In this episode Khoi Le from Hunter Chase Realty talks about the struggles he faced in the beginning of his life in US and how it helped him shape his future. Khoi emphasizes how important it is to understand people and how psychology is the foundation to your success. Next, Khoi discusses the importance of planning ahead and visualizing your perfect world to use as a guide. Last, Khoi talks how realtors can get support whatever communities they identify themselves with and what they can do to give back.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Khoi Le can be reached at (505) 918-9893.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to a another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with koi Lee, a top producer from New Mexico and Hunter Chase Realty. But before we get to Koi, just a quick reminder, if you’re brand new to our show, we would really love it if you would subscribe. So if you are listening on a podcast app, hit that subscribe button. If you are listening through our website, pull up a podcast app on your phone and search for keeping it real and then subscribe. And if you’re watching us on YouTube or Instagram, we are thrilled to have you there as well. But please tell a friend think of one other real estate professional that would benefit from hearing these interviews with top producers like koi and send them a link to our show. If they’re not a podcast person, send them right to our websites keeping it real pod.com They can stream every episode we’ve ever done right from the browser. And also you know if they are a podcast person haven’t pull up keeping it real and hit that subscribe button. And also please follow us on Facebook we post all of our episodes that we do right there and we even while we’re recording them, we broadcast them live on Facebook so you don’t have to wait for us to produce the episode which usually takes a few weeks you can find us on facebook@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our interview with coyly.
Today on the show we have koi Lee from Hunter Chase Realty in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Let me tell you a little bit about quite a quite has been in the real estate. It has been in real estate rather for over a decade and enjoys traveling to teach real estate across the nation. He is the Operations Officer and head trainer for his brokerage he attended a top 10 worldwide college for his Master’s of Business Administration in in management of technology, graduating college in Albuquerque at 19 which is incredible. I didn’t graduate till I was 22 shows you what I did in college. But he also won the UNM business school competition it’s which has allowed him to pursue his dreams of helping others through real estate. As a master certified negotiations expert quite loves to find the deal and make dreams come true. His background in psychology has been a tremendous help in this relationship oriented industry quite loves to teach social media to agents and local businesses because it’s such a powerful tool to create and deepen relationships. He is also a member of Knakal rep which is the National Association of gay and lesbian real estate professionals. And we reached out to national rep earlier this month and told them we’d like to feature more of their members on our show and Clay was the very first person they recommended. So we are so excited to speak with him today. Please follow koi on Instagram you can find him at at the koi which is th e Khoi, so Instagram the koi koi Welcome to our show. We’re so excited to have you.
Khoi Le 3:50
Hey, man, thank you so much for having me and thanks for that great introduction. Couldn’t have written it better myself.
D.J. Paris 3:56
Well, I you know, it’s we are here to celebrate, you know, top agents and what they did to get to where they are. We are we’re nearing about 300 episodes and our audience just loves hearing from successful realtors. I just saw statistic. Well actually, my boss told me about this statistic. I didn’t see it. But there are 100,000 More Realtors now as there were about 10 years ago. So it is really exploded. And you know, obviously content like this I think is really helpful for our eight for a our listeners who can hear from somebody who’s had so much success so young. So I’d love to start all the way at the beginning of your real estate career. Obviously, you you you crushed college at a very early age, which is beyond impressive. But tell us how you got into real estate.
Khoi Le 4:48
So um, I I’m actually from Vietnam, and my my, my mom immigrated with me to America we lived in various cities, but we ended up in Albuquerque. And, you know, she worked multiple jobs. But she knew that, you know, the first thing she needed to do was get a house. Okay? And so we, you know, when we’ve purchased our first house, ourselves younger and everything, and she accumulated, she started her own business, a jewelry business and bought more houses, etc. But there was a big frustration, their frustration was, she didn’t speak English well, and she didn’t know how to read English well. So what comes with that is an opportunity for people to take advantage of. And I just remember one time when we, we lost a lot, because an agent went out and took advantage of this, and we lost our, our, our deposit on a house, and he took it, you know, and, um, you know, so, you know, when, when you’re, when you come over here and for opportunity, and everything like that, and then you lose everything that you worked for, because somebody swindled you out of it, that, you know, that that’s, that’s a major blow. So, of course, I committed to going to college and everything like that, you know, it’s, it’s a case of, and we talked about this a little bit off air too, you know, it’s hard to just speak about, you know, the struggles and everything, but I’m okay with sharing. Because I feel like it’s important for people to know that it doesn’t matter, you know, where you come from, you know, you can achieve whatever you want. So there was bouts of homelessness, you know, sharing, you know, 10 people to a room, etc. But we did what we had to do. I went to college, got out as soon as I can, because I knew that the faster I got out, the sooner I can, you know, help help out. So with that I, first I did the management of technology, skills, I sold my first business, which was the biodiesel business.
D.J. Paris 7:12
So were you a real developer, or you were just a tech guy, or tell us if you don’t mind?
Khoi Le 7:19
Yeah, so management technology is cool. So what you do is you, you work with, like engineers, and you work with sciency people, and then you take their ideas, because what they’re good at is sciency stuff, what I’m good at is marketing, and logistics and everything. So we take that idea, we take it to from a seed company into the marketplace, you know, IPOs, and things like that. And we’re very lucky that we have three big labs here in Los Alamos Labs, Sandia Labs, and also the laboratories at UNM. So we would take ideas, see where we can commercialize them, and take them to market we advised on angel investments and everything like that. So because of that, with that business plan competition, I got a, you know, a large some back of the day that was large for me, and, you know, started that business, sold it off, and then got this one thing out of my veins, which I hope I opened a nightclub.
