Welcome to another episode of Coaching Moments With Ryan D’Aprile from D’Aprile Properties!
In this episode Ryan D’Aprile and Melissa Fusco from D’Aprile Properties talk about the importance of structuring your business. Ryan talks about the three pillars of structure – mindset, routine and skillset. Melissa discusses the importance of planning ahead and planning the execution of the activities you put there. Last, Ryan and Melissa discuss the importance of habits and systems to build good habits and improve your business.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.590.6416 and ryan@daprileproperties.com.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Welcome to 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 today is our monthly coaching moments with Ryan de April. Now if you’re not familiar with Ryan, or if you’re new to the show, Ryan comes on every month to give our listeners and our viewers a coaching moment and a coaching session. Well, let me tell you about Ryan Ryan Day April is a progressive thought leader focused on providing for his agents and staff at the April properties. His strengths are his motivational skills, coaching style and his dedication to training. He has 14 offices throughout Chicagoland and is also in Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan with hundreds and hundreds of top producers. Deeper properties is a coaching company with eight strategic coaches who work week in and week out with every agent individually focused on business planning, coaching and accountability. If you’d like to take your career to the next level, or if you’re just not getting the attention you need check out depot properties visit DAPL properties.com. Welcome once again, Ryan.
Ryan D’Aprile 1:44
Thanks, DJ. How are you?
D.J. Paris 1:46
I’m good. I’m good. I’m excited today because we have Melissa from your organization as well who’s who have not talked to her? So I’m super excited to introduce her or have you introduced her to our audience?
Ryan D’Aprile 1:57
Yeah, I’m excited for you to meet Melissa. Melissa has a tremendous individual. We’ve been working together for what, seven, eight years now? Yeah, please. Yeah, Melissa joined us as a real estate agent. And we did coaching one on one. And then Melissa became a managing broker for us for one of our offices, and then went on to become certified in coaching and training with us, has attended ninja leadership, coaching and training in Colorado Springs there and went on to become a regional manager for our company in coach for organization. And most recently, Melissa is now our executive vice president. So Melissa supports the leadership in our organization. And she works with those agency to coaches day in and day out day in and day out coaching them, who then in turn are coaching our agents. And so
D.J. Paris 2:50
you you train the trainer’s
Melissa Fusco 2:52
train the trainer’s Absolutely, yep, it’s coaching, it’s in my blood?
D.J. Paris 2:58
Well, it’s important. I mean, it’s really kind of funny to think about just from sort of a meta perspective that trainers also need trainers, right. And so even no matter what level you’re at, in your own personal production, you know, whether you’re a brand new agent, or you’ve been practicing for 20 years, or if you’re a, you know, to give them a maybe more accessible example, if you’re a high school student, who is, you know, excelling at a particular sport, or if you’re, you know, a LeBron James, who’s already at the top of the game, all of those people have coaches. So, you know, this is a good, good reminder to how the importance of coaching?
Ryan D’Aprile 3:35
Well, I think it’s one of the biggest threats to real estate agents in our industry is that lack of structure, and in why the failure rate is so high, because, you know, when you typically start a career in something, you have a manager and your manager has a manager or managers, managers that the manager and it’s, it’s a whole what is called a hierarchy. But is it really a hierarchy, I look at it as a hierarchy. It’s a support system, it’s a structure and this industry was just kind of built on, you know, 1099, do your own thing come and go. And there are companies out there just built on a numbers game, the expression is the qualities and the quantity. And it’s just, you know, abiding by the 8020 rule, and only 20% of them are gonna stick. I really think you could do something different. But you got to provide structure, you got to provide routine. And you have to look at a lot of different industries and why the success rate is higher for a lot of them, because they have managers because they have coaches, and as they elevate their elevation of coaching takes on another level. And so we’re just really replicating that and just embracing that whole philosophy of, you know, of a team, a company wide team experience. You know, there are there are lone wolves out there and that’s great and And it’s cool to be a lone wolf pack. Our software system for our accounting is called lone wolf. And I
D.J. Paris 5:06
think it has to do with we have used lone wolf as well at our company,
Ryan D’Aprile 5:09
right. And it just just came to me right now, as I’m planning on talking about that, but it’s probably what this industry looks at itself as a whole bunch of lone wolves out there. And I don’t think that’s the best approach for people.
Melissa Fusco 5:21
And there’s so many different parts of, you know, the, what you need to build that really great business. And so you guys have been talking a lot about accountability, as like one of the spokes on the wheel highperformance, you know, showing up and doing what you do to the best of your ability. And then that third piece, it really is structure, you know, you have to have that solid foundation in place so that you can trust your process and know that it’s going to work for you. Yeah,
D.J. Paris 5:51
yeah, and structure structure is one of those things, too, that oftentimes agents, you know, especially the kind of personality that tends to be attracted to becoming a real estate agent, is usually somebody that is structure is probably for the vast majority of agents, that one of their biggest challenges. And so you go looking for structure and so many different ways. And I just wanted to bring this up, because some people look for it in joining an established team. So they say, you know, I can’t kind of do everything on my own. So I want to join a team that’s going to be able to provide, you know, some semblance of of a normal sort of daily structure. Or, you know, maybe your firm offers that. I know, your firm does that. But that’s pretty unusual. A lot of firms don’t do that. So then people go looking elsewhere. And it seems like they mostly go looking for that to join a team. And I was just thinking, as you guys were both talking about this, that, if it was me, and I was out there producing before I went looking for an actual team to join, I would probably look at hiring a coach number one, it probably be cheaper to hire a coach, and they would be able to give you that structure. So if your own firm isn’t providing, you know, the opportunity to do one on one coaching, like you guys offer a date or properties, that would be the first thing I would look for is to hire an external coach, rather than just immediately joining a team thinking that’s gonna solve all my structure problems. It certainly could. But I like the idea of having a personal coach as well.
