Welcome to our BRAND-NEW monthly feature, Social Bootcamp With Gogo Bethke!

In this episode Gogo discusses how agents in Michigan have had to improvise during this period to continue their work in real estate. She points out how they even had to rely on sellers for photos and videos of property and work through all the stages of business virtually. She also discusses how important it is to reach out to your clients to just be there for them during this difficult period and try to help them with any real estate related issues.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

DISCLAIMER: Gogo’s 30-day moneyback guarantee is no longer available.

Gogo Bethke can be reached at gogosrealestate@gmail.com and at her Instagram account.

Purchase Gogo’s Bootcamp by clicking here – Keeping It Real Podcast listeners get a discount!

Gogo's Bootcamp 2.0

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

Welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. And today we have our monthly feature which called Social bootcamp with gogo bath key now if you’re new to the show, and haven’t ever listened to this monthly series that we have with gogo, let me tell you a little bit about her. Go go back he came to the United States in 2003. To build her American dream. She was broke, she had no sphere of influence, no experience barely spoke English, and when only $6 to her name, which left her with nothing else but Facebook to build her real estate business. And that’s where she started she created gogos real estate and her real estate career began. Now with the power of social media, Google has sold over 45 million in residential real estate transactions. She shares the good the bad and the ugly side of real estate and are honest snippets in her everyday life. I’ve gotten her 10s of 1000s of social media followers in the real estate community and she has earned the income sorry, not the income the nickname the social media queen. She has also earned income of course, after being asked to present at various realtor events. Go go build a social media Bootcamp for realtors called gogos bootcamp. Now today she has a team of over 130 Real estate agents all over the country and is growing every day. Now her goal is to help as many agents as possible. Make a name for themselves in real estate and if she can do it, a girl from Transylvania Romania with no US education, no sphere of influence, no money and no experience. And with an accent that you can do it as well. We’re going to ask everyone right now to pause this and go find gogo on Instagram at Gogo realistics, our gogos real estate geo gos real estate, and we’ll also be posting a link to it here. Also, we highly, highly, highly, highly remember, recommend signing up for Go Go’s Bootcamp for our listeners, we have a special website set up with a discount, please visit Gogo podcast.com. That’s geo geo podcast.com. And once again, welcome gogo to the show.

Gogo Bethke 3:09
Thank you for having me. Highlight on my mind.

D.J. Paris 3:13
What I’m sorry, saying what was that

Gogo Bethke 3:15
highlight of my month?

D.J. Paris 3:16
Oh, that’s so sweet.

Gogo Bethke 3:17
We look forward to talking to you every month.

D.J. Paris 3:21
Go go and I are we’re struggling a little bit today. And so we are we are bringing it because it’s I don’t know if it’s like what it’s like in Michigan right now. It is beautiful outside here in Illinois. It’s in the 60s. And it is to that point of the day where I’m looking outside. I haven’t got to spend a lot of time outside you probably haven’t either. And I just want to go outside and enjoy the sunshine. i What’s it like in Michigan right now?

Gogo Bethke 3:46
I seem I mean, we had the you know, in the 20s the last few days it actually snowed and all that and finally came up to it was supposed to be 57 today, so we were so excited. And I did get a chance to sit on the deck for like 20 minutes i and it’s not that warm, like it looks sunny, but it’s pretty cold. So I ended up coming back inside. But yeah, I had a 10 o’clock podcast and 11 o’clock live and then now I’m here with you again, on a podcast. So I don’t see much of the outside either. And even during this COVID I feel like I have been so busy. You. Yeah, I’m

D.J. Paris 4:19
doing just as much work as I did. I’m actually going into the office, we’re my boss and I are here just because checks come in and we have to deposit them and but I mean really I’m just as busy as ever. I would be at home if I didn’t have to, you know, pick up checks and things but it’s it’s amazing that, you know, all the realtors I’ve interviewed, the top producers like yourself are all staying pretty busy, you know whether they’re running a team or if it’s just their own private practice. I wanted to ask you because I we were talking about this just before we started. I was it’s easy to get really emotional about it. And this is about social media engagement. So I was telling gogo before we started that the, that our listenership is has grown, which we’re grateful for every month that grows a bit, and it grew from last month. And the reason I was checking it, I really don’t look at it very often, because it really sort of, it’s nice to see, but it doesn’t really matter. We’re just going to keep doing this even even if we only have one listener, we’re gonna keep putting out episodes. Thankfully, we keep getting more, but the one thing that has gone down, thankfully not the listenership, but our engagement on Facebook. So even though we’re doing the same exact type of posts, that we’ve done in the past that have got pretty decent responses, likes, comments, shares it, we’re just not seeing it. We know people are listening. But we don’t see a lot of engagement on Facebook. And I was curious if you’re seeing any of that same activity or lack of activity in your own business.

Gogo Bethke 5:51
Absolutely. Something is definitely I feel like and yeah, and this is my opinion, I’m no scientist of Facebook. But definitely something going on with Facebook, same on mine, the activity for so I put everything on Instagram, I automatically feed it over to Facebook. So it’s the same exact post, same image, same time of the day, same blah, blah, blah, it automatically goes over there. And Instagram, I might get hundreds, if not 1000s of likes and hundreds of comments. And on Instagram, or on Facebook, I’ll get 35 likes and three comments. Yeah, same exact post, same exact everything, same time of the day, everything is the same. So I think is Facebook has definitely limited us. And our followers of what they’re going to see they I understand they want us to pay because it’s a business page, they want us to throw money at it. The part of that kind of frustrates me as I was telling you, it’s not that I don’t want to throw money at it. If I want to reach people that they didn’t want to be opt in, they didn’t already choose to follow me. If I want to reach those people, I understand I have to pay for it. Because they don’t know of my existence. It’s advertising. Yeah, it’s advertising, Facebook is going to push me to make sure that that person is going to see my account in hopes that they’re going to follow me. Okay, but with the ones that already follow me, the ones that already opted in, who knows seven years ago, the fact that they don’t show them my post, unless I give money to them. That’s annoying, that is not cool. I already own that I work hard for that those people opted in to follow me. I give them a reason to I post, I’m consistent, I share knowledge. I’m the expert. So I get annoyed by having to pay. So Instagram seems to be working much better at these times. LinkedIn is working very good at this time. So I would probably concentrate more so your energy over there unless you want to throw money at it. Just kind of know I mean, have a presence on Facebook, feed everything over there like that just kind of be there have an existence until Facebook figures out what’s going on and figure out their algorithm and allows us to do more than what they’re truly allowed allowing us to do now.

D.J. Paris 8:04
Yeah, I have a thought about Facebook, which is just as I’ve gotten older, I plan all of our high school reunions, I’m the guy that plans the high school reunion, which is like the most thankless job, but I like doing it but it is a lot of work. But what’s funny is so I we do it through Facebook. I mean, we do it through other ways, too. But that seems to be the easiest way to get in touch with everyone for my class. I’m 43. So we just had our 25th anniversary last year anyway, makes me feel old. But regardless,

Gogo Bethke 8:34
I mean, I’m 20 this year, so you’re good.

D.J. Paris 8:38
You’ll Yeah, you’re not you won’t be old for another five years. And I’m teasing. I don’t feel old at all. But but it is funny. Because as as you know, and I’m again, I’m 43. So as people my age, it’s seeing I see their, their posts on Facebook, much less. I think they’re posting much less as well. I think they’re not participating on Facebook as much. And I’m also wondering, maybe that’s the reason why engagements down less activity, Facebook, you know, obviously that that,

Gogo Bethke 9:09
for me, it seems like on the personal side, there’s plenty of activity, there’s plenty of people posting, you know, memes and political things, and this and that and what they’re doing at home and what are they eating, and you know, how the homeschooling is going like their parenting thing, and they are getting a lot of activity on there. So that’s why I’m thinking is the algorithm on the business page side that is tapping our posts, they’re just not getting even the view. It’s just not even showing up in their feeds.

D.J. Paris 9:35
Yeah, well, they know that the average non, you know, a personal person, you know, a personal account is likely not going to spend money, right, a business account is 1000 times more likely to promote a post for $15. So who knows? But yeah, so I guess the point we’re making is if you’re seeing lower engagement on Facebook, you’re not alone on your business pages, doesn’t mean you should stop posting in fact, may Maybe you should even post more not necessarily, you know more unless it’s great content. But just understand that you know, ebbs and flows.

Gogo Bethke 10:07
Yeah, and then periodically share it back over to your personal page, so then your personal friends can see it. And that will generate you more traffic back to your page. And I just think like Facebook, maybe have gone a little bit wrong with making it so strict, because if at least they let us to have access to half of our people, then at least I know, okay, I know why I do this, I know I’m paying you 10 bucks, is to get that action, that correspondence on my post. But if my post is right now, at two likes, I’m gonna give you 10 bucks, I can get to

D.J. Paris 10:38

  1. Right. You’re right in I have a I have a quick tip for everyone. This has worked really well for us on our keeping it real podcast page on Facebook, whenever anyone likes a post, especially if it’s shared, right. So if it’s shared, if you’re going to buy someone else, you’re obviously going to get access to some of their followers who might engage with the content. So if you are getting likes, you should invite all of those people, Facebook makes it really easy to invite them to like your page, you know, when you create the page, you can send a mass one out to everyone in your contact list. But I love the people that like I find that about a third to a half of them will actually end up liking your page, because they’ve already liked a piece of content, you just hit that invite button takes two seconds, and it sends it to him. So if you’re not doing that on Facebook, you absolutely should. And ask you ask the people who follow you to share your content, say, Hey, if you found this valuable, please, please send it to someone else. And

Gogo Bethke 11:39
yeah, yes, no, that’s a great idea. And in order to do that, the way you find that, as you go to the Word says how many people like that, if it says, you know, 56 people, like you’re gonna click that number 56, it’s going to give you a list, it’s going to show you everybody who is not following the page, but liked that post. So then you’re going to invite them to follow the page.

D.J. Paris 11:57
Yeah, it’s a great suggestion. It’s easy to forget to do that. Because then you’ve already maybe you’ve already done four more posts. And then somebody goes back and likes something five posts ago. So you have to go back through your feed, just do it once or twice a week, go to everything you posted, look like it’s bogus. And click on the on the the number of likes link, and it’ll show you everyone it really, really quickly shows you just click a button, you can do it in two seconds and move on. And you’ll find a lot of those people end up liking your page. I wanted to also ask you about just in general, you’re in you’re in Michigan, real estate is a non essential in that state as of today. Hopefully that changes for you guys shortly. But a lot of states it’s that way a here in Illinois, we’re thankfully able to still practice working were deemed essential, but it’s different everywhere in the country. What are you doing? Or what are you seeing agents doing to just to stay busy being that you can’t go to showings? You know, you can’t go to closings? I mean, or you can but it’s real tricky. How, what do you say?

Gogo Bethke 12:58
So it has, we have to improvise a lot on both sides of the transaction. So on the buying side, we’re not allowed to show houses. So buyers are making offers pretty much sight unseen. I cannot take them to the property, but the inspector can. So that doesn’t make sense when they’re doing the action. So they get the offer accepted, sight unseen. And then when they do the home inspection is when the buyer gets to go with the inspector and actually see the home for the first time. So I’m like that, that doesn’t make much sense. But you know, it is what it is. So they can do that. We are actually having a six o’clock online virtual interviewing process. So a buyer is interviewing us to see if it would be a good fit to be the realtor. And they’re coming from out of state actually come in from Chicago. I think about it. Yeah. So that’s different. Like that’s my first First of all, I’ve never interviewed for a buyer realtor. So that’s a first, but I’ve certainly never done it on Zoom. So that is going to be different. So the things that you can do now is to fill up the pipeline. I don’t know if you knew this, but you can create a Calendly link give access to people to your character. So you can say hey, I’m doing lesson side presentations Monday, Wednesday, Friday from six to eight because bad. I’m doing buyside presentation tuesday thursday Saturdays from 11 to one because and then that way they plug themselves into your calendar. Now you can do these zoom calls with them. See ahead of times if you will be a good fit. So then finally, when the time comes around, you already have your pipeline built so that’s one way of you know, do it from home. Facebook also allows you to set up appointments in there so you can do listing appointments and biocide appointments right in your Facebook business page calendar and then just give people access to that and just make a post about it. Say hey guys, I know we are not essential which means I am not able to leave my house but that doesn’t mean that I cannot work real estate. I can do everything that I can do virtually. So we are doing listen side by side, you know presentations and pick a spot. Here’s my calendar. I can’t wait to be a realtor and just kind And then leave it up to them to pick a spot in your calendar. So then on the listing side, we had to improvise a lot. So listing presentations were chose. So we are having a conversation just like this. Most of them are my friends or they know me that I’m in the industry for a long time. So I’m not interviewing for the job. But I still have to explain them the process of what it’s going to take, and especially now with how is it different with COVID. So we are still listing even though we are not able to actually go out and see the property. So we don’t have yard signs, we don’t have like boxes, I can take measurements, none of that we have to take previous listing measurements. While we are doing for the pictures and the videos, we’re actually asking our sellers to take iPhone photos, which I’ve been preaching forever since I had a license don’t ever always hire a professional. Now I have to I don’t have any other option because I am not allowed to schedule a photographer to go out to the property. So the sellers have to take the photos, but what we do, they send it back to us. And then our VA Oh, the photographer will edit them just depending how what the quality of the pictures are. We’ll edit those also our sellers are doing virtual tours. So we asked the sellers to create one nice walkthrough of the property and just kind of look at it from the eye of the buyer. What would they want to see if they were buying this home? What questions would they want to have answered? So as they’re walking through the kitchen, for example, they can say you know, they’re all stainless steel matching appliances are less than five years old. All are saying with the property, you know, this is a pullout pantry, this is a blah, blah, blah, the kitchen sink has a grinder the trash compactor, blah, blah, kind of just like walking through as if they were buying a home virtually. And if they had the questions, make sure to answer them. So they’re doing that we’re uploading those to YouTube and and turning them into like a professional virtual tour. And then including those links with a text code with our smart phone number, where people can just text our smart phone number or code like you know, 4040 and then they are going to get the virtual tour in return. So a lot of improvisation and closing on Friday. Know that that is a whole other trying to figure it out our title companies will not allow, if the seller and the buyer have their own title company, neither title company allows the other party to close at their place unless that title company is closing them. So now we have to have totally separate closings. Because buyers and sellers close at a different time, not even at the same time. Even if they are with the same title company, they don’t want them in the same room. Now there are two times that we need. So we can just have a 12 o’clock, the 12 o’clock window. Now we have to have a 12 and the 11 or the 12 and the one for for both parties. So it’s just or if they have multiple rooms, they have to put multiple, multiple rooms so we can not be there. The closing my best to represent my client is via zoom if they allow me to do that. So yeah, we had to improvise a lot.

D.J. Paris 17:48
Yeah, I am. I wanted to ask your opinion about this, because I was thinking about this recently that we are all now hooked on video conferencing, specifically Zoom is kind of the, you know, the big one of the day, who knows if zoom will be as popular in the future, but there will be video conferencing. And I really think that even when everything returns to normal, this is going to be the norm of it, especially with people you haven’t not with your clients. Yes, you won’t need to do this as often, although you certainly can. But I really think that this will become whereas in the past, if you were meeting with a client, a listing presentation, maybe or a buyer who you’ve never met before, maybe you’d meet them at your office or at a Starbucks or someplace neutral and safe. I think now that’s all going to happen here. And go you were saying this on the last time we did an episode, which was to say now’s the time to get more comfortable being on camera. It doesn’t mean you have to perform. But to realize that this is the new normal and yes, eventually we’ll all go back to our regular lives in the regular ways we’ve done things but I think this is here to stay. I was curious to get your your thoughts on it.

Gogo Bethke 19:03
I think both I think is definitely the question is not if it’s here to stay, I think it is here and it is staying. It’s not going anywhere. In many occasions. It’s amazing. Like especially when you have out of state clients who have the ability to meet face to face like this. Prior to deciding if you want to work with one another. It’s awesome. So it’s definitely here to stay but I do think that we outstayed our welcome and zoom. left six weeks. So I feel like when we get released, but at least me and I don’t I can’t talk for everyone but I am excited to be up in people’s business in the personal space. Yeah, I’m excited to hug people. I’m excited to be in the same room. I am excited to you know, do all that just shake hand. You know, I mean, like I cannot wait to be back to that. So I’m not gonna hop on the Zoom unless I absolutely have to write I’m excited to meet someone in a coffee shop.

D.J. Paris 19:52
Yeah, I just think it’s going to be great for a lot of people have phone anxiety, right. A lot of realtors think they should pick up The phone and they don’t right this is ever since people have had telephones and there’s been sales type positions, there’s they call phone phobia or phone anxiety. And now it’s so it’s so cool because you can actually do that via video conferencing. And it is a more intimate and connected experience, even though you know, you’re still miles away and maybe hundreds of miles or 1000s of miles away, you’re able to at least see somebody. So I think that for a lot of us, this is a you were talking about this before we started recording. But what a great time it is to reach out to your clients. Obviously, right now is not the time to go, Hey, do you know of any other buyers or sellers that could benefit from my services, that’s probably not the best timing for that kind of, but it is great timing, to have face to face conversations with people who are stuck at home and are maybe lonely and starved for some human attention. And they’re not going to be able to get that hug today. But they can get you know, at least a virtual hug through through this video conferencing.

Gogo Bethke 21:01
Yes. And yes, I totally agree with you. It is not the time to be asking for business, it is the time to help one another. I think it is the time to reach out to your sphere of influence your past clients or people that you know you have in your database to see how you’re doing. Do they need help? Is there anything that you can do for them in the previous market crashes? Or the last one especially there was no equity people didn’t have equity and the biggest problem now 70 to 80% of the people have equity in their home. And most may not even understand that they could tap into that. If they were having a financial hardship right now maybe they don’t qualify for the stimulus package package. Maybe they don’t qualify for unemployment employment, and they just don’t know where the money is going to come from. If they have equity in their home, they could potentially tap into that. And they could take that money out and float themselves in the summer. Maybe just have that cushion to know that I have a Friday that. And yeah, would you benefit from that? No, because you’re not going to make a commission off of that. But here is your time to help. So you can call them see if they need their help. If they say that, yeah, you know what, that might be a great idea for us, you might be able to use that money, then you can say hey, I’ll run a quick CMA. What is the address of your property, I’ll tell you what I think it’s approximately bought today on the market, then minus what you owe on it is your equity. Now, if there’s a number that you’re happy with that like yep, you have some equity, then I can also recommend some of the lenders and I’ve worked with through the years and I would recommend for you to call them now give them that vendor list or lenders list, have them make that phone call from that moment your job is done. Done. So said the lender is going to take it over if they qualify. If they’re able to get a HELOC or or an equity line, then, you know, they can take it from there and you help them out you will at least help them how much your home is approximately aboard, they will still have to do an appraisal and all that but at least they will know. Yeah, we have equity Oh no, we don’t. And you have them. So next time when they do need a realtor who would they call Who else but you because you wanted to have them at a time of need?

D.J. Paris 23:02
Well, and just think you know, you’re so right. And think about how many other professionals you have in your life that you pay fees to on a regular basis. How often do any of those professionals reach out proactively and say, I was just thinking about you. I wanted to see number one how you’re doing. And I also had this thought just to float it by you to see if it might ring true for your current situation. Hey, by the way, just in case you didn’t know rates are at an all time low. So you know what some folks are doing who are who you know, are looking for cash opportunities is they refinance. And you know, anyway, just thought I you know, I’ll shoot you an email about it. But anyway, that’s providing tremendous value to people right now. And you know, you need to do it in a very delicate and considerate way. But by having those conversations you’re you are going to be as as gogo, you just said you’re going to be in some ways, very heroic to them. And you’re you’re not benefiting directly, but you’re

Gogo Bethke 23:59
actually working for absolutely nothing because you still have to run that CMA is still gonna take you some time you’re investing time for that initial call, you’re investing time to caring about them, you invest in time when you’re creating a CMA and emailing get back over to him. You invest in time and effort by sharing the connections that you made through your career with all those lenders that you’re going to provide their information to them. So you’re investing some time but you investing it with the hope that you will earn their business in return one day,

D.J. Paris 24:25
and you’re just demonstrating care and compassion. And I can assure you that the vast majority of the people that they pay professional service fees to at some point are not doing right, you know, is their attorney is the attorney who did their will reaching out to them. Probably not right is is the fight is the insurance agent reaching out to them? Probably not. You know, who knows the dentist reaching out? Probably not. These are opportunities for you to be one of the few people in their life that demonstrates that you care and that just pays a multitude in return. If it doesn’t pay today, but it will pay tomorrow in business and referrals, it’s a really a no brainer.

Gogo Bethke 25:07
Exactly. Exactly. And who knows, some might have to sell you and I mean, but that you just didn’t just shouldn’t start a conversation with that, in my opinion, not at the time of what’s going on right now.

D.J. Paris 25:18
Yeah, what, back to social media. Because obviously, your bootcamp is amazing because it teaches realtors, step by step A to Z, how to, you know, create a powerful social media presence so that you can attract, you know, of course, more followers and then build a more real estate business as a result. What are you telling your your bootcamp followers right now, what are some of the, you know, is there anything in particular that’s really working as far as just keeping Realtors busy on social media so that they’re able to produce content that the clients are and that their followers are interested in?

Gogo Bethke 25:56
Yeah, I think it’s sharing the knowledge is very important. So if you learn something about the real estate industry that applies to your area, definitely just create a quick video about it, you don’t have to know all of the answers, you might just say, you know, what, not just released an article about blah, blah, blah, you can read the article repeated what you just read, and then include the attachment as article so they can follow up with that, but by just sharing what’s going on, and that people can follow along the ones that do have a care about the real estate industry, because not everybody does. But if they do they have something, you provided them information, which in return is going to just automatically make you the local expert, because you’re sharing that information. So I think that’s very important. Also, in the last episode, we talked about using this time to gather reviews and feedbacks, because when we are selling, we are too busy. We don’t have the time to make sure we have the five stars everywhere. Or even that you have a Google My Business presence, you might not even have it set up. So I think this time is very important to do that. Also, this time is very important to figure out the things I usually don’t have time to do. So if social media was the one that hey, I want to figure it out. It’s not going to take two minutes, it took me I’m 10 years in, you know, I mean, that’s what everybody wants, like, what can I do today? Well, I wish I could teach you everything I learned the last 10 years in one day. But again, it’s going to take time. So if you want social media to be your breadwinner, then you’re going to have to put some time in because in life, everything is like that in order to take money out, I always call it an ATM in order to take money out, you’re gonna have to take time, you have to put time in and you have to put effort. And so same thing with social media. So I think this is a perfect time to sit down. I mean, yeah, my bootcamp, I totally recommend that but it’s not two minutes long. It’s I mean, we’re coming out with finance tupuna. Right now, finance alone is 108 videos. You know, I mean, so I can’t teach you Facebook ads in one video, I can teach you organic social media in one video, I wish I could. But if it was that simple, then everybody would be an influencer? No, I mean, so in order for me to teach you everything, how to have millions and imprints and how to get leads, and never have to buy when and how to build a brand organically without spending money, it’s going to take some time. So my bootcamp is probably at least 30 hours of video content. So if you want to figure this out, this is the perfect time because you have not been asked to do but sit on the couch and decide, okay, I’ll get four hours in today, four hours in tomorrow. And as you’re going along, the whole point is to get all those steps done. So when I’m talking about a CRM program, and automated drip campaigns and the buy side and listing side and, and holiday drip campaigns, then you make sure that yours are set up in your CRM program, you make sure that you have a CRM program, you make sure that all of your contacts are uploaded and they are tagged properly. And if they don’t have a tag, you’re like, oh, shoot, I don’t have a tag then you’re gonna go in, you’re gonna go through those and you’re gonna say, okay, this person closed on 123 Main Street or representing the seller, okay, I’m gonna hashtag seller, this person on this street. Oh, they I was on the buy side. Okay, I’m gonna tag them buyers. Because when you tag these things in your database, then you can automatically just send them an email, then you’re not sending it to everybody, who’s your aunt and uncle and cousin and a buyer and the seller and the renter if it doesn’t apply to them. So if I’m talking about how much your home is worth, I’m not going to talk to a buyer who’s searching for one right now that’s currently homeless. Right? Yeah, I mean, so by tagging them so all of this is I teach you everything literally how I how I built everything from zero to wear goggles real estate is today, but I can do that in an hour. So the bootcamp is hours and hours and hours you’ll get lifetime access. So we actually will be dead though. We broke it down we used to have an upfront cost for it only and and I understand times are hard. So we change that now they can do upfront if you can afford it, you can do an upfront cost you have lifetime access, which means everything that we come out with not only everything that’s already created as yours, but everything we come out is just automatically going to be included. Because Instagram changes algorithm every five minutes so I have to click on your video because things that were worked last year it doesn’t work this year, just like we are talking about why is Facebook so slow? I don’t know. When it’s time to kind of take it easy on it until Facebook figures it out. Um So what we did is we broke it up into monthly payments. So now it’s for small monthly payments. And your your customers actually get a 10% discount your listeners. So they get a better prices, they just go to your, to your page. But yeah, so we try to adjust it, you know, I mean, there’s times are changing, I always put a new content, I try to adjust the price, so it’s easier for everybody to afford. But this is the time if you see you are serious about social media and you want to build a brand and you want to be able what I call to fish. My goal is to teach you how to fish not to give you a fish. So it’s not about me giving you a lead. It’s about me teaching you how to go and find one how to have them reach out to you.

D.J. Paris 30:39
Yeah, now now’s the time to remember that as real estate agents, you know, you this is a business and it is your business. And now you know, yeah, you have to you have to work on the processes, now’s the time to work on process. And you know, for when you’re in the middle of the busy season, you don’t have time to study social media platforms and to, you know, create posts for Google My Business by the way, everybody should be have a Google My Business account and should be creating posts every single week. It’s simple. It’s easy, it’s quick, but the point is you might go well, I don’t normally have the time to do that you do now. And so now’s the time to invest in something like Go Go’s bootcamp. We’re doing this as a company My boss asked all of us in management, there’s nine of us to find a some sort of, you know, course that we wanted to take and we all chose different courses. And we’re all doubling down on our efforts to because now’s the time to develop those skill sets those things that when you’re in the middle of running your business, you just don’t have the time to do so now’s the time,

Gogo Bethke 31:48
I always want to figure out stocks I’ve never had the time. So I figured okay, well, perfect time market crashed, stocks are at the bottom. So I can buy now, five stocks with a price of one. And it’s a perfect time to kind of figure it out. So I decided to learn how to stack trade while the downtime I decided to read books I do. Or I started my own podcast, I added we added 108 I think videos to the bootcamp I added personally to the organic side, God knows how many, so it’s just like I am working. I’m busier than ever.

D.J. Paris 32:16
Yeah, yeah, me to work. It’s it’s funny that you know, this is and it doesn’t, you know, you’re busy and just a different way. And now it’s it’s just this is the time to invest in yourself. And it’s in, invest in your customers that invent invest in the people that put their faith into you. And that allowed you to sell them a home five years ago, reach back out, see how they’re doing, you know, even if you haven’t reached out in five years, reach out now and say, you know, I haven’t I haven’t checked in on in a while I want to check in now how are you? And just keep it to that. And you know, anyway, develop your skills. Do that, because when it gets busy again, and it will, and hopefully sooner rather than later, you’re not going to have this time anymore. It’ll just go away. And we’ll all be busy. busier than then than we, then we are maybe right now. So now’s the time. And just for our listeners, as gogo was mentioning, if you want to invest in gogos boot camp, and we could not recommend it more highly. I’ve always felt that that is never a bad investment, to have to purchase something where you can learn how to grow your business, right? That is a no brainer. I will spend money all day long on that. And now she’s got additional payment options for people that are you know, struggling financially. So that’s even amazing as well. So go to Gogo podcast.com to get that special discount again. Go go podcast.com. But go go. I think we had a great episode here. I think we talked a lot about, you know, the attitudes that realtors can take right now and some steps specifically about how to just keep going and hopefully in staying positive through challenging times.

Gogo Bethke 33:58
Absolutely. You have to adjust to the times. I mean real estate especially is such a quickly changing industry. When it comes to technology, especially of like, just think about it. I didn’t even know what that live was when I got my license nine years ago. I mean, I wouldn’t know what to do without it right now. You know, like I get paid at the closing table. I take a picture of my check and that’s how I get paid. Are you kidding me? Yeah, you know what I mean? So it’s like you have to We are constantly adjusting and it just kind of prepares us to whatever life throws at us we just adjust you just figure it out. Oh, I’m not essential. Okay, I’ll figure out how I can list a home how I can sell a home how I can market a home how I can get to the closing table without ever leaving my house.

D.J. Paris 34:38
Yeah, and and how you can develop additional skills in between all of those things. By you know, taking courses like like Go Go’s boot camp or reading books or going to seminars or you know, virtual seminars. I took a yoga class yesterday. I am not a yoga person. I did yoga yesterday. How did you like it? Well, I am I am tall as you You know, and I have never been able to touch my toes, like with my without bending. And so I still, that is like never going to happen. But so I’m super inflexible. So that was really hard. But I enjoyed it because it was physical. And, you know, it centered me

Gogo Bethke 35:17
about it grateful to mine the very first time I’m from Eastern Europe, we don’t do yoga in Eastern Europe. And the first time I went to a yoga class by accident, because I thought it was like an Arabic class or something. And I got there an hour early or something. I was like, oh, shoot, I’m in a yoga class. I didn’t want to walk out like 10 minutes and realizing it’s a yoga class. So I sat through it, oh, my gosh, I was so sore today. After I literally got in the car, I have to pick up my leg and pull it in the car because I couldn’t lift it up. I’ve never been so sore in my life. And, and I realized it’s great for the mind, especially at the very end. I always fall asleep when they were like, Okay, it’s like a three minute meditation. And they’re like, Hey, go, go, go go beyond all leaving. I just knocked myself out. I don’t know. I just I learn to love it.

D.J. Paris 36:01
Yeah, and not again, a new skill, right? This is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. And I never found the time I never carved it out. Could I have carved it out? Sure I could have but I didn’t. But now I have less of an excuse. So now’s the time to develop those skills. Try the things that you know are good for you develop those morning rituals, develop those social media rituals that you’re like, I know, I should be posting more. But I’m not I know I should be connecting more with my sphere of influence on social media. But I’m not. I know I should friend everyone on LinkedIn that isn’t my sphere, but I never did. Now’s the time because when everything goes back to normal, that’s when the dividends will pay themselves. And all of a sudden you’ll have client upon client upon client that will remember that you were there for them during this time. And that you were you weren’t hiding away in a bunker even though you were away in a bunker. You were still present and active. So So yeah, I think that’s that’s our matchmaker, think

Gogo Bethke 36:57
about a New York perfect example, you’re not allowed to cold call. I know how it says we’re not essentially Michigan, there’s the list of things I’m not allowed to do is very long, pretty much the only things that it allows me to do is social media.

D.J. Paris 37:11
Yeah, it’s funny, right after I’m done, we’re done here. I’m going to be talking to a broker in New York who has a firm of about 400 agents. We’re friendly. So we’re just checking in seeing how he’s doing. But yes, there’s he he can’t cold call brokers to come work at his firm, his brokers cannot cold call a client’s all of that has gone away. And remember, yeah, and so now we’re all adjusting, we’re trying different things. We’re developing other skills, so that when this all goes back to normal, those skills will remain. And hopefully, some of those habits will stick. So we could not recommend more highly. Are you sick of paying for leads or not being able to afford to pay for leads, or just going I know, I should be doing more on social media, but I’m not sure how go goes bootcamp, it has our highest possible recommendation. We don’t recommend any courses, really, except that one and a window, one or two others. So this is really we couldn’t be more, more, you know, assertive and telling you really, this is the time to invest in yourself. So

Gogo Bethke 38:16
it’s 10 years of knowledge, you know, plugs right into that course. And the way I look at it, just let’s do a simple math. What do you think nationwide? Average commission is

D.J. Paris 38:25
on a transaction? Yeah. Five 5000? Maybe?

Gogo Bethke 38:30
So that’s, that’s a it’s $5,000 on one transaction alone. Yeah. So if I can generate you one transaction, just one, we’re not talking to 60 million I did, you’re talking that one transaction that would pay for the course five times. The course would pay for itself five times over, if it’s shitty enough to only Garin only gets you one transaction. Right? Yeah, yeah. No brainer.

D.J. Paris 38:59
It’s a total no brainer. And, and now’s the time to double down on those efforts. And, and you know, it look, none of us. None of us are feeling comfortable right now. Nobody’s comfortable. But that’s okay. Because out of discomfort, it creates energy. And this is where you can take that energy and harnessed and learn new things. So So realize that we’re all little on edge and irritated and claustrophobic but yet, okay, that’s true. Yes, we’re all feeling that way. But we also can take that energy and push it in a positive direction and, and use it to learn stuff. And then once once again, once everything’s back to normal, it’s going to happen, we will be back to normal at some point, and then you will have gone Oh, I wish I this is not vacation time, right. And I think it’s easy for all of us to feel like this is vacation. It is not this is time to invest in yourself. And so, Go Go’s boot camp is a great idea. And it’s just full of really great information too. So We encourage all the listeners to check it out. Also, please everybody follow go go on Instagram, which is Go Go’s real estate Gee oh gee Oh s real estate. We’ll also be posting that link. But go go once again, always a pleasure. Thank you on behalf of the listeners for continuing to show up month after month. We appreciate it the listeners appreciate it. On behalf of gogo and myself to the listeners we say thank you for continuing to support gogo, our show, tell a friend think of one other realtor that could benefit from hearing from this, this conversation we just had, and from all the conversations we have with the great guests that are kind enough to do our show, and send them a link to our podcast. And also please follow us on Facebook as well. We’re facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. If you’re on there right now, you might be watching us recording this live. If not go there and you’ll be able to see us record every one of our episodes live and we also post an article every single day that we find online designed to help you grow your business gogo thank you again. We hope you guys get out of we hope you become essential quickly in Michigan so you can go do more stuff.

Gogo Bethke 41:14
I can hardly wait to be back in Rio I you know the little things like I want to grab Starbucks on the way to somewhere and I wouldn’t wear high heels. I want I want my air my hair to blow in the wind in the car like just little things. The little things in life is what I miss. But thank you so much for having me today. Thank you so much for everyone who listened and give us a time of the day. And happy selling.

D.J. Paris 41:35
Happy selling. Thanks. We’ll see. We’ll see you guys on the next episode.

Jim Starwalt, Broker Owner of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Star Homes has been a top producer, trainer and coach for over 20 years. In our conversation Jim, in his candid style, shares exactly what real estate agents need to do today to grow their business. He also talks about the challenges with text messaging clients and how to set a boundary around your personal time. This episode is chock full of actionable strategies to help you stay productive!

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Jim Starwalt can be reached at 224.627.7581 and jim@starhometeam.com


Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Agent youtube.com. Would you like more leads that find you instead of you finding them? Let the YouTube agents show you how the YouTube agents started making videos with no sphere of influence. This year they’re on pace to close more than 100 sales all from leads generated on YouTube. They put a step by step video program to show you exactly what to do and what not to do to become a YouTube real estate superstar. Visit agent youtube.com to learn more and sign up today. That’s agent youtube.com And now on to the show

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with Jim star. Well before we get to Jim, I want to remind everyone of two quick things number one, please tell a friend think of one other real estate agent in your life in your office in your periphery somebody you may be met at a showing or somebody you know who needs some help getting to that next level and send them a link to this show. This is our whole intention to help agents grow their business so please tell everybody you know that helps us also please follow us on Facebook you can find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod not only do we find an article written specifically to help you grow your business every single day of the week. We also post links to all of our episodes and you can watch the videos sorry you can watch the interviews being recorded on video in real time only on Facebook so again facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pot we hope everyone is staying safe and healthy and now on to our interview with Jim Stowell.

Today on the show we have Jim star wall of Better Homes and garden STAR homes. If you’re not familiar with Jim, Jim is the broker owner of Better Homes and Gardens real estate STAR homes with offices here in the Chicagoland area in Gray’s Lake and McHenry, Illinois. Jim has over 20 years of experience in the real estate industry as a top performing realtor and real estate team leader. And before working in real estate Jim spent 15 years as a roofing contractor, Jim can provide superior level of real estate knowledge, service and advice to not only his clients, but the brokers at his firm. Now last year, this is really impressive. Jim’s team sold over 150 units, which is amazing. Jim has passion and coaching. His passion is coaching and teaching agents and we are absolutely thrilled to have him on the podcast today. And you can visit Jim at Jim star wall team.com, which will take you right over to the Better Homes and Gardens STAR home website and you can learn all about what they offer. Jim, thank you so much for being on the show.

Jim Starwalt 3:29
Hey, thanks for having me on here. And quick correction is Better Homes and Gardens real estate STAR homes. So we’re sorry, we’re so sorry. We’re associated with the magazine, but we’re not the magazine. So they are a sister company. So those wonderful franchise long tails that we have. So

D.J. Paris 3:47
isn’t it you know, it’s so funny here in Illinois. So, of course, not all of our listeners are realtors in Illinois, but they’ve made a lot of changes, the state has really finally created rules around teams and company names. And so now a lot of you know, things have just gotten longer.

Jim Starwalt 4:06
But yeah, it’s longer and we have to spell it out. But it’s not a bad thing. You know, they’ve changed our signage, which I’ve always had had the company the company has to be prominent and all signage and all advertising, which is not bad. I mean, if you’re not proud of where you are, you know, so many people weren’t working under under a brokerage and you know, they’re trying to put the brokerage name and miniscule letters down at the very bottom and their name logic how to promote yourself and your broker is going to be happy to want you to promote yourself and such but, boy, there’s there’s power in numbers. You know, the more signs out that look similar people understand who you are better.

D.J. Paris 4:48
Yeah, uniformity is for branding is just so important. I also think, yeah, and I also think some of the rules now that are around teams and how companies promote themselves with Advertising guidelines are really just to help the consumer know what’s going on because it can be so confusing to the consumer. So I think you’re right, it’s ultimately a good thing.

Jim Starwalt 5:12
For consumers, it’s a tough for consumers to know, like, who do I contact, if I find if I have a problem, everything’s fine until it’s not as what I say all the time. So everything’s good until it’s not good. And then people need to know who to reach. So if you’re

D.J. Paris 5:28
Yeah, we’re actually redoing, we’re redoing all of our signs as well, right now, because we many, many years ago, we just had a general 800 number. And every time a broker joined us, we’d give them a little extension. And then that way, they wouldn’t have to put a rider or they’d still put a rider on, but they would put either their cell phone or their extension. And finally, like, this is like 10 years later, we’re like, what are we doing, putting an 800 number there that no one’s calling, and also, it’s just gonna confuse you know, the consumer, trying to find that broker by typing in some extension, they’re not going to remember notice. And so finally, like we had to wise up ago, just put the brokers phone number on there, don’t put ours. And of course, you know, so constantly trying to improve, to make things better for the consumer as well. I

Jim Starwalt 6:15
should have should have their own phone. But yeah, okay. Let’s go.

D.J. Paris 6:20
To Be quiet. No.

Jim Starwalt 6:23
That’s why you’re spending your marketing dollars. You know?

D.J. Paris 6:26
You’re absolutely right. Yeah. And we don’t want the calls either the brokerage firm doesn’t want.

Jim Starwalt 6:31
You don’t want don’t want that we want to absolutely who’s ever marketing, we want it to go to you, you’re paying your efforts, you’re paying your money, we want to absolutely go to you. So okay, what do you try to get out? I’ll be quiet.

