Welcome to another episode of Coaching Moments With Ryan D’Aprile from D’Aprile Properties!

In this episode Ryan discusses several different issues affecting agents today. First he reveals how to cultivate and deepen client connection through discipline and habit-formation. Next he discusses top strategies of converting prospective clients to active buyers/sellers. Last he advises how agents should stop focusing on selling and start focusing on understanding client needs.

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.

Ryan D'Aprile
d'aprile properties

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
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All right. Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, and I am your guide and host through the show. Today we have our monthly episode, which is called coaching moments with Ryan de April. Now if you’re not familiar with Ryan, let me tell you a little bit about him. Ryan is a progressive thought leader. He’s focused on providing for his agents and staff, his strengths, our motivational skills, coaching style and his dedication to training. Ryan has 13 offices throughout Chicago and also in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan and as hundreds and hundreds of successful brokers at his company. D APR properties is a coaching company with eight strategic coaches who work week in and week out with every agent individually focused on bills, business planning, coaching and accountability. And if you would like to take your career to the next level, or if you’re just getting not getting the attention you need or deserve, check out D APR properties, visit D APR properties.com. Once again, welcome back to the show, Ryan.

Ryan D’Aprile 2:00
Thanks, JJ. Appreciate you having me. Yeah, I

D.J. Paris 2:04
appreciate your all the contributions you make this era, some of our most listened to episodes are your coaching moments. So we really appreciate your help. And yeah, what’s so what’s going on? Right? You know, obviously, right now we’re most of the country is at a stay at home order. Some states have deemed real estate to be essential. Some states have not. So we’re fortunate, at least here in Illinois to be able to practice to some degree, other states aren’t as fortunate currently. But what are you seeing out there? What are you what are you seeing with your agents?

Ryan D’Aprile 2:41
So we’re thankfully seeing a continuance of business. So I mean, there’s clearly been a slowdown, but before we launch, you asked how things are going and I said, really good. And then you said, You were surprised. And I said, Well, relative to the current market, what’s going on, things are actually going really well. And in fact, last week, this past week, we saw quite an uptick. I think there is a lot of demand out there. Clearly, there is not enough inventory. One of our agents just put a home under contract, she was on the market for 48 hours and had nine offers on it. So, you know, business is down because of the shelter in place, and the fear that’s out there, but I think it’s temporary, like anything else, it will lie, it will pass. But recently, in the past week, we’ve seen an uptick. And I think we’ll see that continue, as you know, as the world starts to get a hold of this. And we start to get to hopefully better and better news.

D.J. Paris 3:45
I remember on our last episode, the stay in the stay at home order was was also enacted. And you had said that this, in some ways was similar, but also different from the real estate crash of the late the late zeros from you know, 2008 to 2010. But you had said something very interesting. That was echoed by a someone that I interviewed yesterday from San Jose, California with no connection to you. But he said exactly the same thing that you had said that you had done back in 2008. When the market crashed, you said you doubled your efforts, you doubled your marketing efforts, and it paid dividends and he was saying the exact same thing. So if you don’t mind, I’d love to for our listeners to hear more about, you know, what, what does that look like? What What should agents? Absolutely.

Ryan D’Aprile 4:34
And I really think you know, there’s a book out there as its title is that it’s not what happens to you. It’s what you do about it. Now what happens, sees what you do about it, and I feel it’s really important that we look for the good in life. And when we have situations like these and it seems to happen every 10 years 911 The Great Recession, this pandemic that’s going on. You know if you really pray There’s a life of lifelong learning. And you’re going to get caught up in the moment watching the news and that deer in headlights, but you kind of come back and you dial in. And what’s different for me now in 2020, to 2008 2008, as in my third year in real estate, and I was selling real estate, and I double down my activities in my business, and 2020 is my eighth year of growing our company and running our business. And man, so many good things have come from this that I’ve learned from, you know, from the importance of culture and community and in keeping together and being a beacon of light for your agents, who are essentially a beacon of light for their community and their network. We’re doing the weekly zoom calls, we’re having over 250 participants weekly on it, getting a lot of great feedback, our managing brokers, who are coaches have really rolled up their sleeves with their office managers and are making sure their agents monthly marketing is getting out there. And the agents are staying engaged in their network and in their, in their, in their flow with their, with their network. And some really great best practices are coming out of this. And yeah, I’m certainly we’re gonna see the ripple effect. And we already are after just one month of like real, concentrated Kool Aid, you know, really putting it in there and getting focused on our practices. And, and what we need to doing, we’re already starting to see the results of more business or agents or feel are much busier than the average agent in the marketplace. And the morale is, the morale is really, really good. I mean, again, it can get scary and but the folks that are buying in and participating in the weekly calls, and that are letting manager broker approach, hold them accountable and meet with them on a weekly basis. It’s really, it’s starting to trickle into their life in their personal life and everybody really in a pretty, pretty good state of mind.

D.J. Paris 7:04
I remember reading from a quote. So I’ve actually listened to interviews as well with Coach John Wooden, who is I don’t know if he’s still the most winning coach for NCAA history for men. But I believe he certainly was, and probably still is. And he ended up winning, I think, seven NCAA championships in a row, like, which is just completely unheard of. And then I think he won like nine of 12. Like he’s some incredible statistic. But anyway, the reason I’m bringing him up is he was all about process and discipline and fundamentals. And he he said he and this is his his words, not mine. And it wasn’t metaphor or exaggeration. hyperbole. He legitimately said he never looked at the scoreboard. He said, I just never looked, he goes, we just keep our head down, and we do what we’re doing. And I wonder if you know if that’s really the secret to staying,

Ryan D’Aprile 7:58
you know, it is and success in life and in business is it is a process. They say we’re in sales, I don’t think, you know, sales is an art. I mean, it’s a combination. But really, I don’t feel like we’re in sales, we help people navigate through the marketplace, our biggest value that we bring to the market is emotional intelligence, and helping people through that huge transition in life. But out for a real estate agent, a loan officer or anybody else who is responsible for essentially supporting themselves by generating leads. It is absolutely a process. You’re only as good as your habits and these habits and these daily habits are not for the few they’re for the majority. It just it’s all apparent Are you willing to dedicate, in time block one hour a day and do it five, six days a weak, I’m a I’m a gardener I love I love my plants. I love my flowers and I I cultivate, and I look at my business, my companies, I look at my personal business, I look at my children, I look at my garden, all of its cultivating and, and I try to please love the journey. Embrace the journey. And I right now it’s May, isn’t May, it’s April 30, almost. And it’s almost like tulips are all well. And I plant my tulips in the fall. And I weigh all winter for spring. And the most fun is when they say the little green sprouts. And then the next Ooh, there’s the bulb. Now they’re gorgeous. They’re beautiful. They’re all over the purple and they’re white. But in the back of my house, I have about 100 sunflowers planted and have more fun with the little green sprouts that come through the dirt. I’m enjoying the beauty of my tulips, right and my rhododendrons and what I’m excited for my Azaleas are about the top. What am I talking about people and what the hell is he talking about? It’s cultivating and it’s enjoying the process and the journey. So if you bring it back to what we do for living, you know, I really would challenge anybody to look at their business. And are they truly getting the most pleasure at the closing table? When they’re getting the check? Or are they really they stop and they reflect, and they take a moment to look back at the process from soup to nuts, A to Z wherever you started? And did you enjoy the journey, and eventually did, and it has its ups and it hasn’t done and it’s, it’s difficult living in the moment, I completely understand. Because when you have those downs, they’re hard. But if you could step up, step back. And as Deepak Chopra says, become a witness to your life, and become a witness to your life and your practices and, and start to watch, you know what you’re doing and enjoy. Enjoy that cultivation process. I have no idea how we went down this this road.

D.J. Paris 10:47
Nobody but you’re right. It is about habits. It is about discipline. And it is about you know, it’s funny. It’s like, you’ve always said this in previous episodes. And I think it’s a really important concept to circle back to, which is there’s freedom in discipline, the the irony of, yeah, there’s some short term pain, but you’re going to actually have more freedom in your life by having structure. It’s sort of just, you know, absolutely,

Ryan D’Aprile 11:15
yeah, that and that’s what I love. That’s what I love about what I do. I’m a coach, right, we have a coaching company, and working with so many individuals in our office, our agents, and really kind of having these different breakthroughs. And one of them is, is getting people to stop fearing success. Because they think once you become successful, I’m have less time for this. And we have less time for that. And folks, it’s not true. You know, I have I have 400 plus people at my organization from a real estate company, a mortgage company, a title company, I’m a wife and three daughters, I coached the basketball team, I was able to do all these things in success did not get in the way. But I had to have discipline, I had to have processes. You know, it’s exhausting working in your business everyday, you got to take time to work on it. And that’s the cultivating and, and a couple of things I want to talk about in our in coaching moments today for some takeaways for our listeners, DJ is one, the cultivating of the business which I just kind of covered. Two, I want to talk about converting, I think one of the things that we need to speak with speak to our agents or listeners here is, you know, you have you have your network or your lead source, I prefer the network lead source, but there’s many others, they move into prospects. And then they move to active clients, and then they move to sales. But moving on from prospects to actors. How do you convert a cover that then I think to wrap up is let’s talk about, you know, stop selling, and start understanding your client, being a buyer seller understand their why. And working with so many agents, they they come to me and they look for advice on a buyer consultation or listing consultation that they’re going on. And it always usually starts with them. And what are they going to say? And I said, Stop, don’t make it about you. It’s not you’re a participant on their journey. It’s about them. And you need to learn how to ask why questions. And why that is so important is through out the journey of a buyer or seller’s transaction. They’re going to come up the roadblocks and a lot of those roadblocks are themselves. And you have to go back to their why and to help them see why they started on this and help them gather way they will come to the decision that you know they should make. But remember, you know, that’s why we add the value or the third party we’re not so emotionally attached to it. And when emotions are high. Logic is low. So we gotta go back to that way. So let’s talk about let’s talk about converting. Is that okay with you?

D.J. Paris 14:03
Perfect. So we’re talking about converting prospects to, to customer?

Ryan D’Aprile 14:10
Yeah, exactly. A prospect to an active client. Right. And just some bullet points that I have here that I wrote down. One. First, you should assume that you are their real estate agent and follow up with action. You don’t have to wait for permission all the time. People like to be led. Okay. And one of the things that I like to say is get over the imposter syndrome, right? Get over the imposter syndrome. And that’s self imposed. And that’s these limiting beliefs that we all have. And you have to understand people have a need out there. You’re a professional, you went to school, you got your license, you go to continued education. to go into the office on a weekly basis, you go to office meetings, you’ll learn best practices, you’re learning at the statistics, what’s going on, you are the experts. And it’s, I equate to like going to a doctor’s office and a doctor hesitating, when you walk in, say, may I would you mind if I took your blood pressure, you’d be freaked out. And you have to you what you have to look at, when you have somebody who’s a prospect. And again, a prospect, or client is that a buyer that’s in your car driving around, it’s not a it’s not listening, it’s active listening, actively listening, you have to take out that that imposter syndrome and which is self imposed. You have to speak and statements, not questions. And then of course, you have to look at the different categories of the lead sources, which will direct you on how you act with them. So let me elaborate on that a little bit. Okay,

D.J. Paris 15:56
sure. I’m just gonna back up just one pause for just a sec. Because in Ryan’s about to say a lot of really, really great things about about how to prepare. But I will, and I want to add to that, just briefly, is to say, you know, if someone if you’re newer to the industry, if you’re not as experienced, and your client asks you a question where you don’t have the answer, right, front and center, tell the truth. Say, you know, that’s a great question. Let me get right back to you with an answer on that. And most people understand that you’re not going to have every answer. So this imposter syndrome Ryan talking about is really, really important. Don’t be afraid to say to the client, that’s an amazing question. I mean, happens to me all the time. I had somebody I’ve been doing this 10 years, somebody I was trying to recruit somebody for our firm yesterday. And they asked to come or a commercial transaction question. I said, to be honest, I really don’t know. But I will get back right back to you with the answer. Give me 30 minutes. And they were like, awesome. That’s perfect. So yeah, but if I if I would have, if I would have, you know, answered it differently, or hemmed and hawed, they probably wouldn’t have thought, it’s highly of me. So I always say, Don’t be afraid of being an imposter, you can always tell the truth to always tell the truth.

Ryan D’Aprile 17:13
Absolutely. You know, I remember it for our listeners out there be real estate agents or loan officers. A sale is a byproduct of a relationship. Yes, that’s what it comes, you don’t sell homes, you never have, you never will. Right. You add a ton of value to the marketplace. And that’s emotional intelligence. It’s understanding what’s going on how to refocus people that are buyer’s or seller’s throughout the process, the focus on the goal and their Why buy but you know, in the beginning process of this is you have to focus on the relationship, and then knowing what their Why is. And then there’s a point where you have to get out of your own way. And you have to have a belief system in yourself. And you have to understand that you are the experts. And you got to start speaking in statements. Yes. And that questions? Yes. You know, if you speak in questions, and you ask, Would you like me to send you this? Would you like to do this? Would you like me to give you would you like me to come by and give you a an idea or value of your home? You could be scaring them, because they don’t know what comes first, right? People want to be led. Yes, you have to lead. So DJ, you are considering selling your home. You know, DJ, that sounds great. Listen, I want to come by next week, I want to just take a look at your home, there’s a lot of steps and going over, there’s a lot going involved in selling your home, I don’t want you to think about it, I got it all covered. But I need to come by one, take a look at home, have a cup of coffee, give you some ideas. And I’ll show you what the next steps are after that. That’s just one example of how I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. And what the happens to do is I puts me in the lead position. And they come to us because they want us to lead.

D.J. Paris 19:14
And it also the other thing it does, and I want to make a point because I we do this in our recruiting calls. So so, you know, I recruit realtors to work at our firm. And one of the shifts I’ve been doing this 10 years, when I first started, this was my own ignorance. I would say, Hey, would you like to learn more about our firm? You know, I would give a little pitch and you know, maybe they’d say yes, most time they go, no. Then we changed it. And it was a small change. But it’s really what Ryan just said. And now what we say is to say hey, if you’re ever interested in looking at another firm, we’d be honored to talk to you that went from a question to a statement. And it goes back to that, you know, if you’re doing it right, you don’t have to ask for the sale. And we just said hey, we would love to talk to you if you’re if you’re interested in Let us know. And we checked. And that improved our, our these phone call responses by like, we have twice as many people interested from that simple switch from asking a question to where it really puts the person on the spot. And maybe they’re not ready to make that that commitment. And also, they might have resistance towards it. Now we just say, Hey, if you’re interested, let us know. And we just pause, and we wait for them to respond. So it’s kind of similar to what you’d said, it’s

Ryan D’Aprile 20:29
a great point. So when we have somebody that’s in our prospect category, that we want to move to active. What I mean by that is, when they are ready, you know that they are going to use you. Yeah, and so again, we don’t sell we don’t force we swim downstream. But you have to understand what your lead sources, all this. All these, these definitions, and these, these are these terms that I’ve been using, they’re very important, because one of the things that we use at our company is called a dashboard, something we built, and it gives you control and it gives you visibility. And really, most CRMs will have this ours is customized to more of our language and how we flow. But you got to know your lead source, because you have to work with everybody differently. And let me tell you why. So if I’m going to convert somebody from a prospect to an active, and they’re an open house lead, okay, that’s going to be different than their lead from my network, right would be different if their lead from my referral from my network. So if let’s talk about open house, wait. So agents out there, you said an open house. And you know, a lot of agents tend to sit at their open houses over and over again, I do encourage agents to kind of get out of the practice and maybe have other agents that your open house, they’re gonna get more unbiased feedback, they get to you that you could relate to your client. But it also puts you in the state of mind that when you are hosting somebody else’s open house, you’re not so focused on selling that house you’re in, but creating relationship with a potential buyer that walks in. And when you are working with an open house lead, and that conversion that I’m talking about, I think first thing you need to focus on, is that relationship. Where are you from DJ, and let you speak and you’re gonna ask her? Where are you from? It’s one of my favorite things to open up with. Because you may tell me physically where you live, right? You may tell me where you grew up. You may tell me where you went to school, you may tell me where you work, I have no idea. And then the conversations that could choose your own adventure. But the questions I’m asking are always about you. Right? And there’s this eve Have you heard of Ford, the acronym Ford know that stands for. So for the stands for Family, Occupation, Recreation, and dreams of over dreams in a second because that can be confusing. But these are things people want to talk about, about them. Your job in the lead development, as a real estate professional, or a loan or loan officer, the businesses that I run, and then I coach, and your job is to create relationships. If you want to create a relationship with DJ, if I want a relationship with you, I’m going to talk about you. And I’m gonna ask questions regarding family, or your occupation, or what you’d like to do, or dreams. What’s dreams. So what do you plan once the shelter in place is left? It’s dreams, music future type questions? What are you gonna do for spring break? What do you plan for the summer? And that’s right, and then you can go on and on and on. We’re talking about converting a prospect to inactive clients. So the first thing you have to do is you’ve got to build trust. And if you want to build trust is give that individual that you’re speaking to significance, and learn about them. And that’s about talking about the why. Now, I’m giving some examples. We’re on a podcast, it’s Facebook Live. It’s unique to me. I’m getting used to this so and Ryan,

D.J. Paris 24:18
by the way, is normally in front of a whiteboard, and he’s scribbling furiously, and he’s not able to do that right now. And I know that stuff, if you if you’re watching this, you know Ryan, normally we have to have a camera following him. So I noticed this isn’t as comfortable for you is because you’d normally in we should mention before you start what exactly what Ryan does for his agents because this is really unique and we have 44,000 Real estate agents in Chicago. That is a significant number of agents. And Ryan does something that virtually no other no other broker owner does, where he travels from office to office. He’s got 13 offices, and he literally has whiteboards in every office and he coaches every single he coaches his coaches he can Just the agents. And he runs around and this is his life. This is what he does. So sorry, we don’t have a whiteboard for you, but

Ryan D’Aprile 25:07
that’s okay. And it’s uh, you know, it’s the energy, right. And there’s usually the classroom people and I could we could dialogue back and forth. So and then I’m trying to, you know, for brevity, I’m trying to keep the stand. So I don’t want to lose the listeners or poor listeners, but coming back, you know, to this, right, it’s, I built a report with you. Okay, listen, real estate agents, this is particular Illinois, when we have the private network and whatnot, then you have to practice it understand techniques, because when you meet somebody in an open house, you know, that they’re out looking, they might not be looking to buy for the next four months, who cares? You know, you’ve just identified somebody who’s in the marketplace, man, take time to build relationship with them. And then please, take the home buying process as fun, you know, pay attention to your vernacular and, and make it exciting to them. That might be different for seller. And we’ll be going to that maybe in another episode, because everyone for four hours on this, but I’m, after I build the trust with you, okay. And I’m hosting an open house, okay. I’m going to want to do all the few homes that are on the private network. Prior to that open houses prior proper planning, I want to plan plan properly going that open house. So after I build the report with you, and I find out what you’re looking at, and I mean, I’d say a $500,000 home, but you’re looking for a $300,000 home, okay, I might not have it memorized. But it was just an example. But I might say, you know, DJ, there’s home on four or five, six, Apple Street, and 1321 Main Street, not yet on the market, you should go drive paths, and take a look. And then I’ll say and listen, you know, if you want. Now you gotta know your audience, right? So maybe you’re my I’m in the community, and DJ, you’re new to this community. Make it fun, hey, DJ, if you ever want, I’d be happy to drive you around the town and show you where the different schools are, where the downtown is, where the dog park is. And then they’re gonna say, I don’t want to bother you, I don’t want to waste your time, you have to come back with your first language, which is your energy. And you’ll say no, this is fun. This is I love to do this. If you want, I would be happy to do it if you don’t want to. And then we send them a community tour. We send them bits of information to them, after we met with them. But you know, in the time, the 10 minutes, that 30 minutes we spend together 80% of it on that report, then the next 20% of it, yes. But yeah, the next 20% of it is going to be what are you looking for, you know what, there is a couple homes they know, and go over and look at this and be and be like, you know, I work at this organization. But I’m friends with so many agents in this community, if you want a shoot an email, could see what else is coming on, and keep you up to date of what will be out there and what might be coming. And then after that, I’m going to stay in touch with you with a text message or an email, we could get a conversation as to how to get that stuff. And there’s techniques to do it. And when I was selling, and I was doing this, I mean, eight out of 10 times, you end up working with me. And through my closest friends today. And the number one focuses was on them the report and then coming off with my love and my energy for the business, ensuring that people buy homes by communities. They’re buying towns or by neighborhoods, they’re buying, you know, a lifestyle and they’re buying a future that they’re looking into, really embrace that and ask to be a part of that journey and lead them lead them and say, Hey, you’d like to pick me up, we’ll go get a cup of coffee. Take you 20 minutes, the happy show you around. No strings attached. By the way, I don’t see no strings attached. I don’t like sales type shirt type of cliches. But I imply it if that makes any sense.

D.J. Paris 29:10
Yeah, I want to tack on a few just really quick techniques, because you said a lot just now and and one of the things that you said quickly and I want to circle back to is this idea of when you’re doing an open house to know not only the neighborhood know what all the homes on the MLS are that are comparable, that clients who are going to walk in are prospective clients, you know, would probably want to know about and then also as Ryan said this was big and I don’t know that every every MLS in the country has this but you should look to see is called a private listing network and Ryan very quickly said you should be checking the private listing that work to see if there’s any other available units because those those properties tend not to stream out to Zillow. Redfin, a lot of the the consumer facing websites So what Ryan’s saying is go there and say, Oh, by the way, there’s another property that hasn’t yet hit the MLS, I can shoot it over to you, I’d really like you to Yes.

Ryan D’Aprile 30:09
And agents will want you to listen too closely here. And the point of contention I have with the association is what they essentially did is they, they sold our data to the Zillow so the world who are then selling it back to us, but God forbid you send a postcard with another agents information, you’re in violation of the rules. I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole. But I want you to understand with what DJ is talking about the PLN there’s a proper way to send properties that are on the PLN to people that you meet from these lead sources. And listen closely, if not through an automated search on the MLS, right? It’s through a text message. It’s through an email. And you’re saying, Hey, I know of a property. It’s four bedrooms, it’s five bathrooms and making this stuff up, right? It’s through budget, it’s four bedrooms, two bathrooms, it’s in that price point. The address is 456 Main Street, one dry path, you want to get in, let me know, what am I saying? I’m saying not the DJ and open house, and then go log in the MLS and put DJ in a automated search. Anybody could do that you’re in the 80% if you’re doing that,

D.J. Paris 31:18
and they could do it themselves, too. They don’t yeah, for that,

Ryan D’Aprile 31:21
right. Right. Now you got to get creative. You got it, you know, you got to become that gardener, you know, grab your miracle girl clip and prune and take care of that lead and cultivate it and and really step back and witness your activities and put yourself in their shoes. Like how would you want to be led? Yes. How would you want to be led to the process?

D.J. Paris 31:42
You know, it’s funny I am I’m going to give you an example of when I used to, I get all my clothing from basically one place but before before then I used to go to Banana Republic and the reason I like banana republic now but what I liked about them was their salespeople were quite good as I would walk into the store. And uh, you know, some of their sales people, of course are better than others. But they’re, they used to have an office or a, they had a store here in Lincoln Park that’s no longer there. But I would walk in, and they would say, Hey, I Okay, looking at my coloring and my skin and my hair and whatever my height, whatever my style, they would say, What do you want? What do you what are you looking for? And I would say well, I’m looking for X, Y or Z. And they would say, okay, based on your skin, tone your hair, you really should be wearing these colors and stripes but not you know, vertical but not horizontal, whatever, and different types of clothing. And then then they would go give me a few minutes, I’m going to find a few things for you. And I would be walking around. Yeah. And they would come back to me at like a conceptual would. And they established rapport. They asked what I wanted. And they said Hang on, I’m gonna let me think about it for a few minutes and they would come back and it was one of the best shopping experiences and that’s why I was so loyal to Amanda Republic. I still am I love banana republic. But the point is, is I went that’s a good and I don’t even want to say the word salesperson because they’re not a salesperson. I bought the clothes because they

Ryan D’Aprile 33:06
lead they they lead you and that’s what people want. They don’t want decisions you guys so like listen put into an automated searches blast and what’s in the MLS, you’re not adding any value. So go find a couple of houses. And here’s the next one that people talk about is well, they checked No. on everything. I sent them cool to get them out to one or two properties and three or four homes that they checked no on that you think like, show it to them, surprise them say hey, I got to work. Let’s just go look at this. Here we times that happened with it. Oh my god, I love this home. And yes, you check no on it. I didn’t I don’t say that. There’s no point. But you as real estate professionals you have to understand, let you know like you got to take control. Go back to the dressing room, like do you just said, go grab some items and say, let’s try this. And let’s try that and speak in these statements, not questions. And lead. People want to be led.

D.J. Paris 34:06
People want to be led by by consultants. Right. So I’ve always said, you know, it’s a shame that that we’re called salespeople, because I don’t I don’t think anyone who’s successful in real estate would probably refer. I mean, they might say they’re in sales, but they’re really a consultant, their job is to find out what what the client needs, and then to authentically give them solutions. And yeah,

Ryan D’Aprile 34:28
I mean, the sales made when they hire you know, that’s the only time you were in sales. And that’s simple, just a byproduct of being in flow with your network and create relationships, like you are in the friends making business. And it’s not it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and so on and so forth. So there was something else DJ wanted to cover, but it just slipped my mind.

D.J. Paris 34:50
You were talking about today’s market, so

Ryan D’Aprile 34:54
yes, well yes. Can I can I can I can I lead here? Okay, cool. Well, you Yeah, so Converting Prospects to act as we just went over open houses. So now let’s talk about network. lead source. Okay. So DJ you, I didn’t meet you an open house, you’re somebody in my network. And I know you, I know what’s going on, because I’m good daily habits. It’s my job to know who you are, and work with you. And by chance at a basketball game, or a soccer game or a cocktail party, you say, you know, yeah, you know, thinking about buying a home next year, you wouldn’t come out and say it, but you’d say little cues. This is totally different. Because I have no relationship with you, because you’re from my network. So I’m going to handle that I’m going to work different. And I’m going to not ask them when I tell DJ, that’s awesome. I can’t wait to work with you. What I’m going to do is start sending you some properties. And listen, I know you know, you’re not ready eight months from now. But eight months goes like this. And this is so much fun. What do you do next Saturday or next Sunday? I need you to give me an hour, one of those days, grab a cup of coffee. Let’s go out. It’s a lot of fun. Let’s go see what’s out there. I didn’t ask if I could be your agent. Right? I didn’t go on a buyer consultation with you. I didn’t put myself into an interview. I grabbed you. I you know, virtually put you in the car. And we just went and started the process.

D.J. Paris 36:29
And even if I had said, Hey, Ryan, I’m busy, Ryan would have gone okay, no problem, what about next week, and I really want to get you out there we got us, we really should start this process.

Ryan D’Aprile 36:39
100% don’t feel like an impostor. That’s your job. Because here’s the thing. TJ wants to buy a home, he’s talking to me about it. Right? And I’m bringing it on. So I’m going to lead, I’m going to be confident, your confidence is incredibly important to your success. And we’re gonna go out and we’re going to enjoy the experience, you need to be the curator of the experience, we live life for experiences. So think about the experience, you know, in whatever you’re good on that everyone go down that rabbit hole, but the cleanliness of the car and everything else you do. But take control now. Same exact thing. But DJ, you want to sell your home. Right, so now you’re listening. Same that same exact step, DJ, that’s awesome. I’m gonna shoot some data, what’s going on in the marketplace, we like to do. We like to not talk about comps in the beginning. By the way, when we are working with our agents, we’d like to look at some statistical data and really separate ourselves marketing. You know, we don’t even go down the rabbit hole of marketing because in today’s day and age, you know, you could be a one man shop put on the internet, your homes all over the world is the marketing is it’s articulating your value. And it’s really understanding like the case, Shiller, the indices talking about real estate from a national level, bring it down regional here in Chicagoland or southern Wisconsin, or Northwest Indiana, or, and then then bring it down locally, then this time, I was going to a local community talking about supply and demand and pricing of all the homes. And then let’s get into the comps. We could talk about that. But, but But first, I’m at a cocktail party, and you’re talking about potentially selling your home, say DJ, that’s awesome. I’m sending you some information tomorrow, what’s going on the marketplace? And I want to go over your house next two, three weeks. And you might say, well, you know, we’re not looking for the next year. And I’m gonna say that’s okay. You know what, I still want to get over, I want to take a look. Hey, you know what, DJ, let me ask you a question. What if somebody came to me and said they want to buy your home, you never had to go on the market. We never had a list that and I had an easy, smooth transaction, on your terms in your conditions. And you might say, well, that’d be perfect. Okay, cool. Then I use your home. I’m a real estate agent. I work in an office with hundreds of Agents, I’m friends with the 1000s of agents in this community. Let me come over and by the way over the next year, let me give you advice on what we need to do. And by the way, again, here I’m speaking as a leader, okay? I handle it for you. You can live your life you can be you know, be the attorney that you are, or be The Stay At Home father that you are or be the accountant do what you do focus on your family. I got this, I’m gonna take control. And so there’s so many nuances that can that can dive into. But what I want our listeners to understand is when I’m working with the network connection, and I’ve done my job of creating relationships with people, my network, and they bring that up to me. I’m not asking you to be their agent. I’m, I am the agent. I’m your agent, and I’m going to take control the process.

D.J. Paris 39:48
Yeah, though, they’ll tell you if they’re not interested. Of course. You know, it’s so funny. This is exactly

Ryan D’Aprile 39:53
why most won’t. Sorry. You’re right. I really want to help you guys. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, most of you like braces. And it’s good. Thank you, TJ for saying that, because that’s true, you might get one out of 20 that will say no, but most Won’t we don’t appreciate.

D.J. Paris 40:10
It’s the same reason why I love personal trainers, which right now is a little bit more challenging to work with, like 10 pounds, I’m here. I’ve gotten more than that. But I love a personal trainer, I once went, when I was hiring a personal trainer years ago. And he went, he said, Well, what are your goals? I said, Look, I only have one goal, because some people come in and they want to lose a certain amount of weight, or they want to gain a certain amount of muscle, or maybe endurance or whatever. I said, I only have one goal. I said, I just want you to put me to work, and do whatever you do, you’re the expert, just tell me what to do. And don’t let me quit. And, and that is I think a lot of times how people just want it. If you’ve established rapport, if you’ve established that you’re the expert, and you know, and they believe and trust in you. You have to, you know, congruently tell them what they need to hear. And impostor syndrome should should not prohibit you from doing that. This is your job, you were to say, just like Ryan was saying, in a very assertive but respectful way, say, Okay, we’re doing this now, this is what we have to do now. And you say it in a kind way. But boy, I respond as somebody who, who I just want professionals in my life, I want my insurance agent to call me and go, Hey, by the way, I noticed this thing and one of your policies, I’m gonna switch you over to this other thing, because it’s better and cheaper, or it’s got more coverage. I want those kinds of phone calls you I need you to sign this because it’s actually better for you. I want my financial adviser to call me and say, Hey, I noticed you’re a little overweight in stocks and equities. But your bonds are a little underweight. And we need to evaluate that I want somebody I want those people in my life. And I think most people want that, too. So this is what they want, you know, this is what you can do as a real estate professional.

Ryan D’Aprile 41:59
Right? Absolutely. So let’s go on to the last topic, okay, wrap it up for the listeners for sure. And this is you can converted the individual, they’re an active client, right? And in the process. This is where we tell people you know, to stop selling, and ask why, and figure out what it is because it’s incredibly important to know, their why because in negotiations, or whatnot, they’re going to bring up things that have nothing to do with why they’re selling. And if you bring it back to the why, or why they’re buying, you’re not going to be running into a brick wall over and over again. And you DJ, if you’re the buyer, you are the seller, by me bringing up your wine talking through you through it with you, you’re going to end up getting out of your own way. And so what am I talking about? I just give you a couple of examples. I’m just making this up on the spot here. Let’s see. So, DJ, why you are selling your home? Is because you want a bigger home. Why do you want a bigger home? Right? Yeah, right the last year.

D.J. Paris 43:00
Right now there’s a lot of people being included. And this is a real example where I’m feeling a little the four walls I live in are getting a little feeling a little cramped. So I’m looking to upsize it right now of course rates are very attractive for you know, upgrading. So I actually am looking to, to sell and buy.

Ryan D’Aprile 43:22
Right, so I’m gonna come up with a different number. Because what I’m going to do with you what I would do with you right now is I drill down more sure I saw rates are low and you want a bigger home, I still have more to deal with. Yeah, right? Because there’s that now let me give you an example. So I know one that he used. So you want a bigger home. And why? Well because you know you’re married. And you have two kids, right? Or if you’re in the city Chicago says all time you might have one kid, you live in a one bedroom condo, you’re not in a rush. Right? You have your second on the way, right and so there’s so many different things or for you DJ you know you want to move right? You’re single you live in a in a condo and rates are low. I’m ready to figure out more What the Why is. You know, how long have you lived there for DJ? Two years? Okay, great. Do you are you seriously think about?

D.J. Paris 44:16
Yeah, I mean, right now I’m in I’m in our office and Linkin Park, but I’m feeling a little a little claustrophobic in my place. I’d like to

Unknown Speaker 44:24
so is it small?

D.J. Paris 44:25
It’s eight. It’s yeah, it’s a one bedroom. It’s 850 square feet.

Ryan D’Aprile 44:31
Anything else are you looking for? Like what do you want to get out of a movie?

D.J. Paris 44:34
I love a west facing view. Because I like to see the sunset. It sounds silly, but it’s important to me. I like to be up high. I like being in high rises. And I would like to add a second bedroom for visitors.

Ryan D’Aprile 44:50
Why do you want a second bedroom for visitors?

D.J. Paris 44:51
Well, my parents live three hours away in Peoria, but they’re from Chicago. So they’re up here all the time. Their businesses are up here. And I don’t like sleep. Find the air mattress and giving them the bed every time. So I’d like more space.

Ryan D’Aprile 45:04
Yeah. Holiday pants.

D.J. Paris 45:07
Early 70s 70s. Okay,

Ryan D’Aprile 45:10
cool. And you like the West sunset? I do. What do you see now?

D.J. Paris 45:14
So yeah, face west, I get to see the Chicago River. It’s right outside my place when I’m very fortunate to have that. So I like being I’ve also been on the east side of the city curfew is

Ryan D’Aprile 45:26
not an issue. No. Okay, so you you’re happy with your, you’re happy with your issue. So you guys, I want you understand what I’m finding out here. So I’m finding his wife, but I’m also going to go and find out what his pain is. And I haven’t found out his pain just yet. I think his pain is slipping in the air mattress when his parents come. That’s and yeah, yeah, and the other thing I want to talk to you eventually is understanding that, um, you know, we tend to overvalue our money and undervalue our time. Yeah. And our parents are in their 70s. And, you know, money comes and goes, but when five years goes from now, you can’t get that time back, right. And so one of the things is you might be wanting to use, you might be wanting more time with mom and dad, and enjoying it. And, okay, and you can’t get that time on mom and dad and your one bedroom, 800 square foot apartment, and you have the ability to get that two bedroom, you’re paying isn’t your Westview because you got to do the Chicago River. But your pain might be, there’s gonna come a time when I’m gonna get can’t come see me. Right? And this is stuff that I’m going to No, I’m not going to repeat this with you. Right now. I’m going to notate it, right. And so many real estate agents are so focused on while I’m with this company, we got this market share, and I got this marketing, I got that it’s not about you. It’s understanding who your client is, what do they want? And then hey, let’s go out DJ, let’s look through this. And then when DJ, when you’re the deer in the headlights, because of all these different things that are flying at you, your iPhone, buddy, I’m your beacon of light. I’m your emotional intelligence. And we’re saying, well remember this, is this still important for you? Is this what you need to do, and it helps you, it helps you cross the bridge. And you’re the one who’s crossed the bridge, not me, I just have pointed out what your why is and then what your pain points are. And this is something that you could practice on with your friends, I’m not talking about making a sales practice is like, actually just get into a conversation with a friend or your child and talk about them about something they’re looking to do. And ask them why don’t say, Well, I’m practicing my real estate career. And this is why I wanted to just really try to add value to somebody’s life, it has nothing to do with real estate, and get in the habit of asking why. And start consulting with people on other things that they want to do, and be that voice. It’s a wonderful skill set and a gift that you could give to your friends and your family. But it’s something that comes with time and practice guide DJ, I want to talk to you more about why you want to move and in concert with you and go through that. But this is where, you know, in wrapping up the call for everybody is, you know, you know, stop selling yourself. Right and, and don’t worry about all this other chatter that’s out there in these trends. And this net, it’s not about you, it’s not about me, it’s not about my company said about your company, it’s about your client, it’s about them, and be that servant leader, be that person who is interested in the other individuals and then you add your your value and age, it will flow naturally for you.

D.J. Paris 48:40
Yeah, the more information you have about what your clients want, what their musts, their shoulds, and they’re not importance, and their why knowing all of those things is so critical. Otherwise, you’re throwing Dart darts in the dark, right? You need to know exactly what people want, and why they want it. And then that and really, it’s funny. It’s not as commonly done, successful agents do it and not as successful agents don’t. And if you have that information, and you spend the time to really connect and find out what the client is looking for, and why you will be so incredibly successful, because you’ll know you’ll they’re giving you the exact formula for you to be able to find them the property they want.

Ryan D’Aprile 49:32
Yeah, it’s easy way. It’s easy way. Your egos not your Neagle, you know, let it go. It’s not about you. It’s about the consumer, the client you’re serving, you know, dig in and figure out about them. Okay, so I think that’s a good wrap on the call. I hope it is I think I’m trying to keep it in that content series here. For your listeners.