Ryan D’Aprile 7:15
Yeah, it’s like it’s Know thyself, right? Working on that. And, you know, it’s interesting, our company, we did about a billion dollars in transactions last year, and probably 85% of our agents were not licensed five years ago. So we had to embrace the coaching, where, you know, there are behemoths out there. And their whole backbone is on recruit, recruit, recruit. When we started doing this, we just said, Well, you know, let’s just train, train, train and coach, Coach Coach, because we’re not recruit, recruit, recruit, you know, all of our training, you know, growth has been primarily organic.
Melissa Fusco 7:49
So we had to be in a position where we were able to provide the structure for the new agents. So we have a choice, we had no choice. And, you know, when people were coming in the doors were going, listen, we’re gonna tell you what to do, you just have to do it. Right. So I mean, people, by human nature, people want structure, because they want to have those safe boundaries set for them. And so that they can really perform within that safe place.
Ryan D’Aprile 8:15
Predictability, as well as predictability and want to know where they stand where they are. And those boundaries are important.
Melissa Fusco 8:20
Absolutely. And if you have those expectations that you set for yourself, you can meet and exceed them, but you have to have them defined. So that’s, you know, the structure is really like the foundation of you know, what an agent’s business should be and then building around
D.J. Paris 8:38
so much, it’s so much of a of a realtors life and and really, probably all of most of us can relate to this, whether we’re real estate professionals or not. But so much of of the anxiety of life is what am I supposed to do next? What What am i What’s that. And you know, a lot of us struggle with that Realtors struggle with it, other professions struggle with it. And this idea of knowing what your next action is, and it’s not a perfect sort of step A to Z or you know, do A then B then C, but if you just have your day structured out in some capacity, it’ll leave a live, not only does it increase your productivity, but it alleviates a lot of anxiety. It does,
Melissa Fusco 9:17
oh my gosh, I mean, seriously, like it helps you sleep at night. And I’ll
Ryan D’Aprile 9:21
even just do a quick thing here and I’ll get off this, but even when you’re looking at coaching and training, you got to structure that right. So one element of it is mindset, okay? And that’s about 80% of all success is based on that mindset. Sure. And we’re going to talk about a routine, right? Because it’s doing the same thing over and over again, the right things, it’s going to move the needle in your business, just like doing the wrong thing over and over again, right. There’s the definition of insanity and expecting a different look. So it’s like being aware, right? Setting a routine on what’s right. And then the coaching attorney moves into skill set. And then what you do was find out, it bounces back and forth between these and what you need. So I’m gonna stop sharing here, but I’m just gonna want to minimize that sharing this damn thing. I knew I shouldn’t have done this DJ.
D.J. Paris 10:13
No, it’s fine. And for our for those that are listening, Ryan is just drawing on his whiteboard, mindset routine and and skills and really trying to develop all three of those in realizing how important they each are. But yeah, let’s talk about structure.
Ryan D’Aprile 10:29
Absolutely. So you want to champion
Melissa Fusco 10:32
Yeah, sure. So I mean, we obviously all know that we need structure. It helps us sleep at night, as we just mentioned. So the first things first is, you know, I actually myself the first week of January, not that you have to do it the first week of January, but I literally planned out my entire 2021 already. I made a plan. I sat down I time blocked with myself. Right and I are really big fans of Robin Sharma. Yeah. And, you know, Robin Sharma talks about the Menlo lab. Yep. And what the Menlo lab looks like is you simplify your space, you don’t have your distractions around you. Right? Absolutely, you can sit down and really be on purpose, and build something that is going to help you facilitate the rest of the actions that you’re trying to define. What you want to do in that lab is and when I tell people, I kind of just build on that a little bit about how that lab is like, fall in love with the process, fall in love with that creative space and that routine, all that lab where you eliminate the distractions. Robin also says most people are busy being busy. Even high performers are busy just being busy. So if you could really dive in and pick out one, what’s that one
Ryan D’Aprile 11:47
thing that I could do to to move the needle and the memo lab?
Melissa Fusco 11:54
Well, I’ve been calling it Mensa lab, right? And it’s actually meant to be so proud of us that we actually use the CAC to impress his theories. But yeah, so making a plan right off the bat really is like what what the first thing you want to do. And then what you have to do is that identify all of the actionable items that you need to accomplish. So this is like a task list, you start with big tasks. subtasks, right. You want to make sure that those tasks that you’re focusing on are going to be a combination of live flow activity, which is you being in flow and on purpose with your sphere of influence and who’s in your network where you’re getting in business
Ryan D’Aprile 12:32
from relationship building.
D.J. Paris 12:35
Intentional relationship building, yes, not sales
Melissa Fusco 12:38
calls people, right? That sounds callous. No, this is just this is like where you get to have fun in your business. This is like, you know, you’re a realtor, you get to have fun and make friends and that’s part of your daily action. You know that in combination with your your auto flow, which was what how we refer to it here at deeper properties and Ninja and Ninja. Okay, yeah, right credit where credit is due? Absolutely. Um, so that autofill activities, you know, that’s your multi channel marketing. That’s your, your direct mail.
