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In our May episode of Monday Market Minute, Carrie McCormick from @properties and Christies International talks about testimonials and reviews. Carrie reminds us that you can ask all the parties involved in a transaction for a review, not only your client. Next, discusses platforms for reviews to live in and how to post them in your social media accounts. Carrie and D.J. also discuss how how to deal with negative reviews. Last, Carrie and D.J. emphasize the importance of asking for reviews from your clients and all the other parties involved in your transaction. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Carrie can be reached at carrie@atproperties.com or by phone at 312.961.4612. Please follow Carrie on Instagram by clicking here. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00You should assume that every client is going to Google you and read your reviews. So let’s help you get more reviews. 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 Real the largest podcast for real estate agents and buy real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show and today on the show is our annual ARPs our annual our monthly series called The Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick it’s a lot of EMS from the Kerry McCormick Real Estate Group with at properties. Carrie is a top top top 1% producer in Chicago with over 20 years of experience helping buyers sellers and investors in Cary is always not in the top 1% or even 1/10 of 1% but probably 1/10 of 1/10 of 1%. So out of 46,000 Realtors in Chicago, she’s like in the top 10 to 15 Out of all of them literally so she is a true superstar. She’s an expert in everything from first time homebuyers, veteran investors and luxury properties. She also works with a lot of developers and is often chosen to represent their high end developments. And she has a reputation here in Chicago as being very sought after as a speaker. So if you ever need anyone to speak at events, she is also a great resource. We are just excited to have her on our show every single month for the past five years. Please visit her at her website, Carrie McCormick r e.com. But more importantly, follow her on Instagram. She has an incredible Instagram or social media presence. And she does it all herself. So you can find her at Carey McCormick real estate on Instagram links to those in the show notes. Carrie, welcome back to the show. Carrie McCormick 3:01Well, thank you. Thank you. That’s quite the intro and I appreciate you and everything you do. D.J. Paris 3:06I appreciate you because you were one of the very first people to come on my little show at the time. And you have been such a loyal member of our of our staff I guess I’d say and it is a real honor i i will say for all of our listeners Karis name comes up a lot when I’m I work on some committees at the Chicago Association at the local level. And whenever we need speakers heard, your name is always always suggested and so I’m like I’m so lucky to be able to get to talk to her every month. So our listeners are lucky as well. So what do we got going on this week? This month? Carrie McCormick 3:46Yeah, so I wanted to talk about testimonials and reviews. Because you know, as we’re busy and we’re doing our thing you know it’s sometimes we forget about how important reviews and testimonials are and it just dawned on me actually, I forget what I was looking for but well it was a product I was buying actually and you know I went to go look at the reviews that everyone had written about this particular product and really kind of got you know, in depth of reading through the reviews and made a decision to buy something based on the reviews and you know, it is important in our business and I do think with people being online and making decisions that having a roof or testimonials we need to focus on them. So you know I’m it’s always this is always a reminder to myself, you know, I’ve got a lot of reviews online and there’s there’s months that go by that I’m like, oh shoot, you know, I forgot to do that. I forgot to ask that person for review. So implementing a system that right after your transaction is completed to make sure that you reach out to that home buyer or home seller and get a review for yourself and then I started thinking is, you know, in, in every transaction, there’s a few different parties involved, right? You’ve got the attorneys, you’ve got the lenders, you’ve got the inspectors. So why don’t you ask those people for a review as well, because they were part of action with you, as it Yeah. And, you know, I started doing that with the attorney. And you know, like, the attorney would send me an email and say, you know, it was so nice working with you, you know, you’re a true pro blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, well, thank you. And so are you. You know, would you mind I love that you did that. Would you mind? Here’s a link, you know, would you mind writing a little review for me, right, because I think it’s important not only from our consumers, our, you know, our buyers and sellers to give us a review, but everyone else in that transaction. And so you know, that’s another way to get more reviews. The other I noticed a problem. But the other challenge that we have is that there’s so many different places to put a review, right? You can do Yelp, you can do Google business, realtor.com, Zillow, your own company’s website, right? You’ve got all these different platforms that people can put reviews on, right. And so I work for at properties Christie’s international here in Chicago, and our company, after a transaction is complete at properties, Christie’s will send out an email directly to the consumer, to write a review for me, which is then housed on our website. Well, that’s fantastic. And that’s great. But not a lot of people go to the app properties website, to look at my reviews. Right? Right. So you know, I use a lot of Google business profiles. So I want the the review to be on there. And then again, you’ve got Yelp. So anyways, my point is, is that pick the platform that best works for you, and concentrate on that or find a way that you can cross? Do your reviews on cross different on different platforms? Sure. So I think that is, is great. And then once you do get those great reviews, what do you do from there? So one, obviously social media, right, so let’s exploit that great review. So whether you’re going to put it on your LinkedIn account, your Facebook account, your Instagram account, use that review and share it on social media. Some clients don’t like photos of them. So obviously, make sure that if you’re either posting their house or a picture of them, you ask them permission to do that, because a lot of people are private, and they don’t want other people to know that they bought a house or sold a house or where they’re living. So just you know, a word of caution, make sure that you ask for permission before you put a client’s name, of course name but you know, their picture and or their house up there. D.J. Paris 8:00So yeah, I have a bunch of thoughts. This is such great advice. And we don’t talk about reviews enough. And I’ll tell you what we did at our brokerage, similar to what app properties does, is, and this is something that anyone can really implement for themselves. And I actually built the system for our company. And obviously, somebody built it for your company as well. And it really wasn’t that hard to build. And so what we do is, every time one of our agents has a closing, it’s kind of a manual job, because we have to go through and pull the email address of the client, which I wish was in a central location where we could copy and paste, but a lot of times, it’s paper apps or whatever, and you anyway, you have to find the client’s information. But obviously, as the agent, you would already have that. So what I would do is I would let the client know, well, going all the way back to the beginning of the relationship, I would let them know say, hey, you know, once we get through this transaction, I’m going to be sending you a you know, an evaluation of me if you don’t mind sharing the good, the bad, the ugly, share everything. You know what the experience was like, that would really help me out. And then once that transaction closes within a couple of days, ideally maybe even while I don’t know if same day is the right the right time, you might have a better gauge on when to send I think we send it about a week after approximately is kind of when we do it. Just kind of let the dust settle on everything. And then the the way that we do it is kind of cute. We have I have a picture of a kitten. I would bring it up here on the video thing, but most of our audience wouldn’t see it anyway. But it’s like a kitten begging. So it looks like a kitten. It’s like the cutest picture ever. And it says would you please leave our broker a review and then it says if you know whether you had a good or, you know, whatever experience you had, we’d love to hear about it. And then we direct everyone specifically to either Zillow or Google for you know and like you said for our company stuff, which is not really the broker wants obviously that testimonial to live where they want it to live as well. So yes, the company that you work for might get this themselves might be sending these kinds of emails out. And you also want to reach out to the client. And then you want to, like you said, you want to ask permission to continue to use that. Testimonial, maybe say, Hey, you wrote, wow, thank you so much for writing this incredible review, would it be okay, if I use this in this this quote, maybe a line from it? Or, you know, in a social media post, or maybe an advertisement, is it would you be okay, if I, you know, would it be okay, if I used a picture of you? If so, can you send me one, if not, I can just put your name, if not, we can just put your first name. And like, whatever the level of comfort is, the person has, you can, you can then use that, like, Carrie, I know you’re a big fan of Canva. So you can then drop all that into Canva, make some cool posts, which you can actually post the testimonial on Google My Business, which is the you know, local sort of, you know, not you can actually post content there. So you can post it there, you can post it on all your social media channels. And I think it’s, the reality of it is is the first thing I do when I buy something on Amazon as an example. I go straight to the reviews before I purchase. So I think even in the best possible scenario where somebody’s referred a business deal over to you, maybe it’s a previous client, oh, you got to work with Carrie, she is the very, very best, I suspect. Of course, those are amazing, but I still think people probably look you up on top of that. Carrie McCormick 11:35I do I do. And another thing is, think about negative reviews. You know, it’s it’s kind of scary that well, when you ask someone for review, especially with a great, you know, transaction, you know that they’re gonna give you a good review. Today, you know, Zillow? Gosh, I don’t know how I don’t remember how they did their reviews. Or if you asked for more, that system automatically sent it out. But it was a star system, right. So it was like, it was so easy to rank someone, you know, one through five stars five being the best, of course. And someone gave me a four star review, which in the real world, it’s not that bad, right. But what it did is if I had 50 reviews of five stars, and one four star review, it took the whole average down pretty significantly. Yeah. And it was like, I was no longer a five star agent. I was like a 4.8 star agent, which was just like, No, you know, and it’s like you couldn’t remove that review. And it was like, you know, so it’s like, if you have, that’s not a bad review, but if you have a negative review or anything like that, we know what do you do? And obviously you you have to respond to the review. And obviously be gracious. And you know, the public will watch your review, or I’m sorry, watch your response and see how you respond to them. And I did I remember asking the person, you know, you know, I appreciate you I had a great experience with you. And you know, I appreciate the review. But I’m just had a curiosity, you know, why did I not, you know, get a five star versus a four star? And then the person said, Oh, I clicked on it wrong. D.J. Paris 13:18Right. Exactly. Carrie McCormick 13:20It was just like, you know, well, I appreciate the response. You know, and you know, I’m so glad you know. So there was a conversation that went into that. And I remember calling Zillow and I’m like, you know, here’s their response, can you change it because I want my five stars back and they could, or it was it was, it was out there. But you know, if you do get a negative response or a negative review, it’s so important to obviously respond to to that and be gracious and be professional, avoid blaming or any accusations, of course, and just remain professional. D.J. Paris 13:56In those comments live forever. So I what we’ve learned is it it’s funny too, because the four out of five star is actually harder to respond to than the one star, because the one star review, which which we get those two, those are actually easier to respond to because they’re usually the people writing them are usually a little goofy, right? For lack of a better word. I mean, unless you really screwed up and did a bad job as an agent. But usually the person is a little goofy. So they’re going to out themselves in their comments most likely about their goofiness and then your response to a one star review is actually you know, like all you have to do is own it and apologize and say I’ll do whatever I can to make this right. Because again, it’s going to live forever. And all that other people want to see is that you took ownership of it. You didn’t like you said you didn’t blame you didn’t judge. You didn’t say well, you did this and you’d write you know you did that and you just said I accept responsibility. I will do what I can to fix this. Thank you for your feedback. And I’m sorry for your experience. And that in that fixes it, it really does. And even if, you know it brings you from a 5.0 to a 4.6. When people dive into it, they’ll go, oh, there was one wacky person, and every single business has wacky reviews, it’s just part of the deal. So it’s all it’s not so much to me about the actual number, like, I would love to be a five oh, for everything to, but it’s not going to happen. So because it’s not going to happen, it’s all about the response for me, Carrie McCormick 15:32right. And I start doing that with businesses that I’ve encountered or services, you know, if they ask for a review, I’ve been giving them you know, reviews, because it’s, it’s how we build our business, too. So it’s important to me to get reviews from my clients, I want to be able to pay that forward to other businesses and service providers out there. Write good reviews, because of course, some businesses, you just see all the negative, you know, people do the reviews only when they have a negative experience. But I think it’s important to, to point out the good stuff as well. D.J. Paris 16:05Well, yeah. And also, it’s important to ask, we was funny, in our brokerage, we did not used to ask for reviews, and we had mostly negative reviews as a result. I mean, we still I shouldn’t say mostly negative, that’s not true. But we had a lot more negative reviews, when we left it up to chance, when we just said, Hey, because typically when people write reviews, they’re more likely to be unhappy than happy if they haven’t been prompted. If they’re doing it on their own volition. They’re probably upset, or they had the very best experience of their life. And people are more likely to do it when they had a bad experience and a good experience. So you do have to ask, and when you do ask, we went from having like 50 reviews, where we had never asked, we had about 50 reviews, and some of them were five stars, some of them are one star. And then we said, we’re just going to start asking everybody, even if they had a bad experience, we’re going to ask everybody, and we’ve gone from 50 to about 500 Google reviews within a couple of years, simply by asking, and almost all five stars now, like it’s incredible, by actually opening it up to everyone and asking for it, we get them. And we but again, but like you said, giving a review, especially to a small business in your local area is huge. We all all of us small businesses, every agents a small business to, we know when we get a review, because we see it and we get an alert. And it is a very important thing for struggling small businesses and all small business struggle, all small businesses struggle. So this is a way you like you said you can pay it forward. And you can also, you know, do a review swap. If you want to, you could say hey, I’m gonna leave you a five star review and hope that the person feels obligated to maybe even return the favor. That’s a Carrie McCormick 17:48great idea. And a lender did that to me once they said, you know, if you write a review for me, I’ll write a review back and it was you know, I don’t know if they wrote me a review back. But I thought that was nice, you know, it was a nice, you know, back and forth between the two. So I think that’s, that’s a great way to approach it, especially with a vendor or a partner. Well, that D.J. Paris 18:11was the other part that you said that was so brilliant, which was don’t just let the client chime in, because the client was probably going to have a good experience. But who knows, maybe sometimes deals go bad. And then you know, and then but there’s a lot of other people associated with the deal. The attorney, the lender, the processor for the lender. I mean, there’s a lot of people that can chime in. And also probably a good opportunity if anyone listening is a lender and wants to sort of gain favor with other realtors. Write your own reviews for people you’ve worked with and close deals with because they will appreciate it and they’ll probably more likely to want to work with you again too. Carrie McCormick 18:49Yeah, I mean, it gets your name out there right because you get to sign off on your reviews so your name gets out there so it’s not that a bad thing Yeah, it’s D.J. Paris 18:57it’s we live in in an environment or a society now where it’s so easy to be negative and ashamed to spew bad experiences so easily. Right? We have social media, we have just ways to talk about bad things. I had a very bad experience with a flatware company of all things like one of the worst possible buying experience I’ve ever had was buying silverware just recently. And this company, I won’t even mention their name, but they’re a big deal company and I’m an I think I’m a nice person. And they just went completely off the rails and I was like, I’m going to destroy this company. I can’t wait to review bomb them. And then I and I ultimately I didn’t because I don’t want to hurt another business but but like I was fired up to do it because they treated me poorly. So my point is is like if you know if you have other people in your corner that you can ask for reviews. Please ask don’t leave it up for just the angry people because the angry people are gonna write reviews. And, you know, with respect to people’s homes, things always can go can go sour out that aren’t even your fault that you can get blamed for. So stack some good reviews by asking a lot of other people associated with the deal. Ask the agent on the other side. That’s could be a review swap. Hey, I thought you did a really good job, Mr. And Mrs. buyer’s agent. I’m the listing agent. So I’m going to I just want to let you know I left your review, and then hope that they return the favor. Carrie McCormick 20:20That’s actually a good one too. What’s that? I’m sorry? Good collaboration? D.J. Paris 20:28Yeah, well, this is yeah, I am a big fan of reviews. And I use them a lot personally, in my own life to make decisions. So please ask your clients for reviews. I know. There’s always a thing about asking, asking for business, asking for reviews, asking for things. It’s hard, I get it. And I don’t know that you should always ask for everything. But asking for a review explaining why you want the review is important. Because if you explain it to your client, saying, hey, it’s really important, because people do look at my reviews. So I would appreciate it. If you could share your experience that would really help me, you know, in my own business, really that simple. I think that’s a great place to wrap up. Let’s keep this one short and sweet. Because I don’t think we can do better than that. That was amazing. So for oh, I want to tell everybody really quickly before you sign off, we have started clipping our episodes, it only took five years, I’m finally doing it. What does it mean? What does this mean? So I now have somebody who goes through these episodes and combs through them to find the very best like three to five moments per show that are these little small clips, usually 30 to 60 seconds, and we put captions to them and we make them look kind of pretty. And then we post them all over social media tick tock Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, everywhere. We are posting these and we post them every single weekday. So for example, for this episode, we’ll probably have to probably have three or four for this episode. So please, guys, don’t just wait for our episodes to come in. You can actually get bite sized information follow us on social we’re all over just Google us whatever social platform you’re using. Just search for keeping it real hit that subscribe button you’ll get a daily little dose of a little videos nugget of wisdom from people like Carrie and also please follow Carrie on face on sorry on Instagram and follow her on Facebook as well but follow her on Instagram particular she is like the queen of Instagram for realtors here in Chicago and Carrie McCormack real estate is the Instagram handle on you also follow her on her website which is Carrie McCormick ra if you are a realtor who has people moving to the Chicagoland area and you don’t practice here, Carrie would love the opportunity to talk with you she has a huge network of people that refer her clients to her because she is that sought after, especially in the high net worth luxury space, but she can help you with really all of your client’s needs. So if you have people moving to or from Chicago, she is a great resource for you. And Carrie, anything else we should be talking about? Yes, Carrie McCormick 23:08I have one more thing that I’m going to talk about or say to you is I am now speaking at Inman in Las D.J. Paris 23:15fancy Carrie McCormick 23:17hopefully we’ve got some listeners that will be at Inman and I’m excited to take the stage and I don’t know what about yet there but I will be in Las Vegas at Inman so if anyone’s going would love to meet you in person D.J. Paris 23:31I might have to attend as well just to come see you. That is amazing. Congratulations on that I love Inman and I actually saw the owner of your company speak at Inman, New York many years ago that one, and he was awesome. And I think we’re getting them on the show soon, which is very exciting, too. So congratulations, Carrie. If you got anyone who is near the Las Vegas area who’s going to Inman, that’s a session you want to see you want to talk to somebody? You want to hear what Carrie says because she is doing it every single day. 20 years and by the way, she doesn’t have a team. She is literally doing it all herself and she does over like 150 plus million in production a year. She’s absolutely incredible. So go see her in Las Vegas for Inman reached out to her if you have clients in the area. And if you’re a buyer or seller looking for an agent in Chicago, she is the very best so reach out to her. All right, Carrie, thank you. Thank you on to our audience. Thank you to Carrie. We will see everyone on the next episode. Thanks Carrie McCormick 24:30awesome. Bye

Welcome to another episode of Video Boot Camp for Real Estate professionals with Kim Rittberg. I don’t have the time, I feel self-conscious, I don’t know what to say. If this sounds like you (I know it does), award-winning real estate video Coach Kim Rittberg can help.  She will share tips to get yourself on camera, start attracting leads and clients right now. Want to visit New York City and walk away with 13 videos for your brand and social media? Kim has her one-time only NYC VIDEO SHOOT DAY: Thought Leader Accelerator. Find out more info and apply here! Special discount for Keeping It Real Listeners.Working to put yourself on Camera? Grab Kim’s Camera Shy To Camera Shine course. (Special 40% off for Keeping It Real listeners!) 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 0:00are you procrastinating making videos for your real estate practice? Well, don’t worry, you’re not alone. But we’re gonna get you past that today with Kim Rehberg. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solutions so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show. Kim Rittberg 1:30Hello, keeping you real listeners. I’m so excited to be back. I get so many great notes from you. And I feel like now I have a lot of new friends across the country, I actually do have new friends. So keep dropping me notes on Instagram, LinkedIn, wherever you’re at Facebook, I want to see how you’re taking my tips and actually using them. Today I wanted to talk about three things that you can do right now to start showing up on video. So to reintroduce myself, I’m chimeric Berg, I’m an award winning video producer, I spent the first 10 years of my career as a TV news producer. So writing scripting training people to be better on camera. I then took that experience to launch the digital video unit for Us Weekly, which led to $100 million sale. And then I worked in branded content at Netflix and Pop Sugar. Now I run my own business where I help real estate agents and business owners grow their leads their income and their credibility through video and podcast, which is why I’m here. I’ve been featured in Fast Company and Business Insider and I speak across national stages. I was at the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices convention in Vegas this year. Maybe you saw me there. Anyway, I’m very friendly. So make sure to connect with me on Instagram or LinkedIn or wherever and you can grab my free tips. In the show notes. Today, I really want to talk about not showing up on video. One of the major things I’m seeing with my real estate agents coast to coast, California, Ohio, Hawaii, Nebraska, wherever is that struggle to just get on video. So it’s not even at the point where like, oh, what’s the strategy? What should I do? It’s getting yourself on video. And I’m seeing that that is a hurdle that we need to overcome. I want to back up by saying you don’t need to be anything more than you. We’re all great, especially in an industry like real estate, you’re talking to people every single day. So you have a great personality, you know what you’re doing. It’s not that you’re shy, or it’s not that you’re an introvert, day in and day out, you talk to people. So already we are ahead of the curve in terms of comfort with people and comfort with showing up. And now it’s about transferring that to the camera. So first up before I even keep going I want to mention I am doing a one time only. I’ve never done this before. I mean, I’ve done this before, but not for real estate agents. I am doing a shoot day in New York City, meaning you fly to New York City, I film 12 videos for you with a professional filmmaker, professional editor, and I coach you on camera. So I direct you to put you super at ease. We have professional hair and makeup, it’s going to be so fun. So we’re gonna do a New York City shoot day plus dinner, and it’s going to be great. So if you’re interested, make sure to reach out to me and tell me you heard me and keeping it real, I’m offering a great discount just for keeping it real discounts just for keeping it real listeners. And the reason why I’m offering this visa, I think so many of my agents and business owners to really struggle with just doing it, just doing it. And so that’s why I set up the shoot day, I want to really lower that hurdle, lower the barrier to just showing up and getting there. And you absolutely can grow your converter business successfully with just your iPhone. Sometimes it’s helpful to have an award winning video director coaching you, you know giving you the confidence to speak comfortably to show up authentically. So that’s why I’m doing this one time only in New York City shoot day. You do not need to live in New York City, of course, fly in, do the shoot day, get your hair and makeup join me for dinner. It’s gonna be really fun. And then you get it all delivered. You basically don’t have to do a thing. So I want to mention that and now I want to get back to the things that you can do today to grow your business to get yourself on Video. So, number one, have a friend or family member interview you. So when we need to show up on camera, often we’re like holding up our phone, where’s my phone? Often we’re holding up our phone. And we’re like, oh my God, I feel so uncomfortable talking to a weird metal object. Okay. So when you’re just first starting out, I recommend having someone you know, ask you questions. Why is that easier? We’re all used to conversations. That’s not a barrier, obviously, especially for real estate agents, you talk to people all day long, you are great talkers, you have great personalities, that is a little easier to be putting yourself on video. So here’s how you do it. You get a little tripod or not, or you just hold the phone, your family or friend holds up the phone and asks, you just start with three questions. One is, what’s something you get asked all the time? To can be? What do you do? And why do you love it. And that’s a way to show a little bit of your humanity. And you can also feature like a fun fact. So a fun fact is always good to insert because someone knows how to talk to you. They’re not necessarily always going to comment on your social media video with like, Hmm, condos are interesting, or like, new developments aren’t interesting. But if you talk about that you use a skateboard, or that you love football that gets a conversation going that more people can participate in. So again, have them ask you questions. One could be something you get asked a lot. The second can be about why you do what you do and what you what you do whatever you represent. And then third can be something else that’s really fun. Maybe it’s a tip to buyers, or a tip for sellers. So that’s my first advice is get on camera with a conversational q&a. Your family or friend is right behind the camera, and you’re in front of it. If you’re posting to Instagram, or Tiktok, film it vertically. That’s also for YouTube shorts. All right. My second tip to get over that hurdle of getting on camera is be a guest on someone else’s video. Don’t always need to buy the Ferrari to sit in it. You can take a seat and someone else’s Ferrari. So they drive the conversation. Again, we’re talking about you are trying to jump over the hump of getting yourself on camera, right? That’s the truth. It’s easier to be interviewed. You can guide them with what questions you want to highlight, but you can show up and just answer questions, you’re still gonna want to prep, you’re gonna want to always prep before you’re on camera, feel good about yourself, have some water nearby smile, be full of energy. But it’s a lot a lot easier to show up for someone else’s video than to schedule yourself or shoot it yourself by yourself. So my second advice is show up for someone else’s video and ask someone so ask someone in your referral network, maybe it’s a vendor you work with a lot. Maybe it’s a mortgage broker or lawyer, meaning they’re more comfortable filming videos, and they can interview you. The third way that you can start showing up is through disappearing content like Instagram Stories, Facebook stories, content like that, that only lasts a certain amount of time. The reason why this is a great way to connect with people is twofold, maybe threefold, to vote. So number one, they disappear in 24 hours. So when you’re feeling a little bit stressed about you know, how am I hearing, how am I showing up, it lowers that stress level a little bit, because it’s going away in a day. Remember, nothing’s like deleted forever. So be careful, don’t do anything NSFW. Not Safe For Work. But the Instagram stories do disappear. And the reason I love Instagram Stories, Facebook stories is that they really give that connection. So let’s say my reels are always very time to music, and then lots of graphics. And it’s great. It’s great content, but people want to get to know you. And if you’re filming more real, more real content, authentic content, have you on site, maybe in your house, just prepping for your day, is letting people get to know you. And everyone’s interested in other people’s lives, no matter how boring you think your life is. Another thing I love about stories is they have these built in engagement mechanisms. So when we’re talking about engagement mechanism, meaning they can encourage people to interact with you. Now, why is interaction important? That’s what you want. If you envision social media as like a digital coffee shop, you want to be in the coffee shop, you want people to see you. You also want them to walk over and say hi. So when someone’s responding to something that you’re posting on Instagram stories, that is engagement. Obviously, it’s great. It’s like a potential lead coming over and talking to you. On top of that, the algorithm and social media likes when you get engagement. It says this is a person who people like to see the content of let’s put more of their content out there. So it will promote you. So the robots and the humans like interactive content. So here’s a couple of ways that you could do this. So you could put a poll so you could put a poll on your content. So let’s say It’s the morning, and you are getting ready for your day. And you’re talking about coffee. You’re getting your coffee ready. You’re making your coffee, you say, I love drinking a cappuccino every single day. A lot of people don’t like making fancy coffee, do you drink fancy coffee or regular coffee. Or you could say do drink tea, or coffee. And in the poll, you could just have the coffee or tea or fancy coffee or regular coffee, a very easy way for people to interact with you. So you’re not asking them, you know, what’s your favorite chemists chemical compound, I don’t even know the word. You’re not asking them what their favorite chemical compound, you’re asking something that’s like on the tip of their tongue. So that is a really good way low stress, low effort, low barrier way to start getting yourself on camera, and not want to return back to something I mentioned earlier, about connecting with people, and about sharing more with yourself. So one of the things I’m seeing for my group coaching agents, and my one on one agents is, the more they’re bringing themselves to video, the more success they’re having. So for example, if you love to dance, and you go to dance class, one of my agents does this, actually, she loves dancing, you go to dance class, maybe you support the arts in your area, bring that in. Because a lot of times we think of social media as like sell, sell, sell, sell, sell platform for advertising? Well, when you’re in a relationship based business, like real estate, you’re just trying to build that relationship, like, yes, obviously, you want people to buy from you. But as soon as you’re selling, you’re losing. As soon as you’re selling, you’re losing, you have to think of it as a way to build that relationship with every single person who hurts your post, if you’ve got five hertz or 50 hertz, those are individual people who saw your posts and liked it, you should go back in and connect with those people go to their feed, comment on a post of theirs. So remember that it is a way to engage with them. So again, what I just said is when you see a post of yours, and a bunch of people put a heart on it, and they liked it, go to those people’s feeds, look at some of their content and don’t just heard it at a thoughtful comment, like, let’s say, it’s, it’s, it’s someone that you know, from the area, and you can post a comment with a question in that. And as you’re doing that, oh, look, I have a visitor, my daughter, but I’m going to continue recording because even though my daughter visited, we never break, we never break. And so part of that, when you’re talking about engagement is putting in and dropping in a comment, not just the thumbs up or the heart. And the reason why that’s important is because the heart doesn’t do much to build that relationship. You really want to start a conversation and you want to bring your opinions and your thoughts. Now talking about fun facts and things like that. I have seen this from my agent clients. I’ve seen this for myself. If I’m talking about video and marketing on camera all day long, sometimes people comment, engage. But a lot of times it’s the more personal stuff that people feel connected to, or they feel like they can then talk to you about. So one thing I always mentioned always I try to switch it up, but I hate olives. It’s very like simple, weird thing. But apparently everyone loves olives and thinks I’m like a homicidal maniac for hating olives. So try to incorporate that into like the bottom of a caption or into a video or somewhere. So that let’s say no one’s gonna comment on the video marketing details. No one’s gonna comment on my on camera coaching video on specifically the on camera work, but maybe they’re gonna comment on the fact that I hate olives. And like, does that mean you don’t drink martinis? Does that mean that you also heat pita bread? I love pita bread for the record. But anyway, the point is putting in fun facts allows people to start a conversation with you. It gives them the green light to say, Hey, Kim has a sense of humor. Kim has opinions like let’s see how she reacts. And again, it can be the same way with sports. Everyone loves talking about sports, right? People love talking about you know, your favorite travel spots. People love talking about books or music. So if you drop that in there, for example, I’ve seen someone say like, I love AC DC, or I love the Beastie Boys or I love Beyonce. That then gives me a hook to say, oh Single Ladies is the song I dance to when we’re having a dance party, things like that. Things that are unrelated to work. But again, we’re building that relationship for work. So I just think those are really important factors to think about as you are building up your content. Remember your content is to build those relationships. So again, I’m going to go back to what we talked about. And I’m going to add in a couple more details about the three things you can do today to start showing up on video I forgot to mention earlier, because I got so much amazing support from the keeping it real audience. I decided to put online a class that I’ve only taught live, but now you can get it no matter if you’re busy and we can’t connect our schedules. It’s called called from camera shy to camera shine. This is what I taught my Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices national convention agents. And it is an amazing course that gives you all the things you need to show up confidently on camera, plus a 10 day challenge to make you accountable. So it’s a really, really great course and you get 40% off if you’re keeping it real listener. So, alright, so we are talking about getting yourself on camera, and getting yourself on camera easily. I wanted to be honest right now and say My daughter came in and interrupted this recording. So you might have heard some sounds, but I do want you to notice that it didn’t make a big thing of it. So the same thing with filming. Sometimes, you flub a word, or you need to take a second take, it’s not a big deal. It’s okay, even the professionals do it. And I wanted to reiterate a few things about easy ways to show up on camera. So first of all, we were talking about the conversational method. So doing q&a with somebody, and that person can be off camera, meaning they’re behind the camera, and you’re talking straight to them. So you’re looking at the camera, but their eyes are like right behind the camera lens. Again, we care about the eyeline because eye lines break the connection. So if we’re looking at the eyeline, the person thinks we’re talking to them if we’re looking below the eyeline, you lose that connection. So it’s important to keep that eye aligned. But the most important thing is that it’s conversational. We’re always trying to show up as ourselves. We’re always trying to be authentic. And remember, we’re not authentic when that camera light comes on. Without a lot of practice, it takes a while. So now I have a weekly podcast, I show up all the time on social, but when I started showing up, I was frozen, I was stiff. And it just takes practice. You can read every book on fitness that you want, we need to go to the gym. And I was a little tough but sweet with one of my agents. Recently, she was saying that she really enjoyed my lesson, we were in the middle of a boot camp. And she really enjoyed the lesson about studying other people’s videos, when to stop a video like when’s the right time to end the video. And I said, Great, that’s so great. You learned that I haven’t seen you showing up. You can read read read all you want about showing up on camera, you need to show up. It’s a muscle just like every other thing. So I cannot stress enough. No one feels they’re ready. Everyone hates their videos, everyone hates their voice. Everyone hates how they look on camera. First time it’s hard. The third time is hard. The fifth times easier, the 10 times easier, and it will get better. But you can’t just keep practicing by reading you can only practice by doing it is a muscle, your mouth is a muscle. So that’s a really, really important thing to remember. So a few action items. So I’m going to reiterate, I’m going to remind you about my New York City shoot day if people are interested. That is on June 1, but message me ASAP. I only have a few spots. I normally only do this for huge brands. I’m doing it for business owners and agents at a discounted price for keeping it real listeners. So make sure to message me, you show up. I coach you on camera, I make you super confident I write the scripts, my award winning filmmaker films, you and IT professional editor edits your videos, it’s going to be amazing. And then we’re going to celebrate with dinner in New York City which is going to be really fun. That’s really fun. And then you could also buy my camera shy to camera shine on camera course. Again, special discount only for my keeping it real friends because I love you guys, you’re the best. And remember, follow me on instagram connect with me at Kim Rydberg and I’ll you know, connect with you and I’ll keep in touch with you and tag me when you do these things. Because you can show up and you can do it. It will grow your leads. It will grow your clients it will grow your confidence because you’re gonna be proud of yourself. Like I did the thing I remember when I finally launched my podcast, I was like, Can you did the thing. So every step is a great step. We have to crawl before we walk. So start showing up and tag me in your videos. And maybe I’ll see you on June 1. Maybe you’ll buy my camera shy to camera sign class, but regardless, we’re gonna be friends on Instagram. So at Ken Ripper, I will see you then

