. And her friend was a broker. And her friend said, well, let’s just recruit her. And my friend says, Well, no, she has little kids, you have no idea what you will do to her for that state in my mind. Then just before I move to Florida, you know, and I’m talking to a good friend. And at this point, I know that life is hard. And I have no idea what the future health. And I say, but I don’t even know what to do over there. Because back in Ohio, I used to work for NASA over there. And, and I, but I didn’t want that nine to five on that street yet out schedule. Plus, I was going to be leaving a bit of a distance from NASA. So she said, why don’t you just become a realtor. And some like that’s two voices. So I kept that in the back of my mind. So then when life began changing, I’m like, You know what, let’s do this. So I will I call a friend, which was the neighborhood my neighborhood expert. She was a realtor. She lived to house two houses down from me. She said, You need to go for it. I’ve not always known. You’re supposed to be a realtor. I’m like, how everybody knows. But I don’t know, you know? So she counseled me, I went and I took the license, you know, the classes. The weekend before I took my estate exam. I did a 10 a 10 mile race. And I broke my left because my leg? Oh, no. So I am like, I’m thinking this is it. And I said, Okay, God, when I am in that test, if I don’t pass, I’m done. But I guess I was supposed to be here. I did pass it. So that’s kind of my story. Well, I always D.J. Paris 7:12love the expression. And this is I’m not promoting or denying any anyone’s religious beliefs. But I always love the expression, whatever whatever anyone’s spiritual beliefs are that God never gives you more than you can handle. Yep, in a given moment, although it does get tested. And breaking your leg a day before a somewhat challenging exam is not not the easiest or most fun weekend before the weekend before the weekend before? Yeah. Well, it is it is interesting, too, that there are people that seem to show up in our lives. Again, whatever your anyone’s belief is about the universe or higher power or whatever. There are things that happen where sometimes people just know things about you that you don’t know. And if you just listen. You know, sometimes it’s like, oh, and a couple people are telling me to do this, maybe I should do it. And obviously it worked out really, really well for you. So tell us what it was like a getting into really an industry that you didn’t have experience in before. Was that challenging? You know, how did you grow your business Marisol Jusino 8:17II was having because first you don’t know much of your sleep, because we learned a lot. And everybody tells you when you take the real estate class, you know, you’re just thought how to pass an exam, not to have to sell real estate. I did have a lot of support. You know, there’s always good agents that try to help you on so forth. As crazy as it sounds, my very first listing, it was my son. And he was just seven, seven years old, seven, eight years old. And he goes to his again, you know, everybody believes what they believe. But he goes to his Sunday school teacher. And he says, By the way, do you happen to know anybody than you gotta D.J. Paris 9:02be? Hold on? I’m stopping this story because there’s no way this story is true. What do you first said, I want to just back up in case anyone missed that. So Marisol said something that at first I thought I clearly heard this wrong. And I’m not going to interrupt her. And then when she got out, I go, No, I heard it. Right. And I’m only pausing you, because this is the cutest story I’ve ever heard. Yeah. So this, she said her first listing was from her son who was seven years old, and he goes into school and go ahead. I’m so sorry. Marisol Jusino 9:29Yeah. He asked him, you know, do you happen to know anyone that needs to buy yourself at home? And he looks at him and he says, As a matter of fact, I do. I am thinking about selling. I said, Well, you need to use my mom because she just got her license. And that was my first listing. D.J. Paris 9:49That is that is the most adorable. It’s the it’s I’ve done 500 episodes. That’s without exception, the cutest and most adorable story that could ever be first Someone’s first listening. Cheers. Cheers to your son. That is yeah, that is really. Oh boy. That is that’s about that’s about having a good family team right there. So yeah. Oh my gosh, how cute is that? Well, what an adorable story and what a great son. Yeah, that’s so cute. So okay, so aside from, from that to everything sort of snow, like continue to grow from that will Marisol Jusino 10:23just be gone. It just it was just happening. I mean doing what the basic things that we do, yes, you know, because stuff does happen. But nevertheless, at the same time on my personal life, I was going through a divorce and all the craziness. So life was crazy. Life was crazy. But somehow, things always worked out. I mean, don’t ask me how this always did work out. But by 2020 10, that’s when I was because a lot of agents left the market in 2008 times get crushed. And the funny thing is that they say they usually say if you last five years, you’re gonna stay on the market. And I’m like, Well, you know what, I even if I sell one listing a year, I’m staying, you know, it’s like, I need to be that mark. But honestly, by 2010, I was worn out. And I had no idea what to do overwhelm in every sense. And that’s when I left and went into timeshares because I needed training. I needed to I mean, D.J. Paris 11:32there is there’s so many people that left in that time because it for those of us that weren’t in real estate at during that time. This of course is when the crash happened. This was a lot of the the the loans that that were done with, you know, they were very generous with loans Florida and particular was very hard, because they had much easier restrictions there. And so And like every third or fourth person in Florida had a real estate license at that time, it was some crazy statistics. So everybody had a license, people were making money hand over fist and they were just selling and reselling properties. And and then of course, the collapse happened. And it was devastating for many, many people. So I love the fact that you at that point, said, You know, I really could use more training and you know, the timeshare world, despite what anyone might think about that type of business that the sales man ship that is taught in those in those those rooms for those companies is beyond impressive, because it works. Marisol Jusino 12:34Yes, it does their training. i When young people come to me and asked me, you know, what should I do? I’m thinking about joining real estate and I my advice is always please do it. Get the license, go sell timeshares for a few months. Yeah. You’d be awesome. D.J. Paris 12:54Well, and those are those are particularly tough, because and I know like my parents used to do this when, when they were younger, when they maybe didn’t have as much money. But they would have you know, somehow they would be on lists where they would get flown to like Las Vegas. And they would go for, you know, get free free room and maybe a free hotel, or sorry, free airline, I’m not sure. And you’d have to sit through a presentation. But you know, you know, most of the people in that room are doing the same sort of thing they don’t really want to buy a timeshare. So it’s a very difficult sale, because you know, if the person is ready to buy, it’s great. But the vast majority of people just want the freebie. And so it does make it a challenge. And there’s a lot of objections to overcome and you’re asking for a lot of someone’s money. And it’s it’s it’s a very, very difficult sale. So I think you’re right, there’s the sales training, there’s got to be just amazing. He rates. Yeah, okay, so you were in timeshares. You got the sales training, and then you decided eventually to return it to the traditional brokerage world. Yet, Marisol Jusino 13:56well after I left time chairs, and I am like because I had said to myself, I don’t know if I can do this. And I’m thinking what do I do with my life? And I received a call from a former client. And he says, Listen, I don’t know why your nerves are making this call, but I need to talk to you. And I’m like what you tell me. And he says, Call me crazy, but you need to go back to real estate. This is you were born for that you need to go back. And I just smiled because at that point, I was actually coming from meeting with a broker. Just because I had also a friend that called in from the Miami area. And she said listen, I don’t know if you’re still in real estate. But I want to buy a condo you know, in the Orlando area. We have 400,000 cash. Can you help us? Heck yes. Yes and yes. So that’s that was my way back in. That was lucky And then at that point is just, you know, it was relearning. Because yes, I had learned the real the selling part. But now it’s like, burn patient ship part of the business. How and plus the technicalities, because there’s so much technology that everything changes, everything changes. So it was time to do that. But I was going through life, I still because unfortunately my case, you know, I, I was in an abusive relationship. As I mentioned, I divorced in 2005. But it wasn’t until literally early last month, that finally everything finally ended, because there was an injunction. So it’s been really a drain. So he’s just at sometimes you wonder, and that’s, but that’s when I noticed, is like, hold it. I mean, I’m still making it things are happening. Even in the worst days, there’s always the the ball is still rolling. And that’s when I’m like, but what is it and I began looking at my book of business, and it’s referrals of referrals of referrals. You know, I mean, two years ago, I close my first buyer, I closed them all over again, you know, so he’s like that referral book, when you stay in touch with them. And when you do what you’re supposed to do, yeah, they stay loyal. D.J. Paris 16:29They do. And first, I also want to honor you for sharing about your, your, you know, the challenges you faced and the, you know, victimization that’s happened that happened to you, and the fact that you were dealing with that, not only while it was happening, but for for about 17 years, or 18 years, after 18 years, I mean, you know, that is a heavy, heavy bag to carry around. And it is not an easy thing. So I honor you for carrying that bag for as long as you did, I know that that can’t possibly be easy. And also a good reminder, I think to anyone out there that that knows of maybe somebody that’s that’s in a similar situation that is currently in a similar situation, and maybe the people are afraid the person is afraid to leave, because maybe they don’t think about how they don’t understand how they could support themselves. If they were to leave a relationship. And maybe they think, well, it’s better to be in even an abusive one than non abusive one, because at least I least I can pay the bills in this abusive one, which, of course, you know, is is not not a great place to be. And to, you know, sometimes it’s just a couple of people to say, Hey, I think you can do this. And so it’s a great, great reminder to encourage people who are trapped, or who feel trapped in those in those sadly abusive relationships to maybe see a pathway out. And so I honor you for sharing that we I mean, we have 1000s and 1000s of listeners, I guarantee that that story is going to touch somebody, and maybe even inspire somebody who might be in that situation or know someone in that situation to maybe see a different path. And so I honor you for the courage to talk about that. Thank you. And, and I also want to talk about the Hispanic market, because I know that here in Chicago, which is where I’m located, we have a large Hispanic population. And there is a tendency, because we have about 800 agents here at our own company. So I just talked to a lot of agents. And I’m always recruiting agents for our firms. I’m always talking to agents. And whenever somebody brings up the Hispanic sort of demographic for finding buyers and sellers, a lot of times what what agents will say is, oh, well, I don’t know that I don’t know that market. I don’t know what those what that group of people is looking for. I don’t know how to communicate with them, I don’t really know how to infiltrate or penetrate that market to really get in. And so I would love any just information or advice you might have, because you’re right, it is the largest minority non minority group growing at the fastest rate in our country. So it’s important to certainly not ignore that group, but learn maybe how to better communicate with that group and understand what what what their needs and desires are. So I’d love to hear more about that. Marisol Jusino 19:19Well, in summary, because there’s so much that you can do, but the the question, the big question is, and most people said, Well, what do I do, just like you express is like this, and everything that is so known, we, we kind of tend to stay away from it. But it’s not that hard, because to begin with, you know, about 70% of the Hispanic population speaks English, you know, so that’s one thing, you know, yes. Will it help to speak Spanish? Well, of course, you know, of course it will. But if you don’t speak Spanish chances are Are your buyer or seller will speak English is there’s a big chance. Most of the buyers right now the Hispanic buyers are 30 and below 30 years old and below me, which means they have been born and raised in this country. So they are, you know, they know the language says the first thing, but that’s about English. That’s how we’re talking about English or Spanish, but knowing that Hispanic or the Latino language, it really is more than is an English or Spanish is how do we communicate what’s going on in there? You know, it will help, of course, to know a little bit of maybe the basics. Because you gain trust, when you speak about the basics. You know, when you say a few words in Spanish, like most people will say, you know, well, I took Spanish when I was in high school, that’s really, really sweet. But I have forgotten all about it. But what about if we are, but I hope that you can teach me how to, you know, that kind of, you can help me remember those little nuggets, you know, that will help that will really help. And it’s also the respect, you know, because when you when you are honest, because honesty will be the best policy you have to be honest. If you are not if they if they we don’t perceive the European honest, you will be treated nicely, but that there’s going to be a wall and the feet have you and if so happens that you do a transaction with that person. That’s the end of it. That’s the beginning and the end. Sometimes, as crazy as it sounds, it may be even better not to the transaction. But keeping the relationship. D.J. Paris 21:52Yeah, yeah, maybe even referring it for referring it to an agent who really is immersed into that, that community. Marisol Jusino 22:00Because is, is that it’s that transparency and explain the processes from A to Z, what I usually tell my buyers and my sellers, What You See Is What You Get you I’m going to tell you the good, the bad, the primary and the ugly, you’re going to know it all. And there’s a lot of time spent on that orientation, whether it’s the buyers orientation, or the listing presentation, a listing presentation with a Hispanic is not going to last you 20 minutes, I’m sorry to tell you that yellow is usually not going to, because they want to get to know you and we are not going to tell us our stuff until we know that you can be trusted. D.J. Paris 22:44Ah, that’s, that’s really interesting. So I was while you were talking about that I was thinking, I know here in Chicago, there are a tremendous number of Hispanic cultural events, there are cultural, they’re places where they were Hispanic people gather, there’s, you know, certain events and and, you know, experiences that they tend to have. And if I wanted to immerse myself in that culture to get more business, I would be going to a lot of those events, I’d be I’d be in the background for a while learning about that culture, learning about how they communicate what’s important to them. And then eventually, you know, sort of working my way into opening having them see me as a trusted adviser, but you’re right, it just, it isn’t going to happen overnight. Marisol Jusino 23:33Is not that that’s a good step to begin with to get to that person personal knowledge. So you’ll get that personal knowledge, you can go to events in which there you’re going to meet people one on one, although I really believe I mean, with so many Hispanics in the US right now, everybody knows at least one. I mean, everybody does is like build that relationship. Because from that relationship, you’re going to be selling to everybody. And when I mean everybody is literally if they love you and trust you, you call them or you said Listen, I need help on these, they will but again, you have to reimburse that. I mean when they call you and they will call you for little things, you know sometimes, you know their computer broke as crazy as it sounds, you know, can you help me? Well, I have learned a lot about computers by helping them you know, because it is Hispanic style your family and culture. D.J. Paris 24:31Absolutely. And and and family and culture are yes, I would have if you were to say what what would my guests be about what I know about Hispanic community, I would say family and culture as well. So that is that that rings true with my experience. I am I have a Hispanic name. I am not really Hispanic myself. My first name is Delphin and my middle name is Joaquin. So I have a Spanish from Spain, a Spain Spanish name but but anyway, but but the point is, is I was not I didn’t was not raised in that culture and, and so as a result, I but I do know we have gosh, probably a few 100 of our agents are Hispanic here at kale. So but yeah, you’re right it’s it’s it’s about earning trust because I think what what sometimes people forget about people who come to this country or who are in a minority group that are that are here is that they’re oftentimes and I mean, we should just be honest about it these are, you know, Hispanic people are often treated less than non Hispanics and other minorities get treated this way too. And we have to remember, especially if we’re not a minority, to remember that not everyone’s treated the same. And so some, some groups are going to naturally be a little bit more defensive or or it’s going to take more time to earn their trust, because of the way they’re treated on a regular basis. And so, you know, this idea that, you know, I, it would be great if everyone was treated the same. Sadly, it’s not exactly the way it is yet. So, you know, earning that trust is not an automatic. Marisol Jusino 26:09No, he’s not. But the reality is, and that’s just a little nod at the reality is that most, which is really interesting. I was, as I was looking at numbers, most Hispanics right now. I mean, they are they have been American board. So that means yes, they’re Hispanics. And when you get one, you get the family. But the culture is changing, in the sense that there’s more communication. You know, we’re beginning to see beyond, you know, your D, so your dad, because most of them the growth, the Hispanic population, since 2010. is due to Hispanics being born in America. Not other not not immigration, not immigration. D.J. Paris 26:57Yeah, that makes sense. And that opens up the that that a lot of times, like you were saying sort of resolves the the language barrier that could exist, because the ones the second generation, or the people that were born here, obviously are speaking English, maybe, maybe not. It might not be their first language, but they certainly grew up in our our school systems and learned English as well. Yeah, that makes sense. Marisol Jusino 27:21But I’m sorry, not what I was going to say. But you eat it does help to learn to communicate, because once you get to them, you’re going to be going home and mom and dad chances are they speak Spanish. D.J. Paris 27:34Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it’s it’s never been an eat? Well, I don’t, it’s never easy to learn anyone else’s language. But it’s never been easier because we have these devices in our pocket that we carry around 24/7. Like, there’s Duolingo, there’s a number of, of the, of the learning language apps. And, you know, maybe you won’t speak perfectly within a year of studying, but you’ll know enough to be able to at least show the community that you’re putting effort into learning their culture, their language, their traditions. And and, of course, Hispanic people have been traditions, it’s important to honor these traditions to be part of them to learn about them so that you can participate. Marisol Jusino 28:17Yes, anybody can be learned. I mean, it was. And I say that because I moved into this country. I’m originally from Puerto Rico. And I moved in 89. And when I moved from Puerto Rico, and I Lee ended up in the Cleveland, Ohio area. I didn’t know the language. Sure. I couldn’t speak the language. And I understand the frustration when you’re learning a second language. But if I tell people if I did it, anybody can do it. D.J. Paris 28:51And there couldn’t have been or I don’t know, Cleveland, all that well. But there couldn’t have been a large Puerto Rican community in Cleveland, right? That had to be very, very small. Marisol Jusino 29:02No, no way I was. And I didn’t, obviously, I didn’t know anybody. But they finally this is just a funny story. The funny story is that I’m like, Okay. I mean, I need to learn the language. So I turn on the TV because most people tell you turn on the TV. And that’s how you learn. Well, guess what? When I turned that TV on, what came up was the Beverly Hillbillies. And now I’m laughing about it, but I cried, I cried because it was like, I’ll never be able to, I’ll never be able to. D.J. Paris 29:33Yeah, it’s it is an interesting thing. If anyone ever has not had that experience of watching a foreign film or or watching a talent, a television show that was a shot and you know, in a different language, it is incredibly difficult to try to understand what’s going on if you don’t know the language at all, but you can learn it over time, of course, but it is that’s a hard way to do it for sure. So, so I would love to To know about the ways in which you stay in touch with your sphere of influence in between transactions, right? So while you’re working with a client, I assume you’re speaking with them all the time, you’re constantly servicing them, obviously, you’re doing a great job. But what happens? So the buyer sell the home, it closes. And then like, you know, maybe they don’t need you for the next seven years or so, until they’re ready to make another transaction. What do you do to keep that relationship strong during those those times? What if he’s Marisol Jusino 30:33the first the first time I’ve done a transaction with that person? You know, I let him know, throughout the process? Listen, this is coming to a close, but I’m not going anywhere. You need me, you call me? It doesn’t matter what I said, don’t call me at two in the morning. Yeah, but if you do, it’s okay. But my phone would be on silence. By but just to set that standard, that this is what you can expect. And then every now one that is more, more that the phone call of anything else? Because yes, you know, we’re thought to put everything in the CRM and send these and send that. And you know, what, most people will not look at it, it will end up in the spam folder, or they will unsubscribe is especially with the Hispanic client. And funnily enough, I am the same way. So this is how I realize how it was going on. Because in my case, it’s kind of the opposite when I was getting into the American culture. So it was that’s when I realized, but hold on, this is how I felt, this is what I was going through. And there’s a quote that says, show me how much you care. And then we can talk and it’s literally the same thing, it literally is the same thing is be there, yes, you’ll be invited to the birthdays, you will be invited, you know, to everything, you know, something is going on, sometimes to be decisions, sometimes big decisions are being made. And you’re called, you know, listen, what do you think about this? You know, and, and it is unknown or is it can be scary? It can be scary, but I always tell people, I will never tell anyone what to do. But what does your heart tell you, but you will be as they because they will see you as that contact at that person. And your phone will ring there. There were times in my worst times in which is like, Okay, what’s going to happen in here, because I didn’t have the mind to do anything, I’m overwhelmed, and so forth. And the phone rings. And they you talk and check it I haven’t heard from you in a while. So it’s really funny because it works the opposite way. If it’s been a while and you haven’t made contact, you will be cold, because they want to know, why haven’t you cold? So yeah, it’s really sweet. It’s really sweet. D.J. Paris 33:08I love that. And I want to make sure that you made a very important point that I believe he made a very important point, I just want to underline it, which was, you know, sending out email newsletters, which is very common, and I’m not here to tell you not to do that. Because I think, you know, there’s a reason to do that. I think there’s a there’s a good reason to do that. But is that necessarily going to demonstrate to a client that you care about them? No, it’s just gonna demonstrate that they’re on your email list, and you’re still in the business. And that’s okay, if that’s the intention, if the intention is like, Oh, this is all I need to do to stay in contact with somebody send them a newsletter? No, that’s probably not going to demonstrate to anybody that you care about them. It’s just gonna demonstrate that you’re still in business. So like, you were saying, I love that you said, hey, the transactions completed, but I’m not going anywhere. And in fact, when you need anything, anything related to your home or anything at all, you reach out to me and I, if I can’t do it, I’ll get you to the right person that can, that’s how you demonstrate care. And that’s what people that’s what everybody really wants. We don’t really want another email newsletter, but it’s not it’s okay to do it. Just don’t make that the only thing you do. And don’t think that that demonstrates care, it doesn’t. It just demonstrates that you’re a decent marketer, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that that you’re helping anyone. Marisol Jusino 34:30And then the best that that is basically set it set them up and forget him. You know, that’s that’s the way I see it. And that’s the way D.J. Paris 34:38and that’s the way everybody feels when they get those emails. You don’t feel special for getting an email. Marisol Jusino 34:44Yeah, happy birthday. Even