D.J. Paris 8:20
Wow, what a change. Yeah, so,
Khoi Le 8:22
so opened the nightclub, and then ran it for a bit, sold it to some investors from Las Vegas, and then, you know, decided, hey, I’m gonna take some time off to just kind of see what’s up, I travelled a little bit and then got really, really bored. But then I remembered, you know, that, you know, I should get into this profession because one, I’ve helped my mom with all of her real estate dealings, you know, I’ve translated for her, etc. But she’s not the only person out there that needed help, you know, with with these forums, and you know, deals and everything like that. So becoming an agent that can, you know, speak their language and, you know, help help the Vietnamese community out it has been a tremendous help for my career, as well as being part of the LGBTQ community and having a opening a gay bar.
D.J. Paris 9:20
Wow, that’s because you said so much that that’s it’s really impressive that you’ve really had success in three very different industries. You know, the, the sort of you are kind of part of the incubator, it sort of world and taking good ideas and bringing them to market and then then switching over to the nightclub world. And that’s a tremendously difficult world as well, from what I understand and then having a success there is even probably more rare and then of course, having success in real estate and I’m curious if there’s a certain if there’s certain habits that you cultivated that have sort of stretched Spanner across these different industries that you’ve had success with that, you could say, hey, you know, I’m really sort of doing similar daily tasks, or at least daily, you know, disciplines that I’ve that really, you know, sort of go across all these different lines of work that you’ve been involved in.
Khoi Le 10:16
Yeah. So one thing that when I was going through school was everyone was saying, Hey, you’re, you’re getting your MBA, that’s that was the end goal, right? Sure. Getting an MBA, why don’t you go to business school? And for your bachelor’s degree? And I, you know, I went for my psychology degree, right? And I had people ask me that I just answer them same thing as, who do you work with when you’re in business? And if they’re confused, or think I’ll answer for them, you work with people, right? You don’t work with machines, you need to understand people, first and foremost, it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in one year, you need to enchant people. And two, you’re always selling something, okay? I don’t, it doesn’t matter. If you are an engineer, you’re selling your resume to that manager, that you would work for that national lab, okay, engineer, as a salesperson, everyone is selling something. And so, you know, when we identify what their needs are, you know, people’s needs are, we can, you know, go more in depth and help them and build that relationship with people. And so that’s why the habitus psych background has been tremendously helpful. Now.
D.J. Paris 11:32
Go ahead. Oh, no, go right ahead.
Khoi Le 11:34
Sorry. Yeah. So having a psych background as has been helpful. And I think the traits in be with any industry to be successful in any industry is going to be want, first of all integrity, do what you say you’re gonna do. If you’re going to work in tech, if you’re gonna work at a nightclub, if you’re gonna work in real estate, do what you say you’re gonna do. That’s, if you if you go that far, like you, you’re already more successful. And then most people, they’re second,
D.J. Paris 12:07
pause you, I want to pause here for a second, just because I want to talk about about that integrity. It’s such, it’s such an easy thing to sort of say, you know, to just sort of define, as do what you say you’re going to do, which is absolutely the truth. But I’m curious in when you’re working with your buyers and sellers, do you set the expectation in advance? And, you know, make sure that that they are on board with with what that means? In other words, are you telling them you know, here’s how often I’m going to communicate with you? Or, or here’s what how this process is going to go? I’m curious on on on that part of it for real estate, because I know that communication is everything, when it comes to working with clients. And I’m just curious on what that looks like for you. Yeah,
Khoi Le 12:53
if communication is everything, then yes, you should communicate how they’re going to be communicated to right. I always say no, communication is also a form of communication. If you’re not updating your client, you’re telling them, they’re not worthy of being updated. So think about it that way. I also work on a philosophy of if they ask you a question, you have failed. Okay, so I tell my team, if our client asks us a question, we have failed, you know, if they’re asking things like, hey, what’s an appraisal? Right? What do you mean, you know, how do you not know what an appraisal is? Of course, that’s not going to be our answer. Our answer is, you know what, hold on, write up the blog post, write up the email, send it off to them, and then copy that for the next client. Right? Because each time we reiterate, we reiterate. And that’s one thing that we did with our management technology courses. Now that just kind of had I had a little bit of epiphany of something. So I’ll touch base on that in a little bit. But we reiterate until we get it right. Okay, so, so yeah, if if, if they asked us we failed. Back to your question, do we tell them ahead of time how we operate? Of course we do. Are you going to be the one who’s going to control the narrative? Are you going to let the tail wag the dog? Okay. I tell him. You’d like that
D.J. Paris 14:24
one. Yeah, no, no, I love that. Because it’s, it’s, you know, it’s funny. I interviewed a top producer here in Chicago a few years ago and out of 44,000 Realtors, we have in the Chicagoland area, she’s in the top, literally the top 10. And I asked her, I said, Why do you think you’re in the top 10? And please don’t say you work harder than everyone because I’m sure that’s true. But But what else do you think it is beyond hard work? And she says, this is gonna sound so silly, and I’m embarrassed to say it, but it’s probably the truth. I call every single one of my clients every single week and give them an update on how things are going. And I said, and she goes then That’s kind of it. I said, why doesn’t everybody do that? And she goes, No. So I just I just was thinking that that came to me while you were talking about the importance of if they have to ask you a question, if they have to say, and even if it’s just, hey, what’s the next step? That’s probably the biggest failure of all right when they say what comes after this, because then you haven’t really prepped them correctly. And so I think we’re talking about overly communicating and not overly in a negative way. But making sure that that any possible question a buyer or seller might have, you have already have that as part of your process so that they don’t have to think about it, you know, and then ask you. Yep,
Khoi Le 15:42
exactly. You know, if they’re asking you things such as you know, hey, what do I gotta do to get to get my house ready for inspections, right? Now, of course, you can type it out in your text messages, and just send it to them. Okay, now, I did that this one time. Next week, I have to do it again. And again and again, right? Or you can systemize it, do it once and send it out each time you schedule inspections, to the seller, what is your this is what I asked my brokers is, what is your business going to be like, in five years? Okay, are you in five years? Are you still going to be typing out that text each time somebody else? Or are you your business is going to be so good that you have to have your assistant send out that email? Well, if it’s if it’s going to be the second, why not create that thing now?
