Category: Podcast Episodes

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
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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

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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.

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Jordan Pyle from Pyle Residential at Keller Williams is not only a top producer in Chicago, but also is involved in leadership positions with his local association and brokerage. This spirit of getting involved and giving back has not only served his community, but indirectly helped accelerate his real estate business. In our conversation Jordan talks about how he’s utilizing his time during the stay-at-home order to continue to deepen relationships with his contacts and how agents can continue to move forward despite current restrictions.

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

Jordan Pyle can be reached at 312-805-7074 and jordan@pyleresidential.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 host and guide through the show and in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with Jordan pile of Keller Williams. Before we get to Jordan. Just a couple of quick announcements for everyone who is listening to this episode, we say thank you. Thanks for continuing to support our show to tell a friend and also to follow us on Facebook. So telephone if you know any other realtors that could benefit from listening to interviews like the one you’re about to hear with Jordan, send them over to our website which is keeping it real pod.com They can stream every episode we’ve ever done, and also subscribe via their podcast app right on the site. Also please follow us on Facebook you can reach us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod every single day we post an article that we find online that is written specifically to help you grow your business. And of course we post links to every one of our episodes. And if you want to watch these episodes versus listening to them, you can watch them being live sorry recorded live in real time right on Facebook. So what we do is we record them now with video and we stream them live on that Facebook page. So watch it there so you don’t have to wait a couple of weeks for us to finish producing it and making it an audio episode. So again follow us on Facebook facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our interview with Jordan Pyle.

Okay today on the show we have Jordan Pytel from Keller Williams. Jordan is the founder of pile residential with Keller Williams in Chicago Linkin Park. Over the last six years, Jordan has built a robust real estate, business and network through hard work, authenticity and trust. Jordan believes that success in anything is 90% dependent on your mindset, and 10% on the actions you take on a day to day basis. Jordan is the current chair for the Chicago Association of Realtors Young Professionals Network. He’s also the founder and president of the Keller Williams young professionals Chicago chapter, he is a 2019 top producer, and in the last few days was just recently named in the National Association of Realtors. 30 under 30 is a very, very big deal. Jordan is passionate about leading by example and empowering and supporting others in achieving a limitless life. Please follow Jordan on Instagram. You can find him at Jordan dot pile. That’s p y le and, and also you can find him on his website pile. residential.com Jordan, thanks for being on the show.

Jordan Pyle 3:49
Thank you so much, DJ, I’m glad to be here. Hope everyone is taking care of themselves out there.

D.J. Paris 3:54
Yeah, I was telling Jordan, before we started I’m like, I’m not feeling 100%. So I may disappear for a few weeks from things but no, I think I’m okay. But yeah, I agree. We I am I’m in our office in Chicago, we’re supposed to really be home, but I’m considered an essential person. So I get to come to work on there’s usually 10 of us here and it is regulated to just me and the owner and we stay. We stay far away from each other. We have to yell to each other to say hello, but yeah, I get to do the podcast. So that’s but I think as soon as we’re done, I’m gonna going to get home. There’s police now patrolling the streets, and so I get a little nervous even driving home. I feel like I’m doing something wrong. But anyway, we’re here. We’re here to talk about you, not me. And Jordan is just a wonderful guy. He’s really somebody that I admire a lot and I’m so excited that you’re on the show. He just he’s part of a lot of you know, he does he just does a lot with the industry. He stays active involved and gives back but you’re Let’s start at the very beginning, because I’d really love our listeners to know, you know, you’ve been in business for six years now. But how did you get into real estate? Why did you get into real estate?

Jordan Pyle 5:08
Yeah, well, first off, grateful to be here. I’ve been watching this shot I told you that before in the past this podcast, and this is one of the best things you can do is just be a sponge to the industry. You know, listen to other agents figure out what they’re doing collaborate. So to actually be on the show today is super cool. But yeah, to kind of rewind the tapes to your question is, you know, I got it. Yeah, this, this would be your seventh. So got it right out of college, one of those crazy people that got, you know, moved here without a job 24 Or would be about mid 2013. Going into 2014 got my license, you know, had a network here, five to seven people, you know, yeah, no knowledge of the city, you know, no, no knowledge of how to sell real estate. And, you know, slowly but surely over time, I kind of had put pieces together, I was just naturally attracted to it from my real estate agent that found me my first rental at the time, I was in the job market. And I kind of asked him, I was like, this is cool, what you do like you help you just drag people around, you help them look at spots, and then you get paid if they decide to live somewhere. He’s like, Yeah, man, like, jump in, like, go get your license, you know, I got a spot for you. And, you know, it was given a lot of the wrong advice up front, I’ll tell you that, you know, a lot of false hope. And

D.J. Paris 6:20
awesome, super easy.

Jordan Pyle 6:22
So I definitely was pitched that and I knew nothing better at age 20 to age 23. And, yeah, long story short is got in it, stumbled my way through. I’m not that instant success story by any means. And just now scratching the surface, but it took me some time to find the right environment to find the right way to do things accountability. And now today, like I said, we’re year seven, dealing with something that we haven’t seen before with the whole Coronavirus, but now there’s a lot of good I think that’s also going to come out of this so we can kind of dive into that. You know, today.

D.J. Paris 6:54
Yeah, thank you. And that’s interesting. So I’m always so impressed with realtors. See, I can’t see brokers because in Illinois, we call them brokers and, and nowhere else they call them, they just call them agents or realtors, we’re just gonna say realtors to not confuse I get lots of email from the audience going, Why do you say the word broker and like, oh, it’s an Illinois thing. But But anyway, what you became a realtor very early in your early 20s. And you said, you know, I knew five to seven people, I’m guessing those people were probably around the same age as you and probably not buying homes, most of my friends at age we’re not. So how did you if we can rewind, just to talk about because we have a lot of people that who listen, who are newly licensed or are younger, or who just don’t have that sphere of influence? And they’re like, What do I do? Um, can you talk about what you did to survive? Because this is a very difficult thing to do, especially as early as you did it?

Jordan Pyle 7:48
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, like a lot of brokers or agents that get into the business, you know, it’s kind of a progression from rentals, to, you know, maybe buyers, and then maybe from buyers to sellers, and some combination of that. And I wasn’t, I was no different than that. Except for I just had nothing, right. So a lot of people are like, when I was asking around, what do I do like call to your database? And I’m like, why don’t have one of those. Right, so few things came from that, you know, it made me look, other places put myself in uncomfortable situations network, tell every single person that I knew, or that I came in contact with, that I was in the real estate business, and that I was willing to work hard to earn their business and their trust and their confidence, you know, I was definitely the honest one where, you know, there was a little bit of fake it till you make it there. But at the same time, I was like, I understand all my experience, but I’m gonna work harder than the next guy to make sure that, you know, whatever it is that you’re looking to do, I can support you in that. So I think that’s something that helped me kind of get the ball rolling. And then the other part of that is like, I didn’t have a database, and everyone was talking about it. So I just put all my focus into meeting new people, putting them into a database and then finding a way to stay in systematic touch with them. Yeah, it’s nothing different than you hear from anyone else.

D.J. Paris 8:59
Well, but it’s it’s really important to hear it because they say repetition is the mother of skill. And it is you know, I was I Brian Buffini who every probably better who listens knows he has a, you know, very successful training and coaching system and program, and probably the the biggest in the entire industry. And he always says how you win the day, and he has about five ways that you win the day. One of which is did you meet two to five people today? And it’s such a simple and basic thing to go, oh, yeah, yeah, I’m supposed to do that. But to actually do it is remarkably difficult. But if you can actually meet just two people five days a week, that’s 10 a week, 40 a month, 480 a year. Within a couple of years, you will have so many people in your database, and some of those people will will use you but it is your I’m so glad you mentioned meeting people because we’ve interviewed other people on the show and that seems to be a very consistent thing is even as you continue to build your business And even as you get to where you’re working, mostly referral, it’s still meet, meet, meet people, but add them to the database stay in touch. So,

Jordan Pyle 10:07
right, and I think I think back then it was, for me, it was just more about as many people as possible, you know, you get to your point where you have to start becoming a lot more intentional about where you spend your time who you spend your time with. But then it was just a matter of getting out there, you know, showing people that I was going to show up every single day, I think that’s a big thing is like just having staying power. And whether you’re busy doing deals or not like every single day I showed up, every single day, I made progress every single day, I asked questions, and really just studied, you know, I’m a very, pretty analytical and kind of strategic and how I move around. So I would get on a subject, something that came up during that day that I didn’t know or something that put me in an uncomfortable position and that whole night and go back and figure out how to how to respond to that better the next time, you know, so I really dive in and or reach out to some mentors and say, Hey, this came up in conversation today, like, how would you go about responding to this? So little by little every single day, it just was the compound effect, which is sitting on my shelf right above me here, that compound effect by Darren Hardy, great book, yeah, it’s gradually then suddenly, you know, it took six years to see now to the point of a database that generates 10 million hours plus in business every year. So he’s playing the long game is important. And I kind of have that mindset going in.

D.J. Paris 11:22
Yeah, and I imagine even today, you know, the daily disciplines and behaviors that that you, you know, ideally would do, to be able to then get you to where you want to be I, I, I’ve interviewed people, even from your Keller Williams office, we’ve had a bunch of them on the show. And a lot of them will talk about just keeping your head focused on those daily disciplines and, and understanding that that’s really fundamentals win the game. Right. So I appreciate you talking about that. I do want to also I know giving back is really important. You’re really involved in the local association, also involved in your company as well. And you talk about why you got involved and what that’s meant for you, and maybe just for our listeners who, who aren’t maybe yet involved, and maybe why they should consider it as well.

Jordan Pyle 12:09
Yeah, man, it’s definitely something I’m super passionate about. Everybody that knows me knows, I’m, you know, young professionals is kind of my world. It’s my jam. Right? So what you’re referencing is, is, I stepped up to join the leadership, or, you know, the advisory board for the Chicago Association of Realtors, young professional network? What would it be, I guess, two years ago now, you know, I have some mentors, as I mentioned in my life, and you know, a good woman by the name of Tommy Troy was someone that has really pushed me he’s put me you know, again, outside of my comfort zone. But at the same time, it’s been kind of that guiding hand in my leadership journey to say, hey, just go do it, you’re gonna figure it out, you’re gonna be you’re gonna get better because of it. And so he was kind of the initial spark that was like, you might as well try it, get to know these people. Because originally, I was like, why would I want to go network and sit on a board with all these other real estate agents? And

D.J. Paris 12:57
after that’s not going to help me build my business? Oh, yeah, exactly. So

Jordan Pyle 13:01
at the time, I definitely had a scarcity mindset. And then he helped me and a lot of other people, and specifically, Keller Williams helped me create an abundance mindset. And so once I got in it, I kind of realized that I like stepping up and having a voice having a platform to affect change, you know, you know, for the good. So once I got in, I spent one year as a board member, and then I was asked to basically step up as the vice chair, my second second year on the board, which was last year, and then now I’ve naturally transitioned into the chair. And you know, I’m blessed to be able to leave 14 Other Chicago real estate individuals, and we’re all about education, collaboration and camaraderie. So just bring up right industry as a whole. You know, I love the quote that iron sharpens iron, and a high tide raises all ships. So really, for me to kind of be on the front lines, especially in a space where we’re entering this disruptive time, take Coronavirus out of it. We were in this very disruptive time of the real estate industry. And I want to be the guy that’s on the frontlines fighting that’s that’s leading by example. And that’s also creating that ripple effect, again, to bring up the industry as a whole. So that’s kind of passionate about it.

D.J. Paris 14:09
Yeah, I’m glad that you glad. Thank you for that. And I’m glad to hear your thoughts. Because I think it’s one of those things that we often especially people who are busy, they have families, they have other responsibilities or trying to build their business. And now there’s this other opportunity to give back and it doesn’t really fit into the business plan of No, I need to like find more clients. And the irony is exactly what Tommy who by the way, for those of you not from Chicago, Tommy was the president of the association, Chicago Association realtors, just recently, he’s somebody who is a good part of his life is all about giving back and Jordan is very similar. But the irony is by doing that it actually expands your life you actually end up getting so much more than you give, whether it’s financial or whether it’s just in Your own pride or or confidence, or just feeling better as a human being. I feel the same way. I’m involved in several charities, and I’m on some boards as well. And I, I was just interviewed by a college student who wanted to ask me about business and whatever she has, what’s one thing you wish you would have learned? Much younger, and I said, the only thing was, is, I wish I would have started volunteering, like, 20 years ago, because my life would be even richer. Now. Forget about financial success, I would just be a happier person. And and George Jordans about Yeah, good.

Jordan Pyle 15:34
It’s just, you know, it’s just that that’s fulfilling. And that’s ultimately why I jumped into this. Yeah, I like to refer to it as leadership, you know, involvement and giving back all that kind of group together, whether that be young professionals, or I get back to Alzheimer’s Association, and things like that. But it’s the stuff that I realized I was working in the business and I was creating a successful business helping clients get from where they wanted to be to where they wanted to go, or where they were to where they wanted to go. And, but I realized I was missing the side of it, that was like, I’m actually making like a deep impact on my community serve. And I looked at, you know, obviously, the conventional ways of doing it within your niche of your neighborhood, or your Medicare you live in. But the one thing I realized and harness was I didn’t have what I wish I would have had when I first started in the industry, which is that guidance, which is that what I like to call a growth environment, or a community of other people that are like minded, that are also in this abundance mindset, trying to help each other get better. So if I can shorten that learning curve for people, you know, we talked about all the time that real estate’s an industry that 95% of people that get in the business, within a year, they’re out of business, whatever the the craziest. So for me to have learned the hard way to kind of failed and pick myself back up and done that over and over, I learned a lot quicker. And I want to save other people that time that money that energy, to ultimately make them successful, more, you know, faster.

D.J. Paris 16:57
Yes, I couldn’t agree more. And for everyone who’s listening, because we have listeners from all over the country, Jordan is the chair of what’s called the Young Professional Network here in the city of Chicago. And of course, we have listeners from all over. So if, as everyone listening is probably a member of their local association, give them a call and see if we if they have a young professional network chapter, if not, you know, consider creating one, but they probably have one. And it’s, it’s a wonderful organization, and you don’t have to be necessarily young to be involved. But it’s just a place to to learn from other realtors and support each other. And also to affect change at a larger level as well to affect policy change.

Jordan Pyle 17:36
And add to that, if you don’t mind is Go ahead. And it’s even though me volunteering in these positions, doesn’t directly pay me like we were talking about that a little bit before there were things that you knew in your life that pay you some of them that don’t. But a lot of it’s the passion. But it’s it’s goes back to the infinite game or Simon cynics new book, which is all about the long game right now two to three years into my leadership journey. And my you know, sitting on these boards and stepping in these leadership positions. Now a third of my business, literally 33% or more might even be closer to 40 is Agent agent referrals. And yes, that sounds because I’ve Yeah, yeah, that’s amazing, not only through the local association, and how that’s all interweave within all the other local associate associations around the country. But Keller Williams, also I mentioned, I’m the founder and president of the Keller Williams young professional Chicago chapter. So I know people, multiple people in almost every city around the country because of these involvements. So now, when anyone knows anyone either moving to or from Chicago, that they have to sell their home to leave Chicago, or they need to buy one moving to Chicago, typically, I’m the guy that think of because I’m the most present in these different organizations that I’m a part of.

D.J. Paris 18:50
Isn’t isn’t that interesting? And I’m sure you never thought that that was going to happen. And that’s not the reason why you got involved. But Isn’t that an amazing? Just wonderful thing to have come out of it?

Jordan Pyle 19:02
Not in the way that it has? I knew it would come? I didn’t think it was gonna be 33 or 40% of my business.

D.J. Paris 19:07
Wow, that is that is remarkable. Wow, well, let’s let’s talk a little bit about mindset. Because I know right now is I think it’s a good topic for good part of the country, the majority of realtors are staying home, either by by choice or by force. And maybe they’re not totally sure you know, how to stay active, how to stay busy, what to do, what to talk to clients about and I know you don’t have all the answers, but I want to talk I’d love you to talk to our listeners about what you’re doing. How are you staying productive? Is it business as usual? Have things changed? And what are you doing this just stay active and positive?

Jordan Pyle 19:47
Yeah, I think it’s again, going back to you know, my intro is everything is mindset. You know, it all starts with mindset. So, you know, I like to scale it back first and say that you know, the way that you show Up in the world is directly impacted by the things that you do to give to yourself or to show love to yourself before you ever show up to the world. And what I mean by that is like, it’s the analogy and I’ve referenced this in the past, but it’s the, you know, it’s the put your mask on an airplane first before you can put anyone else’s mask on. Because if you can’t take care of yourself, and you can’t show up healthy to 100% and ready to serve everyone else in your world, then you’re not going to have the impact that you’re looking to have. So for me this whole Coronavirus, it starts there. So it’s about how am I making sure that I’m I’m doing things, you know, from working out to meditation to kind of this holistic health and wellness routine that I’ve implemented through my morning routine, to make sure that when I do come in contact with potential clients or prospects, that I’m giving them an unbiased opinion, essentially, that I’m giving them an opinion based on facts and the things that you can control based on a bunch of fluff or a bunch of fear, right? Sure. So for me, it’s really making sure that I’m grounded and formulating these opinions, and then talking through that specific situation with that client, because there’s not a one, there’s not one solution right now, in today’s world that works for everybody. Like I can’t tell you, if you reach out to me, it’s a good time to buy or sell, like I need to know what other factors are going on in your world, and then be able to hopefully provide a prescription to that. So for me, you know, it all starts with working on your, on your mindset. I was thinking about this earlier today, it’s like I’ve been preparing for a time like this, like all those extra nights staying up late, you know, making a few more calls or getting an extra mile and on the treadmill or, you know, going that extra 1% Every single day has now gotten to a point where things start crashing around you, you’re very centered because you understand who you are and your core, right. So I think by harnessing who you are your core and then allowing that to extrapolate out into your interactions, your relationships and things like that is the best thing that all of us can do right now to stay sane, stay healthy and continue staying focused and disciplined, when it does come down to work.

D.J. Paris 22:09
Yeah, that’s, you know, it’s funny, you’re talking about taking care of yourself. And a lot of times we don’t think of things like, Well, we know that we should exercise and exercise, you know, with with some weights, and we should do some cardio, because we know it’s a good idea for our overall health. But what is oftentimes sort of not talked about as much is you will be able, and Jordan was just talking about this, but I want to I want to dive into it a little bit more. Because if you exercise your body, you’re gonna get rid of a lot of extra stress and tension that’s just there, especially right now, everyone’s a little freaked out, we’re all freaked out. This is normal, we’re all scared, every you know, a lot of people are worried about their jobs, and you know, just obviously getting sick and a lot of things. So everyone’s got additional stress and fear right now that’s totally normal. And exercise is probably more important than ever to help get rid of some of that. So that as a real real estate agent, you can show up better for your clients. So you actually said that, and I was really important to hear I think I want just to say it again, is when you exercise, you’re not only giving you’re giving yourself you know the fuel and you’re going to increase your energy and you’re gonna probably you know, have a healthier life as a result a longer life, but you’re also going to be able to show up better for your clients, you know, a lot of that fear and stress might get dissipated through some exercise and, and that’s just a great reason alone because as Jordan says he wants to show up for his clients in the best possible condition. And that means he has to take care of himself first. And so I’m really glad you brought that up.

