New video feature! In addition to continuing to produce the long-form audio interviews with top 1% producers, we’re also going to serve you up some bite-sized video goodness!
Keeping It Real Podcast producer Liz Lape is here to guide you on an actionable strategy to help your business. It’s short, helpful, and also on video!
In today’s Liz Lesson she discusses how to market and retain Gen Z real estate clients through authenticity.
Transcript
Liz Lape 0:04 Hey guys, I’m Liz leg and this is your weekly list lesson. Attracting Gen Z buyers can be confusing. They’re new to the buying game and have different values from the generation before them. Take it from a fellow Gen Z or this generation values authenticity and personal connection with content, and they lose interest fast, especially online. This may come as a surprise but polished online advertising won’t cut it. Gen Z buyers tend to ignore online advertisements I reject the idea of being sold. Instead, create the personal bond Gen Z craves by sharing short videos stating your values as if you are having a conversation. This will increase trust and personal connection between you and the buyer. Another strategy is to try providing Gen Z buyers with online platforms like having your own Facebook business page, where clients can voice their opinions provided an opportunity to feel more engaged in the process. Thanks for watching those lessons and I’ll see you next time.
Welcome to the October edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick from At Properties!
Fresh from her speaking engagement as a panelist at Inman Luxury Connect in Beverly Hills, Carrie McCormick tells our listeners some of the insights she observed. For example, the rise of the importance of staging – buyers expect homes to be move-in ready and staged. Also, how you can use video to tell a story better than pictures. I provide a marketing tip on how to personalize your holiday cards for clients!
D.J. Paris 0:00 On this episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Quicken Loans real estate professionals. When you work with Quicken Loans, you have an agent relationship manager available to you and your team. These dedicated experts are part of the agent relations team. They serve as your single point of coordination so you can count on them to keep you in the loop throughout your client’s entire home buying process, call 888-980-2891 or go to real estate dot Quicken loans.com Today, call for cost information and conditions equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states NMLS consumer access.org Number 3030. And now onto the show.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made for real estate brokers by real estate brokers. My name is DJ Parris, I’m your host and guide through the show, as always, today, we have the Monday market minute, which we do every month with the great Carrie McCormick. If you are a new listener and you haven’t yet got it listen to any of our Carrie money market minute episodes. Carrie is one of the top producing brokers in Chicago and this is a huge deal because there’s 45,000 brokers Carrie is always in the top 1% of 1%. She is literally one of the very highest producing brokers. She’s been a high producing broker for 20 years with App properties. And she just came back from Inman luxury connect where she was a featured panelist and speaker in Beverly Hills. So we are so excited to talk to you. So Carrie, welcome back to Chicago.
Carrie McCormick 1:50 Well, thank you, it was such a fun panel to be part of it was a privilege. I was seated next to Kevin Thompson, who I’ve never met in person. I’ve always seen him on panels or in, you know, different write ups. But he’s the Chief Marketing Officer of Sotheby’s International based in New York. So I got the privilege of talking to him backstage personally for a little while. And then of course, you know, seated on the panel with him. And then another gentleman that I was with is dusty Baker. He is a top producer from Southern California, also with Sotheby’s and, you know, talking to these two gentlemen that, you know, one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast selling millions and millions of dollars of real estate it was it was such a privilege, and especially to be in Beverly Hills. I don’t know, you know, how many people been out there? I’ve been out there once before, but it’s, it’s kind of lala land. It’s really it’s really interesting place to be and, you know, millions of dollars of real estate are traded in that town. It’s unbelievable.
D.J. Paris 2:57 Yeah, so tell us a little bit about what you you know what you spoke about what you learned, let’s, let’s Yeah, the listeners. And
Carrie McCormick 3:05 so the panel that I spoke on was about, you know, luxury listings and how to market them. And the reoccurring theme between the three of us is how important staging a home has become. It’s the buyers in this marketplace have changed. And again, this is not just a local thing here in Chicago, it was across the US, there were people. Like I mentioned from New York, or agents from New York, there were agents from California and Texas that deal with these oil tycoons. The same thing is, is that staging matters, when a buyer walks into a home, it has to trigger an emotional feeling and that emotion needs to be I love this house, I can live in this house, I can move right in. And, you know, it’s our job now to create an emotion of feeling from these buyers. And that’s where staging has become key. Whereas before, you know, but like I said, I’ve been doing this for 20 years, you know, it just we didn’t have to invest in that we didn’t have to worry about staging, you know, we would just use what was ever in the home. But again, staging has become key, whether it’s real staging or Virtual Staging. For the people who are listening. Virtual Staging has become a huge hit for those you know, folks that don’t want to stage their home so I would definitely look into that if you haven’t already. The other thing that I opened up the panel with was about storytelling. I use a lot of video marketing in my advertising and marketing for a home and dusty Baker who is the gentleman I sat next to he disagreed with me. He said that he does not use video because he feels that no one is watching seeing the videos. So again, everyone’s got a difference of opinion on video marketing. But I love video marketing for two reasons. One, it does tell the story about the home because you can do B roll of neighborhoods of schools of coffee shops in the area. So not only are you marketing and selling the home, your marketing and selling a lifestyle, the neighborhood, what you know, when you walk out your door, what can you enjoy. And you can’t get that through just, you know, traditional pictures. So I love the storytelling feature of the video. And also, I love it just because the SEO rankings when Zillow or any other platform sees that you have a video content in your in your listing, it thinks it’s more important, it feels it raises you up a little bit on your ranking. So I think you get to fold with these video marketing. So that was, you know, between the staging and the video marketing, that became the hot topic of our conversation on our panel, we talked a little bit about print marketing, and we all agreed that, you know, if you place an ad in a magazine, there’s you’re not going to get a buyer for that home, you know, no one’s looking for a home in a magazine. I don’t want to name any but you know that, you know, you’re not working through a magazine and saying, Oh, look, look at this home, I wasn’t even thinking about it, I think I should buy this home. But we all agree that print marketing has become a way for branding ourselves as agents. So you know, our picture, our name becomes front and center in that print, you know, if we want to list a few homes in there to obviously show off our listings or you know, hopefully there is someone that does see a home that they may like and give you a call. You know, we’ve all agree that that has become a way to leverage the print the print part of it. But really it was, it was such an interesting place to be again, I was talking with people from coast to coast. And we all seem to be struggling with the same issues as far as the buyer market right now. You know, the market times are up. Again, this is across the United States market times are up, pricing is starting to level out. If you’re looking to move a home, you’ve got to price it right. It has to be staged properly. And you have to have an aggressive marketing campaign. Hands down.
D.J. Paris 7:33 Yeah, I have a few thoughts on on all this great stuff that you just said. And I wonder if a lot of it with a staging in particular, you know, we think about and we should really mention your Instagram account because it is one of the best if not the very best I’ve seen for what a realtor should aspire to do and Instagram, which is Carrie McCormack real estate. So go on Instagram and follow Carrie number one, everything she puts up is very professional, it’s a branding opportunity for her but also it’s there’s a consistency to the look the feel, and she does it all herself that she doesn’t have an agency posting for her. So it’s really very, very remarkable. And I wonder how much of this idea of now staging, whether it’s virtual or actual staging, I wonder how much of that has to do with the rise of the popularity of social media platforms like Instagram where we take pictures of our food, and we tweak it to make it look like it’s just absolutely incredible. And we post it and I think this idea of the pictures you know if you’re virtually staging, making the every room look perfect or again, actually staging so when somebody comes through, you know, I always heard years and years ago that you were supposed to leave the room as sparse as possible so people could imagine their own stuff in the room and I just don’t think that’s the case anymore. I think you’re right. You want it to look just perfect.
Carrie McCormick 8:57 Actually the moderator of our panel also brought that up is you know, she said Let we have to blame you know, these Instagram accounts and some of these. These TV shows like HGTV has some fabulous shows. But what the public is getting used to seeing is perfect rooms right with whites and these grays and these luxury this and luxury that and the consumers that’s in your face all the time of you know this is how a kitchen should be so when they walk into a real life kitchen that doesn’t live up to that expectation, the Instagram expectation or the HGTV you know kitchens, they get upset, you know and that’s what they want. So it’s it’s a hard dynamic to, you know, to work through. Another thing we all laughed about was that these and I love all these HGTV shows is you know they do these fix and flips and it takes you know you will I’ll just show for an hour, you know, the beginning to end the house has been renovated, but you know, in the show, it takes them two weeks. So when I coach a client through renovations, or how long it’s going to take or meet with contractors, you know, I tell them this, you know, this could take a couple of months, and they’re, they’re flabbergasted. Well, they did it in two weeks on the show, you know, how could that take, you know, six months for us to do. So it’s bringing, you know, some of these TV shows, you know, you gotta bring back the reality of, you know, what’s going to happen in the renovation. So it’s, it’s challenging.
D.J. Paris 10:36 Well, and also, for everyone listening, whether you’re a realtor who are looking for tips from from Carrie, or if you’re a seller going, oh, gosh, now I have to stage every room in my house. Well, the good news is, it’s never been more affordable. Obviously, you could always virtually stage it, which is, you know, very, almost almost a free service with photography studios now, but even if you’re hiring, you know, a staging company to come in and actually replace furniture and make, it’s not that expensive, if it’s going to yield a higher return. And I know many brokers and Carrie, I know you’ve done this as well, that will tell sellers, we need to get your stuff out and move stuff in sometimes. And and it’s just a great idea, because the the data suggests that help sells homes sell home quicker. And for higher price points.
Carrie McCormick 11:23 Absolutely. I’m starting to do that quite a bit. It’s I’ve got clients living in the house and will relocate all their furniture to one area. And then we stage a few other rooms. So they’re living in a half staged house, and you know, half of their furniture. So it’s it’s a really great concept and new new idea to sell a home.
D.J. Paris 11:46 Wonderful, any other takeaways that you could share with our audience from the conference?
Carrie McCormick 11:51 Well, it’s really like I said, it’s having a robust marketing plan. And the bottom line with a lot of this right now in the market is pricing home correctly. And giving feedback, I’ve started to give a lot more feedback on my showings to people and just, again, this was across the US agents are saying, Please give each other feedback after these showings, because it helps each other in our industry. communicate to our sellers of what’s going on, because if you do a showing, and then just go see each other, you know, and don’t give any feedback. It’s it makes more difficult conversations for our for our sellers. So again, just professional courtesy to each other, as you know, giving some good feedback.
D.J. Paris 12:39 Well, and it is called a cooperative commission. Right? So brokers are supposed to cooperate. And again, oftentimes, the broker might be too close to the situation to see something that other brokers who are coming in to do this, to look at the property with their clients might not see. So you have this opportunity to provide incredible feedback. And I don’t know what percentage of brokers provide feedback, but it’s not high enough for sure. So everyone listening, if you’re a realtor, and you get that little email saying, give us some feedback, please do that, or call the other broker and let them know. So that you guys can both work together and get some homes closed. Exactly. So I have a and I want to hear I want to get your feedback on this. So I have my marketing minute of the day. And Carrie actually gave me the suggestion, really, the credit goes to her. But I wanted to also get your thoughts on this because I was like, oh, what should I talk about? And the holidays are coming up, Carrie reminded me. And it was like, Okay, what what do brokers do? Or what should they do for their clients. And so I’ll just give you my experience, because I’m not a producing broker. So I’m really the worst person to ask, but I will tell you what I get in the mail around this time of the year. And I have lots of different professionals that have various services that I employ, you know, financial advisor insurance, you know, that mortgage, that sort of thing. And I really get very little, quite honestly, around the holidays I use, I usually will get a card or some sort of mailer. But it’s I can’t think of anyone and I’m not in any way insinuating the people that I choose for my taxes or for the other services I employ. I have no qualms with them. They’re great, I love them. But I don’t know that any of them really send me anything personalized. And so I was thinking about this and like sending out something is better than nothing. And if you’re just going to throw a holiday card in the mail, hey, that’s better than sending nothing. But I would think if you have the time, and you can start now because we’re only in in the middle of October is maybe even just write one or two sentences on the card specific to that individual. And again, I know if you have hundreds and hundreds of people in your database, that’s not going to be super easy to do. But I will tell you the idea of a handwritten note, and I’m not suggesting we all write handwritten notes for every single person for the holidays, but just a sentence or two about Something about that person, you know, even if it’s just hope you and the kids have a great holiday or hope you and your husband have a great holiday. And if you’re like struggling on what to write about, really, this is where social media comes in very handy, or LinkedIn, right? Go to LinkedIn, go to Instagram, go to Facebook, look up your clients see what they’re up to. And you could write on the Holiday Card, hope you have a great holidays. Oh, I just saw you got back from Barbados. That sounds amazing, right? Or that looked amazing. Anything like that? I think personalized is just because I get I might get 10 cards in the mail, but none of them have any personalization. So that’s just my thought, again, I know it’s a little bit of work. But I would remember that card would would mean a lot more to me, if someone took a few, you know, 30 seconds to write something
Carrie McCormick 15:46 that is a great tip. And that is so true. Because I do I get cards from like, the bank or tax accountants or whoever it is. And it’s just it’s, you know, got a printed label on the front, it’s got, you know, their signatures even printed. So it’s like, I’m sure they don’t even know that that card went out to me. And again, the gesture is nice. I’m glad I made their mailing list. But if someone wrote a personal note, even if it said Happy Holidays and had a hand signature, it goes much further. I love that idea, especially getting a little more personal with a trip or a baby or wedding or whatever it is. That’s that’s huge.
D.J. Paris 16:23 Awesome. Well, I think that just about wraps us up. But before we wrap up, I want to obviously remind our listeners, if you are a buyer or a seller and investor or renter, and you’re looking for a great realtor, if it was me, I would want to choose one of the top producing ones in Chicago, because that just seems like a good idea. So Carrie McCormick is at the very, very top of that mountain. So Carrie, if there are people that want to work with you, what is the best way they should reach out?
Carrie McCormick 16:53 Absolutely. So always call me I’m always working 24/7 So 312-961-4612 Or you can shoot me a quick email to Kerry ca RR ie at@properties.com. But please do if there’s any questions just about market in general, about the panel I spoke on about marketing. I’m always loving to give back and you know, give free advice. So anyone out there if you need anything, always just call me.
D.J. Paris 17:23 Wonderful. Well, thank you to everyone who continue to listen, we’re so grateful for our audience. So grateful to our guest host Carrie who comes on tirelessly and selflessly who does not have time to do this. We were actually supposed to book do this yesterday and she’s like, Oh my god, I have a showing and I was like of course you have a showing. That makes perfect sense. That’s how busy she is. So we’re so grateful to Carrie. So thank you on behalf of the audience and on behalf of Carrie and myself to the audience. Thank you for listening, telephoned pass this around to other brokers who you think could benefit from hearing from from from from Mavericks like care like Carrie and continue to listen and carry we will see you next month. Thank you
New video feature! In addition to continuing to produce the long-form audio interviews with top 1% producers, we’re also going to serve you up some bite-sized video goodness!
Keeping It Real Podcast producer Liz Lape is here to guide you on an actionable strategy to help your business. It’s short, helpful, and also on video!
In today’s Liz Lesson she discusses why real estate brokers should price their seller’s properties ONLY in multiples of 10k.
Transcript
Liz Lape 0:04 Hey, I was late producer for keeping it real podcast and this is a list lesson. Did you know that you should be pricing your listings in multiples of 10,000 for example, 300,000 or 310,000. The reason for this might not be so obvious. Let’s say someone is looking to spend 300,000 on home, and you’re selling a 300,000 home but President 299,000 to be competitive. The problem with this has to do with the way people search online. If a buyer is looking for a home on Zillow for 300,000, they might make 300,000 Their minimum and your listing will never be saved. In fact, studies show that by pricing and multiples of 10,000 these listings get 50% More views. So list all your homes for sale in multiples of 10,000 Thanks. See you next time.
Danielle Dowell is one of the most successful Chicago brokers, but perhaps the most incredible part of her story is that she moved to Chicago knowing only ONE person. After a year in real estate she became a top broker and has remained one for the past twelve years. As her business grew, she realized it was time to add more staff. Danielle founded The Dowell Group in 2015 which now has ten members. She’s routinely asked to speak at conferences, television, and now, on our podcast. In this episode she explains how she found success and how you can, too!
D.J. Paris 0:00 This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Quicken Loans real estate professionals. When you work with Quicken Loans, you have an agent relationship manager available to you and your team. These dedicated experts are part of the agent relations team. They serve as your single point of coordination so you can count on them to keep you in the loop throughout your client’s entire home buying process, call 888-980-2891 or go to real estate dot Quicken loans.com Today, call for cost information and conditions equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states NMLS consumer access.org Number 3030. And now onto the show.
Hello, and welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made for brokers by brokers. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment, we have an interview with the great Danielle doll. Before we get to Danielle, a couple of quick items. Everyone who is listening, you need to follow us on Facebook. So go to facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod why? Well, we wanted to make give you an actual reason to follow us on Facebook, we post daily content, we find articles all over the web that will help you build your real estate business, we post one of those a day plus, our producer, the great Liz Lape does a video once a week called Liz lessons where she for about a minute or two talks about something that you can take action on immediately to grow your business. So again, go to facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And also if you want to stream all of our old episodes, which you can also find on Facebook, go to our website, right, which is keeping it real pod.com every single episode we’ve done, we’ve done well over 105 or six of them at this point, you can go back and listen to every single interview we’ve done and learn how to grow your business like the top 1% producers do. And then lastly, don’t forget to tell a friend the way that we have grown this business by spending literally $0 Since we started is by word of mouth. So if this content is valuable to you, and I suspect it hopefully would be if you’re listening, make sure to tell every other real estate professional, you know this exists. And also if you have ideas of people we should be interviewing and talking to on the show, send us that information as well. Again, we always say thank you to our listeners and also to our wonderful guests who take time out of their busy day. And they don’t have time to do this right. The people we interview are way too busy to talk to a dummy like me, but they do it anyway. And we’re super grateful so and we also of course are grateful to all of you who listened. So thank you guys so much. And now on to our interview with Danielle doll.
Today on the show, we have Danielle doll of the dowel group. Daniel is a top real estate broker since 2007. She founded the doll group in 2015 with a goal to provide consistent service for clients from the city to the suburbs. And their group actually is pretty interesting. Instead of having everyone do his particular role. What they prefer to do at the doll group is match clients to agents and brokers based on personality, price point and area. Adele group provides attention to detail to all their clients aware that the business they love is dependent on relationships, they will always go the extra mile Whether you’re buying, selling, renting, investing or building, they are there to lessen the stress of Sodhi associated with your real estate transactions. You can follow them at the doll group r e.com. Go to their website. Check it out. Also they are on Facebook, Instagram, just search for the doll group. It will pop right up and today. As I mentioned, we’re talking to Danielle who is the the lead the team leader, the founder and somebody who is a huge powerhouse in this industry. So welcome, Danielle. Thank you.
Danielle Dowell 4:15 Thank you. Thank you for having me on your podcast.
D.J. Paris 4:17 We are so thrilled to have you. You’ve been on our guest list for like since since the beginning. And so we’re so grateful that you have the time to do this. You have such an amazing origin story. Tell us how you got into real estate.
Danielle Dowell 4:32 So I got into real estate I was in the hospitality industry and I lived in a couple of cities Dallas, San Diego St. Louis was the last city that I lived in before moving here. And I didn’t like the hospitality industry. I was 24 I think and I thought man, I don’t really like the late nights. I had an associate’s degree I had. I was supposed to play sports in college decided not to last minute which was I think the best thing I ever did But I didn’t have a bachelor’s and I thought, well, what can I do to make the most money and that I’m going to like, and that wouldn’t be all these nights. And at the time, I had some friends of mine girlfriends owned an appraisal company in St. Louis. So I kind of helped them out decided that wasn’t for me. My brother was in mortgages at the time, he was younger than me. And so I thought, well, I’ll get try to get to cells. So I moved to Chicago. I didn’t know anybody. I knew one person. And I got onto Craigslist. They moved in 2007 2007, like late 2000. I think late 2006. Actually, like I want to say I moved in like November. Yeah. So I got on Craigslist, in which I still hire off of Craigslist. I love it. But so I got on, and I kind of looked and I found a woman that was a top producer. And she was looking for an assistant. And so I went in and interviewed with her. And then I became her assistant for probably a good, I would say probably two and a half years, if not a little bit longer than I helped her with showings and things of that nature afterwards. And then stayed on her team. And then my sister moved here for a while and helped me for about five or six years. And then we just kind of decided that we were ready to do our own thing. And so we went off. And that’s when we started the dowel group.
D.J. Paris 6:16 Wow. And how many team members do you have today?
Danielle Dowell 6:20 Right now we have 10. So we have two office managers who are licensed everyone in our team is licensed. And then we’ve got eight agents.
D.J. Paris 6:30 Yeah, and that’s, and we should mention to all our listeners, and normally we wait to the end, which is really stupid of me, because not everyone makes it to the end. Because, you know, they don’t want to hear my voice for 45 minutes. But Danielle is team is always looking for brokers that might be a good fit. Can you tell the audience a little bit about what you’re looking for and who might be a good fit for your team?
Danielle Dowell 6:52 So yeah, so I’ve never really recruited, but I’ve come through different avenues of finding people and some people have reached out directly to us. So right now we’re looking for we do city and suburbs. So we’re trying to build a little bit more in the suburbs right now. So in the suburbs, I definitely am looking for someone on the North Shore, also looking for a western suburb agent. And then in the city, we definitely looking for someone on the south side. So that’s kind of who we’re looking. But even if you’re anywhere else, if you think you would be a good fit. If you think the personalities would match, like I like to sit down with everyone. And it has to be a win win. So I have to be able to give someone that’s coming on the team something and they’ve got to I’ve got to be able to see that they’re going to be able to give something to the team.
D.J. Paris 7:36 Sure. And the best way they could reach out is just through your website, or through social media, I
Danielle Dowell 7:41 guess. Yeah, I mean, you can call me you can email me. Yeah, either way, social media is fine. If you’re interested, one of the best hires that we’ve had over the years, she actually had reached out to us two years before I hired her. And she was asking if I needed a buyer’s agent. And that’s not how our team works. Exactly. So I said, you don’t that’s not how it works. But I said, I’ll meet you for you know, I don’t know lunch or, you know, for breakfast, or coffee or something. And she said, Oh, it’s okay. And she came back a year later. And we ended up connecting at that point. And she’s been on the team for a while, and she does an amazing job.
D.J. Paris 8:18 Yeah, that’s really important point, too, is a lot of teams are not structured the way you guys have structured, which is everyone has their own agent, and you’re matching the client up to the individual versus hey, this person is the transaction coordinator. And this person is, you know, the person who has the showings. And is that is that? Do I have that? Right?
Danielle Dowell 8:36 Yeah. So I mean, I felt, I think what we do, it’s not the easiest, and I guess, the most proficient way financially to do it. It does cost more money, I think, than how other teams are structured. But I think it gives the client more individualized. You know, we’re know the client better everyone is on the same page, they’re not getting passed off to someone that they’ve never met or haven’t been dealing with along to the transaction, which I always felt strange when that happened. So kind of how we put together is it’s to two agents per team, and then an admin, so there’s always someone that can answer an email a question, there’s always someone that can show the property because we probably do about 75% sell side. So there’s no reason for us not to be able to show something I mean, and if if anything happens, even if those two people can’t at least there’s someone else on the team that can and I just think it’s for us this you know, type of clientele that we have, it makes them feel more at ease. They’re always getting consistent feedback. And so my thought processes, give more feedback, give people more information than what they know what to do with and then usually they won’t, you know, try to call you.
D.J. Paris 9:49 That’s actually so my my boss who was my real estate agent back in like 2005 When I was in the IT world. He had a philosophy that he told me said Is that he said, I never wanted a client to have to call me first. So which I think is a great customer service philosophy like I will I will give all the information. So I know and I never had to call and say like, what’s going on? What’s, what’s the next step? He just always told me?
Danielle Dowell 10:15 Yeah, I think that’s great. Because, you know, when people start calling, there’s a reason why they’re calling because they’re not getting something that they want. So if you’re giving everything to them upfront, and you’re giving them the ideas that you think that they need to do, but letting them make the decision on them, I filled the transaction goes much smoother, and everyone’s always happier.
D.J. Paris 10:35 Yeah, more communication versus letter more information versus less, I guess, isn’t that probably
Danielle Dowell 10:40 for sure. I mean, even if you have something sitting on the market, give them ideas of things to do. They may say yes, they may say no, but at least you’re still trying to work on it. And you’re trying to push them past the goal line.
D.J. Paris 10:53 Yeah, and we should mention that you are just an amazing worker, like, in addition to building your own business, you have a development company in Missouri, you’ve got another you have a home there as well. And you just you’re a you’re a good worker, obviously. You wrote something super funny. So I would Daniel’s permission, I asked you if I could read this just because I thought it was super cute. She goes I have no kids. No and nor am I married, nor do I have plans to and I thought that was funny because I was I was actually just on my way to Tiffany to get you a ring.
Danielle Dowell 11:25 That I wouldn’t take the ring.