D.J. Paris 16:36
It’s a really, really amazing suggestion. So everyone who’s who’s listening or watching right now this is a great we do this here at our company i i work on the recruiting sites I recruit realtors, I don’t work with with buyers and sellers directly. But what we’ve done over the years is we have every single question that somebody might be who might be looking to join our firm might be curious and knowing we have all the answers written out and as Realtors you can, obviously you should accumulate all of these questions, put them in a in a database, put them in a spreadsheet, have these answers, pre written, pre formatted, tightened up and sent out in a systematized way so that they don’t even have to ask but when they do, you can shoot that out. But boy, that is such a great suggestion is, is just write down every question that buyers or sellers ask you and have the answers ready to go. And then figure out how to incorporate that into your into your systems.
Khoi Le 17:28
If you take, let’s say one hour, okay, if it takes me one hour to write out, what’s an inspection, put it on a blog post, put it in PDF, save it to, you know, send this out, after you scheduled inspections, if that takes me one hour, but it saves me one hour every week, that’s 52 hours in a year is your time worth that? Mine is I charge a lot of money per hour.
D.J. Paris 17:55
Well, that’s the other thing too is you know what you charge per hour, it’s another great exercise is working backwards and figuring out, you know, a realistic sort of goal for the end of the year, and then figuring out how many hours you’re working that year and then making that dividing that up and then realizing if if anything I’m doing is not generating that amount of money, it might be a good idea to outsource it. Now virtual assistants are so popular, you know, the entire world will bid to help you with your business. And you know, you can find some really competitive rates. But back to your you were I got us off track and I apologize you were listing you were on your your second tip. And I apologize, I sort of got off track, but I’d love to hear it if you could remember if I didn’t take you too far away. Yeah, so
Khoi Le 18:39
your question was, what between those three industries, you know, is a common denominator? I would say of course, the first one is the integrity part of it doing? What you’re gonna say going to do to is definitely, definitely systematizing things which we talked about right? is, you know, you know, whatever you’re going to do repeatedly. You know, write it down, systematize it and then outsource it to somebody
D.J. Paris 19:06
quick, have a quick question for you. So it’s funny, because you’ll talk to some agents, although I think these agents will be in the minority. When you ask them like, hey, what do you bring to a listing presentation? Almost everyone I’ve ever interviewed on our show, and hundreds of people that have been on the show, have all said, Oh, I have a whole process. I have a whole you know, like for listing presentation, for example. I’m going to bring, you know, a questionnaire, I’m going to bring maybe a little what we used to call a war book or some slides or you know, and then there’s other people, but I think they’re in the minority, but it’s still not all that uncommon. Who go I show up with a blank pad of paper. I’m curious on on what your process is when since you are so systematized are you I’m assuming you’re probably not a blank pad of paper guy or you bring that up in addition, but I’m assuming you have a whole process on top of that.
Khoi Le 19:54
I have both okay. And so if I have a listen up like, Man, I can message one of my team members. And I can say I need a listing padfolio it’s a leather padfolio for this address, okay, and I, if I go pick it up, or I can have it delivered, if I really need to, and I’m going to be at that property, they’ll meet me at the same time drop it off, right? It will have, let’s say, any previous MLS sheets are gonna be printed out, the house surveys printed out, our sellers book is printed out, I have samples of our marketing material in this, this thing too, I have two pens, one of them is green, because I only write in Greek. And because green is money, I have key tags to key tags, because that’s what I require from my sellers, I have my business cards, I have every single little thing that I might need. And also I have a checklist. And that checklist needs to be filled out and checked to make sure that I that I know every single little thing is already in there. If something’s missing, they’ll also they’ll write you know, like get no previous data on there. So if I glanced at this piece of paper, for 15 seconds, I can go in and start right away. Yes, I have a blank piece of pad on the end. And that I write notes in after the listing is done. If it’s signed, great. If it’s not, I still send it over the padfolio over to my team member, there’s a system for them to be assemble it, input things into my CRM, update notes, scan anything that needs to be scanned, dissemble things that weren’t used such as key tags, pens, whatever that was go into its own cubbyholes, it goes into a separate slot, depending on where it is signed, unsigned, etc. And then they also schedule onto my schedule for next week to follow up with these people, or whatever tasks that I put on the pad, I say, you know, get this skip discuss this. And it’ll all be done in my sleep. Basically,
D.J. Paris 22:00
it’s really incredible. And for everyone listening, you know, this is the year this is if you’re not this organized, and you don’t have the systems yet in place. This is the year to do that. This will just ultimately it will sort of ironically, these systems will actually give you more freedom in your life, it might seem constraining and certainly, you know, realtors tend to struggle with organization because the personal person to person skills, interpersonal skills tend to be more prominent in realtors and organization tends to be, you know, something that that a lot of realtors struggle with. But this is the year to systematize so that you don’t have to think about each of these steps every single time because you’re likely to forget one or you’re likely to just you know, make a mistake, because it’s easy to do that when it’s not systematized. So I applaud you for that. That is a really incredible system.