Ryan D’Aprile 13:08
Yep, direct mail, email marketing, your digital marketing. There’s many tools out there to facilitate digital marketing, direct mail or email marketing, but that is not you,
D.J. Paris 13:19
you guys call it auto auto flow, because you create those those materials. And that and that system to do for your agents. Correct. So so the term
Ryan D’Aprile 13:29
is automatic flow, it’s always going for you what we decided to do here at the company, right? Eight years, we sit down this path in this journey, we coach withdraw, we motivate like, Do it, do it, do it. And then people would try to do it and get on. And then about two and a half years ago, we said we’re just doing it for we’re doing it for them. We have the technology. But instead of teaching somebody to technology, we have marketing assistants, we have office managers in each office locally, and we’re just doing auto flow for them. Because it’s critically important that it continually goes out and isn’t skipped. It’s not missed the beat and so yeah, so that’s, it’s not why we call it auto flex what it is. That’s the philosophy that you just said that we decided to do about two and a half years, but just take it off the plates of the agents. Yeah. So
Melissa Fusco 14:17
that would be part of the combination of the live flow and auto flow. And then also in addition, it would be like your develop your business development. So what are the things that are going to help you grow your business, tilt the needle, if you will, in order to get more and more business to to come to you? And then management, you know, and then your business management? So that is really like the tasks that you’re looking to define when you’re making a plan for your year. Yeah. And then from there, you’re gonna break it into like bite sized pieces. So you’re gonna do what your daily what your weekly, what your monthly, quarterly, etc, that tasks are.
Ryan D’Aprile 14:55
When we were we go on holiday every week, my wife might go Last time we go away every week, I’m sorry, every winter break, we go away. And it always flies over New Year’s Eve. And I just love that first two days of the year. If you get the setback right? Now what I realize is, well, that’s something that’s been trained in me over the past 45 years of my life, where it’s your New Year’s resolutions. The next thing is like, Okay, how else can we expand on this? So let’s start with can you do this quarterly? And then it can go to the next level, can you look at the first of each month as New Years? Could you imagine if you treated the first of every month, as a new year, and you snack and you plan, and maybe get into it on a weekly basis, and, you know, it will take time to build those habits. You know, but habits are, where you are and why you are where you are. So just you know, be aware of what your daily habits are. And it’s going to show you where you are. So it’s kind of being aware of that stuff.
D.J. Paris 15:56
Yeah, and also thinking about the as you said earlier, figuring out the habits that that do the most, you know, for you, and then even learning how to maybe even outsource Well, you guys just talked about outsourcing, you do a lot of the you know the physical mailings and things for your agents. That’s oftentimes what agents struggle with. It’s like they know they should be, you know, sending out communication. But you know, they get caught up in working with their existing clients. They’re busy prospecting. And of course they have to wear at most firms, you have to wear pretty much all the hats, the firm doesn’t really provide a lot of that your firm certainly does. So it’s trying to identify, you know, okay, I do want to send a mailer out, my firm doesn’t do that for me. So now I have to either hire somebody to do that, or I have to do it myself and trying to figure out where’s the best use of of my time? So how does he ever question How does somebody determine? And I know there’s no easy answer, but like, what is something they should do themselves? Or what something they should outsource?
Ryan D’Aprile 16:55
Okay, can I can I Hmm. I’ll tell you the things that you should do for yourself. And I’m going to repeat your question, what do you do for something? What should you outsource you should do for yourself relationship building activities, you should outsource a good chunk of the let’s call it spam and junk mail mail. Sure. That’s incredibly important to your business. I’m going to I just want to come back to making the plan and the scheduling. Yeah. But for the listeners here and the viewers, I’m gonna wait for one more thing. And here’s why it’s incredibly important to outsource the mundane marketing. Your host is as you start your gut, your gut say, okay, so you can see that most people, I don’t want to say real estate agents, I want to get most people that are in a sales environment, Miss Daikon, or mix up the difference between a lead source and marketing. So let’s go over the two here. Okay. And this is why Autoflow and having a done for you is so, so important. Okay. I have told I’ve heard so many individuals. Well, first off, let’s define these sources. Okay. DJ, so the source is your network. Okay, that’s one lead source, or a referral.
D.J. Paris 18:17
Where’s the referral come from? Your nesting clients,
Ryan D’Aprile 18:21
your network network, existing client is your network, right? So right, that’s a lead source. That’s the lead source. appendage. It’s not that bad. And we’re going to stick here, but open houses. Yeah. What was your lead sources? Um, purchase web leads, buying leads on Zillow or Trulia or Redfin, that’s a lead source, calling cancelled listings, expireds fizz bows, that’s at least farming a community. By the way, these terms change from industry to industry, but they’re just the same. It just different means. I was coaching a loan officer this morning. I won’t digress. Actually. I will speak about this loan officer this morning about structure and time, timing and making a plan. But I’m digressing here to answer a question that you asked what should you outsource it? So the important thing is what your yes word source, but I want the listeners know why. Why you need outsourcing. So then there’s marketing, what’s marketing? Postcard? Email marketing. Okay. Social media. Right. How about a grocery cart? Divide? Yep, sure, right. Billboard, a billboard. A bus bench? Yep. So on and so forth. And this time I cannot tell you how many times I hear from agents across the country that I talked to even veteran 20 years in the business and say, I never got a call from a postcard. Right. No, you never will.