D.J. Paris 11:26 Okay. The good news is it’s 17 Karat. The bad news is it’s cubic ciconia. So well, that’s that’s the trade off. We just were just keep that to ourselves. And yeah, that’s okay. All right, then I’ll just I’ll keep the room for someone else. But anyway, no, but that was it was very cute. The point is, is Daniel treats this like a business because it is her business. And she’s incredibly busy. But also, you know, finds the time to give back to our podcast. And she you just did actually WGN thing with our managing broker and Joel shop, and which I saw a few weeks ago. And anyway, you’re you’re out there and constantly giving back. And I think that’s really, really a Hallmark and really consistent among all the people, these top one percenters I’ve interviewed, they always find time to give back. I think that’s really cool. So thank you.
Danielle Dowell 12:14 Yeah, I think you should it’s, I think it benefits everyone. I know, when I was first in the industry, I was trying to talk to as many people as I could to figure out how they can become successful, or I just watched a lot of people. And so I think by having these certain outlets, it’s good for anyone that’s coming up to be able to understand what they can do better, or how they should go about proceeding. Because the one thing in real estate is everyone does it differently. So there’s not just one way to do everything. So I think it’s really important too. I like working with a ton of different people too. So I can see how they all work. Because I take a little bit from everyone. And then there’s some stuff that I don’t like the way they do. So I don’t do it. But in the stuff that I like, and I’m like, oh, that’s genius, I should add that into my plan. So I think you constantly have to be learning. And so these type of things are very, you know, you can turn on the podcast, you can listen to a bunch of these top producers, and take little bits and pieces that you like.
D.J. Paris 13:07 Yeah, that’s the whole intention of our show here. And obviously, a lot of the other things you’re that you’re involved with is listening to you know, you’ve been on a lot of panels, and discussions about how you built your business. Can we talk a little bit about that? So you moved here, and I understand you were an assistant, so you probably got a great education with the person you were working with. But you know, at some point, you did decide to go off on your own at that point. Did you know a lot of people in Chicago, were you still was your network still pretty small? Or how did you build it?
Danielle Dowell 13:39 No, at that point, it wasn’t I was we were like my sister and I were already producing fairly well, just on a team. And so I we never I never had thought of building a large team. I went off thinking me my sister Assistant, we’re just going to do our thing and just continue on. And then I had people contact me, oh, hey, can I be in our team or, you know, I need to sit open houses, you have a lot of open houses, it was just really random. So I just kind of hired whoever came to me within reason. And most of them I had known were like friends in the industry usually hadn’t been in the industry that long. And we’re just looking for a little bit more help and mentorship. So that’s how it started. And then since then it’s been a massive learning curve. So now it’s just not the same way. Now we’re much more particular about who we hire, we want to make sure that they get along with us cultural wise, because our team is very tight. We have a really good team, we spend a lot of time together. And I am very aware that like one bad apple can really do horrible results to any sort of group or any sort of whether it’s a company or industry or whatever. So I want to make sure that everyone’s on the same page and they understand that what we’re all doing is for a common goal for everyone. And then also, like I said before, I want to make sure if you come on the team that you’re not just coming on the team blindly like there’s something I need to be able to give to you and there’s something you need to be able to do To me, because that’s the only way that a team’s really going to work where relationships really going to work. It has to be a win win for both parties. Yeah, I
D.J. Paris 15:07 think I think that’s right. And I think that’s a really great attitude. And we probably attract a lot of great people as a result of not only your reputation, but being able to offer that to to someone coming on board and saying, look, it’s a symbiotic relationship, you know, what can you do? And here’s what we do. And let’s make it work. I have a question for you. Because you’ve been you literally moved here knowing nobody, or one person, I guess, but And you came from a tiny town too. So it’s not like all your friends in town moved to Chicago, you know, from Missouri, where I grew up in Peoria, which is, you know, a moderately, like, sizable town in Illinois. But a lot of people I knew moved to Chicago, you probably knew nobody that moved from, you know, the Ozarks up to Chicago. So if you were newly licensed, and you were listening, and wanted to hear like advice from you about or someone at your level, what would you tell somebody to do, who’s either new to the business or really wants to, like, take this to the next level.
Danielle Dowell 16:03 So what I did well, back in the day, nobody did rentals. So the market was so good. So I emailed every agent in the office and the company saying I would do the rentals. And so I did that, that was a ton of my business. And a lot of that turned into buyers down the road or even, you know, sellers down the road. So that’s what I did, I also set a ton of open houses I would set for a weekend. So I set like two Saturday to Sunday, I would only set certain areas, mostly new construction, I would look off market for other realtors, I knew this whole new construction, ask them what they had coming up so that I had a list of off market opportunities to when I was at these open houses. And then I would tell these people, you know, hey, I can offer you information that no one else can have, we would probably go and look at some of these places, but they always ended up buying something on the MLS. So I had a really good year of where I did a lot of those and the woman that I was working for had those listings. And then I would just also anyone else in the company that had listings, I would just search, I would set myself on a search for like certain listings that I wanted in certain areas. And then I would ask them if I could do their open houses, which most people don’t really complain about. They’re like, yes, yeah. And by the
D.J. Paris 17:08 way, I’m gonna cry, because you just said something really brilliant that I don’t want to gloss over. So what Danielle says a lot of people listening are like, Well, okay, how do I get open houses? And here’s, here’s what Danielle essentially did. She went into the MLS and set up search. And you can easily do this, where she probably put her company name, she defined a geographic area, which you can now just draw, you know, in the, in the tool, geographically where you want. And literally, you could just get new listings, you know, sent to you every single morning. So you could do that. And then you can reach directly out to those brokers, even if you don’t know them personally, and they’re in your office or affiliated with a company and just say, Hey, I would love to do an open house for you. And Daniels, right like that. It’s usually a win win, because it makes the seller look great. I’m sorry, it makes the listing agent look great to the seller. Yeah. So if you don’t have this, like search setup, like it’s, it’ll take 30 seconds to set up. And then you get notified every time somebody in your office. It has a new listing in an area you’re interested in, like brilliant. That’s a brilliant idea.
Danielle Dowell 18:12 Yeah. And then I just kept those lists. So I think the first I think year and a half I was in I did not keep a list, maybe even tears, I could kick myself for doing it. But I’ve made every single person sign in. And I would have that list. So I still have those lists. And I put them into like, you know, I have a spreadsheet. So I have like a eblasts list that I continued to eblast. And just started to build people up that way. I always I was actually working at I worked at some bars to part time, I would always get people’s cards, I would always immediately go on to LinkedIn, and friend them. And that in all this stuff doesn’t it’s not going to get you business in like the first six months or a year. But like when people start to see your name and down the road, it’ll get you business the next two or three years. So if you plan on staying in the industry, longevity. It’s great. It’s like it’s you. You have like the spirit. And people at first are kind of like, yeah, this bartender just as such, he’s a real estate agent, sure, whatever. Everyone’s a real estate agent. Because I mean, that’s kind of what you know, everyone thinks, and it’s pretty hysterical. But once you start to get successful, you start to build a business behind you. Those people recognize it, and then they’re like, oh, wow, you know, and then you get to have their business. So it’s just collecting as meeting and collecting as much information from people that you can and just making sure that you input it. So I hear so many people to get business cards, or that said open houses and they never are consistent with keeping the information and put it into whether it’s a CRM and Excel spreadsheet, whatever you whatever you use. It’s just you have to be consistent with it. And it takes a lot of time and it’s super boring. And I remember when I first started before I had any sort of help or assistance. You know, I would get up in the morning at like six and work until 12 at night because I was consistent because I did everything I was supposed to do. As soon as I met someone for lunch or coffee. I immediately sent him an email that day follow up saying hey, it was Nice to meet you, hopefully we can do this business together, you know, how can I help you here? Like I was always very, very consistent. And I mean, it took for five years, I call it like my dark period, I really didn’t do much. I mean, you know, that’s I just focused on my business, especially not having anyone here. I mean, I didn’t go to college with people and couldn’t call them my family wasn’t in the business before. Like you said, I didn’t know a single person here. So I had to be very diligent on my, on the way that I kept myself organized. And as far as like contacts going, and knowing stuff and reaching out to people about certain things. So, you know, I saw something that that made sense for this person to see. So I would send it their way, you know, it’s just, it’s, it’s that’s just doing being consistent. I think that’s the number one thing in the business, no matter whether it’s selling, marketing, whatever you’re doing, you have to be consistent.
D.J. Paris 20:49 Yeah, no, you’re right. And what’s funny, we have Ryan to April comes on once a month. I don’t know if you know, Ryan, but he he does a coaching episode. And he has a statistic, which I didn’t know, which is 16% of your network transacts in real estate every single year, and some transact twice. They sell, sell and buy, right. So anywhere from 16. If you just know, 100 people that could possibly be 16 to 32 transactions in people you already know, but how often are you staying in touch? How often are you, you know, letting them know that if they ever do have those needs, you know that please contact you. And obviously you did those things, but a lot of brokers don’t. So it’s a good reminder of the fundamentals of like, stay in touch, make sure you’re consistently sending people items of value, as Brian Buffini would say, to make sure that they think about you and they actually eventually need a real estate broker.
Danielle Dowell 21:41 Yeah, and if you don’t have much business to or if you’re not from Chicago, so I called all my family and friends and people that I knew, because I’d actually lived in several different cities before this. And you know, at the time, we were younger, so a lot of them weren’t buying, but I still call them and I tell them, hey, if you need a top realtor, you know, obviously now we’re top realtors, but we can I can get you a referral. Sure. And so even be able to get like a 25 or 30% referral after doing absolutely nothing. I’d rather do that all day.
D.J. Paris 22:11 Yeah, me too. That’s, that’s a brilliant idea. It’s funny too, because like, I have my license, I don’t produce and I was thinking, I always use myself as an example. I’m like, I’ve probably too busy. I have a you know, sort of different job. But I said the reason why none of my friends have ever asked me to help them buy or sell a home is they have no idea. I’m a real, I have a real estate license, because I don’t do that as day to day. And as a result, nobody asks me to help them buy or sell a home, which actually is fine for me. But it’s a good example of everyone else should know what it is you do if this is your profession, even if it’s part time. And you know, it’s just one of those things, that consistency is everything. And just like you were saying, just reminding to reminding the audience to consistently stay in touch. Let’s talk about you know, in the gosh, there’s so many different brokers who do it so many different ways. Tell us a little bit about the client experience for your team. So you know, a buyer seller and investor or renter comes your way. How do you guys feel that you’re different from from other teams and other brokers out there.
Danielle Dowell 23:12 So we don’t do just buyer or seller. You know, I don’t have just the buyer seller agent, because in my mind, in order to be able to negotiate, you need to know how to do both sides really well. And when you’re on the buyer side, you’re doing the same thing you would on the sell side, but opposite, right? But you need to know how to talk to all parties in a way that you’ve done both sides. So for us, I think our biggest differences that we do, I put people together on the team, it’s not like a round robin, oh, you’re next to have the lead. It’s nothing like that. Like it’s all who I choose to put on to the different transactions and all of my transactions I could list with. So you’ll every transaction, you’ll see in them a lot size code list on there, it’s because I always call us with someone on the team. So, um, but yeah, so basically what we do is based off of where they’re looking neighborhood price points, and obviously you have clients to you have to understand that maybe they are going to want a little bit more of you, instead of having someone else. A lot of our clients now that we’ve worked with for years are like we don’t care, just give us whoever we know that will be done. Well, and I think we’re totally upfront about it, too. So we show up at the listing presentation, especially if it’s somebody that’s brand new with both people that you’re going to be talking to I don’t go to the listing presentation and then throw someone else on the deal because obviously I could see how that can be upsetting to any client I would be upset with it. So we make sure and put the extra effort in to have both people there so they’re meeting both people so they know who they’re working with. And you know, and then immediately everyone is CCD on the transactions, whether it’s text, email, etc. But I think matching up personality, price point neighborhood everything like that is really important. So you know, even from like if we go on, let’s say a cold listing presentation like we’re Googling and finding out all we can about the background of like who we’re meeting at their house because why would you not right The more information you know, when you have, you know, the easier it is to talk to the client and to find out like what you have in common. Yeah. And
D.J. Paris 25:08 by the way, I want you to pause for a second because not to disrupt your flow. But you just said something that triggered something with me that I thought would be really helpful to the audience. So Daniel is talking about, hey, do your homework right, before you go meet with your sellers, your buyers, make sure you know, at least enough make sure you know at least more about that person than maybe the other broker that you don’t know who you’re up against. Who’s an invisible person because they’re interviewing three realtors, right? So what like, what would that actually look like? Well, this just happened to me this morning. So I was publishing a podcast episode. And I, we podcast, we published the links, just like we’ll do for this one on LinkedIn, and Facebook and Twitter. But anyway, I was on LinkedIn, because I had, like, had to fix this link. And I and I always forget, this is a thing, that if you go to LinkedIn, and you go to the your little feed, you can see every one, I think they do it a couple times a week, everyone who’s gotten a new job, they just, they just aggregate it for you. And you could just literally click and part of doing your research, obviously, on your people that you’re gonna be meeting with is, you know, look them up, find where they work, maybe even find out a little bit about the company, they work for us, you have something to talk about, or what their hobbies are, or whatever. But even if you don’t have clients, you should be congratulating everyone, you know, on LinkedIn, whenever they get a new job i and i just realized like, oh, yeah, I you know, anyone could do that.
Danielle Dowell 26:24 Oh, absolutely. I mean, we definitely should. And I think LinkedIn too. I mean, I think it’s getting used more often now. But for while they’re, you know, people randomly I think you said they didn’t use it as much. So when you did respond to someone on LinkedIn, in my opinion, you got a much better response than you would like on a Facebook or Instagram or something like that.
D.J. Paris 26:42 Yeah, for sure. But yeah, so you know, what Daniels team does that I think is really interesting. And again, not the way that the vast majority of teams I’m aware of work is, you know, they meet as a team, they figure out who would be the best fit, and then that person takes the lead. And then Danielle is always there to assist if she’s not the primary person. And yeah, that’s huge. And tell us a little bit about how you feel you’re different than other brokers, like what are you guys? What do you feel that you guys are doing? That maybe sets you apart from aside from the team structure?
Danielle Dowell 27:15 Well, I think there’s, you know, a lot of things. I don’t know, it’s, you know, I think it’s gets a little bit too hard. It’s hard to differentiate yourself sometimes. Right? So it’s just kind of who you are, and like, how you think about things and what the bigger picture is. And so for me personally, and I think what I try to, you know, tell the team and explain to the team is like, with real estate, there’s so many ways to make money. And so like, even within our team, like we talked about doing some rehab work together, like I do some flips a couple of year, you know, someone on the team is like, hey, like I can do one with you, I maybe can’t put as much money in. But you know, I’d like to experience it, I’d like to do that. So that kind of stuff we’re trying to do more of. Also, I always thought like building the team. And this is just kind of internally more than like, I guess, externally for the clients. But I think it does help the clients out too. I mean, when we have people that know construction from the beginning to the end and know how to rehab a home, that’s only going to help our clients out. But so a lot of its internals, what I’m saying about the team, but like even for Timo, you know, when I started, I worked so many hours, I mean, it was insane how many hours I put in and how hard I worked. But I’ve always been a hard worker, I’ve always had like two or three jobs. I played sports competitively on tons of teams, like that’s just always been my natural personality. I assumed that that was everyone else’s personality, I realized that Absolutely. Is not everyone else’s personality.
D.J. Paris 28:37 Expression. It’s never crowded along the extra mile, right?
Danielle Dowell 28:40 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so what I found, though, is that plenty of people are really good at what they do. It’s just you have to kind of help them find that spot. And you also can’t expect people to do as much as you do. So what I did is I thought, well, if I you know, on the team, if we can have a system and granted, this is still in the making, and it will be for a while. But if we can do something where everyone can still come, they can still make good money, but they can actually take a vacation, which I don’t think it took a vacation my first five years. You know, if they can have that downtime, I know that that downtime allows you to really be creative and to be able to come back and do things in a much better way. Whereas I think just working people to the bone, I mean, people will do it. I mean, I’ve done it, but I don’t think it’s the it gets you the best benefit. And I don’t think it actually it doesn’t it doesn’t end up helping your clients outright. So to me, like it’s just a lot of things internally in the team that I wanted to change that I wanted to be and make really positive inside in order to hopefully create that positivity and to carry that outside to our clients. So it’s not so much what we do differently to our clients. It’s know much what we do inside differently that then helps our clients.
D.J. Paris 29:54 Yeah, I mean balances balances everything. It’s funny too, because I saw Daniel speak at um I’m at a an event just a few weeks ago, and she was on the panel with Matt Larose, who’s who’s not yet been on the show, it will certainly get him on, hopefully soon. But he’s, he’s an anomaly, right? Because he wants to work 24/7. And then it came to you after he was, you know, sort of shocked, like, stun the audience by saying, I just work around the clock, and I love it, it feels like I love it, too. But I also need time off. And having that balance, for sure helps you, you know, treat your clients. I mean, assuming you’re somebody that needs balance, which, you know, maybe Matt, you know, he’s happy working as much as he does. But yeah, I think I think you’re right, having that balance enables you to be a better broker, right?
Danielle Dowell 30:37 Well, yeah, and I just know, when I’m super busy, and I’ve got a ton of stuff going on, you know, I think that it’s you, you’re my emails are shorter, right? They’re not as the salutations aren’t as good. And no matter how much you think that you’re just getting the information across, at the end of the day, if you have to spend an extra two minutes to write a nicer email, people are going to remember that they’re going to remember that you said, Hey, how are you doing? I hope all as well, instead of just see a five, right? So, you know, that’s what I think is going the extra mile what make people pay attention, especially in a world right now where everything’s just so immediate. It’s just like, yes, no, yes, no, this that. Plus, you know, when it comes to a text and an email, you sometimes it’s hard to really read how the person is feeling, right. And so for our clients, we definitely don’t want them to feel that we’re being short, or that we don’t have the time for them. So you know, we want to go that extra mile. And which brings up kind of something that we haven’t talked about, but I’ve always believed in. And this is probably because honestly, I don’t have kids, I’m not married, I have probably extra income to do so. But hiring more people and doing it in a timely manner, so that you’re not playing catch up, and also that you have the time to do these really small things that actually matter that matter a lot, in my opinion. Yeah, can
D.J. Paris 31:49 you talk a little about a few of the small things that you now have more time to do?
Danielle Dowell 31:54 Yeah, so for me, I mean, even for me to be able to go and to do more appointments and to do more meetings and things that I need to do for myself hiring you know, another in house person that can sit and at the office, that can even if sometimes there’s maybe they’re they’re not doing a ton of stuff like they do enough, you know, and everyone that works for us is really good, because I have to say, the women that I have in my office right now are the best, I mean, they will work nights and weekends if need be. So if they’re not working at some point in time during the day, or if they want to, like stay home and say can I work from home, I don’t really care, I don’t care actually where you work from as long as the work is done. Now, granted, we do have to have people in the office for printing and for, you know, stuff of that nature. But I mean, at the end of the day, like to me, it’s just do the work, if you’ll do the work, I don’t really care, you know, per se when you’re doing the work, if that makes sense. So, but for me, I hire people beforehand, because I feel like I can always have seen when things are gonna get a little bit more heavier, it’s gonna be a little bit more busier. And in all honesty, I mean, we need time to train people to and to make sure that they know what they’re doing. You just can’t hire someone to expect for them to be ready to go. I mean, it takes months. So to me, I’ve always rather put money into the business, I’m also a person to that didn’t start making money. And they just went out and started like buying all sorts of crazy things. And not to say that I mean, everyone can do their thing. It is what it is. But I’ve always been more like probably because of how I grew up just a definitely more financially conservative within means. But if I know something could make me money, then I’m not financially conservative. That makes sense. Yeah. And for people
D.J. Paris 33:30 who are listening who may be, you know, feel like they don’t yet have the resources to hire people to help them you probably do because we are now in such a global gig economy that there are websites you can go to to say, here’s what I’m looking for, maybe it’s a virtual assistant, maybe it’s somebody to help with your marketing. And you can find people from all over the world that are incredibly inexpensive and effective. And so even if you just wanted somebody to, you know, help you with staying on top of your client, your your network, and making sure you’re, you know, staying on top of that they people can help with that. And it’s not that expensive, either. And then, you know, if you want somebody full time, you know, and they’re here in the office, that’ll be more expensive. And maybe you can work up to that. But you can always hire people ad hoc to on the way along the way.
Danielle Dowell 34:15 Yeah, I think a lot of people get scared about hiring someone because number one, it’s the cost that’s associated with it. But also it’s like, what if I don’t have the business, but I think the big thing that you have to understand when you hire someone is you yourself have to be organized. So if you’re not, it’s never gonna work, hire someone. So I get up at six in the morning every day to start sending out emails and to get my day plan for people that I have to get stuff to. So you have to be prepared to do that. Because hiring someone it makes life easier after a while, but it’s also another job. So now you’re having to manage and you know, take care of people. So it’s not as easy as like hiring someone and just throwing everything at them and saying like, Oh, it’s great. Now I can go hang out at the pool all day and go golfing. Like that’s not how it works. So you have to really be in it and a business sense and really understand what it takes to hire someone, it’s, it’s, it’s not definitely the easiest thing in the world. But once everyone’s trained up, then you can start seeing the levels of your productivity go up. It’s amazing.
D.J. Paris 35:12 Yeah, I’ve always felt like you should focus on the three things that you really love and are the most passionate about, and then get you the best results. And then try your best to offload them offload all the other stuff to you know, other people, you can delegate and delegate, it’s never been cheaper to be able to do that. And a lot of it is stuff that you know, the same skill set that is great for sales and marketing might not be the same skill set. That’s great for paperwork, right? So you can find places people to do that side of it. And you know, and then you can be out there doing the thing you love to do the best that probably will make you the most amount of money to absolutely. Well, I look, I think you’ve said it all. And I want to remind all of our listeners that if you are a broker and are interested, alright look, whether you’re a broker, or whether you’re a client, a buyer, seller, renter, investor developer that is looking to either work for Daniel’s group or work with Danielle and her group. Daniel, by the way, they can always visit your website, which is the dowel group rv.com. We will also put that in the notes. You can also find them of course on Facebook and Instagram, just search for the dollar group, it’ll pop right up. And then what’s the best way that someone should reach out to you? You mentioned phone and email before Do you mind sharing that with the audience?
Danielle Dowell 36:26 Oh, yeah, you can reach me on my cellular device anytime. It’s 312-391-5655. And then my email is D dowel at Danielle dow.com.
D.J. Paris 36:40 Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy busy day to do this. I know you do a lot of these kinds of things. So we appreciate it. And, again, we want also want to thank all the listeners for continuing to support us. We’re over 100 episodes now. So we’re super grateful that everyone continues to listen and share. Please share this with a friend if you know any other brokers in your office that might benefit from hearing from people like Danielle, obviously, turn them on to the show, I will not be giving this cubics akoni ring to Danielle. So if maybe a future guest will want to
Danielle Dowell 37:19 anyway, a Halloween costume or something. I can use it somehow.
D.J. Paris 37:24 You want to hear a really funny story real speaking of cubic zirconia. And before I sign off i a million years ago was in a different profession. And I had a woman, I’ll try to keep this vague as to not reveal who it is. But anyway, it’s a woman who was I mean, it’s not embarrassing. It’s just I don’t even remember this point really who she was she was married to but it’s a woman who was married to a professional hockey player. And she had this beautiful ring and we were just meeting to do a business thing. And I sent home that your ring is amazing. She goes she sort of like whispers it’s cubic ciconia. And I go Oh, really? She goes yeah, my husband’s like this big, big time hockey player. But she goes, I thought it was kind of silly that he would spend like 30 grand on a ring. So she goes so we got a fake one. And we just think it’s hysterical that everyone thinks it’s and I was like That is so funny. And there was like just a joke between them. But that was literally her ring. So I’ve always thought that was kind of a funny story. But
Danielle Dowell 38:15 I mean, whatever works for you. I think you know, I mean, see these aren’t bad. I mean, think about that, though. She’s out and about if someone steals it.
D.J. Paris 38:25 Yeah, I mean, you could just leave it at the table at a restaurant and wouldn’t feel too bad about it. Well, anyway, everyone who’s listening, work with Danielle, whether you’re a broker, and you’re looking to join a team, reach out to them to see if you’re a fit. And again, if you’re a client, obviously, their reputation speaks for itself. She and her group are in the top 1/3 of 1%. That’s how how a crazy amount of success they’ve been having. So they’re obviously doing everything right. So visit them on the web as well, doll group, the dial group, r e.com. And Danielle, thank you so much for taking time to be on the show.
Danielle Dowell 38:59 Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me and for that new marketing statistic that will now be on all our posts.
D.J. Paris 39:05 All right. All right. Well, for everyone listening. Thank you and we’ll see you guys on the next episode. Thanks, Danielle.
Before real estate Danny Lewis was a public relations and advertising executive. He offered to sell his grandfather’s home, and after that transaction, realized he had caught the real estate bug. Danny converted the marketing skills he had developed into a successful real estate career quickly, building not only a successful practice for himself, but also a strong team now known as Lewis Real Estate Group. In this episode Danny discusses not only how to build a team, but also why he recently moved to Dreamtown. As one of the youngest top 1% brokers in Chicago, he continues to expand his reach and success!
