Welcome to our newest monthly feature, Close-ing Time – in partnership with TheClose.com.
In this episode Chris Linsell from TheClose refuses to believe that we are in a recession and explains his reasoning for where we are economically and how that impacts the real estate market. He also discussed how agents should prepare for future changes in their practice, such as adjusting expectations about market performance and how to adjust your marketing strategies with clients to meet their changing needs. Last, Chris discusses the importance of teams and why 2020 is a defining year for agents working together.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Chris Linsell can be reached at chris@theclose.com.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. And this is our monthly series called closing time with Chris Lindh sell in partnership with the clothes.com. Now if you’re not familiar, let me tell you a little bit about the clothes. The clothes is a new kinds of real estate website designed to give agents teams and brokerages actionable strategic insight from industry professionals, and they cover real estate marketing, lead gen technology and team building strategies. From the perspective of working agents and brokers who want to take their business to the next level. Please visit the clothes.com and subscribe to their newsletters so you can be notified every time they publish an article. And from the close we have crystallin sell now. Chris is the closes resident expert on real estate topics ranging from marketing lead generation transactional best practices, and everything in between. He’s a licensed agent in the state of Michigan. And Chris has also been part of hundreds of transactions from modest rural, rural starter homes to massive waterside compounds. When he isn’t writing, you’ll find Chris fly fishing. This too I’m not sure about today, but hopefully go even go back to fly fishing soon. In the trout streams of Michigan or on stage, performing in as low as community theaters latest production. Chris, welcome to the show. again.
Chris Linsell 2:17
Great to be back. Thank you so much for having me.
D.J. Paris 2:20
Are you are you currently doing anything in theater right now? Are you guys performing in any capacity?
Chris Linsell 2:25
No, absolutely not. I I’m introducing my kids to some some live streamed Broadway shows. But that’s that’s about it. And in fact, my only real escape during the week is to the trout stream. So we’re able to go out and fish that’s Yeah, well, you know, I could pretty much I don’t have to socially distance from fish. So that’s true. I get like, four hours to myself every week, and I am spending that in the river right now. My wife, I was very gracious.
D.J. Paris 2:58
We’re really lucky. From a theatre perspective. Here in Chicago, we have one of the best theater scenes in the country, maybe some would argue may be the best. But we have these great places like Goodman and Steppenwolf. And, and there’s dozens of others. But you know, some of them are doing things, you know, virtually. And I haven’t really got a chance to watch any of it yet. So I was curious if if you guys have gone virtual yet, but yeah, so So you’re in Michigan and things are definitely a lot of eyes on Michigan, the country is watching guys, just as your governor is is so interesting. I think she’s, she’s fun to watch. And she’s I think she has a lot of really smart ideas. And I know not everyone believes that and not everyone likes but but I think it seems quite sensible when you guys go are one of the you know, states with with the most challenges right now. So
Chris Linsell 3:50
yeah, it is a challenge. And I’ll tell you what, you know, I’m not going to draw a line in the sand as far as where where you stand on stuff. I will say though, that, you know, for better or worse Michigan’s got a lot of really passionate opinionated people in it. And when we are not busy swimming in the Great Lakes and floating down streams, we are participating in a spirited manner in all forms of political conversation. But I can’t say this I can’t say this. We are on the road to recovery just like most places in the United States and we’re in a better place now than we were two weeks ago or even a month ago so that I’m thankful for and glad we’re continuing to move in the right direction here.
D.J. Paris 4:38
Yeah, I feel the same way here in Chicago obviously we’re locked down pretty tight. Maybe not as tight as as Michigan but there’s a lot to be worried about and but I still just believe that there’s so many people right now, at home going as soon as I’m soon as this all is over. I’m going to start looking for another a bigger place. has to be a lot, especially with interest rates being as low as they are right now. I have to assume that that’s I know what’s on my mind. And yeah, personally, it’s got to be on a lot of people’s minds.