Unknown Speaker 22:51
You want to know my secret? Yeah, I’m lazy. I don’t want to keep doing this over and over and over again. I’m forgetful. I’m like, Oh, crap, I forgot to pen. Can you show up to listen point without a pen? Hell no. You know, so. So I just wrote everything down. I am not a good paperwork person, I’m not a good, I’m actually probably not a good operations guy. But I’m just lazy. I don’t want to keep doing the same thing over and over. So then I hire people that are very good at that stuff, right? To help me organize and create a system that you know that I want this particular thing this particular way. Yes, you might not make sense at the moment if you’re new. But then you come come in and see the hive, everyone buzzing around. But there’s a there’s an art, there’s a dance to this whole thing. And once you figure out what you want, and which again, we are saying is more freedom. I’m spending that one hour to say 52 hours, you know, in a year. Right? So I’m just I want my free time. I know I need it. So do I do the same things over and over? And again, you know, that’s
D.J. Paris 24:03
it. Yeah, it’s it’s so it’s so simple. And for those of you that haven’t developed these systems, it can be overwhelming to think about building all of it at once. And, and and I would encourage everyone to just start somewhere and start with one little chunk of chunk everything down into little small pieces. And over, you know, a month or two, you could probably develop a good good number of your systems. And then you just have to run them. It’s the same. It’s funny. Almost a year ago, I realized I’m 44 I guess I was 43. A year ago. I said I struggle with getting to the gym I just my whole life. I just it’s not something I’m naturally inclined to do. I’m certainly not alone there. But there are people that seem to have an easier time just getting to the gym and exercising. And that’s just not me. But I know it was really important. And so I said how do i systematize this because I leave it up to me trying to find the motivation to do it and to try to remember to do it and to find the time. It just doesn’t happen or at least I have most of my life as evidence but it doesn’t happen. And so I said, you know, what if I hired a trainer, and I thought, Well, that makes sense. Because, you know, when I pay for something, I tend to want to use it. But but also, you know, there’s a built in accountability there. And so that’s how I systematized exercise. And I haven’t missed, you know, a session since now, it’s very expensive sort of process to do it that way. But it’s the only way it works for me. And I wish it I wish I was just naturally one of those people that went to the gym, just like I’m sure a lot of us wish we were more naturally organized, I fit in the same category as you there. So I have to systematize everything, because I’m just forgetful, maybe probably more forgetful than you are. And so I can appreciate building these systems to help account for some of our challenges. And you know, we’re good at certain things, and we’re not good at other things. And having systems in place. There are so critical. So I appreciate you sharing that.
Khoi Le 25:51
Yeah, again, work backwards. What is your business going to look like five years from now? Are you still going to be the person that’s looking through to make sure that their listing package is all together? Or are you at such a level that you have an assistant that makes it for you on the fly? And they know exactly what they’re doing? Because you, you know, you recorded the videos, you wrote down everything already? Okay, so decide now what your business is going to be like in five years, and then act like it?
D.J. Paris 26:20
So I have a good question. All right. I don’t know if that’s a good question. Sorry. It’s a question. Based on something you said that I was really impressed with, which is just having a five year vision. And wondering, you know, what, for all of our listeners, you know, that exercise is so critical. And of course, you know, what you think your business should look like in five years may change, it may evolve over time. And, and ultimately, it probably will. But knowing sort of where you want to end up is really important. So I have a question, because a lot of people I think would answer that with Well, I want to work mostly, or almost exclusively by referral in five years. And I’m curious, and I’m sure that you probably are we’re already working almost exclusively by referral. But I’m curious if you have any suggestions for some, some walking backwards to what people can do today to help sort of set up that kind of future.
Khoi Le 27:13
So on my door, right over there, it says on the top there $28,571,428. Okay, that’s how much I need at a 3.5% withdrawal rate for to gain $100,000 a month. So that’s the money I need to be in my bank account or investments at a 3.5% for 10. Well, $100,000 a month. So that’s one exercise I did is how much money do I want per month? Right? So first, that’s what we’re, that’s working backwards there. Right. And then underneath there, I have my real estate business. Property Management, commercial insurance, business, staging, business, leasing, business, social media, fix and flip loans. And SEO. Yeah. SEO there. So those are all my companies that I have. Also,
D.J. Paris 28:11
these are all the funnels that that ultimately drive in revenue for you.