D.J. Paris 0:00 This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Quicken Loans real estate professionals. When you work with Quicken Loans, you have an agent relationship manager available to you and your team. These dedicated experts are part of the agent relations team. They serve as your single point of coordination so you can count on them to keep you in the loop throughout your client’s entire home buying process, call 888-980-2891 or go to real estate dot Quicken loans.com. Today, call for cost information and conditions equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states NMLS consumer access.org Number 3030 And now under the shop
Welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate brokers for real estate brokers. My name is DJ Parris, I am your host and guide through the show. As always, we want to start out by saying thank you to our listeners, and our hosts both who are spending their time either listening or contributing to the podcast, we greatly appreciate it. And a couple of quick announcements before we get started, we do have a sponsor that will be coming on a future episode. So we’re very excited about that. And if you’d like to be a sponsor, for any of our upcoming episodes, you can always reach out to us, the easiest way is go to our our website, which is keeping it real pod.com By the way, that is also the place where you can stream every episode we’ve ever done. Also, of course, we’re on iTunes, Google Play or any podcast app that you might have on your phone. Just search for keeping it real podcast, and you should find us right away. Also, please join our Facebook group, which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. We not only post of course links to all the episodes, but also links to articles that we find online that will help you with your business, as well as links to the host or sorry, the guests that we promote. So you can get an idea of what they are doing a digitally as well and follow them on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and their websites, of course. So again, thank you for listening, we are gosh, well over 100 episodes now we’re going strong or to keep going strong. And it’s because of you who continue to listen. And our waiting list to for guests to be on the show is now approaching 100. That’s how popular this podcast has become. And we’re so grateful that it seems to strike a chord and help people but we also always need your suggestions. So don’t hesitate to reach out to us, through our website through Facebook. Any way you can find us and say here’s what I want on the show, here’s who I want. And that’ll help us give you guys the best content that would be helpful for your business. So, again, let’s now move on to a really exciting interview with somebody I’ve known for many, many years. He’s a true superstar in Chicago, and a super great guy, Danny Lewis.
Today on the show, we have Danny Lewis of the Lewis Real Estate Group with Dream town. Danny is a Chicago native with a strong background in customer service sales, Public Relations and Marketing industries. See he specializes in the home buying and selling process as well as an investments leasing income producing properties and commercial, his organization attention to detail and ability to fully understand his client’s needs set him apart in the industry. He has been a top 1% Producer consistently almost since he started in real estate, which is incredible. And his production, his personal production and his team has been growing year over a year. You can visit Danny’s website at Lewis Chicago real estate.com also find him on Instagram, which is Louis Chicago real estate. And on Facebook, Danny Lewis real estate, I will post links to these for the listeners. Danny, welcome to the show.
Danny Lewis 4:10 Thanks so much for having me, DJ.
D.J. Paris 4:13 Yeah, and you and I have known each other for a number of years, I’ve always been a big fan of all the amazing success you’ve had like very quickly. So before we get to all of that, I want to hear the origin story about like, why you chose real estate how you got into real estate, if you don’t mind sharing that. Yeah, of
Danny Lewis 4:31 course. Again, thank you so much for having me on the show today. I’ve always been a fan of it is really cool to actually be on it. Yes. So let’s throw it back to 2010 I was coming out of a job in PR and advertising and working in marketing. And at the time my grandfather who was 92 at the time, decided to move to a retirement home so he was going to sell his home himself and at the time he was 92 he had his wits together and all that kind of stuff but at The same time, you know, he wasn’t he didn’t have an email address, there was no way he could sell a place on his own. Sure. So at the time, I watched shows like Million Dollar Listing and house hunters, and I saw all these Realtors making seemed like a lot of money, and having a good time doing it being their own bosses. And I thought, you know, why don’t I give it a shot. And so my first pitch was to my grandfather to convince him to let me sell his home on his behalf. And he did and he let me do it. And I just fell in love with it. I fell in love with the process, I fell in love with the fact that I had to be social, I fell in love with the fact that I was my own boss, I was making my own hours. And finally, I fell in love with the paycheck once it closed, it was, you know, a lot more than I was making in PR. So to me, it was a no brainer to transition to real estate right after that.
D.J. Paris 5:48 Wow. So you, you sold your grandfather’s home? And then you decided to I guess do this full time?
Danny Lewis 5:54 Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I got my license online, the Institute online.com sure took like, what, six weeks, maybe five weeks or something like that. It wasn’t too hard to get the license. And then once I got it, I started immediately. I got my license in October 2011. I didn’t make my first paycheck until May 2012. You know, I know at least started and probably the worst time to start in terms of October. Yeah, really? Yeah. But on top of it was 2011. And I remember that was like one of the worst years for real estate in general. But turns out actually one of the best years to buy looking back. But yeah, in terms of being a brand new broker, it was it was not easy out the gate. And there was a lot of failure and frustration to start before eventually succeeding.
D.J. Paris 6:39 Yeah. And you know, it’s funny, we’ve now interviewed, or Gosh, I don’t even know close to 100 people on the show who are all top one percenters like yourself. And the idea of not earning a paycheck for you know, six to eight to 10 months is not an uncommon story at all. In fact, it’s really unusual when somebody says, Oh, yeah, close my first deal in the first month or two, that is almost never happened on any of the people I’ve spoken with, unless, you know, they were just very lucky or had a friend that happened to be in that timeframe of when they got their license and needed to buy or sell. So can you can you talk a little bit about what you did. If you can remember back to that time, I know, everything’s so much different for you now, because you’re so successful. But back then what were you doing to setup future sales and future clients,
Danny Lewis 7:20 I would say in trying and failing. So, you know, when I was originally starting out, I was one of the first people to invest in Zillow and Trulia advertising at the time and 2011, Zillow was still brand new. So it was truly anilao. The realtors who, you know, did really well, in the great years of real estate and up to 2008. I feel like they kind of got lazy and they kind of fell off afterwards. In 2009. They didn’t really put a lot of investing and money into Zillow and Trulia, they kind of thought that people who looked on websites weren’t legit. They just felt like it wasn’t serious. So I took advantage of that. And I started out by advertising in Lincoln Park, and at the time, I think 100% was available, which is insane. That isn’t, that is insane. It is now 0% is available. Now there’s a waitlist whenever you try to get on it. So yeah, I mean, I would get these leads. And at first, they would just sit in my inbox because I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t have the confidence to say anything, I didn’t really know, you know, what I could help these people with, because I was so brand new, I didn’t have that confidence to take that, that first step. And eventually I did, obviously and made that phone calls and call people back and, and I started trying these different ways to you know, get these leads to become my clients. And I tried all these different types of, you know, pitches, all these different types of intros, etc. And eventually, I found what worked for me and settled on it. And then eventually, over time, you know, started teaching my team members how to do it. And, you know, like I said, there wasn’t immediate, like, there was a good six or seven months of zero income. But you know, once I got over the hump, and once I figured out what my niche was, and once I figured out what my pitch was, that’s when it all changed for the better.
D.J. Paris 9:09 Yeah, that is so well said. And it’s absolutely right. It’s funny, I was just at an event. Oh, actually, you were at the event with me. We were at the Zillow event a few weeks ago. And I can’t remember what the statistic was. And I think they showed it to us then, because I do a lot of things with Zillow. And it’s amazing how many leads they sell, where the broker does not really follow up, you know, maybe have one phone call because they live transfer the call and then the broker, you know, the person isn’t ready to buy that moment. And maybe they’re six months out and that person is likely not to stay in the brokers probably not staying in touch, and they’re paying a fortune for these leads.
Danny Lewis 9:45 Yeah, and that’s actually why they started doing that and to be honest to kind of screw people like me over because I was one of the people who would respond quickly and I hire people to respond quickly. Sure. And now and this is a whole other spiel. If you want to get into this at some point I’d be happy to have The way that Zillow leads work now, it’s just so jumbled and so quick. And I feel like it’s so forced, compared to how it was before. But yeah, I mean, like I said, if you want to get into that, that’s a whole nother combo we could have as well.
D.J. Paris 10:13 Well, it’s, I guess, the point of all of it. And yeah, I mean, certainly their whole systems have changed. But the point is that you were very diligent over over this, you know, the incubation period, have you got, you know, they always say, you know, now I don’t even think they call them leads anymore. They call them contacts. Because really, that’s that’s what it is, right? And you know, that better than anyone? And I guess if you think about it, as well, this is somebody who’s looking to buy, well, maybe they’re not looking to buy right now. And so the people, the broker who stays in touch, obviously, over time, ultimately wins the game. And obviously, you did that very successfully. Yeah, are you? Are you still doing a lot with internet leads? Or have you become sort of too busy for that, or
Danny Lewis 10:53 I’ve started to wean off and go more towards referrals. Now, you know, internet leads, make sense, if you’re a brand new realtor, or if you’re just trying to get your foot in the door, know, when you join real estate companies, they always say, you know, tell your friends and family or in real estate, you know, push it out there, let everybody know, I figured out really quickly, the reason they do that is so they can get their brand
D.J. Paris 11:12 out to my friends. Ah, interesting. That’s probably true. In my opinion, they
Danny Lewis 11:16 didn’t really care about whether or not I would get business from them. They cared about saying, Hey, Danny is now at x agency, or take a look, etc. So my whole idea is how do I get people who I would have never met complete strangers to know me and refer me business. And that’s how it started in this online advertising. You know, the whole idea is with your sphere is you know, you have one circle, and that circle then pushes out to all their circles right up, you know, you as a realtor, if it’s just friends and family, you know what that first circle is, but if it’s a complete stranger, now I had like 50, or 60 circles pushing out to their sphere. And it just really made the process and multiplied it by 20 cents. So that’s why I got into online advertising. But now that I’ve been established per se, and been around for a good amount of time, you know, now those you know, complete strangers are now my referral army. They’re pushing me out to everyone. They’re referring me to their friends and family. So instead of my friends and family referring me I have complete strangers are not strangers anymore. refer me out to their friends and family.
D.J. Paris 12:23 Yeah, it’s funny, I heard somebody talk about recently, the switch from because they became too busy to work internet leads. And they said, Well, it’s actually now a lot cheaper because I don’t have to pay the the, you know, the Zillow fees or wherever they’re purchasing leads. However, they say it actually is more expensive in a way because but in a good way. Because I now invest, I’m investing so much time with my clients, and taking such great care of them that they do refer business, but in a way, it’s like, I’m actually, you know, the time value of money. And this is a good thing. But I’m, you know, I’m spending more time with people I care about. So, you know, I don’t know if it’s technically cheaper to do it that way. But it’s certainly more fulfilling, right. And you have now this huge army, like you said, of people who are just sending everyone business. And again, that’s evidenced by all the success you’ve had. I am, I’m really curious to know, too. At what point did you decide I need a team? Because I feel like you did that pretty quickly, like within a, was it just a few years? Or was it a little after that?
Danny Lewis 13:22 It was actually in the first year, so amazing. And to go before that, what I really figured out real quickly was that I needed this system. And that was the first thing I figured out. Once I got the assistant thing nailed down. Then I said, I need a team. You know, when I was starting out in the first six or seven months of you know, being a realtor, I realized how much time I was spending, setting up showings calling agents chasing them around trying to figure out my schedule, calling leads etc. And I thought, You know what, honestly, like, these are things that I could train someone to do. And then I could focus on prospecting and finding more clients and, and just, you know, making more time for myself in a sense. So it’s risky and and it’s an investment, but it was the best thing I’ve ever done was to get an assistant and to get help. Because that really did freed me up because now I could think about the other important things. You know, their top Realtors I know. My friend Josh Lipton, for example.
D.J. Paris 14:18 Oh, yeah. Josh has been on our show
Danny Lewis 14:20 love Josh. Yeah, great guy. He does all his own. Well, he’s more into developing now. But when he was, you know, mostly working in real estate, he did all his own showings, he set up everything himself and like, how do you do that man? Like, how do you like have a life he has a kid now to, you know, how can you possibly be able to successfully have a personal life while you’re still chasing around agents who want to reschedule a showing at 230 to three and blah, blah. It just blows my mind that there are realtors out there that can do this by themselves. And you know, God bless them. I think that’s amazing. I personally am not one of them. I need help. I know I need help. And that was one of the first things I figured out when I got into real estate. I got my first Since then, when I had maybe a million dollars total in, in sales in general.
D.J. Paris 15:06 And it’s funny too, because like conventional wisdom would say you had no business getting an assistant with only a couple of deals under your belt. And yet you saw the future and saw this will actually make me more money in the long term.
Danny Lewis 15:19 There was conventional wisdom and my dad, my dad, I told him, I was getting an assistant, he was like, Why, like, what do you need this system for? Sure, just do it all yourself. Exactly. And at the time, like, I really probably, you know, didn’t have enough work to keep them busy, from nine to five. But you know, I figured out real quickly what I can do to keep them busy. And on top of that, once I did have like a whole thing set up for them, now I became freer to talk to clients to be able to, you know, prospect myself to be able to go to events, to have a life, these are things that, you know, having an assistant freed me up to do, and then eventually, you know, grow a team. So you know, the whole idea behind the team was I did start to get a good amount of leads. And I did start to get a lot of people just sitting in my inbox waiting to hear back from me. And I realized it would take me two or three days, sometimes to get back to people because I had so much else going on, I couldn’t focus on these people who are reaching out for my help. And that’s, that’s huge. I mean, if I’m spending all this money on leads, why am I wasting it if they’re just sitting there in the inbox, so the idea was at the time I was at Conlon was to send out an email to the company to even put on Craigslist, no looking for, you know, motivated brokers who can take over leads and start, you know, calling these leads, turning them into clients, and then I would just get a referral fee. That way, I wasn’t wasting money, they weren’t just sitting in my inbox that way, you know, these people who are asking for help are getting the help they need. And that way, you know, these newer agents can now have the experience of having clients of their own, and then eventually build their own, you know, rapport with these clients and having them refer them business.
D.J. Paris 16:54 But by the way, I want to pause for just a moment for the listeners, because I want to, we just Danny just said something very profound that no other person we’ve interviewed on the show has has mentioned, and maybe other people have done it, I’m sure, you probably aren’t the first, but you’re the first person to talk about it on the show. And I think this is really interesting. So obviously, Danny’s an entrepreneur, you can hear it in the way he speaks, he happens to be in real estate, he’s passionate about real estate. But at its core, you know, he’s he runs a business. And even early on, he realized, Hey, maybe I can still purchase leads and refer them to other brokers and earn a referral fee. That is a really, really important and intelligent way of thinking about leads as maybe you’re not even giving them to yourself, you know, and you earn a referral fee. That is a brilliant idea. I’ve never heard anybody think I’ve never anybody taught me that they did that.
Danny Lewis 17:45 I mean, that’s the whole basis of my team too, as well. I mean, like, like I said before, I mean, there’s two needs for it, it’s, you know, the need for yourself to make money, etc. But obviously, the bigger need is to make sure these clients have what they need. And that’s a realtor who’s 100% dedicated to them, who has the time to speak with them wherever they want, who could take them out on showings whatever they need. I understand I’m only one person, so I can’t really physically do that myself. So instead, I’d rather train people to take the leads as I would take them and then hand them off and then take a referral fee.
D.J. Paris 18:15 Yeah, I guess then naturally, that leads you to build your own team, because then you have and I know that you, you know, it’s obviously there’s a million teams out there. And a lot of them promise a lot of different things. The one thing I know about Danny and his team, because I know people on your team, and I know people over the years that have been on your team, they’re like he gives me leads. I don’t you know, and that’s really somewhat rare. Actually, I don’t know how common that is. And you actually deliver on that promise, which is probably why you’ve built such a successful and loyal team.
Danny Lewis 18:47 Yeah, I mean, when I started the whole team thing, and thank you, by the way for saying that. And when I started the whole team thing, I want to put myself in their position. And that’s what I do with everything in real estate with my clients, etc. I always tried to turn the tables and say, what would I think if I was them? What would I be looking for? So the whole idea with the team that I came up with was the exact opposite of everyday team, which means that you know, today’s normal real estate teams as brokers who do deals for their agents, once they close the deal, they do the deal under the team leaders name, the MLS, ID, etc. You know, when they have listings, it’s the team leaders name that’s on the sign outside. That’s not me. You know, my idea is I want to build a resume for these people. I want to make sure that if and when they decide to leave the team, they have something to show, and also, how not an egomaniac. And I’m not saying people who are team leaders who take the credit are egomaniacs, but personally, I don’t need the credit. I don’t need to take sales that I had nothing to do with so whenever my team members do a deal whenever they have a closing it’s always under their own MLS ID whatever my team members have their own listings as always their own signs out front. The only time that they you know say that they work under me or with me, per se, is you know, when we’re dealing with clients who know me already and who I’m introducing them to. But otherwise, these leads, these are just their own personal leads. And like I said, once they become clients of theirs, and they get referred business from these leads, that’s 100%.
D.J. Paris 20:10 Yeah, and it also gives a team member, one less reason to ever consider leaving, because they they’re not going to, like you said, putting yourself in their shoes. They’re not thinking, you know, I’m really building his brand and not my own. And you, you have essentially solved a pretty serious problem that exists in a lot of conventional teams. And again, I’m not in any way criticizing that structure, like you were saying, you feel the same way. You know, there’s a million ways to do it. But I would understand the inclination at some point for somebody, especially as they get more successful on your team to think like, well, I’d rather build my own brand than than someone else’s. So that makes perfect sense, really smart. That’s the
Danny Lewis 20:49 whole idea is to not have these people be on my team forever for them to eventually start their own team and do their own thing. And that’s how I got started, you know, I was on a team, when I started out was understand this bill G, he started me on a team, there’s only three of us, or four of us or something like that. And you know, whenever I had a question, at Friday, on Friday, at five o’clock, or you know, in these weird hours, he would always get back to me real quickly. And I remember that. And so it’s kind of like I always say, it’s like going to Starbucks, and the person in front of you pays for your coffee, you’re not going to just take the coffee and leave, you’re going to pay for the person behind you. So that’s how it is me as well. You know, I as someone who helped me out, it would be a huge waste if I didn’t turn around and give as well.
D.J. Paris 21:29 Yeah, and we should talk about recently, in the last few months, I believe, I don’t remember the exact date. But I know you just recently transitioned yourself over to dream town, which I love dream town. Actually, many, many, many years ago, in a previous career out, I worked for the company that built originally built their website. This is when they were the they far as the websites go. And this is pre Zillow. And I mean, they crushed everybody’s, you know, all the all the big firms, because they were so tech focused, and they just weren’t, they were young and cool. And they still are young and cool. And I just have always been a big, huge fan of them. i A lot of the brokers, they are just great. We’ve had a lot of them on the show. But tell us a little bit about why you chose dream town. And you know, how that transition, you know, went and that sort of, yeah,
Danny Lewis 22:15 so I’ve known evolved the owner dream town for a good amount of time, and I want to say is recruiting me, but he’s known me and he’s, you know, reached out to me for like the last four or five years, whenever I had questions. Whenever I needed something, I would reach out to him and ask him and he would always help without asking for anything in return. And that always stuck with me always. And, you know, just for people in general who are listening, you know, karma does come back. I mean, if you give, you know, everything does come back around. So yeah, I mean, I knew the company, obviously. And most recently, I’ve become more of a listing agent more than ever, you know, having legitimate sales materials and advertising for my listings is now more important than the commission I make. Because obviously, the more listings you get, you know, the more help you need, in a sense. And I realized I needed help. And the company I was at before is a great company, but they weren’t as marketing focus as I would want to be. You know, they had, I think one person in the marketing department, whereas in dream town, there’s like, 14, and I have a dedicated person to me, who basically does all my marketing for me reminds me what I need to do stuff. I spent more time on marketing the last three months, and I didn’t my last seven years of real estate, it just, it’s mind blowing. And, you know, the resources they have for my clients are awesome. The the agents that work there, that culture they have, it’s something that I want to be a part of. And, you know, it’s been everything that I’ve hoped so far it’s been, you know, four or five months, but in these four or five months, I’ve learned how much I’ve been missing, in a sense, and it’s been awesome. It’s been a great experience.
D.J. Paris 23:51 Yeah, dream job is just one of those companies that has seemed to figure it out. And they, you just never You rarely, I mean, rarely, I mean, I’ve never I saw saved, you know, basically never ever hear anybody unhappy. So, you know, customers or brokers, it’s, I’m a recruiter so so I don’t even try a dream job brokers, because I know they’re just happy, typically. And that’s a real testament to that. So So I applaud you and your choice there.
Obviously, you don’t need my approval, but I do think that I think it’s a good choice. Yeah.
Well tell us a little bit about about, you know, is it you know, because there there are brokers that are listening that are always looking for, you know, for maybe a different opportunity, and you know, what is it that you looked for so, obviously you talked about marketing Were there other things that that were really important or was that the primary thing that was like
Danny Lewis 24:45 the primary thing but you know what, I could say that anyone who’s listening in any broker who’s out there, you’re the wintertime is one of the debt is time in real estate, especially in Chicago and December there’s really no reason for us to be here at all right sales are down everyone’s focusing on the holidays, etc. So what I always recommend is at the end of the year, you know, once you have your resume, quote, unquote, put together of sales, that’s when you go around to all the major agencies call all the managing brokers set up meetings with each one of them, and go see what there is out there to offer. You know, I’m not going to do that for a while, because I’m happy where I’m at now. But, you know, at a point, you know, the last couple of years or so I realized how important it was to not just make connections with those managing brokers, because now when I go out, and I see them, you know, I’m friendly with all them, they all know me, well, even if I didn’t, you know, choose to go to their company, they do realize that I’m not going anywhere in terms of real estate. So it makes sense to still be friendly, for down the road, you know, just going around and seeing what these other cultures look like to see what these other companies are offering their agents, and then take that idea, take that ammo and use it towards your own business. I mean, you can go to a meeting with a company that you have no intention of joining whatsoever. But they could say something in that meeting that you think, Oh, why am I doing that with my business? Or why isn’t? Why am I talking to my managing broker about doing that with me? It just gave me so many ideas. And it gave me so many different levels of thinking about our jobs that I never thought about before. So you know, I would say no matter what, no matter what your intentions are, no matter what motivates you, in terms of, you know, a company that you work for, just go out there and meet the managing brokers of all the major companies see what they’re offering their agents, and then take that and use it have your life.
D.J. Paris 26:25 Yeah, and it’s in no way a betrayal of your current situation. It’s just, you’re just looking because cultures change, managing brokers change. And all of a sudden, you know, a firm that maybe you weren’t interested in before, or an office of a larger firm or a smaller firm, they get a new managing broker, and it changes everything. And all of a sudden, they become so I think that’s, you know, as somebody who I would prefer, our brokers never leave our firm. Of course, they do. You know, some do, and it’s totally okay, and maybe other firms are a better fit at some point. And so, and maybe we’re a better fit at some point. So I exactly pletely understand that inclination. And, you know, it’s something that I think, you know, it’s funny, like, I used to see ads, where you somebody would blast out an ad saying, come join our firm, and it would say, like, private confidential conversation, I’m like, it doesn’t have to be a scary thing that you’re afraid of getting caught. It’s just normal business, you know, it’s, you know, and, and things change that it’s never almost ever even personal. When you find a firm, that’s a better fit. It’s just, I think they’re better fit.
Danny Lewis 27:30 I mean, you. I mean, you said exactly what was about to say, it’s in no way, a personal thing. And I think I’m pretty sure at this point that every managing broker realizes that that, you know, it’s real estate is just how it is. I mean, when you’re a free agent, in a sense, an independent contractor, you know, you’re only looking out for yourself, you’re not really looking out for the company that you work for as much. And I get that. And I think that most managing brokers and owners get that as well as at the end of the day, we have to pay our own bills. And if the company that you’re working for isn’t doing that, then you got to see what else is out there.
D.J. Paris 27:59 Yeah, and speaking of your team, and and also, you know, recruiting in general, I know, you’re always looking, or you’re looking currently, see if there’s more people to add, that would be a good fit. Can you tell us a little bit more about like, what, who would be a good fit for your team, because we have so many listeners, and I’m sure there’s plenty of people that would be interested in exploring what you guys offer.
Danny Lewis 28:20 For sure. You know, starting out, obviously, in the beginning, it was a lot of newer realtors, people who are brand new to real estate. So you know, as you know, I was helping them take these leads and training them on how to turn these people into clients. You know, I’d also be training them on the MLS, and train them on pretty much everything in real estate, you know, writing contracts, etc. Now, it’s come to a point where, you know, now we’re looking for established, you know, experienced brokers, people who have the experience of working for companies, people who had the experience of having their own clients, maybe they’ve been in real estate for a good amount of time and, you know, hit a standstill and want some help. That’s what we’re looking for now, and actually have a couple brokers on the team, who have been in real estate longer than I have, you know, 1015 years, but, you know, they kind of swallow their pride in that sense and realize, you know, what I’m doing right now isn’t working, this guy is doing something that’s working for him and his team. Why don’t I find out about it, let me reach out to him and see what he’s got. And it’s worked out beautifully. And the other thing too, is, you know, I have team members, good amount of team members now that are pretty much located in every part of the city, but there still are a good amount of parts of the city that I’m missing out on in suburbs as well. So you know, suburban agents, people who are, you know, a little bit further out than what I’m used to, like 2030 minutes away, or 2030 miles west or north. Those are the type of brokers that we’re looking for now. So more than ever experience counts for sure, in terms of joining the team, but you know, also people who are in areas that aren’t served as much, I’m always interested in talking to them as well.