Jordan Pyle 23:40
Yeah, I’m I’m an analogy guy. And I think this paints a picture for people and you know, I’ve talked about it again in the past but like the demonstrating being like the flag and the flagpole. So right now everyone has the flag you know there’s when there’s when and the flag is flapping all over the place right? But what happens in a storm you know, the flagpole stays completely straight up and down in the wind or the flag class like crazy. So the meditation the working out the journaling, the gratitude, your morning routine, your your your night routine, at the end of the day to make sure you’re kind of you know, booking in your day, like all of that creates a stronger flagpole so that people don’t see you as the flag they know they can go to you for you know, advice and to consult with and to know that you’re going to be a strong and grounded opinion. So I think all these things allow you to again show up as that flagpole versus that flag. And then therefore, you can, you know, really make a positive impact for those other people.

D.J. Paris 24:41
I agree that I guess that’s where that expression becoming unflappable comes from right. It’s that same same metaphor. And, and and yeah, and you have to practice and now what a great opportunity to start to develop those habits of taking care of yourself, and also taking care of your clients too. But what a great opportunity. And if anyone out there has not familiar with the book, Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, which I actually a big, big fan of it actually walks you through a six step process, including meditation, exercise, journaling, reading, visualization, affirmations, etc. And it just it’s a simple thing. You can modify it to your own. You know, your own preference, but it’s a great way just to center yourself and get get ready for the day and also to do at the end of the day, how did I do today? And to forgive yourself when you make mistakes, like, Okay, I didn’t have a great day, I didn’t get to the gym, or I didn’t. I used to supposed to call back those two clients, and I didn’t but I’m going to do better tomorrow and and just you know, setting yourself up and you’re right. It’s don’t let don’t let the wind just happen to you, right? Like the wind is going to happen. That’s that’s going to happen. And it’s like, are you going to be the flag or the flagpole? So I appreciate that metallurgy. The

Jordan Pyle 25:53
morning routine, I would say is it’s something I’m incredibly passionate about. It’s been one thing I’ve implemented probably four to five years ago. And, and yes, I missed a ensure modified, but always being able to have that to go back to and when I execute that, I wake up at 5am. You know, I do my exercise. I do the Savers, right.

D.J. Paris 26:14
Yeah. So you’re so he’s referencing Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod? Yeah,

Jordan Pyle 26:17
yeah. So you do the silence. You do the Affirmations, Visualization, exercise, reading and then journaling? Yeah, you’re you feel like Superman, you know, whole day, you’re so fired up, because you’ve already taken the time to get back to yourself. Right. So if anyone listening to this, they they’re struggling to get a morning routine together. Like I love talking people through it, because I see the change it makes on their life. And then that then creates that ripple effect for them to help somebody else out. So if there’s one thing I would recommend for both business success and just life like being happy and joyful, it’s the morning routine, and the Miracle Morning is a great start.

D.J. Paris 26:57
Yeah, it is. And it’s always, you know, it’s again, life is gonna happen, right? Bad things are coming, good things are coming, everything’s coming. And the question is, is what can I do to get myself in the right state to be able to handle the good and the bad as it happens, and mindset is, is the key to that and spending some time early in the morning is, is a good idea. Because it’s typically when we’re not being bothered by maybe other family members are our spouses or significant others, and emails and everything else, the world hasn’t started knocking at our door quite yet. If you get up early enough, and you can, you can spend that time and give it to yourself and and it pays dividends, you’ll just show up better, you’re just going to have a better life. It’s really that simple. So they I’m glad we’re talking about that. All right. I also want to talk because we’re really talking about some some fundamentals related to discipline. And I know discipline, obviously is important for you. But you are also training for an Iron Man, which is so far beyond my comprehension. But I am so impressed with people who do that can can you talk a little bit about the discipline it takes to do that and how it relates, if at all to what you’re doing in your business.

Jordan Pyle 28:11
It 100% relates. And that’s ultimately why I decided to do Ironman in general. So yes, um, so I’m doing the Madison, Wisconsin as of now Iron Man and September 13 This later this year, and it’s the full one 40.6 So it’s, you know, it’s 2.4 mile swim, followed by 112 mile bike ride and then finishing with a marathon. So 26.2 miles, so adds up to 140.6 miles and yeah, so the beginning of the year, I was looking at my goals looking at, you know, everything I wanted to accomplish, and I don’t know if you’ve ever read but there’s a awesome book out there and anybody in kW knows it’s called The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Pat has been Yes, great. business books in general not real estate related at all and and so I was thinking, Okay, if I could really sum up every single thing in my life to one thing that I need to focus on moving into 2020 Not knowing that all this crazy stuff was gonna happen this year, but it came back and as I peel back the onion, it became the honor man, because I knew that something of this type of scope, you know, something that large that I knew I was gonna have to put that much time discipline and energy into it was going to force discipline into every other area of my life. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 29:25
yeah. Yeah, cuz that’s some people that’s for them. It’s a full time job preparing for the Iron Man.

Jordan Pyle 29:31
Yeah, I mean, it’s no joke. It’s, you know, some some days is two hours, you know, working out some days, it’s four. And some days going in the future it might be five or six right as you get closer and closer to it. So that makes me wake up with the intention, wake up with purpose. Get all the things that make me feel good done in the morning. Like the morning routine that we were talking about. And then now I know when I’m at work, like, Hey, I have this amount of time, and it pushes me to help time block and batch things because I know that later that night, I asked I Gotta go back to the gym and get two hours in, right? So there’s no longer there’s a quote out there that talks about like all work will fill, or all work will expand to fill the time allowed, right? If you give yourself nine hours to do something, you’re gonna, you’re gonna take nine hours to do it every half an hour, and then the next hour, you’re doing something else, you’re going to finish it and then not in an hour. So that was kind of the mindset I had going into it. And then yeah, the actual training itself, it’s super cool, because it’s something that I get better at every single day. I have breakthroughs every single day. And I’m constantly going past limits and ceilings that that I’ve previously thought were like, the limit. Right, right. And I think all that applies to business and especially like putting yourself in, you know, getting comfortable in uncomfortable situations. And knowing that there’s always more in the tank. I think that allows me to then it translates in every single area of my life, not just business, but also the time I spent with my loved ones, making sure I’m president doing things. Yeah. And it’s just at the end of the day. It’s it keeps me healthy, too, which is awesome. Yeah, that’s

D.J. Paris 31:03
is it? Is it been obviously, some of your trainings, I’m sure been modified. And maybe you’re not able to train it at where you’d like to right now? I’m guessing.

Jordan Pyle 31:13
Yeah, so I’ve been I’ve been modifying I can’t swim right now. But there’s band exercises and shoulders exercises. You know, I can I can. Someone told me I shouldn’t be doing this. But I’ve been going on runs outside, keeping my distance, but sure, whatever. And then biking, I have an indoor bike. But that that example, in itself is exactly why it applies to life too, because no one knew that this curveball are gonna get thrown at us. So it’s about learning how to pivot, pivot the training, do things differently to supplement, you know, what you would have done to achieve the same result?

D.J. Paris 31:47
Yeah, and so I’d also like to talk about, you know, what Realtors could be doing right now being that most of us are at home? You know, we’re sitting around, what are you? What are you doing to keep your business running? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jordan Pyle 32:05
Yeah, yeah, I’m not gonna say this is what you should do. I’m just gonna say this is what I what I enjoy. And this is based on some feedback from other people and things like that. So I wrote a few things down, because I figured this was probably going to come up. And I think it’s super important right now. So the first thing is, dial in your morning routine, I’m not gonna spend time with x, we just talked about it. But start building routines, this is a perfect time for, for, you know, we’ve been, for the longest time been building bad habits and good habits. But we’ve been building all these habits. So it’s easy now to kind of like, if you think about yourself, it’s almost like a juice cleanse for your life. Right? So this is challenging not only life, but society to take back all the things that are important to us and get rid of the weight. Right. So now that you have a clean slate, start focusing on what are the things you can what positive habits, what beneficial habits can you implement, and then just start stacking those versus, you know, letting all the audibles creep back in? Right? I think that’s the first thing operate on a schedule as if you were going to be going into the office every day. Yeah. The next thing that I’m doing is I am going and for the time being, I’m, I’m taking my annual goal, and I’m putting it on the shelf. You know, and not to say that things might not turn around in two weeks. And all his business as usual, that could happen. But I’m also, I think, I think this is a serious issue, I think it will pass. But I do think that this is something that’s going to change the way we operate from now into the future. So, so taking that goal, putting it on the counter on the table, and then redefining the next 90 Day goals. So I think See, now a month is too far. So go to 90 days, figure out what those goals are, and then break those into monthly goals. From there breaking into weekly goals. And then from there breaking into daily goals. And then it all ultimately, once you get that clarity around those 90 Day goals, now you can think about your daily scoreboard. So then I would say every single day, if anything, if nothing gets done, make sure you build a daily scoreboard. And those things have to get done. If nothing else gets done those things get done the day is a success. So for me it’s things that are both personal and business so for me to wake up at 5am write my goals meditate, check my bank accounts, my budget because I think that’s I do that I do that as well. Yeah, especially with this time and then the last thing that strictly you know is good for my business is set an appointment. So it’s literally just set one appointment a day, do these other four things, and everything will move in the right direction. And then outside of that the last step I would suggest is redefine a rebuild out on your Google Calendar. Like you can you can start a new calendar call on your perfect week and look at the seven days and say, What do I want my life to look at or look like? So making sure you’re putting in all your recurring events. You know, if you have workouts, put them in there, if you have phone calls, put them in there, if you’re a parent and you have kids with certain obligations, put it all in there, make sure the big things and the important things get in there first, and then fill in the rest of the time with lead generation activities, and things that are going to help grow your business. So that’s kind of what I’m doing right now.

D.J. Paris 35:20
That Thank you, I think that’s very helpful. For our listeners, this is a great opportunity to build your scoreboard like Jordan has, and, and putting every area of your life in there, you know, talk about, you know, put some spiritual goals, put some social goals, but some emotional goals, physical goals and business goals. And, and, you know, I’ve never been a big fan of ultimately a goal, like, my end goal is to achieve X, I’ve always been more for me, what’s always been better is what direction am I heading? And what are the daily disciplines to get there? And that’s all I ever focus on is, is what do I need to do today? So you start at the end, and you work backwards? Like Jordan says, you say, Okay, what do I need to do today to win the day, and whatever that means to you, and, and, you know, even if it’s just, hey, I want to think about my relationship, my primary relationship, or the relationship I have with my kids, or my co workers, or, or my clients or lead generation, and just figure out a couple simple behaviors, because like Jordans in, you know, in the process of training for an Ironman, and I’m sure to just think about the sheer enormity of that is overwhelming to think and maybe not for him anymore. But for the rest of us going Oh, my God, he’s doing 100 plus miles, you know, in three different sports Simon almost justly? Yeah, yeah, but but you don’t have to think about that. Because all you have to think about is today, I have to do, you know, three things around training. And I just have to, and those aren’t easy either. But it’s a lot easier to think about that than to try to imagine accomplishing this massive physical feat that you’re going to do, because you did all the daily activities. What I do

Jordan Pyle 36:54
in my workouts is I do like, Okay, the next 20 minutes, it’s focused on the next 20 minutes, exactly. Next 20 minutes, the next 20. And you can easily do that in business, setting a timer just recurring nonstop, essentially, on your phone every 20 minutes, when the bell goes off, work focused for 20 minutes, take a five minute break, walk around, get a drink of water, meditate, do whatever you need to do make a phone call text people, and then jump back into that 20 minute time block. I forget what it’s called.

D.J. Paris 37:21
There’s how Amador the Pomodoro Technique? Yeah, so yeah,

Jordan Pyle 37:25
doing things like that I think are gonna help. And then I don’t want to forget to say like, actual tactical things do through data or to do with your business, like, you got to call people right now. You gotta, you gotta check in on people, you know, and I think it’s not a conversation about real estate, of course, let them ask you, if it comes up in conversation, what your perspective is and give a educated response. And so you got to know what’s going on around you. But it’s about figuring out how to do it, if there’s any way you can help. And just reach out letting them know that you’re there in any way, shape, or form, right. And then the way that I’m structuring that in my business to figure out who I’m calling every day. And of course, there’s people in my database. And you know, I know a lot of agents listen to this. But any clients like everyone equals or matters the same, but you got to have a system for how you’re reaching out people. So what I’m doing is I’m basically, we’ve started pivoting over to a new CRM, like right around the same time of all this going down. So I’m taking all of my people from my old CRM and putting them in my new one. And then I’m going through 10 records a day. So 10 contacts a day, filling in as much information I can about these people. So their birthdays, their email addresses, home addresses, whatever I have on them, social media profiles, and then filling out that card out and then giving them a call, or shooting them a text checking in on them. So just breaking it down again, to 10 people a day, you know, within 70 days, I’m going to be through my whole database of 700 people, and then everything will be cleaned, you know, it’s a good chance to reset your database, get rid of some of the fluff, and then focus on the people that are really important to you. And they’re

D.J. Paris 39:00
great advice. And I hope everyone is listening there. Again, Jordan is is very skilled at breaking things down to you know, its smallest doable, actionable components, right. So he’s even breaking down his time into, you know, into smaller chunks. Because even for some of us, you know, working on something for an hour might be a bit overwhelming. So yeah, break it down into 20 minutes, and then congratulate yourself, when you made it the 20 minutes, that’s not easy to do. And then just keep, you know, take a few minutes and then get back to it. And, and all of a sudden, by the end of the day, you’ll have so much accomplished I read a statistic that said the average I don’t know if this is true, but it’s it seems to be pretty close to true and probably the average. You know, office worker really only does about an hour and a half to two hours of work a day. But they’re there for eight hours because, you know, they like you were saying they expand. Yeah, but you have eight hours to get two hours of work done. But as real estate agents, we don’t really have that we, you know, it’s all up to us and so You really have to be disciplined and structured. And if you can’t be, and not everyone’s good at that is get a partner, get a coach, find somebody that can help hold you accountable. I’m a big fan of coaching. And you know, you can even find a buddy, if you can’t afford hiring a coach, Find a buddy find somebody that is struggling like you and he can help each other

Jordan Pyle 40:18
DJ, I’m glad you mentioned that man. Because that’s like, that’s the last leg of all this is everyone knows what to do. Every single person out there knows what to do. And it’s a matter of stepping in there and, you know, allowing yourself again to get uncomfortable, it’s, it’s not a lot of people are willing to make the sacrifice of like, the short term for the long term benefits. So I think now more than ever, when you can’t necessarily be having realistic conversations, you can don’t get me wrong, but it’s limited in its scope. Because there’s bigger problems in the world. Now’s the time where these small things like he’s things from the heart that you’re doing, you’re gonna build a bigger business down the road, he’s gonna build trust, authenticity, you know, all those different things and to show empathy and compassion to people right now is that’s gonna go so far, you know. So it’s such a long way. So I think every day just waking up with your head down hard up, Gary Keller had mentioned that head down on focusing, because it’s so easy to get distracted right now of all the Zoom webinars and different things going on online and head down on what you know, is important, and then heart up to be able to help anyone that needs it, right. So that’s kind of how I’m going about my day is today.

D.J. Paris 41:29
Wonderful. I think that’s a great place to wrap up, head down heart up. Really, I think that’s what it’s what life is all about. So it’s, it’s like that old Zen saying they say Before enlightenment, chop wood carry water after enlightenment, chop wood carry water. So always got to keep your head down, but keep the heart up as well, it’ll guide you into the right spot. And right now everyone is scared. So what a great opportunity for you to let them know you care about them. And guess what people want to work with people they care that who they know care about them. So most of the people, the service providers I use have not reached out I get I get the you know, generic emails that they send out everyone else, but I don’t like getting text messages or phone calls from lots of different providers that I pay money for, you can be the exception to that. And you can let people know and, and you have time, so now’s a great time to do it. Also, I want to Jordan, for everyone listening, not all of everyone who listens is necessarily a real estate professional. But we sometimes have you know, clients who are interested in working with someone like yourself, if we have any buyer’s or seller’s renters investors who are looking to work with you what’s what’s or if we have agents who want to refer business to you, since obviously, that’s a big, big for you what’s the best way they should be reaching out,

Jordan Pyle 42:47
I appreciate that DJ, probably the easiest way for anyone that’s looking to buy or sell or if you’re trying to get in touch, just send me an email, Jordan at pile residential.com. Or you can go to my website power residential.com. Yeah, and he’s locally and then I can pretty much connect you with anybody across the country to buy or sell if you have those needs as well.

D.J. Paris 43:09
Awesome. And also remember to follow Jordan on Instagram, you can find him at Georgia, Jordan dot pile and p y le So Jordan dot pile on Instagram and also his website, which he just mentioned, power residential has links to all of his social media accounts. So you can find them on all the different platforms there. Jordan, thank you so much. I know you’re incredibly busy, not only with your business, training for the Ironman, and then also all the other involvement that you have in leadership position. So I really appreciate your time. You know, and we’re so excited to have had you on the show. And congratulations again, on the 30 under 30. That’s a huge nod to you. And, you know, again, just keep up all the great work. And for all of our listeners, we have just a quick quick a couple of things we’d like to mention. Number one, please tell a friend, think about another real estate professional that you know that would benefit from listening to this interview that we just had with Jordan and just one other person. If everyone does that, we’ll double our listenership. And we would appreciate that as well. And then last to remember to follow us on Facebook. Our Facebook page is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod we post an article every single day that we find online that’s written specifically to help real estate agents grow their practice. And also we do post our episodes there as well so you can find out what we’re doing. So follow us facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Alright, on behalf of Jordan and myself to the listeners, we say thank you for continuing to listen. And on behalf of the listeners and myself, Jordan, thank you for your time and we’ll see. We’ll see everyone on the next episode. Jordan, thanks.

Jordan Pyle 44:45
Thanks so much DJ grateful for you man.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Marki Lemons-Rhyal has spoken to over 300k real estate professionals about how to grow their business to achieve their goals. In our conversation she talks about the importance of using the extra time we have right now to work on our business plan. Marki provides actionable tips about working from home and how to embrace pivoting to find new opportunities for growth.

