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

D.J. Paris

Secrets of top 1% realtors and real estate agents!

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Jun 12, 2023 • 43min

Photo Marketing Strategies For Your Listings • Devon Higgins

May 31, 2023 • 52min

What Real Estate Agents Should Be Doing Right Now To Manage Their Money Effectively • Quinn Driscoll

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

May 30, 2023 • 30min

How Real Estate Agents Should Talk About Lending Rates This Summer • Learning With A Lender • Joel Schaub

Welcome to the May episode of Learn with a Lender with Joel Schaub of Guaranteed Rate! In this episode Joel discusses what’s going on in the world of lending rates and what are the opportunities that agents should educate their clients on at the moment. Joel also talks about the importance of understanding the numbers and how to educate renters for their opportunities as property owners. Joel also explains the recent changes in the market that are affecting both people with lower credit score and those with perfect credit score. Last, Joel reminds everyone how to sign up for his weekly newsletter. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Joel can be reached at joel@rate.com and 773.654.2049. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00What can you do about high interest rates for your buyers and how it affects your sellers? Well, you probably think not much, but today we’re going to show you what you can do to keep your business running in a high interest rate environment. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks, how many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our show. Right Welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, I’m your guide and host through the show. And today, once again is our monthly series called Learn with a lender with Joel shop from guaranteed rate. Let’s tell you more about Joel Joel is the vice president of lending at guaranteed rate. He’s been doing loans at a high level since 1220 years now to that actually 21 years. He’s been doing this since 2003. And he got to that level of being one of the top lenders in the nation because of what he does specifically for agents, which is he gives back part of his commission to your client on every transaction. Last year alone, Joel gave back over $300,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with him. And that puts Joel’s volume in the top 1/10 of 1% of all lenders nationwide, which is a really impressive number because there are over 400,000 loan officers in in the country and Joel is currently ranked 137 out of 400,000. So he is really at the very top of the mountain last year alone he closed 319 transactions is highest ever. And that was for 126 million in loans, which is insane. This year, he’s already closed. And remember, this is not an easy year for loan officers. He closed 106 transactions already for just shy of 40 or sorry, just over $45 million insane. Now if you’re ever looking for a to work with maybe a different loan officer, maybe you don’t have a great relationship with people that you’ve worked with in the past or you’re just want to expand your business and want to partner with one of the best we cannot more highly recommend Joel he’s the very best we’ve ever worked with. Guess what he did my loan. That’s how much I like him. And it’s not because he’s my friend. It’s because he’s literally the best. Joel can be reached at and I want everybody to shoot him an email joel@rate.com J oel@rate.com. Asked to be put on his newsletter but also asked to have a conversation with someone on his team where you guys can talk about how he can help you grow your business, shoot him a text message also or call him at 773-654-2049 Let’s say hello to the biggest Cubs fan. I know Joel welcome again to the show. Joel Schaub 3:57Hey TJ thanks so much for having me on. I love it that you referenced the Cubs even though they’re not having a good year you got to stay positive. And that’s kind of the message that I send over to real estate agents every time I meet them doesn’t matter what the market is you got to stay positive and that’s what we’re doing with the Cubs this D.J. Paris 4:12year. Well as as a Cubs fan that’s pretty much always how it is it’s we don’t win but we don’t care we just enjoy Joel Schaub 4:20there’s an old saying I think right win or lose will still booze you can go out to Wrigley and have a good time. That definitely holds true this year when they’re not winning two games. D.J. Paris 4:29Awesome. Well, what Okay, we got I think we have to talk about rates because rates are in the ether. Everyone’s you know, either frustrated about rates hoping that rates move a certain direction or just wanting to know from somebody like yourself who really has an inside track to what’s going on in the lending world. What do Realtors need to know about what’s going on today right now in with rates. Joel Schaub 4:53Well, listen, we’re now in this new normal right where when a client hears that rates are at six or six and a half percent. They’re actually not scared off by this, right? They may not like it. And I don’t like it either. But if you’re an agent, you’re not telling borrower something that they don’t know already, right? It used to be DJ, even just a few months ago, this was news. This