if you especially D.J. Paris 34:47if it’s a happy birthday email that is automated. It’s like pick up the phone, call the person they’re probably not going to answer anyway. You’ll get their voicemail and leave them a happy birthday message or sing them happy birthday or do something that It actually demonstrates that you care. And that goes a million miles further than even a text is better than an email, but a phone call, we still all love to hear somebody who now we don’t always maybe like to talk on the phone. But we love it when people reach out and say, Hey, I’m thinking about your happy birthday. Yeah, that’s correct. Yeah, it’s so much about demonstrating care, isn’t it to the client. Marisol Jusino 35:24And that’s, that’s the bottom line, which is, it works in reality, it works with any transaction, it really works with any client. But the, the other reality is that they with the Hispanic client is going to, if you’re resilient, if you’re really, if you really want that client, you’re going to have to work for it, it’s not going to come easy. But once once you have established that relationship is yours, but never take it for granted either. D.J. Paris 35:56I wanted to ask you about the Hispanic community, specifically about first time homebuyers, because I see a huge opportunity to educate certain renters in the Hispanic community who maybe had never even pursued homeownership, maybe they didn’t know how to do it, or what was what the process was. Maybe they were embarrassed to ask, I know that I was embarrassed to ask when I before I bought my first place. I didn’t want to ask anyone, like, what’s a mortgage? How does it work? I was too embarrassed because I was in the financial services world, not not in real estate. But I was like, I should know this. And I don’t and I feel silly asking. And now you can just Google everything, obviously and learn about it. But not everybody does that. And sometimes people just their blinders are on. No one’s taught educated them. So I’m curious on the, you know, hey, moving from renting to homeownership, doing those kinds of seminars, you know, bringing in, you know, inviting people in those communities that are really underserved, and teaching people about the pathway to homeownership. Was that something that you’ve been involved with? Or do you have any suggestions about how someone may consider doing that? Marisol Jusino 37:12I have been in the past. And there’s one really one thing to make clear, right? Now, as of last year, 7.9 million Latinos, were homeownership ready, financially. So the reality, but again, and they will come to those things, because like, like, in here, like we have, there’s so many first time buyers assistance programs available, because there are so many of them. And when they go through that program, you know, from A to C, they’re good, explain the process. But again, they weren’t really, when you approach them the first time is like, get rid of the idea that I gotta get 10 leads, and I’m gonna close in six months, I’m going to close these 10 people, no, no, because the same process you’re starting, you just got a heads up a head start. But you’re going to start that process of developing that relationship. And you can explain the process from A to C, but if you did not build that trust, they’re going to go find someone that they will trust. D.J. Paris 38:23Yeah, that just makes makes perfect, perfect sense. And, you know, that this idea of, of earning trust is the way the way that I think is, is of course, by being of service. And the I’ve always thought felt that the Hispanic community because they put so much emphasis on family, and there’s so and again, they they are historically have not been treated well by by people who, you know, especially first generation have a bit of a, you know, a language barrier, obviously, cultural barrier, and just being seen as maybe even a threat to our country. Some people see as many people as a threat, which is, which is unfortunate, but it is a reality that Hispanic people still sometimes have to deal with. And so this is really important to understand that history for anyone that really wants to serve that community, because to understand their history means you can empathize or sympathize and really get a better sense of the challenges that community faces so that you can be of better service that you can feel for the struggles that they they’ve had. Marisol Jusino 39:30And and the reality the another thing to view is, you know what I have learned and I’m sure everybody that’s watching right now has learned as well is you know, the issue is never the issue. Plain and simple. The issue is never the issue. So if something is happening if if I get upset, you know, it’s not the client is me. So I better go and find out what got triggered Me. So don’t personalize just professionalize and keep it up. D.J. Paris 40:05You know, you’re reminding me I’m going a little bit off off of off script for a moment, not that we’re on a script. But just off off the conversation, you just reminded me of a very smart thing that I’ve heard it spoken about in the 12 step rooms, which is, so if anyone’s familiar with with 12 Step programs, one of the one of the lessons that is learned in that room was people get sober, or they stop doing these problematic behaviors and find a supportive community to help them through whatever addictions they might have, is they learn that when something is activated within me, it’s not the event that’s active, it’s something like you just said, that’s within me that’s being triggered being adjusted. And it doesn’t mean that whatever’s happening externally doesn’t matter. No, it does matter. But it’s important to know that I am reacting a certain way and I can learn emotional regulation, I can learn how to how to control my response, so that I can be more supportive. While this chaos is happening to my client, as opposed because the client is going to be in chaos, the client is good, especially when something goes wrong, you know that, of course, our listeners know this, something always goes wrong with every transaction, there’s always a bump in the road. And during that bump, the client is probably freaking out, because that’s what happens. It’s a large financial purchase or sale. And you can be the adult in the room and say, Look, I know this feels a certain way. I know what this is, I know how to handle this, I am here to make sure you feel okay. And being that guide through the emotional ups and downs. Marisol Jusino 41:40That is correct. Plus, at the same time, if every time you meet with that client, especially if they’re buying, if every time if you’re building that relationship, if you are talking I like to tell them, like I always like I mentioned at the beginning, The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly, you know, and third party stories, just tell them stories. Listen, this, this may happen because I tell them, please throw walk on me. I don’t want you to go to bed with questions. Because by the time you wake up is going to be a nightmare. Yes. Please, please, please, I want to know you have any questions? Tell me I want to know what’s going on in your mind? And if I don’t know the answer, which by now I just laugh and I said I doubt that I want but if I don’t, I will find out I will find out if something goes wrong. And I tell them if there’s something that you think may go wrong, there’s something that you’re not telling me. So listen, this is a divorce course is going to court is going to come out is going to come out. So just tell me so we we can deal with it, we can find the solution, because everything has a solution. So let’s just talk about it and get to the bottom of it. D.J. Paris 42:56And I think you know, it reminded me of of when I bought my condo, not my first purchase, by the way a couple years ago. And I by the way I’ve been I’m not a practicing realtor, but I’m in with realtors every day all day. It’s, this is my job. And I talk to realtors, I teach realtors, even how to grow his business. And yet the day but the night before I was closing on my condo, all of a sudden, I had one of those freak outs where I was actually ice skating with my girlfriend and I couldn’t even hardly get on the ice. I go, I think I’ve ruined my life. I think this is a terrible decision. I don’t know what I’m doing. By the way, I’m in the industry, I have a license, and I’m sitting there and I’m like, I can’t get out of this. I think I just ruined my entire life. Anyway, everything turned out fine. But the point is, is I suffered silently. I really I mean I told my girlfriend but she didn’t really know what to do. Other than say it’s gonna be okay. But what I really needed at that moment was was another professional. I needed to share that with another professional and and they needed to say, Everybody feels like that. Don’t worry, it’s totally normal. You’re going to be okay, I’m taking care of this. And and so it’s a good reminder that even people who you think, Oh, they seem fine. You need to check in with them and allow them like you said, Please throw up on me. Because if you’re just throwing up like I was freaking out and I was like wait a minute if I’m freaking out it must be a real thing because I’m in the industry. Well no, it wasn’t it was all in my head. But I didn’t have anyone there to throw up on and so as a result I suffered and it turned out okay of course but you’re so absolutely right. And we forget this as Realtors sometimes because we always think it’s going to work out we’ll figure this out. The person might not always feel the same way. Marisol Jusino 44:41Well not lost. We need to find out where are they coming from? Yeah, where are they? And if we know them well enough. We know whether this is the first transaction we know whether they went to foreclosure in the past. Right you know they love their home, or you know they get denied it or they got taken by another agent, which unfortunately, it’s happened. So the more we know, when they say these, or even before they say it, because if we know, we know, we can walk a step ahead and say, Listen, this is the way you might be feeling now, and I usually turn specially to the buyers after they sign the contract is like, listen, after we signed this, this is the process. But this is the process that we have in writing, these are the steps that are going to happen, doesn’t matter what but now, let’s talk about the process that you are going to go through emotionally. Because I see what’s going on. D.J. Paris 45:44That is a brilliant way of saying it and also really, really calming. Because it it what you’re doing is, of course is is you’re basically validating someone’s feelings. And instead of just like, oh, it’s gonna work out, don’t worry, I got it. It’s like, I understand how you’re feeling a lot of people feel this way. You know, I’m here to guide you through. I’m, you know, I’ve got you and and being able to empathize with them and say, that must be a hard feeling. I get it. I hear you. I’m here to help help you through it is, is really what, and most people aren’t willing to share that without you asking because it’s embarrassing. It can be it can be embarrassing to somebody, it can be just painful to talk about. I mean, no one wants to talk about fear. But it’s there. And so what I loved about what you said is you asked How are you feeling about this? And if they were like, oh my god, I’m totally freaking out. I don’t think you’d be like, Well, you shouldn’t freak out. You should be like, no, no, I get it. Don’t worry, I’m here with you. I’m not I’m going to be the rock that you can hold on to as your freakout. And we’re gonna get you through. Marisol Jusino 46:51That’s it, just walk a step ahead of them. And just that, that I know what you need to know what’s going on. And tell him this is this is okay. It is okay. Or if they put a little bit of distance because people do that tells you there’s something there is something is going on that they’re scared to share. And at that point, you’ll see just evaluate the relationship they agent client relationship from A to C, evaluate all those conversations, because people always tell us how they feel. Yeah, they always do. So and if you know, we know, you know, and you will not be able to take offense if even if they scream at you or whatever. Because you know what’s going on? Yeah, I mean, it’s not you. It’s just, oh, D.J. Paris 47:46I was yelling at my girlfriend the night before. She had nothing to do with the transaction. She just was in the room. So I’m like, I’m yelling. I mean, I’m not really, I’m not blaming her, but I’m yelling, oh my god, I freaked on it. And she was just like, it’s gonna be okay. And I was like, you don’t know you’re not in the business. I’m in the business. I’m freaking out. Right? So what happens in your right being there to really be there during those emotional moments, and making sure the person feels comfortable to share those emotional moments? Boy, boy, you are, you know, they’re going to tell everybody about you. If if you help them during those during those tough emotional moments, and that they feel comfortable enough to share, they’re going to tell everybody oh my gosh, my realtor is the greatest. Yeah. Marisol Jusino 48:27Let’s remind them early on. That the reality is when you’re going to do something new, everybody’s an expert around them. Because I tell them now you’re going to go you’re gonna tell someone that you’re going to buy a house, everybody’s going to be an expert. And I said and people are willing tension, people are formed from a good heart. But the reality and I tell him, like, for example, and I use the pimple story, for example, if you get a pimple, you know, everybody’s telling you how to get rid of it. Everybody is, well, the one you have to go to the dermatologist, go to the expert, you know, because you can end up burning your face. So it’s okay. But if someone tells you something that puts you on ease and makes you scare, tell me tell me and I can explain what’s going on. Yeah, D.J. Paris 49:19or just correct the information. Sometimes it’s just like you said sometimes just bad information. You know, putting toothpaste on the pimple, maybe that maybe that really hurts the skin. Even though it sounds like a cool little hack to fix it. Maybe that actually would make things worse. I I had a similar experience at a dermatologist. Many years ago, where I was reading online, people were saying, oh, you should wash your hair less. It’s actually bad for the scalp to wash your hair every day. And I was like, Okay, I read enough articles that said it. I just assumed it was true. Waiting to go see my dermatologist who had been practicing for like 40 years. And I go it’s okay if I don’t wash my hair every day. Right? And he goes, No, you should wash your hair every day and I go no, no, I’m reading this stuff. He goes That’s wrong. don’t know, I’m not gonna maybe it’s different for women and for men, I’m not here to tell you what to do anybody what to do. But he was like, nope, well, I have I have a skin condition. So for my particular skin condition, so maybe I don’t know what the average person should do. But he said, with your skin condition, you need to wash every single day he goes, it’s actually going to make it worse. If you only wash your hair, like two or three times a week, it’s actually bad for you. And I was like, Oh, he goes, Yeah, don’t read. If you’re gonna read stuff online, run it by me. I’ll tell you the truth. And I was like, oh, yeah, of course. So you’re absolutely right. You know that making somebody because who knows what people read online, they can be persuaded they can read things that that you know, are in their best interest. And they don’t know it. And so that’s why you as a professional are so important. So Marisol, I think this is a great, perfect place to wrap up. I do want to mention for everyone listening, that Marisol works in Florida and guess where a lot of people retire to Florida, we all know that. So so at least everyone from Illinois goes down there. I know my parents are down there as well. So if anyone out there has clients moving to Florida, whether they’re, you know, maybe a second home, maybe retirement, you know, maybe they’re moving to the villages or one of those kinds of places, wherever they are, you know, especially if they’re in Central Florida. Reach out to Marisol she would love the opportunity to connect with other realtors. And by the way, she has clients that move other places too. So maybe you can work out a nice little referral network. And by the way, too, you know and I don’t know Marisol, if you’re looking to expand your group your team, but of course if you are people can reach out to you if they think they’d be a good fit on your team. But if you have clients, if anyone has clients that are moving to Central Florida, have them reach out to Marisol because obviously she is one of the top agents in that area. So and I want everybody to follow Marisol. First go to her website, which is g 12. Professional group.com link to that in the show notes and follow her on Instagram. M Just see no one at on Instagram. So m just seen one link to that as well, in the show notes, Marisol. It was such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much. This is actually we had a technical issue the first time we record we were trying to record so Marisol was nice enough to reschedule. Come back and do it all over again. So we are so grateful to you. And we on behalf of our audience, we want to thank you for coming in and spending an hour with us. And then also on behalf of Marisol and myself, we want to thank the audience for continuing to listen and support our show. Please tell a friend that’s all that we really ever asked if you tell one other realtor about the show. Let them know, especially somebody that maybe wants to break into the Hispanic market or learn how to serve that community. Even more effectively. Send them a link to this episode, you can send them to our website, keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done, you can stream it right from that website or pull up a podcast app, tell your friend pull up their podcast app search for keeping it real and hit that subscribe button. We would appreciate it Marisol, thank you so much. I will see we will see everyone on the next episode. And yeah, I have. Well this is Memorial Day weekend. By the time this is released. It’ll be past that. But I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day. And for everyone watching us live have a happy holiday so Marisol, thank you so much. Marisol Jusino 53:18Thank you so much. She was a true pleasure. Take care

Ryan Young the Co-Founder and CEO of Fello and the owner of Young Team, talks about his transition from a well-known chef to real estate business. Ryan explains how working in a posh restaurant has taught him work ethic and discipline which is now serving him in real-estate. Next Ryan discusses the importance of calling FSBO and expired leads, and how they helped grow his business. Ryan emphasizes the importance of approaching people without judgment, listening more and talking less. Last, Ryan talks about his website Fello and explains how agents can best utilize it. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Ryan Young can be reached at (216) 859-1201 and ryan@theyoungteam.com This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00There are 36,000 realtors in the state of Ohio and today we’re going to talk to the number one team in the entire state. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with top producer Ryan Young. Before we get to Ryan, just two quick reminders. Actually three quick reminders. I’ll keep them real short. First, please support our sponsors. You heard him at the beginning of the show. We also have them throughout the interview portion, please, they are the reason we can pay our bills and pay our staff pay our team. So please support them check out their services and products we only we only promote products and services that we think are just unbelievably great for realtors. So that’s one second, please tell a friend about this podcast. That’s the other way we grow is by telling other realtors about us. And the third thing that you could do it that we think would be really helpful for you is actually to follow us on social media. Every single weekday we post a short clip from one of our episodes kind of like a best of with an actionable insight or moment we post them every day or every weekday on all the various social channels even including Tik Tok and we’re on like six or seven social channels so anywhere Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc Twitter, you can find us all those places just pull up any sort of social platform you use search for keeping it real, hit that subscribe button, we would really appreciate it. Alright guys, let’s get to the main event my conversation with Ryan Young. Today our guest is Ryan Young from a young team with Keller Williams in Cleveland, Akron and Canton, Ohio and also the founder of fellow which is a seller lead generation tool. We’re going to be talking about that shortly. I should also mention by the way before I get into Ryan’s bio that he I think it’s in his bio but just in case it isn’t he literally has the the most successful large team in Ohio so we’re super excited to talk to him about his business fellow and also the young team as well. But let me tell you more about Ryan. He is the CEO of the young team recognized as the number one large size team in Ohio and the number 18 team in the United States by Wall Street Journal real trends, the young team this is insane. Last year 2022 completed 600 More than 600 sales transactions with over 200 million in production 600 transactions 200 million in production insane. Ryan’s a third generation real estate agent with a real estate engrained obviously into his DNA. And the team has been at Keller Williams top 100 team for several years in a row in 2019. Ryan recognize the challenges faced by agents due to national prop tech companies and founded flash house flash house was a direct to consumer eye buyer that bought and sold over 500 homes in Northeast Ohio since 2020. And 2022 Ryan founded fellow which is high fellow.com hifelo.com link to that in our show notes, which since its launch in October of 2022 is quickly becoming the most powerful seller lead generation tool in real estate a coveted coveted place to be fellow is now being used by 35 of the top 100 Real trends teams in the country, including Rob to Ken ski, Jeff Cook, Robert slack, Andrew Duncan, and more probably many of the people that have been on this show us fellow so we’re gonna talk about that. At his core Ryan is committed to empowering all agents with the tools and tech that has fueled his team’s success to learn earn more about fellow go to high fellow h i f e l l o.com. Hi fellow.com for the seller lead generation tool. And if you are an agent in the Northeast Ohio area, this would be Cleveland, Canton Akron around there. If you are thinking about maybe seeing what other opportunities exist as an agent, I know I would be reaching out to Ryan, because I’d love to get, you know, on a team that did 600 transactions and 200 million last year. So anyway, reach out to them, you can visit them at the young team.com link to that as well in the show notes. Ryan, welcome to the show. Ryan Young 5:39Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. D.J. Paris 5:42excited to have you. For two major reasons. Usually guests, we have one, we have one major focus in your case, we’re going to talk about two of them. And I’m really excited. But before we get into you know the fellow and and what the technology that you’ve built does for agents, I’d love to hear your personal journey into real estate because you even though it is in your DNA and your third generation realtor. It wasn’t how you started, you didn’t start in real estate. You had a different career. So tell us about how you got into real estate and why Ryan Young 6:13yes, so many don’t know. But before I got into real estate, I was actually a professional chef. I graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, when I was 20 years old and thought I had a life all figured out right? Just like many 20 year olds, and I cooked all over the country and Chicago and Las Vegas in New York. And all of a sudden I got to my mid 20s and had a mid 20 life crisis and was like what am I doing with my life? I’m working hard. I’m making no money. I have no weekend’s no holidays, I, all my friends that I graduated with are all going out and doing things and visiting each other. And I’m stuck, you know, in the restaurant industry working a lot. And so I was in Vegas at the time, I think I was 26. I reached out to my folks who were realtors in Cleveland, they had a team, just the two of them. And I called them and said, You guys are going to think this sounds crazy. But what do you think about me moving back home, I was in Vegas at the time and actually getting into the real estate industry. And really what I was saying to them is I have an associate’s degree in culinary arts, I’m 26 years old, what can I do? What takes the littlest, the least amount of education littlest? Actually, that makes sense. When I’m saying least amount of education, the least amount of education. It has the most upside financial upside. And I was like, the real estate industry, you go to school for 120 hours. And next thing you know, you can sell people’s largest assets. And so they said, you know, if you’re going to do this, one of our core values is have a decided heart. And if you’re committed to it, and move back home, so I moved back with them. This is 2009 and got my license and then started building from there. Speaker 1 8:06It you know, you you have, you’ve made that a very condensed story. But we should I should mention that when you were working here in Chicago, at least only because I live in Chicago. Ryan wasn’t just a chef here in Chicago, he was a chef at the very number one most exclusive restaurant in Chicago, or if it’s not number one, it’s number two. And we are where I am. and I were talking about this beforehand, where you know, Chicago has a lot of really, really great restaurants. So he was like, at the very top of the mountain I’ve actually been to the restaurant Ryan was at it’s called a linear Google at some time, if you want to see the crazy molecular gastronomy stuff that they do. But but, you know, world renowned place. So Ryan was was not floundering in his career. But that’s just how difficult you know, working in foodservice can be even even at the top. And so it’s so amazing to me, that you were able to transition from what I consider I always think of chefs as being extraordinarily creative. I don’t know, maybe that’s maybe that’s not always accurate. But I always think like, that’s a different skill set than then doing real estate, but maybe it isn’t, I mean, obviously, mechanically, it’s different. But maybe the disciplines and the habits are similar. I’m not sure. So how