D.J. Paris 49:54
I want our listeners also who are in the Chicagoland area to know that what I do for a living because this is this I will give some context to what I’m about to say is I spent 100% of my time recruiting for the company I work for, but I’m putting that aside in the moment because if you are looking to switch firms, if you’re a broker in the Chicagoland area, the suburbs, the city, or you’re in Michigan and Northwest Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, and you’re looking for that one on one coaching experience, and maybe you’re just looking to see what other firms offer, please take a look at depot properties. Ryan has not asked me to do this plug for him, but I’m going to do it because I’m such a big fan of him and his company. So please go to D APR. properties.com Reach out see what they offer. They have a full marketing and coaching solution. It’s incredibly unique. I, I recruit agents from all firms, you know who I don’t ever recruit agents from Ryan’s company, because you must be doing something right because nobody ever leaves. So that is, that is my biggest, highest possible recommendation for anyone listening who wants to just see what other opportunities exist, reach out to D APR properties and see what they if it’s a good fit. I’m a huge fan. And we’re so honored Ryan to have you on the show. Before making your welcome. Before we wrap up, I want to say two quick things. One is ways our listeners can help us so we’re going to ask you for two quick favors. They’re pretty painless, but one is to please tell a friend. This is a wonderful coaching session we just did with Ryan, please think of one other real estate professional or a loan officer or you know, anyone in sales I could benefit from hearing from these great strategies Ryan just shared and please pass the podcast over you can send them directly to our website which is keeping it real pod.com Or just have them pull up any podcast app search for keeping it real world will show up. The second thing is please follow us on Facebook you can find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod why? Well, number one we broadcast these episodes live so right now if you’re listening to this, we already broadcast the video portion while we recorded it on Facebook so you can watch these episodes before we actually finish them. But also every single day we find an article online written somewhere designed to help you grow your business and we share it with you. So we’re all the whole intention of this podcast is to help learn from the best and people like Ryan come on every single month we’re so honored to share his strategies and Ryan thanks again wonderful episode.

Ryan D’Aprile 52:24
We will see oh DJ appreciate it.

D.J. Paris 52:26
Yeah, we will see everybody next month. Or and with Ryan again and hope every hope all your agents are staying safe and healthy and and family and friends too.

Ryan D’Aprile 52:41
Thanks, Ryan. Thank you

Welcome to another episode of Coaching Moments With Ryan D’Aprile from D’Aprile Properties!

In this episode Ryan discusses going through the housing market crash of 2009 and what he did then to keep focused on his business goals. He then discusses the importance of attitudes, beliefs and action and how mindset is the starting point for everything. If you’re struggling with knowing how to stay busy while working from home, or looking to build some better habits, this is the episode for you!

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.

Ryan D'Aprile
d'aprile properties

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by gogos bootcamp Are you a real estate agent looking for the best social media training program on the planet? Gogo Beth key is considered the top Instagram Realtor in the country. And her step by step training program will take your social media game to the next level. She’s so confident there’s a 30 day money back guarantee so you have nothing to lose. Keeping it real listeners receive a special discount so please visit Gogo podcast.com That’s Gee oh gee Oh podcast.com for your special discount and now on with the show

Alright, welcome to the keeping it real podcast. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host as always through the show and today is our monthly coaching moments episode with Ryan de Abril. Now, if you’re not familiar yet with Ryan, by the way, this is our first video podcast, you might still just be listening to the audio, but you also could be watching it live on Facebook or on YouTube. But Ryan, if you’re not familiar, is a progressive thought leader focused on providing for his agents and staff. His strengths are his motivational skills, his coaching style, and his dedication to training. Ryan has 14 offices with deep real properties throughout Chicagoland. Also in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan, and hundreds and hundreds of brokers and top producers. The appeal properties is a coaching company with eight strategic coaches who work week in and week out with every agent individually focusing on business planning, coaching and accountability. If you’d like to take your real estate career to the next level, or if you’re just not getting the attention you need or deserve, check out deep real properties visit deep real properties.com Welcome once again, Ryan. Appreciate it. Yeah, it’s the first time we’re actually well looking at each other while doing this. It’s it’s Yeah, yeah, it’s I like it. Because I know you’re

Ryan D’Aprile 2:13
going to Well, it’s going to make me have to sit down I’m not Yeah, you’re going to be hard. I’m gonna get through it.

D.J. Paris 2:22
Yeah, well, let’s talk about getting through it. Right this that’s a that’s a good segue and share what’s going on right now and and how you know, our your bro, what are you telling your, your realtors to do in these uncertain times?

Ryan D’Aprile 2:37
It’s very interesting times. I was having a conversation last night with somebody and comparing it to different times that are going on in our lives in the past, you know, 20 years just thinking about the business and somebody was relating this to 2008. Yeah, and one of the things that I’m going to talk to you about and our audience here is my experience with the great recession. And the things that I did for that to be essentially a catalyst in my career. And I and how I got through and how I actually succeeded, thrived in that marketplace. But this isn’t what happened in the Great Recession. What this is, is similar to 911. Okay, this is a this is something that is says my internet connection is unstable. Can you see me so?

D.J. Paris 3:24
Yep, yep, I can’t see you. It is it is a slower connection, but you seem to be fine. You’re coming through just fine.

Ryan D’Aprile 3:30
And I’m just going to check if I’m still on the right one. Okay. So, yeah, this is, you know, this will pass. Um, but it’s interesting, but I relate this more to like, what happened in 11 different version of what, what the fallout is to come with the economy? It’s, it’s not, you know, it’s not the financial markets, or I shouldn’t say, you know, the stability of our economy. It’s, you know, it’s a crisis.

D.J. Paris 4:01
It is agreed. And a lot of people are staying home a lot of uncertainty in not only the stock market, but the economy in general, obviously, jobs in particular around hospitality food service.

Ryan D’Aprile 4:16
Yeah, like they call that’s the real economy, right? The stock market is a disaster. But the real economy is, is going to have, it’s going to have a huge effect on the real economy, but we’re gonna get through it. We’re gonna get through it. We’re going to come together these I believe these times really highlight. I think the important things in life, right? Like you’re exactly right, as a business owner, and as we say, the real economy right the the hairdressers, the Uber drivers, the real estate agents, the the attorneys I live in, are you having an impact on the economy on the restaurant tours? We just have to come together and as business owners, this will actually highlight if we’re if we’re focused on moving forward best practices that we need to, that we need to, to get involved with in our business. And it could be business development lead generation, it could be finances and and looking at your spreadsheet and how you run your businesses and what are necessary, what are unnecessary expenses, all these things are going to come into play in the next couple of months. But it’s, it’s one of these times where what I did in 2008, when this all occurred, excuse me, when the when the financial collapse occurred. In 2008, I had a decision to make. And I shared this with all my agents, I was three or four years into my real estate career. And I was my wife wasn’t working, I had three daughters. And I had two mortgages, and I was how I was terrified. So what I did is I turned that off, because I couldn’t afford, I couldn’t afford any more negative emotional energy for myself, right. And once I did that, and I, you know, I hunkered down into my dashboard, and my network. And, and stated communication with my network. And, and I didn’t pull back on my marketing. Right, I doubled down on my marketing, my business just absolutely took off. I was scared through 2008, nine and 10 and 11. And I started coaching in 2010. So I was scared, because what’s going on with the world and uncertainty, but my business absolutely thrive during that time as a real estate agent. So I’m working with all our agents now and saying, Listen, there’s a lot going on, there’s a lot to distract us. There’s a lot to disrupt us if we allow it to. And so it’s important to be informed. But you don’t have to be informed 24/7

D.J. Paris 7:02
I was, I was out with, oddly or ironically, food poisoning. For the past four out of the last five days today, I’m fine. But it really knocked me out. And I realized over that time, because I was just basically laying in bed. There wasn’t much I could do. And I would the first day was really laying there. And just the only thing I could really do was grab my phone and I started getting you know, updates about what was going on with the with the Coronavirus. And after a several hours I realized oh, I’m I’m now addicted to this news cycle, because it’s so stimulating. And it’s it was giving me the impression of being busy, because I was reading and then all of a sudden four hours went by and I went you know, maybe that wasn’t the best use of those previous four hours. And and I had to shut it off, because it’s so addictive. And it made me feel as if I was participating and buying engaged in my life. And the truth was, I was just consuming information. And it wasn’t particularly all that useful at that moment. And the truth is,

Ryan D’Aprile 8:05
we’re gonna get through this, we’re gonna get through this, and we’re going to get back to normal day life. And just like anything, we just have to focus on our mental attitude. We have to focus on our mental health. Because truthfully, your attitude is the number one indicator of your success and your success, not only in business, but in life in general. I’m going to draw diagrams since what the hell we’re hearing what’s on TV. See this? I you know, I saw this a number of years ago, and I and I have shown all my agents that so I don’t know if you can see me and can you see this? You’re good? Okay, so I can’t recall where I saw this. But I show everybody when I’m coaching them, like how much your mindset has an impact on your life. So do you know what?

D.J. Paris 8:56
Bs stands for? Belief systems?

Ryan D’Aprile 8:59
That’s right, your belief system? What else does in for? Bullshit? Bullshit, right? And I joke around people, because a lot of our mindset is typically it tends to go to the bullshit, and it tends to be negative. And so if we can be more focused on how important it is in our life, and what we need to do to move forward, the better we are equipped to do the right things. Alright, so here’s your belief system. Have you ever seen this before?

D.J. Paris 9:23
No. I mean, we’ve I know we’ve talked about it, but I haven’t seen it.

Ryan D’Aprile 9:27
So here’s your belief system, okay. And then what this has an effect on is your actions. And what your actions have an effect on is your results and what your results will do will reinforce your belief system. And so when these times right, where you’re just glued to the TV and you’re glued to everything that’s going on, or even out of these times, and we are kind of reflecting on ourselves in our negative belief system that A lot of us tend to have and in the sphere in society that we are all wrapped up with, we’re trying to work with Charlie, pull out of it and do these actions that you do that will give you the results. It just comes down to this your belief system. And so Ghostbusters, you can’t cross the streams here, your belief systems are either positive, or they’re negative. And so if you’re feeding your mind with all the negative, okay, it’s going to have a negative effect on the actions that you’re taking. And right now, everybody needs to be a real estate agent that has to support themselves that has to support a family, you have to understand that we’re going to get through this, okay? And when we come out of this, you have a choice, start over then or get going right now. Does that make sense? It does. So what happens is, when we’re focused on the negative, we start to take less action, less action brings less results, less results, reinforces that the world is falling apart, alright, or we could say, Hey, this is a good time for me to take a pause, to take stock and what’s important, my family, and all right, and then also my business and the things that I need to do, they got me there, the economy’s going to slow down, alright, it’s not going to come to a screeching halt, it’s going to slow down. And there’s going to be some effects to it. But what happens is the cream pens, the rise the top during this occasion, and when I studied 2008 910, I’ve been coaching agents for the past eight, nine years. Now, I look back on my career, during the Great Recession, there was just as much business for me as a real estate agent, as there was in six and seven, there’s more than enough to go around. And so if we can focus on the positive, and you have to look for its work, it’s gonna take action, and just take an action gives you results, and you have to do it over and over again. And then all of a sudden, you slowly start to come out of the red, and you move into the green. And that is what everybody that’s in our industry in the world, in fact, needs to, it needs to focus on. And then what can you do, and, you know, in your community, is when we’re allowed? Well, we haven’t been a lot, NASSCO help, but shop local, you know, the, the real economy, the real economy is in your backyard. And, you know, this is not a knock on. But, you know, go go to your, you know, dine out. What I mean by that is if the restaurants open, call and have it delivered to your house, do what you can to support your your neighborhood friends, your family, your small business owners, we are 80 to 85% small businesses are 80 to 85% of the economy. And we’re not the ones that really end up getting bailed out. I mean, it’s really, an I just don’t know how you create a bailout package for small businesses. That’s that’s, I’m not getting into politics at all, what I’m saying is that, it just, we all play a role in this, we’re all going to come together, we’re all gonna get through, but one of the best things we can do is, is to really shop local and support your small business owners.

D.J. Paris 13:17
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I was thinking about your your chart there about how belief systems, you know, cycle through to actions and results. And, and, you know, I think there’s a misconception a lot of times for maybe some of people listening, who because we interview these top 1% producers on our show, and they probably think I bet every day these people wake up positive, energized, ready to go. And I will tell you, that is not the case, every single person struggles in my girlfriend’s struggle this morning, I had to give her a pep talk. And she is normally not somebody who struggles, I sneak I struggle sometimes. So what I encourage everyone to do is to use this time to cultivate those habits that you normally are too busy to cultivate. And if you need if that’s a morning routine, where you can get yourself in the right mindset, don’t don’t just assume it’s going to automatically happen because it doesn’t, right, we have to set ourselves up to to to create a routine where we can get those predictable results.

Ryan D’Aprile 14:17
Right? Are you one of the things that I share with our agents and individuals that are coaching is be vulnerable? Because people want to help each other out. And so what I mean by when I say be vulnerable, is just express how you’re feeling and say hey, I’m feeling this way kind of helped me out. And so I’ll be vulnerable here as well. Yes, I’m not sleeping at night. You know, I’m not sleeping through the night and waking up. I’m a small business owner, I have I think 70 employees and 13 offices plus a number of agents and and my actions I I have a lot of responsibility. And so I’m I too am nervous and I’m not you know, I’m not Pooh poohing that understand what we’re going through. But I come back into it and they take, you know, Shawn Akers, one of my favorite authors. And within our company, I’ve been quoting a lot of a lot of his books. And if you haven’t read it, read The Happiness Advantage. And he has his PhD from Harvard psychologist, he’s a brilliant man. And he just studies how being positive and happy, happy, it has such an impact on your life. And the one of the underlying denominators and most successful people is their positive attitude. But to your point, that doesn’t mean we all don’t I struggle with self doubt fair, I’ve told you this before depression, I, I have it all, what I do is I take actions to pull myself out and to look for the good, and there’s so much good around us. Right now, it’s more important than ever, to pause and do what you can’t put yourself in a mindset. And one of the things is I turned out, I tune out of the news.

D.J. Paris 16:01
Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, we have this opportunity to think about, you know, okay, so if we know that attitude is really the, the impetus for everything else, and then we have to realize that attitude is not always a natural state, it’s something we have to cultivate to so, you know, create a routine. Every morning, when you wake up, you know, there’s a great book, I’m sure you’ve read it, it’s very famous, it’s called the Miracle Morning, it’s, you don’t have to read that particular book. But it’s all about creating a routine to get you in that mindset, of gratitude, of appreciation, of opportunity. And to be a you know, otherwise you wake up in the world just hits you a million different ways. And you don’t know if it’s gonna hit you, in a way that bums you out or, or excites you. So you have to set it up for yourself. And I have to do the same thing every morning, I don’t wake up, you know, super excited and happy I have a routine to get me that way. Otherwise, it’s kind of like motivation. People say, you know, if you just wait around for motivation, you probably be waiting a long time discipline. Discipline is really what wins the game. So create a routine for yourself.

Ryan D’Aprile 17:08
That’s, that’s very true. And then these moments, let’s get down to, you know, what’s important. Let’s open up your dashboard, your CRM, yeah, what are the what’s the number one source for most people’s business, which it should be as your network, your sphere of influence, whatever you may call it, let’s connect with those individuals. Texting phone call, don’t make it about real estate. Alright, just check in, make it about relationships. If you focus on relationships, it’s not, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, it’s who you know, and these are cliches for a reason. And anybody that is in a sales environment, has to it’s on their network, and you got to continually water that garden. And water is the relationships, the actions that you take, to reach out with a text, a handwritten note, a phone call a direct message via Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and commenting on individual because it’s not about you, it’s about them. And what everybody contributes, or everybody desires and wants out of life, significance, love. So just little significance, give a little love, give more attention. Now more than ever, and if and when things if we get quarante, or things get pulled in, it’s the best time because there’s nothing else you really can do. So turn off the news, get into best practices, be prepared, because it will pass it will pass will be back to normal.

D.J. Paris 18:41
There’s so much so much opportunity right now to demonstrate care, compassion and empathy to your contact list. A simple phone call, Like Ryan said, or a text message, hey, just thinking about you hope you and your family are good. You know that that’s, that’s an easy and free way. And probably they’re not getting calls from other service providers. Right. So you should be doing that anyway. But demonstrate my very first job in sales. There was a guy who’s 25 years in the business, one of the most successful guys corner office downtown, in in the loop here in Chicago. And he said to me, if you have to ask for the sale, you’ve just done it completely wrong. What you always have to do is demonstrate that you care about people, if you demonstrate that you care, all the sales will come your way. So this is a perfect opportunity. You know, if you here’s a really simple example, if you want, you know, you have a contact list, and this is going to cost a few dollars, but maybe it’s worth it. If you have Amazon Prime, you know, shipping is free. What if you shipped a $5 little care package or something to each one of the people in your database, if you can afford to do that and just say, Hey, I was just thinking about you that way. You don’t have to worry about delivering it. They don’t have to worry about whether they want to see you because of the you know, possible, you know, self distancing that we’re trying to do. But what if you just did that you spent $500 Which again, I know for a lot of People might be outside of their range. And and I can appreciate that. But if you have it, and you do that boy, what what? How much does that demonstrate that you care about somebody? And even if it’s not a gift, or just a simple phone call, I was thinking about you, I care about you. I hope you guys are doing well. Anyway, I’ll chat with you later. It doesn’t have to be more than that. And that’ll go so far.

Ryan D’Aprile 20:19
Yes, absolutely. And let me give our audience some tips to that I’m assuming you’re 100% Real estate agents or majority your real estate agent, and what to do in the, in the coming weeks as well. If things continue to shut down, which again, they will pick back up, if you have a lot of pending contracts, we own a mortgage company as well. And so this is one of the biggest refinance booms we’ve ever had. And one of the things that’s out there that’s going to happen is potentially here in Chicago, if the state shuts down, you can’t get water certs. And what that means is then you can’t have closings, and therefore the title companies will will be forced to, to close its brain come to your clients. All right, because it’s temporary. And let’s go back to previous deals that we’ve worked on, and say somebody is in a deal a year ago, and something happened, personally to them. And the attorney, or the real estate agent reached out and said, We have to extend our closing for two weeks. It happens all the time in our business, sure, not the end of the world, I would tell our real estate agents and our loan officers that are listening to this is get ahead of that and call your clients and say, hey, you know, we’re gonna get through this, your home is gonna close, it might get pushed back. If the cities in other cities have closed down, they have stopped doing things stop, I think it was countryside, which I believe requires inspections, city inspectors aren’t doing inspections anymore. Just bring calm to the situation. Because the number one value as real estate agents, the number one value we bring is an emotional intelligence. That’s why these disruptors out there, these, these these red fins of the worlds right. And I want to quote, they’re losing 10s of millions of dollars a year, thinking that our industry is a commodity. It’s not our number one value is emotional intelligence. Now, like I said earlier, we all struggle with emotional intelligence. But when you get yourself into that right mindset, pick up the phone, call your borrowers, if your loan officer, call your sellers, and call your buyers, real estate agents and say, Hey, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s what we’re dealing with. I don’t have all the answers, but I do know for certain that your closing will happen. It might get pitched back a week or two. But that’s okay. And here’s why city officials can’t go out for inspections. title companies can’t order water certs, so on and so forth. It’s not the end of the world. It’s okay and then listen, listen to them. Let them vent, let them cry, let them scream. And then get back to what you do. When you calm down to then go replenish your energy. Get back into a positive mindset and pick up the phone and go do it again. Because that’s our job. Our job is to bring emotional intelligence to one of the most stressful emotional transactions and people’s lives which is

D.J. Paris 23:39
in in non pandemic times. It’s the most stressful thing. So So have compassion empathy for what your buyers and sellers are going through right now. Aside from the

Ryan D’Aprile 23:51
unsung heroes, yeah, sorry about that. No, I didn’t mean to cut you off. But yeah, that’s true. I mean, you guys do so much. You add so much value to the marketplace. The marketplace is grateful for you because your business has not gone away in the past 20 years with all these disruptors trying to come in here because the market needs yield. The market needs your emotional intelligence, they need your love. They need your energy. Okay, so go out and be you. Go out and be you and have what Shawn Aker talks about is the ripple effect. Give a little piece of positivity out there. Give it to your loved ones, give to your friends, give to your clients. And slowly but surely, we’ll all might have this will leave the red of the negative or go into the green positive mindsets, and that’s what’s going to happen. What starts all recessions in my opinion, is consumer confidence. And we just had a huge shake up just like we did in 911. But we came out of 911 We’re going to come out of this.

D.J. Paris 24:55
Agreed Perfect. Well said Well, Ryan if there are brokers here in sure Cago I’m sorry, not just Chicago, you’re in multiple states, Michigan, Indiana, as well as Wisconsin, that are interested in joining your company, what’s the best way someone who’s listening who wants not one on one coaching? Who wants you know, the the D appeal experience for their their own business, what’s the best way they should reach out,

Ryan D’Aprile 25:20
they can reach out, they could, they could, like I had before they could, they could email me, they could call my cell phone, I want to, I want to, I’m going to shy away from that right now. And what I want to do is just get everybody to focus on themselves right now. I focus and I greatly appreciate that you don’t just focus on your energy, stay positive, do the things you guys need to do. All right, to keep moving forward. And together, we’re all gonna get out of this. And yes, if you ever if you’re looking for coaching and training, you can reach out to our company, you can find us on the website, you get my cell phones all over the internet, you could give me a call, I’m happy to walk you through either you’re looking at talk or if there’s a real estate agent that just needs to talk some through. You know, since I’ve talked to people in Idaho, Delaware, I’ve had, I’ve made some really nice friendships from this podcast we’ve gotten into so great, thank you for that. Yeah, yeah. So not Well, thank you so much. I appreciate that. Appreciate the plug, I just want everybody to realize we’re just going to, we’re going to get out of this stay positive, our mental health and our attitudes, the most important thing, and then get down to the number one basic activity that is going to help you move forward and grow. And that is relationships with your network. card system clients, call your pending deals, your active buyers, your sellers, are under contracts, and and be the calm in the storm.

D.J. Paris 26:43
Couldn’t said it better. Myself, and I won’t because you said it. So Ryan, thanks again for being on our show. We really love your contributions once a month is huge for our audience. It’s really, we get so much great feedback. So thank you, behalf of the listeners, we appreciate it. And thank you on behalf of Ryan and myself do the listeners which have just exploded without bragging about numbers we are continually to continually increasing and now we’re pretty much nationwide. So it’s very exciting. But so thank you to everyone because we couldn’t do it without you. You must be telling other realtors about us and we appreciate that. So we’ll keep providing this kind of content. And you know we’ll see again next time So Ryan, thanks again.

Welcome to the February episode of Coaching Moments with Ryan D’Aprile!

How important is mindset? What could you do right now to improve your thoughts and beliefs that would result in more business? In this episode Ryan provides the disciplines needed to make 2020 your best year ever in real estate. Follow his suggestions and then send him a thank you! 🙂

Over the past decade Ryan D’Aprile has personally coached hundreds of real estate agents to top producer status. He has devoted his career to sharing the strategies that have worked for him (and for countless others) to help agents get to the next level.

Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.590.6416 and ryan@daprileproperties.com.

Ryan D'Aprile
d'aprile properties

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
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Welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast most listened to podcasts for real estate agents by real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your host and guide through the show and today we have our coaching moments monthly episode with Ryan de abril Ryan is a progressive thought leader is focused on providing for his agents and staff, his strengths our motivational skills, his coaching style, and his dedication to training. Ryan’s company deep real properties has 14 offices throughout Chicagoland. Also they are in Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan. And they have hundreds and hundreds of brokers, many of which are top 1% producers. Do you have real properties is a coaching company with eight strategic coaches who work week in and week out with every single one of their agents individually focusing on business planning, coaching and accountability. Now, if you are a broker, a real estate agent and would like to take your career to the next level, or if you’re just not getting the attention you need from your current firm, check out de abril properties, visit the appeal properties.com. We’ll post that link in the show notes and welcome once again, Ryan. Thank you, TJ, how are you? I’m good. How

Ryan D’Aprile 2:08
are you? I’m well, it’s good to be back. I love visiting with you. I really enjoy. I really enjoyed doing these podcasts together. I hope you do as well. And I hope the listeners get value out of this.

D.J. Paris 2:19
Yes, this is such an important show that we do this this series and we get the most feedback. I think we get the most feedback from from these episodes. And so we’re really grateful that you take the time out of aside from running 14 offices, you’re pretty busy. So well,

Ryan D’Aprile 2:34
that’s okay. No, I’m good. You know, you know, you said running 14 offices and being pretty busy. I think one of the things I want to talk about in this podcast here is mindset, and, and how to have a mindset that’s going to help you be successful. And so with you just jumping, saying and I want to jump right into something if that’s okay with you. Okay, let’s do it. All right. A lot of people I’ve noticed in this business and in life in general have a conflict with success and money. And the truth is, if you become successful at something, it does not mean you’re going to have less time for other things, especially your family, a lot of individuals think more successful I am, the less time I’m going to have to work on the things that I love or work with people that I love. And that’s simply not true. And if you really challenge yourself to grow and to focus on a skill set, like we’re talking about here in real estate, you have time to happily do a podcast once a month with your favorite podcast host. And, but it’s really true, this is not this is this is not effort, I hear I have plenty of time, I do have, you know, 13 offices, not only 1413 offices, and we do have hundreds of agents. And I do have other companies such as a mortgage company, the title company, and there’s a lot going on. But and I want the listeners to hear this, I have time from my wife and my three girls, I have time for myself. And I focus on having a positive relationship with success and a positive relationship with money. And I think that’s one of the first steps that you need to take in your journey down this path. I came across I don’t know, you know, I do I have a routine and one of the things that I do and I fall off my routines at time, but I’m a very active individual. And so to wind down, I get up very early in the morning, usually around 435 Because I am able to spend about two hours, basically with myself working on myself and then concentration on things that I want to accomplish that day. And one of it is is meditating and I’m critical of myself and I I don’t think I’m the best meditator but when I do it, I just I love it and I use the comments if you ever

D.J. Paris 4:58
use a comment before No, I know that I have not used that. Right. So

Ryan D’Aprile 5:02
the comment the daily comments fantastic and Deepak Chopra, and Oprah Winfrey have one as well, which I’ve been saying to myself, I gotta go back because I was like three or four years ago that’s using theirs. And I just, I love Deepak Chopra. Now, have you ever listened to him? But he’s like, Oh, sure, that’s my guy. But anyways, the point is, is I saw this quote, after doing a meditation, guided meditation that I do in the morning, I’m going to share this with my company on our internal group page. And really, really, this really resonated with me. And I want all the listeners to just really pause and think about this. The two most powerful warriors are patients in time. Yes. And it was such an amazing moving quote for me, because what we struggle with is our insecurities and our self doubts, we all have it, I have it. Me too. And you know, another expression, I think it was Teddy Roosevelt who said, This comparison is the thief of all joy. And in this business of ours, in this real estate business, where you have this social media world out there, where everybody’s looking to do the next HGTV real estate agent and picking, you know, what might not be real, but portraying something, we tend to compare ourselves. And I want you to come back to that, quote, the two most powerful warriors are patience and time. We all overestimate what we can achieve in a year, we underestimate what we can achieve in a decade. Yes, remember why you got into this business, give yourself a break. You know, you got to give yourself a break, and work on the art and the craft that is you as a person and don’t compare to others compared to yourself, and who you were, you know, a year ago or a month ago or a week ago? And are you focusing on continuous improvement? And, you know, that’s kind of why I want to focus, you know, our conversation about here and, and this podcast is, for those of you who are listening or driving, you know, I understand what you’re going through, it’s, it’s tough, because, you know, you are a brand. You know, and it’s a very interesting business. DJ. It is, you know, it’s got its wonderful. You know, attributes to it, these I love the business, it also has some of the yucky side, as well, um, one of the, the yuckiness I feel about this business is just the the hardcore recruiting that is out there all the time. Sure, you know, and we all go through rejection, and we go through our journey. And I always tell everybody, if somebody didn’t pick you, to use you, as your agent, or a buyer’s, or if an agent gets recruited away from you, or something sort, yes, I am, how can I improve, but also, a lot of this is not about you. And you got to look that we spent so much time and effort as not only a company but individual agents disclosed to both the broker owner and the agent, focusing effort and building a brand for an agent. Does that make sense? Yes, and the agent is building their brand. So you know, that’s not easy. You’re putting yourself out there. And when you put yourself out there, your subject, you’re opening yourself up to more self criticism than anything else. And we go through this emotional roller coaster. We all just have to kind of give ourselves a break, and listen to a lot of the noise out there and try to figure out, you know, what’s it about? And what is my focus? And truthfully, I think everybody’s focus needs to come back and get re centered, and kind of cut off the noise. Figure out what you want. What’s your goal? What’s your mindset? What’s your intention is your intention, you know, set to the right place, because if it is, then that’s where your attention will go. And, you know, find an outlet for yourself, to break away from all the digital and the media, and everything that’s out there. And come back and recenter and refocus yourself. daily, if not at least minimum weekly. I don’t know if you have any routines that you work on, to help yourself focus, but I think it’s something that all of us as real estate agents, we’re putting ourselves out there need to do I did I did a yoga class. The other day called Kundalini, I believe it’s called Kundalini

D.J. Paris 9:38
sure breath yoga. Yeah, maybe not Breath of Fire and all of that stuff. He asked her.

Ryan D’Aprile 9:44
It’s fantastic. You know, and I, you know, one of my agents in our neighborhood office told me about it, and I said, God, I need something like that right now. And I want everybody to understand is that you know, be open to explore and trying things like this. And, you know, I felt You know, I feel like I’m attuned well to myself, and I focus on my energy. And sometimes my energy is awesome. And sometimes it’s horrible. And, and you gotta pay attention to, you know, you know, the universe and in signals that are getting out because I went to my, I went to my doctor about a year ago during a very stressful time. And you know what he suggested I do. What was that? Kundalini? Oh, nice. Yeah. Right. And it took a year. And then one of my agents mentioned it to me, and I said, You know what, it’s a sign. And I did it last Sunday in Naperville, at the studio on Webster. And man, did it refocus me and get me going, I had probably one of the best Sundays in a long time, because how it just really centered my breathing, and kept me to kind of just quiet my mind. You know, you have 50,000 thoughts a day running through your mind?

D.J. Paris 10:51
Right? The problem is, they’re the same 50,000 thoughts every day, right?

Ryan D’Aprile 10:56
Come more aware of it when you start to meditate, right? And then you realize, when you’re going subconsciously through the day, how distracted we all get?

D.J. Paris 11:06
Oh, of course, we’re always being stimulated, because we have a device that gives us nonstop stimulation and rewards our, our dopamine, you know, our nerve, the neuro transmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine, etc. And really conditions us to be responsive versus mindful.

Ryan D’Aprile 11:27
Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s fascinating. And then you realize it from the position that I’m in as a coach, why the failure rate is so high in this business? Because there’s such a lack of structure, yes, to a real estate agents day, when you have these thoughts, you’re gonna go in all these different directions. And then you have all this other stuff out there, right? You have the social media, you got the recruiters calling you every week, and it’s like, what are the interests of everything that’s going out there and get focused back on to? What’s your interests? What do you want? And I think everybody in this industry, because it’s your self employed, 1099, you’re eating what you’re killing? Right? Right. You’re out there, you’re building, hopefully, with your company that’s helping you build a solid brand for yourself, I, you know, you need a coach, you need you need a coach so that you can have accountability and structure to your your daily activities. And it’s, as a coach is fascinating. Even seeing the very top producing agents, when you follow up with them and cast they’re given and you let four days go by and they haven’t done it. You know what I get back when I from them when I tell them to do it, and they haven’t done it for four days. What do you think their responses? Usually?

D.J. Paris 12:47
i Oh, my gosh, we’ll get right on it. I’ll get that done. You thank

Ryan D’Aprile 12:50
you. Yeah, you know, it’s Thank you. And I think there’s a lot of fear out there. And there’s a lot of fear for managing brokers out there. And they’re fearful of holding agents accountable. And so if any managing brokers are listening to this, and, and looking to improve their skill set, and coaching and training, that’s what your agents need. And that’s what they want.

D.J. Paris 13:11
And you shouldn’t in any way, feel embarrassed about needing help. I’ve said this probably before on our episodes, but if not, I pay a woman to call me every morning at 730. And remind me to do very basic things that I struggle with. And it’s a little embarrassing to admit that I don’t remember to always clean out my cat’s litter box twice a day, which, by the way, is a pretty basic thing. If you have a cat, you should clean it out at least once a day, my cat’s more particular. And to make her life better, I should do it twice a day. The truth is if I’m being completely honest, and I have, you know the hot lamp on me, and you asked me if I do it, I wasn’t doing it for the first seven years of her life. And then I hired a person and I pay her very reasonable amount of money. And now I have other habits that I struggle with. So she asks me every morning at 730 Questions like did you make your lunch today? So at 11 or 12? Or one o’clock? I don’t have to sit here and go, What am I eat? What do I have to go get food? You know, where do I? It’s I don’t want to deal with that. So she asked me did you pack her lunch? She she asked me did you clean the cat box twice? Yesterday, she asked me things like did you plan your weekend so you can go spend time with your girlfriend. You know, these are things that I need help with. And I wish it was a little bit more automatic in my life. But you know what this works. She is my coach for some of these little things. It’s very reasonable. And I just have to surrender to the fact that I need help like everyone else.

Ryan D’Aprile 14:38
Absolutely. We all do. And one of the things in this that’s kind of a good segue to another element of coaching here and focusing on the mindset is what we have to do is we have to be conscious when we have moments of clarity because quite honestly 95% of our day is ran subconsciously so if you could take a little time to plan out your day. One of the goals the mini goals I think we should have is focusing on quieting the noise that we have, yes, yes, gotta quiet the noise, we have to limit what noise we allow to come into our world. And then, you know, another thing I think about is forcing, okay. And it’s so it’s interesting because, you know, DJ, our company, you know, probably 85% of our real estate agents were not licensed five years ago, we bring agents into the industry and we coach them up, that’s really kind of our value proposition. Sure. So I’ve had, you know, eight years now of experience working with agents, and I really helping them to stop forcing it the first year is, first two years are brutal for agents because of what they do to themselves and how they convert. And I go back to my days, you know, the one sport I played was wrestling. And, again, when you wrestled, what you tried to do is use your opponent’s weight against them, instead of forcing it and it’s one of the best things that I can relate to in real estate is you got to think about timing, and allowing things to flow instead of forcing them. And there are basic actions that we need to take to grow our business. And we have to understand, to be in this business, we have to have relationships with our network, that’s your job. It’s very simple. And you can’t complete it, and you can’t do it in a month. And you can’t do it in three months. And you can’t do it for four months or six months, and do it every other month and try to come back and try it and come back, you need to have a structured routine, you have to follow a system. And then you have to allow the process to germinate. It’s like planting a seed. And, you know, over watering it, putting tons of water on it, just hoping that the flower is going to grow,

D.J. Paris 16:56
trying to try to force it.

Ryan D’Aprile 16:58
Trust the process. Trust process.

D.J. Paris 17:03
There’s a great Zen saying, I don’t know if I’ve brought it up on the show. But it’s it’s a great one to live. It’s a hard one to live, but it’s important. And it’s called Before enlightenment, chop wood carry water after enlightenment, chop wood carry

Ryan D’Aprile 17:18
water. In other words, yes, great, isn’t it? It’s the truth. I was just with a very good friend of mine, my oldest friend. We grew up down the street together. And he just moved home from LA, so proud of him. And he’s been in movies had been in movies at Richard Gere. And he wrote a screenplay. He sold it to Lionsgate and he’s like a brother to me. And, and I haven’t seen him though, because you know, I have wife and three kids, he’s got two kids just moved back from LA and we’re catching up. We’re down here at the Renaissance and Wacker Drive them throwing a big company party tomorrow. And so if I sound nervous, it’s because I am. But um, you know, Dan, and I were talking and I was showing him, the dashboard is this technology that I built and how we coach and train. And he was just asked about the business, we’re just catching up. And he says, Do you think the business is going to look different 10 years today, he wasn’t sure so much has changed with technology, like the and a lot of noises change with technology. But the basics haven’t at all, right? So many people chase trends, and there’s so much VC and money, throwing out there to quote unquote, disrupt the business, and the only people who are disrupting the business is the agents themselves. By getting off of what you said, chopping the wood and carrying the water, it’s going to look totally different, it’s going to be exactly the same. Some of the tools are gonna be different, it’s going to be the exact same, you guys, we are an emotional intelligence business. Okay, so let’s think about exercising here. When you go when you exercise and you want to get in better physical shape, you’re gonna go to the gym, you’re gonna break down your muscles. That’s what you do when you’re lifting weights. Yep, you’re breaking your muscles down so that they could grow back and go back stronger. Now, I want you to look at the next challenge that you have in your business. And the next emotional breakdown a client of yours has or you have because we all have them. And I want you to answer relate it into the gym, and you’re breaking down your emotional muscles. Would I promise you keep faith, have faith, trust the process? Because what’s happening is you’re becoming mostly emotionally, more and more emotionally strong. And the emotionally strong. Real estate agents are the ones that could best help navigate their clients through the transactions. And because of that, then they can make in net them more money, and they can help make better decisions. We add a ton of value. We add a ton of value in this industry. When I’m surprised as most agents don’t realize it, and they pay attention to the the disruptors that are saying this is just the transaction. No, right. This is an emotional investment. It’s an emotional life decision. If the consumer values us and needs us, so when you have those moments of doubt, and a breakdown, I have them all the time. I’m sure you do to DJ all the time. My fellow real estate agents, please listen to me. That is your gym, you will get stronger, you will survive and I promise you have trust in the process. And you are adding more value to the world because you’ve become emotionally strong. Yes, you

D.J. Paris 20:27
are. And if, if, if emotional, emotional support wasn’t needed, real estate agents would have been phased out already Zillow, Redfin, some of these, these great services that really can can serve as a lot of the non emotional parts of real estate, are going to be able to take that off your plate. And so you get to focus on the heavy lifting, which of course, is coaching, supporting, making sure your clients get all of their needs met. So I think that some of the disruptors are helping realtors to be able to better do what what they’re really paid to do, which is, you know, guide somebody through all the difficult emotional parts of a transaction.