D.J. Paris 6:41
No, no, no, no, no, I think what you said is really important. And also for everyone listening, you know, think about that. Think about all of your marketing materials, you know, is it easy for somebody to get in touch with you, and don’t just assume that you always know, send it out to you know, 20 people that are in your sphere of influence and say, Hey, I’m working on this marketing material? Is it really clear how to get in touch with me? Or is it confusing? Is it confusing who I work for is, you know, and it’s really important to get some feedback. So Jim, no, that was awesome. But yeah, let’s let’s talk about stuff about you. And you’ve been in real estate for a long time. Tell us how did you get how did you first get into real estate? I

Jim Starwalt 7:21
haven’t done it over 20 years. So getting close to 25 ish, but my wife Susan was an agent before I was. And so when she started so I was a roofing contractor grew up in a contractor family. I’ve been running around roof since I was 10. In fact, I remember I was about 10, or 11. I was on this summer time wasn’t at school. So I’d go with that. And it was fun. Putting shingles on up on the roof. And I had somebody to climb roofs. Yeah, somebody stop and yelling at my dad. You can have that little kid up there. We’re calling the police in the labor force. And he just gave him a nice wave told them they’re number one. But any, no. So as a roofing contractor, and then my wife, Susan, she got into real estate and I’ve always been fascinated with real estate. Like, I had one of my one of my buddies that grew up with him. He’s a he’s a broker. Now to Jay reed out there. I think he’s with I think he’s with HomeSmart. Now, but every day after school we played, we played Monopoly. So it’s like, I always beat him to So Jay, if you’re listening. Sorry, I beat you all the time. But yeah, we play Monopoly every single day. So it’s just kind of it just kind of chuckles me. But anyway, Susan got her license and she was working. Back then you got your license, and they sat down and they said, Here’s the phone book, right? Yeah, seriously. Here’s the phone book, look in the office where it was in Mundelein, Illinois, and they said start Dakota Mundelein section, start at the A’s who started dialing. Then a week she had her first listing, she sold 38 homes her first year all by herself.

D.J. Paris 8:59
Wow. That’s a hit pause for a second. That is incredible for for a number of reasons. Even, you know, in today’s market or any any today’s market. First of all, even if you had 38 Friends ready to buy or sell homes that were close to you, that would be an amazing accomplishment to fact that she cold called people out of the phonebook and got listings and ended up closing that many. I mean, first of all, just doing that many deals in the first year puts you in the top 1% of all realtors in Chicago so that is absolutely incredible.

Jim Starwalt 9:33
Yeah, she’s she’s absolutely amazing. She’s basically she does all the work around here and I take all the credit as how it goes. So we were both we’re both working together. In fact, I remember the first listing appointment she sent me on I can still visualize the house I can picture the people. It was horrible. I could not wait to get out the door. We’re doing that. That whole spreadsheet where you know like an appraisal like your house is this and you have the fireplace As little add 5000 In fact, back then we had a list that said a fireplace is worth $5,000. If you have a basement opposed to not having a basement, it’s $15,000 very simple. It was, but I’m trying to read all this. I’m trying to talk to these people on my first appointment. I just I try not to swear I made a really, really bad I could I, it was horrible. I couldn’t get out of there quick enough. Then I remember the second the second appointment, I went on I was trained back then it was hardcore. It was hardcore, close. I mean, and I went out I remember the house was in Ingleside. It was on the lake. It was a poor lady. And I got in and I closed on and I got the signature. The time I got home, I had a phone message waiting. She was in tears. Do I really have to sell my house? Oh, no. Last time I ever did that. Yeah. And it was just just like, hey, so high pressure tactics started really, really quick. And something that it’s not about the what we learned really quick is a real estate is not about selling. It’s about bonding. And it’s not about you. It’s not about your tools. It’s about your client. And it’s about their needs, and what do they want. So everybody knows me knows I have a hard time listening. But they know that when I’m in front of a client, I do a lot more listening than I do talking. So let me find out how I can be a service to you. Because that’s how we have a service. So

D.J. Paris 11:27
yeah, you’re absolutely right. And it isn’t about the agent, it’s about the consumer and getting their needs met and exceeding their expectations. So you’re, you’re a trainer, you have realtors, that you’re coaching from your firm, of course, this is a huge passion of yours, right now. Everything’s temporarily hopefully paused or not paused so much is just changed. Everyone is stuck at home most of the globe. And you know, realtors are still trying to keep their business active. What are you suggesting? Or what are you seeing agents doing that you think is a good idea during the sort of, you know, challenging time.

Jim Starwalt 12:08
Now, you’re gonna have a hard time keeping me on track because I bounce all over but I’m gonna go back to Susan selling we’ll come right back to this. Sure. Greg can control your show. Susan was selling lots of homes and I’m up on the roof sick of babies, you know, and diapers. They’re they’re four and six at the time. And I’m up on the roof and I got the bag phone and it’s on the chimney. And so I got my crew of three and hear the phone ring or the pager would go off. Shut off the compressors. Everybody’s happy. We’re up to the chimney. Hi, yeah, this is this is Jim. That was a REMAX of the times that Jim REMAX and you know, how can I help you? What? What do you need? I would take down some notes. Great. I’m in a meeting right now. There’s some people here with me. I never lie. There was people with me. How about if I call you back at about 330 Oh, that’d be great. Hang up the phone. We’ll get back to work. So yeah, so she got me off the roof. If you’ve ever had to go up on roofs because you got babies and diapers and it’s 10 degrees out and you have a cleats on and go on two story roof and shovel the snow and ice off. Back then we didn’t have ropes. We didn’t use ropes and safety stuff you put the cleats on and like golf shoes and walked around and shoveled the roof off for free the first day so that the sun will melted off so you can work the next day make money. Oh wow, selling real estate’s easy after that. So So yeah, so as soon as I got me into that, so anyhow, I had to I had to give her lots of credit for working really hard and getting me out of that job. So anyhow, training and coaching, what should people be concentrating on especially right now? Especially right now the thing that you have to do is you have to time block you have to have a calendar. Everybody listening to a lot of realtors, mostly Realtors listening probably lots of other people too but go to your brokers I know that they’ve all been coaching you and teaching you they’re all good. Listen to them. Now’s the time to call them up and and say hey, I remember six months ago you were talking about helping me with my calendar. You wanted to sit down, get on a zoom conference, share your calendar, show them what’s going on. I have a I have a team of we did about 160 If you include Wisconsin I’m also have Wisconsin brokerage virtual brokerage so I did a majority of it I think I did about of that 150 A personal I was about 85 or 90 listings was the side of that. I don’t work Sundays. I don’t work Wednesday afternoons me and Susan go on the boat we go fishing. Because when somebody calls and they want to have an appointment with me it took me years and years and years until I was coaching agents and teaching them how to do these things that it really hit home with me. Is that somebody calls can you come over tonight? At seven? No, I’m sorry, I can’t. I am all booked up. But you know the oh can you can I make it at 130 or 212 Are your 330 my appointments are 133 30 and 530. And that’s it. Of course, everybody says, and that’s it. I’ve got one tonight at six. Yeah, you know, it’s pretty, it’s pretty tight on that. But I don’t work Sundays. And people will fit their appointments within that you have to know what you’re going to do each day. So when an agent shows up in my office, and they don’t see them work, I see them drinking coffee, or I see them they look a little bit lost, I say, Hey, show me your calendar. You haven’t been you haven’t been selling as many homes, as you told me you wanted to, I can help you get to the success level you want to be at, you told me where you wanted to be. So show me your calendar. And I can tell you if you’re going to make that or not. So if you don’t know what you’re doing the rest of the day, if your calendar doesn’t have what you’re doing from nine to 10, from 10, to 1030, a break from 1030 to 11, from 11 to 12, then you should go home. If you don’t know what you’re doing today, I want you to spend the next hour deciding what you’re going to do the next three days and put on your calendar and go have the rest of the day off, go do a video, go do something. Because you’re no sense sitting in here pretending you’re playing real estate. agents come into the office, and they have coffee, and they go on brokers tour. Or they decide well, maybe I’ll work on something. So I get on Facebook, Hey, I’ve spent eight hours doing a nice, really cool post for Facebook. And I sent out I’m proud of myself, I did real estate today. Right? So So anyhow, I don’t I get I get kind of passionate about this because I hate seeing Realtors not being successful. It’s such a lucrative business, and it’s so rewarding helping people. But you have to have a calendar. And you have to have a schedule. You should know right now, every hour of the day what you’re doing tomorrow. Correct?

D.J. Paris 16:51
Correct. Correct. I couldn’t agree with you more I, I struggle with that myself. I’m not a practicing realtor. But just in my own day to day business as a more creative type, which I think real estate agents fall into that same category. structure can be difficult for a lot of real estate professionals, and especially if they’re working on their own, and are solo sort of practitioner. But now as Jim said, Now is the time to lean on your firm. And while you’re stuck at home, if you don’t have those structures in place, or you need help establishing those, what a great opportunity to reach out to your managing broker to say, hey, remember that training that you promised me it’s I’d like to cash in a little bit on that, can you help me schedule my day? I couldn’t agree with you more. That’s so you have to know your start date and your your start time and your end time. And everything you’re going to do in between. So I think that is it’s such simple advice. But it’s incredibly powerful. And I would bet most of us no matter what profession we’re at, really don’t do that. So now’s the opportunity to develop those habits.

Jim Starwalt 17:52
Well, in many realtors are female or male who are watching the kids at home or at home. Right? It’s even more important to have that calendar, that schedule, put it up. I mean, people laugh in our office when I when I talk and I train because I show him a picture of my bedroom. Me and Susan, we get up and there’s a great big calendar on our wall. We know what we’re doing throughout the whole year. We know when our vacations are we know when different seminars we’re teaching, we know what’s going on. We live this stuff. So you’ve got kids at home, they need to know that from eight to nine is study time or book reading time, and I’m going to be doing this. And then we’re going to stop at 845 to nine. And I’m going to help you if you’re having if you’re struggling. So it couldn’t be more beneficial to teach them how to follow a schedule also. And to get yourself in the habit of doing that. Because when this breaks loose, you better have a calendar because it’s going to be wild.

D.J. Paris 18:51
Yeah, I think it is. I think you’re right. And the structure thing. I think we could do hours and hours on creating a calendar and sticking to it and why that’s so important. And it sort of in some ways can be a bit counterintuitive, because you think well, now I’m locked into this, this rigid structure, the reality of it is by being in such a rigid sort of somewhat semi rigid structure, you actually will get a lot more freedom, ironically, because you’ll you’ll be just accomplishing more, and you’ll find that you’re more efficient and effective. So thank you. That’s such great advice.

Jim Starwalt 19:23
You want to hear great big gasp of everybody go. Don’t check your email. So don’t check, check your emails till 10am Don’t even look at it. Just Just don’t There’s nothing. There’s nothing there that you have to handle at 8am. You got a client who’s upset you got a client who’s pissed off, you got a client who’s just just anxious and wants to know How come the appraisal hasn’t been done yet? It’s still not going to be done by 10. Or more than likely it’s already been more than likely it’s already been scheduled. Is there no, no, it’s happening tomorrow at three. So don’t check your emails until at least 10 o’clock in the morning. So don’t go down.

D.J. Paris 20:01
No, it’s a good rabbit hole, because I’m sorry, it’s not a good rabbit hole. But it’s a good thing to acknowledge, to acknowledge that, that it’s the rabbit hole that I want, you know, I come into my office, I get here at, you know, 830 or so. And then I immediately go to my email, because that’s what pops up. And it’s, it’s easy for me just to make that the first thing and then I could tackle those 15 emails that I got over the previous night. But then the problem is I’m like, Oh, wait, what am I supposed to do next. And so I think a lot of us can relate to that. It’s like, same thing with like, with soon as you wake up, don’t put on social media either, because you’ll get lost in that rabbit hole. And then also, you know, I couldn’t agree more with Jim, you know, have certain times that you respond to email. And you can also have times that you don’t like, that’s okay, too, you know, know your structure, know, your customer service policy for you and for your clients, and make sure they know the expectations. But you know, you could split if you spent the first hour like Jim said, take their, you know, plan your next three days and take the rest of the off, you just did a massive thing. That’s absolutely right, like spend the first hour of the day planning or ideally the night before. But if you don’t, if you should do that first so that you know, when I wake up, oh, I don’t check my social media until next time, otherwise, you just get caught up like the rest of us, we’re all human, we get caught up in things. And then we lose a lot of the day,

Jim Starwalt 21:19
my calendar is filled every spot for the next 10 years at 133 30 and 530. It says client appointments, all I have to do is go in and change that one. So it’s just it’s just the structure and the having it not check your emails. First thing in the morning, is, first of all, you’re also training your clients that I’m not I’m here for you, but I’m not on demand. And that starts right off the bat, they have to understand that I have a life too. When they send you a text, I have to take my agent take their phone, I’m like, What are you doing? You’re going back and forth six times on text with this person. Answer once say, say you’ve got some people with you, you’ll get back to them in an hour. There. Okay. They they, I understand that this is our clients, this is their whole life is that deal. It’s very important their Eat, eat, sleep, breathe real estate for 30 days of their life. Right? And so they’re they’re in it. So they know what’s going on. You also know what’s going on too, but your whole life can’t be their deal with them. You need to let them know that I will answer your questions. I’m taking care of it. But when you text me or you send me an email at nine o’clock at night, I am not answering that phone. That problem will still be there in the morning. So how many of us have I’ve done that for years, you grabbed that phone call at nine o’clock. And now you’re thinking about it all night long, and you don’t get a good night’s sleep and you can’t function the next night because somebody’s mad, because the appraisal came in low. The appraisal still low tomorrow, let’s we can handle it at 10 o’clock when I check my email, you know? Yeah,

D.J. Paris 23:01
I I couldn’t agree more. I want to go back to the texting thing as I was thinking about this while you’re really saying this in a way that I hadn’t thought about before. Which is to say that, you know, people who text the person texting, wanting the question, the customer to the agent is expecting an immediate response if that’s their expectation. And so as Jim was saying, you know, this is something you could talk to the client ahead of time, and you should tell them how your communication policy works. So say, hey, just FYI, I try to respond to texts quickly. But it might take me up to a certain amount of whatever time is applicable to you to reach to return that call because a return that tax. Because if you reply instantly, and then they go back, like you were saying like five or six times, and then all of a sudden you get a client phone call, or somebody walks into the office, or you just have an appointment to get to or whatever. And you can’t continue that back and forth. It’s a strange stop in the middle of a conversation to be like, Oh my gosh, so sorry, client just walked in. So I think having that policy upfront, like, hey, when I get a text, if I can respond to it right away, I do. If not, please allow me some time. And I think because I was thinking about that if I was texting back and forth, all of a sudden the person disappeared. You know, that might be worse in a way.

Jim Starwalt 24:20
Yeah, that’s that’s a great point is that once you’re once you’re in it, then you stop. It’s like how do you how do you stop you send some the thumbs up emoji and then they send it okay. And then you said, Okay, are we done? Yeah, no. So I like that. That concept of it too, that they’re going to be disappointed in you. This business is all it’s almost less about disappointing the people you’re working with. Not disappointing the people you’re working with setting the right expectations. So again, I go all the way back to it is not about you. I don’t care if it’s your first day of real estate or you’ve sold 10,000 homes, when you go in that it is not about you or how many homes you’ve sold or have not sold. When you when you go in and go into listing appointments just a little bit, yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay. When you when you one thing, the very first thing I teach agents is personality profiling does DISC personality. Yeah, you need to know who you’re talking with. I am a, a D. So I’m A, D and I. So I’m very forward. And I love to have fun. We have lots of parties and barbecues, and any things that anything’s a reason to get some chips and nachos out. And let’s get the margaritas out. So there’s a there’s a bar right in my office on. We have a lot of fun. But it’s taken me until I start teaching and coaching for the last bunch of years to understand that my personality is only 10% of the population of the of the earth. So that means my style has the potential to piss off the other 90%. So people will laugh because I’ve done it so long when I start talking to somebody, and my voice will automatically go a little bit soothing. And I’ll lean in, it’s not disingenuous, and it’s I’ve trained myself that I need to pay attention to them. Sure, you know, the old match match what they’re doing, and I do it not even conscious because it’s it’s my work personality is different than my normal personality, because I’ve learned to temperate. So when you call me and you say, Hey, Jim, come and talk to me about my house. I’m thinking about selling it. The very first question I ask is, tell me about your house? Yeah, you tell me that it’s a three bedroom, two bath, 2600 square feet. And it’s in a neighborhood. And here’s a couple facts. Well, I know that this appointment is going to be about facts and figures. If you’re telling me oh, I just love watching the grandkids play in the family room. We’ve gathered there for years, and we have our Thanksgivings. And it’s such a warm place. I know that that’s the nightmare appointment for me, because I’m going to have to spend two hours in there listening. I do care, I love people. But my personality is you have a problem. I’ll solve it. Let’s go, right. So when grandma’s telling me about, you know, we’re walking to the house, I’m looking, I’m seeing the pictures of the grandkids, and I’m seeing them on a swing, I’m seeing if they’re in the backyard, I’m going to ask about those things. I will get that appointment without ever showing her a number. I will not open a listing book it for either of them. So I’m going to talk to their personality, the person that wants facts, I’m going to look in the eye and I’m gonna say here’s the deal. We both know what your house is worth. I know you’ve looked online, right? You’ve looked at Zillow, you’ve looked at cetera. And so I have of course, of course, I know what that is. And I’ve already got it written down. So I have some numbers. So what are you thinking? This is? What I understand you brought me here to this my job? Why are we I’ve already got it in here. And I’ll show you but I just got to make sure we’re on the same page. I think. I think it’s like 250. Okay, great. Look, that’s exactly what I had. So you’ve already looked me up, you didn’t think about me? What do you say? We just signed the paperwork and I get to work. That’s my listing presentation. If you don’t know my golden nugget, there it is.

D.J. Paris 28:17
That’s it. That’s a huge golden nugget. So let’s let’s break down what you just did a little bit, because I think I think this is really, really important. First, you didn’t try to sell right, which I think most people, a small percentage of people like to be sold to I think most people don’t, they want to be understood. They want to feel like you care. You’re doing that. Even though you say hey, necessarily. I’m the guy that just wants to get it done. Get to the point put me to work, I’m your worker, but you’re able to still communicate in the language that the client needs, which isn’t is as you were saying, of course that’s not disingenuous. In fact, in some ways, it’s even you could even say it’s more complimentary because you’re like, I’m going to communicate with you in the style that you prefer, versus what’s necessarily natural to me, which in your case, you’re like, only 10% of the population is has that DISC profile. So I think that’s really really smart. But yeah, I love that that you’re like I have you know, I you probably have a listing presentation in case you need it, but you clearly are able to connect in a way that doesn’t require that I think that’s amazing.

Jim Starwalt 29:21
So I had an agent, and this agent was in tears. I’ve been on nine listing appointments, and I have not got any of them. Look at my materials. They’re absolutely gorgeous. They’ve got this book that’ll knock your socks. I wish I could do that kind of marketing. I’m like, holy moly, this is gorgeous. I told this agent I said the next thing you have to do the next listing appointment you go on. There’s always a wall or summer table or something by the door you need to set all this wonderful listing book that you have. You need to set it on that and I don’t want you to even touch that again until they agree to list with you. This agent got to know Next four in a row.

D.J. Paris 30:02
I love it because that enabled her to do the most important thing which is connect with the with the client and listen. So smart.

Jim Starwalt 30:09
If you’re a good agent, your brokerage already told you, you’ve got the materials, you’ve got the pre list packets, listen to what they’re saying, Send that pre list packet over, you know that they’ve already looked at it, because you can see they opened up the email and you can see that look that we use toolkit CMA, because you can see when they’ve opened it up, and I know that they viewed it, I don’t need to talk about it. So it’s not about me, it’s not about my tools. They think all realtors are the same and have the same tools. And we’re all the same. I’m the only one that listen to him. I got a quick story. I got one up to I had listed a house from a complete stranger in seven minutes. I love this. I know exactly the time. I’m pulling up to the driveway and he’s got a big oversized Jeep and it’s muddy. Okay, I know this is an adrenaline guy. Yeah, I know, he doesn’t care that much about details because it’s still muddy. I look at there’s a there’s a dirt bike stuffed in the corner of the garage, leaning against the garage, a couple skateboards, etcetera. Beautiful house and you know, a great, great person. I walk in the door and I say, you know, so how are we doing? So can you show me around the house? And I see his eyes go down a little bit. And I said, Look, I can tell you’re not in the mood for any type of sales pitch. I’m like, we both know your house over 250,000 What do you say we do the paperwork and I can get I can get out of here and start my marketing. That’s the that’s the whole conversation I had with him. He goes, I love you. Let’s sign that papers. He did not read a piece of paper. I need to explain the paper. But is there a he had an all I said, Okay, sign here, sign here, sign here. Let’s put the price on, I’ll send this to you. And I was out the doors back in my car in seven minutes. That’s amazing. But it wasn’t about me.

D.J. Paris 31:42
It wasn’t about it wasn’t about you. And also you were able to, to use, you know, in intuition and logic to make some assumptions about how this person communicates what they want. And then of course, how to give it to him. I think that is amazing. How would you recommend agents start to develop that skill? Obviously, listening is one thing, but being able to sort of discern, oh, this type of client that this probably is their communication style or their personality.

Jim Starwalt 32:11
You need to take a class on DISC personality profiling. And I like the disc I like that because it’s very simple. I have one that I that that we that we teach. It’s put on by by Dave Ramsey with Chris Hogan is the one that does it. And it’s phenomenal. It’s funny, he it’s made my marriage amazing. Susan laughs because now I realize that, that she’s not just crazy that she when I come in with a great idea. Now I was like, Hey, we got to do this. And she’s like, That sounds wonderful. Let’s talk about it tomorrow. Tomorrow, we have another idea. So if I still want to talk about it tomorrow, we’ll talk about it. But I used to she she’d make a face and she’d go like this. And I’d be like, what, what, what’s the matter with my idea, and I’d be offended that she didn’t jump all over my idea and share my excitement. So now I know that I need to present an idea. Let her think about it. And then we’ll talk about it in a couple hours. Now she’s got it down to about 10 minutes. So I give her a hug 10 minutes to digest something so. But it’s I think everybody who is getting married should pick the DISC personality profile. I think everybody in real estate needs to understand who they are. Because understanding who I am first helps me relate more to other people know that I need to slow down a little bit. So different personalities are funny. So my agent Randy, he used to be a newspaper publisher. He was the editor. He was the he was a top dog. So he’s very good at asking questions. So we’ll do call ours at our at our office like okay, who’s afraid of using the phone? Let’s go we’ll put it on speakerphone. We’ll start cold calling Zillow for sale by owners. And Randy, he’ll he’ll be on the phone for a half hour with somebody that tries to hang up on him. And he’ll get the appointment in the same amount of time I’ll go through 25 calls and I’ll get an appointment. Right. So again, I pissed off 24 people and made one happy. So it we have to understand who we are.

D.J. Paris 34:23
Yeah, and this is, you know, it’s funny. So what I do during the day is I you know, I tried to recruit realtors to work at our firm. And I’ve been doing it for 10 years. And it’s it’s, you know, I probably have a natural ability, I’ll just or just through the experience. I’ve had to sort of know how to do that. But have I formally really been trained in something like disc or a different personality profiles like No, not really. And you just gave me a great idea, because I’m sure I haven’t always communicated in the way that the person who may be interested in joining our firm needs to hear. I just kind of do it the same way oftentimes. So thank you because that’s going to help Be,

Jim Starwalt 35:01
they might not need training from you. So we try to tailor we try to tailor our training, because that’s who your personality is. You don’t, you don’t need to change it. But you just need to understand who you’re talking to and need to understand what you are. So makes a big difference. So yeah, ever, like I said, I had the agent that didn’t close on anything, but was amazing at putting together these these listing books and minds in a three ring binder. And it’s pretty nice. We all have, we all have the stuff from our brokers. That’s what I use the stuff given us from corporate and I have three hole punch in snappad. And then I got my CMA in the back, but I don’t open it, I never open it, I don’t need to open it. It’s not about that. You need to understand that.

D.J. Paris 35:44
It’s not about that. I just I love that. And I think that’s such an important. Important point now. So now that we’re all you know, we’re at home, what are you telling agents to do just to stay active? Any any suggestions on how to challenge

Jim Starwalt 35:58
them, I challenge them to challenge them, I challenge them to get on Zoom, I challenge them to have started having one zoom consultation a day, get you I can get you on and I can pull up the multiple listing service. And I say, hey, EJ, let’s just check out the values your house just for fun. People are bored, they’re happy, they’re they’re thrilled to have something to occupy their time for a little bit. Let’s look at the homes in the neighborhood. Cool. Did you know you’ve got about $70,000 equity in your house. That’s awesome. Good job. Hey, if you know anybody else that wants a equity check, having we’re having give me a call. Do you know people that are worried about their jobs, or they do they need to start a home equity line of credit to get themselves through a couple of months, all your realtors out there, you should apply for a home equity line of credit, you may not need it, it’s not going to cost you a dime if you don’t use it. Keep your marketing going strong. So they should be educating themselves. They should be listening to podcasts, they should be watching, watching all there’s all kinds of free videos everywhere. I pay Tom Ferry gobs of money every single month. But I really don’t have to because everything’s on YouTube, everything they teach is right there. So educate yourself. But set a schedule, you’re not you’re not out of works. Don’t Don’t think you’re not working. Here’s the difference. Right now buyers right now are looking at two or three homes and buying when they do not want to look at 20 homes. So get them before you have from your business changes from here on out forever. You’re never going to meet a client that you haven’t met on a zoom conference call first. You’ve seen each other face to face and you’ve got it recorded. And you’re just you know, I’m recording this. So we can remember what we said. There’s a lot less chances somebody’s going to do you harm when they know you’ve got their image and who they are recorded.

D.J. Paris 37:47
Wow, that’s really a smart observation. And you’re absolutely right, whatever. Yeah, I’m really glad you said that smart. Right.

Jim Starwalt 37:55
So before we go out, let’s take a look. And let’s look at all the homes you got 10 homes you’re interested in. So let’s zoom in on this one here. 123 Main Street. This one backs up to the train tracks. Is that is that bothersome for you? Personally, I would like that because it’s no houses in the background. But but there’s no fences in this whole neighborhood. You said you had to have a fence? Do you still want to go look at this house. Now, Jim, I think we can eliminate that one. Let’s go to the next one. Let’s go to the next one. Let’s go to the next one. Let’s assume you know how to zoom in and click on the address and look at the backyard. Look at the whole rest of the neighborhood. We really want to put in ground swimming pool. Well, good 10 out of 20 homes have that there’s a real good chance you could put one here. So let’s eliminate homes down to two or three. And then you know we’ve taken 52,000 homes and eliminate it down to three. So I’m going to bring a contract. And we don’t want to waste too much time homes are going fast. So let’s let’s go out Saturday and buy a house. What do you say? I mean, this we’re never going to do business the same again, if you learn these tools now. Yeah. Sorry, I get passionate.

D.J. Paris 39:03
No, that’s no, this has been I’m at a bit of a loss only because I’m processing what you just said, because it’s been you’re communicating in a way that I we none of our previous guests have. So I’m really, really grateful for that. But you’re absolutely right. So much has changed. You know, we have we had an agent and our firm just was does mostly leasing and he said he’s done five deals in the last two weeks. Or maybe it was for four or five deals, all virtual tours other than that sight unseen. And he just, you know, did it that way. And he’s like, you know, when he goes nothing’s really changed. I mean, it’s changed as far as what he’s doing. But he says the activity is not really I mean, of course homebuying activity is has changed a bit but he’s leasing he says it’s still going really really strong. So just

Jim Starwalt 39:50
buyers buyers are out there. If you can get the sellers to commit Oh my goodness. Social media advertising is blowing up. The last ad I put out, we’ve got a, we’ve got a tool from corporate that we can do social added our social ads, Social Engine ads, and they got the Facebook and Instagram $149 My phone just didn’t quit. Because it goes for seven days, we had 16,000 views. We had, we had 1800 people engaged in the ad, meaning they clicked on the pictures and looked around. We had 179 people fill out the lead form. So Mike Myers is my six buyer’s agents are, were non stop. So we’re calling all 179 and staying after Him and who wants to get out? What are we doing? So social media is where you should advertising right now everybody’s at home looking for a distraction?

D.J. Paris 40:45
Yeah, go to go to where the girl or the customer is right and

Jim Starwalt 40:49
go to wherever the customer is. I guarantee any any of the large brokerages again, you’re going to you’ve got some of the same ad tools and stuff, talk to your talk to your managing broker, have them show you through them. You know, show me show me how it works. Let’s do this. So they should be it should be known how so? If not, they’d be happy to dig in and find out because they should. So

D.J. Paris 41:12
yeah, it’s it’s such a it’s such an interesting time. And you know, this is this is the time also for the sphere of influence to really be staying in touch because like Jim saying he’s you know, people are online, they’re still searching. And in fact, they might even be feeling a bit claustrophobic in their current conditions, and maybe wanting to expand, I think there’s a lot of a lot of people are going to be feeling that way, if not right now, in the immediate future, and when with returns to normal, but a great way to, you know, to make sure they know you’re there, and you can start having those conversations now.

Jim Starwalt 41:45
No, absolutely. And then right now in Illinois, they’re calling us essential. They’re letting us work. And it’s good, because we are not because we get to sell somebody’s house. But when you boil it down, and I teach this and I coach this you have to understand where we are the pinnacle, we’re up here. Because when we sell a house, the lenders get to work the title companies get to work, the home inspectors get to work, the painters are going to come in the moving companies, what is there 2530 Different companies that get work just off of one sale. Not to mention that if the when the people move in, if they get a fence, whatever goes on. So we are essential. And you out there need to understand that we’ve got a big responsibility to keep the economy going right when the economy fell out in oh eight anybody was still working on I was my business supercharged, because I worked 14 hour days, seven days a week, just like I’m doing now. And we let our staff all go and we’re me and Susan are doing everything in the whole office plus selling houses. So we’re paying our staff and making sure that they’re taking care of their families, but you need to work harder than ever, this is not a vacation. It’s it’s a wonderful opportunity. So I made a made a little I don’t want any color and take a word and you make words off it COVID-19 create opportunities via internet devices, contact 19 people a week on Zoom.

D.J. Paris 43:13
I love it. Say that once more.

Jim Starwalt 43:15
Create opportunities via internet devices, contact 19 People are weakened zoom. Clients past clients continue out. I don’t care if you’re not used to doing it. Call your mom on Zoom three times a week until you’re used to doing it, get on it and do it. I hate seeing myself when I see it. I like to see from the backend. See, my hair’s disappearing. And I’m like, man, but I guess that’s who I am. So what are you gonna do?

D.J. Paris 43:40
Yeah, and what you’re doing is two things. It’s connection. And it’s, you know, providing probably a little comfort, but also some opportunity, you know, this is a time to, to have those conversations and your clients. Yeah, nobody’s comfortable. I think, you know, doing this, especially with previous clients, especially if it’s a video there’s, there’s an intimacy to it, that can be challenging, but the client is probably thrilled that you’re reaching out to connect and to provide value. I mean, I think about all the professionals I have in my life, how many of them who I pastes serve, you know, service fees, do, how many of them reached out to me, since this all started just to check in or to provide some value, maybe one one of one of 15 You know, so it’s not a crowded space doing this will actually, I think will really impress the people who you’ve already worked with, or your people haven’t yet worked with you.

Jim Starwalt 44:34
So let’s go back to time blocking it doesn’t I’m gonna keep going. I’m gonna keep hammering that because that’s everything there is there is no golden nugget in real estate. There’s, there’s five there’s five basic and I’ve got to pull up over here. You can’t see it. But you’ve got open houses, you got your sphere of influence. You got your farm, you got your social media and you got your CRM, and they all intersect in the middle. It’s like a wheel now I call it my wheel of fortune. They all intersect. So when you’re talking you’re sphere of influence. You may put something on your social media, it may, some of your sphere of influence is your farm. If you’re going to time block, maybe from nine to 930 every single day until you’re left back out in the world, you study your farm. You should know how many three bedroom homes are in there. How many four bedroom homes real estate is hyper local. Don’t be the Lake County real estate professional. Don’t be don’t be the town, be the subdivision years, many years ago, I was college trail subdivision in Gray’s lake. And that’s all I marketed. There’s there’s 400 homes in there. If there’s 400 homes in there, and everybody moves every two years or every 10 years. How many homes is that a year that change hands as 40? Like if I can get half of those? That’s 20. Right? They’re just off my farm.

D.J. Paris 45:49
Wow. Just by being the grace like guy,

Jim Starwalt 45:53
and when I have those 20 listings in there, not the grace Laker the collar sale guy. Sorry, folks. Yeah, sorry. No, no, I’m

D.J. Paris 45:58
crazy like guy because like is Yeah, that’s a that’s a great lake is a big a big area. Yeah,

Jim Starwalt 46:04
I started out with one subdivision for five years. That’s all I marketed because other than that I marketed to my sphere. When I sold those homes in college trail subdivision, I did such a good job that they will refer me to somebody. So those 20 turned into 40. That that’s how real estate works. Don’t be everything be hyper local and hyper focused.

D.J. Paris 46:30
It’s so important. And it’s something that like, you know, no, your TrueNorth, right? No, no, the you want to be this, it’s like you want to be the biggest fish in the smallest pond. Right. So you in order to do that you have to hyper hyper focus and specialize. And even if it’s just a certain number of homes or certain number of miles that you that you really cover, you want to know it better than every other broker in town. And by doing that, you just create massive value to that community.

Jim Starwalt 47:00
Until everybody in that circumference knows who you are, you don’t need to expand out so you got to do videos, you’ve got to show what’s there, you’re going to info sparks and pull up the stats, you can you can show those stats, you can pull them up live on Zoom via Facebook. I mean, these tools are amazing. I did a stupid video, you can see him I just put shelves up in my office. So I thought, hey, I’ve got this really cool tip. So I did a DIY tip got nothing to do with real estate. You take an envelope, and you tape it right underneath where you’re going to drill and you open up so when you drill, the dust falls right into there. Oh, that’s brilliant. I won’t ever yell over fall over 400 views and a billion comments and such and tons of shares. But you kind of use this video stuff.

D.J. Paris 47:49
You know now, now’s the time, if you’re camera shy, now’s the time to practice so that you can feel more comfortable having these conversations because as Jim saying, this is the new normal, this is not going away, when once necessarily we return to some version of normalcy. This is this is going to be the constant. So better get used to it. And what a great opportunity now to practice.

Jim Starwalt 48:13
So I got a quiz for you. Do you know how many homes in Lake County have one bathroom?

D.J. Paris 48:19
I don’t, but I bet you do.

Jim Starwalt 48:21
They all do some have more? Yeah.

D.J. Paris 48:24
You know, I fell right into that without I wasn’t paying attention. Thank you. Yes.

Jim Starwalt 48:31
When you teach you, you have to have your corny jokes. And

D.J. Paris 48:36
I think pretty much all of my jokes are corny, so I can appreciate that. Well, I actually I would love to actually pause for this episode because I would love to bring you back and have you you know, with these the tips you’ve been providing today, it’s been a lot and really, really helpful. And I’d like to get you on a regular schedule, if you’re that available. So we can talk about that after but I also want to make to let everyone know who’s listening. If you’re a broker in the Chicagoland area and are interested in working with a firm like Better Homes and Gardens, STAR homes. STAR homes. That’s a that is Boy, that is a mouthful but it is a great company and a great brand. What’s the best way that that and by the way, not just agents but maybe a customer who’s looking to work, working for new realtor and looking for somebody from your team to work with what’s the best way

Jim Starwalt 49:32
you know what my cell phone is everywhere in the world, but it’s 224-627-7581 you can go to Better Homes and Gardens real estate. Just do a search you can find us your give me a call. You can send me an email. My cell phone has been advertised on the internet for over 20 years. So people like I’m not putting my phone on LinkedIn. But call me we’re always looking for talent. We’re very, very careful. You have to be somebody who’s willing to share in our office. Our office is open hotel concept and we encourage everyone to share. As I tell their office you’re in, don’t be afraid to talk to the other people in your office, the office, I was in had windows and everybody had paper taped over their windows. I said that would never be that office, you don’t have any secrets. If our office has an 8% market share, that means there’s 92% market share out there for us to get. So we are very collaborative office. We’re always looking for great talent. So if you’d like to come in and see if we’re a fit together, yeah, give me a call.

D.J. Paris 50:32
And and if you want to work with a realtor who doesn’t make it all about them, which I think is is it’s a simple concept, but an important one and one that has served Jim and his team very, very well, for over 20 years. Definitely reach out to him as well. He’s got lots of capable brokers. He himself, of course, it’s an extraordinarily capable broker is one of the top producers here in Chicago. So Jim, I want to thank you on behalf of the listeners for your time, and I really would love to bring you back to do this more regularly. So we can talk about that. But on behalf of the listeners, thank you for all the great tips and advice. On behalf of Gemini to the listeners we of course say thank you for continuing to support and listen to our show, we ask just two quick things before we go. One is to please think of another real estate professional that could benefit from having listened to this interview that we just had with Jim and send it over to them you know, you can send them right to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com Or just you know, have them pull up any podcast app and search they’ll find it. The other second thing is to find please follow us on Facebook you can find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. We pod we obviously broadcast all of our video recordings of our episodes as well as our audio recordings. And also we every day we post an article that we find written online specifically designed to help Realtors grow their business usually just one a day and not to clog up your feed. But something that we think you’d appreciate. So again, facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pot. Other than that, we will see everyone on the next episode. Thank you hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. Jim, this was wonderful. really had a great time. Thank you so much for being part of the show.

Jim Starwalt 52:14
I had fun. Thanks for helping having me on. I’m always love to give it’s my passion. So talk to you soon. I’d love to come back on

In our April episode of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick of At Properties, Carrie discusses how in grade school she was able to tell an emotionally engaging story about a seashell during show and tell and how she uses that same principle today to list properties. D.J. talks about how you can partner with third-party management companies to send your clients virtually over to their leasing consultants and earn a commission along the way!

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Carrie can be reached at carrie@atproperties.com or by phone at 312.961.4612.

Please follow Carrie on Instagram by clicking here.

Carrie McCormick D.J. Paris Monday Market Minute

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.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show. And today, we are speaking once again with Carrie McCormick for our Monday market minute. If you’re not familiar with Carrie, she’s actually been with us since the very beginning almost four years on the show. We’re so grateful to have her she’s one of the top real estate agents in Chicago. And just to tell you how big a deal that is. There are over 44,000 Real estate agents in Chicago, she is always in about the top 15 Out of those 44,000, sometimes top 10. She’s been a top producer for over 20 years, she’s with AP properties, and just an amazing broker. And if you want to find her online, please visit her on her website, which is Carrie McCormick our e.com Again, Carrie McCormack ar e.com. And also please follow her on Instagram. She has an unbelievably wonderful Instagram account and it’s a great it’s a great model for how real estate agents probably should do Instagram so you can find her at at Carey McCormick real estate again at Carey McCormick real estate. Carrie once again. Thanks and welcome.

Carrie McCormick 2:13
Well thank you. It’s a wonderful intro. appreciate it as always. So hope you’re doing well hope everyone out there is staying safe and sane right through this time. But I wanted to chat today to talk a little bit about marketing. Right now obviously, times have changed and I wanted to bring everybody back to your grade school days. So do you remember your show and tell days at school? Yes. What all you know, it was a nerve wracking time, but I remember show Intel and while I’m asked her that really early on in my years, and I never thought show Intel would you know be part of my professional career. So just a quick little backstory about Carrie. When I grew up, I was actually a tomboy. And I remember my show and tell days at school or by date that came and I was at home, feverishly looking for something to bring to school and being a tomboy. You know, I didn’t, I was afraid that the girls were going to judge me or the boys were going to judge me and my favorite toy was the General Lee from the to

D.J. Paris 3:23
Sure. And that was a favorite toy of mine as well.