was it making that transition from, you know, being a real professional chef to going and starting, you know, building a business from from the ground floor and in a totally different industry? Ryan Young 9:29Yeah, I mean, it’s funny, I owe a lot of the success I’ve had in real estate to my professional training in the culinary world. What’s interesting is the culinary world is a lot of creativity, right? It’s very hands on. When you’re working at the level of restaurants that I was working at, like the one in Chicago. It’s a very disciplined industry. And when you get to that level of elite restaurants where you It’s much more than loud music bumping in a kitchen while people are showing up hungover. It’s like, it’s a very like almost autocratic type of like environment where no one’s talking, everyone is very laser focused. And, you know, you’re striving to be the best restaurant in the world. And that comes with expectations. And so it’s interesting though, that kind of created the work ethic for me on what I applied to what I was doing in the culinary industry. And in some of these restaurants, where you’re working, you’re getting in at 10am, and you’re not leaving there till 2am. And if you apply that type of work ethic to an industry like real estate, I really do think that’s one of the things that propelled my career pretty quickly, because I was running circles around people, I was out working people in Northeast Ohio, when I first got licensed. And to me, that was not like an exhausting speed, it was the speed I was used to, if anything, it was a pretty casual speed, when you consider the nature of showing homes. And it’s, and it’s fun. And it’s, you know, it’s like it’s a little bit more informal and stuff like that. So for me, I really applied that work ethic and that preparation and how we approached being in the kitchen at some of these amazing restaurants, to actually applying that to my real estate practice and some of the discipline and how I approached our business. And I really do think that’s something that I attribute to the success we we had it early on, was the work ethic and discipline that I was taught in the restaurant industry. D.J. Paris 11:36Well, and in the restaurant industry, just just to sort of put a finer point on this, which I think, I think are not a finer point. But but my own little take on it, which I’m curious to get your opinion on, is when you work at the level of restaurants, and you worked with the chefs that are at that level, and the food prep and the sous chefs and the whole team. You never know when the Michelin guys coming in to do to do is do his review, right? They don’t give you the heads up. So you have to always everything is precision, right? There’s this precision model that we don’t know when we’re going to be judged on the world stage by some Bozo at Michelin, or whatever, you know, the local newspaper, whatever. So we have we and people are paying a super high premium to be here. So everything is perfect. I first out of college, I worked for well, second job out of college. But basically first job, I worked at Anheuser Busch, and I know a lot of people don’t automatically associate Budweiser, the beer with the actual beer, Budweiser with high quality. But there’s a reason why and it’s not number one anymore. Now I think Bud Light is number one. But Budweiser was the king of beers, as people know, for a long, long time. And it wasn’t just because of the marketing, like they legitimately had a precision that other beer manufacturers didn’t have an eye. I learned a lot of that from them. At a similar sort of situation, I was like I Oh, I’m working for the best or the biggest, rather, not necessarily the best. But the biggest. And I understand the precision that they played at was just a different level. So I imagine you have a lot of that as well. Ryan Young 13:08Yeah. And what’s interesting is before I was in Vegas, before I moved back to Cleveland, and I worked at the Wynn and Steve Wynn was notorious for treating, expecting him, holding himself accountable to the same actions that he holds all of his employees to. So you know, Steve Wynn would be walking through the casino, and if there was a wrapper, a little something on the floor, he’d bend over and pick it up. You know, it’s like, if that was his expectations of this is how we, when we are here, this is how we behave. This is how we approach the hospitality industry and how we approach every single client should feel like this is a special experience and stuff like that. And there’s a lot of you know, especially in that level of hospitality and restaurants and hotels and resorts, stuff like that, and talking about Disney and some of these other like, philosophically, just like the people that do it the best. It’s an experience and when we can apply that to the consumer experience that we have in the real estate industry. I say this, like with all due respect, but like the bar is set pretty low for our industry, which is a shame because it’s such an important experience in people’s lives. And so if you can provide a delightful experience or exceed the expectations of the customer creates long term business foundational type of opportunities that just creates so much long term business. D.J. Paris 14:40Yeah, I agree. I again, it’s just precision and and this experiential idea, like, like you talked about Disney. I don’t know if this is maybe this is a rumor, but I’d always heard and maybe this is true, we’ll assume it’s true for the sake of me saying it. But if it isn’t true, it’s a heck of a good idea where even the people who work in the park out with If even the people who are picking up trash even the the low the lowliest worker, maybe in the park, if they come across a patron, you know, when when a vacation or that visitor, I believe if they’re within a certain number of feet, they are expected to smile, look that person in the eye and smile, like they are expected not to be invisible, they’re not supposed to ignore the patrons are actually supposed to make the patron feel good about, you know, spending 1000s of dollars to walk in the park. Yeah, and it works. And it’s important, and there’s a precision to that there’s actually that’s just a rule, but it’s a heck of a good rule. And I imagine, you know, you’ve worked in places with those kinds of rules where, where it’s, well, hey, you know, we’re a premium brand, we’re a premium product. And, you know, if you can take that premium sort of experience and give it to the, you know, even a non premium consumer boy, you’re gonna make him feel like a million dollars. And that’s what everybody wants to feel like, Ryan Young 15:57in what it is, is, and you hear this term thrown around a lot, or this word thrown around a lot, but what it is, it’s a culture, it’s a, it’s a culture of, they hire to that culture at Disney or to these right, you know, it’s like, it’s an expectation, as soon as you walk in the door, it’s an expectation even before you walk in the door, in the interview process. This is what we are expecting from our team members. And when you when you create that culture, and that’s what essentially everyone is bought into, then all of a sudden, it doesn’t feel like abnormal, or it’s not exhausting. It’s not it’s effortless, you know, D.J. Paris 16:37standard operating procedure, at some point, it just becomes that’s how we do things. Now, I would love I would love to, to find out because Ryan didn’t just become a realtor and become successful. His team is the most successful large team in Ohio, currently, which is an insane, incredible Ohio’s not a small place. I and I would love to know how you started, obviously, you’re getting your parents video, you probably had a good sense of what it takes being around it, because your parents, I’m sure you just identified sort of the work that’s needed. And also having this incredible work ethic ingrained into you and your previous culinary career. I’m curious, though, how you started because you still had to start with zero clients. Right? And I’m curious then, like, what that process was to grow from? Just starting in 2009, I believe is around that when he said to to Now, last year doing, you know, 600 with your team 600 transactions, which is beyond it, you’d be you’d have I think here in Chicago, I’d have to look at the stats, but I think you’d be the largest team in Chicago as well. So it’s obviously a massive accomplishment. So I’m curious, how did you ramp up? Ryan Young 17:46Yeah, so it’s not like the glamorous story that I think like people expect I actually spent the first two years living in my parents basement. I was also working full time at a restaurant serving I need to the front of the house to make some money. The market when this was right, I moved back to Right when it all crashed? Yeah, so it’s like not the best time to like get into real estate. So it’s like, I wish I could say like, my first couple years were like, you know, peaches and cream, but it was, it was raw, like, and it I was I was learning, you know, and I spent the first couple years I was doing everything from putting in science to I really wasn’t selling that much. There wasn’t much to sell, photographing houses in data input, MLS, like a little bit of everything, right. And then finally, after it, I think it was 2012. Um, I finally was like, Dad, I gotta get out of your house. And like, I’m 29 years old, like, what are we you know, and it’s funny because I, you know, in Vegas, I was living my best life bought a house when I was 22. And, you know, live, you know, live in a pretty, pretty good young person’s life. And I finally sent up like, you know, we were going to do this, let’s do this. And I moved out of their house, got my own place. And I said, let’s, let’s attack this, the market was starting to open up just a little bit. It was like, 2012. You know, we’re finally like, we bottomed out. And now I think we’re like, on the upswing. And I basically I got to coach I got super aggressive into calling expireds and fizz bows and lead generation, I got very aggressive. One of the things that I had going for myself was I was probably 29 at the time. And there were a lot of people moving back to Cleveland, my friends when you’re when you grow up in Cleveland. As soon as you turn 18 You get as far away as possible. Like, you know, it’s just one of those things like either you go to college or you move to Chicago or you move to LA or New York or wherever. It’s like you grew up in you look at this small town and you’re like, I just can’t wait to get out of here. The funny thing is, after a decade of being away, you realize how great Cleveland is. And so people start to move back just like I did, right. And so it was kind of I started getting a lot of people that were moving back. Once I started having a little bit more success. They were like hey Ryan longtime it’s In 10 years, we’re moving back, we see you’re doing well in real estate. So I started to pick up a lot of those first time homebuyers as the people moving back. But once I hit like 2012 2013, I just started out working everyone and I was in the office early, I was out on appointments late, and I was just grinding really hard. And we got to a point where I remember my parents use it sell like 3540 homes a year together, I think, which is great, which is a great business, by the way, great business, great business, no expenses very low, you know, high margin, like very respectable, respectable business. Um, I think after that year, we maybe sold 80 or 90 homes, and I was like, Alright, this is this is happening, like, let’s do this, right? And then we just went through the let’s hire, let’s bring out an EA, and we brought on someone to kind of hit man on demand was the EA, executive assistant, is that what EA means executive assistant? Yep. And then from there, you know, we, we basically started growing, kind of organically, like the, or I guess, at the time, he was an awesome, you know, person operations person. But they handled, they put a lot of things that we get away from me to let me continue to focus on selling and growing. And then before you know it, we had more opportunities than I can handle. And then we brought out a buyer’s agent. And it’s kind of like the, you know, the seventh level type of model how you continue to grow and leverage yourself more and more. And before you notice, probably 2015 2016, and we were selling 250 homes a year. And then it was like, Okay, now I started, I started hanging out in circles where people were selling 500,000 homes a year. And although 250 at the time felt like a big deal. When you’re hanging out with these people that are selling 1000 It’s like kind of suck, you know, it’s like I worthless. And so then I started aspiring to be to run a business more based on what some of these other people are building. And it kind of showed me that it’s like, Let’s be like, a big, it’s possible, let’s not be a big fish in a puddle. Let’s, you know, be a small fish in the ocean. And let’s keep growing. And so the funny thing is, we we started really growing heavy from late 2017 to I say, like 2021. And now we’ve kind of been, we’ve been pretty stable. Obviously, the launch of fellow be building a one other company potentially slowed us down a little bit. But it’s like, you know, we’ve been hovering between that five and 600 units a year. It’s a very comfortable business, our average agent sells about 45 homes a year on our team. So it’s, our agents are very high producers, very high productive. But now we’re actually at a place where once again, surrounding yourself with bigger agents in need being fellow has given me exposure to a lot of the biggest teams in the country. I see what some of these teams are building. And I realized that five to 600 units a year is nice, but we’re selling ourselves short, we can continue to grow. So we just kind of turned on that growth mode switch basically this year, to really start accelerating and expanding what we’re doing. D.J. Paris 23:10It’s incredible. It’s it’s I know, there’s probably a lot of our audience that feels Oh, I can’t relate to that kind of production. But I do want to say and Ryan made this very clear about outworking the competition being from his previous training of working at these high end culinary institutions and, and being expected to put in a lot of hours. But he was also not just putting in a lot of hours. He was doing the grunt work of real estate which is in you said it’s very quickly and I just want to make sure everyone who heard it understands what this is he mentioned about calling expireds and fizz bows and I always assume everybody knows what that means. But just in case you don’t. What that means is Ryan is calling people that do not want to hear from him because they have either hired a realtor who didn’t get their home sold, and they’re probably pissed off about it or it’s somebody who goes I am not going to work with a realtor. That’s the the for sale by owner I can I hope everyone knows what that means. But we’re calling people that do not want our calls. Ryan’s making those calls. And he’s and he’s having success with it. These are if you want to cut your teeth and really learn what you’re made of fizz bows and expireds are the battleground they are difficult they are tough. And these leads are sold to dozens of Realtors in your area every they get the same leads you do so it could be you could be sharing the same phone number with about 1520 other agents. So you might be the 15th phone call that person’s got the same day. So I’m just I’m making this a big deal because these are literally the toughest calls in real estate. And I think what a great place to just build character resiliency, learn how to talk to people outwork the competition, because you are definitely in competition on a Fizbo or an expired everybody’s drive and even wholesalers are trying to call them it’s just they’re getting bombarded so sorry to make such a big thing about this but it is important because It probably built a I’m curious what you learned from calling fizz bows and expireds. Because nobody talks about anymore. Ryan Young 25:07The I, I sound like the old guy that when I was there a guy to walk to school uphill both ways, bare feet and a couple feet of smell, like, I used to roleplay and practice every day, and I try to really, you know, press that upon my agents, the agents or the young team and be like, guys, like, I don’t think you understand the commitment, I invested into the craft of getting really good at it right. And then the second thing is, I realized that these are all just normal people. And they’re all you know, one of our core values is get out of judgment and envy, curiosity. And every time someone I talked to is pissed off, it’s like, they’re not pissed at me, right? They don’t know me, they don’t hate me. They know it’s like, but they’re in an uncomfortable situation. And the more you can approach a conversation is just the conversation. And I think I started to put, take less pressure off it and just listen more and come from a place of contribution. And trying to understand more, versus I think so many salespeople, they have these scripts, and the scripts are supposed to be a path or a guide of what you’re supposed to say. But when you’re, when you’re really, really dialed in, the conversation feels effortless, right? Like, this is what you do in your space, right? With podcasts and interviewing people, you make them very comfortable in opening up and talking. And it’s like, that’s our job when we’re calling these type of leads is to make them feel comfortable. And so sometimes if you just go through the script, but you’re not really listening to what they’re saying, it’s going to be it’s going to be, it’s just not going to end well, right. And so what I think I got really good at was so confident in my scripts and dialogues that I could sit back and actually listen and stop worrying about what the words on the paper say, or what I’m supposed to say. And actually just use those as kind of guiding points for me to get to where I wanted to go. And it completely changed the game. And it changed the game on how I approach listing presentations. And it changed the game how we approach building fellow as well, because it made me realize that like, there’s a lot of people out there that want our help. And it’s just a matter of the presentation of how we get in front of them and show them what they’re actually looking for, is how we can actually help them. And so that was that was like a, it was very big for our business for me to kind of grind my teeth on those and build our business through that because no matter what the markets doing, it could be 2010 all over again, or 2021 COVID I feel like I built the skill set to be able to go hunt, essentially and versus always just fielding inbound in nurturing and stuff like that. So it I’d say our business wouldn’t be where it was without that. D.J. Paris 28:03It’s an incredible growth, I think a great place to start talking about your newest endeavor. Again, it’s I definitely want to ask you about balancing your life because most Realtors I know struggle with boundaries around, you know, taking care of themselves, their families, their friends, their social, their physical health, etc. And their business. And you’re running two major businesses trying to do that in a team and you know, whatever’s going on in your personal life. And in you have time to even jump on a podcast with me. So I’m definitely would love to hear. But before we get to balance, I want to talk about fellow because this is you know, it’s funny, I’m in charge of the technology for our firm. So I get pitched by a lot of tech companies because we have about 800 agents and whatever I guess they think you know, we’d be a good sale. So I get I get a lot of pitches by different tech firms, and rarely to never do I do I hear about seller prospecting tools. We you know, obviously, the easiest type of leads to generate buyer leads. But there’s already a lot of different companies out there fighting in that space and you’re fighting in a different space. You’re playing in a different arena. I’m super excited to learn about it. So let’s talk about so by the way the website is Hi fellow.com hifelo.com But what is fellow tell us about it? Ryan Young 29:26Yeah, fellow is a seller lead generation platform. And I think the I always like to just preface we don’t sell leads, right? What we do is we help you incubate and help you create opportunities out of potential opportunities that you’ve already acquired. Okay, so D.J. Paris 29:45I want to ask a quick question. I’m sorry, I’m gonna interrupt you because I want to make this point. Why why did you decide not to sell leads? Obviously, you could have built that too. You could have built a lead generation platform and instead You said I want to build more of a sphere of influence nurturing, you know, already in your database seller lead platform, why the decision to go to somebody’s internal sphere versus the entirety of of, you know, the market? Ryan Young 30:16Yeah. So let me take the story back a couple of years. And I think this will help answer that question. So you mentioned in the intro, we had a company called Flash house, Flash house was a direct to consumer eye buyer that we built in Northeast Ohio. And within three years, we received about 5500 offer requests from sellers, okay. So we’re going direct to consumer, over three years, postcards, all these things, spending about six figures a month, driving these sellers or homeowners to request a cash offer. What was interesting to us was less than 2% of those people that requested an offer actually sold their home to us. So that 90 plus percent of people that were sitting there, I’m a homeowner, and I’m hands raised, hands raised, right. And so my, the young team was the beneficiary of those 98% of people, because I own both companies, right? So we realize that like, wait a minute, what are what are we doing here? Why are we trying to buy home? Why are we going direct to consumer, we feel like we’ve created some pretty powerful tools that have really helped us reduce down our customer acquisition costs. As we go direct to consumer, let’s empower agents with these tools. Right? In Originally, the whole thesis was we gave the agents the technology when we made it. And all we wanted to do is be the eye buyer standing behind them. So what it looked like was I call a few DJ and say, Hey, I’ve got a product, it’s free, all you have to do is upload your entire database, and we’re going to start incubating these opportunities. And if they want an instant offer a cash offer, we’re going to be the one to fulfill that cash offer behind you, and partner with you. And if we buy that house, then you’ll get to list it from us, you’ll be our listing agent after we buy it. So we piloted this in Northeast Ohio in June of last year. And we brought about 600 agents on the platform. And it worked. It was incredible. We started generating all these cash offers and all these people started raising their hands. But at the time, June of last year, interest rates started to rise, July they rise, Rose some more and then they kept rising. And for you know that 7%. And we wouldn’t we didn’t want to buy houses anymore, because there’s so much volatility, sure. But we found this unique tool that was driving us essentially opportunities for free, versus us spending the six figures a month going direct to consumer and trying to acquire new opportunities. So we realized that there was so many opportunities that were already acquired by the agents that were just sitting in their database that were, you know, that was stagnant that they haven’t talked to for a couple of years. And so if we can create this, essentially this engine that started to make those opportunities rise to the top, well, now all of a sudden, the agents don’t care, because it’s not costing them anything. We’re getting opportunities for free. So we have zero customer acquisition costs. Long story longer, we realize, Wait, why are we trying to buy houses, let’s just create a white labeled product and sell it to agents, essentially, to let them do whatever they want, they can buy the houses, they don’t have to buy the houses. Now ironically, you know, we launched it in October, I’d say more than 60% of our teams don’t even do a cash offer program, they just use it from the seller lead generation component. So we just realized, instead of selling leads, agents are already spending so much money trying to buy leads, let’s be a platform that’s a flat fee, that helps them actually create opportunities out of the existing database out of the prospects that they’ve already bought. And that’s where the real money is the money is in your database. And if we can help them shake that up and create the seller opportunities out of it. It’s really powerful. Yeah, I used to, I used to have on a Coach Ryan de April, every every month on the show. And he’s I think he’s coming back shortly to for the fans of the show. He’ll be back. But He is fond of saying. So I’m just quoting him because it’s his statistic 16% of your database is going to transact and real is going to use going to need a realtor or transact in real estate in some way. Yeah, that’s what it is transacting real estate over the next 12 months. I’ll say it again. 