Podcast Episodes Archives • Page 56 of 69 • Keeping It Real Podcast • Secrets Of Top 1% REALTORS ® • Interviews With Real Estate Brokers & Agents

What It Takes To Become The #2 Top Producing Broker In Chicago • Matt Laricy

February 27, 2020

Matt Laricy of The Matt Laricy Group is our most requested guest of all time! He’s a true real estate legend in Chicago, known for his professionalism, work ethic and commitment to the craft. As one of Chicago’s top brokers, Matt discusses how he started in real estate with zero clients and spent the first four years studying the market so that he could become an expert in Chicago neighborhoods. Today he’s the #2 top producing real estate agent in Chicago (out of 46k brokers). Matt discusses his journey and provides tips for anyone looking to take their production to the next level.

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

Matt Laricy can be reached at 708.250.2696 and mlaricy@americorpre.com.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcasts made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment we’re going to be featuring a true Chicago legend, our most requested guest of all time Matt legacy. So before we get to Matt, couple of quick announcements number one, please tell a friend of every one of our listeners tells just one other realtor who could benefit from listening to interviews like the one we’re about to have with Matt, we could double our listenership and be able to offer you even more episodes. So thanks in advance for telling a friend and also follow us on Facebook visit us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod why? Because number one, we now have video and we broadcast all of our episodes live almost a behind the scenes recording, you can watch as we’re doing it on Facebook, but also we post an article every single day that we find online dedicated to helping you grow your business. So again, follow us on Facebook which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our interview with Matt Larissa.

Right, today is a very special day on our show. We started this podcast two and a half years ago. And today we have our most requested guests of all time. Literally not a week goes by where we don’t hear it from at least one listener saying you have to have our guests on the show. So we’re beyond excited to welcome Matt legacy of the matt legacy group. Now if you’re not if you’re from Chicago you already know about Matt Lauer see, but our listeners of course are nationwide. So want to tell everybody about Matt in case you’re not familiar. Matt is a third generation realtor. He’s also the managing broker for mirror Corp real estate company that his father started. Matt also heads his own team, which is called the matt legacy group. His hard work charisma and true passion for the business help Matt’s reputation as a qualified realtor quickly rise. Some of Matt’s accomplishments are being the number two agent in Chicago. He’s labeled one of Chicago’s who’s who Realtors by Chicago agent magazine. He’s a 30 under 30 by National Association of Realtors, and he’s won the Chicago agents Choice Award for industry MVP. Matt specializes in all facets of the real estate business, whether it’s navigating the way for first timers, helping a seller prep their property for sale or providing help in the luxury market. He knows and has experienced it all Matt’s a strong believer and giving back as a board member for the Make a Wish Foundation and Matt has helped the charity raise hundreds of 1000s of dollars for children in need. He is called the hardest working man in real estate. And I live half block from his office. And every time I walked by day or night, there’s always something going on. So it’s a well earned and deserved reputation. So please Oh, by the way, visit his website at Matt literacy. group.com. Welcome to the show, Matt.

Matt Laricy 4:00
Thanks for having me, man. We appreciate it. And I appreciate the kind words and nice intro.

D.J. Paris 4:06
Well, it’s I mean, it’s absolutely true. You are the most requested person to have on the show. And I know how busy you are. So it’s a real honor for us and our listeners. So thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and we should also plug that you yourself have a podcast and a vlog. And you can actually access that through Matt’s YouTube channel. So we’re gonna post a link to that, but you can just go to youtube search for Matt legacy. It’ll pop right up and subscribe to his channel, his vlogs they look awesome, way better than this. But they’re awesome. And you should definitely check them out.

Matt Laricy 4:34
Definitely subscribe. We appreciate that too.

D.J. Paris 4:37
Well, I would love to talk about I always ask this of all of our guests. You know, I know you come from a real estate family but we’d love to hear about how you got started and your journey into real estate.

Matt Laricy 4:49
Yeah, I mean, since I was a little kid getting in real estate was pretty much all I ever wanted to do. So since I was like two or three years old, I used to go to my father’s office on the south side by Midway Airport area. We we felt like the books because back in the day, they had like little books that you would fill out for, like listings. So that’s kind of like what I did. And so I just kind of always figured I’d get into real estate. And I went to college or anything like that. But literally before I actually graduated college, I already had my broker’s license. At that time, there was only agents and brokers, you know, there wasn’t brokers, managing brokers. So then you had to be 21 to get the broker’s license at that point. So I waited till I was 21. The day I turned 21, I took the test and got my license. And then the day I graduated college, I literally hung my license up and started selling right away. And in fact, my father didn’t allow me to work at the company right away. Just said he didn’t think it would be appropriate. So I went and worked at a century 21 for about six to seven months. And essentially 21 I worked that was actually an old client on my father’s that I think probably didn’t like him. Because I was the only person that didn’t get a desk, and the entire 200 agents out of that office, like everybody has a cubicle. So that’s where I started, you know, selling and I just then I moved events in my father’s company. And that was all in Oh, six. And that’s kind of like right towards the end of Oh, six 2007. That’s kind of when things kind of started getting kind of tough in the business because you kind of start feeling the rumblings at the mark was, yeah,

D.J. Paris 6:12
you got in at a tough time. Yeah,

Matt Laricy 6:15
I mean, I decided in 2008, they didn’t want to sell on the Southside Chicago anymore. They want to take the company downtown. And that just coincides with the fact that it was like maybe middle of 2008 they don’t want to take it downtown, which, as we know, it was like pretty much when the market fell out. And my dad’s a true self that our spirit he’s like, if you want to go downtown, you’re on your own. I’m not gonna give you a he hates North siders, no offense to anybody out there, that’s north Cyrus you just like hates him. And he’s like, I’m not gonna give any money or support you with your dream on that. So I came down here, I was around like, 23 I didn’t have any money. And I didn’t know anybody downtown. I didn’t know the differences between the neighborhoods, either. I didn’t know like, what webinars or vocals man like I didn’t know, that was different. You know, I just know I wanted to sell or the big buildings were. So I came here just house my way the top. And that’s just kind of like how it started.

D.J. Paris 6:57
Yeah, I was talking to Joel Schaub, who comes on our show once a month from guaranteed rate. He’s basically said the greatest thing about you, he just goes, he just thought works, everyone, you know, and I went, Yeah, that’s pretty much it. You know, I don’t know if it’s, of course, you know, you’re obviously extremely knowledgeable, too. But outworking I know, is a big, big thing for you. Would you say that’s, is that your number one success secret? If there was one?

Matt Laricy 7:21
I mean, I’d say it’s one of them. You know, I think the biggest problem in real estate is a lot of people just think it’s easier. They watch Million Dollar Listing, and they’re just like, hey, you know, like, the guy like wakes up at 10 o’clock, and he puts on something that looks cool. And like flirts with some hot girls. And, you know, he’s got a $10 million sale. I’m like, people just think like, that’s how it is. But throughout the years, it’s it’s a constant grind. And you know, we count days off here, and we’re constantly making sure people are working hard. I think that’s important. But also, the other aspect is, is that like, I run my business, like a business. And I think the biggest problem that most Realtors fall into is that, you know, you’re afraid to let go of any power, you think it all has to be done by you. It’s all III. And you know, they don’t understand. And now that teams are kind of more popular than when I first started

my business, I think one thing that probably second most is the fact that we are able to kind of run our business like a business.

D.J. Paris 8:15
Yeah. And you know, actually, that brings us to one of our listener questions. So one of our questions because you mentioned structure, right. And Realtors oftentimes struggle, that’s not always the skill set that attracts someone to being a real estate agent, they love the freedom, they probably don’t thrive in structure, and you are a huge structure guy. So one of our listeners, Suzanne wants to know, do you have a morning routine? And if so, would you be willing to share it?

Matt Laricy 8:41
Yeah, I mean, I actually think that you have to have a structure. It’s kind of like, you know, like you, you have to have a set things that you have to do every day. So like even my assistants, my agents and stuff like that every day you do a certain task. So whether it’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whatever the day is, you have certain tasks you have to do that day. But then on top of that, you then tackle whatever else comes in. So for me, no matter what, you know, I wake up pretty much at the same time, every single day of the week. Well, not pretty much every day of the week, I wake up same time I go to the gym, you know, get the stress out. And then I tried to not have if I mean, if I have to have an appointment the morning I will but I try not to have like a super early appointment because I like to get through all my leads my prospecting. And then that way, I’m done doing that. And I’ve already cleaned up my inbox at that point. So then I tackle all the other stuff that comes in because like all day long, I always get emails and calls and negotiating deals and all that other stuff. But like, every morning if I didn’t go to the gym, or it’s easy, right? Like, it’d be really easy to just be like, let’s Screw it. Let’s wake up at eight o’clock today and like sleep in and not go to the gym. And it’s kind of wake up and like it’s not gonna make that big of a difference. But that’s, that’s a slippery slope. You know, you you give up one day, then the next day you kind of slip in maybe a little bit later in the next notes 10 or 11 o’clock and that’s kind of now your normal routine. So I think it’s really important that you have structure in this business. And that’s some of the things I try to teach my team all the time this Having structure, you know, every day you have to have like, certain things you have to do. And you need to make sure that I don’t know if you have to write it down or whatever, you have to make sure you do it and check it off your list. And then you can move on to everything else. So whenever I hear people talk about like, Hey, I don’t feel like I’m busy, or I’m, like seeing a lot of success. I’m like, Well, what are you doing every day? And like, well, some days you wake up to this, and sometimes they do this. So I mean, I think routine is probably the most important things you can do to be successful.

D.J. Paris 10:24
Yeah, I had on years ago, I had a Josh Weinberg who’s Of course, Tommy’s partner, Tom, he’s a real close friend of yours. And Josh, I’m sure as well. And they I asked them this is back when I just started the podcasts, didn’t know what to ask people. And I said, Hey, what are your what are your goals for next year? And I had Josh on the show. And he, he sort of laughed, and he goes, Yeah, we don’t really think like that. We think about discipline. And he said, one of his disciplines was Tommy, and this is a few years ago, but it’s probably still true. He said, We have Tommy has to meet one person a day that he hasn’t met before and pitch what we do. And he goes, if we if he does that, we’re gonna hit all of our numbers. And I just love that, that they have those, you know, even however many years they’ve been in business, they still do the basics, the fundamentals.

Matt Laricy 11:05
Right. I mean, that’s, that’s it, I think, the power of routine for everyone the most powerful things you could use to be successful in this business?