D.J. Paris 29:53 That’s great. And if, since we’re on the topic, if someone is interested in reaching out to you to see if they’d be a fit and that you’d be a fit for them as a new team member, what would be the best way for someone to reach out to you,
Danny Lewis 30:05 you can just reach out to me my email, which is Louis Chicago, real estate@gmail.com. I mean, on real estate DJ, if you can’t find me on that when something that’s true, we’re also
D.J. Paris 30:16 going to, we’re going to post that email address and your phone number as well for listeners who are interested so they can easily reach out to you. So yeah, he’s Danny’s easy to find, and he’s a marketer by trade.
Danny Lewis 30:27 I’m doing something wrong. That’s true.
D.J. Paris 30:29 You know what, that’s a good point from going forward. I’m never going to mention how to get a hold of anybody. If you can’t find them, you probably shouldn’t join they’re actually a really good idea. Be funny. I also just just to wrap things up, I wanted to just because the story I want to hear this because I don’t know the story. But I want to hear your sex shop story if you don’t.
Danny Lewis 30:52 That was taking some clients out. They were actually online leads. Really nice older couple of very conservative, very quiet. First couple showings, didn’t say much, you know, we’re very respectful of the sellers and the owners. And so we had the third showing, I think, was the last showing of the day, walk in, and this isn’t a kid show, right? Like, say whatever you want. So we walk in and there’s like a giant dildo like write this as soon as we walk in, that’s amazing. My jaw drops, and I realized I look around, there’s like, like, maybe 300 deals, all put around on tables all like stacked up purposely and etc. It turns out, the owners were renting the unit out to someone, a tenant who used it as a sex shop. And it was the most awkward thing in the world. And you know, I know is you know what it’s like to tour in places with clients who no one said a word like everyone’s head was down. We didn’t talk about not even after we
D.J. Paris 31:51 couldn’t even just like joke about it, because no one was there for it. Yeah,
Danny Lewis 31:55 not with these guys. They were way too conservative. They were older. You know, if they’re my age, if you know, there are people who I thought could handle that who looked at me or you know, laugh a little bit were in there, I would definitely say something. But it was just so awkward because we acted like nothing ever happened or like, no, like it was no one there. So that was it wasn’t really the section that was funny. But it was kind of like the reaction afterwards of how awkward it was and how strange it was not to even like pretend like we were just in there.
D.J. Paris 32:23 Like, how does the listing agent not go, Hey, broker bring the buyer by just FYI, here’s what you’re gonna walk in like that, to me is crazy, right?
Danny Lewis 32:33 So that again comes back to the whole idea of why I have a team and why having an agent at the properties as they’re showing it is so important. So this was obviously a lockbox scenario, I called the agent afterwards and told them and they had no clue they had no idea what was going on. So amazing. You know, for all you agents out there, when you’re pitching people on or pitching, you know, sellers, and why you should be listing their property. One of the things you have to include no matter what, and this is why having a team is necessary, is that you will be showing the place in person every single time. And it’s crazy that we have to say this, I mean, with the amount of money that we make off of commission of the amount of money that we make in terms of you know, sales price and percentage. We should be there physically for every single showing, there’s no way that you should walk away with a check for $7,000 If you’ve never walked through the door, and all you suburban agents out there, they’re listening. God bless you. I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how you get listings. As you know, I have suburban agents that didn’t even show up to closings or inspection. Right. It’s it’s the culture of how they do it out there in the city is not like that. And it’s so important, so important to be there physically for showings for exactly situations like this.
D.J. Paris 33:40 I love that the listing agent had no idea that is that’s amazing.
Danny Lewis 33:44 None no idea. I was the one who had to break it to her like, by the way, you should probably know that your listing is being used as a snack shop right now. Wow.
D.J. Paris 33:53 Well, I think that’s a great place to wrap up because we can’t tell that story. That’s, that’s about as good as I’ve ever heard. But anyway, again, as Look, obviously Danny and his team have had tremendous success. He’s got an incredible reputation in the industry. Everybody knows him. They everyone loves him. He’s a great guy. Obviously, his clients and his team members already know this. But if you are looking for a realtor and you want a team, or you want to work with Danny’s specifically or someone on his team, again, I will post links to it. But what’s the best about you? Obviously, they can visit your website. Let’s give that again. That’s Louis Chicago real estate.com. Danny, Do you can you bring up the email address one more time as well?
Danny Lewis 34:35 Sure. That’s my last name Louis. Oh, ew is Chicago real estate@gmail.com.
D.J. Paris 34:41 Awesome. And we’ll post your phone number as well so that anyone who’s listening who’s looking for a broker or is looking at who is a broker, and as you know, an experienced broker who’s looking to join a team, I couldn’t recommend Danny more highly. Obviously he doesn’t need my my recommendation, but I certainly know him personally and he’s a great guy and and takes really good care of his team members, which, you know, I don’t know how common that really is. So it’s, it’s a big deal. So with that being said, Danny, thank you so much for spending time on a Friday with us, which I’m sure this is a busy day for realtors. So I appreciate your your flexibility and timing. We’ll get this episode out very shortly. And on behalf of Danny and myself to everyone who’s listening, please continue to listen. We’re so grateful that that everyone who is listening continues to and also that you make sure to share this with a friend if you have other brokers in your office or you know that could benefit from listening to interviews, like the one here with Danny obviously passed the word. So on behalf of Danny and myself, we say thank you and Danny appreciate your time.
Danny Lewis 35:44 Vijay, thanks so much again, man. I had a blast. I can’t wait to hear it in here the future episodes as well.
Welcome to the August edition of Coaching Moments with Ryan D’Aprile!
What if canceled, FSBO & expired listings weren’t as difficult to convert as most brokers imagine? In this episode Ryan discusses how to approach these challenging prospects and how to convert them into clients. He also recounts a story about how he turned 12k into 150k in his first two years in real estate through a monthly mailing strategy. That’s a 1,150% return!
D.J. Paris 0:15 Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the only podcast made by brokers for brokers, which isn’t true, but we haven’t come up with a better tagline yet, but we might be the biggest podcast out there for brokers by brokers. So we’re very excited because we are doing as per usual, our coaching moments with Ryan D APR segment. So Ryan is on the line. Let me introduce Ryan before he says hello, if you don’t know him, or aren’t yet as familiar as you should be, he comes on once a month and does a coaching session. And the reason why is this is what Ryan does professionally in his own company. So he owns a brokerage firm here in Chicago. They have 13 offices in the suburbs city, actually in three states, I believe, and Ryan actually in their 400 Plus brokers. And in addition to running the business, Ryan also travels, the majority of his time is spent traveling from office to office training his agents and coaching them, and he is generously doing the same for our listeners. So actually, before I bring Ryan on, we should promote as if you’re interested in and you’re a broker or a client, somebody who’s looking to work with a broker, looking to work with somebody from Ryan’s company go to Depot properties.com, which I will also post a link to in the podcast notes and Ryan’s team. They’re always looking for more brokers and their brokers are always looking for clients. So if you’re interested in either of that, contact Ryan’s team at Depot properties.com. Welcome, Ryan.
Ryan D’Aprile 1:39 Thanks, TJ. Thanks for having me. It’s always it’s a pleasure. I look forward to these.
D.J. Paris 1:43 Yeah, we’re excited to to have you on we get a lot of great feedback for doing these episodes, in particular, because every broker out there whether they’re a top one percenter, like the ones we interview, or maybe a listener who wants to be a top one percenter, everybody needs coaching, you need coaching, I need coaching, we all need it. And the fact that you come on once a month to provide it is really a big deal. We’re really grateful for
Ryan D’Aprile 2:07 that. Thanks. Oh, pleasure. Yeah,
D.J. Paris 2:09 so Well, I’ve at our firm, we have hundreds and hundreds of brokers, you have the same, and Ryan and I were just talking offline, and he’s like, What are you hearing at your firm? Like, what are what are people say? And, and I said, Gosh, not that much. And then I realized, well, that’s because people are pretty busy. It’s the summer, there’s a lot of activity, I see it in the number of transactions, not even just at our firm, but just across the board and Chicago transactions are up, up, up. So people are pretty busy. But I wonder if it’s easy to neglect doing the fundamentals that help keep you busy when things maybe aren’t as active. So maybe we can talk about that. Absolutely.
Ryan D’Aprile 2:45 And you know, it’s funny, before our call, it’s about seven o’clock at night when we are doing this podcast before I got home, probably around six o’clock, one of my favorite things to do is turn the garden hose on and just take about a good hour just water the yard and water the plants and I phone stays inside. And I was thinking about the business and what we do for a living. And here we are. And it’s you know, it’s August. And it’s the last day of July or whatnot and all my flowers, my hydrangeas and roses, everything is bloom, it’s beautiful. When I’m out and I’m watering it and and the reason I’m watering it, it’s the same thing as the business that we are in today, you’ve got to water your business all the time, even when it’s in full bloom, you can’t neglect the basics that you have to take care of. You have to take care of your business, you have to take care of plants, even when you are in the busy growing season where we all think now’s the time to harvest. And there’s a time to harvest. But you always got to be taking care of your farm your business and what you’re doing planting the seeds because there’s always tomorrow, there’s always next week, there’s always next month, and we have seasonality to our business. But the seasonality does not mean and does not have to mean dead slow, nothing going on. But when you’re busy, and if you neglect those important activities that we’re supposed to take, then when the quote unquote, seasonality comes, that’s when people start to panic. And the worst thing about that is, then you’re worried about panic and business that you don’t have versus being strategic about growing for the next season. Does that make sense?
D.J. Paris 4:23 It does. And I’ll tell you I was just at a panel event earlier this week. And I listen to Matt laris he speak for those of you who aren’t in the Chicago area or who are in aren’t familiar with him. He’s one of the top producers in the entire industry here in Chicago. And he said I don’t believe in seasonality and the whole crowd went where I grumbled and he said no, here’s what I mean. It doesn’t matter to me what’s going on in the market, I have to consistently tend to my business every single day as if it were busy and slow at the same time, which I thought was a really interesting way of putting which is basically what you just said,
Ryan D’Aprile 4:56 Absolutely. You always have to be focused on it. Finding somebody who wants to buy or sell a home, in your business, or if you’re in the mortgage lending business, finding somebody who wants to refinance or purchase a home, or if you’re insurance, or if you’re an attorney, or if you’re a doctor, so on and so forth. I mean, the fundamentals are the same across the board, you have to be finding somebody who needs your service, you add value, adding value typically comes naturally to all of us, what doesn’t come naturally to all of us is taking care of ourselves. And a lot of us put ourselves last and we put our business last, it’s a very dangerous thing to do. But it’s natural thing to do, because we care so much about our clients. But if you put yourself last and don’t focus on yourself, then you’re not gonna have the clients to take care of. So that’s where accountability and coaching really comes into play. Take care of yourself, find the coach, find accountability partner, be with an organization that provides consistent coaching. It’s not rocket science. It’s consistency. And like Matt had said, regardless of the season, it doesn’t matter, you have to be working as if you don’t have a client and generating the next lead or sale or what it might not be for the next month or two to come. A great. So what are the some of things that you’re hearing in your office?
D.J. Paris 6:21 Well, gosh, let’s talk about what people could actually do when they’re busy. So we know that, you know, if customer service is the bulk of time you spend on your business, maybe if you’re working an eight hour day, and that may be a bit low for a lot of successful realtors or people who are, you know, just worked retreating, like a full time job. But if we wake up at an eight hour day, and we say, Okay, well, customer service, meaning once you acquire the customer, all of the work that is included, maybe that takes up six of the eight hours. So then the question is, okay, well, I’m pretty busy, because I’m, it’s that time of the year where I’ve got a lot of clients, what do I actually do with the other few hours, I have to help 10 that garden?
Ryan D’Aprile 7:06 Well, so you have to have, you know, a couple of strategies, I think your number one focus should be your network, your network is your net worth. But then there’s other things that we can do such as farming, we could focus on a campaign for cancelled expired or fizz bows, you could look at open houses, and you have to really plan out and map what your strategy is going to be. So I don’t think you should be doing everything but you pick a couple. So I always think your network should be at the foundation. Some people do purchase these big purchase lead strategy, some picture to farm, some people do cancel expires. So let’s just grab three, let’s pick a network, which I think should be the foundation of your shores. Let’s pick a farm. And then let’s pick a cancel and expire strategy.
D.J. Paris 7:54 Yeah, you can we start with with with canceled expireds and fizz bows. Because if I don’t know if you want to lump all those into cancelled, expired and fizz bows altogether, but this is always a question that comes up, especially for newer brokers who, you know, they they read about this idea, or they hear it from a coach. And they’re not entirely sure, because these are difficult calls. But I like difficult calls. So I like the idea of at least getting, you know getting a few of those under your belt. So can we talk about your thoughts about canceled expireds fizz bows? And if you are doing them how to have success? Yeah.
Ryan D’Aprile 8:29 And here’s going to be something that most people are going to be very shocked when I hear when I say this. Forget about the call. You know, and I know there’s a lot of coaches out there that teach, you know, four hours a day on the phone pounding the phone calling canceling expireds that’s not my strategy. I think it’s a more sophisticated approach my strategy, but perhaps it’s more geared towards an individual who isn’t the type of I’m not I’m an extroverted introvert. Okay, so, I like to solve. I like to work with individuals and I like my marketing to do my sales for me, I like to be top of mind so that when somebody has a need, they have a relationship with me either directly or indirectly and that I am that call to come so when I take my cancel the my expired strategy, I do it through a direct mail approach versus the call. So I think we’re all used to hearing some of the coaches that are out there and they have black times you pick up the phone you call for three hours. I think that’s exhausting. That’s just this DJ this is my opinion though. And so I don’t want to cast judgment I don’t want to offend anybody who’s doing this either. So well
D.J. Paris 9:48 but But what if we just think about it logically. So here’s how the the average broker who is working fizz bows expireds cancelled do it. They purchased they purchased these lists that are readily of vailable from lots of different providers online, it’s very inexpensive, you can buy these for next to nothing. And they’re purchased by many, many brokers and 90, I’m guessing, but let’s say 98% Of those, that activity is going to be phone calls. So what Ryan is saying is actually makes a lot of sense, because how many people are going to be mailing something out to those fizz bows? Very few.
Ryan D’Aprile 10:25 And it and it should be a campaign and should be coupled with a geographical farm. Right. So um, so, you know, if I’m going to take my efforts, and I’m going to take my time, I’m going to apply it statistically, to the best return, the best return is your network 16% of your network transacts every year, so when I take my so there’s a limited amount of willpower, we have
D.J. Paris 10:56 a finite amount of willpower and, and you want to make sure you have to be very strategic about how not to deplete it too early in the day.
Ryan D’Aprile 11:04 Well, that’s exactly right, seven o’clock, you know, a little, it’s a little after seven o’clock right now. And I came home when I was at my garden, and I had a beer, I was watering my grass, I, I should go work out, I could go work out I’m strong enough to go to the gym. But I don’t have it in me to go to the gym. And I won’t, I’m done. My willpower is completely depleted. And so when I go and I look at my business, I have to, I have to value my energy, my resources and my time. And I’m going to take that, you know that that Herculean amount of energy that people are taking and calling strangers that are cancelled expired, and they’re pissed off in the first place, because our home isn’t sold, I’m not going to put it at that because I just, I’m not that strong. Or I don’t have that amount of willpower to face that type of rejection day in and day out. So I’m going to take my time and my effort, I’m going to apply that to my network. And I’m going to call them and develop deep relationships with them. We ask them how they’re doing, how their kids are gone. It’s all about them. It’s not about me, my marketing will take care of the rest for me. Now. Coming back to the castle expireds. I do think it’s a wonderful strategy. I think it’s something we need to focus on. But there’s a different way of going about it, I believe it’s coupling it with a geographic farm. Now you gotta understand, this does take money, in effect, everything takes money. And everything in our life is a gamble. You gamble your time you gamble your money, I cannot believe how many people I see out there that they spend one to three months to get their real estate license, six 700 bucks for the class, they spend 1000 to $2,000 for the association, but then God forbid they spend 10 bucks or $100 on marketing themselves. Right? Right. And they’re not valuing all the time it took for them to get the real estate license, and so on and so forth. So this takes a little bit of time, and it takes a little bit of money. But I look at my business as a my network. That’s the first foundation then I’ll look at a geographical farm. And then I’ll coupled with a cancel expires. So if I have a geographical farms, they have 500 residences, right? So I can live in a condo building with 200 units in it. And there’s another kind of building next to me with 300 units in it. So there’s my 500 residents I’m going to hit or I live in a community and there is a geographical circle around my home. And I picked 500 homes, that’s a farm. Okay, now your return on that it’s going to be about 2%. Okay, so if you farm, okay, let’s describe what a farm is, you send a postcard every single month. Okay, that’s what we’re defining as a farm, send a postcard every single month, after 12 full months, the second year, you can expect about 10 leads from that. But what you can expect for the first 12 months is that getting 10 leads from it. And you have to understand, it’s like, you know, planting, you know, planting a flower, you know, you could take care of it, it’s going to take 12 months for this thing to bloom. Does this make sense to you? Yes. Okay, so I think a good farm and cancel expired strategy
is going to take a good two years, the first year, you’re gonna plant the seed, the second year, you’re gonna harvest and then you need to continually plant those seeds in the second year for your third, fourth and fifth year. And then you have what we call the snowball effect it gets easier and easier. So what you’ve done the farmers you create a brand name for yourself in your community. Okay, now these are not people in your network. They maybe should be in your network but to geographical farm and you’re starting to put yourself out there now in that farm. People hire other real estate agents I know right stabbed in the heart. Oh my god, they picked somebody else. I don’t know who they are. I should quit this business is not working out. Of course they have Here’s somebody else, don’t worry about it, don’t be so critical on yourself, relax, give it time. But what’s going to happen is sometimes, sometimes the home doesn’t sell. Right. And sometimes it’s it has to do with the sellers willingness to listen to the agent, pricing it properly or whatnot, let’s not speculate on white and sell, let’s just focus on the fact that it’s in itself. Now, you have been farming this home, in your radius for say, 1314 months, and it cancels, or it expires. This is where you jump into action. Now everybody else picks up the phone and makes a phone call. I like to put together what’s called a listing book and a well written, handwritten note. Your such and such I noticed your home has recently expired, I’ve been admiring it from afar to a beautiful home. And I would be very interested in meat with you, if you ever consider going on the market again. And then I send it either, you know, first class, you know, FedEx, USPS or UPS, I send it in a package to them. Now, remember, they’re consistently getting a postcard every single month. Then two weeks later, I will send them either a bio book on myself, or a Real Estate Report. And I’ll continually send them items of value in the mail for the next year. Does this make sense? TJ?
D.J. Paris 16:33 Yeah, and I want to pause for a second because I want to give you my own experience with where I live. And you’ve you’ve been in the neighborhood I’m in I’m we’ve met Ryan and I had drinks at theory Cafe, which just happens to be thankfully right next not not next to where Ryan lives. But he was nice enough to come in. But right next to where I live.
Ryan D’Aprile 16:50 That’s where my daughter that’s my wife and I that’s where I grew my business. And that’s what’s right.
D.J. Paris 16:54 You weren’t you’ve been right here. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. And so we I was just thinking about this recently, because I get postcards. But I have an look, there are 40 I think we’re up to 44,000 brokers in the Chicagoland area. That’s the number of brokers. And I’m the building I’m in. There’s a lot of transactions that happen. It’s a it’s a high rise. It’s a very nice building. And the number of postcards I have received in two years since I moved in. I bet I’ve received probably one a month, but never the same person. I think I’ve maybe gotten two postcards from the same person ever. Now, again, maybe they’ve did the math and learn that I’m in the business, but 99% chance they didn’t. Nobody is doing even the postcards every month. And I mean, almost nobody I know your agents do. Very few brokers do this. So even if you’re just doing that on a consistent basis, you’re so far ahead of the game.
Ryan D’Aprile 17:51 Well, let me share a story with you. I’m not sure how long we’ve been going for. And I don’t want to bore your listeners. But let’s just talk about the exact community that you and I had lunch in, in the school just a couple blocks south to the Fulton River District that your my wife and I lived at 320 North Clinton and townhome and that we lived at River Oh God, what was the name of Randolph place? 165 north canal. And then we had Samantha we moved to our townhome anyways, I got into the real estate business is 2004. And I started marketing I started my farm. And DJ 12 Months went by. And I sent a postcard every single month, you know, many phone calls I got in that first year?
D.J. Paris 18:34 I know how many none? Yeah, that sounds about right, that
Ryan D’Aprile 18:38 one. Now my business grew. And it grew such because I took such good care of my network, that I was able to leave the company that employed me. And I’ve never been employed ever since I’ve been self employed ever since then I’ll have to say that properly. All right. But that’s because I had a solid foundation of a straight network business. But I understood the importance of you know, more than one leg to a stool. And so all right, put in an open house strategy and put in a farm strategy to complement my network strategy. And 12 Months went by and I’m telling you about it, there are agents that want to stop after two months. And I explained to them a story. So let me let me tell you what it takes and what it could cost me if I stopped. So back then I was doing about 1000 Okay, I was really gung ho I wanted that in my day job. And I picked the 1000 addresses in the Fulton River District. And I send them a postcard every single month. And that cost me about $500 a month. I don’t spend that kind of money. It doesn’t have to be that big of a farm. I’ve only got so big that I realized I had a diminishing return. But for the sake of time here, I won’t go down that path. I just Stick with story 500 hours a month 1000 postcards I was sending out every single month 12 Once one phone call, but I knew that the return was about 2% In terms of the percentage of people that receiving my postcard, I should get 2% of 1000. I should get about 20 leads at some point. Yes, but it is a two year strategy. And the 14th month, which was the bleeding out this worked on a calendar year. So the 14th month, I think was February it was February. I had not gotten a call, March came sent out another hand got a call. And in April, I was faced with a decision. Do I spend 500 more dollars on the strategy. I’m three months into three, four months into a new year. I am 16 months in the strategy. I haven’t gotten one call. And I decided I’m going to do it again. And that month I got a phone call. And this individual call me said my wife and I are thinking about selling our home. And we know you sell all the homes in this area and we’d love you to come over and talk about selling our home. Now DJ been an agent for almost a year and a half. Okay. How many units do you think I sold in there kind of building?
D.J. Paris 21:19 Zero? Or how many not? Yeah,
Ryan D’Aprile 21:21 how many do you think I sold an entire area? No, gosh,
D.J. Paris 21:25 who knows how many not? Yeah,
Ryan D’Aprile 21:27 I was in network. Travel. I’ll go anyway, as a new agent. I was 18 months into it. But they said we know you sell a lot of the homes or condos in our area. We Yeah, because I hit given I built a brand it took right and built the brand. Anyways, I sold her condo for $400,000. And they bought a home for $1.2 million, referred me to their brother who bought a home in Lincoln Park for 600,000 hours, who referred me to their law partner who I listed their home up on Southport for 600,000 hours. And they bought a home in Oak Park on shit home Avenue. She’s a mouth for 800,000 hours, who referred me to their back door neighbor on Southport they lived on what’s a street behind Southport such that the W never beat the back door neighbor called and hired me. I sold their home for $600,000 They moved to Austin, Texas, but I put my For Sale sign on the fence and the stairs neighbor who she’s a cardiologist at Northwestern. And he’s a er surgeon in Park Ridge called me because he saw my name on a for sale sign. And I sold their home for $600,000 $150,000 in gross commission income I earned over the course of six months. Wow, almost didn’t spend 500 bucks on that postcard. Well, then let’s
D.J. Paris 22:49 talk about what that total return was. So if you if we figure you spent 13 or 14 grand $6,000
Ryan D’Aprile 22:55 a year, and that’s take it to that two years. 12 grand.
D.J. Paris 22:59 Yeah, 12 grand to make 150 grand. Oh, and you have
Ryan D’Aprile 23:03 no idea how many referrals I’ve had from those individuals over the past 14 years. And the friendships I’ve gotten out of it, forget the money. Like I care about these people. I know their kids, right? It’s opened up so many wonderful things in my life besides just a commission check. But you got to be all in, you got to show up, you got to decide, is this what I want to do or not what I want to do, you got to have passion? Yeah, I saw my daughter and said, I want for you to have passion. I want you to have energy. That’s the two things consuming passion, confidence and energy. Those are the three things that could wish for you girls in my life, and just go out. And to everybody who’s real estate agent that wants to do this, you got to throw yourself in, but you got to commit and you got to show up. And you can’t give up after two three months. I mean, we’re talking about a two year strategy of your network, a farm or might be purchased web leads or may be cancelled expires or might it be open house, pick your strategy and give it two years give yourself two years because the serving the client but comes naturally just be yourself? Yeah, I
D.J. Paris 24:14 think you’re so right. I mean, between the two of us, we have about 1000 brokers at our firms. And what I found is I think about our brokers, you know, at our firm at least because I know them much better than your brokers. Although I know your brokers are very successful. I think gosh, you know, I think most brokers are caring I think their clients like them. And I think that part of it, they do pretty well. But but as a you know how are brokers? Are they doing mailers? Are my brokers you know, are they doing regular farming? Probably not. That’s the one thing that I think a lot of brokers maybe it doesn’t come as natural and you’re when Ryan says you got to go all in. It’s easy to go all in on the things you’d like to do and that come naturally but The things that are difficult but that are going to get you the best results are the things that are most important. Like Ryan said, he wrote a personal note, you know how many personal notes I’ve received in the last year, it from all the different services that I use, whether it’s my financial advisor, my insurance person, you know, the mortgage person, or just anyone just friends and family in my life, I’ve probably you know, I my birthday, I get a few cards from friends and family that’s about it. If all you ever did was write even everyone in your existing network your people in your that you already know and love and who love you, if you just wrote all of them a personal note to remind them that you’re in the business, that would be a huge
Ryan D’Aprile 25:38 reminder that you’re in the business, just write them a personal note, I get personal notes written to me, by my agents, and they are thanking me Yes, and it makes my day it only to everything to me. And it’s just such an impact you could have in somebody else’s life. Because what we’re craving more than anything, especially in the social media generation we’re living in is connection. Because everything else is just bullshit phony baloney, we’ve got to break through that we are becoming where I think we’re on a horizon of a whole new era of understanding of just the human experience. And we’re getting out of this 1718 years of social media and this pretend life, everybody’s having his breakthrough and have the human connection, if you have a human connection people and the amount of connections you have with them, like, you can multiply that and have more and more of those connections, the more value you’re going to get out of it for your life. So it’s, it’s to, to, to your point, deejays, stop and take time. And, and, and, and and connect with the people in your network. In writing a handwritten note, make a phone calls, send me a text message. But remember, it’s about them. It’s about them, and asking how they are, and really being interested. And then perhaps if you can give gratitude to them, but you got to find out, it’s got to be in the right context and how you’re going to do it.