16% of your database, according to Ryan will transact in real estate in the next 12 months. And if you have let’s just say 100 people in your database which would be a pretty moderately sized database, that’s 16 it’s 16 potential transactions but it’s really more like possibly 32 transactions because you have some people that are saying yeah, that was sorry that we are selling then buy something else or buy and sell whatever so that you know for people that are like wanting to buy leads because again the inclination is my database. I don’t have any current exciting offers coming up with within my sphere of influence, so I need to seek outside and Ryan with Say, Yeah, you probably don’t, that’s probably all going on internally, that you’re missing, you’re 100%. And here’s what’s interesting. So we so if you do buy new opportunities that will let us help you convert those opportunities into also a seller, right. So we do three things really well, we take the client’s existing database, we plug it into our platform, and we start incubating them trying to drive seller leads, and these can be old buyer leads all paths, clients, or whatever, right? We plug them in our platform and start incubating them and basically creates a significant amount of traction on the seller side, we also take buyer leads in real time and sync them over to our platform to try to help them to become sellers, right? Because a lot of people that are looking to sell their home, first start off looking to buy. So if you’re getting a buyer lead, and that’s a predictive seller lead, right, maybe six months, 12 months out, so how can we start incubating them right. And then the third thing we do as we provide these, this marketing suite of products that are things like embeddable widgets, and landing pages and QR codes, to really help agents push it out organically, to continue to drive more people into that funnel. And what we found was, so we were doing the, you know, the ibuyer, we saw 30% of people that requested an instant offer would go to market within 12 months, right, like, so it’s a, it’s a start of if your mind is going to I wonder how much I can get from my house cash flow, you’re gonna sell the next thought you’re gonna sell in the next 12 months, what’s interesting, you’re not gonna you’re not going to sell next week, you might you might sell and sell next week, right, month 11. But our job is to incubate them and continue to drive them back to our custom dashboard that we built for these agents that keeps them working down the funnel. And what’s interesting is we had another revelation. The home value message is the most universal message message to every homeowner across the country, right? What’s my home worth. And so what we do is what we’ve gotten really good at is we leverage the home value message where my home’s worth to drive them into the funnel, and they land on this custom white label dashboard branded to your team and it’s all customizable. And we keep bringing them back to that dashboard every two weeks every two weeks, your home values change click here. And then there’s these additional call to actions like do you want to do a cash offer or if you want to get a CMA or if you want to sell now or whatever it is. So the goal is keep driving them back to that dashboard through the message of home value, what’s my homework, but then once they get there, try to get them down the funnel by hitting additional call to actions like as they get more serious stuff like that. And it’s interesting I’ve seen people in the young teams database seven eight months that have been incubating that finally in our clicking I want to sell my house and it’s like you know us as agents we have we’re so impatient. We just we want to attack them right as soon as they become a new lead. And a lot of times that’s not when they’re ready but then we give up on them fellow is sitting there incubating them and turning it over D.J. Paris 37:59to you know, it’s everything you said is so absolutely right on the money as a marketer I was I was just thinking about you know, I’m a I’m a condo owner and I was thinking the Irish I mean I’m going to use a different example so for a lot for all of us who are probably most of us receive experience monthly email that says your credit or at least I do, it’s free but I get like this thing that says my credit credit Yeah, whatever Yeah, whatever you’re getting, you’re getting that and it’s kind of I was called like the report card of life that like lets you know how you’re doing it you know that that credits the end all be all but the point is, is that every month I get an email in fact, I got it like the other day from Experian, one of the three credit unions and it said, Hey, congratulations, your score went up by three points. It’s like who cares? But it made me feel good. And and in to bring that into real estate is one thing that Realtors always forget is that even if you’re not looking to sell your home you it’s kind of nice to know what it’s worth on a monthly basis. So this idea of incubate I mean, what is Zillow? Zillow is two things. It’s here’s all the homes for sale in the area. And here’s what your home’s worth. That’s really all Zillow is, and they’re brilliant because people do want to know what their home is worth. And if you can, instead of them having to seek it out, if you can send that to them. And you can, you know, send that out to them proactively, which is what fellow does. I mean, that is significantly important. I’m in a new development I bought two years ago, I have received 00 communications from the 46,000 realtors in Chicago that said hey, you’re you bought your home for this and it’s now action while they there’s probably a reason it’s probably worth less than what I paid for it but but the point is, let’s just say that even in worth was worth more I still wouldn’t have gotten any messaging saying just so you know your your home’s. We think your home’s actually appraised by x. We’d love to talk more about that with you further. And by the way two people have already sold properties within that two years. So It’s not like people aren’t transacting in my building they are. Because you know, life events, people move, whatever. I love it, I think that is so bright. So I sort of stole your thunder there. But tell me tell me more about how fellow actually does the incubation part the, the automatic part of of nurturing. Ryan Young 40:17Yeah, everything is emailed lead generation. So it’s like, we have found, you know, we don’t, we completely sync with everyone’s CRMs. So if they’re doing automated texting plans or calling out of their CRM as they can, but basically, what we’ve gotten just really good at is driving that opportunity into the funnel, and then just incubating them through email and continuing to bring the consumer back every two weeks and landing on that dashboard. And like I said, I mean, it’s, it’s powerful when you when you build a database, and you realize that if they’re not landing on your dashboard, that means they’re probably going to a different person’s dashboard, or to Zillow dashboard, or realtor.com, or whatever it is, where they’re trying to essentially sell that opportunity to another agent. And so we’re really trying to help agents on the seller side, get their ecosystem, get their database back, essentially. And it’s been really powerful. It’s why we’ve grown as quick as we have, we’re working with the biggest agents all over the country. And you know, once again, the buyer side is very oversaturated, everyone is selling buyer leads, we just feel like we’re kind of playing in our own sandbox with focusing on seller lead generation. And I think now with just the climate of the market, with there being limited inventory. It’s just really clicking. I love it, I have a bold prediction that Ryan’s company, if they haven’t already been receiving a buy offer from Lone Wolf technologies, they buy everybody who has a great product. So that is a I’ve just, I’m just being silly. But lone wolf seems to acquire really great idea companies, and this is one that I would imagine they would love to have in their portfolio. But fellow is is really cool, because you’re so right, everybody wants seller leads, because of course, those are the arguably easier of the two types of real estate leads to, to have to work. And yeah, they are the most coveted leads, and you’re there, you’re what you’re doing is you’re not selling leads, of course, because you’re you’re actually just taking somebody’s existing sphere of influence, and you’re nurturing it for them. And a lot of companies claim to do that. But I would sure love to put my faith in a company that’s helmed by the guy who runs the largest Keller Williams, or the largest team in Ohio. And and I’m not saying that to shower praise on you, but just objectively, that seems like a good idea. For me, well, I am I am and my team is using it, my team is using it day in and day out. And so we’re building it but you know, with feedback based off of, you know, feedback based off of what my team seeing and when we’re breaking in we’re we’re having success and stuff like that. So we are the user. So this is not like us being some tech people in Silicon Valley, you know, that have no ideas what it’s like to be in the agent shoes, you know? And you’re you’re not a tech guy, that’s not your background, how did you How and why did you decide to even build fellow? Um, you know, we it’s all been an accident, right? Everything has been unintentional, but it’s like, we saw an opportunity. And then we saw another opportunity and then we saw demand and then a next thing you know, it’s like this is happening and like I said, it was not what it was. I was just trying to build give myself a competitive advantage. And it turns out that it we realized that it’s very, when you power it with technology, it’s very expandable and scalable and I it just kind of came organically D.J. Paris 43:57I think to what fellow can do which is I’m curious to hear your thoughts on is it can it’s not about necessarily waiting for somebody to say raise their hand and say I’m ready to sell. It’s actually it can be influential because I know if tomorrow if I got an email from an agent that was using fellow that said, Hey DJ, just FYI I think your home your condo is appreciated $200,000 Which by the way would be that’s a fantasy it’s not going to happen but if it did, I’d be like I think about selling Am I actively seeking out the Zestimate or what it’s worth I’m in this industry and I have no idea what my what my place is worth at the moment so I’m not looking but if somebody were to send me in Now obviously that’s an extreme example but if somebody were to just to send me Hey, here’s here’s what’s happened. Here’s what other places are going for in your area you know just updates again the surface part of this job in between the sales the here’s what’s important to you, Mr. homeowner or Mr. or Mrs. renter or whoever. This is what you’ll need today, even though you might not Lead me for the next five years, here’s what can be helpful. That’s what really fellow does is it’s consistently reminding, giving, giving the, the the sphere of influence actual value in between transactions. Yeah. Ryan Young 45:13Well, and what we’ve gotten good at is the what we’ve gotten really good at is actually getting them to take actionable items to work their way down the funnel to become real sellers to AI from a lead generation standpoint and stuff like that. So there’s a lot of products out there that are informative and like to incubate, but what we’ve gotten really good at is actually creating leads, and actually creating conversion, I guess I should say, out of these existing opportunities to get them to raise their hands to actually become listing appointments for you. D.J. Paris 45:45Amazing what everybody Ryan is gotta run. He is running the largest team in Ohio, he’s got stuff to do. So let’s support him. We’re gonna get him back on the show because we’re going to do a deeper dive into how he runs his team as well. But high fellow.com is the website h i f e l l o guys seller, lead gen seller lead gen that’s the gold those are the Glengarry leads, if you know. Yeah, those are what we call it, we call them the Glengarry leads at our. But anyway, those are the top of the mountain leads Hi fellow.com, learn about what they can do with your sphere of influence to get you more seller appointments. And also guys, if you’re in the north, if you’re in Northeast Ohio, you should probably work with the young team, let’s just be honest, go to the young team.com. Learn about what these guys do. Maybe it’d be a great fit for them. They have high expectations, so they don’t take it just anyone but their Keller Williams, awesome, amazing institution. Obviously, Ryan and his team are insanely successful, and great, guys. So please reach out to them if you think what they could offer and what you could offer them and they could offer you. So anyway, the young team.com is the place to go. Ryan, thank you so much for being on the show. I know how busy you are and appreciate. And I’m so excited to watch. Hi, I keep wondering called Hi, fellow fellow. But the websites Hi fellow.com. I keep wanting I’m excited to see the trajectory of fellow and how you continue to evolve the product. And maybe we’ll do like a giveaway for our listeners at some point or some sort of something we have. Ryan Young 47:17That’d be awesome. I just got I was just gonna say I appreciate I mean, it’s just cool to you know, spend time in hanging out with you. And, you know, there’s been a lot of really incredible members or you know, you’ve had a pretty strong audience on here. So I’m honored to be a part of that list. D.J. Paris 47:37Yeah, well, you were super easy to talk to. I feel like I feel like you and I could be could be brothers in some way. So yeah. So for everyone. Let’s support Ryan and check out hi fellow.com. Let’s also check out the young team. By the way, if you guys have clients that are moving to Ohio, or, you know, reach out to Ryan email to his, he and his team would love those referrals. Guys, last thing, please tell a friend about this show, we would appreciate it. Just think of one other agent in your office that would love to hear how somebody goes from being a top chef to a top real estate agent. Shoot them over a link to this episode, you can find us at keeping it real pod.com We are also on all the social networks. So check us out just search because it’s not always keeping it real is not always the actual handle. So just search for keeping it real podcast to hit that subscribe button. And we appreciate it. Ryan, thank you for your time. On behalf of Ryan and myself. We say thank you to the audience for sticking around to the very end. We appreciate you Ryan. We will talk See you later and we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks Ryan. Ryan Young 48:42Thanks, DJ. Appreciate it.

Devon Higgins the VP of Sales for PhotoUp & FolioWebsites shares his own journey of how he started the business as a digital marketer and how he ended up working with real estate agents. Devon discusses why agents should use professional marketing and invest more money on technology. Next he explains how important making videos for listing is, in order to stay in touch with people and to communicate closer with them. Last, Devon talks about the app (Agent Up) that he and his company have created and how it is becoming more agent central in advertising. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Devon Higgins can be reached here. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today we’re going to show you how to upgrade your photo marketing game. What’s a photo marketing game? 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 this show and in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with digital marketing expert Devonta Higgins, before we get to divan, just one quick reminder, actually two reminders. First, please tell a friend. If you can think of somebody right now that is looking for a podcast like this. Maybe somebody who’s newer to the real estate industry struggling to build their business wants to know what the top producers are doing, please send them a link, somebody in your office definitely fits into that category. And if you’re a solo practitioner next time or under showing tell the other agent, I would really appreciate it. But anyway, seriously, thank you for telling somebody about our show. We are so grateful. It’s been about five or six years. And that’s how we have marketed our business. So thanks to you for helping do that. And the last other thing I wanted to mention is we started clipping our episodes we people have been asking us to do this for years. Finally we got around to it. What that means is every weekday, although once in a while I forget but most weekdays, I publish a 62nd clip on all the different social media platforms like a best of from one of our episodes. And usually we find three to five best clips per episodes. We have a lot of these published at any way. They’re short, they’re bite sized, but they’re also really, really actionable. So we cross post them everywhere. You can find us on social, even tick tock Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, probably a few others I can think of but anyway, LinkedIn has already said that anyway, it’s everywhere. So please find us you can literally just pull up any social platform search for the keeping it real podcast, you’ll find us there. And you could also go to our link tree which is link tree forward slash keeping it real pod. Anyway, we’ll have a link to that in the show notes. But guys, thanks so much for keeping our show rolling, telling other people about it and please follow us on on all the various social channels. We love getting to you more often than just through these episodes. So thank you. Anyway, that’s enough about me. Let’s get to the main event. MY CONVERSATION WITH divan Higgins. Today on the show we have to Vaughn Higgins, let me tell you more about fun the Divan Higgins is a Michigan native and owner of two businesses. First is photo op, which is a real estate marketing services company and also folio websites which is for website design and development for realtors. He’s a seasoned entrepreneur, sports enthusiast husband, father of two beautiful girls and of course a realtor himself. Divan was born in Lansing, Michigan, but lived most of his life in Grand Rapids and we were actually just talking Off mic about how I was just in his neck of the woods watching a comedy show a few weeks ago. I love Grand Rapids. It’s a lovely lovely city. But he he has a marketing degree with a minor in entrepreneurship. After college. He did a short stint here in Chicago for a logistics company before moving back up to Michigan and Grand Rapids to begin his career in real estate marketing and eventually opening up his own marketing agency. Today we’re going to talk all about real estate real term marketing. Please follow divan on his website photo op. Is it done? I’m so sorry. Photo op.com Devon Higgins 4:58Yep, photo op.com or Photo op.net Either one will send you our way. D.J. Paris 5:03Awesome photo op.com or photo op.net to get all of your marketing realtor needs met divan tell us welcome to the show, by the way. Devon Higgins 5:15Yeah, thank you for having me. I’m excited to to be here and talk a little bit more about real estate marketing. D.J. Paris 5:21Yeah, me too. I, I’m a marketing guy myself. And this is always these are always the most fun conversations I get to have, because that’s my background. My training is in marketing. And I see, you know, it’s funny, we oftentimes think location is everything. And of course it is. And there’s other things, too, to get into that bucket of everything, which include marketing. So I am excited to help our audience learn from you today about how to better market their properties, and also maybe even find more clientele. So tell us how how’d you get into real estate? Devon Higgins 6:00Yeah, so for me the journey was kind of serendipitous I almost I would say fell into kind of real estate in the real estate marketing space. And bit on my end, like you said, and your intro, and thank you for leading me up with that. I studied marketing in school at Michigan State and wanted to use that degree, kinda like you said, went to Chicago for a year did the logistics gig didn’t love it, and just wanted to do some more marketing. So came back to Grand Rapids where I was born and raised and where I was raised and got into doing some digital marketing on my own, and helping other clients with their digital marketing. Some of the folks that I’ve been worked for were realtors, help them build websites, do newsletters help with social media. And then eventually came across a couple of guys working out of a co working space that were doing real estate marketing, specifically photo editing. And they had a team that they were working with photo editors, and designers and developers that were actually over in the Philippines. Both these guys were super cool dudes went out for beers with them ended up playing soccer with them. And then they said, Hey, Devin, you know what, I’d love you to come on over and work with us kind of as a part time basis and help us with some sales and marketing. So I said, Yeah, you know what I mean, I’ve I’ve obviously done sales and marketing. I’ve worked with a couple of realtors and agents before, let’s go ahead and give it a shot. So part time work and then went on for a while. And I just fell in love with the company who they are, what they stood for the team over in the Philippines, helping them grow and develop as leaders. So I kind of went all in, I said, Hey, guys, like, I want to continue doing this, I want to continue working with you. And they they agreed they were liking what I was doing. And they said definitely we’d love to bring you on full time. And I said I’d love to as well. But I’d have to shut down this other business that I have right that I’ve grown from scratch and kind of built up this clientele. So I was able to work out a deal with them where they brought me on. Over time as a partner, I was able to shut down everything else. And that led me to become a kind of full time real estate marketing with photo op. And then from there. I’ve worked with that now since 2014, and not a business and just in the past two years, I got my real estate license. Finally, from being in the real estate marketing space for so long. I’ve worked with a ton of photographers, media professionals, videographers in the real estate marketing space. And they obviously work with a ton of agents, we then are trying to expand our business and grow a bit and work with more agents directly. And in doing so I thought, hey, you know what, it’s a middle of COVID I’m stuck at home already not doing much. I’m gonna go ahead and sign up for this 40 hour course online, get my real estate license and see how that goes. And I did that pass the test and joined a small little brokerage here in my local neighborhood. And I’ve loved it. It’s been able to help me help friends and family with real estate. But also just get to know the industry even better at a more intimate level. Especially for me kind of personally, it’s helping me out with business and connecting with agents more and figuring out what their needs are. D.J. Paris 9:23Yeah, boy, you said a lot. That is so helpful. No, no, no really, really great stuff. That was super, super helpful for us getting a better a better sense of sort of where you came from and how you how you got to where you are today. So come your eye. I like to think of you as like an outsider. You know, you’re somebody who came outside of the industry marketing is such an important piece of, you know, the transaction process, but it doesn’t get talked about as much I think as it may be deserves. So I’m curious to get a better sense of sort of opportunities you see, or maybe even, maybe we should start with mistakes. Look, should we start with some challenges that you see that you know, mistakes or challenges that Realtors make when they’re trying to market? You know properties? For example, Devon Higgins 10:15I think the biggest mistake and I wouldn’t necessarily call it a mistake, it’s more knowledge of what real estate marketing can get agents and that is more listings or have the your current listings sell faster or for higher prices. And from what we know from looking at stats gathered by us internally and other organizations like na are and then only about 35% of all listings are actually shot with professional photography. And the listing starts there. Right? It starts with your photos, getting the photos out there on the listing, and then into all the listing aggregator websites, your Zillow or Trulia, Redfin, so on, so forth. And obviously, that all comes from your MLS. But only 35% of listings are shot with professional photography. And I say that because what we know as well, and doing this for years, and me kind of working more with agents now is in and actually did a study that said that 50 are actually agents who use professional marketing professional photos, right? videography, drone, aerial, whatever it might be. But professional marketing are earning twice as much commission than those agents who aren’t. Yeah. So have that right. Only 35% of folks are earning twice as much commission, what can you be doing, I think, as an agent to kind of up your level and up your game. It’s used professional marketing and professional marketing doesn’t have to be a massive burden. I think a lot of people think like, oh, my gosh, I got to spend an arm and a leg on all this marketing material. And we’re trying to come to the table at least, and make it more affordable. One because we have just a big, incredible team over in the Philippines that helps drive down cost. And do just because everything’s getting a little bit cheaper and easier to access, right, your average agent uses their phone for everything. We’re trying to empower agents to be able to do all the marketing from their phone, taken your photos from your phone, get them digitally edited right away, we have an AI technology that does that right now, which is pretty cool. Do your Virtual Staging, do your video do your floor plans, the more that you can do from your phone, just the better? Or even again, working directly with a professional who does this already? That’s that’s kind of step one. Hire out the professional have them do it. There are great people in every market. We know that from working with photographers all over the world, and they’re going to help you at the end of the day just make more money. D.J. Paris 12:42Yeah, it’s it’s really interesting. I see it like a lot of different ways, especially with I definitely want to talk about AI here in a moment. But I’m curious on you know, sort of your your thoughts are like technology is moving so quickly that Realtors you know, yes, do they technically need to hire a photographer a professional photog for their listings, they should because you want you want the very best possible photos. And you want people that have devoted their career to understanding how to get the best possible imagery out of each shot. So as a realtor, that’s not unless somebody has a professional photography background, that’s really not a realtors skill set. So you should partner with a company like photo op, but you can also create additional complimentary content for each of your listings with your phone. You know, thankfully, the technology has has, you know, gone so quickly, so that we now can do this ourselves and do supplemental material to the to the photography. Devon Higgins 13:52Yeah, exactly. And I mean, technology has grown a ton. I mean, since we started, we started in 2012. So we’re 10 years ago now. I mean, technology has changed a lot just in terms of even the marketing tools that people use, right you now it’s super common to see drone or aerial photo and video on listings, especially high end listings. That wasn’t even really a thing, or it was just starting in its infancy about 10 years ago. There are things like virtual tours, right? Whether it be Matterport, or using a 360 camera to allow you them to click through and walk through a home. Those are becoming more and more common and some of that technology. And these marketing tools just aren’t going away, right, the more marketing and the more material you can put online to allow a potential home buyer to get a better understanding of the home, the better. The other thing that we saw a huge spike in over COVID was Virtual Staging, right? People couldn’t get into homes to stage them or weren’t even allowed to go walk through in some cases. So how could they envision themselves in the home? Well, we’ve Virtually staged