Carrie McCormick 3:27
So my mom convinced me not to bring the generally to school. But what she did tell me she she brought me this, this shell and she’s like remember this, you know, the C shell that we got when we were in Florida. And she started telling me the story about the day that we found this, this shell and how we’ve kept on to it. And you know, it’s just it’s been in our house ever since. And you know, she was such a good storyteller. It just made me think it made me feel like happy, you know, hearing that story and just kind of remember at the beach and how the sun felt that day and the sound of the waves and the seagulls and you know, brought a smile to my face. I’m like, Yeah, you know, I’m gonna bring this shell to school and, you know, so I go to Show and Tell day and, you know, I get up in front of the class and, you know, my hands have got this shell. And, you know, I can just kind of feel like the classroom looking at me like, Oh, God, you know, shell you like really, you know, and so I got up in front of the class and I started you know, just not talking about the shell. But I was talking about the day I found the shell and how it made me feel and just created this story around the shell. And I do remember at some point, you know, the classroom just kind of like leaning in, right? Like, you know, like, I want to hear more about this and you know what happened next and so it just it didn’t become a story about the shell. It just became a story of emotion and how it made me feel and You know, I mean, really fast forward to now, that’s what we have to do. Right? So we can’t show properties for the most part, we can, but you know, a lot of people aren’t out. So we have to know, tell people about the properties, right? We need to turn our listings into consumable virtual content now, and we have to think beyond this visual, we have to engage people. And we do that through storytelling, you know, so I think our, our descriptions of the homes and you know, our marketing just has to change. A few years ago, I came up with this marketing campaign. And if you look back to my, my Instagram, you’ll see that I had this ad that said, every home has its own story. Yeah. And our job is to tell the story of this home and make it come alive. I think we’ve been inundated by these images of homes, right? You just start clicking through these homes. But what a story does is it engages somebody in it tells the history and the personality of the home, right? You start engaging and connecting with people’s emotions. And I mean, think about even those like Budweiser commercials. If you remember, those are some of these commercials that make you feel a certain way. Yeah, yeah. So what we have to do, so not only now, are we real estate agents, you know, we’ve got to be storytellers and marketers. One thing that I’ve done is when I sit down with a seller is I asked them, you know, their perspective of their home, like, what’s, what’s their favorite, you know, design of the home, the architecture, the history of the home, even sometimes quirks of the homes and have them tell you a story. So if it’s, you know, you know, my kids loved it, you know, hiding out under the stairs, they would play, hide and go seek there. I mean, that’s when you do showings. And when you could talk about that when someone else storage under the stairs, just be like, Oh, I got a funny story. My, you know, my sellers, kids used to, you know, play hide and seek down here. Again, it’s sharing moments, it sharing the history of the home that really makes it come alive.

D.J. Paris 7:10
I have a friend who bought a home recently, and it had a lap pool in the back I, you know, I’m not a practicing realtor myself. So I haven’t really seen one before. And, and it’s really unusual, it’s just a long, thin pool. And, and I said, What’s the story behind that, and he had bought the home, it was there when he bought it. And he told me this story about how the guy was training for this. It was some sort of triathlon, and he was so into it, that he built this into the backyard. And anyway, it created a story because I think you’re right, like what happens when someone buys a home, and their friends come over for the housewarming party as they look at something that might be unique about the home or unusual? And they’re like, what’s the story with that? What happened there? And so you’re right, like, when you have a listing, you now have the ability to tell those stories, and people love to know the history of of a place or what’s unique about it. And, and you’re right, I think so often Realtors FORGET TO to incorporate that. And that’s also one thing that the disruptors in particular the the algorithms, you know, the companies that are trying to, you know, just automate, a lot of the home buying selling process really can’t do. They can’t tell that story. They can show pictures, they can tell you the facts. So I think you’re right, they call that story selling, I think, this idea of Yeah.

Carrie McCormick 8:33
So another thing is, you know, as you’re talking to your sellers, and you’re writing your story about the home, make sure that you include key terms that buyers are likely to be searching, right, you have to think about all buyers searching, and you know, you can take advantage of a little SEO as well. So as people are, you know, Googling certain terms or certain aspects, you know, like lap pools, a good example, you know, I mean, that’s kind of broad, but you know, at least you know, you have some sort of descriptions to that give a little bit of history about it. Also, I’ve started doing a little bit more perspective of the homes from the outside. So because clients aren’t going out as much, you know, they don’t know, excuse me, they don’t know, like, what the street scene looks like. Right. What’s next? We take our pictures, we take a just at the front of that house. Yeah, you know, we don’t know what the neighbors look like. And Google Earth is become a very helpful tool, but also just, you know, videoing coming down the street coming into your, you know, front door, what does it look like to the left to the right. So definitely have more pictures, just in general, but I’d say also start incorporating some pictures from the outside as well.

D.J. Paris 9:45
You know, that’s a really that’s a really good idea, because I know that when I am looking to move, I want to see what’s nearby, and especially now when it’s not as easy to get out and be mobile, and actually go visit the properties. Now is the time For the realtors out here, let me show you what the neighborhood looks like. Let’s show you if you’re in the city, like what’s nearby what cool shops and restaurants and, and retail establishments. So it’s a and what the scenery looks like nearby.

Carrie McCormick 10:11
And now that the trees are budding and you know, everything’s starting to look better. So it’s really a good time to start, you know, doing some outside shots and more neighborhood shots. So, you know, the market is the market. And, you know, I think first and foremost, we have to, you know, worry about everyone’s safety and, and health. But also, you know, real estate is important, because it’s our home, you know, and we obviously, everyone’s spending more time in our homes. And and I do think that in times of uncertainty, you know, real estate can bring a tangible solution, and breathing room for people who are changing crate or craving change in their life. So I think it’s really an important aspect. And, you know, it’s our job to bring it to them.

D.J. Paris 10:59
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I know I’m feeling I don’t know how you’re feeling. But I’ve started to think about, you know, maybe it’s time for me to upsize. Maybe it’s time for me to when, when this all when we return to normal, and maybe even before we return to normal, us to really get serious about you know, I’ve spent, I do, I’m lucky enough to be able to go into the office still. And I’m lucky most people don’t get to do that. But even with the amount of time I’m spending at home, which is more than normal, I’m still feeling confined. And I suspect a tremendous number of people are feeling that same way and, and are, you know, I think now more than ever, and people are also looking online to I think we’re maybe just have a little bit more time and we’re feeling you know, like, oh, maybe it’s a little too too close for comfort. And, you know, now’s a great time to reach out to those clients. And obviously check in to see how they’re doing, but maybe even wait for them to tell you hey, you know, it’s good thing you called I’m actually thinking about maybe maybe finding a bigger space or just a different space,

Carrie McCormick 11:58
right? Especially work from home, you know, people are going to be working from home, they need their own space. So it’s an interesting time, and it’s our job to you know, to help keep the real estate market moving forward and doing the right thing.

D.J. Paris 12:13
Yeah, I also wonder too, and I don’t know much about the commercial world we have we’ve had commercial brokers on the show before but I’m curious and how many people once you know were able to return to work, I wonder how many employers are going to say you know, this work at home things works pretty well. And so I think from the residential side, there are going to be a lot of people going and I don’t really have a dedicated space for our home office. And this might be more of a you know, regular thing for me now or maybe at least some of the days of the week I’m going to work from home. And so I think there’s gonna be a lot of movement when every thing returns and rates are so low and it’s such a great time if you are looking to buy to to just be doing that and so I think now more than ever realtors are so important just staying in touch with the clients you know waiting for them even to reach out saying you know, I think I need to upgrade so I agree. I agree. So here’s my marketing tip of the of the month and you know, this might not necessarily apply to everyone listening so I apologize for that in advance but I think this will apply to most most broke Most brokers and when I say brokers I need to remember that not everywhere. Realtors are not always called brokers. So agent broker, realtor, whatever it is, you call yourself real estate professional. But here in Chicago this is quite popular and I imagine in many metropolitan areas, even maybe more rural areas you can still do this. So in you know we all know about the MLS and the MLS. I’m going to be talking about rentals just for a moment of course the MLS has lots and lots of rentals. Typically these are owners who are looking to rent out properties that they have two potential tenants but there’s also another side of rentals which are third party management these would be companies that either own or manage buildings or, or units that they typically don’t list on the MLS and a lot of times Realtors forget that their these opportunities exist because they’re not on the MLS and so often we’re tied to the MLS and thinking that’s the inventory. Well that is the inventory but there’s also this non MLS inventory so here in Chicago at least there are dozens of big property management companies that never list any of their units on the MLS and so if you’re a broker in an area and you have renters you know you can oftentimes feel limited by what’s available on the MLS. So if you can reach out to these, these these properties, you just call them and ask say hey, do you work with with realtors are you willing to pay a commission if I bring you someone and right now it’s actually kind of a you know, realtors don’t have to do as much work because a lot of these these management companies have their own in house leasing staff. They love it when brokers call they love taking right now they’re not getting calls, either they’re there, the phone’s not ringing as much. So if you have somebody that’s looking for an apartment, now it’s, you know, it’s probably in some ways easier than ever to pass them over to some of these leasing consultants, you still obviously earn a commission, and they’ll do the virtual showing, or if they’re able to go see the property that’s possible to, but just remember, these opportunities exist. And really, it’s as simple as just, you know, going online doing a search for apartments, if you’re a realtor, and just reaching out to the management company and say, Hey, I don’t know if you if you partner with agents or not, but I have somebody that would really love to see this property. Do you guys accept those kinds of referrals? And you’ll find more often than not that those, especially right now, and things are slower, those firms want your calls. And so reach out, you can pass it over to their leasing consultants, they’re the best ones to do the showings anyway, you can maybe be there on a virtual, you know, in the background, or just turn it immediately over. And I’ve heard from a lot of management companies right now saying, Please, please, please have your realtor’s call us we need tenants. So great opportunity. And if you’re in an area that you’ve never done that before, great opportunity to reach out to those management companies and build a relationship and say, Hey, I do get renters, and I would love to send them over your way. So that’s great. I agree. Awesome. Well, if anyone out there is listening who would like to work with one of the top Realtors in the Chicagoland area which by the way we are the second largest real estate market in the country are second or third. This is a big deal. Carrie is legitimately one of the very top Agents Brokers. She is well respected. She’s been doing it for 20 plus years. Carrie, what’s the best way a client can reach out to you or somebody who’s looking to work with you?

Carrie McCormick 16:49
Sure. So call I love when people call so it’s 312-961-4612 or you could shoot me a quick email at Kerry ca RR ie at@properties.com.

D.J. Paris 17:03
Also, please follow Kerry on Instagram, you can find her at Carey McCormick real estate I I’m oftentimes not impressed always with how Realtors promote themselves on social media. Carrie is the exception, she just does it. so unbelievably well, she does it all herself too, which is even more impressive. So if you want to see what a really impressive and wonderful Instagram account looks like follow her there Carrie McCormick real estate and also if you want to see a really great realtor website as well, Carrie McCormick R e.com is where you can go and learn more about Carrie. But definitely reach out to her if you are interested in finding a top agent to work with. Or if you’re just interested in learning more about Carrie. Well, Carrie, thank you so much. I’m glad to know that you and your family are safe and healthy. And you are still going strong. Thank you. Oh, God, I lost you for a second. Yeah, thanks. Thanks again. And we will, we’ll see you next time I want to on behalf of Carrie and myself, we want to thank the listeners for continuing to support our show. We’re now four years in and we’re going as strong as ever, and we have the most number of listeners we’ve ever had, which is so so we’re so grateful for that. And also please tell a friend think of one other agent that could benefit from watching or listening to these episodes and sending them over our podcast. And also please follow us on Facebook, you can find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and behalf on behalf of the listeners and myself. Carrie, once again, thank you for taking time we’re doing this on a Sunday morning, by the way. And that’s how dedicated Carrie is so kind to be on our show on taking time away from from her business and family to share with our listeners. So thank you so so much. Thank you. All right, we’ll see you next time.

Carrie McCormick 18:56
Awesome. You’re the best. Thanks. Thanks

Emily Ackerman of Chicago Home Collective at Compass was recently awarded National Association of REALTORS® winning the 30 under 30 award. This young superstar has spent countless hours defining and adjusting her process so that when she works with buyers, sellers and renters, she is able to provide a first class experience. In our conversation Emily discusses her ongoing commitment to professionalism and what agents can do right now to keep their business active and growing even while working from home.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Emily Ackerman can be reached at 913.314.3112 and emily.ackerman@compass.com


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. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. And we’re just in just a moment we’re gonna be speaking with top producer Emily Ackerman. Before we get to Emily, as always, we want to start the show by saying thank you to everyone who is listening, or possibly watching. Right now we thank you for supporting our show for listening and for telling a friend. And we also want to say a special thanks to all of the nice comments and emails and just well wishes that we receive from listeners all over the country. We got a couple today and we really means a lot to us. We certainly aren’t asking you to tell us how great we are. But anytime you want to do that, we love it. So thank you for continuing to tell us how this show has impacted your business and how it’s helped you. Also please follow us on Facebook you can find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and the reason to follow us on Facebook every single day we find an article online that can help you grow your business and we present it there. And also we do live recordings of our all of our episodes on Facebook, we stream them there so you can watch them because normally it takes us a couple of weeks to actually produce the episode so you can watch it and not have to wait for us to to do all of the post production that we do. So again find us on Facebook facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and also please continue to tell a friend think of another real estate agent that could benefit from hearing from these types of interviews and pass along our podcast and I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. And now on to our interview with Emily Ackerman.

Today on the show we have Emily Ackerman of Chicago home collective which is part of compass. If you’re not familiar with Emily, Emily strives to create a positive and engaging experience for her clients. All while bringing a refreshingly candid, yet persistent attitude to the transaction. And expert on many of Chicago’s most popular neighborhoods, Emily leverages her networking resources to accomplish her client’s goals and is described by them as savvy tenacious and always taking indicate sorry educational approach. Emily has consistently proved herself as an accountable and trusted advisor, and in 2020, was selected by realtor magazine and National Association of REALTORS as one of their 30 under 30 honorees for young professionals across the country, which is a super huge honor. Please follow Emily. You can find her you can find her online on our website Chicago home collective.com. And also on Instagram, which is Emily. App. Sorry, Emily Ackerman underscore real estate. So Emily Ackerman underscore Realty. Anyway, Emily, thank you so much.

Emily Ackerman 3:54
Thank you for having me. And for such a warm introduction. I’m excited to be here. I’m just thrilled to have you know, to be a part of this, and thanks for having me on.

D.J. Paris 4:05
Yeah, no, thank you. And we were really impressed because National Association of REALTORS did just come out with their 30 under 30. And we had had previously another recipient of that and as soon as we were done as Jordan piles, which a few episodes ago, everyone should yeah, and we were just Emily and I were talking about him just before we went on. And he said you absolutely have to talk to Emily Ackerman so here we are. So we’re really thrilled to have you and thank you so much.

Emily Ackerman 4:32
Thanks for the thanks for the plug JP

D.J. Paris 4:38
so tell us a little bit about you know, how you how and when and why you got into real estate love to hear that.

Emily Ackerman 4:45
Yeah, um, you know, I wish it was a super unique story, but when so I’ve always loved Chicago I fell in love with the city years ago, I used to go to camp in Wisconsin. I would spend my summers there for seven years. And I always had friends from the surrounding areas and had this infatuation with the city. And after going to school, I went to IU Bloomington, I knew that this was like the next place I was headed. And I was going to do anything to get to the city and not go back and move in with my parents in Kansas City. And I found an internship and I was I always liked marketing and PR, and I ended up working for a firm represented. They specialize in like hospitality businesses, restaurants, chefs and stuff. And I had a part time internship for the summer. So 2014. And I was just like, I can’t be doing this. I always had a little bit of an interest in real estate, my uncle is a developer back in Houston, and he would encourage me a little bit to go work with him. And if anyone’s ever been to Houston, I’m originally from Dallas, Texas. It’s, it’s not as beautiful the city as Chicago. And there was no way I was going to go back there. And so when I really committed to getting my license, here, I while I was getting my license, because I had a part time internship, I was only working three days a week, and on my nights out, or my nights off, I would go out to the city, I would go to restaurants and bars, I would bring any of my friends in at 22, you can still go out in the middle of the week and have a fairly easy recovery. But my objection was just or I just wanted to go out and meet people and start building a network in the city. And so through that I would gather business cards. And the next morning like LinkedIn or email these people, these players were like commercial agents, or just had some sort of connection to the real estate community and just was like, Hey, can I can I learn about what you do? Is there anyone that you can put me in touch with, and eventually I, another top eight compass agent who I won’t name, but he helped me find my first apartment, he ended up putting me in touch with Kelly Parker, who I now work with today, and who makes is the principal and founder of Chicago home collective, my team. And since then it’s like, that’s what that’s what we do together. So it’s that was like the beginning steps of like, how I got into the business, and she’s been an incredible mentor to me, since then, we still work together.

D.J. Paris 7:34
Yeah, that’s it’s a great story. And it’s so interesting, a couple of things stood out, in particular that you on your own went around and went out and you know, sought after people in the industry that you wanted to connect with and learn from, which is really, in some ways, sort of the intention of the show, as well as a lot of other, you know, organizations try to connect people with, with, you know, the top producers or people that are just more knowledgeable or experienced than I always think seems like the smartest way to learn. And, and I just really applaud that initiative for you to go out and do that on your own. That’s at a pretty young age to,

Emily Ackerman 8:13
I don’t even know how I had that much confidence. I think I’m so excited to be in a new city and I had this energy where it was like, What do I have to lose? And yeah, I think that that took me really far, because it got me out of my comfort zone. And through that would go to like networking events and stuff. Thankfully, I don’t really, I can rely on a lot of my clients. And I’ve organically built my business. But I still kind of reflect back on those days. And that was really tough, but I pushed myself to do it. And I’ve actually turned a lot of those connections into friends now.

D.J. Paris 8:49
Yeah, I hear that a lot. It’s a constant refrain from our guests is that over time, they’re like, Oh, I’ve gone to weddings, or, you know, birthday parties, or anniversary celebrations or whatever, for these people that they helped sell a home to X number of years ago. And they just entwined themselves into their lives, you know, through all the different real estate activity, and they become as important to them as you know, their closest friends. So it’s, it’s really kind of cool to watch that. So you’re at the beginning stages of building those relationships, not beginning, really, but the early stages still. But I you know, we have so many listeners who are, you know, maybe a similar age or even maybe older, but who are thinking how does somebody in their mid 20s or early 20s? I guess even when you were really starting to do this, like that’s a difficult endeavor. Can you talk a little bit about how you started building your business? Because I assume when he came to Chicago, I don’t know, most of my friends in my 20s Well, maybe early or mid 20s weren’t purchasing homes. They just weren’t. So can you talk a little bit about how did you get started like what did you do?

Emily Ackerman 9:56
Yeah, I mean, that was definitely something that I had, like was mentally struggling and through because you’re you get licensed and you’re so hungry and you’re ready to go. You’re like womp, womp, you know, my network from from Bloomington where I had a great network. But they weren’t really in the stage of life where they were thinking about buying a property. And so you’re faced with this challenge of, how do I get my business to the point of where I want it to be, while utilizing people who Buying a house is the last thing that’s on their mind. And so I think I really dove into rentals. And I’m sure you’ve had agent, I know you’ve had agents on this podcast that say, do not forget about those people. Because ultimately, I think providing expert knowledge and service to those renders is really they have been, like the bread and butter of my run of my referral base. Because it’s, they remember how the level of service that you provide and how you treated them, no matter the price point. And so what I did was, I originally had put all of everyone I knew from from Bloomington, who had moved to Chicago, I put them in a database and a CRM, put as much or input as much information as possible birthdays, where they lived, and I just was, like, sucked it up. And if I asked them what their addresses were, and I asked if it was okay, and I would make a joke, can I can I spam you with my, you know, with my mailers and stuff, and I’m going to try and send you items of value and things that something that you will be able to have like a takeaway from learn something. And so most people just say yes, and Right, right. Yeah. And I think I started getting recognized by the information I was putting on these mailers, rent versus buy, and just just more of like, memorable collateral. And I think through that, that helps me grow my business, and continuously marketing to those renters and not forgetting about them, and just checking in with them, and letting them know, Hey, I’m here to help if you need anything, even if it’s not, I’m not the one person helping you, but something doesn’t feel right, or you’re representing yourself, and you want me to look over something, just letting them know that you’re there. And I think naturally, people will gravitate to you. And then ultimately, when they are ready to buy a home, they think of you know, your top of mind. Yeah, it’s

D.J. Paris 12:27
really smart. Because the reality of it is, is that renters, you know, typically don’t most don’t use an agent at all right? They don’t use a broker, you know, it’s it’s, you know, the, the access to the database, so to speak, is is pretty available. So for people that, you know, if you’re a real estate professional and you are working with renters stay in touch with these are people you do not want to forget about, because at the end of that term, they may be interested in just moving to another apartment somewhere else, which of course is another opportunity to work with them or in a in a best case scenario. They’ve now been educated by you about why purchasing makes sense. And so

Emily Ackerman 13:06
I encourage newer agents to not be discouraged if someone doesn’t use you. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I’m sure you have this conversation a million times with other agents, we talk about our best friend not using us or yada, yada, yes, that’s happened to me too. But people will never forget the way that they feel when they’re conversing with you. And if you’re able to give them just a little bit of valuable information, when they are on these other sites and Zillow, and Trulia and have all access to other to these like rental network properties, I have had clients rent on their own, and then come back to me to rent their next place because they just remembered what it felt like, you know, to partner together and sometimes at that point, they have a higher price point. They have a better understanding of the city, and they’re not all over the place. And it just creates like for really awesome partnership.

D.J. Paris 14:02
100% I couldn’t agree more. And almost everybody that I’ve ever had on the show, not everybody but I would say 95% of the guests, we’ve had started out doing rentals as a way to supplement their income in between sales and also learn the business and start, you know, working directly with clients. And they it typically just is the quicker entry path unless you happen to just have a bunch of friends waiting to buy or sell copies you know, as soon as your license which most people don’t have. So this is a great a great piece of advice. I also so I want to kind of skip forward a little bit into this award you just won because this is really important and a big news and there’s only I think two people in Chicago and I apologize if there was more. Okay, there were three Okay, so there were three people in the entire country that were from this city you were one of them. So talk a little bit about why you think you were you were selected. What is there do you feel like you’re doing things did Currently, or to then most other, you know, brokers?

Emily Ackerman 15:04
Um, I think my short answer is, is no, I. And it’s, it’s funny, I don’t think that I’m doing anything like extraordinary that someone else isn’t doing. You have to find the few things that you are confident doing and do them very well. And I think it’s easy to spread yourself thin and not focus, or and then when you spread yourself thin, you’re not putting as much time and energy into the into all those things, rather than honing in on the few that help actually grow this. Yeah, it’s

D.J. Paris 15:41
a jack of all trades, master of none, sort of thing. And, and as I’ve gotten older, I’m older, of course, the the new are, I’ve realized that there’s a lot period of my life with my own skill sets in the business sort of endeavors that I do. And if I would have hyperfocused in a couple of those skill sets versus trying to learn everything, I, you know, I probably would be better off today. So it certainly applies to real estate. So if our listeners are trying to interpret sort of how to how to do this for themselves, think about like, the easiest example would be like geography like where are you oriented? For your business? Are you trying to be an expert in one neighborhood or a part of a city? Are you trying to be all things to all people and taking deals, wherever, you know, think about that, and think about the idea of specializing. And then over time you become really valuable to people of that particular demographic?

Emily Ackerman 16:37
Yeah, I mean, I think for me, naturally, the I focus on a very curated process, I’m very hands on, I consider myself a full service broker. And that is the expectation that I even that I have for myself, no matter who my client is. So even from rentals to first time homebuyers who I’ve worked with a number of first time homebuyers, I have a process in place, from the beginning that we make contact, I have templates that I use it for emails, I hope none of my clients are like, not in a bad way. But I’m just like, material, you have a roadmap for how you do things, and it just becomes a little bit more natural each time. And you follow that, it becomes easier and easier. And miraculously, you know, your business just grows, because you’re continuing on that path and tweaking as needed. And that is just something that has worked really well for me, in my business. Yeah, and so that’s just, that’s something that I focus on.

D.J. Paris 17:46
You’re such a process person, I can tell that from even before having having spoken to you today because I have to share with the audience when we send out a pre interview questionnaire, just to get a flavor of what maybe the guest wants to talk about. And then usually we have to hunt our guests down to like, Please return this, we need to start doing research. Emily got hers to us. No problem. There was no problem at all. She did it quickly. But she she gave us so much detail. And I was really, really impressed. I’ve been doing this a long time. And we don’t usually get this level of detail. But it made me think I bet she’s like this with your customers or clients. I bet she has processes in place. And I know it’s it’s even from the meeting. I mean, you have a whole sort of itinerary that you run through. And then that extends to all areas of your business. I’m guessing whether it’s after the sale, you probably have a follow up process after so. But yeah, so how important is process to your, to your practice?

Emily Ackerman 18:44
I think it’s I mean, it’s, if not the most one of the most important factors because as you begin to get busier as an agent, it seems that your timing, you have less time to do certain things. And so by implementing a process and sticking to that, that has allowed me to not have to like reach so far mentally, it’s like, okay, I have in my Dropbox, the intro to buyer email or intro to seller, okay, once we get photos back, this is the template that I use. And like I said, you tweak as needed, but it the the foundation is already there. And it’s not like you’re not creating a curated, you know, experience for your clients. But you’re creating shortcuts to help make your life easier. And also expedite in just create a more efficient transaction. And so that has allowed me to focus on the things that are really important in building relationships and maybe putting like less time into the smaller tasks that just are part of the real estate transaction.

D.J. Paris 19:54
Yeah, I really could not agree more with all of that being said and now we’re in And as the time we’re recording this, it’s still where the country is still largely under lockdown. And we certainly here are in Illinois, how has those processes shifted for you with, you know, some more limitations on our ability to sort of be mobile? Or has it not really shifted? Are you still just following a similar path that you were before?

Emily Ackerman 20:20
Yeah, I mean, I, I don’t want to advocate and say business, you know, business as usual over here. I’ve had to make quite a bit of adjustments to my day to day because I’m not out. And, like, physically doing showings, I feel that us as agents, we’re very responsible for, you know, we go into people’s homes. And I have, I have a twin brother who lives in New York, and he is an ICU nurse at New York Presbyterian. And if anything, if there’s anything that we could be doing, it’s, it’s just staying home and being responsible. And it’s tough. I have some clients who are very eager by the sidelines, and I have gone into vacant properties, but I haven’t gotten into any, like anyone’s home that that people are living in. And so, you know, the showings have slowed down. I don’t know. Anyone. Tell me if you you know, if you’re

D.J. Paris 21:14
no, we have we have 660 agents at our firm. And yeah, everyone’s a little bit, I mean, to a lot bit slower. Everyone’s Yeah,

Emily Ackerman 21:21
exactly. But in terms of like, those processes, like they’re not going away, they’re just being altered a bit. And if anything, it’s giving time to, I guess, sticking to those processes, but adding in different strategies, for instance, spending more time sourcing properties from top agent network, and, you know, compass coming soon, and those sorts of sites so that we can show buyers and sellers that, you know, you’re still top of mind that I’m still from my home office doing what I need to do to create as much success. So and we just do that within the means of what everyone feels comfortable with. It seems everyone’s falling on, like, a slightly different, like side of the spectrum. But, uh, you know, I’m doing my best to kind of stick to what I’ve already put in place, because that’s what’s going to keep us feeling energized during this time. And, you know, during this time of uncertainty,

D.J. Paris 22:24
yeah, I think I think that’s really well said we, I have a very interesting. Well, it’s not my I mean, a lot of people are saying it, but I’m curious to, from my own experience, as been even looking around. I’m at the office right now. But typically, I’m at I’m at home outside of this, of course. And I’m starting to feel like a little claustrophobic in my own place. And I’ve started to have those fantasies of like, maybe it’s time to upgrade. And I wonder, and I’m sort of in the business a bit, you know, and so that shouldn’t be something that is triggered by something like this, for me, as it’s kind of something that I’m participate in on a regular basis. But it’s brought that particular feeling like front and center. And now that we’re all spending more time at home, and I’m like, I wonder how many people are feeling that same way? And when this all goes back to normal? Maybe there’ll be just this huge boom and activity? I mean, I don’t know. Yeah,

Emily Ackerman 23:17
I mean, I’m going to be optimistic here and say, and, you know, based off of the experts and you know, who compasses brought in, and even the economist that that I’m watching online, everyone at that major consensus seems to be that, yes, we press the pause button right now, I am not going to get into like all of the details of what you know why we’re in a very different place than we were in like, for instance, oh, eight. Sure. But it’s, I think most people are on the sidelines. Obviously, the sellers that are on the market right now are motivated in some capacity. But I think everyone being cooped up at home, they’re either they’re probably with you know, someone else or their significant other even by themselves. And they’re thinking, Okay, I might need a change of scenery. And it’s just kind of the time where those seeds are planted. And, you know, those people are thinking, Okay, well, if God forbid, this has to happen again, or there’s another another wave in the future am I going to be satisfied in the space that I’m in right and so on. I’ve had a lot of people reach out I actually I have a virtual buyers meeting later this evening. So I know that this is on people’s minds, and ultimately people will have to move and they’ll have those changes in their lives that require them to find either downsize or to get more space. And I hope that you know, we all get through this as quickly as possible. And I like I said, I’m gonna be optimistic and say, I think once we get through this kind of the curve and we flatten it, that we’re We’re all super busy, and we’re able to help our clients find that new space. So,

D.J. Paris 25:05
yeah, I think there’s gonna be a lot of people looking to, to upsize, or increase, I really just think that I mean, I know I’m going to start looking for that. And with rates being where they’re at, it’s a very attractive time, obviously, right this very second, it’s we’re going through a horrible time. But this from a financial perspective, you know, the rates or rates are low. And so this is an opportunity where people who, yes, maybe they’re not going to move for the next year, are going to start to think about it. So I think, once hopefully, we return to normal sooner rather than later. Once that eventually happens. I’d be very interested to see how many people are like, Okay, I need to find a bigger place.

Emily Ackerman 25:45
Yeah. And I think now more than ever, we recognize that we feel so safe and secure in our homes. And that’s what it’s always been, for me, this is why I do what I do is, I think that you are your most authentic self, when you’re at home, and you feel that, you know, I think your home should elicit your best self. And right now being cooped up at home, you’re finding reasons that you might want to find a bigger space, and your needs have changed. And I hope that we all come to that. And, you know, if someone does want to move that, I’m top of mind, and hopefully I can be a part of that journey for them.

D.J. Paris 26:31
Yeah, I want to just go back, you just said something very profound that I did not thought of, and it’s absolutely true. Which is such a cool thing you’d said Home is where you find your best self. And that is one of the one of the most sort of It’s poetic and beautiful, but it’s also very true. And I think that also speaks to if that was your belief about your job, which it is, it would explain how motivated you are to really help your clients. But I just wanted to honor you for that’s a really like, great thing you said I wanted. And definitely for people who are looking for, you know, different ways to communicate with your clients. That’s a really powerful metaphor. And to say like, my job is to help you, you know, find this best version of yourself by finding the place that your dreams,

Emily Ackerman 27:19
I mean, kind of at the core values of Chicago home collective, my team, and we all kind of have this like, like kind of odd ideology, that, you know, your, your home houses your story. And I feel so responsible, like helping people get to that point. And the energy that you cultivate in your home, like it really needs to be that safe and secure space. And I think that’s just what we’re going on what’s going on in the world right now is reaffirming that and like literally, because there is this pandemic and the outside of those boundaries, we it’s a little bit more of an unknown. So I think people crave that feeling and hope as a result of that. Hopefully, the housing market, you know, I think the Chicago market will represent how people value their homes. So I hope we’re all very busy later in the year.

D.J. Paris 28:12
Yeah, I think so. And I think again, there’s just a lot of people now realizing, Oh, I might have to spend unfortunately, you know, right now I’m spending more time at home that you probably most people would probably prefer. But again thinking, Well, what if this were to happen in the future? You know, would this be an adequate place to go through something like this again, which of course we hope doesn’t happen. But yeah, I think it’s it’s very, it’ll be very interesting to see. I’m curious to know. So a big question we get from our listeners who skew older are always interested in younger agents for this one particular reason, which is they’re like, I do not understand how a younger brokers are utilizing social media. And I’m not asking you to explain how social media works, of course, okay, good. But how important is it into your business? Is it a, a stream of of referrals and possible clients? Is it more of just a way to stay connected? How are you using it? How important is it for you?

Emily Ackerman 29:10
Yeah, no, that’s a great question. I don’t really think of myself as an influencer or anything like that. But just as you said, I use social media to stay connected. It’s a great for a platform to be able to not to be able to comment and share and show people that, you know, Hey, I see you and I see what you’re putting out in the world and I appreciate it and kudos to you. I think it can work in a reverse way where I’m adding value and everything that I put on my Instagram, I really try and think to myself, Okay, is someone going to learn something from this or am I just putting something out there to put it out there and so, I like to be very intentional with with my social media. I’m not the most active the New Year’s resolution I I mean, that’s just something that’s always been on the back of my mind, because I consider myself kind of like a more low profile or behind the scenes. I’m working on integrating social media more. But with that said, you know, I think it’s a great way to stay connected. And I do get, I’ve gotten leads off of it. And I’m actually working with a buyer right now who found me on Instagram, and she’s like, I’ve been following you for over a year, I love your energy, you’re exactly who I would want to work with. And that was, I don’t want to say surprising, but it made me feel really good. Because many times as a younger agent, even you’re, you’re not quite sure, if you’re on the right path, and you’re doing the right thing, but you’re doing your best. And it’s nice when that gets recognized. So I would say more, more than ever, this could be a great tool to use, especially since we’re not out and about and the ways that we have been in quarantine. And it’s a great way to add value and stay connected. And it’s also free. So I think for any older agents who haven’t dipped into social media, or even younger agents who maybe have don’t have like, a budget or anything like that social media is like the best way to dip in and show people that you’re still doing you and you’re out there.

D.J. Paris 31:25
Yeah, it really is. And if nothing else, it’s if nothing else, it’s just a great way to stay connected to your sphere of influence. If it does nothing else, as just a human being, it makes staying in contact much easier. And you can demonstrate care and compassion and empathy, and especially through these sorts of times, you don’t always have to pick up the phone, although that’s always a wonderful idea. But being able to send, you know, well wishes to people who might be struggling and posting about it or, or even just celebrating their successes or laughing at the jokes. You know, all of that is is really important, probably now more than, than we’ve known in recent times, because people are sometimes at home alone. And you know, they may be, you know, without a lot of human interaction. So that’s a great way as, as a you know, real estate professional where your job is to maintain these relationships. But is a great time now to reach out and demonstrate that. Yeah, I read this story about you. And I think I want to end with this because this well, I read the story that that was provided about. And I thought this is particularly not that it needs to be the most amazing story ever told, because I don’t want to set that expectation for you. But here’s why I liked it. Because I think it really reflected who you are. And I think this it’s a silly story. But it actually is a perfect sort of idea for our listeners to go, Okay, if I have this sort of attitude and mentality. Here’s where I might end up. So if you don’t mind me, or if you don’t mind that long preamble. Tell us about the drape story.

Emily Ackerman 32:58
Oh, my God. I like just close this property. So Mike. Yes. Okay. No, I think this is honestly a great story because it really kind of it shows who I am at my core and like the type of agent I am. So I have this property that the sellers had moved out. They were currently living out of state and we were doing some work to the unit to get it ready to go and it was like 95% ready I had scheduled my photographer was going to be meeting him and the my clients, she got her painter back to do some touch ups. She was like super neurotic about it wanted it perfect. What are the painters? Do they take the drapes off the walls, and I had arrived early before my photographer making sure everything was great and you know, wiping things down. And I you know, I walk into the room and I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me. Their drapes are sitting in the middle of the room. I’m like, like, I’m five foot two, there’s no way I could, you know, physically get these back, you know, reinstalled. I’m like, okay, Emily, I’m talking to myself. I’m like, we got to get it in gear. So I found out I’m like, Okay, where’s the nearest Ace Hardware? I drive myself over there. I somehow like miraculously convinced the manager I traded my driver’s license in to use like their store ladder, because apparently you can’t return ladders these days. And I don’t know what I would have done with like, a ladder. And ladders

D.J. Paris 34:33
are really expensive.

Emily Ackerman 34:35
Expensive. Expensive. Yeah, they thought I was crazy. They’re like, you’re basically going to steal our ladder. And I’m like, no, okay, here’s my driver’s license. I’m going to be back in the next hour. So just like bear with me. They’re like, okay, girlfriend, like, you know, we have your driver’s license. So I hauled this ladder into my car. It barely fit I was like that person with like their trunk open door. Driving back to this property driving slow because I’m like, I don’t have a driver’s license, I get back to the property, haul it all the way up all these stairs. It’s a duplex. So I have even more stairs to go down and I get all of these drapes up and haul it all the way down these steps into my car and returned it. And to make it even better. It was so hot out. I mean, I had pit stains. Thankfully, I didn’t have any other appointments the rest of the day. But it’s like that’s kind of like, you know what I had to do to make sure that my photos looked amazing because that property was going on the market in days. I needed my you know, my photos. And I think I remember I think I remember texting Kelly Parker and saying anyone who’s questioning any any Millennials about not being resourceful? Come at me. Yeah, I was like, I was super hyped to how resourceful I was. But like that’s, I think, a prime example of what you have to do for your clients. And I sucked it up and I and I actually remember I was not like, in like, you know, I was, I think it was in a blazer that day. And I just took it off. And I was like, let’s do this. And yeah, the photos turned out great. And we sold the property for full asking price. So made me feel good.

D.J. Paris 36:22
Well, if there are any other buyers, sellers, investors, renters who want to work with a realtor that’s willing to basically steal the ladder. No, you did not steal the ladder, you you bartered with your your driver’s license and then go to their home to stand up on your tiptoes on the top of the ladder to get the drapes in stalled for the photos if somebody’s looking for a Realtor with that sort of dedication, because we do have listeners who oftentimes find their broker this way, Emily, what’s the best way somebody should reach out to you?

Emily Ackerman 36:55
The best way would probably be email, Emily E M, i l y at Chicago home collective.com. You can also call or text me I still have my Kansas City number. It’s unique 913-314-3112. Or you can find me on the compass site, or Chicago home collective or at Chicago home collective on Instagram also.

D.J. Paris 37:18
Yeah, and also Yeah, follow Emily as well on Instagram, which is Emily Ackerman underscore real estate. So Emily, this was a real honor for us. And I think you I know you gave our listeners a lot of great tips, in particular around being just having a process and just going for it. And just keeping your head down and doing the work and, and the success that you’ve had in your you know, early, early part of your career is so exciting and very inch. I’m sure our listeners will be very interested to see, as you know, your star continues to rise. So thank you so much for being on the show. On behalf of Emily and myself to the listeners of course we say thank you. We ask the listeners to do we ask you to do two quick things. If you don’t, they don’t mind before signing off. One think of one other real estate professional that you know that could benefit from hearing from an interview just like this one with Emily. In fact, how about this one and send them this episode and you can shoot them right over to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com We have all of our episodes, of course there you can stream it right on our website. Also, follow us on Facebook. So we’re keeping it real I’m sorry, we’re facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod or just search for keeping it real podcast will pop up. But every single day we post an article that we find online that was written specifically to help real estate agents grow their business. And also we post the videos to these interviews. And you can actually watch them live as we’re recording them on our Facebook page. So please follow us there. Emily, thank you so much for being part of our show. We were so excited to have you and again, congratulations on the 30 under 30 award. That’s absolutely amazing. I appreciate that. And thanks and we will see everyone next time. Thanks.