Tony Clark the Co-Founder of RealtyFlow shares his experience first in the investment area and how he transitioned into real estate during Covid. Tony discusses his journey in real estate and how getting a mentor helped him a lot by focusing on finding a niche. Next, Tony explains the importance of a niche and explains the cases when he thinks a niche doesn’t work. Last, Tony emphasizes the importance of keeping in touch with people in the business of real estate. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Tony Clark can be reached at (615) 977-5495 and tony@househavenrealty.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00How does somebody generate 40 million in sales in their first 18 months as a realtor? 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 and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with top producer Tony Clark. Before we get to Tony. Just a couple of quick reminders guys, we are publishing now, every single weekday, a short form video clip from one of our episodes that has some sort of nugget of wisdom that you can take action on immediately. So we want to keep feeding you with these great, you know pieces of content from our guests. So the best way to find these is just to find us on social media. We are literally on all the platforms, not MySpace and not Google Plus, obviously, but on all the others, you know, Facebook, Instagram, tik, Tok, LinkedIn, YouTube, probably a few others. But anyway, just do a search for keeping it real podcast on whatever social app you’re using. And please hit that subscribe button and let us know what you think of the short form videos. And please also tell a friend about the show. Think of one other agent that needs to hear what you’re you’re about to hear from Tony and send them a link to either our website keeping it real pod.com Or just tell them to pull up a podcast app and look for keeping it real hit that subscribe button. We appreciate you. Alright guys, let’s get to the main event my conversation with Tony Clark. Today on the show, we have Tony cluck from Beverly and company in California and also with House haven in Tennessee. Let me tell you more about Tony. Tony is a real estate agent with a background in both real estate sales and investment real estate strategy. Now this is incredible, everyone, so please please check this out with in his first 18 months as a realtor. He closed over 40 million in volume. He also realized the importance that good systems make in a real estate agents business and has since opened up his own consulting firm dedicated to helping agents improve their systems and to scale their businesses and he even has his own CRM that is dropping probably by the time this episode is released, it’ll be available. So I want you to check out Tony in a couple of different places. First, I want you to follow him on Instagram. So follow him at Tony Clarke dot real estate. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes. And I also really want you to check out his new CRM and we’re gonna find out more about that today as well, which is Realty flow.io. Again, Realty flow.io. link to that will also be in the show notes. Tony, welcome to the show. Tony Clark 4:13Hey, thanks for having me. I’m I’m excited to be here. D.J. Paris 4:17I’m excited to talk to you. I rarely it’s funny I’ve been doing the show for for five or six years now. And I always feel like I’ve seen and heard it all from from our guests who are all superstars in the industry. But rarely do I get to talk to a lawyer like a rookie superstar. And not only did you close 40 million in your first year and a half, which is insane, obviously, but you also are like practice practicing now in two states in two markets, which is even more incredible. I know you’re mostly in California, but you also practice in Tennessee Nashville as well. So let’s get let’s start at the very, very beginning, which is not much that long ago. But I love to know how you got into real estate and why Tony Clark 4:59you I, I jumped into real estate actually, from the investment space, I worked at a private equity firm that did residential real estate just kind of wanted to learn the ropes, I was all the way back when I was a kid, I was that kid trying to sell baseball cards to his friends or try to flip golf clubs in high school, you know, just the stereotypical business minded kid. And I always say houses are just bigger toys than, you know, the stuff that we we sell growing up. But um, but yeah, so started at a private equity fund, kind of learning the investment side, they were based out of California, but bought in different markets in the southeast. And so I was essentially acting as a real estate agent for them, but just sourcing properties for them and running deal analysis and really got a lot of good experience there. But realized pretty quickly that basically what I was doing for them was being a real estate agent who could only have one client. And so I wound up transitioning from the fund to getting my license, and actually wound up moving to Tennessee with my wife after I got licensed so that we could start, you know, investing ourselves and build, build a clientele there, which was where I was really focused on when I was at the private equity fund. D.J. Paris 6:19Wow. So and, and were there lessons that you learned working in PE private equity that you were able to bring into the individual sort of realtor practice? Tony Clark 6:28Absolutely, I think the big thing that I learned from private equity is whether you’re buying one house or 1000, it all comes down to the numbers, at least when you’re looking at investment, real estate, that when you’re looking at a deal or looking at a market, it’s all about understanding one the risks that come with investing in that market, and then also what your numbers look like, or at the end of the day, if it’s a if it works on the spreadsheet and you’ve accounted for the risks, you know that you have a much better chance of that property being a good asset or a goodbye. And that translates to then working with individuals where it again, doesn’t matter if it’s a big fund or someone looking to buy their first property, you can just get down to the numbers and the end of the day, it is a big financial decision that they’re making. D.J. Paris 7:20Since I so rarely get to talk to anyone with your background. I just have a quick question. And again, I know you’re still more to this industry. But you have this unique perspective. Was it any surprise to you to see the eye buyer start to the eye buyers start to fade away? You’re talking about numbers, right? It’s all about the numbers and we’re seeing companies that really should have those numbers locked in pretty well. And I’m not here to disparage companies like Zillow. Like I love Zillow. Even they got it wrong, right? So it’s, it’s interesting. What do you think’s going on in the eye buyer side? Tony Clark 7:53Yeah, it’s one of those things that so the model that the eye buyers use is so tough to do at scale, it was really the the PE fund that I was at, was trying to do one to four unit residential properties at scale. And they were a small fund with, you know, a few 100 houses and I couldn’t imagine a fund bigger than them doing what they’re doing. You have to manage so many people and so many contractors and keep so many things straight that even if you have multiple levels of management, it’s just tough to get that right. And especially when you’re buying with with such tight margins, which is what we would see them doing I know I brought a couple of properties to those ibuyers didn’t do a lot of work with them. But you know, even the prices that they had to pay for the properties in order to win them and then try to sell them for higher. It’s just D.J. Paris 8:45like we’re gonna look at those and say like, they’re overpaying. This is crazy. Oh, yeah. Tony Clark 8:50Oh, they were I was like, either they’re much smarter than me because they know something or something. Something isn’t adding up. And I’m not gonna say I’m smart enough to go pay more than they are for this house. So I’m just gonna let it be. D.J. Paris 9:03As it turns out, they were wrong. So yeah, but so but let’s so our That’s it. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get us off track. But I got Tony. He knows the private equity world. I was like what’s going on with all these I buyers. But let’s let’s get to the real meat of this because the really impressive thing you did in the first 18 months is close 40 million in production. And that is that that puts you in the top 1/10 of 1% of new realtors in the whole country. I mean, probably even more than the top 10 1/10 of 1%. So you are at this very elite level. I don’t think success happens by accident. Maybe unless unless you had a friend who had a $40 million property sold it was a one transaction just said I wouldn’t say that. I want to hear that story too. But I don’t think that was what happened to so how did you do it? Every one of our listeners and viewers is like they’re they’re dripping with jealousy just like I am. How did you do it and what what might you suggest to agents who want to duplicate that sort of success? Tony Clark 10:06Yeah, I mean, I think it was really a mix of a few things. And the first was, you know, I, I did get very lucky with both the timing and the market that I was in. So you know, there were some things that I did, and I’ll talk about that. But starting with, you know, getting into real estate right during the COVID, boom, and then being in Nashville, Tennessee, which is one of the more talked about investment markets. Definitely. Were some tailwinds that that helped so, but then within that, I know, when I first got my license, I had a mentor who kind of told me, he said, Hey, it’s, the first thing you need to do is find a niche. And for me, I’d kind of thought that, you know, investment, real estate made sense, but also, like, who’s gonna listen to a kid in their mid 20s? Tell them about investment property. So it was this kind of, like a lot of people. And, and so I really, that mentor was really pushing me on that. And I said, Okay, you know, I’m not going to do any marketing. The first time homebuyers, I’m not going to do any marketing for luxury, real estate, I’m just going to focus on this for six months. And we’ll see how it goes. And it was definitely slow getting started this first few months, you just kind of bumble around and try things that don’t work and try some things that work. And I think that, at least when I was first starting out, it was niching down and saying, I’m just going to focus on investors. And even within that, saying, I’m looking for a very specific type of investor. And I think this can go for any real estate agent who even if investors isn’t your niche, but let’s say it’s first time homebuyers, for me, I said, I’m looking for investors who need loans on the property where they’re not the flippers that are paying all cash and going to go flip 50 houses, I don’t want to go write a bunch of offers for them and get rejected, I’m looking for an investor who has, you know, has enough money for a downpayment and is looking for a rental, that’s just gonna give them monthly income. There’s a lot more of those out there. And there’s less, it’s kind of this sweet spot where there, there haven’t been as many realtors, at least, that I saw in Nashville who focused on that. And so once I identified that niche, then it was just asking the question, Well, okay, where are they at? Where can I find them? And then it turned into a lot of just let’s, let’s go to real estate meetups and let’s go bigger pockets was a big source, like, let’s go find those people. Essentially, D.J. Paris 12:29I’m going to pause you for a second because I want for anyone who is listening who is a little bit lost on like what Tony’s talking about. So you know, his niche was he wants to work with investors, he wants buy and hold investors who need loads, right? So we’ve now identified his niche. Now, you might be thinking, Well, where does Tony find these people who, and there are places to find it. But my question is actually going to be a different question, Tony, is, is it? It’s been my experience talking to other investors and people in this industry who do what you do, that finding the investors is actually the easy part. My suspicion is finding the deal is step number one, in other words, finding those opportunities to then present to a versus, you know, now traditional, you know, primary residence homebuyers are they can look on Zillow, they can look on Redfin agent isn’t always the one that finds the property. You know, the buyer are usually finding the property and bringing it to the realtor, I want to go see that place. Now for on the investor side, I’m guessing it’s a you finding the deal. And then you saying, Here’s a cash flow opportunity, and then going to your pool of investors. By the way, for anyone who isn’t familiar with bigger pockets, it is the largest online forum for real estate investors in the country. It is by far the top of the mountain. If you ever really want to get a good education and understand how investors think and talk to each other. It’s basically like Reddit for investors. That’s, that’s what it is. It’s, it’s where you can, it’s a social component. I’ve had the BiggerPockets guys on my show before I love those guys. They’re just awesome. And it is a great place to to learn how to talk to investors. But anyway, was I right about that, that finding the opportunity is really the hard part and finding the money and the investors is the easy part? Tony Clark 14:15Absolutely. I think that’s the first step being finding the investors as far as you know, if you find a great deal, but nobody can buy it, then you’re kind of out of luck. But that’s definitely the easy part. And I think then going and finding the deal comes down to even first I think understanding who you’re working with on the investor side, and what they’re looking for that was something that I learned from the private equity fund that I took into real estate was let me sit down with this investor and work through exactly what they’re looking for in a property and without getting too technical on the investment side, basically saying, you know, here is either the return that you’re looking for or what kind of neighborhood are you looking for as far as how quickly it’s going rowing versus how stable Are you know what not, let’s sit down and figure out what you’re looking for and then go find properties that fit that, that box, it’s the same thing. When I work with cars, I will take clients on who are looking to buy their first home or friends and family. And it’s the same thing as you know, I could love a house that we go see. But if it’s not the kind of house that they’re looking for, I just wasted both of our time. And so to really get narrowed down on their criteria, that then gives me a better a better feel for going out and finding those properties so that when I present it to them, I will know how to present it and say, Look, this is what fits your goals. And also I can kind of weed out a lot of the properties that don’t so so it kind of winds up being an easier way to search. D.J. Paris 15:47So basically, you you meet with an investor, you say, Okay, what are you looking for? In other words, is there an annualized rate of return that you’d like to have is the key one for tax deduction? And the most important thing is that the income is that the appreciation? So Tony walks his or doesn’t walk people through, he finds out exactly what his investors want and need. And then he says, Okay, I get it. I know what you want. Now my job is to go find these properties. So here’s question number two. So now you’ve identified the the needs of the client. And now it’s okay, now you got to find the hard part, the property? Where are you finding the properties? What percentage of the time are the properties on the MLS? And what percentage of the time? Are you doing creative ways to find things that are not available on the MLS? Tony Clark 16:34Yeah, I would say it shifted, even within the past couple of years, it’s definitely shifted where early on it was more off market, I would go just try to network with people. So I’d go to not necessarily real estate agent events, but real estate investor events, or business networking groups, and just ask everyone I knew I’d say, Hey, I’ve got somebody who’s looking for XYZ type of property, do you know of anybody? And then I’d put them into my follow up system and just follow up with them saying, I’ve got a buyer looking for this, do you have anything? And same thing with wholesalers, I would go find wholesalers or investors and say, Do you have anything coming up? Keep me on your list. And it was really just finding the people who are out there hunting for deals daily. And then keeping in touch with them. And that I think was key for finding those properties. D.J. Paris 17:27So you weren’t sending all these mailers to these these multifamily buildings or whatever saying, hey, I want to buy your property, which some people do and have success with that. You can go knock on doors, you there are ways to find properties that aren’t even aren’t listed at all. But that are you know, Mom and Pop may, you know owns owns a multifamily. And you there’s a million different ways and there are much, much better podcasts than this, specifically for how to creatively find those properties. We’re not real estate investing podcasts, per se, but I was curious. Um, but you do sometimes find them on the MLS as well, I’m guessing. Tony Clark 18:06Yeah, absolutely. And it was probably, I’d say close to 5050, where the MLS was a lot more of what you were talking about, if they were looking for just a property to park money in or some you know, a few new builds that were going to be nice corporate rentals, or, you know, you find properties on the MLS, but I’d always just tell my clients, I’d say, hey, I’ll set you up, I said, I have a three step process where I will set you up on the auto search for properties. And this I think works with any client where I’d say I’ll set you up on the auto search. So if I’m away from my office, for whatever reason, you get the properties and you don’t have to rely on me seeing them. I’ll also see see myself on the auto search. And that’s step two, and I go through that once a day. So if there’s something that really jumps out to me, then I’ll reach out to you directly as well. So it can be there’s two way conversation, you know, that I’m I’m actively looking for you. And then three is the off market properties. And that’s, you know, I’ll, I’ll really be personally reaching out to you on those. But I think that, that helped me win a lot of clients initially, where they said, Oh, he’s going to do more than just set me up on an auto search and wait for me to respond and just kind of earn some trust early on. D.J. Paris 19:15And how important is it to be active in these online forums like bigger pockets so that you can get access to this huge network of people who want to invest and also learn. I mean, I tell everyone, if you want the best education about how to how to add the service of being able to support clients who want real estate investment, advice and want those kinds of deals, bigger pockets is I can’t think of a better place to go than that. But how important is that for the education and also the networking? Tony Clark 19:48Oh, absolutely. I think it’s it’s big if people it’s just reaching out and letting people know that you’re there to add value. I think that’s the big thing is if you’re there to learn and to add value that Networking is big, because everybody can kind of see through, if you show up with the business card to the networking event and say, Hey, call me if you’re gonna buy sell a property, and they’ll they’ll add your card to the list of 20 other people. But if you’re there, and you’re, you’re either, you know, very interested in learning about their experience, and that’s where I see real estate agents and lenders and people who do that really well. They’re there to learn. And then they’re there to add value of, you know, even if it’s just one tip that I learned this from one of my mentors, he’s like, Hey, find one thing about your market that most real estate agents don’t know. And you can just throw that into your first conversation of Nashville, it was within the Nashville Metro, there were two different tax districts and one you paid about half the property taxes you didn’t the other. And I would just throw that into my first conversation where D.J. Paris 20:46I would like to know that if I was moving to Nashville, yeah, Tony Clark 20:49absolutely. And I’d say hey, here’s, you know, it’s the Briley loop the freeway, essentially, if you’re inside that your property taxes are going to be almost twice what they will if you’re outside, and all of a sudden, you’ve added value and build trust. But you can only do that if you get in front of people, either networking online or in person. And so I think that’s huge. I think that’s a big, big value add. D.J. Paris 21:11Yeah, I What a again, you’ve really only been practicing, as a realtor for a short amount of time. What percentage of agents do you think have your particular skill set with respect to you know, real estate investment? Like I, I’m just going to throw a number I’m completely making out of wholecloth, I’m going to say less than 3% of Realtors probably focus in the market that you’re in, or focus in real estate investing? Would that be? Roughly fair? Tony Clark 21:42Yeah, it’s that’s a question that honestly, I haven’t been around enough or in enough markets to see in Nashville, I will say. So now being in Nashville, and in California, that percentage was much higher in Nashville, I think just because there’s so much Nashville was exploded there. That’s yeah, but it was it’s still low. I mean, it’s still I think, you know, that three to 5% there, and then probably, you know, 1% or less that really focus on real estate in California on investing, invest where I am in California, D.J. Paris 22:12it’s such a nice additional avenue to add. So you know, and again, you can’t be all things to all people. You’re like, Hey, I’m not a luxury guy. I’m not a first time homebuyer guy. I mean, you could be and you could, you could get your way through those deals, obviously. But it’s not your main focus. But it’s, it’s, it’s a nice thing, you know, if it was me, and I guess it’s all about what you’re into, like you came from that world, you came from the PE world. It’s what you’re into. You’re a numbers guy, you’re a systems guy. And let’s actually, let’s switch to systems because that is, you know, anybody can grind out not anyone. But a lot of times people think well, Tony did 40 million in 18 months, in his first 18 months, he must have just grinded it out. You probably did. But I’m curious to know what systems helped make that a little bit easier for you. Because I imagine you were working pretty long hours to get to those numbers. Tony Clark 23:06Yeah, it was really, definitely trying to figure out how to take what I was doing my my, my motto as far as growing and scaling is I say, Okay, let’s, let’s work really hard. And then let’s figure out how to simplify what I’m doing. So that I can scale bigger, and then sit, work really hard, simplify scale. Like that’s, that’s kind of how I think about it. And so the first few months that I was in the business, it was let’s just call everyone I can have my cell phone or go through Facebook or you know, keep a Google sheet and then realize that’s not sustainable for anything. And so then started using a CRM and really keeping track of my contacts and trying to set tasks for myself to follow up with people and trying to you know, still make it personal because we’ve all seen the the automated emails where you know that you’re on a mailing list, and it sounds like a mailing list and you burn trust that way. So I said, Well, I don’t want to do that. But let’s figure out how to keep in touch with my clients and really just organize my database because like you were talking about with Oh, go ahead. D.J. Paris 24:13No, I didn’t mean to interrupt your flow. I’m super excited to hear about how what systems you built to do this. Yeah. Tony Clark 24:19Yeah. So it was really the first one was my database and at first I use the CRM that was provided from my brokerage and then tried a couple others but it was really more the functions of I would anybody who went into my database or anyone I’ve met, went into my database, I’ll start there. And then I tagged them as whether they were you know, buyer, seller, vendor, friend, whoever and then they get added to a couple of things were one I just had a newsletter that I pushed out and it wasn’t anything groundbreaking. I didn’t spend a lot of time on it, but it was just hey, you know I’m I’m in the market. Here’s a little tidbit to add value. And then From there, I always knew, you know, when I would be able to fish kind of with that newsletter, and then anyone who was active, I really kept track of where they were in the process and what they were expecting from me, if I had active clients, I would know that, hey, I’m gonna call them every couple of days or every day or you know, whatnot. And then anybody who was still a new lead, I’d push them through, I did have a few automated campaigns and templates and things I’d use for new leads. And it was really, I would just develop those based off of if I did something once, I’d say let’s figure out a way to simplify this the next time. So let’s put an automation or a task in and then let’s figure out how to do 100 times more work with that same system without it breaking. D.J. Paris 25:45So well, you’d meet with a client, and you’d get a sense of what their expectations are of you. And you would identify those and probably arrive at some sort of agreements, like, whether it’s verbal or just internal, you’re like, Okay, I know what I need to do for this client, which means I’m going to call them either every day, every other day, every three days, you you made that determination. Of course, every client can be different. And you make that termination. And then you set up the repeating tasks so that you don’t forget it. You know, again, this sounds so basic, however, the basics are the fundamentals are usually what win the game. And so it’s silly as it is to go. Remember, every three days in your calendar, you have to call so and so. It’s funny, I’ve told this story before, and I apologize for our audience that has heard it ad nauseam. But I talked to one of the top agents in Chicago here many years ago, and I said, What do you think it literally out of 46,000 agents, she’s number one, and I was like, how did you what what why are you number one, and you know, what did you do different? She goes DJ, I call every one of my clients every week, I go, and she’s like, well, oh, active clients, right? And she goes, active clients. And I said, and like, yeah, so not so but to kind of I was expecting a bigger and she goes, Well, obviously there’s a million other things she does. But she goes, That’s my secret sauce. And I was like, it’s it’s that and she goes, I know it sounds really silly, right? And she goes, That’s it? She goes, you’d be shocked. Most agents don’t they’re afraid to call their clients unless it’s good news. So, so curious to get you to get your thoughts like when you know, you have to call them every couple of days. Do you already know? I mean, unless it’s like new news that you have to provide to them. Do you know sort of what you’re gonna say? Tony Clark 27:30Yeah, typically it’ll be and whether it’s a, you know, I say call sometimes it would be a text, word communicate of, you know, get in touch with them to stay top of mind. And yeah, when there was no news, it would really just be a quick, usually just a quick text of saying, Hey, just wanted to check in with you. Nothing new on the market today are nothing new I’ve seen but wanted to let you know, I’m looking. And perfect. That was that was it? They know that I’m looking for them. But there was nothing there not I dropped off the face of the earth because they haven’t heard from me in two days. And they’re checking Zillow for three hours a day and feeling like their agent isn’t? Isn’t there with them? D.J. Paris 28:08Yeah, the number one reason people fire their agent is shocking, not shockingly, communication. It’s consistency and communication. So So okay, so you now have the systems in place where with respect to communication? What, tell me about how you began to develop your systems. So that because again, that isn’t necessarily super easy to scale, right? Because you have a certain number of clients, you have certain number of phone calls or texts or emails you can make in a day. So how do you how do you sort of keep it all organized? Tony Clark 28:41Yeah, so what I started to do with the systems is as I kept scaling, I said, Okay, I need to push a system until it breaks where like you said, the tasks, I let me just call everyone until I can’t call everyone anymore. And then let’s step it up. And so within my niche, what I wound up doing is I started tracking where I would lose clients. And I started to see, like, Okay, I’m getting X amount of leads in from and you mentioned, bigger pockets, I bought bigger pockets leads for a long time. And they were a great lead source where they would come in, and I had an automated workflow, come into my CRM, I hit them with an intro email that had a video in it, saying, here’s a little bit about the market. I’d love to book a call with you. Here’s my calendar invite. And then I just had an automated email and texts that would go out every day to them. Just if until they booked a meeting. And so that, you know, as one example, I realized, that came out of me realizing that I was losing a lot of leads that came in, because I even though I felt like I was reaching out to them quickly within you know, 1530 minutes. It wasn’t instantaneous and somebody else was and D.J. Paris 29:52isn’t that amazing? Yeah, that’s like 15 to 30 minutes. It’s almost like to happen to century ago. Yeah, that’s Tony Clark 29:58yeah, because but by that point, they’re done looking at properties, and they’re moving on to their next thing. And if somebody calls them right when they’re looking, it’s, you know, when I, if I need my lawn mowed, and I go call one lawn care company, and they don’t pick up, I’m just gonna move on and call the next one. And it’s, it’s ridiculous when you’re looking at it from the other side of things, we have such short attention spans, but it’s such a big thing. So, but yeah, I would track really, that being one example I, I would track where I was losing leads, and then try to figure out a way to plug that hole on if it was, okay, new leads are coming in, and I’m converting them at, you know, 20%, and I shouldn’t be at 30. Or I think I can get to 30. Let me go analyze that part of my business and make it better. And this is where I, I’m just a data numbers nerd on that side of things. And so I’d look at that, or then I’d look at my pipeline and say, Okay, I, you know, I’m getting a lot of good clients in, but then I’m not, you know, I’m losing them once they become clients, and I should be converting higher here. Okay? That’s because I’m not finding good deals for them. Let me go find more ways to find them properties are under contract, am I not doing a good job of communicating with lenders or inspectors or getting bids from contractors? You know, there’s, there’s different factors at each stage of the client journey? Or after they bought a property? How much repeat business Am I getting? And if it’s low, how can I follow up with them better? So there’s these, I kind of developed five different stages where I could be losing clients, and then I just tried to optimize each one of those and make those better. So it’s, it’s all based on stuff, but it’s just putting a framework in to, to think through it. D.J. Paris 31:38Well, push ups are basic to and they’re also super important, right? So I mean, that with the with the highest possible compliment, because it’s it’s always these fundamentals. And just as you were telling me, you know, I’m thinking about I’m a recruiter, I basically recruit realtors. So I could, I was trying to apply this to my own systems of like, where do I lose recruits? Like, why do they end up choosing other firms and where in my process, but because I think I think that comes from from that that private equity, large scale size, even though you were at a smaller firm, or at a smaller fund, you still were managing hundreds of houses. And so this idea of scalability is obviously important. So you have to look for those weak points. And this idea of doing an audit in your communication chain, in your, you know, or just in your sales pipeline, and looking at your five stages, identifying those weak points and plugging those holes as you said, Boy, I I’m loving that. In, you’re a numbers guy. So your, your, your your metrics person, so everything is is benchmarked, and metric. And we know we’re above the line or below the line before below. And what’s really cool about real estate stuff is there’s a lot of data out there that you can use to say what is the you know, on a bigger pockets lead or a Zillow lead, or whatever it might be, you know, the average close rate is this, I want to get to x. So a lot of this data is already there for you to benchmark against. And it just helps you become super efficient, I imagine. Tony Clark 33:07Absolutely. It’s and I think it’s something that had not everybody in real estate, but I feel like most of us are pretty competitive, too. And so if you can use data to say, Oh, here’s where the averages are. Here’s where the top tier are. I’m sitting, you know, below that, oh, what’s it going to take for me to get there for me to get to the next level? And I think it’s a good mesh of being able to use those, those data points to push yourself to be better. D.J. Paris 33:34Yeah, I mean, even I would even encourage all of our listeners or viewers, if there’s someone in your local market, who’s a realtor that you admire, that has like a very, you know, some really impressive numbers, whether it’s production, whether it’s days on market, whether it’s you know, percentage, or list price, whatever the metric is that you’re like, how do they do that? Literally call them and be like, I am so enamored with the way that you do X, Y, or Z. I’m your biggest fan, I noticed you do all these things. Could I grab 15 minutes of your day? I’ll buy you coffee or lunch or whatever I will, I promise you that will be called five of those people. One of those people, if not all five, we’ll take that 15 minutes. And have you ever done that? Where are you reaching out to other mentor? You said you have mentors? So Tony Clark 34:20yeah, absolutely. I think that’s something that either both within my market in Nashville, I did that a few times. And then even outside of the market, I’d find somebody who was out in Ohio or Pennsylvania, where they’re just crushing it in their market, but I’d say hey, you know, one big fan would love to even an investment real estate, it was the, hey, I can add value. I would love to push people your way. If they’re not a fit for Nashville, like the numbers look good in your market or whatever. You know, would love to pick your brain for 15 minutes, or usually instead of pick your brain. I don’t like that saying as much as just hey, I’ve got these three questions. Here’s the one thing I’m struggling with, we don’t mind sharing what you do here because I see you doing it really well. And that’s an easy answer for them. They don’t have to think through. Oh, what’s he going to ask? It’s no, here’s the question. Here’s where they can add value, and they’re happy, happy to get D.J. Paris 35:16super flattering to ask someone for their advice. It is what if you, we think maybe, oh, we’ll be annoying, those people will be bothering them, maybe well, but good chance you won’t be because they’re going to be so flattered that, that you’ve recognized something in their process that probably most people don’t recognize. They just see them as successful or, and you’re like, hey, I noticed you do this one thing. I’m, like you said, I’m such a fan of that. I would love to learn how you do that. And maybe I can add value to you and help you and etc. It’s all about those those connections. And those, you almost have to be a fan of other agents, I think, I have learned that after almost 500 episodes, the top agents that I’ve had on the show, they’re always like, so happy to get it, they get excited about other agents. Because they’re like, oh, there’s this other guy that does this really cool thing. And so I think that’s part of it, too. But knowing your numbers, right, that will go back to systems, you got to know your numbers, you got to spend the time, every single day studying your local market, studying your niche, you got to know the numbers. And most agents, the good news is, most agents really don’t know their numbers, if we’re being honest. So for the people that do spend that time and really niche down and figure out where they, they, they, they, they blossom and bloom, and it’s just it’s so impressive, because most agents aren’t going to spend that time doing it. Tony Clark 36:43Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so I think if that’s you, and either if your numbers driven, or even if you’re not, but you’re able to take a little bit of time and run through it, you you have such a leg up on the competition, or you’ll at least, and I’d love to hear your take on this too. I think that’s how you can build a sustainable business, you’re never chasing the next client, then you say, you know, here’s my marketing budget for this month, or here’s how many people I need to cold call or, you know, if I do this, then this will happen within reason, you know, markets can change and shift or you’re never, I would think you’ll be less stressed on, when’s the next deal coming in, because you’re focused on those things that you can control to make that next deal happen. D.J. Paris 37:25Totally. And all that we can ever really control is is our thoughts and actions, right? So it’s like, yeah, that’s all we can control in. And the good news is, we can control it mostly. But I want to talk about Realty flow. This is your CRM, because you are a systems guy, and you were looking for a CRM solution for your particular niche. And you were like, I couldn’t really find one that was a perfect fit. You’re like, I’m gonna build one. So and by the way, many people have attempted this. This is not, this is a tough, tough business. But I want I want to, if I was going to get, you know, I would be looking at a CRM from a guy who did 40 million in his first 18 months, that seems like a guy I’d want to follow. So tell us about Realty flow and what you’re looking to do with that. Tony Clark 38:15Yeah, it really so Realty flow came out of the essentially came out of the consulting firm that I’ve been running for the last few months on basically, I’ve been going in and exactly what we just talked through with other real estate agents saying, hey, I’ll come in, I help you audit your numbers, I’ll help you look at, you know, what systems you’re using. And let’s figure out ways to streamline your business and kind of come in and do that. And I went through that a few times with agents and realized that there were some similarities between really agents at different productivity levels, you know, the top top tier agents usually had their systems pretty dialed a lot of newer agents, it their systems were like giving a Ferrari to a 15 year old, who hasn’t learned how to drive yet on right, you get these big CRMs that can do a million different things. But really, you just need a way to manage your contacts, track deals, manage tasks, which that was the one weird one that I just most CRMs don’t have just like a Google Tasks kind of thing where you can just put sticky notes in it all has to be assigned to contacts and whatever. And then just do you know, basic automated texting and emailing and then tracking those things. And so from that, I was able to link up with a couple of business partners that I worked with one before and one is a developer, software developer in the Netherlands, and they just finished on their project and they were like, Hey, Tony, you know, what, what are you working on? And it just kind of meshed where we decided we were going to launch a real estate CRM really with the same motto or mantra that I’ve been using for my business on just this is designed to simplify your business so that you can scale and so that you can then go work hard on your business and then Simplify it through the system and then scale. And so it’s really, it’s not meant to be anything groundbreaking other than just here as a clean, simple way to look at everything in your business instead of a convoluted dashboard with 1000 different things going on, that you have to sift through which so D.J. Paris 40:18I think what a lot of times CRMs are, you know, they’re built by developers and developers aren’t necessarily real estate agents, sometimes they are, sometimes they’re not mostly not. And so I think sometimes CRM companies, tech companies get some of the tools a little bit wrong only in the sense of understanding that providing, you know, all of these different features, functionality is great. But what it can result in for, especially a newer agent is a lot of anxiety. So they get this, like you said, they get, you know, their CRM, which is fully featured has all these amazing tools. And yet, it becomes overwhelming, because there’s so much it’s basically a blank canvas with all these different, you know, all this different paints a million paint colors, and it’s like, oh, what do I do? So you’re looking to sort of simplify the process, streamline it make it really accessible to agents, so that they can plug in and scale up. Tony Clark 41:17Exactly. And I think just designing it, you hit it right on the head, designing something that’s for real estate agents, because a lot of these big companies, it’s a CRM that works really well for an enterprise fortune 500 company with five levels of management, sure, it needs to do a lot more than a real estate agent, or even a brokerage or a team where you’re tracking very specific things. And it’s really just saying, let’s remove all the stuff that would work well for other industries, but that you don’t need in real estate and that do the things that you need in real estate really, really well. And then let’s, let’s bring in some fun stuff like we we pulled in chat GPT. So you can write listing descriptions and some other things we just, you know, pull that in so that you can do all of that from from the CRM, but it’s really like let’s let’s do the essentials really, really well and D.J. Paris 42:04get rid of the fluff. Yeah, the fundamentals let’s let’s keep keep the machine oiled and running. I love it. So I would encourage everyone to check out Realty flow.io checkout, you can do demos there, you can see the CRM and inaction and hopefully, maybe, you know become a client. So check out Realty flow.io. Also, I want everybody to follow Tony at on Instagram, Tony Clark dot real estate, we have links to both of those in our show notes. Tony, one last question. Now you’ve had a tremendous amount of success in the last 18 months, which again, it’s it’s like blowing me away your success. And by the way, hugely jealous of you so amazing, amazing. Success, their jealousy and in the most positive way. What what we’re missing, give us one mistake that that you made or something that you’re struggling with right now, just so that we know you’re human, we know that you have your own struggles. Tony Clark 43:10Oh, how much time do we have? Yeah, I think the if I were to think back kind of the the number one mistake that I make over and over is I try to do too much instead of leveraging either leveraging basically anything leveraging other people’s time, or abilities, or knowledge or software are all of these different things, I think the big mistake is I fall into the trap of oh, if I want it done right, I need to do it myself. And I think everything from I don’t need to go to every showing, I can have a showing agent do it or I don’t need to, you know, pretend like I know stuff that I don’t let’s go call a mentor or let’s you know, employ other people on my team and train them so that they can go do things better than I could on my own. I think that’s the thing that I struggle with the most. And so it’s not even a mistake that I made one time, it’s something I’m still working through on I try to hold on to things longer than I should instead of delegating them and putting them into the hands of people who can do them better than me. D.J. Paris 44:22My boss has always said if you if you delegate something, assume and again, this is not like written in stone, but this is his philosophy. Assume that they’ll that the person you delegate the task to will do it to about 70 to 80% of what you would do, so it’s not going to be perfect. It’s going to be 70 to 80%. Perfect, and then maybe you come in and tweak the blow blast 20 30% of it. But even that would be pretty helpful. Right? So like even if they don’t quite get it to the Tony Clark perfect perfection level. They can get you at 70 You know, three quarters of the way there and then you just you know, run the ball All into the endzone. That’s a pretty good deal, you know, but it’s hard because you do have to accept less than perfect work. Because Tony, you have very specific standards, high standards for, you know, whatever, you know, task, you may you may be delegating to somebody, and you have very specific rules and structure. But you do have to sort of accept a slightly less than for delegation. And that, to me has always been the hardest part. I’m curious if you struggle with that as well. Tony Clark 45:32Absolutely. And I’d say it’s even a pendulum where I, I struggle with either letting go too much, or not letting go enough, where if I hire somebody to do something, I’ve got a virtual assistant who he’s awesome. He’s been working for me for about a year, year and a half now. And when I keep going back and forth with him, even still, where all I’ll micromanage too much, and then I’ll let the reins out too much, as far as I don’t give them enough direction, not like I let him slack off or whatever, it’s just, hey, here’s the task, go do this. And he’s like, Well, we’ll tell me what, how do I do this? Or, you know, what, give me more direction. And it’s really finding that balance of saying, okay, here and in a new skill set also of managing people, that’s very different than doing things yourself. And I’m still very much learning that but I think that’s, that’s right on where, you know, 70 80% there’s the expectation, and then you figure out how to encourage and uplift and, and keep accountable. Anybody who is working for you. D.J. Paris 46:33Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s really an impressive thing. And we now we are in a global economy. So for anyone out there who is, you know, thinking, I can’t afford an assistant, you might not be able to afford an assistant in your local market, but you might be able to afford an assistant from another country and other parts of the world who were the economics are different, where the cost of living is different. And we can get virtual assistants, who will, who will only want a certain amount of pay that you might be able to afford. So if you are struggling, you know, Upwork is a great website to find talent globally, to help you with whatever you’re struggling with. And if you’re not a numbers, guy, hire a numbers guy, you can find them all over the world. And if you’re, you know, need help in any other way, obviously, Tony’s leveraging that, and he’s saying the same thing that all of us struggle with this, we want to do everything ourselves, because, you know, we have a vision for exactly how things should look, feel and sound, but I’m having people help you. You can get help from all over the world. Now. We’re so fortunate. So I want everyone who’s listening to please Oh, one more thing. I’m sorry for interrupting myself. But for anyone who out there who is a realtor in the Nashville area in particular, you know, any Tennessee realtors. I want you to check out Tony’s brokerage, which is a house Haven, in Tennessee. They’re an amazing company, Tony was telling me offline about I was say, Tony, you’re amazing, you know, 40 million in your first year and a half. And he’s like, Oh, I wonder just did my managing broker he’s told superstar. So if you are an agent in that market, and you’re like, I’m not getting this, the tools, the training, the support that I need for my existing firm, I want to go work at a firm where a guy just knocked out 40 million in a year and a half like that’s, that’s a pretty cool place to me that they have a few nuggets of wisdom over their house Haven. So definitely reach out to Tony. You can find him on Instagram, Tony Clark dot real estate. Also check out his CRM Realty flow.io.io. And Tony also practices in Ventura County all over the LA area where he is with Beverly and company out there as well. So if you ever wanted to team up with him out in California as well, he would reach out and remember to Tony does deals all over the country. So he needs realtor partners. So he has investors that are looking for properties everywhere. So maybe you might be have a client that is looking for a deal that Tony can put together in another state another market. So if you’re a realtor, and you just want to network with Tony and sort of trade deals back and forth happens all the time, reach out to him, find him on Instagram, or check out his CRM as well. And Tony is on behalf of our audience. This has been such a fun conversation with you. We had a record number of people watching live which is amazing. So that is so I’m so excited for that to on behalf of everyone the collective audience. Thank you. We appreciate you. On behalf of Tony and myself. We also want to thank the audience for making it all the way to the end the episode please we ask that you do just one thing to help us tell a friend think of one other realtor that you know that is struggling I mean it’s 2023 This is a tough year for realtors. Let’s be honest, let’s make it a little bit easier for them. Send them a link to this episode so that they can learn from Tony You and they can have a $40 million next year and a half just like our friend Tony. Tony, thank you so much. You’re amazing. I’m excited to we’ll have you back on the show as you as you continue to scale because 40 million is your bottom now. So I’m excited to see where you’re headed. You’ll probably be a billion dollar producer and then look 10 years or so. So I’m excited to continue to watch your ascension. But keep us keep us in the loop. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks, Tony. Tony Clark 50:32Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening and I really appreciate the invite