D.J. Paris 27:04 Yeah, and I mean, for me, I’m a bit of a scatterbrain. So I know that this is not a professional thing I do. But I realized very early on as an adult that I am not great about remembering to stay in touch with friends that have moved away. And now it’s much easier with social media and text to be able to do that. But I like to talk on the phone. So I but I had friends that I was starting to lose touch with. And I realized I mean, guys probably aren’t as apt to call each other on the phone, which I understand too. But I thought I’m losing touch with my friends. And I very simply now just have repeating tasks. Every month, I have remembered a call, you know, so and so remember to call so and so. And I just it’s a system, and there’s no benefit for our business gain. But I but there’s a benefit for my life because I get to connect with these people. But I have to have a system in place, or I will forget to do it. It’s not because I don’t care. It’s not that I don’t like them. I’m just busy, you’re busy. We’re all busy. And having systems in place. Like if you’re a broker at Ryan’s company, for example, he helps you with a lot of the marketing, they do a lot of it for you. So you can focus on what you do best, which is servicing your clients. But and
Ryan D’Aprile 28:11 really, you know, rolling with those friends. Yes, yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s our job. And that’s what we have to focus on. And you do have to systematize it, and you have to track it. You know, hopefully you have somebody who’s looking over your shoulder, that you agree to surrender to and say, hey, help me, you know, one of the things that we talked about, or you mentioned about your agents, and then some of them do it, some of it don’t. And you know, you are questioning, you know, your hope some of them do it, I could tell everybody at my company and outside our organization, to agents who have surrendered and said, I’m going to follow the system, have them write SAS,
D.J. Paris 28:49 yeah, there’s just gonna be certain things that you don’t do, you can’t do it’s not in your wheelhouse, you’re not oriented towards it, you’re not wired for it, and you just have to go, I don’t do a good job of that. So I’m going to outsource it, or I’m going to have somebody else hold me accountable. And I’m just going to get it done. But Don’t torture yourself trying to force yourself to do something that you’re not going to do. You’re just if you’re not going to do it, set up a system to have it done for you or find somebody else that can do it. Well, and
Ryan D’Aprile 29:17 there’s two really basic things you need to focus on now, in terms of generating the business, right? There’s one is is is connecting with everybody here in your network, you know, once a quarter through communication that’s personally that’s personalized, it’s not selling. And the other one is marketing to them three or four times a month via direct mail, digital email marketing, social media, right. So, those are the two paths that you have to run parallel of each other. What happens is, you know, people try to come up with new concepts or, or they over analyze What they’re sending out? Right and I think I butcher this quote every time but Eisenhower’s Eisenhower said, a well thought out plan ever executed is way worse than a poorly thought out planned, well executed. And I Oh, absolutely, I heard that. But that is somebody else said to me a long time ago about direct mail is ship shit. And I just I was so fond of that saying and and what the person met when he said ship says just get it out the door they look at well, I
D.J. Paris 30:40 can also remember, they’re going to look at it for two seconds and toss it anyway, it’s not that important. What’s on there? What’s important? Is that correct for two seconds before they throw it in the garbage. They go, Oh, yeah, that’s right. Ryan’s a broker, and then let’s write garbage.
Ryan D’Aprile 30:55 That’s it. And by the way, chips, it’s just an expression. But in short, you don’t have to write a dissertation here on what’s going on, it’s marketing, stay consistent, be in front of your network, three to four times a month, and never miss a month. And if you miss a month or so, you know, basically starting all over again. Because that’s what happens. People get going home, they start three, four months, and they stop. And then a year goes by. And then they look over the shoulder. And there’s somebody’s been the business for 18 months that surrendered and follow the business. And also on their side six, seven $8 million of real estate a year. And this person is struggling with what I gotta do like, well, you know what, even though you’ve been in business for 1314 months, you’re starting over, because you didn’t let the system work. If I didn’t email, if I didn’t send that postcard, it wouldn’t have led to those 14 transactions in a six month time period. That equates to about 150,000 hours of gross commission income. And by the way, that was from one strategy, one of three strategies that I executed that year. And I think I did about 15 or $17 million. And that was my second year in the business. It’s not to say it’s incredible is that it’s really not, and it’s not complicated. What is incredible, you know, is I don’t know It’s incredible, but it’s stop thinking. Just stop thinking and just do it.
D.J. Paris 32:15 I gotta tell you so the last episode, if anyone’s listening, go back and listen to the episode just before this one because I interviewed 22 You’re gonna love this. These two guys, Greg and Zack, they are 22 years old and they’re at Keller Williams, but it gets better in Barrington, right? You could not ask for a tougher place to start in real estate that in the Northwest suburb of Barrington as a 22 year old, this is a very wealthy area, if anyone’s not familiar, and a 22 year old has a hard enough time getting clients, these two guys, here’s what they do, you’re gonna love this. So I’m just going to we’re going a little bit out of order. But I wanted to get back to farming because I just remember that with these guys. You’re gonna love this. So Ryan talked about hey, mailers and writing handwritten notes and doing all those in, that’s all great. Here’s what these guys did, are doing every day, since they have nothing else to do. They have no clients, although they’re starting to really become successful. They’re the youngest two brokers in an office of 300. By the way, what these guys did is they go, no one’s going to give us their business. We’re too young, we don’t know anything. They literally walk the streets of Barrington knocking on doors and saying, Hey, we’re from the area, this is where we grew up. This is our neighborhood. And we wanted to come and just say hello and let you know, we’re a team. And we’re young, but we’re really eager. And we would love to earn your business. And we just wanted to give you some information if you’re ever in the need. And this is what they they film it to. And they put it out, I’ll send out their videos. But these guys are fearless. And this is what they do all day. And they’ve gotten eight on of this, and they say they’ve never come across another realtor when they’ve done it.
Ryan D’Aprile 33:50 Well. And you know, I you know, kudos to those guys. And I’ll tell you with the farm and cancel expires strategy that I’ve implemented in the past, and I do now with some of our agents, I do it because I don’t have that I couldn’t do it couldn’t knock on somebody’s door. Sure. And, and I’m not saying don’t do it. You know, I’m saying that’s wonderful. But you don’t even have to put yourself out that much more successful. What you have to do is you got to pick a plan, what fits your personality, and then you have to execute it and you got to give it a couple of years you’ll have success. If you don’t deviate. If you don’t change you know, if you don’t change courses and try another strategy and then what’s the next newest trend and once an excellent trend and axing know who you are. And I know how I am I’m an extroverted introvert, and that I’m going to let my direct mail do my marketing for me. And then I’m just going to focus on being a good conversationalist being focused on the person I’m talking to, and track my actions and activities and know the people I’ve talked to record the notes so that when I come back and visit them again, they are significant because I bring back up who their spouse is or what they did and but that’s my style everybody has different styles and I I don’t want to go you know down too much in a row but it’s just part of this is get to know who you are and what works for you and what you’re comfortable with.
D.J. Paris 35:12 Yeah look if everyone who’s listening and I know nothing about sports right I don’t know if your sports not okay, good. I thought I thought we were saying there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I play tennis twice a week. So I but I don’t I don’t even know anything about tennis. But what’s funny is, if you if you’re everyone who’s listening should read any autobiography or biography on coach John Wooden, UCLA. He’s the winningest coach, I think he’s still the winningest coach in NCAA history. And he was all about fundamentals right? Just key never once this is true, he won like eight consecutive NCAA Tournament championships. Like that’s how successful this guy was. And he never once and this is true, never looked at the scoreboard, he didn’t care. He said, there are times when you’ll win, but you won’t feel good because you didn’t give it your all. And there’s times when you’ll lose, and you’ll feel great because you gave it your all and it just doesn’t matter. It’s up to the gods, let the score take care of itself. What matters is fundamental. And that’s what we’re talking about. That’s
Ryan D’Aprile 36:10 a great, that’s a great thing, it reminds me of another expression is don’t focus on the goal, focus on your activities. Just focus on your activities. Success is just a byproduct of that. So if you are focusing on the end, practice success, and, and even worse, comparing themselves to others, just focus on the activities. And if you really break it down, activities are simple. This guy doing five days a week, not 751 hour a day, maybe. But anyways, that’s network strategy. Coming back, circling it, kind of bringing it to an end, the farm strategy, I think should be coupled with a good and solid cancel expired Fizbo strategy. And I don’t think you have to do it with a phone call, I think you could have a another approach that actually would stand out from all the other phone calls that are hitting out there. And there’s from a listening book to a bio book to a Real Estate Report so many other things. But I guess we could pick that up for another podcast as for others, but in this time, where we are writing contracts left and right, and we’re getting listings, please don’t forget to be in flow with your network, and what other strategies that are out there that you’re executing, do not neglect yourself. And if you don’t focus on generating business, you’re neglecting yourself, I understand the importance of our clients. And we have to give our all our clients. And we tend to do that we tend to forget about who or who we are, and how we take care of ourselves and our families. Right now, in the busy season. Please know that you have to be in flow with your network and the other strategy you have. So that when the market slows down from seasonality, you’re not slow. Just the competition is
D.J. Paris 38:01 you Yeah. And taking care of yourself. You know, you’ve mentioned that a few times, I want to bring up just a simple strategy that I have done for a long time. Now I am not out there. As a practicing broker. I’m in an office all day I sit there. But one thing I did many, many, many years ago, I’m now about 10 years into this just because it made sense to me was I realized I was spending way too much time everyday trying to figure out what I wanted for lunch, right? Like I get to work, I start thinking about lunch around 10 o’clock, where am I going to pick it up from where am I going to order from where you know, what am I going to do and it was way too much energy. And we know we have a finite amount of decision making energy and motivation and discipline that we just have a sort of I went, I never want to deal with this again. And plus, I’m eating a bunch of garbage. And that’s okay, if that’s what you want to do. But I was tired of just that. It was just too much energy. And also I was eating badly. And then I would have one pass out by two o’clock. And if you’re on the road, because you’re meeting clients, or you’re just out and about, it’s even harder. I have been packing my lunch. This is pretty nerdy. But I make my lunch on Saturdays or Sundays for the entire week. And I freeze it. And again, that probably doesn’t work for everybody. But because of that now, I never have to think about lunch ever again. I have to think about it on the weekends. What am I going to prepare for the week? I think about it takes two or three hours of my time to prepare. And then I’m done. And I never have to think about it. And I can just work during the day. So if you’re, if you’re, if that’s a it’s a simple and it’s not directly related to real estate, but if you’re struggling or struggling with energy, prepare your lunches and ahead of time.
Ryan D’Aprile 39:31 Yeah, well, it comes down to business development too. If you’re struggling on what to do, you should have a you should have a CRM, you should have a dashboard. You should have a roadmap and it shouldn’t literally tell you what to do. And the activities should not take much more than an hour a day.
D.J. Paris 39:47 Yeah, I wake up every day have a system in place that tells you what I used to do us that’s my system. Ryan’s got a system he’s created for his entire organization. In fact, that’s a good place to to promote Ryan’s organization. So if you’re out there listening no matter what field you’re in, and you want to learn more, either because you are looking for a broker who’s as disciplined as Ryan is, he’s got lots of hundreds and hundreds of them, or you’re a broker and you want to work with someone like Ryan, who can help you with some of these marketing efforts. So that you can focus on servicing your clients and expanding your network. What’s the best way they should reach out to you,
Ryan D’Aprile 40:25 you can email me Brian at diva properties.com. Either call my cell phone 312-590-6416 Or you could text me. And just we’ll take it from there, see what you’re looking for what your needs are, I’ll tell you who we are. We’re coaching companies, essentially the backbone. So a lot of people go out and they hire coaches and trainers, that’s what we are at our company. And then we’re backed by an unbelievable marketing team, where we’ll actually do the monthly marketing for you take it out of your hands. And make sure it’s executed consistently. So that when that 14th or 15th month comes like it came from me, you don’t have to think about it, decisions are done for you. And then if you focus on your activities, the results will come. But it’s it’s it’s a team effort. It’s it’s work on our part, it’s work on your part, but you bring it together, it’s it’s still at their 15 years of doing this, I still think is one of the best careers out there.
D.J. Paris 41:25 Well, and it’s such a neat career, because everyone has to live somewhere. And like 87%, I might have that number slightly wrong. I was just looking at it this morning might be 89% of people when they buy and sell a home use a realtor, in fact, for sale by owners are at an all time low, which absolutely is shocking to me. When I came into this business from a I have a marketing background in it. When I came in this business 10 years ago, I turned to the owner of my company and I said I don’t think realtors are gonna exist in 10 years. And he goes, You don’t know what you’re talking about. I said, No, I don’t. But that’s just my guess. And sure enough how wrong I have been. But not only was I wrong, it’s actually fizz bows have gone, it’s less than 7% of all homes sold or sold for sale by owner.
Ryan D’Aprile 42:08 Well, you know, what you and I should do is we should we should notate that. And we should talk about emotional intelligence for next month. And but we’re making a promise to the listeners. So you and I need to follow through with that. And that, to me, is such a fun part of the business. And it is a no brainer. And I knew this two years going into the business, it’s not going anywhere. Because it’s such an emotional transaction. Now we talk a lot about lead generation, how yet to focus on it. But there is an art to understanding and relating to relating to your clients and having to listen to them, we have, you know, two ears, one mouth, and one of the hardest things for us to do in our profession is to actually stop and listen. But it is one of the most, it’s the biggest value our buyers and our sellers get out of us. It’s that, that emotional intelligence and that human connection, and be able to relate with them and be able to talk them through, we actually just we facilitate the transaction. And as you develop that art and that skill set and that capability, oh my gosh, your referrals just continually grow and grow. So perhaps on our next session, we’ll, we’ll I’ll create a little outline, and we’ll talk about motional intelligence, okay, DJ, and I’ll give maybe a two to four point touch on how as a real estate professional, how much the consumer values, emotional intelligence, and how you can convey the value to them, either when you’re in the beginning stages with them, middle stages, or even an or even after part. And just we could also and it’s always really good to reaffirm what we do what good we provide, because selling the home is not I don’t think our main focus, it’s taken somebody from, we want to start here and we want to go there and say, Well, let me go on a journey with you. And let me talk you through every step of the way.
D.J. Paris 44:16 Wow, that’s yeah, that says it all. And by the way for all of our listeners, and we have 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of listeners. We’re so grateful for that. By the way, please send us your questions. What would you like to hear from Ryan? What questions do you have? Maybe it’s related to emotional intelligence, which we’ll cover on our next episode or what we covered today or in the past? What do you what questions do you have you can send those through our Facebook group everyone who’s listening needs to subscribe to our Facebook group because we post links to every episode and every single day our producer Hannah finds an article she sources it online of all the various blogs and different news sources related to how realtors can grow their business you know, we don’t post about hey, here’s that buyer lawsuit with the now Association realtors. We don’t focus on that, because that’s not going to help your business today or I don’t know, maybe it will but probably not. We focus on specific tactics. So every day, we give you at least one quality article that will take you no more than two minutes to read that we find online. And in addition to that, of course, posting links to the so you can send us notes through there saying, hey, I want to hear more about X, Y, or Z. Also through our website, keeping it real pod.com, where you can also listen to every episode right from your web browser. Obviously, anywhere. Podcasts are served up in whatever app you’re using, find us and subscribe there too. But on behalf of Ryan and myself, we really appreciate you guys listening. We also on behalf of the listeners want to thank Ryan for his generosity. He is way too busy to do this yet he does it every single month, and we couldn’t be more grateful. So thank you to everyone listening, Ryan. Thank you, Caleb and we’ll see everyone on in a month. Thanks
Welcome to the August episode of Learning With A Lender with Joel Schaub!
In this episode Joel Schaub partners with Christine, a renovation loan expert at Guaranteed Rate, to explain everything real estate brokers need to understand about these products. They get into detail about FHA 203k loans and how to use for both home improvement and home purchase. If you’re not familiar with renovation loans, you will be by the end of this episode!
D.J. Paris 0:13 Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made for real estate brokers by real estate brokers. My name is DJ Parris. I am your host and guide through the show today we have our monthly regular segment called Learn with a lender with Joel shop from guaranteed rate. If you’re not yet familiar with Joel, let me tell you a little bit about him. He is a vice president of lending at guaranteed rate. Joel has been doing loans at a high level since 2003. And it’s gotten to that level because of what he does directly for agents and their clients, which is he gives part of his commission back to the buyer on every transaction. Last year alone, he gave back over $271,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with them and that put jewels value in the top 1/10 of 1%. nationwide. out of 380,000 loan officers in the country. Joel has been ranked number 181 year to date, he has closed 163 transactions for just under 58 million in closing. In the month of July alone, Joel’s close to 15 million, which exceeds the entire amount he did in the first quarter. And it’s not like the first quarter was slow. Joel is never slow. By the way, if you are looking for a lender, you really need to look no further. Joel is your is your person. He’s your guy. The his slogan is just called Joel because when you do, he actually will take such great care. You’ll never need to call anyone else. Here’s how to get in touch with Joel can be reached at Joel JL e l@rate.com. Or you can reach him on his phone which is 773-654-2049. So let us say hello to the biggest Cubs fan. I know Joel Schaub Good morning.
Joel Schaub 2:00 Hey, good morning, everybody. I really appreciate it. That warm introduction. All the accolades aside, it’s really about giving back. And I think today is going to be a really good show, because we have some knowledge that’s going to help the real estate agents actually close more transactions. And isn’t that what it’s about? We want to be able to provide some value. And I know that we have some great topics for today.
D.J. Paris 2:23 Great. Let’s get started. Oh, let’s
Joel Schaub 2:25 jump right into it. Right. And so here’s where we’re at. The market was strong. And I think right after the fourth of July, what we saw was a slight amount of this softening. And so what we want to do is help agents out there that maybe you have a property that’s in a perfect location, but it needs updating. We’ve seen this a lot, right? DJ, there’s properties that are great, but what is it you walk into? And there’s something wrong with it? Yeah, maybe it’s not the right kitchen, maybe literally as a big amount of space, and they want to do an addition. So I get phone calls all the time about can we do renovation loans, okay. And if you’re if you know anything about me, I don’t do anything unless I really know it. Right. I’m an expert in what I do. And on the call, I have an expert in all things renovation. So Christine, are you there? Good morning. Good morning. Christine, is part of my team, I want you to introduce yourself, tell everybody how long you’ve been with us and just in the business in general so that we get an understanding of what a true boss you are.
Christine 3:31 Great. Well, I started in the business in 1996. And I fell into a renovation situation about 2006. When that was the start of what we call the bubble, the housing bubble. Had a friend buying a property and the entire kitchen was missing for our real estate transactions where we’re encumbering a mortgage. You can’t get a mortgage if there’s no kitchen, because it’s not habitable. So that’s when the entry happened for me on how you could help people who could not pay cash for a home, get a kitchen to make it habitable. And that’s how it started. Was it about 2006 Since then, I’ve closed over a billion dollars and renovation loans, new construction, jumbo VA, you know, everything the gamut. We try to help people get into these homes that that needs some TLC or just need updating.
Joel Schaub 4:30 Christine literally done more renovation loans than anybody in the entire state that I know. And so the knowledge that she brings to these types of transactions because they’re not easy, DJ. It’s not something that you can just jump into with anybody who says, oh, yeah, I can also do renovation loans. You need an expert. Okay. And so on this call today we’re actually going to be able to identify several ways for the average real estate agent or even top real estate agents. How they can take advantage of some of these programs. Sound good? Sounds great.
D.J. Paris 5:04 And welcome, Christina.
Joel Schaub 5:06 It’s good. We’re so excited for. So Christine, tell me one of the typical situations that we have when a buyer comes to us. And we’ll start with probably the FHA, right, and it’s one of the two or 3k loan type of products that you offer. Just walk us through a typical situation that you’ve actually done. That has resulted in a big success.
Christine 5:28 For FHA 203. K, they offer two different programs, one’s more of a streamlined version for simple cosmetic updates. So how it will help the realtors is if they’re looking at a property, FHA has a little bit tighter restrictions on the appraisal process. And if they notice some things like maybe some, you know, crack windows, some GFI outlets, you know, not right, you know, maybe the biggest thing we see in a municipality, for example, Chicago is that the back porches need to be up to code if you’re buying a two, three or four unit, and those can run 20 to $30,000. And FHA is a low down payment at three and a half percent. So we’re able to help the realtors find financing to do these type of repairs to get the homeowner into the property. So those would be success stories is is getting, you know the buyers into the properties that need some repairs. Like if they’re missing kitchens, or bathrooms, or maybe they have water damage, we see a lot of foreclosures, that they don’t winterize properly, that may have some water damage from the roof leaking. That home is not financeable with a regular real estate mortgage, we would use one of our renovation programs to help the buyer obtain the property with a low down payment and give them a lot of money to fix it. You know, it can be 10,000, it can be 200,000. It just depends on what the buyer would like to do.
Joel Schaub 6:57 Let’s say it’s a $200,000. Let’s say it’s a $200,000 property. And it does need work. And I’m going in and buying my real estate agent saw several offers several listings that said cash only they think that it has to be cash. Is this something that FHA two or 3k loans will allow you to still finance even though it says cash only?
Christine 7:17 Yes, that’s I think a big misconception for some agents who maybe are not aware of renovation financing, if they walked into the property, and let’s say there is some water damage, and maybe, you know, the kitchen was removed for some reason, you know, if it’s a foreclosure and we have that a lot of agents will put cash only, and they’ll get pennies on the dollar for that type of listing versus a financed offer, which we would bring in a financed offer, which should be stronger, and allow the border repair the property. So I think there’s a big misconception that homes that are outdated or distressed, have to be cash only because it’s just not true. They are not aware of this program.
Joel Schaub 7:59 Now, DJ, have you seen agents come to you and ask you the same type of questions? How do you think this could help some of the agents that are on the Oh, yeah, I
D.J. Paris 8:06 think it just in particular, you know, removing some of the misinformation about renovation loans is huge. And I think you just provided a great service, because agents aren’t loan specialists, right? That’s not their job, and typically not what they’re best at. So you know, they need somebody like you and Christine to be able to, you know, set the record straight and just let them know what options are available, in particular with things that get a little bit more creative like this.
Joel Schaub 8:34 That’s beautiful. Christine, on that scenario here for $200,000. How much can they borrow? Is there a limit? Or is there a general guideline as to what the after repair costs? Walk us through what that looks like? Please?
Christine 8:48 Yeah, that is going to vary based on county. So if any, you know, one does have a question, we go off their county of website for FHA loan limit, for example, in Chicago, which is Cook County, that loan limit is around $365,700. So we would have to maintain that loan, with the client putting down three and a half percent. So in your example, if it was $200,000 purchase with 100,000 of repair, we’re fine because we’re below the loan limit. And they scale up. Our conventional program has typically higher loan limits. We have high balance locations, such as New York, Massachusetts, California, where loan limits can go almost up to 800,000 for single family, then we step up again into our jumbo renovation, new construction, where loan limits can go up to 2.5 million to 3 million depending on location. Because you do have some areas where in California, Alaska, Hawaii, New York, there’s there’s much more higher price points. So we’re able to really do the full gamut, you know, anywhere from 100,000 up to 3 million in the renovation and new construction that farm.
Joel Schaub 10:00 So I want to hit those loan amounts again. So for Cook County here, let’s just get the basis for some of these people on the podcast and really start to identify their people listening now that are out there helping buyers look at different properties. And so this is going to open up the door and I hope hopefully lead to them closing more transactions in the next quarter. So on FHA, I heard you say, just north of 365, and is that the full loan amount, they could not buy something at 365 and then borrow more under that scenario, right? Well,
Christine 10:34 they can always bring in the downpayment to make up the difference, if you bought something, just call it 350. And they needed 50,000, we could do that they would be required to put down $32,000 towards downpayment, but then we’ll give them 50,000 back. So it’s definitely case by case when we do some analysis, what would help for them, a situation where it might not work is if it’s a higher price property for 400,000, that needs 100,000. In that case, it probably would not make sense to do an FHA 203 K. And it also steps up depending on property type. So for example, single family is at 360,000. Whereas a two unit would be able to go to 471,100. And it will continue to step up three unit and four unit, the loan amounts go higher, the more units you’re buying. Conversely, do a conventional program, Joe, which we’re seeing that we’re having to use a little bit more, in Cook County, the loan limits 484,350, that’s almost $115,000 Higher, and can help more people with that loan amount.