D.J. Paris 11:12
Yeah, I would love to talk about, you know, your team hasn’t just been successful. You’ve had a meteoric rise, you’re at the very top of the mountain in Chicago. That doesn’t happen by accident. And, you know, what would you attribute in addition to having, obviously, incredible discipline, and structure? What else do you think is has really taken your team and you to the top?

Matt Laricy 11:32
Well, I mean, I think knowledge is power, you know, so like, let’s face it. So people forget my first year in the business, I did zero to one sale, I think it was like, that’s it nothing. My second year in the business, I did one sale. My third year in the business, I did two sales. But my fourth year in the business, I did four sales. So pretty much in the first four years, I think I made a total of like, $30,000 in four years. I remember at that point, I’m like, 25 ish years old, okay. And I’m living at home in my parents house. Okay, I got dumped by some chick I was dating for a couple years. So I’m depressed and lonely at home with no sales in the worst real estate economy we’ve ever seen. And, you know, you’re also guys, you’re trying to pick up on checks, you’re like, Hey, I’m 25 a little bit home. And I’m in real estate, like how well do you think that went over to anybody you met, you know, make no money. So like, you know, like, okay, loser get out of here. So like, it’s really easy to get down on yourself. And, you know, a lot of people see me and they’re like, well, you’re young, you got so successful so quickly, but they forget, like, those four years are probably the four worst years, but best years of my life to because it, you know, helped build some character, you know, brings you down to realize that, like, you do have to work hard. So what I was saying during those years, is that I knew I wouldn’t get rich in money during those years. So I didn’t care that only had a sale. Yeah, that didn’t discourage me at all. What I always said is that, like, you don’t get rich and good market, you get rich in bad markets, right? So I can get rich in money, I’m gonna get rich and out. So when this market turns, I’m gonna know every single thing possible about the market. So what I would do is I’d drive down here first thing in the morning. And like I said, I didn’t know what River North to go colts, or I didn’t know there was a Wicker Park, like, I had no idea that these were neighborhoods, like we’re not cultured on the south side. Okay, so like knowing all this different shit. So I would get down early in the morning. And I would walk the neighborhoods literally with a paper map. And I would draw out the neighborhoods, and I’d walk into buildings and ask them if they’re rentals or sales buildings. And if it was a rental or sales, if it was rental, I’d walk right now, because I knew that you want to make it big and rentals, you’d only make it big and sale. So if it was a sales, I would drill the doorman trying to ask them, you know what this stuff was, and like, try to figure out what the building was. And if it had a name, I put the name down. So when somebody said like, Hey, this is the Montgomery, you know, like, I knew what that next like before people be like, Oh, I live in X building. The fuck is that? Like, is that a neighborhood that I missed? You know, so I mean, but I did that. And you have to remember when you wake up, and you don’t have enough money to pay for gas to get down to the city, and you don’t have any sales, it can be a pretty discouraging day, and it’s freezing cold out like it is saying you’re like, Hey, I’m gonna go downtown and walk in here. But it’s to figure out what I’m gonna know about it, you know, but I mean, I was partial, what I did try to know is like, so, you know, I tried to memorize the neighborhoods. After that, and go back to the South Side office, and I drill my dad, I would sit in the office, literally, he’d always put on a pot of coffee at like, 6pm and be like, Well, I’m gonna throw another pot on, drinks on with me. And I’m like, Yeah, I’ll sit here with you. And I’d sit back there, and I’d have fucking nothing to do. And I would just listen to him answer the phone call and see what he said. And then when he hang up, if I didn’t know, I’d say, Why did you say that? Like, what does this mean? What is the title? You know? Like, why did you negotiate this way? Like, what’s a better routine? So like, I would just ask every question I could. And that also at that time, there’s these things called computers. So anytime, like, I like I would read any article or do anything I could, like, just try to research so I was like, I kind of spent those four years it’s like a college, like education, like trying to really figure out learn every single thing I could. So when the market started to turn like I can answer any question, I mean, not offending business, but I knew everything.

D.J. Paris 14:56
Isn’t that amazing that your dad really set you up to succeed by Not making it easy for you as far as helping you grow your business.

Matt Laricy 15:04
He didn’t do anything. Like, No, I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. Like, you know, it was tough love for sure. You know, I think he kind of helped pave the way to make sure that like we weren’t brought up silver spoon fed or anything like that, you know, I’m sure. He’ll never tell you we did anything, right. So he pitches every day about everything he still runs, technically runs the company. But, you know, I mean, I think that’s the biggest problem too, is like we were brought up in tough love. My guys are brought up that way too. But we’re in a PC society today. I feel like you know, realtors nowadays are set up to fail. I mean, honestly, because we’re not where everybody gets a trophy. Everybody’s gonna win. And whenever there’s pushback, I see, I tell people all the time, probably the biggest reason why I think I succeed more than other people’s because I want it more. Honestly, you’re the ideal and like, the people will be like, Okay, well, it doesn’t someone’s gonna work out. It was nice trying to work with him, like, wait a second fucking work that were 5000 apart, like, let’s make this work. But go back and talk to your guy, pick up the phone, we can make this happen, you know, and then like next, you know, builder like, Oh, my God, they came up like, can you believe it? We have a deal. Like, Yeah, no shit, because you call him back the second time. Like, I will tell you that that happens once a day, literally once a day. And you know, we’re in a society nowadays, where when the going gets tough people get going, like, they don’t want to work for it. Think about when you talk about the market. People are talking about the back half of the year. They’re always like, Oh, my God, it’s a different market right now. Can you believe it? It’s so tough. It’s like what you mean, it’s so tough to like, I show my clothes like 10 times, like 10 times, the real estate was never designed to sell in two or three days in the market. You know, you got to work for the people who want to work for and trying to make deals happen. They’re the ones that are successful.

D.J. Paris 16:32
Yeah, boy, that is that could not be better said. Absolutely. Right. And I think that shows in, in your work ethic, and also just how determine I saw you speak in an event. I can’t remember six months ago or so for Chicago, real producers. And there was a panel and the panels. Great. And you were up there. And somebody had asked a question about when you give up on a lead. And different people have different answers when once they tell you to buzz off or whatever. And you were like, why would you ever give up on a lead? And you said, I don’t care if it takes five years? I can’t wait for that person to become a client.

Matt Laricy 17:05
Right? I mean, I mean, I, when somebody tells me even like they like it’s a cold lead, you’ve never met him before. Like, oh, you know, we decided just to rent Well, guess what fucker, I just put you in my quarterly photo, every single quarter for the rest of your life, you’re gonna get an email or a call from me. And you know what I would say that every single quarter, I get at least five to six more sales from those people that people would have just thrown away. And guess what, six sales extra? Maybe that’s an extra 50 G’s in our pocket, right? And then that person who bought now they’re like, Oh, I love this guy. They’re gonna refer me to three other people. Right? So that’s technically not just like six more sales, it’d be an extra 20 sales a year. And one of the things I always tell people it’s like Derek Jeter like, you know, I mean, singles and doubles, keeping the game. You keep getting these little wins here and there. And here and there. It’s not about getting a $2 million sale, you get a bunch of little ones. Those add up. And that’s what builds your network. And I’m sorry to cut you off. No, no,

D.J. Paris 17:52
I cut you off. You’re absolutely right. It is singles and doubles all day that wins wins the game. I would love to ask a few questions here. Our audience was kind enough to write in because you’re obviously such a legend here in Chicago. Let’s see normal

Matt Laricy 18:06
guy trying to see like everybody else. That’s all.

D.J. Paris 18:09
Yeah, well, look, I that is, you know, we’ve done 130 Some of these episodes, all top 1% producers, and, you know, they all really you know, all boils down to wanting it more. And so I think you’ve just saying that was was so important to our listeners. And also what’s great too is your first four years, you didn’t have a ton of immediate success, yet. You just kept going and now you know if it was if it all went away tomorrow, you can rebuild it again. That’s what’s so amazing.

Matt Laricy 18:36
I lived at home till I was almost 27 years old. I didn’t give a shit. You know what I said to myself, I said like every dollar I saved, I put back in my business. That’s the other thing is I reg invest in myself. So like instead of spending 2000 hours a month downtown showing off, they’re like, Hey, I got money, blah, blah, blah, I think give a shit. I don’t give a shit if everybody thought I lived on my car. I wanted to be successful in the business and I was willing to sacrifice everything to make that happen. So every dollar made, I thought myself so I’m gonna put that right back in there. It’s like a lot of people talk about like how we got big on Zillow, right? Everybody’s like, oh, man, that guy got big as a Zillow blah blah. I’m gonna tell you a good story. What happened with that? In 2010 I want to guaranteed rates holiday party and Mark Martini Ranch was called Okay, now it’s Pacific Standard Time. Okay. And I was locked up with five agents in the city. I won’t tell them when they were in that worship these guys man fuck, I’m gonna go up there. I don’t know who they are. But they don’t know me. And I’m like, Hey, what are you guys doing for advertising? And like the one guy’s like, I’m on bus boards and you know, billboards all the shit. I’m in CS magazine and all this, like, what are you doing? I’m like, well, there’s this company that got created. It’s called Zillow. And there’s another one called Trulia. And like, I played around with their algorithms. I saw what they did I think they’re doing really well and I put my life savings on the line and I think this might be big. And everybody laughed at me and they’re like the internet like What the Why like nobody’s going online searching for homes like what do you guys I was like, Are you guys idiots like, this is huge. No, like, you’re never make anything blah, blah. They laughed at me and like, honestly, I walked I left the party after that because I was so embarrassed about like, how they made me feel. And I just thought to myself, you know why? If I’m going to keep trying at this, I’m gonna keep trying to tech route and see if they pick up, you know where it takes me like, here I am. But I’ll tell you what those websites first came out. That’s the differences that I invested my money in technology that other people felt would never work. And I did that all throughout my career, you know, and I still do that today, when I, when I see an opportunity, I think something’s going to take off, I invest my money with it. It’s it’s not, you know, John’s money, or I don’t get money from compass or some of these other, you know, places to give me money. Because my own hard earned cash, I invest in myself to see if something’s gonna work. And for people out there listening, you have to know is that like, you got to take chances. If you believe in enough, and you’re gonna work on it, then do it. But if you don’t believe in it, don’t put the money into it, because you’re gonna fail it. That’s the problem with agents is they don’t, you know, they go half and a half out. And they’re like, I can’t believe this isn’t working. It’s like, well, you didn’t give me your all, you know, and that’s the most money.