Khoi Le 28:15
Yeah, and I already have some of those already. Okay. But that’s posted on my door, I see that every day. Okay. And that’s, that’s the number that I’m shooting for. Yeah, it’s pretty low. Okay, 28, millions low for me. But that’s what I gotta get to get started. Alright, so the, the number one exercise, not everyone, you know, cares about the dollar amount or everything, but the thing that I take my agents through is called the perfect world. Okay, I have them shut their eyes, and you walk through every single moment of your perfect day in your perfect world. And you repeat every single sentence in my perfect world, okay. In my perfect world, I’m waking up at this time. In my birth world, I work out here. In my perfect world, I woke up in this house, and has this many bedrooms, and this is the person next to me. And I check my phone. At this time. Some people like to check it early, later, whatever, you know, and then what do you do next? What do you do next? And until you complete your perfect day in your perfect world, and then that tells you what your goals are. Okay? If it’s you want to work, wake up to the perfect partner, you want to get more time for the gym, etc. You identify what you want. Yes, you know, it gets pretty emotional when we go through this exercise. And then we ask the question, what does it take for you to take from today? To your perfect world? What changes can you make now to become your perfect world? So yeah, you know what, in my perfect world, I’m at the gym. And you know, I’m at the gym with my trainer, and I’m super fit, blah, blah, blah. What’s the gap? Well, is the gap that you know, I haven’t woken up and done this, or I need to get a trainer. You took that step too. way to bridge the gap between where you are now with where you want to be. Right. And so the perfect world exercise is kind of what I would refer to first. That’s a
D.J. Paris 30:13
great I know some people refer to it as like future authoring perfect world, it’s really important. And you don’t always have to know exactly how you’re going to get from here to there. Because sometimes even just recognizing the end goal will open up over time what those steps may be to get there. So if you’re, if you’re like, Well, I want to earn a million dollars a year, and I’m only earning 50,000, right now that the brain can’t really figure out how do I get from 50,000 to a million, but what it can do is say, here’s the lifestyle I want, here’s what I want my day, my life, the emotions, I want to feel my physical vitality, my my spiritual vitae, you know, everything, you know, my relationships, everything, and then that’s what I want. And then you can just and then the brain starts hunting for ways to actually get you there. Um, you have to do the work, of course, which is the hard part. But But So I’m curious, is it been your experience that most of the major shifts that we make that will actually get us there are actually pretty minor shifts that if we just repeat them, you know, sort of day in and day out, ultimately get us on that track? versus sort of, you know, if you want to make a million dollars a year, you could get lucky and buy a lottery ticket? And I guess that’s does happen to people? I don’t know that it’s a great plan. But it’s certainly that’s one way to do it. But it’s not a very predictable way. Probably the least productive and it’s
Khoi Le 31:38
not repeatable, yet. That’s true, right? Do you just want to get a million once? Or do you want to do it every year? And then eventually, every month? Right, so that’s the question. Now, the changes that I’ve made are probably minor, right? If you reduce it to the ridiculous is what I call it, right? You know, just reduce it, reduce it, and then and then you say, Okay, if I got to call 50 people to get one, yes. All right, great. I got a call. I want 100 deals this year. So that’s, you know, 5000 calls I gotta make, right, what’s 5000 divided by 365? You know, and then you just take that exercise, and then you know, you can reduce it even further. You just gotta call 14 people to get 100 deals. Right? Can you and
D.J. Paris 32:29
how’s pretty amazing return on investment or return on effort? I would say that’s a that’s an incredible return on effort. Yeah, exactly. So
Khoi Le 32:37
1414 calls, if you have 16 minutes, and you have 14 calls. That’s an average of four, four and a quarter minutes. Can you spend a quarter like a four and a quarter minute every day to do this? Right? Is your is your time worth 100? deals that weigh in? Yeah, of course mine is right. And so that’s why that other agent, you’re talking about making phone calls, weekly phone calls to her people? She’s, she’s paying herself right there. Right? So it is very minor changes.
D.J. Paris 33:11
Same thing to with staying in touch with with sphere of influence, right? Or previous clients. You know, this idea of, oh, my gosh, you know, this client that I use that use me four years ago to buy their home, use someone else to sell it? And yes, of course, that happens. Sometimes someone’s you know, family member gets in the business, and you’re probably not going to keep it based on, you know, things outside of your control. But there’s so much within your control that oftentimes, you know, as agents, we don’t have systems in place. You know, we close the sale where we had a great experience with that buyer or seller. They like us, they know us, they trust us. And we know they’re probably not going to use us for another seven years, let’s say. So then the question is, okay, do I want that person to think about me seven years from now? Of course, I think everyone would answer yes. But then the question is, what am I going to do to earn that for the next seven years? How, why should they think about me? Just because I did a good job. Well, okay. Yeah, that’s something but what what’s more gas I can put in that tank over the next seven years? I’m just curious if you have any suggestions or thoughts about I’m sure you do about how to stay in touch with people after the sale.