Emily Ackerman 39:03
next time. Bye

For 32 years Sharon Rizzo of The Rizzo Group at Coldwell Banker has been one of Chicago’s top producing real estate brokers. She’s been the city’s #1 agent (out of 42k agents) and has built up a team that specializes in everything from luxury properties to investment opportunities for developers. In our conversation Sharon discusses the importance of adding investments to your portfolio, and how she and her team are staying as busy as ever during the current stay-at-home order.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Sharon Rizzo can be reached at (312) 953-4086 and sharon.rizzo@cbexchange.com.


Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Agent youtube.com. Would you like more leads that find you instead of you finding them. Let the YouTube agents show you how the YouTube agents started making videos with no sphere of influence. This year, they’re on pace to close more than 100 sales all from Leads generated On YouTube, they put a step by step video program to show you exactly what to do and what not to do to become a YouTube real estate superstar. Visit agent youtube.com to learn more and sign up today. That’s agent youtube.com. And now on to the show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And guys, we have over 150 episodes now. And that is really exciting. And I encourage everyone who’s newer to the show, to go back and read through the titles and descriptions of previous episodes, because so much of the content that our guests share is really timeless, and will could really stand you know, my idea starting the show was to create a library of the stories of top producers. And we’re really proud to say we’re we’ve hit a bit of a milestone. So we only have done that, of course because we have listeners. So thank you to everyone who has supported us and who continues to support us please remember to tell a friend and follow us also on Facebook. But guys, I just wanted to say thank you and now on to our interview with the great Sharon Rizzo.

Today on the show we have Sharon Rizzo of the Rizzo group from Coldwell Banker here in Chicago. If you’re not yet familiar with Sharon, everyone in Chicago who’s listening is already familiar. But for our listeners who aren’t yet familiar with Sharon, who live elsewhere, let me tell you a little bit about her. Sharon Rizzo is a familiar name in Chicago real estate. Her 32 year career is peppered with professional accolades, multimillion dollar deals, and industry recognition among local and national developers. More recently, she was the Chicago Association of Realtors Golden Eagle winner, which basically means she was the top agent in the city. And by the way, we should mention before I continue with Sharon’s bio, there are 42,000 realtors in the Chicagoland area. So this is a big, big accomplishment. It turns out, she did over 114 million in residential sales in 2005. Sharon had more than 60 million in sales in one year, making her the number one agent in Lincoln Park. That same year, she co founded a family run brokerage with her husband, Santo and their daughter Kelly, which later evolved into the Rizzo group. Now at your service through Coldwell Banker, Residential Brokerage, and I drive by her office every day on the way into my own office. And obviously, it’s a little The streets are a little less crowded at the moment, but excited to finally get Sharon Rizzo on the socials. Sharon, thank you so much for being part of the show.

Sharon Rizzo 3:32
Well, you’re welcome, DJ. I’m thrilled to be here. And good to know that you drive by the office all the time. We’re one of the few offices that actually has a parking lot,

D.J. Paris 3:40
usually huge parking lot.

Sharon Rizzo 3:42
It’s the know how cool is that?

D.J. Paris 3:44
For our listeners, Linkin Park is one of the most desired areas in all of Chicago. And parking is a massive premium. So you guys have the biggest parking lot of any any real estate firm I’ve ever seen.

Sharon Rizzo 3:58
very thrilling. We’re all happy about that, for sure.

D.J. Paris 4:01
Well tell us a little bit about you. You’ve been in real estate for such a long time and have such

Sharon Rizzo 4:05
oh my gosh, for a long time. I know how you got started. I know I was I had sort of a weird background. I mean, not weird, but an unusual background in that I was an audiologist actually at the University of Chicago. So I said I’ve great from the neck up, treat. We treated a lot of hearing issues, but mostly I diagnosed hearing problems. And I had a part time practice there. And then in my much younger days, I was under contract to Playboy models and traveled about 100,000 miles a year mostly as a narrator model spokesperson for major corporations and got married and decided I wanted to have a family and it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to travel 100,000 miles a year with a young family. So I was looking for something not to replace the audiology necessarily because that was a flexible part time thing but to replace the modeling, I was kind of done smiling and being on all the time. So I thought it was a good time. And my husband was with American Invesco at the time, which was sort of the condominium conversion king of the business. And he got me started and got me interested in sales, which I never thought I would be interested in. And little by little I eased into it completely became a sales manager for them, gave up my practice at the University of Chicago and became a full time realtor was also working for NBC a little bit as a broadcaster. So I gave that up as well. And I’ve been in real estate, the rest of my entire career, up until now.

D.J. Paris 5:49
Yeah, right. And everything’s changed. But, of course, I’m sure you’re still trucking along, you have a huge team we should mention, Sharon’s team is 15. People at this point, 15 realtors, and may even be growing in the future. But which can tell us a bit about why you developed a team? Was there a need at some point where business just became so so big and constant that you needed additional help?

Sharon Rizzo 6:16
Yes, that’s exactly what happened. I had been a sales manager in general brokerage for many years anyway. So I was used to managing a large group of people. So it was kind of natural for me. And little by little, I found that people sort of one or two to join, and it just really grew organically. As a result, we were also working on some very special projects that really required more people than just what my husband and myself could could accommodate. So it grew a little by little and now we have a team of 15. And they are really a diverse, terrific group. I can’t speak highly enough of the team. We’re very excited and the sales manager at Coldwell Banker has been so supportive and just terrific. So it’s been a great, great opportunity for us with Coldwell Banker.

D.J. Paris 7:07
Yeah, I am curious to know and I’m sure our listeners would be curious to know since you’re the head of, of this big team, how are you? What are you talking to your team about these days? Since we know right now, while we’re recording this, probably most of the country is still under a stay at home order. Real estate agents are likely at home most of the day as well. How are you and your team staying busy? What are you guys doing to keep the business running and growing?

Sharon Rizzo 7:35
Well, it’s interesting that you asked that because tomorrow first zoom virtual team meeting with with all 15 members and really going to see how they’re doing of course, I’ve kept in touch with them individually anyway. But they are doing virtual open houses virtual showings. Literally wearing masks and protective gear going up showing homes when when applicable. Sometimes we specialize a lot in condominiums, of course, being a downtown broker. And some buildings do not permit you to even come in. Some buildings aren’t even believe it or not permitting move ins and move outs which I was a little surprised at. But yeah, so most of it has been virtually However, one thing that we’re trying to get everyone to focus on right now is what is out there. That’s a really good investment. Because if you can find some really good investments right now, and there are quite a few. It. It’s, I think an easier time to get people focused on that to get buyers focused on that right now. So we’re really working on that.

D.J. Paris 8:52
Yeah, let’s talk a little bit about investments because I know that’s a particular passion of yours to educate other agents about wealth building through through real estate investments. So can you talk a little bit about you know, how you started, obviously, you know, with your history, you would have come across investors along the way. But But why why is this such a passion for you?

Sharon Rizzo 9:14
Well, we started out in condominium conversions. American Invesco was very well known for converting major high rises like Lake point tower, Millennium center, even which was new construction, which was a little bit different. And because of that, because you have to have a 50% presale, for example, in most of those buildings. To get that you really have to focus on investors. And that was very, very popular at the time because interest rates were not as low as they are now, which is another reason to be focusing on it but enough to where you had very little negative cash flow with about 20% down and so it was very, very easy and very popular to get investors to buy In condominiums, especially in a conversion, because you had a renter already built in, so we started focusing on that very early on, and really focusing not so much on selling the real estate per se, but rather what the real estate did for you. For example, you know, giving you the, let’s say, vacation home that you’ve always wanted, or sending the kids to college or whatever additional, you know, an independent retirement, for example. So we are focused on what the real estate could do for you, rather than the real estate per se. And we were able to build up a very large body of investors that we had that we were also able to refer to some of our team. So that has been very, very, very a big part of our business from the very beginning. And still is.

D.J. Paris 10:53
Yeah, I’ve always thought that real estate, if it was done with with the way you were mentioning as an investment is really an annuity at that point, and hopefully a cashflow positive annuity. But now with rates being as low as they are, really creates a lot more opportunities. And I wanted to ask you this, because we’ve had a lot of guests on the show over the years, who are real estate investors. And so seems that and then, of course, with with my own experience with realtors at our own firm, we have a lot of investors here as well. And it seems that the prevailing thought, and I’m saying this for the benefit of the audience who might not be working with investments or investors, that a lot of times a realtor might think or listener might think, well, I don’t know any investors and and from everyone I’ve ever talked to in sharing, I want to get your thoughts on this is that the guests will always often say, Well, that’s actually the easy part, finding the investor isn’t difficult, because there’s lots of people that that are cashflow heavy, or cash heavy, rather that are ready to to get a seven to 9% return, if that’s possible, but finding the deal is the challenge like don’t worry about the investors, they’ll show up, find the deal first. And then you know, typically the finding the money is the easier part, would you would you agree with that?

Sharon Rizzo 12:07
But yes, I would. And I think that what’s interesting to look at is pre 2008 when the market crashed, if you will, pre 2008 The interest rates were like seven and a half percent in like 2005 2006. So if you put say 10% down as an investor, and you could get that financing, then you would have a significant negative cashflow. Yeah, but because real estate has always appreciated from the very beginning, even in the 1980s, when it went up to 20%, there was a little bump, for sure, for a few years, but it jumped right back up. So we never had that big huge dip that we did in 2008. So you always banked on appreciation, and didn’t care, really about the negative cash flow. So in 2008, however, that, you know, that became a problem. And people were let you know, that’s when you had a lot of short sales and foreclosures, because people could not support it. But now, with interest rates literally being less than half of what they were in pre 2008. Now you can put 20% down and not have a negative cash flow. So even if there were a problem down the line, which we don’t anticipate that to happen again, like it did in 2008, because a lot of those problems have been connected, like giving a loan to someone who had a pulse. And yeah, all right. So as a result of that you don’t have a negative cash flow. So you don’t, you’re not going to have that kind of a problem that you did with teaser rates that they were giving pre 2008 And then all of a sudden you were left with a maybe a $2,000 a month negative cash flow on a $300,000 purchase, and a lot of people can support it.

D.J. Paris 14:00
Yeah. Well, and now and the other thing too about working with investors or or, you know, investment groups, is that right now, whereas, you know, realtors aren’t as easily able to show properties. A lot of times investors don’t need to see the property anyway, right? They just want to look at the numbers. And what a great opportunity with rates being as low as they are to find those those deals and present those to

Sharon Rizzo 14:24
exactly they will they will buy sight unseen, especially with a good virtual tour. Even if you have to do it subject to seeing it down the line lock in the deal now that I was able to do four of them as a matter of fact, in the past couple of weeks sight unseen just because of the very low interest rates and some of the great deals that are out there right now you have to look for them, but they are there.

D.J. Paris 14:48
So this is a good question. And I’m gonna I’m gonna ask you a difficult question that I know is is one that has could have a an hour long answer, but wanting to get some tips from you for our listeners who haven’t yet Get started to work with investors or find investments. But any ideas about how they can start to educate themselves on different opportunities where to search for properties? Obviously, the MLS is one, one area, but then there’s a lot of properties that never hit the MLS for investment purposes. So just some suggestions to our listeners, if you don’t mind about how they can start to educate about how this all works.

Sharon Rizzo 15:25
No, absolutely not. DJ, I think that, first of all, I’d love to find A plus B buildings, and a plus locations. Sure. And a lot, there are quite a few of those in River North high rise condominiums where they’re pretty maintenance free, you really can, as an investor purchase something in one of those buildings and really not have to worry too much about it. They have large staffs, and engineer maintenance person on site in many cases. And they’re also priced right in that sweet spot. Use me that my good is in that sweet spot right around, say 250 to $350,000. Square, one bedrooms, I generally suggest one bedrooms in that 250 to 350 range in a big building and an A plus location, there are a lot of them. And you will find that you will have very little if any negative cashflow was sometimes even 10% down if you can get that kind of financing. Right now 20% down for investors, maybe 25 is easy 20 You can get if you look for it. And it’s that would be my advice is to stick in that sweet, sweet sweet spot between 250 350,000 Generally a one bedroom, maybe a studio where you’re going to go down into the, say 170 to $210,000 range, and in a major high rise, but maybe one that’s a little bit older, but again, in a great location that’s always going to be sought after can’t go wrong with that. Yeah, that’s

D.J. Paris 17:18
very true. And we have to remember to that right now. I mean, with with investments, the lending is a little bit different, right? So you’re putting probably more down and the rates are slightly higher than if it’s best. But there’s still so incredibly low,

Sharon Rizzo 17:34
exactly, you’re going to be at you are going to pay a little bit more, but there’s still way too low to where it reduces your negative cash flow to virtual Well, when you consider the tax break. And depreciation, actually, it’s probably going to be a slight positive cash flow, which was not the case pre 2008.

D.J. Paris 17:54
That’s very true. So for everyone listening, by the way, there’s a great resource, I always recommend to get incredible knowledge, it’s probably not the best resource online. It’s called bigger pockets.com. It’s the largest forum for real estate investors. They just chat back and forth all day. And they have podcasts and books and all sorts of other things, but go to bigger pockets. And it’s a wonderful education, because it’ll connect you with other investors, but also just people talking investments all day.

Sharon Rizzo 18:20
No, I’m learning something.

D.J. Paris 18:23
You don’t need any in education. No, I

Sharon Rizzo 18:26
trust me, I can always stand to learn something. But I have to remember that that’s really good to know.

D.J. Paris 18:33
Well, and you know, obviously you don’t only work with investors to you work with traditional buyers and sellers, renters. can talk a little bit about you, do you mind sharing a little bit about how your team is structured? Is everyone working with their own clients? Or is it is it a collaborative approach where there’s different roles? How do you guys have it setup?

Sharon Rizzo 18:53
Well, we, I would say we’re kind of flexible on that everybody certainly works with their own clients. Sure. They work both rentals, no sales, absolutely. But right now we are working on some special projects that involve condominium D conversions. Now if someone had told me a few, a few years ago, I wouldn’t even I didn’t even know what that word meant. Many D conversion How could you ever D convert a large building a condominium to a rental What are specialty had been converting them from rentals to condominiums. I mean, it was it’s just unbelievable what has happened in the past five years. And we have been consultants for a company who has specialized in condominium D conversions. And we’ve gotten our entire team involved in that. So that’s some additional, an additional avenue for them. In addition to just general brokerage, and having the support of a major company You like Coldwell Banker and our sales manager who’s been very active as well, in helping to support the team?

D.J. Paris 20:07
I wanted to ask as well about rentals. So you’ve been a broker for so long. And I’m curious, and there’s a lot of realtors who get their license or who are, you know, building their business, and maybe they’re starting out, and they’re going well, I didn’t get my broker license to do rentals, right, I want to do the big sales, but maybe they don’t have a lot of sales right now, which probably most brokers don’t when they start out. And so I’ve always recommended to brokers who have the time to do it to do rentals, because not only can those people turn into buyers down the road, which hopefully they will, but you can, you know, learn that it’s a more immediate type of transaction. So there’s not as long as the lead time also gets you introduced to the to real estate, the local real estate market, and you can start to learn, of course of the different buildings that support apartments. But just curious on on what your thoughts are on rentals, right. Right now I know the rental market is I mean, well, we’re supposed to be right in the middle of rental market, of course, things have slowed a bit with stay at home. But right now in Chicago, normally, this would be our biggest rental time of the year. Just curious your thoughts on rentals.

Sharon Rizzo 21:16
And well, first of all, I totally agree with you, I think it’s a great way to get started, especially for a new agent, because it takes a while by the time you, you make your first sale, even if you’re doing pretty well, it could be four to six months, where with a rental, you get paid very, very quickly. Like you say you learn the market, you learn the ropes very, very quickly. I think that that’s a great way to get started, particularly for a new agent. So we highly recommend it. We have a lot of people on our team, who do rentals to support particularly the investors when you we have such a big investment base, that we have to get involved with the rental market to make sure that you’re doing full service real estate and giving them the proper service that they need. So it is great for full service Realty as well as getting new agents up and running in the business.

D.J. Paris 22:13
I also wanted to ask you about open houses. So right now open houses have changed. There’s probably no open houses at the moment. But But when things get back to normal, and of course they will hopefully sooner rather than later, but without a yet to be seen. But when things do resume normal to normal, how important Have you found open houses to be obviously from helping the seller, you know, get more marketing exposure to to the property, but also from a broker’s perspective going in and possibly finding buyers to to then work with on other properties? Is that an important part of of what your team focuses on with listings?

Sharon Rizzo 22:52
I think it’s important for the seller for sure. Yes. And I think it’s it’s obviously part of our marketing strategy, assuming that the seller wants a public open house. Sure. Some sellers do not. I do think what is very important is a broker’s open house for listings. And so we always encourage that, and very few sellers would not want you to have a broker’s open, but you want to expose as many other brokers to the property as possible. I never count on the fact that I’m going to sell the property through an open house. Sure. But I certainly want to expose it and also other brokers will come to an open house, and you still may sell it through another broker through an open house. So I think it’s important on many levels because of that.

D.J. Paris 23:43
That’s a really good point. Sharon, and I’m so glad you mentioned the broker’s open open house because I think you may be our first guest that’s talked about that, believe it or not, and we’ve done 150 Some episodes so I want to meet I want to circle back to that. So for everyone listening there is a you know, the opportunity to do open houses just for brokers is something that is somewhat popular here in Chicago and in your local market. It may or may not be what a great opportunity to get other realtors I mean it is called a cooperative commission. Right? So

Sharon Rizzo 24:14
it’s it is it is Let’s cooperate but reason.

D.J. Paris 24:17
But the most successful agents that I have known when they started out and maybe even they still do, although of course right now things things are paused. But when when when times are more normalized. The most successful agents I know go to those broker opens, they want to see what the inventory looks like because then they look more professional and more knowledgeable to their own clients. So hosting open houses just for brokers is a wonderful and smart idea. And the people that show up are typically going to be successful agents that want to see what else is out there. So

Sharon Rizzo 24:51
absolutely, absolutely. I think their broker’s open is really the most important. I think it’s actually more important than the typical Sunday open house. Wow, be honest, I really do. on many levels, you’ll find that brokers who are very experienced, they want to know what’s out there on the market, particularly if it’s if there’s a shortage. If they’re working with a specific client, they want to preview it, and what a great way to preview it without asking for an appointment without a client. And it’s also a great way for new agents. So new people on my team, for example, that’s one way that you encourage them to learn the market to learn what the inventory is out there in and to meet other brokers and establish relationships. So it has many far reaching advantages beyond just the open house, but the primary reason is to expose that property to as many brokers as possible, because they all are working with clients. So it’s, it’s very, very important. And it’s, there is a particular day, and it’s usually Tuesday from say, 10 to two, you can pick hours within that timeframe where it’s actually advertised on the MLS as right, right, and brokers look there, and they want to know what is out there, particularly if they’re working with a client and they want to preview it, they can go back to their client. See, I saw the perfect property for you, you got to see this. So it’s very important.

D.J. Paris 26:21
Yes. So I’m so glad you said that. And thank you for that information. And also think, you know, as everyone who’s listening, let’s think about the proposition, the value proposition to the seller, to be able to say, you know, I’m actually going to do two types of open houses for you. One is going to be for the innocent, I’m assuming that that’s what they want. But say, you know, one, of course will be for buyers to come in and view the property. But I’m also going to do a private open house, just for other agents in our area, because I want to expose, I want them to see this property. And and by the way, so So you guys understand, of course, that conversation, but I would almost bet that if you are up against a another agent, you’re both doing listing presentations, there may be looking at two or three brokers who did go with somebody who says, here’s why I’m going to do two different kinds. That is number one, I’m going to separate you from probably the other brokers that you’re in competition with. But also just it’s just a really good idea on top of it to help get more exposure to the property.

Sharon Rizzo 27:19
Yes, I agree with you. And one other thing that I stress with my, my team is not using lockboxes. unless you absolutely have to, particularly if it’s a property in certain instances, you can if it’s a vacant property, for example, but if it’s a higher end property, I still see brokers using open, I’m using lock boxes all the time, even on a million dollar property. And nobody knows that property better than the other than the seller than the listing agent. Because you’ve made it your business to know it, obviously, you need to show that property. And if a seller is going to hire us specifically to do it, then you should do it and not just let someone walk in on their own when they don’t understand what the you know, the highlights of the property are. There might be a lot about that property that that an agent just walking, and even the best agent walking in would not would not they would likely not know. So it’s very important. And that’s what separate can separate you sometimes as you say, I’m not I’m going to be there whenever possible to show that property. You know, in person, I’m not going to rely just on a lockbox because why would you be hiring me if you’re going to lose use a lockbox all the time?

D.J. Paris 28:42
That’s they can get their own lockbox? Exactly. Yeah. No, that’s it’s a very fair point. And I know this is a debate in the real estate community probably nationwide about should I go to my own showings for my listing? And and some people say yes, most brokers I think would agree that’s that’s a good idea. But that’s the conversation you can have with the buyer’s agent and say, hey, just so you know, I prefer to be there. I can stay out of the way I won’t interfere. But I want to make sure I answer those questions so that you, Mr. or Mrs. buyer’s agent, don’t feel the pressure to have to know everything about this property, I’m going to be your resource. We’re working together, you know, your clients won’t feel uncomfortable, you know, but I want to make sure that I can present the property in the way that that you don’t have to feel the pressure to, to know everything, so

Sharon Rizzo 29:29
Exactly, exactly. And particularly if it’s a higher end larger property, it becomes even more important. And you might do a lockbox on a vacant unit, even if it’s higher. And in the event. Let’s say someone is passing by and they want to see it right then and it’s impossible for you to get there and it’s a broker who might be familiar with the property. That would be a reason to do it. But for the most part, I tried to separate myself on a listing presentation by saying And then I want to be there for all the showings to sell the property rather than just show it

D.J. Paris 30:06
absolutely could not agree more. What a great suggestion. And for right now, for everyone who’s not going to a showing, you could tell the other agent, if they’re still going with their client and you’re unable to go or you’re a stay at home order. You could say, well, if you want put me on FaceTime, and I’ll be there. And I at least could answer questions as your client walks through. So but But what a what a great suggestion. I’m so so grateful that you

Sharon Rizzo 30:30
and so many people, you mentioned FaceTime, and of course, so many agents are using FaceTime now they’ll go through the property and use FaceTime with their clients. Yeah. During this this time, especially with a lockdown. So I’m glad you brought that up.

D.J. Paris 30:45
Yes, it’s where it’s this virtual world. It’s funny.

Sharon Rizzo 30:49
Can we recruit you on?

D.J. Paris 30:52
Yeah, well, I work just down the street, I’m only a couple blocks from you. So pretty close by you know, it’s funny, I have always know people who are listening can’t see this. But for everyone watching you will be LCS, I am normally in in a, you know, a tie and a shirt and suit pants. And this is this is it’s been kind of nice for the last month that we’re at stay at home. Even though I’m going into the office, I can dress down a bit. So I’m actually quite excited not to be so formally dressed, casual and fun. Yeah. So I apologize for everyone watching this and seeing that I’m a slightly dressed down. But it’s, as soon as the stay at home orders lifted, I’ll be back to my tie and my uncomfortable shirt and tie. But

Sharon Rizzo 31:39
on the bottom right? Well, that would

D.J. Paris 31:41
I would love that I do get to I do bring my dog to the office. So she’s underneath the desk. So that’s a lot of fun. But, you know, John, I wanted to also ask, you know, you have seen so many brokers. And when I say broker for everyone listening, of course, different parts of the country call real estate professionals, different titles. Here in Illinois, everyone’s a broker. So if I say the word broker, you’re like, I don’t know what that means. Or that only means people who own their own firm in Chicago or in Illinois, rather, that’s everyone’s, so I should just say realtor, a real estate professional. But you’ve seen a lot of real estate professionals, start their business become successful, I’m sure you’ve seen other agents struggle, and maybe even leave the industry without having the success they want. For anyone who’s looking to get to the, you know, to that next level, whether it’s just hey, I did three deals three sales last year, I want to get to six, or I did 30 sales last year, I want to get to 60, or whatever those numbers might be. Do you have any suggestions for what agents could do? Right now, when we’re all stuck at home? Were not able to as freely walk around and drive around? What would you suggest to to help agents, you know, grow their business?

Sharon Rizzo 32:51
That that is a great question. And the first thing I say is don’t be a secret agent, which I think a lot of agents tend to be you have to remember, you know, think sales 24/7. And it’s funny, normally, if we were not in this lockdown, I would say one of the first things is to get out to a good networking group. But I think we couldn’t, we will sort of skip that right now. And I, you know, again, I don’t know whether, you know, I’m coming back to the investments all the time. But this is a great time to do that. Because you, you are less likely to have your buyer or your potential buyer have to see the property in person, if you can give them a good virtual tour because it is more about the numbers. And what you know what the potential upside is of this particular property. So I think it would be a great time to look through the MLS pick some great again, B buildings and an A plus location and come up with some investments, from studios to one bedrooms, perhaps to start in that 175 up to $300,000 range, you’re going to find if you do your numbers with 20% 25% down, you very likely will not have a negative cash flow. And the returns are great. And come up with maybe four or five properties and try to link them up with some people you know, who have some cash to put down maybe even more and could do a cash deal, which would be even better. And I think that’s a great thing to do during this particular time. As opposed to somebody who’s actually going to live in the property because it may be a little tougher right now for that.

D.J. Paris 34:39
Yeah, I think you’re right. So Sharon saying learn study, start studying real estate investments, you know, it’s a great opportunity for you to add that to your skill set. So if you’re a realtor who is traditionally just working with buyers and sellers, you know non investors, this is a great time to add this because you The worst thing to happen is to a real estate agent, unless they’re just so incredibly busy, they’re happy to pass off a transaction to another agent. But if you’re not that busy, what you never want to happen is somebody to say, you know, I, I actually have want to do some investing. And you say, well, that’s not really what I know, or I do. And I have to now refer you out, which is okay, of course, but to spend this time that we probably all have a little bit more time than we have had in the past, to start to increase that knowledge so that you can service those customers, because you’re missing out.

Sharon Rizzo 35:33
Exactly, it’s a great way you can create your own deal here. Yes, rather than I think that is so important, you can create your own deal rather than waiting for somebody who has to sell a home, which is a little tough right now, or waiting for the buyer who has to see a home because they’re buying their, you know, a property for them, which is a little different mindset, of course, it’s still an investment. And it’s still important to focus on that. But it’s different when you’re focusing strictly on numbers. And this is a great time to create your own deal. By doing that, where you’re focusing on the numbers, and matching up someone you know, with a particular property downtown, pretty much like I was talking about in River North with the ayllu, you know, a plus location B property.

D.J. Paris 36:20
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And you know, we have so our listeners are not only real estate professionals, we also have buyers, sellers, investors, as well, who listen to the show, we’re really fortunate to have have a lot of listeners who listen to every episode. So if anyone is looking for a real estate professional who has a tremendous amount of experience, one of the top agents production wise here in Chicago, and has a team as well as a company, a wonderful company that’s supporting her. We you know, what, if somebody wants to work with you, or anyone on your team, Sharon, what’s the best way they should reach out to you?

Sharon Rizzo 36:58
Well, I think they could certainly look us up, obviously, through Coldwell bankers website. And I couldn’t be reached and I’m happy to also introduce anybody to someone on my team who I think might fit that person’s needs really well, we have all different age range. We’re very, very diverse team. And I’m really proud of these people. But my email, for example, is Sharon dodge Rizzo at CB exchange.com. That would be the best way.

D.J. Paris 37:33
Yeah, definitely reach out to share and her team is always growing, and they’re doing more deals after more deals year after year. And not only that, but just the amount of information and knowledge and and the generosity that Sharon has and provides. Her team is well known here in Chicago. So definitely, whether you’re, you know, an individual looking for an agent, or maybe even you’re somebody who’s looking to see what teams are offering. As for other realtors definitely reach out to Sharon to see to see how that all happens. But Sharon, I think this is a great place for us to pause. And to I would like on behalf of Sharon and myself to thank our listeners for continuing to support our show listening, we ask always just two quick favors from our listeners. One is think of another real estate professional that could benefit from hearing this great interview you just heard from Sharon, and please pass this over to them, they can always visit our website, which is keeping it real pod.com and stream every episode we’ve ever done. I think this is probably our 156 there. So episode, we have this huge history of a huge backlog in the library of content that they can go through. But also the second thing is we asked you to everyone to please follow us on Facebook. And then I’ll explain why in just a moment. So but you can find us on facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. In addition to posting of course all of our episodes, we also every day, find an article online written by some institution designed to help Realtors grow their business. So we try to provide great content there as well. But on behalf of the listeners and myself, Sharon, we want to thank you for being part of our show you were one of the when I first started this about four years ago, you’re at the very top of our list of shortlist of guests that were in our dream guest list. And we’re so grateful to finally got you on the show and appreciate I know how busy you are. So I really appreciate your time. And thank you for being part of it. And on behalf of Sharon and myself. We want to thank again the audience and we will see everybody on our next episode. So thank you so much.

Sharon Rizzo 39:39
Thank you, DJ. It was an absolute pleasure to be on your show. And I’m thrilled that you thought of me. Thank you so much.

D.J. Paris 39:48
Well, we’ll see everyone next time. Thank you. Thank you

Gail Spreen from Streeterville Properties of Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty knows the value of hyper-local branding. Gail has been a top real estate professional in Chicago for 26 years by specializing in one neighborhood – Streeterville. In our conversation Gail discusses the importance of getting involved in your community, and how merging your passion with your business can result in an amazing career.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Gail Spreen can be reached at 312.925.7668 and gail@streetervilleproperties.com


Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Agent youtube.com. Would you like more leads that find you instead of you finding them? Let the YouTube agents show you how the YouTube agents started making videos with no sphere of influence. This year. They’re on pace to close more than 100 sales all from leads generated on YouTube. They put a step by step video program to show you exactly what to do and what not to do to become a YouTube real estate superstar. Visit agent youtube.com to learn more and sign up today. That’s agent youtube.com. And now on to the show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with the Chicago legend Gail spreen. But before we get to Gail just a few quick reminders first, as always, thank you for continuing to support our show the ways in which you can help keep us growing two ways. While there’s many ways but I’ll only ask for two. One is to tell a friend and think of another real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from these types of episodes, interviews with top producers send them over to our website keeping it real pod.com If they’re already podcast, people just have them pull up any podcast app they use search for keeping it real they’ll find us but they can stream everything on our website as well and then the second way you can help us follow us on Facebook dot com forward slash keeping it real pod reason for that is we also in addition to posting all of our interviews, we’ve post videos of our interviews but also we post an article that we find online every single day written specifically to help you grow your business. Thanks guys hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. And now on to our interview with Gayle stream.

Today on the show we have Gail spreen from streetable properties at Jameson Sotheby’s by the way, Gail is an absolute legend here in the Chicago real estate professional industry. But for all of our listeners that aren’t yet familiar with Gail, let me tell you a little bit about her. Gail has been a real estate broker since 1994 and has focused her career entirely on the Chicago market working with large developers within the city, also specializing in the Streeterville neighborhood and downtown core. Gail represents a true real estate professional with disciplines and market knowledge to assist her clients in all aspects of their home buying and selling experience. Gail is proud to call st Earl her home and is also extremely This is an understatement, extremely active in both the residential and business communities as a five time president of soar, which is the Streeterville organization of active real residents rather, Gail is constant continually working to keep Streeterville neighborhood she works in the within the city departments and developers to make improvements to their projects that will enhance and improve the neighborhood and create value for the entire area. For those of you who are not as familiar with Chicago, if you’ve ever visited Chicago, you’ve been to Streeterville which is where the Magnificent Mile is Michigan Avenue all of the great shopping right on the water and is probably my my favorite area of the city too. But we want to Well oh and by the way, and you should visit Gail on her website at Streeterville properties.com. Gail, thank you so much for being on the show.

Gail Spreen 3:55
Oh, thank you, DJ, it’s great to be here.

D.J. Paris 3:58
You and I met not that long ago at a top producer event that you were on the panel for and I was fortunate enough to be able to moderate and I thought you had such great information to share to all of the realtors who were there, that we were thankful that you were able to come on our show and do the same for all of our nationwide listeners. So we appreciate it. Tell us a little bit since you’ve been in real estate since 1994. Tell us a little bit about how you got into the business and you know how things have changed over the years?

Gail Spreen 4:34
Well, they definitely have changed a lot. I actually got my sales license in 1991. And I I know that was back when you had to work for a broker at our time. And then I got my broker’s license in 94. But back when I got my sales license, I was like I don’t know what value is how can I actually tell somebody? This is really worth this much. So I went and I worked at an appraisal company at Night, and just typed appraisals so that I could like learn what the appraisers were talking about how they valued property. And then they started having me help them. And I was doing this kind of in the evenings and on weekends, as I worked at Draper and Kramer during the day in that department. Yeah. So I became an appraiser. And which gave me an I did that for 15 years, just Chicago downtown condos, when other appraisers didn’t want to come downtown and have to deal with condo buildings, I’m like, I’ll do the report. So I did 1000s of appraisals during those years. And you really learned something about all the buildings about value. And so I think it was, it was really helpful in my whole career in real estate is to really understand what the appraiser goes through, and how to value a property, and then to incorporate that into my real estate selling. So there’s been a number of stages through this, but it’s all kind of, you know, brings everything together.

D.J. Paris 6:05
And it’s, it’s so fun. I don’t mean to interrupt, I did want to make a big point, because Gail just said, a really important thing, talking about understanding the value of properties, through her experience, doing lots of appraisals over the years and, and also starting out sort of interning and working to learn that and realizing not just as a potential nother stream of income, but how she can bring that value back to her real estate clients and, and how 99% of Realtors don’t have that experience. And it really separates you from everyone else. What a really smart idea. I imagine that makes you very valuable to your clients?

Gail Spreen 6:44
Well, I think it helps. And it makes me more confident when I’m talking to people about where to price their property, where to put an offer in where the value really is, I can say, Hey, I’ve been an appraiser for 15 years. And, you know, this is how this kind of works. When I have to meet with other appraisers, it’s helpful to because I know exactly what they’re needing to get the report done. And if the data is not there, how do you work within that and come up with a value, I had to do that the other night with an appraiser who was struggling. So I kind of gave him some direction. And hopefully we’ll get the deal done. Nice and clean.

D.J. Paris 7:24
Well, that’s that’s, that’s a wonderful I’ve always been impressed with, with with realtors who go and really either get those certifications, or even really just study and learn, you know, to bring additional value, I think is so important. Especially now, when so much of it can be automated, right? A lot of like the Redfin’s and Zillow ‘s of the world have have taken some of the hard work away from the realtor of locating properties. But now you can come and say, Well, let’s talk about value. And here’s where I have 15 years of experience. And here’s where I think the actual price point should be. And that’s super powerful. I love it. Let’s I would love to talk to you. Because I know being a local present person in your community has been your you’ve branded it as your business you are you were in the community, you’re active, you have leadership roles. And for a lot of our listeners who you know, haven’t yet decided to really get involved with whatever area they’re passionate about, or where they want to focus their business. Can you talk a little bit about how that’s, you know, just how important that is to you and ultimately has that helped your business?

Gail Spreen 8:42
You know, I think it’s helped my business a lot, because especially now people are looking for expertise. So being able to really know your product, know your neighborhood know everything about your neighborhood, is really a much more of a value to bring to you to bring to the table when you’re working with a buyer or a seller. I feel like I can sell Streeterville probably better than anybody because I have a passion for it. And it usually comes through in the way that I talked about the neighborhood where I have a long term vision for the neighborhood and how it continually will get better and better. So I came to Streeterville in the beginning of 1997 and worked for Dan McLean of MCL on the development did South Street or belt back at that time, there was hardly anything here. And so being you know, seeing the neighborhood get built up, the neighborhoods just getting better. We could not even get a restaurant barely here in street or in South Street or well, because there wasn’t enough density. So now to see all the restaurant options we have, it’s hard to support them all because it’s you want to support them all but then you’re out like, you know, eating or, you know, eating all the time. But but so it’s really been A great part of my market from, from being an expert to knowing a lot of the people in the neighborhood. So having been here so long and worked with that people worked with people who are selling or buying, I always feel as a buyer, they become my neighbor. So I want everybody to be happy in our transactions, I want the seller happy, because with my economic development hat on, and my appraiser hat, I want to create value in everything that we’re doing. So I want them to get their best, you know, the best price, but on the buyer side, I want the buyers happy as well, because they’re going to be my new neighbor. And because I also feel that reputation is everything, especially in a niche market, I will go above and beyond for everybody for everything. Because I want everybody happy. And I always believe that, you know, that’ll pay off in the long run, to keep everyone happy. So it’s been a big part of my market, from doing all the different community work that I do for all these 20 some years. So and it’s been really fun. I love it. So it’s all been good. Yeah, I

D.J. Paris 11:11
wanted to I was curious, because obviously, you know, you work with clients, you know, throughout Chicago, not specifically only in the Streeterville neighborhood. But But that’s your primary focus. What percentage of your business is actually in Streeterville?

Gail Spreen 11:26
I would say probably about 90% is like, Yeah, I do some River North, I do some Lakeshore east, a little South Loop. And I really don’t necessarily want to go north of North Avenue. I don’t blame you. I mean, I can be super efficient. You know, sometimes when I’m just stay very local. Sometimes when people see me west of Michigan Avenue, they’re like, oh, my gosh, you’re out of your territory. And, yeah, but but so most of my business is like, right, you know, right here in Streeterville, which is great, because, again, everything’s super efficient, then and I can, you know, I can do a lot more in a smaller area, because I have been able to keep everybody happy having great partners within the industry, from your painters to your cleaners, we get a lot done with, you know, we can just coordinate a lot, very easily because we’re very local and very, you know, in a small area.

D.J. Paris 12:29
So when those off those small percentage clients that maybe are moving to the suburbs, let’s say, is it your policy to, you know, obviously, you could always help them if you desire. But do you end up referring a lot of business to other realtors as well,

Gail Spreen 12:46
I do. So I don’t want to do anything. That’s not my expertise. So anything in the suburbs, somebody else can do it. And I’m happy to do referrals, as well as I’ve got people in the suburbs who don’t want to share that don’t know, downtown, and they don’t want to try, you know, they really want their clients to be taken care of. So I will do a number of split deals with them as I take care of their clients for them. So it’s a good mutual setup that I have with different brokers in different areas.

D.J. Paris 13:20
Yeah, it’s I think it’s so important. And I think it’s a lot of a lot of times brokers, when they get their license, they join a firm, they certainly hear at some point, choose an area, geographic location, get involved in the community, start studying in the MLS, go visit all the buildings, and within a couple of years, you’re going to be really knowledgeable, of course about that area. I just suspect Most brokers maybe don’t take the time to actually do that they get life gets in the way. I had on Matt Lera see from a few maybe a month ago, and he did the same thing in River North when he moved to River North. He didn’t know anything about it. And he spent the first five years literally walking from building the building going What are you an apartment building? Are you a condo how does this work? And he said after five years, he’s like nobody knows River North better than him. And you’re obviously have the same the same expertise and Streeterville. And that makes you so valuable to everyone who wants to move or move within Streeterville or move to is probably is that advice that you have for for anyone who’s looking to to grow their businesses pick an area and get involved and learn it.