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

Marki Lemons can be reached at 773-454-0274 and info@MarkiLemons.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 host and guide through the show and in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with Marquis lemons. Before we get to Marquis I would like to remind everyone to please tell a friend think of one other real estate professional that you know that could benefit from hearing from these types of interviews with top 1% producers and send them a link to our show, send them right over to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com We have links to iTunes Google Play also Spotify, Stitcher, Pandora, or just tell them to pull up a podcast app on their phone and search for keeping it real and it should pop right up. Also please follow us on Facebook you can find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod or just search for keeping it real podcast. Reason for that is in addition to publishing every one of our episodes there we also show you behind the scenes footage and video footage of us recording each episode in real time. And we every single day we post an article that we find online that is specifically written to help real estate professionals grow their business. So please follow us again on Facebook. Thanks for telling a friend. Thanks for continuing to listen and support our show and hope everyone is staying safe out there and now on to our interview with Marquis lemons.

Today on the show we have Marcie lemons rial Marquis is a sixth time realtor Conference and Expo featured attendee. She is one of 100 speakers selected out of over 500 speakers selected to speak at the realtor Conference and Expo six different times. Marquis lemons is a licensed managing broker, also realtor, avid volunteer major donor and International Best Selling Author of and buy go out and buy this right now on Amazon the modern real estate professionals Guide to Success. Marquis also has a podcast called Marquis lemons rial find it on iTunes or any podcast app you use. Please subscribe to her podcast. It’s excellent. And you can find all things Marquis at her website which is marquis lemons.com and want to spell that m a r k i l e m o n s.com. And you can find her social media accounts there as well. She’s an absolute legend in the real estate coaching and speaking world and a social media expert welcome Marcie lemons to the show. Thank you so much.

Marki Lemons Ryhal 3:36
Thank you for having me. It’s you know the world is in a different place today. I’m glad to see that our spirits are vivacious and lively as we you know shelter in place.

D.J. Paris 3:50
Well, this this is a kind of an opportunity for us because we know how hard it is to get you to even appear because you are so busy. You are on the road. Can you tell our listeners how often you’re out there speaking to realtors,

Marki Lemons Ryhal 4:02
I’m on the road 100 nights a year speaking for real estate associations, banks and title companies. So I get to meet a lot of people face to face. I’ve now been home seven days, and I’ve only left the house twice. So I’m very good at following rules and regulations. But I miss being out on the road with my fellow realtors.

D.J. Paris 4:21
Yeah. Well, we’re really grateful to have you on the show today. Before we get into all the craziness that’s going on, because, you know what we always want to do is give some context around our guests and we’re so honored to have you. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into real estate?

Marki Lemons Ryhal 4:39
Well, I am a proud Chicago fifth generation entrepreneur. I was born and raised in the restaurant business so a third generation restaurant tour. My family owned Chicago’s oldest barbecue restaurant been in business since 1954. And for several years we sold more pork rib tips than any other barbecue establishment in the city. So in 1999, I went through a lawsuit with my family because I own the trademark right for our establishment. And as a result, I told myself that I wanted to do something where I could feel like a stay at home mom, and earn an above average income. So I came into the real estate business July 31 1999, as a loan originator because there were very few barriers to entry at the time. And then I transitioned and got my real estate broker’s license in 2003, and I’ve been full time broker managing broker since July 31 2003.

D.J. Paris 5:41
Incredible I mean, really Marquis is here in our local Chicago community. And we, we have listeners from all over the country who might not yet be that familiar with you. But right here, we’re one of the largest real estate markets in the country, you are known by everybody, we have 46,000 Realtors here, and I bet you’re 45,000 of them know Marquis, or know her name. And I’ve listened to her speak, and the other 1000 had just got their license last week and haven’t yet heard this podcast, but they will hear you very soon. And we’re so excited to introduce you to our audience, because they’re gonna love you. So, so thank you for that, that history. That’s excellent. How did you start to get into speaking and, you know, educating realtors.

Marki Lemons Ryhal 6:25
So let’s go back well, before even the whole restaurant thing happened. I have a undergrad degree in Hotel Restaurant Management and a master’s degree in business administration. When I graduated from grad school, I actually gave birth to my oldest son on that Monday, graduated from grad school back Saturday. So I actually thought I was gonna go back to school and get a PhD. And my grandfather informed me that I had six months to get a job that I would no longer be getting an allowance. And so I started teaching on the collegiate level fresh out of grad school, and I taught hospitality management and marketing courses. But I instantly realized that I was too young, and I didn’t have any real world experience at 2526. And so I said, Oh, I’ll come back to this. And in 2006, when I started to serve on the Board of Directors for the Chicago Association of Realtors, I also was told by my mentor to become a licensed real estate educator. And I did so and they kind of happened at the same time. And I was an instant success, probably because I’m animated. And I had real world experience from being an entrepreneur my entire life. And I was in the top 10% of Realtors in the city of Chicago before I became a real estate educator. And so 2006 was when the real estate education portion of my business kicked off, even though I had already been in education for over a decade prior to that. And what I decided to do, I believe that you should earn the most amount of money per hour work in the fewest hours possible. And so I went from being an educator to a trainer, a trainer to a speaker. And now I am probably one of the top speakers in the real estate industry on social media and technology. I’m just gonna claim it. And I work for the National Association of Realtors, religie, homes.com, Chase, Goldman Sachs, all of those companies. I’ve done some type of consultant training education on behalf of their members of their organization.

D.J. Paris 8:40
Yeah, your your pedigree is incredible. And your reputation is incredible as well, as you already know. So this is a real treat for us to have you. i Let’s let’s talk a little bit about so right now. We were just speaking a minute before we went live and the governor says here in Illinois that we’re on lockdown. And it’s it’s you know, it’s this is not uncommon. California has done it. New York’s done it other states are following suit. So people are at home right now, right? Realtors are at home, their clients are at home. You’re at home, you’re not traveling, of course. What do you have some ideas of what you know what Realtors could be doing right now to stay busy to stay engaged to not, you know, just flip on Netflix and waste away the day binge watching any thoughts of what our listeners could start to do just to stay busy?

Marki Lemons Ryhal 9:35
Well, the first thing I believe that every realtor should have a business plan. And that business plan you should in that business plan you should have a marketing plan and in that marketing plan, you need to have a social media strategy. And so let me be clear, took me about 48 hours just to get home get acclimated and wrap my head around what is going on and every single day. It’s like you have to make an justement, but I want every real estate professional to go back to their business plan. Now, when we think about shelter in place, your day is going to look different. And so my schedule used to be that I was the parent who was late dropping my children off at school every single day, until my youngest son got accepted into what I consider to be an A minus Chicago Public School. And they started school at 730. So I was turning the corner on two wheels trying to get the boy to school at nine o’clock. But then at the moment, he had to be on a bus stop, you know, at 6:45am. I was on that bus stop every single day on time, and I adjusted my schedule. So I’ve been getting up at 5:15am. Well, he’s in seventh grade. Now, he doesn’t need me in the morning. So I said, Oh, I can adjust my schedule. So I was getting up at 6am. Well, since I’ve been sheltering in place, and he’s at home, I don’t need to get up at 6am. So I just did my wake time to 7am. But I still have a long list of things that I need to do. And I need to do those things. Because my business plan said, I need to do them. And so not only do I think that we should have a business plan. Me personally, even though I believe in technology, I keep a journal, okay? And my journal is, is with me at all times people laugh and joke. But I have my little daily, I don’t know if you can see my lists, yes, I love right, of things that I have to go through every single day. And so I have my business plan, I’m looking at this time as the opportunity to outgrow my competition. And so if you sit here and you worry about something you have absolutely no control over. And you don’t position yourself to be better as a result of having all this time on your hands. That’s your fault. And so I want every real estate professional to go back to their business plan. If they don’t have one. I want them to think about as a result of being at home for 30 days, you know what, however many days, what are you going to do every single day that your unique selling proposition is going to outpace your competition?

D.J. Paris 12:17
Yeah, I love that. And let’s be honest, and I’m not saying for you, I’m saying to our listeners, let’s be honest, most real estate professionals don’t have a written business plan. They should they know they should. But life gets in the way, or they just never found somebody to help them do that. You have the time now to actually put one together if you already have one. Put your blinders on and keep working it right.

Marki Lemons Ryhal 12:44
Keep working it I came. One of the things that differentiated me right at the time that I started with the real estate education was I was the queen of foreclosures. I knew the foreclosures and short sales were coming. I had my husband drives me up to Appleton, Wisconsin, in the month of February in a snow blizzard, oh no, so that I could get certified to teach short sales and foreclosures for the National Association of Realtors. And my husband kept telling me Mark, you know, I can turn around, we can go back home and I had restless leg syndrome. I can remember this ride like it was yesterday. And I told my husband, I said no, I’ve been looking at the numbers. And it says, I need to learn this now. And I might not have the opportunity once I give birth to Austin. And so a month later, Austin was born. And within six months, you know, we weren’t foreclosures and short sales were the new norm. And so I encourage every real estate professional to look at the 2019 profile of buyers and sellers and profile of Realtors understand what their competition is looking like. Now, let me keep this in mind. There are some things we can’t predict right now because we don’t know what the outcome is going to be. Okay. But the competition of the realtor two weeks ago, we have that data, right. So I want to understand where we were and what is likely to happen as a result. I have people I was talking to a fellow realtor the other day, her client is a buyer want to go into an intro to an executed sales contract. And the listing agent was like, Oh, let me go to the office and fax you the disclosure. Oh my gosh. And I said how antiquated is that? You know, that realtor should think about what are some things that I can do online that I never have to go to the office to have to do them again, again, since so many offices are closed.

D.J. Paris 14:44
Right? Yeah, if you’re not taking advantage of dot loop or DocuSign are one of the many e signature platforms and if your affirm that your ad doesn’t offer that you really need to step up because that is that is a basic thing because you’re time is valuable Mark, he said, the beginning Hey, I my time is worth X amount per hour. And you know, nobody wants to spend an hour dropping off a check or running to get a signature when it can all be done electronically.

Marki Lemons Ryhal 15:11
You know what I did today, I looked at a couple of different platforms that will take our videos and basically transcribe them. So I looked at a system called wav. I looked at splashy, EO, I looked at headliner, and I looked at subtitles, okay. And at the end of the day, I actually made the commitment to pay $99 a month to have someone to do the four videos for me, because of the value of my time. And of course, I didn’t want to make that financial commitment now. But then, at my brokerage, I have revenue share, actually, I’m one of the people who left kW who still gets profit share. So I got profit, share revenue share. And I said marquee, what’s something you can implement that once again, I want, I want my competition, I want to be blowing dust at them, right? That I can do to differentiate myself. Instead of using the free tools, I decided to make the financial investment of $99 a month and have someone do it for me, based on the value of my time.

D.J. Paris 16:16
Yeah, I can agree we did this podcast, I started it. Myself, I did 100% of the work for the first two years, and I was really burning myself out. Because this is just something we do for fun, more more than anything. It’s not really a business of sorts, although it’s turning into one, which is very exciting. But it’s a tremendous amount of of effort and energy. And I know how to do everything. And so finally, about two or three months ago, I said I need a full time assistant, we had some part time people helping. And now we have zonna. And I have now transferred about 90% of the work that I used to do for the show to her. She does it it’s the best investment I’ve ever made. It frees up my time. It wasn’t very expensive. And it was absolutely worth every penny because now I can go out and grow the podcast as opposed to just working for the podcast, which is which is what I was doing. So I applaud you for continuing to increase, you know, your your effectiveness by outsourcing, right?

Marki Lemons Ryhal 17:15
Yeah, we have to outsource you have to realize what you’re good at what you aren’t good at. But you really have to go back to that business plan. Need to understand the value of your time. Yeah. And and I’m always going back even now, I’m looking at marquee, what are some of the things you can hire, outsource with this time off? Because I could spend more time help. We’re homeschooling now, right? I could spend more time in the homeschooling process, which is something I’m not good at. However, it’s something that I have to do to ensure my child’s future, right. And guess what, he’ll have an online tutoring session tonight because I know I’m not good at it. So I need some help.

D.J. Paris 17:54
I love it. And you know, for everyone out there thinking, Well, gosh, I would love to hire, you know, assistance or to help with my real estate business. But I knew I don’t have the income to do that. I completely understand I did this for absolutely free for the first two years generating essentially no income from it. And even the little income that was generated through sponsorships was gone went right back into the podcast. And but I then I had hit me like, oh, wait, we live in a global economy. There are this is a gig economy. And we have people from all over the world that are now connected through technology that will tell me how much their time is worth. And I was able to find help outside of the United States. As much as I would love to have somebody sitting in here with me. The reality of it is I couldn’t. And so now I have people from I’ve several people from different countries who help with this. It’s very cost effective. And it works really well. So for those of you out there thinking, Well, gosh, I can’t hire a full time personal assistant, maybe you can, you just might have to expand your reach or your search rather to beyond just the borders of this country.

Marki Lemons Ryhal 19:03
Yep, that’s true. And let me say this, a lot of them right, also sheltering in place right now. And you’re looking for work.

D.J. Paris 19:14
That’s absolutely true. And they are sheltered in place. I have zonna, who works for me is in Kosovo, and she’s incredible. I couldn’t do this without her. She is sheltered with her family. She’s been sheltered for few days. I have people in the Philippines that help they’re also sheltered as well. So we’re all in this together, I guess. But what you know, I want to talk a little bit about YouTube because you’ve had tremendous success there. And I know you speak a lot about this with respect to realtors can can generate an ROI on YouTube which by the way, could also be a free thing right? We you know, we don’t necessarily need to hire a production crew and a director and and camera, people in lighting people and if you can do that great. But you don’t always have to right. So can you talk a little bit about about you To Have and your thoughts.

Marki Lemons Ryhal 20:02
So my YouTube strategy is actually more of a Facebook Live strategy. When Facebook Live first came out, I was late to get it because I am not an apple girl. I’m an Android user. And so it came to my device late. And when it came, I was so frantic because I’ve never had that level of engagement on any form of video in the past, that it basically consumed me. So we have some tools like blab that I am where Kerry Liddell and I were over there, and we were doing a weekly show on Blab. And we were downloading that video and repurposing it. So I love to really start my video as a Facebook live video, because I create video sales funnels over on Facebook for lead generation purposes. And so what I do is then download that video content and repurpose it Oh, into almost 200 Different forms of content. But I’m taking I have two channels, one where I’m taking my Facebook Lives and repurposing them. And then another one kind of like you do as I’m taking my I record my podcast and video. And I’m building out a separate YouTube channel just for the podcast. And if you know YouTube is the second largest search engine, you can take that video and embed it essentially anywhere that accepts embed code, whether that’s your, your blog, or other platforms like LinkedIn. And so I am taking video content for lead gen downloading it and then placing it over on YouTube and taking the embed code from YouTube and placing it back into my WordPress blog. And then also for articles over on LinkedIn.

D.J. Paris 21:52
We do we have the exact same strategy. So I love that and, you know, this is something that now if you’re a real estate professional, and you’re like, you know, I would like to start creating a hyperlocal content, maybe you want to start to create neighborhood videos or, you know, city wide videos or suburban videos or anything that that you think yeah, that your your clients are not even necessarily your clients, people who are searching on YouTube are interested in learning, now’s the time to learn how to do it. And you don’t have to have ultra professional equipment, you know, you just have to have really good content. And now’s the time to learn how to actually market that content. It’s not enough just to put it up there, you need to know how to how to make sure it’s it’s easily searchable. And that hopefully shows up at the top of YouTube. And and there are strategies to do that as same with Facebook.

Marki Lemons Ryhal 22:45
Well, you know, it comes back, you were talking about hyperlocal content. And so those key words, whether you’re using those in the title, whether you’re using them in the description, whether you’re saving the video and have the alt text, you want to talk to people the way that they’re searching, and then you do want to provide valuable content. And a lot of times we as real estate professionals, we will go spend two $3,000 on a video and not generate any leads, right? Why I like live video is because I don’t like to edit. And so I don’t have to edit that live video and I’m 100% Okay, with making mistakes, I don’t make a lot of mistakes, because practice makes perfect. And I’m consistently creating video content. So it tends to flow for me, I don’t like to edit. And when I’m taking these videos and downloading them minimum, I mean minimum edits, you know, I might trim the the beginning and the end of the video and then add an intro and an outro video to it. And so I love video because it is the only form of content that you can repurpose without recreating. So the email marketing is coming from the video. The blog post is coming from the video, but I like to generate those leads initially and then take the video content and repurpose it. Yeah, that’s

D.J. Paris 24:09
a boy I mean we are we are so simpatico on this we do the same thing we stream this live we of course when when when we produce the audio version, we trim it up we polish it we it’s not much editing, but we make it sound a little bit better. But when it comes to the YouTube videos, yeah, we we chop off a little bit the beginning in the end, we put an intro to it and call it a day. But the most important thing is then marketing it and making sure that we are getting in front of enough eyeballs. And we just launched our YouTube video so we were really getting very little eyeballs at this moment. But on Facebook, we started doing video a few months ago really and it was silly of me not to have done it before but I just really didn’t think I wasn’t sure that it would work. I was I’m an audio podcast guy. And all of a sudden each video we do now gets well over a couple 1000 views is usually within a couple of days on Facebook. And it’s amazing and our listenership, and our viewership now, I guess, has increased. So this is such a great time of all the real real estate agents out there to learn how to do this stuff. Marquis teaches this, this is part of what she does. And we always encourage everyone to visit our website, there’s so many amazing resources there, which is marquis lemons.com. And but you speak about this all over the country. What are you hearing these days? Obviously, right now we’re in the middle of a crisis. I know you’re not necessarily speaking as much during the crisis. But prior to the crisis, what are you hearing out there from realtors? I mean, what are they? What are they struggling with?

Marki Lemons Ryhal 25:44
Well, one, they are struggling with the utilization. So when we think about real estate, it is often the second third, fourth occupation, we do have an older entry age than other occupations, this is something people always wanted to do, they would do it in their retirement. The problem that I’m seeing is if that person is let’s say, 40 years or older, if one they’ve never been an entrepreneur, and B, they’ve never had any tech training ever, in their previous occupation, they’re struggling, because not only do they need to learn real estate, they need to start to learn social media and technology. So millennials, we’re seeing have an easier entrance, only because they understand technology, because their generation of people who’ve never lived without it. And so I’m seeing that those that are coming in, if they’ve never had any entrepreneurial entrepreneurship training in the past, and they don’t have any tech experience, I don’t know how they’re going to survive, because the first thing they have to do is change their mind. And the mind is, is actually their barrier. Because they will say, Oh, I’m too old, it’s always a negative when they need to start talking about, you know, I am a lead gen magnet, I am a wonderful entrepreneur. I have technology skills that will sustain my business. And they aren’t saying their affirmations, and they don’t even know what to say. Because there are so many things they didn’t get before they get here.