Chris Linsell 5:10
I, you know, I completely agree with you. There’s there’s a lot of kind of chatter right now, both in the real estate and just the business community in general about this pent up demand for, for going out and doing business. And I think that that’s, that’s a legitimate thing in real estate. And there’s really no situation more focus than a time where you can’t leave your house for people to sit around and wonder, Should I get a new house? Is this place right for me? So I think that that demand is going to be there. To some degree, we’ll just have to wait and see how how things shake out in the mortgage market and whether or not we’ll be able to qualify people for loans as easily as we were before. But you know, I am continuing to be optimistic about what’s going to happen on the other side of this.
D.J. Paris 6:02
Great. Well, I know you had some thoughts about whether, you know, the buyers market and yeah, where that’s headed where we are. We’d love to get your thoughts on that.
Chris Linsell 6:13
Yeah, absolutely. So you know, I am I’m just gonna go on record as saying I actually I got some some flack on Twitter the other day, for,
D.J. Paris 6:24
for weight flack on Twitter, there was a dissenting opinion on Twitter.
Chris Linsell 6:28
I know, it’s really hard to believe it’s just you think Twitter is one big kumbaya circle around a virtual campfire, somebody got a couple of somebody’s got a pretty miffed at me when I refused to call what we are in right now a recession. And so Okay, I just want to like, back up just for a second, I use the more academic definition of recession, which is six months of economic downturn, and we are not there yet. Think about where we were six months ago, we were I mean, this was pre Christmas, six months ago, things were in pretty good shape back then. And I am certainly not saying that we the likelihood of us moving in that direction is bad. I think a recession is on the horizon in one form or another. And what typically follows that in a real estate market is a buyers market. seller’s markets tend to be associated with bull markets, and and buyers markets with bear markets. And so you know, it’s something I think real estate professionals need to be thinking about, because a lot of us haven’t actually been in a real buyers market before. I mean, if you think about the last time, I mean, this was 2008 2009, when we were really experiencing some of these buyers market conditions, there’s a lot of real estate professionals who’ve never had that in their career at this point. And so it’s something that we should be thinking about right now. Like, what’s going to be different? How are things going to change? What do I need to do to adjust my business to, to continue to be successful in that condition?
D.J. Paris 8:07
And what do you think people should be doing right now to prepare? Is there anything that an agent can do? Just thinking about that future?
Chris Linsell 8:18
Well, I’d say, first of all, the most important thing to do right now is to adjust your expectations. As far as market performance, you’re just generally speaking, there are less transactions during the buyers market, because you have less demand to actually make those purchases. Now, we were talking just a few minutes ago about how there’s going to be some pent up demand when we’re finally released from from home confinement here. And I do think that that is true, but I don’t know how long lasting that is going to be so sure, that’s gonna be our first kind of adjustment is remember, we’re gonna see a few less transactions than we’re typically used to. We’re also gonna see a drop in home prices. You know, there are some of the big third party aggregators, like Zillow and realtor.com, are all looking at drops anywhere between three and 5% by the end of 2020. And, you know, for a lot of people use their home is their is their largest source of wealth. And when when you when you’re chopping 5% out of somebody’s nest egg, that’s pretty significant. So we as real estate professionals need to be sensitive to that and understand kind of the ramifications of what that means for our clients. So that’s, that’s the that’s the first thing I would say is adjust expectations. The other thing I’ll say is, we need to think about adjusting our strategies a little bit because if we remember, as a part of a buyer’s market, if less properties on average, even if it’s only a little bit less, some less, on average are going to be selling. That means we’re going to see more expireds we’re going to see More for sale by owners. And we’re gonna see more withdrawn listings than we did even last year. And this is an opportunity for real estate agents as marketers to think about who that selling clientele is, what their situation is in, and how you can market your business, to best appeal to those to those prospects, because those are folks who are still interested in selling their home, they just didn’t have any success the first time around.