Gail Spreen 14:31
I would recommend that. I think that’s the best way to really get going to work with other brokers to do open houses that other brokers that are working in that area to do that because I still do after all these years they still do open houses on the weekends. And I’m in front of people all the time. I enjoy it because I’m needing more neighbors that I might not know. People see you’re busy so activity breeds activity so they You think you’re busy doing things, so it’s just a great way to meet more people. And to get more leads, if that, if that is your goal, my goal is usually to sell things. So but I love meeting, you know, meeting people in the neighborhood and, and people that want to come into the neighborhood for who are just checking out different areas and really don’t know Streeterville. So I could go on and on about Streeterville. So at some point, I have to, you know, like, give them my, my overall kind of, you know, talk about it just to make them I, I also believe in no surprises. So when somebody wants to, they’re looking what’s you know, picking between River North Streeterville Lakeshore East South Loop, you know, old town, you know, just being very upfront with them, these are a lot of the positive and negatives, you’re going to see about the different neighborhoods, and then have a new, you know, letting them decide and pick what fits the best, their lifestyle the best, and what they’re looking for. I never really want someone to go, you know, and to pick a neighborhood and they’d be like, Wow, I didn’t really think about that. I want people to really be happy with their decision, whether it’s street or build, whatever neighborhood doesn’t, you know, I don’t care. I just want them happy. So no surprises.

D.J. Paris 16:20
Yeah. And now and I think that’s, that’s a great customer service policy, no surprises. And you know, I think now since we are most of us are working from home, most of the country, whether we like it or not, we’re stuck at home, I snuck into the office, but we barricade the doors so no one else can get in. But most of us are at home. And especially for the listeners who are real estate professionals, which is 99% of our listeners, now is a great time to get familiar with the inventory in your area. For example, here in Chicago, especially where Gail is and in the city area. Rounding around Streeterville is a lot of high rise apartment buildings. And now’s the time to do the virtual tours, do that go to each one of their websites and get familiar if you’re somebody that’s into rentals, but a lot of condo buildings have that as well. But now’s the time to really this is we have extra time these days. And so now’s the time to really get your knowledge down for your area, you know, study the MLS know what the average price point is, for a one bedroom or a single family home or an apartment, you know, all the different options like you can really use this time to get more knowledgeable and as Gail such, think of how valuable you know someone is who wants to move to Streeterville. Gail is the best resource. Obviously, she has lots and lots of years of experience. But Gail did a lot of studying outside of of her, you know, working with clients to make sure that she could bring that knowledge to our clients. So great advice. Gail, that’s really awesome. Also, you know, what I would like to mention for all of our Chicago listeners is your husband is is he a sculptor? Is that his profession?

Gail Spreen 18:01
He is he’s a professional artist. And one of the fun things that has happened through the years is a number of years ago Gallopin company commissioned him to do a bronze sculpture of cat Streeter, who is eight foot bronze, at the corner of McClurg and grand in front of the yolk restaurant. So we have that and they do beautiful landscaping around cap. And so it’s cap in his dog spot. I’ve got a little statue of CAP Streeter, right here, who is my, my backup all the time. And but it’s kind of made us the historians of Streeterville as well, which is, which is great, because I love talking about history, and cap Streeter, which he was such a colorful character, and to think he lived right here. And just the whole development of how this neighborhood became what it is. It is kind of, I call it an irrational passion that I have. Because it’s I don’t understand why I’m so attracted to it, but I love the history of the neighborhood. And so with that, we are actually working right now on a documentary on the development of South Streeterville. It’s really we hope to have it done this year. But we hired a professional video company who interviewed all the developers that have been part of how this South Streeterville area became what it is today from Dirk Lowen, who is Mies van der Rohe is Grant son, who did the water cannon that shoots over the river. Oh, Charlie Gardner, who was head of Chicago dock and canal to Alderman Hopkins who was a great activist with me in Streeterville through the many years and now an alderman, we’ve got about 12 Different people we’ve interviewed. So now we’re putting all that together to tell the story of how Streeterville became what it is today. So that’s good. That’s really fun to work on and the history museum is going to be the repository and we’ll keep it. And it’s much more of a kind of urban planning film than really like some marketing film. But I’ve, you know, it all started because I had a buyer who said, How come this area is only getting developed now, and I’m like, Oh, my gosh, we have got to tell the story of how it was the busiest shipping port in the whole world. And now to see what it’s become today. So I think, you know, that was kind of my impetus to be like, let’s get this done. And let’s do it from the mouths of the guys who actually did the development instead of somebody else, just telling the story. So that was, we’re excited about getting it, getting it done and letting people see it. So kind of fun.

D.J. Paris 20:46
Wow. Well, I you know, it’s funny, we, we think a lot about how to how to grow our business. And I always think, you know, you should pick, pick something that is that you’re super passionate about, that you have an interest in, and just dive headfirst into it with respect to community, like find something about your local community that you are passionate, whether it’s a charitable organization, or just being involved in the Chamber of Commerce or pot, local politics, or whatever, get involved. And not only will, there’s a good chance that you’ll become more present in the community, maybe even get more clients as a result, which is not the reason to do it, of course, but a nice benefit. But also, you’ll just have a tremendous sense of pride. And it’s as Gail, you were saying, it’s fun, I feel that I feel that way about a few organizations of my own. And, yeah, it’s it’s fun to to be able to affect change, like you’re in leadership positions within the neighborhood. So that must be really exciting to be able to dictate sort of, in some ways to have input on what happens.

Gail Spreen 21:49
Absolutely. And just to know that the neighborhood is has become what it is, and a lot because of your input. And our work through all these years from development issues that we’ve identified, you know, different, different aspects of it of a development proposal that we can, we can say this isn’t gonna work, because we know how the streets work here, too, from doing that, to doing street cleanups to park cleanups to you name it, we are working on things that you know, just all try to make the neighborhood a better neighborhood. So it’s fun. And that’s something that I’ve always encouraged other brokers to do, get involved in your community, and otherwise, get involved in something, you know, maybe it’s some organization, maybe its paws, because you have a dog, maybe it’s the diabetes, you know, association, I don’t know. But there’s a gazillion different ways that people can, that organizations that really are looking for people to be involved, but pick something you’re passionate about. And then like you say, get, you know, dive in, get involved and really, you know, really try to not so much get business out of it, that will come you know, but get involved and try to help them. And when you help them, it will someday it should, you know come back as a benefit to you. But that should not be the goal.

D.J. Paris 23:15
You’re right. And it’s funny. I think what a lot of people forget is that a lot of organizations, whether they’re charitable, or part of your you know, your local community government, they are looking for people to do work. There’s never a shortage of good ideas, but the people that actually execute those ideas are in short supply. So you know, if you’re not currently participating in your community, or in organizations where you can actually be a value, boy, that, you know, not only will you be helping that organization, but also you’re going to have a tremendous sense of community and pride, just doing that. And then ultimately, hopefully, you know, it makes you more present in the community and more people know about you. And of course, that can lead to more business. But even if it doesn’t lead any business, you’ll just have a tremendous sense of fulfillment, I think. But yeah, but there’s, there’s never there’s, we always say this because I’m on I work with a few different organizations, and we never have a problem coming up with ideas. It’s always who’s gonna actually execute these ideas. So if you’re somebody that likes to do work, and be able to, you know, get involved as I mean, all the organizations I’m a part of, we’d love to have anybody that’s willing to do that. So, but you’ve been a good shining example of somebody who has done that work time and time again, in many, many organizations.

Gail Spreen 24:35
Well, people do say I have a problem with not being able to say no,

D.J. Paris 24:40
yeah, that’s because they know that’s because they know your worker. They know if they get you on board, it’s gonna get done. So you’re very important. Yeah, let’s talk more more about real estate. So right now, of course, everything is changing or has changed, at least from our abilities to kind of come and go, although you were just did an inspection just moments before joining us. Have you seen any changes in the last month or so? Or is it business as usual? Right now?

Gail Spreen 25:13
Oh, there’s definitely changes because in the high rise buildings that I work in, we can’t get into them. There’s no showings allow. And so that has been a challenge. So we’ve done a lot of virtual tours, shirts. What is fascinating, just in the last month is we’ve got all your beautiful professional photography done, right? It’s all online. And people will be like, Hey, can you send me a virtual tour, and you’re like, well, it’s all on my, you know, you’ve got the best pictures. And they’re like, Oh, but I want to see a walkthrough. So it doesn’t matter if it’s not even a real professional one. But they want to see a walkthrough and they want to see it a video done. So I have spent quite a bit of time and it’s one of my team’s kind of mission right now is making sure we have video of all our listings. And, you know, doing them in shorter clips, so we can get them sent out. But having this video, I had one person, it was a little tiny studio, and they’re like, Oh, can you send me a video, I’m like, there’s three rooms. Kitchen in the bathroom. And I’ve got great photos of them. Oh, but we want to see a video. So I was like, wow, you know, we really need videos. So I actually went in, I did, you know four videos today that we’ll be using, I have the inspection I just finished. I actually from doing a video, I just sold a condo, to some people from California and I have that inspection yet this afternoon, FaceTime, by FaceTime them. And with this with this video, and they bought this condo, we were able to put together put a deal together. So I think some of the things that are really going to be changing in the way we do business is these videos. And you know, people really wanting that whether it is the most professional one, or they actually appreciate just having, you know, having enough for amateur one done. And you know, and enjoying that. But that’s interesting, as well as doing all the the zoom and all the meetings online, which is kind of fascinating that that we’ll see how that changes some of all the meetings that we normally would be attending, and how we kind of, you know, change that structure versus sitting next across the table from someone discussing issues versus having everyone on a on a screen together. So definitely changes.

D.J. Paris 27:47
Yeah, a lot a lot. You just said there. But you’re right. Yeah, things are changing. But this is still very much a I well, I guess we shouldn’t say face to face business, but because it could be screen to screen, but looking at someone and having them look back, whether it’s by saying hey, let me FaceTime you and walk you through the apartment because we don’t have, you know, a traditional virtual tour, but I can do that for you. Or you could just go in and take that video. And the cool part is that I think most people don’t expect professional quality videos because we’re all used to watching Youtube and and now tick tock and all of the other sites that promote streaming video that anybody can do just with a phone camera is their sort of use to just seeing people produce their own stuff. And so not that you if you can obviously having you know, these really cool virtual tours like Matterport and the different options there are always awesome. But at least something I know, I my girlfriend works at catalyst, which is a high rise in the west loop. And they’re doing of course they’ve same as as with a lot of the buildings, whether they’re apartment or condo, no one’s getting in my building, no one can come in even my cleaning lady, of course, nobody can come in. So other than residents. And so these virtual tours, as Gail saying is so important. And I suspect that a lot of our listeners, you know, might be thinking, well, what if I just take my phone and use it? It’s like, well, that’s better than nothing, and have something at least until maybe if you want a more professional crew to come out, you know, whenever they’re able to be allowed back into these buildings, who knows, but do something and you just sold a home it sounded like you didn’t exactly say this, but to the couple from California is that sight unseen just from the

Gail Spreen 29:30
it was just from doing a FaceTime. And then first I did the video sent that to them. And then they said let’s do a FaceTime. And what’s nice about doing the FaceTime with them is if you’re going to the kitchen they can be like Hey, show me like the dishwasher better the refrigerator better take me back to this area. So it it kind of there’s that interaction is nice and then there you’re being able to really focus on what they care about the most. So

D.J. Paris 30:00
Yeah, that’s really, really smart. So yeah, so for everyone listening, if you’re allowed to go into the property, and your clients aren’t, you know, you can do these, you know, via zoom FaceTime, there’s a million ways to do it. And then you’re able to, you know, almost do what the person would have done in person which has asked about various, you know, parts of the of the place. And yeah, really smart. That’s awesome. So that’s really encouraging for for everyone stuck at home, thinking, how can I how can I? Can I still close deals? The answer is yes. Or at the very least, I’ve always said, like, to all the brokers that our firm as well as like, now’s the time also, if you don’t have clients, to deepen those relationships, and to reach out and let all of your sphere of influence in your contact list, obviously, friends and family, but let everybody know you’re thinking about them and check in on them and see how they’re doing. Because probably a lot of us are sitting at home. Some of us have more to do than others. But it’s it’s a lonely world. So anything you can do to connect right now is probably a good idea. Right? Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about and Gail, you are so well known in Chicago, and a lot of brokers and realtors have come to you over the years asking for advice. We talked about getting hyperlocal getting involved in the community was in open houses. This was another thing we you mentioned, how important it is to do open houses. And do you recommend to newer brokers maybe who don’t have listings to talk to other realtors in their in their office and ask if they can help with

Gail Spreen 31:33
open houses? Oh, absolutely. I think that’s a, it’s a great opportunity for people to be able to get in front of residents, whether they’re actually sellers or buyers, the residents that are coming and going through the building, I always wear a nametag which I have one eye because I always wear one. Because we’re in elevators all the time. You know, people know me, but sometimes, you know, it just is that some people are more visual. And they remember you by the, by your name that way other people are more aural. So I think, you know, there’s just all different ways to make sure that you’re always in front of them. And you’re beating both people. So I would highly recommend that to young agents to be to be out there. You know, there was a lady back when I started all my community work. And she was like, super well known for the Magnificent Mile Association. And she was like the queen of Oak Street and Michigan Avenue retail leasing. Everybody totally respected her. And her name is Jackie Hayes. And I said what Jackie is to retail on Michigan Avenue and Oak Street, I want to be to Streeterville. And Jackie said, You’ve got to be out there all the time, you’ve got to be at everything you’ve you know, you’ve got to be the face of it. And so I always took her advice. I’m, you know, to this day, I’m still out there all the time. You know, at meetings, I’m you know, obviously involved in everything, and still doing the open houses, but you have to you have to be there. And so I just recommend to people don’t sit home when we can get out and get busy again. Get out there and have you know, no, your know your business. No study, like you had said, DJ, study your buildings know what your product is that you’re trying to sell or to rent, you’ve got to be able to say, you know, if someone tells me, Oh, I live at 600 Lakeshore drive, and I’m in this unit, I know exactly what their view is. I know their floorplan. And if they’re looking for a property that is similar to that, but maybe larger, but they want the same view, I can go I can tell them exactly what buildings will have it because I know all the floor plans and in the neighborhood. Or if I say, gee, if some buyer comes to and says I’ve been looking at different properties, and I’ll ask him, What have you been looking at? And what did you like about it or not like? And if they tell me what units they’ve seen, I know exactly what they’ve seen. And I can I can sell off of that. Because now I know what they’ve what they’ve looked at. I know what other properties are that, you know, that are in the area. And I know what were like, where, what properties and what units would that best fit them. So it really by taking this time to study your market, study your product is just key. I think there’s so many things that can be done right now people should not be bored. There’s so much to do. So they should really take advantage of this time. It’s actually a very special time to be able to do that. And to be able to see your family a little bit more but also, you know, really learn your market.

D.J. Paris 34:49
Yeah, we I know at our business, all of we’re in management or there’s nine of us here and we all said okay, we’re going to since we have a little bit extra time than we normally wouldn’t have had it along with a lot of people, of course, we said we’re all going to learn, you know, go through a certification. So I’m doing a marketing thing and other people doing other things. And so, which was really smart for my boss to, to recommend that. And so yes, now is the time to, to beef up those skills or, or to just say, you know, I’ve been talking about getting involved for years, now’s the time to do some research to figure out what organizations I may want to support and lend my talents to. So I and yes, let’s study the market, let’s let’s become an expert, because experts are very valuable. And, you know, over time, maybe right now you’re doing transactions all over your area, because you’re new, and you’re trying to just keep, you know, keep growing, but always have that true north. So Gail’s true north is very obvious, because it’s her whole life is Streeterville, which is an awesome, you know, thing for her and she loves it and is, is that’s just works perfectly. So you you want to be that person to whatever local area you are in. But you have to know, as Gail said, you have to know the inventory. You have to be valuable in that way. So now’s the time to figure to figure that out. And, and the good news is it’s it’s not not you have to study hours and hours a night, if you just study for one hour a day, you’ll find within a couple of months, you just you’re going to know a lot more, and you’re going to know the inventory. And then when someone asks, Hey, I’m moving to, you know, XYZ area, I’m gonna say okay, well, here’s what’s available. And that just separates you from the vast majority of brokers. Yeah, so I wanted to get I wanted to ask you, since you’ve been in business for so long, you’ve seen so many agents succeed, obviously, you’ve seen others that haven’t succeeded. What do you think separates it, we’ve talked a lot about what you’ve done to become successful. But are there any other suggestions you have, as far as well, this really seems to work, we talked about open houses becoming an expert getting involved. Are there any other suggestions you can think of for for agents who are, you know, want to learn how to just, you know, grow their business?

Gail Spreen 37:11
Well, I would say even back when I was starting, I was sitting there doing postcards, to, you know, to my building, or to neighboring buildings, and I just did it manually, and got it, got them out, wrote notes to people, you know, really stayed connected with people that way. And so, I think you have to kind of know, your target market as well. So in Streeterville, if some of the people in certain buildings may be a little bit older than younger, than they still appreciate direct mail, and they will still read it, were, then in some other neighborhoods or some other buildings, they might be a different, you know, like age group, and they might be much more on the social media, and, you know, just a little bit, your messaging would be just a little bit different. So kind of, you know, definitely be constantly reaching out and doing your marketing, don’t just wait for everything to come to you, but do push out information as well. So, you know, working on, you know, doing postcards, but and doing your messaging, whether it is social media, for however you can get into the building Statway it might be in their newsletters, you know, if you’re offering to pay somebody to be in their newsletter for marketing, that those associations would love it, you know, and then you’re right in front of your home, the whole building, whether it’s online, or it’s in a you know, hardcopy that they’re getting to all their residents. So there’s a number of different ways you can you know, that you can take advantage of that, that angle as well.

D.J. Paris 38:58
Yeah, I think that’s really good advice. I met a realtor once who lived in a, I forget where somewhere I was a listener of our show, I think it was in Kentucky, somewhere in rural Kentucky. And he was telling me that what he does, it’s actually not so rural where he is, but he works just in neighbor everything to me seem it seems rural, because we live you and I live in some of the busiest areas of the world. But, but you know, more of a suburban area of somewhere in Kentucky anyway, what he would do when he sold a home is he would write a personal note to every neighbor within a certain number of blocks, or however, he figured, however much he was able to do this, but he would say hey, just to let you know, I’m so and so. And I just recently help you know your neighbor, sell their home, if you’re ever interested. And he said that that was the smartest thing he ever did. And he does it to this day. He writes, you know, he said sometimes he has to write 50 of them and it takes a while to do it takes a couple of days. But he goes every time I Do that at least two or three people call me, which is a remarkable return on investment. But it’s basically what you were just saying as well as is whatever your marketing strategy is, you have to, you know, send those messages out on a consistent basis. And, and yeah. Yeah, let’s, I also want to talk about Gail. And I want to know, a little bit more about, you know, what you do for your clients, because we not, we don’t just have to list our listeners are not just realtors, but sometimes our buyers, sellers, investors, I know you’ve done a lot with developers, in addition to buyers and sellers and renters as well. You talk a little bit about what what you do for your clients?

Gail Spreen 40:42
Well, we try to be as much full service as we possibly can. So we will, I mean, whether it’s getting the place cleaned, whether it’s bringing in a designer to help lay out the furniture, that we’re trying to, you know, put it on the market, you know, put it on the market and really have everything laid out. So it will show the best two by two, it really just anything needed, we want to be the resource that they will come to. So I mean, I am constantly asked for the most unusual things people will I mean, I’ll have them texting me, where do I get Thai food? And then I’ll like send it back? Or do I did this? Where do I get that, so you really become this resource for anything st Earl from them. But on the client side, we are really trying to make everything as seamless as possible for them. So that we’re bringing in the stagers, we’re bringing in the cleaners, we bring in the photographers, we have the brochures, when it gets to the point that you’re getting a deal done, make it so easy for them give them great direction all the way through. A lot of my clients, you know, are very sophisticated people. However, they haven’t done that many real estate transactions, to never assume anything that they understand all these steps to it, you know, to the whole transaction. So really working with them on every little step along the way, to actually this. I mean, one of my clients right now, just the fact that I was an appraiser and I’m able to help this appraiser keep our deal together. You know, he’s just so thankful, when I sent him my explanation of what I sent to the appraiser, my seller came back and is just like, so thankful that I’m able to help the, the, you know, the appraiser for this deal, get the deal done. So there’s a lot of different different ways that I’m able to help. And it goes right down to doing the final walkthrough, making sure that the place is clean when you’re bringing the buyer in as they’re going to pay a half a million dollars for a condo, and now the condos vacant and doesn’t have all the beautiful furniture anymore. I want that buyer happy so that they walk in and at least even if it’s vacant, it’s clean and fresh. And you know, and they’re happy going to, you know, as they go off to the closing. So every little step along the way to make the best experience possible is what my goal is right, you know, all the way through.

D.J. Paris 43:25
Yeah, and you clearly do that. I wanted to just circle back to one thing that I think has become more popular in recent years, which is staging. I suspect this has to do a lot with us being able to see via social media, Instagram, in particular, how everything looks perfect and shiny. And I think people are now expecting that. How often are you working with when you have a listing with stagers? Is it majority of the time is it only occasionally? I’m just curious how, how frequent that that is for you.

Gail Spreen 43:58
I would say it’s not a majority of the time because a lot of times they have a lot of beautiful furniture in there already so they will wait to move their furniture until we get it so however, depending on what their furniture is, I might make recommendations for certain pieces like we need to remove about half the pieces, you know and then and then maybe have a stager come and add a few pieces that will you know enhance the flow enhance the luck of the of the whole place. So I would say it’s not all the time but every opportunity I can I I’m trying to bring a stager in because I think the value of them is is enormous. And I don’t think sellers sometimes can really appreciate how valuable those stages are. But when you go online on the MLS and you’re looking at photos where they might have virtually staged it and then they show the empty room. There’s no come Harrison to those two rooms with furniture in it versus a vacant. And it’s, you know, it’s it’s definitely worth the money that they, you know that they have to spend. And so I highly recommend that.

D.J. Paris 45:15
Yeah, thanks for that. Also, you know, for anyone who is listening, who is thinking about, you know, working with a Chicago real estate expert, in particular in the downtown area. Gail, what’s the what’s the best way that one of our listeners who might be looking for a new realtor should reach out to you?

Gail Spreen 45:36
Well, my email is Gail Gil at Streeterville properties.com. So that is one of the easiest ways to get me or my phone number, which is my cell that I give out really to everybody and, and posted anywhere. 3129 to 57668 is also a great way to get me.

D.J. Paris 45:58
Well, I think we’ve really set it all today, we talked a lot about the importance of getting involved getting local, getting knowledge about your your area as well and how that has served you in particular for and how you have served it for well over Gosh, 2020 plus years, it’s incredible. And of course, you have status in Chicago is one of one of the top brokers here in the entire Chicagoland area. So I think so much of the value you gave was just telling people this is this is how I built my business. So we really appreciate your time. And I know you’re super busy as well, even through, you know, this The Stay At Home era. But on behalf of the listeners, we want to thank Gail for her time and sharing all this great wisdom. And on behalf of Gail and myself to the listeners we also say things want to remind everyone that if everyone could just tell one friend about our show, think of another real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from Gail or any of the other guests we’ve had just shoot them over to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com Or any podcast app, just search for keeping it real, you’ll you’ll find us right away, that would really help our show grow. Also, please follow us on Facebook where@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod not only to be able to watch the behind the scenes recordings of these videos, or either of these episodes, you get to see the videos. But also we post every single day an article that we find online that was written specifically to help Realtors grow their business. So we try to provide a tremendous amount of value there as well. So follow us again on Facebook and tell a friend anyway, Gail, thank you again. You were wonderful guests. Were so excited to continue to see Streeterville prosper under your leadership. And thanks for being a part of the show.

Gail Spreen 47:51
Oh, thank you. And if you wouldn’t mind, I have one last plug. I’m chair of the lights festival for the Michigan Avenue Lights Festival parade. And that happens the Saturday before Thanksgiving every year. So I was chair last year. I’m chair again this year. So if anybody wants to get involved, you can be a balloon handler of parade Marshal. I would love to have you so just let me know. We’d love to have you join us. I know it’s not till fall till November. However we start early.

D.J. Paris 48:22
Well, and I will also yes, so everyone, I will put a link to that in the Episode Notes as well. And also my favorite church. I only have I’m not really that into churches, but I my favorite church is in Streeterville which is fourth Presbyterian, which of course is everybody’s favorite church because of how cool and perfectly situated and beautiful it is. But I they do some cool things over the holiday as well. I imagine they’re probably part of part of the lights, I’m guessing right?

Gail Spreen 48:49
Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you again, DJ. It was great to be on

D.J. Paris 48:54
Thanksgiving. All right. We’ll see everyone on our next episode. Okay, take care.

Welcome to the March episode of our Learn With A Lender series with Joel Schaub!

Joel Schaub from Guaranteed Rate discusses why some lenders (thankfully not Guaranteed Rate) are taking up to nine months to close on new purchases, and provides guidance on how agents can check-in with a lender to see the status of a loan. Since stimulus checks are on the way Joel also suggests reaching out to local businesses and purchasing gift cards to give away to your clients (or to host a contest). Great suggestions about how you can continue to thrive while stuck at home!

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Joel can be reached at joel@rate.com and 773.654.2049.


Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Joel Schaub at guaranteed rate. As a realtor it’s important to partner with only the most trusted name in mortgage lending. Joel has 1000s of satisfied clients and gives $1,500 of his commission back to your buyers on every closing. He is known for his ability to close even complex deals start to finish in only 14 days to learn what 1000s of others already know. Make a note to call Joel at 773-654-2049 or email joel@rate.com Guaranteed Rate is an equal housing lender licensed in all 50 States Consumer Access Number 2611 And now on with the show.

Welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris I am your guide and host through the show in quarantine like the rest of us today is our Learn with our lender our monthly episode with Joel shop guaranteed rate. So Joel is waving if you’re watching us live or on video here. But for everyone who is not yet familiar with Joel, Joel is a vice president of lending guaranteed rate. He has been doing loans at a high level since 2003. And it’s gotten to that level because of what he does directly for agents which is he gives back part of his commission to the buyer every single time. Last year alone Joe gave back over $291,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with them. And that put Joe’s production in the top 1% of 1% Sorry, 1/10 of 1% nationwide. Just to show you what that number is out of 400,000 licensed loan officers in the United States. Joel is ranked number 181. I don’t even know what that percentage is. But it’s it is in a very tiny miniscule part of 1%. Year to date, Joel has done 71 sales transactions for just under 27 million and closings. He has currently 102 files that are set to close that are locked that are going to be closing in the next 60 days. The busiest man I know and the biggest Cubs fan I know but never too busy. Thankfully to do our show. Joel, thanks for being on. Welcome once again. DJ, you always do it

Joel Schaub 2:32
right. I’m so impressed by what the keepin it real podcast has become. We’re they’re giving back. We’re teaching we’re learning. And we’re all about education. I mean, that’s what this is on a monthly basis when we can come on and get together and actually share what’s happening because you hear things. But it’s actually good to actually get it right from the source and know what’s happening in the mortgage market. So that you as an agent, or as a buyer can have some firm understanding of what’s going on out there. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 3:03
first, we should say you’re working from home. I’m actually in the office, but the doors locked and barricaded. So no one can come in. But essentially, I’m working from home as well. But guaranteed rate, you guys are still going strong. You were just mentioning for people that are actually we did this before the episode you said 50 was at 5400 employees are now working virtually it’s business as usual. But of course, just working in a different way.

Joel Schaub 3:30
Yeah, we had to make a transition like everybody else out there. And in a 10 day period, we moved over 5000 of our employees nationwide from an office location to a at home work location. So it is business as usual. We hire only the best of the best. And the idea is that things are continuing to go on and even smoother in some cases. As far as the technology that’s getting advanced. I’m going to talk a little bit about what’s happening on appraisals right now. Oh, great. I’m going to talk a little bit about what’s happening as far as the ability to do documentation closings, right, so you can electronically sign a lot of the docs. And so not that there’s much it’s good, that’s come out of this COVID 19 pandemic, but there’s some things that I’m seeing that I know have really moved ahead. years. Okay, when we get out of this some of these things that we’re seeing right now, that’ll really be good for the real estate community as a whole.

D.J. Paris 4:25
Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, now’s the time where if someone out there is a realtor who’s listening who has a buyer and is nervous, you know, I think now’s the time to look at these larger lending institutions that you know, have the support staff and, and the wherewithal to be able to withstand the changes in the market like your firm has. So I think it’s a great time to, to bank on on the proven lenders, like guaranteed rate.

Joel Schaub 4:52
Well, we just hope that none of the lenders out there go out of business. I mean, this is the time where it would be just a shame if some of these smaller banks that really do provide services to a lot of clients went out of business because of this, but we’re seeing a lot of runs on liquidity as far as the ability to close mortgages, because a lot of people work on a warehouse line, and they can’t produce more transactions until they clear their warehouse lines. And there’s gonna be some smaller places that just don’t make it through this. And that’s the that’s the sad part about this. So we’re not all cutthroat. Okay, it’s, we’re not all hoping that the competition goes away. We’re all in this together, there’s plenty of business for everybody out there. And if I’m an agent right now, and I have any offers that are in process, I’m taking the time to pick up the phone and call that lender and just say, hey, you’ll know a lot in that first few minutes on the phone just saying I just want to check in you have my buyer. This is the listing. I don’t usually make a phone call. But I just wanted to know, is everything going as planned? Okay, I would ask them two questions. Are the files is this current file out of underwriting? And do we have the appraisal back, and those are things that’ll, if I have a listing, and there’s a process in place right now that the closing might be in the next 30 or 60 days, take the time and just find out what’s going on on the other end of the phone? For the mortgage side of it, that’s important. And any good mortgage guy will pick up the phone and answer hopefully, to help you out.

D.J. Paris 6:24
And Joe, could you repeat those two questions just for listeners? Because I think those are key. So if you’re a realtor out there, and you’re well, just wanting to get a status update, or nervous or pick up the phone call the lender. And the two questions again, do you mind sharing?

Joel Schaub 6:36
Well, the first one, of course, DJs is my is the buyers file out of underwriting. It gets submitted to underwriting. Okay. And then the second one is, is the appraisal done, but if I’m the listing agent, I know if it was done or not, because typically they come into the house. But right now, they have so many abilities to do drive by appraisals, that if you’re a listing agent, you don’t even know if the appraisal got done. So you’re just inquiring whether or not the appraisal was done? And did it come in at value? So a couple of things that most lenders will be absolutely happy to help you.

D.J. Paris 7:09
Yeah, or at least at least the good ones. It’s funny, I not funny, but I heard that banks were being flooded with so much business due to all of the rate movement that’s been in the last, you know, four months or so that they’ve even started raising rates as a result of slowdown, the number of applications because maybe they’re just at capacity, like you were saying that the the warehouse, sort of, you know, structure, whereas places like guaranteed rate have continued to thrive and, and are, you know, still still getting loans closed at a good clip. But I do would like to talk to you about what’s changed as far as length of closing, what are you seeing out there? What’s what’s more common these days.

Joel Schaub 7:50
So this is where there’s a big dichotomy in the market between different banks, I just saw one of a competitor’s company that said they were taking between 150 to 180 days to process a refinance request, means that’s five or six months, wow, it said thank you for your request, a processor will reach out to you within 27 days, and based on our current turn times, we will close your file between 150 to 180 days. And it’s a sign of the times, right? Are you even gonna want to refinance in six months, right? It takes that long. And so what that means is that the refinance volume has driven up so much of the demand and the capacity for banks that the purchase business is falling behind. As an agent, what do you care about, you don’t care about refinances. You care about your client’s ability to close on a transaction. And so there’s still a lot of banks that can close in under 30 days on purchase transactions, if they have separated the way that we did, which was we have our own staff for underwriting for refinances, and a staff setup just for the purchases to keep those coming out in 24 to 48 hours. Wow.

D.J. Paris 9:04
Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s amazing. It’s so I bet you’re so grateful you work for a company with such great resources. You know, it’s, it’s it’s just remarkable. They continue to thrive. Talk a little bit about the the jumbo market, what’s changed there? I know, there’s been, you know, that’s sort of been turned around as well.

Joel Schaub 9:23
Yeah, DJ, you’ve seen this in the headlines a lot right now that anything that’s not a conforming loan amount and on a conventional mortgage that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy in Illinois, that’s 510,400. And since we have so many nationwide viewers and listeners, that is the average for a conventional mortgage 510 400. If you’re above that, you fall into that jumbo category. And those rates have just gone way higher, almost a full point higher than a conventional mortgage, because there’s no liquidity in the mortgage backed securities market so nobody’s stepping up to buy billions and billions of dollars of mortgage pools, if 25% of Americans don’t have a job, and they’re not able to make their mortgage payment. So, because of this uncertainty that we have, right now, the mortgages that used to be the second greatest investment tool behind a US Treasuries is no longer such a safe haven, there’s nobody out there buying them. So the only banks are the only one buying the loans from the bank. So the Fed, Federal Reserve stepped up and put in a big bazooka, they put in $50 billion of de liquidity to help buy up mortgage bonds. But that doesn’t affect anything that’s 800 900, a million to 2.5 million, those are all excluded. So those rates right now, for the foreseeable future are going to be a point higher give or take than what you’re seeing on a conventional mortgage.

D.J. Paris 10:54
Got it? Good. Interesting. That’s good to know. We talked about refi. It’s just a little bit earlier. But you know, what is going on? Right now, you mentioned, hey, some banks are taking, you know, six months is Have you seen the volume start to slow at all, due to our current pandemic? Or is that really not changed, the volume

Joel Schaub 11:15
rates are low. So buyers that bought in the last three years, they’re still calling left and right, they have a rate in the fours and just turn on the TV, you know, and you watch the markets. And you know that 30 year fixed rates are in the threes. And so that’s what’s driving the demand. We saw rates about two or three weeks ago that we’re even lower. And what I preach a lot is, How do we get a no cost? refi? Right, that’s always my focus. The banks and the advertisements and everything is focused. Yeah, they want you calling asking for that 3.25%, they’re gonna charge you 1000s of dollars to get it. Yeah. And that’s great. You can go brag to your friends on the golf course, if you’re allowed to ever leave your house again, I got that three and a quarter rate, but you paid for it, right. And so the idea was, could we instead of taking a rate of 3.2, take a rate of 3.3 or 3.5, for example, and get the bank to waive all fees, a lot of that stuff has really gone away, because the mortgage bonds right now don’t have the pricing at each different coupon level. So I think there’s going to be a time in the next 60 days, 90 days where things settle down, we’re going to see these rates with all the volatility come back down. And it allow for the refinance business to go through a lot more smooth. And I just don’t see any situation which rates spike, okay, the feds are there. They’re literally the lender of last resort, and they’ve stepped up and they’ve said, unequivocally they are buying mortgage backed securities to keep rates low. So I don’t see a situation where we got the jumbo spikes that we will have there in the conventional market. So first time buyers, you’re safe. Step Up buyers, as long as you’re not borrowing into that jumbo space, you definitely anticipate rates in the threes for the foreseeable future, which allows you to go out and buy a lot more house.

D.J. Paris 13:07
And what a great time to call, you know, since we’re all kind of locked in home on periodic zoom meetings. But between the Zoom meetings, everything life is just between zoom meetings now I think but but but during the that in between time, what a great opportunity for realtors to deepen those relationships with their sphere of influence. And whether somebody’s a renter, great time to talk about buying, whether they’re a current homeowner may be a good time to even just mention the word refinance with the right understanding that, you know, banks are backed up a little. But what a great time to just reach out and have those conversations, people have more time to think about it. Excuse me. And you’ve you’ve been saying this, ever since we’ve started doing this, I just want to remind our listeners great time to call and talk about it.

Joel Schaub 13:54
It gives you an opportunity to not call and talk about yourself as as professionals and you’re a real estate agent out there, you want to continue to provide value. And a buyer that closed a year or two ago, maybe you don’t have a reason to call them now’s the perfect opportunity just to say, first of all, are you safe, yeah is your family and those types of things. We’re kind of doing it all on a superficial level with you know, social media, but just to literally pick up the phone. And even if you get a voicemail, we’re just thinking of you. I want to know how your family is doing. And just so that you know market rates are low, I’m sure that it’s a good time for you to reach back out to your bank and just encourage your buyers, whatever bank they had, if they had a good experience, pick up the phone and ask them if they can do a refinance right now. If you’re the reason that a buyer saves a couple $100 A month they’re gonna remember

D.J. Paris 14:49
you. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And it’s funny too, because with this group, I was thinking about this. I’ve said this a few times on recent episodes, I’ll mention it again, talked about Reaching out just to check in. And of course check on the safety and well being of the people that you care about your, you know, your clients, your contact list, your sphere of influence family, friends, etc. And I was thinking like, Okay, I have all these business relationships, people, I pay fees for even some on an annual basis. There’s no insurance, and there’s financial advisors, and, you know, dentists and, you know,

your Harris’s and whoever. Yeah.

So funny. You mentioned that. Yeah, so thank you, because the only person, my accountant, right, all of these services that I pay fees for, and some of them are, I pay small fees, and others larger fees. But regardless, I was like, I wonder who’s ever going to reach out to me if anyone and check in to see how I’m doing. And the only person that has is the person that cuts my hair. And she checks she sent me a text, how’s it going, just checking in and you hope you’re safe and healthy. I’ve been going to her for like 10 plus years. But she has lots and lots of clients. And I you know, the only person and I thought this is not a crowded space. Everyone got emails from the companies that they support going, here’s what we’re doing. And those obviously became overwhelming. But how many individual reach you know, touches did I get as a result of this, this current situation was one. And she’s probably the one I paid the least amount to, as far as total amount in fees I pay. But it meant a lot to me. And it made me feel like she cared about me. And he you have an opportunity, every one of our listeners, as Jill just said, to reach out and just check in, whether it’s a phone call or text, I think a phone call makes sense these days. But that’s up to you. But to do the one thing that probably none of the other services they’re utilizing are doing. You know, so what a great idea. So thanks for that, Joel,

Joel Schaub 16:45
these companies, everybody’s sending you their message, letting you know what they’re doing, right, these big companies can do it. If I can get an email from the Holiday Inn Express in San Diego where I stayed one night because I missed the flight. I don’t care what you’re doing at that hotel, but you’ve taken the time to let me know, right? You’re seeing all those emails, actually take something out of it and make sure that you take your sphere of influence and reach out, it’ll mean something to those people. And that’s what we are in the day, we’re just people that are trying to make good connections, help people out. And there’s nothing just genuine about it. You know, most of you guys out there really care. And if you take some time, we’re all sitting at home. Right? We have time.