D.J. Paris 20:47
And I mean, I don’t know any realtors, that that only did a handful of sales in four years who are still in the business, right? Like, that’s the difference between you and everyone else is you just stuck with it, you knew it was gonna work, eventually, and you became an expert. And that was really, really important, as I don’t know how many brokers even become experts anymore.

Matt Laricy 21:05
I think the problem is, as soon as I talk about that, now is that a lot of people get their license, and they have got a great network, you know, and they did really, really well. But when when it gets tough, and I deal with these agents all the time, like how do you not know what a closing cost is? How do you not know what this sounds like? People actually don’t know, I say, you have to learn this stuff now. Because when the market turns, which it will, you know, I’m not saying it’s gonna get to oh, wait, but it’s gonna get a little bit worse. What’s gonna happen is you’re not going to be the expert. People are like, Why am I going to work with that? You know, so you have to educate yourself, every single day, you should be reading something, make sure that you’re ahead of the curve. So you can always be educated on the market.

D.J. Paris 21:39
Yeah. And that actually brings me to one of our listener questions, who said, how do you think this is anonymous question. So how do you feel the real estate market will be affected? If the Republicans win the presidency? Or if Democrats take office? Do you feel there’d be a shift in the market?

Matt Laricy 21:55
Yeah, I think there’ll be a huge shift. If the Republicans win office, the markets can be phenomenal, it’s business friendly, things are gonna keep going the way they’re gone. We’ll have four great years. If the Democrats win the office, I think it depends which one does. And it could affect the market. It’s not doom and gloom. Okay, there’s three branches of government. But I think the market probably won’t be as strong as it would be. If Republicans in office and if you look, statistically speaking, the housing market is typically better with Republican in office, it is, you know, people have more money, and you

D.J. Paris 22:22
don’t care what either way, right? Like, as far as you’re gonna be able to grow your business regardless,

Matt Laricy 22:27
I own a business, you can’t have a political opinion in my mind, because if you’re like Republicans, half the people hate you. And if you like the Democrats, if people hate you, I mean, like, honestly, depending on who gets an office, everybody’s gonna have to make adjustments on their business. And that’s just the way it is.

D.J. Paris 22:41
Yeah, I saw you speak once at an event and somebody was asking about cash. Where do we think the markets headed and you were like, I don’t really care because I will find opportunities no matter what I find, you know, you were they were saying in the winter it’s it’s slower and you were like, it’s not slower for me in the winter. Like I’m just as busy.

Matt Laricy 22:57
Well, that’s the problem is people forget like, you know, people keep saying and now they’re like oh my god this January is different than other January’s. It’s different. Like no shit. It’s not different. We’ve been more seasonal because these rents we’ve been the most rent heavy city in the country for the last couple years in a row. So guess what, January, February, a better number months and July and August. So when you’re slow October, December, the reason you’re slow is because like everybody gets his calls, like, I want to scorch and deal you want to deal. Let’s talk in October, I’ll follow up with you every single week until October. And when October comes in these deals pour in, that’s when we’re going to die. So that’s where from October, December, I crushed it in sales, with investors, my deal seekers, you know, that’s it, you just have to plan your business or your people want a 2 million our house, but you know, they want it at 1.8. Okay, well, I can get that for you in October. I can’t get it for you. In February, when there’s 50 people looking at Samos.

D.J. Paris 23:40
That’s well said. Okay, Roberto asks, What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made while growing your business? Because he would like to avoid it. He says Thanks in advance.

Matt Laricy 23:50
I mean, I’ve made more mistakes, and I could count on my human being just like everybody else, I make a mistake every single day of the week, it’s probably more than one a week or one a day, I probably the biggest one that cost you the most is maybe hiring wrong. You know, there’s some times I make a hire where I kind of know in my gut that it’s not the right move, but maybe I’m kind of desperate at the time. So I take them on, and I take a chance and then I realize like really quickly, they’re not the right fit, and then I’m fucked because it costs you a lot of cash. And then you have to find somebody else. So that’s probably the biggest mistake that cost me.

D.J. Paris 24:21
They say, fire fast, hire slow, right? Something like that. Yeah, I

Matt Laricy 24:25
agree with that. All right.

D.J. Paris 24:27
This is a kind of a silly question, but Rianne I think it’s Rianne. hopefully I’m pronouncing that right asks about your blue suits, saying do you always wear blue suits because you love the color blue? Or is it a branding thing?

Matt Laricy 24:38
I started wearing blue suits because the suit guy went to set he thought it would look good and blue. So I bought my first custom suit was blue. And then after that, I kind of liked that it was different. I felt everybody always were brown or black or gray. And I was like let’s just get these obnoxious blue ones. And as I liked more, I started getting more blue color suits so that we had different ones to wear. That’s it. We have a dress code, my office all my guys who wear suits and ties at all time. So you got to if you work seven days a week, I’d have enough variety in the next you know, for the people out there. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 25:10
I’m always shocked at how so many Realtors dress so casually. I think

Matt Laricy 25:15
it was ridiculous. I do I think everybody listening out there to wear a suit and tie. I mean, you don’t see anybody going into a board meeting and in like, you know, khakis and like a T shirt and trying to win $100 million in business. Now I get it, like we’re not pitching $100 million. But like, I’ll tell you, I probably get two to 3% more business a year because I wear a suit and tie. Like if it’s between me and somebody else, I’ll win it just solely the way I’m dressed.

D.J. Paris 25:38
No question about it. And it’s kind of like, you know, we think other professions like if I went to see an attorney, and if they weren’t in a suit, I’d be a little disappointed and I might not trust them as much.

Matt Laricy 25:48
Yeah, I mean, 100% agree. Yeah. Okay, this

D.J. Paris 25:51
is this a good question. And I suspect I know your answer, but I’m curious to hear it. So Charles asks, With the advent of discount brokerages like Redfin, of course, being the most obvious example. Have you seen this impact your business, if at all,

Matt Laricy 26:06
it’s grown my business, I would say, I think there’s a lot of people, it’s great, because like, a lot of my buyers will go out with them, and then realize that like, they don’t know what they’re talking about. And then they’ve gotten to hold narrowing down for me, like they start with like, 30 years. Now they want one area and they want like one house and like this one popped up, can we see it and I show them one place, and they buy it? It’s phenomenal. And on the sell side, it’s like, they’ll think they want to go a cheaper route. I’m not just naming one company. There’s a lot of companies out there, of course, I realized that wasn’t the right route to go. So then they’ll take us on and we’ll get it more of a realistic price. And it’s easier for us. So I mean, there’s going to be different people that like different things. That’s why they make red cars, black cars, blue cars, everybody’s got their own opinion, there’s no right answer, there’s no wrong answer. Some people will look at as a discount, I just look at as a different personality. That’s it. You know, for me, I don’t see it as a threat. I know what I charge and value, I bring the table, I never degrade any agents or any company. A lot of people do it to us quite often on listing appointments. But I always say that it’s an I’m not here to tell you why I’m better than XYZ. I’m here to tell you who I am and what I can offer. And if you like me, then let’s roll with it. And if not, I wish you the best and I hope whoever gets to listen gets a sale. Like that’s it. That’s how you have to live your life. If you live your life with hatred towards the other agents, you’re going up against companies and you worry about that your business is gonna be affected.

D.J. Paris 27:23
Well, that and it’s called a cooperative commission, you might run across that person in a future deal

Matt Laricy 27:28
that people do business you run into enough that doesn’t make sense like that and other people.

D.J. Paris 27:32
Yeah, 100% Agree. Okay. Lucy asks, I would love to get your opinion about ibuyers. Just for our audience real quickly, I’m sure pretty much everyone knows what that is. In case you’re not I by no means an instant buyer. So somebody goes onto a website, they get an instant offer on a property. And, you know, it’s obviously become quite popular. What are your what’s your take on I buyers?

Matt Laricy 27:52
I think it’s a fad. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it’s a fad. I think, you know, right now the economy is unbelievable. It’s literally the best economy America has ever seen. The market is unbelievably hot. A lot of realtors who’ve only been in the business last six, seven years like Man Real Estate’s great, it’s never bad. Well, guess what? Like we are in fictitious waters right now. Like naturally the way October December was last year for a lot of people out there that were crying complain about the market that’s normally like how the normal market is okay? It’s like, it’s always like really tough. So when you buy 3000 homes and just pay tax assessments, mortgages, or whatever it is, and they’re not moving really quick, what are the I buyers going to do that? What are they gonna do when they can’t sell in two seconds, I’ve never met anybody that wants to buy something that’s like super overpriced. So if they have 3000 homes that they’re just sitting on, and we’re now in a point where, you know, average market time goes from, you know, 30 days in an area and Deborah, they’re buying and it goes to 300 days, and they have 3000 Those, like how well that’s gonna work for you. Technology disruptors will come into an industry at all times, whenever the economy is very, very good. But when the economy gets bad, how much is it gonna affect? It’s like commission, like a lot of people thought commission was gonna go down, right? And that when the market was booming, like things were selling in 24 hours, you would get a lot more people asking you for commission reductions. Well, guess what, now that market time is up. I have more people will say like, they’ll pay me more if I sell faster. Yeah. So it’s just like, I mean, there’s just a fat for sale by owner.com was the biggest threat to humanity in real estate in the 90s. How that works,

D.J. Paris 29:23
right? Yeah, great point. Yeah, everyone thought that was that was going to replace realtors, I, yeah.

Matt Laricy 29:29
And the real estate agency, I bar all that stuff. It’s evolving. It’s changing. I think the people who do it part time and don’t take the job seriously. I think a large portion of real estate agents in the next 20 years will be gone because it’s been such a thing where like, Hey, I’m gonna get my license two to three deals a year sheets and gigs. It’s cool, right? I think that type of stuff is going to start to change and what I call more like bottom feeders that get a couple of deals a year are gonna be off the table. And I think people are gonna look at more as a profession, which I think is only good, I think it’s gonna make the bigger agents people bigger.

D.J. Paris 30:01
Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. All right, Tim asks, do you specialize in only a certain area of the city or do you also work in the suburbs? And should I as a new broker in this person’s in their first year should they specialize in one area or try to do try to go wherever the listings take them

Matt Laricy 30:19
specialized and we mostly specialize in this like what I call the downtown markets which is like South above like Lakeview and then north Center West Loop restaurant, all that stuff. So when I first got my business, I would go anywhere, I would be in like Orland Park up to like Skokie this outside. Like we’re like anything that would come in. I took it like Hungry Hungry Hippo, right? Like all the businesses that get the more the better. And then I realized that like, I didn’t know what happened the street over and like people were kind of like, I kind of felt like I was chasing commission. So like now if I get something suburbs, I refer it out to certain people in certain areas, the suburbs I give to and it’s just like me like and I, if somebody’s like, why don’t want to use you because we’re buying him or something. And suburbs like asset agent, like how many places have sold in this building last, like 10 days, I can tell you everything about everything there is about the market here. Can I tell you what’s happening with NACA today? I’ve never been better with that in my life, like how the fuck am I supposed to, but I could change the commission up there. So like I always say figure out where you want to be own it, specialize in it, know everything you can know about it, and then maybe expand to another smaller region that’s right next to it. So it’s kind of like building an empire. But you don’t want to go too far, where you can’t maintain the balance of the Empire you have.