Kevin Van Eck, the Executive Vice-President of Innovation and Education with @properties and Christie’s International Real Estate, talks about his transition from a paramedic to a real-estate agent. Kevin discusses the power of connecting with people and how real estate is a relationship industry. Next, Kevin emphasizes how technology is moving so fast (AI) and why agents should be up to date all the time to be more competitive in the market. Last, Kevin discusses the agents’ role in neutralizing and navigating the emotions of their clients. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Kevin Van Eck can be reached at (312) 208-1430 and kevinvaneck@christiesrealestate.com This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today we’re going to be speaking with somebody who leads 1000s of top real estate agents across the country every single day and find out what he’s telling his agents to do. 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 Kevin Van Eck from add properties and Christie’s international real estate before we get to Kevin just wanted to let everyone know if you’re not following us on social I really want you to and not because I want to have a big follower count. Although I guess I do want to have a big follower count. But that’s not the reason I’m saying this. Because you know, you don’t owe me that. But I feel like I owe you more content. So what we’ve started doing is clipping our episodes, including this one. And what what that means is we’re finding short form sick 45 to 62nd clips of bite sized information extracted from the full episode that you guys can absorb every single day we’re publishing these daily or every weekday that’s not on the weekends. I’m a little too lazy to do that on the weekends, but during the week they were publishing one of these every day and we publish them to all the social media channels including Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, probably a few others on Twitter, that’s the other one. Anyway, find us on there. And the easiest way to do that what’s the easiest way to go to our website keeping it real pod.com I think I have all of our social links on there if not just whatever social platform you’re on. Search for keeping it real hit that subscribe button and then you’ll see those daily bite sized videos that will give you just a little bit of wisdom or hope every single day from one of our brilliant guests. Okay, I’ve made the pitch long enough please follow us on on Instagram, Facebook, etc. We appreciate it and now onto the main event my conversation with Kevin Vanek. Today, my guest is Kevin Vanek with have properties Christie’s international real estate here in Chicago. Let me tell you more about Kevin as executive vice president of innovation for Christie’s international real estate Kevin plays a central role in developing and implementing a range of programs to drive growth and success among network affiliates and agents. These include technology agent performance, recruitment, retention, and third party partnerships Kevin’s experience as an agent, managing broker and agent performance coach and his role in developing brokerage technology gives him a unique perspective that few in the industry have a native Chicagoland Kevin graduated from the University of Illinois is an Army veteran and a world traveler. Please learn more about the brands that Kevin represents, which is at properties as well as Christie’s International to learn more@properties.com and Christie’s real estate, a Christie’s real estate.com Both links to those will be in the show notes. Kevin, welcome to the show. Kevin Van Eck 4:25Hi, DJ, thanks so much for having me. D.J. Paris 4:28I’m so excited to have you on I was just at a meeting down at the Chicago Association of Realtors for this for this committee I’m on and your name, believe it or not came up. This is not a surprise as you are very well regarded and respected here in the Chicagoland area. But you now you know represent a brand that has moved beyond just the Chicagoland area, which is really truly impressive. So I’d love to well before we get to that, let’s tell I want to learn about your journey. So Tell me a little bit about how you got into real estate, why you got into real estate and how you got to where you are today. Kevin Van Eck 5:06Sure. And going back to what you started with, you know, I served at the Chicago Association of Realtors for a long time. So they have a very special place in my heart. So that made me really smile when you said that. So thank you. That’s very good. I think the when I got into real estate, it wasn’t planned. It’s really interesting. I’ve had sort of a career where I’ve hopped around quite a bit between different industries. Like you mentioned, I served in the army, I was a paramedic, I wanted to be a trauma surgeon. And right before real estate, I was in restaurant franchising, and it was D.J. Paris 5:41very different from being a trauma surgeon. That’s, Kevin Van Eck 5:44that’s it’s funny the path that we all take, because I don’t think we, you know, anyone ends up where they had predicted if you ask them at 18, right? Right. So for me, it was the beginning of the downturn, and the restaurant group that I was working with, they were starting to feel it, they were based out of California, and the downturn was impacting quite a bit. And I had a friend at the time who was in real estate and said, maybe you try it, I thought my first reaction was the market is crashing is probably not probably not the smartest time to get in. And then I thought about it. And I thought about how you know, during that market would be the time to grab market share, and to actually grow a business because there were so many agents getting out of the business. And, and I saw an opportunity. And I was nervous as anyone would be I was prepared financially, but jumped into real estate. And I didn’t, it was interesting. I didn’t know what I was doing like most of us when we first get into real estate. And I had to learn very quickly, especially because of what was happening in the market at that time. D.J. Paris 6:45Yeah, it’s interesting, I started as a financial advisor in 2001, after that crash of the financial of the tech market in particular, and the stock market and of course, the events of 911. And it was, in some ways, it was the best time to get started because people were exiting the business, they had been burned by their financial advisors previously, who had put a lot of their assets into technology. And so in some ways, it was both the hardest time to get started. But also really fortuitous time. And I imagine you probably feel the same way when you got into real estate. Kevin Van Eck 7:24Agreed, I think it was, you know, I didn’t know what the good times were what people call the, you know, tooth out early 2000s, when it was almost, I call it the disney world of real estate. And I didn’t know that. So all I knew to do was you know, from 8am to 6pm, or longer work connect prospect. And it’s funny because I didn’t learn, you know, I didn’t have a lot of mentorship. And I could share more about that. But I didn’t have anyone really teaching me the ropes. So I learned, you probably remember this DJ in a website called active rain. And it was one of the first real estate blog sites and they told, you know, they told agents just to write cards, go out to lunch, dinner, breakfast drinks, and just see your people. And that’s exactly what I did. And that’s really what what launched my career at the time. D.J. Paris 8:09Yeah, it’s amazing that those same principles have, meet as many people as you can connect with them, interact with them, have some sort of communication strategy so that you’re sending something to them of value every so often or having conversations of value is is really sort of the discipline that even still works just as much today as it did that. Kevin Van Eck 8:33That’s right. It’s the basics, right, going back to the basics. And because it’s always been a relationship industry, and I don’t think, you know, you and I are both very involved in tech and trying new things. And but that still hasn’t replaced that one to one, that communication relationship, face to face that we have with our clients and other agents and colleagues in the industry, too. I don’t think it’s you know, there’s a lot of been a lot of talk over the years, and especially now with AI about agents being replaced, but nothing replaces that relationship. D.J. Paris 9:03Yeah, let’s talk about AI. This actually came up in my committee meeting this morning, we were sort of laughing about one of one of our committee members, because of the belief that in 10 years Realtors won’t be needed. This is a realtor and he says AI is taking over this is what’s going to happen. And it was a very interesting perspective. And I don’t know that he’s totally wrong. I hope that he’s wrong, but I don’t know. I know that as technology has sort of gotten past the year 2000 We’ve been hearing that every almost every single iteration of any new technologies. This is going to replace realtors, you know, even even going back to you know, pre Zillow days, there was sort of this talk of like, oh, people are just going to look for homes online exclusively. Not really need a broker anymore because Realtors used to be the gateway to homes they’re not really the gate the gatekeeper anymore because anyone who has access to the internet can search basically the MLS without ever realtor and and still, but but the realtor is as needed. I met with a friend who is on the board of actually I shouldn’t say where but but a big big financial services firm. And he had said 12 years ago to me, you guys are going to be out of business as a realtor, we got a business attendance and this is a guy who knows things. And he was like, You got to find a new line of work because it’s It’s over for you guys. He was TechSoup. Turns out he was wrong. He was right about a lot of other things but wrong about that. And thank goodness, do you think AI is is threatening to realtors? Kevin Van Eck 10:34I think you know, it’s hard to say in the long term, right. But things are things are moving so quickly. If you asked anyone six months ago, what chat GBT was, you know, who wasn’t on anyone’s the common person’s layout? Radar. Right? So I think now but look how quickly so a lot of agents and brokerages and tech companies have adopted open source AI, it’s wild. So in the short term, though, I don’t I don’t think we’re threatened by AI. But I think what it’s the perspective we have to have is that it is competition. It is competition with us, where we have to raise the bar and understand what we need to do to create great experiences. And to be able to, in competing with AI be able to guide consumers based on the non tangibles that they share with us. So I think, you know, because AI right now, it’s very technical, it’s glitchy all of that. But I do think, you know, from a data and stats standpoint, it can be something, but we need to put it to use. And we need to make sure that, you know I talk a lot about experience and consumer experience, the AI can’t create a consumer experience like you can. D.J. Paris 11:45Yeah, the only way I see AI actually replacing the role of a realtor, which in my mind. And there’s a lot that Realtors do, obviously. And this is going to be a very, very incomplete definition. And I’m not here to make that definition for all of our listeners and viewers because I am technically one but I don’t want to practice. So I want to be very careful in what I’m about to say I’m not looking to to ruffle any feathers. But I believe one of the primary roles of a realtor is to really guide their clients through the emotional ups and downs of a transaction. And that if AI can somehow at some point in the future solve for that which I I don’t see that but maybe who knows, I think then realtors have have more of a sort of thing to worry about. But for now, the hardest parts of the transaction are that emotional sort of regulation, that distress tolerance, the ability to to be there and be present while news either as in your clients favor or against and just understanding how to navigate through that as your clients are freaking out or, and that’s something that that it unless AI is at some point able to really understand empathy, compassion, wisdom, experience, and be able to soothe someone and help them stay regulated through through through a transaction. I think realtors are safe. Kevin Van Eck 13:10I completely agree real estate’s an emotional transaction. It’s not, you know, residential real estate is an emotional transaction. So you hit the nail on the head with the word emotion because I think even, you know, look at look at some of the disruptors that have been out there, whether it’s open door, purple bricks, the ones that tried to replace the agent in terms of guiding the consumer into a property and offering up properties and guiding them through the transaction. It didn’t work. And it didn’t work. Even during the pandemic, when you know, consumers weren’t out shopping for homes, everyone immediately went back because there’s when we talk about the emotional connection, it’s that emotional regulation during the transaction that an agent knows how to navigate, but it’s also that consumer emotion when they step into the right property, and I get a feeling. So I think about I really did this was, I don’t know 10 years ago, I was in New York City at an Inman conference. And I couldn’t I couldn’t sleep. So I turned on the TV and there was a commercial, it was maybe a precursor to Carvana where you could order a car online. And I thought, This is wild. If people are ordering cars online, they don’t need to actually sit in it and drive it. They’ll just order it, we’re in trouble. Because the next step is if someone’s spending $75,000 on a car online, it’s not too long until they’re spending 150 300 $600,000. online buying a house but we didn’t see it happen. You know, it happened in some cases during the pandemic, but I’m not I’m not feeling overly threatened. I think it’s an opportunity for us to utilize AI to better serve and create that experience for our consumers. D.J. Paris 14:43And for anyone that isn’t from here in the Chicagoland area. Of course. 95% of our listeners aren’t. Our viewers are not but for those who aren’t familiar with at properties, you’re most certainly familiar with Christie’s international just even, you know being in auction house have previously and still being an auction house. But understanding the story of app properties is particularly a strong one. Because you didn’t just come around you were just mentioning disruptors, you guys were disrupter. And you were disrupted in a way where here in Chicago, one of the largest real estate markets in the country, I don’t know when our properties was founded. But but whatever, early, late 90s, early 2000s, whenever. And what they did is they were an independent brokerage, and they went toe to toe with the big franchise firms and the big, large legacy firms, the ones that we all know, and we’ve had lots of guests on from those firms. And those are great firms too. And not only did you guys became the number, I believe the number one independent brokerage in the country very quickly, and you basically grabbed all of the talent that was here in Chicago, they all migrated, not all but almost all migrated to add properties. Because what you guys were building was so unique, so special, and you’ve continued this dominance here in Chicago ever since. And now you’ve partnered with Christie’s and you know, you guys are branching out at properties, meaning is branching out to other other markets. Christie’s, of course, is always always in markets, and also branching out, but this was an impressive rise. And you guys were really at the forefront of that of that disruption. Kevin Van Eck 16:22Yeah, I think it’s interesting, too, because it wasn’t, you know, I won’t say it wasn’t intentional, we always had the intention to grow. And that comes from the two founders, Mike golden and fat long, and who are super intelligent people, you know, they were the number one and number two agents in Chicago working with another brokerage when they founded that properties. So that story is super interesting about why they founded that properties, and why they left their previous brokerage, because that’s everything that app properties have been built on, which is, you know, agent first, if you give the agent, the best tools, the best resources, the best marketing, you’re going to organically attract agents. And then you’re also going to be able to provide that that higher level of service for your consumer, so that they’re also attracted to the brand and attracted to the app properties agent. And so everything from that point forward. And now since our acquisition of Christie’s international real estate at the end of 2021. We’re doing the same thing for our affiliates. They’re, we’re we’re injecting our tech, everything that we’ve done in our properties to become number one here. We are now injecting into each one of our affiliates around the globe. D.J. Paris 17:28I believe I’ve probably had more at properties agents on the show than any other any other brokerage in even including the large the larger brokerages. So it is, you know, it is a really tremendous talent pool that now other agents can participate in. And you know, whether you’re here in the Chicago area or somewhere else, there’s a lot of really cool things happening with with that properties at Christie’s International. But let’s talk about let’s talk about sort of brokerages because I think this is I don’t know, I’m calling this the year of recruiting only because I we’re seeing a lot of movement here at our company, people going in and out, people leaving the industry to join like a holding company just to sort of say I’m out for a while. But people are switching firms, there’s lots of team building going on, teams are obviously actively prospecting for more recruits. So obviously, that that trend is here. And this is I think, a year where a lot of agents are just kind of exploring their options. So I’m curious to get your thoughts on if you were an agent or any suggestions you might have to our listeners who are agents about how they might sort of evaluate where they’re at and what other avenues they should pursue? Kevin Van Eck 18:44Sure, I think that’s a great question. And you’re right, it is it is the time where agents are looking, I would be looking, I would I would be assessing where I was if I were still, you know, working with clients and actively selling, but I think looking why that’s happening, I think it was easy for everyone to be a hero in 2021. Right, it was because of the pandemic and because of everything that was happening. It was easy for agents and you know, some agents don’t want to admit it, but the growth that we saw during that year was just wild and not that agents didn’t work hard but a lot of it was market driven. Well now that the market is not is not you know participating that way and the market has changed it’s time where agents are looking around to understand okay, what is my brokerage doing for me? What are the What am I getting for whatever my split is what am I getting in terms of support and tech and marketing and brand and all of that to make it easy for me to sell as much real estate as possible. So I think that’s why you know, agents are taking a moment to look around I think my my I have a series of tips that I give because I think you have to be thoughtful I joined the wrong brokerage when I got my license when we were talking earlier and 2007 When I got my license I joined the wrong brokerage because I didn’t Ask the right questions. I was promised some things they weren’t delivered, which is why D.J. Paris 20:06we’re gonna call those, by the way we’re just gonna answer that he was promised leads anywhere is not given leads. Because that this industry, Kevin Van Eck 20:16you are so right, whether it’s a team leader or brokerage, you know, offering leads. But for me it was at the time, I realized that I’d been with another brokerage for about four months, five months, and I was designing my own postcards on whatever website it was that website is still around. But it looked like in elementary school child had built it and it took me four hours. So that’s when I realized, okay, this is not going to help me grow my business. It’s taken me four hours to build something that looks like you could have done with crayons and construction paper. And there was no support in doing it. So I that’s when I started to look around. And I found out properties at the time. And that’s what I that’s what I think is the number one thing for agents is take the time to look around and recognize sit back. And if you are thinking about making a move, I would first talk with your current brokerage and make sure that you’re not missing something. They’re definitely right. I would make sure because think about it agents were busy agents are busy, they’re out with clients, you miss emails, you miscommunications, your current brokerage might actually be offering what you’re looking for. You’re just not taking advantage of it. So I think that’s the first thing. And then after that, then I would I would sit back and think about okay, what brands stick out in your mind what brand resonates with the consumer you want to work with? And then start interviewing and ask tough questions. Don’t be this is your career, right? So ask tough questions like, how have you helped other agents grow their business? Ask for specific examples. dig into the details. How does this work? What is the process when I need to x? Because everyone, we’re all salespeople, right DJ? So it’s very easy. For you know, whether it’s a broker owner or a managing broker to say the right things, or they have to show you the right, thanks. Yeah. And then you can make an educated Apples to Apples decision. Also, based upon cost versus value, which I think is sometimes where we don’t make the right decision. I think, you know, there’s, there’s a brokerage for everyone, there will never be one brokerage, you know, there was a brokerage recently that said they would eventually be the only brokerage available. Good luck. Yes, consumers want choice agents want choice, there’s always going to be a different offering. So. So I think though, the cost versus value, a lot of times we’re attracted to a higher split. But we don’t always understand what we get or don’t get with that split. So there’s the trade off. So every agent has to make a decision. Okay? Am I going to be putting my own signs in the ground? Or are they going to be installed for me, and that’s a very basic one, it goes much deeper, but examples like that, because I think what we find, and I know, you’ve seen it, DJ, which is agents will make a decision, but they spend more time on admin or installing signs themselves or doing all these tasks that aren’t directly related to business growth. D.J. Paris 23:07Yeah, I could not agree more. I think that my suggestion for anyone that is out there to piggyback on what Kevin said, just a little pro tip, if you’re talking to a recruiter, somebody like me, for example, I know I’m honest, but you know, know that I’m being honest. So what I would recommend, if you talk to anyone who is a salesperson who’s saying, hey, you know, come work for us, we have, you know, all these great tools and features, and you know, everything that you’re looking for great. And then what I would do is I would randomly call three of their agents, people that you respect that you admire, and that are not referred to you by the person you’re talking to, because they might stack the deck, right? So this idea of of being able to reach out and say, Hey, I was thinking of joining your firm, I had a great conversation with so and so. And I just want to confirm that, you know, this is how it actually works there. And and do you think this would be a good fit for me, and usually the the agents there, if you call them at random in particular, you need to know that they haven’t, you know, sort of stack the deck in their favor, but you’ll get you’ll get the truth. If you talk to three people, one of them, one of them will say, Well, this is exactly how it is. Kevin Van Eck 24:12It’s very good advice, you know, talk to the people that are actually utilizing what’s there and what the value is and communicate, you know, if they could talk about their relationship with the managing broker, if they could talk about all these things that typically don’t come up when you’re when an agent is talking with the managing broker during a recruiting meeting. But I think, you know, when I say there’s a brokerage for everybody, I’m not downplaying the brokerages where agents are putting in signs or maybe it’s a higher split for lower service. I think that they’re, you know, of course, there are some teams or there are some setups where maybe that maybe that team leader does just want to be a team manager, right and so they have all the pieces in place to make sure that they can take some of that off of their agents plate so but that’s it but it’s a big decision and you don’t want to we all know agents that have hopped around and that’s okay because They’re trying to find their place but you don’t really want to be that agent you want to make, of course everybody wants to make the right decision the first time. D.J. Paris 25:08Yeah, and very few agents do. Some people some agents do because brokerages can change over time. an agent’s needs can change over time. And right now, and I don’t know what what the stats are, I’d love to see stats on how many brokerages an agent, you know, who’s does this for 20 years is on I bet it’s at least two, I would guess it’d be somewhere between minimum of one obviously up to maybe two or three. Obviously, you don’t want to keep switching because that’s disorienting your clients say it’s disorienting to you, you’ve learning new systems, you’re adapting and changing all your marketing. And so it’s not something that anyone goes into this business going I can’t wait to just jump jump from brokerage to brokerage. But the cool part is you can if you need to, and if you want to, and at least here in the Chicagoland area, we have hundreds of options on literally hundreds. And so it these brokerages are all in competition with each other, whether you know whether they they say it explicitly or not. And so they understand this, and they understand that they’re unless you work as an employee, for example, you’re a W two employee that yeah, maybe you can’t just easily move, you’ve got obligations to your employer. But if you’re an independent contractor, like 99% of Realtors, are you the power is in your hand. And so you get to sort of go around and talk to other firms and say, Hey, I’m over here now, but I’m looking for this. Can you help me? And I think that that is a tremendous amount of power that an agent has Kevin Van Eck 26:36agreed it’s very easy to move your license, right. But I think that’s why you’re thinking through it methodical and not making an emotional decision as an agent if something happens, or if someone is willing you with a large sum of cash, whatever that incentive might be. It’s thinking through carefully, because oftentimes, the incentives aren’t worth you know, aren’t worth the move aren’t worth whatever they’re selling. So D.J. Paris 27:00yeah, I It’s interesting. In the last few years, obviously, you’ve seen this as well, brokerages have been really throwing a lot of money at producing agents to attract them over and they sign some sort of agreement that maybe it’s a 123 year deal, whatever it might be. And a lot of brokerages were just buying up agents recently in the last several years, and I am but these are brokerages that some of them have never been profitable. So it’s very interesting to me. I’m curious what’s going to happen when some of those contracts come due. And these agents are now free agents again and can freely move and all of a sudden, maybe they’re not getting the same split that they were promised years before or, you know, there isn’t as much cash that there being a bonus. So it’s gonna be a very interesting model. I know that that, you know, when he there’s a race to the bottom that that can happen with brokerages to where you can literally just go to the brokerage that like you were saying that, you know, we’re an example of a brokerage that is a high commission, low fee model. And, and yeah, we don’t do all of the services that a firm like at properties does. And we also don’t charge for it. So it makes sense. And we have agents that are better fit here, and they wouldn’t likely be a good fit at your firm and vice versa. And both can coexist. And both can coexist peacefully. And it’s actually really exciting that there’s all these different options for agents. And so but let’s I want to I want to talk about, I’m gonna switch gears just for a quick moment and talk about because this is something that I would love to get your take on, which is leveraging what you call feeder markets. First, let’s define what a feeder market is. And then what sort of what your take on those are. Kevin Van Eck 28:47Sure, well, I view a feeder market as when you look at migration, right, and this has been a big term in recent months, especially since the pandemic and because of the rise, you know, the elevation or increase in property taxes across the US in different states. And then of course, there’s this political, you know, veil that’s over everything. So I think when when we talk about feeder markets, it’s where someone is most likely to come from and where they’re most likely to go to. So a good example of a feeder market would be locally the Chicago market to or from Southwest Florida. It seems like you know, the Naples market and Marco Island, Southwest Florida is a huge Chicago is a huge feeder market for that region. Whereas, you know, New York might be a feeder market for Miami and the east coast of Florida. Yeah. And so those are the I think the definition is, you know, where are people most likely to come from? And then the question, you know, how do you leverage that? Well, let’s go back. How about how about how do you want to identify that it’s really interesting, I’m working with a broker owner named Nick. He is in the Caribbean islands, and he’s done an amazing job there with a Christie’s international real estate brand and bringing together affiliates in the Caribbean And they’ve created sort of this conglomerate group, which is really cool, because there’s a lot of movement between the islands there. The other thing he’s done, though, that’s really interesting. And what he’s taught me is a lot of time feeder markets are driven by direct flight routes, where if you can find a direct flight route from a specific city to let’s say, Salt Lake City, or to Park City or to the mountains in Colorado or somewhere else, that city is likely to be a feeder market for that market. And so we started mapping out direct flight routes, because anyone that’s buying a second home or a third home or a second residence, even where they’re splitting their time, they’re more they’re more likely to do it. If there’s a direct flight route. Yeah, my and then D.J. Paris 30:42my parents. We grew up in Peoria, Illinois. And for some i It’s so funny, you say that because it didn’t occur to me until recently why they had this. There’s a direct there’s an airport, and there’s a direct route to to Clearwater, and Tampa, Clearwater, which are two different airports, but basically, but they do have flights to both and I went, why wonder why Pyare to Tampa, and I was like, oh, yeah, because retirees go down there. And my parents are retired out there as well. So it makes perfect sense. Kevin Van Eck 31:12Yes. And that’s it. I think that Chicago to, you know, the Chicago to Southwest Florida to a lot of as, as locals have, you know, they bought second homes there or they retire there. So I think the way to leverage it, though this for agents, right, I think and brokerages. So if you’re a broker owner, and you’re thinking through this, we’re doing this, I’m doing a ton of research right now for Christie’s international real estate when it comes to, okay, can we identify the sleeper feeder markets, because we can I can name that New York, Miami, Chicago to Southwest Florida, LA to Atlanta, all of those, but what what are the sleeper ones that we don’t know about and then using digital advertising to be able to market on both sides. So for agents, my recommendation is, you know, obviously, work with your brokerage in terms of, you know, if you’re a part of something like a network like Christie’s international real estate, or if you’re not, and you can’t leverage that, because you don’t necessarily have that start making connections with agents in those markets, and have those referral sources and relationships set up. It’s a huge opportunity we often miss and especially in a market like this, when there are fewer transactions, you want more opportunities. That’s one way to to, you know, stabilize your income or even grow your business through that type of referral business. D.J. Paris 32:22It’s the most common request when I interviewed top 1% agents from markets that receive a lot of inbound traffic from other areas beat feeder markets. So the number one request I get from, from agents I interview who say, when I say what do you want me to promote, they’re like, make sure you tell your listeners that if they have people moving to my area, I would be honored to and these are top 1% agents. These are busy, busy, successful agents. And they, they see the value in this. So I think you’re right, it’s making fun making those connections, finding realtors in those areas that you can trade clients back and forth and pass referrals over. And also making sure your clients know that you can still assist them if they’re moving to Florida or you know, Georgia, wherever it may be that you have a network of trusted real estate professionals in those markets, that they don’t have to go search or they don’t have to ask their friends who have already moved there. You already you can help them, but you have to let them know that otherwise, they might not think to call you because you’re the local you know, Chicago guy or you know, whatever city you’re in Kevin Van Eck 33:26a grid, you can be number one here, but they don’t ask you about a different market, if they’re moving, you’re buying a second home or whatever it might be. So that’s a, that’s a huge tip is make sure everyone understands, you can service them or advise them anywhere. And I also think it’s educate yourself on those on those feeder markets, educate yourself so you can sound and speak intelligently about Naples or so you can speak intelligently about the market in Miami. And then the other thing is social media makes it so easy to share content. And LinkedIn has really grown from a platform like that I’ve seen more interaction and activity on LinkedIn than ever. And I think there are stats out there that reflect that. But I think that’s a great place to be able to share to your point DJ, making sure that other people know that you can service and are knowledgeable and you are a global agent, let’s say you can in through those connections you make you can share their content. So that you you are showing that okay, you’re not just local in, you know, Central Illinois or in Chicago or in Southeast Wisconsin, you’re you’re you have the ability to service and you’re knowledgeable about the real estate market as as a whole. D.J. Paris 34:30Yeah, I think to it, we’re talking about the idea of feeder markets, which I’m so glad you brought that topic up. We talk a lot about referrals, but to other markets, but not this idea of sort of being strategic in advance of the client saying, Oh, I’m moving here. Can you help me find somebody having that information? I was thinking when you mentioned social media of creating content, if it was me if I had a lot of clients that were nearing retirement age, just as a really simple example, and this is really an obvious example. So it’s not necessarily something I’m coming up with you nicly but it’s something that I think you could you could take advantage of anyone listening is do your research on where people from your market move to. Also, I would look to where places where maybe that are up and coming like you were saying emerging theatre markets, emerging places of retirement or second homes, and you know, start putting up content of, Hey, are you nearing retirement and thinking about maybe getting a second place or winter vacation or just moving entirely? Here are some options that you might not know about? And again, that’s not necessarily even specifically real estate related, although I mean, it is, but but it’s really content that provides value to people who are in that stage of life. Kevin Van Eck 35:40Absolutely. And one more thing. So continuing on that is, if you can, if you know why someone is moving from, let’s say, LA to Atlanta, or why somebody is moving, you can actually then speak to the value that your market brings, and what you do specifically for clients coming from that market, and offer other other areas that might fit. So to your point, the up and comers, I remember, I worked, we have a company in Atlanta Annesley. They’re the number one luxury real estate company in Atlanta metro. And I lived down there for a year, working with them and learning and setting them up, essentially, with all of our resources. And it was great, they have a second home market called Blue Ridge, and it’s just an orange couple of hours north of Atlanta. And that place that that it is so expensive, the affordability there has gone down because it was especially during the pandemic driven up by second homebuyers. Well, there are plenty of other similar lakes and areas around Atlanta that someone moving might not understand or know about. So if you’re familiar with your truly familiar with your market, and the opportunities that are there are those those I guess the you know, up and coming markets, you can offer more and attract attract those, those movers or migrants to your to your community. D.J. Paris 36:59Yeah, I could could not agree with this. This, this is such a great conversation, as we’re seeing a lot of the baby boomers are retiring, if not already retired, they are moving. This is a huge percentage of our United States population. So we we have a real opportunity here to I mean, financial advisors have known about this for years and years and years going, there’s all these trillions of dollars of retirement dollars are going to be flooding the financial advisory space, and financial advisors have been trying to gobble up their their their percentage of market share, this is a great time to do the same thing for real estate, is really understanding who your clients are. Or even maybe you don’t have a lot of clients who, for example, if you want to focus on retirees that are retiring, but what you can do is learn about that and you can go interview other agents and talk to them. And it’s been my experience. And I’ve again, I’ve had so many properties, agents on the show, Carrie McCormick comes on every single month since almost the beginning to talk about, but it’s been my experience, like people like Carrie and everyone else, basically, who’s ever been on our show is so incredibly generous with their time with their thoughts. You know, not every realtor is going to have time to chat with you. But if you reach out, you’d be shocked at how few how infrequently top producers actually get asked by younger producers. Maybe they’re intimidated, they’re afraid, they feel like oh, I don’t want to bother so and so. This whole show has been about bothering since we started at six years been bothering top top producers and saying would you please come on and tell our agents what you do by the way, we’re not paying you so can you please come on and do it for free take an hour out of your day. And you know what, I think we’ve only had maybe two or three noes in six years. People realtors are tend to be very especially really successful realtors, they understand the cooperative nature of this business, they understand that being of service giving, having a little bit of that Servant’s Heart kind of mentality. Really, it sort of lights them up. So this is a great opportunity this year to to like going all the way back to the beginning of the conversation is look at the realtors in your market that you truly admire, whether you want to work at their firm or just learn from them, and take them to lunch, take them up for coffee, you know, see if you can get 15 minutes with them. And you’d be shocked at the lessons you’ve learned Kevin Van Eck 39:21a grid and locally there’s an agent named Tommy and there’s an agent who’s a real legend in Chicago real estate and a million I remember Tommy telling a story when he first got into the business inviting out Millie for lunch and he was nervous because he was new and she was this you know, huge producer. She met him they went out for lunch and they’ve been friends ever since. And that was a long time ago. And and I think it’s true. Why do you get into real estate? Why why do agents that end up being successful get into real estate, it’s service. It’s what you said DJ? It’s so whether it’s service with our colleagues and helping them mentor from that way or servicing our clients. It’s all it all comes from the same perspective and mindset. D.J. Paris 40:02Yeah, we were so lucky that we all sort of work. We’re not all of us. But most of us work independently, or maybe on a small team or large team, what we’re basically doing our own thing within that team, or maybe it’s just us independently. And we have the opportunity to see what everyone else is doing independently as well. And, and take little bits and pieces from, you know, obviously not taking someone else’s content or someone’s exact idea, but understanding how that can influence or inspire you to do more things. And, you know, I, there was a woman who had been sending me, I got on her mailing list, she’s a realtor, I’ll mention her name, because she’s such a lovely person Nicole Hodge do with Dream town. And what she did for years before I reached out to her, she would send an email on Wednesday of every week, this is such a brilliant thing. It’s so simple, but it’s brilliant. And it said, here’s the fun things to do in Chicago this weekend. And it would have like five or six ideas. And I was like, That’s brilliant. It had nothing to do with real estate. She never once mentioned that we’re in real estate, but she still does this to this day. And I went, That’s brilliant. Because this is so much value to anyone who around Thursday or Friday go, oh, shoot, I got to come up with something to do this weekend. And so I called her just out of the blue. She doesn’t know me, I don’t know her, I just called her she picked up the phone. And I’m like, I just gotta tell you, like, you don’t know me. She’s like, No, actually, I do know you, I listen to your show or whatever. But I said, you know, you don’t know me, but but I am so impressed by this. And, and then she and I become fast friends. And it’s one of those things that a lot of times these people do these really cool marketing things or branded things and and they you know, they get a lot of great results. But if it’s inspiring you reach out to them and say like, how do you do that? Like, how did you think to do that, you’ll get so many great ideas, because you don’t have to, like you were saying, You don’t have to build the postcard anymore. You know, exclusively on your own, you know, we have tools to help with that. And Canva can kind of do it for you. And some AI stuff can do it for you as well. But I would talk to the agents who have the best looking marketing materials already, and just say, How did you do that? And what’s your firm help you with that? Did you do it? Did you have a lender help? You know, there’s lots of little tips and tricks that aren’t really accessible. But if you reach out to people, they will tell you? Kevin Van Eck 42:14Absolutely. I think that’s part of the real estate community. I think if I can go on to marketing soapbox for a second, if that’s okay, I think you’re talking about content, you’re talking about something that very early on Nicole was doing. And I saw a lot of that from Dream town where they had, you know, the five, top five things to do in Chicago or whatever. What, from a content perspective we have as an agent, you have to be different, right. And because I think one of the things that I’ve really been talking about in app properties we’ve been talking about is you can’t do the same thing that every other agent is doing. You can’t otherwise you appear to be a commodity when it comes to the service side. But from a marketing standpoint, it’s not that attention spans have gotten shorter, maybe they have, but that’s not the point. The point is now we are being overstimulated by so many things that everything is trying to get our attention. And there’s some wild stat out there about how many ads or product placements we see. In any given day, it’s astronomical. So you need to make sure that when people see your stuff, they stop. When they’re scrolling through your social media, they stop. And when we talk about just listed and just sold, those have a place, right, whether it’s a postcard or on social media or wherever it might be digital ads, they have a place but if someone’s not actively buying or selling, and that property is not know if it’s not a $100 million aspirational property that people can scroll through, they’re not stopping. Right, right. So I think I just want to encourage agents think about what else your clients are interested in. And we we talked about this at Christie’s international real estate, I know if I have a high net worth individual likely they’re into art, automobiles, wine, something, you know, bag, Birkin, bags, whatever it might be. They’re into these things. So I can now use content that they’re interested in. That’s not real estate related, which is a term or a phrase you use earlier. D.J. Paris 44:08Yeah, I boy, I could not I could not agree with you more this idea of of being different and just understanding what your audience wants. If your audience wants to see your success over and over and over and over again, then by all means post exclusively just listed just sold. I don’t really think that’s what anybody wants to see exclusively. But But I understand and you said it has its place, it’s a good thing, you should definitely celebrate your accomplishments. And you know, it’s it’s you should be proud of that. That’s great. And that’s not really content for your audience. That’s more of a local showing up a little trophy and that’s fine. But then it’s also like, okay, also I want to create a lot of content that people go hey, I need that. I need that content right now. I need to know how you know, tips on how to get my home ready to sell or I’m in between buying and selling homes. So I do just want to know what’s going on. So Especially this weekend in my area, or whatever the content may be, the good news is, it can be about anything as long as it’s applicable to your audience. Kevin Van Eck 45:10That’s right. That’s it. So thinking outside the box, you know, I don’t think doing the same thing. If it doesn’t make you stop scrolling, then don’t post, if it’s not something that you would click like or engage with and comment on, don’t post it, come up with something different, think a little bit harder, D.J. Paris 45:25come up with something different. Because when I first got into this industry about 11, or 12 years ago, and I still see it every so often, but there was that phrase that everybody put at the bottom of their email that said, and I know where it comes from, and it comes from a very good place a good source. So I’m not poking fun at the source. But but because it’s a legitimately great source. But I think every so many people adopted this exact thing, where at the bottom line of their email, they said, I’m never too busy for your referrals. It’s like, who cares? Like, of course, you’re not too busy for anybody’s referrals like that? Would it be comes it the first person who did it? Okay, great. And now the 100th person who does it in your local market, you know, everybody was buying websites that was like, DJ sells Chicago, real estate.com. That was another another big fat. And I’m not saying I’m not putting those facts down, I do understand that there’s no place for that was cute. And I’m not totally, I don’t want to put anyone off. But I think you could be a little bit more creative and do something just a little bit more unique, and have more impact, and certainly certainly get more attention. Kevin Van Eck 46:23Absolutely. And this ties across everything, I think you have to do something different if a lot of times, again, it’s not, especially with top producers sometimes, which is they’ve got a great business, they’ve been growing, they you know, they’re they’ve got their income is solid, they’re not necessarily concerned, the problem is if they don’t innovate, or try something new and do something different, from what their competitors are doing, their business will not continue to grow, and it will shrink. So I think the the idea is, you have to you have to differentiate yourself, whether it’s with a physical listing presentation, whether it’s with a branding book, whether it’s with digital advertising that catches eyes, you have to be different. Otherwise, like I said, people are going to miss they’re there, we become a commodity we come up, we can become an industry that post just sold, where there’s just these cookie cutter homes that we’re scrolling through on Instagram, that doesn’t really do anything for the individual agents brand. D.J. Paris 47:23Here’s a little little tip, I want to get your opinion, a little suggestion I might have instead of just doing a just listed just sold, which by the way, again, I’m not saying we’re not saying don’t do that, that’s still you should be celebrating your accomplishments. And what I think would be really fun is when you do it just listed or just sold, or just whatever contract or whatever the announcement might be. It’s also do a little video, go into the home and show a couple of cool things that are in the home. That is way more engaging than just hey, I just sold this million dollar home if you sell a million dollar home, I want to see the inside of the cell and show me something cool in by the way, because it’s a $200,000 home $150,000 Home, there’s still something cool in that home, there’s something unique. And there’s a story to tell, even if it’s a 32nd story, go in with your camera and say you’re not gonna believe what’s inside. So this is so cool. And or here’s the best feature of what I just this property I just sold. That’s the kind of stuff that people go okay, cool. We’d like to see things like that. Kevin Van Eck 48:18It’s absolutely right, the word you use with story. We have to be better storytellers. You know, whether it’s like, what you’re saying is, can we tell a story about the experience we created for our buyer or our seller, tell the story that highlights that consumer and how you made their their transaction as seamless as possible, you did something that is unheard of. And it doesn’t mean like 2021 Everyone’s posting about how their average sales price to list price ratio was 101%. Yes, everybody’s was 101%. Right. So that’s not unique. But if you have a story to tell about a way that that transaction went, and if you also have a story to help guide clients now I think storytelling is an art we have to continue to master as agents. Because whether it’s helping and supporting and advising a client and how to price their home now as the market is changing, using cautionary tales using success stories, you have to use these stories because people relate to them. And so if you can do that with your successes to exactly what you’re saying, DJ, instead of a just sold Hey, I sold this it’s more about telling a story. How was this a unique experience or to your point, story about the home, talk a little bit about the history of the home or what that you know, that unique aspect of the home that they won’t see elsewhere. D.J. Paris 49:34And you can also talk to I think about the challenges that clients face throughout the buying and selling process and I think telling those stories is incredibly valuable because then that homeowner who might be in the middle of that process of buying or selling and they hit a roadblock and it seems bleak and they’re depressed or or they’re angry. Stories like this can help soothe the PERT the afflicted A customer because you can say, Hey, I’ve been through this before. And this could be a one to one conversation, this could be a social media conversation. But this is something that people need to feel that they’re not alone. And this is an opportunity for people to feel like, okay, other people go through this, I will be okay. So it’s such a such a great suggestion. And this is, I think, a great place. Because we covered a lot of ground here, I think it’s a great place to, to, to bring this episode to an end. And I just wanted to sort of go over a couple of the things we talked about today, as a recap, because we did, we did cover a lot. First, you know, obviously, we talked about Kevin and his, his rise through throughout, through add properties. And now Christie’s International, we should also mention, by the way, but before I conclude all of this, that Christie’s and our properties are always looking for quality agents who are thinking that they need more from their brokerage. And this is a great opportunity, you know, 2023, this is the year people are exploring, they would love the opportunity to see if they might be a good match for your needs as an agent. So I know you guys aren’t in every single market in the country, but you’re in a lot of them. And so if you have the itch to want to see what other options exist, just go to add properties.com also visit Christie’s realestate.com, I will have links to those in the show notes. See if there have local offices, by the way, they’re expanding, too. So they are opening offices everywhere. And I’m telling you, at properties came to Chicago against all odds and basically rose to number one, very quickly under the tutelage of as you mentioned two very very intelligent great guys, but did it and and they have a lot of knowledge. And that’s just just a great company. So could not and Christie’s the brand Christie’s of courses is so well regarded to a white glove brand. And it is it is just an awesome, awesome company. So I I’m the biggest app properties fan out there, even though I don’t work there. But I am a huge fan. So if anyone out there is exploring, please check out our property. So we talked about what what it’s like to maybe switch brokerages what questions you get some great suggestions on how to explore other options that we also talked about, you know, leveraging these feeder markets, this idea of how do we think beyond our current transaction? You know, where are some trends that maybe are happening in the future? How can I start, you know, creating strategies to make connections with agents and other markets? How can I you know, start to really develop that that additional sort of revenue stream by finding out you know, where my clients are going and where they’re coming in from and, and developing relationships. So you can have that two way interaction and get those phone calls once in a while, it’s like, Hey, I’m a broker down in Florida, my clients moving to Chicago or vice versa. That is a really, really powerful connection to have. So I’ve had agents on the show, by the way that literally fly to other markets, just to meet with agents to really say I am so serious about sending clients are way that I want to make sure that you’re the right person. So if you know that’s another, if you really want to step it up, that’s a great, great opportunity for sending a lot of people to a market, I’d be visiting that market as often as possible and, and making my presence there known to make sure that you’ve got great partners there. So anyway, this is a great opportunity to really explore your brokerage this year to explore you know, some of these feeder markets, also to understand that AI is not yet taking over and hopefully won’t take over. You know, we won’t become slaves to to the ai, ai machine. But who knows, I guess we’ll find all find out together. But in the meantime, your jobs are safe, because the one thing that AI can’t quite yet do, and hopefully never can is handle our emotions, and really give us guidance that is based on not just facts and understanding, you know, sort of the, the the intricacies and the subtleties of life that aren’t black and white. So, for everyone out there, please go visit@properties.com also Christie’s realestate.com links to those in the show notes. Kevin, I’m such a fan of yours. I’m so grateful that you took time out. I know how busy you are. So on behalf of our audience, we appreciate you. While we were doing this, we had the highest number of people ever watching us. I was telling Kevin ahead of time to go don’t worry, we’re recording this live broadcast live. No one’s gonna watch it. There was like 30 people watching which is incredible. So this is just how this is because of Kevin not because of me. So this is how respected this man is. Kevin’s a great guy. He’s He’s a real leader in this industry. And you know what he says is always a good idea to pay attention to because he just knows a lot. So we’re grateful on behalf of our audience. Thank you, Kevin. And on behalf of Kevin and myself, we want to thank our audience for sticking around to the very end. We love you. We honor you. We are so grateful we do this for you. And please support our sponsors. Please support Kevin checkout at properties and Christie’s International. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Thank you Kevin. Kevin Van Eck 54:58Thank you so much DJ. It was an honor Good to be here.