D.J. Paris 17:32
Yeah, the thing about caring is the kind of person that’s going to make that call is the person that cares. Like, it’s it’s you, the people that would do it in a disingenuous way just probably wouldn’t even do it. Because it’s it’s so counter to them. And they’re Yeah. But now’s the time to Yeah, as Joel said, show the heart that you have, and your clients know, you have. And you know, this is a great opportunity just to check in with them. And, and yeah, and then you get the tail end, you could tack on Hey, by the way, I was just thinking about you, if you you know, whether it’s a refinance, or a new purchase opportunity, you know, you can always throw that in if you’d like. But even you know, once we get through the end of this, you know, we were talking about this, my are the owner of our company, Nick. And we were going through some of our providers and working with them, because you know, all businesses are businesses has changed a bit. And about 90% of the service providers that we contacted, and said, Here’s what we’re going through, can you help us with this or that and defer a payment or however, and we’re certainly thankfully in good financial shape, but we were just checking to see what the options were 90% of those companies said no problem we’ll work with you don’t worry about it, the 10% we remember who those 10% are, and when we come out the other side of this, it might be an opportunity for us to re examine those relationships. My point is is is that you know, you can reach out and you can be that that sole provider to that person, there’s probably a lot of people that care about that person, that ad have business relationships, but who’s actually doing the reach out, might as well be you and and you will you will get so much from doing that. And that’s not the reason to do it. But that’s what will happen. When this all is over. They’re going to remember that you reached out and hopefully they would continue to use you in the future. So

Joel Schaub 19:13
So I want to give a tip and you’re exactly right. If I’m an agent out there right now, where are most of the eyes, right? They’re on their phones, you’re looking at social media. And so what I did recently is I created a giveback campaign, it’s called Joel gives back. And at the end of 30 days, we’ll have given 1000s of dollars to our local community in the food and service industries that literally are shut down. So these restaurants right now that are so vital to the your, your local economies where you guys live. Chicago is one of the best foodie type of towns there are okay, and all of these restaurants are really struggling. And so what we’ve done is a campaign to buy gift certificates from some of the restaurants that were the hardest hit, and then give them away And so we’ve done, we’re 15 or 16 days in every single day, we’re giving away $100. And by the time all is said and done, we’ll have donated 1000s of dollars back to the people that run the restaurants that need it. And then giving those gift certificates to people that are less fortunate so that they can put some food on their table and just relax, you know what it’s like to make meals 15 days in a row, I mean, take some time. And so the point here is, you don’t get to do it that many days in a row, go and buy a gift certificate to one of your favorite places, and then raffle it off online and just say, who needs it the most, or make a fun game out of it. And just show that you’re charitable, I promise you, it’ll go a long way, as an agent, find ways to give back. I bring it up almost every time that we’re on here. But it’s a givers gain mentality that will get you through this.

D.J. Paris 20:52
Yeah, and to, you know, when you’re doing that as a marketing opportunity, obviously you’re doing it to give back but to promote it. Definitely let the the establishment for example, if it’s a restaurant, let them know, Hey, I’m going to be raffling this off, I’m going to tag you in the post, if you want to share it with your customers, we’d be honored to have anyone Welcome to do the contest. And you know, you’re going to you know that they’re going to be thrilled. Because it you know, it’s an opportunity for them to attract more customers. And obviously, hopefully, they’ll share that with their, their own social followers. So it’s a great opportunity to to help out those small businesses. And I I also say once those stimulus checks come in, please use them in your local local businesses, please spend some of that money on the places you like the best so that they can stick around because it’s tough for a lot of places right now. So,

Joel Schaub 21:41
DJ, I’m so glad you said that, because that’s exactly what’s going on. People need it more than anything. Okay. I teased this earlier in the broadcast, but I wanted to come up with the two things that I really think are actually moving forward here. Okay, so the first one, and this is letting people know the sky isn’t falling in real estate. So the first one is, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have reduced a lot of the guidelines to get deals done right now. So instead of putting the the reins on these things, one of the big things that they’re allowing for is a much easier appraisal process. Okay. So what we’re seeing right now on purchases, is that the appraisers no longer need to physically enter the property. Okay, let me say that, again, if you have a listing, and you haven’t been contacted by the appraiser, the appraisal might already be done. Right. So last week, the head of the NBA met with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and they’ve issued new guidance, as far as the ability to have desktop appraisals. Okay. So that means that they can use the photos that are directly in the MLS, drive by and make sure the property isn’t on fire or gone, or just an empty lot. And they’re using the Contract Purchase price. So if you got a seller willing to sell it for this, and a buyer willing to buy it for that, they’ve been told, let’s not go out of our way to try to appraise things low. So we’re seeing a lot of two and three day turnaround on appraisals, instead of taking seven to 10 days. So that’s shortening the time deals done. So that’s one of the things I think we’re gonna see going forward as well, is we got away from this a lot. After the 2008 2009 we had to have that guy go out, get in the house and take his tape measure, measure every damn room. You don’t need all that. You just don’t. Okay, you can make common central lending decisions at a big time level without having to physically have that gentleman go through the entire house and take every single picture. There’s so much data. Okay, so we’re getting back to some common sense there. Now we’re not going to start over appraising things, and we’re not going to get away we’re not going to go back to no appraisals, but we’re going to have a lot more common sense going forward. And it’s going to help you as an agent not have so many deals where the appraisal comes in low that’s just the worst Okay, yep. And then to the ability right now for a lot of counties to go fully digital and closings is coming. Okay. Wouldn’t that help if you just couldn’t you don’t have to sit at a title company for two hours the day of closing

D.J. Paris 24:16
it’s almost amazing that in 2020 It hasn’t been this way for 10 years already right like this. This is the future is yesterday but at least it’s at least it’s finally about here Yeah, it’s it’s funny I now I think there’s so many businesses that are now seeing they can do things virtually and so thankfully, the title companies are you know, are catching up and will I guess it very exciting just makes everyone’s life a lot easier.

Joel Schaub 24:45
As an agent you should go to the closing right and but for the longest time agents have gotten away from because they’re so busy, they got other things to do. And they don’t want to be the one sitting there for two hours. But now the ability to do flash closing on a lot of these transactions being Right now we already have the ability to sign 95% of the docs electronically and only go to the title company to sign the six or seven wet signatures that are needed per county. Right now we’re getting close to the point where a lot of counties are allowing full electronic closing packages. And I think it’s going to just ease the process. And it’s, it’s funny that in today’s digital world, you wire the money to the closing you sign packages electronically, you still need to go and squiggled something on a piece of paper. I mean, so we’re getting there, there’s the ability to do all the refinance closings just like this, you enter a room, you show your ID, you digitally sign and making clothes a full refinance from start to finish with no human contact. Okay, that’s it. So we’re getting there on the purchase side of things. And so I just want to get to end with stay strong. Okay, the market isn’t falling, I think we’re gonna see a surge once we get out of this of buyers of pent up demand to come out because rates are going to stay low, the feds have said so. And so just take a deep breath, be safe. And just know that there’s a lot of people around you that care about you.

D.J. Paris 26:13
And reach out to the people you care about. And not just your sphere of influence and contacts, but certainly certainly them. But reach out, now’s the time to deepen relationships across the board. So you know, think back to your friends and family. And now you can start to develop those habits of staying, staying in touch. I know, I know, there’s more people I’m reaching out to these days, just to check in and, and but yeah, so stay in touch, stay connected. By the way for everyone who’s listening for anyone who is listening. And by the way, I should mention before I say this, that we at the firm I met, we have over 600 Realtors here, and the only lender we recommend is Joel. And obviously we get called by every lender, every loan officer would love to be that person. But we literally have this relationship because we just feel that Joel is the best that we’ve seen. I have personally worked with him as well. And everyone I’ve sent to him and said the same thing. So for everyone who’s listening, if you don’t have a great relationship with with a lender, or you’re looking to see what other options exist, we will always tell you to to call Joel and Joel slogan is just call Joel. And we actually think that makes perfect sense because he’s obviously fantastic. But to Joel, what’s the best way anyone? And by the way, you could be an agent out there looking to partner with a lender for for some opportunities, marketing wise. Also, for anyone who’s out there who may be interested in working with you directly. As a borrower, what’s the or refinance? What’s the best way somebody should reach out?

Joel Schaub 27:40
Well, it’s all about building that relationship. And so I just always start with an email and just introduce yourself. I’ve done this several times on the show, and I’ve gotten to meet so many agents from all across the United States. They say, I’ve heard you on the keepin it real podcast, here’s what I do, I’ve actually set up relationships out of state right now to help people on open houses and doing broker opens and helping their clients because we’re in all 50 states and give part of our commission back. So on most transactions, I can give a $1,500 closing cost credit to help offset the buyers costs. And if you’re an agent out there, just looking for a fresh start here and want to work with somebody else here, just feel free to reach out. My email is Joel JOE l@rate.com. So it’s joel@rate.com. And you can always reach me 773-654-2049 I’m still answering. So give me a ring, we can start to build a relationship. I like to know the people that are out there and what they’re doing. And as you can see, it’s about providing value, we’re here to help grow. That’s how I’m doing over $100 million a year of transactions. It’s not because we don’t know what we’re doing. It’s because we’re really truly trying to help you grow your business to the next level. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 28:57
that just makes all the sense in the world and is so smart. And you’ve been doing this for gosh 17 years or so now and it’s remarkable. Here in the local Chicago community everybody already knows Joel so if you’re listening from outside of this area, or again if you’re here and just looking to work with Joel obviously reach out but anywhere any state any one of our listeners can reach out and Joel will hopefully be able to help you so definitely give him a shoot him an email or give him a call. And we just have one quick favor to ask of all of our listeners before I sign off, which is to please follow well two things please. Two favors rather. I just doubled the number of favors I’m going to ask for but the first one is simple, please follow us on Facebook you can find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod we as we’re recording these episodes, we post them live on Facebook and kind of watch a little behind the scenes as we’re recording. But also we every single day find an article online designed to help you grow your business and we post it and we also post silly questions of the day and things like that but it’s a good way we try to put a lot of energy into it to give you value. And then the second thing is to please tell a friend, think of just one other agent, one realtor, one broker out there that could benefit from listening to Joel and all the other great guests we have, and please share this podcast, you can send them to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com Or just, you know, tell them to look it up on iTunes or Spotify or wherever they’re finding podcasts. But anyway, on behalf of Joel and myself to the listeners, we say thank you for continuing to listen and support our show. And Joel on behalf of the listeners and myself, of course, we thank you for your continued contribution. I’m so grateful to have you on here every month, and excited to see how busy you are and your success continues to grow. So thanks again and we’ll see you next time. Stay safe everybody.

Phil Byers of Byers Home Team at Compass is not only known as one of Chicago’s top real estate producers, he’s also one of the most professional agents you’ll ever meet. After 17 years Phil shares his strategies on what has worked to build his business and what he’s telling his team and clients right now during the stay-at-home order. He also provides actionable tips for real estate agents looking to take their production to the next level.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Phil Byers can be reached at 773.980.6683 and phil.byers@compass.com


Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Agent youtube.com. Would you like more leads that find you instead of you finding them. Let the YouTube agents show you how the YouTube agents started making videos with no sphere of influence. This year, they’re on pace to close more than 100 sales all from leads generated on YouTube. They put a step by step video program to show you exactly what to do and what not to do to become a YouTube real estate superstar. Visit agent youtube.com to learn more and sign up today. That’s agent youtube.com. And now on to the show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and your host through the show. And guys, we just hit a milestone. Well, I didn’t even know we hit the milestone. Thankfully, zonna, our producer, who’s on top of everything in keeps this thing running notice this and told me this morning. So we actually passed over the 100 and 50th Episode Mark milestone a week or two ago. And so we wanted to celebrate that. And also think take this opportunity to thank our listeners. Because without you we wouldn’t have made it even five episodes. Thankfully, this has become a popular show among real estate agents in the country. And we’re excited to continue to provide this content to you on a regular basis. We’ve doubled down this year and doing about twice as many episodes as we normally do. So we’re super, super thrilled to be able to provide more of that content to you. But we need a favor from you. So continue to support our show by doing really just two things. One is telephoned, think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from interviews like the one we’re about to have with Phil Byers, who’s amazing. And you’re gonna be so excited to hear from Phil, it’s a great interview. And all of our interviews are good, because the guests we have are so amazing. And we’re so grateful to have them on the show. So tell a friend about our show, send them over to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com. And also the second thing follow us on Facebook find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod why? Well, not only do we post all of our episodes there every single day, we find an article written online somewhere designed to help Realtors grow their business. So you’ll get some great tips and advice. And also, you can watch our videos or behind the scenes recordings of our episodes on our Facebook page. So once again, find us on Facebook. And lastly, stay safe and healthy. And when those stimulus checks come in. Hopefully they’ll be coming in this week or next. Put that money back into your local economy. Support your local businesses who are struggling right now just like everyone else, help them out so that they can keep your local economy going. Alright guys, thanks. And now on to our interview with the great Phil buyers.

Today on the show, we have Phil buyers from buyers home team at Compass fuel, by the way, Phil is a legend in the Chicago market. So we’re super excited to have him and actually if somebody else should be hosting this podcast, it’s probably him. So I’m going to tell you a little bit about Phil, if you’re if you’re from the Chicago market, you probably already know him but our listeners of course are everywhere. So for everyone who doesn’t yet know Phil, let me tell you a little bit about him. Phil Byers recently joined compass as a 17 year veteran of real estate in Chicago’s North Side neighborhoods. Formerly in consulting, Phil started buyer’s home team with a mission of providing next level expertise and service to his clients. His favorite part of the business is advising his clients so they make well informed and clear decisions about their home and financial future. Phil’s also served as a productivity coach I could use him and has a true passion for helping the people of the real estate industry succeed. He was also named a 2019 Chicago Association of Realtors top 1% producer and we are thrilled to have him by the way follow find Phil and his his team at buyers home team.com welcome Phil to the show.

Phil Byers 4:41
Thanks CJ. Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here. We are

D.J. Paris 4:45
excited to have you I was telling Phil just before we started that we haven’t met in person, but I feel like I know him because he moderates a lot of events and panels all over Chicago and probably elsewhere and he is 1000 times better. In fact, funny story before we get started, I, I was just moderating a panel for the YPN for Chicago Association realtors. Oh, Grant was like I hadn’t done that ever before. And I said, I am going to take the times I’ve seen Phil speak and basically I did a version of you for about an hour. I love it. We haven’t met in person, but I was impersonating you just about a month ago. So

Phil Byers 5:21
Well, I always say when I’m moderating panels are doing that stuff that I’m pretending to be in show business. You know,

D.J. Paris 5:28
you are so good at it. Your note cards. You Phil is super professional. I am not so I love I love. I need to I need to learn from you and do better.

Phil Byers 5:37
My friend Joe Zimmerman did a big panel in a room of like 800 people about a month ago, and he called me a couple of weeks and I’d love getting this call. And he was like, Phil, I need to tips on moderating this panel. And so I you know, coached him up a little bit to get ready for the room. I love it like tonight show if you can.

D.J. Paris 5:56
Well, let’s talk about you. I would love to know since you’ve been in real estate for a long time, but you came from a different background. I would love to hear that story. Can you tell us a little bit about why you got into real estate and how you got it?

Phil Byers 6:07
Yeah, yeah. You know, I grew up in a family where my dad worked for the same company for 35 years. And which is great today is his birthday actually, which is Wow, happy birthday. Yeah, happy birthday. 77 years old to my dad. He wants to go grocery shopping either this is Coronavirus, driving my brother and I nuts anyway, he, I just sort of had it in my bones to be at a big company and to sort of like climb a corporate ladder. And I was doing that for a while. And I just kept kind of bumping into hating it. And just really feeling trapped. Real Estate interested me I didn’t know anything at the time. But my now wife and my girlfriend and soon after this, my fiancee at the time, we looked for a home and we bought it together. And I think the process was just confusing and overwhelming. And I was so interested in real estate that I thought I think I can do this better. So I got to leave that nine to five, you know, commute to the suburbs and sit at a desk job and get to do this carnival job that we do. But I really wanted to just serve people i That’s my first impressions of the business is that I just get to really take a process that can be confusing and overwhelming and just help them get through it easier and set expectations better.

D.J. Paris 7:22
Yeah, I would say that that’s a very big reason why people get in this idea of serving that is certainly something that comes through in your personality, when I’ve seen you speak I think that’s something that is that is definitely you. And can you tell us so we have a lot of listeners who are either newer to the business and right now, obviously, everything’s upside down and difficult. But you know, even in more normal times, when we’re not stuck at home, you know, a lot of the listeners are always looking for tips and advice. And do you mind sharing sort of how you got started? And what did you do 17 years ago, you know what, what was what was what, what helped you build your business. And the thing I

Phil Byers 8:01
I always remember is there was an agent and my first office and this is a little bit of background on sort of sort of where I was at the time. So I come into sales, I’ve never sold anything before I quit my job. I’m in this new office, I don’t know anybody. And it was I don’t think of it today as being scary. But at the time, I’m sure I was scared, right? I mean, I don’t I don’t make a living anymore. I don’t have that income coming in benefits, all that stuff. And there was a woman that used to walk around my office going, it’s just a numbers game. It’s just a numbers game. And I always make this joke, although it’s not really a joke. I didn’t really understand what she meant, right? I remember her telling me just go to Starbucks in the morning. And when you’re waiting in line for your coffee, handing out your business card to all the strangers in Starbucks. And my first reaction was I’m doomed because there’s no way that I’m doing that guy, right. I’m too nervous. But I read The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, which is Gary Keller is broken. In it, there was this thing called a 33 touch. And it was a math formula. And I really attached to it. And it said if you meet people, and you put them into this machine, and you touch them a certain number of times per year, and you have a plan. So it’s thought out it’s businessy, right? It’s, you know, you have a marketing plan, and you have a touch plan and you’d seek to stay in in contact with this group of people. It also taught you to not judge the relationship. So if you meet somebody, let’s say at an open house, which is where I cut my teeth, I used to sit open houses all the time. Because I had been taught reading this plan, like meet people, put them into your thing. Your thing being your marketing plan, make sure that you’re touching them 33 times a year, four of those touches were personal and my business just grew and grew and grew and grew and it was just on the backs of, hey, I met you Do you need anything? Hey, I met you, here’s the thing that you might need, and then people would eventually call you and then that’s what my career has been for 17 years I say now, I really just have a Rolodex business where my clients are just kind of a natural churn all the time but it was do open houses and meet people meet people meet people meet people meet people is all I I was obsessed with for, really, for the first five years of my career, that’s all I did was just obsessively go to open houses, go to networking events, meet people that could potentially be buyers and sellers. And then stay in touch with them. Even if they didn’t give me any vibe that they necessarily wanted to stay in touch with me, I still stayed in touch with them. And then a lot of those people became my clients and then told them and when you do the good work on top of that, you know, you do the fun part, which is actually work with them, then they refer you and come back to you and all that stuff, which is really great. And that’s how I started it was just go out meet, meet me do open houses and build your database. I’m obsessive about names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.

D.J. Paris 10:39
So that was the seed that started my business. And now is such a great time. While we’re you know, a lot of us are working from home, the vast majority of the country to really go back through your CRM or just your database of your contact list your sphere of influence, and make sure you have all of that information filled out and you you should know, your clients birthdays, their anniversaries, where they work, all of those things so that you can have a reason to reach out to them. And you have things to say you could call them on their anniversary. It’s my it’s your father’s birthday today. It’s my parents anniversary. And I don’t I’m curious on my parents have lots of service providers in their life financial planners, insurance attorneys, whatever, doctors, etc. And Realtors as well. And I’m wondering how many calls they’re getting today from other people who know it’s their anniversary aside from friends and family? And I bet it’s zero. Yeah. And so what a great opportunity right now for us to fill in those holes in our database.

Phil Byers 11:35
Yeah. And people, it’s a weird thing. Because one of the things that interests me as I always try to refer to myself as a citizen of the industry, like I really like being in, you know, you mentioned at the top of about doing, you know, the panels and speaking engagements and stuff, I really, really love the people of our industry. And I always say that you don’t even have to be that best friendly with everyone what they really want you to be as an expert, and they want you to be a really solid agent. And they want you to be able to answer their questions. I mean, the number one question that people have, you know, today when I get from clients is what the heck are you guys doing? Yeah, can you show a thing, can you and sometimes people just want to connect with you. And there were years where I felt like I do a deal. Going back to that point of like really liking to be a citizen of the industry in talking to people over the years. When I say this, people attach to this, I go for years, I thought everybody hated me at the end of a transaction. And I’ve been proven wrong, literally almost 100% of the time, then they call me three years later, but it’s like you have this big relationship and you’re with them. And so that self doubt that you have, can really mess with you. And so sometimes if you’re if you feel uncomfortable calling a client saying, Hey, happy anniversary, because you don’t have that kind of relationship, call them up and say, or don’t even call them, send him a note and go, Hey, just checking in with your DJ thought you might want to understand some metrics here. showings are down 55%, the last three weeks, and the number of contracts are down about the same, the number of listings are down about the same. So roughly half the markets disappeared. In case you’re wondering, and gee whiz, if you have any questions just about the market in general, or your home, just call me that’s people love that. Yeah. And they don’t necessarily even need to be your best friend. I’m not one to like, bring a pie at Christmas and short over the birth of a new child. But I am the person that’s there. They know the relationship they have with me. And they, they like it. And I like it too. I want to be there for them. And that touch doesn’t even have to be so gooey if you don’t want it to be. It can just be is me checking in. You’re so

D.J. Paris 13:34
absolutely right. And it doesn’t have to be as personalized. But it does, I think you either have to go the GUI route, or you have to go the expert route. And ideally, you’d have a combination of both. So you have great relationships, but really, at the end of the day, that knowledge is probably probably wins in trumps everything. Because right now I have a friend who’s a financial advisor, he is of course, just a last couple months, it has been you know, it’s been crazy. You know, obviously every day is crazy now with the market. And I said what are you telling your clients? I’m not one of his clients. And he and he just immediately rattled off about 10 things. And I was like, That was a great answer. Because he immediately had that answer. So I think what you just said is so important is have an answer. Do your research know what’s going on and know statistics like, by the way, showings are down, you know, cancellations, and temps are up and, and being able to have an intelligent conversation. You don’t have to know everything, but you certainly have to know more than your clients.

Phil Byers 14:32
You got it. You got it. And sometimes the best answer is I don’t know the answer. It’s Yes. And I don’t mean like I’ll find out for you. I mean, when I had I have you know, I coached 40 people for a year. I have a lot of colleagues, I have a real passion for young agents. And it was funny like day three of the lockdown. I’m getting phone calls from my colleagues and I would start answering the phone going. Hey, I’ve also never been through this. So I know you’re calling me to ask me what to do. But I don’t know. Because we just don’t know and when clients are gone Hey, What do we do with this? I go, double your building. Let us do showings, if so we can do this or that. And if you live there, we can do this or that. But it’s it’s a challenging time. But yeah, I agree. Or I think that summary is really good knowing an answer. And being able to tell your client something is so important. That’s what they want you for. That’s what they want you for. Yeah. And

D.J. Paris 15:19
that’s also your job, right? And not your job. And I’m not referencing you, but I’m saying it’s a real estate professionals job is to have answers. And it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to know everything. And again, the I don’t know, answer is perfectly acceptable. And then if it needs to be followed up with, let me do some research and get back to you, which is a perfectly acceptable answer, especially if you’re new, or let me check with my team and get back to you. But yeah, there’s off. Authenticity, transparency, and especially right now, everything is so so different. To be able to say, I really don’t know exactly what the future holds. But here’s what we can do today, or here are some options or ideas and, and let’s work together to figure it out, I think, yeah, I think that’s a really good. I want to also say something about you specifically, that you talked about being a citizen of the industry. I also have seen the way how enamored you are with other real estate professionals that you admire. And I’ve seen you do this in moderation. You know, it’s not an act, but when you’re talking to your guests, or the people that are sharing their secrets or their success strategies, you are, you are as interested as the most interesting person in that audience. You are that person. And I wonder how much of that has helped you even in your business over the years? You seem like somebody that’s always been interested in other other agents and how they’re how they’re doing?

Phil Byers 16:41
Yeah, I mean, I sometimes joke that I miss my calling. I mean, I You joke to the top two that I you know, maybe I should host a podcast. I mean, I would love it. I it’s so much more interesting to me to be curious about people. The other the other reason I think that you see that come through, is because I think our industry doesn’t tell the story of what it’s like, very well, the story gets told in whatever movies or reality shows, or whatever. I mean, I was just watching Ryan serhant, watching a bunch of his videos and really loving that I understood him. And I didn’t know much about Ryan serhant and really liked the stuff that he’s doing. But it spoke to me as an agent. I think from a consumer standpoint, it’s a little tougher. And so when I’m I’m doing those events, or I’m getting to interview, Jenny Eames are sure you know, the completely insane, Frank Montreux or whomever it is, I just want to know what they’re about and what makes them tick. Because I’ve been through it, I’ve, you know, anybody that makes it, is gonna cry and crumbled to the ground at some point from the pressure and stress, you know, ideally in the early part of their career. And I always say I can smell if you’ve done that yet. You don’t I mean, and if you’re talking to Melanie stone, you know, she has, if you’re talking to Jenny Eames, you know she has, and then I just want to hear about you and what it’s like for you. And I’ve, in some of those interviews, gotten answers that took my breath away. Yeah, and how honest and real they were not even about the like, what are your best tips for open houses, right. But this is how I feel sometimes, because this business is hard. That’s I like the opportunity for us to tell that story to each other because it makes us feel a bit more connected. Because the rest of the time, we’re mostly wrong running around going, Hey, look at how great I am. And look how many houses I sold. And, you know, we all look at each other with tears in our eyes. Sometimes we go I can’t do this another day. You know, and that’s what interests me is, is that part of the connection, the League, the consumers and the real estate sales, but what makes Matt literacy tick, or what makes Frank Montreaux tick, you know, Jenny Eames, or whomever it is, I just, I do love that process. And I don’t know it interests me and it helps me connect to the people of this business and it makes me like it more to

D.J. Paris 18:55
ya, I agree. And those those agents who are often featured on these types of panels have such interesting stories and they have there’s a lot of commonality in their discipline their the fundamentals they use to build their business there tends to be a lot of that is the same but but you know, when you were talking to me mentioned Frank Montero, who’s another Chicago legend, Southside Chicago guy, and, you know, you would asked him at this panel about the way you’d asked everyone on the panel, what would their morning routine was, and he had the most interesting morning routine. And it was very surprising because he’s kind of a gruff, you know, sort of type of guy. And he said, Oh, no, this is this is what I do for the first hour of the day, and it was all about, you know, taking care of himself. And I thought, Oh, my God, what a great you know, it’s I love hearing stuff like that. From and you’re able to bring that out of people. I’m curious to know what you are. What you are telling people on your team right now to stay busy. How are you staying busy and productive during during the turbulent times that we’re in?

Phil Byers 19:58
Yeah, few more Single I made a transition to compass and just really fun and exciting. But I admit that, you know, after 15 years with a different company, I rested for a little too long. So what I’m doing, and then I’ll answer the part about what I’m telling people to do, what I’m doing is catching up, I’m using it as an opportunity to get to all those things that I haven’t been getting to. I’m typically in touch with my clients pretty regularly. And we’re continuing that people on my team, it’s keep doing what we do every day, which is connect with our clients, the way that we’re connecting might be a little bit different. What we’re talking about might be a little different. I have a philosophy that we can go and share information with our clients, even if they didn’t ask for it. So I mean, two and a half weeks ago, I wrote a big email to my clients about you know how this is affecting us thus far, just so that something could get in front of them, and so that they could start hearing us talk about it and know that we’re connected in reality. But the answer whenever anybody asked me how to build their business, or what we’re doing now, or your question, which is what are you telling your team? Or what are you telling people to do now, is what you should always be doing, which is being in relationship with your clients be asking them what they need? To my clients, the big advice that I’ve given is if you’ve started, and this is a little bit of lead generation, right, but if you started thinking about selling this year, what an amazing opportunity for us to do all that homework that we hate doing. Everyone gets really excited about putting their place on the market doing showings getting offers the part about like, Okay, send me conodonts, okay, send me all this information, get me this, we got to get the photos scheduled. That’s the part that people hate. And right now, it’s a little more doable, because you have more time. And so I’m trying to line up for D Day, basically, at some point, it switches gonna flip and we’re all going to be back at it run around like crazy people. And I’m putting listings in the chamber ready to go. I talk to a client today where the only thing holding us up is that the building won’t let anybody in to do anything. A lot of older people live there. It’s 90 Lakeshore drive. And nobody, they will let anybody in there. They weren’t like cleaning people. And they weren’t let photographers in. So I talked to my client today. But she just appreciated hearing from me, and having me push just to go, Hey, can we get in there? And don’t get me wrong. I’m not being dangerous. In fact, we’re trying to let people in without even me going shake, can they meet, get the keys of the desk or whatever, we’re not being irresponsible. But hey, if it’s a vacant unit, if I can get a cleaning crew in there, can I and we can’t in this case, but my client really appreciated me thinking about it and continuing to push. And that’s what we’re doing is just staying in front of everybody and moving the ball where we can move it keeping our closings going, you know, there’s been deals I’m sure you’ve heard that have fallen apart during this time where buyers have gotten spooked the stock market spooks everybody, for good reason. I mean, I’m not even arguing that they shouldn’t be spooked. But I’m trying to focus on all the things that we can do. Which is kind of how I run life anyway, I don’t really get stressed out, I just go, okay, the world’s burning. Where’s the path out of the woods? You know what I mean? Or how can I get some rest for a day? Or how can I throw some water on this fire? That’s right next to me for a minute. So I can clear my head to get to the next thing that’s just try to stay focused and and do more. Being funny, your clients? Yeah, I

D.J. Paris 23:11
think I think that’s right. And it’s it, this is a great time to go back to those fundamentals and to maybe cultivate the habits that you didn’t have time to do when you are running around working, you know, insane hours, because everything is normal. And, you know, now it’s opportunity. Like for me when I was thinking back to that conversation that you had with Frank Montreux, where he was mentioning his morning routine. And I was thinking, you know, I was like, I gotta incorporate that sort of thing into my life, and I hadn’t, and now it’s like, okay, I actually have time to put that into place. And that’s going to reap dividends as well. Same thing with, you know, deepening relationships with clients, if there are people that you’ve worked, not you, Phil, but anyone listening who has worked with in the past, and maybe you’ve lost touch, what a great opportunity to reach out, just check in, see how they’re doing. Maybe give them some ask them, you know, you can always ask them if they have any real estate needs as well. But even just the reach out and saying, hey, you know, I sort of lost touch, I apologize for that. But I wanted to reconnect and just see how you, you know, you and your family were doing or I have this idea for you, you know, or hey, by the way, it might be a great time to refinance. Because of course of the rates being so low. And if you don’t want to go the touchy feely route, that’s a great value add, say, Hey, if you don’t have a great lender, I’ve got one for you. If you know that sort of thing. So lots of great opportunities to to, you know, to stay connected, I think, which is, as you said, the kind of the name of the game.

Phil Byers 24:31
Totally. Yeah. You said, you know, it’s a good time to get back to fundamentals. And I’ve said for years, the best thing to do is just get good at fundamentals. That’s the whole business. I say this a lot is just dribbling and passing. Forget you. You can make a ridiculous living just knowing how to dribble and pass really well. And dribbling and passing to me is staying connected to the people that you’ve met, bring them value, do good work, stay in touch with them. I mean, the number of times it’s funny I fill out a thing for You for funny story, one of my favorite stories in the business is different than the one that I gave you. But Phil, it’s, it’s years ago. So it’s probably it was probably 2010 ish. I don’t remember what year the, or the Olympics were supposed to be in Chicago. 2016. Number one, the bid for the Olympics. Okay, so I’m sitting at this networking Christmas party at this woman’s house. And for some reason, this woman, she was a patent attorney, she just didn’t like me. I was in a, I was in a networking group, kind of like a BNI. Group. Okay, yeah. And she had hosted this Christmas party for all the people of the thing. And I’m not a very social person. So I don’t want to be there. But I’m a professional. So I’m there. And our wives and spouses are all there. And so we’re sitting there talking, and I ended up engaging her and saying, Oh, your house is so beautiful. It was in River North. She had a big townhouse. And I said, Oh, I’m curious to know, when you got it or who your age was. And she was kind of like, talk to the hand like, oh, here, do you have an agent, and I was like, Alright, I’m gonna try to pitch anything, I just want to know, so she’s going on and on about how great her agent is. And she’s clearly uncomfortable with me just having any conversation with her because I happen to be a real estate agent. And she says, Our agents really great, our agents really great. We actually just bought some new property on the south side, because the Olympics are definitely coming to Chicago in 2016, which is, you know, remember the Olympics when they were here. So it went great. So she had gone out and bought some stuff. And I said, Oh, I again, I asked her who her agent was, because I want to know if I know them, right? Finally, after pressing her. And after she’d been raving about her agent, she goes, I don’t remember their name. And she, I was that day was such a huge aha for me. And when you look at the statistics of our business nardus is great report every year, the profile of home buyers and sellers. So awesome find is 74% of people never hear from their agent again. And then remarkable. And that’s the whole that’s the dribbling and passing thing, right? Like forget shooting, like you can dish it to be shoot, just dribble down the court, and you’re gonna make an insane living, just keep in touch with people offer yourself to be available. She couldn’t remember the name of this agent that she raved about. And that’s not the first time in my career. But I just always remember that as a reminder, that’s why keep in touch. That’s why we as agents should keep in touch because literally people forget our names.

D.J. Paris 27:12
Well, yeah. And that’s, and it’s probably a lot of it’s just, you know, and there’s no judgement to this. But I think all of us think we’re just a little bit more important than we really are. And that’s, that’s not because we haven’t. But, well, I’ve always said as a joke to it. Phil just said, I’ve always said, you know, if you’re just posting on Facebook just listed and just sold, nobody cares. Nobody cares. The person who you just sold the home to or sold the home from cares. Other than that, nobody needs to see you. Right back. But but the point is, is that we all think well, I sold you know, in your case, in this story, I sold this person in beautiful river North townhome, which is probably not inexpensive. And then I also sold them a property on the south side for you know, maybe multiple properties. Yeah, well, maybe. And and of course, they’re gonna remember me, they love me, I’m great. And here’s an example of them not remembering.

Phil Byers 28:04
So great. And such. It shows up in the numbers. Yeah, Darren does a great study every year, it says most people are going to forget about you, most people aren’t going to keep in touch. And to me, that’s the whole opportunity of the business. And the coolest part about it is that if you just stay in touch with people authentically, you get to mostly be yourself. Like I don’t have to pretend to be anything else. I’m filled. This is how I would say to my clients in the way I’m talking to you right now. Unfortunately, it’s the same way I talk to my wife, like we have the same cadence, right? Like there is no different speed or different version. And I think if you can systemize it, you know, I love that you mentioned Frank Montrose morning routine, right? Like if you can systemize even just a portion of your day, right? And I don’t even care what portion of the day it is. But if you can just get really on purpose about a couple of things. You don’t even have to be that again, you don’t have to be good at shooting you just have to dribble and pass.

D.J. Paris 28:58
Yeah, it’s funny that it’s I think it was Scott pack or somebody wrote the it’s never crowded along the extra mile. Somebody wrote that but it’s not even the extra mile. It’s not even crowded mostly around the highway. If you’re just actually doing the fundamentals, you’re far ahead of most sadly and unfortunately, but the good news is you don’t have to necessarily be the very best you just have to do really great customer service. And if you’re in and that extends you know before the sale and well after the sale,

Phil Byers 29:30
especially after the sale for sure. These people are not checks their relationships and part of the joy of the business is having trees of friends that have bought in referred to me and had kids and then had other kids in the bigger homes and bigger homes, bigger homes. I mean, I know some people that are you know for 15 years and I’ve helped him buy and sell three homes and I’ve watched them go from dating to married with three kids and the part about doing the business isn’t that fun after a long time you don’t hate it, but it’s just what you do. But the part about knowing those people and knowing about their lives and them honoring you, and wanting you to be part of their life is great. And it makes it worth it. Because the rest of the time, we’re just pushing papers, you know, right? The human part, if we’re not making it human or or humanistic. It’s just, like I say, then we’re just brokers.

D.J. Paris 30:21
And it is it is remarkable that in our narcissistic, you mentioned about most clients don’t hear from their realtor after or forget their Realtors name. It’s a very sad, sad thing. But it’s also what an amazing opportunity for anyone who’s new to the business to understand that, you know, just doing that staying in touch is a good, a good chunk of the way to success,

Unknown Speaker 30:44
honestly.

D.J. Paris 30:46
Yeah, it’s, it’s, as Phil said, at the beginning, you know, look, whether you’re going what look if you if you work at a firm, and Phil said, he cut his teeth on open houses, which almost every we’ve interviewed almost 150, top 1% producers for the show so far. And basically, every single one of them started out doing open houses. And so for everyone listening, and I just want to quickly get back to that, because it was such an important thing. And we just we’ve sort of moved past it. But I want to go back because this is really important. So if you are a lot of people might say, well, I don’t have any listings, well, this what a great opportunity to develop relationships with other real estate professionals in your office, and just beg them ask them, Can I please please, please do an open house for you? Oh, my God. Yep. Yep. And, and if you don’t have that, then you know, you know, then go to Starbucks, like Phil was told, and just start handing out your cards, meet as many people as you can do it in an authentic way. Be yourself and add people to your database. But yeah, open houses are right now, obviously, a lot of places aren’t able to do that. Here, of course, in most states, but but once that, once we get past that, you know, beg people I’ve even had top producers on my show that have said if somebody’s a top 1% producers who say if somebody in my office asked me to open house, I turned them down two or three times. And I wanted to see if they keep coming back.

Phil Byers 32:07
I love it. Yeah, love it. One of the things if I could talk about that open house, minute and what I did, I’ve given this suggestion to agents, there’s an agent who’s still active in our market. Her name is Nancy Finley, she was sort of my first mentor. When I was at my first office, and I remember that there was a listing at the New York billing 3660 lecture that she had on the 25th floor had a great view as a one bedroom, there’s no big deal. And I basically just adopted it. I mean, I said to her, she wanted to do this. I mean, this is a while back. So I mean, she wanted to do open houses literally every single weekend. Yeah. And I said, I will do an open house here every single weekend for you. And what I would say to her, as I’ve said this to new agents, I can Oh, don’t just call up. Somebody says can you do an open house? What I remember saying to Nancy is, the only thing you have to do is leave keys in my mailbox on Sunday morning, I will handle everything else, I’ll bring a sign. I’m not going to ask you all the inane questions about how many units are in the building or, you know, whatever, I can find all that stuff out on my own. I’m gonna make this. So two things would happen. One, she was thrilled because there was an open house happening every week and you were earning your keep, right? She didn’t have to do it. I would leave a note for her clients at the end of every open house. Hey, we had you know, 14 groups through today, contact Nancy, if you have any questions I obviously wouldn’t get in front of her client. But I met so many people doing the same open house every weekend was great, because then I was able to go, here’s everything on the market in the building, here’s everything on the market in the nearby buildings. So I started to develop sort of those first shreds of expertise. Yeah, and the other thing I say to agents a lot is you if nothing else, let’s say nobody comes or very few people come or you don’t, you know, add 20 people to your database are all they’re all represented you you at least get to start understanding the rhythm and the language of the business. Yeah, open house is so important for that listening to consumers that are scared walk in the door, and start asking the questions that they’re going to ask you start to learn, oh, this is what people are taught to ask or this is what people are concerned about, or this is what people wonder. And then you start to develop that way too. You know what I mean? And it’s so it’s not just go to an open house and meet some buyers. It’s go to an open house, meet a bunch of people you can add to your database, run your marketing machine that gets in front of those people all the time, but also learn the language of the business. To your point I love develop the relationships with the other agents in your industry. Nancy Finley loved me. I remember she needed to Colas something back then. And the first time my name was on a listing was because she was like, Look, I’ll put you on as a co Lister Can you handle all the showings and I’ll give you 40%. And I was like, great. Yeah, just because I did good work for her. But it’s the one other thing I’ll add before I go on is the other tip I would give to agents that are looking for open houses don’t go up to an agent necessarily and say can I have an open house go to your office’s listings? Yes, little ones that have been on the market three weeks that are in really good spots that you know we’re going to have good traffic that you would like to stand in and tell all your clients about and go to an agent and ask specifically, hey, I notice you haven’t done an open house in a couple of weeks, this thing’s been around, I’d love to host an open house on this specific property for you. And by the way, if your clients want it, I’ll do it every single weekend. And now you pick what open house you want, instead of just going up to an agent and saying, Can I have an open house, please? Because we all know as agents, what happens is they go, cool, cool. There’s a one bedroom condo out. And yeah, who knows were in this really crappy apartment building that I can’t sell. You can do an open house there all day long. And that might not be what you want. But you take it because they said you can have this one instead. Maybe you go and ask them for some specific ones.