Ryan D’Aprile 21:09
It is, and then get back to what we’re talking about the beginning, okay, and take care of yourself. You know, there’s a saying out there is you can’t pour from an empty cup. Right, you got to take care of yourself first.

D.J. Paris 21:23
When I was, I was just at a top producer event a couple days ago, and the panel and I won’t mention their names because I haven’t gotten permission to share this. So but one of them, one of the the gentleman who was speaking was is one of his legend here in Chicago. And they asked him what advice he had. And this is a roomful of top 1% producers. So these are people that are already incredibly successful in I mean, I write for the magazine, put it together, so I get to go, which is really great for me. So I get to learn all these great tips. And so really to piggyback Ryan, on what you just said, they asked, he’s they said, what one piece of advice would you give everybody in this room? And so this gentleman said, I wake up at 430, very similar to you. And this was his routine. He said, the first thing I do is I, this is him speaking he prays, then he then he reads his Bible because he’s a religious person, and then he meditates. Then he does his affirmations. And then he plans his day. And he said, The whole process takes one to two hours. He said, he has children. He has a wife. He said, This is just for him. He said, it’s the most he’s been in business tool, 30 years, no more than 37 years. And he said, This is what I do every morning, it’s the most important thing I do. I do it for me. And it helps me in ways I can’t even tell you. He goes, I know it might sound a little silly and not related to real estate. He goes, if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t be successful.

Ryan D’Aprile 22:53
Yeah, it’s it is and there’s something in there that he’s routine, that maybe I think we’ll kind of circle back and then we’ll close out the segment. Unless you have questions, but it’s what he does is is his affirmations. And what I do when I’m coaching my coaches, and my coaches are coaching agents, or I’m coaching in particular agents, you we really want to focus on envisioning who you want to be, and be the person and have fun with it. You got to have fun with this, like, you just can’t go through the routines, you got to literally you got to work off your energy. Energy is everything in this in this world. Energy is everything, you have energy, it’s a form of language, and people feel it. So focus on your energy, envision who you want to be, and be that person, you know, focus on what would that person need to do to get where they are, and then start doing those things now. And then trust trust the process. And you and I have now I think recorded close to 10 sessions together. And, you know, listeners can go back and hear that process. And you know, I’m almost embarrassed on how easy it is. It’s it’s a very, very simple process. It’s just life is complicated. Human beings are complicated. So what we have to do is get an accountability partner, find a program that could help hold us accountable. Because if you do these things day in and day out the results always will show

D.J. Paris 24:27
up. You know, it’s amazing to is this show we interviewed top 1% Realtors all over the country, most mostly here in Chicago for the first few years and now we’re taking speaking due to nationwide realtors who aren’t at the top. And I you know, I don’t I can’t say with certainty that 100% of them have coaches but I know about 90% of them do just off the top of my head from all the people I’ve interviewed. So if the people at the very top have coaches seems like the rest of us should probably consider the same thing.

Ryan D’Aprile 24:58
Yeah, I exactly. Unlike if you don’t need a coach, that’s awesome, if you’re happy where you are wonderful, great talking to the 90%, who are struggling, because unfortunately, that’s what the statistics are 90% of real estate agents are struggling to get ahead. If you find yourself in that boat, don’t do it alone. Don’t go it alone and ask for structure. Ask for structure. All right structure and discipline will give you financial freedom, and the ability to say yes to experiences that are going to come along in their life, nothing worse than they say, No, I can’t because I have to do this or that. But if you are structured in your discipline, it’s like that thing I said in the beginning, most people are afraid of success, and they have a negative relationship with success and money. You guys got to buck that it’s not true. The more successful you have, you are, excuse me, the more freedom you’re going to have.

D.J. Paris 25:54
Yeah, that’s true. And also, you know, again, you know, I always say, you know, you’re, you’re a living example of this is kind of stay in your lane, which in other words means, as Ryan does this, he disconnects from noise that isn’t going to support his goals, his lifestyle and what he wants to accomplish. So things that are disruptive to you, that you find yourself, you know, spending an unhealthy amount of time either in your head or just obsessing about, you know, with with news or any social media, you know, really, as you start to find yourself being distracted, that’s when you gently bring yourself back to yourself and say, what’s going on with me right now? What do I need? What is it that I’m looking for right now? And if the answer is, well, I’m looking to be distracted, that’s fine. But just being conscious of what’s going on instead of unconscious, and just going through your day, and being reactive. And being a slave to social media likes and comments. You can really, if you get quiet, you pay attention, you’ll find out what it is you need. And you can give that to yourself. But as Ryan says you need to structure time, for every part of your life, I even when I go to visit my girlfriend, I hope she’s not listening, because this isn’t going to sound very romantic. But if I’m going to visit her at her place we live separately, I sit in my car for just one minute before I go in and I say I’m not going to check my phone, I’m not going to, I’m going to walk in and I visualize how I’m going to greet her. I visualize I’m going to ask about her day, and I visualize me doing the things that I want to do to be a good partner. So that because if I don’t do that, I show up, I’m distracted. I’m not really giving her my full attention. So that’s my little routine. But I have to have a routine or I’ll just show up and who knows what, what what state I’m going to be in.

Ryan D’Aprile 27:46
Yeah, absolutely. And for those of you who who say to yourself, are you thinking these thoughts, because they come really quick, you know, I am not going to be able to do this, I try it you know, these guys that Ryan share, I could see him meditate in the morning and journaling and doing the things that he needs to do. And he’s top producers are writing their affirmations and everything else. You guys I go a year without doing it. It’s not a good experience. But I go year I fall off the wagon, and we all do just get back on. And don’t be so critical of yourself. And that’s kind of my biggest goal when I meet with individuals is to kind of just get them to get off the pedal of being critical of themselves so much. Because when you’re critical of yourself, you’re really you’re really hurting others around you.

D.J. Paris 28:31
Well, and and you’re hurting yourself in the reality.

Ryan D’Aprile 28:35
You’re going as you’re you are hurting yourself, but you’re you’re hurting others because when you’re so critical, your health, your energy is negative, it’s toxic, and then the people who are on care about you, okay, you can’t even understand what’s going on. Because you’re so upset with yourself. Yes, and therefore, you’re maybe being critical of them. And then they’re just trying to help you. And so, like it says, this is like some real deep shit here we’re talking about, everybody needs to take a break. And understand that it’s hard not only to go to them, but the ones that love them. Take a break, stop being so critical yourself. Nobody is sitting around judging you. It’s just your world. This is a journey. Enjoy it.

D.J. Paris 29:19
Well and remember to that research is really clear because what you’re doing when you’re criticizing yourself, is you’re really bringing about you know, the feeling of shame, which is there’s something wrong with me I should be doing better. I’m not quite there. What’s wrong, why am I why is it hard for me to get things done? You know, instead of just going hey, I’m an imperfect person. I can’t do everything perfectly. So I’m going to I’m going to be compassionate and kind and if I if I saw somebody out there struggling one of my friend was struggling and said, Hey, I’m struggling with this would I would I be critical of them? I know I’d be empathic I’d be compassionate. We need to treat ourselves that way. For no other reason than the research says being critical. If you’re self doesn’t work actually doesn’t make you more productive. In fact, it has the opposite effect. And if it worked, I would tell people Yeah, be critical of yourself that actually helps get you motivated. And for the, almost all of my life, I thought that’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to be hard on yourself, you’re supposed to be mean to yourself, and then move on, oh, it doesn’t actually

Ryan D’Aprile 30:21
work. No, no, that’s a good point. That’s absolutely the truth. And in this business, you’re putting yourself out there, and I understand the fear and the anxiety that comes with that. But give yourself a break. And again, just trust the process. It’s a very simple process. Remember, everybody your network is your net worth. And your business is to create relationships with your network, make that your focus, quiet out the noise, there’s other opportunities. Like there’s other ways to generate business. But the best way is through the network. Take that path, it takes time. When I work with agents, I tell them, I’m like Mr. Miyagi, like wax on wax off and pick up the coat hanger coat and drop the coat and do all these things. But it is, like you said, the chopping the wood and in carrying the water is the basic relationship building techniques, that’s going to excel your career.

D.J. Paris 31:17
Yeah. And if you’re ever at a loss for how to build those relationships, just ask yourself, What can I provide to this person that would make them feel good, that would give them some sort of additional value? Instead of I’m going to remind them and I’m a realtor, and then that’s okay. But you know, think about point, what would be really helpful? What could I do that would make this person feel valued or feel appreciated? You know, even if it’s just a hey, I was thinking about you, how you doing? You know, whatever it should be? Yeah,

Ryan D’Aprile 31:46
that’s right in and so, you know, I want to kind of chime in here and that I want to reach the end, when you reach out to your network. It’s not about you, right. And Ally, we think don’t worry about value at this point. Because we’re not talking about marketing. We’re talking about relationship building. Yes. You know, focus on, you know, what are you going through? And what do you care about, and what you care about is yourself, of course, and you should write, and the ones you love, so research them, and ask them about them. Ask them about the ones they love. And this make it very casual. That’s what your focus should be on. And by doing that, you’re going to increase the connectivity you have between that person, you know, be someone other people want to be around DJ, yes, be someone other people want to be around. And I remember one, one of my father’s friends, he was the most successful guy knew growing up. And, you know, just, I just admired this person so much, but I didn’t realize until I was older. He’d always walk in, he’d say, he asked me about myself. Yeah. And he’d asked me what my brothers and he’d say, my mom was so pretty. And he told me how funny my father was. This guy who was the pinnacle of success at its time for me, and he was still is always just focused on us, and made us feel so special. And we just wanted to be around them all time. Take that you guys, let’s really think about that. And I really think that’s a good way for us to, to close off this session of our podcast, be someone other people want to be around, right? Be somebody that other people want to be around. And people want to be around people that make them feel good.

D.J. Paris 33:33
And if you’re ever at a loss for what to say, ask people about their lives, find out what they’re passionate about, find out what’s exciting, you’d be shocked at how few people that Ryan Ryan knows. But you know, we all know that it’s so rare when anyone actually unless our is our closest closest friends, you know, asks me what I do in my spare time. You know, very few people ever asked me that. And the people that do I’m so honored, right? So you can you know, if you’ve ever had a loss, just find out what gets people excited in their own lives. And boy, they’re, you know, that’s a wonderful way to deepen a relationship.

Ryan D’Aprile 34:09
Okay, I got one last thing for us before we wrap this up. Okay. Sure. You just remind me what you just said to. So be someone other people want to be around. I have two or three people in my life that I complain to their my safety zone. I do not do that with my network. Yes. And that’s something everybody has to be aware of. So a wise woman said to me one time be someone other people want to be around. And I grabbed on to that, because it’s incredibly important. But then I’m very focused on I need an outlet too. Sure. And I gotta be kind of those outlets to write. I can’t just pitch in the entire time about what’s wrong in my life. But your network, you know, when you meet with them, you Do you have a tendency to stress out and verbalize how you’re stressed out? Try to change that habit. And and leave that for your one or two safety people.

D.J. Paris 35:10
Yeah, I just to let you know what I do for that, because I think that is such a great idea and tip, and I think most people don’t have that. And for me, I’m in a men’s group, we meet every other Monday night, and we talk about the hard stuff in life. Where are we struggling? Where are we afraid, where we angry, where we sad, and we sit and support each other. And that’s a structured environment, I do it every other Monday night, we meet for three hours, believe it or not in a little dingy basement that we rent out for 20 bucks. And we sit on folding chairs and talk about the hard stuff. And that’s where I can go to you know, really vent and get help. And so if you don’t have that there are tons of options out there. But yeah, it’s really I’m so glad you mentioned that’s a great, great idea.

Ryan D’Aprile 35:56
Well, thanks for having me, DJ, this was a this was a nother you know, fun podcast. I really enjoyed this. And again, I hope the listeners out there are getting value from from our segment here.

D.J. Paris 36:05
Yeah, I know they are. Because we get a lot of feedback from them. And they are also the the listener counts do not go down when you when you when we do episodes, they go up. So we’re super grateful to you and for everyone who’s listening if you’re a broker, a realtor or an agent, depending on what state you’re in. And if you’re here in Illinois, or Michigan, or Indiana or Wisconsin, and you’re interested in joining a firm that does provide extreme coaching and really works with you individually to help take your business to the next level, consider deep real property. So I’m going to send you know, DAPL properties.com, that’s where you go, Ryan, is there a specific email, in case anyone’s interested in learning more about your firm or a phone number that you could recommend?

Ryan D’Aprile 36:48
You know, so it’s interesting, I’m actually coaching other real estate companies now in other markets like his like, some and well in other states right now. But I’m local, and this is my company, and I love it. So you guys can if anybody wants to just call me my cell phones 312-590-6416. Or you can email Ryan at the April properties that come ry a n, d a, p r i l e, properties that calm.

D.J. Paris 37:21
And we don’t want to gloss over what Ryan just said. So whether you’re an agent here locally, in our immediate area here, or if you’re affirm all across the country that’s looking for coaching or wanting to have Ryan come in, and Coach, you know, your team, reach out to him to for those opportunities. So And please, for everyone who’s listening to the show, I’m asking for a favor from you I’ve to two asks. One is please tell a friend just reach out to one other agent that could benefit from hearing episodes like these monthly episodes we do with Ryan, they’re so valuable, and pass this information along. It’s free, right? There’s no cost to any realtor who wants to listen, we do this as a way to give back because it fills us up. Ryan does this because it fills him up. It fills me up to do it. We’re super honored to have the audience that we have. But of course, we’re always looking to reach and help more people. So just tell one person, another realtor about the show that will really help us continue to provide more episodes, we’re committed to doubling the number of episodes we did last year, and we’re on pace to do that. And that’s because our listenership has increased. So please do that. And then the second thing is please, everyone subscribe to our Facebook page. It’s facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And the reason for that is not only do we publish episodes in real time, so you’ll know as soon as this episode with Ryan, of course goes live. But in addition to that, we find an article every single day that is designed somewhere online that’s been written to help you grow your business and we promote that there. It’s the only thing content we promote on there’s every day, there’s one article that we find. So we’re we’re dedicated to helping you grow your business. So please support us by visiting us on Facebook and also support Ryan, reach out to him visit the apple properties.com as well. And Ryan, on behalf of all the listeners, thank you once again for being such a dedicated co host and supporter of our show, we couldn’t do it without you and we really, really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you

Welcome to the January episode of Coaching Moments with Ryan D’Aprile!

Over the past decade Ryan D’Aprile has personally coached hundreds of real estate agents to top producer status. He has devoted his career to sharing the strategies that have worked for him (and for countless others) to help agents get to the next level. In this episode Ryan provides the disciplines needed to make 2020 your best year ever in real estate. Follow his suggestions and then send him a thank you! 🙂

Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.590.6416 and ryan@daprileproperties.com.

Ryan D'Aprile
d'aprile properties

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
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Welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made for real estate agents and brokers by real estate agents and brokers. My name is DJ Paris. I am your host and guide through the show and today we have our monthly episode called coaching moments with Ryan de Abril. Ryan is a progressive thought leader focused on providing for his agents and staff. His strengths are his motivational skills coaching style and his dedication to training. He has 14 offices throughout Chicagoland and in Wisconsin and Indiana and Michigan, and hundreds and hundreds of brokers deep real properties is a coaching company with eight strategic coaches who work week in and week out with every agent individually focusing 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 at your current firm. Check out dia real properties visit deep real properties.com welcome Ryan de abril to the show.

Ryan D’Aprile 1:52
Thanks, DJ. How are you doing, buddy?

D.J. Paris 1:54
I’m good happy holidays. And happy new year.

Ryan D’Aprile 1:57
Yeah, New Year’s right around the corner. We’re coming in early next week. And we it’s that time of the year right where everybody starts reflecting on the previous year and coming up with these new year’s resolutions. I think in our last session, I said everyone should treat the end of each quarter. Like, like a new year. I think a lot of people come out of the gates running. But then 10s of fizzle out. And we’re going to come into that time where we make our New Year’s resolutions. We’re ready to rock and roll. You blink your eyes and it’s February 15. And the excitement’s faded. So I think that happens a lot of people. So coming into this, keep this in mind you guys, when you end the first quarter of next year, which will be here before you know it. Think of that last week of March as another new year because I think if you really focus on doing what you need to do each quarter, four quarters in a row, you’re going to continually improve and be more and more satisfied with your career. You know, personally and professionally, I believe so. But yeah, here we are, and you have any plans for the holiday?

D.J. Paris 3:02
Well, I just got back from Florida and got to spend time for unplugged a little bit, which is hard for me to do. I imagine it’s even harder for you. But I unplugged for a few days. And now I’m back. And yeah, I mean, you know, I think so much of we have between your company and the company I work for we have I don’t know, probably about 1000 brokers total. And it seems to me to be that habits are the cornerstone of success, right daily habits, weekly habits, monthly habits, quarterly habits, and just seems to be what wins the game?

Ryan D’Aprile 3:37
It no and it truly is. The the action that is required to get yourself ahead is the actions the tasks are incredibly simple. What’s difficult is people being consistent. And I think what is the issue there is really kind of how people talk to themselves their internal belief systems. You know, we tend to follow up the stories we tell ourselves. And unfortunately for the majority of us, that story is overwhelmingly negative for many different reasons. You know, the information age, social media, everybody’s showing these, you know, these, these, these lifestyles that they live in, but they’re really not true, if it get beyond the app, but what people do, they tend to compare themselves. And it’s just this this snowball effect of negativity then really takes people off track to doing especially if you’re in sales, the simple tasks, which is essentially relationship building activities to grow your business. So yeah, it is habits and you gotta you got to be very conscious and aware of, of your habits and the habits you want to have and put some structure and guideline in place. So you can make it easier for yourself to do these simple tasks that we’ve been talking about this whole this entire pasture and I figured, you know, DJ, why don’t we talk about this past year and some trends that you’ve seen? And I’ve seen, and then we’ll have some coaching moments as well. Great. So what did you see this past year? What did you What did you notice, within your with your, in your marketplace?

D.J. Paris 5:16
One of the things that our brokers and you know, in Illinois, we call everybody broker in other parts of the country, it’s of course, agent. But what our Realtors were reporting to us is that, you know, years and years ago, there was prevailing wisdom that you wanted to keep rooms really sparse because you wanted people to be able to visualize their own stuff inside of the rooms. And, you know, the idea was, you know, keep it really bear and let people sort of dream and visualize as they walk through. And I think that’s shifted a lot. And the rise of staging companies has become, I think, a lot more relevant and popular. And I wonder if that’s largely due to us being on social medias, particularly Instagram, where we just see perfection every single day, every single day, all day long, nothing but perfect food, perfect homes. Perfect. You know, the we look perfect, because you call it you tap on the picture, and it changes all of our wrinkles, and everything just looks perfect. And so I’ve noticed that staging companies seem to be more relevant than ever. I was curious if you saw that as well. Yeah, I’ve been

Ryan D’Aprile 6:20
seeing more and more of that coming along. And I’ve seen a lot of agents getting skill sets, or vendors that they know of, and working with it, to to add value to their sellers homes. I think it’s important, I think there’s so much we do as real estate agents, I think, still today, the number one value that we add to the marketplace is emotional intelligence, because it’s such an emotional transaction. It’s the biggest financial transaction. But I think it’s also the biggest emotional transaction that so many disruptors have tried to come in and change the model of our business. But you know, they’re still losing 10s of millions of hundreds of millions of dollars. And you’re not grasping the fact that this is really a human experience people are going through. But then the next level beyond that is, yeah, it is it’s that staging, or it’s at that touching the house up and moving things around, you know, a number of my agents are incredibly talented, actually using the stuff that is in the home, but just rearranging it. So it’s organized in a different way. And just, you know, moving things around. And so yeah, I’ve seen more and more of that. I see more and more that come but as a real estate professional, and as majority of the listeners here are real estate professionals, I think that’s something to to be aware of. But it’s don’t go down that rabbit hole making that your sole focus, because I think that’s one of the things I’ve noticed with a lot of agents is, is you see a trend or something like a trend that you just mentioned, you know, with the staging, and that coming up in HGTV and everything else. But at the end of the day, we are in a sales function. And you need you need to focus on generating business generating leads, what’s a lead? Somebody wants to buy or sell? Where do you find those people? Well, there’s many different categories. The best category, the best place is your network. And so I still think that 80% of your focus in your activities should be that relationship building activity. And I think the other stuff that comes along and selling a home comes naturally to most of us.

D.J. Paris 8:27
I think I think you’re you’re so right. And I talked about this in a another episode I did recently, where I said make this the year that you demonstrate how much you care about the people in your network, and what that what I thought that looks like and I’m curious to get your opinion, and maybe you could even give us some additional strategies or some additional thoughts around it. But I thought, well, how do you show that you care, you’re to your sphere of influence individually, if you you know, it’s hard to do that if you don’t know much about their lives. And I thought make this the year that you do keep tabs in a in a positive way on what is going on with the people that you do care about your sphere of influence, take notes know about their children know where they work, know what’s going on in their lives by this is a Rhian tip from from a long time ago is follow them on social media check in see where they’re vacationing, what’s you know, what big life events do they have? And this gives you a reason to reach out. And

Ryan D’Aprile 9:26
that’s your Yeah, DJ right? That’s, and for everybody listening here. You guys. That’s your job. That is your job. That’s what you have to do. People hire real estate agents that they know like and trust. You know, it’s cool to be the next Instagram star and have the greatest stories out there. But if you’re not connected with these people, they’re not going to care. They really aren’t. And so social media is a great tool. I say it’s an r&d it’s research your network and develop a relationship with them. That’s what I use it for. I actually don’t think it’s the best advertising tool I’m sure there’s a lot of people just You know, you’re out of your mind. But you know, we’re not selling a commodity, you know, again, it’s a huge emotional transaction. It’s a huge financial transaction, the sales cycle seven years. And what I mean by that sales cycle seven years is that most people live in their home for seven years. So the transaction, you know, is a longer cycle. So you gotta be focused and do make that this year, make that every year actually. And until I see something, you know, for almost 20 years, I’ve been in this business. And I’ve been in this business since the, you know, the dawn of the social media and the Zelos. And still nothing can hold a candle to an agent who has a relationship with their neck network, nothing. So, you know, until something shows me, you know, there’s a lot of trends, there’s a lot of instructors as a huge money out there, then these hedge funds in these publicly traded companies that are willing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. I’m not willing to, as a individual real estate agent, I don’t need to follow those trends. I’m going to follow what’s tried and true. And that is really being in connection. In flow with your with your network.

D.J. Paris 11:07
I asked a recently asked to one of the very top top top producers here locally in Chicago, Melanie Julio, what’s the secret of her successes? I think she’s a top 10 out of 46,000. brokers. And I said, if you had to narrow down to one cornerstone activity, what what is it? And she thought about it for a second, and I wasn’t sure that she would even have one because obviously, realtors, everyone listening, you do a million things for your clients. But she’s like TJ, if I had to say one thing, she goes, it almost sounds silly to say this, because of course I do this. But she goes, I don’t think everyone does. She goes I call every single client. Now this is once their client. She says I call every single one of them every single week just to give them an update, whether there’s anything to report or not. And I said, Oh, okay, that’s a pretty simple suggestion. She goes, you’d be shocked that pretty much nobody does that. And that’s, that’s just once they’re a client, right? There’s so much you can do to stay in touch, Like Ryan said, the sales cycle seven years, what are you going to do for the next six years? To demonstrate that you care about your client?

Ryan D’Aprile 12:11
Yeah, and what Melanie said, she said, you said something that just triggered me. She said she shocked by how many people don’t do that. And I want our listeners to hear this, to be in the top 5% to be the top 5% producer in your marketplace. It’s simple. It’s easy. And it’s it’s a choice that you make the other 95% choose not to be in it. I mean, that’s it’s that simple. They make daily choices not to be in it. There is nothing that is complicated, difficult. In fact, most people are overthinking this. And like Melanie said, I mean, what a common sense, you know, approach call your clients once a week. Yeah, right? Of course. Right? Right. In Melanie’s brilliant for saying that, right. I’m just I’m talking to the 95% who don’t like this is what you have to do. You’re in a service business, you’re in a customer service business. And either the you know, and even if it’s not your customer, your network will if you want them to be your customers and clients, then you have to serve them, you have to have a focus on them and the relationships.

D.J. Paris 13:16
Well, that and that’s once you know, you’re right. And that’s once you get them as a client. But as Ryan, as you just said, look, there’s a sick, you know, six to seven year window of time where they don’t aren’t looking to buy or sell or transact in any way in real estate. That’s the heavy lifting, right? That’s where you need to stay in touch. But then a lot of times, at least brokers here at my firm will say, Well, why do I Why should I? What do I say? What? When should you know? Why would I call them? It’s like, well, that’s when you should know everything about their lives. So it gives you a reason to reach out so that you can consistently show them that you’re paying attention that you care that you’re involved in their life, you’re interested so that when that seven year marker comes due, obviously, they would hope to go to the person who has cared the most for the last seven years.

Ryan D’Aprile 14:02
Right. And so those tools as individuals, right, it’s one thing is they’re going to ask the question, What do I say? And then I say back to them is that is that’s a defense mechanism you’re using to put off doing what you need to do you know what to say, you’re going to find out what to say. And the truth is if you want to have if you want to have more, you have to become more. And you know, any any top person in their field has depth. And you have to have depth and it takes hard work. It takes commitment and you know, born and raised in this amazing country they have we’re programmed for quick and easy. You know, you know, I have a large organization that we built over the past 787 to eight years. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t immediate. And it still isn’t easy today. I mean, it’s Saturday, and I’ve had three appointments this morning, by the way, to those that that might scare you. Do. I’m also a family man, I have a wife, I got three daughters, I coach my kids basketball teams as well, they weren’t in basketball anymore, but I’m with my kids all the time I travel with them. So don’t be afraid of success, either. There’s more than enough time. In the day, I think, you know, in our last podcast, DJ, you know, I said, What does? Like remember the names? But what Warren Buffett? And what’s the Virgin Airlines guy? Richard Branson, right? And Elon Musk, what do they all have in common? 24 hours in the day, we all have 24 hours in a day, a lot of people are afraid of success. Don’t be afraid of success, success will give you more time. It’ll give you more freedom. And it’ll give you the ability to make choices. What you have to embrace is discipline and structure. Because there’s so much time in a day to do all these things and not get out. And the things that we’re talking about the activities, and it’s going to take your business to the next level, I mean, really only takes an hour and a half to two hours a day, and that everybody has an hour and a half to two hours a day. But I want you this year to make a New Year’s resolution is to call yourself out on the excuses. You know, when when you start to make excuses to yourself. So yeah, I had this and yeah, that don’t Don’t, don’t allow that anymore for yourself. Everybody, including myself, we need to stop looking outside, we got to start looking in, we got to look in the mirror. And we have to hold ourselves more accountable to doing the things that we have to do. And again, to be in that top 5%. It’s a choice. And it’s simple to be there. Most people choose not to be there.

D.J. Paris 16:36
Yeah, I think you’re right. And because the the path to success is well trodden, it’s not a secret. It’s a readily accessible hack. Listen to any episode in this entire podcast, and you’ll hear the exact steps to success from top producers. And it is rarely mind blowing and novel and, you know, secretive, it is always usually the same exact message repeated over. And I would say once you develop whatever those daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly activities are to grow your business, most important one, I think being daily, you know, what can you What are repeatable tasks you can do daily, then I think it is so helpful to have an accountability coach, or a partner, or a firm that can hold you accountable. Because in, you know, Ryan and I are similar is is we need that as well in our own lives with with our own businesses. And, you know, we can’t do everything ourselves. So

Ryan D’Aprile 17:33
well, I learned a great thing about time management. And now this is now I’m speaking to the, to the top producing agents, right. And, again, you know, there are a lot of real estate agents making 234 $500 million a year in this business in Chicago. It’s an incredible business, you can make a lot of money doing this business, but you do have to get into time management. I saw somebody the other day, and I can’t recall who it is. But he said, you know, if you’re making $500,000 a year, you’re making 250 bucks an hour. So, you know, I think about myself or a close friend that’s in the business and in this individual set. So if you’re, if you’re mowing your own yard, or if you’re doing your own laundry, and you are actually capable of earning that kind of money to doing those tasks. And so you could pay somebody 20 bucks an hour to do that. You’re costing yourself $230 an hour to do your your yard work, or $230 to do your laundry like look, I love gardening, and I love yard work. So I think that’s a bad example, maybe on a Saturday or Sunday, I need to get out. But I do think coming to doing the laundry and, and even sometimes grocery shopping. And if you are a top producer, one of the most important things is that you maintain that. And so you got to think about the willpower you have and these daily tasks. And I think one thing you should think about in this next year is what at your home, can you outsource. And again, I’m a father of three girls, and if I was outsource housekeeping, with somebody, a housekeeper coming in half to three days a week, you know, my parents, my children are going to look back in their life to say, we were worse parents because somebody else folded our clothes. You know, we’re able to provide a lifestyle for them. Because for us to do the laundry class, my wife $230 An hour uses track what it costs us to pay somebody to come in and keep the house clean. So it’s tangible when you brought that up. It just brought up a good point. And I want to

D.J. Paris 19:39
Well, and I think you oh what Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the most important thing is quality time, right? And that’s what you never want to sacrifice. But it’s funny, I have a friend and she works in a completely unrelated industry. And I want the point I’m about to make here and I’ll make it first so that you guys can understand the context of the story is a lot have times people who are listening go, Well, I can’t, I don’t have an accountability partner, I don’t know anyone or I can’t afford a coach. I’m going to challenge that in. First of all, there’s always people you can meet that, that you can hold each other accountable. But if you want to hire someone you can’t afford, you can’t afford it not have a coach. I agreed, if you’re agreed, I want to share just how inexpensive it can mean. And this isn’t a coach so much as an accountability partner. But this is how inexpensive so I have a friend and he is in a completely unrelated industry. He’s he’s in us, he has a salary job, and he is struggling waking up in the morning. And I know for those of us that have no problem waking up early, and getting to work on time, we sort of know how to somebody struggle. But look, everybody struggles with something. This is what he struggles with once he’s at work. He’s a total superstar, he wins awards. He’s a total great guy, employee, except he just gets to work 10 minutes late, and his boss is about ready to kill them. And so he goes, I cannot afford to lose this job. This I’m screwing myself up in this, but he just can’t do it. So I said, Well, you know, you can hire somebody that will wake you up every morning on the phone. And he was like, What do you mean? I said, Well, you can hire people to do anything. And he found somebody, I think they’re in the Philippines. And they wait, they call him like three times in the morning. And they force you know, sort of forced him to get out of bed. His best all yesterday was answered the phone. So anyway, this, the solution has worked for him. And I have a solution for that. Well, I just want to Yes, and I want to hear that. But this this, what’s amazing is the total cost for this is trusting him $10 A week, $10 a week to save his job. And so my point is, is we live in this gig economy where people are willing to help, like Ryan said, you can have somebody come in to fold your clothes, it might be less expensive than you think. But again, look to see what you would be earning. If you were working or maybe spending time with your family. You know, that’s there’s a cost associated with that if you don’t do it, right.

Ryan D’Aprile 21:51
If you don’t, and I even think of my wife, she’s a Top Producing agent she sells. I think she’ll sold $22 million in real estate this year, right. And these past weeks, she’s just slaving over wrapping the gifts not just for the children, but for her clients and everything else. And we’re, you know, again, none of us are perfect, right? And I’m running it, you know, a million miles an hour, and I heard this person on a podcast is Oh my God, Jesus, that’s brilliant. Why aren’t we hiring somebody to do these gifts for her. So she’s not exhausted at the end of the day. And she could focus on what she did to do another 20 plus million dollars in 2020. So hey, you know, a DJ, I want to shift focuses here, and, you know, and continue to add value to the listeners. Let’s talk about some market trends of what we saw. And I recall last year, also in the first quarter last year, seeing just a drop in activity. Do you recall that? It was I don’t know if we’re going to it was remarkable. I said, oh shit, what’s going on here. And we started seeing a lot of shifts in supply and demand. And in June or July, it was around June or July, I was going over some supply and demand data with you. I figured why don’t we look back at the year and look at where we are right now. And let’s just look at the entire Chicagoland MLS. Let’s look at some of that data. And then let’s look at the city Chicago, and let’s look at the attached and detached market. That’s fine. Okay with you. Okay, so we saw a huge drop in the market in the first quarter. And then activity really picked up. We as a company finished very strong, I believe a lot of other companies did. We’re up almost 20% over last year, our organization and you know, our organization is a little bit unique. Because we’re not such a hardcore recruiting company. We’re in our marketplaces, you see these agents shifting from office to office. As you know, a lot of our agents were not licensed five years ago. So we saw a lot of so what I’m what I’m pointing to is not something about org organization. It’s more about the marketplace. A lot of our agents started with us five years ago. And we seen when we had a an O ship moment in the first quarter, what’s happened in the marketplace, we finished really strong we were up almost 20% over last year. Now looking back, I’m going to look at the ship. Let’s see here, like put my data here. I had it and I just lost it. So let’s look at the entire MLS. And let’s look at the detached. Let’s look at the detached so the single family home market and the entire MLS and let’s look at let’s look at some supply and demand. And this is the you know supply and demand is the cause. And price is the effect. So

D.J. Paris 24:33
and this will be really helpful because we know we do need to recognize patterns and trends and market is cyclical. And I’m really excited to see what is in store for the future with mortgage rates being very reasonable right now. And you’re still we’re now seeing a lot of activity our business as well is up 20 to 30% with our brokers so I’m I’m we’re very we’re very excited and grateful for that. But I’m curious to know what the future is going to bring Um but also to look back and see see what finally we saw that ramp up and you know later last year and it was it was very well received because we were nervous earlier earlier in the year with the slowdown

Ryan D’Aprile 25:12
was so many all. So this is detached in the entire MLS so it’s all Chicagoland area this is the entire time period over two years, inventories up 12% But the good thing is under contracts up 6% And the sold rate is outpacing what’s for sale by 1%. So 13% more single family homes and the entire MLS have sold. So, um, you know, this flies up, but the demand is still there, which is great. So now let’s look at the all MLS price for single family homes. Okay. What we’re seeing in single family home market is in the entire Chicagoland area, the entire MLS. home sellers are asking 11% More in November than they were two years ago. There are, they’re going under contract for two and a half more than our price two years ago, but they’re actually closing for 7% more. So I’m seeing still a healthy, healthy market where we were starting to see a shift in June and July, right, we had a slow first quarter. And then you start to see in half mark halfway mark of 2019, you are seeing a rise in demand and a huge opportunity, a rising supply and a fall in demand. But a lot of markets. Now this is you know, real estate’s hyperlocal. Okay, so this is the entire MLS, but then you zeroed into a lot of markets and a lot of sellers get very savvy and they drop their prices and and what has happened and in relationship that is that they actually homes are selling for more. And this is where it’s hard to convince your sellers. But if you ask less you actually get more versus the other way around. So that’s in the entire MLS let’s see what’s going into the city, Chicago. Okay. Any questions on that? DJ? Does that make sense? So let’s look at the condo market in Chicago. And we’re gonna go into supply and demand. Holy cow. Okay, I wasn’t I didn’t know this information and prepare for this. So in Chicago, in November of 2019 versus November 17. There are 32% More condos for sale than they were were. There’s negative 6% under contract. But there are 4% More that sold now this is supply. So we’re seeing a huge influx of supply. Here. Let’s look at what’s happened with price. So which says there might be some downward pressure on condo prices. Here, let’s pull up. And this is the kind of information to our listeners. Regardless if you’re in Chicago, or you’re in Florida or work California and you’re listening to this podcast, this kind of information, you need to go to your broker and research on your own and find out and have at your fingertips so that when you meet with your clients, you’re you’re educated and you can help them make informed decisions here. So let’s go and look at the condo prices in Chicago. This is the city of Chicago. Now, this is not Chicagoland. So you’re getting a little more local, but I’m really more regional here than local. So people are asking a percent condos are are for sale are being offered 8% More than they were two years ago. They’re under contract for 3.3%. So the trend is following. And they’re selling flat as they were two years ago. So we’re seeing a shift in the kind of market in Chicago. Because does that align with what you’re saying?

D.J. Paris 28:55
Yeah, I guess so. You know, I haven’t really I’m not out there producing so it’s easy for me to to know or not know, or they’re easy for me to not know. But yeah, I mean, we are I am hearing that from our brokers.