D.J. Paris 27:20
Well, and the beauty of it is this is all teachable. All of this is learnable. It’s not age specific. It’s not like, oh, because you’re, you’re 24, you you inherently get this, you’ll probably have an easier time adapting it because you grew up with it. But I assure you, you know, people sometimes ask like, DJ, how did you start a podcast, I was like, Well, I read a bunch of stuff online, I took some courses. And then all of a sudden, I knew how to do a podcast I had no and I’ve never been in radio, I’ve never done anything like this. You know, I just learned it’s all online. And a lot of it’s free. And now’s a great time. And if you say well, I don’t have time. Now you do have time, I’ll have a little bit more time. And unfortunately, and it’s a bit sad that we have this time, it’s unfortunate for the whole country, and a lot of people are struggling. And yes, that’s true. And, and, and but here’s an opportunity for you to start to cultivate those habits. And if you give yourself and you say, Well, I don’t know anything about YouTube, great opportunity to start now spend 30 minutes a day, for the next month, you’ll probably be inside for some of that time anyway, whether you like it or not, and spend maybe a couple hours, whatever you have time to do. And also, let’s not neglect our sphere of influence everyone, let’s not neglect our clients. The people that are most freaked out are the people that are we’re already working with. But in addition to that, you making sure that you’re staying in communication with them. And I’m going a bit off 10 Off topic, but let’s make sure that we’re reaching out to everyone in our sphere and just letting them know we’re thinking about them during this time. But also remember, this is a time to go back to your business plan and say, you know, my YouTube game right now is a little weak, my Instagram game is weak. How would I increase that? Well, you might not know you can learn there’s so many resources online available and now’s the time right?

Marki Lemons Ryhal 29:10
Well, there are two things in regards to what you stated one, I’m going to be 50 on my birthday. And so definitely there’s no age limit, ending or start right. It’s I had I changed my mind and that’s why I embrace technology and the changes you must you must dedicate yourself to becoming a lifelong learner. So I am going to be that 80 year old cute granny with the hottest technology you know what my grandkids talking about? Oh, our grandma, we’re gonna run this by her or the one who’s the 80 year old tic tac sensation. That’s gonna be me. I’ve already claimed it right. So that would be number one, but then notice this during this Coronavirus scare everyone we’re getting emails from people we have not heard from in five to 10 years. I don’t need To know where these people get my email address from. So email is still relevant. And we’re sending consistent emails like I send an email every single week. Now I am going to go to every other week, because I want to get a higher open rate. And I’m starting to think maybe I was sending too many emails. But some of these people, I have not received an email from I know in the past five years, but they’ve been hearing from you. They’ve been hearing from me, but I’m talking about all the different businesses that have people’s email addresses. And this is the only time I hear from you. Like, I’m like, I’m like, please do not send me Do not send me another Coronavirus email. I’m okay. I every update every tip, every website, someone has already communicated it to me. Because every day probably for the past week, I’ve received 10 to 15 emails from people who have not been in communication.

D.J. Paris 30:54
Boy, I could not. There’s that is such an important point. You know, it’s it’s the same. It’s a similar point to Don’t, don’t be like everyone else. And also everyone’s already oversaturated with this information. And also don’t make it the only time you ever reach out, right. I get this a lot I am I was absolutely shocked how many emails I received from businesses that I forgotten about, because they hadn’t communicated with me. And all of a sudden they’re telling me what their CEO thinks about the Coronavirus, which, okay, fine. But it’s one of 60 emails I got yesterday. And yeah,

Marki Lemons Ryhal 31:33
yeah. Some of these organizations I’m like, and who are you? And when did I sign up? I mean, I’m really questioning the whole process. And so email marketing is effective. People are now sending emails as the result, I hope it’s not the only email they send. But at the end of the day, if we were to come back to the fact we have podcast and we have video content, and we have a YouTube channel, I’m basically doing audio to text transcription. And so now I have content in order to sin, ongoing communications and post that blog. But guess what, it was all in the business plan. So I had half a podcast, probably four or five years on my business plan, when it was in its infancy. And then finally, in January of 2019, I launched social selling made simple. And so you know, but it was on the business plan. I was a little slow to react and respond. But finally he got done. So yeah,

D.J. Paris 32:31
yeah, you know, it’s so it’s so true is everyone now, you know, it’s time to revisit the business plan, time to come up with that those daily actions, those disciplines, because we all know, it’s not about motivation, it isn’t about waiting for inspiration to hit you. Those may happen, they may not meet in my case, they don’t happen most of the time. But if I wake up at at the time, I’m supposed to, and I look at my business plan, and I say, What am I supposed to do today, and then you just chip away at your goals, you just chip away and just start chipping away. And all of a sudden, you know, one day you’ll wake up and you’ll be you’ll be a YouTube expert, because most people aren’t going to go that whole marathon, they’re going to peter out after a few miles. Because it’s hard. It’s not fun sometimes to wake up and do your homework. But that’s what a business plan is. It’s not something you’ll look at once a year and write once a year and then forget to look at you have to look at it all the time. I would recommend daily just to remind yourself, what am I doing? What am I supposed to do today, especially when all the noise is happening? Right?

Marki Lemons Ryhal 33:32
Yeah, it’s very, it’s hard. And like I said, I’m not getting up at 515. I’m not getting up at six o’clock. I’m getting up at seven now. So I’m well rested. And the goal is that once I get up, I come in my office. Well, one, I bathe and I brush my teeth because it’s very easy when you’re working from home to not do either, right. And then I come into the office. And I have that checklist. And I just start with that checklist every single day. And amazingly, even though I took all my travel dates off my schedule until June the first, it’s now filled with video production online course development. I’ve come back and that schedule is now full, because I instantly knew if I couldn’t be face to face, and I still need to pay a mortgage and take care of children. How can I do that? Oh, what you’re providing face to face you now have to provide online. And so what I think real estate professionals need to understand anything that you do face to face, there is an online solution to deliver that content to meet. I mean, anything you do face to face today has an app or method of delivery online. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 34:48
yeah. And you You are the you’re the I’m gonna call you the queen of pivoting I’m gonna give you a new title because I think in some ways that might be your secret sauce. Far be it for me to tell you But you have throughout your entire career, you’ve consistently saw where things are and where things were going and adjust it. And you’re even doing that now in this immediate time where we’re all sort of freaked out about what to do, and that you’re such a shining example of consistently being a lifelong learner. And just pivoting, changing, going, you know, I’m going to just slightly adjust, my messaging is still the same, I’m just maybe going to deliver it in a different way. And all of a sudden, new opportunities arise out of that. So

Marki Lemons Ryhal 35:30
thank you, I wrote the wrote, well, you know, what I have wrote the word pivot probably five times in the last 24 to 48 hours. Because that’s what we have to do as an industry. Instead of having a regular open house, we now need to do a virtual open house. Can we come in and see a house? Yes, the problem is that we touch everything. So can you go in? Yes. But now you need to safeguard. So that means don’t touch people stuff. Imagine that. Keep your hands to yourself in someone else’s house. Right? Which is kind of like common sense. But people come in, and the first thing they do is they touch right? They gotta touch everything. This is someone’s house. Yeah. You know, it’s so some of the changes. I think a great changes, I think that we should have always since video is on essentially, it’s on every mobile device. Right? Right. We should have been doing open house previews for years now. Someone sent me a video from four years ago, I was at the Chicago Association of Realtors and I did a walkthrough on Facebook Live on why you should do virtual open houses. Right? So it’s, it’s not new. It’s cost effective. And it gets you in front of the world’s largest audience online.

D.J. Paris 36:53
Yeah, it’s, it’s awesome. And you know, it’s another thing to even if you’re not broadcasting on Facebook, which you should be. But you know, when things get back to normal, and we’re going out and doing normal showings, you should still video then because you can send those at the end of the day to the client, say, Hey, here’s all the stuff we saw today. I know your heads, probably spinning here with five videos for the five places we went through just to refresh your memory so you can review them. But yeah, doing those on Facebook too, is super cool, because then people can follow along with you. And, and even if you if it’s just you, I want to show you my new listing because what I always think I’m gonna get your opinion on this. And, and, you know, you may disagree with this. And that’s okay. I always think Realtors do themselves a disservice when they only post a static image of I just listed or I just saw, it’s the most nobody cares. Nobody cares. The only people that care are the people you just sold the home to or sold the home from they care. Nobody else does. And it’s boring. And nobody wants to see that.

Marki Lemons Ryhal 37:57
We are in agreement 100% Every, every listing has three disqualifiers location, price point bedroom bathroom count, if that’s all you’re doing is posting that photo, and you don’t have anything to talk about the neighborhood or how to finance getting into that home, you have added all the disqualifiers for reason to not engage with that photo. I have a private Facebook group. And in that group, if you only post a photo, we take it down. It’s called the is real estate live. So you have to either have an event, which we will accept a photo. But if you post the listing, and it is not video, we take it down. We were so tired of just the photo, right? I mean, like it’s, it’s nothing unique about it, it has the three disqualifiers in it, do something different. And so I am 100% in agreement with you. But I wanted to go back, because I was talking about using the system that I was paying for. So when we think about YouTube, all of those long YouTube videos I take, I take an aha moment, three minutes or less. And I’m taking that over to have them do the audio to text transcription. So that I can now come back and either use that on Facebook, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, or even IG TV where it meets the time limits. And so you want to think about giving people content the way that they desire the content. Some people still like to read some people learn audio, some people visual. And so I’m always thinking, you know, how can we take this one piece of content and give it to people the way that they desire because what you’re never going to do is change how the consumer desires to consume information or their preferred communication style.

D.J. Paris 40:00
Right. Yeah, I mean, I love the idea of doing a virtual walkthrough and posting that on Facebook. And even if I’m not in the market for buying or selling a home, at that time, I might want to see what’s inside that house. And the static image, as you said, has disqualifiers and also doesn’t really tell me anything, I want to see the inside. And if somebody who I follow on on social media, whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, you know, goes, you guys got to see this, come on, and I’m gonna show this to you. And then you walk into the home all of a sudden, now I’m engaged, I think it’s cool. I’m interested, even if I’m not in the market, and I go, wow, that was really, that was really neat. And I, I’m always amazed that that real estate professionals don’t do that as much as they should, you’re going into the house anyway, take a 30, take a two or three minute video and share it with the world.

Marki Lemons Ryhal 40:49
There are two things with that, I believe anytime you take a listing, you need to act, that home owner for access to their Wi Fi. So get the code because it allows you to market the property more effectively while you’re there, whether it’s photos or videos, there’s just going to upload and download substantially faster, very smart. But if you are a broker, or managing broker or whatever they might call it in your state. What I highly recommend now is to get a Zoom account. Because essentially, every camera you can have up to 100 cameras or more contingent upon the package, you get each camera, essentially a mobile device, an iPad, a computer as a camera. I’m thinking that offices need to do their own virtual Open House tours. And zoom would be an excellent platform where they could either stream that live to Facebook, or stream that live to YouTube, or just record it and download it and then repurpose it. So it’s so many ways to get things done. But I’m thinking if you have a great team or you have an expansion team or you’re an office, you provide that as a tool to the team or to the office. And now you are you have your own virtual open house tour. And all your agents need is a mobile device.

D.J. Paris 42:11
Yeah, I was I was telling you Marquis offline that we’re doing this via zoom as well. And one of the best qualities or features zoom has it’s with the paid membership, but it’s not expensive. It’s really inexpensive, is you can broadcast live on Facebook simultaneously. And I wasn’t even sure when we started doing this, because this is an audio podcast. Is that going to how is that going to confuse people? Is it going to make the distribution a little trickier? And I thought and Will anybody here does anyone wants to see these interviews? And we did one and it got like 1200 views within 24 hours. And I was completely shocked. And I went well. Of course I wasn’t thinking clearly. And of course that makes sense. And so everyone should go out and get a Zoom account. They’re free for the basic package. And then you can always upgrade. But boy, they are so helpful. And there’s so many cool features. I’m a big, big fan of zoom. And that’s what that’s what we’re using right now. I would like to ask you a question. You were saying you don’t get asked too much. So I love this. Tell me about you said your funniest real estate experience was not knowing about your MLS ID. And so and by the way, you’re not alone on this one. But you tell us about that. Can you mind sharing that story.

Marki Lemons Ryhal 43:26
So when I came into real estate, I came in as a broker, I was never a sales agent. At the time, if you had an undergrad or master’s degree, you could just simply sit for the state exam and never attend pre license school. So I’m one of those people. So one that’s a problem all by itself. The second problem was due to the fact that I decided to be my own broker and hold my own license right out the gate. You don’t have anyone to ask anyone to ask. So when I go to schedule my first showing appointment, the young lady asks for my MLS ID number and I’m like, Well, what is the MLS ID number and where do I get one from? And she tells me I have to go to my local association. So I go to the Chicago Association of Realtors. And when they give you the sheet of paper, it’s not like you just get an MLS ID number right? You have to pay the Chicago Association of Realtors, the Illinois Association of Realtors, the National Association Association of Realtors, you have the one time setup fee, and you have the MLS dues. So let’s say it was $1,200 So I’m like $1,200 That wasn’t in my business plan to start my business, right. And so when she gives me to be I’m like, I’m gonna give you this check and we’re gonna be done. We choose she said, Oh, no, honey, you’re gonna have to pay us every single year. At that moment. I knew I didn’t know nothing. That is really one of the pivots in real estate, to dedicate myself to being a lifelong learner because what I love about it the Chicago Association of Realtors I I felt like a complete idiot. I say, Who was this organization just took all my money, and it wasn’t on the state licensing exam.

D.J. Paris 45:08
Yeah, yeah. And you don’t have a choice. It’s not that you can choose not to do it, you choose not to do it.

Marki Lemons Ryhal 45:15
And so keeping that in mind, I always accept the fact that I know I don’t know. And that was my first experience as a licensed broker. And at that moment, I said to myself, you need to get in every single class humanly possible. Because clear, you don’t know nothing. You don’t you don’t know nothing Marquis.

D.J. Paris 45:40
Yeah. It’s funny I, I I’m always shocked so So Mark, and I are here in Chicago and Chicago Association. Realtors is the local city Association. And they’re excellent. I actually was just, I got to moderate a panel of top producers a few weeks ago. And for the YPN, and the YPN. Here in Chicago, it stands for the Young Professionals Network. And a lot of associations have some version of that. And it’s an excellent little subset of the of Chicago Association realtors, where they have these great breakfasts at a local restaurant here in Chicago that’s famous called Manny’s, and they bring in top producers, they bring in speakers, Mark is spoke at it a million times. And it’s a great thing. And it comes with your membership. And I cannot tell you, we have 650 Realtors at our own firm, almost all of which are members of Chicago Association of Realtors, and a lot of them don’t even know this exists. And so this is such a marquee set as a big thing. So all of us out there are probably a member of some local association, I guarantee there are classes, there are benefits, because you’re paying them a lot of money. There are things that you probably aren’t that familiar with, contact them and say, Tom, can you send me a list of the classes? Where do I go to find out what’s going on? Because you might as well get your money’s worth, and there’s so much great value in those trainings.

Marki Lemons Ryhal 46:57
You know, I just thought about it. And as a result that first year, I don’t, what year did you come into real estate?

D.J. Paris 47:03
Oh, just about 10 years ago? Yeah. Okay.

Marki Lemons Ryhal 47:06
So I’m taking you back to 2003 2004. So what I decided, well, I didn’t decide this. But at the time, because real estate was so hot, you would have all of these open houses where at the time, they would give you like $100 Marshall Field gift card or Saks Fifth Avenue gift card or the new $20 bills came out. And I remember, they were given away the new $20 bills at an open house. So what I strategically did was, I went and got all my money back by attending these events and ended events, right, this is crazy, where they was given a gift. And I was going to eat because I wanted it to cover the cost of my meal. Because I said if I got to spend this $1,200 I didn’t know nothing about I need to recoup my money out here in the streets. And I actually recouped my money by doing what I was supposed to do. And that was attend open houses. But at that time you would have and you had to get there early, because they would run out of the money of the gift cards. So it’d be like the first 50 the first 100 people I was I was on my mobile device. I’m pretty sure it looked like a brick at the time. I had my no pad had my big bag, and I was going standing in line doing all of my calls my scheduling, but there was gonna feed me and give me a gift card. Yep.

D.J. Paris 48:21
Well, I actually Marcie, I saw you speak not that long ago, maybe a month ago over at. Oh gosh, the new big apartment building Nima real producers at Neem, I should know that one of our brokers works there. So I should know that. Yes, at Nima. And boy what a cool building. So this is the largest apartment building now in Chicago. And I want to tell you just a quick funny story. So Marquis was there was all top producers I write for the magazine that was that was sponsoring it. So they let me come. And I was sitting there watching Marquis speak. She’s, of course Excellent. And as we were going down, and this goes back to lifelong learning and pivoting, and this is of course before before the virus hit and things all change. And I was writing down that this is the hottest apartment building in Chicago. It’s gorgeous. It’s beautiful. It is so cool. And I’m writing down with with a top producer who I did not know. And she goes, I just hate these apartment buildings. And I said, oh, and I was curious. I said, oh, oh really? Are they overpriced? Like what? And she goes, I just think anyone who rents is a total moron. And I said, Oh, okay. And I said, Well, you must have, I’m sure you have clients that must be renting at places like this. And she’s like, Yeah, and I tell them, they’re stupid, and they should. And it was very interesting. And I thought, wow, boy, you know, and that’s fine. And I’m not here to to, you know, be pejorative towards this realtor. But I thought push, she’s kind of missing out on an opportunity here because a lot of realtors have pivoted. Now things are all up in the air. But we’re pivoted to like starting to think about rentals, rentals, you know, might make sense in some certain circumstances for some clients, and I thought, Boy, what a missed opportunity. You were at this beautiful Building, they were doing tours, you might have one person, you know, that actually could have been a good fit for this place. But that attitude Just Shut, shut it completely down. And I’m sure that she has missed opportunities. As a result,

Marki Lemons Ryhal 50:12
she has an abundance of missed opportunities. If we were to look at Kevin Rocio he’s one of the top commercial guys in the multifamily market here. And because he owns so much real estate, he does not own where he lives. But because he has all of this other income producing real estate, he pays a very, he’s in the ideal community, he pays top notch rent, because he wants to be serviced when he’s at home. And so, you know, owning and living in owning might not be your cup of tea, right? When you come home, you want some we want you want to bring your car down warmed up, right, you want him to have a grocery store in the store and bring your food up. And that for some people, that’s the lifestyle, and he can afford that lifestyle. And he has all the tax write offs. And so I would say definitely, that person is missing out. They let me say this, I look at life as not black and white, but all the shades of gray. That person was looking at life as black or white.