was something that borrowers were not expecting. And now we’re finally getting to the point where everybody’s expecting it. Right? We’re actually off from the highs, there were rates that were in October, November for a 30. year fixed, that surpassed 7%. And now on today, you know, they’re averaging in the low sixes. It’s something that we can spread positivity about that they’re not as high as they once were. D.J. Paris 5:44Yeah, my, when I first got when I first bought a condo, I think it was 2005. And I was younger, younger man with, I think I still had pretty, pretty good credit, but I certainly didn’t have the income that I do today. And I Yeah, well, that’s true. I had perfect credit, almost, but very little income. But I remember I got five points, 5%, maybe, around that number, somewhere around there. And I was, that was okay. For me, it seemed reasonable. So I think people need to remember, historically that we’re, you know, if we’re just comparing against the 3% days of a few years ago, you’re always going to lose, because those were historic lows. But people are still concerned thinking that rates are higher than they’d like to be. Realtors are obviously struggling with this with their buyers. So what do you what sort of opportunities are there right now that agents should be educating their clients about and how to take action? Joel Schaub 6:40Well, right now, since rates are higher, we just have less buyers, right? We just simply do, they’re, they’ve been priced out. So there’s a lot of people that only could buy DJ, when rates were at two and a half or three and a half percent. And now that they are up over 6%, there is a contingency of buyers that just are not in the market. And so that means if we are in the market, we have less bids on that property, even though at the moment I say that I know that agents out there, say and not my market, we’re seeing multiple offers on hot properties. And I understand that for sure. But if we’re a buyer in this market, and the strategy would be I’m going to wait until rates come down to buy it’s not a good strategy, right? There’s going to be even more of an influx of buyers, if all of a sudden rates drop, and we don’t anticipate them just overnight. Dropping a full point, I think it’s going to be a gradual thing. But I do think that it’s going to start this year, even by the third and fourth quarter of this year. I do anticipate rates being lower than they are now. D.J. Paris 7:42Yeah, I mean, we also have to remember to back in the 3% days that obviously you were working probably harder than ever because nobody was priced out of the market, except everyone was kind of priced out of the market, because prices went up so much higher. It was like the rate was amazing. We’re like, whoo, I’d like to only pay 2.75% Except I can’t get anything because everyone’s buying things $100,000 over asking without even going to see the property. So let’s let’s all also everyone viewers, listeners, remember that those weren’t just the easy days, those were good days, but they were very difficult to actually get if you had listings, you were doing great. If you had buyers, it was tough. So now as Joel mentioned, yeah, rates are higher. But boy, I, you know, I’d rather have less competition and a slightly higher rate or you know, even even a much higher rate, knowing that I could at least get the property that I want, then refinance a couple of years later and bring that rate down. Joel Schaub 8:38What we’re seeing right now is sellers just don’t want to trade up and do that big of a rate increase. If I’m selling my house today that has a 3% rate DJ and I have to go with them take a 6.5% rate, I’m just not going to sell the home. And I think there’s some evidence here that if rates do dip into the fives, which we probably will see here in q3 and definitely q4 of this year and into next year, we will start to see sellers say Okay, now that rates have come down, I’m okay trading up. But I think that 6% is this, this threshold where sellers are just saying I’m going to stay put. And if we do see these rates, get down into the fives we will see a not a large number of sellers are still going to be sellers, DJ that will never sell that. All right, they’re going to be the incidental landlord, all of a sudden, they’re going to just keep that property and put a renter in it versus selling it. But I know that we will start seeing much more inventory as these rates come down and we’ll be seeing that soon. D.J. Paris 9:37You know, for me as a, as somebody who considers themselves slightly outside or adjacent to the real estate industry, I’m not a practicing realtor. I would much rather have less competition on on the purchase. So if the rates dip into the fives, which we hope of course they will I know the NAR Chief Economist believes they will Well, hopefully by get to about five and a half by this, you know, the end of the year, who knows, we don’t nobody has a crystal ball. But I would actually be a little afraid of that, because so many buyers are waiting on the sidelines, I would just hate for there to be a buying frenzy, waiting for that rate to hit. And then all of a sudden, I’m sort of back in a similar scenario to when it was 3% days, where it was just lots of buyers, prices going up, right now prices are down, this might be a good time to even get in