it right, we have a whole library of virtual furniture, you can pick out what assortment you want for each room or stage it with multiple different styles in one room to kind of give you an idea of different opportunities or different styles and sets that you might want to have in a living room or dining room or bedroom. So I think all of that has just pushed us forward. And again, I don’t see any way that we’re kind of pivoting back to the way listings used to be as a paper clipping in a magazine and you had one single photo that was given you all the information, there’s just so many other tools at our disposal now. D.J. Paris 15:35Yeah, I think that a lot of realtors, if you really want to be on the cutting edge, and really try to get expand your reach for as wide as possible, I would think that you want to create lots of short form video content for each one of your listings. Maybe you find a particular, you know, accent that the House has, or something kind of unique character, some sort of characteristic about the house. And you could do a 32nd video on that, to complement all of the professionally shot, you know, photos and aerial shots drone. So these are what the reason I’m mentioning all this, of course, is this is what people like to watch people like to see the in interior of a property and you can post these short form clips on social media all over. It’s it I think, I believe, in the coming years that this will be a much more significant way that people actually really go through the home buying experience is through the short form video clips, obviously we’re seeing tic TOCs exploded over the last several years. You know, short form video is here to stay, it’s not going away. And so what realtors can do immediately is start creating short form video content to compliment or or they can hire a firm to do that as well. But let’s talk about let’s talk about video for a while. So what are the opportunities right now that you see that Realtors could be taking advantage of for video marketing? Devon Higgins 17:17I mean, yeah, DJ, you said it perfectly. I think there’s there’s a bunch of different ways that realtors can take advantage of anything video related, and it really is figuring out what first works best for you. And for the listing specifically, I’ll start out by saying everything that you just said there DJ is backed up by the data, what we’ve seen is that listings with video, get about a 400% increase in engagement than those without, right, like you’re saying there, it’s just more engaging people like to interact with video, they’re gonna sit there, they’re gonna watch it, you don’t want to make a feature length film, right of the entire house, you want to get people just the taste, because you still want them to get through. But what we found is that anywhere from 30 seconds to get to two minutes max is a great length for a video. And really, that can range from the quick 32nd Tiktok video of a quick snap of each room walking through the house, it can be as long as an actual video walkthrough tour, where you’re going through every single room and just kind of giving a pan. As long as you’re putting some sort of video content out there, it’s going to help increase engagement and traffic to your listing. And all that does is then eventually increases hopefully the the sale price and the speed at which you’re able to get that listing sold. So yeah, anything from a short tick tock to a longer video that maybe you want to get professionally done. But you can again, do so much on your phone right now that don’t let that be an inhibitor. And if you want to go the more professional route, a bigger higher end listing, go ahead and move that direction. But always be thinking too. And this is maybe one thing that I’ve talked to a couple of different people about marketing in general, it’s not necessarily just the listing that you have right now. It’s marketing for the listing that you’re going to get next. Right. So the work that you do now the marketing that you do now is not only going to help you sell the home that you currently have for sale, but it’s going to also be a promotional tool to find that next listing right to help you get that next job that next client. So think of it as an investment in your future career not just selling that listing that day. D.J. Paris 19:20Yeah, that’s a really important point. I want to sort of step on that point and accentuate it because you are absolutely right. What you do today can be used as a future reel, a future sort of best of you know, or marketing for to get a new listing. So you know if it was if it was if I was if I had a listing what I would do, obviously I would hire someone to to do drone photography, I would have someone to do, obviously the internal interior shots, and then I would create short form content, maybe three to five I don’t know how many, depending on how how unique the property is little short form videos like this is so cool, you can’t wait, you know, check out this particular feature of this property. And that what you’re basically doing is you’re bragging about the house, you’re you’re you’re showcasing the house, the best features. And you’re then showing that to your next few clients, this is what I actually do. And what I think is really important about it is it shows the passion you have for the business, it particularly if you put yourself in the video as the realtor, you know, saying, Hey, I have this listing, here’s what I’m doing. It shows that you’re into it, your your, your your professional, but also that, you know, creating those little short form videos, just again, drips on people, is the repetition that hopefully, you know, the more of those you do, the more people will see it, Devon Higgins 20:48you’re I mean, you’re exactly right, and you’re your own brand, as an agent, right, you are going to be the one and if you’re willing and able to get in front of the camera, talk to people, right engage with them, they’re going to want to hear your voice, they’re going to want to see your face, they’re going to want to engage with you so that when you do see them, they feel like they already know you right, that step has already moved past. Now again, I don’t say that’s for everybody. I know some agents who just don’t want to be in front of the camera don’t want to do all of that themselves. One of the tools that we’ve done over the past few years, is actually spin up a virtual assistant company, as well within the photo op brand. So you can actually just film your own content, send it over to a VA have them kind of build everything for you and then upload it to your social media channels or to the listing. The what that does is just eliminates all the oh, I need to get in front of the camera or I need to learn all these social media platforms, I don’t want to learn Tik Tok, I don’t want to learn Instagram, you don’t have to write, you can hire somebody to do that. And what we’ve done is tried to say you don’t even have to hire somebody at 15 $20 an hour here, you could hire somebody at half the price, who knows all the skills, who speaks great English, who works kind of when you’re sleeping, so that you can leverage the amount of time and resources that you have to continue to do professional marketing. Because again, as we know, using professional marketing is gonna help you double your commission over time. D.J. Paris 22:10It really does work. And I’ll just kind of peel back the curtain on our own podcast here for a moment. So for the first five years of the show, I was not making videos, or rather not making short form videos for our audience to absorb these these smaller moments in the shows. in bite sized chunks, I was I just wasn’t doing it. And so eventually I hired people also from from Southeast Asia. And they they work when it while, like you said while I’m sleeping and they create these short form videos for us. And it is it’s just skyrocketed our reach. So, you know, we’re doing exactly what you’re talking about is exactly what we do on our podcast is we release a little short form video clip once a day, with like a little tip for realtors from one of our episodes. So you can literally call these these moments from this footage. And whether you do it or you hire somebody to do it. It’s this is this is how people like to absorb media. Devon Higgins 23:18Yeah, it’s just at the end of the day do it. Right. I mean, it’s that simple. And it sounds probably simpler than it is. But again, there’s, there’s resources available. There’s companies, there’s teams, there’s people out there that are willing to help you figure it out. So don’t look at it as this big burden. Look at it as truly an investment. And again, what it comes down to is we like to say it’s opportunity cost, right? Where’s your time best spent? Is it best spent creating your own real creating your own Tiktok right posting everything to social media, going out and taking the photos in some cases? Probably not maybe for some it might be but probably not your time is best spent getting new clients getting out there networking, right, building your brand, building your reputation, that’s where something that only you can do and you have expertise and there are people all over the place right all over the world who likely have a little bit more expertise and knowledge than you in some of these areas. Find those people hold on to them, hire them, get them trained up on your brand, your style, your technique, whatever it might be and then use them to leverage your time for bigger and better opportunities D.J. Paris 24:26100% agree and I you guys also have a new app coming out called agent up tell tell us of what agent up is and and why it’s important. Devon Higgins 24:36Yeah, so just like I kind of evolved from working with professional real estate marketers and media professionals and then grew into becoming an agent. Our photo brand has evolved as well so we’re becoming more of an agent centered brand we’re gonna still have the photo brand but also have an agent center brand called agent up where agents can come in and use our whole suite of services like property websites, virtual tours, photo editing, video editing, virtual assistants. And then we also are developing an app to be able to do all of those things directly from your phone. One of the coolest things, I think, that we’re going to come out with with the app is AI editing capabilities. So the ability to take photos from your phone, have them edited via AI and turned around and sent back to your phone within about five to 10 minutes. Whereas the typical real estate photo shoot right now is coming back to you. And probably 24 to 48 hours to have professional grade marketing material at your fingertips within five to 10 minutes is pretty unheard of. Now, is this going to take away what a photographer does? Absolutely, yeah, they’re still going to be, they’re still going to be a need for a professional photographer, and you should still 1,000,000% Use them on any of your listings that need that quality and that level of work. But if you want something quick, if you want something that looks really good, and can get back and can jump onto a listing within a matter of minutes, this is going to be a great tool for you. And again, maybe you have a lower end listing and the two to three to $400,000 range that maybe you don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on professional marketing, this is a great option for that as well. So that’s one thing I’m pretty excited about. D.J. Paris 26:17Yeah, that’s really, really cool. Because I was thinking, how would I use it if I was out there with a listing? That is so neat, because I would hire a professional photographer, I think everyone should for, you know, almost every listing. And then I would walk around the property in turn interior exterior, take lots of lots of shots. And then I would come to your system and upload those have those those photos retouched tweaked a little bit via AI, and that would be my supplemental content. So I would be posting that stuff like check out this window or check out this, whatever, it would just be supplemental drips, so wouldn’t be like I would hire most of the professional photo for the main or professional photog for the main shots, right? And then I would I would have all this other content, video. And now, still images that you guys are working on to be able to, like you said, a turnaround time of five to 10 minutes via AI. So basically you’re going to be uploading your photos into into the into your cloud. And then you guys kind of tweak it a little bit and send it right back to me with a. I mean, that is that is amazing. That is really a super impressive thing that and then again, you can then drip that content on to the audience. Devon Higgins 27:37Yep, yep, I mean, drip content, teaser content, whatever you want to call it, again, just the more level of professionalism that you can bring to your business to your brand. It’s only going to help you in the long run. And I know I am using terms about AI and I know you’re interested in it. A lot of people are a lot of people are scared of it too. Right? of what’s going on chat GBT and things that are coming out, is it gonna take over the world? Is it good or bad. And that’s for other people to discuss who are much more able to do that. But I think for us, we know that it’s tear, we know that it’s coming, it’s going. So finding ways that we can leverage that, right? Because there is good that can come with it. And we’re trying to include AI in whatever we can to kind of leverage your time, your expense, whatever it might be to give again, more levels of professional marketing at your fingertips in a much faster, immediate route. D.J. Paris 28:29Yeah, the way that I’ve been thinking about AI recently as and it will evolve, and this will not probably be the way I think about it moving forward. But for now, I think about it as just like a helper, like a helper or a prompter. So if it’s like one of those things, where if you if you’re staring at a blank piece of paper, and you need some ideas for maybe a listing, you know, listing description, or really anything, you know, date night with the wife ideas, it could be anything, any any sort of idea generator and an idea generator and an AI chat, GBT in particular is particularly helpful for that. So in this technology is just going to get more and more sophisticated and more integrated into our daily lives to where we are, I believe we’re going to just start you know, in the near future, just start asking questions out loud, and getting those responses back to us through some sort of mechanism. You know, almost like the oracle at Delphi, what they used to say when when you know from the old Greek stuff, but but basically being able to access information quickly and get answers. And what I love about what you guys do is is you are at the cutting edge of this so you guys are really trying to help agents be able to do things at a very fast clip, which is a real game changer for real estate because again, as you said the turnaround time for professional photos. It does take time bit For professional photography, because of course, they have to put their art into, into the shots. And then there’s also the supplemental stuff that you can do along the way that’s much faster and much quicker, and can also help kind of grease the wheels. You know, at the end of the day, we’ve all been conditioned by now, sort of unwillingly, to expect perfection. Let’s be perfectly honest here, like we expect perfection in our photography. And in the images we see, which is not fair. And it shouldn’t be this way. But it is it just the way it is because filth filtering photos has just become commonplace, everyone can look perfect, blemish free, everything can look and seem perfect. With you know, a tap of a finger on a screen, it can smooth out all the rough edges. So because the consumer expects to see beautiful beauty, we have to have technology that accentuates beauty in order to compete. So it’s just the reality of where we are today. And I love that your technology really does this. Devon Higgins 31:10And in many ways to you bring up a great point, right. And it’s it’s been said many times beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we’ve found that to be very true from working with photographers for so long, who have much styles in terms of shooting in terms of editing in terms of what they think is the perfect picture. And one of the programs that we’ve done now is and because that just vary so greatly, not even from photographer to photographer, but even from like state to state city to city, a perfect look for a photo shot in Hawaii is much different than a photo that shot in Bangor, Maine, right? The level of editing What’s in the Sky, what type of window mask or window pull they want, so that that changes from person to person. And I think with agents, it’s very much the same, right? Whether it’s geographical, whether it’s the person who’s requesting the images, you want to be able to push and pull on that a little bit. So human is still pretty important in that. And I think just in terms of photographers, we’ve we’ve basically connected them directly to editors, we’re doing the same thing with agents and allowing them to work directly with a virtual assistant. Because we know that at the end of the day, if you can, buddy what exactly you’re looking for. And they’re able to do that on a daily basis and replicate that and build up kind of their repertoire, their relationship right with you, they’re going to be just much more efficient and getting to know what exactly you need. Now, can I help leverage that? Of course, and I think over time, it will. But right now, I think still the personal relationship when it comes to certain business aspects is is still very much needed. D.J. Paris 32:49Photo op.net is the place to go to learn all about photo op. So walk us through photo op. So I get I get a listing, how do you guys help me? Devon Higgins 33:01Yeah, so you get a listing, you’re wanting professional marketing done, right? Whether it’s you want to actually get some photos edited, you want photos virtually staged, you want a property website, you want to build your own virtual tour, we have the tools to be able to allow you to do that, you’re basically going to come to the website, photo op.net or photo op.com, you’re going to create a free account, the 10 credits, those credits are able to be used on any of our services, photo editing, Virtual Staging, video editing. And then you can also get access into our products. So the single property website, a virtual tour, and you can build basically what you need. If you like what you see, and you’re enjoying the service, you can sign up for one of our monthly subscription plans, and get a little bit of a discount on those credits. Or you can just use those on demand as needed. So it really is up to you on what you need and what you’re looking for. Obviously, higher volume agents might want to sign up for a subscription, save a little bit of money. But if you’re only doing a listing every now and then then it might make sense just to drop by whenever you have a listing, upload some images for Virtual Staging, build out a property website and then add it to the listing on your end. D.J. Paris 34:13Yeah, that sounds sounds amazing and perfect. What are some? What are you seeing in this year? So we’re 2023? We’re almost halfway through the year. What are we seeing as far as trends for real estate marketing that or is exciting to you or things that you’ve seen that? You know, it was impressive? Devon Higgins 34:36I think the the biggest trend that we’ve seen continue even through the pandemic. A couple of things it’s been one the Virtual Staging, which I mentioned earlier, continues to increase overall I think people just like the speed and the cost of virtually staging a few images instead of physically staging an entire home. And then the other one is these virtual walkthroughs I get 360 tour that can be done where you actually can just from your home, physically walk through a house and go room by room, turn around 360 degrees, hover over certain spaces know what the measurements are in that room. There’s some powerful tools there, where then you can kind of eliminate some of these homes that maybe the pictures look good, right? Maybe the areas look good. And maybe a video gave me an idea. But once I physically walked through the house and kind of understood the layout a little bit more, you know, maybe I’m more interested to go to that listing and actually walk through it in person, or you know what I can maybe check that one off the list. I think at the end of the day, it just gives Realtors the opportunity to leverage their time instead of going on maybe five or 10 home showings individually with a client, you’re only doing two or three that are narrowed down very specifically to hopefully a house that you’re going to want to make an offer on and hopefully get that offer accepted. As we all know right now, that’s probably the hardest part of the game is getting that offer accepted. D.J. Paris 36:03Yeah, for sure. It’s it’s tough year this year, with rates being where they are listings. Volume is down, although it’s starting to climb back up, which we’re excited to see. So this guy’s This is time to realize that the previous three years was a real anomaly. And homes were selling sight unseen, right, they were just being sold as is there was multiple offers dozens of multiple offers, in most cases. And so people weren’t even a lot of times visiting the properties before placing offers. Everybody of course, already knows this, now that the tables have turned, and now you have to be a little bit more aggressive with your marketing. And so okay, you got your photography done, start working on those short form clips, those short form videos, those short, those short form, still photos, you want to push as much content out into the public sphere as you can, because this is just going to get more exposure. And it’s also just a lot of fun to do as well. But what we’re really trying to do is what what when you’re out there marketing, and pushing out like short form video, yes, you’re trying to sell the home, but you’re also branding yourself along the way. You’re also demonstrating to everyone else in your audience, like oh, hey, by the way, I this is what I do for everybody. This is what I do for my clients. And that is also so it’s not even necessarily just about selling that particular property. It’s about showcasing your talents as a realtor. Devon Higgins 37:41100% again, yeah, looking forward right now just worrying about the listing that you have now it’s the next listing that you’re gonna get, how are you going to find that? Well, it’s a matter of how you market yourself today, and what people are seeing out there and you want people. I mean, like you were saying, getting more content out there more regularly, when people think of real estate when people think, oh, I need to sell my home or I need to now buy a home, you should be at the top of their thoughtless. And how do you do that you get in front of them, right? And that’s almost subliminal messaging in a way, right? If you’re constantly getting content out there that shows Hey, I’m a realtor, this is a listing I have or this is what I’m doing today. To help my clients right, they’re going to start thinking of you as the go to person for real estate. And at this point in time, there’s likely a realtor in most everybody’s network, right? You probably know somebody or have a friend of a friend who’s a realtor. How do you differentiate yourself? How do you put yourself above the other guy or gal in your market or in that same person’s sphere of influence? It’s marketing. It’s getting your name out there getting your brand out there staying front of mind, that’s going to help you get that next listing or get that next buyer. D.J. Paris 38:51Yeah, I could not agree more. The website is photo op.net. So photo op.net Also, photo op.com I believe is the same. So photo op is the company these guys can do it all for you. I highly encourage you to check it out photo op.net We’ll have links to what their services in our show notes. Devin, I’m so sorry. So funny. One of my very best friends is divan, and so I’ve been calling you divan the entire the entire I didn’t Devon Higgins 39:24I didn’t want to I didn’t want to stop you or he’s gonna let you go. And it was it was all good. I’ve been called divine. I’ve been called every D.J. Paris 39:31so my apologies to Devin. My one of my very, very good friends is a divine so I apologize for that. But it’s your great guy. And this is really really cool, interesting stuff. So anyone out there who wants to create more content for their real estate branding, you know, as a realtor, whether you’re listings whether you’re trying to drum up new business, check out photo op.net they they’re awesome. They just add They’re on the cutting edge. And if you’re all ever wondering, how do I start to participate in some of the new AI modeling that is going on photo op is the company to check out so I divided what’s the best? Devin? I’m sorry, what’s the best way that somebody should reach out if they want to learn more about a photo op? Devon Higgins 40:20Yeah, so definitely check it out the website Photo op.net Photo of.com. We’re on social media as well. Instagram, we’re at photo op marketing. We also we don’t have a tic tac yet, although it is something we need to definitely look into. But yeah, YouTube videos, if you’re looking for tutorial videos on how to get started with your real estate marketing, we have a bunch of how to videos there to check out. And then yeah, drop us a line, shoot us a chat. You can find me on there. My face is somewhere on the website. You can dig around and find me or you can email me at Devin at photo op dot nets. And that’ll go to me and I’d be more than happy to help you out. D.J. Paris 41:03All right, David Higgins from photo op, thank you so much for coming on the show giving us some examples and ideas of how to better strategize for branding and marketing efforts for realtors this year. Thank you so much. On behalf of the audience, we appreciate you and your time. On behalf of Devin and myself. We also want to thank the audience for sticking around to the end. We appreciate you. And we we only ask that you do just one thing which is telephoned think of one other realtor that maybe could use some help with their marketing efforts. Shoot them a link over to this episode, we would appreciate it you can find all of our episodes, which can be streamed right from our browser at our website, keeping it real pod.com or pull up any podcast app search for keeping it real and hit that subscribe button. Please leave us a review as well. We appreciate it. We read them and we want to always continually improve to better meet our audience’s needs. So thank you, Devin, super excited that you were on our show. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks. Devon Higgins 42:09Awesome. Thanks, DJ.