D.J. Paris 51:12
Exactly. Yeah. Well, I couldn’t agree more. And I think this is such a great place to wrap up. Mark has given so much value on this episode. And I want to make sure that our listeners know how to to get engaged with Marquis. So obviously her website for everything you want to know when you can hire her for speaking engagements, although obviously immediately, but but you can reach out to her and find out her schedule, bring her to your city, bring her to your your audience, and it can even be done remotely as well. But definitely visit her website Marquis lemons, that’s Mar K i l e m o n s.com. And also everyone should be reading her book. It’s an international best seller. It’s called the modern real estate professionals Guide to Success and also subscribe to her podcast. If you just go to any podcast app you have a by the way, you can go to Marquis website, you can subscribe right there. Just go to any podcast app though and type in marquee lemons, it’ll pop right up, hit that subscribe button and see what she’s all about. Because her content is excellent. She’s excellent. And she’s always evolving. And it’s great just to be around that energy to understand that you as a real estate professional, you need to keep evolving. So Marquis lemons for all things. And she has all sorts of great resources on her website as well. So marquis lemons.com, Marquis, on behalf of all of our listeners really appreciate you taking time. I know it’s a crazy day in particular here in Chicago. But I appreciate you taking some time out from being superstar mom superstar business owner and and all the other things you do to share it with our audience. So thank you. And on behalf of Marky and myself to our listeners We also thank you for continuing to listen to support our show everyone we would ask you just to tell one other real estate professional about the show and about this interview. And anyone you think could benefit from hearing from people like Mark you let them know about our show. And that’ll help keep us rolling as well. So Marquis, thank you so much. Let’s all stay safe and wash our hands and don’t touch things when you go into a listing. No touching.

Marki Lemons Ryhal 53:18
No. Thank you. All right, thanks Marcie.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Julie Busby of The Busby Group at Compass was originally mentored in SoCal by one of the top producers in the country. She followed her advice and became one of California’s top real estate agents. Then, she moved to Illinois where she had no sphere of influence and had to rebuild her business from the ground up. Since then, the all-female Busby Group has closed over 450 million in home sales. In our conversation Julie talks about how she became a top producer twice, and how you can do the same!

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

Julie Busby can be reached at 312-275-5714 and julie@busbygroup.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 in a moment, we’re going to be speaking with Julie Busbee of the Busbee group at Compass. Before we get to Julie, a couple quick ideas for you. Now if you’re like most of us, I know in Illinois, we’re totally quarantine stuck at home. And many states are doing the same thing, you’re probably slow down. If you’re like most realtors, and now’s a good time to go back through our catalog, we have almost 150 episodes. And even if you went all the way back to number one or number two, which of course we don’t expect anybody to do. But there’s such great content. And our intention when we first started this podcast was to create a library of content that would be timeless that you could go back to and really understand what are the fundamentals? What are the what are these secrets of top producers? Well, as we’ve learned, after doing almost 150 episodes, there aren’t really any secrets. But there’s a lot of fundamentals, a lot of discipline. And you can go back through these episodes and hear it again and again. They say repetition is the mother of skill. So please go back now that you probably have a little bit more free time and check out old episodes that’s what they’re there for. They’re designed to help you grow. Also please follow us on Facebook find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod why? Because we show video episodes live as we record them so you can see behind the scenes, me talking to the guests and then recording the episode live in case you can’t wait for us to produce it and make it available in this fashion. So facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And lastly, tell a friend think of one other Realtor you know one other realtor I promised you do that could benefit that struggling that wants to learn the secrets of top producers and say hey, there’s this podcast out there. It’s totally free. It’s on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Stitcher, Pandora everywhere. And just subscribe to it, check out one episode, see if you like it. That really helps us in a lot of ways to but it also helps them so please, our intention is to help as many Realtors as possible. This is our passion. And we’re super grateful for everyone who’s listening really means a lot to us. And we’re going to keep cranking out episodes, despite the fact that we’re all quarantined at home, because there’s still a lot to learn and work on. So thank you for sticking with us. Thank you for supporting our sponsors and thank you for listening Of course as per usual and now on to our interview with Julie Busbee.

Today on the show we have Julie Busby from the Busby group at Compass, a real estate broker for nearly 20 years. Julie Busby is the founder and president of the Busby group and in the top 1% of Chicagoland brokers, Julianne are all female team are known throughout Chicago for their unmatched integrity, and diverse portfolio. The Busby group is proud to work with first time buyers, luxury sellers and everyone in between. Julie started her real estate career in 2001 when she partnered with one of the country’s top brokers based in California, and since then the Busby group has sold over 450 million in real estate throughout Chicago. Visit the Busby group at buzzbee Group B USB y group.com. Welcome, Julie.

Julie Busby 4:33
Thank you.

D.J. Paris 4:35
Thank you. Thank you. We were really excited to have you this is the first all female team we’ve ever featured on our show you guys are absolute superstars and legends in Chicago. So this is very exciting for us. No you are and this is. In fact, the reason we’re doing this is I was seated next to one of your team members at a Chicago real producers whatever. And she was like what do you do and I was I mean, whatever. And I mentioned the podcast. She’s like, you gotta have this on your show. And I was like, Oh, Your Honor. I was like you guys are on our list. So now we’re so excited to have you. This is really awesome. Cool. Yeah. Very, very cool. Tell us a little bit about how you got into real estate all those years ago. So yes,

Julie Busby 5:17
I was in San Diego, California. And I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur. So I actually was looking into the best return on an investment. And I kept coming back to real estate. I also, I don’t know I, I’ve always been a workaholic. I started selling insurance in high school. And, yeah, it was kind of crazy. I did a Co Op program and left high school at noon every day and went to an insurance agency. So anyways, through that I partnered actually with a realtor and I was always fascinated with her career. And then when I want knew I wanted to own my own business one day, I just kept coming back to real estate, ended up approaching a woman who went to church with me, and it ends up. I knew she was a productive realtor. And I approached her and I said, Hey, can I come intern with you for free? And I did that. And lo and behold, she was the number three broker in the nation at the time. So my God definitely learned from the best. That was back in like, oh, 101 is I think when I got my license, and so I started working with her like, oh, 102

D.J. Paris 6:21
is like, I want to go back to a couple of things. First, no, no, this is really important. I always tell people, the same thing is like work for free, find a mentor, somebody who’s already been successful, and just go, can I shadow you? Can I hang out with you? Even if you have to pay them? I think you would probably agree that what you learn from her has got to be worth so much more than the little amount you didn’t get paid back then. Right.

Julie Busby 6:52
So what’s funny is I’ve actually done it twice in my career. I’ve had to rebuild my team and my career twice. So I started my career in San Diego, California, became a top 1% Producer out there. And it all started from me approaching that woman and shadowing her just learning from her being a free intern. Then when I moved out here, another top broker I knew through my network, and I said, Hey, can I come work with you for free? I helped her become I think we were number one that year in Chicago. And then that just springboarded me to my career now in Chicago. Wow. Yes, I did it twice. Yeah.

D.J. Paris 7:28
First of all, you walked away from an incredibly successful career in California. Was that scary for you? Were you nervous? Or were you like, I’ve done this once. When I moved to Chicago, I can do this again.

Julie Busby 7:39
It was not scary. I felt like I had reached the pinnacle of my career, which is funny because I’ve now exceeded it further. I was actually moving here because of a boy, we’re still together. He’s my husband, he he was stationed and he was a helicopter pilot for the Navy. He retired from the Navy came out here his family’s out here I came kicking and screaming because of my real estate career. And the business I had grown. And so when I first moved out here, the plan was actually going to open a fitness studio. It was like I’ve reached my pinnacle of my career. I’m proud of myself, I moved when and now start like a fitness empire. Got my real estate license to represent myself because I wasn’t happy with the service level I was getting. And from that me and this other top producer got back connected again, because I got my license. And then I said you know what, let me work for you for free for a summer and see how that goes. And here I am. That was those 2011. So we’re now 2020. So it’s nine years ago. And now I just did 45 million last year. So it’s been nine years. Yeah.

D.J. Paris 8:42
Wow. With just out of curiosity, I just have a quick question about your husband, because this is this is awesome. So a million years ago, I used to work for for a beer distributor. And we were we went at one point. This was a couple hours east of San Diego, where the Blue Angels rain. It’s an area near El Centro. Yeah, so yeah, I was gonna say your husband probably has been there knows all about it. And when I was there, there were no joke. There were like 200 earthquakes that day. In that area. They were all tiny ones. But it was the coolest thing ever.

Julie Busby 9:15
We Yeah, San Diego. We have a ton of earthquakes. I have some fun stories about that. But yes, we have good friends who are Blue Angels. And it’s cool. They would do air and water show. I was always working and couldn’t come watch them. And so they would say Well, where are you showing property today? And they would come and tip the fly the plane? Oh, yeah. It was cool. It’s amazing.

D.J. Paris 9:36
And you know, it’s funny, and I imagine you probably would agree is a lot of times these top producers in real estate, I always ask them oh my gosh, you must be inundated with requests from people that want to intern with you. They’re like, not really. A lot of them are like not that many people approach. And and here you did it twice. You went up to top producers and not only in And again, this you sort of said it was sort of by accident, you didn’t realize how successful the person in San Diego was. But literally the number three person in the country that is an untouchable, unreachable person. And you were like, No, I just went up and asked, and then you, you know, I mean, how important is that? Is that mentorship or that internships? In how you’ve charted your success?

Julie Busby 10:21
It’s huge. I will tell you, did I get a lot of hands on training from them? No formal training? No, but did I learn through osmosis 100%. And both times, the women were very successful had many listings at one time. So I would also just learn the marketplace so much sooner than if I was on my own. Because I’m looking at 20 properties a day, versus your average broker might just see like one property a day, so I learned the market place very quickly. And I think it’s important to Yeah, approach, you know, get out of your comfort zone and approach someone that you admire, and ask for mentorship. Yeah, it’s rare. I definitely have people approached me to join the team, but to just for me for free, or just to shadow me doesn’t happen often. No,

D.J. Paris 11:12
it’s always amazing. And it’s one of those things where I always tell people like yeah, like, if you need to offer to pay them to hang out with them, like do that too, because it is absolutely worth it. You know, and, and it’s flattering to that person as well. It’s, it’s, it’s, they don’t need to be flattered, but it’s very, it’s a very fulfilling thing to to think, like, wow, you know, I could I could help that person. And, you know, I always think like, go up to every, you know, it’s the same thing. I always say to realtors, even who join our firm, I say go up. We have lots of lots of Realtors offer. And I was like, go up to them and ask if you could do open houses and continue to ask because if you’re new, yeah, right. And let’s so I want to talk about your group, because you guys have I think you guys, you women, I shouldn’t say that either. But you have an all female team, which I think is so cool. Can you talk about like how you started the team? At what point in your career were you like, Okay, I need to have to build a team.

Julie Busby 12:10
Um, so I, the team just happened organically. I knew I needed once you get to a certain level, you realize you need some help administratively. And then usually, like they say, the next hire and be like a buyer broker. I so I did that. Originally it was admin, and then a broker on the team. And then candidly, we just kept growing and growing. And I’ve always been a workaholic. I mean, again, I started working when I was in high school, so I was easily putting in 90 hour days. And I also have a certain level of service that I want to provide my clients. And in order to do that I was working around the clock. Yeah, I do have two little kiddos, I have a four year old and a one year old. So it’s, candidly, I want to quality of life. And in order to have quality of life and still offer the level of service that I think is very important in this industry. I had to grow the team. And so it just happened organically. And then people just kept falling in my lap. I’ve been very, very blessed with the brokers and team that we have in place it they’ve honestly fallen in my lap. And it’s one of those where there’s such amazing, incredible talented people that it’s like, I can’t turn them away. So we’re growing the team again. So that’s that’s where we’re at. We’re where we are. Did I have the initiative to grow an all girl team all woman team? No, it’s just happened that they you know that talent has fallen in my lap. So

D.J. Paris 13:45
I think your website’s a really good reflection of your culture and what your team stands for and what you offer. So I really want to plug your website again, just because I think it’s a really strong website. I see a lot of realtor websites that I think most of them aren’t that great to be perfectly frank, but yours is. So it is it’s clean. It’s simple. It’s really clear what you guys offer. And also there’s cool things like you have a hey, send us your email, and we’ll send you our little black book, which is basically all your vendors that you make a man which it sounds like a simple idea. And it is except it’s providing value. That’s a reason alone, just even visit your website is like you get some value just by visiting. Whereas a lot of people it’s just hey, it’s an online business card kind of, but yours actually has some value. So yeah, go to Busby. But I’m sorry buzzbee group.com What I want to talk about you know, you mentioned Hey, I work a lot you work a lot. What do you think aside from that has made the difference for you? You know, there are 40,000 Plus realtors in the Chicagoland area. You are in the top 1% What do you think it is that you’ve done differently than the vast majority of brokers who maybe haven’t Had your level of success.

Julie Busby 15:02
So definitely service level is 100% important to set your self apart. Also, you know, with experience with almost 20 years of experience, I’ve seen it all. I will say, throughout my career, especially in the beginning, I was just getting hit hard with very challenging transactions. And even still, today, I get very challenging transactions. And the beginning, I would say, you know, what was me because I was in San Diego and people were doing, you know, $20 million deals just like that no big deal. And I’m over here struggling and learning every step of the way. And now I look back, and I’m so thankful for that time to grow and experience speaks volumes, I’ve seen every hardship, every challenge, I was working hard, I became a top short sale producer in Southern California, during the financial crisis. So like, I’ve seen it all and experience speaks volume, and I can truly navigate the entire transaction for my clients and tell them, you know, what road bumps might come ahead and how we can overcome them.

D.J. Paris 16:07
I imagine that makes you really valuable to your team members to when you guys collaborate on on client ideas and struggles. Somebody in the team knows how to handle it, because they’ve been through it already.

Julie Busby 16:17
Yep, yes, absolutely. And honestly, too, it’s challenging. I have a brand new broker on on the team who is trying to grow her business and grow her sphere. And she says, you know, she just gets shot down sometimes and gets gets down on, you know, someone makes an offer, and then they decide to walk away and the deal falls apart or, and she’s so challenged by that and doubt about it. And I reminder, I went through this and honestly, it’s going to help you because it’s going to help you navigate along the way throughout your career. So don’t I all the twists and turns in your career. Take them in stride and take it as a learning experience.

D.J. Paris 16:59
I was just moderating a panel of top producers for the YPN a couple weeks ago for the YPM. And somebody from the audience. This is really funny, you’ll you’ll appreciate this. Somebody we had a question and answer portion at the end. And, and we had Nancy Nancy to Sony was on there and Gail spreen. And anyway, it was a great producer panel. And that somebody in the back said, Oh, I one of my friends decided to go with another realtor other than myself. And, and and I’m really upset about it and the whole room and they weren’t laughing at this person. Because like we were laughing because and I just said everyone in the room raised their hands when this has happened to everybody. And I said you’re not you’re not alone.

Julie Busby 17:45
It’s so funny. Oh, see, and it feels so good. You know, to know like, oh my goodness, that top producer on the panel has been through this. So that’s that’s cool.

D.J. Paris 17:54
was speaking of so we have 1000s and 1000s of listeners and they are eager to hear advice from top 1% producers and really want to hear you know, if you were to counsel a new, a new broker, or somebody who’s looking to really increase their production, is there any advice you have? What would you tell them to do? That’s made the big difference for you.

Julie Busby 18:17
Right? So we already touched on it, definitely approach a someone that you admire their business and could see as a mentor, absolutely approach them. Absolutely as to shadow them. I, I do usually say you know, check out a team, a team could be somewhere where you can learn because there’s, you know, multiple different experiences that you can learn from, and you back each other up. And it’s a collaborative, collaborative environment. So I do recommend at least trying to find a mentor and try to shadow them and learn from them. And if a team is an option to you definitely explore that. And then open houses. I’ve grown my business from a lot of open houses. So I think it’s because I’m relational. I don’t buy leads. I like 99% referral and pass business now. But I’m relational. So I’m not one that buys leads. I’m one who looks to relationships to grow my business.

D.J. Paris 19:17
Yeah, I’m always amazed at how many brokers don’t beg other brokers to do open houses for them. And you know, if you’re new to the business, or even if you’re not new, and just you’re in between clients, and you have nothing going on books, some open houses, and it’s really hopefully, yeah, I mean, hopefully you work at a firm or there’s more than just you and if it’s more than just you ask that other broker, if you could do that for them. Usually, the answer in most cases is usually yes. Because it makes them look good to the seller. And also obviously opportunity to for you to learn how to talk more about real estate and maybe get some buyer leads along the way. So yeah, open houses are so important. And a lot of a lot of brokers I think maybe are just afraid, but I always say you know, definitely Utley asked to shadow someone at an open house before he if you’re not absolutely, yeah, so we have actually a couple listener questions that are part of what we just touched on. So I want to want to circle back to those. So we have anonymous from Chicago asks, since you have an all female team, are most of your clients female?

Julie Busby 20:20
Good question. No, they are not. We help men and women, the same amount. But I will say I think studies are showing more and more that women are the decision makers, right? Oh, that is something we do keep in mind. But no, we don’t just work with women.

D.J. Paris 20:40
Yeah, and by the way, we should let mention to the listeners that Julie is not the first person from the Busby team to be on our show. We and this is one of our great episodes. So everyone listening, you go back about 100 episodes, and you will find Susan Panozzo, who is a total superstar in and of herself. These are the quality of brokers that Julie has on her team, Susan was unmaking. And so I should make a plug for her episode, which is like two years ago now. And it was so awesome. And I referenced it a lot. Because Susan, is great, because she has a huge history in doing rentals and web developers. And it is such a cool niche. And I was so glad to learn that she is now on your team because she was a total superstar on her own. And I was like, Oh my gosh, they are so they are so fortunate to have her. So you were actually not the first buzzbee group. I love that. Yep. Okay, another question from Vera from Chicago. As Vera says, I am practicing solo right now. But I’m thinking about joining a team, what should I look for in a team? And what should I look out for? Do you have any suggestions?

Julie Busby 21:46
So that’s a that’s a good question, too. It’s funny, one of the team members who joined my team, she’s like, I don’t know what to ask you. And I said, You know what, talk to me about this, and then go talk to another team member about this, that you know, the same thing and see what what makes sense for you. So, you know, different teams are set up differently if you are. So I think the number one thing is find out what why are you thinking about joining a team? Is it because you’re looking to grow your business? Is it because you like a collaborative environment? Is it because you want leads? Do you want backup? Do you want to be able to go on vacation, imagine that you real estate having backup, think about what is important to you. And then that will come the questions for that team, I will tell you, our team is set up a little differently. I don’t do leads. As I mentioned, I’m one who is more of a mentor to my team, and help them grow their own sphere, because I am very focused on relationships. And so I want to we’re very, that’s something that’s important to me is being genuine. And so we I help them focus on their relationships, and how are we going to grow those and help their friends and family and everyone that they’ve met. So, and then I also wanted to create an environment where we could back each other up, because I have a crazy lifestyle. And I have two little kiddos and I spend time with them. So that was important to me. And so that’s what I’m looking for in my team members. But there’s team members or potential team members I’ve met with and they say, I really want someone who’s buying Zillow leads, and they’re just going up to me, you know, and I’m gonna run with it. Awesome. I’m glad you know that. That’s not how we structured it. But there are amazing teams that do that. And it and it works just the same. I think the main thing is ask yourself, What’s important to you? And why are you thinking about joining a team? And then that will bring you the questions to ask.