at 6%. Knowing that I can get what I want, pay a little bit extra for a couple of years, maybe made probably less, but whatever, pay a little bit more, and then possibly refinance into a more comfortable place. To me, I think where you live is, is you know, it’s like you buy a TV, but after a couple of weeks, you don’t even notice, like how much you paid for it anymore. It’s just your TV, but at least it’s the TV you want. And I think that that that realtors, you know, really could do themselves a huge favor by saying, Hey, it’s okay, if you want to wait. But here’s what happened, the last time rates got lower, is we had this huge challenge of actually getting buyers to actually, you know, close on property. Joel Schaub 11:11So the action plan, if you’re a realtor is have the clients actually speak with a loan officer, somebody on the mortgage side to make sure they’re comfortable with the payments. So we’re so focused on this rate. But we don’t put a rate on a check every single month, and I’m dating myself saying a check, but you’re making a monthly payment. And the payment is what matters. It’s not the rate. So understanding what the all in payment is. And if you’re comfortable with that payment, let’s buy something if we’re not comfortable with that, then we have to wait. And it’s just about being honest with ourselves and understanding what is our maximum purchase price, working with a trusted loan officer to actually get that information. And I’m thinking, Oh, it’s much worse than they think. And we go through the numbers and they realize, okay, with these rates, it’s actually not that bad. Maybe my payment is 230 or $300 more per month than that price point. But when rates do come down, I can refinance the debt. So that’s one of the big things is just understanding the numbers, knowledge is more important than anything and just understanding where you are actually at. And doing that with your buyers will put you in a good position. D.J. Paris 12:22You’re so right, the actual rate percentage itself is largely irrelevant. It’s just what our brains kind of, for some reason, that’s an easier number for us to sort of grasp in our brain. rates are high rates are low. I know that number, but you’re right. At the end of the day, it’s about how much did I pay for the home? How much downpayment did I have? And what’s the check I’m writing every single month. And honestly, if it was me as a buyer, I would, I would say okay, my purchase price, because rates have gone up, my purchase price has probably come down. But so if prices a bit in certain areas, so I would still want to look at lower price properties. And see if maybe it’s not quite as big a chasm as back in the 3% days where I could afford, you know, a home, that’s an extra 150,000. Well, maybe prices have come down enough now to where that actual chasm between what you want, what the price is, is actually not as great as it used to be. So I actually think I would encourage everyone and not just because it’s good for the industry and good for the economy and good for your business. But I actually think you there’s an opportunity here to take advantage of what a lot of agents aren’t willing to do, which is a lot of agents are just sitting on the sidelines waiting for the rates to change. And it’s like, okay, maybe and maybe that’ll work out and eventually rates will change one way or the other. But I would encourage your clients to start looking because the moment somebody sees as you know, somebody sees their dream place. A lot of those trepidations and challenges go right out the window. They’re like we’re gonna have this place. Yep, it’s all it’s it’s 6%. Okay, I don’t care. I need this place. And we’ll refinance later. Joel Schaub 13:55I love that you say that because the payment really does break down a lot of the the walls of oh, I don’t want to buy because rates are high. So if you’re an agent right now that’s dealing with a lot of clients that are move up or higher end buyers that already own a home. Yeah, you do have an issue, right? A lot of people don’t want to move. But I work with a lot of agents where their book of business or first time buyers, you’re working with people that are already renting in a lot of markets throughout the United States, rents are as high as they’ve ever been. It’s very easy to spend two, three or $4,000 a month in rent. And it’s funny when you talk to these borrowers and say, Well, I’m going to wait one more year. I don’t like six and a half percent, or I don’t like 5.75. I’m going to keep paying the rent. Well, that’s 100% interest, every single dollar that you spent as money gone when you’re renting, I’d much rather have five or 6% of my money going to interest than 100% of it going out the window for rent, right and so, educating and talking to borrowers and see In what they can buy for an equal or even sometimes DJ lower amount than they’re paying in rent right now. It’s just that little switch that’ll go off in a borrower’s mind, you got to make the phones ring, you got to go create your own destiny right now you can’t just wait for borrowers to call and say I’d like to buy a home, it doesn’t work that way anymore. So find out where renters are and be the person that they go to and educate and teach in your business as well. D.J. Paris 15:27And right now, you’re right is it’s the absolute