Ryan D’Aprile 29:07
Alright, so let’s look what’s going on in the Chicago single family home market. Okay, there is negative point seven. So there’s 1% Less homes for sale than there were two years ago. So there is a downward shift in supply. It’s almost flat, though. And it’s up under contracts of 1.4% and sold up 1%. So the single family home market in the city of Chicago is much healthier than the condo market is. And let’s look at what’s going on with the price then. Chicago detached price. Well, people are asking 18% More than they were two years ago. They’re selling 8% more and they tune it they’re under contract for a percent more in goodness. They’re selling at 11.8% More than they were two years ago. Now here’s the thing. I want all the listeners especially the Chicagoland listeners to understand This is I think in I think in Chicago north, there are like 42 different neighborhoods, in Chicago Association, realtors, North any of Chicago rules, association, realtors, south, this is all Chicago. So you really got to dial this in, this is more of a regional conversation what’s going on. But real estate is hyper local. So this is totally different. I could get in a geographical area of Wicker Park or Ukrainian village or, or Roscoe village and you know, Lakeview or whatnot, I could do all Lakeview I could do Old Town, Linkin Park. And, and, and, and things shift. So there’s a lot of data out there. And there is a great author, and I can’t remember his name, but he wrote the book to Sell Is Human. But he said, Dan Dean, what’s his name to sell to human? Oh, come to me. But it again, your job, your number one focus, if you want to move the needle, and be more successful in this business, you need to focus on relationship building. But then you have to focus and shift over to some skill set building. And this is a skill set that I think really consumers are looking for. And what this is, is being a curator of knowledge. So we live in the information age, this information is at everybody’s fingertips matches mine, your sellers, and your buyers, they have access to it too. They just don’t have time for it. So we have to be the curators, and we have to be able to explain to them what’s going on and help them make decisions, especially if they’re selling their home. And they gotta understand why are selling their home, and always talk to their why. And then say, Hey, here’s the flags that are blown in the wind, this is what direction now you get to make the decision. And I think as real estate professionals, if you are really good, if you’re really good at daily activities and creating relationships, and you spend a few hours a week on your skill set and understanding the data and what’s going on here and there. And then like you said, DJ in the beginning, you know, maybe look at some staging and some other value adds don’t go crazy don’t know, be a master of few, right? Not a master of all because What’s it saying jack of all trades and master of none. Right pick pick one or two things that falls in your wheelhouse, which we like to call your dharma and in make yourself shine by focusing on that skill set activity with the activity that’s going to really move the needle in your business is the relationship building activity.

D.J. Paris 32:29
Yeah, that’s, that’s really I think both are so important. And so if you think about it, from everyone who’s listening might start saying okay, well, how do I do this? Well, maybe you alternate if you’re first of all, you need to have a communication policies, right. So think about all those people in your sphere of influence, who aren’t looking to buy, sell rent, you know, in the immediate future, but you want to stay in touch. So maybe one month, you’re noticing that they went on vacation, and you can contact them and say, Hey, I saw you just had a great vacation more of a human connection, more of, uh, shows that you’re paying attention to their lives. But then you know, that’s right. And so that’s really just some of what you need to provide, you need to also have a skill set about your, your career, your your industry, so that you can provide additional value. So that’s another reason to contact Hey, I just saw that you guys are in Wicker Park right now homes or condos are selling for 11% more than they were two years ago. I don’t know if that’s of interest to you. I don’t know if you guys are thinking of moving but I just wanted to share that with you. So you were in the loop on what’s going on in your in your neighborhood. That’s a tremendous value add that, again, all your competition is not doing. But these are the people that want to work with you, they like you. But they also want to be reminded from time to time that you do have this skill set that you are good at your job. And Ryan looked up that data and all of 20 seconds, right? This isn’t hard to find. But you need to be able to provide this to be able to I got a postcard recently in the mail from Michael. Michael Rosenberg. And it was he has sold more condos in my building than any other realtor. The reason I know that he put it on the postcard, which I thought was very smart. And then not just that, then on the backside, it had all of the current condos for sale in my building. It had the mons who have recently closed in the last 90 days. And I could easily see. I mean, think about how much value there was in just that postcard. I now know what’s going on in my building. I now know who sells the most. And and I know Michael personally is a wonderful guy. But I just thought well, boy, that was a great postcard. Right? So you have to think about how do you continually add value? How do you how do you get that sort of information out to your to your sphere of influence, right?

Ryan D’Aprile 34:41
And I think you know, to wrap this up, you know, for all the listeners out there is you know, we’re going to come in next week. It’s New Year’s Eve and we’re going to have a new year and when you guys listen, this is probably gonna be the first week of January whatnot. Now as you know, now’s the time, you know, to start to organize your business and to focus and and first thing you do is you got to believe in yourself, you got to understand how powerful you are as an individual, and that you have a network or that you can create one over the course of a year and a lifetime moving forward, you got to believe that if you create relationships in your network, everything else will fall into place. Because it will and opportunities will just unfold. So it’s really the belief that you have in yourself that you need to focus on daily, I believe in you, but that’s not enough. You need to, and that’s where it really starts, it doesn’t matter what I think, or your spouse thinks your parents are, or your friends, it’s what you think. And it’s what you think about yourself. Everybody else is So, you know, really wrapped up and you know, what, you know, self doubt, anxiety, self loathing, we’re all so wrapped up in ourselves. So just focus on that, like, how do I make that belief positive, so that I could do the simple things that I have to do day in and day out? That can really change this year, which that can be the catalyst to change in my life. Absolutely. And,

D.J. Paris 36:07
you know, if you just focus on how do I demonstrate to the people who, who liked me the best, and who I like the best, my sphere of influence? How do I demonstrate that I care? And you break that up into several categories? One is a personal connection, right? Do you know what’s going on in their world their life? Can you celebrate with them and be there for them when they’re struggling? And then also, how do you demonstrate that you have a skill set about real estate because as Ryan said, they have access to the status, Zillow is available to everyone, and everyone’s going there anyway. But do they have the time to really drill down into the data? And I would say, you know, look, every time I’ve ever had to refinance, my mortgage lender at the time, never called me and said, hey, it’s a good time to refinance, I had to get that information. And maybe there’s a reason maybe they’re not incentivized to do that. But boy, as a realtor, that’s a great reason to pick up the phone, it’s a great reason to let them know that homes are selling for more or less, or now’s a good time to buy. And just making sure that they know that you have that skill set in addition to also caring about them as as individuals. And you can do this daily, right? This this is not a massive undertaking, right? This, you know, your your sphere of influence is what 300 people on average, somewhere around there, you know, break that up.

Ryan D’Aprile 37:24
And I’ve got I’ve got several agents that have less than 250 people in their database, and they do over $10 million annually. That’s, it’s less is more people. Yes. You just go deep.

D.J. Paris 37:37
And the only way to go deepest, do consistent action. So every day have a certain number of people that you in your database that you are contacting and demonstrating value to right this is goes back to that old Brian Buffini thing is how do I win the day. And of course, you have to work with your existing clients and your that’s going to be the bulk of your day, then you’re going to but don’t forget the the building relationship part as well. So the exhausting part of the day is dealing with clients stuff. But remember, how do I add value to the people who aren’t yet my clients are in between sales. And I want to make sure they are always remembering that I care about them. And if you just have, you know, put them on a schedule, and every month they’re being contacted, or whatever your schedule is have something to talk to them about

Ryan D’Aprile 38:23
it. And I’ll break it up for you guys here. And I think maybe DJ we wrap on this, I think it’ll be a strong one for everybody to to make a plan for next year. Okay, let’s say you have 250 people in your database. And let’s say your business is plugging along and you’re happy where it is and you want to maintain it, then I think you really should connect with everybody wants a quarter meaningfully, right. And I call them asking for a referral. And I call them asking if you know anybody wants to buy or sell, you’re gonna call them send them a text message, write a handwritten note, send them a Facebook or LinkedIn message, commenting on something you saw was just thinking about them. Now, if you have 250 people on your network, and your dashboard was what we call here, if you have 250 people in your CRM, your dashboard. That’s that and you work Monday through Friday, take Saturday and Sunday off. It’s for context that day. That’s less than 30 minutes of work. Come on. Now. We all can do this, right? So I say Come on, like, really make it a mission to do that. Now, if you want to get your level and you’re not at $10 million a year, and you want to be at $10 million a year. Great. Then do it once a month do for 12 months in a row. Now remember, you have to have an automated marketing plan. That’s a whole other conversation. You know, your network should get direct mail from you. Every other week, they should get an email marketing from you on a monthly basis. You should have some type of digital presence and they should really forget about it because that’s just branding. The work is the relationship building. But if you’re not at the $10 million mark and you want to get there, okay then there are 20 working days in the month. There’s 20 So if you take the 250 People need divided by 20. That’s 12 contacts a day, again, 12 contacts a day. And let’s just say it takes 10 minutes to do a contact to send somebody a Facebook message or a text message. Forget email, email is the worst, okay? It’s really, it’s meant to be personal. It’s to be a call, a text message, a handwritten note, or a direct message via LinkedIn, or whatnot. It’s two hours, it’s 125 minutes a day for five days a week. You know, we have two hours to do things subconsciously, running errands, taking dry cleaning in and out, why don’t we spend those two hours on an activity that’s going to really move the needle for you so, so think about where you are, reflect on 2019? Hopefully, everybody had a wonderful 19. And if you want to maintain your business, stay in flow with everybody wants a quarter. And if you’re looking to have a breakthrough year, do it once a month, make this year a commitment, break it down? Each quarter, see how you do reflect in the last week of March? How did you do in first quarter, but guess what? If you botch it, and you didn’t do it, that’s okay. You get the second quarter start all over and do it again, spend two hours a day contacting those? What is it 14 People 200 divided by 12, not 20 was 12 people a day to be in contact everybody in network once a month, you will guarantee guarantee authors.

D.J. Paris 41:25
I mean, and let’s not gloss over that word guarantee. Ryan’s not using that word lightly. That is absolutely the truth. So you know what, here’s one simple thing we do.

Ryan D’Aprile 41:35
I’ve never had anybody that I’ve coached follow the system not have success. I’ve had a lot of people that I’ve coached, that have not been successful. But that comes from the belief system themselves, and then not doing the activities after they leave, or they follow a trend or they do this and do that. But quite honestly, anybody who has came and followed this path has had total success in a short time period in three years. Now I’ve worked people for two years, and it’s take them two years to get on board. That’s a whole different conversation. But the ones who get on board that buy into this, it takes two to three years to have to be in that like, top 20% in Chicago. So I’m 12 $15 million real estate here, it’s guaranteed to happen.

D.J. Paris 42:19
What we need to have your your wife on here, one of these days, I’d love to hear her perspective on what it’s like to not only raise 333 daughters, but also produce an incredible amount of production, or produce a number of sales per year, I’d love to have her on one of these days, too.

Ryan D’Aprile 42:36
Yeah, I have a lot of agents that that actually do that a lot of a lot a lot of mothers and fathers in our company that are doing the kind of production my wife is doing. And you just let me know and I happily have them come on in and we can do

D.J. Paris 42:48
a q&a that would be that would be great. And a really a great place to to also mention Ryan’s company is always looking for brokers who are wanting to be coached, or wanting to go to that next level. And this is exactly the kind of service they provide. They have eight coaches, there’s 14 offices, and they work they really do work individually with every single agent to help get them to where that agent wants to go. Um, Ryan, if there are realtors out there that are looking for a new home, maybe they’re not getting the attention that they need or deserve. And they want to, you know, work for a company like yours, what’s the best way that they should reach out?

Ryan D’Aprile 43:25
Sure, yeah. So to go back with what you’re saying is, you know, everybody needs to have a coach. And if you don’t want to pay for the coach, we have a traditional brokerage that we run 13 offices, we’re approaching 500 agents. And every one of our coaches meets with our agents on a weekly, bi weekly or monthly basis on the schedule that the agent and the coach work out together. And it’s included essentially in as who we are as a company. And then we actually do your marketing for you a lot of things that I’ve realized is that I’ve coached and I’ve preached agents to do their monthly marketing, we have shifted, and we’ve just taken another hands and we’re just doing it for them. You take those two, those two elements, you put them together, you have a great formula. And if you want to explore it, you know you could reach out to me or any one of our managing brokers, you go to our website, reach out to one of our major brokers or you just pick up the phone and give me a call three one to 5906416 we’re local, we’re here in Chicago, we’re throughout the suburbs, and except time to meet with you and one of our coaches and just do a consultation, see where you are and see where you want to go. And

D.J. Paris 44:34
and also go to do real properties.com You know, don’t worry about trying to spell that because it is in the notes of the episode here. So if you’re listening on an app, just go to the notes on deep real properties.com And we’ll of course link to there and were so gracious and by the way. If you’re here in Chicago, you know in there are a great option. If you’re looking for a new firm. If you’re not here in Chicago, maybe they’ll expand tend to your neck of the woods. But there are companies like Ryan’s probably in your own area. But reach out, you know, you deserve a managing broker in a firm that is able to provide you with that, that help because we all need help. And we can’t all do it ourselves and Ryan, and I have coaches and we need help. So you probably could use some help as well. So look for someone in your neck of the woods that is able to provide that support. Ryan, thank you, once again, we had a great 2019 as a podcast, your episodes are so popular and so well received. We’re so grateful again, for you spending the time that I know is not easy for you to carve out for. So very much appreciated. And for everyone who’s listening, please tell a friend we have actually I was telling Ryan just before we started, we’ve actually doubled our number of downloads from last December through this December, which we’re super grateful for and that’s all because of you the listeners. So make sure to tell a friend if you have any other realtors or anyone else in his service or sales related industry that could benefit from this information doesn’t have to be realtors, but especially Realtors let them know that this podcast exists, help spread our message so we can continue to provide this content for you on a regular basis. And we really appreciate it. So Happy Holidays, Ryan, to you and your family. And also thank you thank you for all of your hard work with our podcast this year. Thank you for the listeners for continuing to support our show and telling a friend and beyond. I guess what that will end with a Happy New Year message and we’ll see everyone in 2020

Welcome to the December edition of Coaching Moments with Ryan D’Aprile!

What does every professional athlete have in common? They ALL have coaches! And so should you! In this end-of-year episode Ryan discusses the importance of coaching, and how you can implement coaching for better accountability into your business for 2020.

Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.492.7900 and execassistant@daprileproperties.com.

Ryan D'Aprile

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Quicken Loans real estate professionals. When you work with Quicken Loans, you have an agent relationship manager available to you and your team. These dedicated experts are part of the agent relations team. They serve as your single point of coordination so you can count on them to keep you in the loop throughout your client’s entire home buying process, call 888-980-2891 or go to real estate dot Quicken loans.com Today, call for cost information and conditions equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states NMLS consumer access.org Number 3030 And now onto the show.

Welcome to keeping the real the largest podcast in the country made for real estate agents by real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris I am your guide and host for the show. Today is our monthly coaching moments episode with Brian De April. Ryan is a progressive thought leader focused on providing for his agents and staff. His strengths are his motivational skills, coaching style, and his dedication to training depot properties has 14 offices throughout Chicagoland and also in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan and hundreds of brokers. A depot properties is a coaching company with eight strategic coaches who work week in and week out with every single agent individually focused focusing on their business plan, coaching and accountability for the agents. If you’d like to take your career to the next level, or if you’re just not getting the attention you need from your firm, check out the April properties you can visit them at D APR properties.com. And welcome the owner of deal properties and the founder Ryan Ryan D APR. Welcome. Thanks, DJ.

Ryan D’Aprile 1:57
How are you?

D.J. Paris 1:58
I’m good. I’m really I love these episodes, because really you are the crux of what we are trying to do on the show. And we do it through various different ways by interviewing top 1% producers. And we’re so grateful that you who is really 100, a full time coach and a trainer to the trainer’s is willing to come on once a month. So this You’re exactly what we’re attempting to accomplish. And we get so much great feedback from your episodes. So really excited to have you on again.

Ryan D’Aprile 2:26
I appreciate It’s my honor. How you how you Braving this cold?

D.J. Paris 2:29
Good, so yeah, so for those of our listeners who are luckily not in Chicago, you’re not? Well, maybe in other parts of the country. It’s this cold too. But yeah, it’s pretty ugly this week. Lots of ice and snow, how about you

Ryan D’Aprile 2:41
nowhere, like just boom, and I’ll hit us the snow in the cold but, but that’s why we live here. And that’s actually it’s why I love it here. I love the change I love, I’ll get sick of the cold and snow Come on late February. But right now I’m kind of enjoying this and wait for the decorations that go up.

D.J. Paris 2:57
And we should also mention, you know, you it’s funny, because I have made my world very small. My the office I have is a mile from where I live. So the weather never really affects me that much. But we should mention sort of what you do, because it’s really important. And probably it’s kind of a peek behind the curtain. Ryan’s like a super busy guy. He has hundreds and hundreds of agents, over a dozen offices, several businesses, but really what he focuses most of his energy on his traveling from office to office helped make make sure that the agents are getting the training and support they need. So you’re probably you probably had a rougher week than I did with travel.

Ryan D’Aprile 3:30
Yeah, but you know, it’s not bad. Because I’m a I’m a podcast and an audio book junkie. So I get a lot done in the car. But it’s free in the brain kind of stuff. And I want to talk about I was inspired by somebody. I’ve been listening to the past couple of weeks, I’ve been sharing it with my agents and whatnot. And I think we’ll talk a little bit about some of the things I’ve learned from him. And I do want to tell everybody that it’s like everything that I coach and I preach, I learned from somewhere else. This is not like, you know, sometimes you go on your coach, and from my perspective is like, you know, oh my gosh, I feel like a phony. This is what somebody else said, but you know, you have to understand it. I’m embracing it. And all I’m doing is I’m being a conduit from what I’ve learned from all these great minds. And if I’m coming in touch with somebody who’s in the mortgage lending or the real estate brokerage business or whatnot, just kind of try to help them with the, the nuggets of knowledge you learn from these. These, you know, these gurus these brilliant thought leaders that I listen to on the podcasts are various audiobooks.

D.J. Paris 4:32
Yeah, and that’s exactly what we do here, too. We have this whole idea of what they say Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, right? So Ryan’s a giant, all the other fortunate guests we have that are generous to to give their time are also giants and we’re learning from the best. And so that’s what we do here.

Ryan D’Aprile 4:49
And I think, you know, given that, you know, we’re a week away from Thanksgiving, we’re coming into that six week holiday stretch that we go into, and the real estate business tends to hibernate a little bit or so lot activity, I think this is a great time to talk, start talking about business planning, and your next year and how to prepare for it. Um, so before we

D.J. Paris 5:10
before we get to I just wanted to pop in with a quick thought, a quick idea, because I was talking about this on another podcast yesterday, which probably our listeners wouldn’t know about. So I mentioned it here, just in case they won’t see this on the other episode I did. And I want to talk about Thanksgiving, because Ryan is a huge proponent of staying in touch with your prospects, your sphere of influence your past clients, everyone that you’re looking to get additional business from, and just, you know, have a strong working relationship and personal relationship. And we’re coming up on the holiday season. And of course, this is a time where brokers are going to be sending a lot of holiday cards, a lot of holiday greetings, and that’s all great. And all of that’s awesome. And then I realized, very few people ever do anything for Thanksgiving. And I thought that’s one way to separate yourself, this would be a great opportunity to get in touch being that it is a bit slower to get in touch. And maybe instead of if you were saying, Well, I’m only going to do either holiday greetings in December for my clients and prospects or in now, I would say maybe do it now you’ll have less competition from everyone else who are sending those same cards. Yeah, I

Ryan D’Aprile 6:17
think I mean, it’s a good idea, I do think you know how they card Thanksgiving, or Christmas, there is a clutter of them. And I tell everybody, you know, your job is simple. It’s creating relationships with the people in your network, quite honestly. And statistically, you know, 60% of them are going to transact every year. And so and each of them know, people who are going to buy ourselves a little bit of referrals you receive from your network. So one thing that I do work with a lot of our agents on when you know, again, you kind of kind of do this in it, we get in and week out bi weekly, monthly, at the biggest time sprint span. And we tend to forget and I don’t count holiday cards as as a as a touch with you, I don’t count as a touch I kind of marketing. And I think it’s something great. And I think it’s something everybody should do. You know, I walk into my house and I have, you know, come December 20. It’s like our islands got dozens and dozens of pictures, and I enjoy looking at them. But from a professional standpoint, and what we do for a living, you know, what comes first, right? The client, right? Or the fail and the client is what comes first? And how do you get a client and it’s a byproduct of these touches that we’re talking about. And you have to you have to be you have to be discipline, you have to be consistent, you have to have the right mindset to understand and be aware, right, and being aware of what you want, is going to trigger the actions you need to take. So I do think it’s a great idea, DJ. But I do also want to say is don’t slip into that, that that little trap where you think yeah, I didn’t touch you sent them a card for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I think what you’re saying does have its avail point centered Thanksgiving because there’s less clutter. But you really should contact everybody your network in the fourth quarter, like you should every single quarter, to continue to build on a relationship, you do it a couple of years in a row, you’re going to receive the compound effect, the snowball effect, where you have a deeper relationship with these people. And then you have a marketing plan that’s going that you’re not even thinking about. And then essentially you’re attracting sales and you’re not chasing sales.

D.J. Paris 8:34
Yeah, I think that the biggest mistake brokers make, or one of the big mistakes brokers make, and it’s very common, it’s the same thing we do where we go to the gym once. And then a week goes by and we’re like, I should probably go again and you just don’t have it scheduled regularly. It’s the same thing. I live in a high rise building in River North and I get about once a month, I get a postcard from a random broker. And you know, it’s part usually partner with the lender. And it’s nice, it says, here’s all the listings I have in your neighborhood. And here’s all the success I’ve had. And it’s cool. And it’s like, okay, and then I don’t hear anything more about from that person for maybe six months. And then I get another postcard. I think they sent me one six months ago, there’s not there’s no consistency. And you know, you have to you know, so if you’re going to do a thanksgiving greeting or holiday greeting, okay, well, that’s one thing, but have a communication policy where it’s like every single person I talked to gets touched 12 times a year. And he and I’m going to just draw out the calendar and ever you know, and I’m going to do it this way. And there’s lots of ways to do it. As Ryan has mentioned, you can you know, write them a post on social media, you can call them you can email them, you can text them, there’s a lot of ways to do it. But you have to be consistent, you have to realize you probably might have to touch them 30 times, you know, over time before you get any sort of traction

Ryan D’Aprile 9:48
and taken a bite sized bite sized pieces because what’s special about January 1?

D.J. Paris 9:54
Well, it’s it’s resolution time it’s the beginning of the new year.

Ryan D’Aprile 9:57
Right it’s resolution time, I think everybody And now it’s the new year, it’s resolution time. It’s also the beginning of a brand new quarter. So I try to tell everybody take the last, you know, two to three days of the last last two, three days of the quarter, and the first two to three days of the quarter and treat it like a resolution, you should have for quote unquote, New Year’s resolutions a year. Okay. And what I success in this is, you know, one of those audiobooks, I’ve been listening to Robin Sharma, I don’t know if you’ve ever listened with He’s phenomenal. He says, and I just love this success is created. Success is created through the consistent practice of simple, I love that word, simple fundamentals. I think the 80% they’re struggling, you know, the first thing that they’re struggling with, is with mindset, and they have that somewhat of a victim mentality where they think that the others are lucky, and it’s just not for them. And with a negative mindset comes negative or no action at all. So the first thing we got to work on, like we discussed in last podcast is you got to really set yourself and work on your mindset. So you can take the action, and understand that the people that have success, they created it, it was not bestowed upon them, it was created. And quite honestly, it’s simple. But you have to be consistent. And consistency plus discipline will equal freedom.

D.J. Paris 11:31
And consistency plus discipline does not include talent, it does not include raw talent, right? Every discipline and consistency will almost it will rise to the same level as talent, if not above talent. So in other words, if you say, Well, gosh, this, this real estate is not my natural inclination, it’s a lot of really successful realtors. It’s not their natural inclination, either. But they’re hard workers and they’re consistent.

Ryan D’Aprile 11:55
Right. And so you know, I, let’s, let’s break down the month, okay, and let’s work five days a week, let’s treat this like a job. Let’s treat it like a career. It’s interesting, mostly real estate agents. You know, a lot of fearless people get their real estate license, they watch how they treat their career, they work so much harder for somebody else for a paycheck. It might even be a dismal paycheck, but they’ll show up five days a week for that check every two weeks. And here they get an opportunity to work for themselves. And they don’t show up. They work one hour, one day, every two weeks, and then they get frustrated and upset or they come and they do busy work, you got to focus on what’s going to move the needle man, you got to focus on what’s going to move the needle in your business and stop subconsciously going through your day. And working on things that might release dopamine, because it’s making you feel like you’re productive, but it’s not activities are going to move the needle, there’s 20% of your actions that are going to produce 80% of your results. And then there’s 80% of your actions that are gonna produce 20% results. And most people spend 80% of time and the 80% of the actions that’s only giving 20% of the results. And they don’t focus on the activities that will move the needle. So if you could take a month, and you could break it down into working days. All right, in taking out holidays in you know, five week months out there. On average, you’d have 20 working days, a month. Okay? So you hear hammering going on right now.

D.J. Paris 13:30
It’s okay, though, it’s perfectly fine. One of

Ryan D’Aprile 13:32
our offices has been remodeled, and I’m backing over and one back offices. So um, so if we take a month and we break it down, you should have 20 working days, because it’s gonna be two days off a week. Now, can you spend an hour and a half every one of those working days working on what’s going to move the needle, then you can do whatever else you want, with the other six hours in that working day. Yeah, and

D.J. Paris 13:57
by the way, just just to pause for a moment. This is Brian Buffini taught me a very similar thought didn’t teach me personally. But I went and saw him speak this is a million years ago. And he said treating your business like a business for real estate agents is important. And he mentioned that he sort of saw it as a stool and there were three legs to the stool, and one of those was client acquisition. So that’s kind of what we’re talking about now marketing, branding, staying in touch. And he says that’s probably only an hour or an hour and a half a day, but it’s the most important hour they and the maybe the rest of the day is customer service, you know, maybe six hours of the day is doing, you know the stuff with your existing clients. But he said that hour, hour and a half, you know whether doing some sort of touch to generate business is the most important hour of the day.

Ryan D’Aprile 14:38
Yeah, you know, I’m factoring that this plant has actually been talking about three legged stool and so three or four legged stool, but it’s a little bit different. It’s upon it’s the lead the lead segment you’re gonna go after and I’ll talk a little bit later on, but that’s a great that’s a great line. And yeah, and that’s that what he says the most important part, that’s what’s going to move the needle. If you can Hidden if you do this five days a week for an hour and a half, you’re and you do it for three months in a row. Robin Sharma calls it the 9091. Stick 90 days, which is three months, that’s focused 90 minutes. And that day was an hour and a half on the one task, that’s going to move your needle. And that is the relationship building. Real treat your career as a real estate professional, or a loan officer, or insurance salesperson or a doctor, an attorney, whoever’s responsible for acquiring clients. If you don’t treat that part of your business with respect and discipline and give it the attention it needs, you’re going to have a frustrating career. If you can dedicate that time. And if you can’t get a coach, you guys, you need to have a coach, you have a coach, he could check in with me once a week and maybe get good maybe check in every other week. I have an agent. I’ve been coaching him now for going on three years. knew the business four years ago. He’s going to he doesn’t have a team as an individual agent, average price points $220,000. He’s going to finish the year at 14 and a half million dollars. We coach every two weeks, much time is spent on the phone when we coach.

D.J. Paris 16:20
I bet not that much minutes. Yeah.

Ryan D’Aprile 16:24
But he does what he’s supposed to do. And if he doesn’t, I chew him out for it. And I don’t chew him out. I’m like, Well, what did we you know, he gets it. And it’s accountability, we do have some good in depth conversation at times. And sometimes it’s not 10 minutes. But is that accountability that just separates you from the bottom 80%? Well,

D.J. Paris 16:43
every professional athlete in the world, every professional athlete in the world has a coach, now the very best at what they do.

Ryan D’Aprile 16:50
Now, if you’re an employee, somewhere, you might not be the coach. Or if you’re in a sales position, where you have a salary, and you’re required to come in five days a week, you don’t need a coach, because guess what, your managers your coach, you got one, right, but real estate’s not like that, you don’t get a check, you’re not being paid, you’re working for yourself, you got to if you if you don’t have it naturally in you to be discipline inside it, go find yourself a coach. And I’m going to tell you, the process is simple. So 20 days a week, alright, five days a week, 9091 90 minutes. All right, 90 days in a row, an hour and a half on the one thing that’s going to move the needle, the one thing that’s going to move the needle is creating a relationship with the people that’s in your dashboard, or your CRM, those are the people that are your network. And most agents stay in touch with the same five people day in and day out with their network, that’s not going to get you anywhere, you got to get beyond your comfort zone. And you got to create a relationship with the other 195 people or more and realize that’s your job. Because if you have a relationship with them, and then you have a marketing platform that’s consistently hitting them, the sales are just going to come to you. So coming into the holiday, you know, Marathon we’re about to come in to make sure you spend these days, this time catching up and getting that over with. And then let’s look at next year. And let’s treat every you know, last week of the quarter as a great business planning and almost like a rebirth your business so you could have four New Year’s, New Year’s Eve for New Year’s release resolutions, you know, quarterly resolutions, what did I do? What are my hat about? What am I regrets? Now, what am I going to do differently? This next quarter, we’re just we’re gonna be coming into that. Now the three legged stool that you’re talking about that Brian refer to? Brian, like I know him, or the four legged stool, you know, that I was thinking about is what’s your business planning strategy? Where are you going to find these clients, right. And so our job is to find somebody who wants to buy or sell a home. And there’s a lot of different places you could buy them, or presumably find them from you can buy them. You can find them though from one, the major one is your network. So that should be one of the legs of your stool. That should be we’re by the way your network. People call it sphere of influence and whatnot. That is we’re a percent of your time should be spent. That’s where you should focus all of your time because it’s going to give you all the results. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have any other strategies. You could have another stool, maybe it’s gonna be open houses this quarter. You’re gonna get into three to four open houses a month to get out and meet buyers or seller’s. Maybe another stool might be I’m going to do a purchase web lead. I’m going to buy Zillow ads are truly ads this year to meet people that could be another lake or you could say I’m going to have Oh farm, I’m going to farm my community. And when I’m sending a postcard, every single month for two years in a row, I’m going to try to create a brand name for myself in my community. And I’m going to commit to sending a postcard every single month, for a minimum of two years. By the way, if you send a postcard to a farm, and you’re only going to two to three times, just don’t do it. Yeah, don’t save your money, save your money, do it for two years and create a brand. So that was the three to four legged stool that I was going to talk about and actually done talking about it. But look at your business as a three or four legged stool. The number one should be the network, you need to create the network, you need to take care of the network, your job is to create relationships with that network, make sure there’s a marketing campaign going out to them, and then look at the other opportunities that are out there and pick out a strategy plan, and then execute it over the next 90 days. And then when you come to the last week of the quarter, which we’ll be coming to do in six weeks here. Plan again, plan for the next quarter. Sorry for the construction going on here.

D.J. Paris 21:02
No, no, it’s fine. I think you’re absolutely right. And I think the easy part that brokers tend to miss it’s it’s the it’s the wake up and do your push ups thing. It’s like every morning I say to myself, and I don’t always succeed, I say I’m just going to wake up and immediately hit the ground and do 50 Pushups. And by the way, I don’t always do that. But if you don’t, what’s

Ryan D’Aprile 21:22
it called? When you tell somebody why you did it’s called a what? An excuse, an excuse. But the thing with excuses, they’ll make you feel better, but they’re not going to get you ahead. This is another thing, and I’m sorry if I cut you off, but he just said that. And again, I gotta give credit to Robin Charmin for this. Because it was, it was just brilliant. She said, and Mike butcher this a little bit but Richard Branson, Warren Buffett. Right? Who’s another ultra successful individual that’s out there? Elon Musk. Okay. Let’s talk about the people at the top of the top right? They all have something in common? You know what that is? No, what’s that? We all have 24 hours in the day. Right? How many hours a day do you have 24. Right, and what they do different, I believe, as they prioritize their time. And so many of us, let errands and tasks that are not going to move the needle, get ahead of the efforts that we need to take, that’s only going to take an hour and a half to move your business. So whenever you’re in that, and you’re making an excuse, or you’re frustrated, you’re really not looking in the mirror, and you’re looking outside for either the solution to your problem, or the blame to your problem. Got to look in the mirror. And you said what am I doing with my day and my time? Why is this person doing this? I tried to say don’t compare, because that’s the thief of all joy. And I didn’t make it up. I use it all the time. Because I struggle with self doubt. I struggle with anxiety, I struggle with depression. I’m I’m trying to be open to that with everybody. Because it’s something that we all need to know that we’re all battling. Right? And, you know, but but when I get in the right mood, I’m in the right headspace. I say what am I going to do today? What’s the hour and a half to two hours that I can spend? That’s going to move the needle, that’s the Network tab. That’s the activities that are going to create relationship with the people in your network that are going to generate you not only new clients, but referrals and relationships that go well beyond that day. So sorry about that. I’ll cut you off.

D.J. Paris 23:46
No, no, no, you’re right. And I think it’s easy, especially once you start getting a few clients to allow the customer service part of the job, which is once you get the client and doing it’s easy to let that take up the entire day. And you you get to the end of your day and you go well, I was busy. And it’s yes, you are. But did you carve out some time to do your push ups to do your do your marketing? And if the answer is no, then the question is, did I really win the day? Well, not really. I mean, I was busy and I service to my clients. And that’s important. And I have to do that. But Did I did I do my push ups and that’s the important thing is to just carve out that time and that’s your time to build your business.

Ryan D’Aprile 24:29
That’s exactly right. And so, you know, I think DJ just to wrap up maybe this coaching session is to you to come full circle back to what we’re you know that that that saying is that success is created. It’s not bestowed on anybody. Success is simple. Success is created through the consistent practice of simple fundamentals. There’s nothing complicated about what we’re talking about doing it sending a text message hey, how are you just saw this, sending a message on Facebook or any Instagram message not running on the wall, sending them a message saying, Hey, I just saw this happen is so cool. It’s just think about your whole balls. Well, you’re not saying oh, by the way, you know, we were looking to buy or sell, you’re not making the sales call, we will talk, I think I think we should talk about how to make the kill, maybe in our next coaching. So you do have to have a killer instinct you do not you do have to know how to make a closing. And maybe you and I should talk off air about how we’ll talk. Maybe we should talk about that next session. But I just wanted to, you know, cover in this episode, while we are coming into the holiday season, don’t neglect the hour and a half that you need to spend on it’s simple process of simple tasks that will create great success for you.

D.J. Paris 25:49
Yeah, and I think too, I wanted to give credit to a interview I listened to that you can probably find online, it was with Tony Robbins interviewed coach John Wooden from UCLA before he passed away. So winningest coach and maybe still the winningest coach in NCAA history. And I believe I have this right. And I’m like, I know nothing about sports. But I think he won seven NCAA championships in a row. And so he was a fascinating person. And he had said, I was listening to this interview, not knowing much about him. And Tony said, How did you win all those championships? And he goes, Oh, was all fundamentals, he says, I try every single day, everyone had to shoot a certain number of free throws a certain number of foul shots, a certain number of, you know, just regular baseline shots, etc. And we tracked everything. And we and then at game time, we just ran our fundamentals. We never use I never as a coach once ever looked at the scoreboard. And Tony said, Well, of course he looked at the scoreboard. He goes, No, he said, I didn’t care. He said all I cared about was executing fundamentals. And the scoreboard took care of itself. And he said, and that’s just the truth. And it’s a it’s an amazing thing. So when Ryan says don’t compare to other people, don’t look at the scoreboard, focus on your fundamentals. Fundamentals always win the game, they always, always, always win the game. Unless you get lucky. I mean, maybe you can get lucky. And maybe you’re that one in a trillion person that hits the lottery, or just has million dollar sales fall into your lap, but I am not that lucky. Ryan’s not that lucky. None of our agents or his agents are that lucky, you have to just just work hard at the fundamentals, keep your head down.

Ryan D’Aprile 27:21
You do and we will compare and I compare and I want to share with people that I have anxiety and self doubt and depression everyone time to time because you know, I, I’m an eight personality, right? I’m a high driving hard driving person. And you know, and sometimes it’s just like, Oh my God, why am I not doing this one man? Do we all do it? So you got to stop you got to take care of your, your body, your health, you got your flat, you got to think about what you scrape before and all the things Yeah, and that’s time I look at my wife and I think my kids that health and like oh my God, everything is going for me. And I get my my mind back on track. And then I get back to the actions are gonna move the needle.

D.J. Paris 28:00
Couldn’t have said it better myself. And I don’t say it better myself, which is why you’re on the show. And we appreciate your on the show. And by the way, most of our audience, I don’t know what percentage will say 99% because that’s probably true. Our brokers here in our local Chicago area. And Ryan’s company depot properties is always looking for people that are looking to take their real estate career, whether they’re brand new, just got licensed, or they’ve been in the business a while and want to get to that next level. What Ryan’s company does, that’s really different from pretty much all the other companies I’m aware of his they focus so heavily on coaching and training that every firm says they do that but Ryan has actually do that they have strategic coaches, which I’ve never heard of another firm having. So if you’re interested in finding a firm like Ryan’s Ryan, what’s the best way that a broker should be reaching out?

Ryan D’Aprile 28:52
It’s easy, you can email me to call me you can text me, my email is Ryan at the APR properties.com D APR i Le, the prilled the APR, pick your pronunciation? The APR properties.com. Or you could shoot me a text or call 312-590-6416. That’s myself.

D.J. Paris 29:14
Wonderful. Well, I wish all of our listeners is probably the last episode we’ll do before Thanksgiving. So everyone will hopefully hear this before Thanksgiving. So we wish all of you on behalf of Ryan and myself a happy Thanksgiving. Also a happy holiday season and this is a great time to refocus on your business plan for next year. And your business plan should have a daily activity of getting a deepening your connections with your existing sphere of influence your network, as Ryan is fond of saying your network is your net worth to steal his phrase and then also to make sure you’re looking to acquire more new clients as well and deepen those relationships and if you can do that, I mean if all you did, if this was your entire plan, which is not a complete plan, but If all you did was meet two new people a day for the next year, and you met for 500 people, oh my god, you’d have all and you should do a lot more than that. But if you could even just meet one new person a day and deepen existing relationships everyday to boy, you’ll have so much business you won’t know what to do with it.