D.J. Paris 23:40
Yeah. And to piggyback on that. I also think that if you’re looking to approach a team and ask them to join, you better be able to articulate what you’re going to offer them, why do they need you on their team? Right? And, and if you were just if you just go to them and say, Hey, I’m really not good at prospecting, and I need leads? Well, yeah, there are teams that that will, will bring you on. But But I think a stronger proposition is to go and say, here’s what I can do for your team. And if you guys have extra leads, I’m you know, I’m open to that if that’s what you want, but be able to say, here’s why you have to get me on your team, here’s why I need to be on your team. Here’s what I can bring to the table. And because a lot of times I think people look to join teams because they don’t have enough leads. And that’s that’s what they need. And that’s okay. It is but yeah, but I think you should, you should be able to be able to say here’s what I can do for you. And if you can do that you’ll probably have a greater chance of of success with that team because they’ll be able to, you know, a lot of times teams know that people are looking for leads and and sometimes you know, that could be a great fit, but but not always. I wanted to ask you also about your concierge level of service. And you guys get all sorts of requests you have about you we won’t mention names but you’ve worked with professional athletes. Do you mind sharing the story of of that rub unusual request?

Julie Busby 25:03
I mean, we get so many crazy requests. Kenya on my team runs our concierge department. Her husband is a pro athlete. And so we created the concierge level service based on what they would expect. So I am very proud of us and all that we offer. But holy moly, do we get some funny requests? We had a very well known big, burly pro athlete that we helped get into a home. This was just last year, and he was relying on us for a lot of different concierge level services. And then one day we get a phone call. It was like 7am in the morning. Of course, I answered the phone right away. Hey, how can I help you? What’s going on? Um, yeah, so I’m going out to go practice and there there’s a frog in my front yard. Okay, what What can I help you? Oh, can you come get the frog? I was shocked to this 200 pound burly Athlete on his way to practice could not pick up the frog and figure out disposing of a frog or not disposing but you know, move the frog out of his front yard. So we drove out there and helped to help take care of this frog.

D.J. Paris 26:19
It was really if the frog pees on his hands, it gets worse. And oh, that’s true. That’s not that is not true.

Julie Busby 26:27
It was ridiculous. Yes. But it was funny to the team. But we of course,

D.J. Paris 26:33
did you wait, did you go do it? Yeah, yeah. Did you find the frog

Julie Busby 26:38
and the manager lives with him. And he was there drinking red wine at like 8am. And not even willing to help out with this frog. I mean, and he was also a big burly guy. It was just such a comical experience. Yes.

D.J. Paris 26:50
But I imagine when you do that, not only does it become an amazing story, but I imagine that athlete is like, She is awesome. She is willing to come out and do something as trivial as that. But it really speaks. And I know it’s a funny story. But it really speaks to how committed you are to your clients. And obviously, you’d hope that people wouldn’t ask for things like that. But that being said, you know, that’s the market, you’re you’ve served in that particular way. And those people might have different types of needs. And and how cool is it that you’re willing to go hey, I’m not, I’m not too important to go pick up a frog and go move it to the other yard?

Julie Busby 27:28
Oh, you have no idea. We always joke like luxury real estate, we should start like a behind the scenes blog of luxury real estate, because we’ll be cleaning up bathrooms that are pretty messy. I’ll leave it at that. I mean, it is not luxury. Yeah, yeah.

D.J. Paris 27:45
But that but that’s that’s the job, right? Like, ultimately, that’s the it’s all the little things, isn’t it? Like, it’s the picking up the phone at 7am. Now, that doesn’t mean any Everyone always has to do that, you know, everyone can set their own boundaries at the boundaries, right. But I will tell you, that is an impressive thing. I mean, if we even just think about all the other services that we pay money for financial advisors, insurance, lenders, you know, really anything, you know, contractors, landscapers, financial, whatever, how many of those people pick up their phones at 7am? It’s pretty much nobody, right? So it doesn’t mean you have to give up all of your life, obviously, you’ve struck a balance. And I know it’s not easy. But you also are there and that’s the commitment you’ve made. And as a result, look at where you are, and I think, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a it’s a funny example, but it’s also a good example of like, Hey, if you’re gonna, if you want to be a top producer, you better show up, and you better be there and are you better have, you know, have those expectations in place for your clients, so that they don’t call you at 7am? Because if they need you at 7am, and they don’t know that you’re not available, they’re going to be disappointed. So I love that what a great story. And then, I want to talk about if you don’t mind sharing your story. I know faith is important to you. And I wanted to talk about the client you were you were worried about a client and you kept them in your your thoughts and prayers. Do you mind sharing that story? Because I think it’s also very, it’s a very sweet story, too.

Julie Busby 29:16
Yeah, I will. I’ve had so many numerous funny stories in real estate, but this one was the first one that came to my mind. While I another one happened this weekend. But the I am so when I have a client, I take their the entire transaction to heart and I again, I’m very genuine and I want the best outcome for my clients. And that means we’re walking away from a deal. That means we’re walking away from a deal. My opinion is things happen for a reason, and I’m never going to push something I want the best outcome for everyone. And anyways, so I take that to heart and yes, I do sometimes pray for my clients. There was a transaction that was going very haywire, very toxic For my buyers, and I was just praying about them a lot. I was remembering family members pray for them. I mean, I was praying a lot for them. So much so that apparently when I say their name, I would then I was praying so much that I would just roll out into prayer. So when I tried to pick up the phone and have a conversation with them, I will I left a message for them. And I said their names. And then I said, and dear lord bless them and watch over them, amen. And I realized I just said a prayer on their voicemail and was totally, totally embarrassed. They called back and said, For you praying for, it was kind of funny. It didn’t work out for the best in the end, FYI, on that transaction. But it was stressful in the moment. And I you know, at least they knew I had their best interest at heart.

D.J. Paris 30:47
So I think so much of it is demonstrating care, demonstrating empathy, compassion, showing that that you’re on their team, and whatever way brokers can demonstrate that to their clients is always a win. And, you know, I think that’s such a such a great example, again, of, you know, and it’s funny, of course, because, you know, that’s just not something that that everybody would say, yeah, just the fact that you even thought to ask your family members to keep those people in mind is also demonstrated of of what kind of broker you are. Now, you did mention something happened this weekend, if you’re willing to share it, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask if you have like a funny story. Well, this

Julie Busby 31:32
is more I feel bad. It’s a team member on my team. I won’t say who it was. But it was just hysterical, the poor so I was out showing property, she was doing an open house for me an hour, she was a co Lister on one of our listings. And so she was there. And some gentleman at the open house decided to turn on the body sprays of the shower, and get it off the knob broke and couldn’t get off. So, Oh, I almost said her name, she went back there to help. And she ends up the only way to turn off the body sprays is to physically get in the shower. And like she’s working on these knobs and trying to get out. So anyway, she is drenched in water. And like just covered in water, the whole the shower, the flooring is, you know, covered in water. And she’s calling me and I’m out on a buyer torna answer and she’s like, I’m, I’m drenched with open house, can you bring me clothes? I said I’m in Evanston showing property. And I was like, cool, this person called this person and we were able to get her help. But the poor girl is like, finished Open House drench like a rat, just total hair wet. And I’m sure people are so confused why she is dressed. She literally like took a shower in her clothes during the open house.

D.J. Paris 32:44
But I mean, I also think like that’s, that’s such a cute thing. I know, like, nobody wants to be drenched at an open house. Of course, especially not the broker who’s doing the open house. But it’s also like, a really human thing, right? Like, it’s one of those things where a buyer might walk in and they, you know, she might have said, I am so sorry, but here’s what happened. But it also shows a level of like, just willingness to stick around and do the job. Right. So I think, in a weird way, it probably works. You know, it doesn’t matter that she’s drenched in some ways it probably makes her more endearing to the people who walk in that she’s willing to just, you know, obviously you guys got it fixed. But But I again, I think this speaks to the that’s the most professional thing you can do is just stick around and and yep, I’m a total mess. And I’m trying to get it fixed, but I’m not leaving. Right. I think that’s awesome. I love that. It’s very, it’s very relatable because we’ve all had something like that.

Julie Busby 33:42
Totally, totally. It was pretty funny. Okay,

D.J. Paris 33:45
one last question. Can you name one mistake you’ve made while growing your business because our listeners they always love to hear what to do which you’ve done a great job of explaining given some great ideas any what not to do anything that you’ve done where you went my wish I wouldn’t have done that or you know anything like that.

Julie Busby 34:03
So and some people may disagree with me but I I think when you are sometimes we get when we start to grow we get so excited and we want to do more marketing and spend more money on this and and honestly we get calls I mean I know all the realtors listening to this will say yep, I get five calls a day of this solicitor to sign up for this I’m gonna get 10 qualified leads today and then sign up for this and you’re I’m gonna send text messages to all your clients and in just be careful and truly budget. We own a business. You need to look at it as we own a business. We are entrepreneurs and you need to be careful and budget and just don’t spend beyond your means. I know. I was approached to early on in my career to do a video marketing and back then like video was very expensive is going to be like $10,000 to do a simple video and I said, oh gosh, video and yes, video is where it’s at now, right? So when I was like, Okay, so $10,000 is going to be an investment into my career forever. Well, thank goodness, I finally had the wherewithal to say, no, wait a minute, technology is going to continue to enhance and continue to get better. Why would I? Why should I spend $10,000? On the video today? We’re in five years, it’s probably not relevant, right? So be careful, I think the biggest mistake is what we can get ahead of ourselves and, and spend money where we shouldn’t. And I would vet everyone who’s calling you that and get a reference call and say, Okay, great. Can I talk to three realtors who have had success with this? I just did that with a program. And I wasn’t I only got one reference. And I wasn’t that satisfied with the response? And I’m glad we didn’t sign up. But I would just that that would be my lesson.

D.J. Paris 35:55
Yeah, that’s so important. And really, we always forget to talk about that on the show. So I’m glad you bring it up. I’ve also read that the next tech bubble to burst might be in real estate, because of all the ancillary services that are being pitched to realtors on a regular basis. Consumers, all these tech companies, especially realtors are getting your your right you get five calls a day from the new and greatest CRM or a lead system or websites or whatever. Yeah, texting service, and all of those could be awesome. But at the end of the day, this is still very much a face to face business, right? And so certain technology is there to enhance and help. But yeah, I say the same thing when people are looking to join a firm. So like I do recruiting for our firm, and sometimes people ask me, what’s really funny, they’ll ask me, they’ll go, it’s not funny. I mean, I understand why they asked it, but I correct them. And they’ll say, Can you give me the names of three realtors that work at your firm? And I’m like, Look, I can easily do that. But odds are, since we don’t really know each other, you have to assume that I’m stacking the deck. Like I’m gonna get you people that absolutely love us. Don’t and I don’t want you to think that I’m going to do that. So here’s what you can do instead. At our firm, we’ve got lots lots realtors, I say just pick three at random. That’s going to be the real answer. Right? And if they don’t get back to you then pick three more, but call three people. Yeah. And so that’s always the problem with a lot of these with firms. If you’re looking to join a firm, everyone promises everything and call a couple other realtors just randomly and say I’m thinking of joining the company. Here’s what I’m thinking I need do you think they do a good job? And then you’ll get the real answer. But same thing with technologies. Same thing. So what a great, awesome suggestion. Yeah, and it’s funny, too. I just got a video quote for our for our company, as more of a recruiting video thing, and we’re like, oh, it’s gonna be $30,000. And we’re like, really? Like, insane. It’s insane.

Julie Busby 37:48
I mean, this, it’s so ridiculous. Do you have some good video people? If you want me to send you some referrals?

D.J. Paris 37:53
Yeah, there we go. See, I trust Julie. So I’m gonna take her referral. But ya know, and that’s, and that’s it. And this, you know, it’s at the end of the day, it’s it’s realtor meets client, you know, gains their trust, or is referred to them from somebody that they already gained trust, and then just kills it on service, crushes it on service. And ultimately, that’s the most important thing. And that’s what you’ve done. And you’ve done it two different times, which is pretty amazing. Most people only become a top producer in one area once you did it and and basically said, I am leaving and going to start the whole thing over again. And you did it. And I mean, that is really truly remarkable. You’re the only person we’ve ever had on the show that successfully have done that. So I want to honor you for that, because that is a massive MTU it’s probably no big deal to just who you are. But to our listeners. This is big, big, big. So everyone out there, you know, get a mentor, find someone like Julie, you know, that can help you that will mentor you or you know, ask for help at your firm and, and learn from the best. And that’s what our podcast is all about. So by the way, Julie, if any, we don’t just have realtors that listen, we have clients that listen as well. So if anyone is out there who wants to buy, sell, rent, invest and is looking to work with your team? What is the best way that a client should reach out to you?

Julie Busby 39:13
You could call everyone has my cell phone number 312-890-4818. I’m very quick to respond

D.J. Paris 39:22
and visit their website, which is Bobby group.com. By the way, follow them on Facebook, just search for Busby group, same thing on Instagram, there are websites awesome. You can you really get a sense on your website. And I really want to encourage our listeners who have websites to consider this approach if you’re looking to revamp your website. It’s funny, I was talking to Matt Matt Larose. He was on the show a few weeks ago, and I said on his website, he has almost like he doesn’t have an MLS search. He doesn’t have much of anything. He goes DJ, I don’t want any of that stuff. I just want to tell the story of why people work with me and why they work with our group and you’ve done the same thing on your website which I think is so cool and I think a lot of times Realtors don’t think about it from the customer’s perspective of like, I need to tell this story and so everyone please visit their website to get a good sense of what I think a successful broker or realtor website looks like again, Busby group.com follow them on Instagram, follow them on Facebook if you’re a client and you want to work with Julie go to their website, you know, contact them she just gave out her her phone number as well feel free to reach out. And Julie thank you so much for being on the show. On behalf of the listeners we really appreciate it before we sign off for everyone listening. If everyone out there just tells one other realtor about our show people that could benefit from watching or listening to this podcast episode please let them know we’ll double our listenership we can do even more episodes. So everyone go out there and tell a friend and follow us on Facebook which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Julie thank you again. I’m so excited to watch your continued success and your group success and I know some of the people on your team. They are all just like you very, very nice, very disciplined, super hard working people and you guys have such a cool thing going and I I excited to watch it continue. So thank you so much for being on my show.

Julie Busby 41:15
Thank you for the opportunity. It’s been fun

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Lawrence Dunning from Mainstreet Real Estate Group is a financial trader turned boxer turned MMA fighter turned top real estate broker in Chicago. He founded his trading firm at a young age and walked away to pursue his goal of boxing eventually winning the Golden Gloves. In our interview Lawrence talks about the discipline and focus it takes to be successful in real estate, finance, and sports.

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

Lawrence Dunning can be reached at 312-286-0427 and lawrence@mainstreetreg.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 podcasts 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 in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with Lawrence Dunning. Before we get to Lawrence, I want to remind everyone to think of a real estate professional that you know that could benefit from hearing these interviews with top 1% producers and pass along the podcast. How do you do that couple of ways. Number one, send them our website which is keeping it real pod.com Even if they’re not podcast people, they can listen right on our website to every episode we’ve ever done. Also, if everyone could rate us on iTunes or Google Play or Stitcher or Spotify, whatever podcast directory and app you use give us a rating let us know what you think about the show that helps our visibility as well. And lastly guys, please follow us on Facebook we can find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod why? Well not only do we post all of our episodes but we do behind the scenes live video recordings. So if you want to watch me record an episode in real time and not wait a couple of weeks for that’s what it’s a long it takes us to produce the episode before you can hear the audio you want to watch it live as we’re doing it we do it right there on Facebook and we also post an article too every single day that we find online dedicated to helping you grow your business so we try to provide so much value on that Facebook page that you’re gonna love it so follow us again facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our interview with Lawrence Dunning.

Okay, today on the show, we have Lauren stunning from Main Street Real Estate Group. Lawrence was born in the UK in London. He graduated with an MBA in finance, eventually settling in Chicago, at age 24. He set up his own trading company, which he ran for the next seven years. At age 30. He decided to step away from business to pursue some athletic goals actually spent five years doing just that. In particular, he has done MMA fights, he’s on 10 professional MMA fights. He has his black belt in jujitsu a number of other accomplishments physically as well. And then he’s become convinced during that time about the real estate investing model. And he bought his first investment property, which was a commercial strip mall, and got his broker’s license five years ago, and has been a top 1% producer for the last three years, which is an incredible feat to do that quickly. And he’s used the same principles that to build both a successful trading company, and now a successful real estate broker business. So we’re excited to have him on the show. This is a real treat for us. Welcome to the show, Lawrence.