D.J. Paris 10:28
Yeah, and for anyone listening who’s not aware, although I suspect most rare listeners are, but just in case, there are companies that will sell you expireds and for sale by owner listings. So I mean, you can obviously set up searches probably through your MLS as well. But it’s pretty reasonable. Now, they’re obviously challenging phone calls, I think even the most successful agents who make those kinds of calls would probably say that, however, those are people, as Chris said, that are looking to sell their homes and, you know, maybe they had a negative experience previously with an agent, maybe they are their expectations were out of alignment with reality, whatever happened, they can be challenging calls, because these are people who have had not sick, they have not had success in their in that, in this particular go around. But they can be converted, and I have had many guests on our show, who make those calls and love it. And I’ve always thought, well, that’s got to be the hardest phone call. And some people say no, it’s really not that bad. You know. So there are services for very little investment. We’ll we’ll send you those listings daily.
Chris Linsell 11:36
And yeah, you know, I think that it’s it’s worth pointing out there. There was a study done by Baylor University back. Now granted, this was almost like eight years ago. Now back in 2012. Baylor University, business school, did a study on cold calling. And they actually used real estate as their subject, business within this study. And there’s a if you search on online, super easy to find, if you search Keller Center, which is one of their business schools, their Keller center, cold calling, you’ll you’ll come to the short sheet on this report. But basically what this report said is, if you can use a consistent script that delivers value to your callers, and you stay consistent about when you’re calling and work through a group of people that you’ve identified as potential customers, which is they haven’t sold their home in the last five years out of this study showed one for every 209 calls that you make, you get a listing or a referral. And that seems like a lot. That’s a great return on investment. I know right? I mean, honestly, it seems like a lot of you know, when I talk to agents about when I’m coaching about being anxious on the phone, you know, they one of the one of the answers I get is I hate here and no, and I just tell them every no you get here, you are one no closer to a yes. And if you could make I mean 208 29 calls in a week, that’s less than 50 calls a day, that’s less than an hour a day on the phone, you get a listing every week, the app did that, that would double the business of the average real estate agent in the United States. So this is a time that that in a buyer’s market, you can take advantage of these statistics, and work those prospects because those folks are interested in selling, there are chances for agents to prosper here. You just have to kind of adjust your sails to the new wind. We
D.J. Paris 13:55
we focus a lot on recruiting agents to join our firm and we’ve tried every medium over the last 10 years I’ve been doing this. And we now have about 700 agents here when I started we just had a few so I’ve I know what works and what doesn’t work even just in the on the recruiting side. And we’ve we’ve sent emails and I can’t even tell you how many emails we’ve sent. Probably millions over that time. We have a lot of agents here in Chicago, we’ve made sent postcards, we’ve done anything. mailers, handwritten notes, handwritten notes are ideally probably the best way or one of the best ways but they’re very costly and they’re difficult as far as time but we’re reaching out to 1000s and 1000s of agents and what we have found over the years is a good phone call, which is non salesy provides value. It has been our most successful strategy in a time where everybody hates getting a cold call. You just do it in a very soft way. So there are this idea that you know, if you say well, I don’t like getting cold calls. Yeah, nobody does. How However, if you got one that was actually a value, you probably wouldn’t you, it’s not difficult to actually make a good phone call. And if you just know how to do that you’ll actually have more success than you probably realize. And the other thing is you won’t really be upsetting people as much as you might think as well, because you’re not calling them in a very soft way and offering value. And if they say no, oh, well, he move on.
Chris Linsell 15:25
Absolutely. 100%. Right. And especially right now, I don’t know if you’ve got audience members here who are who are actively prospecting right now. But you know, the folks that I’ve been speaking to on the phone, because I do my best to try and stay active and working in my local markets, just in northern Michigan in general. And, you know, I’m certainly getting my fair share of no thank yous, which is a part of prospecting. But the folks who I am talking to, genuinely are excited to just talk to somebody because we are craving that sort of human connection right now. So you know, right, now’s a great time to get started on that stuff. If you’re not. If you feel an anxious about the phone, you’ve got a little bit of a little bit of forgiveness, because you’ve got people who really do want to talk right now. So why not jump in right now and get comfortable because you got a golden opportunity to do it.