D.J. Paris 20:02
You never will, right from
Ryan D’Aprile 20:03
the lead source, you decide who you want to market to? Do you want to market to a farm and your campaign? Or do you want to market to your network? Or do you want to do purchase web leads, and do you know the call in in 10 Minutes or Less type of thing, there is a huge difference between marketing and lead source, they are absolutely not the same thing. If I had a penny for every time saying you said, Well, I never got a call from my grocery cart ad, you know, well, but what happened is people in your community that are living in your farm, and people in your network that happen to be living in your community are reinforcing your brand, because they see you at a grocery cart, and they get your postcard and they get your email marketing. And that’s what auto flow is about. And that is one of the reasons why you should outsource it. Because we all have self doubt. We all have finger real questions. And our brains are designed to pause, stop, protect yourself, you can’t stop your marketing if you want to grow your business. And marketing doesn’t have to be the greatest marketing in the world. You want to be the best you can possibly be don’t compare yourself to other real estate agents, yourself, just yourself and focus on the relationship. That’s what we call the lifelong focus on relationship, happy auto marketing done for you. And then to pull it all back. Now stick with that. It’s routine. It’s routine. It’s time lining, time blocking. So that’s how I answer that question, DJ. And
D.J. Paris 21:37
marketing is really, I’m sorry, real quick, I just wanted to say, you know, maybe a better word than marketing would be branding, right? It’s just keeping our name and our image in front of the people that we don’t we want to not forget who we are and what we do. But it isn’t necessarily in a something that will necessarily deepen a relationship, but it will at least keep your your your image in the back of their mind, as they see this repetitive, you know, content coming from you which can be automated,
Ryan D’Aprile 22:09
right? And remember, you guys, people don’t hire real estate brokerages. As much as I love our brokerage, they hire people, hire people they don’t hire, you are the brand, you need to have a marketing plan, you can be at a one person real estate company, or the biggest real estate company in the world, your productions not going to change based upon that it’s going to be all based upon you your routines, and how you are branding slash marketing yourself these days, you just had an understanding that it’s a reinforcement, brand reinforcement that counts within the relationship building activities, the lifelong. That’s going to help you separate you from the rest. Perfect. So let’s talk about making the
Melissa Fusco 22:57
biggest bang for your buck. Okay, so you know, what you just went through, but the live flow, the auto flow, all of that you’re working that together, and you’ve made your plan, you got to schedule it out, you know, you absolutely have to time block, you got to schedule it out. You know, some of the example of a daily activity would be like, you know, being in front of your network, making phone calls, talking to people on social media, that’s just gonna come naturally. Yeah, a weekly might be you schedule some real estate report, some live live real estate reports, you know, have coffee with one of your friends and just say, hey, prepared this Real Estate Report for you. Something that could be an annual business planning, got to do business planning. I suggest doing it in October of the report. Yes, sir. Right. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, that is like having the structure in place for what you’re going to do for your business. Or like whatever you decide to do, right to getting the year and executing. Yeah.
Ryan D’Aprile 23:55
And be aware to when you’re planning this what your days like so I have and you do as well. I have three daughters. So I’m from 730 in the morning, to eight during the morning works not happening. Right? It’s just it doesn’t make sense. Also, my quiet time is five in the morning to seven morning while I’m on my phone with my network at five to seven o’clock. And you know, that’s me team, my time. Me Time. And bright so so there’s a certain time where I’m going to dedicate to it and then if and when I select that time, everything else has got to be tuned out. You know, and it’s like, you know, the dopamine that’s released when your phone games and everything else like we’re in this call right now with the DJ My phone’s off. Yeah, he has to be off. I take this meeting serious, you know, just like I take my life loan serious. It’s my business. And most real estate agents put their business last and they put their clients and everybody So first, you gotta make you know, on at some point in the day, five days a week, and that means all the other stuff is turned off. And you’re focused on that one thing that’s going to move the needle in your business.
Melissa Fusco 25:14
Yep. And really going back to like, what we started off with is setting your own boundaries. It’s your who have permission to set boundaries. Another Robin Sharma nugget is the the addiction to distraction is the depth of your creative productivity. And again, thank you one more time addiction to distraction is the death of your creative productivity. Yeah, yeah. So if you’ve got like the alarms, dinging and it’s your your, your phones on your nightstand, waking up in the middle of a night, and you’re like blue screen, and then you’re like, you know, your eyes are like, spinning. Watch people I’m seeing this. Yeah, it’s like, it’s like, we gotta learn how to put it away, disconnect and regenerate ourselves. Everybody that knows me knows that my phone is in the kitchen at eight o’clock. Like, your nice thing is,
Ryan D’Aprile 26:05
if you look at my email, people were having xiety Oh, my God, you have seven 370,000 unread emails, like, my business comes first. And I see from the subject and like, my guy give 10,000 unread text messages, I don’t care, my business comes first. All this stuff is just a distraction. What he also says is, distraction is the enemy of progress. So look, I’m easily distracted. I am ADHD, I’m all up to one hour a day, man, five days a week, right? I had carved out a very nice business for myself, clear it out, carve out a very nice life for myself. Anybody can. But like, I tell everybody, it’s a choice between rules, real 20% will sell 80% of the real estate, right 20% will sell API real estate or 20% or less, we’ll say 80% or more. Here’s the cool thing for all the listeners, it’s your choice to be in the 20% people are making a choice, I’m either going to be in the top 20, I’m going to be the bottom 80. You might not be consciously making that decision. But it is your decision. Because you’re the only one has control over what you do every day. Nobody else can I can’t headlock you, and make you do this. Right. So you know.