D.J. Paris 31:21
Yeah, and it takes years, right? Like, it’s certainly you’re in River North, your your offices there, it takes a ton of time takes years to really get that knowledge. And then you become so incredibly valuable to people who want to live in those immediate areas that no one really can compete with you.

Matt Laricy 31:36
Rome wasn’t built overnight. You know, everybody wants that instant gratification these days. I mean, it’s gonna take a long, long time to do it.

D.J. Paris 31:42
And then one last question. So we’ve got, I don’t know what percentage of our listeners are brand new to the business, but we get a lot of new new brokers. So we talked about discipline structure, becoming an expert, taking your time treating it like a business. Is there anything else that you would coach a new broker on to start doing? Maybe it’s a daily discipline? Maybe it’s just something to start working on. But But what’s what’s sort of keeps your, you know, would you recommend somebody to keep their eye on the prize

Matt Laricy 32:10
structure in your day, first off, making sure that you do the same thing all day, every day, like, every day you do, you have to do XYZ, no matter what, you know, and then educating yourself on top of that, and making that part of your routine of being like every day, like, for me, personally, I read five articles a day about the market every day no matter what. So I can always say in tune, you can’t be like, Oh, this happened. But that’s why we tell people like the Wall Street Journal doesn’t need to tell me what’s happened in Chicago. I’m like patting them on the front lines. I know what’s happening here better than they ever would dream to know about it. But that’s because I educate myself all day, every day, these new people out there, take every class, you can take every webinar, you can listen to every podcast, you can read every book, whether you agree or disagree with it. In take all that information in, you could formulate your own opinions later on. The main thing right now is to actually understand what the hell you’re doing. Like don’t worry about the sales, we always thought the sales are a cherry on top, like if I got to sell that be awesome. Like, yeah, make a couple bucks to survive. But like, I was blessed enough to have parents who had like a house that I could live at, but like still like, to me the money I never give it I still today don’t give a shit about how much money I make. I care about having sales and educating myself on what’s happening in the marketplace. You know, I just I think that’s a big problem for new new agents. Everything they know about is like, don’t talk to me about what your GCI is what you know, there’s a lot of the companies are like, what’s my GCI gonna be if I do this, who gives a shit with your money, I can tell you, my GCI is because you want I don’t give a shit. I don’t give a crap about how much money I’m making off per deal. I care about making sure I do the best fucking job. And I know everything there is about, you know, the market and what’s going on out there. And that’s what you should be more concerned about the moral about what you put in your pocket. And every new Broker, I need probably the person that tells me how much money we’re gonna make first year. So the first thing I tell him, I’ll tell you right now, if you ever heard my competence, the first thing you do, I will leave that meeting right away. I cut meeting short so I just get up and I’m like, this isn’t a good fit.

D.J. Paris 33:49
Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, you know, knowledge is power. And for every one of our listeners, I always recommend to I’m not a Producing Realtor myself, but we interview a lot of them for our show. And, and so I always say you should be terrified of somebody who’s better than you. And you absolutely should be because Matt’s and his team is going to come in and blow you out of the water if it’s a listing presentation. So you need to up your game. So you need to spend those four years really upping your game so that you can compete with the big boys and girls of course, but you need to be able to compete and if you can’t immediately articulate your knowledge. You know, guys like Matt are gonna come around and crush you and not that Matt’s looking to crush you, but he’s just going to have a better

Matt Laricy 34:31
technically I am. I like competition and I want to try to be the best in the business. I’ll tell you when I was trying to up in common I would take the first five guys that obviously gameofthrones sure you know and it would count tell the people that you want to kill every night before she went to bed I would look at the top five guys and be like, these are the guys who want to take down like all day every day like what can I do to better myself to be better than that? You know? And then immediate like in a bad way like I feel like a bad people. I mean, these guys are unbelievable rock star people. You know guys and girls. I’m just saying for me personally If I knew to be the best, I had a beat the best. So how would I beat the best? Well, I have to be better myself. These guys aren’t at the top because they suck. They’re the top was the best in the game. So every night like Game of Thrones, I’m saying like their names like, this is what I’m gonna do to try to bring them down. And I would think about it, I had a plan of attack, I didn’t just go off the seat of my pants being like, oh, let’s try to do this today. Like these new people, you have to take the job seriously, if you hold yourself to a serious matter, the people you meet are going to do that as well.

D.J. Paris 35:24
Yeah, and just the sheer amount of knowledge you have on the current markets and what you see future trends going you just make adjustments you you don’t, you don’t even worry about where things are headed. You just notice where they’re headed and adjust the business accordingly. It seems

Matt Laricy 35:38
like it’d be scared about it. You just gotta know that like, Hey, if you have to also think five steps ahead. Like if you know, like, hey, like, I know, this is gonna be a tough end of the year. It’s a presidential election year. Chicago doesn’t perform all that yet. Well, I know August in December is gonna be a bloodbath. So right now I’m already preparing for now today. So that August, December, I’m not held with my pants on I’ll be prepared. I’m going to crush in August number because I know I’m gonna do it next year we succeed.

D.J. Paris 36:01
Yeah, well, you know, I think that you’ve said it all. What a great, what a great conversation. I want to make sure everyone listening. You want it if you want to see, by the way, a great website as well. There’s a lot of just terrible realtor websites out there. Matt Larose has one of the best ones, maybe the best one I’ve ever seen. Visit Matt literacy group.com. You can see exactly what a good website and I love the fact that it’s not, there’s not too much information on there. It’s really concise. It’s clear, it’s a good example of how to promote your brand, which of course, obviously, you know how to do

Matt Laricy 36:31
that, you know, the one thing we did with that was that we didn’t put listings on them and the only company that doesn’t have listings on our website. And what I said is because there’s so many different websites out there nowadays with with listing on there, I said that like why not promote who you are. People want to know who you are, they’re hiring you. So let that be seen. And that’s what we built the website around.

D.J. Paris 36:48
And no one cares about your listings anyway. They care about you, right? I mean? Yeah, yeah. So that’s, that’s good. Because a lot of right, I always say that if like if you’re a realtor, and you’re just posting ads, or not ads on Facebook, but we’re doing posts on Facebook bragging about your your most recent listings, like, I don’t know, the Pete, most people care, but they want to know what you’re all about. And the website does that. And then also listen to us, listen to his podcast and watch his videos on YouTube, Matt literacy project. So I’ll be sending out to all of our listeners in the notes for this episode, you’ll be able to link directly to that. And again, Matt, true legend in Chicago. So grateful that I know you don’t have time to do this, and you did it. Anyway, it’s a real, real honor for our listeners on behalf of the listeners and viewers. Really, really appreciate it real quick, guys, before we go. If everyone out there tells another realtor who could benefit from listening to interviews or watching interviews like the one here with Matt, we’ll be able to double our viewership, we’ll be able to do more episodes for you. So please tell a friend about our website. And on on behalf of Matt and myself to all the listeners. We really thank you appreciate your your support and continuing to, to watch our episodes and listen. So Matt, thanks again. Really appreciate your time. This was great. Yeah.

Matt Laricy 37:58
Thanks, guys. Thanks for watching. You know, we’re always here if there’s any questions in the bottom comment.

D.J. Paris 38:03
Awesome. Thanks, man.

Matt Laricy 38:05
All right. Thanks.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

200 Real Estate Sales Per Year • Matthew Arminio

February 25, 2020

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Matthew Arminio of Apex National Real Estate is here to tell you that buy-and-hold and fix-and-flip are still viable real estate investment strategies in 2020. And he should know since he averages over 200 closed sales each year across five states (all investment properties). In our conversation Matt discusses his process for sourcing investment opportunities, how he evaluates the profitability of each property and how real estate agents can increase their knowledge of the investment side of the business!

Contact Matthew Arminio at 888.773.2739 and marminio@springlakecap.com

Want to watch this episode instead? Click here for the YouTube vide o !

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host and guide to the show and in just a moment, we have a great interview with Matthew R Mineo. Before we get started couple of quick notes, I want to remind everyone that we are in the process of launching a brand new website which will make everything a lot easier. If in case you want to search and find old episodes that appeal to you or want to just for example, watch all the Joel episodes for learning with a lender or Ryan do a pre sale or go go for Instagram or carry McCormick for the Monday market minute. So we’re running into just a few snags getting that website completed. But it should be completed in the next couple of weeks. Very excited about that. In the meantime, our website is still really functional. If you visit keeping that real pod.com You can stream every episode we’ve ever done live there. Also, please join our Facebook page, which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pot every single day, we post an article designed that we find online designed to help you grow your business. And of course we post all of our episodes there too. And we’ve now added video. So when we’re recording an episode, even though it might not actually get produced for a couple of weeks, what we do in the interim is we while we’re recording it, we broadcast it live on Facebook with video. So guys, it’s a great way to actually watch our episodes being recorded, see some behind the scenes stuff and get the episodes much faster, because it takes me a couple of weeks to produce them and actually get them ready to you through the podcast app that you’re probably using. Lastly, speaking of the podcast apps, if you’re on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Spotify, wherever Pandora, we’re everywhere, please leave us a review. Whatever that review is, we appreciate it. It helps our visibility within those podcast directories and just gives us feedback and lets us know how we’re doing. So please leave us a review. And one last favor. I’m asking for you tell one other person about the show. If you know a realtor out there that could benefit from hearing from true top producers like Matthew or Mineo just pass it along to one other realtor, you can either send them to our website, keeping it real pod.com Or just have them pull up iTunes or Google Play or wherever and have them search for keeping it real podcasts. It’ll pop right up. Thank you for all your continued support. We couldn’t do it without you guys. We’re cranking out episodes left and right. And we’re so excited to continue to bring you the content that you want and deserve and clearly appreciate. So thank you on behalf of all of us and now on to our interview with Matthew or Mineo.