D.J. Paris 16:17
We just recently had on the top, I believe the top one or two agents in all of New York City. And I was asking him, his name is Elon Brock. And I was asking him, how did you get started, he really had no sphere of influence. This is he’s been here 20 years now. And New York is a notoriously difficult market to do sales. And because of course sales are, you know, just so incredibly expensive. And everyone rents in New York and even even working with renters is difficult. But anyway, he was saying that he got almost any any couldn’t be a nicer non salesy type of guy. Because I’m what I’m about to tell you, you might have thought otherwise. But he when he first started, and even now, he would get listings, from cold calls. And he would literally get up all the paperwork side, kind of like back to the old days where stockbrokers would call you, you’d never meet them. They’d say, I’ve got a hot tip for you. You might do everything that way. Those days are pretty much long gone. But he and he wasn’t that kind of pushy type of salesperson. But he would get listing and we’re talking about multimillion dollar listings, when he was brand new, when he had no business getting those kinds of listings on a phone a phone call. He said he had about a 70% close rate if he can get somebody on the phone. That’s amazing. Amazing, and he’s done. Now, 3 trillion in transactions was just an incredibly but as as kind and humble and as non salesy as you might not expect, you might expect him to be maybe a bit of a different kind of person, but he seems to just be a nice, likable guy. So those calls can work. Maybe you’re not going to get multimillion dollar listings off of a phone call. Who knows? But certainly worth a shot. If you’re not able to do a whole lot right now. Anyway, other than reach out.
Chris Linsell 18:10
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And, you know, here’s the here’s a good piece of encouragement for folks to take what DJ just said, think about that in your own market. And like, go you can go right now while you’re listening to this, go pull up your MLS and look at what the average sale price is for a property in your market right now. I betcha. If you’re in a non Metro market, I bet you that sale price is somewhere between 203 $100,000 If you go right now and you pull up that number, and you multiply that number, times 10 just that number times 10. And then you add that number your new number to your volume last year. That’s what your volume this year could look like if you have a crummy year on the phone a bad year. You’re gonna have a great year, double that number. I mean, it really is there are people who want to list out there you just got to get them on the phone and if you don’t know what to say on the phone, you know, plug for the close here. I literally I was looking today with we have literally a dozen articles on there with scripts, phone scripts for all sorts whether it’s expired or fizz bows or old clients or totally cold calls I mean it’s like probably close to 50 scripts across the close on different fights go there practice learn some stuff just get on the phone. I mean you got what do you what do you what are we doing otherwise? Let’s let’s do it. You got time. Let’s do it.
D.J. Paris 19:44
Let’s do it a perfectly said. I also know you you were interested in talking about you know in this about teams and I will tell you in my own experience, having been recruiting for as long as I have and our firm we tend to attract more individuals. practitioners however, in the last couple of years, I have noticed that boy, so many brokers are on teams, they find a lot of the people almost just about everyone I’ve interviewed has a team, these top producers. So this is there are some firms here locally in Chicago that are big firms with 1000s of agents who essentially, they don’t necessarily require you to be on a team, but probably 90% of their agents are so so this is everything and everywhere is teams right now. So I wanted to get your thoughts on that.
Chris Linsell 20:31
Okay. I have a lot of thoughts on that. So but let me start off with a question for given. And, you know, you and I haven’t talked about this. So if you nail this right on the nose, I’ll be really impressed. I likely won’t. Okay. So given thinking about all the real estate agents across the United States, what percentage of those agents would you say are currently on a team?
D.J. Paris 20:56
Oh, I would bet it’s pretty low. And the reason I’m going to suggest the numbers low is because so many agents are part time, they do one or two deals a year, and that’s the majority of people have their license. So I’m gonna say, because of that, I’m gonna go 5% are on teams.