Ryan D’Aprile 30:16
DJ, Happy Thanksgiving man. Thanks for having me, Ben.

D.J. Paris 30:19
Thanks for having us as on the show. Thank you for all of our listeners. quick couple of points if, if everyone out there by the way, I want to deepen relationships with you. If you enjoy the show and listening to Ryan, as well as our other guests, send us your questions. Let Ryan know what you would like him to coach you on on our next episode, the way you can do that visit us on Facebook even go to facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. In addition to posting links to all of our episodes, every single day, our Associate Producer Liz finds an article online that is dedicated to helping agents grow their business and posts an article. It’s the only thing we post on there every single day along with all of our episodes. So you can go get your daily dose of agent secrets and actually build your business and then also tell a friend if everyone just tells one other broker about this podcast, we’ll double our listenership. And what that allows us to do is it attracts more people, sponsors to the show and enables us to do even more for you guys. So thank you so much, Ryan, for doing so much for our audience. I know on behalf of them, we thank you. And on behalf of Ryan and myself, we appreciate everyone listening. So we will see Ryan we’ll see you next month.

Ryan D’Aprile 31:32
Thanks, DJ looking forward to it.

D.J. Paris 31:33
Thank you

Welcome to the October edition of Coaching Moments with Ryan D’Aprile!

How important is attitude? Ryan maintains it’s your single most valuable internal resource. Your attitude will provide you with the energy necessary to continue to scale a mountain while the rain is pouring down. It’s perhaps the only area of life where we have complete control. Ryan discusses how you should choose your attitude carefully and have it work for you, resulting in achieving more of what you want in life.

Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.492.7900 and execassistant@daprileproperties.com.

Ryan D'Aprile
daprile properties logo


Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
On this episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Quicken Loans real estate professionals. When you work with Quicken Loans, you have an agent relationship manager available to you and your team. These dedicated experts are part of the agent relations team. They serve as your single point of coordination so you can count on them to keep you in the loop throughout your client’s entire home buying process, call 888-980-2891 or go to real estate dot Quicken loans.com Today, call for cost information and conditions equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states NMLS consumer access.org Number 3030 And now onto the show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made for real estate brokers by real estate brokers. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host and once again this is our monthly session called coaching moments with Ryan de April. If you’re not familiar with Ryan Ryan de April is a progressive thought leader focused on providing for his agents and staff. His strengths are his motivational skills, coaching style and his dedication to training. Ryan has partnered with Lindsay Miller, who’s the CEO of depot properties to build a dynamic organization based on a foundation of culture, character and community a depot properties has 14 offices throughout Chicagoland and is also in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan, you can learn more, or to join depot properties, visit them online at D APR properties.com. Ryan, thanks again for being on the show.

Ryan D’Aprile 1:49
Thanks, TJ. Thanks for having me, I enjoy enjoy meeting with you on a monthly basis.

D.J. Paris 1:54
Yeah, this is a lot of fun. And our audience loves it because they send us all emails almost every day, going back through your all the episodes we’ve done. So it is very much appreciated. So on behalf of the listeners, thank you, what would you like to talk about today? So we went

Ryan D’Aprile 2:10
over a lot of skill set training I feel in the past few months. And so what I thought today might be a good topic would be talking about mindset, and a good attitude and an attitude of, you know, an attitude of gratitude and how you can really become more and more successful in life based upon your internal belief system. And how you look at life in general, your business, your home life, your personal life, and all these things I think they are. I wish we could silo our business and keep it separate. But it really does. It really does intertwine with our entire life. So I think something that’s very important in our industry, where it’s a very high EQ, emotional intelligence type business is how do you get back and kind of replenish your energy? And your thought process? And how do you focus on an attitude of gratitude? And how do you focus on being positive on a daily basis, so that you can do the things that you need to do because it’s really your attitude and your internal belief system that are going to propel you to take the actions that you need to do to be more successful in this business and in life in general. So that’s my thought DJ, I thought we would kind of go over that.

D.J. Paris 3:30
I think it’s a great place to start and a great topic. And it is made all the difference in my own life, as much as I would love to say that. It is my skill that has got me where I’m at. And certainly that has helped tremendously. But it is my attitude that has essentially landed me every job I’ve ever had. And also within the job the success I’ve had, I was thinking about this earlier that and I’ve been in a number of careers now I been in marketing, essentially for 20 plus years, yet I’ve never taken a marketing class. It’s not what I studied in college. And the fact that I’m in it is kind of funny, but it has been because of of opportunities that have been presented to me because people thought he’s got a good attitude, we want him around. And I’ve developed skill as a result of that in marketing. But I think attitude is so important, you know, in this business and really just in life in general, so great, great top.

Ryan D’Aprile 4:21
It’s it is it’s actually I believe it’s 80% or more of what we do, and I’m going to relate and to myself in my life so I could help you know, help others kind of see to perspective where I’m coming from why it’s so important. So I’m going to dive back to my earlier years and even my my my high school and when I entered high school I was 15 1415 years old. And at our high school, I went to lions Township High School, and my daughter goes lions Central High School, my other two girls will end up going there. they’ve changed it around. But believe it or not, is a very similar system, just different definitions. And what I’m going over right now is to show everybody here how important your attitude is. So to me, what’s very important to my core and to our core values of our company is creating what’s called a ripple effect. So we are a coaching company. But our biggest Why is to help everybody in our organization to come over their self doubt, insecurities, because we all struggle with it. The key is to be vulnerable, and discuss it and understand it, because then that way others can help you and then you could help others. So one of the things we’re looking for is that ripple effect that Shawn acre, and so many others talk about in their books, which I’ll go over that as well with you. And it comes down to children, because I experienced this now I have three daughters. And they’re all experienced in this at different levels. So when I entered my high school freshman class, we had our subjects we had health science, social studies, math, English, literature, etc. I’m sure all those subjects you had DJ at your high school as well. And next to every subject, was a letter that the school administrators assigned. And these are grown adults that are teaching children that are raising children, some of them have PhD, and they’re, they’re in academics, and they’re in, they’re in what do you call the superintendent administration. And they’re essentially responsible for our children for a long part of their lives from, you know, from first grade through high school, and then beyond. And I entered the high school and next to every subject line was a letter. And the letters would go from AP, I’m sure you’ve heard of AP, have you heard of AP before?

D.J. Paris 6:50
I even took a couple of those classes. So yes, I do remember,

Ryan D’Aprile 6:54
all right, you took a couple AP classes, right? I never did, I was on the complete other end of the spectrum. So there was AP, then there was h and h stood for honors. And then after h there was S and H lines such high school in the 90s, early 90s stood for superior. And then there was our you know, our stood for remedial, regular. So you were in either regular math, regular science, regular English. And then there was GE Do you know what GE stood for? I thought it stood for good. You want to why? Every subject I was in had a GE next to it. And it was general. And essentially what I society, especially in my high school was telling me in almost every subject, I was below regular. Now I’m not placing blame on them. But I want everybody understand that we’re all facing challenges, and they really define us. And the question is, is how are they going to define you? Because it’s not what happens to you is what you do about it? And that’s what I try to tell everybody in life. And I think the journey of life is the challenges we face and how do you react to them. And so here I was 15 years old, walking into a school of a class of maybe 800 kids, and having publicly labeled below regular every subject and going through that for four years. And then going on to college. And I joke around but barely getting in and barely getting out. Look at academics just was not my thing. But after school, and mean, after college, I had immediate success in the corporate world. And I was rejected several times when I wanted to go into executive search. An executive search is essentially where a company hires you and you go out and you recruit. It’s a very simple concept. A company comes in, they hires you, they need a regional sales manager. And that’s where I started in the hardware industry, the Building Material industry and it worked for a company called Brooke Chase. And we would do searches for companies like RYOBI or USG Corporation, we did middle management, executive search. And then after that, I wanted to do senior level search. And I was a whopping 23 years old and I got this red book executive recruiters and I called all the elite senior level executive search firms. And everybody turned me down just like every recruiting firm in the beginning turned me down when I interviewed them, but I called the owners and the managing partners of each of the firms and one of these company, one of the companies that eventually hired me. They said to me, you don’t have the degree, nor the pedigree to work. And what that means is when we’re interviewing he says, Hey, what did your father do for a living? Is it my dad, it’s very proud of my mom and dad, Dad auto parts stores. So if we weren’t, you know, in a sport, we in high school, by 15 years old, we had to get to one of our dad’s auto parts stores and work it was a family business. And then they asked where I went to school and these guys went to really nice Ivy League Brown, University of Michigan schools which Uh, you know, I’ve never would have been able to get into and they said you don’t have the degree nor the pedigree. But Ryan, we’d like your tenacity. So at least it gave me a phone call back, right? They said that to me, and it was pretty chilling. And again, but I had been put through that my entire life, right? Imagine 15 years old walking in high school and being put at the lowest subject line for every class, right. But the point that I’m trying to get at is now as a 43 year old man, looking back at that 15 year old, and then that 22 year old and a 24 year old. One of the things that stood out for me now looking back is, this kid had a great belief system and himself. And it’s, I almost want to say, I was lucky that I had that belief system. And it’s probably because my mom and dad believed so much into me, and they always pumped my ego up, and everybody has different circumstances. But I didn’t put academics as the end all be all. And I just put down what came to me naturally, and my friend building a friendship, building ability and whatnot. I just felt really confident myself all the time. And so here I am, being told again, right? I don’t have the degree nor the pedigree, it’s just like, hey, so when you walk into the door, go left and go to your G classes. You don’t belong in the RS H AP classes. But they gave me a shot. And five years later, I’m 27 years old, and the partner in the firm says, you’re going to be my right hand person.

He literally, him and I just melted so well, I was making more money than I ever thought I’d make. Because making more money than my mom and dad made probably three years combined. I had been on private jets of fortune 500 companies and large, multinational privately held companies doing stop senior level executive searches. But what he said to me is, you don’t have a degree of pedigree, but we’d like your tenacity and and never let that go. And I really, truly believe all success is based upon your grit and your grind and your passion. And everybody has to understand that we all are challenge facing a challenge. Just like I face the challenge in those GE classes, somebody faced a challenge in those AP classes, but in a different story. Everybody has their story, right? But the purpose, the point of our session here is the importance of mindset, and a belief system, and you got to believe in yourself. But that’s not easy. And it takes time. And actually it takes a culture and it takes a community of people and surrounding yourself with the right people. So one more thing to end the story. Okay, and then we’ll go on to the next part of this is I started buying and selling real estate, right after college while I was doing my executive search business. And I had accumulated quite a bit of property, a big 20,000 square foot warehouse building and a mixed use apartment building. I own three flats and houses throughout the Chicagoland area. And at one point, I said to myself, I should get my real estate license. So I went and got my real estate license. And I went to some school and got my license. And then went into Chicago in the west loop in a interviewed with a real estate company. And they said no. And so he said, No, I don’t think you’re a good fit. But what you can do is you could just go sponsor yourself if you want. So I went back to Madison Wells 181, West Madison, where my office was, I went met with them during lunch, went to the 33/43 floor to my corner office. And I ended the time. And I had to deal with rejection again. I’ve been dealing with rejection my entire life. And all of us are, but I didn’t let it defeat me. I didn’t let it overcome me. I went back I sat at my desk I remember I was looking over Lake Michigan, picking up the phone and calling the Chicago Association realtors and the IDF PR to figure out how do I sponsor myself because at that point, I said, I’m done. If they don’t believe me, that’s fine, I believe in myself. And that’s when I started selling real estate back in 2005. And I started selling real estate for myself by myself. I wasn’t sponsored by anybody. And within two, three years during the Great Recession, I was ranking in the top 1% of the Chicago Association, realtors in terms of production, and that it has something to do with skill set, but it has more to do with mindset and attitude. And that’s what I want to share with everybody in this podcast is that there are a lot of books we could do there a lot of practices we can we there are a lot of practices that we can do to continually build up our own belief systems in ourselves and that you have to make this a priority because it’s the biggest differentiator out there. is your attitude.

D.J. Paris 15:03
I just saw, I just saw a I have a page a day calendar. It’s like a life hack calendar. And a lot of times they’re everyday, it’s not always so great. There’ll be little hints and tricks to make life a little easier. Some are better than others. But yesterday’s. I thought it was so interesting. And I wanted to just get your and I’m sure it’s a statistic that whoever makes the calendar just fabricated, but it’s a good statistic, that’s probably true. And it said 50% of any job and is being liked. And other words, your attitude. And and I thought, I bet it’s more like 80% of the success of any job is your attitude.

Ryan D’Aprile 15:39
Absolutely. I mean, one of the one of the benefits of going to one of the most prestigious schools out there is because of the network you have. Right. And that’s one of the things I think these great schools will give you a great network. But that’s just going to open the door for you after that you got to be liked. You have to have work ethic, there’s so much that goes into it. There are so many other statistics out there, DJ that back this I think one of them and don’t I mean, I’m being recorded, right? So don’t quote me as a silly statement. But I don’t know how accurate this is. But I think that the same goes 80% of first. Wait, what is it? It’s four to one, it’s a four to one chance that somebody immigrating to the United States becomes a millionaire, over somebody who was born and raised in our country, it’s a four to one. So if you immigrate to the United States, in your late teens or 20s, you know, in and English is not your primary language, you have a four to one chance to come in a millionaire over the children that are born and raised here. Have you ever heard

D.J. Paris 16:49
that? Yeah, I think that’s called like the immigrant effect or something. Because they are coming oftentimes from disadvantaged environments, where there isn’t as much opportunity, a lot of the freedoms that we, you know, will take for granted. They might not have and they come over here, and they’re like, Wow, I have so much that I can do here. And because their mindset is set to a much more disadvantaged environment, they come over here and just see nothing but opportunity

Ryan D’Aprile 17:20
to be here. Absolutely. They’re grateful to be here. And that’s where it starts. Now. Again, I’m going to come back to the high school and I’m watching my daughter’s and Junior High in high school, and I’m watching the subjects in the social studies subjects that they are learning. And it’s so interesting to see how I hate politics. By the way, this is my disclaimer, okay? I don’t get it politics. I stopped watching politics in 2007. It was the best thing in my life to do

D.J. Paris 17:45
what we should and let’s talk about that for a second. And Ryan, is it the reason Ryan has told me privately that he does not engage in a political discussion or even just, you know, reading about it is it affects his attitude,

Ryan D’Aprile 17:58
it does affects everybody’s attitude. And so you have to understand the business of politics. The business of politics is to get us to fight each other. Let’s say I’m left in your right, or let’s say I’m right and your left, right. We probably agree on everything but 3% of the time. Right. But it is it is it gives off I think, a very dangerous message politics. And here’s what the message is. Your life isn’t that great vote for me, and I’ll change it and hate message, no matter what side side of the aisle are on your life isn’t that great vote for me, I’ll make it better. And that’s the message of kids off and the anger people have when they get into politics. And they talk about it. It doesn’t just end when they’re done with the conversation. They’ll think about it for three, four more hours. And therefore they’re not putting their life ahead. They’re not doing the things that they need to do to take the life, what they’re doing is they’re dwelling on a politician or to when they hate one that they love, and how they’re going to advance their career and not their own. And, you know, even our children in our schools are being taught the politics and what’s good and what’s bad. And there’s an element you have to write you can’t be you can’t be an ostrich. So I’m not, I’m not. I’m not advocating total ignorance. Okay. What I’m advocating here, is being aware of what’s going around us and what other people’s agendas might be. And at the end of the day, you cannot help anybody if you don’t help yourself first. And that statistics at 41 immigrants over American Board says because millionaire, whether it’s accurate or not, it says something about, hey, they’re happy and grateful to be here. And you have all of this luxury around you. But you might be miserable. And you might be complaining, and you blink your eyes. 20 years goes by and now you’re 20 Now you’re 40 and you blink your eyes and 15 years go by On your 55? And did you spend more that time angry and bitter? And that focusing on how to get ahead? Or did you have an attitude of gratitude and grateful for what you have the clean water you drink? Right? Your health, there’s so much you can be grateful for. I think most people forget this. And I don’t think they realize how detrimental that can be to their success and happiness in life.

D.J. Paris 20:29
Yeah, it’s one of those things where you literally, you know, everyone’s situation is different. And people experienced challenges and unexpected things happen, that that are extraordinarily difficult, tragic. You know, and everyone goes through versions of that some people, of course, have more than others. But I had read once in a book, and I can’t remember which book? Well, there’s two things I wanted to mention. But one was that if nothing else, if you wake up another day, that’s a reason to say thank you, because a lot of people aren’t going to get to wake up tomorrow. And so if you’re, if you’re having struggling to find something to be grateful for, well, gosh, you just got another day to do something magical or just to do something to either help yourself or to help others. And that’s a reason.

Ryan D’Aprile 21:15
And then it’s even even going beyond that. What’s really difficult is how do you enjoy the downs with the off and how do you spin the downs? And really take the good out of it down. So I’m going to start plugging some books here. Okay. The entrepreneur rollercoaster by Darren Hardy. I think the last time I read it probably four years ago, but I just recall, listening to the book, and being an entrepreneur, then it’s still being an entrepreneur today. And realizing, oh my god, you had these troubles too. You had these ups and downs, you have these heart break, we all do. So it’s something that we all have to embrace. You have to embrace the roller coaster. Do you remember? Oh my gosh, I think the movie was called parenthood with Steve Martin. Do you remember canneries Kennedy’s was in that movie? Right? So I’m, I’m not the best movies. But this line stood out to me. I think I was in high school when this movie came out. But there was a moment where Steve Martin is in the kitchen and all the kids are running around screaming. It’s how I feel like when my family is over, and he could hear a roller coaster and he had his youngest boy was being bullied and you know, he had his job. situation. I think he was let go. And you could see like his vision going up and down. You hear in the background. They do this audio visual or this visual or excuse the audio of like, carnival and roller coaster rides. And then he comes focused and he looks at this 8590 year old grandmother. Do you remember her in the movie? Do you remember that? About stadia okay. Yeah. And he she was always bothering him and he and he couldn’t handle and she looks at him. She goes, she reflects and I remember exactly what you said she was, you know, life. I was a little girl and I go to the carnival. And she said something. And he’s he’s starting to roll his eyes. And and he’s like, What are you seeing now? She said, we went on the merry go round and went around and around and around, but loved the roller coaster when we go up. And we go down and we go up and we go down. And he realized that the wisdom that she was telling him that life is a roller coaster. And we have two ways of going about this. We can embrace it. Or we can wish for the boring miracle round. But the reality is we don’t want the miracle around. We don’t want the boringness. So when you get the challenge and you get the down, you get that gut punch and everything else. There is a way to step back and say, You know what, I probably wouldn’t have this any other way. Because I could have my boring office job somewhere.

D.J. Paris 23:48
Ryan Ryan Holiday is one of my favorite authors. I don’t know if you’re affiliated, he had a new book that just came out yesterday called stillness as the key. But one of his seminal works that everybody should read. And again, his name is Ryan Holiday is called the obstacle is the way. And it just perfectly sums up, Ryan, what you just said, which is the challenge is where the juice of life is. It’s certainly hard. And there’s, there’s, you know, certainly a lot of tough emotions with it. But if things aren’t just a little scary and a little tough and hard. Boy, that’s where all the satisfaction is as you persevere through it. It’s just where everything good comes from, from challenge

Ryan D’Aprile 24:29
it is it’s where all the meat in the marvelous isn’t the challenge. It’s not. It’s difficult when you’re in the situation. But when you look back, I look back at seven, eight years, I’ve been trying to grow this organization. And I could tell how I felt during the UPS or the down parts. Looking back. It’s like Wow, am I lucky to go through that? And that’s it’s Ryan Holiday and what’s it called?

D.J. Paris 24:50
Yep. The obstacle is the way I want to

Ryan D’Aprile 24:53
ping you after this meeting. I’m going to get that book. Another great book is the happiness of it. image by Shawn a car Have you ever read The Happiness Advantage? Yes, I have. Okay, so for the readers, I’m going to go over a couple points that Shawn talks about in the book. And So Sean, I grew up in Waco, Texas was going to be a firefighter and a whim, he applied to Harvard. And he got accepted. And so clearly he was in those AP classes and smart guy, and unlike how I was in school, and he went to Harvard, and he studied psychology, and he did his postdoctoral there and whatnot. I might be butchering this a little bit, but he became a professor there in psychology. And he realized that there were probably 20 to one studies on happiness. So there was drug addiction, there was you know, what other psychology right depression and trauma, trauma, all these things out there. And, and it’s kind of going back to what I was talking about, like, watching my children in school and what they’re studying about everything that’s wrong with our country and everything else. And like, Look, I’m not some like, you know, you know, I’m not mister like Patriot American states a great like, I know, we have issues. I’m just trying to talk about the mindset and how important it is that the messages we give across. And when you are I’m raising children, right? It’s like, how do you help balance this and show everybody how grateful you are, but he was going, going back to, to Shawn, he was talking about your 22, one studies on a drug addiction abuse, and all these other things, trauma, and there was very few studies done on happiness. And so he started a course called happiness. And he realized that there was a two year waiting list at Harvard, for his class. And he was like, Why could there be at the greatest university in the world? A two year waiting list for my business school, right? Sure. my psychology class on happiness. And so he went on, and he did a survey and he discovered that 70% of the student body in Harvard was unhappy or depressed. And do you know why they were?

D.J. Paris 27:06
I would guess they were stressed about performing well, in college.

Ryan D’Aprile 27:10
Here, these people are in the number one school. I mean, you could write your ticket, can’t you? You got to Harvard? I mean, it’s I would think so you would think so. So what I write, but, DJ, I’ve written my own ticket. Sounds like you’ve written your own ticket. Yeah, I think schools, right, right. So. So again, I’m even repeating these messages that our children are going to hear. And this were the ripple effect that he talks about, that I want to have, when I’m coaching my agents to have more of a ripple effect in our society, to measure our words, what we’re saying. And here is he’s like, you’re in the best university, but you’re depressed. And what they’re doing is they’re comparing, they were the number one student in their high school, and now they’re

D.J. Paris 27:48
in the other just one of one of 1000s. Correct.

Ryan D’Aprile 27:51
And so Comparison is the thief of all joy. And all of us are going to compare, and it’s one of the things we need to stop. And the only thing you should be comparing to is you the day before, the week before the month and the year before. If we could focus on comparing ourselves to ourselves and our past selves, then I think we’ll have the snowball effect on the happiness and Happiness Advantage that Shawn acre talks about.

D.J. Paris 28:20
Yeah, there’s a philosophy I found online, I’ll try to find the article where it was on a Reddit post of all places, and it was in a, a Reddit forum called get disciplined, and it talked about discipline. And it’s a great forum. If you’re a Reddit person, check out get disciplined, but the philosophy is called no more zero days to Ryan just mentioned, hey, trying, you know, the only thing you never compare your insides to someone else’s outsides. And that’s a very important and difficult lesson because it’s easy for us to do that, to look at other people and say, well, they’ve got it made, and they’re not like me, and I’m not quite there. And there’s something wrong with me because I’m not where they’re at at this stage. But all you ever have to do is compare yourself to yourself. And the no more zero days, philosophy is come up with a series of habits, behaviors, goals that you want to achieve. And instead of looking to the, I’ll be happy when I get to a million dollars or whatever x that is for you, for whatever goals you’ve set is say, okay, what can I do today? Well, if let’s say I wanted to, you know, be able to lose weight, and I say, Okay, well, I know I need to exercise I need to do some cardio, I need to lift some weights and I probably need to watch my calorie intake and then it gets to the end of the day and you go gosh, you know what, I didn’t do anything. I ate poorly. I didn’t exercise. You know, I didn’t get to the gym. But you know what, before I go to bed, I’m going to crank out one pushup. If that’s all I did, that is not a zero day I did one thing and then you can go to bed and okay, maybe tomorrow I’m going to do better. But never you know if you can just go to bed and never have a zero day do something. Just one thing. then you’ve you’ve improved

Ryan D’Aprile 30:02
many habits, a book, written by I can’t recall with author’s what’s called mini habits, talks about the one pushup a day. And at least you get down in position. If you get down into position. You might do two or three or four. That’s the big Yes, exactly. So another little mindset technique, and there’s so many things that are out there to help us is the 8020 rule. And that’s a Pareto principle. But where I’m going with that is it’s a Pareto principle, but it’s based on wealth in our country. So we hear that 20% of our population owns 80% Of all the wealth, correct? Correct, right. And then as that 20%, shrinks, their wealth gets larger and larger. Sure. Right. So then you have your one percenters in the world, right? The 1%, they have 99% of all the wealth in our country, correct? Right? And there is how do you look at that? Do you look at that as a negative, or you look at it as a positive? And then you get into policies and taxes and laws and everything else? Let’s not go down that path. Let’s just go back. And let’s look at the 20%. That controls 80% of the wealth. Sure. All right. So let’s take the 20% that control 80% of the wealth. What percentage of that 20%? Right, what percent of that 20% made it in their own lifetime? And what percent is that 20% are second generation, meaning they inherited it, it was passed down

D.J. Paris 31:28
to them, I would have to guess the vast majority made it themselves but actually don’t know.

Ryan D’Aprile 31:34
Yeah, so 80% of the 20% made it in their own lifetime. And 20% or 20%, inherited it. Now that’s a staggering number. And if you want to do like a little task, let’s just figure this out. Let’s talk about second generation people. That inherited money. Can you name one?

D.J. Paris 31:56
I have a few friends that have Yeah,

Ryan D’Aprile 31:58
let’s go big. Let’s go. Let’s go real quick. Let’s talk we’re talking about real money here.

D.J. Paris 32:02
Like the big Gotcha. Those are not my friends.

Ryan D’Aprile 32:05
They might be and maybe you might not want to say that out there. But let’s just think, right. Okay, can you say somebody’s name up that you can think of? That is a second generation, multi multi multi millionaire. How about habits?

D.J. Paris 32:20
Let’s say Paris Hilton, some somebody like that.

Ryan D’Aprile 32:23
There you go. There’s one Paris Hilton, right. Um, how about Pritzker? Our governor? Sure. How about the bushes? Sure. How about the Kennedys? Yep. Right. So a lot of them, you know, are in politics now. And they’re there. They’re making policies and they’re running our lives, right. But I’m just kidding here. And as both sides pile you could tell how I feel about politics, right? But really, so I’m starting to run out. I’m sure there’s more I could think about it. Now. Let’s go to first generation, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban, Bill Gates, Mark, human. Right, Will Smith. I mean, all of these individual can go on and on and on. It’s really easy to look at how you can make a life of your dreams on your own here and every reason to be grateful and excited about it. And the expression that I heard that I share with everybody, I’ve encountered them, you know, tasked with coaching or helping or getting ahead is Don’t overestimate what you can achieve in a year. And underestimate what you can achieve in a decade. Because all these people achieved it over time. And what they embrace more is the journey. And then a lot of these first generation people like gates, like, Oh, my God, what’s the Berkshire guy’s name? I can’t believe I can’t remember his name. They’re giving the money away. You could do all morning from all the wealthiest people in our country. Katzman 99%, take it all away from and redistributed. Eventually, it’s going to go back to those 20%. Because because of their mindset, exactly. They made it on their own. They’re grateful where it is. It’s the journey. It’s not the destination. And there’s a lot of things that we face. There’s challenges, there’s trials, trope trials, right? There’s also mundane and is boring. Yeah, for sure. I love real estate. Of course, it gets boring guys, what doesn’t after a while, but you’ve got to look back at and say how do I readjust my attitude and mindset? Oh, yeah, I get the common goal and I please, I get to be with my family. I am not stuck behind a desk for eight to 10 hours a day. If I don’t want to be stuck behind the guest. There’s so many ways to spin it. But that’s your job. That’s we have an obligation to shift our mindset and refocus on to the good. So then we do the things that we need to do to get ahead.

D.J. Paris 34:49
Yeah, it’s it’s funny. So we’ve done over 100 episodes of this podcast where we talk to the top producing brokers, and people also like Ryan, who have been top producing brokers. Now he’s running 14 offices with over 500 agents. And we, you know, as I start to think about what has been some commonality among all these top producers, and the biggest sort of takeaway of all is almost all of them are shocked that not everyone is a top producer, which of course, not everyone can be a not everyone wants to be. But they’re shocked because they don’t understand how people aren’t. And because they already have the attitude, they don’t necessarily think they’re smarter, more skilled. And they I’m sure they are very skilled, and they have great customer service. And they’re very good at their jobs, of course, but more than anything, it seems to be there, just the attitude. And it’s not even so much that they’re the hardest working, although, of course, they’re hard working. But there’s a lot of hard working people that still struggle. And you know, the attitude is, is so important. And it’s almost universal on all of these interviews we’ve done. And by the way, these are people that are not paid to be on our show. As such as Ryan, this doesn’t directly benefit Ryan to be on our show he he doesn’t plug anything, he’s not getting any benefit. He does it because he wants to be of service. And I’ve always thought maybe that’s the best attitude of all, is this idea of gratitude. And that’s being of service, you know, boy, I’m so lucky. How can I help other people, and especially in real estate, and I’m not a Producing Realtor, but everyone I’ve interviewed, that’s how they think about it, they’re not in it for the money, or the power or the fame, maybe they are and they just don’t mention it. But I don’t think so the vast majority of of everyone that we’ve interviewed, they talk about being of service, they like helping, and what a great attitude to have, if that’s your attitude, you’re going to wake up every day excited to start the day, and you’re going to get to get you through those challenging times when your best friend goes with another realtor instead of you. And you’re like, ah, that hurts, or your clients pain in the butt or a deal falls through. You’re just helping and you just help Help Help. And in this in this profession, you get rewarded for helping people how cool is that?

Ryan D’Aprile 37:00
Yeah, and you know, you have to be also have to keep in mind, so you want to give and you want to help, right, and it’s what drives us. But also, and I’m speaking to the majority of the real estate agents that are out there that put themselves last, you got to help yourself first. There’s a lot of real estate agents in our industry, that are that are mothers out there, and they’re just naturally prone to put themselves last, you can’t, you’ve got to put yourself first, it’s incredibly important, especially if you’re a parent to show your children how to succeed, you can’t talk you got to walk, you got to walk the walk. So what you have to do is take some time, and you have to help yourself. And that way you can help your children or the people that you love that you want to help out because they’re only going to learn from you by example. So you have to stop and you have to check your attitude. You have to do what we call the mirror check, do some tests on yourself, and ask how do you feel about this? And how do you feel that and if they’re overwhelmingly negative, you have to have a mind shift, you have to have a mind shift because you’re gonna have an effect on the rest of your day. So, so what else can we talk about? So we went over the mindset, right? Yeah. And talked about some some books everybody should read. Right. Daniel Pink is another wonderful author of, of my business and psychology. Shawn acre,

D.J. Paris 38:22
and what was the book that you Ryan Holiday?

Ryan D’Aprile 38:25
Ryan Holiday and what is the well, his

D.J. Paris 38:27
his book is called obstacle, the what is the way and one of the things that if anyone’s out there that’s interested in a really practical philosophy and it goes back 1000s of years, look into stoicism. The stoics were philosophers that that talked about challenge because we all experienced challenge challenges part of life is as Ryan just said, it’s the meat in the marble, right? It’s the juice of life. And the all that you can ever do in life, the only thing we really have control over is really two things, which is our well really just one thing is our behavior, right? That’s all that we really control our beliefs and our behavior. And so you know, life is just going to happen to us, the tough stuff is going to come our way. That’s normal. And it’s hard. And all we ever can do is answer the stoics. The stoics really interesting because they just go, you always assume the worst, assume that nothing’s ever going to fall your way that everything that that you’ve built up is going to crumble. People are going to leave, they’re going to die. They’re going to disappoint you, they’re going to betray you. Okay, let’s just because we don’t have control over any of that. So we’re going to assume that all the bad stuff is going to happen. And by the way, of course it won’t. But assume it’s like the Boy Scout Motto always repeat, be prepared. And because it Brian Tracy said this too. We all know who well, a lot of us know who Brian Tracy is famous motivational speaker. And he used to say, nobody is coming to save you. And I thought boy, that is a tough thing to hear. But maybe it’s the truest thing anyone could ever hear. Nobody is coming to save you. So yeah, and that’s the good news. The X Well, good news is no one’s coming to save you.

Ryan D’Aprile 40:03
Lines. I mean, that’s a great thing. And let’s, I gotta tell everybody it’s like so you can either control your life or have somebody else control your life, what would you rather write and you want to have control of your life, so then you can’t blame. All you could do is look in the mirror. And nobody’s coming to save you. It’s you have to do it yourself. But you know what, it’s a big responsibility. But it’s all the freedom in the world, or the freedom of the world’s corner to take big responsibility. You have to be responsible for yourself. Everybody has got to stop the blame game. And the best thing we can do is look for the magic in our life. Yes. You know, magic is real. It’s out there. And if you see it, you’ll see it every single day. Let’s just Let’s talk before it.

D.J. Paris 40:44
Let’s talk about magic. Because I was talking to you offline recently. And you were started a new, a new vertical in your business, a new a new department that you were interested in, or that you you had been interested in for a long time. And it’s finally here. And I said, How did you do that? And I expected you to say, Well, first I did this, and then I did this and and you just go oh, I visualize that. And I sort of laughed because I thought well, maybe he’s sort of kidding. Or he’s being just humble. And then you said something very profound. And you were not kidding. And you said, DJ, that’s how I’ve achieved everything in my life. I and I went oh, and it really took me aback. And I thought I got to ask him about this on the podcast. So can we talk about how you’ve used visualization to, to achieve things I can.

Ryan D’Aprile 41:25
And there’s so many great stories out there and so many people that have created so much in this world, such as Will Smith, who I love and admire. He’s one of my heroes and talks about this. Jim Carrey talks about this as well. I take it back to childhood. I’m 43 years old, and I still feel like a kid I daydream all day long. It’s there is a I forgot what it’s called, oh, there’s a book out there. It’s a test. And it’ll give you your five traits. And one of mine is a futuristic. So I’m always daydreaming out there. But what that means is I’m visualizing. And then there’s something that I want, I will focus on it. And I’ll visualize it, visualize it, and it usually comes true. And so I said to you with all seriousness, because I feel like anybody had come in. You know, I come into that we’re in a busy environment, we’re having conversations, I feel like I owe it to them to share anything that I’ve done. That’s helped me to get where I want to be. So you asked me a question. I answered it with all seriousness, because I think it’s something that needs to be taken serious. And visualization is incredibly important. Michael Phelps talks, right, so we hear about it. So let me share a fun visualization story with you. Okay. And again, this is coming back to the magic in life, if you look for the magic in life, you will find it, but you got to look for it. You could also look for the tragedy, you look for the hang anger, you could look for the hate, you could look for the disgust you could look for it’s your choice, and happiness is a choice. And don’t forget that everybody has a reason. And people are fighting battles at various degrees scale of one to 10 Mine’s probably two, right there are people are fighting, bigger battles out there that I can even imagine. But most of those people that I meet, have got the best attitudes out there. So here’s a story of visualization. So I started in 2009, or 10, coaching a handful agents just by a whim, and it wasn’t 2012 that I decided, You know what, I’m going to grow a real estate company, I’m going to stop selling. And I’m just going to start coaching and teaching. And so part of my philosophy and part of my coaching and teaching has a lot to do with mindset and attitude. And so I’ve been doing this, I started with six agents, a couple years went by it’s 2012. And I said, I want to start start wanting to start doing this more. And so I bring more people in the company and just start focusing on coaching and training them. And one of these agents said to me, Ryan, there’s an individual that reminds me, a lot of you and I really want you to meet with him. I said, Sure, I’d love to meet with him. And he said, she said he wrote a book. And his book is about visualization. And manifestation isn’t sure I was intrigued. I would love to meet them. And remember I was up in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. We’re at our summer house, but it was the winter time. And she emailed introduced us. And by the way that summer house came through visualization because I always wanted to have it it was the first one I bought for other home but that’s not that’s not the story I’m telling. So I get introduced to him. And he says Ryan, why don’t we meet at Joe’s stone crab house, you know that is to ensure so we go we meet and I walk in and I am seated at the table and then here he comes. He’s like the six foot three slender built, probably in his early to mid 60s, man all put together in a suit Do you see me I’m always a jeans and a collared shirt type of person. We sit down and he gives me his book. And we just start exchanging niceties and having a very nice conversation. And he takes somewhat of a, he takes a lead of the conversation, and he’s interviewing me, and he’s very interest. He’s one of these great guy, right? They’ll ask you questions about you all the time. So he just, he’s just playing me at my game and right, and I’m just, I’m loving this guy, because I’m getting to talk about myself. And he’s incredibly intrigued. He’s very interested in me. And we immediately have a great connection, primarily because of what he was giving off to me and his energy. And he said, so and he asked me, Ryan, what did you do to visualize what you have? And and I start sharing some stories with them. And he says, Well, what are you visualizing right now? And I said, Well, it’s interesting. You ask that, because it’s 2013 or 14 at the time, I can’t remember what year it was. It might have been 14. And I said, you know, I have not flown in the airplane in eight years. I have studied abroad, I’ve traveled throughout Europe. I have my previous career before real estate. I was in corporate America, and I traveled once a week. I’ve been on small little private planes and big jets, but after our trip to Florida, with our oldest daughter, who by the way, DJ turns 16 yesterday, and one more time, Oh, happy

D.J. Paris 46:24
birthday,

Ryan D’Aprile 46:25
thank you. And she was a year old. And we were getting off the plane landed in Chicago from Florida. And excuse my language here, you might want to bleep this out. But we get we’re getting our bags, I handed my little baby to my wife and I looked at her I said, I never get on when these fucking planes again. I was having such horrible anxiety. Sure. And you know, I’ve always I’ve struggled with anxiety my entire life. And I, I feel obligated to coach and teach to help others with their anxiety. So but I’m telling him the story. I’m like, so you know, I haven’t traveled and I haven’t flown on a plane in eight years. And I have three daughters, and my oldest is eight. And then I want to take these girls around the world. They’re the loves of my life. I want to show him like, want to go to Africa, I want to go the Amalfi Coast, I want to go and I can’t drive our suburban there. I could drive down to Disneyland. But that’s about it. So I’m kind of in trouble here because I want to live this life when I’m conflicted. I’m scared. I have anxiety. And it’s you know, it’s so fascinating. Ever since I’ve been visualizing that I want to fly again. And I drive, you know, on to 94 North, I look at the planes and I go, Oh my gosh, I can’t wait to be on one of those again. That’s what I say to myself to help me get over my fear. As I was saying this to him, he had this puzzled look on his face. And he said, Ryan, do you know what I do for a living? Oh, wait, did I tell you? Oh, I sit. So as I told him I said, By the way, since this has happened to amateur pilots have joined my company. And I said, so it’s like all the signs that are coming replace, you know? And he looks at me says Do you know what I do for a living? I go yes, you’re an author, of course, because he was asking me all the questions, remember, and he was normal. First, I had a chance even ask him anything. And so here I am. I meet with this author. I have this hardcover, you know, 300 page book? And I’m like, yes, you’re an author. He goes, No, this is what I do on the side. I’m the most senior captain American Airlines. He goes, and I would like to meet you in two weeks. And I’m gonna bring you on a plane, we’re not going to fly and walk you up and down. I’m going to help you get over your fear of flying. Wow. And two weeks later, I met him and I put in visualization. I wanted to fly again. Two weeks after that my wife and I flew down to Florida to my childhood friend’s wedding, which, of course I was invited to and we were going to drive what we flew out. I don’t know. We went to New York City. Then we went to there and I traveled around all over the world. Now it might my children and I’m still nervous. I’m still afraid of it. But you know, you know, we’ve done Montana, we’ve done Jamaica, Punta Cana, we’re going, you know, we fly all over the place, and it still makes me nervous. But that’s just another story about visualization manifestation. So you asked me, How did I start this new vertical in our company how to do it? I daydreamed about it? I daydreamed, about it? I thought about it consistently. And the universe will align and put things in place for you and put people into your world to make things come true.