All right, today on the show, we have Matthew Armindo from Apex national real estate. Matthew is a licensed managing broker in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, and Georgia. He’s focused solely on investments in real estate, primarily a single family investments. He works with all kinds of clients from large institutional funds to everyday investors, sells currently over 200 homes a year which is absolutely incredible. Welcome to the show, Matt. Thanks for having me on. Ya know, thank you. We really appreciate your time. I know I know how busy you are. So this is really appreciative of you spending time with our audience. Tell us a little bit about you know, your journey. How did you get into real estate?

Matthew Arminio 4:35
Yeah, so I got into real estate in 2009. I was working at a bank and managing a bunch of custom credits locally in Chicago and was just dealing with a bunch of guys who had real estate investments on the side and fell in love with the deal structures and the nuances of real estate and all that stuff. I actually went to DePaul University and got a master’s in real estate finance, and then took a job at a private equity shop that was doing commercial real estate ended up in the single family space when everything kind of went dark. In 2009, I was approached by one of the largest rental hedge funds in the country in Chicago to help them source and purchase assets here. So actually did like 600 deals for them from roughly 2009 to 2012.

D.J. Paris 5:33
Well, and how did you find those deals? If you don’t mind me asking what what was back then? What was that? Were they mostly on the MLS? Were they not on the MLS? You know, that’s usually a question are not investor brokers are always curious about investors.

Matthew Arminio 5:47
Yeah, so we did. We did some direct mailings, some Pay Per Click advertising, sort of like the we buy homes. Sure, but for the most part, it was MLS buys. So we we covered 138 Chicago markets for them, eventually expanded into Georgia with them. You know, but it was just wake up everyday pound the MLS understand what their Buy Box was, what type of product they wanted, what the necessary yield was estimating some sort of improvement budget forum and just getting out as many offers as

D.J. Paris 6:24
we could. And these were all buy and hold or were they flips or

Matthew Arminio 6:28
that particular client was all buy and hold on. So the first three years that we were doing this, it was all just buy and hold, but they now on something like 45,000 homes nationwide.

D.J. Paris 6:38
Amazing. Do you still work with them? Are you off five do working with other clients now?

Matthew Arminio 6:42
I don’t work with them anymore. I do work with buy and hold clients. My biggest buy and hold clients are actually in Missouri and Wisconsin. Slightly different model. But my main source of business right now are fix and flip buyers.

D.J. Paris 6:59
Yeah, I’ve talked to a lot of investors over the last, you know, two or three years, it seems that the given we have listeners all over the country, we’re of course located here in Chicago, you have licenses in like five states. So you know, more of the national trends than I would know here locally. But I know even in Chicago, the margins have become a lot tighter for house hacking, or just buy and hold in general. Have you seen Have you seen a shift there’s that why have you expanded to other states because of the Chicago market or just as a natural progression of expanding your business?

Matthew Arminio 7:35
A little bit of both. I mean, we we went into Wisconsin because we had clients in Illinois that liked that, like the general market and like the yield you could get on single family in Wisconsin. Our clients is similar to a Nashville or an Atlanta, just a little bit behind the growth curve. Our clients in Atlanta are looking at four and a half percent population growth going, there’s not nearly enough inventory to satisfy all the people moving. So each market operates a little bit differently. But at the end of the day, it’s all about either hitting, hitting the yield or hitting the spread on your fix and flip to make money for the client.

D.J. Paris 8:21
Yeah, I’ve Yeah, I agree. It’s I’ve always heard that a lot of times brokers who aren’t investors to traditional Realtors working with buyers and sellers, primary residence type of deals are a lot of times not really understanding. They’ll say, Well, we don’t, I can’t, you know, finding the money, you know, to fund to finance these deals. And then savvy investors or seasoned investors say, Oh, the money’s the easy part. It’s fine to making the numbers work that are the challenge. Would you agree with that? Is that been your experience as well?

Matthew Arminio 8:52
Yeah, I mean, making the numbers work is always the hard part. One of the bigger challenges to is when you get into a lot of markets, and you’re dealing with agents on the sales side that aren’t necessarily used to working with investors, it takes a little bit of hand holding on their part because it’s a it’s an untraditional offer. As much as from an investor perspective, we might we’d like to make it look and feel like what they’re used to putting the house under contract, doing the inspection hand holding the client through inspection issues. In Illinois, we have attorneys, so dealing with the attorneys and lining up the closing. It doesn’t quite ever happened that way for us. You know, and it’s unfortunately it’s a lot less, I think, emotional than the retail game and a lot more financially driven. So just trying to educate Realtors on that side of the business is usually the biggest hurdle.

D.J. Paris 9:52
Yeah, they’re just it’s sort of two different animals, right? Like the traditional realtor deals with, you know, the public and you guys you’re To be mostly and the traditional realtor is b2c, it’s just a whole different game, I guess

Matthew Arminio 10:05
it’s a completely different game. It’s a completely different sales experience. The way that my clients talk to me and I talk back to my clients is completely different than what happens on a retail transaction.

D.J. Paris 10:18
Yeah, I imagine they put a lot of trust in you to go out and find that find the deal. And then obviously, if the numbers work there, they’re more likely to make that investment. I imagine the clients are almost rarely to never on site, looking at the property. Is that is that the case? Or do they?

Matthew Arminio 10:35
Yeah, so, you know, in our world, not only are we sourcing the property, but we’re also bird dogging it. So we are for most of our clients is we walked the property, we put the scope of work together, we’re telling them what needs to be done. I mean, it’s no longer it’s not really a game of, Hey, these are the comps. It’s, these are the comps. These are the features of the comps. And this is what it’s going to cost you to get these features into your house. And how will ultimately compare to the other comps. Because we’re not necessarily worried about the property appraising on the back end, we’re more worried about it selling on the back end.

D.J. Paris 11:11
Right? What what type of? Well, here’s a question that I that I’m always curious about be and people brokers who are non who are more traditional Realtors might not understand the sheer number of offers, that I suspect you have to write Are you guys just constantly pumping out offers is that is that a huge part of of the business is just offer after offer and seeing who bites

Matthew Arminio 11:36
you know, when we move into a new market, it tends to operate that way. And it tends to operate that way. Because even us on the buy side don’t necessarily know the nuances of the market. So we don’t quite understand like, what’s an acceptable practice and what’s not an acceptable practice and who the power players are in a market and how we sort of position ourselves so that brokers understand we’re real, and will close. So we might not be the highest offer on the table might not be the best offer on the table. But there’s a certainty to working with us and our clients that I think a lot of other investor brokers can’t offer. You know, but once we sort of understand that market, I mean, in Chicago, we’re gonna buy 6570 assets for one of our fix and flip clients this year. And that’s probably about 20 offers a day, when it comes down to it. It’s incredible.

D.J. Paris 12:30
And how are you guys finding opportunities here in Chicago? Is it? Is it still the direct mail? Is it pounding the pavement? Knocking on doors? Is it MLS? What What have you guys found that’s working in this market? So,

Matthew Arminio 12:44
you know, my general philosophy is you can find great deals. And my general philosophy is you can find bad deals and just trends on in your particular market, sort of what the velocity of the MLS is as to whether or not you can really whether or not you can really find enough opportunities for your client. You know, in Chicago in particular, yeah, we still buy off the MLS primarily. We like it because we get more control that way. Sure. You know, there’s an expectation if you’re on the MLS, that access isn’t an issue. We can run in normal diligence period, we can walk an inspector through it if we need to, we have time to get our contractors in, in some of your faster velocity markets like Atlanta, we don’t have as much time that we can get through the process. And therefore the MLS doesn’t really operate as smoothly for us there.

D.J. Paris 13:36
Yeah, that makes sense. I think in Atlanta is aren’t there to MLS as well, or there used to be I don’t know if they’ve combined Yeah,

Matthew Arminio 13:43
they still have to MLS. And that’s always a fun thing when we open a new market, figuring out what MLS you’re on, and what platform and what it reaches and what it doesn’t. So yeah, there’s one that covers like, mainly Atlanta, and then one that covers everything else. So

D.J. Paris 13:59
Gotcha. And so we have a lot of listeners who are traditional realtors who oftentimes say, you know, I’d love to be able to work with investor clients. But I really don’t know anything about how to get started. You know, I always recommend to people who are looking to get more involved in investments to of course, check out bigger pockets that’s bigger pockets.com was a no brainer for for everyone who wants to even just get a knowledge about investments. And they have podcasts and you know, obviously lots of great resources for people to learn. There any other suggestions you have for brokers that really want to add this to their portfolio, whether it’s their own investments, or to be able to work with institutional clients like you do, or just, you know, mom and pop investors?

Matthew Arminio 14:46
Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that you have to do is figure out who the major players are in your market. So you have to kind of start to track your market, track the flips in your market and figure out Who’s buying them who’s? Who are they? Because the first thing is you got to identify who the potential client that you’re bringing product to, and really have to drill down on their numbers. You know, what you have to remember with them is, it’s not about what I think is a good deal. It’s not about what you think is a good deal. It’s about what they think is a good deal. It’s about what works for their metrics, you know, you have to remember that there’s an asset manager on the other side, that’s being judged on a set of criteria that his boss put in place. And so you have to be able to make sure that you understand that and help him see his way to that particular end goal.

D.J. Paris 15:40
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And so yeah, as far as tracking the big players, I’ve also suggested, wherever you know, our listeners are nationally or even internationally, is to you know, get involved, start going to some of the investor meetups, bigger pockets has tons and tons of them all over the country, people are always promoting those, and then just just, you know, find out who the big players are in your space and take them to lunch and find out how they do things. But one thing I have found is Investors love talking about investments. And there is no shortage, no shortage of podcasts, there’s no shortage of resources meetings that you can attend, to really start to educate yourself.

Matthew Arminio 16:24
Yeah, that’s definitely true. We find a lot of guys on Facebook, so we’re always farming, Facebook investment groups, LinkedIn, investment groups, Instagram, you know, all the various social media sites that you would typically think, where they go to promote themselves, their product, their businesses, I mean, that’s where you go and just strike up a conversation with them. And I mean, at the end of the day, investors are about one thing. Finding deals. So usually, if you say, I’m a realtor, I get the ball start.

D.J. Paris 17:00
Yeah, I think that’s right. And a lot of times, they’re they partner with realtors as well, there’s a lot, you know, and I imagine you, you know, I don’t know, if you do any traditional, you know, public, but primary residence by and sells, but you might be somebody who’s too busy to do any sort of traditional, you know, public real estate transactions. So those are also people that you want to connect with, because they might have opportunities for you, in whatever they’re not spending their day doing.