Chris Linsell 21:15
So you are close. If I asked you this question, 10 years ago, it was just over 5%, back in 2010. Okay. And as of 2018, that number jumped to 26%. That is amazing. 26% of agents in the United States are, excuse me, 26% of agents in the National Association of Realtors, there are a few exceptions here. But just to make sure we’re statistically correct here are part of teams. And I’m gonna just submit that 2020 may be the year of the team unexpectedly. So and here’s why I think this in the state of Michigan, I’ll just use Michigan as an example. But this is true for almost every other state in the Union here. There is no other than passing your state licensure exam, and taking your pre license education, there is no prerequisite to becoming a real estate agent, you can literally start up in Michigan, I could have started completely from scratch three weeks ago. And assuming that, you know, I could take my test right now. And in the matter of three weeks, I could go from having zero experience to being a person who’s in charge of somebody’s biggest financial moment of their entire life. Right there is it that’s that’s startling to me. And I think for a lot of real estate agents, they there is this feeling of this weight of the world that kind of comes down on their shoulders, and they’re like, oh, man, all of a sudden, I’ve got all of this privilege and power. But I’ve got all this responsibility, too. I wish I had some way to learn the best practices from somebody else. And this is why teams make so much sense for new agents. Because you’re coming into a situation where you get to work side by side, shoulder to shoulder with an experienced agent, a team leader, who can not only show you the ropes as far as how to conduct transactions, how to market yourself, how to market your team, and how to interact with clients. But you also have somebody who can help mitigate the risk that is inherent in the real estate business. And that last part is especially important for 2020 Real estate is going to see, I’m sorry to say I think we’re going to see some attrition in our industry of agents who are going to come out on the other side of this pandemic, unable to support themselves, because they don’t have a support structure set up. And a team provides that sort of support structure, you have a built in lead source you have built in clients that are a part of your team pool, and you have built in opportunities to market yourself through the team channels. And so I think that there is going to be an attrition of individual agents and a growth of teams, as agents are looking to kind of mitigate some of that risk and and create for themselves opportunities as a part of a team that maybe they wouldn’t have before.
D.J. Paris 24:41
Yeah, I think you’re right. And it’s interesting. I interview a lot of the top 1% agents who the show here and almost wit you know, there’s got to there has to be a few exceptions. But out of the 160 Plus episodes we’ve done it’s just a few times where somebody did it all on their own From the very beginning, I just interviewed and I the episode I can’t remember if it’s if by the time people listen to this, if it will be out yet, if you’re watching this right now live, it’s not yet out. But I interviewed a gentleman from San Jose, California for with Keller Williams. And he, his name is Jordan, and he is an I’m sorry, yeah, his name is Jordan. Anyway, he, he’s in his fifth year, he’s 28 years old. And this year, he did 68 million in production himself. Wow. And you’re like one of the most incredible success stories I’ve ever heard it for somebody that young in their fifth year. But he started on a team, and he was willing to take a bit less commission on every deal. He said, You know, he thought of it as an investment into his future business. And he said, Honestly, he partnered up with one of the top agents in the area. And he said, I just wanted to learn everything this guy did. And it was worth it for me to share my commission with him because number one, he helped me close deals. But But number two, he said more importantly, I learned everything I know, from him. And it was it was the smartest money I ever spent. And again, when he say money spent, meaning he was taking less commission, because he would be sharing some of that with his team. And so I know that there’s a lot of people who may be listening, thinking, Well, I don’t really want to give up, you know, some of my commission, which of course, in especially today’s economy, this is that’s a difficult decision to make. However, if you think about it as an investment, I mean, all I can tell you is just about everyone we’ve ever interviewed started on a team. So take that for what it’s worth
Chris Linsell 26:40
100%. And let me let me frame it another way to as a real estate coach, I can tell you, I mean, every situation is a little bit different. But I charge about 100 bucks an hour to sit down and talk and work through different different strategies and ways that you can better your business. As a member of a team as, especially as a junior member of a team, you are getting that essentially, for free. When you think about the number of hours that you get under the tutelage of whoever is leading your team. Now, it becomes important, this is a really important place, you want to make sure you’re choosing a team, where the leader of said team is someone you can really learn from, it doesn’t make any sense to join a team with people who don’t bring value to you. But if you think about the number of hours that you are going to be working side by side, the number of text messages you’re going to exchange with this market leader in your business, the number of phone calls and meetings you’re going to be in that is just countless opportunities for you to learn how to, to up and to level up your business. And let’s look at it also from the flip side, this is a message that goes out specifically to the agents right now who are listening to this who have, you know, have achieved a level of success in your local market, that you basically hit the ceiling for what you can do by yourself, I would like to suggest to you before you hire an unlicensed assistant, consider starting a small team with a brand new licensed agent, instead of an assistant, someone who yes, you may by the by virtue of commissions end up paying a little bit more, but you have a person who is extraordinarily invested in your success because their success depends on your success here, a licensed it Junior agent as a part of your team. They eat when you eat, as opposed to an assistant who is getting an hourly wage, of course, they want you to be successful, but they’re clocking out and going home, whether you close the deal or not. And so this is the time right now for agents who have reached that level of success where they have to, they have to do something in order to level up to the next place. Consider starting the team right now. Because you have a lot of people who are hungry for success and are looking to mitigate the risk right now. This is an opportunity for him.