D.J. Paris 49:10
Well, it this particular vertical was even more magical, because I said, Well, how did How’d you do it? They go, Oh, no, someone called me. I said, Well, how did that happen? You’re like, I don’t know, they just did. But you had been visualizing it for how long?

Ryan D’Aprile 49:25
That one. And I want to keep that song confidential, because it’s a big corporate client and whatnot. I think I put it out in the universe about 18 to two years prior to that huge client calling us and it leading into one thing and the next one the next. And I was open to it, and I was looking for it. And then you can it’s coming in with an attitude of gratitude and being aware. And then, you know, you and your conscious and your subconscious and your brain will see all the things that are out there and that’s what Shawn Achor talks about in Happiness Advantage. He talks about if you have a positive mindset if you are a man We’re optimistic and you are feeling better, you’re going to see the clues that are out there, to put what you want in line to give you what you’re dreaming of.

D.J. Paris 50:10
Yeah, and I boy, I could echo that myself. I had a previous career where, where I was making lots of cold calls. This is a long time ago. And I started visualizing for 10 minutes a night, these big clients, like you were mentioning a big client called you, I was mentioned, I would visualize a big client call me and they had no reason to contact me, I was a nobody. There was a million other people they should have worked with instead of me, because of my lack of experience. I had no business ever getting a return call and 99% of the time I did it. But I started to put that out and started to visualize No, my phone is gonna ring one day, I’m just gonna keep plugging along. I’m gonna keep making these dials. Someone is going to call me and it happened. And that was when I was in my early 20s. And I couldn’t explain it. And it was almost accidental, except it happened. And so I thought, Well, okay, maybe this was just coincidence, and I’m making up a story in my head, you know, because I want to have superpowers, but irrespective it happened. And so I said, Well, there’s no there’s no downside individualization, other than, you know, having some sort of realistic expectation of what may come your way. And if all you do is visualize things that you want and do the work necessary, there’s a good chance you’re gonna, you’re gonna hit up, but Ryan was saying about having a negative mindset. And you don’t even have to, internally have a negative mindset, all you really have to do is turn on the news. And that is to say, you shouldn’t as Ryan said, You shouldn’t be Pollyanna. You shouldn’t be ignorant and not know what’s going on. But the News knows that that negative stories sell Of course they do so yeah. So it’s your

Ryan D’Aprile 51:48
Yeah, on the on the morning, local news. I mean, for somebody who doesn’t watch the news, and then I drove around, I slept over my brother’s house on Lincoln Square, about eight months ago with my youngest daughter who lines up with his daughter, and they had a sleepover rest day there in case she got homesick. Not that I’m a helicopter parent or anything. And we woke up, we had coffee the next morning, and he had the WGN GN news. And again, we don’t have we have one television, our house is rarely on, if it’s on we’re watching Netflix, as a family. And I just I just don’t like the news because of the negativity that spews out. And, you know, they’re just talking about, you know, a plane crash, and a little girl getting a try by shooting and like it was no big deal. And as my, my nine year old, the time was just staring wide I at the TV. And I was conflicted as like, am I shouting these girls too much? Or am I not as one of those as like, JJ crew turn this off dude for a second. And it and I ask myself, Am I you know, I debate with my mother, she’s like, you can’t have ignorant children? Like, what good are they getting out of this, I’m going to tell them what they’d be fearful of and what to watch for. But I don’t know, I just think negativity sells itself gets great advertising dollars and everything else. I just think I’m responsible for myself, my wife and my three girls, as they are responsible for me, they take care of me as much as I take care of them. But I just need to know who I am. And I know that 90% of my actions are based on my subconscious mind. So I just want to be very careful. When I do have conscious moments and decisions I get to make, I’m going to tune into the right things, not the wrong thing. Well, that’s right.

D.J. Paris 53:27
And look, if you want to study politics, like if that’s what you’re passionate about, you can go out and obtain that information about what’s going on politically. And you can find those those outlets that are going to write a more balanced reporting of what’s actually happening. And you can study policy and law. And if that’s your passion, again, you get to control what goes in or out. If you’re just a consumer, if you’re just wanting to look, I’m a marketer, I’ve been in marketing my whole life. We love it when people don’t go out and get their own information. Because marketers, we control the way you you. If you’re just a consumer, we control that experience. And you don’t want to be controlled. You want to control your own experience. So whatever your passions are, dive headfirst into them. But be very careful about what you’re consuming. That’s that that’s I think, the main point,

Ryan D’Aprile 54:18
yeah, and I don’t want to run too long here and the podcasts and but I want to do you know, here’s a little moment, I want to try a little ripple effect here. Okay. And this is a political movement, right for this. Here’s a person who is anti politics. I’ll vote for anybody right, left, up, down whatever side they’re on. I’ll vote for anybody who does this. Listen up. Okay. Make social media illegal for children under 18 years old. Oh, that would be great. It’s horrific. I have three children and everything that they see what they do, and it’s crazy. It’s like my grandfather was smoking at third grade, because there’s nothing wrong with it that it was socially acceptable. couldn’t imagine a third grader laying up a marble

D.J. Paris 54:59
wall. All right parents would be arrested these days when I was

Ryan D’Aprile 55:03
a little boy. And if my kids, if as a little boy and I was invited a kid’s house, I’d have to see all bunch of bikes in the front yard. And that was Snapchat, which grown adults are creating grown adults recruiting selling to our children, you could see where every kid is in the neighborhood, and you’re not left in or left that my daughter has been both sides. They’ve been the kids have been excluded. And they’ve been the kids have been included. They’ve been the kids who have executed kids. And it’s all available on social media. So it’s the one little political rant I want to get on Sunday, our children, I think, are the guinea pigs. But someday, some politician is going to say, You know what, this is a great thing. And it’s going to get me no office, you got my vote, make it illegal.

D.J. Paris 55:40
I love it. And it also it disconnects us because it’s not actual interpersonal connection. It’s it’s artificial. It’s not it’s not real, it’s a grown adult mind

Ryan D’Aprile 55:51
deal with that, right? And not a child, not allowing them because it will take your form away from your kid. Sure, great. You’d be a parent, tell me how easy it is. Right? It’s not. And so, you know, I always say I don’t want to take too much of this podcast on that. I just want to get my little plugin. And I always think if I ever had chance to say something that I’m going to put it out there to see if other parents buy into that belief. Or even get to be a parent to, you know, to care for what happens to kids in their. And their in their and their, their, their their mental well being, I guess you could

D.J. Paris 56:26
put it? Well, this is really interesting. Because before for the inworld, we’ll wrap up with this because before the podcast, I was asking Ryan, by the way, what Ryan does everyday. And I think this is always really interesting, because I suspect with all of the hundreds of real estate firms here locally in Chicago and really all over the country is that Chicago is probably no different. And there are hundreds and hundreds of real estate offices. But I suspect Ryan’s credibly unique here. He has 14 offices and what he does literally day in and day out as he travels from office to office, training his staff, and also the agents. And and I said to him right before we got on, I said why don’t you and I get it’s nice to do it, you know, face to face. Obviously, there’s value there. So why don’t you just do it online? Why don’t you just do it that way. And Ryan said, well, that because it’s a face to face business, and I want to be there and I want people to see me and I want to interact with people face to face. And boy, the more of that that we could all do in our lives, the more face to face connections we have, whether it’s in our business, or uh, personally, our friends, you know, getting off social media as much as possible and getting more face to face. Really just, you know, lots of opportunities come your way you’ll have better friendships, better relationships, every and better clients if you’re a realtor, right? So this is this is the way to do it, for sure.

Ryan D’Aprile 57:42
Yeah, yeah, you’re good. You’re good video. And there’s advantages and leverages to video and things and whatnot. But to handle a live interaction, even if you do it via Google Hangout, I prefer our coaching and training being one on one, we do group training, don’t get me wrong, but majority of it is one on one, we carve it out. And it’s face to face and face to face with between the computer screens, which are interacting with each other, and you’re having dialogue. It’s a it’s a simple business life isn’t simple. And is a business that lacks structure, and you can’t be successful without structure. So we just take the approach of high service, high touch, whoever comes to our doors, that’s a part of our team and our family. But that’s just our business philosophy. And it’s how we work

D.J. Paris 58:24
well and that’s a good good place to mention. If you are a broker and you’re looking for a new place to hang your license and a new firm to call home. Ryan would be honored and his team would be honored to talk to you again they have 14 offices, hundreds and hundreds of Realtors, a lot of them extraordinarily successful. And Ryan goes around making sure that his staff knows how to individually coach you and train you. So if you’re interested in learning more about depot properties, what they offer and I again, their differentiator is the coaching is the training and is providing a lot of the marketing the stuff that Realtors go I know I should do but I don’t do it or I don’t do it that well or I want to maybe help have somebody helped me with that. Boy do properties is the place to go. So go to Jaipur properties.com There’s a contact us form reach out, obviously they’d be happy. And by the way, this is another little plug for Ryan his company. Ryan would never ask me to say this because he’s too humble. But I asked him I said how do you guys do your recruiting? And he goes, we don’t it’s it’s just people join us. Or it’s word of mouth. And boy, what a great what a great compliment that is to the systems and the structure that they’ve created. So if you’re interested, definitely check out Depot properties.com. They always are looking for for brokers to join their team. So Ryan, what a perfect place we went almost an hour and I know this is a guy who does not have an hour to give and he gave it to us. So thank you once again on behalf of the listeners. And we’re so honored that you do this and it’s it’s just so well appreciated because we look at the downloads and you get a lot Got

Ryan D’Aprile 1:00:01
a DJ, really appreciate it and so it downers mine. Thank you so much.

D.J. Paris 1:00:05
Thank you guys. And thank you, Ryan, and thank you for our listeners. Again, we wouldn’t do this without your support. So if you’re not already on our Facebook page, that’s a great resource. We’ve even started doing one minute videos once a week one of our producers Liz gets on there and does a little tip of the week to help you and your business. Obviously post links to all of our episodes, as well as links from you know, some of the books that that Ryan mentioned, we’ll be putting on there. So visit us on Facebook as even though we talked about social media being being not a great place to interact with other humans. It is a good resource hub, at least for this podcast to learn about what we’re talking about today. So facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Otherwise, we will see everyone on our next episode, and we’ll see Ryan in a month. So thank you to everyone listening and Ryan.

Welcome to the August edition of Coaching Moments with Ryan D’Aprile!

What if canceled, FSBO & expired listings weren’t as difficult to convert as most brokers imagine? In this episode Ryan discusses how to approach these challenging prospects and how to convert them into clients. He also recounts a story about how he turned 12k into 150k in his first two years in real estate through a monthly mailing strategy. That’s a 1,150% return!

Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.492.7900 and execassistant@daprileproperties.com.

Ryan D'Aprile
daprile properties logo

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:15
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the only podcast made by brokers for brokers, which isn’t true, but we haven’t come up with a better tagline yet, but we might be the biggest podcast out there for brokers by brokers. So we’re very excited because we are doing as per usual, our coaching moments with Ryan D APR segment. So Ryan is on the line. Let me introduce Ryan before he says hello, if you don’t know him, or aren’t yet as familiar as you should be, he comes on once a month and does a coaching session. And the reason why is this is what Ryan does professionally in his own company. So he owns a brokerage firm here in Chicago. They have 13 offices in the suburbs city, actually in three states, I believe, and Ryan actually in their 400 Plus brokers. And in addition to running the business, Ryan also travels, the majority of his time is spent traveling from office to office training his agents and coaching them, and he is generously doing the same for our listeners. So actually, before I bring Ryan on, we should promote as if you’re interested in and you’re a broker or a client, somebody who’s looking to work with a broker, looking to work with somebody from Ryan’s company go to Depot properties.com, which I will also post a link to in the podcast notes and Ryan’s team. They’re always looking for more brokers and their brokers are always looking for clients. So if you’re interested in either of that, contact Ryan’s team at Depot properties.com. Welcome, Ryan.

Ryan D’Aprile 1:39
Thanks, TJ. Thanks for having me. It’s always it’s a pleasure. I look forward to these.

D.J. Paris 1:43
Yeah, we’re excited to to have you on we get a lot of great feedback for doing these episodes, in particular, because every broker out there whether they’re a top one percenter, like the ones we interview, or maybe a listener who wants to be a top one percenter, everybody needs coaching, you need coaching, I need coaching, we all need it. And the fact that you come on once a month to provide it is really a big deal. We’re really grateful for

Ryan D’Aprile 2:07
that. Thanks. Oh, pleasure. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 2:09
so Well, I’ve at our firm, we have hundreds and hundreds of brokers, you have the same, and Ryan and I were just talking offline, and he’s like, What are you hearing at your firm? Like, what are what are people say? And, and I said, Gosh, not that much. And then I realized, well, that’s because people are pretty busy. It’s the summer, there’s a lot of activity, I see it in the number of transactions, not even just at our firm, but just across the board and Chicago transactions are up, up, up. So people are pretty busy. But I wonder if it’s easy to neglect doing the fundamentals that help keep you busy when things maybe aren’t as active. So maybe we can talk about that. Absolutely.

Ryan D’Aprile 2:45
And you know, it’s funny, before our call, it’s about seven o’clock at night when we are doing this podcast before I got home, probably around six o’clock, one of my favorite things to do is turn the garden hose on and just take about a good hour just water the yard and water the plants and I phone stays inside. And I was thinking about the business and what we do for a living. And here we are. And it’s you know, it’s August. And it’s the last day of July or whatnot and all my flowers, my hydrangeas and roses, everything is bloom, it’s beautiful. When I’m out and I’m watering it and and the reason I’m watering it, it’s the same thing as the business that we are in today, you’ve got to water your business all the time, even when it’s in full bloom, you can’t neglect the basics that you have to take care of. You have to take care of your business, you have to take care of plants, even when you are in the busy growing season where we all think now’s the time to harvest. And there’s a time to harvest. But you always got to be taking care of your farm your business and what you’re doing planting the seeds because there’s always tomorrow, there’s always next week, there’s always next month, and we have seasonality to our business. But the seasonality does not mean and does not have to mean dead slow, nothing going on. But when you’re busy, and if you neglect those important activities that we’re supposed to take, then when the quote unquote, seasonality comes, that’s when people start to panic. And the worst thing about that is, then you’re worried about panic and business that you don’t have versus being strategic about growing for the next season. Does that make sense?

D.J. Paris 4:23
It does. And I’ll tell you I was just at a panel event earlier this week. And I listen to Matt laris he speak for those of you who aren’t in the Chicago area or who are in aren’t familiar with him. He’s one of the top producers in the entire industry here in Chicago. And he said I don’t believe in seasonality and the whole crowd went where I grumbled and he said no, here’s what I mean. It doesn’t matter to me what’s going on in the market, I have to consistently tend to my business every single day as if it were busy and slow at the same time, which I thought was a really interesting way of putting which is basically what you just said,

Ryan D’Aprile 4:56
Absolutely. You always have to be focused on it. Finding somebody who wants to buy or sell a home, in your business, or if you’re in the mortgage lending business, finding somebody who wants to refinance or purchase a home, or if you’re insurance, or if you’re an attorney, or if you’re a doctor, so on and so forth. I mean, the fundamentals are the same across the board, you have to be finding somebody who needs your service, you add value, adding value typically comes naturally to all of us, what doesn’t come naturally to all of us is taking care of ourselves. And a lot of us put ourselves last and we put our business last, it’s a very dangerous thing to do. But it’s natural thing to do, because we care so much about our clients. But if you put yourself last and don’t focus on yourself, then you’re not gonna have the clients to take care of. So that’s where accountability and coaching really comes into play. Take care of yourself, find the coach, find accountability partner, be with an organization that provides consistent coaching. It’s not rocket science. It’s consistency. And like Matt had said, regardless of the season, it doesn’t matter, you have to be working as if you don’t have a client and generating the next lead or sale or what it might not be for the next month or two to come. A great. So what are the some of things that you’re hearing in your office?

D.J. Paris 6:21
Well, gosh, let’s talk about what people could actually do when they’re busy. So we know that, you know, if customer service is the bulk of time you spend on your business, maybe if you’re working an eight hour day, and that may be a bit low for a lot of successful realtors or people who are, you know, just worked retreating, like a full time job. But if we wake up at an eight hour day, and we say, Okay, well, customer service, meaning once you acquire the customer, all of the work that is included, maybe that takes up six of the eight hours. So then the question is, okay, well, I’m pretty busy, because I’m, it’s that time of the year where I’ve got a lot of clients, what do I actually do with the other few hours, I have to help 10 that garden?

Ryan D’Aprile 7:06
Well, so you have to have, you know, a couple of strategies, I think your number one focus should be your network, your network is your net worth. But then there’s other things that we can do such as farming, we could focus on a campaign for cancelled expired or fizz bows, you could look at open houses, and you have to really plan out and map what your strategy is going to be. So I don’t think you should be doing everything but you pick a couple. So I always think your network should be at the foundation. Some people do purchase these big purchase lead strategy, some picture to farm, some people do cancel expires. So let’s just grab three, let’s pick a network, which I think should be the foundation of your shores. Let’s pick a farm. And then let’s pick a cancel and expire strategy.

D.J. Paris 7:54
Yeah, you can we start with with with canceled expireds and fizz bows. Because if I don’t know if you want to lump all those into cancelled, expired and fizz bows altogether, but this is always a question that comes up, especially for newer brokers who, you know, they they read about this idea, or they hear it from a coach. And they’re not entirely sure, because these are difficult calls. But I like difficult calls. So I like the idea of at least getting, you know getting a few of those under your belt. So can we talk about your thoughts about canceled expireds fizz bows? And if you are doing them how to have success? Yeah.

Ryan D’Aprile 8:29
And here’s going to be something that most people are going to be very shocked when I hear when I say this. Forget about the call. You know, and I know there’s a lot of coaches out there that teach, you know, four hours a day on the phone pounding the phone calling canceling expireds that’s not my strategy. I think it’s a more sophisticated approach my strategy, but perhaps it’s more geared towards an individual who isn’t the type of I’m not I’m an extroverted introvert. Okay, so, I like to solve. I like to work with individuals and I like my marketing to do my sales for me, I like to be top of mind so that when somebody has a need, they have a relationship with me either directly or indirectly and that I am that call to come so when I take my cancel the my expired strategy, I do it through a direct mail approach versus the call. So I think we’re all used to hearing some of the coaches that are out there and they have black times you pick up the phone you call for three hours. I think that’s exhausting. That’s just this DJ this is my opinion though. And so I don’t want to cast judgment I don’t want to offend anybody who’s doing this either. So well

D.J. Paris 9:48
but But what if we just think about it logically. So here’s how the the average broker who is working fizz bows expireds cancelled do it. They purchased they purchased these lists that are readily of vailable from lots of different providers online, it’s very inexpensive, you can buy these for next to nothing. And they’re purchased by many, many brokers and 90, I’m guessing, but let’s say 98% Of those, that activity is going to be phone calls. So what Ryan is saying is actually makes a lot of sense, because how many people are going to be mailing something out to those fizz bows? Very few.

Ryan D’Aprile 10:25
And it and it should be a campaign and should be coupled with a geographical farm. Right. So um, so, you know, if I’m going to take my efforts, and I’m going to take my time, I’m going to apply it statistically, to the best return, the best return is your network 16% of your network transacts every year, so when I take my so there’s a limited amount of willpower, we have

D.J. Paris 10:56
a finite amount of willpower and, and you want to make sure you have to be very strategic about how not to deplete it too early in the day.

Ryan D’Aprile 11:04
Well, that’s exactly right, seven o’clock, you know, a little, it’s a little after seven o’clock right now. And I came home when I was at my garden, and I had a beer, I was watering my grass, I, I should go work out, I could go work out I’m strong enough to go to the gym. But I don’t have it in me to go to the gym. And I won’t, I’m done. My willpower is completely depleted. And so when I go and I look at my business, I have to, I have to value my energy, my resources and my time. And I’m going to take that, you know that that Herculean amount of energy that people are taking and calling strangers that are cancelled expired, and they’re pissed off in the first place, because our home isn’t sold, I’m not going to put it at that because I just, I’m not that strong. Or I don’t have that amount of willpower to face that type of rejection day in and day out. So I’m going to take my time and my effort, I’m going to apply that to my network. And I’m going to call them and develop deep relationships with them. We ask them how they’re doing, how their kids are gone. It’s all about them. It’s not about me, my marketing will take care of the rest for me. Now. Coming back to the castle expireds. I do think it’s a wonderful strategy. I think it’s something we need to focus on. But there’s a different way of going about it, I believe it’s coupling it with a geographic farm. Now you gotta understand, this does take money, in effect, everything takes money. And everything in our life is a gamble. You gamble your time you gamble your money, I cannot believe how many people I see out there that they spend one to three months to get their real estate license, six 700 bucks for the class, they spend 1000 to $2,000 for the association, but then God forbid they spend 10 bucks or $100 on marketing themselves. Right? Right. And they’re not valuing all the time it took for them to get the real estate license, and so on and so forth. So this takes a little bit of time, and it takes a little bit of money. But I look at my business as a my network. That’s the first foundation then I’ll look at a geographical farm. And then I’ll coupled with a cancel expires. So if I have a geographical farms, they have 500 residences, right? So I can live in a condo building with 200 units in it. And there’s another kind of building next to me with 300 units in it. So there’s my 500 residents I’m going to hit or I live in a community and there is a geographical circle around my home. And I picked 500 homes, that’s a farm. Okay, now your return on that it’s going to be about 2%. Okay, so if you farm, okay, let’s describe what a farm is, you send a postcard every single month. Okay, that’s what we’re defining as a farm, send a postcard every single month, after 12 full months, the second year, you can expect about 10 leads from that. But what you can expect for the first 12 months is that getting 10 leads from it. And you have to understand, it’s like, you know, planting, you know, planting a flower, you know, you could take care of it, it’s going to take 12 months for this thing to bloom. Does this make sense to you? Yes. Okay, so I think a good farm and cancel expired strategy

is going to take a good two years, the first year, you’re gonna plant the seed, the second year, you’re gonna harvest and then you need to continually plant those seeds in the second year for your third, fourth and fifth year. And then you have what we call the snowball effect it gets easier and easier. So what you’ve done the farmers you create a brand name for yourself in your community. Okay, now these are not people in your network. They maybe should be in your network but to geographical farm and you’re starting to put yourself out there now in that farm. People hire other real estate agents I know right stabbed in the heart. Oh my god, they picked somebody else. I don’t know who they are. I should quit this business is not working out. Of course they have Here’s somebody else, don’t worry about it, don’t be so critical on yourself, relax, give it time. But what’s going to happen is sometimes, sometimes the home doesn’t sell. Right. And sometimes it’s it has to do with the sellers willingness to listen to the agent, pricing it properly or whatnot, let’s not speculate on white and sell, let’s just focus on the fact that it’s in itself. Now, you have been farming this home, in your radius for say, 1314 months, and it cancels, or it expires. This is where you jump into action. Now everybody else picks up the phone and makes a phone call. I like to put together what’s called a listing book and a well written, handwritten note. Your such and such I noticed your home has recently expired, I’ve been admiring it from afar to a beautiful home. And I would be very interested in meat with you, if you ever consider going on the market again. And then I send it either, you know, first class, you know, FedEx, USPS or UPS, I send it in a package to them. Now, remember, they’re consistently getting a postcard every single month. Then two weeks later, I will send them either a bio book on myself, or a Real Estate Report. And I’ll continually send them items of value in the mail for the next year. Does this make sense? TJ?

D.J. Paris 16:33
Yeah, and I want to pause for a second because I want to give you my own experience with where I live. And you’ve you’ve been in the neighborhood I’m in I’m we’ve met Ryan and I had drinks at theory Cafe, which just happens to be thankfully right next not not next to where Ryan lives. But he was nice enough to come in. But right next to where I live.

Ryan D’Aprile 16:50
That’s where my daughter that’s my wife and I that’s where I grew my business. And that’s what’s right.

D.J. Paris 16:54
You weren’t you’ve been right here. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. And so we I was just thinking about this recently, because I get postcards. But I have an look, there are 40 I think we’re up to 44,000 brokers in the Chicagoland area. That’s the number of brokers. And I’m the building I’m in. There’s a lot of transactions that happen. It’s a it’s a high rise. It’s a very nice building. And the number of postcards I have received in two years since I moved in. I bet I’ve received probably one a month, but never the same person. I think I’ve maybe gotten two postcards from the same person ever. Now, again, maybe they’ve did the math and learn that I’m in the business, but 99% chance they didn’t. Nobody is doing even the postcards every month. And I mean, almost nobody I know your agents do. Very few brokers do this. So even if you’re just doing that on a consistent basis, you’re so far ahead of the game.

Ryan D’Aprile 17:51
Well, let me share a story with you. I’m not sure how long we’ve been going for. And I don’t want to bore your listeners. But let’s just talk about the exact community that you and I had lunch in, in the school just a couple blocks south to the Fulton River District that your my wife and I lived at 320 North Clinton and townhome and that we lived at River Oh God, what was the name of Randolph place? 165 north canal. And then we had Samantha we moved to our townhome anyways, I got into the real estate business is 2004. And I started marketing I started my farm. And DJ 12 Months went by. And I sent a postcard every single month, you know, many phone calls I got in that first year?

D.J. Paris 18:34
I know how many none? Yeah, that sounds about right, that

Ryan D’Aprile 18:38
one. Now my business grew. And it grew such because I took such good care of my network, that I was able to leave the company that employed me. And I’ve never been employed ever since I’ve been self employed ever since then I’ll have to say that properly. All right. But that’s because I had a solid foundation of a straight network business. But I understood the importance of you know, more than one leg to a stool. And so all right, put in an open house strategy and put in a farm strategy to complement my network strategy. And 12 Months went by and I’m telling you about it, there are agents that want to stop after two months. And I explained to them a story. So let me let me tell you what it takes and what it could cost me if I stopped. So back then I was doing about 1000 Okay, I was really gung ho I wanted that in my day job. And I picked the 1000 addresses in the Fulton River District. And I send them a postcard every single month. And that cost me about $500 a month. I don’t spend that kind of money. It doesn’t have to be that big of a farm. I’ve only got so big that I realized I had a diminishing return. But for the sake of time here, I won’t go down that path. I just Stick with story 500 hours a month 1000 postcards I was sending out every single month 12 Once one phone call, but I knew that the return was about 2% In terms of the percentage of people that receiving my postcard, I should get 2% of 1000. I should get about 20 leads at some point. Yes, but it is a two year strategy. And the 14th month, which was the bleeding out this worked on a calendar year. So the 14th month, I think was February it was February. I had not gotten a call, March came sent out another hand got a call. And in April, I was faced with a decision. Do I spend 500 more dollars on the strategy. I’m three months into three, four months into a new year. I am 16 months in the strategy. I haven’t gotten one call. And I decided I’m going to do it again. And that month I got a phone call. And this individual call me said my wife and I are thinking about selling our home. And we know you sell all the homes in this area and we’d love you to come over and talk about selling our home. Now DJ been an agent for almost a year and a half. Okay. How many units do you think I sold in there kind of building?

D.J. Paris 21:19
Zero? Or how many not? Yeah,

Ryan D’Aprile 21:21
how many do you think I sold an entire area? No, gosh,

D.J. Paris 21:25
who knows how many not? Yeah,

Ryan D’Aprile 21:27
I was in network. Travel. I’ll go anyway, as a new agent. I was 18 months into it. But they said we know you sell a lot of the homes or condos in our area. We Yeah, because I hit given I built a brand it took right and built the brand. Anyways, I sold her condo for $400,000. And they bought a home for $1.2 million, referred me to their brother who bought a home in Lincoln Park for 600,000 hours, who referred me to their law partner who I listed their home up on Southport for 600,000 hours. And they bought a home in Oak Park on shit home Avenue. She’s a mouth for 800,000 hours, who referred me to their back door neighbor on Southport they lived on what’s a street behind Southport such that the W never beat the back door neighbor called and hired me. I sold their home for $600,000 They moved to Austin, Texas, but I put my For Sale sign on the fence and the stairs neighbor who she’s a cardiologist at Northwestern. And he’s a er surgeon in Park Ridge called me because he saw my name on a for sale sign. And I sold their home for $600,000 $150,000 in gross commission income I earned over the course of six months. Wow, almost didn’t spend 500 bucks on that postcard. Well, then let’s

D.J. Paris 22:49
talk about what that total return was. So if you if we figure you spent 13 or 14 grand $6,000

Ryan D’Aprile 22:55
a year, and that’s take it to that two years. 12 grand.

D.J. Paris 22:59
Yeah, 12 grand to make 150 grand. Oh, and you have

Ryan D’Aprile 23:03
no idea how many referrals I’ve had from those individuals over the past 14 years. And the friendships I’ve gotten out of it, forget the money. Like I care about these people. I know their kids, right? It’s opened up so many wonderful things in my life besides just a commission check. But you got to be all in, you got to show up, you got to decide, is this what I want to do or not what I want to do, you got to have passion? Yeah, I saw my daughter and said, I want for you to have passion. I want you to have energy. That’s the two things consuming passion, confidence and energy. Those are the three things that could wish for you girls in my life, and just go out. And to everybody who’s real estate agent that wants to do this, you got to throw yourself in, but you got to commit and you got to show up. And you can’t give up after two three months. I mean, we’re talking about a two year strategy of your network, a farm or might be purchased web leads or may be cancelled expires or might it be open house, pick your strategy and give it two years give yourself two years because the serving the client but comes naturally just be yourself? Yeah, I

D.J. Paris 24:14
think you’re so right. I mean, between the two of us, we have about 1000 brokers at our firms. And what I found is I think about our brokers, you know, at our firm at least because I know them much better than your brokers. Although I know your brokers are very successful. I think gosh, you know, I think most brokers are caring I think their clients like them. And I think that part of it, they do pretty well. But but as a you know how are brokers? Are they doing mailers? Are my brokers you know, are they doing regular farming? Probably not. That’s the one thing that I think a lot of brokers maybe it doesn’t come as natural and you’re when Ryan says you got to go all in. It’s easy to go all in on the things you’d like to do and that come naturally but The things that are difficult but that are going to get you the best results are the things that are most important. Like Ryan said, he wrote a personal note, you know how many personal notes I’ve received in the last year, it from all the different services that I use, whether it’s my financial advisor, my insurance person, you know, the mortgage person, or just anyone just friends and family in my life, I’ve probably you know, I my birthday, I get a few cards from friends and family that’s about it. If all you ever did was write even everyone in your existing network your people in your that you already know and love and who love you, if you just wrote all of them a personal note to remind them that you’re in the business, that would be a huge

Ryan D’Aprile 25:38
reminder that you’re in the business, just write them a personal note, I get personal notes written to me, by my agents, and they are thanking me Yes, and it makes my day it only to everything to me. And it’s just such an impact you could have in somebody else’s life. Because what we’re craving more than anything, especially in the social media generation we’re living in is connection. Because everything else is just bullshit phony baloney, we’ve got to break through that we are becoming where I think we’re on a horizon of a whole new era of understanding of just the human experience. And we’re getting out of this 1718 years of social media and this pretend life, everybody’s having his breakthrough and have the human connection, if you have a human connection people and the amount of connections you have with them, like, you can multiply that and have more and more of those connections, the more value you’re going to get out of it for your life. So it’s, it’s to, to, to your point, deejays, stop and take time. And, and, and, and and connect with the people in your network. In writing a handwritten note, make a phone calls, send me a text message. But remember, it’s about them. It’s about them, and asking how they are, and really being interested. And then perhaps if you can give gratitude to them, but you got to find out, it’s got to be in the right context and how you’re going to do it.

D.J. Paris 27:04
Yeah, and I mean, for me, I’m a bit of a scatterbrain. So I know that this is not a professional thing I do. But I realized very early on as an adult that I am not great about remembering to stay in touch with friends that have moved away. And now it’s much easier with social media and text to be able to do that. But I like to talk on the phone. So I but I had friends that I was starting to lose touch with. And I realized I mean, guys probably aren’t as apt to call each other on the phone, which I understand too. But I thought I’m losing touch with my friends. And I very simply now just have repeating tasks. Every month, I have remembered a call, you know, so and so remember to call so and so. And I just it’s a system, and there’s no benefit for our business gain. But I but there’s a benefit for my life because I get to connect with these people. But I have to have a system in place, or I will forget to do it. It’s not because I don’t care. It’s not that I don’t like them. I’m just busy, you’re busy. We’re all busy. And having systems in place. Like if you’re a broker at Ryan’s company, for example, he helps you with a lot of the marketing, they do a lot of it for you. So you can focus on what you do best, which is servicing your clients. But and

Ryan D’Aprile 28:11
really, you know, rolling with those friends. Yes, yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s our job. And that’s what we have to focus on. And you do have to systematize it, and you have to track it. You know, hopefully you have somebody who’s looking over your shoulder, that you agree to surrender to and say, hey, help me, you know, one of the things that we talked about, or you mentioned about your agents, and then some of them do it, some of it don’t. And you know, you are questioning, you know, your hope some of them do it, I could tell everybody at my company and outside our organization, to agents who have surrendered and said, I’m going to follow the system, have them write SAS,

D.J. Paris 28:49
yeah, there’s just gonna be certain things that you don’t do, you can’t do it’s not in your wheelhouse, you’re not oriented towards it, you’re not wired for it, and you just have to go, I don’t do a good job of that. So I’m going to outsource it, or I’m going to have somebody else hold me accountable. And I’m just going to get it done. But Don’t torture yourself trying to force yourself to do something that you’re not going to do. You’re just if you’re not going to do it, set up a system to have it done for you or find somebody else that can do it. Well, and

Ryan D’Aprile 29:17
there’s two really basic things you need to focus on now, in terms of generating the business, right? There’s one is is is connecting with everybody here in your network, you know, once a quarter through communication that’s personally that’s personalized, it’s not selling. And the other one is marketing to them three or four times a month via direct mail, digital email marketing, social media, right. So, those are the two paths that you have to run parallel of each other. What happens is, you know, people try to come up with new concepts or, or they over analyze What they’re sending out? Right and I think I butcher this quote every time but Eisenhower’s Eisenhower said, a well thought out plan ever executed is way worse than a poorly thought out planned, well executed. And I Oh, absolutely, I heard that. But that is somebody else said to me a long time ago about direct mail is ship shit. And I just I was so fond of that saying and and what the person met when he said ship says just get it out the door they look at well, I

D.J. Paris 30:40
can also remember, they’re going to look at it for two seconds and toss it anyway, it’s not that important. What’s on there? What’s important? Is that correct for two seconds before they throw it in the garbage. They go, Oh, yeah, that’s right. Ryan’s a broker, and then let’s write garbage.

Ryan D’Aprile 30:55
That’s it. And by the way, chips, it’s just an expression. But in short, you don’t have to write a dissertation here on what’s going on, it’s marketing, stay consistent, be in front of your network, three to four times a month, and never miss a month. And if you miss a month or so, you know, basically starting all over again. Because that’s what happens. People get going home, they start three, four months, and they stop. And then a year goes by. And then they look over the shoulder. And there’s somebody’s been the business for 18 months that surrendered and follow the business. And also on their side six, seven $8 million of real estate a year. And this person is struggling with what I gotta do like, well, you know what, even though you’ve been in business for 1314 months, you’re starting over, because you didn’t let the system work. If I didn’t email, if I didn’t send that postcard, it wouldn’t have led to those 14 transactions in a six month time period. That equates to about 150,000 hours of gross commission income. And by the way, that was from one strategy, one of three strategies that I executed that year. And I think I did about 15 or $17 million. And that was my second year in the business. It’s not to say it’s incredible is that it’s really not, and it’s not complicated. What is incredible, you know, is I don’t know It’s incredible, but it’s stop thinking. Just stop thinking and just do it.