Matthew Arminio 17:28
Yeah, we spend a lot of time like our our brokerage is 100%, solely focused on the investment space. So when we get a retail client, we’re reaching out to agents that we have relationships with in some markets, and we’re referring that business to them. And so for agents that get a lot of clients that say to them, like, I want to I, you know, I want to do an investment, I want to flip a house, I want to buy some rentals, like, look for someone in your market that understands what they’re doing. And don’t be afraid to refer the business over to them, because usually, there’ll be a great referral source back.

D.J. Paris 18:03
Yeah, and they’re going to be able to better service the client until you you know, get your knowledge up to par. And you know, you shouldn’t be afraid to reach out to somebody like Matt and say, Hey, I’ve got an institutional client or an investor client, that’s not really my specialty, can I pass this over to you and, and, you know, hopefully, other opportunities that come your way would go to them as well. So,

Matthew Arminio 18:23
yeah, give an example of something like that I got approached by a guy based out of Ohio last week. He’s got his foothold on Ohio. But he’s got a client who is buying regionally not nationwide, but they’re buying all over the MLS or Midwest. And he doesn’t have anybody covering Wisconsin. And so he reached out to me and said, Hey, these guys are buying like 20 a month in Wisconsin, I’d like to be able to source and send product to him. And so he and I are in the final stages of putting the deal together, where we’re gonna be his boots on the ground in Wisconsin. And we’re going to source this product, and we’re going to feed it to him, and he’s going to sell it to his client and everybody’s going to win.

D.J. Paris 19:01
Yeah, that’s a really smart idea. That’s some something that all of the top producers we have on our show will will tell you, whether they’re retail or institutional, they’ll say, you know, if there’s something they can’t handle, or that they’re not an expert in, they always refer it out and you earn a nice little referral commission and, you know, turn it over to someone else’s expertise.

Matthew Arminio 19:21
I think early in my career, I tried to be everything I tried. Sure, the market expert, you know, local market expert that, you know, pound the friends and family and be the traditional retail broker and be the investment guy and that message gets muddled and then you don’t have as much power with your clients because they’re not really sure what you are or what you stand for what you believe in, but once we kind of said, all the retail business we’re going to take and give to other people, and everyone just understands that we are the investment firm things got a lot Like our message got a lot more powerful.

D.J. Paris 20:02
Yeah, that said Jack of all trades, master of none. It’s an important phrase. And we, you know, we at the brokerage we’re at, that I’m at as well, we’ve tried to be everything to all brokers and we’ve learned over 10 years oh, we’re not everything to all brokers, we have a very specific narrow niche that we think is important. But you know, that’s what we’re good at. We don’t try well over, you know, we’ve tried to be everything. And then we’ve learned not such a great idea because, of course, we can’t be and then we’re not really specialized in anything. And it’s, it’s really, it’s a hard lesson to learn. But it’s an important one, especially for newer brokers, certainly try a lot of things, see what you like, but whatever you get the most excited about the most passionate about is probably a good idea to focus on. But don’t try to do everything because you just won’t be able to and, and take it from from people like Matt like pick, pick a specialty and really become an expert. But then people will ultimately come to you, right?

Matthew Arminio 21:00
Yeah, I mean, we’ve like I said, it used to be we had to go out and find people in the market. I mean, now we have established relationships with attorneys, investment groups, hedge funds, we’re getting referrals, almost weekly, of like, Hey, I got a I got a guy who inherited money from his Third Aunt that he didn’t know existed, and he wants to buy 10 rentals. And so can you help me out? I mean, we’re constantly building portfolios and positioning guys to be successful in the market. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 21:30
I’ve got a funny investment story for you. This is goes back about 25 years, I heard it from Brian Tracy, the self, the self help guy. And he said that he knew a guy this is this goes back probably actually about 30 years. What he would do, this was his specialty. It’s such a it’s kind of a dark specialty, quite honestly. But it’s it was interesting. So what this guy would do is, is a tough a tough one to talk about. But he would he would watch, I think he was in Las Vegas, this is maybe 30 years ago, and people were retiring out Las Vegas. And of course, at some point, people, you know, would pass on. And so what he would do is he would check the obituaries. And whenever somebody would pass on, he would he would wait a week, he would walk over to the property where a lot of times the family would be gathering trying to figure out what are we going to do with this property? What what’s the point, he would make an offer right there at the front door. And that’s all he did all day was walk around neighborhoods, knock on doors of recently deceased people and say to the families, Hey, are you looking to unload this house, and then he would, you know, he would buy it and rent it out. And that’s all he did. And he became incredibly successful. And he would even tell you, this is the story I’m hearing that he wasn’t really all that smart of a guy. But he knew that that worked. I don’t know that that works anymore. And again, maybe maybe not not the way I would go about building business. But the point is, he had a specialty, it was kind of an unusual specialty. And that actually worked for him. So you know, obviously you don’t do that. But But it’s an interesting idea. There’s so many ways in investments to really go out and source clients. Yeah,

Matthew Arminio 23:05
I mean, we I was at a mastermind meeting in, in Nashville last week for nationwide investors. And the one takeaway that I think I came out of there with was, understand what you’re strong at. Yeah, and just pound that, like, don’t worry about all the stuff that you’re missing on the edges. If you got something that works, just keep being the best at that one thing, that thing coming forward, and you’ll have no problem being successful.

D.J. Paris 23:35
So I have to ask this, because, of course, our listeners were probably waiting for me to ask this. But what markets are what cities in the country? Do you see a lot of opportunity now, and in the future? If you’re willing to share that? Of course.

Matthew Arminio 23:49
Yeah. You know, the, we don’t do a lot of work on the coasts. So I don’t I hear stories from Seattle and California and and those types of places. We like a lot of the southeast that hasn’t necessarily matured. You know, at the end of the day, when you’re looking at real estate from a, I guess, a more a more global perspective, so to speak. Like, we’re looking at markets that have temperate weather decent transportation systems aren’t so oversized that people don’t want to move to them and offer value and cost of living. And if you can throw a good school system and on top of it, I think you got a formula for six for success. I mean, I look, I look at Nashville and Atlanta is kind of the most recent examples of Sure. That population explosion and when you look at them, I mean Nashville in particular, Atlanta was already a little bit bigger, but Nashville was a typical, you know, is a typical mid sized southern city that exploded overnight. Well it exploded out Overnight, because you don’t have state income tax, you have a relatively cheap housing base, you have good employment, like you’re in the middle of the country, it’s a Southwest hub. And it’s got a decent school system in it. So like when you start to add all those things together, it makes a lot of sense. And then you throw in that, you know, it might snow twice a year there. And, you know, I think you’ve got a lot of people in the Midwest that are looking for that more temperate lower cost of living environment. I know that you understand that. When I say that, I pretty much mean Chicago. But yeah, I think that rings true. You know, I think that I think that people will always flock where they can get a better cost of living, and a more temperate environment.

D.J. Paris 25:46
So yeah, I was in Nashville a few years ago for the Eclipse because it was ground zero. So that was really cool. Because you got to look at the stare at the sun without glasses for about three or four minutes before. So that was really exciting. But when I was there, I had not really spent time in Nashville before. As soon as I got there says two years ago, I was like, Oh, I get it. Now I understand why you could just feel it when you’re there, of course, but it at the time, it was just shy of like 1000 people a day were who were wanting to move or moving there. I don’t know if it’s still at that pace. But it was just it was getting crazy. And after visiting there. I was like, oh, okay, that makes sense to me. There’s so much going for

Matthew Arminio 26:27
it. Yeah. So we I mean, we like we like St. Louis a lot. Obviously, I think Indianapolis will continue to attract people, we like Memphis, we’d like Nashville and Atlanta to continue their growth. You know, we think the Carolinas will continue to grow. And Texas will continue to grow. I think those are kind of our major spots. Now. Some of them, we think we’re probably a little late in the curve for us to jump into a new market. But you know, if you’re already there, I think there’s got to be investors looking for quality product. And if you can find your way into that into that niche, and you can help them provide that you can grow your business.

D.J. Paris 27:05
So last question, and probably the hardest question to answer. And I’m certainly not expecting a definitive answer here. But if I if if you could give suggestion, a suggestion to our listeners, who are most of which traditional realtors, non investor brokers, who say, Okay, well, how do I go about finding an investor? Right? So now I found an opportunity, whether it’s a fix and flip, whether it’s buy and hold. And I now think the numbers work, I’ve done the math. Now, where do I take this? Do you have any suggestions of how to go about sourcing investors?

Matthew Arminio 27:41
So I think it’s actually easier to go the other route, if you really want to do it, the best way to do it is to find the investor, understand the investor, look at what the investors bought, look at what the investor is trying to accomplish. Is he trying to flip a house? Is he trying to, you know, is he a buy and hold guy who’s trying to build a rental portfolio, try to really drill down on what they’re looking for, and then go out into the market and find the product. Got it, you know, unless you have, the other side is if you have a property, you better have a deep database, because, you know, we run into clients who, hey, I’m not buying this month, or sure, you know, I’m not flipping right now I’m renting around changing strategies, or I gotta get this sale to go through, which doesn’t line up with your closing date. I mean, there’s a lot of things that there’s a lot of variables that go into selling, you know, brokering a house to an investor. So I think it’s much easier if you have the investors, and then go find the product that fits what they need, then trying to take one house and send it to one guy and talk him into taking it.

D.J. Paris 28:48
Yeah, and the good news is investors hang out in clusters, right, investors love talking back and forth, obviously, bigger pockets is a great example of that. And bigger pockets is great, too, because they keep the forum, which is basically the largest forum that I’m aware of, for investors to chat back and forth. They keep it very clean. They don’t really let traditional brokers get on there and promote their their product, their services, they’ll they’ll boot you right out that it’s really a try, you know, a forum for investors to chat back and forth. So if you’re like, Well, how do I find investors? Well, there’s a lot of ways of course, there’s a lot of different meetups, but the first place I would go is you know, go get on bigger pockets and introduce yourself, say, Hey, here’s where I’m located. Here’s where I’m from, here’s what I’m trying to trying to find some investors. You know, I know how to find fix and flips or I know how to find a buy and hold. Here’s where I’m specialized. Does anyone have advice and probably get 50 responses from from other investors helping you out?

Matthew Arminio 29:45
Yeah, I mean, if you like I said local investment groups. I mean, they’re not the thing about investors is they’re not trying to hide and they don’t care who brings them the product. Right? Like they just they’re not great at promoting themselves either. So you have to do spending you’d have to spend a little time finding them and cultivating the relationship a little bit, but they want you to bring them product, they want to see deals. Yeah.