D.J. Paris 35:38
Yeah, it’s funny I had very early on when I started doing this podcast, just to piggyback on the stories as I’m not a Producing Realtor myself, I have to steal the stories of others that I’ve interviewed. But I had Nico apostle, who of course, you know, and he was on and he, when he got his license he was I think it is early 20s. He said, None of my friends were buying or selling homes, rentals, working with agents at that time wasn’t as popular. So he said he really had nothing going on. So he would beg people for open houses and Linkin Park, which is where he’s from, and obviously, where his family’s from. And when he talked about, I said, Well, how did you get people to come to open houses when you were 23, or whatever he started. And he said, this is one of the smartest things I’ve ever heard. So for anyone listening, I’m just going to repeat this tip. And if you want to go back and listen, that’s years ago, I did this interview, but it’s a great one. But he said he would show up an hour early. And now this won’t work in a high rise, of course, but for single family homes or three flats, he would knock on the doors of all the neighbors. And he would say, Hey, I just wanted to let you know, I’m doing an open house down the street. If you want to come check it out. Here’s my car, just come on by. And I said well, that’s interesting. I said, did people ever come he goes, people came all the time. Every neighbor is nosy, and they want to see what’s going on inside that unit. And I thought that’s one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever heard. Yeah, simple, but it works. So yeah, as Phil was saying, call your call your clients, call your buyers, let them know about these open houses, or get creative and get somehow get people to show up. Because as Phil was saying, you get to learn the rhythm of the buyer, thought process, the language, the questions, you just get used to talking about real estate in a social and informative way. And also hopefully get some some leads out of it or at least adding people to your database. So yeah,

Phil Byers 37:25
if you’re scared, like if you’re new and you’re scared, there’s no risk. You can flub your line you can be scared you can not answer the question the right way. And it’s all good.

D.J. Paris 37:35
Very good point. I want you to share your other your other funny story about the balcony and getting stuck if you don’t mind. Oh, yeah,

Phil Byers 37:42
this was this is a perfect for what we’ve talked about, too. So I was doing this open house. This is one of my first memories. I don’t even think I was a full time agent yet. I had asked for an open house, I might have actually been a Nancy Finley open house too. And it was on Damon. And so I’m doing this open house. It was a windy day it was in the fall. And I’m out on this back deck. And this is a building that was a it was like a fourth floor walk up and there was no staircase down from the balcony, it was all interior. And so we go out there and take these people out. And we’re looking around, and the door from the wind slam shut from the master bedroom and locks. And so now we’re out on this balcony, myself and two strangers are out on this balcony and I have no way to get us out of there are down the keys. Were inside I think on the counter or they were on course thing. And the best part about this story is you know they had signed in. So 15 minutes later, a neighbor think I’d left the unit door open, somebody in the building was coming up and I yelled down, the guy came up, open the door came in the unit, let us in. And so we got in had a laugh, they laughed, and I put them in my database. Of course I sent them and I do this with open houses even now. Sure I sent them a thank you note on Monday, hey, great to meet you, whatever. And they never respond to that. But you know, they’re in my marketing. Now they get a postcard from me, whatever. And like 90 days later, they sent me a note and said, Hey, we’ve been looking for an agent, I remember they said this, they go we’ve met 40 different people, and we just remember you the most, and we really liked you. And then to jog my memory, they said we were the people that got locked out on that balcony with you that one day, which is really funny. And we and I’m still in touch with them and we laugh about it. That’s how I met them. And it’s I think if that would have happened and they would have liked me which is very possible and I think this happens to a lot of agents like you put on a good show you’re at an open house the people like you You make a good first impression but you don’t follow up. Yeah, you drop the ball, it doesn’t go anywhere. And I didn’t remember them specifically until I got that note and of course then I can check on their name and it’s in my database because I took good notes and so on and so forth. And I don’t know it’s especially people that don’t have an agent yet that are or that are just starting the process. They just want to meet somebody that they like your job is really just to make a good first impression and that for some reason, because I’m sure I was nervous. But making jokes the whole time to spoke to them and they remembered me.

D.J. Paris 40:03
So I love that story and probably a good a good place to wrap up. I mean, I think you know you, in this conversation have really given our listeners a lot of great advice. And also, you know, we we have a lot of people who are buyers, sellers, investors, renters who also listen to the show. And if somebody out there is looking to work with you or your team, do you mind sharing what’s the best way that they should reach out to you?

Phil Byers 40:30
Yeah, I mean, there’s it’s all the ways buyers home team on Instagram and Facebook. www dot buyer’s home team.com buyers is my last name, b y ers. I mean, all the socials everywhere. I mean, just ping do fill buyers Chicago, you’ll find me. Yeah, that’s true. I usually say Instagram or Facebook are the best ways. Wonderful. Well,

D.J. Paris 40:53
Phil, I want to thank you for being on the show. I know how busy you are even in this, you know, challenging time that we’re all in. And to take time to do this is really well appreciated by not only myself, but the listeners. I think this this will go down as one of our more popular maybe most popular episodes. So I appreciate all the advice and just sharing your story and, and Trent your your authenticity and your transparency is going to be really well valued by our listeners and our viewers. And also on behalf of the film myself. I want to thank everyone for either watching or listening to this. We’re going to ask everyone for one quick favor, actually two quick favors. One, please follow us on Facebook. So you can find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod or just search for keeping it real podcast, you’ll find it on Facebook. Reason for that is we broadcast the behind the scenes the making of these episodes, the videos in real time there so you can watch them. You don’t have to wait a couple of weeks for us to produce the episode. But every single day, we also find an article online designed specifically to help Realtors grow their business and we post that there to help you. So please do that. And the second thing if everyone out there can think of just one real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from this interview with Phil, please pass that along. You can send them right over to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com Or you can find us on anywhere. Podcasts are served iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play wherever Pandora, we’re everywhere. Just search for keeping it real podcast. But Phil, thank you so much for being on the show. This was a lot of fun. And you were one of the first people when we we first started doing this. I didn’t mention this earlier, but that we put at the top of our list of some people that we wanted, and we finally were able to find time.

Phil Byers 42:34
I appreciate that so much and I had a lot of fun. TJ I really really appreciate you having me on.

D.J. Paris 42:38
Thanks so much and continued. We wish you continued success. Not that you need my well wishes because you’re doing everything right. But Thanks and we’ll see. I will see everyone on the next episode. Thanks Phil. Thank you

Welcome to our BRAND-NEW monthly feature, Social Bootcamp With Gogo Bethke!

Gogo Bethke from Gogo’s Bootcamp is known as the Social Media Queen of Real Estate because she built up her entire practice and team (now over 150 agents) through social media engagement. In this episode Gogo discusses what real estate agents can do today during stay-at-home to keep their business running. Also, she demonstrates first-hand how vulnerability is the key to engagement!

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

DISCLAIMER: Gogo’s 30-day moneyback guarantee is no longer available.

Gogo Bethke can be reached at gogosrealestate@gmail.com and at her Instagram account.

Purchase Gogo’s Bootcamp by clicking here – Keeping It Real Podcast listeners get a discount!

Gogo's Bootcamp 2.0

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.

Welcome, everyone to another episode of Keeping it real this. We believe we are the largest podcast for real estate professionals made by real estate professionals. My name is DJ Parris. I am your guide and host to the show and today is our monthly episode with the amazing and wonderful gogo Beth key from gogos bootcamp. This is our social media bootcamp that we do every single month. Let me tell you a little bit about Gogo. If you are new to the show, gogo Beth key came to United States in 2003. To build her American dream. She was broke had no sphere of influence, no experience barely spoke English, and with only $6 to her name. So that left her with nothing else but Facebook to help build her business. And that’s where she started she created gogos real estate and a real estate career began with the power of social media gogo has sold over 45 million in residential real estate transactions. She shares the good, the bad, and the ugly side of real estate with her honest snippets into her everyday life with her 10s of 1000s of social media followers. And in the real estate community. She has earned the nickname the social media queen. She has been asked to present at all sorts of realtor events all over the country. She’s built a social media bootcamp as well for realtors called Go Go’s bootcamp. Today, she has a team and this is probably an old number of 130 agents, it’s probably much bigger now. And she is consistently growing that nationwide. Her goal is to help as many agents as possible make a name for themselves in real estate and if she can do it, a girl from Transylvania Romania with no US education and no sphere of influence, no education or no money or experience, then you can do it as well. We’d like you to follow go go on Instagram at gogos real estate. And also we have we highly recommend this is our highest possible recommendation that everyone listening signs up for Go Go’s boot camp for our listeners, we have a special website set up with a discount, so please visit Gogo podcast.com That’s Gee, oh, gee, oh, podcast.com Check out her boot camp. It’s amazing. I’ve done it. It’s incredible. You should do it as well. And now welcome once again, gogo, thanks for being here.

Gogo Bethke 3:00
Well, I thank you so much for that intro.

D.J. Paris 3:03
We’re so excited to have you, and love talking about you and your success. And you know, your business is just exploding. It’s always growing. And you’re helping so many agents with their social media. In particular, right now, when there isn’t much that anybody can do. You are in Michigan, and you guys were not deemed an essential service. as of the recording of this. Hopefully, that’ll change soon. So you’re the agents can’t do a whole lot. So what’s going on right now? What what are you what are you seeing out there?

Gogo Bethke 3:35
I mean, this is a time for social media. If you if you haven’t had the time to figure it out, like you are forced now to figure it out. Because it’s almost the only thing and the last thing standing that our stereotypes can do from the comfort of our homes. Like if you look at New York, they’re not even allowed to cold call anymore. So it’s like we can do, we can Dornoch, we can hold open houses, we can network with other agents in the industry unless it’s virtual, you know, we can do the things of the lesser things. And we can do it so long. On social media, we can, if you think about it, this is the time where people spend four hours a day in average on different social media platforms, because there’s nothing else to do but cruising at, you know, just see what’s going on. So I think this is a perfect timing, to make sure that you’re prepared for what’s coming. Because I do believe that the good times are coming. As soon as we are released back to society, we are going to have a phenomenal year. You know, our prices are still standing strong. Our interest rates are low. Our inventory is so low right now here in our neck of the woods. And I feel like as soon as we were released, and everybody can get pre approved and the rates stay where they’re at or maybe even get better than the average of the 3%. I mean, I think we are going to have an amazing year in real estate. And I just think everybody should use this time to grow their business. You know, get the stuff done that they usually don’t have the time to do build those parts of the business that will help them scale when we are finally released. And I have a couple of tips for that.

D.J. Paris 4:59
But you Yeah, let’s let’s have I have a quick thing I wanted to mention is I wonder how many people who are stuck at home which is the majority of America at this point, and are sort of feeling constricted by by their, the, the physical size of their their home. And I’m wondering how many of those people when the when all of a sudden we’re back to normal are like, it’s time to upgrade? I know I’m thinking about that. And I bet you a lot of people are too and I was thinking, maybe that’s great content for social medias to start to talk about, Hey, are you starting to feel like maybe not necessarily to say oh, by the way, if you want to buy a bigger home use me. Maybe that’s not the time to do that. But just to talk about how everything’s feeling a little tighter and more constricted now.

Gogo Bethke 5:43
Yeah, that too. And then we were talking with with Dwayne last night. Just think of all of the people. And this might not sound good, but surely isn’t a conversation at the dinner table last night? Think of all of the people who can send one another? Yes. Or they’re realizing how much they don’t like to send one another. Because when you don’t spend so much time with somebody, you’re not that annoying. But now that you have to be with them night after day after night after day, week after week after month. Like I think this might also mess with our divorce rates and that again, for sure have real estate altogether. I mean, I don’t wish this on anyone. But when you lacked half with people, it can get ugly if you don’t like

D.J. Paris 6:23
yeah, there’s going to be probably a lot of babies born about nine months from now. A lot of people getting divorces.

Gogo Bethke 6:30
Exactly. So I feel like in real estate, yes. Especially here in Michigan we are, we are shut down like we are not considered a central so there isn’t much we can do. But at the same time, I feel like when finally we get released, there are so many different angles that go into just birth, the real estate market as you said, people are gonna start having babies 1010 months from now they’re going to need to upsize. Also many people realize, you know what, I don’t have a home office, I have four children and a dog and a parent running around crazy and I need to go live like you won’t be able to do that as long as you have that assigned pace. So I feel like a lot of people are going to just, you know, change residences because of that. And then the borders and then you know this and that and new jobs and relocations because so many people has lost their jobs. So who knows what the new jobs are going to take on. I wonder

D.J. Paris 7:17
how many companies who were people go into the office I wonder how many of them are starting to realize we can do a lot of this virtually and after this all goes back to normal. Be very interesting to see how many people end up staying work from home. And so your point is, is really well said that you really do need a dedicated space.

Gogo Bethke 7:39
Yeah, yeah. And for us, I mean I’ve been with exp you know that since October 2018. So I’m like 14 months and 15 months something like that of working from home. So I’m totally used to it. And now the person I’m not used to is my husband also got a real estate license his full, full full time realtor right now. He used to work corporate America and travel all the time. So now he’s home full time. Now our children are home full time. Our dog is home full time you know so it’s like having the house full and even though just before you came on live here. Even though I told my children and they’re old enough they’re almost 11 and 13 there was enough to understand hey man is and alive. My 13 year old decided to walk like army walk up to bam bam I opened the door just before you get on your neck seriously nice. Like just because I’m in a different level of the house sounds travel. Like you can walk around like that and I’m trying to go live here so it’s like adjusting to the working from home thing. It’s an adjustment for everybody.

D.J. Paris 8:39
Even we’re all seeing we’re all seeing a lot more of people that that we’re not always normally seeing and we’re seeing a lot less of people too right it’s it’s this weird combination of you know the the you better you better really liked the people you live with because

Gogo Bethke 8:55
zactly exactly when you’re stuck with them and I can’t even imagine like in areas where they live really close to one another like New York where people live in a cute little tiny quarters like in Romania. My parents live in Romania. They’re not allowed out on the road. Yeah, like we can at least go on a bike ride we go on a hike if it’s nice and sunny out we throw football in the backyard and stuff but in Romania you’re not leaving your house unless you’re going to you have an emergency or you need to go grocery shopping but if that’s the case only one person can go right so imagine areas like that when you’re like literally stuck in another shoe box. I would probably start losing it.

D.J. Paris 9:31
Yeah, I we have some of our help. Here at our office live in the Philippines and they are not really allowed to go outside except for grocery shopping. They’re not really allowed to take walks zonna Yeah zonna who’s our our producer from she lives in Kosovo same thing. They’re not really allowed to do much so we’re very lucky that we can still get out and do a few things.

Gogo Bethke 9:56
Stay the sister lives in a high rise in the in the city. I grew up fan in the same high res I grew up in, they, they live in an apartment. And so they ended up going out to my parents house, because they live in a village and they have a yard so the children can actually go outside, but you still can go out on the road, you can be in your own yard. But if my sister stayed in the apartment, they would literally be inside an apartment all day every day.

D.J. Paris 10:17
Yeah, yeah, we’re, we’re very lucky. There’s, you know, here, it’s even though we’re now the epicenter of everything for the virus, but we’re still able to do some things. And we’re lucky, I think so.

Gogo Bethke 10:30
is in third or fourth place, too. So yes, that’d be one grocery shopping, and I had masks and gloves and all that. To germ freak, I am not a junk freak myself, I believe that this flow is pretty, it’s not the one that’s going to take me. But you know, he made me wear a glove and mask and all that. And then when I got home, I shot a quick video and I touched my hair like this with my glove. And he was like, You’re gonna have to take a shower. You have to wash your hair, you have to burn your clothes.

D.J. Paris 11:00
Well, I mean, it’s, it’s at the end, the real problem is, is we don’t start showing symptoms until, you know, for like, a week or so. So it’s, you know, nobody, you know, we we probably all have it right now. And we don’t even know.

Unknown Speaker 11:14
I hope not. But yeah, I

D.J. Paris 11:16
hope not. I mean, you and I will be fine. And and, you know, our people like without, you know, horrible preexisting conditions. And, you know, but yeah, a lot of, you know, I was thinking about like, going to visit my parents for Easter. They they’re impure. They’re in their early 70s. And I was like, and we both talked about it, and they want me to come, but they’re like, you probably shouldn’t, and I was like, You’re right, I probably shouldn’t. Because I’m not worried about me. But yeah, I’m

Gogo Bethke 11:39
not worried about me, our oldest is type one diabetic. And if you looked at the people that the mortality rate, the highest ones are diabetics. Now, I can’t specify if it’s type one diabetics, or diabetics as an overweight diabetics. I don’t know. And I certainly don’t want to find out. So that’s the other thing like we have to keep our immune challenged child

D.J. Paris 11:59
secure. Yeah. And my girlfriend has has some an autoimmune disease as well, or just sorta rather. And so yeah, so we have to keep her safe as well. So I can appreciate that. So what what are you telling your agents and all of the Go Go’s? Bootcamp, people to do right now on social media? What are the tactful ways to do it? And what are maybe what are ways not to do it? Right?

Gogo Bethke 12:20
Yeah. So I don’t think this is a time to start lead generating, I don’t think this is the time to be calling people and asking for their business. We don’t do any of that. This is the time to help one another. So there’s any way that you can have one of the things that we have done and this one is a little bit more detailed, but I tried to explain as as as good as I can, I guess if you guys look at back in 2015 1617 18, sorry, back in 2000. What was it 6789, the crash time and all that people use a lot of their equity, they will take equity out of the homes and they will go buy boats and whatever jet skis and whatever they you know, bikes and whatever they wanted to spend their money on. And so a lot of people over 820, some billion I think we use, we took out of equity and in the homes. Right now, in the last few years, 1617 1819, we have only used 200 and some odd billion. So a lot of the people right now have equity in their home. So if you have clients that may or may have lost their job, or they need some sort of a, or they’re just uncertain, and they need some sort of a help, and there’s always an equity they could tap into in their home, most of the people right now have equity in their home. So that’s also just a nice way of like touching base with them. Just reach out to them, Hey, you may not think of this, but you potentially could have equity in your home, that could be something that you could tap into, and help yourself financially in this time. So if I can help you let me know, I will be more than happy to send you a quick CMA a competitive market analysis through our MLS access, I don’t know how everybody’s MLS works, but we have an hour’s real count one, that’s called RPR. Because just plug in an address in there will give us approximate market value. So that’s one way of doing it. So then you can just say all I need from you, which is DME, or email me your physical address, I will send back a report that shows your potential market value, and then your equity is market value minus what you owe on it. And then also, we have a list of lenders that we have been working with through the years, please feel free to give them a call either one of them, see if you would qualify for a home equity line of credit, and if something that could help you in these times, and then also just feel like when you help them in need. They’re just automatic, and they will reach out to you when they’re ready to buy and sell. So I’m not asking for the business right now you’re pretty much just helping them and in this time of with our resources, resources and our connections. And then when the time has come around and they need to sell and buy I’m sure they will call us.

D.J. Paris 14:43
Yeah, that’s a great idea. So you know, that’s a real creative way to, for people to start to think about, you know, getting more immediate cash and another option. Obviously, with rates being so low, it’s a really good time to look into refinancing as well, which isn’t going to directly Put money in your pocket, but it’s gonna reduce some of that monthly spend. So right now the banks and lend lenders are really overwhelmed because there’s so much activity with refinances and and people just, you know, buying homes, despite obviously all the

Gogo Bethke 15:15
challenges were so low beta. So like if you have something you know if you’re into fives or sixes, maybe you bought years and years ago. And right now you can get it down to 3%, that you’re saving 10s of 1000s of dollars 10s of 1000s of that work, depending how much your mortgage was, of course, but a lot of money. So that’s just one way of being able to reaching back and giving back and at these times, not asking for anything in return, I strongly recommend not to push your services right now. And to people because they really had just, it’s a time of uncertainty, of course they can. If they have realistic needs, and they love, love and appreciate you and follow you already, they’re going to reach out to you no matter what. But I just don’t feel like these are the times to take advantage of people. And you know,

D.J. Paris 15:57
I have I agree and I have an idea for you. I wanted to share this with you. And you tell me if it’s a good idea or a bad idea, because I’m not sure but I think it might be a good idea. So gogo is, you know, as far as social media, she is the end all be all for good ideas with social media. So I was thinking, since real estate is hyperlocal. And we have so many small businesses out there right now that are struggling. You know, restaurants, in particular, retail shops, of course, are really, really struggling. So I was thinking, you know, since we have our listeners who work in their local communities, maybe one idea could be that you could reach out to some of these businesses restaurant, for example, that might be struggling. I know like in Chicago, our restaurants are really struggling right now. And they’re trying to let people know that no, we still have takeout, where we have specials where you can come. And I was thinking, wouldn’t it be kind of cool. If you live in an area, that area that you want to specialize in, reach out to some of these local businesses and say, Hey, I would love to do you know, a quick little interview with you, it could be five minutes, it doesn’t have to be long. I can bring you on my IG TV, you know, stream, or we can just do a one minute video and post it to Instagram, and Facebook Live and do also and we could just talk about your business. And I could just make sure that every one of my followers and listeners knows what you guys are, you’re still open if they are, I don’t know. What do you think about that?

Gogo Bethke 17:20
It’s an amazing idea yesterday or the day before, when we went grocery shopping and I was talking about being messed up from head to tail. There was a restaurant or whatever. There’s a business here locally that supplies to restaurants usually they supply fresh produce, but only to restaurants usually. Now while the restaurants are really not working, they’re doing some carry out. They’re only open from four to eight some of them and only direct carry out while the producers just sitting on this facility. So they ended up opening it up for the general public doing and I ended up going there. We heard from my father not we went there while we were there. I asked him Hey, you guys have a Facebook page. Do you mind if I promote this to mine and develop? Oh my gosh, yeah, we would appreciate it so much more about blog. If you think about it, they’re sitting on fresh produce go bad like this. It’s not it has a shelf life of a week. Yeah, you have to get rid of it. If not, it’s gonna go bad. So I literally did a quick little video as you walked out of there all messed up and all that and, and I just did like, Hey, guys, here’s where we are. This is what’s going on this place is usually not over open for the public, we showed what we got, like, for 50 bucks, we’ve walked out of like two boxes, that’s like two big full boxes of fresh produce. And they were so thankful. And then even just yesterday, and today, I ended up seeing a couple of our Facebook friends who went there, they ended up taking pictures of the product and stuff like that, and they ended up posting it. So it’s just like, it’s like a snowball effect. But then that place ended up tagging me back. And they thanked me for our services and for helping them getting the word out there. And I’m hoping that one day we’re going to need a realtor, they’re going to remember this time and they’re going to be like we’re going to call the global check. And that’s why we’re doing it is like helping one another. You know, I also believe in karma. And I believe you know, you get what you get in life. And if you can give for somebody not expecting anything in return, they will also give to you not expecting anything in return when the time comes around. So definitely reach out to local restaurants, if not in us, you could just reach out to local restaurants and be like, Hey guys, what are you guys, what is your schedule? What is your menu because they have a carrier or different menu now for carry out. It could be as simple as hey, could you shoot over your carry out menu and then I will post it on my Facebook and say hey guys, the wooden spoon is open Monday to Friday from four to eight they do carry out and here’s the carry out menu please support a local business and just provide that and then thank them and they’re going to say that they are going to share just going both ways. So now their followers going to see your post your follower is going to be there like going to see their business and they want they are tagged they can go over and follow their business plan. So there’s so many ways you can do this. You can also interview through zoom just as you sad because we can’t physically be in the same place. But you can certainly interview local businesses or the realtors whatever that helps you and then post that and just you know how To get the word out the word out whatever you want to the world to know about.

D.J. Paris 20:05
Yeah, it’s such a great idea. Now, you know, you have everybody is scared, everyone’s struggling a lot of businesses, they would love it if you reach especially like, I know a lot of a high end restaurants are really nervous, because obviously, they’re not serving and you don’t think of them as takeout places. And a lot of the ones here in Chicago have converted into doing daily specials and meals, and they only can reach their email list, which might be very small.

Gogo Bethke 20:31
Yet, so yep, they were doing business. Yeah, yeah. So

D.J. Paris 20:35
So now, you can now you can reach out to them and say, Hey, are you guys doing any anything of takeout carry allies? You know, Would you do a three minute interview with me? You know, I’ll send you the Zoom link, and you can do it on your phone? And or just send me the menu, and I’ll promote it. But yeah, those are great ideas.

Gogo Bethke 20:52
Yeah, so many ways you can do it, we also have our vendor list. So this is a good time to start building that if you don’t have one, you know how many times they ask you for a plumber. And for a painter and for a desk for a data dog walker, a mower, you know, a landscaping company like all of these things, this is a time to reach out to your friends on Facebook. Net own, you know, small businesses and support them say, Hey, would you please sign this letter, so just read an Excel sheet send them the link, they will literally plug themselves in there are vendors even give discounts to our clients. So they will give like 10% out just because they are our clients and we refer them they will do this, they will do that for free. You know, hold me value, whatever that you know that does. So this is your time to start supporting those local businesses start building your preferred vendor list. So then when the good times come around, you have your your list, because no other time when we are so busy, you don’t have the time to build and you don’t have the time to reach out to your friend who’s like, what do you do you have a cement company? That’s right. Can you tell me a little bit about that? What area you guys cover? What type of words do you guys do? Like what do you need more clients? And would you be interested if he added you to our preferred vendor list? Like that kind of stuff? And then I guarantee you, I swear every time we reach out to one of our friends here locally that has a local business, you’re like, oh, yeah, by the way, do you do commercial? Do you do inventory or thinking of building do you do blah, blah, blah, it just automatically turns into the next realistic conversation?

D.J. Paris 22:11
Yeah, and now’s a good time to, to where not just to have that vendor list. But like it’s gonna go missing. You could also interview each one of these people, you could set up a little zoom meeting, a three minute Zoom meeting, it doesn’t have to be long. And just record these these interviews. And then you can use that information as social media content. You can also just have it available in case somebody says, Hey, do you have a good attorney, we can use Yeah, you know what, I’m going to send you his information. Also, I did a little three minute things, you can see what he or she looks like how they sound, what their energy is like. And you could send that over as well. And that’ll even be so it’s now’s a great time to start aggregating all of that information.

Gogo Bethke 22:48
And also, I mean, we’ve worked with so many different vendors just on our end, you know, you might be like, you know, what, yes, I’ve worked with this title company forever, but they have messed up the last, you know, nine fires out of 10. Maybe it’s time to switch title companies, you know, I mean, so maybe this is your time to interview those other files and narrow down, who has what you need, who has the work ethic and the work style that you have. So you, you don’t butt heads in a transaction, and then just, you know, work on that, like, there’s so many different aspects of the real estate industry that you could be working on? Most importantly, yourself? Yeah. So that’s what I want to talk about, take that nap, that you usually don’t have time to do that book that you always wanted to, but never had the time take that course, that you like, Oh, if I only had the time I go through that real estate, social media training, you know, I mean, so whatever is that you wanted to do, but never had the time God just cleared off your schedule. Go get it done.

D.J. Paris 23:40
I just I got an email this morning. And I have to really give credit to Compass, the company compass. This came from a compass broker. I don’t know if compass wrote it or if she wrote it, but it was it was a her monthly newsletter, and obviously, not, you know, talking about real estate stuff right now might not be all that well received. So I almost deleted it, because I was like, I don’t ever read that stuff anyway, but I was about to delete it. And it caught my eye because the entire article was 10 things stay at home moms can or parents can do right now to keep their kids busy during this time. And it was it was like Oh, that’s really really smart. And it goes into what we were just talking about. It was useful information. It was timely. And it was not talking about real estate. It was you know, actually something people could use. I was like that was a great email and I normally I see those newsletters and I just go at who cares? And I went I know I’m not going to read that because I don’t have children but I forwarded to some of our brokers and I was like this is a good idea. Yeah,

Gogo Bethke 24:41
yeah. I mean think about it all of the parents at home like I also I just heard from one of the agents in our team that in Arizona they already done for Dave will have no more school this year. Yeah. So we it’s not official here in Michigan. Yeah, but it’s probably coming which means even if we get released back in a month or two my children’s gonna be home all day every day. You are going to have to figure out some sort of an entertainment for them. Yeah, I mean, like, especially not being able to work outside of the house, when we finally can, I want to leave, like I want to go do all the things that I wasn’t able to do physically be in another place, which means we’d have to leave my children at home, which means I have to figure out a way for them to be entertained or dragging with me or drop off at a museum or hire a sitter or you know, any like, it’s going to take some adjustment of how, how we live life and giving ideas for parents who were not used to having to entertain the children at home, like myself. That’s a great one. You like, oh, yeah, we can do that. But no, think of that. Love it, love it. Good idea. The other thing that I wanted to talk about is reviews and feedback, right? So it’s so important to have those five, five star reviews and all the different platforms because people are going to Google you. They want to make sure they if they are ready to put their biggest asset on the market and the most money they will ever exchange hands wet. They want to make sure that it’s handled properly. So they’re going to Google if you don’t have a social presence, especially with a mullet millennial, if you don’t have a Google if you don’t show up on it, you don’t exist. So it’s very important to have your reviews and feedbacks and I’m going to talk about the few sites that I that I think it’s important to have a presence on. So even though I don’t buy leads, it is very important to have a profile on Zillow because most people are going to look you up. They want to see you. Everyone’s going to Zillow, everyone goes to Zillow, they’re going to check you out. They’re going to see your production, your price range your reviews, and feedbacks, what area you cover all that. So even though I never bought Zillow leads, I still have a Zillow profile. So they can look me up on there. They see my transactions in other areas. And I do it and how many have done and my review. So I think Zillow is very important. Next one is realtor.com. They are kind of neck to neck, less traffic. But people some people just love to go to that commerce, Zillow, and then Facebook page. So if you don’t have one yet, it is the time to create one you want to business Facebook page. So then you can have reviews and feedbacks. The next one is Google My Business. So all of these you should have, and and all of these, you should have reviews and feedback. So let’s talk about Google My Business. That is probably the most important now. That is Millennials toward having babies and you know, meeting their home away from mom and dad’s basement and things like that. They’re going to Google

D.J. Paris 27:21
you. And the reason why Google My Business is the most important just to make sure everyone understands why we’re saying that is Google prioritizes, the Google My Business page listing when you’re searching for reviews, so it’s going to show up above Yelp above Facebook above Zillow, it’s going to show up at the very, very top because it’s Google’s own platform. And you know, almost all the searches done online are done through Google. So you need to create a Google My Business account. And you need to be asking for reviews there.

Gogo Bethke 27:53
Yes. So what the funny part is, I was very surprised to find out when I created this that Google will actually send your snail mail to confirm your account. I was like, Yes, that’s right. Yeah, they do. I’m like, you know, this is a joke, as of April 1, it is April 1 and

D.J. Paris 28:08
April 1, but it is not a joke. And it’s not a joke. So you’re gonna get a you get like a postcard in the mail or something. Yeah, so

Gogo Bethke 28:14
you go to Google My Business. So literally just go to Google, put in Google My Business, you’re going to find a page and there is going to be a create or join or some button on there and just follow the steps. It is really not brain surgery. Now if you’re an exp agent, because now there’s many of us out there, we don’t have physical locations. So I want you to be very careful what address you put in there. Because it’s going to be I mean, you do have to hide it from the public, but I don’t ever want you to not be able to figure it out. And now suddenly, your home address is on Google, because you don’t want people showing up at your front door. Right? Well, if that’s the case, I recommend maybe talking with a local title company or local lender or somebody else that you’re friends with that has a local office downtown somewhere that you can ask them, Hey, can I just put your address down as my physical location. So if somebody wants to me on something, or send me a book, or send me a postcard or something, then I can, you can just let me know. And I can pick it up from your office. So I talked, I talked to my local lender and my my Google, my business is actually registered at her local office, right? There just an idea, you also have the option of hiding the physical address. So let’s say if you have only an online address, you know, an online business that you really don’t need people physically, then you can also just do that and hide the physical location. But either way, you have to disclose the physical location because they’re going to send you a postcard, right? That postcard it has a five digit code, five, six, something like that digit code in there, you’re going to have to go back to Google My Business, you’re going to have to enter that that code that you received in the mail can take up to two weeks to get that postcard. And after that your Google My Business is confirmed. Now you have a Google My Business account under you’re going to have the ability to post it’s kind of like Instagram in a way where when you post your posts will I think they only stay up there for seven days and seven days. Yeah. And then they go poof, so just make sure you know periodically Get under a new post something. And then definitely use the reviews and feedback on there. So, ours automatically when Christine my office manager processes our files. After closing, we have an automated email drip campaign for past clients. So we just switch them over in our CRM program to past clients and one of the very first text message and email goes out is asking for reviews. And then you pretty much say hey, I loved working with you, I hope you had the same five star experience and I have with you again, five star experience you can just kind of putting it out there. I had a five star experience working with you, I hope you had the same kind of reminding you of like, what am I expecting you to say when you’re filling it out? Now of course, they’re gonna be honest, they’re gonna tell you how they really felt about the transaction. But I’m kind of hinting at what how I felt working with them. And now and you send them that email with the four links. So you’re gonna do your, your realtor.com your Zillow or five lanes, realtor.com, Zillow, your own personal Facebook page, your Google My Business. And Did I forget anything? I think.com Yeah, realtors, Zillow, Facebook, and Google My Business. So those four, and they all in there. Now they all require the feedback to come directly from the source. So they can just fill out one and you cannot copy and paste it into the other. Neither one of these sites will allow you to do that it has to come straight from the source. So usually what we say in that email is like, Hey, I’m only asking for five minutes of your time. You know, just so you know, our business is more to mouth. And reviews. And feedbacks are so important. When people Google us I would truly appreciate if you could take, you know, five minutes of your time, just go to the first one, fill it out, copy it, go to the next one, paste it next one, paste it next and paste it. So they don’t have to type it up four times, they can just copy and paste only have to type it up one time. So it speeds up their process. But they do have to click individually each of those links and go through the steps. So yeah, so if nothing else is built an automated email. So after closings, all of your profiles are set up properly. You include that link to your direct reviews page on Zillow, your direct reviews page on realtor.com, Facebook and Google My Business and then they can start filling it out after every closing. Now you might be ahead of the curve. And you might already have all that now it’s a good time to get video from your past clients. So yes, your home during that, then do you have a minute to shoot over a quick review video of how you loved working with us. I mean, I already know you left it with words and our sights and we appreciate it. But people some people are visual and they would really, it would really register better if they saw you actually seeing those things. And if you don’t mind just to the shaft selfie style video and send it back to us now those videos you can build into your websites you can put in you know, as a post on your social media pages right now it’s a good time to kind of just at what is it called it’s a shameless self promotion is what I what I like calling get to kind of let the world know like everybody who decided to work with you in the past, they enjoyed that experience. And here’s proof of that. And you can take those little snippets of videos and post it on your social media platforms.

D.J. Paris 33:04
Yeah, and you can also post those videos right on Google My Business. And I think that is, you know, a huge, huge thing. We’ve been doing that for testimonials for brokers who joined our company, for doing that. For the last four months, we’ve been posting those videos and watching the number of views we get on those videos from Google, my business is incredible. I you know, I don’t know how many of those people convert into clients or whatever. But boy, those videos get watched. So you obviously put them on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, maybe even but definitely upload them directly into your Google My Business account they get they get looked at for sure.

Gogo Bethke 33:43
Yes, yeah. And it helps you I mean, it helps the other agents when they’re trying to make the decision, should I should I not join your team, right? There is PII from everybody else that decided to make that same decision, or they are happy that they did. So yeah. yourself anymore. They sold you for them.

D.J. Paris 33:59
And everyone should be paying it forward as to as well. If you’re expecting people to write reviews for you be somebody who writes reviews for the places you visit. And I just had I got sick a few weeks ago, not not related to the current condition, just good old fashioned food poisoning. But I had to cancel this trip, I was going out to San Francisco. And unfortunately, I wasn’t able to go. So the place I was going to be staying, which was very expensive. They didn’t really have a cancellation policy. And I and I let them know, I’m so sorry. I’m really sick. I don’t know if there’s anything to do with the bill. They were nice enough to give me a full refund, which was insane. They did not have to do that. And I immediately wrote them back and I said oh my gosh, I was not expecting that you guys are amazing. What can I do to support you right now? And this is right now when everything was the country was kind of shutting down. And they said if you could write us a review, and they gave me three locations Google Facebook and TripAdvisor because they’re a destination thing. And I said Consider it done. I copied and pasted into all three, I wrote them back, I said, I just did all three. And they were like, Oh my gosh, that means so much to us, you have no idea. So do that for other people as well. I mean, if you’re going to expect people to write for you do it for them and pay it forward, for sure.

Gogo Bethke 35:14
Awesome. And same, I mean, if you think about it with agents that you have worked with, like, even just go to your closing this year, those of agents that you’ve worked with on the other side of the transaction, and go and leave a review and just say, Hey, I love working with Angela, she’s an awesome agent, I was on the list in touch with the buyer side being, you know, we had smooth sailing to the closing table. And I only wish that every other agent would represent their client. And so you know, timely manner, or however you want to word it, and just send it and then now Angela receives this was like, Oh, my gosh, look what you sent me. Let me do the same. Now she’s gonna go back and leave a review on your page of how awesome he was to work with you. Even though it’s peer to peer. It’s still a review.

D.J. Paris 35:51
Yeah, it’s awesome. That is such a great idea. So not only going back to all your clients and saying, Hey, I would really appreciate if you could help me write a review. Go to all the co op brokers, the brokers on the other side of the deal the agents on the other side and say, hey, I want to and you just even if you can’t find them, call them and say, You know what, I never wrote you a review. I want to do that for you right now. How do I do that? Where do you want me to do that? You want me to do it on Zillow. Ask them they will be they will they have never got that phone call ever. So you are going to blow their mind? And then they’re probably going to say, oh, and I’ll do the same for you.

Gogo Bethke 36:23
Yeah. And then also, I mean, you know, so many are like, Oh, I don’t feel comfortable with video. Well, this is a time to start feeling comfortable. Yeah, I’m not been asked to do so you have all the time on TV and the look of your home that it’s peace and quiet, and start shooting some videos. You know, just start and it doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s just talk about whatever’s close to your heart. Talk about something that you’re so good at, in this industry that you want to help other agents to be so good at what they need to do and just shoot it and post it. Next thing you know, by the time we get out of here you to feel so comfortable with video, then you’ll be ready to just you’ll be taking videos all day every day.

D.J. Paris 37:00
And don’t worry if you don’t look perfect. People don’t respond well to perfection. They want to see what yeah. Yeah, there we go. I love it. I love it.

Gogo Bethke 37:13
So don’t take you know, don’t care about if you don’t look perfect. So here it is my imperfection.