D.J. Paris 32:15
I gotta tell you so the last episode, if anyone’s listening, go back and listen to the episode just before this one because I interviewed 22 You’re gonna love this. These two guys, Greg and Zack, they are 22 years old and they’re at Keller Williams, but it gets better in Barrington, right? You could not ask for a tougher place to start in real estate that in the Northwest suburb of Barrington as a 22 year old, this is a very wealthy area, if anyone’s not familiar, and a 22 year old has a hard enough time getting clients, these two guys, here’s what they do, you’re gonna love this. So I’m just going to we’re going a little bit out of order. But I wanted to get back to farming because I just remember that with these guys. You’re gonna love this. So Ryan talked about hey, mailers and writing handwritten notes and doing all those in, that’s all great. Here’s what these guys did, are doing every day, since they have nothing else to do. They have no clients, although they’re starting to really become successful. They’re the youngest two brokers in an office of 300. By the way, what these guys did is they go, no one’s going to give us their business. We’re too young, we don’t know anything. They literally walk the streets of Barrington knocking on doors and saying, Hey, we’re from the area, this is where we grew up. This is our neighborhood. And we wanted to come and just say hello and let you know, we’re a team. And we’re young, but we’re really eager. And we would love to earn your business. And we just wanted to give you some information if you’re ever in the need. And this is what they they film it to. And they put it out, I’ll send out their videos. But these guys are fearless. And this is what they do all day. And they’ve gotten eight on of this, and they say they’ve never come across another realtor when they’ve done it.

Ryan D’Aprile 33:50
Well. And you know, I you know, kudos to those guys. And I’ll tell you with the farm and cancel expires strategy that I’ve implemented in the past, and I do now with some of our agents, I do it because I don’t have that I couldn’t do it couldn’t knock on somebody’s door. Sure. And, and I’m not saying don’t do it. You know, I’m saying that’s wonderful. But you don’t even have to put yourself out that much more successful. What you have to do is you got to pick a plan, what fits your personality, and then you have to execute it and you got to give it a couple of years you’ll have success. If you don’t deviate. If you don’t change you know, if you don’t change courses and try another strategy and then what’s the next newest trend and once an excellent trend and axing know who you are. And I know how I am I’m an extroverted introvert, and that I’m going to let my direct mail do my marketing for me. And then I’m just going to focus on being a good conversationalist being focused on the person I’m talking to, and track my actions and activities and know the people I’ve talked to record the notes so that when I come back and visit them again, they are significant because I bring back up who their spouse is or what they did and but that’s my style everybody has different styles and I I don’t want to go you know down too much in a row but it’s just part of this is get to know who you are and what works for you and what you’re comfortable with.

D.J. Paris 35:12
Yeah look if everyone who’s listening and I know nothing about sports right I don’t know if your sports not okay, good. I thought I thought we were saying there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I play tennis twice a week. So I but I don’t I don’t even know anything about tennis. But what’s funny is, if you if you’re everyone who’s listening should read any autobiography or biography on coach John Wooden, UCLA. He’s the winningest coach, I think he’s still the winningest coach in NCAA history. And he was all about fundamentals right? Just key never once this is true, he won like eight consecutive NCAA Tournament championships. Like that’s how successful this guy was. And he never once and this is true, never looked at the scoreboard, he didn’t care. He said, there are times when you’ll win, but you won’t feel good because you didn’t give it your all. And there’s times when you’ll lose, and you’ll feel great because you gave it your all and it just doesn’t matter. It’s up to the gods, let the score take care of itself. What matters is fundamental. And that’s what we’re talking about. That’s

Ryan D’Aprile 36:10
a great, that’s a great thing, it reminds me of another expression is don’t focus on the goal, focus on your activities. Just focus on your activities. Success is just a byproduct of that. So if you are focusing on the end, practice success, and, and even worse, comparing themselves to others, just focus on the activities. And if you really break it down, activities are simple. This guy doing five days a week, not 751 hour a day, maybe. But anyways, that’s network strategy. Coming back, circling it, kind of bringing it to an end, the farm strategy, I think should be coupled with a good and solid cancel expired Fizbo strategy. And I don’t think you have to do it with a phone call, I think you could have a another approach that actually would stand out from all the other phone calls that are hitting out there. And there’s from a listening book to a bio book to a Real Estate Report so many other things. But I guess we could pick that up for another podcast as for others, but in this time, where we are writing contracts left and right, and we’re getting listings, please don’t forget to be in flow with your network, and what other strategies that are out there that you’re executing, do not neglect yourself. And if you don’t focus on generating business, you’re neglecting yourself, I understand the importance of our clients. And we have to give our all our clients. And we tend to do that we tend to forget about who or who we are, and how we take care of ourselves and our families. Right now, in the busy season. Please know that you have to be in flow with your network and the other strategy you have. So that when the market slows down from seasonality, you’re not slow. Just the competition is

D.J. Paris 38:01
you Yeah. And taking care of yourself. You know, you’ve mentioned that a few times, I want to bring up just a simple strategy that I have done for a long time. Now I am not out there. As a practicing broker. I’m in an office all day I sit there. But one thing I did many, many, many years ago, I’m now about 10 years into this just because it made sense to me was I realized I was spending way too much time everyday trying to figure out what I wanted for lunch, right? Like I get to work, I start thinking about lunch around 10 o’clock, where am I going to pick it up from where am I going to order from where you know, what am I going to do and it was way too much energy. And we know we have a finite amount of decision making energy and motivation and discipline that we just have a sort of I went, I never want to deal with this again. And plus, I’m eating a bunch of garbage. And that’s okay, if that’s what you want to do. But I was tired of just that. It was just too much energy. And also I was eating badly. And then I would have one pass out by two o’clock. And if you’re on the road, because you’re meeting clients, or you’re just out and about, it’s even harder. I have been packing my lunch. This is pretty nerdy. But I make my lunch on Saturdays or Sundays for the entire week. And I freeze it. And again, that probably doesn’t work for everybody. But because of that now, I never have to think about lunch ever again. I have to think about it on the weekends. What am I going to prepare for the week? I think about it takes two or three hours of my time to prepare. And then I’m done. And I never have to think about it. And I can just work during the day. So if you’re, if you’re, if that’s a it’s a simple and it’s not directly related to real estate, but if you’re struggling or struggling with energy, prepare your lunches and ahead of time.

Ryan D’Aprile 39:31
Yeah, well, it comes down to business development too. If you’re struggling on what to do, you should have a you should have a CRM, you should have a dashboard. You should have a roadmap and it shouldn’t literally tell you what to do. And the activities should not take much more than an hour a day.

D.J. Paris 39:47
Yeah, I wake up every day have a system in place that tells you what I used to do us that’s my system. Ryan’s got a system he’s created for his entire organization. In fact, that’s a good place to to promote Ryan’s organization. So if you’re out there listening no matter what field you’re in, and you want to learn more, either because you are looking for a broker who’s as disciplined as Ryan is, he’s got lots of hundreds and hundreds of them, or you’re a broker and you want to work with someone like Ryan, who can help you with some of these marketing efforts. So that you can focus on servicing your clients and expanding your network. What’s the best way they should reach out to you,

Ryan D’Aprile 40:25
you can email me Brian at diva properties.com. Either call my cell phone 312-590-6416 Or you could text me. And just we’ll take it from there, see what you’re looking for what your needs are, I’ll tell you who we are. We’re coaching companies, essentially the backbone. So a lot of people go out and they hire coaches and trainers, that’s what we are at our company. And then we’re backed by an unbelievable marketing team, where we’ll actually do the monthly marketing for you take it out of your hands. And make sure it’s executed consistently. So that when that 14th or 15th month comes like it came from me, you don’t have to think about it, decisions are done for you. And then if you focus on your activities, the results will come. But it’s it’s it’s a team effort. It’s it’s work on our part, it’s work on your part, but you bring it together, it’s it’s still at their 15 years of doing this, I still think is one of the best careers out there.

D.J. Paris 41:25
Well, and it’s such a neat career, because everyone has to live somewhere. And like 87%, I might have that number slightly wrong. I was just looking at it this morning might be 89% of people when they buy and sell a home use a realtor, in fact, for sale by owners are at an all time low, which absolutely is shocking to me. When I came into this business from a I have a marketing background in it. When I came in this business 10 years ago, I turned to the owner of my company and I said I don’t think realtors are gonna exist in 10 years. And he goes, You don’t know what you’re talking about. I said, No, I don’t. But that’s just my guess. And sure enough how wrong I have been. But not only was I wrong, it’s actually fizz bows have gone, it’s less than 7% of all homes sold or sold for sale by owner.

Ryan D’Aprile 42:08
Well, you know, what you and I should do is we should we should notate that. And we should talk about emotional intelligence for next month. And but we’re making a promise to the listeners. So you and I need to follow through with that. And that, to me, is such a fun part of the business. And it is a no brainer. And I knew this two years going into the business, it’s not going anywhere. Because it’s such an emotional transaction. Now we talk a lot about lead generation, how yet to focus on it. But there is an art to understanding and relating to relating to your clients and having to listen to them, we have, you know, two ears, one mouth, and one of the hardest things for us to do in our profession is to actually stop and listen. But it is one of the most, it’s the biggest value our buyers and our sellers get out of us. It’s that, that emotional intelligence and that human connection, and be able to relate with them and be able to talk them through, we actually just we facilitate the transaction. And as you develop that art and that skill set and that capability, oh my gosh, your referrals just continually grow and grow. So perhaps on our next session, we’ll, we’ll I’ll create a little outline, and we’ll talk about motional intelligence, okay, DJ, and I’ll give maybe a two to four point touch on how as a real estate professional, how much the consumer values, emotional intelligence, and how you can convey the value to them, either when you’re in the beginning stages with them, middle stages, or even an or even after part. And just we could also and it’s always really good to reaffirm what we do what good we provide, because selling the home is not I don’t think our main focus, it’s taken somebody from, we want to start here and we want to go there and say, Well, let me go on a journey with you. And let me talk you through every step of the way.

D.J. Paris 44:16
Wow, that’s yeah, that says it all. And by the way for all of our listeners, and we have 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of listeners. We’re so grateful for that. By the way, please send us your questions. What would you like to hear from Ryan? What questions do you have? Maybe it’s related to emotional intelligence, which we’ll cover on our next episode or what we covered today or in the past? What do you what questions do you have you can send those through our Facebook group everyone who’s listening needs to subscribe to our Facebook group because we post links to every episode and every single day our producer Hannah finds an article she sources it online of all the various blogs and different news sources related to how realtors can grow their business you know, we don’t post about hey, here’s that buyer lawsuit with the now Association realtors. We don’t focus on that, because that’s not going to help your business today or I don’t know, maybe it will but probably not. We focus on specific tactics. So every day, we give you at least one quality article that will take you no more than two minutes to read that we find online. And in addition to that, of course, posting links to the so you can send us notes through there saying, hey, I want to hear more about X, Y, or Z. Also through our website, keeping it real pod.com, where you can also listen to every episode right from your web browser. Obviously, anywhere. Podcasts are served up in whatever app you’re using, find us and subscribe there too. But on behalf of Ryan and myself, we really appreciate you guys listening. We also on behalf of the listeners want to thank Ryan for his generosity. He is way too busy to do this yet he does it every single month, and we couldn’t be more grateful. So thank you to everyone listening, Ryan. Thank you, Caleb and we’ll see everyone on in a month. Thanks

Welcome to the July edition of Coaching Moments with Ryan D’Aprile!

In this episode Ryan touches on market research you should be familiar with and how to communicate this information with your client to help educate them on housing trends. This establishes you as the knowledge source and helps to have a more productive conversation around pricing. After that, we discuss the most important year-round activity that is neglected when brokers are busy – lead generation. Ryan discusses tactics you can perform daily to keep your pipeline full of buyers and sellers!

Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.492.7900 and execassistant@daprileproperties.com.

Ryan D'Aprile
daprile properties logo

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:16
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the only podcast made by Chicago real estate brokers for brokers all over the country. And eventually we’ll be even talking to brokers who are not local here in Chicago. But today, we are talking to a local Chicago broker owner, which is our coaching moments monthly episode with Ryan de April. For those of you who are new to the show, and aren’t familiar with Ryan Ryan is a progressive thought leader focused on providing for his 200 All right, I’m sorry, do you have 200 or 300? brokers?

Ryan D’Aprile 0:49
We’re close to 500 At this point,

D.J. Paris 0:51
oh my gosh, see this, how behind I am 500 brokers and his staff. He has 13 offices in three states, I believe. Yeah. That’s amazing. Ryan’s strengths are his motivational skills, coaching style, his dedication to training. He’s partnered with Lindsey Miller, who’s the CEO of April properties, and they work together to build a dynamic organization based on a foundation of culture, character and community, I say those things. And in aside from all of the brokers that Ryan manages, Ryan spends a majority of his day traveling from office to office doing coaching. So he is so generously offered to do the same for our listeners. On the show. By the way, if you’re interested in looking at Ryan’s firm, whether you’re a broker, or you’re just somebody looking to buy or sell or rent, he’s got 500 brokers that work with you, or he would love for you to even consider joining his team. You can find him at his website, D APR. properties.com. But welcome, Ryan, thanks for coming on.

Ryan D’Aprile 1:47
Thank you, for me, appreciate it. How are you doing?

D.J. Paris 1:50
Great. I’m doing good. How was I was just thinking about this, we only have one offense, you manage 13 offices, that is incredible. Yeah,

Ryan D’Aprile 1:59
I have an unbelievable team. So I’m very fortunate we have about 60 full time employees that work at our company are managing brokers work as high performance coaches at our company. So I work with the managing brokers, I coach them on coaching. And then we tag team, we go back and between myself and Liz Miller and Pete Moulton, we run around and we coach the agents individually. And then we train the trainer, which is our major brokers. And like I think I’ve told you before we have our dashboard and our snapshots and we check in we think accountability is incredibly important to the success of an agent. There is such a lack of structure in our industry. And that’s a conversation for I guess another time. But I think I tell all of our agents and anybody I’m talking to is that the biggest gift you could give yourself is discipline and structure. Because discipline structure will give you all the freedom in the world, people think discipline structure is confining, it’s not at all, it could really set you up for long term success and start to have that snowball. The snowball experience. What do you call the snowball effect where after time of doing things consistently in and out the results, they get bigger and they actually get easier. But what I’m going to talk to you about today here a little bit, at some point, we’ll talk about some of the things that we’ve noticed when we give people structure and then we back off and we let them like Okay, great, you got it. It’s like training a child right and you’re running with the bike, and they’re on their training wheels, or you take the training wheels, you take them off or bend them up like I did in my case, so I couldn’t fall down and knock your teeth out. But they needed to do and once you kind of pull that that structure away from them. I’m sorry,

D.J. Paris 3:49
you’re no, no, you’re right. And I you and I are roughly the same age. And one of the things I’ve been most impressed. One of the things I’m most impressed with with you in particular, is because we’ve had offline conversations and if there’s something I ask, Well, how do you do this or that and if it’s not in your specific wheelhouse of strengths, you delegate it or you create a structure in place to account for some of those deficiencies and just your general ability to do I know for me, I have to have structure in every to do throughout my day. I’m really good. If you give me a blank sheet of paper and say create something or write something, I can do that. But if you say here’s 20 things you have to do by the end of the day, I don’t do well with it. So I’ve had to create structure so I can really relate to how difficult it is to create structure but how important and then you’re right I never have to think about those 20 things because I have a structure for it. Yeah. Which is like for me it has so much freedom in it although I think that’s maybe counterintuitive to a lot of people who can just do those 20 things without having a real serious structure I need well you

Ryan D’Aprile 4:50
know if you if you I call it surrendering, right I surrendered last time ago. You could find if you could get if you could surrender and deeper Chopra has taught me just a lot in my life through audiobooks and, and reading books that he’s written. And one of the things he’s taught me is dharma. So just answer that word, right. And it’s, it’s finding your path in life. And what you’re good at is what Louis Slotkin a wonderful marketing executive, I was fortunate enough to meet a couple of years ago, we did an we did a, an Element on finding your magic and it goes along the lines with Discover your dharma, and you got to find what you are good at. And, and really, it gives you happiness, believe it or not, gives you great energy. And then people will feel it, they’ll be attracted to whatever it is. It could be accounting, it could be drawing, it could be music, it could be, it could be, it could be bringing content. And being the curator of knowledge, I love Daniel Pink’s book, to sell as human, he talks about how we have to be the curators of knowledge, and what we talked about in our last session about all this data. And I want to revisit that too, a little bit, if we can DJ, about the data that we went over, because I went over a little matter of factly. But really, as real estate professionals, if you can learn how to be the curator that data and that knowledge, and then tie it into some storytelling and in relating to your sellers, you’re going to help them get to where they want to be. So everybody has, you know, a Dharma, they just gotta go out and discover their dharma or discover their magic, and then surrender. You know, it’s surrender, and let other people help you, because people like to help. And but you got to allow them to help you, if that makes any sense.

D.J. Paris 6:43
Well, since right, since you were talking about a data curation in our last episode, I want to recap that I’d like it with your permission to recap that and talk about how do we actually collect and aggregate that information and present it to clients in a way that’s helpful to them. And also, you know, helps, you know, further on their education, right,

Ryan D’Aprile 7:03
well, so what all the listeners have to understand is that this takes practice, okay. And nobody comes right out at this and is an expert at it. And I think one of the things we have to do is just really share our own life experiences. And think about how you are if you are the seller, and if you are going to relay this data to them, and in sync of where they want to go, and how you can help them get in there by relating to them, because we all are connected through our energy, and we all want to help each other. I mean, if you give solid advice if you could good value to your clients, okay? That is essentially the byproduct of that is making a living, and you’re worth it. And they’re happy to pay for those services. So it takes time takes practice. But it’s somewhat of storytelling. So let’s go over what I was just talking about being the curator of that knowledge. Let’s recap, if we can, what we discussed last month, is that okay, sure. We’re talking about what I call, what not what I call it is cause and effect. All right, so real estate agents out there, you have to understand cause and effect and use your cause and effect in your storytelling and your dialogue and your listing presentations. So, again, we reference to Case Shiller and again, you can write that online, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has got a great index for Case Shiller. And, you know, if you have your computer and you should have your computer, open and connect to the internet, when you’re with a seller, go over this with them and show them that, you know, we’re trending 30 points higher than 2006 and right and allied dialog will come from there, but then we could go to supply and demand this talk about supply and demand, which is cause and then the effect is price. Okay. So supply and demand is caused when supply is down and demand is up. That’s caused, the effect is price goes up. And when supply is up and demand is down, right, then the price begins to go down. That’s the effect. So cause and effect. So what we talked about regionally, which is every single family home in Chicago, in the month of April, we saw in a supply and demand element of Chicago. We saw that the number of homes sold in all Chicagoland the entire MLS was 30% less in April 19 than it was in April 17. The number of homes that are for sale is down 14 and a half percent, but the homes that are actually selling is down by 30%. So one of the things that Mr. Seller that is the question you may ask is why are less homes for sale? I think some homeowners might be waiting quote unquote, out the market. And let’s just have a conversation and dialogue about that. And let’s determine if that’s the best thing to do. So our cause is our supply and demand. So we’re seeing demand is down in the month of April, but then we see our effect in the month of April for price is not that drastic. People are asking 7.4% More in April than they were two years ago, April. But they’re selling for 1% less. So we’re seeing a little bit of a trickle. Let’s go look at me. Now. That was April. So let’s go look at Mays cause and effect. So what you saw what you saw, what I just relayed to you, was the same month’s cause and effect. Usually, what you’re gonna see with your supply and demand, the price, which is the next slide should be one to two to three months out. Sure. Does that make sense? Yes. So in April, supply was demand was down 30% supply was down 14%. But the demand is outpacing the supply to the one on a negative and a downward slope.

D.J. Paris 11:01
Sure, let’s look at

Ryan D’Aprile 11:02
Chicago. May. Chicago May. So for sale went up 2%, it was 14% Less homes were for sale in April. And then in May 12, and 12.2% less homes are for sale than there were two years ago. And 25%. Less home. So again, two to one demand is outpacing supply on a downward slope. Now let’s recall Chicago, okay, this is this is a macro, right? Not a micro that real estate’s hyper local, but you have to have conversations, to give your sellers indicator where the market is going.

D.J. Paris 11:44
Yeah, what we’re doing is establishing context, we’re working big to small to share our.

Ryan D’Aprile 11:50
So let’s look at Chicago land. Price. For me.

D.J. Paris 11:59
We should also mention while you’re doing this, what’s the website you’re referencing.

Ryan D’Aprile 12:03
So this is broker metrics. And they don’t provide this anymore to agents, but your broker owners should have it. It’s about $10,000 a license, what we do is we print these out, we give classes on you know, we go over this monthly, and then our office manager, manager, brokers print these out for our agents out to have and then we talk about these in group sessions and whatnot.

D.J. Paris 12:24
And I’m a broker metrics user as well. So if anyone’s listening, ask your managing broker if they can get access.

Ryan D’Aprile 12:29
So you know, what’s going on in price in the month of May, is that homes for sale, people are asking 10.2% More than they were two years ago. But they’re selling for 1% more. So you know, you have a lot of market, some that are getting it some that aren’t getting it. And then if you drill down to some higher end markets, homes for sale, they’re asking 10 to 15% Less, they’re understanding it, they see what’s going on. And typically when you have a shift in the market, it starts in the coastal markets moves in, then it starts in a higher end markets and it moves down. So when you go to a higher price market, you’re going to see price adjustments have already occurred. And sellers are already aware of it, and they’re getting ahead of the curve. We’re in areas where the price points aren’t so high. It’s still like rock and roll. And we’re in a booming market right now. They don’t see the storm that’s coming, what’s coming. So you could pull these different regions in. And that’s what I’m talking about bringing context and give him an idea. It’s like, it’s like a crystal ball. And you’re kind of showing them again, I could be wrong, the market completely shift. But I’m looking at supply and demand that’s causing the price. And I’m seeing the trend of us definitely coming into a correction.

D.J. Paris 13:54
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So you’re setting the table for the ability to now talk about price and and strategies and

Ryan D’Aprile 13:59
as real estate agents, you shouldn’t love this markets. Right? This has nothing to be afraid of. So if we go back, you know, DJ five, six months ago when we first started doing this together for the first time, you know, I talked so much about the power of mindset and attitude. I saw an awesome picture of Bob Marley the other day he was just smiling. And I can’t pronounce the word that he talked some cycle that psychology based i I can’t remember the terminology but like if you smile for 30 seconds, it’s proven to improve your health and your emotional spirit. It’s like this stuff is not made up as not hocus pocus. And when we are having a shifting market. feel excited about it because there’s opportunities for you to now add value and stand apart because not everybody is listening this podcast. Are they a DJ? No cool. They weren’t. We wish they would but they’re the ones that are interested in growing. The ones that are interested in improving their craft that understand this as a profession, there’s tons of value that we add to the marketplace. Those are the ones that want to really improve their lives and performance and their value propositions. That’s how you stand out, you stand out in these changing markets, more than ever. So I love these shifting markets.

D.J. Paris 15:18
Yeah, it’s an opportunity to really establish yourself as a knowledge source, which is, by the way, why you’re getting paid. So if you don’t have the knowledge of what’s going on at a macro or, or hyperlocal, in the hyperlocal, markets, then educate yourself start to learn, it doesn’t take that much knowledge, it, you just have to have a certain number of data points, you can go in and say, let me tell you what I’m seeing. And does this make sense? And then, then that really establishes the foundation for the bigger conversation.

Ryan D’Aprile 15:50
So now let’s shift gears a little bit, it’s okay. Sure, let’s move off that being the curator of information and you guys have access to all this information. Again, anybody feel free to call me or email me and talk this through with you, and help you storyteller with this if you have any questions. But beyond that, is let’s talk about what we have to do to be successful in our business, which is continually finding more people that want to buy or sell a home. Correct, right. And it term that we use in this industry in a lot of other industries is called Lead Generation. I’m just not big fan of the word as lead generation, because it doesn’t have the impact on the subconscious mind of what actually you’re supposed to be doing, which is finding somebody who wants to buy or sell a home, insert yourself and add value and facilitate the transaction. But to get that success to have that client to get that paycheck, you have to have a client first. What happens in this time? And I’m not talking about a shifting market? I’m talking June, right may spring, we’re having a little bit of a later spring market. Are you feeling that Deja? Yes, yeah. So we’re having a little bit of a sprint later spring market than we had years past, when people become like, suiting, when real estate agents become busy. They tend to drop the ball on the gap.

D.J. Paris 17:15
Yeah, filling the filling the pipeline, it sometimes takes a backseat when you’re busy,

Ryan D’Aprile 17:20
it absolutely does. And the truth is, if you do it correctly, it should take you I honestly do not feel it should take you more than 20 to 30 minutes a day, five days a week. That’s right, 2030 minutes, five days a week, just and I’m gonna say this, because I love you, all your listeners out there, stop making excuses. Look in the mirror, looking right back at you as a key to success are keys, the failure, it’s the best gift anybody can give to someone else, it’s a lot of responsibility to be responsible for yourself. But if you’re not, then you’re going to be subject to somebody else’s word. So I’d rather be straight with you and say, Stop making excuses. It’s a simple 25 to 30 minute exercise a day that you have to do. And it’s being in flow with your network, of course, you have to have your marketing, going out has to be consistent. I’m not going to talk about that I’m talking about being in life flow. And here we are in we’re approaching the end of June, can you believe it approaching the end of June. It’s crazy. And if you were to look into your dashboard, if you were to look into your CRM, and I don’t know what CRM our listeners have out there, the most important element you should be looking for is date of last contact. Yes. And it’s a simple equation 16% of your network transactions every year, some of them tracks act twice. In fact, I’d even say a majority of them transact twice, you know, less than a minute, maybe their early 20s and are buying their first home, or they’re maybe in their 70s. And they’re selling their home and they’re gonna move into a rental. A lot of people in that in between period are transacting twice. So if you focus on that, and then you focus on the positive mindset of abundance, and realize, gosh, I do know 100 to 200 people, and if I’m in flow with them, that’s anywhere from 32 to 64 transactions every year. Yeah. Does that make sense?

D.J. Paris 19:23
It’s huge. And every you know, everyone would love especially if they’re starting out to get to 32 to 64 transactions a year. That’s a lot. That’s a huge thing. Well,

Ryan D’Aprile 19:33
they absolutely will. If they follow a path, it’ll take 24 months, they’ll have great success, and I’m talking to somebody who’s brand new. I have agents that were not licensed five years ago. These are not teams. These are individual agents that are at 15 20 million year to date, and one person is on pace to hit $45 million. Now again, there are teams out there that do 45 to $60 million. These are individually dividuals that now do not have a real estate license in 2015. And here it is 2019. But they followed the path. And it’s like parenthood, the days are long. But the years are short, your snap your fingers, listeners, and two years are gonna go by real fast. So there’s nothing like doing 20 to 25 minutes of solid good work, that’s going to give you 80% of your results five days a week, and do it for two years in a row. And you’re going to have that snowball effect. So what is that? Well, let’s look at your CRM, right, let’s look at what we call our dashboard. Let’s go to the most important source of business, which is called your people we already know, our network, your network, right? And we say this, we say this in our company over and over again, your network is your net worth, you have to understand that I have three daughters. And I don’t know if they’re all going to become real estate agents. I’m sure they’re going to do whatever they want to do. But I want to teach them through life, honey, I’m talking about my girls, honey, your your network is your net worth. It’s not what you know, it’s it’s who you know, the cliches for a reason. So let’s go here. And it’s

D.J. Paris 21:15
important. It’s important to note too, that who you know doesn’t necessarily mean people have influence, right? It’s just who do you know, it could be the dry cleaner you see once a month, and if never had a real conversation with now that isn’t the same kind of relationship you have with your closest friends. But that’s still somebody you know, and somebody you see on a regular basis?

Ryan D’Aprile 21:36
Well, let’s go back to the discipline we’re talking about, I don’t need to be disciplined to have a relationship with my closest friends. That’s how I want to be with them all the time anyways. So I need to be disciplined on that dry cleaner that you said or that person may not have exactly. And the truth is, we really don’t know who a person of influence is. We really just don’t know, we’ll find out over time, hey, this person, my networks referred me four or five people. Awesome. That’s an A, that’s a star for sure. But you can’t you can’t look at your database of 200 people and profiles this is. So why don’t we treat them all the same in the beginning? And why don’t we just focus on flow? So going back to the CRM, let’s go to the most important source of business, which is your network. And then after that, let’s go to the most important action that we can be taking, which is date of last contact? Yes. And you should be looking right now it’s June, what is it June 24, or something? Is it June 24? Okay, fine. So it’s June 24. I’m looking as a coach, did you touch everybody in your database? June, May? Or April? Right? And that’s what I’m focusing on? Because that’s the quarter. Does that make sense? Yes. And then in July, we’re starting to third quarter. And we’re gonna go back to that principle. Again, now, you should have an auto marketing campaign, running to these individuals, it should be going out three to four times, maybe five times a month, it should happen without you even thinking about it. And if that has been ran well and executed properly, you’re gonna become a brand, you will become a brand not overnight, but over a year’s time, you’ll become a brand. Then, if you are lifelong with these individuals, once a quarter, and you do it for two years in a row, you’ll become a trusted advisor.

D.J. Paris 23:27
And you’ll have to fight. Let’s define live flow real quickly for the people who missed previous.

Ryan D’Aprile 23:32
Yeah, sure. So let’s let’s live for life flow is not this, you ready? You drop your kids at school and you bump into two people in your dashboard, and you have a nice conversation with them. That’s not lifelong. That’s on accident. It’s not on purpose. Now, two days later, notating it and then following up with a text or a Facebook message or an IG message, or or even a phone call to say so good. See his school. And by the way, we talked about this. And did you know that? Right following up and making it count. So being invited to a I don’t know being invited to a graduation party of a friend and seeing 15 people in your network there and talking to them. That’s wonderful. That’s not live flow. That’s on accident, you were invited to the party. You sat down, you had meaningful conversations the Great, let’s take the time over the next week or two, to have meaningful follow up and purposeful contact with them. And again, you could send them a text and Instagram message, a Facebook message. Don’t forget LinkedIn. So many of our viewers forget LinkedIn. It’s so powerful. And I tell all of my agents and anybody that I coach, social media is not for marketing. There are two there’s a social media war out there is a war of which real estate agent can outdo the other real estate agent with the best social media picks and you know who’s looking at it real estate agents.

D.J. Paris 24:56
Yeah, that’s the only people that can really is

Ryan D’Aprile 24:59
I I mean, sure there’s an element of doing it and but please don’t make it your focus. Soviet agents are doing it and that’s fine. But it’s like the next agent keeping up and putting up and outdoing the other agent, your, your, your network doesn’t care that much about that. They care more about relationship they’re going to buying and selling home is the biggest emotional transaction of somebody’s life, you need to a be top of mind and be be trusted. You don’t have to be trusted by like, I always been the best and greatest and coolest marketer out there be a friend.

D.J. Paris 25:33
Yeah. And one way that you can do this.

Ryan D’Aprile 25:38
And I went on a tangent, which I tend to do, I use social media, not for marketing, but for r&d, I right search my network, and then I develop a relationship with them. Yeah, and

D.J. Paris 25:49
LinkedIn is such a great way to do exactly that. Because oftentimes, you just check somebody’s post history, you know, you go into your CRM, you say, I haven’t talked to John Smith, and in several, or I haven’t done my live interaction with John, I’m gonna go on LinkedIn, I’m gonna see if he is posted anything related to his his life or his business or the company he works for. And then if we see that maybe John switch jobs, even another opportunity to reach out, Hey, I was on LinkedIn, I saw you switch jobs. And by the way, you can set up alerts to get notified in real time of that. But if you’re just looking up, John, because he does June 24, and you need to have talked to John, you can do that. And then go to Google and do a search for you know, if there isn’t anything personal, maybe something’s going on with the company he works for you say, Hey, I just came across this article, I was thinking about

Ryan D’Aprile 26:36
you. Yes, yes. And, and DJ, that’s your job. Yes. That’s your job, you guys, you have to understand that that is your job. If you want to be successful in this business, that’s your job. If you have these fearful thoughts that come up, we all have them say, Oh, my God, what are they going to think about me? It’s not about you.

D.J. Paris 26:57
It’s right. But you know, it’s funny. We’re talking about this in relation to building a real estate business. But this is the absolute truth. I wish I could screenshot it, because maybe I’ll put as little pictures because I don’t know that anyone will believe that this is actually true. So I realized I do a pretty we have 600 brokers at our firm. And since my job is not out there producing like all of our listeners, I more on the recruiting side. But I have a similar strategy, I have to stay in touch with our own brokers, which is our network. And we have strategies to stay in touch with them and make phone calls. But one thing I realized is I have this really well set up for my for my business, but I don’t do it with my own friends. Sometimes months go by. And so now I have scheduled I have a CRM for my friends my friendships right, you can do this all obviously with with any with any area of life. But I have now setting that up today, actually, when’s the last time I called my friend Mike? Oh, it’s been three months. That’s too long. So I haven’t I have no structure for that too.

Ryan D’Aprile 27:53
Well, you know, in TJ, along those same lines is this is I’ve been asked and I have done this for several different industries. I spoke to a hedge fund Did you know they have about $3 billion under management and they had, they had Wells Fargo Private Client, Chief People Officer, I can’t remember the person’s title there and myself. And I sat and spoke with these. It was their sales arm, okay, it was the sales arm of the company. We went over the exact same principles we were relating so much. They had been still get pinged by individuals from the company, and asked me about advice about life flow. I’ve done this for insurance, I’ve done it for mortgage lending. It’s the same philosophy. And when I hear an individual, like, it’s not for me, then I understand and maybe this is not the right business for you. But you guys, this technique these practices are if you’re an attorney, if you’re an adapter, if your accountant, if you’re responsible for getting customers, if you’re responsible for getting everybody needs a customer, dentists need customers, sure. Everybody needs customers. So this practice, where I want you to understand and what I want to encourage you to do is, is do the Mel Robbins, stop thinking 54321 move forward with this thing, and reach out and just make a connection. And stop thinking about what you do for a living. Because I’m not asking you to call in and saying, Oh, by the way, you know, look anybody looking to buy or sell a home?

D.J. Paris 29:21
Or oh, by the way, I’m never too busy for your referrals.

Ryan D’Aprile 29:25
No, nothing, right. We don’t want to cheapen the relationship or dry. And so many wonderful things besides clients will come of this.

D.J. Paris 29:34
Well, I’ll tell you to it’s funny. I was just thinking about this and I hope to God, I’m reasonably confident the person who’s my insurance agent does not listen to this podcast, but I really like her just in the off chance she hears this because I’m going to pick on her just slightly and she’s in property and casualty and for anyone who knows insurance, that means she has 1000s of clients. I am I am one of hundreds if not 1000s of people to make up her business. So I I’m not ultimately that important to her overall practice. However, I’ve been with her over 10 years, I have literally never met her face to face, she’s done a great job for me. And every year on my birthday, I get a card. And you know, the holiday times I get a, you know, Merry Christmas card or whatever. And I’m not asking for more than that. I’m happy with her. I’m not going anywhere. But it’s been 10 years. And even though she has 1000s of clients, I have like seven or eight policies, whether it must be a de I must be a decent client. It wouldn’t be great just one at one year to get a 15 second phone call, it’s probably not going to happen, where she said, Hey, I just wanted to call and say thank you so much for being with me for 10 years. I really appreciate it talk to you soon. Even if that’s all I ever got. It would mean it would mean a lot to me. Right?

Ryan D’Aprile 30:45
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s and it comes down to it like it for her. And you and me and all of our listeners here. That’s our job. Right? And that’s, that’s our job. To stay in business. We have to be in flow with our network. Otherwise, we’re going to be out of business.

D.J. Paris 31:02
I mean, if you have nothing to touch base with with your your contact list, you can if it’s somebody you’ve done business with the students can say, hey, I three years ago, I sold your home. I just wanted to say thanks so much that that was really a great experience for me. I hope I did a good job for you. And I was just thinking about it. I mean, even if that’s the house, yeah, how are things going?

Ryan D’Aprile 31:22
Right? Right, right. So like along those lines, that’s wonderful. dgap just hey, how’s the house has been going like, Yes, I haven’t seen it forever. I would love to come by have a coffee or beer with you and just see how you been? For not gonna think it’s strange. You spent probably two months in a car with these people. That’s right. And most real estate agents do a poor job of staying in flow with their past customers. Yeah. Now, here’s the other statistic. Every person in your network knows for people who want to buy or sell or home, every person your network. So if you have 20 people, your network gets 800 potential referrals. Now, not everybody is aware. Everybody knows for people, but not everybody is aware of who’s purchasing at the right time to get you the referral. But you know, who is higher likelihood of being aware, says the person who bought in the past year to two years makes sense. All they’re talking about right.

D.J. Paris 32:18
And their friends are asking them about it and going hey, we’re thinking of doing the same thing.

Ryan D’Aprile 32:22
Right? Correct. I give kudos to I never met the guy. I didn’t even hear him speak somebody said to uh, but somebody said Mario Greco calls every even if he doesn’t work with the buyer’s agent. Right? He’s got buyer’s agents. So he doesn’t work with the buyer they ate his buyer agent does. He says I go back. And I catch from that because I call that buyer eight times in a row. And he understands the art will be more flow with your network.