Khoi Le 34:21
Yeah, so let’s address two things there. Right. So the first thing Yes, if somebody uses somebody else, it can feel like a devastating blow. Set, especially for the first time. Here’s what I think. Things don’t happen to me. Things happen because of me. Okay, and if I don’t follow up in a manner that they want, then I have it. Sure. Right. Now flip flip it around. What are your thoughts when somebody uses you instead of the their family member? Right. Yeah. What did you do, right? Yeah, exactly. I
D.J. Paris 34:58
mean, it’s a huge fad. are in the cap of anyone who, who’s being selected that way. And, and that’s where you need to think back is what did I do to maintain this relationship?
Khoi Le 35:07
Right. And so recently I have had a, one of my attorneys, he asked me to list something for him, his daughter and his I think his son in law are both realtors. Wow. Okay, but guess what? I didn’t do it to them. Right? It’s things happen because of me. And so if I am elected to be the expert in my field, they’re experts in their fields, right? I need to market I need to communicate that my value is still there, above and beyond every single other agent in this state. Okay, my expectation of myself is I’m going to be the first team to close 1000 deals a year in New Mexico. That’s, that’s who I’m going to be. That’s what I project and I give them every single reason to work with me. Right? So what do I do? Yes, I, you know, it’s lots of phone calls, lots of mailings and brochures, I have a magazine, I, you know, I’m on the radio here, I’m on TV, etc, but be where your clients are, right? That’s one thing we learned in, in management of technology is, where should we put this product product? Put it where your clients are going to be? Right? Shall we put it at Smith? Well, are the are the people that are going to buy it going to be at Smith’s great course, then then put yourself there, right. So be everywhere, all at the same time, basically, and I it sounds daunting, it sounds overwhelming. But you know, look at you, you’re you have this podcast, right? But then you have a system after this podcast to get it edited, sent out, you have this email that you send ahead of time, etc. Are you writing this email out by hand each time?
D.J. Paris 37:01
Thank goodness, no.
Khoi Le 37:03
Do you have a system right? We then so and you have a system of distribution, etc. Once that gets systematize done, and everything, you you can assign it to somebody else to do so that way you can focus on the next thing. So follow up is so important. Because, you know, if you tell them, you’re only valuable to me every seven years, yeah, right? They’ll hear you. They will hear you. Okay, now, flip it around. And this is what I tell people. What if your client, they’re at closing, you know, they give you a bag of money now. But if you continue to talk to them every few weeks, every few months, talk to them everything, they’re gonna leave these bags and bags of money at the title company. And as long as you talk to them, they’re going to send you to one of their friends, and they’re going to help buy and sell. And then you can grab another bag of money from them. It’s not every seven years. You’re right.
D.J. Paris 38:04
I’m curious, when you stay in touch with people after the sale? Do you have any just quick suggestions for content? So in other words, you know, obviously, if somebody moves into a new home, they’ve purchased a month and you could say, How’s the new home? How’s everything going? But let’s say it’s a year in, and now they’re settled? You know, and you do want to reach out because you want to maintain that that relationship and still add value to their life? What are some what some of the ways or how are you communicating with them like a year out? Where, you know, it’s it’s not hey, this brand new, exciting home? Or maybe it’s, Hey, it’s the anniversary of your home purchase? But aside from those more obvious sort of reasons to reach out, how are you continuing? How are you trying to stay in touch with them?
Khoi Le 38:49
So it’s, it’s uncomplicated to talk to people, right, you have the everyone knows their Ford’s scripts, how’s the family? How’s work recreations streams? That’s easy. That’s easy part. But if you’re blanking on things, there’s I we do, like National Donut Day. All right. Cool. That’s, that’s a cool thing. We’ll partner up with a local donut shop and send people coupons, you know, and so are you adding value after the sale? Also, are you saying, you know, are you out there being an expert, so if you if you have, like news of things being built or new, new coffee shops, etc. You can partner up with them, send coupons out, etc. You can talk about communities, events that are happening. So there’s so much out there that you can give to people, your value should not stop after they sign. Right. I have had you know, this, and again, this is working backwards, right. I work in in the manner that I expect my clients to give me a closing gift that’s how good I am
D.J. Paris 40:00
I love that. I love that
Khoi Le 40:03
say, and people ask me all the time, where should I go for a closing give? I’m like, What do you mean get client closing gift, you should work so hard, and they love you so much, that they get you a closing gift. Right? And that has happened. I’ve even gotten like a cash, you know, just them giving me cash, you know, you know, given to the team gifts and everything like that. But that’s, that’s the level you need to be at, right? To get where you want to go. And again, you gotta determine where you want to go. Now, content wise, there’s so much content out there, right, next door app. I don’t watch the news. Trust me. I don’t have the time for it. I always stand in my stances. If it’s important, somebody will tell me. Right. And so next door that people are telling you what’s going on, you know, if you’re, you’re paying attention to the news, anything NAR is going to give you things to talk about, you can give market updates, you can be an expert, you can talk to reporters, you know, I write articles for our news, our newspaper here too, you know, based on what’s happening. So there’s so much out there that it’s going to be paralyzing. You know, because there’s so many choices how I’m a perfectionist, I don’t want to be seen, like I made a mistake. Right? So to the to a fault that I don’t even execute until I have a mastery of it. And so for a longest time, I wasn’t sending out postcards or anything because I’m like, no, no, this doesn’t look exactly, yeah, this font isn’t right, you know, and it’s like Easter needs to be over here. But now it’s like three Easter’s later, I still have incense. No. Right. So so just do something, just do something is better than nothing, you know, holidays, you know, change your batteries, things going on in the community. Here’s new builds. You know, there’s so so much out there health, I even talk about, you know, here’s, here’s my new favorite app, to some people, you know, this app, I can scan things, I can measure things. So you know, I know, these people already bought their house, why would they care, right? But hey, if you’re buying a new couch or something, check this app out. Or, you know, if you’re buying a new house, and you’re in an open house, on your phone, you could be measuring things. So there’s just there’s, I can talk forever, basically. And so just be yourself, just be who you are to their people, you don’t need to be this professional that’s on a suit, you know, sending out postcards, you know, to change your time or anything like that, you know, just be yourself.