D.J. Paris 29:26
I couldn’t agree more. I this is a few years ago, I interviewed a realtor from the suburbs of Chicago. She’s a lovely, lovely woman. I won’t mention her name just in case. She’s not looking to grow her team anymore this a few years ago. But she was I don’t remember if this made it to the episode or not, but I think it did. But she had said to me at some point. I asked her because she was looking to build, build, attract more team members. And I said well, what are you looking for? And she says, No, she’s a $50 million producer. And she’s She was funny. Because I congratulate her and she goes here, and I really should be closer to 100 I, I’m kind of slacking these days. And I went, oh, boy, 50 million is slacking, but but she said, I’m DJ, what I’m looking for somebody that will literally just let me teach them exactly what to do. She’s like, I guarantee if someone joins my team, and they do the work that I’m going to suggest to them, and she goes, we’re not talking about 80 hours of work a week, we’re talking about, you know, probably 50 to 60. But if you can do that, she goes within two years, I guarantee I will get you into the six figures, she’s like, I guarantee it, because I’ve done it, I’ve replicated it. And it wasn’t a sales pitch, she was just saying, with absolute confidence, I absolutely know the way to build this business, because she’s been doing it 20 plus years, and she’s, you know, mentored countless people. And she goes, the problem is, is most people just aren’t going to follow these instructions. So it’s really important, you know, to to really rely upon your your team or the team you’re choosing to work with, to help you grow. And you you know, if you just have the attitude of I’ll just, you know, do what they do, or what they suggest you’re likely to have their level of success, or you or you’ll find out real quickly if it’s not a good fit. And which case, of course, there are lots of other teams. We I interview people a lot for the show who are on teams. And I always ask before we get started, I say, are you looking for team members? Because if you say you are what will happen when we finish this episode is you will get about 20 or 30 phone calls. And that may not be what you want. And some sometimes teams will say do not we are not looking for new team members, or no we are. But you know, the good news is is you can reach out to all these top producers, they’re so accessible, and they are business owners, especially if they’re leading a team, they are looking at it hopefully like a business and they’re looking to make investments they may may be wanting to invest in you.
Chris Linsell 31:54
Absolutely, absolutely. And you know that investment. That’s an important point. And because one of the things that I talked to agents who are hesitant about joining a team, they want to make it on their own, they don’t want to be tied to somebody else is like put yourself in another entrepreneurial position here. If it wasn’t real estate, you would be you would be falling all over yourself excited. If somebody offered you an opportunity to learn from, let’s say you started a coffee shop somewhat, you would be falling all over yourself for the opportunity to partner with the most successful coffee shop in town for two years. For the first two years of your business, you would say this is like a once in a lifetime opportunity. And I use the the example two years here, just because when you’re part of a real estate team, you don’t sign a contract that locks your life in place here. Your team leader knows that they are essentially training their competition. That’s right, they have it is the onus on the team leader to do everything in their power to keep you as a part of the team because once you discover your own agency and growth, mobility, you will have the opportunity to go do whatever you want in this business, why not take advantage of getting to work as a partner with the most successful coffee shop in town and learn how to make the coffee first?