Melissa Fusco 27:24
And really, there’s a lot of things that you can do to put in place like, you know, when you put in your structure, you make your plan, you schedule it out, right, you have to execute, of course, you know, you can’t forget that stuff. But you know, there’s tools out there and systems that you can utilize in order to help you do this. So, I mean, if you’re tactile, you want to get yourself a planner, if you use, you know, if you’re if you’re technical, you’re going to use like a Google Calendar or some kind of other technology out there that’s going to keep you on track. I personally, like old school 99 cent spiral notebook coupled with my Google Calendar, and that puppy goes with me everywhere. And it works for me. That’s my system. Right? You know, so if you have those tools, you know, it’s going to keep you accountable to yourself.
Ryan D’Aprile 28:16
You know, and I can’t emphasize enough. And coaching, you know, I was with a loan officer and circle back. And he’s an example with making a plan. You know, this loan officer goals that do 25 million in production this year. I’m certain she’ll be 35 million. She’s already close to 10 million with close and what’s impressive. Wow. Yeah, you know what, I love the story, a 20 year veteran in the business, and never really kind of got to where they wanted to be. And I’m like, You are a rock star. We just need to structure some things. And she’s been with us now that’s like her, I don’t know, maybe 15 month with us, and just really is getting there. But with a coaching session this morning, and she is licensed in Illinois. But she hasn’t taken exam though. I have a license in Wisconsin, Indiana. We’re also in Florida. And she’s getting her license there. So we just simply put on our calendar, she enrolled for the example that we’re in at, which is a week from this next Friday. So two weeks from now. And we time block for two hours, a one hour a day for the next five days week. take the weekends off to study man, we didn’t do it. She never would have done it. And yeah, just happen to be the coaching sessions like what’s important. That’s important, great, and get this done. Even saying now for 60 days, bullshit. Here’s the deadline. Here’s what you’re gonna do. Make me a promise and a commitment, in addition to other things that you promise and it made a commitment to me and sure shitshow every time I’ve ever had it and it’s over, it’s behind us. But so coaching is incredibly important. I do it. It just it’s like I need to get over the hump. You know a coach cares about you. They want to help you they want to help Identifying. There’s a lot of different things in it. But it’s it is, like you said, making that plan, setting it. Sometimes it’s big annual goals. Sometimes it’s like a little thing like, you know, I’m gonna get licensed real estates so I can transact. Well, that’s get done in two weeks or less.
D.J. Paris 30:14
Yeah, that’s what I always love that Brian Buffini story with Joe NIGO, who’s like, essentially one of his partners now, but they were just Realtors from across the country, and they befriended each other. And they just said, you know, we need to, we need an accountability portion here. And we’re going to call each other every day at like, 5pm and say, Did you win the day? Or what are the five things you were supposed to do today? And, you know, that was their structure. And, you know, they obviously went on to incredible success, both of them. But But that’s, that’s it. It’s just if those guys can’t do it on their own, then who can write with none of us? Can we all need? We all need help?
Ryan D’Aprile 30:50
Joe lives in my neighborhood? Oh, he does. Oh, that’s crazy. Wow. I’ve seen him speak at an event about a decade ago, if not longer. And he’s a huge basketball player. And he runs this gigantic basketball camp that my my girls all attended. His boys are incredible basketball players, me because
D.J. Paris 31:13
I think he played professionally or at least a college kid
Ryan D’Aprile 31:15
for like Houston for like a year and then became a real estate agent. And the rest is history. But the guy’s passion and love. Outside of coaching is coaching basketball. It all comes back to coaching. Again, sorry, I don’t mean distract. It was like, Well,
Melissa Fusco 31:32
chances are this guy fell. But you know, what’s so funny is that, like, I was talking my husband this morning. And as you know, he knew that I was coming out in here and talking about structure and everything. And it’s funny, because my dad is actually a career coach, a career consultant coach, I’m a coach, and my husband is an instructional coach, for a district in school. And so we were talking about it this morning. And he’s like, you know, he goes, my, my best friend is a guy named Murphy. And he is a professor in Michigan, and the two of them hold each other accountable. And they coach each other, you know, so it goes across all industries, it’s like, you know, goes back to that everybody needs coach, everybody does, you know, so. So the other tool that you can implement, is getting yourself an accountability partner, or you get yourself a coach. So that’s the other the other lever that you can pull to make sure that your structure is working for
Ryan D’Aprile 32:29
yes, and have the mind for that there is no such thing as competition except for yourself. You know, if you have the competition mindset, you know, then you’re living in the scarcity. You can learn so much from co workers in the industry, people that work at other brokerages, just hold each other accountable, hold each other up, there’s more than enough to go around for everybody. Absolutely, you know, it really comes down to life is a journey of basically self exploration of yourself and, and what makes you tick and what doesn’t, and then, you know, then being vulnerable, and you find somebody else, and then having that person be there for you to guide you. I mean, it’s a it’s really a great thing. So let’s talk about scheduling it out. Yeah.