Joel Schaub 11:45 That’s amazing. That’s real numbers that people could go out. Those are real numbers, that people could go out and start looking at properties and then put a plan in place so that they can acquire something in a great area that just needs renovation, and they most people think they have to come out of pocket, or that the renovation loans are tough, that they take six months. Let’s talk a little bit about that. It’s not your typical two or three week close, but but let people know that it’s not some month after month process, right? What is the typical timeframe on a closing that you guys are doing every single month
Christine 12:23 on a closing for cosmetic simple repair, we can do those between 45 and 60 days on a addition or major rehab, we definitely require 60 days. And the difference is the first 30 days is when you are vetting what we call your contractor and consultant information and maybe getting your architect plans. But typically, all of our loans are closing in 60 days on renovation.
Joel Schaub 12:50 It’s absolutely amazing. So let’s say it again, 60 days is what’s needed. They don’t need to have five and six months. And I have so many people come to me and think oh, I’ll never take an offer because it’s got a renovation loan. That’s simply not the case. Right? Yeah, we
D.J. Paris 13:05 should also mention to for the listeners who aren’t in the Chicagoland area, Joel, Christina and myself are however, guaranteed rate has loans all over the country. So even if you’re not local here, Joel can assist you, Christine can assist you as well. So definitely reach out to get those limits and information since it is county based and state based to reach out to find out what what those are in your area.
Joel Schaub 13:30 This is how big your reaches. I think I told you this last time when we were talking not on the podcast, but you have a nationwide reach I received a phone call just over two months ago. And he is in Boston, we closed a transaction for somebody who heard us on the air and was buying a investment property in well outside of Massachusetts. So that’s absolutely your reach. Bravo, DJ.
D.J. Paris 13:58 Well, I’ll tell you the reason the reach has grown as I would love to take credit for it. But it’s for all the guests we’ve had who had been so generous, including Joel and Christine, were really quite frankly, are too busy to do this. And yet they take time out. And you know, they do it out of the goodness of their hearts to educate people to provide value. And, you know, I know Joe very intimately as a friend and this is his whole life is about giving value. And everyone I’ve ever met a guaranteed rate is very much that same way. So this is why the reach I think is grown because these top producers we interview or people like Joel come on and say how can I help educate, and we’re just grateful that people listen.
Joel Schaub 14:41 Beautiful. Okay, Christine, tell us a little bit about some of the other scenarios that somebody on the podcast could really benefit from that. You can can share with us, please.
Christine 14:55 Yeah, I think on the real estate side for realtors, just having the education About this program can separate them in a real life example because I like to use these it really resonates with with our real estate brokers, we had a state sale where the parents had passed away. And there were four adult children, all with a realtor. I mean, I’m sure you’ve run into that DJ. So all four, brought in their realtors to say, you know, can you move our parents home, we need to sell it. The first three Realtors said, Oh, it’s outdated, you know, they’ve lived here 16 years and you’re talking about something close to the children’s heart, that’s where they grew up. So the first three Realtors came in with more of a maybe negative tone, like you know, it’s outdated, it’s going to take a lot to move it. And then one of Joe’s Realtors went in and said, Hey, we have this great program, we can show before and after photos, this is a great house, it has great guts, it needs some updating, but we have financing for it will be able to list it, you know, properly with a strong value. Instead of just giving it away and having a negative connotation. They spun it as a positive with this amazing financing. That realtor became, you know, the listing agent, they hired that realtor that that had the knowledge of the program. And they sold the property within 60 days using our platform, and our materials, which really helps, you know, put everything together for the realtor.
Joel Schaub 16:26 That’s amazing. So now. So now what we’ve seen as real life scenarios where agents on the podcasts that are listening can obtain a new listing, right instead of going in and saying, Oh, I don’t know how we’re ever going to sell this. I’m your person, we can get this listed, I’m going to make sure that one of our contexts at guaranteed rate, we’ll do the financing on the renovation loans. For any buyers that come in, we’ll create the marketing pieces that we set out at that open house. And let people know that it’s not a long process, and that they can do it. So now we’ve talked about how agents can get new listings, because they can have this in their back pocket. And we’ve also covered how buyers can go out and with their agents and actually acquire these properties. So if you’re a realtor that’s listening, these are two big things that can help us grow, because now you have somebody in your pocket that can help you close these transactions and open up a whole bunch of new transactions for
Christine 17:29 you. And Jill, just to add to that, on the realtor side, if you’re working with your buyer, sometimes there’s like certain school districts or they need to be close to their parents who might help with their kids, you know, maybe needing to be near work in a certain location. Sometimes the inventory is not that strong, where there’s a large selection. This allows them to maybe buy a property that needs updating or expansion in a specific school district or near their parents or near their job. And we can customize the home for them. Again, giving the realtors the insight to share this knowledge with their buyers and say, Hey, we can get you in the area. And you can update the house to how you want it since we’re not seeing exactly what you want. So it’s something for the realtors to keep in their back pocket for not only the listing side, but also on the buyer side.
Joel Schaub 18:20 Christine, does this also work on investment properties? Or does this buyer have to live in the property?
Christine 18:29 For a majority of our programs, they’re for owner occupied. We do mixed use for units through our FHA program. But they are all pretty much for every residence, the only Ester options we offer is for long term hold where let’s say an investor’s buying a property, wanting to update it and hold it for a couple years as a rental. We are allowed to do that on one unit property only like single family condo Townhome. Other than that we do not have investor properties for mix mixed units or for jumbo they don’t offer that at this time.
Joel Schaub 19:05 I could buy a house that I’m going to rent out and I could get a renovation loan. I just can’t get into this, renovate it and flip it right. We’re not that’s not our target market for any of those underwriting things. Right. That’s not the way it works. Okay. That’s a lot here, DJ questions for us.
D.J. Paris 19:26 Now, you know, my question is always thinking about the broker. You know, who should they be talking to about this? You know, with this respect to investor clients, you know, this is a conversation that really needs to originate from the realtor side and I think we just we just gave some really good talking points, but any ID any ideas about how they should reach this or broach this topic with their investor clients?
Joel Schaub 19:56 Well, Christine, you’ve probably seen this before, were they the age Doesn’t the agents, the one usually getting this brought to them by the buyer? They’re saying, Hey, can I do any renovation loans? And the agent goes? I don’t know. Right? And so this is the reason that being on the podcast and learning that yes, all you got to do, you know, just cultural, they will connect you with Christine. And we work as a team on all of these transactions. It’s not just that I hand it off to Christine, and that we’re not involved, we work hand in hand on all of these transactions, so that the buyers can go out there and look at places that they just never thought they could get into. So it’s a it’s a win win for the agent, because they’re going to be able to close more transactions, because they now know some of these little tips on how they can do renovation loans.
D.J. Paris 20:42 Perfect. You know, I’m interested in hearing your take Joel AND and OR Christine, on the recent news that just happened, I believe, this morning, where it was reported on by various news outlets that the Fed may be cutting, cutting rates, interest rates by a quarter of a point. Any thoughts on how that may or may not affect loan rates?
Joel Schaub 21:08 I’d love to talk about what that means and what it doesn’t mean, right? Because there’s a lot of misinformation about what a Fed cut does, to mortgage rates. Okay. So the day that the feds cut interest rates, they don’t call the mortgage companies and say, Please lower your rates today by this amount. Wouldn’t that be great? If it was so orchestrated that way, but that’s not what it is. Weeks and weeks have gone into this? This is DJ the, what we call on the floor here, the worst kept secret, right? We know that the feds are cutting rates, and they’re going to do it again at their December meeting. So six weeks ago, the traders priced in almost a 100% rate cut for today. That’s when rates dropped. That is why July, we’ve had more refinance activity and closing activity than I had in the first quarter of 2019. The rate cuts are here. The actual announcement today is just happenstance. Which is pretty cool, though. So what it does is it will be another way for your agents out there to have a talking point. So what does it do? Hey, did you hear that the feds cut rates reach back out to your lender now you should be able to qualify for more of a house and pay less on the same property. So it’s going to get buyers off the fence. So this is a great talking point for agents right now, tomorrow and in the weeks ahead. It’s going to be in the news Feds cut rates. What we know now based on what I just told you that the rate cut has been here. But it still means that rates today are lower than they’ve been in almost three and a half years, which is crazy.
D.J. Paris 22:54 I was looking that excuse me on average rates are about 100 basis points, which in layman’s terms is 1% less than it was November of last year even today?
Joel Schaub 23:05 You remember Anna? You’re exactly right. That’s a big drop.
D.J. Paris 23:10 Huge drop. So even if you aren’t working with any current buyers, but you have previous clients, what a great opportunity to call and say, Hey, I don’t you know, know your current mortgage situation. However, did you know that rates are much lower than they were even last year might be time to call your you know, your your loan officer. If you don’t have one? I’ve got somebody and obviously you can reach out to Joel.
Joel Schaub 23:34 Yeah, no matter what bank they talk to the rates are down right now, which is great. It doesn’t just have to be me your guaranteed rate. The banks right now on a 30 year fixed are down around 3.75 As of this morning and 3.25% this morning on a 15 year. So these are some talking points that you can say with your buyers, because they probably don’t know that for all of last year, all of 17 rates were in the fours and like you’d said in November, they were in the high fours even with 20 and 25%. Down the lowest rates were just below 5%. So we’ve seen a major move down where a 30 year fixed rate now has 3.75 on average.
D.J. Paris 24:18 And I can almost guarantee all of the brokers out there listening that your clients are not getting called by their their loan officer to tell them that you know, loan officers are too busy and it’s just not typically those calls aren’t made by many of them. And so here’s a golden opportunity for you to be a hero to your clients say hey, I know I already helped you purchase that home however, might be time to look for a refi another great reason to reach back out after the sale and keep that relationship and deepen it and continue to provide value. So huge.
Joel Schaub 24:50 I love that. Why don’t we like doing that? Isn’t that such a great thing. We’re all salespeople but what most people fall in this habit of is either not calling Little pasture your past clients at all? Or when you deal you’re asking them for business, Oh, do you know any friends or family? That could refer me? You know? No, they already know this, they would refer you. But if you call them with something of value, hey, just want to check in with the kids the house, hey, rates are down. Remember when we closed, I know that you had a rate in the fours, call your mortgage guy back, you know, remember, Jamel helped you close, I bet he didn’t get that rate down right now. And it means that there’s a lot of rates, if 375 is the best rate in the market, you can be a little bit higher than that with no fees, right. So if you have a rate right now, that’s at four and a half percent, and you could lower it to four, and not pay anything. That saves 10s of 1000s of dollars over the life of the loan for your average three or $400,000 loan, and you don’t have to pay any fees you can refinance. Typically, you’ll ask your banker, what’s the lowest rate in the market? And also what is the rate where you will cover all of my fees to refinance this mortgage? So I as a buyer, don’t need to pay anything. And then you can make the decision which one makes the most sense for your financial situation?
D.J. Paris 26:09 Wow, that’s a great place, I think to wrap up and by the way, everyone who’s listening who wants to speak to a loan officer like Joel and you should, because once you speak to him, you probably won’t need to ever speak to another loan officer. Joe, what’s the best way someone should reach out to you whether they’re a broker or client directly?
Joel Schaub 26:30 Yeah, email me directly. I really liked the communication and we could do the phone call as well. So I’ll start with email, which is just my name. It’s Joel JOE l@rate.com. So that is short for Joel at guaranteed rate. Even doctors and attorneys I always get people that misspell guaranteed. It’s like
D.J. Paris 26:48 that was a smart move. That was a smart move to make it the email simpler.
Joel Schaub 26:52 Jolin rate.com. And then 773-654-2049. And then with Christina on the phone, please do the same tell us the best way for you to connect with the folks on the call. And did we lose Christine,
D.J. Paris 27:12 we may have lost.
Joel Schaub 27:15 Tell them where you can be reached.
Christine 27:19 I can be reached at 773-848-4144 or Chris, Chris de like david@rate.com.
Joel Schaub 27:33 You’re awesome. This was really great. I really enjoyed what we covered today.
D.J. Paris 27:37 And thank you so much, Christine Angele on behalf of the listeners for taking time out of your two busy days to provide value to our 1000s of listeners. So I want to remind the listeners that please to support our show, we can do two things. One, give Joel a call whenever you have a client that needs a loan, whether it’s renovation loans, traditional mortgage, anything, reach out to him he will do his best along with Christine. So support our guests. And the second thing is to remember to tell a friend, right if you know other brokers in your area get we are nationwide. So there’s a huge pool that doesn’t yet know about our show, let them know pass this over every week we have on a top 1% producer and once a month we have on specialists like Joel to help you too. So on behalf of the listeners, Joe and Christine Thank you. And on behalf of Joel Christine, we thank you to the listeners for continuing to support our show, guys. We will see everyone on the next episode, which will be coming out shortly. Also Lastly, please join our Facebook page we post links to every single episode including as well as every Dr. Associate Producer Hanna sources, an article that will help you grow your business that we find online. So we try to provide value every single day of the week. Because we only do these episodes about once a week. So thank you if you are already a member of Facebook, if not the way to find us go to Facebook, just do a search for keeping it real podcast you’ll find us and also our website, we can stream every single episode keeping it real pod.com Oh, one more thing. You can also send in questions. Let us know your lender questions and we will pass those over to Joel and Christine and we will get those answered on a future episode right through our website or Facebook. Send us your questions and we’ll get to them. But anyway, Joel Christine, thank you so much. And we will see you both on receiving the next step. Which will be in a month. Thank you DJ.
Welcome to the August episode of Investor Insights With Brie Schmidt!
Brie Schmidt is one of the most well-respected buy-and-hold investors in Chicago. Each month we’ll be discussing an investment topic brokers should master.
In this episode Brie discusses different lending options available for investors. First she talks about hard money lending, what investors can do to qualify, and what terms are generally included. We also have a conversation about how to find investors, how to structure the deal, and how finding money is usually the easiest part of real estate investing (assuming you have found a great opportunity!).
D.J. Paris 0:15 Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the only podcasts made by by real estate brokers for real estate brokers. My name is DJ Paris today we have our regular series investor insights with Bree Schmidt. Now, if you are new to the show, let me tell you a little bit about my co host. Brie Schmidt acquired her first investment property in 2011 and left the corporate world in 2014. She came because she became a full time real estate investor. She is the managing broker of Second City Real Estate which is a full service brokerage firm, working with new investors and seasoned investors looking to expand their knowledge of the industry and their portfolio. For us a lot. Bri utilizes her extensive knowledge of building and managing a portfolio to teach clients about all aspects of buy and hold investing. She’ll teach you how to analyze potential properties, calculate your ROI, best practices when marketing and leasing your properties, and also how to be a landlord while you’re building a portfolio. Bree is co founder also of the Midwest real estate networking summit, which is a nonprofit educational summit for real estate investors she hosted several times a year. It’s a three day annual event. And it’s awesome. I got to I was lucky enough to be able to attend briefly and the last one. So anyone who’s interested in working with investors or being coming in investor yourself or just getting more knowledge as an investor, check out the Midwest real estate Summit. With all that being said, By the way, you can learn more about the Midwest real estate summit by mid west RV summit.com. We will put a link to that in the notes for this podcast episode. But anyway, without further ado, welcome Bree Schmidt Hello, how are you? Good. Should we tell everybody just how pregnant you are? Can we?
Brie Schmidt 2:01 Yeah, I’m 34 weeks to go.
D.J. Paris 2:04 Four weeks to go. Credible site.
Brie Schmidt 2:07 Awesome. Chicago weather of like 90 degrees has been perfect for me. Let me tell you,
D.J. Paris 2:13 and you just moved. Yeah. And when up to Summit, and you just finished up a summit with hundreds of people. And you had to organize all the speakers, the the event space, everything. It was all the advertisers. I mean, it’s incredible.
Brie Schmidt 2:28 It’s a lot of work. But it’s said like I said you came it’s really worth it. We really focus on no gurus, no pitching, no one’s out there selling their get rich quick scheme. It’s all real investors who not only focus on you know what they do well, but where they’ve messed up and how they’ve, what they’ve learned throughout their their investing career. And that’s really what makes it a little bit different. And people are telling their real stories, not just, Hey, this is the greatest thing in the world, you know, you can retire early, and you know, and it’s not that easy. And everyone makes mistakes. And so that’s part of the focus is talking about those mistakes and how we can learn from them.
D.J. Paris 3:12 Yet everyone should get on her mailing list. So go to Midwest, R e summit.com. And make sure that you’re getting these updates, because you don’t want to miss the next one. What is the next one’s date set yet?
Brie Schmidt 3:26 It will be in May of 2020.
D.J. Paris 3:29 Gotcha. So plenty of time, but you re sends out a lot of good information along the way as well. So get on that mailing list. Okay, so for today’s episode, we actually had a question that we thought was a such a strong question that we thought we’d do a whole episode around it. So I want to read first read the question. This comes from one of our listeners named Daniel, which basically says, and I’ll paraphrase, because he wrote us a really nice note. But he wanted really to ask Bree, uh, her thoughts about hard money lending, he says, hey, I can find deals, but I’m struggling with the funding. He says hard money is something he’s looked into, but not sure if it’s the only option when it comes to now in his case, flipping homes. But so let’s dive into that topic of hard money lending or any types of funding that you think is appropriate.
Brie Schmidt 4:17 So flipping homes is actually it’s a lot. It’s hard. It’s it’s a lot of work. And it’s really hard to get started. Because when you go to approach a wonder, let’s say a hard money lender, one of the first things they’re going to ask is what’s your track record? You know, if this is your first project, and you don’t have a track record? Well, they’re putting risk into you by giving you the money, you know, can you perform? Can you execute the project? Will your sale price, be on target, you know, will you be able to stay in our budget, these are all risks that they’re taking for a new investor. So typically their rates are a lot higher. So I think one of the biggest misconceptions people have about hard money lending is that they’re they’ll Do 100% financing and that’s not true, they’ll typically for a seasoned investor want at least 20% of the acquisition plus the rehab costs. If you’re a new investor, they may want 30 40% cash to show that you’ve got skin in the game. So one of my actual one of my business partners is a hard money lender, and he lives across the country. So we’ve had many discussions about, you know, how he does his portfolio, and he does about $20 million a month, nationwide, through hard money lending. And that’s how we met was he was funding a flipper here in the Chicago market years ago, and had met me through networking events, and the flipper wanted a million dollar line of credit. So they didn’t want they didn’t want every single deal analyzed, they had been through the process a bunch of times, they just wanted a million dollars cash to do what they want with it. So this guy called me up and was like, you know, I’ve heard of you, we know, kind of know each other, you know, about to give these guys a million dollar line of credit, but I’m not local. So if they don’t, if they start dodging my calls or things get, you know, fishy, I want someone in the local market that could go down there and check up on things for me, I’ll pay you, you know, and that’s how we started our relationship. So there’s a lot of risk involved for the hard money lender. Sure, if you’re a newbie, and this is your first project, you’re gonna expect 30 to 40% down payment on the acquisition plus the rehab. As far as terms, you’re still you’re probably looking at four points. If you don’t know what points are, it’s a flat fee up front, due for the loan amount. So for every $100,000, you finance, four points would be $4,000. So that can get really expensive, really quick, if you’re doing, you know, a 678 $100,000 project, and they’re charging me four point. Yeah. And then for a new set for the new or newer investor, that’s not very experienced, you’re probably going to pay between 12 and 14%. And those terms are typically interest only. And they will, depending on the type of project and the scope of work, they’ll do between six and 18 month loans on that. Sure. So to answer your question is hard money, the right route to go? You and because you don’t have the cash to do the deals, the problem is, you still need the cash, right. So alternatives until you’re building up your book would be private money. So private money is typically friends, family, there are private money lenders in the marketplace as well. But again, they’re going to want to see someone with a track record. We had a great private money lender come speak last year, who’s you know, I’ve he’s done a couple, you know, most of my project for me, actually. But he, you know, they underwrite everything, and they’re very diligent about your, your experience and your track record. So if you haven’t done at least, you know, 510 deals, they won’t even have those conversations. So private money within friends and family and your own personal network, right, then you can negotiate terms, they probably won’t charge you points. But then you’re in a position where, you know, you better make sure you know what you’re doing. Because if you, if you mess up and you lose money, it’s your friends and family money.
So be careful with that. The other option, as well as finding a partner, you know, partnerships, as is a very good thing if it’s done correctly. And so if you can find a partner that has the maybe construction experience or the track record, you know, no one says you have to go do this alone, and has a different skill set than than you, then you can leverage their experience with these hard money lenders and get better terms. Because once you get experienced, you know, you you if you’re let’s say you’ve done five to 15 deals, you’re probably looking more around two points, and more around 10% interest, give or take. And then once you’re becoming, you know, a professional flipper, and this is your job and you know, you’re doing 1015 projects a year, then you start getting into the the private money lenders, who will give you much better terms, because they’ve they’ve had a history with you, you’ve proven yourself essentially.
D.J. Paris 9:28 Yeah, that’ll make sense. I know that for anyone listening who’s interested in putting these kinds of deals together and finding alternatives to hard money lenders, you know, if you know, where you mentioned, friends and family if you have people in your life that are cash heavy. These are the people that are looking for a reasonably you know, modest return a quick modest return. So you know, make sure you have your numbers right but you know, oftentimes People who are cash heavy and there are professions that are cash heavy, you know, people who are traders are oftentimes cash heavy. And we, you know, if you’re here in Chicago, we have a huge trading community here. Sometimes they make good partners, because you know, they’re there have they have the means and are looking for maybe a safer return than dumping it in the market. So there’s lots of ways
Brie Schmidt 10:21 and considering mean, even a high yield savings account as a 2% API, offer friends and family 8% return on their money, you know, then you’re getting a great deal at 8%. And they are also putting their money to better use. Um, so on the topic of God,
D.J. Paris 10:42 no, I was gonna say, this is exactly the kind of topic that is discussed at the Midwest real estate Summit. And again, I know it’s, you know, we have some time until the next one. But this is a constant conversation that happens between investors, right? People are always wondering, Hey, how are you doing it? Who are you working with, so you can get networked in with some of these private money lenders, hard, hard lenders, personal investors sort of thing if you are connected to the investor community. So for those who are listening, if you’re you serious, or wanting to get serious about investing, you should be part of bigger pockets, it’s the place to be as, as most of the listeners will already know. But that’s another place where you can source you know, and get, get put feelers out there and see, you know, what other people are doing.
Brie Schmidt 11:27 Yeah, and even though we have 10 Mountains to the summit, there’s plenty of networking groups locally. And so you can find them on meetup.com. Also, on bigger pockets, there’s a network tab at the top. And underneath, there’s a events link, and most of the events are free, the networking events, you know, I’ve been to and spoken at, you know, 1520 of them. And one of the things that I like most about them is going with the investor community, you know, no one’s no one’s hiding their secrets. A there are no secrets. But be if you ask someone like, hey, you know, who are using for it, hey, can I get a GC referral? Can I get a hard money lender referral? Who are you using? Who have you found to be successful there? Nine times out of 10 very happy to share that information with you. No, I’m so that’s how I said most of my contacts have developed throughout the years is through the meetup that I’ve been running for about six years now. And Norwood Park area, just because you know, investors come and they talk, they’re happy to share their their experiences.
D.J. Paris 12:35 Yeah, that’s been our experience as well. It seems to be the investors I know, say that the lending portions actually not super difficult, because there’s always people with cash. Once you plug into the right communities, you’ll find these people it’s the deals that seem to be the harder of the of the two tasks is find the deals and the investors will find you
Brie Schmidt 12:55 depends on where we are in the market. That’s true. Well, years ago, you know, no one was giving out money. And there were plenty of deals. So there that’s the problem with the real estate cycle here, like in general, is either there’s deals or there’s money. And you there’s never there’s never money when there’s deals I was actually at I spoke at I am and I am on does a middle market forum. They’re doing one this October in Chicago. I spoke at last year’s event too. And that was the biggest takeaway is, you know, these were mid market players in the multifamily world is everyone had money, or everyone had really easy access to money, but nowhere to put it. Right. That was the big conversation. So if you can find the deals, you know, finding money isn’t that hard at this point of the cycle? The problem though, is that make sure that what you’re what you’re looking at isn’t actually a deal. One of the things to watch, I’m not sure if you were I don’t think you were there Saturday morning, we had Sue Hoff, who runs a company called my rehab Academy. I absolutely love what she’s doing. So she’s a GC, I think for about 20 years now. And she’s started my rehab Academy, which is classes for investors. And they will teach you everything from you know how to run electric, sweat, copper, they do like one day workshops, how to build a kitchen, how to tile a bathroom, you know, these are all things that you might not want to know the hands on part of things, but if you’re a flipper and you’re doing a major renovation project, it’s probably a good idea for you to know what proper copper insulation looks like. You know what like the things so if you know how to do it yourself, then you know what to look for when you’re doing rehab projects. But one of the things that she also offers which I find very interesting is she will because I had her come to my house to she will walk through a project when you are during your acquisition period. It’s a flat rate. It’s a couple $100 And she will walk through the project with you talk about your scope of work, and then come I’m gonna check the comps. So I was talking with a mutual friend who was doing a project with her up in the north suburbs and like that, and, you know, Sue came in and gave him, you know, hey, here’s what the comps are. And their original plan was essentially to over develop the property. You know, she was like, You’re based on the comps. And based on the materials, your plan is actually probably too expensive, and you’re going to price yourself out of the market. So if you dial it down a bit, here’s the materials list she provides for you. Here’s the cost of all the materials as well. This is what is in line with the market and will give you the best return on your investment.