D.J. Paris 33:35
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s so important. And you know, it’s it’s, you know, one of those things where a lot of times we rely probably too much and I understand why we do but as agents we may rely too much upon the trainers we have at our office who may or may not be out actively producing, they might be running the office, they might be providing support. And while they are almost certainly skilled and there’s a reason they’re in that position, you know, you can bring value to another top producer in your office by saying I want to ride along with you I want to learn everything that that you know, and I would be willing to work with you on transactions so you’ll be helping their business they’ll be helping your business and yes maybe down the road you’ll you’ll graduate to just be a solo practitioner you won’t maybe want to be on a team but until you know that the industry as well as they do I yeah I just again i We understand that it’s not fun to give up more of the commission that you may already be feeling like you give too much of up. But boy, what a great investment for the long game.
Chris Linsell 34:50
Yeah, yeah. So we’ll see. I mean, I think I think 2020 is a year because of everything that is happening in our macro and and local economies. You know, it makes a lot of sense to me that people are going to be looking for ways to reduce their volatility, increase their kind of their business insurance, so to speak. And teams teams really seem like a solution that checks all those boxes. So I’ll be very curious to see kind of how our industry responds on that.
D.J. Paris 35:25
Well, what a great place to wrap up, you know, we talked about the importance of of what’s going on with the buyers market, and also to consider teams and right now it back to teams just for a quick, quick point is great time to reach out to some teams and speak with them and interview with them. And yeah, and you’re interviewing them, they’re interviewing you and just say, Hey, I think I can provide value I’d, I’d like to tell you about my goals and my challenges and see if it’d be a good fit. So now’s a great time to schedule those zoom calls or phone calls. Because, again, if activity is down in your area, and it probably is, those top agents have have more free time than they normally would so great opportunity to reach out.
Chris Linsell 36:05
Yeah, totally. I just want to add one little one little point here. Team leaders that I personally know, these are folks who are willing to they are willing to get you on their baseball team here, by by any means necessary if you have potential to, you know, if you are an agent who who has lots of opportunity, but hasn’t quite gotten to their to their apex yet. You know, I know team leaders who would pay your your MLS fees for a year to get you on board, who would give you a better split for your first 12 months. You know, these are all things like this is this is an opportunity to cover a lot of bases for junior agents right now. Rather than leaving the real estate industry, if you’re concerned about about stability, consider this as an option.
D.J. Paris 37:00
Great. And Chris, tell us a little bit more about the clothes for anyone listening. I know we mentioned at the beginning about the clothes.com is one of our favorite websites, it might be really in some ways is our favorite website, because what we do is so closely aligned with with their mission, which is to provide content for agents for teams. For for any real estate professional that is looking to grow their business or just develop additional skills. There really isn’t another website like it, it for this community, which is just specifically really focused on one thing is how do we help you grow your business?
Chris Linsell 37:37
Yeah, 100% Close is a fantastic spot to go if you have questions about any and all things, real estate, our editorial team, our real estate professionals, who happened to also be able to write it’s not the other way around, we put our real estate experience and Sadie at the forefront of everything that we do. And we work really hard every day to create content that is going to better real estate agent and broker and team’s business with with every piece we produce. Also want to mention to that our mission statement, we have a mission statement on the close. And it is to be the best answers to real estate questions. So whether that is a question about CMAs or marketing or negotiation or social media. I mean, there’s a tizzy there’s tons of things, we want to be the best answer there. So whether it’s an article that me or my editorial partner, our writing, whether it’s advice on social media, we have a fantastic community director there, we run a Facebook group called the close real estate agents mastermind you can join that for free. We have a really active coaching call and webinar experience, we have course for sale, we really want to benefit every aspect of your business. So come visit us super easy to find us the clothes.com we got tons of stuff working there. And we’d love to we’d love to talk. So drop us a comment on an article. Let’s get a conversation going.