D.J. Paris 42:41
We should also talk to us about the importance of brokers. At least here in Illinois, we call them brokers, I’ll just say realtors, because they’re called different different things in different states. But how realtors can get get support from members of you know, whatever communities they identify with. And obviously, you’re a member of Nagal rep, which has, which is the largest organization for you know, an LGBTQ plus realtor community. And obviously, there’s other organizations to support other communities and groups. And I just want to talk about, I’d like to get your thoughts about the importance of getting that that level of support from other like minded, or they’ve been certainly like minded, but people who identify in a certain group and why that’s so helpful.
Khoi Le 43:28
So I do I do a class on tribal marketing, right? And about, you know, identifying your tribe why tribalism is important, and how you can market to these groups and everything like that. It’s people want to feel like they belong somewhere. Okay. And it’s not, I grew up in an era where I was, I was beaten up, you know, they threw rocks at me and my car, they would prank call, etc. And so it’s funny, because just years later, and now we joke No wonder people joke. We joked in office, we’re like, Does this seem weird to you that, like, everyone’s gay now, you know, back in the day, you know, you know, we couldn’t be ourselves, basically. Right. Right. And, and then we realized, I realized that I don’t want to work with everyone. Yeah, I only want to work with people who want to work with me. And if that’s the case, that you know, if a client it doesn’t vibe with my lifestyle, or orientation, I don’t have to work with them. I’m, I’m not desperate. Remember, my I am going to be the first one to close 100 deals, or 1000 deals a year in New Mexico. Does that guy in five years care? If this person is a beggar? Not no, he does not. And I’m going to close that gap. And I’m going to act like have that today. Okay. And so it is very important to get support for whichever community because guess what, you’re not the only person that needs support. Your client needs support, too. I’ve had so many people talk to me, because they know that I’m not going to question their pronouns. I’m not going to miss gender them. And they said, You know what? I don’t want to deal with that. This is who I am. I don’t need people to question to say, Wait, what do you mean, your husband, you know, on title. And I’ve had a case of that happen in in Albuquerque, which is one of the most progressive states in terms of laws for LGBTQ community, the community here, and the title person did not understand that these two women were married. And of course, you know, they, they got married in 2012. Right. And she kept she kept saying, No, we can’t do that we need the husband’s name over and over again. And, and she said, No, there’s you can’t do that. And I had a meeting with the President of the title company here, you know, we did training for that, you know, for that group, you know, don’t want to single anybody out or anything, but it should not be coming up. Right. And so we have to be the first line of defense for our clients here. So not only do we need support from each other, in our groups here, but our clients need advocates to what if, what if that person who was denying that a woman could be married to a woman? Was their realtor that they walked in on an open house? And that’s was their representation? Do you think their experience would have been good? Absolutely not? Do you think they would have gotten fair representation? Probably not. Right, right. And so back, then, you know, when people were discriminated against if your last name was Garcia, or you know, if you had a black sounding name, or nowadays, it’s, you know, okay, these two guys are on on a purchase agreement. You know, so, you know, can, can we send an offer letter, a love letter with these two guys, you know, to this to this family? We don’t know, will that count against us? Right. And so these are still things that I’m advising clients on, if they asked me, you know, about love letters, and everything, I have to tell them, you know, it’s not always that, you know, a person is as open minded, as, you know, working with us or etc. So please consider, you know, your offer still may be discriminated against if they know, your lifestyle, etc. That shouldn’t be the case. Right? And so when people say, oh, you know, gay rights, you know, you guys, you guys can get married now, what more do you want?
D.J. Paris 47:53
It’s over, it’s completely equal. Now. Everything’s equal.
Khoi Le 47:56
Yeah. You know, like, you know, pride flags, sales are down, we’re done. You know, so that’s why people ask the why don’t we have straight pride? You know, why do Why do you guys have gay pride? The fact is, you know, it’s, we’re not done. Right? Yeah, we’re not done fighting for equality for our clients and everything. So it’s very important to identify people that you can talk freely to with these issues. If I came up to a, a colleague, who, let’s say, a straight, who has no experience with, you know, transgender people, can I freely discuss with them, you know, hey, my client likes to be referred to as, as male, and etc, it should be, it should be not a thought it should be just be boom, done. We’re good. You know, but it’s not always the case. So that’s why it’s important to have support, it’s why it’s important to have, you know, a group of people that you can go to that have had similar experiences as you do, that have gotten overcome a lot of things. And like I always say, I don’t want to talk about the speed bumps on their journey. I want to talk about the end, right. But it is important to let others know, hey, you know, this is how I got over that speed bump. Or be aware that there are still speed bumps? That’s a long answer to your question.