Sam Sawyer the CEO of Pinnacle Realty Advisors talks about the beginning of his experience in real estate when he was just 19 years old. Sawyer describes how he helped friends find apartments and condos while attending Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. Sam describes the tool they have built – Brokerage as a service, which is covers all the US, where agents can pick the brokerage plan they want. Next he describes the importance of connecting people and how the idea to connect old agents with the new ones will benefit everyone. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Sam Sawyer can be reached at 972-338-5441. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00It’s 2023. We’re almost halfway through the year now and agents are moving around. So we’re going to talk all about recruiting today and switching brokerages. 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 I’m 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 and real estate entrepreneur Sam Sawyer. Before we get to Sam, just a couple of quick reminders. Please tell a friend about this podcast to send it over to another realtor that’s struggling right now that needs to grow their business in 2023 and let them know about our show. And also guys we have started now clipping our episodes and providing short form video content on all of the different social media channels. I think we’re pretty much on everything so you can find us on Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube really everywhere and probably a few others. So what we’re doing is every day I’m posting a short form usually 30 to 62nd video clip from one of our episodes with a tip or strategy that you can implement and use immediately. So this way you can get these little bite sized nuggets of wisdom every single day but you have to subscribe to be able to access these so find us anywhere on any social media channel. We also have a link tree you can look us up on link tree keeping it real pod is the link tree there. But anyway we will have all of this in the show notes but please follow us on social tell a friend and now on to my interview with Sam Sawyer. Okay, today my guest is Sam Sawyer with Pinnacle Realty advisors in Austin, Texas. Actually, Pinnacle is all over Texas. Sam is an Austin guy. But let me tell you more about Sam. Sam Sawyer has been licensed to sell real estate since he was and this is incredible. 19 years old at 19 years old. I was not that mature. Not that forward thinking so I’m always impressed when I talked to agents who started that that early and knew that that’s what they wanted to do. But Sam began his career while attending Southern Methodist University SMU in Dallas, where he helped friends find apartments and condos very smart idea for college students. Following graduation, Sam worked his way up to senior vice president at Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty. So say that Sam later left Sotheby’s to help launch a brokerage called the collective with two other industry leading agents, which was eventually acquired by compass. Prior to launching Pinnacle Realty advisors. Sam worked for the Y Combinator graduate and venture backed startup zero down in Silicon Valley as their VP of real estate operations. Sam now lives in Austin and looks forward to expanding the pinnacle Realty advisors brand nationwide and we are excited to see him do that Sam, we are so excited. Oh, before I bring you on, let’s say how people can find you. So a couple of ways that you can learn more about Pinnacle Realty advisors first visit their website, which is Pinnacle are a.com Pinnacle are a.com and also follow Sam on Twitter. You can find him at Sam H Sawyer on Twitter. By the way we will have links to both Sam’s website and his social accounts on in the show notes. So you don’t have to write that down. Just scroll down to the Sona Let’s go and visit Sam and check out what he and Pinnacle are all about. Sam, welcome to the show. Sam Sawyer 5:05Yeah, glad to be here. Thank you for that was a nice intro. Thanks a lot. D.J. Paris 5:09Well, I’m just I’m grateful to have you on the show. You’ve been in real estate for a long time. And let’s start at the very beginning, because you’ve done a lot in real estate. A lot of times when I interview people, you know, it’s like, well, I’ve been a broker for the last or, you know, an agent, whatever it’s called in the state that people are listening to, for 30 years, and I’ve basically done the same thing for 30 years. So I am super excited. But how did you get involved in real estate? Sam Sawyer 5:33Yeah, I am. Well, it’s I don’t really know, I’m still doing it. But I guess I kind of started kind of on accident I played. I played lacrosse in college. And so in the summer, I would stay into summer school. And I was just really bored one summer and got my real estate license. And then kind of started out. So that was in between, like freshman and sophomore year in the summer. And then kind of started out helping friends on the lacrosse team, find apartments, and then, you know, started helping other people on campus, find places to live. And then when I graduated in 2009, it was kind of the worst time ever to look for a D.J. Paris 6:23job. Yeah, especially in real estate. Sam Sawyer 6:26And so I actually never intended on remaining an agent or doing what I’ve done, but it was kind of like timing, you know, pushed me a certain way. And so I started working at Southern, basically Briggs Freeman was a company in Dallas that had been around, they’ve been around for a long time, but they joined the Saudis network kind of in, right right around the time that I joined. So I worked at I worked at Southern these in Dallas for a number of years. And then myself and Jonathan Rosen and Christy Berry, who are two other agents there. We left and started a boutique, you know, pretty traditional boutique, high end like Luxury Firm in Dallas that we built up to a number of agents, 30 agents or so. And that was in 2018, when compass was expanding across the country. And so they acquired our firm. And we launched compass in Texas. So our entire brokerage firm joined compass, we became compass in Texas, we launched compass in Texas. And I stayed there for like a year and a half after the acquisition. And then through a mutual friend knew someone in San Francisco that was starting kind of a new age, new age mortgage company lending company, the zero down company. So I left and went to Silicon Valley, worked there for a number of years and kind of while I was there, I had an idea to build kind of a new age brokerage platform. And so left zero down in summer of 2020, and moved back to Texas down to Austin, and we started Pinnacle then D.J. Paris 8:12tell us more about pinnacle, because it’s really trying to do something a little different. And I always loved disruptors, you’ve been in sort of the the tech space, the real estate space, you are attracted to starting things and working with people that are trying to change the industry a bit. So tell us more about pinnacle. Yeah, so Sam Sawyer 8:32pinnacle, the way we call it brokerage as a service. So it’s kind of a play on software as a service. So it’s a subscription based brokerage platform that’s fully virtual, you know, everything’s online, lower fee, I don’t like to lead with lower fees, a lot of people associate lower fee with really bad service. So we’re really trying to build a platform where the agents can pick the brokerage plan they want, we have a number of different plans, you know, that appeal to a newer agent all the way up to, we have a product that’s a white label option that’s really similar to what side’s doing, you know, for a top producing team that wants to launch their own brand. So basically, we’re taking the brokerage sponsorship side is one part of the company. And then we have like an ala carte service side of the business. So the thing that drove me crazy about being an agent at traditional firms is, you know, they promised that they provided all these things for you, but you weren’t really sure what they provided. And they took, you know, I mean, I was a top higher producing agent. So I had a really good split, but I still didn’t see the value. And you know, most agents are on like a 7030 or 8020 split. The companies provide all these tools that you can go get for $20 a month on your own. Exactly. And so really, it’s really I built something I wish that I had all He’s wanted, a lot of people trying to disrupt this space are not real estate agents, and they don’t really understand what agents want. And so I’m just honest and building something I wish that I had and trying to build something that’s lower cost, but really good service. And and I don’t know, it’s really that simple. I mean, no, there’s a lot of people doing cloud based things. There’s lots of people doing interesting things on the branding side. But we’re trying to just build a platform that appeals to, you know, a lower end age, not lower end. But you know, an agent in the middle of nowhere in Texas, just as much as like an agent in Miami, Florida. And so no one’s really built a platform that spans, you know, the whole breadth of the industry. And the way that we’re able to do that is it’s a subscription business model. So we don’t rely on getting top producers, like, you know, we’ll take a five transaction a year agent, as long as you know, they’re a good agent. And that’s good with us. So we’re really just trying to be a platform that serves everyone let people pick how they want to run their business. If they need add on services, we’re happy to provide them, if they want to go use their own tools, then we’re fine with that, too. So it’s really like brokerage as a service, use what you want, you know, scale up and down as you need us. And that’s really how we think about it. So Well, D.J. Paris 11:18Sam, you are a man after my own heart, because I work at a brokerage that has almost a similar model here in Chicago little little bit different, but same idea. So just to get some get some additional clarity on like how Sam’s model works, and how it’s different from a firm like ours is, we have like a monthly fee that people pay, it’s a small fee. And then every time they do a transaction, they get 100% minus a small transaction fee, flat fee kind of thing. 350 bucks is what we charge, what Sam does is actually I even like it may be a little better than the way we do it is because Sam has like a subscription where you don’t pay those per transaction fees. And maybe there are ways where you could do that. But he has basically just a larger monthly fee. And he’s like, that’s we’re just gonna hit you once, once per month. And it’s, it’s really, totally reasonable. And if you are doing even more than one transaction a year, even just one transaction a year, it’s still a good a good deal. But anything more than one, it’s like a total no brainer. And I’ve been I’ve been here since 2011. Here at our company, my whole life is dedicated to a system very similar to what you’ve created in in Austin and Dallas and other parts of Texas. So I am I am right with you. I love this model. I think it’s brilliant. We’ve grown to about 800 agents in the last 11 years. And it was really, really helpful. We see no signs of that model slowing down? Well, I think it’ll only become more and more and more popular as agents start to think about, you know, are the tools I receive from, you know, firms that are taking 20 30% of my commission? Am I getting that value. And it’s not that the firm’s I always find in my experience that I people don’t usually complain about the service, or the support they’re getting at their previous firm. But what they but it does tend to be more of a value proposition. It’s more like, Hey, I’d like the guys at my firm. They’re awesome. They’re really helpful. They’re really, but are they worth 20 or 30% of every commission when I’m doing 99% of the job. And so company like yours is so wonderful for an agent that’s like I use and you provide tools to it’s not like you don’t have tools you guys do. But you know, as well as I do a lot of agents, they like you said they have their own tools, there’s a million options. There’s so many tech players in the space, they want to choose what they want to use, and it’s still gonna save them 1000s of dollars on every transaction, if they just, you know, choose a couple tools of their own if they don’t want to use your inherent tools, which I’m sure are great, too, right? Sam Sawyer 13:42Yeah, no, I mean, honestly, we like we provide a lot of tools that people are used to using, and we’re not trying to build a lot of like tools from scratch, like honestly compass, tried to reinvent the wheel and rebuild like super simple tools. And that’s where like a billion dollars went that they raised. Yeah, and it’s like, I mean, I thought compass at the time was like, the coolest thing in the industry. We sold our business to them, and we’re super excited about it. But we’re just kind of thinking about a different way where like, we’re letting people brand themselves we’re letting people you know if they have their own website like that’s fine. There’s a lot of things in the industry where broker does try to force agents to do things a certain way that for no other reason than trying to keep their brand cohesive and things like that. And yeah, yeah, and so yeah, that we’ve I like yeah, we’re we’ve we’re almost 700 agents now in like a year and a half. D.J. Paris 14:36Okay, well, you’re crushing my my now you’re making me feel like a bad recruiter. So the interview was over. Visit Sam Sawyer. I don’t know. I’m teasing I am. I need to learn what you’re doing and do this thing because you’re obviously doing it really, really well. Sam Sawyer 14:53But yeah, we’re in so impressed. Texas. So we were in a few states now Texas, Louisiana. We just launched Florida, and then we launched Arkansas. And then we’re gonna launch North Carolina soon. Wow. And then California. But yeah, it’s fine. But no, I mean, I love like your model, the company that you’re at, yeah, these, these models are just better for agents. So that’s kind of the high level thing with images. Making D.J. Paris 15:19it it’s, it’s so satisfying when you talk to an agent where this is like a perfect fit for them. Because even now, and we’ve been doing it for like 10 or 11 years, even now, people are still like, really, like it used to be. And thankfully the tide has turned, but it used to be suspicious, really, like you really can do all this, whereas the hidden fees were like, no, no, it’s really just what it is. And once people started getting more used to these models, because obviously you’re not the only person account brokerage in Texas that has this model, it’s becoming more popular, but it’s still, I don’t know, at least here in Chicago, it’s maybe 5% of the agents are at firms like ours. So it’s not that common, but it’s now I don’t get the like, what’s the catch? What’s the I don’t get that as much now I just get oh, that’s cool. But in the past, it was like, This sounds a little fishy. And it’s like, oh, no, it’s What’s brilliant about the fact that people respond that way to me, is that the branding is so strong that the other firms that they don’t look suspicious, sometimes the 100% firms look suspicious, and it’s like, actually, I kind of think of it the other way, personally, for sure. Sam Sawyer 16:22No, I agree. Yeah. You have to be careful with hyping only the cost savings, because a lot D.J. Paris 16:30of work. Because that’s what people start to think. Yeah. Yeah. Like Sam Sawyer 16:33in the beginning, we learned that the hard way. Because like we we did, too. Yeah. And then you attract some people that aren’t a good fit. And then yeah, I don’t know. But like when you approach it as like a service, first lower cost, build your own business? You Yeah, I mean, it attracts great agents, we get agents from, you know, some of the best firms around and then once they’re here, then they stop telling them D.J. Paris 16:57they get it. They’re like, Oh, yeah, because the reality of is I’m wondering, curious, your thoughts on this, when we first started, we only were going after agents to transfer from other firms and not brand new agents, because at that time, we didn’t have training and support in any real way. And we just wouldn’t have felt right about bringing on a new agent. And so we only brought over existing agents who really didn’t need a lot of help, just in case, what we learned very quickly was when those agents when any agent needs help, we can’t say, Well, we’re kind of this 100% model, we can’t really help you like that does not fly. So what we learned is we have to provide, in some cases, even better support than we would maybe anticipate because we don’t want people to ever feel oh, they’re not really going to help me Sam Sawyer 17:41right now. No, I agree. I mean, we really just started taking brand brand new agents like recently, kind of the same idea, it was like the mid to higher end agents don’t need as much hand holding in the beginning. But like newer agents, to me is a great way to grow. But like to me, we think about that, like we want to build like a real like mentor slash New Age training program, not like I don’t know, some of these training programs at the legacy brokerages are like worse than like sitting in third grade and 9095. And so we’re trying, D.J. Paris 18:20I’m never too busy for your referrals. Sam Sawyer 18:25That donuts in the office and like somebody you don’t want to talk to. But like we’re trying to rethink, like, partnering up newer agents with older agents. And really like, I mean, we’re a cloud based company, but trying to connect people in real life. Like we’re not like a faceless, like, we get that sometimes. So it’s like, oh, how is there a community it’s like we do in person events with our agents, and we have a Slack channel with all the agents like, I honestly think our agents talk to each other more than agents at a traditional firm, but in different ways than acting like the office is this place where that happened? Because even before COVID, the only real estate agents that sit in the office are the ones that don’t sell anything. So, you know, I don’t know, like, it’s just funny, like, compass in Dallas had this fancy office, it was awesome to go there. But you know, people are only they own like Monday from 12 to four because there’s an Office meeting and then no one’s there. And it probably cost you know, a couple $100,000 in rent or whatever. So it’s like, oh, no, you can spend the money in way better ways than paying rent or like I mean, I’m sitting in this you know, little crappy office in Austin all by myself. Like we don’t spend a lot on our staff and things like D.J. Paris 19:41that weren’t Yeah, for us. We we spend the majority of our stuff on staff, but our offices are not fancy. They’re slick. They’re just there they just are and you know what, almost, we even were able to leave ours open 24/7 Just because we own the building and whatever. But but the reality is no When he uses it even we have almost 800 agents, nobody uses it. Yeah, so it’s like, it’s like, you know, when, for agents were having a fancy office is important. And there are agents where of course, that’s important to them. And that works for their business model. But that’s a very few small percentage of agents. So the vast majority, I think, are coming around, because they’re going wait, I really work out of my home, mostly anyway, out of my car, it’s nice that there is an office in case they do want to come in and do some work. Um, it’s, I think it’s maybe good just for that feeling of maybe if if there is something local that they can use it even though they never are going to use it. So it’s kind of fun. I’ve been watching this model evolve over the years and watching it kind of hit the public, meaning the other agents in the area. Finally, there was this, you know, initially there was suspicion and now it’s like, oh, you know, and we’re seeing evidenced by by growth like yours like to get you know, almost that many agents in a year and a half is in sane as somebody who does this eight hours a day, five days a week, like, that’s insane. So I am I need to, to learn from from the master like yourself. Yeah, I’m curious on. And by the way, I didn’t mention this, and I forgot to in your intro, and this is equally as impressive as anything else in your in your resume. You were in that you were an AR 30 under 30. guy that is, that is a very, very big deal at only the very best agents I know have ever been on that list. We we usually here in Chicago, we usually never, it’s never been anyone from our firm, but it’s usually one or two people in the whole state of Illinois make it? And so I know what a big deal that is probably saying, but that was Sam Sawyer 21:39fun. You know? Yeah, that’s a good group. And everyone stays in touch afterwards. And yeah, some people when they when they read that they think that I was still under 30. Like, I just got it like last year. And I’m like, No, I’m not. I’m not like 28 now, but 36 Now, so that was a few years ago, but D.J. Paris 21:57still amazing. Yeah. It’s a badge of honor. You get to wear for the rest of your life. And very, very, it’s very rarefied air. And, and believe me, NAR who’s actually headquartered here in Chicago, and I get, I get to go there quite a bit. They take that that thing? Very, very serious. Yes. No, Sam Sawyer 22:15they are so patient on that was like harder than getting your passport or something like it was Yeah, you had to get a lot of references. I mean, it was fun. But everyone, should you learn something even applying for it. If you’re under 30. And an agent listening to this, it’s like, you know, it’s not just all about sales, it’s a lot of things go into it. So yeah, I’ve met some super cool people through that. And it’s a great group. So that’s awesome. D.J. Paris 22:40So let’s talk about 2023. So we’re, I don’t know, of quarter of the way through the year, a third of the way through the year now. And, you know, things, I think it’s the spring market and in many, many local areas, that’s going to increase activity, but we still have rates that are not what Realtors would like them to be for lending, although I, you know, there, there’s they are what they are. And that’s preventing some people from wanting to buy. We have still lower inventory and many major markets. So you’re seeing, I imagine, I mean, Austin is, is always always fun and exciting. I don’t know, the real estate market there. But I assume it’s probably booming, like always has been. But what are you telling? Because you have agents in different states? What are you telling agents to focus on this year, especially for those that maybe the phone’s not ringing as much as it was during during 3%? Interest rate days? Yeah. So what are you telling agents to do? Sam Sawyer 23:35Yeah, I mean, with, with the way that I mean, I kind of started out in a market that was way worse than this one, like in 2010. It was like, impossible to get things done, and people were way more afraid. And like things weren’t happening. And I think right now there’s kind of like the shock in the system because rates rates moved so fast and everyone kind of freaked out and prices a lot of things were happening but coming out of COVID prices or a mortgage rates were low but to me like with our agents are just when people ask me, it’s like, there’s always people moving. And like there’s always like, it’s not like people stop moving or stop selling houses, even if there’s less transaction. So you may have to like, work a little bit harder or try different things. But I mean, one thing I would always do is just go back to people that you had helped you know, rent a house or buy a house and literally just call them and ask them like, Hey, do you know anyone moving? Or like, Can I help you like figure out how much your house is worth? Like something I used to always do is like, it’s called free? Yeah. Do you want to know like, what homes have sold recently and not, not just send like some stupid email like actually like call them or tech. D.J. Paris 24:57You don’t have to meet them in person and take them out. coffee or something? Yeah, Sam Sawyer 25:01like you don’t have to call like, honestly, a lot of my clients were busy and they prefer texting, like, you know, like some that’s fine. It’s I don’t think that’s impersonal. I think sometimes people think they have to call. I think you just do whatever makes sense. But I’m just asking people for, you know, business and like a lot of younger agents are afraid to do that. But I used to, like, send, like, 15 written notes a week, like I would literally every Monday have D.J. Paris 25:28a Brian Buffini method the Sam Sawyer 25:31like, like, here’s a note, I can still do this. And yeah, and like on Monday, I would put 15 out and then by, I wouldn’t always like I would get it done. And I acting like I should always did it. But I would try to just write like, even like, hey, you know, say I’m like good seeing you today at the coffee shop. Like it didn’t have to be anything like in depth, it’s more just like sending somebody something in the mail. Like, I bet 80% of my business came from referrals. And I didn’t do a lot of advertising anything. So I think if you just want to, it’s really just asking people, if you can help them and the market, there’s nothing you can do about it except like figure out a way to make stuff happen. So I get, I get pretty like, I don’t feel sorry for agents that complain about the market, because there’s nothing they can do about it. Right, you can always find a way to sell a house. And like, those still will be like four and a half million transactions this year. They’re saying which is off, you know, from like 6 million, but I don’t know, real estate, residential real estate is the only job in the world where every single person you walk by every day need somewhere to live. Like there’s no other business on the planet like this. So D.J. Paris 26:41yeah, funeral directors, people who cut hair, real estate agents, all are gonna stay in business, if they keep working. You know, your idea is such a good one about if anyone out there have any of our listeners or viewers are, maybe again, the phone’s not ringing as much, maybe you’re in between sales, and you don’t really have anything to work on. It was me. And I’m just taking what Sam said, and he can tell me if this is a terrible idea if I misunderstood him. But what I would do is what Sam suggested is I would call everybody I know who owns a home, whether they were my client, or just a friend, and especially if their friend because what you can say is like, I know, I know you have an agent, but I’m practice I want to, I’m working on honing my skills for for CMAs for competitive market analysis. And I would just love because it helps me keep my skills sharp, I’d love to send you an update on what I think your home is currently worth. Because I went on Zillow, and I saw what they put for your home. And I actually think that might not be totally accurate. So what I’d like to do is give you my own two cents on it, can I just shoot that over to you, or maybe I can drop it by or whatever. And make that just a practice of doing once a month for our once a month once a year for everybody you know, and again, you’re adding value, because I mean, doesn’t everybody want to know what their homes worth like, but they might not think to look it up themselves because they’re not thinking of moving. And if all of a sudden they see that the value is different from what they expected in a positive way. They might go hey, you know what, maybe it is a good good time to consider getting out. Alright, so or, and then and then if they were like, Hey, that thank you for this, I’m we’re happy we’re not going anywhere, then I would say to that person like, hey, great. If this was helpful to you, one way that you could help me out is just anyone else, you know, who owns a home who’s who’s maybe you know, thinking about, you know, their their home value, like I would love to run a CMA for them, there’s no cost, I’m not gonna pressure him to use me. I just want to sort of keep honing these skills. So, boy, I mean, you could stay busy every day of the week just doing those. Sam Sawyer 28:35Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it’s the truth. And yet a lot of people weirdly when I would ask them like, Hey, do you know anyone moving? They would be like, oh, yeah, like, I didn’t know that you wanted more clients like, right? Like real estate agents think that that’s like crazy, but normal normal. I’m not saying real estate agents aren’t normal sight. Like customers and clients sometimes don’t send referrals because they really think I like bothering their agent because they assume some agents are like so busy. But like, you have to just do it in a nice way. Like, hey, there’s a cool house on your street for sale. Like, you may want to see this. It’s listed for 1.3 million. And that’s it. You don’t have to like have any intention. But then they just kind of remember you and like, oh, Sam knows houses in this neighborhood or? Yeah, I don’t know. That’s something that I think a lot of new agents today just don’t do. And they think they go by Zillow ads and build their business. And I think that that’s a horrible way to go about it. D.J. Paris 29:33Like you can do it but what you have to realize about Zillow leads and we probably could agree that those are some of the more high quality internet leads that exist because of course there was hope. So this whole business model is basically today built on on making sure agents are happy buying their leads, however, even in the best paths and Zillow used to be a sponsor of ours. So I’m a fan of Zillow however, it I know because I know that I know their sales reps. You know if you can get above a five percent closing ratio on internet leads, especially these Zillow leads are good. But 5% is about what you’ll get if you do a good job with those leads. So that means you have to talk to 20 people before closing one. And you don’t know when those leads are coming in, and you have to first on it, it’s not that it can work, it’s super expensive. And it is just got a low hit rate. So you can do it if you want to spend 1000s of dollars a month and you want that to be your life. Or you can call everybody you know, and be like, Hey, let me run this cool thing for you that will actually help you. And then they’re going to tell and again, you know, it’s I was just at a top producer breakfast a couple weeks ago, and one of the they asked, the top producer has been doing it 20 years. They said, Do you ever ask for business and he goes, I never did. Until this year. He’s like, this year, the phone stopped ringing and he goes, You know what, I saw other people asking for it. I said, you know, my clients like me, like, I can ask them for that. And, and they don’t if they don’t have anyone, they don’t have anyone. He’s like, I work really hard for people. So he just started asking like, Hey, do you do you know anyone? And he goes, it was hard for him because he felt like maybe that felt like too intricate. But it’s like when it’s a friend when it’s somebody who’s become a friend, like you want to help your friends. So he goes, does he goes dumbest thing I did was not ask for the last 19 years. Yeah. And Sam Sawyer 31:15you have to ask the right way. Some people are annoying about it. And I was like, yeah, like, you can definitely be bad at asking like that. You can it’s not just like, ask in a weird way and bother people or people would like sort of avoiding you at the grocery store and stuff, probably. But yeah, I mean, it’s really like simple, like cool ways to ask, or, you know, if I were a super brand new agent starting over, I definitely would have like joined a team in the beginning. That’s something else. I always tell people, it’s like, absolutely. I started out completely on my own, I screwed up so many contracts. And I would get agents calling me and be like, how did you even fill this out? And I’m like, I don’t know, can like can you help me? Like, fix it? Because I, I don’t know, I just filled it in. And I think if you start on a team, even if you’re not making as much money for the first year or two, like you will jump ahead of people by like, years. And if you’re working with a good agent. I mean, I’m like, This is not what I did. But I wish that I did. And I think that you could have, you know, gone even faster. So D.J. Paris 32:23yeah, it’s a great way to you know, find open house opportunities in case like your brokerage isn’t as friendly to other agents in the firm, you know, saying, Hey, can I do an open house for you? And if they’re like, Well, you’re not on my team, I don’t really know you. Or now I just want to do my own thing. When you’re on a team, those opportunities tend to be more available, possibly leads at some point if there’s a rainmaker on the team who’s just distributing leads, but the very least even if those two things don’t happen, is you’re just going to be hanging out with people who know what they’re doing, and you will absorb that. And yeah, you’ll take a bit of a pay cut to do it, possibly. But gosh, you know, you were saying you should have done that when you started. I told and again, you had a you have a wonderful career. And it all worked out great for you, but might have been easier path. Right? So I totally agree with you there. And I give that suggestion as well to any new agent. And we don’t have a lot of teams here. So a lot of times I’m, as much as I would love to have the person day one after they get their license. A lot of times I’m like, Look, we’ll love we’d love to have you we don’t really have, you know, a lot of teams, so we don’t have a lot of those opportunities, we’ll train you and we’ll do a good job. But if you really want to get experience like yeah, maybe go find one of these big successful teams. And then you can always join us later to, Sam Sawyer 33:40ya know, for sure, that’s smart. D.J. Paris 33:44Well, I am I’m such a fan. I’m so glad that we’re talking because again, I just want to spread the 100% love out there not that we don’t like traditional brokerage models, too. There’s room for everybody. There just is and there’s some really like, you know, there’s I love all the big franchise firms. I think they’re expensive, but I do think they provide amazing quality support. You know, they do you know, there is a point a place for them, obviously, in the industry there. They’re still reigned supreme, but it is starting to shift a little bit and we’re seeing some of these brokerages with a little bit of a different business model coming in like you and just kind of just taken over and it is so exciting to watch and I I can’t imagine, you know, the the franchise or the large sort of national international firms, the big brokerages. You know what, I’m curious on what, what, how, how viable they think their model will continue to be into the future. I mean, maybe it will, I don’t know, I think it’s going to it’s going to start like when when, when top producers, top top producers start moving to and they they’ve they haven’t really done that much here in Chicago, but I know in other markets that that has happened and it’s like the floodgates just open because then everyone goes I want to go where that guy’s going. But Sam Sawyer 34:58no, I mean, we’ve seen gotten a lot of our markets where you get a few years of bigger agents. Yeah, I mean, I, I am not like a, I don’t have like any enemies with brokerage firms but like enemies with business models, and I just really don’t think like traditional commission split thing will be around in 10 years and people think I’m crazy for saying that but it’s like the innovators dilemma like I don’t know if Clayton Christensen is like this famous professor. But it’s like, you know, this philosophy called innovators dilemma where like, big companies are too afraid to take risks, because they don’t want to cannibalize their current business model. So they don’t do anything. And then it’s too late. But they know that like, things are changing. It’s, I mean, no one ever thought Blockbuster Video would go out of business. And, you know, they could have launched something that looked just like Netflix. And this business is no different to me, just because of the, the, the numbers don’t make sense. Like a decade ago, a big brokerage firm business model made sense. Because, you know, you had to be at the big firm to get your listings in the newspaper, literally, you know, like they owned the newspaper listing. So like, if you weren’t at Sotheby’s, no one would work with you. Now, it’s like the cost of tech and all these things is cheaper and splits are getting to a point where these big brokerages, their margins are nothing. And when agents want more, yeah, it just does. D.J. Paris 36:29Yeah, no, we’re starting, we’re starting to see this with Compass. And I hope we have so many compass listeners, I love compass, I actually think they’re such a cool company, from the way they branded themselves. And, and but you know, you’re seeing articles, and I’m not here to spread any fear, because I don’t know anything that anyone else knows. But anyone else doesn’t know, I don’t I don’t have any special information. But there’s lots of articles right now being like, how does compass actually continue to? Or how do they become profitable, they haven’t yet become profitable. They invested a lot into their technology, like you were saying, they built their systems from the ground up, which is kind of their whole spiel, which is like, we’re gonna be this really high end luxury brand. And we have the best systems, which maybe they do, maybe they don’t but but regardless, that they they were also very aggressive in acquiring agents, and they were giving very generous concessions to do that. And then once those concessions start to come due, and all of a sudden now, you know, they gotta pay the bills and deal with the shareholders. It’s, it’s, it’s really interesting. Like, they may have painted themselves a little bit kind of in a corner now trying to figure out the road to profitability and, and compass agents love it at Compass. So I’m, again, I think that’s great. But it is from a financial model. I’m like, How does this work? Like, how do they ever find a path to profitability if it isn’t through like ancillary stuff like mortgage title? That’s the only way I see them being profitable again, I’m I’m a dummy. So who knows? When I know Sam Sawyer 37:53Oh, no, no, yeah, look, I mean, a lot of my best friends are at Compass. I love compass. I love the leadership there. Me too. I’m not like an enemy of a brokerage at all. I always say that. I’m not trying to like single out other firms, but I’m like business models, I, I do have enemies against business models. But that’s just a different thing. But it’s like the, the numbers just don’t make sense as the industry gets more competitive. And then people ask me, Well, how do you all make money because they’re so used to companies having traditional infrastructure, and I’m like, Look, we make money every month, whether people sell something or not. So it’s just a completely different model. It’s like, we don’t take as much of your money, but our revenue is subscription based. We literally, when you sign up with us, you literally put your credit card info on stripe, like you’re signing up on Spotify. Like we have the same sort of thing. Yeah, so it’s like, it’s like a recurring revenue model, we’re able to forecast things better. We have we have 20 employees or so but like everyone’s remote you know, our biggest expense is payroll like we don’t have overhead and then the numbers look way way better than a traditional firm if anyone like really looks at it it’s more like a software business model applied to the brokerage industry and then we we have partnerships where we resell services we’re starting to do like there’s a lot of ways you can add on services that agents want that you don’t have to force them to use. So I want to I think a majority of our revenue over the next few years what could even come from the service side and not even from the brokerage side so it’s like D.J. Paris 39:40Yeah, yeah, we’re we’re starting was just so everyone knows and I again, I’ve I don’t have a reference for this stat. So I may be slightly off but it’s going to be close to accurate which and last time I saw this stat again, I’m just pulling this out of my my memory which is not reliable, but somewhere the average margin at a traditional brokerage is Something like 7%. Like it’s really, really low, which means they’re only making, you know, a tiny amount on their overall because there’s so much cost of doing business. There’s obviously the rent, there’s payroll, there’s your commissions, there’s all the marketing they do to sort of, you know, stay in stay in the public’s eye and the brokers of agents eyes. But, but yeah, it is, it is really interesting that there’s now these additional firms like ours. So I could not be more of a champion of your model, because your model, I love it, it’s literally the same cost just monthly. I just I love that. It’s so easy. It’s so simple. And you know, the cool thing too, for agents, when they do decide to take a chance and try a new model like yours, or here ours here in Chicago, is, you know, I always tell them, because I never want somebody to come in because they feel persuaded because I don’t think I don’t like to feel that way. So I always say I always say here’s, here’s the reality, let’s say everything I tell you is a lie. And we’re really terrible. And we really don’t help you. And we’re not that great. If you come over and you find that out, there’s like 500, other brokerages here in Chicago. And if you come in, and then all of a sudden, you’re like, oh, DJ is a big liar. This sucks. You’re gonna leave a moment later, because there’s a million other people calling you to join their firm, and you’re gonna hate my guts, and you’re gonna tell everybody you know that we suck. So the reality of it is like, it’s not in our best interest to not take care of you. So so we all kind of go, you know, we’re we want referrals to, we want our agents to tell every agent Oh my God, why are you at a, you know, XYZ firm instead of kale. But we know that we have to earn that. And so I kind of like our model. For that reason is we have to really earn it. Like, we can have the low price and the high commissions. But if we don’t deliver on support, training, you know, what the agent actually expects, and also setting clear expectations. Here’s what we do, here’s what we don’t do. But if we don’t actually deliver on that people, everyone’s going to leave and and you know it as well as I do. So in some ways, I almost think firms like ours maybe even have to work a little harder to keep agents happy. Because, you know, they might think, well, maybe I’m not gonna get a whole lot. And then we have to go like, Oh, you’re gonna get all this cool stuff. Sam Sawyer 42:04Yeah. And then once they’re there, they realized that it’s the same or better, and they’re making more money. Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I think there’s a lot of industry shifts that are making these things easier. Like, the agent as the brand is what I call it, but like, the agent name is way more important than like the brokerage name and a lot of markets and it like, you know, 10 years ago, it would be some of these or, like, you would say, the brokerage name first, then like DJ DJ. Now, it’s like, here’s Sam’s number. He works in these neighborhoods, like people don’t even really know where you work. Right? So I don’t talk about this for a long time. It’s like, Well, no. D.J. Paris 42:49Go ahead. I’m sorry. Go ahead. Sam Sawyer 42:52Yeah, it goes back like 30 years ago, like big brokerages. When this industry started, the business models were the exact same then as they are now, back then it makes sense. Because literally, the newspaper, I’ve written a blog about this, I’ll send you but you had to be at the big firm to get in the newspaper. And that was literally how listings were distributed before the internet. And I’m not I’m not even joking right now. Like, I remember my parents when I was little with like circle listings, and then oh, yeah, me too. Worried at the big firm, no one knew your house was for sale. And so like, that is why the commission split model like all these services back then a bit. And now, everyone’s still doing the same model. And we’re like launching people to Mars. Like, it just doesn’t make sense. Like the world has changed. But the brokerage business model blows my mind, because it has not yet it has not changed hardly at all in like 40 D.J. Paris 43:46years. Well, and then, you know, exp comes along, you know, more prominently in the last five, five years. And they basically, it’s, and again, I’m not I’m not here to be disparaging on exp, I think exp is fine, obviously, they’ve been crazy successful. They’re one of the only firms and all they did was slightly tweak the traditional model by basically saying, no more offices, nobody cares. And we’re going to go more virtual and we’re going to give you a slightly better commission split than what you’re probably getting. And and by the way, anyone you know, they’ve kind of created this multi level marketing thing where you can get your downline where you can have agents from all over the country and you get paid a certain percentage on whatever their deals are. And that really, really worked for I know agents, some agents like exp some, some don’t. So whatever your feelings are about it, it has been crazy, crazy successful and what exp saves all their money is they don’t really do any marketing to the to the to the consumer to the home buyer, or home seller. They’re like nobody cares. Only people care about you the agent. So we’re gonna put that money back into you and kind of give you an incentive to keep recruiting and whatever, but your clients don’t care where you work. So why are we going to try to appease the client we want to appease you the agent they were really the First model, I saw that and now there’s been a few other firms that have followed suit. But it, it was pretty, pretty brilliant. It was just a minor tweak, right? Sam Sawyer 45:10No, I agree. It’s like that model like, and now it’s like the recruiting thing. You know, I mean, yeah, a lot of these companies are doing the same thing. And it’s like, you know, we take inspiration from other companies. It’s like a huge industry. But I think just the, the funny thing to me sometimes, like companies have pulled back from this. But like, when companies first came on the scene, every other firms started touting their technology. And there was like, this technology war is what I call it. And then like, you know, now we’re in this phase where, you know, ReMax or Coldwell Banker or someone, you know, laid off all of their internal tech and partnered with, like, Cavey core. And that’s fine. Like, I don’t think like a firm is way more than its tools to me. And it’s like, there’s all these other things that make a firm, and there’s different firms for different people. It’s like, sometimes people ask me, like, oh, how are you going to like, take over this firm? And I’m like, I’m not we’re not trying, we don’t think about it like that, like, Yeah, we should be different options. And like, no industry stays the same, like a decade from now, there’s no way the top firms will be the top firms. There’ll be a lot of new firms that people haven’t heard of right now. And maybe I’m wrong, but I’m gonna try to figure it out. And hopefully, everyone on here will know who our firm is in the next couple of years. D.J. Paris 46:32Yeah, well, they’re clearly it’s clearly already happening. But I think of it I think of it too, with like cable television, right? That’s, I mean, it hasn’t officially gone away. Obviously, there’s still millions and millions of American subscribers to cable television. But I would love to see the graph of that over the last 15 years about subscriber growth, versus people who just go, you know, I’m just gonna pay for four or five different streaming services. And you know, now everybody’s used to doing that paying monthly fee for their HBO max or their Hulu or Netflix. We all sort of are like, Yeah, we get it. Okay. We see the value there. Now, initially, it was a little little like, oh, how are we going to? How are they going to compete with the with the cable companies? Well, they served a need, where people didn’t want 500 channels of things they didn’t watch, and paying 200 bucks a month for it, where they can pay $15 a month and get like half of the shows they want. And so it’s just it’s been. And now it’s like, I don’t even know people that are actively looking for cable in there. You know, some people still have it, because they for whatever reason, they still want cable. But the vast majority of people I know don’t even have that anymore. And so yeah, perfect. Yeah, it’s so I think that will happen to the big brokerages if they don’t adapt and figure out how to be profitable by being a bit more generous to their agents, because eventually, the tide is is already turning, obviously evidenced by the success of your firm is is the tides turning. I mean, geez, if I could if I could hire 700 agents in a year and a half, I would be I’d be a very happy man. So you are you’re doing amazing work in the different areas that you’re in in, we should talk about this. So this is a great place to wrap up. So if you are an agent, and this conversation was like piqued your interest, and you’re like, Oh, I didn’t really know this was an option. And it’s not in every local market, like where I’m from in Peoria, Illinois, smaller city, they just don’t have 100% option there just doesn’t exist. And maybe someday someone will figure out how to do it. But it’s worth finding out if it does exist. And so, Sam, tell us what markets are you in for? We have agents all over listed. Yeah. Sam Sawyer 48:33So we think about it on like a state by state bases. We don’t focus on certain cities just because we all have our operations and everything is online. So Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida. And then we’re launching North Carolina like next week, like may first or may 2. And then California is one where we’re getting a lot of like inbound interest. And so I’m actually trying to figure out how to launch that like in the next 30 days, then you’re amazing here is in California, I’d love to talk to you. But California, Texas, and Florida are all similar markets that we feel comfortable. They are. And I used to live in San Francisco. So D.J. Paris 49:19those are the three biggest markets. So you guys are Yeah, and you’re in Louisiana and North Carolina. Certainly. Yeah, if you are an agent, any of those areas, just owe it to yourself. Even if you’re like I love my firm, I’m not leaving cool, don’t leave but learn learn what other options exist, because maybe today it doesn’t make sense. But maybe in a year from now, all of a sudden there’s a regime a regime change at your office and your favorite managing broker left and the new person you don’t like or whatever this is just just check out what they’re, by the way, great website. Really impressive. Its pinnacle, are a so are a so pinnacle. ra.com is where you go to learn about the different subscription models they have and You know, you can just figure out if it makes sense for you. And it takes time. For some people who explore this right away. They’re like, let’s do it. Other people, as you know, it takes years, some time for them for them to go. Okay, I’m ready, I’m really ready to move. So this is just a great way to plant the seed to see if it’s something that you want to do. So go to Pinnacle are a.com. And also, let’s check out Sam on Twitter. So you can find him Sam H Sawyer, on Twitter, you can read all about his thoughts, and learn what Elon Musk is currently up to fixing, hopefully fixing Twitter, or breaking it and having fun breaking in. So it is it is a fun time to be on Twitter these days, because it’s always changing. Sam Sawyer 50:42So sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Yeah, D.J. Paris 50:46but it’s hopefully it what I what I do love about Elon Musk is he’s finally treating Twitter like an actual business because he has to because he just paid a bunch of money. And he’s trying to figure out a way to profitability for them and they’ve never really been profitable. So it is he’s he’s doing a hopefully some good work and maybe cleaning up some of the trolls on there, I hope. But it’s a great place to to check out Sam. So Sam H Sawyer, on twitter link to his website and his social media in the show notes. By the way, on behalf of the audience, we want to thank Sam, he is a busy busy man, it’s 1000s of agents working with him, it’s got to run a whole team, a company. He is a busy guy, and he took an hour out of his busy day to to help talk to us and our agents. On behalf of our listeners. We thank you, we appreciate you, Sam, you’re great. And also on behalf of Sam and myself, I want to thank the listeners and the viewers for sticking around paying attention to our episode, please support our sponsors, support Sam, go check out and if you know agents in any of the market season, send them a link to their website, they might not even know this model exists. And it is when people get excited about it, it is a really fun thing because like I didn’t know I could keep almost all my commission. I mean your case, they get to keep all of it really. So that’s even better. So check out pinnacle. ra.com. So on behalf of the audience, thank you, Sam, on behalf of Sam thank you to the audience. And we ask the audience to just do one. One more thing for us, which is to please tell a friend about the show. Think of one other agent that you know that could benefit from maybe like we just said maybe learning about Sam’s model, send them a link to this episode. And you can send them right over to our website keeping it real pod.com is where every one of our shows we have like almost 500 episodes now I’m forget exactly how many. But what’s interesting is on the podcast apps, it only typically when we show about 300 And not that I think anyone’s going back to Episode One. But you could if you go to our website, all of our episodes can be streamed right there and my intention when building the show was to have a library of content so that you didn’t have to just wait for our newest episode you could go back through so go back check it out, keeping it real pod.com and Sam, thank you so so much Pinnacle are a.com is the place to go to learn all things. Sam Sawyer and Pinnacle Thank you, Sam. We will see everybody on the next episode. Sam Sawyer 52:59Yep, thank you. This was great.