Quinn Driscoll a business coach and money mentor talks about her experience as a sought-after financial expert witness who worked in the high-stakes world of litigation. Quinn discusses how she helped a lot of agents manage their money and accounts. Quinn describes what differentiates people who are successful in sales from the rest of us. Lastly Quinn gives her expert recommendations for agents. Download Quinn’s free cash flow planner here. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Quinn Driscoll can be reached here. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00We talk a lot on the podcast about how to increase your revenue. But today we’re going to talk about keeping more of the revenue you already have through better money management for realtors. 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 Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with money management expert for realtors, Quinn Driscoll, but before we get to Quinn, I wanted to say that we are now experiencing a lovely boom in our numbers. Because we’ve started doing these short form video clips to reach more audience and give more content to you guys on a daily basis or a weekday basis. I don’t do it on the weekend. So if you’re not currently following us on social media, and we are literally on all the major channels, not Friendster, not MySpace, okay, that’s an old bad joke. But on all the more current ones, tick tock Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, of course and Twitter. So if you are not following us on there, and there really never was a good reason to follow us before unless you just wanted to get announcements about our episodes. While we said we need to give you more. So we now produce Monday through Friday, short form video clips from our episodes kind of like the best of from these episodes, the short form clips. And this way you guys can get a little daily dose of something that our our audience has, or sorry, some thing that our guests have said that we think is really super important. And we’d love that you listen to the entire episodes too. But if you just want the short form clips, please find us on social media we have different handles for all the different social media accounts. So just Google or sorry, go into whatever social platform you use search for keeping it real podcast and you’ll see our logo and hit that subscribe button so just wanted to let you guys know if you’re not currently subscribed to that we it’s a big deal for us. We love it. We’re getting 1000s of additional views and listens now to our podcasts just from these short form clips so please follow us we would appreciate it alright guys enough for me way too long to listen to me. Let’s get to the main event my conversation with Quinn driscoll. Today on the show we have money management COACH QUINN Driscoll with value Gao also you can learn more about her at the value gal.com But let me tell you more about Quinn. Quinn Driscoll is a CPA and ABV. She’s a money management coach for real estate agents and brokers. As the founder of value gal she teaches successful business owners how to follow a money management system so that they can stop feeling confused, anxious or worse broke. Prior to working with value gal or at or creating value gal Quinn spent more than a decade as a sought after financial expert witness who worked in the high stakes world of litigation consulting. She is a frequent speaker and guest expert on financial topics including building a valuable business money mindset and goal setting for business owners. She is a superstar in the financial services world and we are so excited to have her on the show. Please follow her again. Go to her website, the value gal.com And also find her on Instagram at value gal Quinn qu I double n value gal Quinn Quinn Welcome to the show. Quinn Driscoll 4:55Thank you so much. So happy to be here. D.J. Paris 4:57I am just happy to talk to somebody With a lovely Minnesota accent so you’re from the Twin Cities and it’s a very mild but it’s a lovely accent I’ve always been a fan of of that little aspect that people in that area have. are you originally from the area? Quinn Driscoll 5:14I am originally from North Dakota so you Oh, that’s what I’m hearing. Okay, you’re more with belong. Oh is Yeah. D.J. Paris 5:23It’s one of the if there’s no I’m gonna sound like I’m bragging, I’m not bragging because I had a job that took me all over the country wasn’t like I planned out. But North Dakota is one of the six states I haven’t yet been to. So one of these days, I’ll make it over there. But Minneapolis and the Twin Cities is awesome. And you guys, one of the great great bands actually there in New York band, but they sing a lot about the about Minneapolis is the hold steady. So anyone out there wants to find a good rock and roll band The hold steady. They’ve been around forever. They sing a lot about Minneapolis and Husker do I think is also from anyway, doesn’t matter. All right, let’s get to the main thing here. Let’s talk about I could talk about music all day and bore our audience. But I don’t want them to leave. So I want to bet my background, I actually was a financial advisor, not a CPA, and certainly not not kind of having the credentials that you had. And this was a million years ago in a former life. But I find that we have here at our company, we’ve got almost 800 agents. And not only that, but I work with a lot of other agents and other firms because I volunteer with our local realtor Association. And so I hear a lot about money management. And it seems to be one of the big challenges of Realtors, because of course, those Commission’s kind of roll in when they roll in. And sometimes we need to sort of smooth out that roller coaster ride. So I am this is the first time in almost 500 episodes, I think that we’ve ever had a financial services person on so I am super excited about any tips and tricks that you can help our audience to better you’re getting smooth out those bumps in the commission payout world. But before we get to that, how did you get into, you know, dealing with with money and being a financial services person? Quinn Driscoll 7:08Yeah, so my story like many the story of many Realtors is I’m an accidental entrepreneur. So I always pictured myself safe and snug in a little cubicle, never thought from in a million years that I would be a corporate drop out with my own business. But I worked for 10 years in a very deadline driven high stress and perfection demanding job. So I did get the opportunity in that job to work with hundreds of small businesses and see behind the scenes of their financials. So that was such, you know, an interesting and weird and great experience. I was a CPA worked, as you mentioned earlier as a business valuation advisor in the litigation space. So working as an expert witness, you know, keep putting one foot in front of the other. And one day it was like, you know, you look around, and it was like, this is not another 30 years for me. So I realized that I had so much small business knowledge and experience that I wasn’t able to share in a way that I really enjoyed. I live like we mentioned in the Twin Cities, which is very much a big corporate town, a lot of big employers here. And literally, it didn’t know anyone who was a CPA mother of two small children who was running a, you know, basically an online business. So it was a super scary leap to decide to go out on my own and very unnatural to be taking a risk. So CPAs not known for our big dreams and like just going for it. So but you know what I had to do it. So I just had to, I had to figure out a way that I could help the smallest small businesses that really don’t get a lot of attention from you know, they’re priced out by CPA firms, and they just don’t have the, the attention of kind of the financial professionals world. But I also you know, I knew that I could not have started my business if I had spent every dollar that I made along the way. So the money management piece of it is just so you know, close to my heart from you know, My professional background standpoint, but also personally just knowing like it is really scary to own your own business. And to the extent that I can help real estate agents and brokers get a handle on those money management issues. It is just such a good match for what I Want to do? D.J. Paris 10:01Here’s how I know that the money management piece of being a realtor is difficult. I and my, my boss and my business partner created a commission Advanced Business simply to give people their Commission’s ahead of closing. And the only reason we need to even even though the only reason this business even exists is because of the challenges that Realtors face and don’t let not that we’re doing anything wrong, we love our commission Advanced Business, we’re grateful to be able to provide that service. But basically, you know, we’re charging people 10% To give them a loan on their money, which is going to close you know, in 20 days or whatever, whatever it is. And that’s just how commission advanced businesses work. But that wouldn’t be necessary if people maybe had some better spending habits or saving habits. And the challenge, of course, as a realtor is that is, is one of the least sort of impressed upon skills when somebody becomes a successful or even just a new realtor, you know, they’re not, they’re just trying to survive, they’re trying to, you know, eat what they kill, they’re trying to pay their bills, save for taxes. It’s and again, you were saying the smallest business as a realtor is about as small a business if you’re an individual practitioner, as possible. So what are some of the first things that anyone who is listening who is a realtor who’s not on a salary, which is unless you work at a company, maybe like Redfin, or some of those have salaried realtors, but everyone else is on their own, what are some suggestions that our audience can start taking advantage of to better, you know, handle their money? Quinn Driscoll 11:40Yes. So one thing that I have noticed with real estate agents, is that the people who are successful on the sales side are way ahead of anybody else, because you have learned how to follow a system. So you know that if a system works, if your lead gen system works, that you are going to get sales. So it’s the same concept for the expensive side, it’s you if you know what steps you should be taking, you know that you can implement those, right? So you’re a hard worker, you’re a go getter, you know that if you have the steps, and you have, you know, the support, and you know what to do, you can get it done. So the really interesting thing I think that just needs to be talked about a little bit is that with real estate agents, you have no problem talking about, you know, here’s my sales volume for the year, here’s my gross commission income for the year, everybody’s sharing that with each other, you know, it’s competitive, it’s kind of fun to see who can be a top producer. But then it’s like the conversation just stopped there. And not only does nobody talk about what it costs to run that business, but nobody talks about just nobody talks about the fact that you have to spend a lot of money to make a lot of money. So kind of just having that in your mind and being aware of the fact that, you know, there is a way to get a handle on your expenses. And just because nobody’s talking about it doesn’t mean that it’s not really important. So the first very first step is once you have those commissions coming in, no matter how kind of rudimentary the system is, you have got to start tracking your expenses too. D.J. Paris 13:43And what do you recommend? As far as a tool to do that there are obviously a million different tools. Do you have one that you prefer? Or is it whatever system you use is fine, just pick one. I’m curious to get your thoughts for tracking expenses. Quinn Driscoll 13:57Yes. So for tracking expenses, I always recommend number one having at least one business bank account, and at least and only one I should say business credit card. So job one, separate your business and your personal finances and have that dedicated business account and dedicated business credit card. At this point in 2023, pretty much any bank any credit card is going to have online tools for you. So whether it is allocation, enabling where you can, you know, go through your credit card statement and say here’s the category for all these things. That’s a great thing to do if that’s how you like to do it. Just even downloading at the end of the month to excel, the transaction data and going through and doing that yourself is a great way to do it too. You know, it doesn’t need to be fancy. It does doesn’t need to be complicated. It’s just starting with anything is really the best way to do it. When it comes to tracking your expenses, D.J. Paris 15:10and expenses, you know, I’m going to let’s back up even prior to that, because I Yes, we do want to track expenses, we you need a system, and you want separate accounts. So separate bank account, separate credit card, and you’re going to make those purchases, but not everybody even understands. Well, I’m gonna get off of expenses just for a moment, because I realized I had a really important question. And this, I’m curious if you can speak to this. When should someone decide to either become an S corp, or continue on or maybe an LLC, or continue on as an independent contractor. So when when when we become realtors, we join a brokerage? Almost certainly, we’re an independent contractor by default, and we’re going to get 1090 nines at the end of the year based on all the commission we’ve earned. At what point does it make sense to possibly create your own corporation, and then be an employee of your own corporation. For example, I have an S corp. I’m not a practicing realtor, but I’m kind of paid the same way. So imagine that I’m basically a realtor. So I have an S corp, I am a the sole employee of my company. Can you speak to why agents may want to consider that as an option as well? Yeah, so Quinn Driscoll 16:29I can speak to that a little bit. The first thing I would say is that you should have an LLC right at the beginning, definitely make sure that you have that state filing status is usually LLC, and then a Federal Employer Identification Number are kind of the two things you’ll need those to open your business bank account, to show that you are actually a business. So definitely start with an LLC right away. And that is a, that’s just start getting that separation from your business and your personal and start, you know, running your business as its own entity. And then from there, the you can still have an LLC that’s taxed as an LLC versus an S corp. So the time to switch to an S Corp is going to depend on your situation, D.J. Paris 17:26or depend on the amount of income you’re generating for the business. Quinn Driscoll 17:29Yeah, so I don’t have a, you know, hard and fast number. I would say that is something that you would want to talk to your tax advisor about, and definitely have a tax advisor. D.J. Paris 17:42Yes, it might I remember, when I set up the S corp, it was suggested to me when I got to around. And this is a long time ago, but I think it was around maybe $80,000 in in salary, or in commission or whatever income, maybe it was 100,000, somewhere in that neighborhood is when it started to make sense to explore S corp versus, you know, another system. So again, please get yourself a tax accountant, somebody that can actually answer these questions, because we’re talking about massive tax tax savings. And it for those of you that aren’t familiar with S corp, and one of the cool things is if it’s if it’s your company, and you’re an employee of it, you actually technically have access to the entire assets under under the company. Now you’ll pay yourself a salary. And you can pay yourself, what I think the IRS says is a fair and reasonable salary, which you can get calculated through your tax advisor. But I am telling you this is probably the biggest missed opportunity that many successful realtors have not explored is creating some sort of whether it’s S corp or LLC, whatever. And understanding why you want to be an employee of your own company. And when not and why there’s, you know, it’s kind of like when you buy a home and all of a sudden you realize, oh my gosh, the tax benefits from the mortgage interest are really great. And you didn’t really understand that before. This is the same sort of deal. You can reduce your tax liability to two for personal income when you have an S corp to very, very low. So anyway, we can move off of that. But please, everybody, get yourself a CPA. And if you don’t have one reach out to Quinn. She is She is the best. So let’s jump forward to Commission’s because this is what our audience cares about. This is how they get paid. This is how they eat lunch. So commission comes in now what how do we start? Like how much of that should I put aside for taxes? How should I do that? What are some strategies just to make it as automated as possible, so I don’t spend it all? Quinn Driscoll 19:49Yes. So the first thing that you want to think about is, you know your commission checks are not the same as your paychecks. So start with that mindset. have exactly like you’re saying, as soon as it comes in, if you have, you know, if it’s already spent, or if you’re thinking, Okay, I know exactly where this whole thing is going, you need to stop right there, because that’s what’s going to keep you on that roller coaster. So you, you really want to start with a system, a percentage based system to allocate each and every one of those commission checks that’s coming in. So it depends on the size of your business revenue wise, but for the smallest businesses, if you’re under 250,000, in revenue, what I suggest starting with is about 15% for tax savings, and target 30% For for your business expenses, and 50%, to pay yourself. So if you think through that every commission check that comes in at 50% is what’s available to you to pay yourself, that is a good place to start. D.J. Paris 21:05I think the mindset is so important, it’s a depressing, I have a little bit of a depressing mindset as I see a commission and I divide it in half and go, Okay, that’s really what I get to spend. So I understand the inclination to look at the entirety of it. But I think when you have these kinds of systems in place, and you just automatically like you were saying, allocate to you know, retirement to taxes, you then start to look at your Commission’s differently. And you’re right, it’s not a paycheck, it’s a it’s a sum of money, some of which you can use as a paycheck. Quinn Driscoll 21:42Right. And that mindset is really important to set you up, like we said, to be off the roller coaster. So let’s say that you’ve decided you are going to, you want $5,000 A month to go to you for your living expenses, just as an example. So that means if you have a $10,000 month, great 5000 going to you perfect, if you have a $20,000 month, then 5000 is going to you and 5000 gets to kind of you know, hang around until you actually need it maybe the next month when you don’t get 20,000. So it’s the the mindset of what is available to me, for my personal paychecks is different from what I’m actually going to take out every single time. So I should say there’s kind of a distinction there of the paycheck it or the commission check is deposited 50% is available to you. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s going to be the amount that you take out, you’re going to have a regular amount that is consistent coming to you. D.J. Paris 22:54I want to go back to expenses for just a moment. And I will want to tell you about something that really transformed my life as a I’m a creative person, mostly, which means I’m not particularly strong. At the financial side of business, I’m good at creating ideas and you know, being goofy, and that, you know, doing podcasts and things like that. But what I’m not good at is managing money. So what I did is I I never in my life had actually had a budget. And it sounds so simple for people that have budgets, like how can you run a business without a budget? Well, I didn’t. And how do you run your personal life without a budget? Well, I never did. So I three years ago, I started using you need a budget, which is an app online, it’s a web app, it’s like maybe 100 bucks a year or something like that. I am telling you it completely, I was able with three minutes a day now I spent not even three minutes, maybe two minutes a day, I’m able to reconcile all of my expenses, I’m able to see where I’m spending my money, all of my accounts get pulled into one location, one website, everything gets gets dropped there, and I can literally account for almost every single dollar that comes in or goes out. It sounds like a lot of work once you get the hang of it. Even for somebody like me who’s not numbers minded at all. It’s actually really, really easy to figure out. And it helps you really track the ins and outs. So I’m curious if if you have any thoughts on budgeting? Quinn Driscoll 24:23Yes. So I am curious about what made you kind of take the leap to become a budget person because a lot of people, they just have a negative connotation of budget like depressed Do you know what I mean? So if you were willing to share D.J. Paris 24:39Well, I just I knew that I was so here was here was my the impetus for me doing it. I suspect a lot of our listeners can can relate to this. I was like I bet I’m spending too much money in certain areas of my life that aren’t necessarily obvious like yeah, okay, if we go to Starbucks every day and we spend $10 or whatever, then you That’s pretty obvious. But there are like little things like subscription fees that I wasn’t realizing how many of those I have. I was how much am I spending on restaurants and dining out in entertainment? How much am I actually, like, I just wanted to know what percentage of my expenditures are for the things that I think are healthy and reasonable. And when you know, when everything is two taps away on your phone, and it’s not, you’re not physically handing over cash and receiving cash back, everything’s digital, it’s invisible. It doesn’t feel like anything. And I knew that it’s so much easier to you know, get Amazon boxes delivered every day and not think about the total amount I’m actually spending, right. So it was for me, it was because I am, it’s so easy to buy things. I wanted to make it just have like a little checks and balances, because I know I’m not going to stop buying things. But I wanted to know, how do I at least keep it in the front of my mind of how much am I actually spending? Quinn Driscoll 26:00Yes. So one thing that I find really helps a lot of business owners on both the business and personal side is before you start thinking about making a budget, and that seems like scary and a lot of work is to look back at what you have actually spent as a starting point. So a lot of times I will get into, you know, working with a client and we’ll pull up their QuickBooks financials and I’ll be like, Okay, so we have general business expenses here. $30,000. Last year, like let’s talk about what that is. And I give everybody a mini heart attack with this question. Because they’re like, $30,000, like, I don’t know. But then when we get into it, it’s like, Oh, yeah. Okay, that that was this. And that was, you know, all Yeah, these things, I guess that does add up to 30,000. So that makes sense. So it’s the kind of the process of the information gathering and the getting through the shock of what the actual numbers are. And then realizing like, okay, yeah, it actually this does make sense. And this is necessary. And so now I can feel good about that number in my budget, because I know that it’s real. And it’s I’ve done it before it’s doable, or the other way around, like, oh, I can’t believe I spent that much money and didn’t get anything out of it. So, you know, then it’s easy to be like, No, I’m not going to do that anymore. So yeah, it’s really once you start kind of getting the information and getting past that, I don’t want to look at it. Like I don’t want to log on to my bank account, or I don’t want to log on to my QuickBooks because I’m, I’m worried about what I’m going to find. That’s the hardest part, I think D.J. Paris 27:42it is it is the hardest part, and it is uncomfortable. But that discomfort quickly changes to comfort. Because what it allows what it does is it it creates this feeling of responsibility and power. So initially, yes, I totally am with you that it’s scary. It’s sort of like oh my god, I don’t want to like It’s like looking at looking at yourself naked in the mirror and seeing all the imperfections, you’re like, I don’t really want to do that. But once you start going, Okay, now I’m gonna start targeting these areas of my expenses. There are so many realtors who work incredibly hard, and build up amazing businesses treat their clients well really go above and beyond. And then because of their inefficient ways, or ineffective ways of managing their money are broke. And this is or even worse, I’ll hear somebody at an event, a realtor event, say I need to put a new addition on my house, meaning I need to go sell it, and they’ll say I need to sell another home to do that. And I’m again, I understand that. I mean, we can think like that, that’s fine. But instead of thinking transactionally let’s come up with a