best time to reach out to first time homebuyers, renters in particular, and just saying, Hey, you got a huge opportunity. Now, so many buyers are sitting on the sidelines, let’s get you out of you know, giving away all of your, your housing money to the landlord. And let’s figure out a way to you know, to get you, obviously, some, a little bit of principal, and also some tax deductions next year on the interest, I think huge opportunity for anyone renting. So here’s here’s a quick little opportunity I have for anyone listening, if you’re looking to find more renters reach out to anyone you know, who works at a company, especially like a tech firm, where maybe it’s a lot, it’s a skewed younger workforce, maybe people in their 20s, in particular, and I would offer to reach out say, Hey, who is there an HR manager at your company? Or who, you know, can I come in and just plan a lunch and just do a quick little informational session about, you know why maybe buying now is a good idea, or why people should consider home ownership versus renting. And I would reach out to whoever is in charge of the HR or in charge of these events, and say, Hey, can I come in and bring lunch? I mean, this is a huge opportunity right? Now, if you’re like, I don’t know, any renters, you can find them talk to your clients say, Hey, do you have a lot of 20 somethings in your office, I would like to come and do a presentation and bring somebody like Joel along with you who can actually have the conversation and talk about this elegantly. And then you know, reap all the benefits of these people who aren’t shopping rates, they’re not worried about rates, they’re just wanting to maybe consider what the next step is. And the rate is not as important to them as somebody who’s already got a mortgage and looking to either upgrade or change. So yeah, huge opportunity there. Joel Schaub 17:08I always leave with education, and you go to those events do you talk about the number one objection that younger people have is the down payment, right. So I just always use this example, if somebody’s paying $2,000 a month in rent, these year, they’re going to spend $24,000 This year, right? If we negotiated rent per year, the way that we do per month, everything would change. And he said I’m gonna give you $24,000 to live here for the next 12 months, and you’re gonna give me nothing in return, I have to think that rents would be lower, they probably wouldn’t be. But when you put it in the actual annual dollar amount, and then you say, Well, you could actually buy a home with just 3% down on it first time homebuyer Program, or 3.5% down on an FHA program, you could buy a $400,000 house and only put down $20,000. And we have ways to help you with the seller to cover your closing costs. So do you want to spend $24,000 Over the next 12 months? Or can we put together 20 grand and actually go own a home. And that’s the big benefit that we talked about. D.J. Paris 18:17I love that. And I am starting to see a lot more buyers now taking advantage of the 3% programs, the three and a half percent FHA, I’ve seen a lot we’re seeing a lot of that here at our brokerage where people are doing more of those deals, where they are lower, you know, initial upfront and still getting pretty good rates. So you know, this is going to be another great opportunity to talk to anyone renting and say, Hey, I’m Joel Schaub 18:44so excited about it. So excited. I think the camera went out, but I haven’t the idea. It’s just such a great idea to get out there and actually educate D.J. Paris 18:53Well, Joel’s camera is gone, but his voice is still there. So we will power through. We only have a few people watching this live anyway. So it’s no problem at all. But Joe, I’ve also been hearing these these rumors that it might just be marketing stuff, but I’m hearing like, oh, there’s these programs now at certain lenders where even people with moderately Okay, credit or even less than Okay, credit are getting the same rates that people with perfect credit are having even better rates sometimes. And so I want to just talk is is that happening? If not, let’s let’s dispel that myth. Joel Schaub 19:30Yeah, you see it in the news a lot lately, right. The the Biden administration is giving people with lower rates, better or lower credit scores, I should say better rates than somebody who has good credit and a good down payment. Just do a quick search. It’s not hard to see all these news stories coming up. And really it’s Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have retooled their loan level price adjustments, and to put it really easily because They’ve been around for years, it’s just another way to price risk DJ, if you had a lower credit score, you would probably be charged a higher interest rate. Right? If you’re putting less money down, you’d probably be charged a higher interest rate. So none of this is new. What did happen recently was that they did make it easier for people with lower credit scores, and lower down payments, to pay less in fees. And so it’s overall a good story mixed in there, there are some casualties were people that do have good credit scores. And people that do have good downpayments are paying slightly more than they would have three months ago. So that’s absolutely true. But I want to dispel the myth that anybody who has a 650 