D.J. Paris 32:45
Well, and I will tell you, for those who are in the Chicago market, Mario Greco is one of the biggest producers for forever. He is a big deal. And I will also tell you, he routinely reaches out to our show, saying I would love to be on your show. Now he is too busy just like Ryan to do the show. And we just haven’t had been able to schedule them in but you know, he is somebody? For God’s sakes. Oh, yeah. Believe me, he is he is a big gift for us. There is never a question of it’s his schedule. That’s trickier. But my point is, is he took he takes time every three or four months going, don’t forget about me, please try to get me in. And he’s probably maybe the most persistent person we’ve ever had wanting to be on the show. And it’s just we just haven’t scheduled wise. But that’s probably not just a coincidence, right? He is a very P stays in touch. He doesn’t want us to forget about him. Not like we would. But he’s, yeah, he’s got a system

Ryan D’Aprile 33:35
huge. But then I want to although our listeners are here to hear this is because Comparison is the thief of all joy. If you’re just getting into the business, or if you’ve been in it for decades, you’re not where you want to be. You don’t have to be there right to be financially successful. It Believe it or not, it does not take a lot to be financially successful. And there comes a point where it’s enough, right and where we want to be, you know, my wife, sells real estate. She’s been doing it ever since 2010. She consistently sells between 20 and 25 million as a real estate. She doesn’t want to anymore. It’s

D.J. Paris 34:07
a great pet is a great living.

Ryan D’Aprile 34:09
It’s a wonderful living. You know, I It’s a wonderful living. So, you know, by the way, that’s even an extreme by the end.

D.J. Paris 34:19
That’s an extreme folks, that’s more than a great living now that I think

Ryan D’Aprile 34:22
7 million is a fantastic living it and you could do it. I got a wonderful agent. I’ve been coaching. He just turned 30 This year, he’s in his fourth year with us. He’s hit $12 million, the past two years, he’s gonna hit $17 million this year. I’m so proud of them. I use them as an example. But guess what his dashboard is data less context and his notes there copious notes, he’s engaged. He’s not dialing it in. And I’ll tell you something. He spends 30 minutes a day doing it.

D.J. Paris 34:53
That’s it. And we should also mention with him because I think you’ve talked about me with him offline isn’t his average price point. Not that high, like he just Yes, average 185? Well, I mean, that’s even more impressive.

Ryan D’Aprile 35:05
Of course it is, of course, living in the suburb that I live in, you could do six $8 million in a handful of transactions, that a handful, and that’s an accomplishment, don’t get me wrong. But it’s like, you know, it’s, you can have unbelievable results, which is 12 to $15 million in volume with an average price point of 180 to $200,000. If you’re engaged, and you’re in flow, and you understand that your job is to build relationships. So that’s what I have, I don’t want to run out and take this too long. I don’t want to bore the listeners. But I hope I hope this helps. And, you know, what else can I What else can I offer? I think that’s something I want to just kind of focus on is, wait, wait, I apologize, I want to go back. Go ahead. It’s the busy season, and people are falling off, right. And EJ, we, we, we got off, we got off. And here it is, it’s June. And you need to go back, you got to look at your data last contact. And I’ll bet you, the majority of us. And I mean, the overwhelming majority of us, like 85% of us out there have failed to be in flow with our contacts in the second quarter, because that’s one of the busiest Sure. And then we’d go back to the gerbil cycle of trying to start it all over again. And it’s such a terrible habit to be in. And after 567 10 years, you kind of get programmed in need to find an accountability partner or coach to hold you accountable to doing what is important, so that your results are consistent, and predictable. And

D.J. Paris 36:43
I will tell you to when you find an accountability partner, it’s never you when I have somebody that calls me every morning at 730 and asks me the silly questions, or maybe seemingly silly to listeners, but so important to me, which is did you get to the gym yesterday? Did you eat? I have certain things I eat, I don’t eat? Did you eat correctly? Did you did you call a friend? Did you make your bed? These are things I struggle with? Did you check your finances? Right? These are little daily habits. This is what Ryan’s talking about daily habits that are easy to not do like the 20 to 30 minutes of contacting live your contact list. But these are the things that reap the biggest dividends right. And so you don’t need to call the your accountability partner say I just closed a $2 million home. That’s great, you should celebrate that. But it should be Hey, oh, and also were you able to call 10 of your people from your contact list today. In addition to that huge closing,

Ryan D’Aprile 37:38
I have accountability partner for you guys. And for those that are still kind of listening and moving on to the end of this and they’re looking for that last little nugget, go to your managing broker. Yeah. And ask your managing broker, you know, we tell our managing brokers have a monthly check in at least with everybody. Open up the dashboard, hold them accountable, give them a tasks, and you know what your coaching session, your combo says they don’t need to go more than 25 minutes, right? Here’s where we are do this. And then determine seeming two weeks for seeming 30 days. Don’t like go much longer than 30 days. So

D.J. Paris 38:10
I love it. And you know, if you work in an office where the managing brokers not as available, partner up with a broker at your firm and another firm and have a daily check in if you need it. There’s certain things I need checked in on every single day or I won’t do them. So know your limitations. As Ryan said, surrender you have certain strengths, certain things that are struggle, allow those things to be a struggle and build a system in place so that you don’t three months go by and you realize oh my gosh, I didn’t I didn’t call anybody because I was so busy. That’s a that’s a bet you that won’t feel good at the end of those three months?

Ryan D’Aprile 38:45
Nope, it sure won’t. And you’ll be able to see it. If you have. If you have charts and graphs, if you’re tracking your business, you’ll be able to see the dips. And it’s just like the supply and demand conversation we’re having with ourselves. That’s the cause and effect. While the cause is are you in flow, do you have your auto flow going? Do you have your life flow going? And the effect is your business? And then your business should be broken? No. business should be broken up. I once you’re close, depending you’re active in your prospects.

D.J. Paris 39:13
No, I’m sorry, I interrupted you before? Yeah, I was I was interviewing a woman. This is years ago. And she I was asking her Oh, have you done any training programs. And we were talking about Brian Buffini program, which is obviously a very, very popular one. And one of the things Brian Buffini says is how do you win the day and there are certain things that he suggests however, we were talking about because she had been through his program and I said oh, did you sign up for his monthly items of value thing where you send out mailers to everyone anyway, he’s got a monthly program we do that? And she’s like, you know, I just I did and I paid a lot of money for it. And I never mailed them out and she said not never but rarely would she mailed them out they’d stack up month after month. Because you know the funny thing is I whenever I mail out these and these are pre printed in Non personalized marketing materials but you know, they’re Hey, I’m, you know, I’m gonna send you something so you don’t forget about me materials. She’s every time I did it I got a client. She goes, I know that sounds crazy, but I’m like, the truth is I don’t do it. But every time I do it, I get clients, I said, Hey, look, maybe you’re just not good at mailing those out. And instead of trying to fight with yourself, if you can’t do it, what could you pay somebody to do it? Maybe Maybe it’s worth paying 100 bucks to somebody to do that for you? And she goes, yeah,

Ryan D’Aprile 40:31
yeah. Of course. In fact, I noticed this, because again, I started doing this. And when I started doing this, I started wanting to grow our company back into 2012 2000, late 11 2012, this I want to grow a real estate company. And for five years, I was talking to Blue my face and coach anyway, people would walk out a room, they could run through breakfast, they wouldn’t be running, right? So we just we you walk in, it’s done it, we do it, we just we’ve learned from that we’re going to just focus on structured accountability and coaching life flow, we’re going to we’re going to take that marketing element of it, you know, off, you could you can sprinkle it, you could add more to it with a little flair, social media, everything else, just don’t let it be a distraction. Don’t let it be a distraction from where you really. So everyone

D.J. Paris 41:19
should should, you know, at the very least, the end of this, we could all do a better job at staying in touch with our network. So create a structure, let’s make sure we touch every single person as often as possible, and you have a structure. And it’s not just that, you know, every morning, here are the 15 calls I need to make. And it should be fun. And it also is, as Ryan said, and couldn’t be repeated enough. Your net work is your net worth. And it could not be more true, at least in this business.

Ryan D’Aprile 41:51
Absolutely. Well, DJ, thanks for having me, I appreciate it. It’s

D.J. Paris 41:54
always anyone who think thank you, if anyone is out there who would love to work for a company where they provide a lot of the structure for you so that you have the freedom to go and do what you do best. Some of it, they actually do for you. You should look at the April properties go to da properties.com, we’ll put a link in the description. And obviously Ryan and his offices are doing great, they have 500 plus brokers and I we have a similar number. I know just how much it takes to get there. And it means that you know, people are very attracted. And Ryan does it with virtually no marketing. He uses the same principle with his own brokers, which is where the vast majority of new people who join him come from their relationships from previous brokers. So anyway, if you’re interested in this sort of structure, Ryan’s about as amazing as I’ve ever seen it so definitely reach out to him or his team. And otherwise, why and we will see you once again in a month. And oh, by the way, send us your questions. If you want questions for a master coach like Ryan, about what to do, where are you struggling? Where do you need more assistance? Let us know and send us your your questions via Facebook or our website or email and we will get those over to Ryan for next time. So on behalf of Ryan and myself, we appreciate you listening and we are now over 100 episodes, which is amazing to me that that this has been so popular and we’re so excited to continue it especially with partners like Ryan so Ryan thanks again.

Welcome to the May edition of Coaching Moments with
Ryan D’Aprile!

In this episode Ryan dives right in to set the stage for a professional and effective listing presentation. We discuss how to educate your client on why discussing national, state and local trends will help you with pricing the property to sell. This is a way to not only differentiate yourself from other brokers, but also to demonstrate your value. Sellers are looking for your expertise and Ryan explains how to communicate this with logic and reason vs. emotion.

Links discussed in this episode…

Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.492.7900 and execassistant@daprileproperties.com.

Ryan D'Aprile
daprile properties logo

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:15
Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real. The only podcast made by Chicago real estate brokers for Chicago real estate brokers and brokers all over the country, we’d get a lot of emails and social media mentions from people that are outside the Chicagoland area and finding benefit in listening to the interviews we do with top producers. This is one of our regular segments on the show, which is called coaching moments with Ryan de April. Now, let me tell you a little bit about Ryan if you’re unfamiliar with with him and his company, right April’s a broker owner of a progressive and progressive thought leader, he is focused on providing for his agents and staff. His strengths are his motivational skills, coaching style and dedication to training. He has partnered, Lindsay Miller is also CEO of April, to build a dynamic organization based on a foundation of culture, character, and community. And I say all of that, because Ryan has hundreds of agents, over a dozen offices here locally, and Ryan devotes almost 100% of his time traveling to those locations to train and coach. And he is doing that on our show as well. So we couldn’t be more honored and grateful, because he’s a busy man, he’s runs a big company. But he still spends time to come here once a month and teach our listeners his coaching methods. So welcome, Ryan.

Ryan D’Aprile 1:36
Oh, thanks, TJ downers mine, and it’s, it’s a real pleasure I really enjoy enjoy our monthly visits and getting to do this together.

D.J. Paris 1:43
Well, it’s, it’s we the feedback we get from our listeners is so impressive that they love having you on. So the pleasure is ours. And so what what do you want to talk about today?

Ryan D’Aprile 1:56
So, um, you know, the past few sessions we’ve had, we had some mindset. And we talked about lead generation and being in flow with your network. And so let’s shift to more technique here. Sure. And let’s talk about some market based pricing strategies to help our listeners when they are going on a listing presentation with a potential seller, or they have inventory, and they have to work with the sellers, and they have to try to help their sellers see where the market is, and where the markets going, and, and whatnot. And so I figured, let’s cover that today.

D.J. Paris 2:32
That’s great. And I want to actually start by asking you just a simple question, because there’s so many different viewpoints on this. And both really well there’s really major, I guess, two major viewpoints. And people who who do one of these two are very passionate, which is so it’s just a general question. We don’t have to get too specific. But I’m curious to hear your answer is, do you show up at a listing? And again, I know it depends if it’s your best friend, versus an internet lead, let’s say a zillo lead that you’ve purchased versus your best friend who may be looking to sell a property. But do you show up with a listing presentation? Or do you show up with a blank notebook? And what is your thoughts on that?

Ryan D’Aprile 3:10
Well, so the I hate answering questions with a question. I feel like I do that. Sure. Sure. But the question is, is define what a listing presentation is? Right? Right. So is like so for example, we have information we have literally thick, beautifully branded binders, and they cover, you know, community market analysis, why us? The marketing activities that we do with the technology, we have the tools and technology and the communities that our client or potential client is in. Plus they have bio books, so the agents themselves, right, so right, you know, that’s what I call listing presentation and sleeve. Yes, video for them to review. Then there’s the next thing which most people call a listing presentation, but they call it a CMA. Right? Right? And what CMA stands for

D.J. Paris 4:05
comparable market and narrative

Ryan D’Aprile 4:07
market analysis, right, right. And I try to tell our agents, you know, in, don’t call it the CMA call it

D.J. Paris 4:15
no one knows what CMA means, right?

Ryan D’Aprile 4:17
Or even comparative market analysis. And this is going to kind of segue to what we’re talking about right now, is we’re focusing more and more on a market based pricing strategy. And let’s look at our conversation that we’re going to have with the seller, and let’s make, quote unquote, comparable comparative market analysis, let’s make comparables, maybe 20% 30% of the conversation, and let’s have a much higher level conversation with our clients and let’s educate them on the market, you know, the National, the regional, the local, and then we’ll talk about comparative so it really depends, you know, on the stage where you are, because there’s an element of going over there and taking a look at the home and viewing the home. And I think that’s incredibly important so that you can do those comps. But it depends, you know, on where you are, what stage it is the client is and if you’ve been in the home if you sold the home to them before? Or is this a home that you’ve never walked into before, but I think there’s a lot of information you can go there with to add value and educate them. It might not be quote unquote, comparables, but you should walk out the door, and they should be wowed with the data and the value. And it seems analogy has to help them make a decision on what they want to do.

D.J. Paris 5:30
Yeah, I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree with that more. I think that if you’re walking in with a blank notebook, which is fine, and I think you should be a good listener and ask a lot of questions and take notes. But you should have what we used to call 20 years ago, a war book or something that that shows your value, like Ryan was describing what he offers his brokers, and then also the CMAS is even a different conversation. But to get in there and say, here’s what I do for everybody, here’s why people hire me. And here’s, here’s what you’re going to get as a result of working with me.

Ryan D’Aprile 6:01
Right. And I think it speaks, it speaks volumes, like, again, our listing books and our buying our by our purchase or buying books, that’s internal lingo for just to represent or represent a seller. You know, there’s a tremendous amount of thought and time that had been put into them. I mean, they cost us as a company, $30 a piece, wow. And but it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s, you have to put your best foot forward. And first impressions mean a lot. And so not only do you have to dress the part and speak the part, right, you also have to have the collateral with you to give off that feeling of professionalism. But you have to, you know, like what we’re talking about here, these coaching moments, these monthly things we have to do, you have to continually go to school, you have to continually work on your craft, just as I spoke about, I don’t know, two, three times, two, three months ago, you know, dentists continually go to a continuing education school to prevent sort of doctors and attorneys. And so the real estate agents and loan officers have to, we have to understand the market is continually changing. And you have to always be working on your craft. A great. So let’s jump into a market based pricing strategy. Okay. Now, again, like I told you, I’m a big whiteboard person, right. And when I’m teaching, my hands are flailing all over the place, and I’m drawing pictures here, but this is a podcast, so I can’t do it. So I’m going to give you some pain, some mental pictures here for you. So we’re going to look into the presentation when you meet with a seller. And here’s the thing I want to also tell our listeners DJ, is that most agents wait to do this, like 30 days before their listings about to expire, you know if they even go at this level of sophistication, so you got to really pause and, and put this into how you do your business, right. But you really should be doing this at the listing presentation. And they should be continually doing this throughout your listing. And as market time builds, so the stress and so his motions, right? If you can articulate this to your seller, the less and less you’ll become the scapegoat, because we’ve all been the scapegoat, right? And there’s only so much you do have control over. If you’re gonna have a salad, it’s not going to listen to you. But the more you can educate them on the market as a whole, the better they’re going to be equipped to make a decision more in lines with where you want them to make the decision to get their home sold. So I’ll go into it. Let’s just look at a upside down triangle again, okay. Okay, so you have enough stuff guy down triangle. In your head, it’s on our whiteboard here. And at the top, we’re gonna write national, then we’re gonna write a line under that we’re gonna talk about regional, we’re gonna live under that we’re gonna talk about local, and then at the very bottom of the triangle with another line is I have a little triangle at the bottom of triangle. That’s where we’re talking about comparables, okay. And most real estate agents when they go into listing presentations, they start with comparables and it’s probably 90% of their conversation. You’re right. Okay, so we have to have, we have to paint in broader strokes here. So let’s just talk about some national I’m not gonna go too much into too much detail on this. But you know, give you a little information. Dig in team here, do you guys to look into research more, but are you familiar with the Case Shiller? Yes, hey, great. So it’s an indicee. Right. And it’s a good NC for national data. So let’s look at our Case Shiller report. Let’s print it out. And let’s just look at the trends. Now. There’s a couple that you could find online here, right. And I’m grabbing one right now. And it’s it’s it goes back to 1987. Okay, and it’s the 20 composite cities, right. And we have here I’m looking at this and Miss Your salary, it’s very easy to see that. I think it was April, May. Yeah, but may 2007, we’re at our peak, right. We all know what happened in May.

D.J. Paris 10:09
Yeah, I’m looking at that as well. So what Ryan’s referencing is the case, Shiller you can look it up. And what we’re really starting to do just to take one step back for a moment, as we’re going big, we’re going big to small, right. So we’re going to start nationally, and then we’re going to we’re going to narrow narrow, narrow, narrow. So by the time we communicate to our seller, you know, we’ve now basically given them context around the their own specific scenario in relation to the overall you know, national debt.

Ryan D’Aprile 10:40
Correct. Exactly. And if you look at the bottom, I think it was around April or May of 2012. The indices around 107. Okay, and here we are, seven years later. And it’s at 144. And so

D.J. Paris 10:56
it’s been climbing steadily ever since the the bottom of the 2000s. Absolutely.

Ryan D’Aprile 11:01
And it always returns to the median. And it’s one of those things that we want to have a conversation with our clients. And then we want to pose a question to them, where do you think it’s going to go? So one of the things that I like to talk about you have to I’m going to jump Okay, I’m going to jump to regional local for a second, but this is just a situation I try to help my agents with in this current market. If we just look at the Case Shiller we look at 2012. And we look at how much it’s climbed. For seven years we’ve had pretty hot real estate market. Unbelievable, right? Do you ever ride a roller coaster? Do you ever ride? You ever go to great America? I do. Remember that, that? I hate roller coasters, by the way, but as a kid, do you remember the Eagles?

D.J. Paris 11:44
Yeah, of course. American Eagle I think or was it Screaming Eagle? One of the

Ryan D’Aprile 11:49
American Eagle. Right? You remember when you get the top? Can you hear the click?

D.J. Paris 11:52
Click? Yep. And it was a it’s an old wooden roller coaster too. So you remember everything? Yeah.

Ryan D’Aprile 11:57
All right. So one of the things that I tell my clients is like, Look, if you are moving, and I love the response, I don’t need to move, you can’t put you want, right. And you’re making decisions based on emotion, not logic, because none of us need to, I do not need to live in the home that I live in right now. I want to write, and we have more money than we have time in the marketplaces that we live in just being in United States, our clients have more money than they have time. So let’s put that aside. And if you’re going to move in the next year or two, right, to me, it’s click, click click, this might be a pretty good time. It’s gonna be impossible to time the market. But we’re looking at seven years. And here you are, Mr. Client, Mr. Client, and I have my Case Shiller in front of you. And I just provided you a visual to see what’s going on in national level. And then there’s other things you could talk about builders inventory, you know, home housing starts and national trends. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. So this is kind of a broad stroke, you’d like you said, big to small. And then there’s some other things you could look at. So such as, like, what’s going on in the coastal markets? And why is that important with us here in Chicago in the Midwest, and went to school, Kansas? It’s funny, my friends, and Ken said Chicago is not the Midwest, but here Chicago in the Midwest. You know, the coastal markets are the ones that tend to rise and fall first. In the Midwest. Oh, interesting. Yeah, the Midwest tends to trail sometimes 18 months to what’s going on there. So what’s going on in the coastal markets right now? Right. I don’t know the answer that right off the top my head. But these are things to look at and have the conversations and just how you said, Oh, interesting, right? I just added value. And I educated my client, because this is this. This is this is all true. All right. This is information that’s going to help them make a decision. So now we just looked at the Case Shiller right and the 20. What the 20 cities. Right. And and then we just seen seven years of continually rising. And gosh, we’re only 20 off of the peak. Right at what was it in? 171? Yeah, March. Oh, seven. And here we added 144.

D.J. Paris 14:06
Yeah, we’re getting there.

Ryan D’Aprile 14:08
Well, yeah, guess what? That is August of 2004. Numbers, right. Is August of 2004. Healthy, right? was put on six. not healthy, was it too high? Well, history is telling us Yeah, right. Right. But we’ll see. So anyways, um, so So the coastal markets tend to lead the Midwest, and sometimes up to 18 months. So there’s other things to be paying attention to paying attention to. Then let’s come down to regional and local Okay, so do you hear everybody has access to agent metrics, correct? Yes. Do you use a geometric Stein at market dynamics? We do. Alright, so this is a good thing for us use. So let’s look at by the way, pull up some examples for us. Okay, so let’s come and let’s look at all of the MLS Okay, excuse me. all of em read, right all the Chicagoland area. And we’re going to do two years. So April 17, through April 19. We’re gonna look at the median prices. And we’re looking at for sale under contract and sold. Okay? And here’s what the data is telling us. For sale has rose by 10%. Okay, so supply is up. Okay. under contract is up by 2.4% and sold is down by point 6%. So supply is up and demand is down. And I think in the first quarter in Chicago in 2019, Chicago land sales were down by 8%. And that seen the price I’m talking about the number of units went down. is right, it was around 8%. You

D.J. Paris 15:51
recall? Yeah, it was somewhere right. It might have even been a bit higher, but yeah, right.

Ryan D’Aprile 15:55
Maybe 9%. Right. So here we are. We’re having a national conversation. Now. We’re coming down. We’re talking regional talk in Chicago. And we’re saying okay, well, hey, look at inventory has gone up. For sale has gone up by 10%. The time to sell a home has gone up. And the number of soul souls have come down. So now, Mr. Seller, we’re looking at this. We’re looking at this Case Shiller right. We’re looking at the peak of the 2007 market, and we’re looking how we’ve climbed for the past seven years. And now we’re looking at the first quarter. And it’s the first quarter since 2012, where we’ve had sales go down and inventory bubble up, tick, tick, tick, he hit the roller coaster. And so these are the types of things you want. And I’m not here to be an alarmist. Okay, I’m being somewhat of a smartass. Because I tend to be facetious when I bring up the roller coaster. But these are things that you have to talk to your clients about to help them make an educated decision which will have a huge impact financially for them their family, which I’m going to tie this into towards the end. So let’s get let’s get local. Okay. So let’s get local. Now. I pulled up Park Ridge, we have an office in Park Ridge guy. I love our park. I love all our agents, but get a great office Park Ridge. And for any my Park Ridge agents, here you go. I have April, called up for Park Ridge. So here’s what’s

D.J. Paris 17:14
going on. Where are you pulling that up an agent metrics just

Ryan D’Aprile 17:17
out of curiosity, market dynamics. Yes, it’s kind of market dynamics. And so

D.J. Paris 17:21
for everyone listening, I’m sorry, just to pause for a second what Ryan’s referencing is a piece of software by a company called Tara data, and I’ll put a link to it. I use it for recruiting purposes, I use it a bit differently. Our brokers would use it in the way that Ryan’s referencing, it’s a great piece of software. And I’ll put a link to it as well, along with the Case Shiller stuff, too.

Ryan D’Aprile 17:40
Yes, thank you very much. So we’re gonna go on the Park Ridge. And let’s look at let’s look at the data that’s going here. Now you see, though, listeners, right, you don’t see I guess you’re listening here. But you hear what I’m saying is I’m not into comparable yet. I’m not, you know, looking at how many bedrooms you have next to this person’s bedroom and what this home sold for you we’re having a higher conversation. And we’re really informing the seller, our client of what’s going on, not just you know, locally, but nationally, and how it has an impact on the sales cycle of their home and all the homes in the marketplace. So Park Ridge, two years monthly. Here’s what we’re seeing. And this is through April 2019. For sales down 9.9%. Under contracts down 6.3% And solds are down 4.2%. So now Mr. Seller who thinks we’re in a rage, you know, we’re in a hot market and everything else. Now we’re coming down and we’re talking about local, we’re actually looking at the marketplace that we’re playing in. So our indicators are starting to paint more of a picture for us, right. And if we’re going to move we’re going to move. And here’s the good news. We’re coming off of the seven year cycle of values climbing and climbing and climbing and climbing. It’s our decision if we want to chase it down once it goes over that peak. And so this is kind of where we’re looking at a market based pricing strategy. And then we’re gonna talk about compelling or energy pricing. So let’s move now over to I’m not going into until entire listing presentation for you, right, I’m just just a quick 30 minute coaching session here on how to do this. But now let’s look into market dynamics. We are back to Parkridge. Okay, but now what we’re looking at we’re looking at your average sale price versus original sale price. And we do a comparison over the past two years. And here’s what I just find so fascinating. So Mr. Seller, I’m going to show you a home that has sold with no price adjustments. It’s sold 96 point 58% of the original price, but homes that sold Hold with one price adjustment or more are selling it 90%. So now you take into consideration the cost of living your home and carrying your home. Okay? And that differentiator, the 6% versus the 96%, of asking price, and 90% of asking price. And now we’re going to talk about how can we get in some compelling pricing and actually get you more for your money. As long as we price it

D.J. Paris 20:24
properly. Just to jump in here, what Ryan’s really doing is setting the scene to not have the seller say, hey, let’s try it at this first. And if it doesn’t work, we can always adjust it.

Ryan D’Aprile 20:35
Exactly. And understand like, we always don’t get it right the first time sellers and agents. So like all sudden, like, oh boy, shoot, I’ve has property on the market for six days. It’s not moving. I pressed it wrong. So what Don’t, don’t beat yourself up, roll up your sleeves and get in the data and go to Mr. Seller, Mississauga, let’s have a conversation. Because one thing we have to realize that most real estate agents forget is that you don’t create the market, you are not the market. And the market changes every single day. And so the markets changed in the past two months, and you can re address this. It’s like, it’s like taking off all over again. So I’ve had listing head for 60 days. Why don’t we try this approach while we try to national, regional, local comparable proach we could get him to come in you notice I’m not even talking about comparables, obviously in this conversation, because I painted a picture of telling my clients where the markets going from a national down to a local level. And now it’s the balls in their court. And then I end it with look, homes that are priced right or selling at 96% of original sale price versus home the head have one or more price adjustments are selling for 90%. Where would you rather be?

D.J. Paris 21:55
Yeah, and you’re getting this is what we’re doing is establishing context to be able to then ask the seller to make a decision that maybe without this context, they would be a lot less comfortable making, you know, when you’re pricing it to sell versus, well, let’s just try it at this high and see what happens. And you can say, well, we can do that. However, if we look at the data, here’s how that affects the overall bottom line.

Ryan D’Aprile 22:19
Correct. And you guys are so many tools out there besides you know Case Shiller or but that’s easy, accessible online. But the Tara data, the agent metrics, what’s the other one? Oh my gosh, I’m trying to blank it’s on the MLS.

D.J. Paris 22:32
I cloud CMA or not cloud CMA. It’s Oh, yeah. We use it. We use it to check market trends. I can’t remember the name

Ryan D’Aprile 22:40
of it, but Alright, son of a gun. It’s all in them, right? It’s all there. I pulled up just went on the MLS. And because I was having a hard time getting the agent metrics, you know, sometimes it’s slow. Check me out. So I was prepping for this. And I’m trying to find that damn link, sorry about that would put them that

D.J. Paris 23:01
I’m logging into trying to find it. Thanks. It’s

Ryan D’Aprile 23:05
driving me crazy. I found on the MLS that there’s an all of em read. There’s 60,000 homes for sale. And the average time is 85 days and climbing. So you could get all this information. You guys as real estate professionals, we have all this data. And you know, I was watching something I think it was in real trends you ever fall? Is it real trends? And and and Redfin came out, right, and they have this new technology, where a new disrupter where they’re going to take the buyer’s agent out, do you recall him saying, Did you see that I have seen that yes, article. Right. And I tell all our agents only person who could structure businesses you, not these guys, I mean, they they lost, I think $30 million in the first quarter of 2018, their losses increased $65 million in the first quarter of 2019. And well, and then these conversations that we’re having is, these are human conversations that you have to have. And you know, getting the home under contract is like 15% of the job gain the closing tails, 85%, you have to be able to articulate your value to the sellers and you want Well the truth is they actually value us. And it’s us that listen to this noise, I’m going to call it noise out there. It’s called me has been around for all these companies been around forever, and they’re not making money. They could make a lot of money if they actually value the real estate agent looked at it differently. But that’s another conversation to have. But all of this data is at your fingertips. It’s our job to open it up. And then give it context. Daniel Pink, wrote a great book is to sell is human. And he talks about it’s our job to give it context is when my daughters go to school, I almost want them to get a degree in art or history so they can give context and and deal with humans. You know, there’s all This technology is out there, but who’s going to bring it together and tell the story. That’s us the professional. And all these days, like I just did another one. So I’m right now in our Hinsdale office, and I was just doing a little research in Hinsdale, there’s 113 homes for sale above $1.5 million. It’s over 12 months of inventory. What is it, it’s a buyer’s market, a buyer’s market is six months of inventory. So if you’re a buyer in Hinsdale, you have the pick of the litter. If your seller, maybe we should get into some compelling pricing strategy strategies, and talk about what it is we need to do. Because we’ve had a seven year real estate ride, it might continue for a little bit longer, but it might not. And then you have to go through the cycle the next ride up to get back to where we are today.

D.J. Paris 25:48
That makes sense. Perfect sense.

Ryan D’Aprile 25:50
So I don’t know if that was too quick of a coaching session, but I figured I’d kind of go over that within sci fi. Any questions for me?

D.J. Paris 25:57
Yeah, well, I think we’re operating out of a few assumptions that we probably should should define, which is, one is that sellers tend to want to value their property at a specific price that may or may not be in alignment, they’re going to have that price largely in their head before meeting with you whether it’s accurate, or, and so your job in trying to convince them to get to the price that would be most appropriate is to do it through data, right? Otherwise, it’s two people arguing about without any real statistical significance. And I think that’s, that’s the really important part is you have to establish yourself with the knowledge as the knowledge source. And if you’re, you know, saying to the seller, by the way, you’re going to pay me five or 6%, or whatever you’re charging, you better be able to provide some value versus I think this is what it should be based on the comps. Well, anyone can run comps, even your client can run comps, what they probably aren’t going to do is be able to go big to small and say, Well, let’s look at the trends. And let’s actually figure out what the goals are here, what you what your thoughts are. And then let me show you some data to maybe support adjusting some of your assumptions based on what’s going on in the local market.

Ryan D’Aprile 27:09
Well, correct and to tie it back into where we are today. Right? So for the first time, in seven years, we have had a quarter where our our sales have gone down, and the time to sell a home has gone up for the first time. And I think seven years. Correct. So where do the news organizations go to to get that data?

D.J. Paris 27:31
Where do they go? Oh, gosh, I’m not even sure. Yeah, well,

Ryan D’Aprile 27:36
right, they come to us and look at our data, right? Where’s where does all this data coming from? It’s coming in from the National Association of REALTORS is coming from us, the boots on the ground, right. So now I can then educate my client, you know, in this market. So I’m having a very specific conversation right now, in this coaching moment, right? Because this is the kind of market that we’re in. If it was a buyers market, I’d be having a different coaching moment. But it’d be my clients, right. And a potential seller, either is an active listing I have, or a new listing presentation I’m going on is, hey, guys, it’s the end of May, we have six weeks of the second quarter left. And what causes recessions? A lot of it is caused by consumer confidence. It’s a herd mentality, or even us as real estate agents. We’re herd mentality, right? And the the general population is a herd mentality. So when consumer confidence is shaken? Well, that’s when the recession begins. Well, Mr. Seller, it’s we’re halfway through more than halfway through the second quarter. And I don’t think the data that’s coming out in July regarding the second quarter is gonna be much better than the data that came out in the first quarter. So it’s another reason if you’re going to act, get my act now we should have a compelling pricing strategy. And let’s do this, let’s do it the right way. Now, let me shift gears here. You do have sometimes those sellers that are very difficult, and they have like you said, DJ, that price in mind, you know, and I understand that I’ve been in real estate for agent forever. My wife is a real estate agent, I coach all these real estate agents, sometimes you they have to let them go on a test ride. Now there are some coaches out there that completely disagree with me, I understand that sometimes you might sit back and let them hire another agent and wait six months for it not work out, and then come back to you. But you could also say let’s give it a shot. But here’s all the data. But let’s monitor this and let’s stay in touch. And now you prep them for weekly conversations about the data, hey, there’s 120 homes for sale now versus 113. And now it’s it’s 16 months inventory versus 12 months, you know, what do you think we should be doing? So that’s how I look at I hope this this this helps today like questions you have DJ about this segment.

D.J. Paris 29:59
No, I think this is I think this is really good. And I suspect a fair number of our listeners don’t really go in with a big too small strategy and what what again, what we’re really doing is setting the table to be able to have the seller, listen to you more, more thoughtfully and carefully and actually take your advice. And we need to earn that. And I think this sort of strategy by bringing in these, you know, this, this data is, is going to enable that person to go, wow, there’s a lot I didn’t know or don’t realize, even locally, I didn’t realize Park Ridge was was down with respect to, you know, inventory, and

Ryan D’Aprile 30:36
it might not feel like it to them, right?

D.J. Paris 30:37
It will that will they won’t know, they likely aren’t going to know, correct,

Ryan D’Aprile 30:40
right? And they’re still comparing it to 2013 or 2014. Sure, it feels great. But let’s look at the data. And let’s be prepared for what’s going to happen next.

D.J. Paris 30:51
Yeah, the really easy part of the job, I think, and again, I shouldn’t say that, because I’m not out there producing. But we you know, between the two of us, I think altogether, we’ve got close to 1000 agents who work at the firms we’re at. But from what I understand, you know, really the easy part isn’t even the hard part isn’t even so much getting the listing, it’s setting yourself up as the knowledge source so that you know, the buyer, the sellers can actually listen, and what are they paying you for, they’re paying for your advice. And you first have to establish yourself as somebody who knows what they’re talking about. And then you know, then you can hopefully, you know, achieve their goals in a way that makes them feel good about.

Ryan D’Aprile 31:33
So I think our next session, let’s take a little time, and maybe our listeners will send us some questions from this podcast. And, you know, we could bring them out when you and I meet again next month and talk about our next topic that worked for you.

D.J. Paris 31:46
That that works great. And so I want to make a couple of points here real quickly. First, if anyone is interested in joining Ryan’s team, his company, again is D APR properties, that’s D apostrophe APR. Io, Li, you can visit his website, D APR properties, no apostrophe D APR properties.com. Ryan has hundreds of brokers and one of the his value add to his what separates him from a lot of the other firms, probably from just about every firm out there is that Ryan himself personally travels from office to office coaching, his biggest focus is coaching. So if you are we are

Ryan D’Aprile 32:22
Yeah, we are a coaching company. And that is our that’s our, that’s what we lead. And we tell everybody who’s at our companies that we’re a high performance coaching company. So if you come in these doors, you’re gonna be giving tools and technologies that we actually work with, and we focus on accountability. I travel office to office, but I also teach our managing brokers who are viewed as high performance coaches in the organization as well to sit down, and then we’re coupled by an incredible marketing team. And that actually will do your monthly marketing and whatnot for you. So sorry, DJ to interrupt you. But it is, since you brought it up, I thought I’d chime in there and tell everybody it’s like, if you are interested in doing something, just be aware is that walking through our doors you’re walking in to take your business to the next level. And it’s not, we’re not going to focus on the brand, or anything else that’s out there. Branding is incredibly important, but you’re the trend. And we’re going to focus on accountability. And coaching didn’t really take your business to the next level.

D.J. Paris 33:20
Yeah, so and I couldn’t agree more. And it’s one of those things that many firms claim to offer. I think maybe not all firms do offer it in a way that Ryan does. So if you’re interested in joining his company and learning more about what it is they offer, which I think is very impressive, you know, they have all of those tools. And Ryan built that locally, you know, really is very impressive to not have done at a national level, right? If you go into the big franchise firms, they’re going to have a lot of that information, too. Ryan has built that, really from the ground up and he’s local, and it’s a family owned business. So if you’re interested in wanting to learn more about his company, maybe even becoming a broker with him, go to D APR properties.com There’s a contact form. And then for everyone who’s listening, whether or not you join Ryan’s company, or are happy where you are, we want to help you so if any questions that you have for Ryan, about boy what would be really helpful to take your business to the next level. This is what Ryan does. So the easiest way to get that to us to submit your questions you can visit our website, which is keeping it real pod.com You can submit questions that way you can also submit questions to our Facebook page, please follow us on Facebook. So it’s facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. You’re just search for keeping it real podcast you can submit questions there as well. And also we post links to all of our episodes like this one, as well as a daily articles that we find. We have a one of our staff members here for the podcast every day sources a article to actually help you build your business and post a link to it. They’re on that Facebook page. So find us on Facebook or just email us you can do that right from our website to keeping it real pod.com So on behalf of Ryan and myself. Thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate you guys. It just keeps growing. So we’re so grateful. Also, please tell a friend, if there’s any other brokers whether they’re in your office or just people you know in the industry, no matter where they they’re practicing, please feel free to send them this podcast and on behalf of Ryan and myself, we say thank you and we will see you in a month.