Welcome to another episode of Video Boot Camp for Real Estate professionals with Kim Rittberg. Kim Rittberg teaches you how to apply The 3 E’s of great video to level up your video marketing as a real estate professional. In this episode you will learn: The ingredients of a great video The 3 E’s of video What to film to make a great emotional video Bonus ideas for real estate videos Kim Rittberg is an award-winning Digital Video Expert who teaches real estate agents how to grow their leads, revenue and credibility with video. Grab Kim’s Free Download: Improve Your Video Quality to Increase Your Revenue! Grab 10 FREE tips from a former media executive so that you can take your videos from mediocre to magnetic. You’ll also receive an additional PDF on how to go from camera shy to camera shine. Social Moments: “YOU’RE NOT SELLING A HOUSE YOU’RE SELLING YOURSELF”, “PUT ANIMALS IN YOUR CONTENT”. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00What are the ingredients that make up a perfect realtor social media video? 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. Kim Rittberg 1:33How fun is this for me to be back on keeping it real? Today I’m going to be talking about the three E’s of amazing video. Hmm, the three E’s what are those good questions. First, I want to say I taught this for some real money in enterprise teaching. I’ve taught this at universities. So you guys are getting a real deal getting it for free on this amazing podcast. So I want to talk about the three E’s of marketing. So when we’re talking about content marketing, content, marketing means marketing. But it’s more like content. It’s what content, its content that people actually want to consume. We’re not talking about ads, we’re not talking about flyers, we are talking about content to bring people into your funnel, to bring them into the know, like and trust. So you can build that relationship with them, and eventually work with them. And so when we’re talking about the three E’s, these are the three E’s of great content. When you’re considering what content should I make, for my business, for my social feeds, you’re looking at the three E’s, which is every piece of content should be either emotional, entertaining, or educational. I probably said that backwards, really, most of it is educational, entertaining, or emotional. And when I say that, I mean, that’s the sort of thing that I’m saying it should make someone feel that. So when you’re making a video you should be focusing on what are you bringing in terms of value. So educational content, that covers a lot, right? Every person has their own perspective. That’s why I love working with agents, because every single agent has their own perspective of why they’re an agent, what they love about it. So some people love design, some people love the market. Some people love investments, some people have mortgages, and it really is a great way to bring your own unique point of view, because what’s educational to one person is not educational or interesting to another. But you’re putting yourself out there and you’re bringing people into your orbit so they can see you as that expert and get to know you. Because you’re not selling a home, you’re selling yourself. You’re selling yourself. So let’s talk about what makes good video. So generally, you have to think about like, why should someone watch this? Like, would you watch this? And I mean, really think about it, because sometimes I see people put out content, and I’m like, you wouldn’t consume that, would you? So first of all, think about the why of it, right? Is someone going to actually choose to watch this. So the hook comes into play here, the hook is the first two seconds of the video. If you don’t have them in the first two seconds, you don’t have them. Second number 15 or second number 30 of your video matters. Infinite to small bit compared to the first two seconds. I’m not really sure if I use that word, right. But it’s a really nice word, isn’t it? The first two seconds of the most important and everything after it is very much secondary. We’re talking about the hook. It can be the visual or it could be the headline that first two seconds. Ideally, back in the day when we’re talking about like TV and really high quality video made from brands who have tons of money. The very first frame should be super visual, like the most beautiful shot of most beautiful home you’ve ever seen. Are you on a mountain top talking? But the truth is with social media media, I think our expectations are lowered and talking head video like with just a person talking to camera can actually still do really well. However, having said that talking head video needs to have a really, really strong hook. So if You’re bringing content I’m doing giving, for example, let’s say an educational video about why. Why high interest rates are the best time to buy a home? I’d be like, my, why would you say that? Right? It’s a good headline, because it makes me say, I don’t know if I agree, it makes me curious, I might want to click. So you start with the hook. And even though it’s just you talking on camera, that’s okay. You have to start with a really, really great hook, and then deliver what you talked about. And once you’re in the video, a super tight message. So the important things to make a great video is your hook is attention grabbing. It’s clear, it’s visual, and it delivers on the promise, if you promise people, you’re going to tell them why they should invest, you cannot make that video be about your dog. Unless your dog is so cute. Just kidding. Don’t make it about your dog really deliver on that promise, but a good hook piques your curiosity. And first, we’re talking about the good, what makes a good video and then we’ll return to the three E’s. So what makes a great video is a great hook, good visuals, and a story. So we talked about the good hook. The good hook is an amazing headline or an amazing first two seconds. And then we’re also talking about good visuals. So the more you can bring your first shot to be really strong, the better. I just held a webinar with a group of real estate agents in Canada and we a lot of them actually had dogs and two of them had ideas to do a dog story. I said, Great. I love you talking about your dog, a great hook for that dog video. Like the best dog parks in X neighborhood is the agent holding their dog up to the camera. Everyone loves a cute animal. Pets and babies are the best content for video. So you can quote me on that pets and babies are the best content for video. So this is this is really for our social media manager to cut cut this moment. So again, you’re talking about that hook. So I want to see the agent with that cute little dog at the camera smiling to camera and saying here are the best dog parks in Brooklyn, New York. And that’s a good hook. And now we’re delivering on that with the one to three best dog parks. And we’re just listing it out. So that’s pretty easy to shoot video, but I think it really delivers on the promise and starts with a really cute hook. Great. Another element of a great video is a story. Sometimes with short videos, it’s hard to say oh, there’s a beginning, middle and end. But if you’re telling more of a lifestyle story or an emotional story, there needs to be a beginning, middle and an end. So in an educational video, it’s more of one simple message. But in a story that like is about your life about how you became a real estate agent. You know what you’re passionate about, there is a beginning, middle and end to that. And we’re telling you about the types of videos that the three E’s are under. So we’re talking to educational video, and educational videos, any video where you’re educating, and that might sound obvious. First we’ll talk about the educational type of video and then how you’re going to execute it. So an educational video is one where you’re talking to camera. Sorry, not talking to camera, one where you are educating someone, how you execute that can be many different ways. But you are imparting information to the audience member. And ideally, that sort of ties in with your area of expertise, when you are establishing who you aren’t, and you’re the go to person for blah. That thing is what you should educate on. So I like to play sports, but I’m not a sports fanatic. So I’m not going to like be on video teaching people about the New York Knicks that’s not on brand for me and I cannot speak with expertise there. So you pick the areas that you are really confident and talking about. And that’s what you’re going to educate on. And in terms of executing educational content. A lot of people think you only have to be a talking head video sitting down and talking to camera for education. The execution method, how you make the video can vary. But when we’re talking about educational, that’s what it’s doing. It’s teaching, you could talk to camera, you could walk around the house and talk to camera you can if you’re comfortable walking while you talk, that creates some visual interest. You can also put be rollin bureaus, that footage that you see. So you could put in beautiful B roll of like a luxury gorgeous home, even if it’s not one that you’re representing. And then you can you know, put text or voiceover over that you know how to land a luxury home in x area or how much you need for your down payment for a $5 million house or whatever. But you can execute make the video in a variety of ways. But the angle is as educational meaning that is what the viewer is getting from it. So now we’re going to move on to emotional. So if you’ve ever watched a video where it has that sad music, and you grab the tissues, then that’s an emotional video. But in seriousness, an emotional video is anything where they want you to feel something so you An emotional video could be why I became an agent, it could be some angel could honestly sometimes it could be like a little sad, but happy in the end. It’s anytime you’re sort of storytelling and you want someone to feel something. So how to tell that story, what you generally would see for this type of content, its struggles, its overcoming, it’s overcoming issues. It is personal stories. You know, a lot of people have ups and downs. And for a lot of real estate agents, it’s not your first career, maybe it’s your second career. So you can bring back those personal struggles. From your past, people love getting to know people, I had one agent, and she sold Yellow Page ads. And I was like, we’re making a real about this, you sold Yellow Pages ads, that’s so cool. So you can bring back interesting and fun stories from your own life, I promise you, that is the content that people like to engage with. Because you don’t always want to be talking about real estate. Because you’re selling yourself, you’re not selling your home, you’re selling yourself that it’s nice to vary the content and let people get to know you. So that emotional content is done often with that always has a beginning, middle and end. You’re starting from a certain point, and you’re ending at a certain point. So for me, I started working for myself, because I was a media executive. And I loved my career. Like I love creating TV. I love creating video for Fox inside edition Us Weekly People Magazine. But when I had my second child, I was working in the hospital. And I was like, this is not success. For me. I don’t want to be working during Prime moments in my life. And so that is my why. And I turn that into content. Speaking of you might be hearing my kids coming home from school today, right now. So that is an emotional type of video. And you can execute that in a variety of ways, you will generally need to start filming B roll meaning footage of your life to showcase that. And the way that the way you’ll see a lot of those videos being done is through moments of footage and text or voiceover under it. And the last E is entertaining. You can entertain people, if that’s in your genre, you know, not everybody feels comfortable making people laugh. But I mean I do every once in a while I tried to do a pop culture video, or I’ll do something where I’m laughing at myself. So for example, I had a reel where I was trying to like do a funny transition. And instead, I ended up like hitting myself in the face with a snowball. So it was like a blooper or an outtake. But I knew that my audience is gonna think this is funny. So that is another way you can do it. And then pop culture moments are perfect for that. So I recently one of my students use the Rihanna Super Bowl moment when she revealed her pregnancy. And she tied that back to her own personal experience of being a working mom and how hard the pregnancy is. And her video wasn’t particularly funny, but it was like a really interesting take on this huge pop culture moment. And because she had it at the right time, it did really, really well. So connecting yourself to pop culture moments is another way to connect yourself to entertaining content. And I’m gonna go back to the pets concept. If you have a pet, I want to see the pet in your video. Pet videos are gold. Basically, every summer when I spend the summers, there’s like farms near where we are. And I basically make it a point to hold a bunny and smile at the camera holding the bunny. And then I film footage of the bunny running around. And then last summer actually, we had a vole. I didn’t use the content for social media, I should have it I would have but there was like a little hole which is like a mole crawling in and out of a hole in our base in our basement in our garden. And so I should probably use that as footage. But animals make great content. bloopers are good for entertainment, animals pop culture. And again, it’s a way to vary the content people do not want to go to your feed and see just listed and just sold. If you’ve ever heard from me before, you know that I am very adamant that just listen just old will not get you to the next level. But as you’re thinking about what entertaining content to make, think about bloopers outtakes from your life using a pet. Use your pet to give your message if you want to say I have a new listing, have your dog like moving your mouth and just like put in a thought bubble, you know, new listing 142 Clinton Street this Sunday, open house, whatever, you know, you could just have fun with it. If it’s not a part of your personality, don’t push it definitely the most important thing is being authentic. But if you are a funny person, I think that it does show people who you are what it’s like to work with you. And that’s a differentiating factor. You know, people are working with you. It’s a relationship based business. So the more you can say, hey, this is who I am and a little bit of personal here is I’m a funny person, like, honestly, like I took improv comedy in my 20s in New York City like I am funny. And it took me a little bit of time to use that in my professional career in a way that felt natural and authentic because that is something people get from me if you’re going to work with me as your coach, you’re gonna get someone who cracks jokes and has fun and is not always super serious, even though I’m very knowledgeable. I have a lot of expertise. I’m you know, definitely like straightforward, but I’m fun and I’m easygoing. So I I think it is important to be true to who you are. And if you’re more honest and fairness, but if you’re fun, let it out, let it out with this entertaining content. So, alright, I had such an amazing time being on keeping it real with you, again, my assignment to you is, I want you to make a video that is either educational, or emotional or entertaining. I want you to make it, I don’t want you to tag me, and I will share it. And I will comment on it. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I love the keeping it real audience, you guys are awesome. You have connect with me on Instagram, I feel like a lot of us or social media friends now. But make one of these videos. And if you’re struggling with one of the videos, message me and say, Hey, I got stuck on this point. Sorry, you’re like carrying a lot of It’s almost dinnertime here. But sorry about that. If you are struggling, let me know what you’re struggling with. And you can grab my free tips. I have 10 tips to make awesome video and a bonus download of how to be better on camera. So you can grab those. There’ll be listed in the show notes. But you can also grab them from me at Kim ritter.com, you’ll see a little pop up and then you can just grab my free download there. As you go, I’m going to tell you, if you’re aiming for emotional video, make sure to film content of your life. If you want to tell your why. Dig back in your camera roll look back five years ago, 10 years ago, even if it’s a photo, ideally video, but even if it’s a photo, grab your old pieces of content, it will be easier to tell the story in video, when you have the content closer in your phone and you’re like, Oh, you found it, you’re not putting it on the back burner to search for. So when you’re talking about emotional content, I would say that is the sort of thing that you do really need a little bit of that archival video to tell the story. And if you’re gonna do entertaining content, you know, get ready for the next pop culture moment. Maybe if you’re a big sports fanatic, see what happens in the next you know the finals. If your team wins, maybe you can sort of connect it to real estate or just make a joke about it. But either way, feel empowered to try something new. And to remember the good the aspects of a good video, visuals, hook and a story. All right. Go forth and make a great video and don’t forget to tag me at Kim Rydberg K i MRITTB RG and keep reaching out I feel like I have so many new Instagram friends now because of you also keep reaching out and thanks for listening

Sergio Nazzaro a performance coach from Denver shares his experience gained as a soldier in Afghanistan and his transition into a real estate agent. Next, Sergio explains the principal is using from the military rules like serving clients in very high lever and correctness, and how an agent should be the eye for the transactions and have the ability to manage stress in order to deal with the client in a proper way. Last, Sergio discusses the importance of setting the boundaries from the beginning in relation to clients. Please check out Sergio’s “The Sergio Nazzaro podcast” here. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Sergio Nazzaro can be reached at (303) 324-7641 and Sergio@8z.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Have you ever noticed that veterans who become realtor’s ended up doing really, really well? And you might wonder why is that we’re going to 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 and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solutions so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our show Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment. We’re going to be speaking with top producer Sergio bizarro, before we get to Sergio just a couple Oh, actually just one one announcement to to to broadcast. And it is about social media. So we actually have an Instagram account now as well as Tik Tok. And we are on all the social channels including LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and probably a couple of others. But we specifically are now on Instagram. So you can find us top agent interviews again, top agent interviews and every single day or weekday I don’t do it on the weekends. But on the weekdays, we post short form video clips from our episodes that were you know, important moments, memorable moments, something that you could actually use in your sort of daily scrolling through social media. So please follow us. Tell us what you think about these video clips top agent interviews on Instagram and again you can find us everywhere on social media just search for the keeping it real podcast and hit that subscribe button and also please tell a friend about the show. Think of one other realtor that you know that’s struggling right now send them a link to our website or our podcast and we would appreciate it Alright guys, let’s get to the main event my conversation with Sergio bizarro. Okay, today on the show, my guest is Sergio and bizarro with eight z real estate in Denver. Let’s tell you more about Sergio. Sergio is a real estate agent and performance coach from Denver, Colorado. He graduated from the Air Force Academy and served as an officer for six years and after getting out of the military and obtaining his MBA, he quickly realized his project management experience his digital marketing skills, his business education and his negotiation skills placed him in a unique position to excel in the representation of buyers and sellers throughout the home buying and selling process. Sergio is now on a mission to help entrepreneurs have it all in their marriage, their health and their business. Please follow Sergio on Instagram, which is at Sergio dot Nizar, that is NA ZZ aro we will have a link to that in the show notes. And also check out Sergios website where you can listen to his podcast and also consider becoming one of his coaching clients, which has become the standard dot live become the standard dot live. There’s a link to that as well in the show notes. Sergio, super excited to have you. Sergio Nazzaro 4:26Thank you for having me today. I really appreciate it, man. That’s quite the intro. D.J. Paris 4:31Well, I’ll tell you, you know, this is going to be I put a lot of energy into the intro because as a podcast host yourself. I don’t have to work as hard today. So I am really excited, because I just did my heavy lifting. Seriously, I love talking to people who have podcasts because Well number one, the conversation tends to be, you know, just more fluid and natural. But also, you know, just when people come on our show, I’m talking talking to the audience for a second. When people come on our show we ask them some questions. Just so we have some prompts of, of things to say in case the conversation lols. And we just need to fill some time or transition to a new topic. Sergio has some amazing ones, and I never ever get to them in my show. So we are going to make sure we get to some of these before the end of the show. But let’s start. Let’s start at the very beginning. And I’d love to know how you got into real estate and why real estate? Sergio Nazzaro 5:22Yeah, there’s, it’s, it’s interesting. So when I got into the military, I had just got back from Afghanistan. And I decided, well, I don’t know what I want to do with my life, I’m gonna go get my MBA, which that’s why most people get it. And so I’m using the GI Bill which pays for school, the government pays for school. And then they also give you a housing allowance to pay for your your your rent every month. Well, there’s a gap between my summer semester and my fall semester, it’s three weeks long. And the only way that I can make rent is I have to find a class to take. So I decide, well, let’s get this real estate license, I want to buy a house at some point. So I get my real estate license. And it’s a three week class, I finally get the money I need for my rent, I get my license. And I don’t do anything with it for a little while. Because it took a while for me to realize why I got it right. There’s always been like this little bit of a calling, right? I joined the military to serve people on a larger scale. I got my real estate license because of what happened to my parents when I was a kid. And so like there’s just this perfect storm that came together. And that’s why I got it. D.J. Paris 6:28Well, first, thank you for your service to this country and six years of service, if not more time altogether. That is more than Admiral and respectable. And on behalf of the audience, of course, we think thank you for keeping us safe. curious to hear the parents story. Tell us tell us I hope it’s not too tragic of a story as I’m laughing. I hope it’s not. But I’m interested to hear sort of what happens. So that turns you into, you know, we’re a real estate agent. Sergio Nazzaro 7:00Yeah, listen, just to kind of see the preface this, like, I’m really grateful that it happened. So it is a little tragic. But it all worked out. You know, we I grew up in New Jersey, and my parents moved down to Texas, and I was right around 12 years old. And we were living down there. And my parents decided that they wanted to plant some roots there and buy a home. So they find this new bill, they meet up with this real estate agent, and at the time it was stated income to get your loan. And for those of you who don’t know what that means, it means you just tell the bank how much you make. And then they’re like, Hey, we’re gonna give you money. That’s how we got into this HomeTrust. Yeah, he looked like a trustable person, let’s just here take all this money. And so they, they’re going to buy this home, and they have to qualify at a certain income level. Well, they don’t make that much money. And so the real estate agent tells him Listen, nobody’s going to check, just say that you make this much and everything will be okay. Why don’t they do some employee verification. And both my parents get fired from their job. Oh, we lose the house that we were about to get in, we had already put in notification on the rental. And so we ended up homeless for three months. Oh my gosh, it was because of that, that my parents, they’re like, Okay, hey, you and your sister need to go to your grandparents home in New Jersey for the summer. Your mom and I are gonna figure this out. And we’re gonna move to Colorado. And so I’ll never forget, it was the first time I ever watched my mom console my dad, because of what happened. And as a 12 year old boy, looking at your dad crying one, there’s something really great about watching your father be able to express those emotions, but D.J. Paris 8:36not as a 12 year old. Adult looking back. Yeah. 100 like hindsight, 20 as a 12 year old, that’s gotta be terrifying. It was Sergio Nazzaro 8:45and you just feel so helpless as to like, what’s going on. And because of that, because of that one moment. That’s the reason I had to join the military. That’s the reason I had to try to get into the Air Force Academy because my parents could afford college. I had one option. And it really was a domino that has said everything else in my life down this amazing path. D.J. Paris 9:08Wow. Well, I am. That is an incredibly unfortunate story about what happened to your family. I obviously, you know, things things have all worked out for you in particular, and has led you to this path. And it’s like, you know, sometimes the gift of these tragedies there’s there’s this gift that sort of shows up later. But seriously, a terrible terrible story there and but also a good reminder to everyone listening about why being ethical and honest is just the only only way to go because you don’t just possibly, you know, damage your own career or your license or, you know, you’re you’re hurting families. If you you know, there’s anyway, but I am. I am yeah, I’m sad to hear that but obviously, you know, it’s funny, you know, you Talk about being in the military, which is a service position, right? It’s like in the very nature of the job. And real estate, I feel is a service industry as well. So I’m curious. Well, there’s a lot of things. Of course, I’m sure you learned in the military discipline, structure, you know, lots of things that I wouldn’t know about, like you do. I’m curious on what you learned in the military, how it ended, ultimately ended up ends up serving you today? Are you taking some of those lessons and skills and bringing them into the real estate game? Sergio Nazzaro 10:30Oh, absolutely. I think just high level, right? Just a general sense of core values, right? The Airforce, right integrity, first service before self and excellence. And all we do. And I’ve tried to encapsulate that in the way I’ve run my business, like, I will talk you out of a home, if it’s a bad financial investment, right, I need to be able to put my head down at night knowing that we made the right decisions, right. And yet there is this pursuit that I’m on to be the absolute best at what I do to serve my clients at the highest level doesn’t mean I don’t make mistakes. But I’m definitely doing that. And so there was those core values that really became part of my DNA. And I took those into this industry, because I feel like it’s lacking quite a bit. And you’ve seen this influx of agents. Now there’s like, kind of like a bunch of agents getting out. But you saw this influx of agents getting in when the market was hot, and things were easy. Well, the barrier to entry to this thing is really low. And so when you have that, there’s not a whole lot of like people holding each other accountable, except for some of these boards. And even that’s debatable. So I brought that in. And I think the other part about this is like this job, there is nobody watching you. There’s nobody telling you to wake up, there’s nobody telling you to make the phone calls, there’s nobody telling you how to get the business. I mean, you need coaches, but the end of the day, it’s you. And so what I took from that is like, cool, I have the discipline that I need, that I had in the military, and I can carry some of those foundational frameworks into this career and simply in taking that. And then run project management skills. When I was in office in the Air Force, like I’m leaps and bounds above everybody, because I’ve simply just taken that and applied that to, to this. D.J. Paris 12:11Well, you know, the one the one thing that that I know, we want to talk about, which I think complements what you just said, is about stress management. And I know this is a really important topic for you, and I am I’m simpatico with you I absolutely believe I went through a home buying experience a few years ago, and I’m in this industry, and it wasn’t my first home that I purchased. So you’d think I’d be like pretty used to the experience, although I haven’t done it that many times. But just being around the industry, you think I would know, it’s sort of how it goes. And I was completely up and down throughout the process. And it wasn’t all that complicated of a sale. There weren’t a lot of, you know, sort of pitfalls along the way, or the stumbling blocks or whatever, it literally went pretty smooth, and I was still completely out of my mind stress. So I came out of that experience going, Gosh, you know, people don’t really talk about the stress management of it, the management of for the agent themselves to handle their own emotions, and then also to how to, you know, reduce the distress level of their clients when those challenges happen. And I’m so glad that you want to talk about this because it doesn’t Unknown Speaker 13:22your business? Sergio Nazzaro 13:25So you broke up there for a quick second. D.J. Paris 13:27But sorry, I was saying about stress management, like what is stress management mean to you? And how do you apply that in your business? Sergio Nazzaro 13:34Yeah, I think the way I look at this as like as the as the professional in this transaction, you are the eye, you are the quarterback, you’re making sure that everything is working together. And if you as the agent don’t have the ability to manage your stress, how can you bring the power and the capacity that is required to make the space for your clients in a stressful situation, and to handle this without getting caught up in all of the emotion and the money and the potential emotions of the other agent or the seller or the buyer on the other side? And so I think it really starts with the skill set, have you been able to manage yourself and lead yourself through stressful situations, being able to recognize what those are put yourself in the best possible position to handle it so that you can lead your clients? And I think a lot of times, right, I just had experience today. Agents have no fucking boundaries in their business. They’re rude. I’m getting calls at like 10pm and I’m asleep. So I don’t answer calls after seven right. So my Do Not Disturb goes on. People are trying to write offers at 10pm and like get the hell out of here. Right like one you’re not allowing your clients to make a a decision when they’re in the best frame of mind. Nobody wants to make a decision at 10pm at night and to how are you showing up as an agent at 10 o’clock at night. And so there is this stress management where like you have to be thoughtful about the boundaries you’ve set your daily habits and routines, and then you have to be compact it enough to know that stress is part of this industry. That is why we get paid a lot of money. And I would argue sometimes we get overpaid for what we do, right. And so like stress management is one of the best tools that you need to have because you have to deliver that to your clients. And you also have to let them know that it’s going to be stressful. But your job is to mitigate as much of that as can by providing clarity. D.J. Paris 15:22Yeah, it reminds me I was recently I use the calm app for meditation. And I was, yeah, it’s a nice little app. And they’re all these courses throughout it. And gosh, I I’m like the worst person to talk about sports figures, because I don’t remember who this is one of the best, maybe LeBron James, I think it’s LeBron James, he has a course in there, which I didn’t know anything about him other than his name, I don’t, you know, I know. He’s like one of the very greatest of all time. And so I was like, I’ll take his course, he’s the greatest of all time, he’s probably got some wisdom, and the very first, and I didn’t, you know, I didn’t know, he was even a meditator, whatever, and I’m barely a meditator. But I was taking the course. And he was talking about state management at the very, very first lesson. And he was saying that all of this teammates on any, you know, any team he’s played for, he’s like, one of the big things we focus on is how to maintain sort of a level of calm when chaos is happening. And obviously, on the basketball court, chaos is always happening. And especially like, emotions can flare, people get punched, it hurt, you know, people bump into each other, and then you get a want to get angry and, and lash out or you get a bad call or whatever, you get tripped. And he was saying, we are taught to just not react and to learn how to manage our stress in our states. You were talking about how does the agent show up at at 10? o’clock? How does the client show up at 10? o’clock? You know, yeah, probably not? Well, unless you’re one of those strange people where that’s like your prime time to work. But most of us aren’t wired for that. And so I, at 46 years old, I never thought about stress management, with respect to how important it is for performance. I just thought, you know, and he was like, yeah, he was I literally don’t have access to certain resources. If I’m angry. He’s like, I can’t be my best basketball, I can’t be the best basketball player if I’m angry, or if I’m scared, or if I’m sad. And so he talked about like, and I was like, that’s so simple. It’s not easy. But it’s, it’s, it’s really important, because you’re right, the agent needs to show up as the professional and be the adult in the room and sort of just, I’m can weather the storms. Right? Sergio Nazzaro 17:24Yeah. And I think Listen, I have a very unique perspective on stress after being deployed to Afghanistan. And I hold that in a very special spot in my heart. And in my mind, because stress is all relative, right doesn’t mean what I experienced, you know, in combat was not, are more or less stressful than what somebody experiences with, with death, divorce or buying a home. It’s all relative to the individual. Sure, however, talking about state management, and your ability as a creator, to create the state that you know, you operate the best in all comes from stress management. So if you’re working on a, it doesn’t really matter, right? A $200,000 condo or a $200 million multimeter, whatever it is, your ability to manage stress in your state, as you show up to those is what sets you apart from everybody else. D.J. Paris 18:16Yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s so absolutely true. And it’s it’s a practice, right. It’s not a switch that you flip and go Well, now I’m now I’m calm, cool and collected, no matter what’s happening around me or within me. It’s a practice. It’s a discipline. And the military obviously teaches this, I’m sure you were taught stress management in the Air Force. And just an incredible important skill, because of course, in combat, again, I’ve not been there. So I can’t speak to what the experience is like, but I would assume being calm, cool and collected is critical for survival for success of the mission. I assume it’s just number one in the priority list. Because if you’re not, if you’re not in a in a controlled state, then you may be subject to someone else’s controlled state, which might be the enemy on the other side who wishes harm. Sergio Nazzaro 19:08Absolutely. And, you know, as we’re talking about stress, there’s this other aspect of like, What do most agents have stressed with right now? Finding business? Yeah, lack of leads, lack of leads. And so let’s kind of like play this situation out, right? Yeah. When you don’t have business coming in and your stress starts to build. Right now you’re starting to have stress within the household right now. Maybe you’re speaking to your partner, a little bit sharp tongue because you’re stressed. Now maybe your kids feel it a little bit more. Right now your relationship with yourself, right? Like maybe now you’re having like, chest problems right now. Maybe you’re not you’re not sleeping well. And so all of this stress is starting to build. And so when a lead does come in, and they’re like, Damn, you’re frazzled as all hell, like I don’t want to work with you. Right? You miss out on the opportunity that presented itself. And so stress management, right like you mentioned is a daily practice. And it’s not just a switch, because if it was, we would all be super Zen and calm. But we’re not. We’re all running around fucking crazy. And I think that’s, that’s a really important thing because like, if you can manage your stress, when things are hard, your ability to manage your stress when things are good, will allow you to get more opportunities from those opportunities. D.J. Paris 20:23100% agree, and I think you said something at the very beginning about boundaries, which ties into this, which is, every agent should know when they are, you know, working at their best their natural sort of rhythm of their body and their mind, what parts of the day, the evening, the morning, which parts where are you at your your peak, you know, where you can actually you’re firing on all cylinders, you’re calm, your collected, but your your your productive. And if it’s not 10 o’clock at night, then maybe taking phone calls at 10 o’clock at night are replying and even a text messages. It’s really easy to do at 10 o’clock, because you’re sitting there watching TV or going to bed, but maybe not the best option. And also this idea of like, what are you? What are you teaching your clients, if you’re letting them message you at 10 o’clock, if you don’t want that if you want that fine. But if you don’t have a boundary people again, especially with text messages is a really great a great point. Because text messages really don’t end they start, but the conversation never really concludes. Right? And so there isn’t an a natural ending to this sort of interaction. So people just feel well, I’ll send them a message. And then, you know, if you reply right away, then, you know, sort of the assumption is that the next time that message comes in, you also reply right away, or at least, you know, maybe quicker than you would want to prefer. So let’s let’s talk about boundaries a little bit. What how do you how do you set boundaries around your business and your clients and what works best for you? Sergio Nazzaro 21:53Oh, yeah, great question. I think my business didn’t take off until I started to have boundaries. Like it really didn’t hit like a high like elite level until I started to create boundaries. And I think a lot of agents, myself included at the time were afraid to talk about boundaries, because they were trying to introduce them too late. And so your client has these expectations of like, well, we’ve been communicating. And now you’re just going to stop. And so I think the only reason that boundaries aren’t going to be effective or work is if you are not clear about them, and you don’t communicate them at the right time. So whenever I meet with a client, one of the things that we conclude the initial buyer’s consultation or listing consultation with is my working hours. And I tell them, right, like, I start my day at 830. And I will respond no later than 7pm. You can text me at seven o’clock, you will not get a response from me until 830 The next day. Oh, and by the way, I also don’t work Sundays. So if something comes up on a Sunday, you can talk to my assistant, right, but I will not be part of the transaction, I will get back to you on Monday. And so they get that they hear it, I follow up with an email letting them know, but I also say listen, you can text me, after seven, you can text me at 2am I don’t care. My phone’s on Do Not Disturb I’m I’m gonna get it. But if you have to get something off your chest or something pops up, go ahead and send it but just know that these are my working hours and 100% of the time. People are like, Okay, thank you. Do people be like, well, we want you know what, if we want to work past six, I was like, Do you think clearly after a long day’s of work, or a long day of work? Like not really as like cool, then let’s not make decisions and put yourself in a position that’s going to increase the stress for you. And so you put it back on the client. And now they’re like, I like this, you’re in control? D.J. Paris 23:39Well, and being also you’re not, you know, the setting the boundaries thing is important. Because you’re not just saying, here are my rules. You’re saying, here are my rules. And here’s why I have these rules. And here’s why it’s even good for you, Mr. or Mrs. client that I have these roles. So you’re not just saying hey, you know this, it’s my way or the highway too bad. You’re saying it’s, it’s my way, it’s not my way or the highway. It’s this is I can’t perform at my best at this time. And you you’ve set the expectation ahead of time so that they know the rules. And like you said I was going to ask you what percentage of the time I knew you. I hope so. But you’re gonna go there because you did. And I was hoping it was 100% because I’m like, you know, we all can appreciate and respect boundaries when they are set up ahead of time. If they’re reasonable. If they’re not reasonable, then yeah, maybe you’ll have a problem. But you know, you just set it in such a way that I can’t imagine anyone ever saying wow. And by the way, if they don’t like your boundaries, they’ll choose another agent that just won’t be you. And that’s okay. Sergio Nazzaro 24:39100%. And so that was my initial fears like, well, what if they choose somebody else? And my wife, she goes, Yeah, but those aren’t the people you want to work with. And I was like, damn, good point, Lizzie. And so like, that’s the truth. Like, imagine the people that don’t respect your boundaries. And now they’re texting you at 10pm How is that going to increase your stress? And then how does that impact the other clients that you have? How does that impact their experience? Or how does that impact your stress levels to try and get new business, like these boundaries are really important because it’s a slippery slope that can impact your other clients or your future business. D.J. Paris 25:17So we’re talking about really SOP standard operating procedures and having having some sort of rules of engagement, right. So this is what I do. This is what I don’t do, here’s what I’m available. Here’s what I’m not, here’s what I’m capable of. And here’s why. And not just here’s how it is, here’s how it is and why it’s the way it is. And it’s to your benefit, Mr. And Mrs. client that it is this way. And that is really hard to argue with, as you said, 100% 100% agreement on that, from clients. So clearly, it’s working. And, you know, just incredible. And I think a lot of agents, again, this is a structure, conversation, it’s having structure, having these these rules, these these sort of, you know, procedures that that you’ve as the individual agent have set up, and you’re right, this industry doesn’t naturally sort of allow for that, or promote that, because agents are kind of in their own silo, most of the time, it’s just them, they’re probably working from home, they really have no accountability, you know, unless they’re in a group or they have a coach or, or something. And boy, I will tell you, if you are somebody that is struggling out you, Sergio, because obviously you’re incredibly disciplined yourself, but you’re a coach, so you can appreciate this. Having having if you somebody that struggles with accountability, finding accountability partner, getting a coach even better, is really going to be the key to taking you to the next level. And it’s okay to be the person that wakes up and goes, I’m not good at like starting my day and knowing what to do like that’s totally honest, reasonable. And by the way, most of us are that way. So it’s not even unusual. But if you are that person, I had to do this with the gym. Two and a half years ago, I was 40 in my early 40s. And I was like, I don’t go to the gym, and I was ashamed of that. I was like I should go, I should want to go on my own. Well, I finally was like, I guess I’m just going to have to get a trainer because I know if I pay for something, I’m going to use it. And I started doing that. And here I am almost three years later, haven’t missed a session. And it’s not because I like going to the gym. I don’t. But I go there because I have accountability. It’s the only thing that works for me. Does it cost me a little bit extra money? Yeah, but I mean, I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been. Because I set up the structure. So if you’re somebody who struggles like this, get an accountability partner, or even better hire a coach, and you have a coaching program and a business. So let’s let’s talk about the coaching since we can talk about right now. And then I want to jump into social media. But yes, about become the standard. Sergio Nazzaro 27:42Listen, I, my my first best year in real estate that I had was probably my third year ever, and I sold 52 homes, right around 35 $35 million in volume. Incredible. And I got to the end of the year, and I can say without a doubt that I was a professional success in a personal failure. My wife looked at me and we were struggling, we had to get into couples therapy we had called our wedding. I was hanging out with my parents and you know, they would say things like, dude, like you’re in the room, but you’re not in the room like, cuz I’m always on my phone, I was always doing something else and like to hear those things hit me right in the fucking face. I was like, damn, this is just like, This is not who I was meant to be. And I know a lot of real estate agents struggle with this. I know a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with this, right? Like, you’re going down this thing you’re trying to become you’re trying to make this money. It’s addictive. Like I get it, you’re trying to become you’re running your own business. And then you have a relationship. And then you have kids maybe and you’re trying to take care of your health. There’s all of these things going on. And so a lot of times we let things fall by the wayside, and we focus on one, maybe two, usually it’s your body. And then the other part of your business. It’s usually where people fall into. And I just started thinking, right, like, I got a coach. And he’s like, Well, what if you can have it all? And then what do you mean? He’s like, Well, what if you can have it all? What if you can have the business that you want the relationship that you want with your wife and your kids, you could have a connection with yourself where you can make decisions with confidence, knowing that you’re moving yourself in the right directions. And that it no matter what age you had an elite body, I was like, oh, that sounds great. And so I’ve been down this path of working on that for a long time. And so now I’m setting up my own company to do the same thing. And that’s simply to teach entrepreneurs how to have it all in their life because what I found is that when the your relationships with yourself, your spouse, your kids, and your fitness are all on point, your business will take care of itself. And what I found is once I was able to get aligned on those and not perfect I want to be very clear on that. Like I still have my struggles. But once I was able to get aligned on those was the first time I made a million dollars in a year. D.J. Paris 29:53That’s incredible. And I it’s not it’s not shocking, but it is awesome to hear and I like hearing these kind of success stories repeated. Because we do tend to focus in these compartmentalized ways, right? We focus on our health, and we get to the gym and we, we get our body in order, or we, you know, we work on these little sort of one offs. They’re important, but we don’t sort of see it holistically as easily. As we can see, I don’t go to the gym, and I need to focus on that. Versus like, well, if I did go to the gym, how would that impact my business? How would it impact my relationships? How would I be able to show up for my children or my wife, or, you know, my friends, my co workers, my clients, right? There is a lot of benefit to getting everything in line. And I do believe that balances is impossible, but you can get close. And if you can just get close to being in balance. Boy, you’re right, you’re well, I mean, look, you’re living proof you you went from unbelievable. And by the way, 35 million in your third year is insane in and of itself. But you said it came at a cost, right? It was like, That is a huge metric of success. For anyone listening to the show. I bet 99.9% of our listeners didn’t achieve that level of production in their third year. But maybe you wouldn’t want to, if it means you’re going to, you know, other things are going to suffer. So this is really I can’t, I could not agree with you more. Getting in alignment and taking care of it’s it’s I learned this from Brian Tracy a million years ago. And he just said two words, he goes, everything counts, like everything counts. So you better you better pay attention to everything. Sergio Nazzaro 31:34100%. And you know, I think, you know, you talk about balance, I would, I would challenge you on that. Because if it’s in balance, that means it’s in stagnation. And if it’s in stagnation, it means it’s one step away from either going backwards, but it’s probably not going to go forward. And so it’s semantics, but it is important. And so when you think about how all of these impact each other, I just want to make this like final connection on this, right? Like, the way you take care of your body and working out and your nutrition. When you look in the mirror, right before you get to the shower, you’re looking at the mirror naked, you’re like, damn, I like the way I look. Then you go take your shower, now you’re going on a meeting, and you show up and you feel like I feel good in my skin. I feel good in what I’m wearing your clients feel this magnetic energy, there’s this presence, you’ve elevated, everyone’s like, I don’t know what it is about you. But I’m attracted to it and not attracted to it in like a sexual way. But attracted to it. Like there’s something about you that I want to I want to work with. Yeah. And so when you do those, go ahead, no, go, No, I don’t have to go right ahead. And so you know, part of that is like cool. You’ve worked on your body. But there’s always been situations where you know, I’m getting ready to go on a listing consultation, and my wife and I get into a fight. Right before we’re on the way out. And I’m like, damn it, I’m gonna perfect timing. Great. Thanks, right, because that, you know, on that, so I’m blaming her, even though it’s her fault. However, think about what your relationship, you guys are connected, and you’re supporting one another, and your kids are looking at you. And they’re like, Mom, Dad, I love you. Right. And now you also have the body aspect of it. And now you go on that meeting, knowing that your home life has taken care of that you can show up to that with confidence. Oh, and by the way, when you have that connection on who you are, as an individual, those boundaries that we talked about are really easy to put in play because you know what you stand for. And so your business is impacted by all of these things, all of them. And if you don’t have the money in your business, then none of this other shit matters, because you can’t live the life that you want. And so it’s this, really, you have to look at it from all these different ways. But it’s really important to get these things moving forward together. And the only way to do that is to get clarity on what you want. D.J. Paris 33:46Yeah, and then there are systems to assist with making it not so manual for every part of your life, right? There are coaches you can hire, there are people that can help you manage finances, manage your body, manage nutrition, there are there are systems, thank God, we don’t have to come up with all of this ourselves. We can employ people, we can read books, we can attend seminars, we can, we can learn and it’s hard. But it’s the worthy endeavor because for the rest of my life, I’m going to be pushing a boulder up up the mountain every day. That’s just the deal. Like, that’s how it goes. Every time I go to the gym, I got a lift, and it’s even make it like a really easy metaphor, like I got to push really, really I got to be willing to go into some physical pain, to be able to get more muscle growth. That’s just the way the body works. And the same thing works in every other area of the life. If you can just get through that pain of this is uncomfortable. This hurts. If it’s going to lead you to a more balanced perspective, a balanced life like you were saying, If I couldn’t pay my mortgage next month, and I hope to God that isn’t the case. But let’s just say it was I wouldn’t be able to show up here for this interview very present in a very present way I would be terrified. Oh my god, how am I gonna pay my bills. I wouldn’t be able to do a good job interviewing you or if I was a practicing realtor, I wouldn’t be able to pry probably do a good job for my clients, I’d be so worried about that commission, not paying, you know, not coming in. So all of these things, everything counts. And this is why this is why getting a coach is so important because a coach can actually help you, in all of these areas figure out you don’t have to do it all. You don’t have to suffer alone, you can actually have somebody who has some wisdom, some guidance. And by the way, Wouldn’t you love to be coached by somebody who did 35 million in his third year, even if it was totally out of balance, like, Don’t you just want to know how to do that, like Sergio is the guy. But I’m gonna switch gears because I want everybody to consider by the way, reaching out to Sergio because he is he is he is the man, go to his website, become the standard dot live fill out a form, his team is going to contact you to see if you’d be a good fit for his coaching programs, listen to his podcast, as well become the standard. We’ll have links to that all in the show notes. You are a big social media guy. So I’m going to switch gears just for a moment. And I want to talk about the role of social media, that for realtors, what you found that’s been working, maybe mistakes you see agents making. So let’s talk about social media tell us how that applies to your business. Sergio Nazzaro 36:09The way I look at this is right, like it’s all leverage. When I first got in, it was like you got to cold call, you got to door knock, you got to do all this. And I was like, I tried it. And in the first seven months, I was like, I haven’t sold a single home. And none of this seems to be working. Right? Okay. Not that there’s not value to making phone calls. But I just I couldn’t keep up with the pace. And so I saw social media and I was like, Listen, you can put up these posts, it gets 100 likes or you put up this video and it gets 2000 views. I started to ask myself, would I ever make 2000 phone calls in a day? D.J. Paris 36:45I think it will be a long day. Be a long day. Sergio Nazzaro 36:48Right? You want to talk about being on balance? Right? And so I saw the leverage there. And I was like, Cool. Well, why is this so important to me, because people love stories. They love your story. They love your client story. They love information that’s delivered in an in a fun way. Social media is a really powerful tool, because it allows you to control whatever it is that you want to control and how you put it out there. It allows people to connect with you build trust with you that know like and trust becomes really easy when you not only just talk about real estate, but you allow them to see part of your life. And so the moment I started really getting into into creating content on a regular basis, nothing happened for 18 months. And then the year after that I got 24 deals from Instagram. And I was like, huh, I didn’t pay for a single ad. All I paid for was editing and distribution of my content. D.J. Paris 37:41Yeah, it’s all good, because the time and energy it took and I’m sorry, I missed how many months before you got your first deal for 1818? And then you got 24 deals that following year or that next 12 months? Yeah, well, those results clearly speak for themselves. How often were you posting and what type of content Did you find worked best for your audience? Sergio Nazzaro 38:06Yeah, so I think people want to see you. There is this speaker that came to our conference. Her name’s Chelsea pizza, go follow her on Instagram. She’s a really good coach. She said your brand is not a house. Nobody really gives a shit about your under contracts or your new listings or anything like that. Yes, you should promote them. But that’s not what’s gonna get them to like you. Because you DJ are not just a real estate agent, right? You’re, you’re more than that. And so people want to know what you like to do. I like to snowboard mountain bike, go to concerts, right like to be outside. I’ve done more listing and buyer’s consultations, mountain biking and skiing than I’ve done, like in an actual office setting. And so people are able to connect with me, I let them see a glimpse into my life. And so I think it’s really just about telling my story and then also telling my clients story through video. D.J. Paris 38:56Got it? So curious. So now a question I’m, I’m hearing these ghost questions coming in from from our listeners. And hopefully this is this is one that that I think a lot of our listeners might be having, which is, you know, this concern of, I’m afraid to show too much of myself on social because I want to keep certain things private. And I see agents that just, I’m at the gym. Now I’m at Starbucks. Now I’m doing all of these things. Now I’m with my kids. Here’s my dog. Curious. And again, everyone’s sort of, you know, the barometer for what everyone wants to share is different for each person. But how do you think about what you were willing to share and what you want to keep just for you and your family? Sergio Nazzaro 39:39The way I look at this is all of the things that have been in my life can be a beacon of light to somebody else. And so the path I’ve chosen is I’m pretty much a open book that feels comfortable to me, right I feel comfortable talking about my struggles in my marriage that we used to have, I feel comfortable talking about the success that I’ve had, I used to be really afraid to talk about that. I feel comfortable sharing things about, you know, vacations I’m going on, or what I’m doing in the morning at the gym, all of those feel very natural to me. And so when you talk about like, well, what should I share? And what shouldn’t I share? I think there’s this aspect of like, well, what feels right to you? And then maybe take a moment to feel like, okay, this feels right to me, and then ask yourself this question. Are you playing it safe? Because you’re scared? Or do you truly not feel comfortable sharing it? Right? And D.J. Paris 40:36those are two very, very different things. There’s this, there’s this, Hey, I really want to take this leap. But I’m scared. And that’s an end, you need to get honest about that and say, no, okay, this is really a fear thing. And you know, what you can evaluate whether it’s a legitimate fear or whether it’s a fear to overcome, that’s, that’s fine, but just identifying, okay? The truth is, I’m actually afraid to show people I’m into, you know, weaving because I don’t think that’s masculine or something or, or I’m worried about how that might be perceived, or whatever, whatever, you know, your thing is that you don’t, but it’s like really important to you. It’s and the other thing, so the one thing is about figuring out, what is just legitimate fear of like, you know, maybe this would be better not to share, if my wisest self says, you know, don’t share that, because you want to keep that for yourself or for your close friends. And then there’s the other part that’s like, No, I’m just a little bit scared of how it might be perceived, like the fear of other people judging me. That’s a different thing. And that’s what what we’re talking about is like, you know, it’s funny. So you had mentioned going into couples therapy prior to your, your marriage prior to getting married. And even if you were still in couples therapy, I don’t think any rational human being would would be judgmental of that in a negative way. I think they would be like, Wow, that’s awesome. That him he and Lizzie went, you know, went into counseling to figure things out and to get the help that they need. And, you know, gosh, probably most couples need couples therapy. But just this idea of sharing it, what it does is it’s vulnerable, it’s courageous to share it. Because again, you are putting yourself out to possibly be judged and have somebody go, Well, what’s wrong with with their marriage or whatever, you’re willing to share it? It obviously worked out well for you guys. But even if it hadn’t worked out, well, the the willingness to share what’s hard, is what creates intimacy. It’s what creates this connection. Now I feel more connected to you, because I’m a therapy guy. I’ve been in therapy forever. So I like you more now. Because you’re like me, you’re a therapy guy. That’s cool. You’re a coach, I have a coach like all of these things. sharing these vulnerabilities typically have the reverse effect, we might have some fear about, oh, I’ll get judged. I’ll get rejected. People will laugh at me whatever. The truth is, that almost never happens. Maybe if you’re a child and you’re in the playground, maybe but as an adult, people just feel more endearing to you. They want to they feel like this. This guy’s sharing his heart. Sergio Nazzaro 42:58Yeah. And listen, I think there’s, there’s part of that, too, is like, if you don’t feel comfortable showing your face on camera, then right? If you don’t feel comfortable writing that sort of podcast and speak, there’s so many different ways to do it. And not one way is better than the other. But there’s something really special about being able to see another human being on the other side of the camera. Have them experience something, and you’ll be able to look at that and be like, oh, man, I remember the first time that happened to me. Right? I should probably reach out or I appreciate that. And they share it with somebody else. Like you don’t know the impact. And so I think there is this aspect of like, if you’re afraid to do it, and I’ll share this with you. I was one I used to be afraid of public speaking. And two, I was afraid to get on camera. And so how I got over it was I did 30 days of going live on Instagram. And I’ll never forget, I shot the first one, I put the phone down. I said every possible swear word you could possibly say throw it on the bed. And I went back to the conference. I didn’t come back and check it for six hours. I came back and like three people that watched it, it didn’t even matter. Right? And so I just think there’s this part where you like, you think that people are gonna judge you? And the reality is, it’s like 95% of people are consumers. 