D.J. Paris 15:39 Wow, that’s seems like it’s worth a few $100? For sure.
Brie Schmidt 15:42 Um, so yeah, I think what she’s doing is great. So she does the classes, she also does that sort of service for clients. And it’s, I think, very beneficial, especially if you’re a new investor. You know, we all especially as agents, I think, because we know the agent side, we think we know everything. And I’ve seen it, I’m sure you’ve seen it to tons of times where an agent goes to do their own flip project. And, you know, something goes wrong along the way, and then it’s on the market, right. And that’s the last thing you want to do. And we get so excited, because this is our profession, you know, that we want to get, you know, like, oh, I want to do a steam shower, or you know, I’m going to do this grand thing, and it’s going to look great. But that doesn’t always mean that’s in line with what the market wants. Right. And if you’re doing a three, one starter home, you know, in some neighborhood that the average price points 350 If you over build with custom woodwork and steam showers, you know, and now you’re all in is 400. With cost like that you guys sell it for 50. Now you’re priced out of the market, you know, you overdid the project and sometimes the simplest, you know, way is the best. So Sue, that’s what Sue does. And I, I would definitely look into that if you’re a first time flipper.
D.J. Paris 16:58 Yeah, we’ll post a link to her her website on the notes so that people can check her out. And I think one of the big takeaways is you just got to plug in or you don’t have to, but it’s certainly a good idea to plug in to the investor community, the investor community is actually very communal, they they do like Bree said they have meetups, you know, they congregate online, or locally, you know, and if you you know, if you’re a BiggerPockets member, you’ll find out there’s a million things they’re always doing. And members are doing meet up, you know, you just search for real estate investor and you will, you will plug in and get you know, great ongoing support from people who are doing exactly what you’re doing. And I would say it was interesting, and I’d be curious to get your thoughts on this as I almost think the investor community, which a lot of them are brokers are really more communal than even just traditional realtors, I don’t find traditional Realtors community commuting all that much. It’s such a, you know, maybe a solo sport, but, but investment investments might seem like a solo sport, but boy, you can get a lot of help. If you look for it.
Brie Schmidt 18:03 It’s very different, um, you know, even just this weekend was my housewarming party and 75% of our guests and investors that were, you know, became friends over the years. The ID that the investor community is, is all really about paying it forward. You know, no one, there’s really no competition like or as with agents. You know, even even I get with clients, you know, we have if one property comes up sometimes, like we’ve had times where we had eight showings with one house. You know, we had a situation two summers ago, where we had six offers on one house with our clients, which is very, very rare. But usually I always tell them like, listen, even though you’re you all have the same endgame. You all actually have different strategies and different preferences. So people recognize that. And again, usually within the investor community, someone helped them out along the way, and they want to pay that forward. So when I said when it comes to any sort of like lending, referrals, construction referrals, those sorts of things, I I’ve never run into a situation where I’ve asked for a referral and not and someone said, No, this is my guy, I’m not going to share that information with you. Super uncommon.
D.J. Paris 19:24 Well, Daniel, who is the listener that wrote this? And hopefully this answered your question about about hard money lending. And Bree also provided some alternative ideas about you know, getting plugged into the community, and we’ll post a couple links to some of the talking points in the episode. But that also brings us to another point, which is as we’re wrapping up as you’re listening if additional questions came up in any capacity with respect to real estate investing, Reshma is absolutely the person to answer them, which is why we’re so honored that she does the show at eight months pregnant And so please send us your questions, you can do that through Facebook, which you can find us by typing and facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod or just search for keeping it real podcasts, you’ll find us that way. Also go to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com, which you can also submit questions that way as well, or, you know, just send them to me or Bri directly if you have our personal information. But, you know, this podcast, of course, is to help all the listeners learn more about real estate investing. So I will let bring it back to her final stages of pregnancy, and all the other things you’re doing, which is incredible running a business and doing investments. And gosh, you do it all. So in planning next. Yeah, but
Brie Schmidt 20:44 thank you. Yeah, planning. That’s not for a while we needed a break from that. We usually take the summer off, and then we’ll start back up October, November,
D.J. Paris 20:55 good. How many properties are you do you own? What’s How big is your portfolio?
Brie Schmidt 21:00 Actually, I just sold some properties. Oh, I just sold a few properties this spring. And I’ll kind of go into this, but I actually hired an economist. So through through networking with investors, I attended and spoke at an event in Philly last year. And one of the speakers was an economist. And so I ended up hiring him to explain things to me, because I understand the real estate market, what I don’t understand is the stock market, you know, the other what economic indicators, what a yield curve is all these things that are kind of outside of my realm, but affect my realm. So I hired him to, you know, explain things to me. And part of that was him reviewing my portfolio. And I’d went back through, you know, five years of data and gave it all to him. And he pointed out to me that for some of my properties, while they were performing, and doing well, my equity position in them was so great, that if I sold my property today, I would get at least 10 years plus cashflow up front. So yeah, so I ended up I sold five properties, the spring, because they were they were above that 10 year trigger for me. Um, and then I’m looking to reinvest that capital in more passive options. But so now I think I’m down to like, 84 unit. It’s a lot of work.
D.J. Paris 22:25 Yeah. Plus, you also run a real estate company. And on top of that, so incredible. And so, you know, and by the way, I just a quick pitch for one of our other regular episodes, which is with Ryan Day, April, where we’ve actually done this where we’ve worked macro to micro or we’ll call it, you know, more national to hyperlocal, where Ryan actually shows some of the trend data, which isn’t always necessarily specific to real estate investing. But just for our broker listeners who are brokers who work with their clients, you need to be able to explain what’s going on in the market. We’ve done some episodes around understanding some of the trends that are happening, you know, from a larger, higher altitude perspective and then going hyperlocal. So definitely check out our Ryan coaching monthly episode too. But on behalf of Bree and myself, we want to say thank you, for everyone listening, we’re over 100 episodes now. So we’re super grateful for that, and that people are still listening and passing this over. So please tell a friend if you know anyone else that is either a real estate investor or someone who is a broker who is interested in learning more about real estate investment or not or not somebody is not a broker who’s interested, you know, pass this podcast over to them. And we’ll keep doing this and send us your questions. And Bree, thank you so much, and we wish you the very best with your final final days of pregnancy.
Welcome to the August edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick from At Properties!
This month Carrie talks about how, despite it being the busy season, sales are actually down year-over-year. She discusses best practices around working with buyers and sellers in this climate, and also discusses why many of her clients are selling their homes and renting luxury apartments. I provide a marketing tip about delivering inexpensive back-to-school care packages for your contacts with children.
D.J. Paris 0:14 Hello and welcome to another episode of keepin it real the old the largest podcast in the country made by brokers for brokers. My name is DJ Paris and today we have our Monday market minute with Kerry McCormick. So if those of you new to the show, who aren’t yet familiar with Carrie, she is a top 1% That top 1% of 1% Producer at in Chicago, I misses out of 44,000 Realtors, she’s consistently year over year in like the top 20 of 44,000 Realtors, she’s been in the business for 20 years, a total superstar clearly and generously donates her time to speak to you the listeners once a month about what’s going on in the Chicagoland market so that you can better educate your clients or maybe your client yourself that wants to just know what’s going on in the business. So welcome once again, my oldest co host and friend Carrie,
Carrie McCormick 1:16 you can’t say I’m the oldest Am I the oldest? Sure
D.J. Paris 1:19 that didn’t sound good. You’re You’re, you’re the you’re a seasoned co host I have. I know I should have, we should I should redo that. Because you’re certainly not old. But it’s funny. It is funny. By the way, before we get into it, I want to plug, make sure that everybody who’s listening goes and follows Carrie on Instagram for a couple of reasons. One, because it’s really good. The quality of content that she puts out there on a consistent basis is incredible. And it’s a real example of what good quality content looks like in social media. So follow her on instagram.com forward slash Carrie McCormick real estate. We’ll also post a link to that in the notes, but just look for Carrie McCormack that’s to season recording real estate, and you’ll find her so what’s going on? Carrie,
Carrie McCormick 2:12 thank you so much for that great introduction. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate everyone listening and being here. So here we are, we’re in mid year 2019. And overall, I would say it’s really been a challenged market. The volume has been down about six and a half percent this year. And we just we’ve got tight inventory right now. But even though that the volume is down, you know, real estate is selling the number one thing I’ve seen is it has to be priced. Right. I know everyone keeps hearing that. But it just I’ve tested a few different things this market and with marketing and just different strategies. It all plays together. But really, you know, you’ve got to be priced right. And in addition to that price growth is slowing. So usually in Chicago, our typical growth is about 2% a year. And now this year, it’s down to about a half a percent. And, you know, there’s a lot of contributing factors to that, but one is the tax consequences that happened about a year ago. And that’s really affecting, you know, everyone’s affordability in the real estate market. The other part is the luxury market. So, you know, homes over a million so in the first half of 2019. We saw 614 homes in the city trade hands for a million or more. Which if you look back to 2018 It’s a 15% drop, which is a huge, huge drop. However, the altra like the tippy top ultra luxury market, over 4 million is actually up a little bit, which is interesting, but we’ve got some Uber luxury buildings such as like one Bennett Park, we’ve got nine Walton that has these, you know very super, you know over $4 million properties and we’ve seen a little bit when I say a little bit it’s been like three or four property uptick but it’s it’s interesting to see that the Uber wealthy, you know are still buying here in Chicago. One thing I wanted to talk about which for me has been a change in my business is rentals. So for the first time in my 20 years, a lot of my sellers are downsizing in instead of buying you know two or three bedroom condo, they are deciding to rent right and all these great rental buildings you know, it’s it goes back to you know, taxes it goes back to just wanting to live in easier life not worrying about maintenance on a home, you know, the roof, the lawn, you know the tuckpointing etc, etc. And then again the unknown with the taxes. But because I’ve done a lot of rentals recently I’ve been and touring and visiting all these class a rental buildings, and I’ve noticed that there’s an amenity war going on. Yes. So it’s the amenities have become a big factor in clients making decisions. So like rental buildings like the old town park in the Sinclair, they have spas, they have spa services, you can do massage rooms, saunas, steam rooms and gyms. When Bennett Park which is one of my favorite buildings Nima Essex on the park, they’ve got this new service, which I love. It’s called Hello, Alfred, that allows the tenants to schedule like in home grocery deliveries, you could do maid service, you could get fresh flowers delivered daily to your home, you could actually even get turned down service. Yeah.
D.J. Paris 5:48 I was gonna say I dated a woman recently who got turned down service. And I was like, I didn’t know that was it? But yeah, they’re all doing it.
Carrie McCormick 5:55 I mean, think about that. It’s it’s like a simple life, meaning, you know, I mean, you pay for it. But it’s just this ease of not worrying about anything and having everything done for you. So rentals have become very socially acceptable they’ve become we’ve got a ton of them here in Chicago. And they’re just to me, it’s really amazing. It’s an amazing opportunity for some of our, you know, sellers to go into.
D.J. Paris 6:22 Yeah, and it’s also one of those things that it’s typically a temporary thing anyway, right. So you help somebody with a rental, you know, you and then eventually they’ll probably purchase something in the future to even if they came from selling a home and they rent and they’ll probably buy something down the road anyway. Right? Yeah, so
Carrie McCormick 6:39 it’s a good little stepping stone. Another thing I wanted to talk about is buyers. So there’s a lot of new agents that have entered the marketplace, new real estate agents that have entered into our space. And I get a lot of questions I love, you know, helping new agents and coaching and problem solving. So anyone listening who’s new and want some advice, I’m always, you know, happy to help. But one question I’ve got recently, quite a bit was about working with buyers, and how to minimize the risk of, you know, their time and effort, because you can work with a buyer for I don’t know, you know, weeks months, you know, I’ve got one that’s going on a year. And I always say that, you know, working with buyers is always risky. Because you know, you spend a lot of time your own time with them and efforts. In it, there’s no guarantee that they’re going to buy something. And you know, even if they find the right house, are they going to buy it or they’re going to put an offer in is that offer going to be accepted is the you know, is the appraisal going to appraise out. So there’s a lot of things that can go wrong, you know, even when you get someone to make an offer on a home when they find the right home. But you just need to know that and you need to manage the process very closely all the way through. And it’s just important to have open communication with your buyers. And always be honest and be a good listener. And to be solution oriented, because things will go wrong, nothing’s ever smooth. And you just need to be patient, communicate and be solution oriented.
D.J. Paris 8:24 So yeah, and also to remember to that buyers need your guidance, they need your emotional guidance, along with the financial guidance, like, obviously, you’re the one that’s going to tell them, you know, give them advice on on what to you know what to submit a bid at and when to submit a bid, but also, it is a very stressful experience, especially for a first time homebuyer to know what’s happening next, you know, and just to manage expectation and emotion and that’s, you know, the, the job of a great realtor does that.
Carrie McCormick 8:57 Yeah, and you know, things like I mentioned and you know not to be pessimistic, but things go wrong. And every agent out there has had, you know, a deal blow up or something go wrong, or you know, someone’s upset but it is you need to just take it step by step with the process. And if it does go wrong, you know, don’t let it get you down. I mean, it’s happened to all of us is you just have to learn from it. And, you know, learn from it and move on you. It just it’s part of it’s part of the job and you know, anyone that’s listening, if you ever need any advice, like I mentioned, I’ve got 20 years of experience and I’m a good listener, I’m a good problem solver. And sometimes it’s just helpful to you know, talk it through with somebody and you know, everyone’s got a managing broker and colleague so you know, use use all your resources to learn and do better
D.J. Paris 9:48 one. Speaking of working with buyers, you have a new development that you are working with. So tell our listeners about this because it’s very exciting.
Carrie McCormick 9:56 Yeah, thanks for mentioning that. So at properties and myself we just are working with L Cove in Wicker Park. It’s a new 55 unit development. There’s 55 condos and 12. New townhomes, brand new development delivering fall of 2020. It is, if you want to look it up in the MLS, it’s 1255 Polina Street, we do have a beautiful sales gallery that’s located at 1295 North Milwaukee Avenue. We’ve got a full kitchen in there. We’ve got finished samples, floor plans, we’ve got a great VR. So I would encourage everyone listening, stop by our sales center, take a look at what’s new, it’s hard of Wicker Park. It’s an amazing location, and really great floor plans and community. So feel free to visit that website. That
D.J. Paris 10:48 website, by the way is and I’m looking at the pictures it’s incredible, is alcove M. d B. So Mary David Paul alcove, Mary David paul.com. And I’ll put a link to that in the notes. It is.
Carrie McCormick 11:01 So everyone asks what what does it stands for? St. Mary David Paul, but it’s good question. It’s Milwaukee division, and Polina. So it’s this really great alcove community that we’re creating right in that intersection.
D.J. Paris 11:20 That’s very cool. And I love I love that intersection. I just think that is such a fun you have adages, right there and super cool place everyone go visit that. And so congrats on that development. That’s very, very exciting. Okay, speaking up, we do have listeners who, who are buyers, sellers, renters also investors, and if they are interested in working with you or your team, what’s the best way they should reach out to you
Carrie McCormick 11:50 always call me it’s the best and easiest way 312961461
D.J. Paris 11:56 To awesome. And real quickly, I’m gonna give a quick marketing minute it is we are now in August. And I had a quick idea. So everyone who is listening thinking, gosh, like how can I reach out to my my network, we know that your network is your net worth. Here’s a good reason to do that. I actually had two reasons. But I’m just gonna give you one today and save the next for next time. And the first is it is back to school season, right? Or we’re getting close to that. So think about all the people you know, in your network, who have children who are going back to school, whatever ages that is, and think about maybe dropping off a little care package. You know, school supplies, you know, it’s simple, it’s easy, you don’t have to worry about branding yourself on it. If you’re you know, pinched for time you just go to the Walgreens or wherever and get some notebooks, pens, paper, folders, anything like that. Kranz if the children are young enough, and just deliver you know, a little care package for you know, a few dozen of your clients that is so huge and simple and easy, and it will be appreciated and use the most important part. So anyway, that was my quick marketing minute.
Carrie McCormick 13:05 I love that. It’s so cute.
D.J. Paris 13:07 I love it. Well, anyway, that is that’s gonna wrap it up for this time. Kerry’s got a crazy busy Sunday, as per usual and she was so generous with her time. So on behalf of the listeners, we thank her as always, and on behalf of Carrie and myself to the listeners, we thank you for listening. Remember to follow us on Facebook, you can download any of our episodes right from our website, which is keeping it real pod.com In fact, you don’t have to download it. You can stream it right from your browser. Obviously any podcast app you find that you use on your phone, just search for keeping it real podcast and you’ll subscribe to us that way too. So anyway, thank you Carrie once again, we will see Carrie next month. And thanks for everyone for listening. So thank you
Greg Dybas and Zach Bellizzi are only twenty-two years old, but are already making waves as the youngest brokers in a three hundred broker office at Keller Williams in the Chicago suburbs. In our episode Greg and Zach discuss how they use their age as an asset in prospecting. They are, perhaps, the most fearless real estate brokers I’ve met thus far. Their grasp of video marketing and social media is gaining them attention and business. Zach and Greg are the team to watch!
D.J. Paris 0:13 Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real. The only podcasts made by real estate brokers for real estate brokers. My name is DJ Parris. I am your host. And we need a new tagline because I used to say for Chicago brokers, you know, buy in from Chicago brokers except and that was true, except now we have listeners from all over the country. So I don’t want to say Chicago and turn listeners off from other markets. But I’m sure we’re not the only podcast for brokers by brokers in the country. Maybe we’re the biggest, let’s say we’re the biggest I don’t know that. That’s true. But let’s just pretend we are still see the biggest broker podcast for brokers by brokers. Now we need a better one than that. So if you have any suggestions for what we should title our show, let me know because I desperately need one. I never know what to say at the beginning here. But you’re not here to listen to me. Anyway, we’re about ready to get going with a brand new segment. I’m really excited about this. I got these two young up and coming stars, Greg and Zach from Keller Williams, who will be coming on in just a moment. And the reason why I chose them. They’re not yet top one percenters. But they will be very soon I was super impressed with a lot of what these guys are doing in particular, with respect to social media, and video marketing. And I think it’s something that everybody needs to hear who’s in the business to see what other brokers are doing to find success. So this is a really fun episode for me, because these guys are super young. They’re cool, and they’re fun. So before we get to those guys, a couple of quick notes. Of course, as always, you can find all of our episodes on iTunes, Google, play, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you know, whatever podcast app you’re using, just search for keeping it real pod or podcast, rather, if you don’t already have subscribed, and then you can also stream every episode we’ve ever done from our website, keeping it real pod.com. And please follow us on Facebook, we post links to every single episode that we do, along with links to our guests, websites, and social media. So you can check out what our guests are doing and get some good ideas. And also we do it. Our producer, Hannah, goes in every day and finds a great article that could benefit your business and posts it in that Facebook group as well. So facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod, okay, enough for me. But if you do have a suggestion for a new tagline for our show, I truthfully, I need one. So please send that to us via Facebook or through our website and we might just use it and I’ll take you to lunch if we end up using it. So anyway, thanks for listening, continue to tell a friend and on to Greg and Zach.
Today on the show, we have Greg Davis and Zach Blasi, which are they are known as the youngest agents in their office, which is a distinction that this duo embraces to their fullest. Greg says We love this challenge with an expansive background in sales Greg made the leap to real estate last year. And then Zach has set up shop with Keller Williams Success Realty and welcome Greg to the imprint defined by their determination out of the box strategies and an unflagging energy, they’ve now established themselves as agents swiftly on the rise, bring a 21st century edge to the Illinois marketplace. At 22 years old, these guys stand out of their office of 300 brokers and attempt to conquer the Illinois real estate scene I became familiar with with Greg and Zack white saw one of their videos where they were working on for sale by owners and trying to convince them that to list and it was so compelling and interesting. I was like I gotta get these guys on the shows. And now they are so welcome, Greg and Zach.
Greg Dybas 3:55 Thanks for having me. Thank you.
D.J. Paris 3:57 And by the way, I should mention that in the podcast notes, we are going to have a link to their YouTube channel, as well as their Facebook page. In fact, I’ll tell you right now, you got to follow these guys on Facebook because they post all their videos too. Which is guys, what’s your Facebook page?
Greg Dybas 4:14 Our Facebook page is Blizzy Davis Realty partners.
D.J. Paris 4:17 And we will put a link to that as well in the notes. So if you can’t find it, we’ll post a link directly for you. But guys, welcome. First, let’s figure out who’s Zack and who is Greg?
Zach Bellizzi 4:28 Sure. My name is Zach, if you can hear my voice.
Greg Dybas 4:35 Perfect. And then Greg. My name is Greg Davis.
D.J. Paris 4:39 Awesome. And you guys are part of a Keller Williams Success Realty out in Barrington. Correct? Yes, perfect. All right. So first thing I need to know you guys are 22 years old. And you know nobody who is saying gets into real estate at 22. So I love the fact that you did that because it’s a term incredibly courageous thing. And you know, you guys are in in a very affluent area of Chicago. And you’re really taking on a tough challenge, but a really impressive challenge, which is I’m get we’re getting into real estate young, and we’re trying to make it happen. I watched this YouTube video I mentioned earlier and I thought, Oh, this is so cool. I know these guys are going to be top producers very, very soon. In fact, you’ve been featured in top agent magazine, which we’ll also post a link to, which is beyond impressive for 22. So congratulations to all your already have the success you’ve had. But also, I want to know, I want our listeners to know what young people getting into real estate now are doing. So can we talk about your history? I know there’s not a long history right now with real estate, but tell us how you got in the business? Why? And let’s start there.
Greg Dybas 5:52 Sure. So I basically have been in sales all my life, I always say I was selling stuff from the cradle. And I just I enjoy talking with people. So you know, I’ve done many, many careers before real estate and you know, it all comes down to sales. The jobs that I’ve had before this was I was a car salesman. I was a insurance salesman, I was actually a bail bondsman, I was selling bail insurance policies for criminals. And so needless to say, it was kind of apropos to get licensed and just move up the notch to real estate because, you know, what else more can you do besides that, you know, medical sales or whatnot, you know, you know, and for me, it’s just one of those things where you get to meet so many people, and you can, you know, it’s kind of like an octopus with tentacles, you reach out in different directions and find different niches. And it’s not always the same thing every day. And so for me, getting into real estate was a no brainer. Just because it was like the next level, it was the point of, you know, you can sell, why not sell houses, you can do it in a nice area, you can find a lot of clientele, that’s going to be good to you. And so two plus two equals four, and the math made sense for me.
Zach Bellizzi 7:16 And for me, I just believe that, you know, there’s obviously so much opportunity in real estate, I went to community college for two years, and I wanted to go just for like a business job or like a business degree. And real estate, which is always in the back of my mind, I used to actually watch million dollar listings on Bravo. And I just loved everything about it everything that the realtors did, as far as like their lifestyle, and then what they would do throughout the day. And I just knew that this is my key to becoming too successful because of the opportunity. And because we can just like basically, you know, make our own schedules, and just work as much as we want or as least amount as we want. And we can just meet just 1000s of people every single year. And again, just the money like there’s you can just there’s endless opportunity about the money. So
D.J. Paris 8:12 yeah, I want to talk about what you guys are currently doing the activity that you’re doing to grow your business. You know, I had on about a Gosh, a year or so ago, Nikko apostle who’s with Coldwell Banker here in Lincoln Park, and he he’s with Keller Williams actually, in Linkin Park. But Nico’s interesting, he’s been in the business for now quite some time. But when he started, he was about maybe he was 23. And he goes, it was great because he goes DJ, it was great getting in at 23 because it was so incredibly hard, because nobody’s giving me their million dollar home to list because you know, I’m a 23 year old kid, so I really had to hustle. And he talked a lot about how he did that through open houses. And then you guys are hustling like crazy. And I’ve seen that in your you know, the the articles written about you have seen it in your videos, let’s talk about that hustle, you know, the amount of effort you’re putting in which I love. Most of your friends aren’t probably buying condos or homes quite yet. So you really have to get yourself out there. So I applaud you guys for getting in. Let’s talk about you know, what are you doing? What have you found that that’s been working well for you?