Melissa Fusco 33:10
So I mean, really, just, you know, having your, like we talked about with the planner, like, if you’re a tech, you know, tactile director, you know, technology, making sure that you’re just time blocking all of that activities. So like having your daily tasks, and making sure that those hours are blocked, and then your weeks are blocked. And so scheduling it out really is what yeah, you know, like I mean, literally schedule it out in your calendar,
Ryan D’Aprile 33:36
and then have those visual cues, okay to give in, release the dopamine in your mind, to to reward you. Okay, so one of the things in that what we use is the dashboard. The kind of the important thing about the dashboard is, you know, as your cell phone dings, right, or you get a thumbs up on Facebook, or you get a heart on Instagram, that’s it’s so addictive, because it’s releasing dopamine in your mind. So okay, so let’s, let’s, let’s look at what these multi trillion dollar corporations have learn to addict us to their technology, and why don’t we use it to our advantage. So schedule it out, you have a visual cue, we use the dashboard, and it releases dopamine as you are checking off the tasks that you need to do. Yeah, you don’t sell a home. I mean, let me start rephrase. I’m saying like, you know, the end of the transaction, rather representing a buyer or a seller. That’s just the end of all these other things that came before it. And if you’re trying to break a big boulder in half, right, you have a hammer and a chisel and you hit at the boulder you hit the bullet hit the Boulder, and after maybe 100 hits the boulder breaks Again, what was the most important strike? The first one? The second one, the 20th. One? Or is it all right? So then if those 100 strikes is what I need to get to get the end result, then how do I keep myself motivated in addicted to continually doing the strikes? What are the strikes in this case? It’s relationship building activities. It’s your library article should be automatic. Don’t think about it. It’s getting it done. People hire people that they know, like and trust, right? 80% of all homebuyers. 80% of home buyers and home sellers. If you want real estate agents, you guys, that’s why our business has not been disrupted by these companies that are losing hundreds of million dollars a year. Redfin and other companies that are out there, they lose their publicly traded, if they weren’t, they’d be out of business, because they’re losing 10s of millions of dollars a year working for free based on the fact that the relationship is not significant. Okay, the relationship is incredibly significant. The only disrupter in your business is you. If you decide not to engage into relationship building techniques with your network, it’s that simple. I have nothing else to tell you drop the mic, go home, I haven’t seen this for 17 years in a row, it comes down to the relationships you have your network is your network, schedule it out, plan it out, fall in love with your environment, fall in love with that environment, one hour that you do it, make it a tradition, make it a routine, thank you for my bracelet. This year,
D.J. Paris 36:32
every every day, if you just structure out an hour of relationship building, I can’t even there’s no easy way to quantify you guys probably have data about this. But within a year, you won’t believe what that will do to your business to have an intentional hour. And so Ryan gave and Melissa gave some good examples, you know, commenting on people’s social media posts, texting people letting you know, you’re thinking about them, you know, congratulating them on various achievements in their life, which you can find on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram based on what they’re posting. Anything that you can do that doesn’t even necessarily have to be, Hey, are you looking to buy or sell your home right now? Even if it’s just hey, I saw you went on this vacation that looked amazing how Tell me about it. And then oh, hey, by the way, just in case you ever need anything with real estate, let me know. But But tell me about this vacation, you know, like that. That’s it relationship building. And if you do that, an hour a day, you will never be wanting for leads after a year. Or maybe it’s two years that it takes to do that. But you will have more leads and you know what to do it because as Ryan, you just said, you know, people know will choose somebody who they know, like and trust is their agent. And how do you how do you build intimacy, you do it by demonstrating care. And so if you can demonstrate care an hour a day to your network, that percentage of of times where they are need a real estate agent and choose you is going to go way up.
Melissa Fusco 37:55
Absolutely. And you can trust the process that will work for you.
D.J. Paris 38:01
Yeah, we I just added a process. And this is kind of funny. This is off off of the real estate thing. But but I’ll give you an example that hopefully our listeners can can appreciate. So my, my girlfriend and I were talking about, you know, our relationship we were checking in to see how are each of us doing and what does each of us need. And she was mentioning that one of her love languages is being verbal praise. And that’s not really one of my top ones. So it doesn’t occur to me as often to verbally tell her how special she is, which of course, she wants to hear. So I thought, Okay, well how can I structure this so that I do this on a regular basis, because and again, you know, it may be doesn’t sound super romantic, but I wanted to get it done. I wanted to make sure that she never came back to me again and said, You know what, you’re not really giving me what I need in that respect. And so I said, okay, and I thought, okay, how do I make this a daily habit? And I thought, Well, whenever we eat together, I’m just going to turn to her before I take my first bite of food and tell her something about her. That’s really special to me. And it sounds sort of silly, but that’s a structure and that works. And then I never have to think about it again. All I have to do is remember before I take that first bite of food, say something nice and done right but I have to do it every time but I have a structure now. And and now I don’t have to worry about when was the last time I said something nice. Did I have I done it in a while? No, I just have to do it. And now I do it every time we talk on the phone as well. So now it’s the phone and because she doesn’t live with me and then when we eat together so it sounds silly, but it’s a small thing. How will that impact our relationship immensely, right? She is going to feel appreciated, heard understood, loved, because I added this one little tiny thing that takes maybe 30 seconds today. Right? So I’m just not saying that to impress anyone with how great I am in relationships. But this is something anybody can do.
Ryan D’Aprile 39:47
Sounds nice. Yeah, I mean dinner my house is like that starts from the kid.