5% are creators. Be a part of the creative group. D.J. Paris 44:13Yeah, and even if nothing else, you can share parts of you that will create connections with people who what you’re saying might be exactly what they needed to hear or see that particular day. And that is something that is very invisible and hard to sort of think about ahead of time, but if you think hey, you know if I’m gonna post myself coming out of the gym, saying gosh, I just had a great workout. I’m so proud that I went and did this. It’s not a brag. I mean, it could be a brag if you’re bragging, but if you’re just sharing Well, I just did something really hard and now I’m off to work. You know, that might be what somebody needs to see to get them motivated to get in the gym or, and it doesn’t mean you only have to share success to like I’m always impressed and it’s so rare to see. But when people post their cheer challengers on social media that boy, that is that is a real courageous act as well. But I love that because it’s like we we don’t really relate to perfection, we only relate to imperfection. So this idea of going like, wow, like there was there’s an agent, I can’t help. I don’t have it in front of me. But there’s an agent that literally posts all their failures that they have as a realtor, which I love. And I’m like, boy, that’s That is incredible. And they’re like, yeah, it was the best decision I ever made. Because now people, now people feel like they can trust me, but I’m willing to share the imperfection of my life. And you know, because it’s all imperfection anyway, you might as well share it. It’s all everything’s imperfect Sergio Nazzaro 45:38100%. And, you know, I’ll share this, like probably the most vulnerable moment that I’ve had probably in 2023. My wife and I had a miscarriage about a month and a half ago. And it was really, really hard. And as part of my coaching company, I’m trying to let people see that your ability to be vulnerable and process these emotions have an impact. We’ve talked about all this right, TJ, I get on, and I share what it’s like to manage miscarriage as a man. Nobody talks about it. Right? I’ve never had so many people reach out share their stories with me. We have conversations. I’m talking like hundreds of people. And now I have a deep connection with these people about a mutual experience that nobody wanted to talk about. Yeah. Was that hard for me? Yes. Am I telling you to go do it? No, I’m just saying that like sometimes when you open up about something that you’ve experienced, and now you can start to navigate some conversations, the relationships that you build, right, you don’t know what’s going to come from that. And I’ll tell you this, two of those people have already reached out to ask me to help them buy a home. Now, I’m not saying there’s a direct correlation between the miscarriage conversation and real estate. But what I am saying is there is a direct correlation between your authenticity and your vulnerability and you’re able to communicate that and building deep connections with people that will eventually lead you and probably working with you. D.J. Paris 46:59Yeah, and by the way, sorry, sorry. So sorry to hear about about the miscarriage. Sergio Nazzaro 47:04I’m not trying to draw sad bombs on you. I just thought I’d share that. D.J. Paris 47:07No, I look it’s it’s not it’s not even sad. It’s it’s it’s a it’s a it’s a tragedy for sure. But what what what did you sharing that with me? Do just for me, okay, so I’m thinking about our relationship, which is a new relationship with you. We’ve only been, we’ve only known each other for about 45 minutes, I feel much more connected to you, after sharing what happened to your family what happened, you know, to or to your parents now, now to you. I feel more connected, we connect over challenge much more than we connect over over victory. Right. And so and we know that there’s, you know, I mean, miscarriages is such a common thing. Again, nobody talks about it, maybe close friends and family know, when when it happens. It’s happened in my family as well. And it’s something that people don’t really get the support they need outside of their friends and family, it’s hard to talk about, and people just don’t because it’s maybe there’s embarrassment, maybe there’s shame, maybe there’s just, I don’t want to burden people with this information, whatever it might be. The reality of it is people want to connect with you. And they connect with you through honesty and vulnerability, like you just demonstrated for our entire audience. So I commend you on that courage. And and really, just amazing. I could I share my toughest moment and 2023 No, I don’t think I could yet. So I don’t think I’m I can find that courage today to do that. So you’ve now inspired me to maybe think about finding that courage for the future. So I admire you for doing something that I can’t even do myself today. But that’s why you’re a coach. That’s why you’re so good at what you do. In social media. Oh, well, we just talked about we got I think we got through everything on social media, I wanted to ask about your your sphere of influence, and talking about the importance of how to cultivate and deepen those relationships, obviously, through vulnerability, like you’re talking about that, that certainly does it. But how else are you staying in touch with your sphere in a way that isn’t just hey, look at this new home I just sold, which is what we were talking about in social media, you know, just the just listed just sold just under contract. That’s fine. It’s great. It’s it’s wonderful. It’s a trophy that you can post, but probably not exactly what the clients always want to see from you exclusively. Sergio Nazzaro 49:24No, yeah. Who doesn’t care about new listings, people who just bought a home, right? So, you know, the way I look at this is every client has their story. And I have the reason I follow my clients on social media is I want to see how their life plays out. Because I care about them. I care about most of them. Some of them, right were terrible clients. I’m like, it is what it is. But the majority of them I want to I have a good relationship with them. And so I try to stay in tune with their story using social media. But I also try to create the relationship and continue Did nurse relationship in a lot of ways? One of them is, I always send them home anniversary gifts every single year. They get that for me. And then halfway through the year, I also send them cookies just because I wanted them to have like something sweet like why not, you know. And then on top of that, like during they’re twice a year, I’ll give them a call just to check in, see how they’re doing like just Hey, what’s up? One time a year also do what I like to call a real estate review. So think of it like as a CMA, we’re talking about their biggest investment, I refer to it as their annual checkup on their home, right? And then Thanksgiving, right? Like, this is kind of like my favorite time of the year, right? You have October, November, December, October, I invite them to my client appreciation party, November, all of them get home baked apple pies. And by homebaked, as you mean, like from a local bakery? Sure, then in December, they get my Christmas card. And like, it’s me and my wife and our newest son, Luca, who turns one on Sunday. And a lot of people are like, that seems really intimate. And I’m like, but it’s my family. And I want them to like I want to see them to see what’s going on. And so what’s been beautiful about that is like people call me on my birthday. No, right? People are sending me their Christmas cards, right? People are sending me gifts. And it’s interesting. And it’s like, I wasn’t doing it for that. But what I love about it is that, like, I know, we have an actual relationship now. And so I always tell my clients, our relationship actually begins after closing. And so I mean, that D.J. Paris 51:31will and you have a, you have processes in place to deliver on that promise, which don’t do any. Right. Right. But this idea is like, you know, you know, every year you’re going to be having this annual review, you’re gonna be calling them to other times throughout the year, you’re going to be you know, delivering things for them over the holiday season. And, and most importantly, you’re checking in on their social media to learn what they’re doing. So this way, when you do call them or you do reach out, you’re like, Hey, I saw you were just in Cancun, over you know, the last weekend like, how was that that looked awesome. Like you actually gives you things to talk about when you want to reach out because you know, what’s going on in their life? Thank God for social media for that, that aspect of it. Sergio Nazzaro 52:12Yeah, I think I just, you know, people, because I coach, I have coached some real estate agents at AZ to the director of coaching and training at etc. And a lot of agents get worked up and the fact that like, well, I don’t want to annoy my clients, I was like, would you annoy your friend, if you saw them go on vacation? You ask them how it was? And they’re like, No, I was like, so you think these people are just different? I’ll see if it feels right to you. And I tell them this, your intent is your compass. If your intent is simply to ask about their vacation, then that’s your compass. And that’s okay. D.J. Paris 52:45Yeah. I’ve always said, especially like, in the dating scene, sometimes, you know, men, I get, I’m a man. So I think from a man’s perspective, men who are like wanting to approach a woman, they’re like, I don’t want to be creepy. And I’m like, here’s the rule. If you’re not a creep, you don’t have to worry about it. If you’re a creep, then yeah, don’t approach a woman. But if you’re not a creepy person, you don’t have to worry because people understand that you’re not a creepy person, or they’ll figure that out really quickly. You don’t have to be too concerned. Like you were said most people aren’t thinking about you anyway, right? They’ve got their own problems, their own shit going on in their mind, and they just want to get through the day. But but the point is, they’re not really thinking about about you very much. But, but you can demonstrate a tremendous amount of care about them by by learning what’s going on in their lives and, you know, paying attention and giving them feedback that you know, what, what’s going on with them. And, yeah, all of this makes, you know, we’re gonna I’m gonna cut this episode off in just a moment, because there’s so much more I want to get to and I would have you on for another hour. And I’m going to have you back because this is this is all incredible. And Sergio, Sergio is just incredible person, you know, served our country has been incredibly successful in real estate is willing to start teaching other people about this. He’s doing this at his own company. He has his own podcast, he has also, you know, this, this coaching business that I want you guys all to explore. First, I want you to listen to his podcast and also check out his his coaching company. So I want everybody to go to become the standard dot live link to that will be in the show notes. And I want you to consider learning more about Sergios coaching program. God, you know, so many coaches in this industry have never actually sold real estate. So, so why don’t go to somebody who actually knows what they’re doing has actually been in the trenches, and also doesn’t just focus on business, he can tell you the pitfalls of focusing exclusively on business and what that does to every other part of your life. So he can actually help you holistically and really iron out any of the rough edges in your life and we all have rough edges. It’s all part of the deal. And so having somebody that can help guide you through those rough edges. I mean, our best thinking got us to those rough edges. Is ourselves right? So we could FASAB are all our own problems ourselves, we would guess what we can’t, but we can get help when we need it. And Sergio is there to help you. So listen to his podcast become the standard, go visit his website, become the standard dot live, check out his coaching program, follow him on Instagram, watch what he’s doing and consider getting through some of those fears yourself. Guess what, nobody likes the way they look or sound on audio or video. Nobody likes it. So if you’re like, I don’t like the way look and sound join the Club. We’re all in that same club. But you can still get through it and actually serve your clients better by putting yourself a little bit out there and somebody like Sergio can help find help you find the confidence to do that. So follow me on Instagram, Sergio dot Nizar na ZZ Aaro become the standard dot live is where you go to learn all things. Sergio. And by the way, if you’re a realtor who has clients that maybe has a vacation home, in, in Colorado, a lot of people do, he would love those opportunities to connect with you, because maybe he’d be a great resource for your clients and vice versa, you know, so reach out to him and connect with him. He’s a great guy obviously served our country and just a wonderful, wonderful realtor. So Sergio, we are so grateful to have you on the show. On behalf of the audience, we say thank you for your service to the country. Thank you for your service to this podcast. We are thrilled and I’m having you back. So this is not the end. This is the beginning of our relationship because you’re you’re, you’re amazing and I want you back. And on behalf of Sergio and myself, our audience is also amazing. They are the reason we keep the show going. You’re the reason we have sponsors. You’re the reason that we’ve done almost 500 episodes. Thank you. Thank you. We love our listeners, our viewers, please tell a friend. That’s the only thing I’ll ever beg of you. Tell one other Realtor in your office about the show we would greatly appreciate it. Tell them about Sergio as well get you know, check out his podcast become the standard and anyone who else might need coaching and guess what most brokerages aren’t even doing coaching anymore. So you need to find somebody like Sergio to do that. So reach out to him on behalf of the audience. Thank you Sergio and behalf of the Sergio. We thank the audience for being a being on board with us. So thanks everyone. We will see you on the next episode. Thank you Sergio. Sergio Nazzaro 57:13Thank you so much for having me. This has been wonderful

George Doulamis with Blankenship Group talks about his unique experience and transition from property management to real estate agent. George discusses how his experience as property manager helped him to get connections. George explains the importance of being forthright and maintaining the key communications skills with the clients and shows his strategies on how to sell a home. Lastly, he emphasized that a good agent should have innovative and creative ideas for selling a home, and why you should not be pushy to the clients, just wait and listen. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! George Doulamis can be reached at (561) 402-9123 and george.doulamis@evrealestate.com This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00What’s different about selling a $300,000 property versus a $30 million property? 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 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 George dilemmas before we get to George just a couple of reminders first, actually this is a new thing we finally now have an Instagram account. I know it’s embarrassing I have had social media experts on the show for like six years and off air they were like why do you not have Instagram finally we do and not only do we have an Instagram account we’re actually doing some cool stuff with it. So I want everyone to grab their their device. Go check out Instagram and look up top agent interviews. That is our handle top agent interviews and every single day we post a short form video clip cold from one of our episodes and that has a short little take little tactic Tip of the Day. We do that every weekday although I think I missed yesterday but anyway most weekdays I have a new one there so top agent interviews on Instagram We are also on Tik Tok LinkedIn YouTube Twitter, Facebook, probably everywhere else but we post a post them everywhere so find us you can just whatever you know social media app you use search for keeping it real podcast hit that subscribe button. But the reels and the stories that we’ve been promoting the short form video clips have just gone gangbusters. I really wasn’t expecting so many people to to really be drawn to that but it seems to be scratching an itch for our listeners. We are so grateful to you. So hopefully you can find some value there. So follow us on Instagram top agent interviews but you know what, that’s the only thing I really wanted to get through today because we need to get to the main event my conversation with Georgia lamas. Today my guest is George blomus from the Blankenship route, angle and Volkers in Destin and the 30 a corridor in Florida. Let me tell you more about George George was born in Massachusetts, 30 minutes north of Boston. Gosh, I love I love the Northeast. But aside from that he was he also he really grew up in Florida as a child but moved back to the Boston area as a teenager, parents were both blue collar and passed on their work ethic. Georgia unfortunately lost his father when he was 16. And this hurt but it helped him understand loss early in life. Soon after his father’s passing, George began to work part time for his older cousin managing his apartment buildings. And eventually, George relocated to South Florida and worked for Ritz Carlton. This was a real education in the world of service and how to apply to anything he would do in his future endeavors. From there, George would relocate to Destin, Florida, the 38 corridor, short time spent a short time as a property manager which led to the transition to being a full time realtor. Now we’re going to get into George’s story because it really doesn’t even stop there. But for everyone who is listening watching, I would like you to please right now. Go visit Instagram and follow George it’s George dilemmas are II don’t worry about spelling that. I’ll spell it right now but it will also be in our show notes but it’s George do you LAMISR e so again link to that in the show notes. Follow him on Instagram. George, such a pleasure to have you. George Doulamis 5:05Yeah, I’m super excited. I can’t wait to kind of tell my story, see if I can help out. Anybody will, wanting to listen, and it should be exciting. D.J. Paris 5:13Well, I have the only time I’ve been to your area was back in high school where many people from my hometown, which is pure Illinois, which is like Central Illinois, would go down for spring break to Panama City. So that was the closest I got. And that’s the last time I’ve actually been in that area. However, I have had several different people on our show from that area, the 38. area, the destin area, and oh my gosh, I cannot believe how much real estate transacts there, and the price points and just a whole nother world that is really down there. So I’m excited to hear about that. And how you. And also, by the way, highly competitive for anyone listening if you think your area is tough, which I’m sure is, oh, that area is because the price points are so high. There are a lot of agents who are fighting for that business. And George is one of the very successful ones down there. So we’re excited to have George you on the show. But let’s start at the very beginning. Like how did you get into real estate? George Doulamis 6:12Yeah, good question. So like I said, you, you were nicely to describe my background, really, when it started was the Ritz Carlton, I started learning service. And then as I was there, I think that was postcrash back in like 11 or 12 when the economy was starting to come back and South Florida. I wanted to move on and manage manage properties, manage associations. So I ended up trying I ended up finding a job in Destin. It’s funny when I got the phone call over the interview, I said with it, where the heck is Destin, Florida when I was in South Florida. We made the trip we loved it. Stay up for a weekend became property manager. Every weekend, though, I would get phone calls from agents. Hey, can you tell me everything about the association that condos? When D.J. Paris 6:55you were talking to agents all the time as a property manager? Sure. Well, I probably George Doulamis 6:58did what probably half your audience said, Oh, I D.J. Paris 7:00can do this. If these guys are calling me. If these morons can do it, I can do it. George Doulamis 7:05Exactly. So that’s how the transition started did. I’d say for the first year and a half after I got my license probably like a lot of agents that listen to this. I was part time as I did my full time job. And then I just took the leap. That’s how I got into it. I think having the experience of working a little bit real estate when I was younger, but that was more of maintenance. But collecting rent, this was the full time want to get the big listings like anyone else wanted to get the big commission checks, and just jumped into it. D.J. Paris 7:35It’s amazing. I you know, I was thinking as you were telling that story. I was going I’d read some of that obviously at the beginning, but hearing it you know really solidified what instinct I had, which you’ll have to correct me if I’m wrong, which often wrong. But this idea of working for such a white glove company like Ritz Carlton, I mean, this is top of the food chain, you know, right right there at the very highest level of service in the hospitality, and you know, vacation space. And I had a similar experience. When I when I graduated college, I went to work for Anheuser Busch right out of college. And again, different. Sort of I know those companies are seen differently, like Budweiser and Bud Light was predominantly the beers I worked on. And I don’t think people consider that in the same Echelon as a Ritz Carlton or Waldorf Astoria, for example. However, from a sales perspective, they are at the top of the food chain, or I don’t know if they still are, but they were. And I learned so much about perfection from Anheuser Busch. I know it’s kind of a silly thing to say, because we don’t think about those beers as being perfect beers. But there’s a reason why they got to the very top. And it’s not just because, you know, they’re the marketing was great. I mean, the marketing is great, as well as Ritz Carlton, the marketing is great, too. But there is a level of service that you must have learned there that I would almost say you must have a servant’s heart, which is I like an expression of temperament. Because you have been in the service industry for long and you’ve worked for some tough companies, meaning tough, meaning very demanding companies. And I just curious how that sort of, you know, as a property manager to like, that’s a thankless job where you’re constantly just taking an anger and trying to make everyone happy. And it’s not an easy life, or an easy job. But I’m curious, did that did those skills you developed at those places help you as a realtor, because a realtor is a surface job, too? George Doulamis 9:29Absolutely. And then it was the biggest thing. While you’re there, it is very tough. I mean, you actually saw people get dismissed all the time, because they couldn’t live the standard. We had certain ways certain things had to be done. You couldn’t say no, for example. And you’d have to navigate around problems because sometimes something like a property, something could be wrong. They’re paying an extreme amount of money just to stay there. They want to stay to be perfect, perfect. And you might be the first person of defense to have to hear this wasn’t ready. This wasn’t ready. How dare you I came to this property, because, but long story short, they always had a saying, we want to create a world where the consumer could not live without Ritz Carlton in that world. Wow, they had to be there. So I started thinking, as I probably it was probably internalized. But once I started going to real estate, how do we create experiences? How do I create a one on one experience where they couldn’t even imagine me not handling the transaction? So I think even from there, we started going, and then there was always whenever you went out into any of the ballrooms or the general areas, smile, you’re on stage. So right there, you’re like, Okay, it’s go time when I walked through the door, if I have a bad moment in the hallway, that’s fine. But once you walk through there, customers are, number one, D.J. Paris 10:44have your bad moments in private. Yeah, I, you know, you said something, I just want to say it. Again, I want to repeat something you said, because it’s simple but profound. And really, I hope our audience takes it in you said, I want to create a business where my clients literally cannot transact in real estate without me or that they, I mean, obviously, they can, but they feel that I am the guy, there’s no other option. I’m the top of the food chain as far as what their expectations are. And you learned all of that as not only a property manager because that is that is the toughest job. You know, property managers don’t get a lot of things. And by the way, if anyone is working, or sorry, if anyone is living in a condo, and you have an HOA or any you have in a property management team, the best thing you can ever do is like be super grateful and thankful. And like send the property manager like you’re awesome. Well, you know, once in a while, because that’ll get that’ll actually work well, because they don’t get a lot of that they only get the problems. And same thing with obviously anyone in the service industry, you know, tell them how special they are. But I’d love to learn about how you actually took some of those principles, you know, that you learned at as a property manager working in hospitality? And then also like, how did you actually implement that? Like, what was the plan, just to really prove to your clients that boy, they need you? George Doulamis 12:08I’d say from day one, like the Ritz Carlton like any major company has SOPs, right standing operating procedures. So I decided, whenever I got going, whether it was from from the point I started lead generating in the morning or taking a listing, there is going to be non negotiables that we take care of for that client. Anything from as simple as photos have to be top of the line, not the cell phones, not buying the cheapest photographer, you can find every property regardless to even when I started, had to have a video had to have some sort of video trailer and not on a camera, someone had to professionally do it. Those were non negotiables communication. Again, these are non negotiables. Because if we were going to talk to somebody who flew in on a private plane, to stay at the Ritz Carlton communication, it’d be top notch, they expect that when they walk in a property. So I started taking these for us at the time because we it was so learn, we started I started taking these values and implement them, like you just said, if it’s communication, the very best communication they’re going to get. If I was to sit down in your living room and lay out this game plan, how to sell your home and make these promises. Well, you better I told people all the time, you can fire me anytime you want if I don’t uphold these standards, because I’m so I’m so regimented in doing those. And truthfully, growing up with an Irish mother probably helps out a lot too. Because if you don’t, if you don’t follow your promises, it’s not going to be a good day for you as a kid in that house. D.J. Paris 13:34Yeah, well and Ireland to just I don’t know if your mom was born in Ireland or when she came when her family came over but visiting Ireland it the whole country and again, it’s obviously there’s a big tourism economy there but but just even just meeting normal people. There’s this sort of hospital hospitable nature to the Irish Greeks are the same way. Again, I’m, I’m getting like positive stereotypes, I guess. But but the reality of it is, is this idea of, of being of service is so important. And I I’m just going to make a guess. And you’ll have to again, tell me if I’m right or wrong. I, you talked about standard operating procedures, which I think is a brilliant idea, this idea of knowing exactly. Every time somebody is a client of mine, not just I’m going to do a good job because of course, but it’s like no, here’s exactly and mate, whether you share that with them, or it’s just internal. You have that list. And I bet, my guess is that if when you have a listing, let’s just say it isn’t getting a lot of attention, there isn’t a lot of showings, you’re just not getting a lot of interest for whatever reason, maybe not even had nothing to do with you just you know, whatever reason, it’s not getting a lot of attention. I suspect you have a standard SOP, a standard operating procedure about how often you communicate with that seller to you know, make sure that they’re aware of what’s going on. I suspect you have some sort of process in place, even when nothing’s happening. George Doulamis 14:54Absolutely, yes. So they’re going to get a phone call, email or text whatever their preference is. It least once a week, of course, after showings, we tell them we’ll be in touch within 24 hours, we want to keep them along the process. The problem is, again, this will probably ask this later. One of the problems I saw when I first started in real estate in diagnosing listings, communication is always the biggest problem, because they have nothing to talk about when they talk to the client. I’m sorry. We had a slow week, we had no showings. Thank you. Well, what did you do from my house that week? What are you doing? What are you being innovative? How are you doing now. And those were subtle things that I knew from the Ritz, and from property management, like when someone came to show up to their condo here locally, hey, by the way, this week, while you were gone, we had all the trees trimmed, we had this done, we had this done, we had XYZ, and I started applying those whenever I dealt with a listing. So yeah, so that weekly call wasn’t, unfortunately, like 85% of the agents out there would just go, sorry, we had no traffic today. But hey, when it gets busier, I let you know, you’re gonna let the market we’re going to do everything, almost overload them, in a sense, we want them to make sure that they understand everything we’re doing, and everything going on in the marketplace to what D.J. Paris 16:10and how I’m gonna, I’m gonna pause you again, because you just said something else that was that was brilliant. And to you, this is like just how I operate. But I want to make make step on this point a little bit, because I want our audience to really, really hear this. So not only is George call texting or emailing once a week, right, even if there’s no activity, he’s not just saying, Sorry, no activity this week, he’s actually okay, I still have to justify my job, I still have to let them know that I am actively working on the property. And here is the information I’m going to provide to them. Aside from the fact that, you know, we it’s been it’s been light and traffic, I’m going to talk about that. Maybe, you know, maybe I’ll have an explanation for why that is happening. Maybe even a suggestion about how to fix it. But also, by the way, this is all the other things we are doing currently for you. It’s it’s a subtle thing. But it’s very important, right? Because you’re giving somebody news they don’t want to hear and you’re also giving them news, they do want to hear, here’s what I am doing for you. And here’s what I think is going to happen going forward. So having the idea of like you were saying people will avoid their clients, because maybe they’re they don’t have anything else to say they haven’t given down a reason other than I’m just going to be delivering bad news. And maybe I should just leave them alone. It’s so funny. I’ve said this before. And I’ll just I’ll just make this really quick story. It’s a very short story. But I talked to one of the top producers in Chicago a few years ago on the show. And she was very soft spoken and very humble and but literally very top of the food chain like top 10 agents out of 46,000 agents here. And I was like, What’s your secret? Like? What do you think you’ve done? That’s so different. She goes, DJ, isn’t going to be embarrassing to say this. I call every client every week. And I was like, yeah, she goes, yeah, that’s pretty much. And I said, doesn’t everybody do that? And she goes, No. So I know, it’s a lot more than that. But even if that’s a standard operating procedure, which is for you, obviously huge, but I want to switch gears because I want to spend time. Now, for anyone watching or listening, you may have an inclination to want to shut this off at the next topic, I am going to encourage you to not shut this off, because George does something that I am absolutely crazy about. But if you get a little reaction inside of you, that’s like, oh, I don’t like I don’t like what I’m hearing, fight through it, because he’s going to possibly give you an opportunity to really take your business to the next level and fight through some of the fear that you may have around this. And of course, we are talking about phone prospecting. everybody’s least favorite topic. But it’s an important one, because since almost nobody does it, there’s a huge opportunity here. And by the way, we should talk about the kinds of properties that George is working on here. These, these are huge, high net worth individual properties down in that area. These are people that like you said, George was saying when he was at Ritz Carlton, you know, sometimes guests would fly in on a private jet. This is same sort of experience George has dealing with some of his buyers and sellers now, because that’s a destination where a lot of high net worth individuals play and and there’s, you know, normal side normal price properties there too. But George plays in a very, very exclusive space. And the idea of doing phone prospecting, to me is fascinating at that space. So, George, let’s talk about this. Please tell us all about phone prospecting. George Doulamis 19:26Sure. Well, to give a quick backstory, when I started, I was trying to figure out what to do, right? Should I go to buy or should I write blog? Should I do this? Should I do that? Because as we all know, when you get into real estate, yes, you have to study to take a test, but it has nothing to do with how to get business, right. So what I decided to do, I started watching YouTube, there was a guy from Massachusetts where I’m from, and he speaks fast like I do. He was like a bull in a china shop. So I liked that style. And I would literally pause thing, write it down, pause, write it down. Then I would Whole people. And now I can call people very freely. But it would the phone ring, don’t answer, don’t answer, don’t answer, because I didn’t know what to say. I was probably like, half the people listen to this. I was scared, they answered, my tonality would dip, DJ, you know, now, of course, I’m more polished. I’ve done this for such a long time. But that’s what happens. That’s the transition. So I started looking at listings in stunning them. Bad photos, bad description, I would interview sellers and say, you know, I understand you’re not going to sell now. But I just have to ask what went wrong? And they would start telling me, oh, I never heard from them. Everything was below rate. And I started figuring out, okay, if they say this, I want to get on their side as quick as possible, where a lot of people who call, they want to do objection handling. If you say this, I say that if you say this, and now we’re going like this, D.J. Paris 20:52right? At this point when there’s objective, sorry, just to pause for that. Object. objections are great to have an answer to but you are at a logger horn, right? Or I think that’s expression, you’re butting heads, right? Because you somebody’s coming at you one way, and you’re trying to counter and it becomes a force issue. You’re kind of like each trying to force your way in whoever has the strongest argument wins, which is tough. It’s a tough thing to do. George Doulamis 21:16And growing up in New England, confrontation is very easy. It’s normal, right? So I would do this. But then I started practicing doing script practice with people from California, with people that had different so I would start applying and say, Wait a minute, instead of asking, with this tonality? I’m going to shift it I’m going to say like this, I’m going to have a downswing upswing. I’m going to whisper when I had to say certain things. So it’s just a transformation. So over the years, I start getting up. So you’re right, I would start calling 500,000 million dollar houses, I can get them. Right. Couple of reasons. Energy over the phone. People have to understand how important that is. I used to say things now the back and like, how the heck did I get that listing? I know what I was saying. But the energy was there in the seller who just went through a bad experience said in their subconscious, I don’t want to get too boring into this will get bored. But the subconscious is saying wait a minute, this is different. 10 People just called me but this guy is different. Because his energy is different. His tonality is different. He’s asking questions that people generally don’t ask. So throughout the process, I just every time I had something, I’d fine tune it. And I would find angles not and that’s not unethical. What I’m saying by an angle, like if I knew I called you, and what was the old scripts? When are you going to hire the right agent to sell your house? Well, I used to hear that hidden cringe. I’m like, well, if I’m talking to my friend, because that’s what I would try to set it up as I’m not going to say, hey, DJ, Sell Your House came off the market? When are you going to hire the right agent? D.J. Paris 22:47Like George? My friend? Yeah. Talk to me like a human being? Yeah, George Doulamis 22:51exactly. So I perfected a line I really like to use and it works like gold. And I’ll give it out. People can use as much as they want. I’d get to the opening the call. And the question would be TJ I’m looking at these photos on the MLS right now. The kitchens gorgeous. How in the world did this thing not sell? And what I started finding out that’s an implied compliment rather than you hired the wrong agent. What starts going on subconscious, you’re an idiot, you hired the wrong person. I’m smart, I can help you. Right? Like Wait a minute. Now it’s confrontational. Their their sales resistance will build up now. And now for the next 1015 seconds on the phone. If you don’t shift that what happens? Have a good day, or if you’re in South Florida were first sold click. So well. D.J. Paris 23:41What’s brilliant about that? I mean, it is brilliant. So let’s let’s let’s repeat that line because it is a brilliant line. And as soon as you said it, I was like That is brilliant. Because you said you know hey, I hate Mr. or Mrs. Seller. Hey, I was looking at at the photos of your property unbelievable. Like the kitchen insane. How did this thing not sell? Or what? What was what what happened in the world? So yeah, how in the world did this not sell. And by the way, I just want to make another point about tonality because we’ve kind of moved on from that. The best thing that anyone who deals with with, you know, phone conversations or even just in person conversations, take a class on tonality understand how your voice and your inflection, as George says, going up and going down. Understanding how things become questions become statements become demands, understanding that it’s not that hard to understand, and you can practice with people. And yes, you can change the way you talk. So if you’re going to be delivering bad news, there’s a way to do that, that will decrease someone’s anxiety. And there’s a way to do it while you’re there. It’d be really anxious. You know, you can you could do it like that. And no matter what I say you’re gonna go, right and then if you say, Hey, we’ve had a tough week, you know, but you know, here’s all the things that has a different feel to it. And so sling tonality is everything. So I just wanted to honor you for that because very few People I’ve had on the show talk about tonality and talking about the way that they’re projecting their voice and anyone can learn. But I’m sorry. But back to back to your, your your script idea. That is a brilliant question, because what you’re really going for it sounds like is you want the story. Hey, what’s the story here? What what happened? George Doulamis 25:16Yeah. And that’s really the connection, right? We’re going to build rapport. We’re going to go a little bit deeper, we’re going to repeat and referrals. So I say how in the world that’s not so Oh, my agents, the biggest idiot in the world, he couldn’t get it done. Which is probably not right. That was probably overpriced. But anyways, we never jump on that we never jump on the agent. Of course, we’re not going to say, oh, yeah, I agree with you. But I could say, Wow, I’m so sorry to hear that this house definitely should have sold like just just, you know, we want to give them a little compassion get on their side. And then the next part of the scripting is rapport building. So we’ve already kind of got on their side, we went from like this face to face to like, arm around them. Wow, how this happened. So we’re like getting them saying, Hey, listen, I’m different. I want to hear what’s going on. I don’t have commission breath. I’m not salesy. I’m not pushing you. It’s more of here’s the process. So tell me what happened? D.J. Paris 26:10Well, it’s very much like, similar to what a consultant might do at a company, a consultant who’s brought in to rescue a company or fix a problem the company’s having, they might walk in and go, This place seems great. Like, what’s the problem here? Like what, like what’s going on here. And really, what you’re wanting to do is, is you’re out you want, you want the story, you want the person to tell you without feeling pressure, or stress or your right, or that, that they may feel stupid, that they hired somebody that maybe they feel didn’t do a good job, they could be angry at that person, that agent, they could also feel stupid, you mentioned that. And that’s important thing for people to realize, when you ask questions about, you know, the previous agent, you know, it’s kind of like when when people are in a bad relationship, and they break up and you say to the person Oh, I’m so sorry, that happened to you. And they go, I feel so stupid. I was in this relationship. And you’re like, you shouldn’t feel stupid, but people do sometimes. So that’s an important thing to realize. And the other thing that that you said that that was so so smart, or sorry, the other implication is that you have a solution. But you haven’t yet told them you’re like, how did this not sell this should be selling this should have sold, which means you know, something that they don’t know yet, which is also a very subtle way to project yourself as a leader, as somebody who knows a little bit more than they do. And they’re gonna be like, I know if my home didn’t sell, and I had hired an agent and somebody called me and goes, how did your place not sell? And I said, I don’t know. They just maybe they didn’t do a good job. I don’t know. And you’re like, This place should have sold, I would have been like, great. Tell me, tell me what you’re gonna do. Because that’s all I want. So brilliant, George, I really it’s not. Here’s what I’m gonna do for you. It’s this should sell and a lot of times, they’d be like, Oh, great. Let’s talk. I want to hear what you’re gonna tell me. So anyway, I’m just, I’m just honoring you for all of this. Sorry for stopping so often when it’s so important. George Doulamis 27:54Sometimes, you know, most of the time calling gets such a bad name, right? They’ll say cold calling doesn’t work. They’ll call it cold calling. Some people call it prospecting. Keep in mind what I just asked that question How in the world does not sell? Recently, I got a $7.69 million listing out of that. And when I when I sat down with him, after we signed everything I said, quick question. I’m always wondering, what led you to, you know, list with us? When you asked me a question, no one ever asked me how in the world in my home, not so. And they remembered it? Yeah, they remembered it right away. So I know it works. I probably said that question now. 25,000 times. D.J. Paris 28:33By the way, by the way, George is being authentic. He’s not saying it because it’s it’s part of the script. I mean, it is part of the script. But George is legitimately curious, what why did this place not sell? And that comes through? Right? If you say it, and it’s part of your sales tactic, maybe it’ll work. Maybe it won’t. But when you’re authentic, and George is like, genuinely interested, like, what happened here? I can’t figure out what happened here, George, like, it’s probably the price. We all know that. But I want to hear it from their perspective. I want to know what they think went wrong. So brilliant, George, George Doulamis 29:05and I will say this really came from this part of my growth to where I’m at now came from an agent. He probably doesn’t remember I listen to a podcast. His name is Michael Ferraro, Ferro in Connecticut luxury agent. I was probably like a lot of agents listening to this or watching it. He would say, I’m getting $5 million listings by expired calls. I was like, how the heck nobody sits down I called him told me he’s like, Hey, listen, I’ll coach you for two months. I don’t have the time but I’ll coach you for two months. He actually turned me on. He got trained by Jordan Belfort The Wolf of Wall Wow. D.J. Paris 29:40Well, yeah. That’s that’s like the tonality. George Doulamis 29:43It was like on steroids. And, like there’s the scene from Wolf of Wall Street when he sells the penny stock, right. Jordan I because I took Jordan Belfort training after they paid for it. And he talks about he trained Leo on the whole sales thing. Sure, and he comes up and he As the fists down when you elongate words, so there really is such a profound skill set to this, if you want to do it. Now, you may get kicked in the teeth a few times on the calls, you’re like, Oh, it doesn’t work, which is fine with me, especially if you’re in my area don’t call. But you know. So. D.J. Paris 30:18Yeah, it’s it’s interesting. I’ve actually, you know, when I watched Wolf of Wall Street, I was I was obviously I was turned off to the way he conducted business. But I was fascinated by his sales techniques. And he still teaches I think he’s in Australia now, but he still teaches this stuff. You know, I don’t know how good you know, I don’t know what he’s training people on these days. I’m sure it’s great. But, but the idea of paying attention, not so much to as much of the words that we’re saying is how we’re saying things is really I mean, the, the the research is really clear that how we say things is infinite, almost infinitely more important than what we’re actually saying. George Doulamis 30:55And you know, part two, where he talks about it during his training, like, if you do what I did, in the 80s, this stuff is so good. It’s so easy to manipulate, you can get yourself in a lot of trouble. It goes, I’m evidence number one. And that’s why when I come back and coach and tell everybody, you we want to be truthful, we want to be very careful we do because I’m not calling to manipulate. Yes, I can call it tonalities to get you to open up because at the back of aminos. If I can get you to list with me, I’m your number one option. I’m better than everybody else, because I know how exactly why this house didn’t sell. Now, if you have that here, right? If you have the inside, you can get it. If you’re going with falsehoods and everything else, you’ll be exposed eventually, because you can answer the questions the detailed. So what’s going on my listing what’s happening? What’s this? What’s that? Well, eventually, competition who’s going to beat you? D.J. Paris 31:48Right? That’s a you know, you settle you said things that are that are really quite brilliant, too. Because this idea of studying listings, and going through and trying to figure out maybe an expired or Fizbo? What’s what’s going on here? Why is this thing not selling? And yes, we could always come down to price because everything is always price. However, there’s a story that leads you to price that usually is a lot more intricate. And this idea of getting curious about that is is fun, it must be really fun for you, because you’re like, I want to figure out what is going on with this property. Is the seller crazy, and they just are never going to lower their price. Is the the agent not do a good job. What are the photos look like the video, you know, what was the marketing efforts that were done. But I also want to talk about your area is somewhat unique, because a lot of times that my understanding of your area and correct me if I’m wrong, is that, you know, getting listings is great. But when you’re having, you know, a $7 million listing, there aren’t a lot of buyers just walking around going, Hey, when’s the next $7 million listing going to hit the market? You have to sometimes go out and find those buyers even as the listing agent, right? And so I’m curious on what that process looks like. Like once you get one of these, these mega, you know, high high net worth listings. What are you doing to to find the buyer or do you not really have to because they come to you George Doulamis 33:0712 months ago, I wouldn’t have to do much looking right at the song in the ground, even if I mean, I didn’t sell it on the team. But the team, the gentleman who runs the team sold a $24 million listing sign in the ground. You know, amazing when a normal market, which probably a lot of your viewers and listeners are used to, especially here what we’ll have to do is we met we’re going to identify who’s going to buy the house right, we’ll do a buyer profile. For us, for example, we know it’s 90% chance and artist stain owner who may use it two weeks out of the year. Now some may use it a full month or two months. So we know okay, they’re probably not going to use it. They may even decide to rent it because we have such a short term rental market here. homes get rented per week, some on the weekends. So okay, we know that now we know what four or five states are our feeder states, right? Just Alabama, Tennessee, Texas is now big. Georgia has always been there. Not so much parts of Florida, maybe parts down the other Panhandle that want to upgrade, maybe they bought something in Panama City Beach. And so you know what, that doesn’t get the luxury feel that 38 does. So maybe I’ll trade my condo and want to get on the sand. So first we have to do is identify the buyer. And then we can go out different ways to market. We can’t call a neighborhood like we just do in West Palm Beach or Jupiter, Florida where we’d say hey, I know you live in a neighborhood now that has this, this and this, we just listed here and you could trade up. So we had to identify like Nashville. We obviously have companies there. But more importantly, we can market who directly buys from Nashville here. We can do zip codes, we can search that we can send marketing material, and we go along those roads and of course networking with other agents in those areas. We can call them Yep. D.J. Paris 34:53I was gonna say how important is it to have a network of agents in those feeder areas like whether it’s in New York City Eddie, you know, Boston, Nashville, you know, Charleston, maybe you know, I don’t I’m just making these these up maybe Chicago. But But how important is it for you to have like a dedicated network, so you can call and say, I’ve got a new listing, you got to tell your clients about this kind of thing. George Doulamis 35:16Certainly, it’s critical. I mean, especially if you want to stand out here, the last two years, we’ve been the number one team here. Last year, we beat the competition by 100 million the year before a little bit closer. And a lot of times, which is funny, the higher end agents in Nashville, Aspen, they’ll actually call us and say, Hey, I know you guys have some of the better listings. Do you have anything market right now? Or do you have anything that I have a client looking up to, like 18 million? Can you send Can you send whatever you have right now. Now, of course, having those other relationships where you can get on the phone, say, Hey, listen, we just listed X, Y, and Z. If you have anybody looking, oh, by the way, I’ll send you the video right now the video trailer, you can send it out to them. So yes, I mean, if you have that, it’s almost like a cheat code. Because then when you’re selling the listing presentation, part of it is our network second to none. I mean, there’s a reason we sell, you know, 445 million a year. You know, so there’s, there’s definitely value in that where I think if, if you haven’t sold that, or if you haven’t been part of a team and got to see how the machine works, you don’t really value having that network that strong. D.J. Paris 36:27Right? Right. So this idea of, of working on some of these higher priced listings, requires a different sort of skill set than maybe a price point that you don’t have to necessarily go out and secure the buyer, you just have to price it correctly. Make sure it’s the site is in the ground, and and that it’s visible online somewhere. So in the other thing, too, let’s talk about working with the sellers or buyers, really, it doesn’t matter. Because you’re you’re dealing with a lot of high net worth individuals, some of these people this is their third, fourth, fifth home, like you said, maybe they use it a few weeks a year, maybe they rent it, maybe they don’t. But regardless, you are often I’m guessing, dealing with teams, right? So a lot of these people have a manager or maybe an accountant or an attorney or some sort of financial planner, somebody that probably if not more than one or two people, they a lot of times you’re probably dealing with not just the buyer or seller, but also their their business team. George Doulamis 37:25Oh, absolutely, yeah. And you had to find out who the decision maker is. You know, even though some of these people are extremely wealthy, and they do have layers to them. Sometimes they still want to know everything. They want to be the person, I think where that part really comes in, is finding that person who’s a gatekeeper to get to that seller initially. But most of the people in this area, I would say, a lot of them are. They’re not old money, a lot of them. So they’ve worked for it. They’ve sold the businesses. Heck, I know, somebody who has one of the biggest houses on the beach, I think he owns every McDonald’s in Alabama. So he really worked up and now he has and he’s one phone call away where you can connect with him. So it’s a case by case thing, but you know, obviously, they have different layers, that is going to make it harder. But then you have again, it goes back to tonality and leading to that ego so that you know the person who is in charge of the property who you have to intermingle with. And they have a strong ego, well, how do I play up to the ego? How do I make sure they understand the number one option for them without getting them angry without being this or that. And I think that’s a crucial thing I think a lot of agents don’t think about, because let’s be honest, we’re just selling houses, right? We’re trying to make a dream happen for them, or in this case, sell their biggest asset. But a lot of times, I think agents get a little too full of themselves right there, we think that we’re more special than we are. And I think that can really hurt you too, when you’re talking to some of these managers or accountants or financial planners. So I think understanding who we’re talking to who the audience is, and how to handle that. D.J. Paris 38:57And it’s probably also that you come across as somebody with a very mild to non existent ego. And I think when you’re dealing with, with some people who may have an inflated sense of self because of their success, obviously, you’ve had a ton of success too. So you should, you know, anyone should have it, it should be you but obviously understanding you’re in the service business, you have to tamp that down, or and you just don’t seem to be the kind of person that that has much of that, which is awesome. But I imagine that that leaves room for the buyer or the seller to be able to express their ego if they want to and they’re not in competition with you, you are there to support them. And and you’re also analyzing every part of that person, right? You’re constantly thinking, you know, how do I best communicate with them? What’s the best way to say or do a certain thing so that it fits in with their worldview? You’re constantly analyzing and strategizing in order to meet that client’s need. George Doulamis 39:56Absolutely. And that’s really the biggest thing. Like do I have an ego When I need to coerce, but with most people, I’m here to, I’m there to serve them, right? And we know like, I know sellers who need more attention versus some that are like, Hey, give me a call when I get an offer. It’s all I care about, please don’t bother me during the week. I’m very busy. And then there’s others, every four days, hey, what’s going on? How’s this going? What’s with that? So, I think dialing into that personality, knowing exactly who you’re dealing with. At the end of the day, I don’t take it personal. I’ve actually had sellers complain about other agents, oh, they take me so personal. When I do this, when I do that, they start crying to me, I don’t want that in the next person. So that’s fine. If we want to have no feelings, I’m good at that, too. Because a lot of times I get accused of well, you don’t seem that happy when you first meet people. I’m like, Well, I’m just trying to look at the circumstances, how do we how can I help you as fast as possible. And I think some agents, they take everything so personal that guides, we’re really here for the clientele. Our feelings are secondary. Now you don’t want anybody screaming at you get that part. But sometimes, these are high stakes for them. These are high, high, high emotions, you get the gist of it, we’re about to close. Oh, by the way, they didn’t disclose there was a $50,000 assessment do? Well, now the seller has to pay for because he didn’t, you know, but the emotions are so high, and you’re the person in the middle, that has to take this abuse. While that’s happening. Yeah, so you just have to internalize it, hey, this isn’t me personally, I’m here to do a job. When it comes to that, and maybe a few cocktails after the transaction, you laugh it off, but you just try your best not to get take it personal. D.J. Paris 41:35Well, I think I think one of the easiest ways to overcome that feeling of something being personal, because I think anyone listening who has had a disappointment in a transaction, or maybe their best friend shows another agent, as opposed to them, you know, those kinds of situations can feel very personal. I, you know, when you were talking about, you know, making cold calls, that is a really easy way to understand. It’s a very intense way. But a quick way to understand that things aren’t very personal. Because when you’re calling for sale by owners expired listings, you are going to take a little bit of abuse, sometimes because people are angry, they’re, you know, I don’t want to talk to an agent, or I just hired one, and they screwed me over or whatever the reasoning is. And they by the way, they probably had gotten 10, other phone calls that day as well, because a lot of these, there’s a lot of services where you can pay for those leads to come in every day. And they sell them to many, many people. So the idea is you’re not even usually the first phone call. So it’s a tough, it’s a tough phone calls my point, the challenge. Or what happens though is is you really quickly realize, oh, I survived, you know, the guy told me to eff off, because I couldn’t even get my name out before he slammed the phone down. It wasn’t even your fault. But But and you’re like, Oh, well, obviously, that’s not me, that’s just that person was having a bad day. So I think all the cold calls you’ve made have probably helped make you a little bit have a little bit more of a Teflon. Because you’re like, it just happens, it’s not the end of the world. George Doulamis 43:00In the way I look at it too. If I’m making all these calls, when I’m talking to somebody, like in my earlier part of my career, when I’m doing a lot more opens, or I’m doing a lot more this, I want that interaction to be great. So the cold calls prepare you for that. So I’ll talk to people, I can’t call anybody, I can’t do it, I’m only good when I meet them in person. Well, what if you’re proficient with a stranger? How good you think you’re going to be when you’re with somebody who you meet face to face, you’re gonna even better. That’s all the way I looked at it. If I can get you There’s nothing. There’s no greater feeling in the world. When I call you in Nashville, I convince you to sign a listing agreement over the phone, I never meet you, I sell house, you get your wire. And we’ve never met to do that. It’s just, it’s just a great feeling. Because you convince somebody you’ve never met. D.J. Paris 43:48It’s kind of like the ultimate sale because also you’re dealing at a high net worth sort of transactions, not not that any transaction is better or worse than another. But certainly, you know, the stakes could be considered higher at at a higher price point. And and the idea of being able to do that sight unseen. Is is is an incredible, really victory. And and I don’t think it’s lucky, I don’t think it’s well, you just called somebody who didn’t need to meet with you in person. It’s like, no, no, George is extremely strategic about the way he communicates. And communication is is obviously the name of the game. I also before we get close to wrapping up here, I want to mention that I forgot to mention this earlier. So if anyone out there would love to be trained and George isn’t taking on everybody. He’s only going to take on one or maybe two people. But he is wanting to share some of his knowledge that he has learned from all the trainers he’s worked with and all of his own expertise and experience to possibly work with agents to teach them what he knows. By the way, guys, let’s just go back to this one fact that wasn’t even in George’s bio. That is like really crazy. His team outsold the next biggest team by $100 million in a year’s time like that’s pretty Press have. So if you ever were like, I wish my coach was actually out there producing, you know, George got got his, you know, he had a mentor who was successful and, and helped him and he wants to do the same. So if there is anyone who’s like, I want to learn what George knows, George, what’s the best way somebody could reach out? And again, you’re not taking everybody might only be one to one person. But you know, what are you looking for? And how should they reach out to you? George Doulamis 45:23Sure they can, you know, for now they go through Instagram, I think it’s probably the easiest. What we’re looking at really do. Like I said, I’m not trying to take on 1000 people, we’re trying to get people who may be either stuck, maybe they’re getting in. And I know the feeling you’re getting your teeth kicked on the phone, you don’t know what to say you don’t know how to say you don’t know how to go out and get business. That’s the really the worst thing about this business. What is the old saying 90% of people come into real estate with no sales training. 90% of people leave with no sales training. That’s true. We get into a brokerage. The brokers like hey, best of luck, go out there, go kill it. How do I do that? So we’re looking to help those and we’re also looking to help those that I used to do I could get to the $5 million tree, I could get to the door, I get the appointment. But then I don’t even know what saying the appointment to get it. Like when they ask a simple question. Why should we choose you over this and you start just verbal diarrhea, but I can do this, we can find I can fine tune that I’ve set before big time sellers. And we can help people get to that level they want. So I’d say if you’d like go through Instagram message kind of what you’re looking to do, we’ll connect we’ll see if we can be a value because we may not I may not be the best value for somebody. Right. But at the same time it was a connection, they want to talk further, I’d love to see why can help out? D.J. Paris 46:39Well, for anyone who is interested in learning from what George the knowledge torch has, and everybody should be interested in this, go to Instagram and follow him. George dilemmas are ie George like George D OULAMISRE, by the way, link to that in the show notes. So you don’t have to type it in or just search for George dilemmas, easy to find, and reach out to him and say I would love to learn what you learn. And possibly you guys could connect. And also by the way, George has clients buy and sell homes, not just in their area, the Destin 38 area, all over the country. These are high net worth individuals. So George also wants to keep expanding his network as well of agents. So maybe you guys could trade clients. Maybe somebody’s moving to Destin and George has people that are looking for properties and other areas that he doesn’t service. So if you would like to connect with George possibly for on a referral basis, George, what’s the best way? So is that the best way Instagram, they say? George Doulamis 47:40My name is so long, and then you start going George de la missa Blank, blank blank. Easiest way. D.J. Paris 47:47Awesome. So George dilemmas are E again, link to that in the show notes on Instagram, find George George, this was incredible. And you know, I know you’re just talking about your process. But for somebody that’s done almost 500 episodes of the show this this was an incredible episode. So I am so grateful to you, our audience is grateful to you. So on behalf of the audience, thank you for coming on the show, we really appreciate it, you gave so much value, that I suspect this will be one of our most downloaded episodes ever. So thank you in advance for all of the great traffic we’re gonna get because of you. And hopefully we can help you as well. On behalf of Georgia and myself, we want to thank the audience for sticking around to the very end. We appreciate you, we love you, we are here for you. And we are grateful that you tell a friend about our show. So think of one other Realtor in your office or somebody you know, in the industry, who’s maybe struggling right now it’s 2023. This is a tough year to be in real estate. Let’s help other agents so that, you know we get some good karma sent our way, send them over to our website, keeping it real pod.com Or just tell them to pull up any podcast app search for keeping it real, hit that subscribe button. And one last thing guys, we just started clipping our episodes. And by the way, we’re going to have a lot of clips of this one. But we are now posting those short form video clips just in case you don’t want to sit through a full hour of me, which I don’t know why anybody wouldn’t want to sit through the I don’t want to I don’t even want to sit there will pull out of me. But for anyone that wants to see some of our bite size content, which by the way, super easy and super fast, digestible, go to Instagram or on actually all the social platforms. But Instagram is our big push right now. So top agent interviews is our Instagram handle every single day, we post a short form 62nd clip from one of our episodes, and we will have a lot of them from this one. So be on the lookout for that. So go go to top agent interviews. And also while you’re on Instagram, go visit George George dilemmas, ar e send him a message tell them how awesome he was on the show because he is and was and maybe he’ll want to work with you and maybe you guys could train together. So George, thank you so much. This was a pleasure. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks, George. George Doulamis 49:57Thanks so much. Really appreciate it.