Lawrence Dunning 3:55
Awesome. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

D.J. Paris 3:58
Thank you, I would love to learn about how you made the switch from being a trader and having that company, you know, into real estate, why the switch? Obviously Chicago’s a huge trading market, as you know, but why the switch? I know a ton of traders that have done that. So I’m really curious to know, how you got involved

Lawrence Dunning 4:18
was a trading was just such a it’s such a lucrative business. And like you said, the Chicago market is sort of one of the epicenters of I was an option trader. So one of the top, you know, option trading centers in the world. And so I was I was trading and actually I got a credit my my mentor and good friend Moe, who owns my company. He and I met over a decade ago and we both had dogs and we were we both on kind of a late schedule. So we’ll be out walking our dogs and we’ll just be talking. And so Moe would always be talking about oh, there’s so much money in flips and things like that. And this is this is a decade plus AGO A long time ago, but we never we never really got going on the flips but then he I stepped away from trading. I was you know in pair trading for a while. But when I when I stepped away, and I was kind of focusing on some personal goals, I would still trade a bit online and I was still, you know, trying to make money. And then the whole, it’s so interesting because you assume, or at least I did when I was young, if you’re doing something and you’re good at it, you’re gonna be able to make money by doing that for, you know, for the foreseeable future. But I didn’t that, you know, high frequency trading came. And there’s very, very few people that I knew back in the pit that are still trading. It’s such a tough business now. So the, the algorithms took over. And exactly, so I was kind of finding that, but I was still kind of struggling trying to make a bit of money. And then Moe was who’s a broker at the time was like, you know, what about, we’ve started talking about just investing in real estate. So the first thing I did in real estate wise, aside from buying my condo, when I first moved here, was I bought this commercial property. And then as an owner, and a landlord, I really started to learn about the business model. And I think what I really want to kind of explain to people is, I thought I knew about money and finance. So I come from, you know, I have an MBA, like you said, and you

D.J. Paris 6:07
do know about money and finance, right? Trading, traders background,

Lawrence Dunning 6:11
but exactly, but what’s so crazy is I think there was a huge blind spot I had, and I really think because when I look back, I think not, not a lot of people have, you know, a good, a good degree, and then they start work and they don’t really, you know, they’re not really that curious about learning or anything, but I’ve been I’ve been obsessively reading and learning since I was a kid. So I think Man, I had not only do I have an MBA, so I have the the the degree, which I think in practical posts is kind of worthless personally. But I also also read, you know, dozens and dozens, dozens of books on finance, and entrepreneurship and reading about these, you know, these really high achievers. And I think through all of that knowledge, the real estate model, it barely was mentioned. So I only kind of found out about that from a practical perspective. And largely thanks to moe, like I said, and then the more I learned, and the more I tried, like, I can even if you if you said to me, Hey, what’s a great book to read for real estate investing, I could give you one or two that are okay. But there’s still not great, there’s not really there’s not really something out there. Because it’s just the problem is, is it’s so specific, you know, if I, if I was going to write I’m actually I do want to write a little ebook on real estate investing in Chicago, but I’m not going to pretend to know about other cities, and I’m not even gonna think about other countries. And even in Chicago, you know, you’re so specific this street, that street, this type of building, that’s I believe, everything is so different. I think that’s why people just don’t talk about it. You know, they have this when you do when you do, when you study finance, this is a cookie cutter thing. They say, Okay, if you’re young, you want to put 70% Your money in stocks, right? 25 and bonds and 5% cash. And then as you get older, you’re just switching the ratios, that no one no one talks about investing in real estate, because they don’t really know how you know, it. Most of these programs are very uniform. So you’ve got the same MBA program in Shanghai, in London, in New York, you know, in Sydney, and, and you can teach the same principles with stocks, anyone can open up an E trade account and trade the same things. But it’s with real estate, you really need somebody on the ground who’s just a master a certain area. And even he doesn’t know more much more about about anything else, but just his areas, both films, I think, I think it’s just so interesting, that kind of coming to this realization, but the long way round, I guess. So So, go ahead. No, I was gonna say so once once I started, so it was all kind of happening at the same time. So I bought this property, I thought I was making good money, income from the property, and then trading was getting tougher and tougher. And then I was at a crossroads where I was thinking there’s no point letting go trading was very, very hard for me to do because, you know, I made in a day what I in trading what I made in my first year of real estate, you know, what, where else can you make that crazy money, but the problem is, if you can make it that easily, you can also lose it that easily. So by letting that that was a very tough mentally bridge to overcome, but I just I was so convinced with the real estate model, and that I kind of had an idea that trading wasn’t going to come back it was just going to get harder and harder to make money that I decided if I was going to be a real estate investor, I should I should get my license and I should just learn more I should be on the ground and I should really learn the city. And so that’s basically what I’ve done the last you know, six years is I’ve just been trying to do what pretty much what every broker does successful broker, but I’ve also kind of focused a lot of my business on the investing side because that’s more of my passion. And it’s not it’s not that I went into this trying to find a niche the niche almost found me

D.J. Paris 9:40
so I just had a huge coughing attack. So we just we had to pause for a moment so apologize for the for how disjointed this probably seems, but I think that’s really important. And I bet you also as now a broker are probably also really and it seems to be because we’ve had and I know that you’re not just an investor, your traditional broker you work with buyers and sellers, renters, but also investors and you yourself are also an investor. And I’m always shocked at how many Realtors do not service the investment market. And also aren’t investors themselves. And I imagine that blows your mind as well. And I know that’s a huge passion of yours is making sure that people understand residual income and and why real estate investing can work. And yeah, and why it’s, you know, the Uber richer, of course, as, as you were, have explained to me, uber rich are doing that. But it’s amazing how many brokers themselves really aren’t that skilled at knowing about investments.

Lawrence Dunning 10:37
Right. And I think but I think that’s the problem with, I see this with a lot of new agents, is they kind of, they’re kind of scared to do everything. And I think the principles of real estate applies, it applies to everything. So I get I get questions sometimes, Oh, do you do commercial real estate? Do you do this, you do that I do everything you know, I’ll help a friend get a rental, I’ll help, you know, multi million, million dollar investment property for commercial property, regular two to four unit property, a condo, it’s all the same, the principles underlying real estate is all the same. So I think people need to stop being worried about commercial property, residential, it’s, of course, there’s a few subtleties, but the principles are the same. But I think there’s there’s some statistics, I don’t know the exact is it 45,000 licensed agents in Illinois, and there’s some huge amount of them that don’t even own the home they live in. And then, you know, the ones that obviously own the home they live in, a lot of them don’t have investment properties. So it’s definitely easier for me to deal with investors, because I can explain, you know, that, Oh, you know, this building is like, you know, like the building I bought last year, and the reason I bought it is because of XYZ that’s why it’ll be a good investment. So I definitely have that going for me, it’s a bit easier for me to explain. But But again, this stuff is not, it’s not rocket science, it’s pretty straightforward with investing. Once you once you know, the formulas, you know, to analyze these ratios, you know, the cash on cash, return the cap rates and things like that.

D.J. Paris 12:00
Yeah, it is always remarkable to me that brokers will even become top producers in traditional buyers and seller environment. And then the moment an investor comes to them, they’re really not able to service that. And that’s okay, if they actively choose not to service the investor market, because it is a different clientele. It’s just a different process altogether. But I suspect a lot of times, it’s just because they haven’t put the time in to really understand what an investor’s needs are how that process works. And it takes years to under to get that knowledge. But it’s also something that you can start today. And then a year or two from now, wow, the ability to be able to provide those services are, are so important, because otherwise you’re going to be turning away business. And again, if you choose to turn it away, because you don’t have time, that’s great, but I think it’s a lot of times just lack of knowledge.

Lawrence Dunning 12:52
Right. And I think that’s a great point. Because the the market, especially in Chicago, we basically have a decade plus run a very stable and slow and steady growth with the stock market’s done great the last 10 years minus the last few weeks. But the key that the agents today have spoiled, right? A lot of them haven’t lived through the last recession, they haven’t seen. So when businesses good, I guess you don’t have to take all the business you can kind of pick and choose. But we are in some I mean, there was a great graph that I put on my LinkedIn a few days ago, we’ve had five decades of interest rates coming down. So I think the foreseeable future, we’re gonna we’re gonna stay in this low interest rate environment. And that the big thing with that is, if you have money, in my opinion, you only have two options, because Because bonds doesn’t pay you anything. You know, precious metals aren’t really going anywhere cash, you’re eroding inflation every day. So the only the only options are stocks and real estate. And the thing with the stock market is at some point, you know, even before the last few weeks, I was saying listen, I don’t know when it’s going to happen. But at some point, you don’t have these 10 plus years of runs, you know. So I think that it’s it is important if you’re if you’re dealing with people with money to educate them on the real estate investment model, because it’s that, for me is the only good alternative to stocks. And I think it’s way like I don’t know, I barely have any stocks. A few lingering in one of my trading accounts, but in the thing with the stock market. That’s the big difference, I think with the stock market and the real estate market is and it’s very hard to even talk about this with you because like we said at the beginning of the show, I talked about the stock market, the luxury condo market in Manhattan, am I talking about multi units in Chicago? Or am I talking about single family homes in you know, la suburbs? It’s all different, right? So when I throw out these statistics, they obviously are averages in general. There are generalizations but I think we there’s there’s something like a quarter of the volatility in the real estate market that there isn’t the stock market. And I mean, you’ve seen that with this this last few weeks is kind of shown some of the frothiness and the volatility of when, when there’s fears I don’t have you know, I don’t have an $800,000 condo suddenly selling for 600. In the last two weeks, you know, it’s not it’s not the same. Right? I think that I think your your volatility with the right building is less. But also I think that the big thing that people people just with stocks, I guess you have two things, right you have the the appreciation and you have dividends, but we’ve been in an environment where the dividends is is relatively low for most stocks, right? The big the big thing was, when I talk about the right type of real estate, your cash on cash return should be close to if not double figures, double digits a year, it should be close to that. So maybe it’s 8%, maybe it’s 10%. But that’s not well, that’s

D.J. Paris 15:35
the thing, too. And I mean, look, you know, last year, you know, my index funds were up 30%, because they, you know, the market was up. And that’s a great year. However, I would trade the volatility of that for a seven to 9% return, year after year, because I know and I’ve always felt this way about money that the best way that I can grow my income is by working. And then I just want a more traditional, you know, a traditional return, that’s not necessarily guaranteed, but that has a lower volatility, because that is something I can’t control. So I would trade the 30% returns for like a 10% average return over time, in a less volatile environment, which would be real estate investing, if done correctly.

Lawrence Dunning 16:23
Exactly. But that’s a great point. So you, you highlighted the volatility, most especially when you’re young, you don’t mind the volatility, I’m 40. Now, I don’t really want crazy volatility. But that’s only one half. So to use your example, if you made 30%. Last year, on your stock portfolio, you had a great year, and you only made 10% on your real estate, the bid, the big difference between the real estate is you’re you’re buying it typically as an investor with 25% down. And if real estate is averaging even through the biggest 2008 2010, that was the biggest real estate correction we’ve had in a century, even through that you’re averaging about 5% return a year through real estate. Now, because you’re only buying with a quarter down that 5% is actually 20% on real money, then then that’s when you start making big money, you have the 10% cash on cash return, you have the 20% because of the leverage in a very four to 5% appreciation period. And then on top of both of those, every month, you’re paying down your debt, so your your equity is increasing. And then on top of all of that you have all these tax benefits. So when you put that all together, a slow and steady, you know market that’s increasing four to 5% a year, your cash on cash return to the right property is closer to 30 33%, then you’re doubling your money every three years. So that’s kind of why in a nutshell, real estate is the secret of the ultra rich.

D.J. Paris 17:44
And I really would love to point out that these are conversations you have with your traditional clients as well, your traditional primary residence buyers and sellers, you know, you have this knowledge, you have this passion for it, and it works for you personally. And I just think how much more powerful and important does that make you to your clients versus just Yeah, I can help you buy or sell this home. Obviously, we have 40, some 1000 realtors, and actually, the total number of Realtors in Chicago, including the servers is over 40,000 in and of itself. So it’s like there’s plenty of people that can help you buy or sell a home and obviously many of them some of them do that much better than others. But I love the always the you know, the idea that you’re also able to say, Hey, by the way, you should really consider and I would love to get your perspective on this. A lot of people think their primary residence is an investment, Mike my my thought is maybe it might be you might get lucky. And when you sell it, it might be worth more but it’s not really an investment because it doesn’t really produce income for you. I’ve always thought investments should produce, you know, some sort of regular income. But this is where real estate investing comes in. So,

Lawrence Dunning 18:53
but I would love to go ahead I’m sorry. No, I was gonna say talking about your your primary resident being an investment. I bought my first condo in 2004. So I got my first bonus from my trading company put down 20% I bought my condo, fast forward 16 years, it’s probably it’s probably appreciated. I paid 300,000 I think it’s pretty worth about 340. So I mean, you’re talking absolutely negligible appreciation in nearly two decades. So but I knew that going in because I was living in Australia once my company put me up in Streeterville they put me up in a rental I got my first month I moved one blocks. I like the area. Yeah, so I knew when I bought it then even though I didn’t know anything about real estate, I knew that that at the time was the highest price per square foot in the city and buying a one bedroom condo. It’s like how much upside you’re going to get. But I think so that’s kind of what I try to explain to people for you for your primary residence. Of course you shouldn’t be it shouldn’t be a bad investment, but you shouldn’t really look to make any money off it. That shouldn’t be the way the way I see and I would tell someone is listen, you want to live where you want to live and Now, if you want to if you’re a young person, and you say, Listen, I can deal with living somewhere, I don’t want to live to buy a multi unit with an FHA loan, why just put down a little bit as an investment. And then after one year I can, I can move out. That’s a little different story. But I didn’t really want to go that that route. And I guess at the time in my early 20s, I didn’t even know that was an option. So I think that you can kind of you can take advantage of what, what, what is given to you. So right now, we’re in a very interesting for FHA loans, you’re paying about 3%. So it’s insanely cheap. And you can you can put down and say, if you can find a four unit building, and the FHA limit is 70709, I think it is, and you have to put down three and a half percent, you could, in theory, have the seller, sell it to you for 735, give you 20 26,000 Cash Back, use that as your down payment, you almost buy it for nothing. The problem is finding those is like finding a unicorn in this environment, because they haven’t raised the FHA rates for you know, a decade plus. So the problem you’re going to have is, of course, I can find anyone a building like that, but it’s not going to have good numbers, because it’s going to be much it’s not going to be recently rehabbed in a good area with good rents and good numbers. You know, I do find them occasionally, but they’re very, very, very hard to come by. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 21:14
I would love to switch gears because I, we talked about this very briefly, in your intro, and you are a very physical person, you’ve competed. You know, in MMA fights. Can you talk a little bit about the discipline that goes into you know, you stepped away entirely from business to pursue these goals? Can you talk a little bit about that? I just find that so fascinating.

Lawrence Dunning 21:37
Yeah, for sure. So what happened was, I think I always knew at a young age that, like I came, I came from an English system. I grew up in England, I went school in England, coming here realizes how good the US sports arts sports systems are in, you know, high school and college in England, unless you’re a really, really good soccer player, they have really good programs for you, maybe a little bit of rugby, the rest of the programs are kind of nonsense. So I was I played soccer growing up when I was a kid, I wasn’t good enough to be the elite level. One of my, one of my good friends played professionally, which was awesome. But I so I always dabbled in things, but I never really had an outlet. So when I came here, I was trading and it was very intense. And a lot of the people when you have a job like that, with so much intensity, you need some kind of release. So a lot of them went down the path of drinking and drugs and that was that released. And I started boxing. So I went into this boxing gym. And there was a lot of you know, famous UFC fighters in there and it was kind of one of the one of the best jujitsu and boxing gyms in the city at the time. Now there’s a lot more back then there was there was only really one. And so I remember I walked in and my my, my future boxing coach said to me, Oh, you got the door of a fighter you should boxing The Golden Girls. And then I was like, oh, that sounds kind of cool. So I started so I started when I was treating my life was literally just what worked in the trading pit. Take take a nap in the office for a couple hours because a very early start thing goes straight to the boxing gym, come home and go to sleep and just rinse and repeat all day. So I did that I won the Golden Gloves I had I had a few disappointments i i fought in the for the state Illinois state title, which I lost. And I had a great boxing career. But I got to the stage where I was like, Okay, I’m in my late 20s. I’d been doing jujitsu a little bit. And then May was becoming really popular. And I realized, I have my whole life to make money. But we have these windows of opportunity that come and go. And I realized I was I remember I turn 30. And I haven’t one thing I kind of backtrack on for for advice for new agents is when if you if you want to start creating wealth, it’s not just about investing. But it’s also you have to be saving money too. And one thing the reason I became very wealthy in my 20s is because like I said, I bought my condo, my first bonus, I didn’t have a car, I didn’t have all these crazy expenses. I took a few nice trips, that was my treat, but I wasn’t lavishly spending money. I knew people that you know, renting, renting these nice cars and going to the clubs with a Lamborghini and getting tables is I wasn’t into any of that. So as I was making money in my 20s my net worth just kept going up going up going up. And then I got to the stage where I was lying in bed one night, I couldn’t sleep and I got up and I was like now how much am I actually worth and I started to look at my trading accounts and my trading seats and all the assets I had. And I was like, Wow, I’m actually actually worth quite a lot of money. I’m gonna step away I had kind of lost a bit of the passion for for trading. And I really seen the signs it was becoming harder to make money. And I thought, well, I’m 30 years old as a male athlete. You don’t have too long you probably have, you know, five years you’re seeing people go into labor now. But you know, for me, I was I got pretty good five years. And I thought this is the chance if I want to actually do something. And my big my big thing that I always live my life by is there’s a great Les Brown quote and he talks about do you want to be that person at your dying bedside with the angels of your potential all around you saying like we came to you you had all these talents and potential and you wasted us And it’s one of my favorite, my favorite speeches it gives me goosebumps when I hear it. And I’ve always been driven by that fear. I’ve been driven by a fear of being this old man with grandkids on my feet. And maybe maybe I have a nice house and I have money, but I have these regrets. Why did I do this when I was 25? What I do this when I was 30, you know, so I’ve always been driven by the fear of regrets and having to seize opportunity. So that’s why I was like, You know what, I’ve just got to jump in and do this. So it was it was, it was such a great period of my life. And it was so hard, because a lot of a lot of people. I think, you look at what it takes to succeed in athletics. I don’t think I had any natural abilities other than grit and determination. And I think that it was a really great period of my life is incredibly hard. Physically, I just think just, I had this thing in my head, I was like, Well, okay, I go to work, I trade all day, I take a nap, I go to the gym, it’s like, if I don’t have to get up at 5:30am and go to the trading floor, I’ll be able to sleep in I’ll be able to train to three times a day. In between the training sessions. I’m gonna be learning Spanish learning Portuguese, do all these cool things. Yeah, I didn’t realize that when you’re training two, three times a day you are so zonked. You are just trying to nap or like just, I don’t know, space out for a few hours between sessions. It’s so exhausting. But it was such a great period. Because I remember right at the end I had I’m fighting such a funny thing. It’s exciting because there’s so many variables. And I remember, I never felt like I was performing to my abilities. And it was always very frustrating. And I had one fight was my penultimate fight. And I felt like Actually, everything came together. And I showed my potential and I was very happy. And I was like, I have one mole. And then I was like, Okay, now it’s time to you know, close this chapter, but I don’t have crazy injuries and brain trauma, you know, it’s time to close it. But the ones the one thing I the one mistake that I made is during those five years, I assumed that when it was done, I could do something in trading and keep making, you know, a lot of money, right? It combat door of, well, I took the door of the the doing something athletic, but I still had the time and youth and energy that the door on the finance on the trading that completely closed. So that was all kind of happening at the same time when I bought my building during that time. And that’s that was kind of what made the decision well, okay, I’m in my mid 30s, what the hell am I gonna do now, you know, because I was, I probably made every mistake in the book, I was way over leveraged in stocks through the last stock correction. And I, the one good thing I guess I did is buy that property. But I assumed I’m very confident. And I know that I always assume that no matter what I do, I’m going to make money, right? I had that in the back of my head, you have to have that confidence. So instead of what I should have done during those five years, I’d say less than, like, you know, you’re dabbling a bit in trading, you’re not really making that much money. But I’d got used to a certain, and I just, I’m gonna kind of contradict myself, I wasn’t big on buying cars and doing all this stuff. But I did have a certain expensive lifestyle while I taking lavish vacations and things like that. So when you don’t work for five years, so you don’t make too much money. You’re you’re spending, you know, a reasonable amount every year, your net worth is taking a hit. And then right at the end, I started trading a little bit more online. So I was like, you know, I’ll come want to make some good money. And I was trading grain options. And I was having a good year. And I was like, You know what I had a big position on I was like, I’m having a good year. But I don’t want to have a great year, I want to make more than I’ve spent the last five years I want to crush it. And I put a big position on. And I thought I was right. And I lost every day for two weeks straight trading days, it went against me when against me went against me, I finally got to a stage where I woke up and I said yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna lose everything. If I keep this position, even though I think I’m right. They call it in trading, they say the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. And that’s exactly what happened. I woke up and I said, if it turns against me today, I’m gonna get out of everything. The first five minutes of trading, it went against me, I got out of everything. And then 10 minutes later, reverse and I would have made a million bucks. So it was that was that was a very frustrating and painful experience. And that’s and since then I’m like, You know what I just kind of what we were talking about, I don’t want that volatility in my life. You know, I want to have I want to have, I’m not impressed by if someone says, Hey, I’ve got this idea Lawrence, you can make 100,000. That doesn’t impress me as much as some of the says, Hey, you can do something, it’s going to make you $1,000 a month for the rest of your life. Right? That’s when I when I realized that, you know, that’s why for me at that age and with my personality, I realized that the real estate model is 100% Something I want to work on. So all these things we’re talking about, they’re all kind of linked. But I really think the lessons from from that story to anyone listening is you have to take opportunities. So for instance, what I try and tell my one of my partners that I work with a lot, John, is business is good right now, you know, we’ve had like we said 10 years of low interest rates stable, the economies that are creeping up, you know, everything’s nice and stable. People are doing things people feel wealthy because of the pensions and everything’s up. So I said you’ve got to you’ve got to be absolutely crushing it and hustling Now, because when times are bad, it’s going to be, you know, four times as hard to make the business. So I think with that story, a couple of things that I guess lessons that I learned that hopefully, people won’t make the same mistakes as me is, you can’t, it doesn’t matter how good your one revenue stream is, one revenue stream is not enough, because life can always get in the way and change, you can be making half a million dollars a year from one revenue stream. You. I think the statistic is the average multimillionaire has seven different streams of income. And I think that you should definitely, definitely add a few more streams to that to that, that one revenue stream. And the other thing is you just have to take opportunity when you have it, you know, if it me as an investor, as a buyer, if there’s no inventory that I like, with with the wrong returns, I’m just gonna sit and wait, maybe I have to wait six months or five years. I don’t care. I’m not I’m not just gonna force it. On the same token, right now, you know, interest rates are so low. If banks would give me these loans, I would take $10 million of debt today. And I would invest, you know, because it’s, it’s for me, it’s free money. So I think, right, that’s, that’s the one lesson I took from that, I guess, take take opportunities when you have it.