D.J. Paris 39:51
Well, you have more people involved in than I do.
Melissa Fusco 39:56
Oh, here’s my thing to is that like you’re thinking those things about Now you’re just taking an extra step and saying it as opposed to keeping it to yourself. Right?
D.J. Paris 40:04
Right. Well, but at the, the point was that now I don’t have to think about it anymore. All I have to do is follow the structure, right? And so you’re you guys are basically saying the exact same thing is create the structure and then just follow the steps. And you know, have a coach help you tweak the structure from, you know, from time to time. I mean, this is the reason I get to the gym because I have a personal trainer, the only reason I get to the gym is because I have a personal trainer, I am not proud of that. I wish I went on my own, I don’t. So I have a coach for that.
Ryan D’Aprile 40:35
I want to chime in on that for a second I have to I have recognized that I am not a gym person. I just I haven’t been and I think doing activities outside is the best form of exercise for me right staying or if it’s surfing with the girls in the boat or something like that, other than I’m not a gym person. Um, but man, those gym people out there have had some of them best success and our coaching because they are so routine. Make sense? Yeah. And I was talking to our vice president sales or mortgage company and like, give me some of those individuals that they’re at the gym four days a week. Those are habitual routine, routine based people. I’m just gonna insert one more routine and then watch them take off.
D.J. Paris 41:25
Yeah, yeah, routine routine is so important. Because again, it just eliminates anxiety. It eliminates this, what am I supposed to do? I know, I’m supposed to do a lot of stuff. And also, you know, Melissa, you talked about boundaries. I think this is really important, because a lot of our listeners and viewers might be thinking, okay, you know, it’s that Stephen Covey like urgency versus importance matrix, like, Is it urgent? Is it important? Is it Is it urgent and not important enough, etc. But But this idea of do we know? And Ryan, you know, said this earlier today, it’s like, Hey, we’re all I’m on the call this that my phone is off, you know, and Melissa said the same thing. After eight o’clock, you know, my phone is my phone is off. But then it’s like, well, what happens if a client messages me at 1030? I want to be everything to everyone. And I want to respond, because I want to, you know, I want to please my client. But question about how do you set those boundaries with clients? Not so that they don’t text you at 1030, but that they don’t necessarily expect a response right away? Because you know, you have a, you know, you have your own personal time, too.
Ryan D’Aprile 42:23
So there’s, there’s two weeks answer, I’ll chime in, in one way. And okay, so this is an expression that I’ve learned here, not from me from other people in the company. I want to call it but I’m not sure. I think it’s her. If you’re saying yes, is one thing, you’re saying no, it’s something else. Sounds familiar. You’re saying yes, that’s something you’re saying no to something else. So if you’re saying yes to that claim, and picking up the phone at 1030, at night, you’re saying no, to a good night’s sleep, you’re saying no to health for yourself. If you say yes to, let’s just say I’m going to schedule nine o’clock to 10 o’clock to connect with 14 People might dashboard. If I do that five days a week, I’m gonna go through all 300 people my dashboard in a month, and I could do that for a full year. And the next year, I’m an 8 million 12 million $20 million producing real estate agent. And would commit that from nine in the morning to in the morning. If you decide to keep your phone on and say yes, just get back that text message to the client and say, Yes, there’s one quick phone call during that one hour, you’re saying no to that person that you want to become? No, it’s no, no, no, I’m not going to be needful. $20 million producer, I’m going to say yes. To this point in this deal. Right. Now. This is more important that and it’s all simple choices that you’re making. So you just be conscious, understand that 95% of the day, we’re unconscious. So be conscious of the subconscious decision you’re making.
Melissa Fusco 43:50
Yeah. And I mean, it’s not life and death. You know. So that’s one thing that I would say, the second thing I would say, if somebody is calling me at 1030 I am legit, like in Milan sleeping already told us. I mean, I am I’m obviously exactly what I was gonna say. If I when I wake up at five o’clock, and if I see a missed call from somebody that I think could be urgent, I’ll text him a backpack, and be like, Hey, good morning, I’m awake. Was it that urgent? You know what I mean? And here’s the thing is that it’s not usually, you know, I mean, of course, you know, people have children, and they have, you know, got family members that need to get ahold of them or whatever. But I mean, really 99.9% of the time, you can set your boundary, and you don’t need to and if you don’t
Ryan D’Aprile 44:36
set boundaries, people walk all over you
Melissa Fusco 44:40
and you’re not going to be as productive. Now, if you keep running yourself so ragged, right? It is going to be you’re going to end up providing a lesser of a service
Ryan D’Aprile 44:50
and you’re saying yes to what’s important to them, and no to what’s important to you and your family.
D.J. Paris 44:55
Yeah, if you respond to a text in the evening, when you’d really rather be Connecting with family or just taking time for yourself or exercising or relaxing, watching television, whatever it is for you. At that time where you really don’t want to respond and you respond to one text message, you then really can’t not respond, you know, to the next 10 that are coming through. So you really have to think that that through is like, when do I want to be communicating with my clients, and when do I really not want to be because if I respond to one text message, that person is gonna write back a response, and we’re gonna go back and forth for the next 25 minutes, and I’m gonna lose that half hour, because I responded, whereas I could just tell the client, maybe even upfront, hey, just so you know, here’s when I am available to immediately get back to you. And if it’s outside of those hours, I will get back to you at my next possible opportunity. But I don’t want you to think I’m ignoring you. It’s just I have, you know, a structure, you know, to my day, and I think most clients would be 100% understanding, well,
Ryan D’Aprile 45:51
they don’t even they don’t even need to be understanding, you know, let me give you another way of looking at Are you a Mac or a PC? User?