process to where you can have more regular income prediction, right so that you’re more predictable stream, so that you’re not worried about Okay, I gotta come up with another 10 grand to pay my taxes this quarter. Right and which is which is what just happened. So the good news for all of you out there listening who are like I’m not good at managing money. You can hire people to help you do this. They’re ridiculously inexpensive, in my experience, they’re super helpful and they will protect you from going broke. If nothing else, you should have a fear of going broke. I don’t mean you should be terrified. But you should have a healthy fear of losing all of your money because the reality of is realtors have to do everything they have to wear every single hat that a business owner has to wear and you know the skill sets that make you a great realtor might not be the same skill sets to be a great financial planner. So which is why you know, people like Quinn are so important to our industry. Quinn, what are some of the mistakes aches that you’ve seen Realtors make with respect to poor sort of money management? Quinn Driscoll 30:06Yeah, so I think the first thing and the number one thing is spending the commission check before it even hits the bank, you know, you know what you’re gonna spend it on. And so really starting out right away with that allocation system, and I like how you use the word target, because that is a great way to think about it, like, Hey, you might not be hitting your targets for expenses, or you know, anything in your business. But that’s okay. It’s just a it’s just a checkpoint, right? It’s, I’m going to check in with this and figure out, am I on target? And am I not on target? And what do I need to do to fix that? So I think the, you know, just having kind of a regular check in on what is happening with your money is huge. So many clients who I work with, are kind of blown away when we start working with a commission pipeline. So that’s kind of a fancy way to say, what deals are closing in the next two months? And how much are you expecting to get from that? Let’s, let’s put it on a literal calendar. So you can see when money is coming into your business, and just doing that, and updating it on a weekly basis is like, it’s so helpful to give you that clarity of like, Oh, if this was my revenue goal for this quarter, and I have this much coming in, I’m actually yeah, I’m gonna hit that goal, or like, No, I’m not, and I don’t have anything else cooking. So, you know, this is probably not the best time to be blowing up with a huge client event or something like that, you know. So it’s, it’s having the check ins on a weekly basis, I recommend with your commissions and your expenses, to just start, start having that flow of information where you know, where you stand? D.J. Paris 32:05Yeah, this, it’s the idea of like, it’s like stepping on a scale when none of us want to do it. But if we make a habit of it, we can start to notice trends, right? We don’t need to know, every moment of the day what our financial, you know, bottom line is, but we need to know where it’s headed. Right? So we need to know, are we heading in the right direction? Are we on top of it? Are we aware? Are we paying our bills, just working to sort of, you know, outpace expenses, you know, is this sort of cycle that Realtors get into, right? It’s like, I’ve got expensive sell a home got, you know, and it kind of cycles through, and it can be very stressful. And what we’re what we’re really talking about is minimizing anxiety, what we would really want to do is your job is hard enough, as a realtor, it’s already a anxiety ridden and difficult. And let’s make the financial part of it. The end goal, the actual where when you’re celebrating in the endzone with a touchdown, let’s make that the easiest part of the transaction, meaning, let’s not worry about overspending, you work so hard for this, let’s set up systems to automatically delineate those those assets as they come in to separate accounts. Let’s save some for retirement, let’s save some for taxes, let’s put some back into the business. Let’s pay our bills. But also, let’s evaluate our expenditures. Quinn says weekly, I would even say look at your expenses daily, which by the way, you can get down to about one minute if you use, you know, like mint.com or, or you need a budget is the one I use. But a lot of these these web apps are so helpful because they can literally pull all the data from the various accounts, put it in one dashboard for you. And you can just kind of do a check in and by the way, I found a even just I mean, it sounds so silly to say this, but like I found somebody charged me $300 For something that I didn’t recognize last month and I was like, oh, and I got the money back because it was it was actually a mistake. So if I wasn’t paying attention to that I would have just paid it. Quinn Driscoll 34:15Right and let me tell you from personal experience, if you have children who are on the iPad, who are buying sneaky apps, you gotta get a handle on that before it gets out of hand and they bought like all the you know Roblox characters or whatever it is. So check the statements. D.J. Paris 34:32Hilarious. Yeah, yeah, kids in the microtransactions. We need to evaluate this. Again, guys. What we’re trying to help you do is really take the hardest part of the business, the financial management part, the business part of it out so that you can be as you know, focus on what you do best, which is getting in front of clients helping clients buy and sell homes. So Quinn is this is what she does. So talk about how do you help Realtors better sort of plan for the future? Quinn Driscoll 35:05Yes, so I teach a five part system. It’s the acronym is clear. So C L E, AR Commission’s lifestyle expenses, allocation and return, those are the five areas that we are looking at, to figure out is everything, you know, at the level that it needs to be, so that things are working together. So the C Commission’s piece, you know, that’s obviously the money coming into your business, if you’re, if you have a successful real estate agency, you have your lead, Gen, you have your sales, you have your money coming into the business, that’s great. Because the other pieces are the parts that you can honestly control yourself, the Commission’s piece is the piece that’s most out of your control. So once you got that piece down, then the rest of it is actually a lot easier to deal with. So the L is for lifestyle. So we talk about, you know, how are you spending your time, your money and your energy in your life, not just in your business, but with your family, with your health, with your community involvement, all of those types of things? To understand, you know, are you doing the things that you want to be doing, and how is your money helping you with that. The next piece is expenses, as we’ve talked about. So looking at what you are spending your money on both in your business, and we can look at your personal two, if that is something that’s helpful to you. But to get into those details, and I am there to, you know, not shame you or tell you that you’re doing everything wrong, I think a lot of people get worried about that, like, Oh, this is it’s so bad, I just don’t even want anybody to know, but you know what, I’ve seen it all, don’t worry about it, we’re gonna get in there. And we’re gonna look at what you’re spending your money on. And are those things that makes sense are those things that you need to be running your business the best way you can. allocations, we have already talked about a little bit, having those targeted percentages is really helpful. So that every dollar that comes in, you have a you know, a mental map of where everything is going. And you know that you’re always going to have what you need available in your savings, and then return. So looking at the the ways you’re spending your time and money, and what is the return that you’re getting on those. So if you are running the same ads that you ran three years ago, that did great for you. And you haven’t looked at it lately, like, am I actually getting any leads from these ads? Maybe that’s a place where, hey, that’s a big chunk of budget that can go into a different type of ads or just, you know, into a different type of lead gen strategy. So really looking holistically at what are all the things that are happening, and what are the tactical steps that you need to take, but I’m help happy to help you with like is it we need to be on a zoom call, and we’re gonna walk through logging into the bank account, and we’re gonna cancel all the subscriptions that we don’t use anymore, you know, so I am there to be accountability, coaching, advice, sounding board, you can vent like all of the things, you know, it could be a little bit of a therapy session, because money is a tough, tough area. For a lot of people D.J. Paris 38:34money is really associated with lots of shame, too. And that’s, that’s the big thing I want everyone to it’s, again, it’s the idea of getting naked and stepping on a scale, it’s not an easy thing for everybody to do. And it’s hard enough to do. Using that same metaphor it you know, by yourself in your own bathroom alone, but then to then say here is me to the entire to someone else like yourself and say here’s all of my financial nakedness. It can be a little tough and people feel you know certain ways about their past spending activity. But guys, what I will tell you is get over that. People when you hire a CPA to help you with this, they don’t care. They just want to help you. And so even if you are if you have negative equity, or if you have credit card debt, or whatever the situation may be that you’re like, I wish I didn’t, or I wish I was in a different position. Get past that because what we really need to do is we want you to be able to pay your bills and plan for the future and build a successful business. So many Realtors leave the industry, not because they don’t have enough business because they don’t manage their finances. It’s like the silent killer that nobody talks about in this industry. Because we are all talking Talking about deals, deals, deals get more and more and more deals. And there isn’t any sort of, you know, like, if you go to the NFL and you’re, you’re a football player, and you can focus exclusively on the, you know, playing on the field and lifting weights and you know, doing all of this the skill building that you need to do to be a good professional athlete, they have people in the background, making sure that when you retire, you have a pension coming in, well, that doesn’t really exist for real estate. So you have to take control of that, unfortunately, that we haven’t figured out a way to automate that for people. So Quinn and and people like when are available to help you figure that out. Because there’s nothing worse than working for 30 years to realize, Oh, I didn’t save as much as I could have. Or even better, I didn’t take advantage of as much of the deductions that I could have. Right. My dad did his own taxes. He was a CPA, but that wasn’t his profession. But he did it for like 15 years, many a long, long, long time ago. And then finally, he started going to a CPA, and turns out that he had been doing it wrong the whole time. And the CPA was like, I cannot believe you are not in my dad was unintentional, but he was like, can’t believe you’re not in jail. That because I mean, it actually, my dad overpaid his taxes funny enough for like 15 years and so the the IRS had to give us a big check. Basically, don’t, don’t try to do everything yourself, get a professional, go to the value gal.com to learn all things Quinn Driscoll, she is going to help you manage your finances, guys, just hire somebody for this, don’t try to do it yourself. It’s too much. You have too much too, too many other things on your plate at once as a realtor, don’t put this on your plate, hire somebody, trust me, my my CPA, shout out to Debbie the crazy tax lady. That’s her her moniker which is hilarious. And she is not crazy. But that’s what she calls herself. And Debbie is my Savior. She tells me every year like for example, when I’ll talk about this, we’re going back to the beginning about like starting an S corporation. One day, Debbie called me and said, Hey, do you have monthly meetings for your board as board of directors, which by the way, I’m the only person on the board of directors for my silly little company? Yes, I she says well, you can expense those. And I can have two parties a year I think as well, like a holiday party. So there’s all these cool little ways where you can take advantage in an ethical way of the IRS tax codes by maximizing your deduction, deductions and your expenses. But you need to go to a professional for this tax, you know, just doing it online. Maybe it would give you some of that you know, using but going to a highly respected and competent CPA and money manager will be able to help you figure that out. And also we need to read just save for retirement to Quinn Driscoll 43:04Yeah, we sure do. D.J. Paris 43:06Was a lot. I was I was giving I was I was saying a lot there. And I apologize for that. But I was just trying to save money is it’s the thing we don’t talk about. And in this industry. Quinn, what what are the first steps? So so we talked about the first steps being when when when, when commission, first of all, establish yourself as an LLC, we talked about that and talk to a CPA about why that makes sense. We talked about creating an allocation strategy when Commission’s come in, they’re automatically distributed to channels that we don’t touch retirement taxes, etc. Expenditures. And then we also talked about return on investment, right? Like how do we actually evaluate our business expenses that are generating income for us and somebody like you can come along and take a look at all of our books and say, Okay, this is working for you. And this isn’t? Where do you see Realtors struggling the most when they hire somebody like you? Quinn Driscoll 44:12That is a great question. So struggling them. I think the struggle is at the very beginning of just getting over the I haven’t done everything right. And I know I haven’t and so I just feel like I’m going to be judged. Or I feel like you know, there. A lot of people honestly will be like, I don’t want to feel like I’m getting in trouble in math class again, because I’m not good with numbers. You know, so it’s really those kinds of deep seated emotional Shame, shame it is the shame so that’s tricky, but it’s it’s kind of like once you once you make the commitment, I think making the commitment is the hardest thing that you We’re gonna, you’re going to jump in, you’re going to do it, it’s going to be not perfect at the beginning, it’s going to take, you’re going to try stuff and it’s not going to work, and then you’re going to try something else. And you’re going to forget the other thing you were supposed to do. And that’s okay. It’s all part of the process. So, you know, just being okay with that as much as you can, when you are like an overachiever. You know, like a lot of a lot of the top producers and high performing agents are, it’s hard to let those kind of vulnerabilities show a little bit. So I think that’s honestly the hardest piece D.J. Paris 45:37I’ve had so many top producers on our show talk about I was my gross commission income was 500,000, or a million dollars, and I had no savings. Like people would say, yes, on paper, it looks like I am incredibly successful because of all of these transactions. And yet, I really have nothing to show for it in the bank. And that’s where this guilt or shame comes in of like, I don’t really want people to peel back the curtain and see, but the only way out of that is funny, I’m pretty confident in saying the only way to expel shame is by bringing it into the light, meaning expose yourself to somebody who can help guide you through. So even if you feel crummy about we’re current financial. Oh, and by the way, little pro tip for everyone, or little truth bomb, everybody feels crappy about their financial situation all the time. Nobody feels like I’ve got enough money. I mean, maybe 1/10 of 1% of the population maybe feels that way. For the rest of us. Everybody wants more money. Everybody wants to save more, spend less. We all feel like I should do better. Right? So your total, it’s totally normal to feel like I should be spending less and saving more. And I should be earning more. Right? Like that’s totally, totally normal. So don’t worry, find somebody like Quinn so quick, the best way that our audience can can deep work with you. And by the way, pick a CPA that has experience dealing with realtors, because they understand when for example, understands the realtor money sort of circle she understands that process. Pick somebody who gets working with small, independent businesses like yourself, like like realtors. But please, for everything to learn about when and what she offers go to the value gal.com also wants you to follow her on Instagram at value gal Quinn. We’ll have links to the Instagram and her website in the show notes. Quinn, any last tips or advice for our audience? Quinn Driscoll 47:45Um, yes. So I think as you just as you just alluded to, everybody thinks that they are the actual worst with money and that everyone else has it all figured out? That is not that is not correct. Nobody has it figured out. Everybody’s just doing their best. So you know, just do your best. And if you do need help with it, find somebody to help you. And my other my other thing I would say is that, you know, cut us CPAs and accounting brains a little bit of slack. We’re not trying to be confusing, or, like, you know, just giving you the profit and loss statement and talking our weird language that doesn’t make any sense to you. That’s just that’s just what we know. So ask the questions, ask so many questions. We really want you to feel good about where you are with your money. So if you don’t understand something, just sit ask your ask your financial person to explain it again, a different way. You know, just keep asking until you get it because they are here to help you. D.J. Paris 48:52Value gal v value. gal.com is where you can go we have a a thing that we’re going to be sending or we’re going to be providing to our audience. So I apologize, I’m jumbling it a little bit. In our show notes, you will see a link to get some help from Quinn. But please visit the value gal.com also follow her on Instagram as well as links to both those in the show notes. You guys need to get a CPA and a money manager reach out to Quinn if she can’t help you. She’ll know people that can on behalf of our audience. We think Quinn for coming on our show today and helping our audience stay in business and manage their money more effectively. Guys, this you worked so hard for it, let’s keep as much of it as possible. So on behalf of the audience, thank you Quinn for coming on and spending an hour with us. And on behalf of Quinn and myself. Thank you to our lovely beautiful audience. We had almost 50 people watching at one point during the stream here we’ll have 10s of 1000s more we’ll listen once this episode drops, we love all of you and so are so grateful to all of you. So for it Newsweek Thank you for supporting our show. And the best way that you can help us grow is by telling another realtor or anyone that owns a business, or anyone that is struggling managing their money about Quinn, and also any other realtor that wants to learn how to manage their money, tell them about keeping it real. Send them over to our website, keeping it real podcast, Jeff sorry, what’s our website, keeping it real pod.com Is every place you can go or you can just pull up any podcast app search for keeping it real. Hit that subscribe and like button and let us know what you think of the show. Give us a review. We appreciate it. And we read all of your comments and reviews. So Quinn, thank you so so much. Oh, and by the way, I’m sorry. One last thing I want to announce after five years of being on the show, and I should have done this many many years before but I finally doing it. Now we have this short form clip video clips that we post every single weekday on Facebook, Instagram, tik, Tok, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, we post these short form 62nd clips from episodes like like this one. And we post them everyday. So you get a bite sized nugget of information that will help you run your business. So check us out on social media, our link tree which has all of our social plans, all of our social channels will be in the show notes as well. So click on that and follow us on this social network of your choosing. All right, Quinn, thank you so much for being on the show. We appreciate you and we look forward to seeing everybody on the next episode. Thanks Quinn. Thank you

Welcome to the May episode of Learn with a Lender with Joel Schaub of Guaranteed Rate! In this episode Joel discusses what’s going on in the world of lending rates and what are the opportunities that agents should educate their clients on at the moment. Joel also talks about the importance of understanding the numbers and how to educate renters for their opportunities as property owners. Joel also explains the recent changes in the market that are affecting both people with lower credit score and those with perfect credit score. Last, Joel reminds everyone how to sign up for his weekly newsletter. 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 0:00What can you do about high interest rates for your buyers and how it affects your sellers? Well, you probably think not much, but today we’re going to show you what you can do to keep your business running in a high interest rate environment. 