D.J. Paris 37:18
Yeah, yeah, I have tons of imperfection myself. So I can appreciate that. But it gogo is so absolutely right. And look at the courage. She just she had the courage to do something that a lot of people wouldn’t do. Right? She just and I didn’t know she was going to do that. So that’s so awesome that you did that. But she had the courage to be vulnerable and what vulnerability, it’s the most attractive quality in another human being the courage to show who we really are. And you have this unique opportunity to do that right now. You know, you can show it physically, like, here’s what I look like without makeup, or here’s what I look like, you know, without a tooth. But you know, the point is, is that’s what people connect with, they connect with with vulnerability. So don’t worry if you don’t look camera perfect. Right? Go go and I are not camera perfect either. And, but we’re what we’re authentic, right? We’re our honest,

Gogo Bethke 38:12
when I say share the good, bad and the ugly. I mean, you know it not every time you’re going to make a commission, not every client is a walk in the park some of our walk in Jurassic Park. And that’s okay. Like you can’t, doesn’t one of my favorite jokes, because it’s the truth. You know what I mean? It so that’s why I think the secret to you know, the amount of followers that I get is because I show the good vetting the good because some videos I have my tooth in, and in some videos on searching for my tooth, because I can find it. You know what I mean? But it is the truth, though. I mean, I could try to hide it and show like how my life is perfect, but it’s not. You know, I lost my tooth in a sandwich. And now I had to get oral surgery and I won’t have a front tooth for six months. Oh, no. Because I had to do I had no bone there. So then I had to go in and they had to do a bone graft. And now I have someone’s head bone in my face like now that has my gosh,

D.J. Paris 39:02
that’s amazing. But also, but also like, it also just makes us all so much more human. And we’re all imperfect and to try to project. You know, it’s this thing that a lot of realtors, they get like a really nice headshot and then they don’t change it for 15 years, and then people go, Well, that’s an old hedge. Like you can get your headshot it’s okay to look like you it’s okay to look like a real person. It’s okay.

Gogo Bethke 39:28
It’s okay to share that you did have a front tooth for six months.

D.J. Paris 39:34
Maybe we should start we’ll start a fund to maybe to get you maybe there’s like a new like radical therapy or technology to get you a new tooth faster. We’ll have to look is a long time it was

Gogo Bethke 39:48
a long time. I mean I kind of chose this route. I could have veneers I guess Yeah, or a bridge but if I did that I wouldn’t have to mess with the healthy tooth around that I don’t want to have you know when I lost one I don’t want to have to file down three next to it. So I can have four of the same. No, and that’s the that’s the only other option. But that’s my only healthy option where I can put just the one two back in, is by waiting out for the for the bone to heal. And then they’re going to do an implant and they’re going to put a tooth on it. But that’s why it’s taking me so long to have a front tooth is because I have to wait when I had the bone graft that literally cut me open and put bone in my face. That has to heal together with my own bone to strengthen to be able to hold the implant. So that’s going to take time, and I’m okay with that you’re not, I always believe God doesn’t give you what you can handle. And finally, if you know if that imperfection if anything, people, it catches people off guard, they’re still paying attention, you know, we might have enough right here. But when I pop my tool, I guarantee you they were all like, Wow.

D.J. Paris 40:52
I love it. And again, it’s it’s courageous. And this is a business where if you can demonstrate the courage to be yourself. And if you don’t have an answer to a question, tell your client you know, I’m gonna double check. I don’t I want to double check on the answer on that. I’ll get right back.

Gogo Bethke 41:08
I don’t know the answer.

D.J. Paris 41:09
I don’t know. Yeah.

Gogo Bethke 41:12
I don’t know. But I know who does.

D.J. Paris 41:14
I know who doesn’t I will find out and I’ll get right back to you. Yeah, what an awesome place to finish up let’s let’s let’s wrap up because this this was great. And I so always great talking to go go. So I want to make another plug for two things for go go I want everybody to go on Instagram and follow her. So you find her at gogos real estate geo gos real estate. So find her just search for if you can type that in, you’ll find her no problem. We’ll also post a link right on on our, on our when we published this episode. And also I want you all to subscribe and be a member of her boot camp, this is the time to do it. And this will pay you dividends, huge, huge dividends. So definitely

Gogo Bethke 41:57
do one turns out if you get nothing out of it. But one transaction in your lifetime, which I’ve done over 60 Millions, I can guarantee you get one transaction, I can’t guarantee you unless you do the work. But if you do the work, I guarantee you’ll get not one many transactions over but one transaction, one commission would pay for the bootcamp, at least what five times over their minimum,

D.J. Paris 42:19
oh, easily. Because what she’s really going to teach you how to do is how to build a social media lifestyle into your practice doesn’t mean you have to reveal everything about your personal life, she’s gonna teach you how to communicate through social media in a way that is attractive to the people that you’re looking to, to, to, you know, to have as clients. It’s amazing. It’s a formulated system, it works. She has tons and tons 1000s of people who are already members of this group, so you should do that as well. So we have a special website set up just for gogos bootcamp, which is Go Go podcast, Geo, geo podcast.com, check it out, I never recommend any products is the only product I basically recommend. Because I’ve used it, it’s amazing. And it’s great. And it’ll help you build your business, which is what we’re all trying to do right now is stay in business and grow our business. And this is a great time.

Gogo Bethke 43:14
So thank you, thank you so much.

D.J. Paris 43:16
Thank you and go go thank you for being on our show. As per usual, you’re amazing. We’re so thrilled the listeners love you, the viewers love you and your your missing tooth.

Gogo Bethke 43:25
We all love you even more now.

D.J. Paris 43:28
They do. They do love even more. And so on behalf of gogo and myself, we want to thank the listeners. And by the way, I’m going to ask for a favorite from our listeners. We talked about asking for reviews, why don’t you give us a review, we would appreciate it even if you hate us and you think we’re the worst still write us a review because we want to know how you feel. The easiest way to do that. Go to whatever Podcast Directory you’re using, whether you’re an iTunes or Spotify or Stitcher or Pandora, or Google Play Anywhere, and leave us a review. Let us know how you feel. We appreciate it. It helps us get better, also helps attract more listeners to our show. And so we thank you for that. So on behalf of gogo and myself on the listeners, thank you for continuing to support our show. Thanks for watching and listening and gogo. We’ll see you next time. Thanks.

Gogo Bethke 44:17
Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s my pleasure. Bye

Amy Duong Kim of the Duong Kim Global at Compass has a background in actuarial science and was on pace to be a corporate financial consultant when her brother convinced her to get a real estate license. After closing her first sale within two weeks she dove headfirst into real estate and hasn’t looked back. In our conversation Amy discusses how she’s built up her business over the past 15 years and what she and her team are doing during stay-at-home to keep growing.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Amy Duong Kim can be reached at 773.295.4387 and amy.duongkim@compass.com


Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. And we’re about to have a wonderful conversation with top producer, Amy Diwan Kim, but before we get to Amy a quick reminder for everyone listening to just think of one other real estate agent that you know that could benefit from hearing from top producers, how they grow their business so that you can do the same. Think of that one agent and then send them a link to this podcast. You can either send them a link through whatever Podcast Directory you’re using, or send them directly over to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com We have all of our episodes we’ve ever done you can stream them live right from the website. Also please follow us on Facebook you can find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod in addition to posting all of our episodes there every single day we find an article that we source online designed to help you grow your business. And then we also do our video recordings of our episodes you can watch us record them alive see the behind the scenes and you won’t have to wait two weeks for us to produce it. You can actually watch it while we’re being recorded. So again, follow us on Facebook facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. And now on to our interview with Amy Diwan Kim.

Hey today on the show we have Amy Diwan Kim from drunken global at Compass. Amy who is senior broker and founding member of Diwan. Kim global is an alumni of the University of Illinois here in here in Illinois, in Champaign with a Bachelors of Science when I find this very interesting in Actuarial Science prior to a real estate career, she works as an actuarial consultants. Now Amy’s ability to adapt quickly to the real estate market has allowed her to take each opportunity as a learning moment, ultimately creating a stepping stone that really helped accelerate her career. She has been able to help many people find and sell their homes and is also extremely proficient on the commercial side. Now, Amy’s experience really does speak for itself. I’m going to read off some accolades. She’s too humble to talk about but I will brag for her because these are great, and it really impressive. She’s been acknowledged by the Chicago Association of Realtors, also Chicago agent magazine, Jameson Sotheby’s International and has tons and tons of five star reviews from clients. She’s also one to Chicago agent who’s whose awards and has been featured in timeout Chicago, Chicago Tribune, curb, Yahoo, Wall Street Journal, ABC News and the today’s show with NBC so we are so thrilled to welcome Amy Diwan Kim to the podcast. I’m also please visit Amy’s website at Duan Kim global that’s d u O N G. Kim global.com. And also follow her on Instagram at Duan Kim global we’ll be posting those links as well. Amy, welcome to the show.

Amy Duong Kim 4:12
Thank you so much. I’m happy to be here.

D.J. Paris 4:15
Well, we are happy to we’re happy to have you and thank you for for doing this. I was actually a podcast guest myself yesterday on a show and I am never a podcast guest and it was really uncomfortable. So I have a I have a renewed appreciation for what it’s like to be a guest now you’ve been on a million shows. So this is no big deal to you. But I was surprised how nervous I got. Because normally I get to like be in control and ask the questions. But I would love to introduce you to our listeners. A lot of people here in the Chicago market. Everyone knows you hear but we have listeners from all over the country. Tell us a little bit about how you got into real estate your background was was in Actuarial science. So how did you make that change?

Amy Duong Kim 4:59
You Yes. So when I was I loved to actuarial work. Actually, I just unfortunately wasn’t very good at it. So. So when I was looking for a career change, I actually had received an offer at Deloitte and Touche to go consulting. And we would be, I’d be doing something a little bit different data mining. So but you know, my brother actually had said, why don’t you just get your real estate license, just have it handy just in case one of your friends needs to buy a smart, and I took my license, I quit my job, I was about to take this amazing offer at Deloitte and Touche. And I walked in after I just gotten past my gotten my license. And I was going to hand it into my brother, who was who would have who was my managing broker for a while. And, you know, a client walked in, and he had said, you know, I’m looking to sell my home and buy another home. So I wanted to see if you guys could help me, I work down the block, I’ve seen your office. And my brother said, why don’t you just take this client? So I sold his house in a week? I said, that’s incredible. Yeah, that’s like my own camera, you know, 15 years ago, and then like, figure out how to use the MLS and stuff like that. And so I sold his house in a week. And then I helped him buy another house like the next week. And I was like, Man, this is like the easiest job ever. People just

D.J. Paris 6:28
walk in and give you two transactions.

Amy Duong Kim 6:32
I know. So like, I’m just gonna do this. I mean, I’m not gonna go back to like an office job. And, you know, obviously, I realized, this job is not like that.

D.J. Paris 6:42
So yeah, sort of the irony of the consultants life where if you were if you were traveling to clients, and doing that Monday to Thursday thing, and then flying home on the you’re actually working more than they probably were? Oh, totally.

Amy Duong Kim 6:53
Yeah. And I mean, it’s just like getting you when you go, right, and then you get that magical, like, hole in one. And then and then you’re like, you’re stuck with that with the with that hobby, because you’re just wanting that to happen again. So yeah, that’s how I felt.

D.J. Paris 7:12
That’s amazing. What a great story. And also, well, let’s, let’s talk about, you know, your first year, and obviously, you had some immediate success, which is incredible. But after that, you know, you I imagine had to really start to build a business, essentially, from scratch, right?

Amy Duong Kim 7:31
Oh, totally, it was all from scratch, we had a boutique brokerage. And everything was, you know, done differently. Back then a lot of faxing, I kind of denied having a smartphone for so long, you know, had my little TomTom that told me where to go. So but it you know, the goal actually was never to be a top producer. I just wanted to like pay the bills and hang out with my friends. Little did I know that, like all my socializing was a lot of networking. And that was super helpful in and building our business. And ultimately, and I keep this model still, is I try to treat every deal like it’s my own. And if I continue to do that, I really can’t really mess up too much. Or, you know, I know that this is the largest purchase for any person. And, you know, when, when listings accumulate market time, I know that someone has to pay for those bills. So it’s a if I owe I always keep that in mind when I’m working. And because of that lead to the amount of deals we do. But I wouldn’t necessarily necessarily say that was the initial goal.

D.J. Paris 8:45
Yeah, I think that a lot of times when we talk to top producers on the show, they often don’t speak about, well, here’s my production goals, or here’s the number of transactions I want to complete. They oftentimes talk about these fundamentals, like, Oh, if all I did was treat every single deal as if it were my most important deal, and in your case, my own deal, then maybe that’s all I really have to do. Because if that’s all I’m doing, that’s more than self going to create raving fans, I imagine.

Amy Duong Kim 9:21
Oh, I mean, yeah, I don’t know if anyone wants to read my review. Some clients leave very long reviews, which I totally appreciate I love and then we become really good friends actually afterwards. And I kind of am like an open book. I you know, like I have pictures with my kids. I have a video if you go to my website like about us and I always say you should pick a realtor who you feel most comfortable with. And trust because that it’s we’re working together for the same goal. You know, yes, I’m working for you, but it’s really a collaboration.

D.J. Paris 9:59
Yeah, I’d like to to reference the video that Amy’s talking about, if you go to her website, which is again Duan, Kim global.com, she has a really impressive intro video right on on the right when you open up her web page, and what it does, so eloquently and elegantly is tell the story of who Amy is. And it’s not a self congratulatory type of video, which a lot of realtors do, do those types, it’s very much like, here’s what I’m all about, here’s the personal side of me, here’s the professional side, it’s a really great model. For anyone out there who’s thinking about having one of these videos made as I would say, do one, just like Amy’s because it’s just, it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen. And it also grabs you emotionally, because it tells the story of a bit of your family, your parents in particular. And I think that is people love to hear, you know, how you came to be in the business and what your values are. And I think that you did a good job on that. So thank you everyone listening, go check it out and make something similar, you know, tell your tell your story. And then so So you started working with your brother, you started building your business? And and then you know, talk about that, like what really worked for you. I know, it’s been some time since you started. But talking about what really worked for you back then what was helpful? What maybe if there were things that didn’t work? You know, what did you find most useful?

Amy Duong Kim 11:27
So I started back in 2005, which was really the height of the market. And, you know, I honestly, I kind of think we’re going through that right now is that a lot of the top producers are getting a lot of the business. And it was actually really hard for me to gain business. So really, I didn’t become I guess the Chicago lands top producer, volume wise until after 2008 when the market crashed. Because I was working so hard to try to get clients in then from 2005 to 2008, I really didn’t see anything in fruition. And again, you know, that goes back to building a pipeline. But I didn’t really see that fruition until after 2008. And, you know, back then learning how to deal with short sales and dealing with foreclosures, I didn’t necessarily work with Oreos, but I learned how to win deals from doing short sales and foreclosures. And it’s really going back to like being able to pivot and adapt to a new environment. So. So I think that was the 2005 to 2008 was really just kind of like prepping me to hustle afterwards.

D.J. Paris 12:48
Yeah, and then everything changed, right? And then, and then you did have to pivot. And thankfully, you were able to do that a lot of people exited the business back then. Because it was so challenging. And totally, the halcyon days are over the salad days were over whatever the expression is, and all of a sudden, it became challenging. And so you know, you you dealt with short sales, foreclosures. And then just it tells you talk a little bit about that transition and how that changed. What did your clientele change? Did the people you serve as change?

Amy Duong Kim 13:22
Um, yeah, I mean, I guess in 2005, I have to really think very hard, because it was five to eight, it was really like by my friends, um, and then, you know, I think Yelp and Zillow and all those websites started rolling out. So then I, I was like, Whoa, you know, let me give, like, reviews a try and get my clients and past clients to write reviews about me. So then that kind of started. So I was an early adopter, I would say, of that. And then now we’re kind of going through another transition like, now we have people have been using Instagram for a while for work. And before Instagram, it was Facebook. So it’s, again, just adapting to where those clients are and figuring out how to make the tools that they’re using screen like where what they’re looking at, to kind of gravitate towards you.

D.J. Paris 14:20
And I also know that you work with investors as well, when did that start to enter your business? Was that right away? Or did that was that sort of later on in the career?

Amy Duong Kim 14:29
Um, it was later on in the career. So what I love about the fact that even though I was a pretty bad actuary, I did get a lot of math experience and a lot of analytical skills. So so they’re actually excellent for real estate. And because of that, it was I had a kind of very distinct ability and natural ability to kind of find investment properties for client’s and then roll that in with the fact that I had my first child, you know more power to those women who are or it could be spouses who are stay at home, but I just could not. So I really needed to focus on work, I could not wait until our nanny. So I could go back to work. But so with that, actually, I feel like that was like another milestone, you know, 2008, you know, kind of adapting. But after that, in 2012, when my daughter was born, that’s really when I was like, you know, I had to learn to be efficient, I need to learn how to put processes in my system, I need to figure out how I can work when I’m not hanging out with my baby. And that came the whole investors, situation where I was working with clients, who were, who are awake in the middle of the night. And that was in Asia or in Europe, because I had to be awake, you were awake in the middle of the night to night. So you know, I have like literally every app known to man Kakao Talk what group me. So I have to look to like all these chats to talk to some of my clients. So but it was, it was really, it was really interesting to be able to do something that that a lot of people weren’t necessarily trying so and we do speak several different languages in our team. So that has been super helpful to whether

D.J. Paris 16:29
you guys speak six different languages on your team. It’s absolutely incredible. So this is also a very smart thing, because again, investors can be global, right worldwide, totally. Amy wants to be able to support them. You know, it’s funny, I think there’s a lot of realtors who listen, who are listening right now, but probably thinking well, I don’t have any international investor clients and and what I what I have heard from dozens and dozens and dozens of brokers who work with investors who are top agents, is they say, Don’t worry about the investor, find the deal. Find the deal. And the end, the investors will find you that the hard part is finding the deal. The easy parts the investor, there’s always money around. Would you agree with that?

Amy Duong Kim 17:10
Oh, yeah, I mean, you know, you need to be well, knowledge about your area, what you’re speaking of, I mean, so there, Chicago is the only metropolitan city in the United States that we can get a possibility that at least I would say 6% cap rate, you know, in many neighborhoods. La you can’t do that to Francisco, New York. The entry level for Chicago is considerably low. I mean, we could we can get in at a multi unit as low as $400,000. I mean, it’s gonna have a little quirkiness, you know, but you, you know, that’s virtually impossible in other areas, and we have United States has freehold. So a lot of countries do not have freehold. And that’s owning your own property. I don’t know the real, like the true definitions, so you may have to Google it, but like that you own your property where, you know, if there’s eminent domain, then you’re the government has to pay you for that. So, but you you guys have to check that technical stuff, okay. But we have freehold in the United States, where other countries do not have freehold. So there’s like a lot of advantages of owning not only property in the United States, but property actually in the Chicagoland area. So when you know that information and know exactly where those deals are, you have to find the property and let them know about it. So totally, I totally agree with that.

D.J. Paris 18:36
And a lot of times those properties never hit the MLS or they’re there, they hit the MLS, and they’re snapped up pretty quickly. So you have to get really creative and so for anyone listening who’s thinking, Well, how do I start to learn, I always suggest you know, if you’re really interested in learning about investment opportunities, go to bigger pockets.com It’s probably the single greatest resource for real estate investors and they’ll they’ll start you on your education but there’s lots of wonderful meetups and and you know, investors love to talk about investments. So you can you can find all these other like minded realtors or just investors and start to talk about, you know, some of these you know, some of the actuarial part of it and running the numbers and finding those opportunities.

Amy Duong Kim 19:19
Totally, I mean, I feel like I look at for pockets all day long. I actually tell clients, I’m not going to look at the MLS for you. You can totally do that yourself on Zillow. Yeah, right. And, you know, compass or whatever website that’s on the public market. You know, I’m gonna just focus on the listings that are not on the MLS

D.J. Paris 19:39
Yeah, well, that makes you really valuable to people too because you’re right. You know, the MLS used to be behind lock and key that hasn’t been the case for a long time. Now everyone has access whether you have a realtor or not. And so now Yeah, being able to provide additional value especially on the investment side and and do you prefer Do you prefer working with investors or do you like working with traditional buyers and sellers as well, I assume you do everything.

Amy Duong Kim 20:02
We do everything. Um, I think it depends. I still like the emotional part of a home purchase, I love being able to be part of their, that, you know, next life or next chapter. So I still enjoy that too. So I really just and honestly, it just depends on the client like I, most of my clients are very like minded like me. So they really think the same way, which I really love. That’s actually why my bio starts out with the fact that I was an actuary because I think I gravitate towards clients who are like traders and you know, in the finance field are just very analytical. So it’s helpful to have clients are very similar to how I work.

D.J. Paris 20:47
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s talk about the what’s going on right now in obviously, all of us across not just this country, but But you know, globally are dealing with this pandemic. And we’re here in Chicago, we’re under a stay at home order. You know, thankfully, real estate is still considered an essential business. So we’re able to do some things. We had one of our agents at our firm yesterday. Oh, actually, all of them are doing this now. But I just the first I’ve heard of it, because I don’t pay that much attention. But she was like, Oh, I just had my first drive up closing where she had to stay in her car. But she got the closing done. And that’s obviously our world right now. What are you doing? Or what? Yeah, I would love to know what you’re doing to stay busy and continue on with your business?

Amy Duong Kim 21:30
Well, we have always implemented technology in our, in our listings anyways. So it actually wasn’t too difficult to transition to what’s going on right now. If people have not started virtual tours, I highly suggest to have your listings go on virtual tour, there are opportunities to do if, if you can’t afford that, then you know, even just meant to making a video and then doing reverse prospecting and emailing it to those agents. I think it’s something that you could do and be proactive about. If we have the ability, where we have some listings that are currently vacant and staged. Sure, we will offer the lockbox and we a lot, I mean, we will a lot make sure that there’s no showings within three hour time periods of each other. And we’ll turn on all the lights beforehand, so nobody has to touch anything. So we are trying to be fair, like, of course, keep business going. Because that’s the best thing we could do right now, as well. But be responsible and stay safe and do our social distancing. So but yeah, I mean, I think video virtual tours are things that we could be doing right now. And really just staying in touch with your clients not I already was great at continuing my pipeline anyways, but even more so right now. So staying top of mind to those clients is always important to do and even more so right now.

D.J. Paris 23:00
Yeah, I’ve I’ve been thinking and we’ve been talking to a lot of top agents who has said this is a great opportunity for them to reconnect or deepen the relationships they have with their sphere of influence and just even reaching out to let people know you’re thinking about them or that you care about them and checking in to see how they’re doing. You know, we’re all in this together. And so everybody’s scared everyone’s you know, there’s economic concerns, obviously, job security, a lot of people are it’s a tough time. And so I you know, been hearing from a lot of our agents and people on the show here, that this is a great time just to reach out and make people feel a little less alone. And that when when this all returns to normal, hopefully as soon as possible. I think those activities are going to reap amazing dividends, they’re gonna be like, Wow, my realtor really cares about me.

Amy Duong Kim 23:46
Oh, totally. Yeah. A good way to like create new systems to I mean, I love my peloton. So if anybody wants to follow me on peloton to a week long cube, so it actually like has given me the opportunity to like figure out a new schedule, which I actually love to make sure that I you know, focus on my health too. So that that actually has been really rewarding as well.

D.J. Paris 24:16
Yeah, it’s a great time to develop better habits right and you know, whether whether you’re doing peloton or you’re just cranking out push ups on your floor, whatever it is, like now’s the time to start doing that because those habits just again yield amazing rewards down the road and, and you know, we’re all cooped up inside and our physical health is is you know, often neglected I know for me, I neglect it quite a bit. So now it’s like okay, I can either veg out on junk food and television over the next month or two or i which is fine if that’s what I choose to do, but I would be a little happier with myself if I ate well and maybe turned off the television and cranked out some some exercise. He says that I, you know, and thankfully, in Chicago, you know, you can still walk around a little bit. So you get out of the house from time to time other places. It’s not as not as convenient to do that. But yeah, it’s a talk about, you know, I would love to talk to you about current listings. So we talked about this a bit offline. I ran some numbers on the Chicago MLS. And let’s see, I just want to get the number right. I. So I was looking at temps temporarily no showings and cancellations. And I was looking at just the last 16 days versus a year ago. And it appears that we are up in temps and cancellations 58% in Chicago. probably no surprise, but can you talk a little bit about what you’re currently doing with your listings? And what you’re telling sellers and buyers to just let them know, sort of what’s going on?

Amy Duong Kim 25:55
Sure. So I think the first important question to ask is if the property is occupied, if they even feel comfortable with showings? Because personally, I don’t know if I would be if it really just depends on that situation of that seller. Right. And so that’s probably the first question. The second question is, you know, just really figured out what if you have everything to be able to do a safe social distancing showing so we offer gloves to our clients and booties I’m in the process of making masks, but I’m a very bad seamstress. So

D.J. Paris 26:35
I Oh, you’re making them yourself. That’s amazing. Well, because,

Amy Duong Kim 26:38
you know, they’re like, low supply right now. And I do have a sewing machine. But it’s, we’ll see what what they look like at the end of it. So. But we do have, we do have gloves, we bring disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizer, like, you got to bring all this up for your own safety too. But for the people that are live there, and the people who are going to be see the property, and if it’s vacant, it’s, you know, obviously, even better, we do try to get there beforehand to turn on lights. But we do and sometimes we just sit outside in the car while they do the showing, and then we close up afterwards for them. So we want to provide them access. But you know, keep the, though we would love to show the property personally and, but it just during these times, we just cannot, of course beforehand, we always offer virtual tours. And like every photo that we have imaginable for, we usually put only like 40 photos in our MLS, but we have, I don’t know, 60 or 100, depending on what property it is so, and beforehand, we give it to the agents so they can send it to their clients so they can see everything and floor plans and all those all that stuff. So, but I think that people should leave their listings active, we there’s a lot of buyers out there that are a little too nervous, and rightly so are afraid to go out. But they’re still looking, you know, and they’re still looking, they’re still active, I think I maybe it was a NAR statistic that people are looking for a home 19% more on the internet than they weren’t even before. And that was already a lot more. So if you do the only way to be able for clients and buyers to see that is if you are active. So if you have the opportunity to do it, I actually think it’s good to do it. And if they are willing to do a showing, I mean, they gotta be pretty serious, you know, they’re not just like, hey, I’m bored this afternoon to go see a place like they are very serious about looking for a property so and that’s how all my buyers actually are there like you know, they don’t necessarily want to go out but they have to go out there they don’t want to be homeless. So I mean there is still a need for homes everybody needs to live somewhere

D.J. Paris 28:56
yeah, and I think I’m very curious to see and I don’t know that there will be any really way to to to chart the stats on this but I’ll be very curious to see how many people once are the stay at home ban is is lifted, and we’re all back to normal how many people upgrade to a bigger living space? I’d be very curious as I’ll bet you there’s a tremendous number of people who are thinking gosh, I need I need more space. Yeah, I know I’ve started to feel that way in my own place. It’s like maybe I need a bigger place so yeah, so definitely agree

Amy Duong Kim 29:30
with you on that. I think two things are gonna happen they’re gonna possibly look at a different floor plan and then also you know, rethink their financial situation just like they did back in oh eight and you know, I don’t want to say though, reduce their house payment or like the budget, but I also think that they’re going to be a little bit more conservative and see if that will still work within like if they get What they want being a little bit more conservative in their budget, so,

D.J. Paris 30:03
and I think you’re probably right. And then also rates are so low right now where money is very cheap. And so yeah, so people are still looking,

Amy Duong Kim 30:12
oh, people are still looking. And I think that they think it’s a great opportunity as well, too. So because the economy is, you know, uncertain at this point, but anybody who has been doing this for a while knows that, you know, again, everybody needs a home, everybody needs a place to live.

D.J. Paris 30:30
Yeah. I’ve been wondering to a bank on the commercial side, if if I wonder if there’ll be a lot of businesses that once we come out the other side on this, go, you know, we spend a lot of money on office space. And, and, you know, maybe we could do more virtual stuff. And so I, I wonder if the commercial world will shift, but the residential world is everyone still needs, like you said, everyone that needs to live somewhere. So great opportunities

Amy Duong Kim 30:55
I do, I do think it will be commercial real estate will be adjusted differently. So that’ll be interesting to see, as well.

D.J. Paris 31:04
Yeah. Well, I want to talk to you, we talked about technology. And this is a really cool thing. Because now, today, it probably doesn’t seem like that big a deal. But but the fact that you were doing this years ago is so impressive to me is that you you’ve closed deals on FaceTime. And again, now everyone’s using FaceTime, zoom, Google Hangouts, etc. Because we have to, but four years ago, we didn’t have to, and we’re still utilizing that technology. Can you mind sharing that with our audience first?

Amy Duong Kim 31:33
Yeah. So I have clients who have seen property or who have bought property sight unseen. I have clients who I’ve never met before, actually, physically, that we’ve only talked on the phone, and whatnot. So it was something that we were we’ve been utilizing for quite some time. Now at least. I don’t know for like probably Winston’s video started. We’ve been we’ve been doing it. So I mean, it is an inundation of information as much as you can because I want them to feel comfortable as well. So we probably go kind of crazy with when we do do showing the amount of video photography like photos that we take literally down to like doorknobs. To make people in

D.J. Paris 32:20
people care about doorknobs they really do so that’s really smart. I mean, it’s, it’s, we can joke about it, but it’s actually a really smart thing. People want to see the hardware on on the kitchen appliance or the kitchen cabinets and, and bathrooms and they want to see doorknobs too. It’s you’re absolutely right.

Amy Duong Kim 32:37
Yeah. And then like lots of measuring for them. But yeah, just like just every especially so for condo when it’s going to be their residential, I’m thinking of one in particular was an adorable two bedroom condo, she, she had to travel all the time for work. She was coming from New York, but she goes internationally all the time. So in she had no time to come here to buy a place. So every showing was just FaceTime and lots of videos and lots of lots of phone calls. Because when we were under contract, she was in Africa. So so it was really just adapting to what what we could what we could do with with the technology that we have. So and she’s happy, and we’re actually texting each other making sure everything’s okay with each other. But, you know, that is we have the so much power and technology right now that it you know, there really shouldn’t be an excuse as to why someone shouldn’t be comfortable with purchasing a home whether during this pandemic or you know, working with clients internationally.

D.J. Paris 33:46
Yeah, I think you’re right. I think that’s that’s such great advice is just to utilize the technology that exists and you don’t have to have a million platforms. But you know, right now, like, how many photos do you take for each listing? Well, Amy does a ton of photos for each listing, because she never knows that somebody might be making their decisions solely based on the imagery, because maybe they’re not able to physically come come to, you know, the location. So I think that that is really actually great advice. Can you tell us a little bit about your group? I feel like we’ve we’ve, we’ve talked a lot about you, but tell us a little bit about the group that you’ve built and your team?

Amy Duong Kim 34:24
Sure. Well, I work with my husband, he and I are partners. We started working together when we actually just shortly after we got married, so I suppose I was always on the forefront and he was helped. I’m very I’m a very disorganized person. I may seem like I’m not but I’m very disorganized. So my husband is very organized one he’s actually one of the reasons why we have a business the way we do is you know you gotta have I you know, I was always great about being in front of clients and knowing things about real estate but he was always the clothes like the one that finished everything from execute to contract to close, so and then building a great team and sense of not only the agents that you work with, but having a fantastic inspector, having a fantastic attorney, you know, this is how to help having an awesome lender, like having these, these really great partners really also assisted us and supported us to build our business even further. So what my brother is on my team, so he, you know, we had our boutique brokerage from before, I felt like I and our brokerage was great, but I just felt like I was just running a business and not necessarily selling so we really took the decision to move to a larger brokerage and really focus on them. And that was one of the reasons why we were able to build our business to what it is right now. One of my best friends is on my team, and she just, I was she was my client turned into a realtor, I’ve mentor her she’s doing awesome. Another person I met on a mommy playdate to just got her license and to you know, wanted some supplemental income and she’s doing awesome. So every all our team members are very organic. And the goal is we have other Eva, Anastasia Malka, we have awesome transaction coordinator, Vanessa. So I really feel like it’s important to have different types of personalities in our team, we don’t want to grow our team, to this crazy amount, because I want to always be a part a part of their, you know, process and know about their deals. And you know, there’s only so much time in the day, right? And the goal is that we all become $20 million producers, that’s the goal is that, you know, I’m helping them figure out what it’s really trying to keep them accountable, and push them to the next level. And once they get to there, how can I assist them even more. So, you know, I always say, Who whoever we interview with, or who we ever take a meeting with, you know, just so you know, if you join on your on forever, you can’t leave.

D.J. Paris 37:09
I did an interview with a broker in the suburbs a couple years ago, I apologize. I’m forgetting her name. But she said the funniest thing she goes, she’s a $50 million producer. And she said, she said when she brings on team members, she goes, Look, I’m the nicest person in the world. But if you just do everything I tell you to do, you will be a top producer within like three or four years, she goes, you have to do what I tell you. Because I promise you I know the path. And so she was very funny about it. But I would love to know what you know, right now, with everyone staying at home, we know, you know, you mentioned what you’re doing. What how are you helping your team? Or what are you telling them to do to stay busy? Maybe people who aren’t as seasoned as you are newer to the business?

Amy Duong Kim 37:55
Um, yeah, the same thing that we’re talking about stay top of mind with your clients just like pick up the phone or text? Do I suddenly, like zoom seminars and like webinars and educational things up the wazoo. So and they’re sending it back to us to like different ones that they found in their own sphere. So Anastasia just sent one that was pretty awesome. So it, you know, just learning taking this time to learn. We’re really upping our souls. Our social media presence, I think is pretty good. But we’re really revamping a lot of our listing presentations and the collateral and our BIOS, and this is our time to kind of revise everything, I actually do all of this, usually in q4 of every year. So then everything’s kind of set for the rest of the year. And I just focus on selling for q1, two and three. But you know, this was a great opportunity to get to everything that we weren’t able to get to before. So because there’s always projects in the backburner that you always want to get to, it’s really just making sure you get to it. We I’m a huge proponent of Trello. I love Trello. And it’s like a little to do list, I love checking things off. So if you’re that type of person, I highly suggest using Trello and everything that you ever thought of that you wanted to do. I have a going list of it. And I just start checking things off whenever we complete it.

D.J. Paris 39:22
So we run our entire podcast on Trello. So we’re big, big. So for everyone who’s listening Trello it probably for most people’s needs would be free, although there are upgrades, but essentially, it’s a visual, sort of project management, sort of task manager type of system, where there’s a visual component that is really powerful. developers use this. So if you’ve ever been to a developer company or company with developers, they usually have a giant board with all these sticky notes everywhere, and then they’re moving sticky notes all over the place. And essentially, you’re gonna do the same thing with Trello. And it just, there’s a visual thing that just cement sent to me that is missing in a lot of other To Do List systems. So I’m a huge fan of Trello.

Amy Duong Kim 40:04
Yes or they’re sometimes they’re overcomplicated. I don’t want to call anyone any app out. But you know, it’s just like, just this is a simple, really, really simple. It’s like literally, you’re right, having a sticky note and then moving around. So and I hate paper. That’s actually another thing when I, I, when the first when the iPad came out, I never printed out showing sheets at all. I put it I always downloaded the PDF into my, into my iPad, and then I just would go out with that because I hate having paper the fact that my kids like school homeschooled right now I have to print like a crapload of paper is really annoying.

D.J. Paris 40:51
Yeah, utilize technology, it is your friend. Right. And and you know, this is a great time, as Amy said, to look at the assets, look at your marketing, you know, assets, look at your listing presentation, look at your website, look at all of the things that you know, that maybe normally you don’t have time to do, now’s the time to focus on, you know, revamping the listing presentation, or start with little, little projects. And you know, it’s so wonderful these days to is if you go, Well, I’m not a graphic designer, it’s like, oh, don’t worry, there’s a million places online where you can borrow ideas, and also even just pay for a listing. I mean, there are companies that will just build your listing presentation, if you don’t have one for like $20. And it looks pretty good. And then you can go from there. So we’re just so lucky

Amy Duong Kim 41:35
to convert and can

D.J. Paris 41:36
but yeah, we yeah, we do everything on Canva as well, if everyone isn’t familiar, so go to Trello and go to Canva ca NVA. And there are you can just make amazing Instagram posts with it. You can do all sorts of cool graphic design, and most everything on Canvas free as well. So we’re so lucky to have these resources that really didn’t exist 15 years ago.

Amy Duong Kim 42:00
Oh, I had a like, I remember printing out all these postcards, and like sticking mailers on it, and then you know, mailing them out is so I mean, there was pros and cons to how it was done before. But yeah, we have so many different tools and capabilities that we didn’t have before.

D.J. Paris 42:21
Yeah. Well Amy, I think this is a great place to wrap up and I know how busy you are even now that you’re at home you have you have your mother, you’re a successful business owner and also of course working with all your team members and your clients. So I want you to get back to it tear your busy life. But for everyone who is listening, I want everybody to go visit Amy’s website because again, if nothing else, watch her video and feel how it grabs you emotionally and use that as a as a guide for your own marketing efforts. But if you just want to learn more about Amy too, it’s a great resource. So go to Duan Kim global that’s d u O N G. Kim global.com. Also please follow her on Instagram, which is also Duan Kim global, we’ll be posting those links. Amy, thank you so much on behalf of the listeners for taking time to to be on our show we’ve we’ve been wanting to have you on for a long time. So this is a this is a real treat for us. And on and also on behalf. Oh, I’m sorry, Amy, I completely forgot. If there is anyone out there who is a buyer or a seller or renter and investor somebody who’s looking for a new real estate professional and wants to work with you. Obviously they can visit your website. But is there another way they can reach out to you directly?

Amy Duong Kim 43:34
Oh, and like can I should I give my phone number

D.J. Paris 43:38
up to your you give your email whatever is whatever is more appropriate for you. Yeah, my

Amy Duong Kim 43:42
email. Amy, that’s Wong Kim at compass that calm. But yeah, I mean, my website is the easiest way that has my cell phone on there as well. You can just contact me directly. I literally work all the time, which I love. I love working. So and I think my response rate on Yelp is like 10 minutes. So I usually respond within 10 minutes.

D.J. Paris 44:08
But I know, I know if I was looking for a realtor, I would go well, I would love to have somebody that treats each my deal like it’s her very own. So Amy did say that earlier on, and I want to hammer that point home because I don’t know if you would say that’s the absolute biggest secret of your success, but I’ll bet you it’s right up near the top. So if anyone’s out there who’s looking for a new real estate professional or just doesn’t have one in the Chicagoland area Amy is a great resource and you should reach out to her.

Amy Duong Kim 44:36
Okay, thank you so much. It’s so sweet. So

D.J. Paris 44:39
I appreciate you being a part of our show on behalf of the listeners again. We do thank Amy for for her time this morning. And also sorry this did not stream live on Facebook. We had a zoom is having an issue with Facebook probably with all the other zoom meetings going on. But we’re going to upload this this video right now and then we’ll have the option Audio episode recorded and are released in about a week or so. But on behalf of Amy and myself to the listeners, we thank you for continuing to support our show and listening to these great interviews. And also please tell a friend of everyone out there just thinks of one other real estate agent that could benefit from listening to this interview, pass this over to them. You can find us in stream every episode we’ve ever done on our website, which is keeping it real pod.com Of course, we’re on every podcast directory, iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Stitcher, Pandora everywhere, just search for keeping it real. Also, please follow us on Facebook every single day zonna Our producer finds an article online specifically written to help real estate agents grow their business. And in addition to that, we post these these episodes you can even watch the behind the scenes videos of them as well. So follow us on Facebook facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Amy thanks again. And we we will all get through this together and I’m really excited to continue to watch your success.

Amy Duong Kim 46:08
Thank you. Thank you for having me and be safe everyone.

D.J. Paris 46:12
Yes, be safe. All right. Thanks.