D.J. Paris 45:59
I have both, but let’s do both.
Ryan D’Aprile 46:02
Let’s do both. You ready? Yeah. Let’s we’re going to copy something, right. Instead of going your mouse and using file copy, I use the command button, or the CTRL button. The two words that are really key here for this for all the listeners here. Command and control. I command and I control my technology. Dammit. It doesn’t control me. So I’m not a big TV person. Right. And at night, you know, again, I have a 17 year old and 14 year old now they’re in their rooms and mom and dad are and we’re doing our own thing, right? I love to play Texas Hold on my my my phone. Right? Well watch me to chat. I mean, make a Manhattan so the couch at 730 at night. By the way, I’m done at 530 I just can’t because I’m a morning person. And I’m just done. I’m burnt out after 530 I don’t want to do anymore. I turn I command my technology. And my outside world is cut off. And my wife and I have a conversation. I’m playing Texas Hold’em Secretary with the no Hold’em. But my point is, is when you’re on your computers, you guys, I want you to look at the keyboard, I want you to look at the command and control button. And I want you to decide, are you the one who’s in command and control or some technology Command or Control, it’s your choice, just like it’s your choice to be a top 20% Or to be the bottom 80%. It all comes down to your choice. And if you’re seeing this is all really good points, go get a coach will reinforce this stuff to you. That’s what it’s all Wow.
D.J. Paris 47:33
Well, what a great place to wrap up for today. You know, we talked about structure, we talked a tiny little bit about mindset. But the majority of what we really thought focused on is, is countability and structure and understanding what someone’s day should look like. And only you can answer that. But you know, it takes it takes time. So sit down when you have a free day and do it sooner rather than later. Because stuff is going to fly at you all day, every day regardless, and you’re going to feel busy. But at the end of the day, you might not necessarily feel that you move your business forward. Because there’s so much to do on a regular day. So take some time. And as Melissa said, she she does this in October of every year, she plans out the whole year. And of course those plans change and evolve over time. But she basically knows what she’s looking to accomplish by the end of the year. And the direction she’s looking to head and then she just break you break it down into you know, week monthly, weekly, I guess quarterly monthly, weekly, and then daily tasks.
Ryan D’Aprile 48:32
Yep. All right, TJ. Well, thanks for having us. And Melissa, thanks for joining us. Thank
Melissa Fusco 48:37
you so much for having me. This is exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,
D.J. Paris 48:40
thank you, both of you for coming on. This is wonderful. We’re so so honored to have Ryan and Melissa on on our show and have our coaching moments episode that we do every single month and want to remind everyone who’s watching and or listening to please follow us on Facebook, find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real, here’s a little dirty, seek dirty secret. Here’s a secret about our show, we record these and then oftentimes, it takes us a couple of weeks to actually produce them. So for some of our listeners and viewers, they want to see it as it’s happening. So they don’t have to wait for us to produce it. So if you go to follow us on Facebook, you’ll see it we stream all of our episodes live as we’re recording them, and you’ll get first access and you won’t have to wait for us to to for us to structure how we actually are for us to go through our structure to actually process the episode. So follow us on Facebook facebook.com forward slash keeping a real pot and also if you’re an agent in the Chicagoland area or if you’re in Indiana, Wisconsin. Well I guess Florida as well. Michigan too
Ryan D’Aprile 49:36
far Yeah, yeah.
D.J. Paris 49:39
Florida not not Florida yet. But if you’re in any of these, the states and you’re interested in looking at a firm that can help you with all of this most importantly structure coaching, accountability and this automated branding, which they do for you and you know I’m here in the Chicagoland area we have hundreds of firms here. depot properties is really about the The only firm I’m aware of including the biggest franchise firms out there, but to April properties is really the only firm I know that actually does that for you for an agent. So if you’re an agent who is young again, maybe not getting the that experience at your current firm, and you’re looking elsewhere, what’s the best way that they should reach out?
Ryan D’Aprile 50:19
Once a week? What’s the best way to answer that question? I’ve given up my cell phone.
Melissa Fusco 50:25
I was about to give you Ryan’s email address, but I will not do that. I don’t care. And do you recoveries.com? You could you could Google
Ryan D’Aprile 50:33
me, you’ll fight you know, it’s 2021. My my cell phone, email can’t take me contact.
Melissa Fusco 50:41
Facebook, Instagram,
Ryan D’Aprile 50:44
your fellow real estate agents in the community? Just we’re all just give us an hour.
D.J. Paris 50:48
All right, well visit April properties.com. And to learn more about what they offer agents and all of those, those areas. And, you know, again, just think about it this way, you know, do you do you? Could you benefit from having a coach? The answer is of course, yes. And you know, then think am I currently getting that? If not, maybe it’s time to look elsewhere. It’s that time of the year where agents start reevaluating. You know, am I actually getting a lot of value at my current firm. So if you’re not, or if you feel you just want to see what else is out there do properties would be happy to chat with you. So check out Dr. properties.com. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Thank you for everyone who’s listening, supporting us and sharing that with a friend. So Thanks, Melissa and Ryan. We’ll see you next time.
Melissa Fusco 51:30
Thank you, JJ.
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