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. Right 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 today, once again is our monthly series called Learn with a lender with Joel shop from guaranteed rate. Let’s tell you more about Joel Joel is the vice president of lending at guaranteed rate. He’s been doing loans at a high level since 1220 years now to that actually 21 years. He’s been doing this since 2003. And he got to that level of being one of the top lenders in the nation because of what he does specifically for agents, which is he gives back part of his commission to your client on every transaction. Last year alone, Joel gave back over $300,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with him. And that puts Joel’s volume in the top 1/10 of 1% of all lenders nationwide, which is a really impressive number because there are over 400,000 loan officers in in the country and Joel is currently ranked 137 out of 400,000. So he is really at the very top of the mountain last year alone he closed 319 transactions is highest ever. And that was for 126 million in loans, which is insane. This year, he’s already closed. And remember, this is not an easy year for loan officers. He closed 106 transactions already for just shy of 40 or sorry, just over $45 million insane. Now if you’re ever looking for a to work with maybe a different loan officer, maybe you don’t have a great relationship with people that you’ve worked with in the past or you’re just want to expand your business and want to partner with one of the best we cannot more highly recommend Joel he’s the very best we’ve ever worked with. Guess what he did my loan. That’s how much I like him. And it’s not because he’s my friend. It’s because he’s literally the best. Joel can be reached at and I want everybody to shoot him an email joel@rate.com J oel@rate.com. Asked to be put on his newsletter but also asked to have a conversation with someone on his team where you guys can talk about how he can help you grow your business, shoot him a text message also or call him at 773-654-2049 Let’s say hello to the biggest Cubs fan. I know Joel welcome again to the show. Joel Schaub 3:57Hey TJ thanks so much for having me on. I love it that you referenced the Cubs even though they’re not having a good year you got to stay positive. And that’s kind of the message that I send over to real estate agents every time I meet them doesn’t matter what the market is you got to stay positive and that’s what we’re doing with the Cubs this D.J. Paris 4:12year. Well as as a Cubs fan that’s pretty much always how it is it’s we don’t win but we don’t care we just enjoy Joel Schaub 4:20there’s an old saying I think right win or lose will still booze you can go out to Wrigley and have a good time. That definitely holds true this year when they’re not winning two games. D.J. Paris 4:29Awesome. Well, what Okay, we got I think we have to talk about rates because rates are in the ether. Everyone’s you know, either frustrated about rates hoping that rates move a certain direction or just wanting to know from somebody like yourself who really has an inside track to what’s going on in the lending world. What do Realtors need to know about what’s going on today right now in with rates. Joel Schaub 4:53Well, listen, we’re now in this new normal right where when a client hears that rates are at six or six and a half percent. They’re actually not scared off by this, right? They may not like it. And I don’t like it either. But if you’re an agent, you’re not telling borrower something that they don’t know already, right? It used to be DJ, even just a few months ago, this was news. This was something that borrowers were not expecting. And now we’re finally getting to the point where everybody’s expecting it. Right? We’re actually off from the highs, there were rates that were in October, November for a 30. year fixed, that surpassed 7%. And now on today, you know, they’re averaging in the low sixes. It’s something that we can spread positivity about that they’re not as high as they once were. D.J. Paris 5:44Yeah, my, when I first got when I first bought a condo, I think it was 2005. And I was younger, younger man with, I think I still had pretty, pretty good credit, but I certainly didn’t have the income that I do today. And I Yeah, well, that’s true. I had perfect credit, almost, but very little income. But I remember I got five points, 5%, maybe, around that number, somewhere around there. And I was, that was okay. For me, it seemed reasonable. So I think people need to remember, historically that we’re, you know, if we’re just comparing against the 3% days of a few years ago, you’re always going to lose, because those were historic lows. But people are still concerned thinking that rates are higher than they’d like to be. Realtors are obviously struggling with this with their buyers. So what do you what sort of opportunities are there right now that agents should be educating their clients about and how to take action? Joel Schaub 6:40Well, right now, since rates are higher, we just have less buyers, right? We just simply do, they’re, they’ve been priced out. So there’s a lot of people that only could buy DJ, when rates were at two and a half or three and a half percent. And now that they are up over 6%, there is a contingency of buyers that just are not in the market. And so that means if we are in the market, we have less bids on that property, even though at the moment I say that I know that agents out there, say and not my market, we’re seeing multiple offers on hot properties. And I understand that for sure. But if we’re a buyer in this market, and the strategy would be I’m going to wait until rates come down to buy it’s not a good strategy, right? There’s going to be even more of an influx of buyers, if all of a sudden rates drop, and we don’t anticipate them just overnight. Dropping a full point, I think it’s going to be a gradual thing. But I do think that it’s going to start this year, even by the third and fourth quarter of this year. I do anticipate rates being lower than they are now. D.J. Paris 7:42Yeah, I mean, we also have to remember to back in the 3% days that obviously you were working probably harder than ever because nobody was priced out of the market, except everyone was kind of priced out of the market, because prices went up so much higher. It was like the rate was amazing. We’re like, whoo, I’d like to only pay 2.75% Except I can’t get anything because everyone’s buying things $100,000 over asking without even going to see the property. So let’s let’s all also everyone viewers, listeners, remember that those weren’t just the easy days, those were good days, but they were very difficult to actually get if you had listings, you were doing great. If you had buyers, it was tough. So now as Joel mentioned, yeah, rates are higher. But boy, I, you know, I’d rather have less competition and a slightly higher rate or you know, even even a much higher rate, knowing that I could at least get the property that I want, then refinance a couple of years later and bring that rate down. Joel Schaub 8:38What we’re seeing right now is sellers just don’t want to trade up and do that big of a rate increase. If I’m selling my house today that has a 3% rate DJ and I have to go with them take a 6.5% rate, I’m just not going to sell the home. And I think there’s some evidence here that if rates do dip into the fives, which we probably will see here in q3 and definitely q4 of this year and into next year, we will start to see sellers say Okay, now that rates have come down, I’m okay trading up. But I think that 6% is this, this threshold where sellers are just saying I’m going to stay put. And if we do see these rates, get down into the fives we will see a not a large number of sellers are still going to be sellers, DJ that will never sell that. All right, they’re going to be the incidental landlord, all of a sudden, they’re going to just keep that property and put a renter in it versus selling it. But I know that we will start seeing much more inventory as these rates come down and we’ll be seeing that soon. D.J. Paris 9:37You know, for me as a, as somebody who considers themselves slightly outside or adjacent to the real estate industry, I’m not a practicing realtor. I would much rather have less competition on on the purchase. So if the rates dip into the fives, which we hope of course they will I know the NAR Chief Economist believes they will Well, hopefully by get to about five and a half by this, you know, the end of the year, who knows, we don’t nobody has a crystal ball. But I would actually be a little afraid of that, because so many buyers are waiting on the sidelines, I would just hate for there to be a buying frenzy, waiting for that rate to hit. And then all of a sudden, I’m sort of back in a similar scenario to when it was 3% days, where it was just lots of buyers, prices going up, right now prices are down, this might be a good time to even get in at 6%. Knowing that I can get what I want, pay a little bit extra for a couple of years, maybe made probably less, but whatever, pay a little bit more, and then possibly refinance into a more comfortable place. To me, I think where you live is, is you know, it’s like you buy a TV, but after a couple of weeks, you don’t even notice, like how much you paid for it anymore. It’s just your TV, but at least it’s the TV you want. And I think that that that realtors, you know, really could do themselves a huge favor by saying, Hey, it’s okay, if you want to wait. But here’s what happened, the last time rates got lower, is we had this huge challenge of actually getting buyers to actually, you know, close on property. Joel Schaub 11:11So the action plan, if you’re a realtor is have the clients actually speak with a loan officer, somebody on the mortgage side to make sure they’re comfortable with the payments. So we’re so focused on this rate. But we don’t put a rate on a check every single month, and I’m dating myself saying a check, but you’re making a monthly payment. And the payment is what matters. It’s not the rate. So understanding what the all in payment is. And if you’re comfortable with that payment, let’s buy something if we’re not comfortable with that, then we have to wait. And it’s just about being honest with ourselves and understanding what is our maximum purchase price, working with a trusted loan officer to actually get that information. And I’m thinking, Oh, it’s much worse than they think. And we go through the numbers and they realize, okay, with these rates, it’s actually not that bad. Maybe my payment is 230 or $300 more per month than that price point. But when rates do come down, I can refinance the debt. So that’s one of the big things is just understanding the numbers, knowledge is more important than anything and just understanding where you are actually at. And doing that with your buyers will put you in a good position. D.J. Paris 12:22You’re so right, the actual rate percentage itself is largely irrelevant. It’s just what our brains kind of, for some reason, that’s an easier number for us to sort of grasp in our brain. rates are high rates are low. I know that number, but you’re right. At the end of the day, it’s about how much did I pay for the home? How much downpayment did I have? And what’s the check I’m writing every single month. And honestly, if it was me as a buyer, I would, I would say okay, my purchase price, because rates have gone up, my purchase price has probably come down. But so if prices a bit in certain areas, so I would still want to look at lower price properties. And see if maybe it’s not quite as big a chasm as back in the 3% days where I could afford, you know, a home, that’s an extra 150,000. Well, maybe prices have come down enough now to where that actual chasm between what you want, what the price is, is actually not as great as it used to be. So I actually think I would encourage everyone and not just because it’s good for the industry and good for the economy and good for your business. But I actually think you there’s an opportunity here to take advantage of what a lot of agents aren’t willing to do, which is a lot of agents are just sitting on the sidelines waiting for the rates to change. And it’s like, okay, maybe and maybe that’ll work out and eventually rates will change one way or the other. But I would encourage your clients to start looking because the moment somebody sees as you know, somebody sees their dream place. A lot of those trepidations and challenges go right out the window. They’re like we’re gonna have this place. Yep, it’s all it’s it’s 6%. Okay, I don’t care. I need this place. And we’ll refinance later. Joel Schaub 13:55I love that you say that because the payment really does break down a lot of the the walls of oh, I don’t want to buy because rates are high. So if you’re an agent right now that’s dealing with a lot of clients that are move up or higher end buyers that already own a home. Yeah, you do have an issue, right? A lot of people don’t want to move. But I work with a lot of agents where their book of business or first time buyers, you’re working with people that are already renting in a lot of markets throughout the United States, rents are as high as they’ve ever been. It’s very easy to spend two, three or $4,000 a month in rent. And it’s funny when you talk to these borrowers and say, Well, I’m going to wait one more year. I don’t like six and a half percent, or I don’t like 5.75. I’m going to keep paying the rent. Well, that’s 100% interest, every single dollar that you spent as money gone when you’re renting, I’d much rather have five or 6% of my money going to interest than 100% of it going out the window for rent, right and so, educating and talking to borrowers and see In what they can buy for an equal or even sometimes DJ lower amount than they’re paying in rent right now. It’s just that little switch that’ll go off in a borrower’s mind, you got to make the phones ring, you got to go create your own destiny right now you can’t just wait for borrowers to call and say I’d like to buy a home, it doesn’t work that way anymore. So find out where renters are and be the person that they go to and educate and teach in your business as well. D.J. Paris 15:27And right now, you’re right is it’s the absolute best time to reach out to first time homebuyers, renters in particular, and just saying, Hey, you got a huge opportunity. Now, so many buyers are sitting on the sidelines, let’s get you out of you know, giving away all of your, your housing money to the landlord. And let’s figure out a way to you know, to get you, obviously, some, a little bit of principal, and also some tax deductions next year on the interest, I think huge opportunity for anyone renting. So here’s here’s a quick little opportunity I have for anyone listening, if you’re looking to find more renters reach out to anyone you know, who works at a company, especially like a tech firm, where maybe it’s a lot, it’s a skewed younger workforce, maybe people in their 20s, in particular, and I would offer to reach out say, Hey, who is there an HR manager at your company? Or who, you know, can I come in and just plan a lunch and just do a quick little informational session about, you know why maybe buying now is a good idea, or why people should consider home ownership versus renting. And I would reach out to whoever is in charge of the HR or in charge of these events, and say, Hey, can I come in and bring lunch? I mean, this is a huge opportunity right? Now, if you’re like, I don’t know, any renters, you can find them talk to your clients say, Hey, do you have a lot of 20 somethings in your office, I would like to come and do a presentation and bring somebody like Joel along with you who can actually have the conversation and talk about this elegantly. And then you know, reap all the benefits of these people who aren’t shopping rates, they’re not worried about rates, they’re just wanting to maybe consider what the next step is. And the rate is not as important to them as somebody who’s already got a mortgage and looking to either upgrade or change. So yeah, huge opportunity there. Joel Schaub 17:08I always leave with education, and you go to those events do you talk about the number one objection that younger people have is the down payment, right. So I just always use this example, if somebody’s paying $2,000 a month in rent, these year, they’re going to spend $24,000 This year, right? If we negotiated rent per year, the way that we do per month, everything would change. And he said I’m gonna give you $24,000 to live here for the next 12 months, and you’re gonna give me nothing in return, I have to think that rents would be lower, they probably wouldn’t be. But when you put it in the actual annual dollar amount, and then you say, Well, you could actually buy a home with just 3% down on it first time homebuyer Program, or 3.5% down on an FHA program, you could buy a $400,000 house and only put down $20,000. And we have ways to help you with the seller to cover your closing costs. So do you want to spend $24,000 Over the next 12 months? Or can we put together 20 grand and actually go own a home. And that’s the big benefit that we talked about. D.J. Paris 18:17I love that. And I am starting to see a lot more buyers now taking advantage of the 3% programs, the three and a half percent FHA, I’ve seen a lot we’re seeing a lot of that here at our brokerage where people are doing more of those deals, where they are lower, you know, initial upfront and still getting pretty good rates. So you know, this is going to be another great opportunity to talk to anyone renting and say, Hey, I’m Joel Schaub 18:44so excited about it. So excited. I think the camera went out, but I haven’t the idea. It’s just such a great idea to get out there and actually educate D.J. Paris 18:53Well, Joel’s camera is gone, but his voice is still there. So we will power through. We only have a few people watching this live anyway. So it’s no problem at all. But Joe, I’ve also been hearing these these rumors that it might just be marketing stuff, but I’m hearing like, oh, there’s these programs now at certain lenders where even people with moderately Okay, credit or even less than Okay, credit are getting the same rates that people with perfect credit are having even better rates sometimes. And so I want to just talk is is that happening? If not, let’s let’s dispel that myth. Joel Schaub 19:30Yeah, you see it in the news a lot lately, right. The the Biden administration is giving people with lower rates, better or lower credit scores, I should say better rates than somebody who has good credit and a good down payment. Just do a quick search. It’s not hard to see all these news stories coming up. And really it’s Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have retooled their loan level price adjustments, and to put it really easily because They’ve been around for years, it’s just another way to price risk DJ, if you had a lower credit score, you would probably be charged a higher interest rate. Right? If you’re putting less money down, you’d probably be charged a higher interest rate. So none of this is new. What did happen recently was that they did make it easier for people with lower credit scores, and lower down payments, to pay less in fees. And so it’s overall a good story mixed in there, there are some casualties were people that do have good credit scores. And people that do have good downpayments are paying slightly more than they would have three months ago. So that’s absolutely true. But I want to dispel the myth that anybody who has a 650 credit score today is going to have a better interest rate than somebody who has a 780 credit score. It’s just simply not the case. And that has to make sense. D.J. Paris 20:56Yeah, it does in any, you know, there’s that old expression for for news media, which is if it bleeds, it leads, meaning, you know, as was pretty obvious, but in case anyone didn’t understand that, it’s, if it’s if it’s going to elicit outrage, or fear, or, you know, those are a huge human emotions. So obviously, news media outlets will focus on that part of it, and your video is back, which is great for our viewing audience. But yeah, so So this is, you know, this is just if it bleeds, it leads, again, an opportunity for an agent to correct the narrative that some of the news outlets are, are projecting just to get more views and clicks. So I’ll give you Joel Schaub 21:38an example of this. And I don’t mean to cut you off. But it really is important to understand that these low level price adjustments have been around forever. We just retooled them on the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac side. And so here’s a perfect example of a borrower that had a 20% down payment, and a 650 credit score, today would pay about $3,000 less in costs on a $400,000 loan than they would have before. Okay, which is a positive thing. At the same time, a pretty cookie cutter deal where somebody has a 740 credit score, and they’re putting down 20%, that person now is going to pay $3,000 More than they would have before. And that’s kind of the outrage, right? Somebody that has good credit, a pretty typical situation 20% down, their loan level price adjustments have gone up by 75 basis points, where somebody with a lower credit score improved by 75 basis points. And so we’re never going to get this exactly right. They’re trying to make it more equitable, for lower credit score borrowers and more first time homebuyers. But there are casualties along the way. And I can definitely see the outrage on both sides. D.J. Paris 22:54Yeah, and again, we should just point out again, this is the exception rather than the rule. It’s very unusual. And it’s really just a convergence of events that are happening that create this, it’s not to specifically punish the people who are doing well with their credit and reward the people who have struggled, it’s just kind of a confluence of events. It’s a weird sort of thing that media sees it goes, ooh, great time for an article to get some clicks. And, you know, let’s get people pissed off who worked really hard on their credit. And, obviously, again, it’s not as widespread as as so I’m glad you dispelled that. So agents don’t have to freak out when they are dealing with clients with good credit. But it’s important to have these conversations with a loan officer like Joe like you, so that I don’t have to worry Oh, my God, I just saw this news story. First thing I would have done was lob a text over you going, is this true? Do I have to worry about this? And you would have said don’t know, here’s how it works. So this is why it’s so important to partner with, you know, people like Joel like you, who can actually help me navigate as the agent through this so that I know what to say to clients. That’s what I’m always worried about is what is my answer when a client asks me a question. And of course, we always want to be seen as the knowledge source. So tall having somebody like you on my team would be helpful because you’re going to feed me and I’m going to then feed that to my client. Joel Schaub 24:16I recently talked about this in my weekly newsletter that breaks it down so that you’d actually have bite sized pieces that you can talk to your buyers about or your sellers about. And instead of having this legal mumbo jumbo about Fannie Mae’s loan level price adjustments, it’s gonna written out for you, you can actually dissect it and understand in less than 60 seconds how you could disseminate information and not only sound smarter, but be smarter understand what’s actually going on in our industry. So if you want to sign up for the newsletter, it’s free. You can simply email me Joel J. O el@rate.com. And say, add me to your newsletter. That will send that over to you on a weekly basis to that you allow up to date information about the market. Completely no obligation. We’re happy to help you guys every step of the way. D.J. Paris 25:08Yeah, guys, I really can’t encourage you more to do this. Aren’t you tired of just getting, you know, prospecting prospecting emails from from loan officers are like Happy Mother’s Day emails, which is great. All that’s good. I’m not here to put it down. But aren’t you tired of only getting that from lenders, where if you sign up for Joel’s newsletter, which is awesome, because it gives you like four or five bullet points and some explanation, more explanation, but it gives you these bullet points where you can every single week where you can literally just parrot what is Joel sends to you. And so you can go out there and seem knowledgeable. And guys, it’s awesome. Subscribe, email joel@rate.com for that, and he will send you that out every single week and his team is awesome. Well, Joel, I think that’s a really good place for us to wrap up. I think we covered a lot today. We kept it short and sweet. Unless you have any other topics you want to dive into. I think this is a great place to wrap. Joel Schaub 26:05I’ll just leave you with if you’re an agent. Remember that it’s not all about 30 year fixed rates, have your borrowers look at all of the options. Okay? There are rates right now that are in the threes, fours and fives. You can utilize seller paid buy downs, understand what arm rates are looking like right now understand what 15 and 20 year rates are looking at right now. And understand how you can use it to one buy down for your clients in the next few years. While rates are going to continue to go down. Let’s make sure we understand all the ways that you can educate your borrowers and clients on how to get lower rates. So it’s not just 30 year fixed, get out there. D.J. Paris 26:46And I’ll tease you guys to about our previous episode that Joel and I did a month ago. So you’ll have to go back a few episodes to find it. But Joel talked about some really interesting loan products that I guarantee you’ve never heard of. I won’t tell you what they are, I’ll tease you. But if you go back to the previous episode, you will hear Joel talk about some cool opportunities. Specifically like when children are going to college, there’s opportunities there. And even like for parents that are elderly that are going into, you know, assisted living, or just buying a home for mom and dad as they’re older. So anyway, that’s the only tease I’ll give you but these are really cool products I almost guarantee you’ve never heard of. So go back a month ago, listen to that episode, we’ll put a link to it in the show notes by the way, so you don’t have to search too hard for it. Or even better just reach out to Joel directly and have him tell you about things like a two one body down and some of these other products that are really cool and creative ways to get your clients to a more palatable, monthly amount that they’re writing for their mortgage. So reach out to Joel joel@rate.com. You can also shoot him an email or sorry, obviously, you can shoot me an email, but you can also call him and we have his phone number there in the show notes. So guys, thank you so much for everyone watching, listening, supporting our show our numbers, which is amazing. I’ve really never been better. So I am so thankful. And Joel is part of that reason why we have such high numbers because his content is so incredibly valuable. He comes on every single month, please support him, how reach out to him, get on his newsletter and ask him for how you guys can work together to get more deals closed faster. So again, joel@rate.com He’s amazing. He’s the best. And on behalf of all of our age, our listeners and viewers. Thank you, Joel. And on behalf of Joel and myself, we say thank you as well. One last thing before you sign off, please don’t sign up just yet because I want to ask you to do just two quick things. One is tell a friend of course, tell one other agent who’s struggling right now about this episode, send them a link to this episode. And also, please check out check us out on social media we are on now all the social media channels. I didn’t have an Instagram account for the last five years. That was a mistake. We have one now. And we are posting daily content from these episodes. So I have one of a new member to our team France. He goes through he combs through each episode, he finds like three clips or so that are bite size, 60 seconds or less but something actionable. Something you can literally do right now to help grow your business. And we publish those every single weekday on social media. This includes Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, all the channels, so please just Google Find us on whatever channel we’re easy to find. So look for a subscribe and you’ll get that daily dose of wisdom from people like Joel In fact, I published one from today from Joe’s episode last month. So follow us if you want to find us on Instagram the easiest probably one there. It’s top agent interviews. That’s our hashtag or that’s our handle someone else that already had keeping it real podcast so anyway, top agent interviews, but just Google that you’ll find us Alright Joel, thank you so much and we will see everybody on the next episode.