D.J. Paris 39:13
And what I like too is is that your content is is not overwhelming in its frequency. So whereas other real estate websites are might be publishing four to seven articles a day. The close does just a few a week and they put a tremendous amount of energy and read a research into these articles. They’re long form articles, which I love. And they’re very highly specific to hey, here’s steps to actually achieve your goals whereas, and we run across this every day because we try to find an article ourselves that someone else has written to put on our keeping her own podcast Facebook page, and so many websites, just post articles that are links of very general sort of you already know to do this lists of To dues and which it’s that’s fine, I guess. But I like that you guys don’t do that you get really hyper specific and give away the secret sauce in the articles. And those, it’s important because that’s really what what we love so much is that you guys, you’re not just writing these generic articles, they’re very specific.
Chris Linsell 40:19
Well, we’re glad to hear that. And you know, I, that is a, that’s a conscious choice on our part, we would rather release two to three really great pieces a week than two to three mediocre pieces a day. Because honestly, I don’t know if you know this, but there are approximately, on average, there are about 300 350 words on every cereal box, if you count the, if you count the nutrition information, all the stuff on the back all the stuff in the front, it’s about 300 350 words. But at the end of the day, you know what that gets you nothing, you could read that entire box and you’ll walk away. No smarter than you were before. Yeah, maybe a little fuller tummy. But that’s about it. We don’t want to be the cereal box of the of real estate on the internet, we want to be the cereal, we want to be what actually fills you up here. And so you can come to the close. You know I spend it’s a full time job researching reading other people’s stuff, talking to people putting together actionable advice and strategy that people can actually take and use to better their business. And so we want you to be a part of that community. Come Come visit us on the clothes.
D.J. Paris 41:34
Yeah, visit the clothes.com subscribe to their newsletter put if you have an RSS feed or like like, like Feedly a reader rather like Feedly or, or or there’s a bunch, add them as well. And then Chris, if anyone is in the northern Michigan area who may be looking to work with an agent, what’s the best way a buyer or seller or renter may be an agent looking for coaching in your area? Or really you can coach anywhere? How should someone reach out to you?
Chris Linsell 42:00
So I really glad you asked actually, I’m all over the place, you can visit me on my website, which is just crystallin sel.com. Super easy. You can also find me on social media. I’m very active on LinkedIn, I post strategy and coaching stuff every day there. You can find me on Twitter. You can find me on Instagram. I mean, I’m just I’m just all over the place. So
D.J. Paris 42:26
if you want to fight if you want to fight with Chris, you can find them on Twitter and and voice your your concerns about his opinions.
Chris Linsell 42:34
I’m very active in in spirited Twitter conversations, we’ll put it that way I love I love the fact that you can. You have to be brief on Twitter, it keeps people from going on these long, you know, 20 minute rants, you can just be kind of shortened to the point with two sentences. And that’s my favorite way to discuss things right now. Awesome.
D.J. Paris 43:00
We’ll definitely reach reach out to Chris, he’s super easy to find. And you can access all of the closes, of course, contact information as well. And social accounts on the clothes.com. You can also see their their, their their leadership and their editors. And you can actually get to Chris from that page as well. Yeah. So Chris, thanks again for being on the show. We’ll see you of course next month. Hopefully, things are a little bit calmer, more calm down. We’re hoping starting to see some of the states easing restrictions. Let’s hope that’s a good idea. And hopefully we can all get get back to our jobs as helping with real estate transactions.
Chris Linsell 43:40
Always a pleasure looking forward to talking again soon. All right, thanks. On
D.J. Paris 43:43
behalf of the audience, we want to thank Chris for his participation every month. This is very big for us. We’ve been looking to partner with someone in this space. And Chris was the natural choice and so we’re so honored to have him on. We’re also honored to have everyone continues to listen and support our show. So on behalf of Chris and myself to the audience, we say thank you and continue to listen please keep telling a friend visit us on Facebook as well which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod also find the clothes are on Facebook as well just do a search for the clothes. Easy way to find them is type in the clothes and then dot type in D O T CLM. She’ll pull it right up but you’ll find them anyway. They’re easy. And follow us both and we will see you Chris in a month. Hope everyone you know is staying safe and healthy and hope our listeners are too. So thanks, Chris.
Chris Linsell 44:32
You’re welcome. Talk to you soon.
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