Welcome to the April episode of Learn with a Lender with Joel Schaub of Guaranteed Rate! In this episode Joel talks about the mortgage rate increases, and how this situation is creating a little confusion for the buyers. Next Joel discusses how agents should advise their clients properly, not to rush into the decision of purchasing the property just because of the current low rates. Last, Joel emphasizes the importance of communication and showing the clients different alternatives of loans. 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’s going on with lending rates? And where do we see them heading for the rest of the year? Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now onto 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 am your guide and host through the show today. Once again is our monthly series called Learn with a lender with Joel Schaub, one of my favorite people in the whole planet. So you’re so lucky to get to listen to Joel because I am lucky to get to listen to Joel he’s from guaranteed rate. Let’s talk about Joel Joel is the vice president of lending a guaranteed rate he’s been doing loans at a high level since 2003. He’s got to that level because of what he does specifically for agents, which is he gives back part of his commission to the buyer on every transaction. Last year alone Joe gave back over $300,000 in closing costs to his buyers who worked with him and that put his volume in the top one 10% of all lenders nationwide. By the way, if you’re watching this, you’re probably listening but Joe’s lovely wife, Christine just walked back and forth. And I would feel sad that I was talking because I would have loved to have said Hi Christine. We love you. Everybody loves you. But anyway, back to Joel. And let’s see where were we Oh, Joel is in the top 1/10 of 1% of all lenders nationwide. In fact out of 400,000 loan officers in the country Joel is in ranked number 137 guys. Last year he closed 319 transactions that was 2020 to its highest amount ever. He crushed it. He’s doing well this year as well. He is just constantly doing it. Joel is a legend here in the Chicagoland area, but guaranteed rate is licensed in all 50 states. So if you meaning our listeners are watching or viewing, watching, listening rather, are wanting a better relationship with a lender, somebody that can actually help you grow your business. Joel Schaub and his team are the kings of that they want to talk to you. And even if you’re not going to work with them directly, they have an amazing email list that we’re going to get you to subscribe to, because it’ll give you some talking points you can use with your clients. But if you are looking for a loan officer, we cannot highly more recommend sorry, we cannot more highly recommend Joel. He’s the very best we’ve ever worked with. He did my mortgage. I’ve sent people to him. He’s the very best out there. No full stop. Joel can be reached, reach out to him at his email joel@rate.com joel@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 Joel Schaub Joel welcome, Joel Schaub 4:05DJ, thanks so much for having me on. I love it when we go through the numbers, but I really like being here and giving back and this is what we were talking about. Before we got on the air. It’s being able to educate and learn just one or two more things that will help agents close another deal or help a buyer or maybe even get another seller. So I’m excited. D.J. Paris 4:26I want to start but we always put the plugs at the end. I want to put the plug at the beginning this time because speaking of giving back, you and your team put out y’all this is so funny, I have to have actually interrupting my own story because I started to send this to you earlier this morning in an email. I got an email from a very, very famous like a famous mortgage lender, kind of a celebrity mortgage lender on the East Coast. I won’t mention his name. He’s apparently a very nice person. Somehow I got on his email list. He sent me the longest email full I mean it was just chock full of stuff, and I looked at it in my mind, sort of I went dizzy. And it was just so much content in one email that I literally was like, I don’t know what to do with this. And it, and I was gonna send it to you because I was thinking, I’m so glad you don’t do that. But you do have an email that you send out every week that your team sends out, that literally gives you a several different data points of what’s going on in the mortgage world and the lending world. And so I want everybody who’s listening to our show to subscribe to that, because I’ve seen what other lenders send, and it’s not that good. But what you send is awesome. So where can people go to subscribe to that? Joel Schaub 5:39On Tuesday, we call that information overload, right? There’s just too much information out there. And right now, especially with buyers, they have all these different news sources talking to them about interest rates, and it’s all lagging data, right? They literally are being told one week, mortgage rates went up. And they’re actually lower than they were the and so having some bite sized education pieces that you can look at weekly, make all the difference in the world if you’re an agent, and we’ve created that list. So you can literally subscribe by just sending an email to joel@rate.com. And say, sign me up for your newsletter. And on a weekly basis, we give you digestible DJ, things that you can speak to in terms of not just the rates, but different programs and trends that are happening so that you can see my top of the market and do it in a way that sets you apart from others in your market. D.J. Paris 6:35Awesome while everyone go send that email to joel@rate.com. And they will get you on their email list. And then you when you’re talking to your clients, and they ask what’s going on in the lending world, you will have bullet points and you will not have to Oh, I have to send you this email. There was like seven videos in the email anyway, tons and tons of stuff. It’s information overload. But that is not what we do on this show, we distill down to the most important details because realtors and lending are intricately related and connected and one depends on the other. And we all need more business. So what’s going on? What should we be talking about this month? Joel Schaub 7:16Well, we got an action packed show because right now there’s so much volatility in terms of interest rates. And so it’s really important if you’re an agent to kind of be on top of what’s going on in the market, because buyers are asking, right, should I wait right now with rates being too high? If you’re an agent listening to this, I know you’ve heard that a buyer says I think I’m gonna wait until rates come down before we buy and DJ this. The problem with that is when rates do come down, we’re gonna see a flood of buyers back into the market. Okay. And we already know that the data points for the Fed are indicating that we’re going to drop rates over 100 basis points next year. So you’re hearing at first, that that probably has gone too far already. But they have to stay on track, at least this year with the rate increases. And as soon as it’s done, we will see a big drop. That doesn’t mean that clients need to wait until that day to get into the market. Even though we don’t really like this phrase of buy the home, right where you’re getting in. And I don’t even like this, but it’s married the home and date three, okay. However, you can literally use this exact same strategy, whether rates are going to drop in six months or two years. We shouldn’t be buying just specifically because of rate. And you know that? D.J. Paris 8:37Yeah, it’s you know, it’s so amazing. So we were looking at our numbers at our brokerage Today we have over 700 agents. And this this peel back the curtain a little bit, we were looking at our numbers, and we saw something that kind of stuck out at us. And it was really, really interesting. And so last week, with our agents, we only had nine new listings, which was very, very low for us were like, Oh, wow, that’s really low. This or I’m sorry, two weeks ago, nine, nine listings last week, 21 new listings, and we looked and we’re like, what’s going on? Is it the spring market? Is it? It’s it’s a lot of things, right? And the good news is, it’s a great time to list your property because, yes, there’s a little bit more competition, but rates are not again, I just I don’t think six and a half percent or six, even even higher than 6% is something to cry about. I just don’t think it is I think we need to readjust. We need to re educate our buyers and say, Hey, this is where it is. And there isn’t a whole lot of inventory. It’s starting to ramp up a little bit. But I still think I still think rates are fine. Joel Schaub 9:45And there’s a lot of ways to get rates that are lower. Okay, so let’s just have a conversation here. buyers aren’t shocked anymore, that rates are in the low sixes that’s absolutely one of the things that I’m hearing more and more as Yeah, I expect that this isn’t news, unlike last year where it was every single week, it continued to go up, and it was a shock to people. Now it’s kind of the norm. But there’s a lot of ways right now, to get rates that are lower than 6%. So if you’re an agent, you want to have your clients look at two things. It’s not just a 30 year fixed rate mortgage, okay? Especially on the smaller loan amounts, there’s not that big of a difference in the payment on a 15 or 20 year loan, it seems like people just forget about this. And they shouldn’t, a 15 year loan is in the low fives and a 20 year loan is in the high fives. So when you talk about rates being in the sixes, there are plenty of fixed rate options in the fives TJ. And then on the other end of the spectrum, when you’re in these larger loan amounts, you can look at the jumbo adjustable rate mortgages that are easily in the fives as well. So clients that are borrowing in most cities and states over 726,000, they’re going to do themselves a favor by shopping this around, they don’t need 30 years at these rates, the flavors come in five, seven and 10 years. And if you lock a rate for the next seven years, I’m fairly certain that we’re going to see rates lower in the next seven years than what we have today. So why take a fixed rate mortgage, as long as you can sleep well at night, you can take a rate in the sixes, or you can take a rate down into the fives and just work with a bank that will promise to do a free refinance for you. And there’s plenty of banks out there. So make sure you’re partnering with those people, whether it’s me or not, there’s so many banks currently, that no matter what they’ll do a no cost refinance for your clients. And that could get them over the hump too, if they’re afraid to buy now. So some good strategies there in terms of rates. D.J. Paris 11:49Yeah, that makes makes a lot of sense. What are you seeing any hesitancy is the hesitation that buyers had last year as rates were steadily increasing? We’re seeing that level off now. Are you seeing that the attitudes of buyers changing? Joel Schaub 12:07Well, they’re still very price conscious, right? It literally is hundreds of dollars more per month DJ. So we still do really want to dig in and make sure the clients come from with the monthly payment. Because there are a lot of people that because of this rate increase, probably shouldn’t buy. And they don’t hear that they just continue to be told, Oh, everything is fine, let’s get you into a home. And that’s not the best way to build a business. That’s a great way to be a salesperson. But there’s a lot of people that probably should not buy until rates do come down. And just working through and finding out what somebody’s comfortability is, is a lot more important than whether they qualify, because a lot of banks will lend him money. But if it’s hundreds of dollars more than they’re comfortable with, and you know that as an agent, you can set the expectation as to what they can go out and look at, okay, because the pricing is a lot different today than it was before. If they were only approved before and a 250,000 or $350,000 place. Now that rates are higher, that approval amounts come down a lot. So it’s important to be working with them and understand what their qualifications are. And really where their comfort level is. D.J. Paris 13:17What would you sell a you know, homeowners right now that are thinking that they maybe they will sell but they’re worried about inventory, right? So they sell their property, they might be worried? I don’t know if there’s enough inventory out there to buy something else, what what would you say to them, Joel Schaub 13:36I’ll tell them, they can come live with you until they find a place. Let’s get the home sold and DJ will put you up, D.J. Paris 13:43I’ll put you up myself. Now, Joel Schaub 13:45it is a problem, it is part of most conversations that I have. And what I always recommend people do is make sure they know what they can buy before they list their home because it’s gonna be a lot quicker on the sale right now you’re gonna sell your home a lot faster, then you’re probably going to find the home that you like in this market. Right? So with that said, though, just a little further on that conversation is that if you know what you’re going to sell it for, you don’t have to have it listed, you can go out and shop for the properties that you’re getting ready to buy. And as soon as you do go under contract in that place, be ready with your agent to have the place listed. Because if you’re in most markets, these are quick sales. And so there is a strategy to finding the home first that you want to buy. As long as you have the photos taken of your home. You can delay that putting it on the market so that it times out perfectly. D.J. Paris 14:44I’d love to talk also about some of the more creative products that lending institutions are are or that are offering that are popular these days by downs. I know we’ve touched on these before. I don’t think we can talk about this enough. cuz I don’t hear agents because I, I do speak to a lot of agents, not just through the show, but but even just out in my own personal life. And I mentioned the buy down thing. And I swear half of the agents I talked to go, what’s that? So I want to educate everybody about these buydown options, because I think this is such a cool way to mitigate some of the interest rate environment we’re in. Joel Schaub 15:25So let’s cut through all the data and like actually get down to the numbers and actually understand what what it means, right. So if developers are giving the money to the buyer, or the seller is giving the money to the buyer, this works, that if you’re just increasing the purchase price to cover the cost of the buy down. I’m not a proponent of that. So let’s do a strategy. Right now our little quick breakdown of a $500,000 purchase, the client is going to put 20% down, and then I’m going to give you a pop quiz on the savings because this is fun, I’m going to put you on the spot here. Because if you have a $500,000 home, and we wouldn’t be doing a $400,000 loan, we’re going to ask the seller for a 3% credit. And that 3% closing cost credit DJ will fund a two one rate by now. And that to one rate by down drives the rate down to full percentage points in the first year, one point the second year. And then the borrower pays the note rate in the final 28 years. So buyers will say well, why don’t I just take 15 grand off the price. Okay, if the seller was gonna give me 15 grand, I just want to pay 15 grand less for the home? Sure. And so I run that calculation. And I say that that will save on a monthly basis. $92 a month, which is good. So now the pop quiz comes in. And if you’re doing it on a two one buydown DJ, do you think it doubles the monthly savings? Do you think it’s a little bit less than doubled? Or do you think it’s more than doubled? D.J. Paris 17:10I would hear, I would say it’s more than, Joel Schaub 17:15yes, it’s more than but it’s a lot more than so you actually take this, it saves $496 a month, in our first year, to save $254 a month in the next year. And that’s where the problem is, it’s the first two years, we really feel that the feds gonna get this under control and rates will be lower. If we’re wrong, the sellers have still funded the buy down. So that’s a great strategy. And it does save a lot of money. Now, the big thing here is that the buyer still has to qualify on the higher payment. Sure, it’s not an excuse to get into a home that’s over your head. Ladies and gentlemen, we don’t want buyers having to have this to one buy down to qualify. But it’s a really nice bonus when the seller or we can negotiate. If it’s not even a developer, just individual selling the home to fund a to one buy down and it’s 3% of the purchase price. And then it takes 2% off year one and 1% the next year. D.J. Paris 18:20That’s great. And then I know that there’s you were mentioning before we got on air another strategy about parents who have children that are going off to college. Now, I will tell you what you’re about to mention. My I dated a woman many, many, many years ago whose family did exactly this. And it was a great investment for them. It worked out really well saved them a lot of money over the years. But let’s talk about that. Well, it’s called The Family Joel Schaub 18:46opportunity loan. And most banks that you’re already working with if you’re a realtor, and they do have this even if they don’t know it. And what it allows people to do is it’s twofold. The first one is Mom and Dad buying a home or a condominium for a college bound student. It can be enrolled right now or enrolling in the next semester. And they’re allowed to buy that property even though the client is not living in the son or daughter is not going to go on the mortgage. And you’re allowed to do that with just a 5% down payment. What that means is we’re essentially buying an investment property because in a year or two, the son or daughter probably won’t continue to stay in that price property. And so now we’ve created a situation where we’ve bought a home with only 5% down and you’re fully and legally allowed to rent it even after 12 months. D.J. Paris 19:44Yeah, it’s a great opportunity to have you know your child living live rent free, collect the rent from from the other tenants, and then continue to rent out the property as the child moves on. And I know I switched places I lived every every year in college as well. But this isn’t, you know, these are where a lot of people can save money on the room and board, right. So this is a great opportunity to invest a little bit and collect all of the tax deductions, which is nice about having income producing properties as well. So this would be another really great opportunity to talk to anyone that you know, that has children that are nearing the end of their high school years, or maybe their first couple of years of even college. This is when you know, you could start saying, Hey, has anyone ever talked to you instead of, you know, paying for rent for you know, your children at school, that maybe this is another option, this would be a great reason to reach out and just have that conversation with everyone who has a child in high school, you know, getting to the end of going off to college, Joel Schaub 20:50DJ, can you imagine how much money your I would have if our parents, instead of paying for the room and board at college bought a place and literally just kept that place. And that’s the point right now is a lot of people, you’re not doing this for the 18 year old that’s moving to college for the very first time, it’s usually the move up, they’ve been in college for a year or two. And maybe they’re a junior or a senior. And the other thing that I did not mention is that you are allowed to collect rents. So a lot of my clients have their daughter, and then they have two or three roommates, and they’re fully allowed to collect rents from the bedrooms that are there, as long as the parents qualify, that’s not a rental property. And it really allows for generational wealth, you’re buying something, and you’re not putting money into the room and board. Now the other side of that, which, unfortunately we see is a lot of times we have maybe a client whose mother or father unfortunately passes away. And now mom or dad needs to downsize, right, and mom or dad is elderly isn’t working. And the parents are making the choice, you know, your time, you’re at a point now where you become your parents parent, and you have to figure out am I going to pay for a lease for my mother for the next couple of years. Or, gosh, if I’m paying two or $3,000 a month, I I’d like to buy something for her. And I can afford the payment. I don’t want to put $100,000 down. So that’s the strategy again, you can just put 5% down and have mom or dad living in the property. And it’s completely different DJ than it being a second home or an investment property. These are priced as a another primary residence. And it’s the only time that I know of that any underwriter allows you to have a second primary residence. And that means the rates are a lot lower, the mortgage insurance is next to nothing. And it can count for 5% down. So there’s some strategies there again, it’s called The Family opportunity loan, I take it as an opportunity if I was an agent to reach out to the lenders that I’m working with right now and say, as listen to a podcast do you have this loan program and the good ones that you’re working with know all about it D.J. Paris 23:10because so the family opportunity loan allows an individual to possibly purchase another property for someone in the family, it’s it becomes a another primary residence you’re allowed to collect. Obviously, there’s qualifications and you need to fit into this very specific bucket here, but it you’re allowed to collect rent, but it’s not considered a rental property. Joel Schaub 23:36No, you have to have the parent in that property or the son or daughter in the property, what we can’t do is call it this and literally just have it be an investment property. So that goes against the nature of it. And so it does allow for somebody to move in you could collect rents, if there were bedrooms for sure. And then after one year, the son or daughter moves out or mom or dad moves to another location you’re fully within your rights to have that be an investment property as long as for the first 12 months it was occupied by the person that was on the upfront paperwork. That’s an D.J. Paris 24:11amazing strategy. So you live in the property for a year that cements it as a residence and and then from there on out you can kind of do do what you want with only and only starting the whole thing with only 5% down that is an incredible option. Guys these are the kind of creative ways that for lending and for real estate transactions that has really taken Joel from you know from from start to where he is now at the very very top of the of the lending food chain because he is always thinking about creative solutions for his clients. That’s That’s incredible. You kind of blew my mind with that I did not know that was that was an option so I’m I’m really one more Joel Schaub 24:55thing about this though ready DJ because I know right now people are thinking in their mind Well, if I put 20% down on that I don’t have to pay mortgage insurance. Okay, so let me tell you about why this program is amazing is that with 5% down and it’d be considered a primary residence. Let’s take a $400,000 property, yes, you could put 80 grand down and not have mortgage insurance. But I had a client recently just do the 5%, down, where they put down $20,000. And that mortgage insurance was about $51 a month. So $51. And yes, that money is going right out the window, I’ll be the first to admit that we don’t ever want to pay mortgage insurance. But the decision was, if I’m only putting 20 grand down instead of 80 grand, and I’m getting the exact same rate, I don’t want to put down 80 grand if it only cost me 51 extra dollars, exactly. That’s the solution. And if I’m an agent, now, I know two strategies, and I’m keeping my antennas up. I’m thinking of people that are getting older, and I’m thinking maybe they have a parent that needs this. It doesn’t need to be somebody who passes away. It just needs to be a situation where you want to put mom or dad into a property, or a son or daughter who’s college bound or enrolled in a property. And this is the strategy to do it without 20% down. D.J. Paris 26:20It’s amazing. Yeah, that is an amazing, you really are getting your balloon blowing my mind with those I did not I did not know that product existed. And what a great opportunity for anyone with with aging parents or who have worked, or who are parents themselves and have kids who are in college and you’re tired of paying that that room and board rent of let’s let you know, I also would, you know, it’s funny, I just saw the National Association of Realtors, Lawrence Yun the basically the head economist, he just said that he was very happy with inflation, the numbers most important are recently released. And he said he believes rates are on the way down. So the very top guy at the National Association of REALTORS believes rates are are going to be coming down at some point and didn’t say when. But we hope we hope soon. But again, I still think this is not a time to get discouraged. This is just a time to get work a little harder, right? i This not not Joel Of course, Joel always works hard. But for everyone listening, this is the time where lots of people are sitting on the sidelines, lots of agents are not moving forward. You know, they’re they’re paying attention to only what’s happening in the news. And they’re just maybe they’re they have a little fear. This is the time to keep to bring these kinds of options to your clients, whether or not it’s the right fit for them that you know, you guys will figure out. But this is a time to commute over communicate versus under communicate. Joel Schaub 27:56You’re exactly right. When we think about what happened with inflation and what the Feds historic move up in rates, right? Maybe we see a little bit of volatility here where they go up a little bit before they come down. But the likelihood that the Fed does the same amount of rate increases that they’ve already done is next to nothing, there’s a very little chance that the rates continue to go up that much. Okay, it is much more likely that the worst of the inflation is behind us. And that means at some point in time, next year, we’re going to see rates come down. And they might come up a little bit. But the situation really truly is that we should stay positive. We know that rates here in the 60s aren’t something that makes you want to jump out of a tree, everything is okay. And in the near future rates will be lower. So let’s go out and get all the deals we can right now. And let’s help all the clients we can now because when the floodgates turn on again, you better be ready. Because rune rates are down. We’re gonna see that again in the future. And we had a lot more activity, so get ready for it. D.J. Paris 28:58I started as a financial advisor on September 12 2001, which of course we know what what happened the day prior. But it was also aside from the terrorist attack that happened. It was also the tech bubble had already started crashing significantly if we were if we if we were alive during those times. And I will tell you that people would told me at that time, this is the worst possible time to get in. I was coming in when people were losing 85 90% of if they were heavily invested in tech technology at that time. The turn of the millennium that people were down significantly, and I was told worst time you could possibly get in. It was the best time to get it actually because as a result I worked really hard. I didn’t know any different and as a result I just pounded through and I found people that were like me that were new to the market that you know didn’t have a history by Find me to say like, well, I made 80% last year, and now I’ve lost it all. This is a great time to pick up. What I’m really talking about is first time homebuyers, this is a great opportunity to pick up first time homebuyers. When people are ready to buy, they’re ready to buy, you know, rates be damned, you know, quite honestly, like when people need to move they need to move. So now’s the time to get in, I would encourage all of our listeners, find out where you’re the people in your contact list where they work. And I would, I would partner up with someone like Joel or Joel himself. And I would say, I want to go to visit some of these companies, I want to, you know, bring in some lunch, I want to do a whole pitch on, I want to talk to people who are in their, like late 20s or early 30s, who are thinking about buying who haven’t yet done it, that’s going to be my market. And if you do that this year, you’re going to be golden right now. Joel Schaub 30:54And that’s the reason if I’m an agent right now, like I continue to tune in to the cube into real podcasts, you’re getting information, you’re getting one extra thing that you can actually put in place right now. And if you’re in a market like we are, rents are not cheap, and I don’t really know a market. Now that I think about it, where rents are cheap. And if you are renting, the rate that you’re paying is 100 and DJ I like 6.5 or 6%, a lot more than I like 100%. Right. So remember this, when people complain about where the rates are, and they’re renting, remind them that the rate that they’re paying right now is 100%, all of that money goes out the window. And if you own the place, 6% is going out the window, and everything else is actually going to pay down your mortgage, and you get a tax deduction. So remember, the sky is not falling, if somebody is renting, you can help them and just work your sphere. There’s a lot of opportunities right now, and stay positive. And that’s my advice for you. D.J. Paris 31:59And guys, what I would recommend and when I say guys, I should stop saying that because obviously we we actually have more female listeners than than male listeners who say girls, but but I’ll just say everyone, this is this is what I would do if if if I was if I were you, and I meet with a client and they’re not sure, I would say you know what, I’ve got the group, the best mortgage person, the best lender, I’m gonna, we’re gonna have a conversation and they’re gonna try to figure out a creative strategy for you. You don’t have to know everything, you just have to know the right lender. And when you pass that person over, believe me, lenders love those kinds of introductions. So you what you want to do is partner with somebody who is this creative, somebody like Joel or just partner with Joel himself. That’s what I did. That’s what you should do. But if you’re if Joel isn’t, you know, able to help you, you can find someone else. But Joel, for everyone else who’s going to follow me and follow you. What’s what’s the best way that they should get in touch with you so that they can find out about out about these creative strategies and these different options. Joel Schaub 33:05But I love to keep it in real community because I’ve literally had personal conversations with dozens of listeners, they’re shocked when I actually return the emails to them and personally talk to them. And I love it. I mean, it’s just part of who I am. And it’s just one of those things where if you want you can email me joel@rate.com JO el@rat.com. And remember, if somebody’s paying, let’s say $2,500 a month in rent, their biggest objection isn’t that the payment that they can’t afford a mortgage is that they don’t have the downpayment. And so coming up with the strategies to do 3% down, or 5% down, where the rates are really attractive on these first time homebuyer programs, that’s going to make all the difference. They’re already paying a mortgage, they’re just paying somebody else’s mortgage. So help them get on the right track to homeownership. The more people you help, the more you’ll help yourself. And it all goes back to that givers gain mentality. If you can give and you teach and you educate people are going to follow you. And those people are gonna refer you more business. So get out there and put the people first and teach them and help them D.J. Paris 34:20agreed everyone out there grab while you’re probably on your phone if you’re if you are go to your email app and send an email to joel@rate.com asked to be placed on his weekly mortgage update lending list and you will get a market update once a week and it’s too much full of information where you can’t like the example I gave earlier today. It was very beautiful email I have to share it with you but it was yes. You got to see it was so overdone so much data, so much data. But the point is is most people you know look, we want two or three pieces of information We can lock into our brains. That’s what your, what your your weekly market update does. And it gives us a way to actually make more money meaning more clients helping more people. So everyone, and by the way, too, if you’re a realtor, and you want to partner with a lending a loan officer who can actually help you grow your business, Joel and his team, they’re very, they’re the best out there the best I’ve ever found, please give them a shot, reach out to Joel joel@rate.com. Or you can eat you can Joe give that you might give him the phone number one more time. Joel Schaub 35:34Now 773-654-2049. And we’re just happy to be giving back. It’s really great to be on I hope everybody got some useful information, today, we covered a lot about rates that covered the sky isn’t falling, and that rates probably will be coming down. But even right now where the rates are at, if you’re renting a home, it’s still much better to go out and see what we can buy. As long as you have a small down payment, you’re gonna be in the door. D.J. Paris 36:01And some creative strategies for people who have children in college as well as elderly parents who might need a residence. So, you know, pass this episode over. Oh, by the way, guys, we are now on Instagram. I want everybody to follow us please on Instagram at top agent interviews, I wish it was keeping it real. But that was already taken. So at top agent interviews, and we’re post in the reason I mentioned this is not because I want a big Instagram following. But because we actually, every single day we’re pushing out a short form video clip, usually under 60 seconds on actually all of our social platforms, including Tiktok. But Instagram is what where we find most of our audience is hanging out. So please follow us top agent interviews on Instagram, and even get a daily dose of this podcast. So Joel, thank you so much for another episode, another month. Another great episode of content is you know, everyone, get on Joel’s list. joel@rate.com email him now. Now Now tell everyone in your office to get on that list as well reach out to him with your buyer questions right. He is the man he’s got a whole team in place, they will work with you one on one. And, you know also on behalf of all of our listeners, we want to end viewers want to thank Joel for spending time with us today took time out of his busy day to be on the show, as well as we want to Joel and I want to thank the audience for continuing to support and listen and please tell a friend they could one other realtor that could benefit from this conversation and send them a link to our website keeping it real pod.com And also follow us on Instagram again top agent interviews. All right, Joel, great to see you and we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks Joe.