D.J. Paris 31:07
Make make hay while the sun shines. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So So I want to talk about the discipline that it’s take, you know, that that you have demonstrated throughout your entire career, right, you started a company very young, you had your MBA, so you had the knowledge, but obviously with MMA and other types of physical activity, boxing discipline, is everything, along with business as well. Can you talk about what it takes to be successful as a realtor discipline wise?

Lawrence Dunning 31:38
Yeah, I think I think the first thing is you have to manage expectations. So I remember when I first had some friends, that Mo was one of them. But some friends talking about Gary Vee, and I found them a little bit annoying. I didn’t really know too much about him.

D.J. Paris 31:50
Well, he is a little bit annoying, but Well, it’s also very smart. And he knows what he’s talking about.

Lawrence Dunning 31:56
But I recently a few months ago, I think I put on my on my Instagram, I put a podcast with him and the Rich Roll who’s an ultra marathon runner. I listened to it now a bit older than when I first heard him and a bit more mature, I guess. And it resonated so much with me, because everything he was saying was the same. everybody complains, and I guess we live in an era where you can you pull up, you do a hat, everyone’s got a voice. Yeah, exactly. But also, I feel like everybody’s out there pushing the best self and their image. And, and what he said is he said, listen, not everybody can build a million dollar company, only a few percent, because it takes a lot of work. And he said, all the the my big pet peeve is someone that isn’t happy with this situation, they want a certain amount of income or certain amount of lifestyle, but they don’t want to do the work that it takes to get there. And I think and I think that one of my one of my rules that I live with, and I think I think it was from Tony Robbins or somebody like that. But he said we always overestimate what we can do in one year. And we underestimate what we can do in a decade. And I think that’s any any success I have, I would say it’s the same thing. You know, I didn’t win the Golden Girls, my first year, it took me three years, three years and three attempts to win. I didn’t I wasn’t a top agent in my first year, it took me my third year in real estate. And I think that’s something it applies to sport, it applies to business, it applies to almost anything, even even relationships. I’m you know, I got married a year and a half ago, I think I’m a better husband now than I was, you know, when we were dating, because I’ve learned to be a better partner to communicate better, all these little things that would go into into a positive relationship. So I think that the big if you’re, if our audience is mainly in real estate, I would say you have to be a long term thinker, you have to you have to have a horizon where I get these new agents. And there was one that just joined a company, a really, really nice young young kid, very enthusiastic, he could be wonderful. But he’s they’re telling mo when he’s doing his training, it’s like, hey, I want to be like Lawrence. And it’s like, well, Lawrence didn’t just start his first year in real estate and selling million dollar investment properties, you know, it took time to so I would say you have to you have to play the long game in, in, in business for sure for success. And then talking about the discipline, I think it’s it’s it’s habits and consistency. So you have to always you always have to have the goal in the dream, right? People are very big on, you know, in I want to sell $10 million in in 12 months. And then they say okay, break that down. So that’s that’s a little a little under a million dollars a month. But that’s just that’s the that’s the dream in order to get there. You’ve got to beat us every single day you’re doing the right things, the right habits, the right consistency. And I think I think the best advice that I would give I think is relationships, because it not just with your like it’s when I when I deal with on the other side of a transaction with a professional broker. It’s such a pleasure we both on top of it, it’s just a seamless, smooth transaction. And when you deal with people that don’t know what they’re doing, and it’s like pulling teeth, and I think it’s the same with people like do you if I’m buying a house do I I want to work with a broker who’s a pleasure to be around. He’s knowledgeable, he’s responsive, he’s on top of it, or do I want to be with it with a guy who I’m chasing him so he can get my commission. So I think, and this is such small, easy things. And I’m a big believer in work hard, play hard. So I’m not trying to say, don’t have a life, but you have to have certain systems in place. So for instance, I was with my wife had had surgery on my elbow a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn’t do much. So I took a 10 day vacation to the Maldives and my wife, and I’m sitting there and I’m one of my good friends is doing a sell, buy. And he’s selling his building. And he was he was texting me. And he’s like, Lawrence, how are you more responsive, than the selling attorney who’s skiing in Vail he’s like, you’re in the middle of the Indian Ocean, you know, I had terrible service I’m on I’m on some crappy hotel Wi Fi. And he says it was it was a good reminder that, you know, you don’t want to eat, you definitely take breaks and technology break from your breaks and your phone break breaks from work. But also you have to have certain habits. So whether it’s first thing in the morning, and then you have a couple of different times 2pm 5pm And then evening before sleep, or whatever it is, you have to just stay consistent, whether it’s checking in with people, you know, replying to emails, doing your searches, just just, even just education. I think that’s a huge thing. I think consistency in education. I know that when I before I was in real estate, I was a huge reader. And the first couple years in real estate, I was so busy running around the city trying to learn the business take I would take horrendous leads, because I just wanted to be I just wanted to learn the business. I wanted to be out there learning. And I was actually dating a girl at the time who had been in real estate for a long time, she was very lazy. And she had all these just crappy rental leaves. And she was like, I don’t want this, this. I said I’ll take it all, I took hundreds and hundreds of rental leaves, I drove all around the city, because I wanted to know the city. While I wanted to know the business. While I wanted to be around people, I wanted to be busy, I wanted to be engaged. And during that time, I didn’t have I didn’t read read, there was a few years where I really didn’t read much I didn’t learn much. On that side of things I was just so focused on on the practical aspect of being a new broker. And I think my happiness went down hugely. So I think always, always putting time to improve yourself to learn. i For me, personally, it makes me a happier person. But it also makes you just much more knowledgeable person to be around. And to many people focus on what you’re gonna get. So I laugh I get on LinkedIn, I probably get three or four messages a week, almost one a day now. And it’s somebody like, hey, I really want you to give me business to this. When can we meet for coffee? Or when can we have a 50? Ma?

D.J. Paris 37:27
I was coffee messages every day? I’m like, I don’t know you.

Lawrence Dunning 37:32
Yeah, exactly. And I think that what’s what’s so funny about that is, what are they doing? They’re focusing on what they can get from me, they’re offering no value. So most of the time I don’t even have time to respond, was if I have say say say say it was a lender, and he sent me a message and said, Hey, I have a I have a guy who wants to buy a multi unit. I think he’s a he’s a pre qualified client. He’s great. Can you help him? And he buys a an $800,000 investment property? How much business? Am I going to give that guy back? I’m gonna get

D.J. Paris 38:01
back. Yeah, you’d be forever indebted to that bro. Second.

Lawrence Dunning 38:05
Exactly. And he would get so much business for me. So and I think that’s the same with everything. It’s like when I’m when I’m with a client. I’ve had relationships where, you know, when I work with some builders, where maybe maybe it was 12 months, 18 months, I didn’t make a single dollar. Right, I did quite a lot for them. But when it comes around that I’m going to be their broker for the foreseeable future. And, and I think that’s, it’s, again, coming back to that playing the long game is you have to you have to develop the relationships that are going to make you the money later on. And you got to focus on what you’re giving, as opposed to Hey, what buildings can I sell for you? Well, you know, what you’re doing are not really, you know, like, I think that that’s something I think that’s something we we see a lot in our business, but also I think it’s you know, 2020 that’s the culture, right? It’s like, I want to get up here, but I’m already down here and I don’t want to do all the steps. I just want to jump to the top. So I think trying to rush the process. It doesn’t help you either.

D.J. Paris 38:58
Yeah, it’s it’s always about discipline. So even like your example, I think, which is a good one, which a lot of times Realtors get into the business. They’re new, they say, okay, 10 million a year. And, you know, in my, let’s say, my second year, my first year, whatever seems reasonable. If you break it down to a million a month, that’s couple of two to three clients a month, that seems like reasonable. The problem is, then the question is okay, that’s not really the goal. That’s the result. So like a goal is okay, how many people do I need to meet today so that in three months, I might have one client, right? And maybe it’s I need to meet five people every single day or whatever that number is. And if you just drill down to like one or two metrics that you can do on a daily basis, pretty much everything else should take care of itself. But it’s realizing everyday wake up, like I’m sure the same thing with with the different sports that you’ve been involved in. It’s a certain amount of practice that you just have to do and then hopefully, come come game time or match time. You can just go into autopilot but it’s all the push ups. It’s all of the boring, daily activity. Is that when the game right,

Lawrence Dunning 40:01
exactly. I think that’s so so, so great. You picked up on that. There’s a really great analogy that I read recently. And it’s it says, if you’re if you’re taken off from LA, and you point the nose of the 7476 degrees to the right, by the time you land on the East Coast, that’s going to make the difference between landing in New York or in Washington. And I love that. And what he’s saying is, here’s the thing, if you if you I’m a, I’m a pretty healthy bus, and maybe maybe I’m, I’m trying to train for a marathon in six weeks, which I actually am, I can tell, I can skip my I can skip my run today. Because I can run tomorrow, that one run isn’t gonna make any difference. But if you do that every day, I’m not gonna better run. And it’s I think that’s, that’s such an important point you just said is, though, it seems if you’re trying to lose weight, and you, you know, you go out and you have absolutely you pick out, you get drunk, and I haven’t had a big night, that’s not going to meet you, you’re gonna wake up the next day, you probably gonna look pretty much the same. If you take off your shirt, look in the mirror. But if you keep doing those actions, it that’s that’s the key. So I think the way the way to summarize it is, if you’re doing the right actions, time becomes your ally, as you as you move towards your goal, time is helping you get there. And if you do the wrong actions, time is going to become your enemy. And I think that’s such a you picked up on that 100% That applies to almost everything in life, right? It’s like that the one action today is not going to make or break you. But it’s that done repeatedly, that’s going to be the difference between a winner and a loser.

D.J. Paris 41:31
And by the way, it really does apply to everything. And this idea of checking in or measuring on a daily basis is so important. And it doesn’t mean you have to be super anal and judge yourself every day. But you do need even like relationships are more abstract example. If and this is not the most romantic thing that anyone would want to hear. But the truth is, if I don’t sit and think, How am I doing in my relationship? When’s the last time I told my girlfriend how beautiful she is? When’s the last time I did something really nice for her. You know, and again, I would love it if those things just came to me every single day naturally, and I never had to think about it. But the truth is just like anything else, that you know, I have to remind myself I have to I have to have daily activities. So that you’re right. Well, my girlfriend notice for if three straight days I don’t mention how beautiful she is? Probably not. Who knows, maybe she would. But I know that it’s important. And I want to do those things for her. But I better be checking in with myself and no, hey, it’s time for me to say something really nice. And again, the maybe that’s not the best example. But it sort of is because you actually

Lawrence Dunning 42:31
know, I think that no, I think that is the perfect example. Because what you know, like it’s exactly, check it being a good, you know, boyfriend or husband one day to the next is not going to make or break a relationship. But over time, it 100% Will. And I think that’s it’s short, there was a there’s a book or something like the power of small changes or something that talks about this a long time ago. And I think it’s so true. It’s like what you do today does matter. And it’s compounded every day. And I think but in order back to the discipline thing, I think that motivation comes and goes. And that’s why that’s why you have to like I’m really big on I love listening to Les Brown is my favorite, but I love like I’ll sometimes put on one of those 30 minute motivational, you know, with music and some different motivational speakers talking, and I’ll go for a run. And it’s like a slow recovery run at the end of the day. And I’m just letting my letting my mind kind of clear. And I’m you’re basically filling up your brain with just positivity, motivation, inspiration, all these things. That’s great. But the problem is we, we we all have days where you wake up your body, so you don’t want to go to the gym, you wake up, you’ve got a headache, you don’t want to talk to 10 clients. So what gets you through those days is just having your big picture goal and just making it I wouldn’t even say it’s discipline, I would say it’s it’s a conscious choice you make. This is my lifestyle. And I think they talk about that where you, you have to have that. So if you want to be a top agent, for example, to bring it back to real estate, you have the image of yourself as a top agent, well, how does a top agent act? Well, he, you know, he, he looks good. When he goes to showings, he conducts himself in a professional way. He’s responsive, he gets back to people, he’s knowledgeable, he knows what he’s doing. So if you have that image of you as that person, you’re going to do all the things you need to do it. Likewise, if you’re if you’re an athlete, and you see yourself as a champion, what does the champion do? Well, he gets his sleep, he gets his massages, he eats well, he can hit go to the gym when he does. Of course, there’s going to be days where if you’re sick or injured, you’re going to have to take a break. But aside from that, you don’t even think about it. If I wake up tomorrow, I teach jiu jitsu on Wednesdays, if I wake up tomorrow, my back’s sore and I’ve got a headache. I’m not even thinking about not going just so it’s it’s gonna happen, you know, you don’t even give yourself a choice. And I think that’s a really key point is if something is important enough to you. So you actually really want it you have to make it an unconscious choice. Otherwise, we all have we all have that little voice inside us like oh, you know you’re tired when you skip today and, and it’s I remember I remember talking to talking an old friend years ago, and he said to me, oh, it’s alright for you. You know it You’re lucky it’s easy for you to do these things. And I was like, oh, no, I’m

D.J. Paris 45:04
not easy for you at all.

Lawrence Dunning 45:08
Exactly. And I was so happy. I remember when, back when I was boxing when I was in my 20s. And I, every morning that I knew I had a boxing match in the evening, every single time. I would say, Why am I doing this? Like, I’m not getting paid for this. I got a good career. Like, why am I putting myself in this vision every single time and I remember years later, I was watching like some I think it was George St. Pierre, the UFC champion at my weight welterweight. And he’s he was joking. He said he was going to the arena for his fight. And he said, Man, I wish there was some kind of crazy electrical out. Power outage, the whole stadium was shut down, and they canceled the fight. And I thought, wow, so it’s not just me, every single champion, every single person has to overcome this. You don’t want to do these hard things. It’s ingrained in our DNA, right? We, we have something we all are here today. Because you know, our ancestors survived. And there’s something in survival, where it’s that natural thing where if you don’t have to do it, why are you doing it? So we have to overcome this innate laziness. And I think that it’s, you know, the habits, the discipline, all that stuff. That’s it, but it’s not, you know, the David Goggins has become very famous recently. He’s, he’s, he’s really big on, you know, motivational Instagram and everything. And one thing I really like about him is he says, There is no finish line. And I think that’s so true. I have a friend of mine, I was complaining about some damage, just before my elbow surgery, I’m complaining to one of my good friends, Brad, who does jiu jitsu with me, and he’s an investor and a good friend of mine. And I was like, God sucks. And I’m getting older than these surgeries. I’m 4041 in a few weeks. And he says to me said, Yeah, but it’s, you’ll find like, you can sit in your office, and I’ve got some, some some framed pictures and some medals and trophies, and, you know, memorabilia from two decades in those sports. And he’s like, you’ve achieved so much, you must be so awesome. And I’m, I’m thinking but once it once you achieved it, I want to keep going. I don’t want to sit on my laurels and arrest and that’s actually something I’m very passionate about. It’s just happiness, positive psychology and, and because ultimately, why do you want to be a top agent to a new agent? He thinks if he if he sells $10 million a year, he makes a 250,000 commission. He’s gonna that’s gonna give him a lifestyle for him to be happy.

D.J. Paris 47:08
I will finally be happy when I achieve X.

Lawrence Dunning 47:11
Yeah, yes. And I think that’s so like, so almost all the decisions we make in life, we’re trying to we think we’re doing them you know, to give us happiness. So I think for me, you have to be you know, high achievers ever going to be where they want to be in life.

D.J. Paris 47:27
Okay, guys, sorry about that. We lost a Lawrence we got disconnected and we’re going to schedule a part two because he’s so great. And it’s so much value to bring to the audience that we’re going to get him back on the show. So sorry for the abrupt ending here. But we Lawrence and I wanted to thank everyone for listening. We’re excited to have him back in a future episode for a part two. For now, we will say thank you. And also we want to remind everyone to follow us on Facebook, go visit us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and please tell a friend think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing this great interview you just heard from Lawrence and tell them about our show. Have them visit our website, keeping it real pod.com And subscribe to us on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Stitcher, Pandora, anywhere podcasts are served. You’ll find our podcast thanks again. On behalf of Lawrence and myself and we’re gonna get Lawrence right back on the show. Thanks, guys. Stay safe.

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