credit score today is going to have a better interest rate than somebody who has a 780 credit score. It’s just simply not the case. And that has to make sense. D.J. Paris 20:56Yeah, it does in any, you know, there’s that old expression for for news media, which is if it bleeds, it leads, meaning, you know, as was pretty obvious, but in case anyone didn’t understand that, it’s, if it’s if it’s going to elicit outrage, or fear, or, you know, those are a huge human emotions. So obviously, news media outlets will focus on that part of it, and your video is back, which is great for our viewing audience. But yeah, so So this is, you know, this is just if it bleeds, it leads, again, an opportunity for an agent to correct the narrative that some of the news outlets are, are projecting just to get more views and clicks. So I’ll give you Joel Schaub 21:38an example of this. And I don’t mean to cut you off. But it really is important to understand that these low level price adjustments have been around forever. We just retooled them on the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac side. And so here’s a perfect example of a borrower that had a 20% down payment, and a 650 credit score, today would pay about $3,000 less in costs on a $400,000 loan than they would have before. Okay, which is a positive thing. At the same time, a pretty cookie cutter deal where somebody has a 740 credit score, and they’re putting down 20%, that person now is going to pay $3,000 More than they would have before. And that’s kind of the outrage, right? Somebody that has good credit, a pretty typical situation 20% down, their loan level price adjustments have gone up by 75 basis points, where somebody with a lower credit score improved by 75 basis points. And so we’re never going to get this exactly right. They’re trying to make it more equitable, for lower credit score borrowers and more first time homebuyers. But there are casualties along the way. And I can definitely see the outrage on both sides. D.J. Paris 22:54Yeah, and again, we should just point out again, this is the exception rather than the rule. It’s very unusual. And it’s really just a convergence of events that are happening that create this, it’s not to specifically punish the people who are doing well with their credit and reward the people who have struggled, it’s just kind of a confluence of events. It’s a weird sort of thing that media sees it goes, ooh, great time for an article to get some clicks. And, you know, let’s get people pissed off who worked really hard on their credit. And, obviously, again, it’s not as widespread as as so I’m glad you dispelled that. So agents don’t have to freak out when they are dealing with clients with good credit. But it’s important to have these conversations with a loan officer like Joe like you, so that I don’t have to worry Oh, my God, I just saw this news story. First thing I would have done was lob a text over you going, is this true? Do I have to worry about this? And you would have said don’t know, here’s how it works. So this is why it’s so important to partner with, you know, people like Joel like you, who can actually help me navigate as the agent through this so that I know what to say to clients. That’s what I’m always worried about is what is my answer when a client asks me a question. And of course, we always want to be seen as the knowledge source. So tall having somebody like you on my team would be helpful because you’re going to feed me and I’m going to then feed that to my client. Joel Schaub 24:16I recently talked about this in my weekly newsletter that breaks it down so that you’d actually have bite sized pieces that you can talk to your buyers about or your sellers about. And instead of having this legal mumbo jumbo about Fannie Mae’s loan level price adjustments, it’s gonna written out for you, you can actually dissect it and understand in less than 60 seconds how you could disseminate information and not only sound smarter, but be smarter understand what’s actually going on in our industry. So if you want to sign up for the newsletter, it’s free. You can simply email me Joel J. O el@rate.com. And say, add me to your newsletter. That will send that over to you on a weekly basis to that you allow up to date information about the market. Completely no obligation. We’re happy to help you guys every step of the way. D.J. Paris 25:08Yeah, guys, I really can’t encourage you more to do this. Aren’t you tired of just getting, you know, prospecting prospecting emails from from loan officers are like Happy Mother’s Day emails, which is great. All that’s good. I’m not here to put it down. But aren’t you tired of only getting that from lenders, where if you sign up for Joel’s newsletter, which is awesome, because it gives you like four or five bullet points and some explanation, more explanation, but it gives you these bullet points where you can every single week where you can literally just parrot what is Joel sends to you. And so you can go out there and seem knowledgeable. And guys, it’s awesome. Subscribe, email joel@rate.com for that, and he will send you that out every single week and his team is awesome. Well, Joel, I think that’s a really good place for us to wrap up. I think we covered a lot today. We kept it short and sweet. Unless you have any other topics you want to dive into. I