D.J. Paris 30:10
Wow, that this has been really, really helpful. And by the way, we should mention I forgot if I mentioned this at the beginning, I think I did. I want to say it again, as you guys do over 200 sales a year across multiple states. That is an incredible amount of production. For one, one firm. And I know you guys have multiple people on the team. Can you talk a little bit about your operation and and sort of, you know, how it’s grown over the years?

Matthew Arminio 30:35
Yeah. So when we started, it was just me and another partner. And the basic structure was that, you know, he would spend all day pounding the MLS, and I would be the one that would negotiate the deals with the agents and go out and see the houses and bird dog them on behalf of our client. Since then, you know, we’re, we have seven full time people that are looking for product and helping us acquire product, we now have four guys who just do project management in the markets that we’re flipping, they’re just going and checking in on our clients. On our clients product. Obviously, we have three back office staff. So you know, sort of as we’ve, as we’ve grown our transaction volume, you know, we, we have a set saying that as we add about 15 transactions, there’s usually a body that needs to go along with that. Now, that’s a little different. It’s not 15 closings, it’s 15 full turns, because we’re most of our clients, we’re doing the by some of the management and the sell. So for every 15 that we on board at any given moment, you know, it like right now we have 65 projects going so we have for PMS, that all they do is they have a list of 15 assets, and they are responsible for pounding those 15 assets and making sure that their success.

D.J. Paris 31:57
Wow, that’s that must be challenging cross, you know, multiple, multiple locations, I would assume in multiple states.

Matthew Arminio 32:06
Yeah. I mean, like any good organization, it takes great people to be successful. So we spend a lot of time investing in our people and making sure that we train them on what they’re supposed to do and how they’re supposed to react to situations. And we have procedures in place and processes that keep us to keep us moving in the right direction.

D.J. Paris 32:25
Wow. That’s That’s amazing. Well, congrats on on all the continued success. And so I would also, you know, we, of course, want to make sure that anyone who’s listening, who does maybe have an investor that’s looking for properties, that if they want to reach out to you, what is the best way that they should reach out or for brokers just looking to, you know, possibly even pass deals over to you or swap clients and that sort of thing? What’s the best way?

Matthew Arminio 32:56
Yeah, so the best way to get in touch with with me is via email. So my email is my first initial and then my last name, which is m a r m i n i o, at Apex national r e.com. So that’s,

D.J. Paris 33:13
yeah, that’s Apex national rt.com. You can reach Matt through the website. It’s a great website to because it’s very, very clean, very concise, it spells out exactly what you guys do. So I think that’s a really great resource and, and Matt’s a very easy and approachable person. So if you have questions, he can certainly point you in the right direction or possibly even help your clients. And yeah, so Matt, thank thanks so much for being on the show. I have a few quick announcements as we wrap up here for everyone listening and possibly watching as well. We now have videos as you might know, if you’re listening, you might not know that so you can always watch this interview if you’re just listening. If you visit our website keeping it real pod.com We have a link to the YouTube video. We’re also streaming this live on Facebook, which is a plug for everyone listening to join our Facebook page. So please visit facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Not only do we broadcast these episodes live, as we’re doing right now on Facebook, but we also every single day post an article for brokers to that will we find online that will help them grow their business? And lastly, please tell a friend for everyone who’s listening who’s a realtor. If you have any other realtors that could benefit from hearing from superstars like like Matt, definitely pass this podcast over. You know, if everyone just tells one person about us, we’ll double our listenership and can continue to even make more episodes to help you guys grow your business. But on behalf of of Matt and myself, we thank the audience for tuning in and watching and listening. We appreciate it on behalf of course on the audience. Matt, we thank you for taking time out of your day. Again, we know how busy you are. And this is a really, we’re really grateful for you to spend time here. And thanks so much for being on the show.

Matthew Arminio 34:59
Yeah, thanks for having me

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

The Ideal Mindset Of Top Real Estate Agents • Coaching Moments • Ryan D’Aprile

February 20, 2020

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

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

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

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

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

500 Million In Real Estate Sales • Jeff Proctor

February 10, 2020

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Jeff Proctor is one of the most successful real estate brokers in Chicago. Over his career he has closed over 500 million in real estate sales. In the past six years alone he’s produced 385 million. In our conversation Jeff talks at length about market trends (past, present and future) and how agents should adapt to meet their client’s needs.

Jeff Proctor can be reached at jeffproctor@atproperties.com and 773.517.6026.

To watch this interview on YouTube, please click here.

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
Today’s episode of Keeping it real podcast is brought to you by nest egg. Looking to add value to your investor clients recommend nest egg a Chicago based app that is everything your clients need to manage their rentals in only minutes a month. Nest Egg is the only app that gets things done at the rental including on demand maintenance, and services like tenant placement and snow removal. Also nest egg is free to use which makes your clients investments 20 to 30% more profitable. Join nest egg today by downloading the app or by visiting mistake dot rent. That’s nest egg dot rent, use promo code keeping it real to get your first hour of maintenance for free. And now on to the show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the most listened to podcast made for real estate agents by real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide, and host through the show. And we are really excited to get a lot of things happening at the podcast that you may or may not know about. So I’ll spend just a few moments before we get to our interview with the great Jeff proctor in just a few. First of all, we have a new website coming. So keep your eyes peeled at keeping it real pod.com That is our website, it will be easier to navigate easier to find the episodes you want. We’re going to be grouping all of our episodes into different categories just to make it a little smoother for you and you can stream every episode we’ve ever done. I think we have 130 episodes up, and you can listen to it right in your browser. So again, visit keeping it real pod.com. Also, I want to talk about video, we have added video now to all of our future episodes. And I want to explain how you can watch these videos because this is kind of complicated, in a sense, right? Because right now you’re probably listening through a podcast app. So if you continue to listen to the podcast app, you’ll continue just to hear the audio components, which is absolutely fine. We’re thrilled to have you doing that. If you want to watch the video of today’s interview, for example, in the show notes. So if you go into your podcast app, if that’s where you’re listening, you’ll see notes about the episode. And there’s a link right to the YouTube video. Also, though, just to further complicate things, what we’re also doing because it’s really fun and people seem to be reacting to this in a great way is we’re going to be streaming all of these live on Facebook as we’re recording them. So for example, this great interview with Jeff proctor has already streamed live on our Facebook page. And we’ve had such a great response to that we’re gonna keep doing it. So basically, before you can even hear the episodes and the way that we’re you know, producing them, you’ll be able to watch them in real time, but you have to be a subscriber to our Facebook page. So please visit facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod same as our website keeping it real pod.com. But just facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Not only do we broadcast these episodes in real time you can with the video, we also post every single day a link, an article that we find online designed to help you grow your business. So we do that every single day as a way to say thank you for listening and to help you continue to grow. So guys continue to watch or listen to the show whatever works best for you. We really appreciate you continually listening watching and also please tell a friend think of one other realtor that you know that could benefit from hearing from guys like Jeff Proctor, and please pass this podcast over to them so we can continue growing and continue making more episodes for you. Thanks again for listening and now on to our episode with Jeff proctor.

Today on the show we have a Chicago legend Jeff proctor from the Jeff proctor group at at properties since 2003. Jeff has been working with buyers sellers and developments in a wide array of areas within Chicago, the western suburbs and the North Shore. This has developed Jeff into one of the top agents in Chicago at over 500 million in sales, Jeff has been able to fully advise his clients throughout all real estate matters over the past 10 years. Jeff has consistently ranked in the top 1% of Chicago Association of Realtors and produce over 385 million in sales over the past six years alone which is incredible patience and a wealth of experience and knowledge in all areas of Chicago real estate I have established Jeff is one of the top brokers consultants in the industry. We’re so thrilled to have him by the way, visit Jeff and his group at J. Proctor. group.com. That’s j, the letter J. Proctor. group.com. Welcome to the show, Jeff proctor.

Jeff Proctor 5:15
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

D.J. Paris 5:17
Thank you. We’re really thrilled to have you. This is a big, big deal for us and our listeners as well. And you know, you have a great reputation here in Chicago, we of course, have listeners nationwide. But for those of for our listeners who maybe aren’t as familiar with you, can you talk a little bit, I always like to ask this question first, which is tell us how you got into real estate, you know, what prompted you to get in and, and maybe give us that journey?

Jeff Proctor 5:45
Yeah, actually, my mother has been in real estate for 30 years. So that certainly certainly has helped. But I was in Chicago, I was working for a in a corporate gap job. And I was doing outside sales. And personally, I wasn’t overly happy with the income or the potential of income. So I started doing it part time for about two years. Got on my first development back in oh, five. And from there on out, we sold 400 units within the first year, open and close the doors to the development within 365 days. And from there on out, I just jumped ship and here we are now.

D.J. Paris 6:23
Yeah, let’s I don’t want to gloss over this. 400 units and 365 days. That is a big, big accomplishment. Yeah, what that was in year two or so.

Jeff Proctor 6:33
That was a year two. Yeah, correct. Yeah, that was in year two. You know, fortunately, you know, Mike golden. And that one, were able to put me on a development, I really appreciate the opportunity. But we worked with JDL, which is now you know, the prominent developer in Chicago. It was a condo it was a apartment conversion to condos, which obviously today in this market, we’re doing a lot more condos to apartments, which is funny. But yeah, three or 400 unit buildings down and printer square printers Row area. Yeah. And it was it was quite entertaining, to say the least.

D.J. Paris 7:07
So did you basically live on site for that year?

Jeff Proctor 7:10
We lived on site? Yeah, it was, you know, it was one of those things where we opened up doors, and we had a line down the street. So it was that time in the market, though, you know, the oh seven market, the lending was a lot more flexible. And everybody was looking for investment. So it was it was a great opportunity. And you know, it kind of just it got me in contact honestly, with like a lot of other brokers it got me in contact with a lot of lenders, it got me in contact with the whole real estate community. So it started create those relationships. And, you know, we kind of just kept on exploring from there. Since then we’ve done you know, about 12 Other projects in the city of Chicago. So all been great experiences and love the city. So

D.J. Paris 7:51
do you prefer to work with developers versus you know, traditional, you know, one off buyers and sellers, what is it that you find that is the most exciting?