Greg Dybas 9:17 You know, for us, you know, because we are so young folks will kind of look at us and say you won’t How am I going to sell this house? You’re 12 years old, right? We look at your brain not credible at all. You have no experience whatsoever. And it isn’t until we sit down with them. And you know, I’ve learned a lot of not tactics but ways to serve the eggs with clients that will make them believe us. And I think it’s more so when we sit down and say hey, we’re real. This is the idea that we’re going to have for you on getting this house sold or you know helping you buy and they stop and they kind of have to think about it for a minute and then they either make the plunge and they say yes let’s do it or no we’re gonna wait for us we go into it super aggressive. I mentioned before I was in car sales, I learned everything I know For my aunt, she sold Lexus for many, many years. And so when I got into car sales, she always said, it’s all about how you serve the eggs, it doesn’t really matter who the client is, but as long as you serve the eggs correctly, and it’s always going to be different for each client, they’ll make them you know, believe in you, way quicker. So for us, when we go home here, we look at how many, you know, different tactics we can use to sell a house that’s different, you know, you’ll have your conventional agents that show up and say, we’ll just put the for sale sign in the front yard, well listed on the MLS and wait, you know, and just see who comes to us. I never believed in that, or I’m not the type of person to sit and just wait for the business come to me, I have to go out there. And, you know, a little bit of caveat, you know, I I, what I mentioned before I saw bail insurance policies, I was also a bounty hunter, I still went out. And so for me to go and just wait for somebody to come to me, it’s not in the back of my head that that’s okay. You know, I’m used to hitting streets and going out and finding people and, you know, I have zero fear when it comes to just knocking on doors and approaching people. And it’s, it’s super aggressive. And Zach is, you know, always right there behind me backing me up. And so I’ve had to learn how to manipulate real estate to you know, I laugh all the time. Because my even my own family, they’re like, you know, it looks like you’re more of a bounty hunter than you are a real estate agent. I said, Well, you know, I apply the same, the same mentality to that. And that’s why we’re so aggressive is because at the end of the day, it’s the same thing, you don’t get paid unless you find the person Okay, well, I don’t get paid until I sell the house or find the clientele to buy that house. So that’s where the mindsets a little bit shifted, because we go out and it’s it’s so unique that way we I have to remind myself, you’re doing real estate, now you’re not chasing felons, right? So it’s kind of hilarious. When we do this. They look at us, and they’re like, holy crap, these kids are not playing. They’re out here. They’re doing this. We’ve gone in days where I’ll make, like my mind or wanted posters, right? It’s actually, you know, you know, we introduce ourselves in the neighborhood, we’ll hit certain streets or flyers, and we say, Hey, this is us, we understand if you’re not selling, but think of us if you are or if you know, somebody do it, you know, he’ll take one side of the block, I’ll take the other, we go down the row, and we go and meet people knock on the doors, if they don’t answer, we come back another day. You know, we do the video thing, that’s a huge thing for me. If I don’t know you, I’m not gonna buy from you use, you know, obscurity and real estate’s My biggest fear. And so you’re known for the right things. That’s also for me, the biggest deal I, I always say, I’ve been famous since I was 12 years old, and Zach’s got the same mentality with that, you know, we’re not afraid to get up on stage and talk to people. We’ve done some motivational keynotes before, especially in our office. And, you know, I think that brings me the biggest joy because not only do I get to help other people, but I get to mold the clay as we go. And I’m not saying I know it all, by any means. Every day, we learn something new. But for us to give back in that way and go out and show everybody that you know, it’s not like we’re just sitting here telling you what we’re going to do, we’re going to show you, and I’m going to make sure that we have proof of it. That’s why we film it to, you know, we’ve gotten we’ve done crazy stuff. I mean, Zack can tell you we’ve done open houses that were I mean, we’ve got gigantic balloons that were sent up, you know, 400 feet in the air. So people in the neighborhood could see I mean, we’re, we’re so crazy in and our people in the office know that. And so it’s just aggressive sales. I don’t know any other way. I really don’t I look at the line on the, on the ground in the sand. And I decide, okay, am I going to go over it or I’m going to just stay behind it. And every day, I think we do something unique to where it’s gonna stand out. So yeah, you know,
D.J. Paris 13:43 it’s funny, I’ve always wondered, what percentage of brokers here in the Chicago area, but it’s probably nationwide, and we have listeners all over the country. But I wonder what percentage walk up to a door and knock on it and say, Hey, by the way I’m selling. So like, I’ve always thought a great, easy way to do that is if you’re doing an open house down the street, you can knock on every door and say, Hey, by the way, just wanted introduce myself, I’m doing it I’m in the process of selling this home. And if you see me walk, you know, coming, coming and going. That’s that’s why I’m here. But I just wanted to give you my card. And if you’re ever interested or you need help, or you know somebody just like you guys were saying, but I love the fact that you guys are even doing that without at that time having a listing, right, just going in. And the reality of it is the data is really clear. Just like just like, Greg, you said earlier, the data is really clear about how people choose a realtor they want it is a face to face business. They want to choose somebody they know and they’ve met and they you know, or that they’re referred to. And you guys are door knocking and I wonder what percentage of brokers will ever do that. It’s got to be less than 1% has to be and it’s so smart for you to do.
Greg Dybas 14:53 Right and it’s like serendipity. It’s like we go out in the biggest place to start and a lot of folks will always tell you and they just kind of roll their eyes but it Is your own neighborhood All right, you know the streets. You know, some of the people there are very first listing was a for sale by owner and second I actually hit it. It’s down the street from where we live. And he, you know, wasn’t even living there. He had a rented out to tenants, the owner. And so I’m persistent. We’re both persistent as hell. I mean, forgive me for swearing. No, we don’t have right I’ll get blood out of a turnip before I walk away. And so I ended up talking to the caretaker of the house, he was there holding the open house for the owner, because it was for sale by owner and I said, Listen, if you can have him contact me, I just want to chat with them. Okay, fine. Three weeks later, we ended up talking to him over the phone, because he lives in another state for work. And he’s like, alright, I’ll give you guys a chance because you guys seem hungry. Yes. And to this day, we have this house for sale. We are, you know, just plugging away and we have still never met the owner. And he trusts us over the phone. I mean, so for us to go out and do that. It’s not about just giving up when they slam the door in your face. It’s you know, peeling the onion, we used to call it in the car business, right? Keep going. The first denial is going to be the biggest thing, right? They don’t know you with shell shock you, you they’re absorbing so much information. They’re analyzing who you are what you look like, you know, which brings me to my other point. I mean, we aren’t conventionally dressed like salesmen. We don’t show up in a tux. I’m not there in a suit and tie. I mean, we get yelled at all the time from our people in our office, they laugh at us, because we look like a bunch of California boys coming out with our gray bands and our shorts. And I think the stigmatized idea that salesmen have to be this whole, you know, I mean, we don’t look like bombs, but we look for something that’s simple, I guess, right? presentable, people are going to be like, Okay, wait a minute, we don’t have to slam the door. We don’t you know, because they’re not going to come to the door to begin with. I know if I have a salesman show up to my door there. Yeah.
D.J. Paris 16:43 I mean, if he’s white, such as I’m sorry to interrupt, but you’re absolutely right. If you’re showing up to a door in a suit, people are like, what’s this guy trying to sell me? So you’re absolutely, that is such a smart, important point is if you’re going to do these types of strategies to prospect, you, you got to really think about that, who comes to a door in a suit? Somebody’s trying to sell you a vacuum cleaner? It’s like, let me it is like,
Greg Dybas 17:06 right. And I mean, it’s it’s kind of a 5050 gamble. You know, I always say that. It’s like, in the game of poker, we’re dealing. And when we show up to a door, first of all, if I can get you to open it and leave you there and not slam it on me, okay, first step is done. If I can sit here and talk to you for 10 minutes, my job is already halfway through because now you’ve decided to stay at that door and not slam it. I mean, maybe the idea is they’re like, who are you? What are you selling? And so Okay, fine. We if we can get them to the finish line, right? And I can say, Here’s my card, it doesn’t matter if they’re selling, right, they might have a family member that is or, you know, their aunts or, you know, nephew, or you know, somebody’s going to be wanting to buy soon or whatnot, I’ve had that happen, where we just fall into it. And it’s like, perfect timing. Here we go. And the first thing I always say is, it’s hilarious. When we show up to the door, they immediately want to slam it because they don’t know who you are. And I’ll say hey, I’m just your neighbor. I wanted to touch base with you real quick. And they have like this second, like, look, split second look where they’re like, crap. Now, I can’t close the door on it, because they’re my neighbor. Right? Like they feel bad if they do. So, hey,
Zach Bellizzi 18:10 we’re your neighbors. We’re just here to help you out basically, right now, basically, yeah,
D.J. Paris 18:15 you know, it’s, it’s so important. And again, I applaud the courage that it takes to do that. It’s for you guys, you know, you might not see it as a super courageous act, because you do it. But this is what they’re willing to do. Exactly. And Greg, dude, 99% of brokers will not do and they are going to get those listings that other brokers or a lot of times they’re going to be convincing sellers who don’t want to work with realtors, that this is a predominantly what they’ve you know, the sellers have pre decided, and these guys come along and say, No, you really do need to work with us. Here’s why. And I’m telling you that is that is a an amazing accomplishment. And what’s interesting and what the audience really needs to know. And this surprised me 10 years ago, when I came from the IT world, I don’t have a real estate background. And I said, Oh, in 10 years, we won’t need Realtors because it will all just be for sale by owner. I just thought that made sense. It seemed logical to me because I didn’t know everything that went into you know, buying or selling a home and it’s like, oh, they always need you they’ll continue to need you. And in fact, the For Sale By Owner market has gone down it’s at the lowest point in eight years. It’s 90 something percent of all homes sold are sold through the MLS meaning through a realtor, you guys so this is such a smart play. And also just a great way to stay busy but I also want to talk about your videos because you guys film yourself doing this which I think is so cool. you film yourself doing a lot of cool things. But first of all who’s who’s doing the recording? Do you guys have somebody do you guys do it yourselves? How’s that work?
Greg Dybas 19:50 Yeah, so ironically, when Zach and I started up that idea we said alright, let’s so I’ve I’ve never been shy of a camera. I’ve been in front of many cameras. Since I was like 12 years old, so I’m like, Okay, we’re cool on camera, let’s do this. So I’ve had we’ve, we’ve come together to produce in. So we do all the shooting of the video, we, we produce it ourselves, we even edited ourselves. And so a lot of people think, okay, when our first video went up the office called us and I’m like, listen, who filmed that? And what, like, what TV show are you guys gonna be? And I’m like our own, we don’t we do everything in house like, and I think that’s some of the benefits for our position too is that we have that knowledge and that idea that we can do that ourselves, we save money, and we have control. You know, if I want to plan for something, I’ll censor it. If I don’t, then there’s a Genuity right there, we can just show people that what we do is so difficult, I don’t think you know, like, when people flip on the, you know, TV channel, and they see, you know, HGTV shows or whatever. And they’re like, oh, you know, they buy a house, they look at three houses, pick one, and then it’s done. It’s like, I wish it was that simple. You know, it’s, I’ve had to be today, even I was I was calling I called Zach like, maybe 5000 times in a day just because, you know, we’re both like each other’s buffer. I’m like, Listen, I’m about to have an anxiety attack, like my deals falling apart, or this deal is falling apart or this is going good. And you know, it’s it’s they don’t realize how difficult this career is. And I think God that I have background in putting car deals together and insurance deals together. Because I think I was being like prepped for real estate, let down isn’t there anymore. It’s just like, Okay, let’s my biggest motto and my my first boss, when I was writing bailbonds taught me she goes, I’m going to tell you something that in any business it will ever apply to is I don’t care how bad falls apart, you need to find ways to make it work. And so when we have these little hiccups, I call them, I always take a minute and we compose ourselves. And you know, even if I got to scream into a pillow for five seconds, and we go back at it, we go, you know, this is our client, this is our business, you know, we’re not going to stop until the deal is done. And so it’s just it’s people don’t get it. It’s hilarious. So when they say I want to get into real estate and the club, I’m like, Okay, we’ll get you going. But don’t be surprised if you’re going to have a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of long days that, you know, don’t consist of smiles because it’s not going to
D.J. Paris 22:22 well, you’re so right. And you know, there’s an old expression. And it might be the just about the truest thing ever said for anyone in any sort of sales capacity, which is prospecting solves all problems, right? Because we know that that’s true, because there’s so much in particular, in real estate that you don’t have control over deals fall apart, there’s sometimes it’s just up to the gods, there’s nothing you can do about that. But you can always control your effort, right. And that’s what you guys are doing, you’re controlling your effort, you’re keeping your pipeline full. And also, of course, everyone has to live somewhere. So you know, they’re always going to need you. But the the effort that you guys are putting in is, is so impressive. And, you know, I’ve been around this industry quite some time. And our own firm we have over 600 brokers so it’s we have a lot of, I don’t read, I don’t see as often, very rarely people who are who are going to this extent to really get out there. You know, sometimes somebody might say, well, I’ll buy a list of for sale by owners, I’ll pound the phone for for a week. And then they realize, Oh my gosh, it’s so hard I and they quit they they give them obviously, you guys are taking that that next step and like we’re going to go to you and we’re going to try to convince you why you need us. And and they do need you that’s the that’s that’s it’s not even a sales tactic. They literally need you. So I applaud you guys for doing, which, you know, technically it is a technique, but it’s also what actually they need to do, because they’re only going to probably select you if they know you. So it’s smart for you to get there and they actually need you to sell the home. The statistics are really clear that for sale by owner clients, I know you don’t just only work with for sale by owners. But those people those for sale by owners tend to overprice their properties. I’ve been a victim of that myself where I’ve overpriced myself too. So you guys come along and say, here’s why you need us. I love that.
Greg Dybas 24:11 Right? Absolutely. Let’s
D.J. Paris 24:13 talk I want to talk a little bit about social media too, because we we were talking offline about about websites, and I was you guys were saying, Well, we’re in the process of building a website. But you said something, which I think is really important, and a lot of brokers don’t understand. It is yeah, oh, yeah. We’ll have a website and it’ll be fine. But people aren’t really going to our website to look for homes. They’re going to Zillow, they’re going to Redfin, they’re going to you know, these Trulia for example, of course they are. So but you guys are focusing a lot on on social media, in particular, YouTube or Facebook, to talk a little bit about how that’s helped you.
Greg Dybas 24:49 You know, so for our background, we’ve were the younger generation, right? We’re 90s babies. So the internet was fairly, you know, not new, but it was, you know, the.com era and everybody was signing on to AOL and all that fun stuff. You know, I used to remember to instead of instant messaging people on, you know, what was that jerk AOL or whatever. Now, we’re on Facebook and all this stuff. But it’s interesting when you look at the future. And I think that’s what we really base a lot of our stuff off of is, as sad as it is that nobody wants to read a book anymore, they’d rather watch a video, they just, they’re not going to get absorbed into a piece of text. It’s very difficult for younger generations, especially our age to pull up something on their phone and read it for more than a paragraph and lose interest and two seconds. And so for us, when we go into this, people can feel videos. And what I mean by that is for us, and I’ve really kind of made that impactful is I don’t want people to watch our videos and say, Oh, they’re a bunch of liars. I want them to see that we’re real people, we cuss, we scream, we yell, we fight. We banter we have our bad days. And then we have our fun days where we’re screaming and yelling and having a great time. And I think people are always stigmatized in real estate to see that people are always showcasing home and welcomed. Right, in a perfect role. It’s like, listen, the wall has a scratch, the trim needs a little paint. You know, it’s not perfect, but I’ll tell you what, at the used house factory, all that wasn’t an option. You know what I mean? You can make I love that way. And also,
D.J. Paris 26:19 we’re all imperfect people and we relate more to people, when we see imperfection. We actually connect more deeply and intimately with people when we see other real human beings. So I love that you guys keep that stuff in.
Greg Dybas 26:31 Absolutely. Absolutely. So you know, when we call when we do videos, it’s, I always say I call it the B roll. Yeah, because I certainly do and professional film, you want to show your real world life like Holy God, they’re not robots, they don’t do this 24/7 Even though I beg to differ because we do, right, I’m always on my phone. I’m always trying to think unique ways I’m always texting or Colin Zack, you know, and, and so it’s like, when we come here, we have to produce content that people are going to fall in love with us, not Ryan love with real estate, where every time they think, you know, real estate, they do think us or every time they see us, they think those are the real estate brokers, you know, and a way for them to remember that is through video through, you know, the idea that they can be seen at any time online presence, you know, and they don’t have to be long vlogs we call them but nobody’s going to want to I and I’ll be honest, I lose, we lose interest. The second somebody showcases a home, and they’re going through it through a tour and they got the perfect music and it looks like something out of Los Angeles, right? And you’re like, oh my gosh, it’s a million dollar house. Really. It’s only 150k. And it’s just like, wow, that’s cool. Right? Who are you? Okay, we we don’t care about the house we care about who are you? Right? And so for us, when we do this, it’s it’s not so much that we’re showing the real estate aspect even though we do but it’s people will fall in love with the people I’ll
D.J. Paris 27:53 tell, I’ll tell you, when I first when I saw your first video where you guys were driving around doing cold walking, which again, is amazing that you’re that you do that. And within 45 seconds or so I went, Okay, I know who these guys are, I have a sense of who they are their personality. I know what they look like, I know what they sound like. And they just grabbed my attention. What we’re talking about is branding, right? You you have established yourself as a brand. And I love that within a minute. I was like, Okay, I have a pretty good idea of what these guys are about. And boy, that is a hard thing to do. And the fact that you guys can can accomplish that so quickly, in particular through video is is really impressive. Thank you. Yeah. And that’s what your intention is you’re like, I want people to know who we are and what we’re all about. And we’re going to do it in a compelling way. We’re going to show warts and all right, we’re going to we’re going to show the mistakes and the challenges. And that’s that’s what, that’s what branding is if you’re trying to brand yourself, you are this this, you know, complex person with challenges and successes and failures. And you guys are putting it all out there. And people are going to connect to it very, very deeply. And they’re gonna be like, Okay, how cool they are going on there. we root for you, we root for people like that. Right? Yeah. And what I love too is you know, you’re in this big office and there’s lots and lots of brokers and I suspect you know, you guys are very unique in this big massive well established office you’re coming in as new guys go and we’re gonna try something different. I love that. I think that’s that’s great. Sure, well, you know, I want to Oh, I wanted to ask you guys we had a couple of stories that I wanted that you guys were telling us about that I wanted to I wanted to ask you tell tell me the God will sell my house story
Zach Bellizzi 29:51 for sale but was that an accurate
Greg Dybas 29:53 rehab so we actually down the street from us we I had called this for sale by owner over the phone when we first started out in the House has still been on the market. So I think it was like a week and a half ago, Zach and I went over there. And I said, Alright, let’s hit the house, I called the two minute warning, and we went over and dropped in, knocked on the door, the guy comes to the door, and he goes, you know, well, we’re not really interested. So it’s kind of still leave you my information in case you change your mind. He goes, Oh, no, this guy will sell my house. And I looked at Zack and Zack looked at me we had this like, mute point, like, here we go, right. It’s, I’m, if you were to put a Bible in front of me, I wouldn’t know of paragraph or verse to save my life. You know, I mean, we’ve all got our own connections, but I, I’m not the type of person to sit there. And in July about stuff, like I simply am not educated on maker and about that. And so when he said that my car salesman came out in me in Zach, and I have like, this look like for various things. And he’s just like, have it right. And so I was like, Okay, here we go. I said, You know what, you’re right, God is gonna sell your house, he that’s why he put two qualified real estate brokers at your doorstep to sell the place. And he didn’t really know how to respond to that. He goes, Well, we’re okay. You know what I mean? Kind of like fighting fire with fire, we just put a lien on it. Right. So, you know, it’s immediately walking out of there as x like, I’m gonna write a book all this one day, because this?
D.J. Paris 31:15 Oh, yeah, you guys are gonna be on a TV show. At some point. There’s just no question about it. And I mean, that in a very complimentary way, is what you guys are doing. And by the way, that is a really smart thing to say. I don’t want to gloss over. It’s funny. But the truth is, it’s actually a really smart thing to say, because somebody who is religiously oriented in that sense, and is telling you, hey, this, these are my beliefs. And you’re in you can quickly say, Well, you know, people typically who have those beliefs also think everything happens for a reason. And then he basically just said exactly that. Well, guess guess why we’re here. You know, they, I love that. That’s really, really smart.
Zach Bellizzi 31:55 Yeah. Right. When you said that me, Greg and I were just trying. Oh, yeah.
D.J. Paris 32:03 I love it. And yeah, let’s, let’s talk about let’s see, we had another story that we wanted. Oh, I wanted to talk. I heard you guys got paraded around like an acre of land, by us by a seller. Tell us about that.
Zach Bellizzi 32:20 Is that? Yeah, that was in Inverness. So like, obviously, if you know, Inverness and Barrington, there’s your higher priced homes and have a lot more land. So we actually didn’t call this person we just went up to their, their driveway, and they’re, they’re about to leave. And then we just introduced ourselves, basically tell them more brokers and we want to help you basically sell the house. When we didn’t go inside the house. Once we rocked around the whole acre of land, just walk around and then the sellers were just talking about all the parties that they had in their backyard and how much land that they have and what’s theirs. And we finished and we just never went inside the house like oh, okay, yeah, I
D.J. Paris 33:06 had an experience like that. Once in in Barrington. I was invited to a party. It was a friend of mine, and it was her fiance. spot her fiance’s parents so so I’m out there for a party, my friend and enter fiance now married, it was just they were having a pool party. I never went inside. And this was I God knows how expensive this house was millions and millions of dollars, just something you couldn’t even see it from the street, one of those kinds of homes, you know, just way off in the distance. And it was just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Anyway, my my friend’s fiance’s father who owns the home comes home at some point, he’s sees everyone out back, you know, enjoying the pool. And he’s a really nice guy. And he comes over and I’m sorted didn’t really know anybody other than my two friends. So I didn’t really have anyone to talk to. But I went over and because I want to know this guy’s story I want to know, and I’m not a producing broker, I should I should mention as well, but I was just genuinely interested in like, Gosh, I wonder what this guy did to build his fortune. And so I asked him, I said, Tell me about what do you do for a living and he started talking about a business he built up from, you know, and he started in a, you know, he had a studio apartment with his wife and his child and in the city 30 years ago, and he built up this this really nice business unfortunate. Anyway, he’s telling me a story. It’s the most amazing story he had, like, moved from Puerto Rico. He didn’t even hardly, you know, speak English, even though Puerto Rico, you know, is part of us, but he really just a total success story. And he’s telling me this and it’s so incredible. The story again, I’m not I haven’t gotten in the house, and he goes, Hey, DJ, you’re in real estate, right? I said, Well, I’m sort of, you know, and he goes, Well, I have this other home in Barrington. Now, we had probably talked 20 minutes. He goes, I just finished by building it, and I need to sell it. Can you do that? Now? What was so funny to me, and this is an $800,000 home that he was talking about. Now, unfortunately, I couldn’t help them because I don’t really do it. But I went, Oh, this is how it works. This is exactly how people get business. And, and it’s exactly what you guys are doing. And I love that, that you guys have these stories because you’re willing to go up and say hi, where we’re Greg and Zach, and we need to talk. I love that. So, you know,
Greg Dybas 35:18 right? Well, you know, a little thing that we kind of always write off of is when you’re younger, you’re talking stranger danger, right? That’s just so your parents comfort in their back of the mind that you’re running the streets, you know, at night, not getting in trouble. But, you know, for me, when we, when we get into this, it’s like, I come from a law enforcement, family and military family and operational security, they call it is like, huge, you know, don’t tell people your name, don’t it’s like, you know, what, strangers have everything. I don’t know, we were back in the day, they they fell off the wagon with the idea that, you know, you should work a typical nine to five job and do as you’re told and not have anything to show at the end of the day for it. You know, but strangers have everything you want. And so when we go out there, it’s just like, Listen, I don’t know you, I’m gonna, we’re gonna find out who you are. We want to know what you can do. We want to know what we can do for you. You know, and that’s just what we play by every single day, every single day.
D.J. Paris 36:13 I think that’s, I think that’s a perfect place to to wrap up. Because, again, what you guys are doing is so exciting. I’m excited to watch your your growth in this industry, you’re already killing it, you’re going to continue to grow your business, you’re going to, you know, be on the show again, in the future. Several, you know, a few years from now you’re like, oh, my gosh, when we first did your podcast, we were just starting out. Here’s where we’re at today. And I’m excited to have you back on the show.
Greg Dybas 36:41 While we’re gonna like listen, you’re gonna play us, we’re gonna fly you out on our private plane to Malibu or something. I
D.J. Paris 36:47 will I will accept that and hold you to it. So I will absolutely. So now see, I’m riding your coattails even better. Now I have a place to stay in Malibu. So guys,
Zach Bellizzi 37:00 what’s your what’s I’m sorry, we can add you?
D.J. Paris 37:04 Oh, yeah. So we have a Podcast, the podcast is keeping it real pod. So facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod by the way for all of our 1000s of listeners, if you haven’t yet joined our Facebook group. And most of you haven’t, you should, because every single day are actually a Hannah, who’s on our team. She posts a relevant article that we’ve sourced online, specifically trying to figure out how to help brokers grow their business. So every single day, we have one article, and we say here’s what you need to be reading. And then of course, we post links to every podcast interview, we did an announcement that we’re you know, talking to you guys and we’ll be posting a link directly to the the episode once it goes live here next week. And so yeah, everyone needs to follow to follow us on on Facebook. So keeping it real party, you also need to follow Greg and Zack we will post a link to their Facebook page so you guys can can follow them watch their videos, see what see what they’re doing. Because what they’re doing is branding and their branding is really compelling. It’s really smart, it’s courageous, and it works. And so, you know, for our listeners, our whole intention is to help you know get people to increase their production by taught by you know, interviewing guys like you who are out there doing it. So on behalf of Greg and Zach and myself, we thank you this was this will be episode I believe 102. So we’re super grateful for everyone who has continued to listen. We’re grateful to Greg and Zack for taking time out of their crazy busy day to to be on our show with us. So guys, thank you. We it was this was awesome. And we’re going to really excited to watch your watch your progress. Cool, guys. Well, on behalf of all of us. Thanks for listening. We will see you guys on the next episode. And that’s it. Thanks. All right. Thank you