think this is a great place to wrap. Joel Schaub 26:05I’ll just leave you with if you’re an agent. Remember that it’s not all about 30 year fixed rates, have your borrowers look at all of the options. Okay? There are rates right now that are in the threes, fours and fives. You can utilize seller paid buy downs, understand what arm rates are looking like right now understand what 15 and 20 year rates are looking at right now. And understand how you can use it to one buy down for your clients in the next few years. While rates are going to continue to go down. Let’s make sure we understand all the ways that you can educate your borrowers and clients on how to get lower rates. So it’s not just 30 year fixed, get out there. D.J. Paris 26:46And I’ll tease you guys to about our previous episode that Joel and I did a month ago. So you’ll have to go back a few episodes to find it. But Joel talked about some really interesting loan products that I guarantee you’ve never heard of. I won’t tell you what they are, I’ll tease you. But if you go back to the previous episode, you will hear Joel talk about some cool opportunities. Specifically like when children are going to college, there’s opportunities there. And even like for parents that are elderly that are going into, you know, assisted living, or just buying a home for mom and dad as they’re older. So anyway, that’s the only tease I’ll give you but these are really cool products I almost guarantee you’ve never heard of. So go back a month ago, listen to that episode, we’ll put a link to it in the show notes by the way, so you don’t have to search too hard for it. Or even better just reach out to Joel directly and have him tell you about things like a two one body down and some of these other products that are really cool and creative ways to get your clients to a more palatable, monthly amount that they’re writing for their mortgage. So reach out to Joel joel@rate.com. You can also shoot him an email or sorry, obviously, you can shoot me an email, but you can also call him and we have his phone number there in the show notes. So guys, thank you so much for everyone watching, listening, supporting our show our numbers, which is amazing. I’ve really never been better. So I am so thankful. And Joel is part of that reason why we have such high numbers because his content is so incredibly valuable. He comes on every single month, please support him, how reach out to him, get on his newsletter and ask him for how you guys can work together to get more deals closed faster. So again, joel@rate.com He’s amazing. He’s the best. And on behalf of all of our age, our listeners and viewers. Thank you, Joel. And on behalf of Joel and myself, we say thank you as well. One last thing before you sign off, please don’t sign up just yet because I want to ask you to do just two quick things. One is tell a friend of course, tell one other agent who’s struggling right now about this episode, send them a link to this episode. And also, please check out check us out on social media we are on now all the social media channels. I didn’t have an Instagram account for the last five years. That was a mistake. We have one now. And we are posting daily content from these episodes. So I have one of a new member to our team France. He goes through he combs through each episode, he finds like three clips or so that are bite size, 60 seconds or less but something actionable. Something you can literally do right now to help grow your business. And we publish those every single weekday on social media. This includes Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, all the channels, so please just Google Find us on whatever channel we’re easy to find. So look for a subscribe and you’ll get that daily dose of wisdom from people like Joel In fact, I published one from today from Joe’s episode last month. So follow us if you want to find us on Instagram the easiest probably one there. It’s top agent interviews. That’s our hashtag or that’s our handle someone else that already had keeping it real podcast so anyway, top agent interviews, but just Google that you’ll find us Alright Joel, thank you so much and we will see everybody on the next episode.

May 29, 2023 • 25min

Why Real Estate Agents Need To Ask For Reviews • Monday Market Minute • Carrie McCormick

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

May 22, 2023 • 19min

How To Stop Procrastinating Creating Videos As A Real Estate Agent • Video Boot Camp for Real Estate Professionals • Kim Rittberg

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

May 19, 2023 • 51min

40 Million Closed In His First 18 Months! • Tony Clark

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

May 12, 2023 • 55min

Why Real Estate Agent Success Is Dependent On Relationships & Connection • Kevin Van Eck

May 11, 2023 • 53min

Is 100% Commission The Future of Real Estate Brokerage? • Sam Sawyer

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.

May 4, 2023 • 18min

Attract Clients With The ‘3 E’S’ Of Great Video • Video Boot Camp for Real Estate Professionals • Kim Rittberg

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

Apr 29, 2023 • 58min

What The Military Taught Me About Success • Sergio Nazzaro

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

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