D.J. Paris 49:16
It’s, it’s an amazing answer. And it’s absolutely the exact same way I feel so you know, finding your tribe as a realtor. The good news is there’s lots of tribes and there probably is an organization that has members for you know, whatever challenges or maybe not even challenges that you’re facing, but just wanting to communicate with other like minded individuals who can help you when you do find the speed bumps along the way. But also, you know, you know, in this podcast is is hopefully a small version of that because what I’ve learned after all these years of doing it is very rarely have I interviewed anybody on the show, who said You know, it was really easy. I had A whole bunch of friends that were ready to buy and sell homes, the moment I got my license, and I just had to pass the test, and then the floodgates opened up with business. It was it’s almost, or a different version of that is I joined this firm, and they gave me every lead that I ever needed. And I didn’t have to do any real prospecting. I’ve not yet had heard that story, maybe somebody’s has that, that’ll be on our show at some point, but 300 guests, and I haven’t heard it yet. And everybody has speed bumps along the way, whether you know, you’re part of a group that that gets discriminated on, or whether you’re just, you’re maybe not part of a group that deals with a lot of discrimination, what you’re still struggling is finding a tribe of people who can say have been there, I know how to do that. And on our show, we highlight a lot of challenges that people face. But I think that’s so important to reach out to some of these organizations and see if you know, they can be of a benefit to you. And if you can be of benefit to their members. Obviously, you’re you’re part of Nagal reppin, and probably other organizations. And I imagine that just provide some comfort to know that I have a group of people who are having similar experiences to me that I can share with and help them through their journey.
Khoi Le 51:07
Definitely. And it’s, you know, even if you’re in your own city, and you don’t have any resources, you’re the lone realtor that’s in this community, know that we’re out there, where we’re here to help. And if you have any questions, how to navigate things, doesn’t matter. If you’re part of the LGBTQ community, if you’re part of whatever community, I’m always open to talk to people, I give free coaching advice, basically, when people message me, because they asked me things like, you know, you know, how do you start a charity? How do you do this? I’ll just throw it out there. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in my market and my competition, because you aren’t my competition, you can’t compete with me, I want you to win, too. Yeah. And that’s it.
D.J. Paris 51:54
And there’s enough business for everyone. And it is, I always try to remind our listeners, not that they need reminding, but I like to remind our even the agents that our own company, this is it is called a cooperative commission. Compensation as well, you know, to cooperate with each other gets gets the job done. But I would like to wrap up by saying, you know, if there are any buyers, sellers, investors renters in the Albuquerque slash Santa Fe area of New Mexico that is wanting to work with with one of the top agents and teams in the state and the team that is going to get to 1000 1000 transactions a year, what’s the best way they should reach out to you.
Khoi Le 52:35
So I’m always available on my phone number, my number is 505-918-9893. I’m one of the people that will return your calls. You know, it might be a little later in the day, but you know, it’s gonna get done, I am on facebook@facebook.com slash the koi t h e KHOY, on Instagram at the same handle. And of course, Koi at Hunter Chase realty.com. And this is for everyone, not just in, in our market. But if any agent out there has questions or needs help or anything, please reach out. Because if you have that question, somebody else has that question too. And like I said, you know, the more questions we we write down and answer for people, the faster we can progress as an industry as well.
D.J. Paris 53:29
Well, I very much appreciate your generosity in appearing on our show and providing so much really amazing content. There has just been a ton of tips and advice. And I think all of it was just absolutely the same way I feel. So I’m so grateful that you took and I know how busy you are. Because while you might not be at 1000 deals a year yet, I know your phone rang about a about a dozen times just during this hour. And yeah, and koi has a lot of phone calls to return. And I am this is just how busy he is. And this is so impressive to us that that you would take time out of your busy day to do this. So thank you. On behalf of the listeners and the viewers, we appreciate your time and on also behalf of koi and myself, we want to thank our listeners and viewers for continuing to listen and watch and support our little show here. The best way that you can help us grow is by telling a friend just think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing this amazing conversation we just had with koi and send them a link to the show. Easiest way to do that is have send them right over to our website. It’s keeping it real pod.com They can stream every episode we’ve ever done right through the browser there. They don’t need to be a podcast app person. But if they are a podcast person, have them pull up a podcast app on their phone and search for keeping it real and hit the subscribe button. And that quiet thank you so so much for being on the show. This was an amazing conversation I could I could talk to you for another few hours and I know you do not have that much free time so they
Khoi Le 54:55
always keep some time for you. And I just want to throw it out there to it. As I started listening to these, these podcasts and these shows, about top producers and everything, and just you know, keep listening, getting those tips out there implementing one thing at a time to, to iterate your your process until you get it right. Until there’s so many people that want to work with you that you have to hire out, you have to refer and etc. So, you know, just keep it up. You know, it all will work out for you.
D.J. Paris 55:27
A perfect way to end keep it up, do everything that you can and do it daily. And don’t worry too much about the outcome. Because if you just do work and focus on those daily disciplines, like we were saying, you know, 14 calls a day might just net you 100 deals in a year and boy, now you’re making me think about other things I should be doing in my business. So I appreciate the the reminder there. All right, quite well, thank you so much. And we will see unless everybody or everyone will hear us or watch us on our next episode. Thanks coy.
Khoi Le 55:59
All right, talk to you soon. Thank you
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