Amy Corr the Executive Vice-President of Culture and Agent Development for @properties and Christie’s International Real Estate, talks about her journey and her experience from tech firm to getting a real estate agent license. Amy explains how important is to give so much love to clients and get to know them better. Next, Amy talks about her passion for coaching and an innate ability to push people to do their best. Last, Amy emphasizes the importance of being authentic towards others. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Amy Corr can be reached at 312.254.0200. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00What do buyers and sellers really expect from their agent? We’re going to 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 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. I’m your host through this show. And in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with Amy core. But before we get to Amy, just a couple of reminders, oh actually got an announcement. So we finally have an Instagram account, which sounds silly. Everybody has an Instagram account. But we actually created one very diligently and intentionally so that we could provide more content to you the listeners. So we have a team now that goes through our episodes and clips out the very best moments. And we post those video moments usually 30 to 60 seconds on the various social channels including Instagram. So we’re on Tik Tok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, probably some other places. But anyway, please follow us on Instagram, which is at top agent interviews at top agent interviews every day, we’ll be serving you up a short form video with a tip from one of our great great guests. Please also tell a friend about our podcast keep us expanding by telling other realtors about keeping it real. So send them over to our website keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done, we have almost 500 Now can all be streamed right from a browser window Okay guys, let’s get to the main event my conversation with the great Amy core right today on the show we have aded core with AP properties in Chicago also Christie’s international real estate. Let me tell you more about AMI AMI core oversees the development and delivery of branded coaching, training and business planning solutions that help agents consistently and sustainably grow their business resulting in genuine agent satisfaction and a thriving brokerage culture. Amy’s curriculum tackles every stage of the agent lifecycle from broker fundamentals to leveling up to top producer status to building and running successful teams. Her programming is practical, engaging and actionable, based on 20 years of experience as a six as successful sorry about that successful agent of her own right and award winning managing broker. She was born and raised in San Francisco, Amy graduated from Santa Clara University lives in Wilmette, which is basically Chicago with her husband and her two daughters. Guys, this is a really special episode for me. I am very very honored to bring Amy on. If you’re if you’re not from the Chicagoland area most of our audience is not at properties started as an independent brokerage and has as quickly or over their lifecycle of their business has become one of the most successful brands for real estate in independent brands in the entire country. So this is really, really exciting. We’re huge fans about properties. Amy welcome. Oh, by the way, everyone go visit@properties.com at properties.com. Also, Amy does a show every week with Kevin Vanek and that is at on it. Follow her on Instagram at coffee with Amy and Kevin. So at Coffee with with Amy and Kevin, I will have links to all of these in the show notes. So you don’t have to write this down. Amy, welcome to the show. Amy Corr 5:07Oh, thank you so much for having me. Thank you for such a nice intro. You made me sound so good. D.J. Paris 5:13Well, you, you are incredibly impressive. And I am so so happy to chat with you today. So let’s I want to hear about you. I want to know your journey. So tell us how you started in real estate. How did you get involved? Amy Corr 5:30Yeah, no, that’s a great question. A lot of people usually start with how the heck did a California girl? D.J. Paris 5:35Yeah. How did you go from the west? How’d you not end up in the tech world? Amy Corr 5:40Yeah, well, I kind of started in the tech world. But yeah, so I actually moved from California out to Chicago, a couple years out of college. And I actually started in technology, I was moved out here by a tech firm and enjoyed it, you know, did technology for a while with a company called SSA. In fact, I looked them up to see if they still existed, they were just function bought by somebody else. So a while. But then I moved to a cool startup. And I think it was 98 or 99. And worked a ton in tech. And it was super interesting worked so many hours. But after about three years, I kind of was at this point where you know, I was getting old enough to think what the heck do I want to do with the rest of my life? And is this you know, is this what interests me? And I was I didn’t read the What color is your parachute? But it was definitely trying to figure that out. And my now husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, kind of just planted the seed. And he said, you know, you’ve always seemed like you kind of like real estate and you know, like looking at houses and I wasn’t I didn’t own anything at that point in time. And I thought, huh, that’s kind of interesting. So I explored it a little bit. Next thing you know, I enrolled at the place on Halsted Street in Chicago darkness was the gentleman who owned that company, the yellows, Hanson Yes. And really had some real estate. Yes, yes, yes. So I had no clue what I was doing, right. So I decided, Alright, I’m gonna go ahead. I still work full time. But I went, you know, in the evenings to study and get my license. And then I got, I got my license, I got licensed. And I just I actually, I don’t know if you know, Jan Smith, who owned J. Smith and Associates in Bucktown, she actually her old offices now are at properties Bucktown office, she was my first managing broker, I love her, I still see her often. And I just kind of hung my license with her because she was a friend of our family members. And I kind of didn’t even know what I was getting into. But I was sort of excited by the idea of I was working so many hours in technology. And what I remember hearing at the time, it was like 2002, and the market was moving was you know what, if you work really hard, you can be really successful, and you’re your own boss. And so I found that really interesting, because I was working so so hard to make somebody else a lot of money. And I loved my people and where I was at, but I just felt like you know what, if I’m going to do it, now’s the time, I don’t have kids, you know, I’m still single, why not make this change. So I jumped in and worked with Jan for a little bit and then moved over to a different brokerage firm. I worked with Suzy minor for about a year, which was great. That’s where I went met one of my very best friends who really kind of mentored me. And then she and I moved to add properties in 2002. No, sorry. 2004. So, you know, I’ve been with ad for a really long time, I was probably maybe agent 150 at the time. So think about how far I’m like blown away by how far we’ve come if you really think about it. I mean, I remember being in the basement of the Clyburn office selling real estate in the city, and now now look at us as a company, but it’s been a really phenomenal journey. I feel really fortunate and lucky that, you know, I’ve just sort of been given the opportunities that I have in in this industry because I’m just really passionate about it. D.J. Paris 9:09It’s an incredible story and I’m curious, so at properties has Gosh, I don’t know more than 3000 agents, I don’t know here in the local Chicago area, at least 3000 Probably more You’re certainly one of the biggest players and and yet you know, this sort of grassroots built business which you know, competes with Compass and and Coldwell Banker and at you know, and all buyer Baird and Warner and all of these other big players in the space and you guys came in like, it just sort of took over and what I what I see having what I saw have has happened in in here in Chicago is this the branding of ad properties is so immersive what it does. So App properties did something that I thought was brilliant, which, as a marketer, they basically said, what what is, and again, I don’t know, the conversations that led to this. So I’m just, I’m just pre presupposing. But they basically, you know, took one of the deepest, you know, experiences in human existence, which is love. And they said, We want to brand around love we want when people think about our brand, when they think about buying homes, when they think about our agents, when they think about our sort of processes, we want to be the happy, loving, fun sort of group. And they’ve they focused on the one word love, and that became your brand. And it just absolutely took off. And I’ve never, I’ve yet to see another brand in any industry, capitalize on love, and use it as their mascot as their bread and meat is literally your mascot. And it is such a strong message. Because of course, all of us have a connection to that word, you know, and we see it and you guys have it all over the city, you can’t go here in Chicago, you can’t go too far, in at least here within the city limits, without seeing the word love somewhere with the add properties kind of logo there. And they don’t even necessarily talk about real estate in most branding efforts. That’s what’s really cool. I love Amy Corr 11:33that that’s also intentional. You know, it’s also intentional. So I wasn’t in the room when it happened. But I was here when it did. And, you know, we were talking earlier about bad Wong, you know, I think one of the things that you you know, we have to incredibly credit him for is that, you know, he is the mastermind from the very beginning with so much of our branding and marketing strategy. Natasha, Pat Lowe, who’s, you know, our CMO now is incredible, and the two of them together, but he really drives that it’s, it’s what he loves to do. And, you know, all of our fun campaigns, if you’ve watched them throughout the years, you know, we don’t take ourselves too seriously, I think that is really sort of at the root of our culture is We laugh a lot. And, you know, we joke a lot, even in a lot of our management, you know, our different management meetings that we have, you know, we just really have an enjoyment of working together. And we really want that communicated out not just to our agents, but to the consumer. And, you know, because when we’re selling real estate, yes, it’s a transaction. But think about what is related to the home and what everybody thinks about homeownership and life. And so he was sitting down with Natasha, and he was like, I want to come up with a word that would just resonate with everybody something that everyone, you know, can relate to. And he ultimately, I think, even said, everything that’s, you know, something that everyone would love. And then he was like, Wait, that’s the word. Yeah. And, you know, we use our intention was, we’re going to use it as, you know, a campaign, we obviously aligned ourselves with Matthew Hoffman, who was the artist who actually designed the script for love, which we then you know, licensed and purchased through him. And we just started it as as something that we thought would be a cool campaign for, I don’t know if it was 2016 or 2017. And then it was just like, the response was crazy. So then we were like, Okay, why don’t we start taking this a little bit further. And we do a lot of the love magnets, people like to put those on their car. And I remember I was driving somewhere and I pulled up into to get gas somewhere in the in the suburbs. And I pulled in, and this guy pulls up next to me and kind of this kind of beat up car. And I’m like, Okay, I don’t know what he’s wanting for me. And he rolls down his window, because I’m pumping gas. And he was just like, where did you get that love magnet, I’ve been looking for one forever. And I was like, you know, buddy, today is your lucky day, I’m gonna give you my love could have mine. Yeah. And so it just became this thing that we realized, had this amazing experience, and it created this amazing emotion for people. So we have continued to use it, but we really try to use it in a way to that, you know, really pushes ahead of our brand. Like when COVID hit, we started doing signs that were Love is the unity in your community. And you know, it didn’t even have that properties on it, but it was like everybody just knew. And you sometimes I think when you lead with the right intention to focus on others, to give back to figure out how can we help other people instead of serving ourselves first, the universe opens up for you and I really do feel like that’s one of the things that I have learned and developed, you know, not just in my career but as a human working here at at you know, because we all work really hard but I think we’re always asking like, especially for our agents, what do they need from us right now? You know, how can we support them? You know, as independent contractors in you know, great markets, but also challenge In markets, and so, you know, the love is extended amongst one another, but then it you know, and it’s also a great branding opportunity for agents to use as they’re trying to connect with their clients, you know. And so it’s it’s kind of taken a life of its own. And so many of our affiliates, it’s one of the things that they really anchor to and have just really loved, loved having the opportunity to use in their own communities. D.J. Paris 15:25Yeah, I would love I would also love to talk about, sorry for the pardon the pun, would love to talk about teams, because I’m switching gears kind of abruptly only because, you know, this year with rates being where they are and inventory being less than what most markets would would prefer. We are now seeing a lot of agents moving around, right agents are starting to feel oh, maybe I’m if they’re on a team, maybe they’re not on the right team, maybe they’re a different brokerage, maybe there’s better options. And what what we’re seeing is this, this fractionalization of agents, the the the migration of agents who are sort of, on their own maybe thinking maybe I would be better in a collective, maybe I would be better in a group versus just me running everything myself. And at properties is obviously embraced. team mentality. There’s lots of teams that properties, lots of teams at many brokerages. I’m curious on what suggestions you might have to agents who are thinking about joining a team or creating a team? Amy Corr 16:37Ah, good, two very different kind of mindsets, very D.J. Paris 16:40different. Amy Corr 16:41You know, I think, I think it’s, you know, so first of all, I think that, you know, our industry, we are definitely seeing that the team model, you know, is definitely not going away. If anything else, I feel like it’s getting a lot stronger. And I think, you know, for a couple reasons, I think just the speed at which real estate is going now with technology, even if you think 2025 years ago, where we were just on the cusp of things being in the MLS, things being electronic. But I remember when I first started, I would still go and get signatures at night, right? Or the pace was just not quite as fast. And I feel like the consumer expectation was also not quite so high. I mean, think about what they expect now from print advertising to digital advertising to a full blown marketing strategy to where is the exposure, you know, there’s a lot of expectation. And so at some point, as a sole practitioner, you know, we can only handle so much, right, because we’re having to move so fast in order to compete with everybody else. So I think at some point, what I say to so many agents is that if you’re going to grow, there’s only one of you. So you have to figure out what is going to be your plan to scale. And you know, in some time, and what I oftentimes see is that they don’t always scale the right way. You know, I think it’s sometimes just getting bodies to help is the answer where, you know, we actually have a two day workshop that I built with a consultant that is a team’s workshop. And it’s for team leaders for them to really kind of understand like, Am I doing this the right way, because oftentimes, they just sort of develop the team, and have some people that are sort of all working together. But you know, no one has ever really evaluated, what’s the strategy behind this. And so what we really help a lot of team leaders take a look at and what I would encourage most team leaders to do is take a step back and see where your team is at. But what I would have them do is to almost take a sheet of paper and write down on one side, what are the things that I like to do most and I am most effective at? And then on the other side, what do I not like to do or what should I not be doing because it’s not the best use of my time. So many of the team leads that I see and consultant work with, you know, they’re great rainmakers, they’re great at bringing in the business reaching out to clients, they are phenomenal at that. What they aren’t always great at is managing the rest of their people, maybe creating structure for their people. And so what I find is they’re so busy out getting the business and fueling the pipeline. But then there are people who are feeling lost because that team lead just doesn’t have the time to help to develop them. Or what they also don’t always have is a good operations. Person operations are key, right? You’ve got the person that is out drumming up the business, but somebody has to be the backbone to make sure that business is being serviced correctly. And so, you know, I really encourage agents to take a step back and start looking at what roles do I need for the type of team that I’ve either midway built or really want to build. And sometimes what you can look at is some of your people, you’ve got really great talent, they’re just in the wrong spot. And so you know, we’ve we’ve got Um, lots of different, you know, ways for team leaders to really look at stuff. But I feel like sometimes they just sort of throw people into a group. And there isn’t really a strategy behind the growth. And so anybody who’s you know, has a team, I would really encourage that, you know, and I can dive into it for hours, but really just take a step back and understand at the end of the day, what do you want to be doing as a team lead? And what is your role going to be because you cannot be everything, and you need to figure out what roles need to be filled, you fill yours, and then you find great people to fill those other spots. And I will tell you, you will create some amazing synergy. So that’s really, I would say, for team leads for people who are thinking about being on a team, you have to ask yourself, you know, what is the reason for being on a team? Is it simply because I can’t figure out how to fish for myself. And I don’t like reaching out in prospecting. Before that is necessarily your only factor, I almost would even ask you, is this the right business for you? Right, because a big part of being in real estate, let’s face it, you’ve got to learn how to fish on your own. And I’m also a big believer of you cannot expect a team leader to just hand you leads, I think, the best run teams, it’s not that you won’t get them. But at the end of the day, that isn’t their sole responsibility. And that might be some team models of overflow. But my thought is, is that if that ever goes away, if that overflow or the Zillow leads, they purchase, if those dry up and suddenly the team is struggling, to me, it’s all hands on deck, and you better know how to fish. So the best teams I think are ones where team members come in and learn how to cultivate business from the best who is their team leader? And that team leader teaches them? And then I think, yes, definitely, there’s overflow. But you know, so I think when you’re a team member, or somebody who wants to go onto a team, I would ask those questions, I would you know, and if somebody just says, Hey, we’re gonna give you leads, that’s great in the short term, but if you’re in this business, for the long term, you’ve got to learn how to develop your own book of business, that’s your biggest safety net. Because at some point, if that team goes away, and you’re standing there and never develop the tools that it takes to be a great agent, you’re gonna be starting from the ground up again. D.J. Paris 22:19Yeah, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve had many, many people on the show over the years who have talked about purchasing leads versus handing leads out organically versus, you know, working referral based business. Of course, everybody who’s listening would love to have 100% of their business be referral based. And, of course, that is ultimately the goal, because it’s the most cost effective way to to run that, that this business. But it takes a tremendous amount of effort to get there. I but I also think it’s something we probably don’t talk about enough, which is raving fans, like how do how do you encourage your agents to because at properties here in the Chicago market is, if they’re not the highest producing real estate brokerage, they’re number two, they’re number one or number two. So you know, we have an opportunity here to talk to Amy and ask her what are you telling your your agents about? How to create raving fans? Amy Corr 23:23Yeah. I always tell people that you need to focus on the give. You know, I think as agents, you know, especially when we’re new in the business, and I was there, I still remember that panic attack of am I going to be cert able to survive and really grow a career. And there’s a lot of self doubt. I mean, we have all of these CEOs out there, right? They’re CEOs of their own business, but they sometimes barely believe in themselves. And so it’s, and I think for a lot of them, they feel like God, I have to go out and ask for business, I have to ask that question. Do you know anybody who’s looking to buy and sell? And so I actually remove that from the equation sort of all together? My big belief is, look, yeah, I mean, it’s, you know, focus on the person in front of you, and figure out what can I give to them today that’s going to change their life, you know, maybe even just a little bit, you know, and I play this fun game, we have a program called the road to Rolex, and we’ve got over 100 agents that are in the program for the year. And it’s an accountability program, and they’re in small groups of five, and they meet for the entire year. And I am coaching them, like I coach each of the groups kind of once a quarter. And so I was meeting with some of them. And I said, here’s what I want you to think about doing. I want you to like we have this amazing opportunity known as social media, Facebook, Instagram, we get to know more about the people that are in our sphere than ever before. Use it. Don’t use it in a bad way or feel like it’s self serving, but figure out what’s going to move the needle with people. You know, I had a great example I had an agent who had a somebody on Facebook who posted we’re going on Spring Break, and our, our dogs that are the place where we bring our dog, it’s full. Now we’re in a panic, we need somebody to come and you know, watch our dog for a week. So one of this agent who happened to know this woman who posted on Facebook, I said, Be the connector. Focus on the give this person needs something. Do you know anybody? She said, I actually have a girlfriend who does dog sitting part time. I said, Awesome. Or actually, she told me this scenario. So she said she connected and call the woman who does dog sitting and she said, Are you available the week of the 27th? How much do you charge? Can I get this person in contact with you? So sure enough, yep, it worked. She called this other person who posted on Facebook and said, Hey, I have somebody that can take care of your dog while you’re gone for the week. So the beauty of that situation, she just had the opportunity to make authentic contact with two people in her database. And all she did was focused on the give focus on how can I, you know, create an opportunity for others. And maybe she didn’t get a deal that day. But I’m telling you, if you do that all day long, that is going to change the trajectory of your business. D.J. Paris 26:08It’s that law of reciprocity thing, right? Like I do good for others, without the expectation of doing good to me. But people are pretty hard wired to want to return favors. So this idea of being real estate adjacent, I always I always like as this like, I’m going to be yes, I’m going to help you with your real estate transaction. That’s obviously the job of the realtor. But all the other stuff that exists all the ancillary, you know, things that come up, or, Hey, I need a pet sitter for my dog. Amy Corr 26:47And it’s all related to home. related. Yeah, well, I will say, sorry, no, I was just gonna say I always say to agents, it isn’t just the buy and sell. It’s everything in between, that in between is the secret sauce, if you take care of them in between those deals, like not only are they going to work with you again, but think about all the opportunity that that comes with that. And it’s you know, it’s taking the transaction out of it. It’s really focusing on the relationship piece. And, and yeah, it takes a little bit of lead time. You know, I think sometimes agents get a little antsy with it like, Well, nothing’s happening right now. It’s like, just continue the action, and it will happen, it just, you know, if you throw something out into the universe, at some point, it has to respond, you know, just sometimes as agents, we get impatient. So it’s just let it ride, keep doing it. And you’ll see the change. I’ve seen it in agents that I’ve coached over the years, you know, and some of the biggest agents that I’ve really seen and work with are the best connectors, I call them super connectors, you know, they’re the person that is called for everything. Do you have a guy for this? Do you have a girl for this? You know, who would you recommend in this situation, it’s like, Ah, you got to call Amy or you got to call DJ, because he knows everybody, right? That’s who you want to be. And then the rest takes care of itself. D.J. Paris 28:02You really want to bring people into your Echo system, you want to create your own echo system, so that a home buyer or seller or homeowner, or renter, anyone, whenever they have needs around, you know, home related items, that you become obviously the person that they that they go to. And therefore, it’s it’s sort of a simple but difficult thing, right? Like, so you have to, you have to It’s simple. It’s like push ups like good idea hard. So I so I think I think creating an echo system is really, really important, because what you’re really doing is you’re solving these micro problems along the way. And maybe they’re not like maybe they’re massive problems, but you’re solving problems outside of real estate outside of the transaction along the way. And that’s to me, I see that is really the job. The job is how do I solve problems in between transactions for or how to provide value slash solve problems? For for my, my sphere of influence? How do I do that, because if I do that, I can make a reasonable assumption that a vast majority of those people, if I’m consistently adding value to their lives, are going to feel and let’s just be honest, they’re going to feel that they owe you the opportunity to hire you for for a brokerage transaction. So for so I thought that that, you know, the the home selling process is is its own thing. And then but and we focus a lot on that because that’s what we’re in the middle of at any given moment when we’re dealing with a client. But if we can focus if we could really expand to focus on providing value outside of that transaction as much as possible. It’s actually number one. It’s really fun because you can you can, you know, accumulate and And, you know, start to put all of these different vendors and services together and start to create these these guides that you can then project out to, to your clients. But you can be reaching out to them consistently saying, what’s going on with your home, how’s everything going? Do you need anything? Like you can actually reach out to them not ask it like you were saying, not asking, Hey, are you thinking about buying or selling? But hey, how’s everything going with your home? Do you guys need anything, I’ve got the best plumbers, I’ve got the best, etc. I think that is so tremendously valuable. Because number one, every homeowner always has projects that are ongoing, right? Like, we all have ongoing projects, if you are a homeowner, there’s something that you’re like, I need to get to that one room and paint that one wall. And it’s not one thing. And everybody’s got that. So if I was an agent right now, I mean, I am an agent, but I’m not a practice. If I was a practicing agent today, what I might do if I was in between sales, I’m curious to get your thoughts on this, I might come up with my vendor list of all the people that I’ve worked with, and you know, different services related to home, you know, home stuff, and I would have that list. And I would be calling my friend saying, hey, just checking in. Are there any projects currently in your home that are unfinished? Or are you need to work on? Or? Or, or hey, also, if you want to meet to check the value of your home, I can do that, too. But I just wanted to see how everything’s going with the home just checking in on the home. How’s it going? You need anything I’m gonna accent? I mean, could you imagine nobody has ever made that call to me, by the way? Amy Corr 31:41That, here’s what I want you to, here’s what I want to identify. No one has ever made that call. So Kevin, and I just did a coffee last week. And the first thing on the coffee was pick up the phone. I’m telling you, if you were asking me which agent is going to win this year, is the one that picks up the phone and start, you know, face to face man to man voice to voice contact. You know, it’s the fastest way to get into a yes or a no. And we’re so afraid of no. But what if the answer is yes. And you’re missing all of those yeses. That’s what drives me crazy. And it’s funny because agents that I do coach, they get really nervous about the phone. And there’s a lot of them that do like they can talk to anybody until the cows come home. But the minute that they feel like oh my god, I’m calling somebody, and I’m interrupting them in particular. D.J. Paris 32:27Also, if they haven’t been following up with them, consistently, paths are like, Oh, I haven’t called that person in a year. It’s gonna feel weird. It’s good. Yep. Amy Corr 32:36Yeah, it’s like they would rather like rip off 10 band aids out there are as opposed to make that call, you know, but so it’s funny. So what I had encouraged a lot of agents to do is, you know, there’s those straight to voicemail apps fly dial. And so I said, You know what, let’s warm up with this. And so then they would push back with on me, and they would say, Yeah, but they know that I’m going straight to voicemail. So then I said, then just own it. Call them and say, Hey, Bob, you know what I wanted to give you a phone call. And I wanted to go straight to voicemail, because I know, oftentimes, you’re in the courthouse. But gosh, I would really love to connect with you and see how you and Susie are doing, how are things going with the house? Is there to your point, DJ, is there anything that you guys are thinking about during the spring? And can I provide any vendor recommendations? Give me a call back when you have a second, there is nothing that will ever replace the sound of my voice, the tone being inflection, my excitement and energy to be trying to connect with them again, I don’t care how hard you try how many exclamation points on text. You’re never gonna get it. And there’s so many agents who are so afraid to do it. It drives me crazy. D.J. Paris 33:45You are so right about the voice, straight to text voice, like the slide dial it straight to voicemail. You are so absolutely right. So I want to make this point because you just made it I want to I want to reiterate it and it’s a good one. People want to hear your voice. They also you if you want to do a straight to voicemail via sly dial or any of these other straight to voicemail services. And you might think oh gosh, like Amy said, Well, what if they know that I’m not actually calling them going straight to voicemail? Here’s how you would say it. And Amy just gave a great script there. What I would add to that, as well as saying, Hey, I didn’t want to bug you. I know you’re at work. I’m just shooting this right into your voicemail, but super excited to catch up with you. You know, bah bah, and then and so you don’t have to. I always say this about it’s kind of like the dating apps. I always say you don’t have to worry about being perceived as a creep. If you’re not a creep. Like if you’re not a creep, you don’t have to worry about it. So so if you’re going to someone’s voicemail, you don’t have to pretend that you’re not you can explain why you are doing that because you don’t want to bug them. Yeah. And by the way, most people aren’t going to answer the phone anyway. So you’re gonna get their voicemail Amy Corr 34:54to their voicemail right? And all of you out there you can thank us when you try this later today and you You get a client calling back? Who’s super excited to talk to you? Right? D.J. Paris 35:04But I mean, isn’t it really this idea of value? Right? Like, it’s I, I’ve done 500 of these episodes. And I would love to say that, that I’ve, you know, sort of extracted this this secret elixir of how to be a successful real estate agent over all these episodes. And it seems to be if somebody were to put me on stage and say, What did you learn from interviewing hundreds of top 1% agents in the country, I would say, they work really hard. And they’re constantly thinking about how they can add to their customers lives, like add some sort of value. And that’s pretty much it. Like, there’s a lot there. I mean, with those two things, that’s kind of everything. And it’s not easy, but it’s this consistently. Like, like, Amy, like, you were saying, How can I add value today? I mean, it can be as simple as, you know, if sometimes it’s funny, too, because people are like, Well, how do I how do I find more? Leads? How do I get more leads? It’s like, Well, okay, do you go to the grocery store? Yes. Okay. Do you run into people at the grocery store? Well, there’s people at the grocery store, I try Amy Corr 36:13not to, I hate when I hear them say I try not to Yeah, D.J. Paris 36:17right? Well, and I’m not saying you should talk to everyone at the grocery store. But I’m saying, if you can think about forget about leads, if you think about smiling at people or or acknowledging them, or complimenting them or saying something affirming, that is genuine, authentic, you know, something that moves you like I was, I was at a committee meeting with the Chicago Association of Realtors yesterday, and a friend of mine, or one of the people on my committee had purple hair. And I was like, I gotta remember to tell her I love that purple hair. If there’s always ways we can add value to people’s lives, and if we consistently do that, whether it’s a compliment, whether it’s being of service, whether it’s, you know, checking in on them, this is what wins the race. It’s always about effort. I think Amy Corr 37:08it’s effort, and it’s care. You know, I mean, and, you know, you had said there was, what you would say about agents is, you know, constantly providing value and working really hard. But I would also say, really being authentic, you know, I think as agents when you are looking at top producers, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t look at sort of your real estate heroes, or you see a top producer, you know, in your office and you say Dang it, you know, I really want to be like so and so, yes, there are certain things about that person that you’re attracted to. But don’t lose yourself. Because the thing is, is that and this is what I also say to agents is, look, you have a great engine behind you with App properties, Christie’s international real estate, you know, we’ve got a lot of stuff that you are able to go into a listing presentation, or sit down with a buyer and feel super confident. But here’s what I want you to work on. Who are you? And why are you bringing them the value? Because the thing is, is that they’re going to pick you because of you probably not much of anything else. Yes, you’ve got all of this other great stuff, which is going to add to that confidence. And you know, I think what I love the most in coaching, is when I get to that point where I can work with an agent, and I help them find themselves. You know, not everybody can just pick up the phone and be super confident and be able to say certain things doesn’t mean you’re not going to be successful, or does it mean that you don’t have to start slow start with a sly dial and be as nervous as all get out? It’s okay, it gets D.J. Paris 38:34okay. It’s okay to be where you are. So in other words, if you are scared, if you if you’re messing up. I mean, look, you know the the reality of it, is it. The phrase that I’ve hated my entire professional career career has been the fake it till you make it. I don’t like that phrase. Because it implies that we’re going to pretend that we have competence when we do not. I think I think it’s way better to acknowledge insecurity fear. I think people relate to that I think people now ultimately we want to develop skill and we wanted to, you know, hone those skills and develop those. But I think the being authentic, if I could make any sort of suggestion to our audience, whatever you’re into, I don’t care what it is, whatever you’re passionate about outside of real estate, somehow figure out a way to incorporate that into your real estate practice. If you’re into horses, if you’re if you’re into racing cars, whatever it might be your dogs, Amy Corr 39:41whatever it is, yeah, kids. Yep. D.J. Paris 39:45Yeah, bring that figure out a way to put that into your bring that into your business and you will attract other people who of course, also have those interests, but also people we we demand authentic. The city from our from our service providers, we want to know what you are like, we want to know what you do at home you don’t, you can set boundaries around what you’re willing to share. Privacy, of course, is important. But you know, we want to know who you are as a human being. And thankfully, we have technology that allows us to share those things. But people want to know who they are working with. They don’t, the skill is important, of course, but also the human side of it, who are you as a human being, and if you can demonstrate that, along the way of also providing value as as you continue to work with your clients, you’re just going to have a massive success. Amy Corr 40:41Yeah, I think especially just because, you know, we are in an industry that is so personal for our clients, you know, I mean, there is personality related to, you know, the selling of a property, you know, when we go in, and we are evaluating their house and giving them a price, there’s a lot of sensitivity to that, because there’s a lot of pride, and when, you know, when the price isn’t maybe what they expected it to be, you know, it’s a personal thing for them, right, because they believe, you know, gosh, but this was so special to me, I don’t see why everybody else can see it. So, you know, I say a lot that I think one of the biggest things for you know, being in real estate is that high emotional component, and really being able to lean in and understand you know, who these people are, because it is personal under, unlike other industries, and so, you know, back to your point, DJ, you know, the more authentic you can be, and the more that they can, you know, you don’t want to show them all of your flaws, but like when they’re feeling a little imperfect, if they’re feeling like, Ah, okay, I’m seeing the human side of this person, I feel more comfortable sharing my imperfections, or some of the things we’re worried about, because they have to open up about a lot. And you know, so I think as agents, again, you know, it’s, the more you are you, you are going to attract the people that are like you and you’re going to actually enjoy working with them more instead of working with people that are constantly pushing back on you or not believing you know what you’re saying. But it kind of starts with us figuring out who we are. And I remind my agents all the time you are CEO, you get to pick out all this stuff, you get to decide, you know, what you want to wear, who you want to focus on how you want to prospect, you know, you get to pick out the how, but you still have to do, and you know, and sometimes it takes a little while, you know, and what we were saying before, you’re gonna screw up, you’re gonna feel stupid, you’re gonna get nervous. But you know, I was talking to an agent earlier this morning, who just got her first eluxury opportunity. And she was like, I was so nervous, I’d wear all black because I felt like I was sweating everywhere. And she said, but what I told myself, is that this is a growth moment. I am growing, as I’m sitting here as terrified. And I said, Yes, you are. D.J. Paris 42:54Well, that’s true. Both things can be true, I am scared, and I’m excited. And both of those things can be be present at the same time. Yeah, I think I think it is so much about going all the way back to giving right we can always come back to value, like how do we improve people’s lives, right, we’re going to help them buy a home, we’re gonna help them sell a home, we’re gonna help them rent a home, we’re also going to allow them to, to come to us when they need, you know, things, fix things, things move. And, and we’re going to let them in on our how we how we cope with the ups and downs of, you know, a real estate transaction, for example. So I think the emotional sort of component or the emotional maturity of of, of an agent is really important to be able to anticipate the emotional reaction of like disappointment in advance. So I think really good agents. I’m curious to get your thoughts on this. No, okay, I’m about to deliver some rough news. Because we know that at any part, at some point in every transaction, there’s bad news, every transaction, there’s one at least one piece of bad news. So this is something we get to practice a lot. So the my point, what I’m trying to get to is, if you can identify, Okay, I know what the experience is. Or I’m going to ask other agents who have been through this kind of thing. What’s a typical client reaction to you know, not getting a home or having an offer come in goofy or whatever, whatever the the bad news is, being able to, to predict that that may be happening really makes because because I like I bought a home a few years ago, was not my first purchase. And I had forgotten because it had been a few several years. Amy Corr 44:49You forgot the pain. D.J. Paris 44:53And it was a really pretty easy transaction. And I was like, it was so stressful. And I was I was thinking god, I forgot I forgot how stressful this is. I mean, I’m not practicing agents. So I don’t know what a lot of our agents know. But boy, I really needed somebody to like, kind of give me a hug at certain times during a metaphorical hug, I guess. But, but the point is, is I think agents, it’s such, it’s, you know, we’re talking about a huge financial, you know, huge financial decisions here with respect to home ownership could be the largest financial purchase, possibly in you know, in the family. But understanding what the emotions are that are at stake, and understanding how to cope with those ups and downs, I think really separates the wheat from the chaff with respect to top producers. Amy Corr 45:45I agree. And I think what I would also say is, and this is something that I feel like I had on sort of my own journey of growth in my professional career, is I sort of felt like God, I’m supposed to just know how to do all of this stuff, if I’m gonna be really good. And you know, what I really learned is, you know, you’ve got to continue developing your craft, and you know, you don’t come out of the gate brand new knowing how to really be really solid when it comes to the emotional piece to your point, TJ, people may not necessarily know like, how do I respond or what should I anticipate, but you know, continuing to learn, read books, get mentored by other agents, but then also, it’s just you kind of have to go through enough transactions to then know, I know what’s going to happen this time. But one of the people that I really love is, it’s Chris Voss right with a V. The FBI hostage investing, hostage negotiator negotiator read is, yeah, so read his book. And we actually did kind of a workshop, Kevin and I were, we took some of his top tips, and kind of tried to apply them specifically to real estate situations, and sort of like how to use his scripting, because we aren’t saving a life. But sometimes we are saving a house, right. And one of the ones that I love to your point DJ was, I think it was called the accusation audit. And you know, where it kind of was like, Look, DJ, I know you’re not gonna love me, and you’re gonna be really upset when you hear this news. You know, it’s sort of where you put that into their psyche, where you’re already setting them up for a level of disappointment, or they’re already thinking, Well, I can’t be that disappointed at you. Right? So you kind of you but that was a technique that I probably used at certain points without even knowing it. But once I learned that, I thought, oh, my gosh, I use it on my kids. I wish I could use it on my dogs. I use it on my husband, you know what I mean? But suddenly, it was like, this is a communication technique that I can use that allows me to get the person on the other side prepared for something so bad so that when I deliver the actual news, it doesn’t feel quite as awful. Right. And he has a lot of interesting techniques. D.J. Paris 47:48Yeah, Chris Voss This is the never split the difference author, famous FBI hostage negotiator, guy, definitely read this book. But But this, this is what we’re talking about emotional, sort of competence, I would say or emotional coping competence, like real estate agents, you know, if anything, yes, they’re going to sharpen their skills with respect to, you know, market related data, right? They’re going to know, hopefully, they’re going to know, their, their, their numbers, but also knowing sort of the touch points of the clients understanding sort of, what are the motivations? What are the emotions, what are the personality types, and trying to cope ahead, I like the word cope ahead, say, Okay, tomorrow, I have to deliver some bad news to so and, you know, ex client, and like Amy said, I’m gonna maybe I’ll use one of the techniques to sort of maybe soften the blow a little bit. But I also, you know, you can cope ahead and start to think about how might that feel to somebody, okay, they’re gonna, they’re they lost, they lost the deal. Okay, how might that feel them, they’re gonna feel probably pretty defeated, they’re going to feel sad, they’re going to feel maybe angry. Maybe they’ll blame me. You know, you sort of need to go through all of these different instances in your mind and put yourself in their position and say, Okay, let’s let’s cope for all of these. Let’s cope ahead for all of these different inevitabilities. We don’t know which, which one’s going to actually turn out, but I’m going to prepare ahead so that when they respond with whatever their emotional responses, which is going to be probably severe, I am going to have a Don’t worry, it’s okay. Because x and that that I think is is really the key because I know if and as a homebuyer, myself, and home seller, I’ve done that several times. I just all all I ever want in a transaction. So think of me as more of like a lay person. I just want somebody to go it’s all going to be okay. That’s all I ever really want somebody to say somebody who I trust Amy Corr 49:53that and then here’s what we’re going to do next. Exactly, no, it’s going to be okay. And then they’re the ones that are going to move have the ball down the field. And that’s what we have to do as agents, we say it’s okay. But here’s the plan. And I loved your idea of as an agent, kind of taking in the shock of the bad news first, because let’s face it, there is an emotional component that we go through, we get so tight and close to these clients of ours, and their loss, let’s face it is our loss, it’s you know, the better the agents, sometimes, the more emotional or, you know, the harder we can take it, but the best agents understand that take the emotion in, allow themselves to be sad, be frustrated, be all the things that you need to be, allow it to pass, and then recognize I have to be the one that can go in with, we got this attitude, there’s something else for us out there. And you know, be able to remove the emotion to allow the clients to have as much emotion as needed. And I think that’s important, because sometimes an agent will get the bad news, and doesn’t take that time to process it and get to where they need to. And they’ll call the client too fast. And then everybody’s emotional, right? And then no one’s helping anyone. So you know, and I think that is practice, right? I think there’s a million times probably early on, that I was super emotional and called the client right away. Oh, that didn’t go so well. So, you know, it’s a lot of this. And what I also say, to so many agents is, you can be a serial student, though, too, you can read books, you can, we have a lot of classes, we’ve got a lot of programs that you can be in, at some point, you got to jump off the diving board straight into the deep end. And you got to just start, you know, working and trying to figure it out and make a ton of mistakes. And, look, we’ve also arrived DJ, you’re sitting here, I’m sitting here, how many times have we blown it? D.J. Paris 51:45Probably, like five times today, even I’ve blown it many, many times. Today, it’s a it’s a matter of effort, and, and discipline and, and discipline, I don’t want to say discipline, that’s a word. Nobody likes a habits, habits, let’s let’s build good habits. Discipline is a word that we should probably just get do away with Amy Corr 52:07ourselves some grace, you know, the other thing that I see so much with agents is, we’re so hard on ourselves, you know, I was in this group earlier. And this agent was just sort of not beating up on himself a little bit, but he just was just talking about his lack of confidence. And it was so great, because we have these accountability groups that meet every other week, it’s five of them. And, and two of his other team members were like, Robert, you are like amazing, because he was talking about reaching out to an agent in his community that I think is retiring from the business, and a mutual friend of theirs had said you guys should meet because maybe you’d be a great agent to take his business over. And so this guy, Robert was like, Oh, I don’t know, like, what if I’m not a good enough agent, or I’m not the personality type that he would want. And somebody from his group said, Robert, you know what, instead of you thinking that he may be your lucky star, you might be his don’t cut yourself, you know, so you know, you need to cut yourself some more slack, you are amazing. And so I just I see that so often amongst our agents. And, you know, I think one of the things that is also really important, you know, this is a lonely business, as a real estate agent, you know, we can come into the office, and we all sit around the watercooler and talk about our clients. But a lot of times we go back, and we’re really the ones dealing with a lot of these people’s situations. And that’s really hard. And so, you know, on our end of things, when we really try to support from management standpoint, is really being able to see the agent as the individual, you know, how are things going how’s work, how’s life, you know, that means so much for an agent to feel like they are really seen, you know, and it’s just to never underestimate that, because, you know, you’d be surprised some of the agents out there the things that they’re have going on, and how they are still able to carry themselves with such grace, running businesses, you know, and are all CEOs having to support themselves. It’s just, you know, it’s just amazing. So I just think for so many agents that are out there, you’re all rockstars and just recognize, you know, what you do is incredible and just believe in yourself because I don’t I don’t think agents always hear that enough. They should hear it from themselves, but they don’t. D.J. Paris 54:17Yeah, and they should, you should be in community, find your community. Even though you may be an individual producer and you’re producing big big numbers, find your tribe find people that can help support you, whether it whether it’s your your brokerage, or whether it’s just a community of other agents. You know, we are in a sort of communal kind of business, it’s I mean, it’s cooperative for sure. And or at least it’s supposed to be and so this this is an opportunity you know, you even though you might be working remotely, which pretty much everyone is these days you know, you don’t have to not be you don’t have to be apart from from people. So right This idea of you know, get support get an app properties does a great job of this. So we should really talk about, you know, if anyone out there is an A, you guys are not just in the Chicagoland area anymore. You’re kind of all over. Let’s talk about that. So if agents are wanting a different experience, maybe they’re not getting a certain amount of of support or training or resources at their current brokerage, and maybe thinking about switching, looking to see what other options exist. This is the year we’ve seen a lot of movement. How should agents start to explore Christie’s at properties? Amy Corr 55:36Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, locally, we’re at properties, Christie’s international real estate, and around Chicagoland, Wisconsin and Michigan, but we do have affiliates. You know, we’ve got properties in Indianapolis at properties in Dallas, we’ve got an amazing affiliate in Detroit, up in Wisconsin, we’ve got an amazing affiliate in Madison, in the Madison area. And then now the cool thing is we’ve got some really great agents just across the country, Christie’s Cirino, out in California, down to John our woods in Naples, we’ve got a lot of really great people and, and really what’s happening, and what I’m enjoying so much is what we have built as a culture and an opportunity to, to train and develop agents, we are really figuring out how to take that and expand that out into our affiliate network. So a lot of the programming that we do a lot of the support that we try to give to our agents, from accountability to you know, how to develop a great listing presentation, you know, we’ve got a really comprehensive approach to training and our technology, you know, platform has been really phenomenal to support the back end of our agents. So I would just say, if anybody is interested, it’s easy to find me on social media or, you know, you can email me but, you know, we’re, we really feel like, it’s also the idea that attraction, you know, I, I don’t recruit as actively anymore. But when I did, you know, I would always say, this is about you finding a great fit, but it’s also about us finding a great fit, right, it should really feel like a partnership. And I also feel like it isn’t so much as hiring agents, but it’s really them deciding who do they want to hire to help them run their business? And how can we be that little engine pack behind them, just to really make sure that they can take off. And, you know, I feel just so fortunate because I think, you know, culture for us has always been a really big thing. And DJ, you said this earlier, we kind of just, you know, we’re growing and did a lot of things. And I think one of it is like we really just focused on not so much what everybody else was doing. We really just took a look at like, you know, what should we be focusing on as a company? And you know, the question that we always have is, are we doing it good enough? Or can we be doing it better? And are agents feeling supported? Or can we be doing better? And, you know, and so we really kind of just came from that vein and, and I think the funniest is we’ve just never taken ourselves, you know, we are very serious about creating successful agents. But we also have a lot of fun. And, you know, I think sometimes that goes out of people’s lives too fast when it comes to work. And I think it’s finding the fun again, even though the market has its challenges. There’s so much opportunity out there and sometimes when we let ourselves go to have a little fun, it’s amazing how the universe will open up for us, you know, D.J. Paris 58:20a great, perfect, perfect way to wrap up the show. Amy, thank you so so much. Yes, go out. Have fun. Oh, I am so happy to I hope to have you on in the future as well. When everyone who’s listening who has made it this far to please please subscribe to Coffee with cat with Amy and Kevin’s you can find that on Instagram and YouTube should they do a weekly show talk about the sort of state of the market what you can do to keep your business moving forward at coffee with Amy and Kevin. We will have links to that in the show notes. If you are in any of the markets that Amy mentioned, you’re interested in exploring other brokerages at properties Christie’s international would love to talk to you. So please check them out@properties.com at properties.com. And, and behalf of our audience want to thank Amy for her time today. She is a busy, busy woman. And she was kind enough to be on our show. So thank you on behalf of the audience Amy. And on behalf of Amy and myself who want to thank our audience for continuing to support our show. Please tell a friend to think of one other realtor that could benefit from hearing this, this conversation with Amy and send them a link to this episode. The best way you can do that send them over to our website keeping it real pod.com is where all of our episodes live. Also on every podcast directory out there, just search keeping it real hit that speciated Amy thank you so so much. I had a great time with you. Excited to to have you on in the future because I want to talk to you about more more things related to how to be how to become a success. on real estate So, Amy, thank you. We will see everybody on the next episode. Amy Corr 1:00:05Hi everybody.