Jeff Proctor 8:00
Yeah, you know, I mean, today? Yeah, I mean, I’d say the majority of my stuff is one off buyers and sellers. Right now we’re working actually on a couple of apartment deals meaning land development, zoning, we put in, you know, would do commercial deals, we’ll do apartment deals would do retail deals, we’ll do land site development, zoning consultation, buyer’s or seller’s condos, single families, developments are great. They are there. They’re not they’re few and far between today, because we have so many apartment developments now. So yeah, I love working with developers. I’ve done custom single family homes. But today from the condo market perspective, it’s a lot of boutique developments. So you know, there’s smaller industry developments back in the day when we did larger development there. 400 units, 200 units, 300 units, and you had sales centers, you had all these things now, it’s they’re so small that you’re, you know, they’re by appointment only, right? So you’re not opening up to these huge sales centers anymore. And the developments are a smaller nature, smaller land sites and the larger stuff, as you know, our apartment deals that, you know, tend to get built and resold to another investment group. So the kind of market isn’t it kind of development market isn’t nearly as prominent as it once was. But yeah, I love the development aspect. I mean, we’ve worked with clients on custom single family homes in Lincoln Park to, you know, to boutique, you know, build out to their own condos on historic buildings. So I just love the whole development process, whether it’s 1923 know, building or a brand new construction. So,

D.J. Paris 9:35
yeah, for our listeners who are realtors who are wanting to get more in with developers and be considered for some of these projects. Do you have any advice about how somebody who’s not who doesn’t have your kind of background and experience maybe how they can start to develop those relationships?

Jeff Proctor 9:55
Yeah, I mean, today, I’d say I’m at the comfort stage. You know, for the last five to 10 years it just picking up the phone and calling right? I think overall you have to know your you have to know your numbers, you have to know the zoning, you have to know your numbers, you have to know the variances, you have to know the fer for square footage requirements, you have to know I mean, you have to know the how to build, right, you have to know installation factors, X, your cladding, you know, all sorts of stuff. So you have to know the industry inside and out. Because I think you’re just kind of spinning your wheels, if you’re calling these developers asking for a handout and you don’t know anything about the about the development process. So learn the development process, learn zoning, learn construction, how to build, how to build right, and then learn interior finishes to so you can talk and discuss that with developers and obviously go to the potential buyer and sell those those features and finishes to so you have to know the business inside now. I think it’s glamorous to do these developments, per se. But once again, if you don’t understand the market, or the zoning or how to build you’re, you’re kind of just at a loss for words.

D.J. Paris 11:05
Yeah, you’re not really even going to be considered unless you really, really know your stuff. No, no. And you you’ve built out a team. I’m curious, you know, and again, I’m never sure if you can call it a team anymore or group in Illinois. For our listeners who aren’t here, they’ve changed the rules. So I’m not sure what’s what’s the right thing to say. But I know you guys are the group. So can you talk a little bit about when you started develop your team and how that’s worked for you?

Jeff Proctor 11:30
Yeah, it’s worked out great. You know, it’s ever changing, because you’re hiring and brokers that, you know, obviously, they want to progress themselves. So you see people come and go all the time. You know, the ideal situation for me, when I started, it’s just that I got to the point where I just couldn’t handle it myself. You know, the day to day were present for all showings. So you know, especially on the left side, which is very difficult to do. So we, it’s been great, it’s freed up a lot of my time, in terms of just day to day, it’s freed up a lot of admin work, Docu signs, listing agreements, contracts, paperwork, closing documents, etc. To handle the client directly. So it’s allowed me to go from, you know, I’d say, when I started, I was so low as doing 30 35 million or so. And then we jumped to about 70 Plus, you know, with the group, so, if I brought in brokers, you know, that, you know, might be struggling to, you know, maybe a broker that needs a little bit of guidance needs a little bit of assistance needs some, you know, some added income to their bottom line, because they they’re just kind of getting started or struggling in the business. So it’s been great. As long as everybody performs or we’re, we’re all happy. But it’s it’s been a shifting paradigm in terms of the brokers and the team and everybody that’s on there. Unfortunately, we lost a couple people last week, which that will shift but now we’re interviewing more people downtown, but everybody’s excited. So

D.J. Paris 12:59
and by the way, if any of our listeners think they might be a match for your group, is it okay if they can reach out to you you’re great. What’s the best way should they visit your website?

Jeff Proctor 13:09
Yeah, visit my website you could contact or just you know, honestly, I my cell phones my office, so you know, 77351760 to six, it’s just text email call. Let’s just talk direct. So

D.J. Paris 13:21
yeah, I know if I was Producing Realtor and I wanted to learn from from someone and join a winning team. Certainly, you could do much worse than looking at looking at your group.

Jeff Proctor 13:32
Market, the spring markets, it’s gangbusters right now. It’s not any better than last year was a little quiet because we had a lot of macroeconomic things going on, I think. But this spring is I mean, it’s it’s two it’s 3x in terms of what we saw at the end of last

D.J. Paris 13:48
year, so and rates are down again, lending rates.

Jeff Proctor 13:52
The Jumbo seven year ARM is 2.75. I just refinanced mine at 3%. Three months ago and the two of 2.75 It’s not.

D.J. Paris 14:01
That’s amazing. I we had Joel Schaub from Guaranty radon. He comes on every month and he was this weekend on Friday night. I talked to we recorded episode on Saturday. I said what do you do last night just because he and I are buddies. He said, Oh, I spent all night emailing everybody who bought a home in the last two years. They should they should refinance.

Jeff Proctor 14:20
Oh, it’s I mean, sub 3% on a jumbo mortgage is incredible. I don’t know It’s free money. Take it take into account inflation and tax deductions. So it’s pretty, pretty good opportunity right now.

D.J. Paris 14:35
Well, I wanted to go back to something you had said. Because not every broker and I think, of course, every broker has an opinion about this. And it’s kind of a still a hot, somewhat debated topic, which is should listing agents go to showings, you had mentioned that you always you’re in your team go to showings. Do you have a particular opinion about about whether they obviously you feel you should be there?

Jeff Proctor 14:56
Yeah. 100% I mean, so here’s a here’s an interesting In my opinion, it’s a very interesting piece is that, so I moved west, with my family for my kids. And I still do a ton of work in the city. But I’ve naturally picked up business in the western suburbs in the North Shore. And nobody wants to talk to anybody. So it’s it’s really weird, but I just don’t feel like you get the right marketing, you get the right sales approach if you’re just letting people just randomly walk into a property without any guidance, right? Right. We always are there to at least meet and greet and run through the marketing points to the properties, the sales, the statistics, the area details, and just everything about the property. So hopefully, the transition is much quicker in terms of a list to sale to closing process. It just, it just benefits. I mean, even like our brochures and all of our notes, so we use like an Evernote system for every property that we use. And everything is encompassed into one document, right. So when everybody when that person is leaving the property, they have all the financials, the reserve balance, the condo association information, the details, the years there was built, everything you need to know is already been done and communicate it to that to that buyer. The last thing you want to do is see somebody leave and then all of a sudden turn around to three days later and go, Hey, what was this information? Right? And it all to them there? It’s just it’s part of sales. I mean, you’re in a sales position. So you should be there and be present.

D.J. Paris 16:29
100% Yeah. And then also assuming that the buyers broker is just going to know everything. And

Jeff Proctor 16:36
that’s never the case, of course, is that it is the case. But you know, I mean, let’s say everybody tries to get a good start in the business. And, you know, maybe they’re not fully aware, and I get a lot of brokers, I had a broker literally email me, you know, 30 minutes ago and said, Hey, I saw you sold this place over there. I’m not familiar with the development, can you give me some insight? And I’m like, Sure, of course, you know, it’s just, it’s a lot to learn, especially in the city of Chicago, because it’s a big city to know everything. So it’s a give and take. So yeah, I mean, you got to just be there, you got to be present. So yeah, it’s

D.J. Paris 17:06
also a good way to justify your fee to the seller, right, as I’m showing up. Yeah,

Jeff Proctor 17:12
I mean, that’s, that’s the other thing marketing, marketing dollars today are far above what we’ve ever spent in terms of listing properties and clients in general. So we’re doing you know, I have a social media company that I hired it right, because that’s not my that’s not my go to show. It says they entertaining social media. We do print advertising, we do direct mailers, we do brochures, we do videos, we do photographs, we do drone shoot drone footage, we do local video footage, I mean, it’s the numbers, and we put a ton of marketing dollars out there. And you know, just, it’s great, because it just needed it’s about it’s about exposure for yourself, but at the same time exposure for the property. So

D.J. Paris 17:56
well that and probably 99% of Realtors don’t do all those things. Of course, you know, they’ll probably get professional photos done. That’s pretty much. I don’t know, that’s always a given these days, but it’s mostly a given. But other than that, you know, I don’t know that most realtors are doing a lot of that they should be. But I guess that’s one of the things that separates you from from other realtors.

Jeff Proctor 18:16
Yeah. Agreed?

D.J. Paris 18:18
Yeah, so one of the questions we get because we have a tremendous number of new brokers who listen to our show, who look at a guy like you and say, Oh, my God, he’s already you know, this wild success and has been doing, you know, for almost 20 years now. What advice do you have? Because you do bring on team members. And I don’t know how new some of your team members are. But I suspect you see a lot of people who are new to the business. What advice do you have, if you were starting out today, you know, being that developments maybe aren’t as prominent as they were when you started? What would you do today to get started, if you were brand

Jeff Proctor 18:52
new, I think with the whole group scenario, that’s first and foremost, I would find somebody that you can kind of tag along and it doesn’t need to be part of a full group to be honest, he could really just tag along and just say, Listen, if you need to help here, if you need help there, I’d love to jump in. You know, there’s times where I need help on a listing and, you know, I bring in a broker that you know, once it is hungry and and I put them on the listing, and I call list it with them and they they’d kind of do some of the day to day for me and they’re getting the experience that they normally wouldn’t get. Right. So the problem is there’s so that would be one and then number two is pick up the phone. I mean, you gotta you gotta be you got to be aggressive and you gotta call people so it’s not pushing, it’s it’s selling yourself, but at the same time, you have to call people you know, the last thing I’ve interviewed people and people have gotten started the business and they go on and just feel really uncomfortable. I go Well, you better get uncomfortable because it’s going to continue to be that way. So, I mean, I know social media, like I said is not my forte but I do look at it every day and if I see a client or a friend or somebody like that that’s looking for real estate or mentions real estate, I’ll pick up the phone, just call call and say, Hey, how can I help? And if it works out great if it doesn’t, hey, listen, I made a good phone call and I made a good connection.

D.J. Paris 20:07
Yeah, and you did something proactive as a way to add value to that person’s like, Hey, I saw you have a have a need. And I thought I’d reach out and see if I could be of assistance. It’s, it’s certainly, yeah, this is one of those businesses where I think if you’re, if you’re not willing to just go and say, I can help you with this, then and you need to be able to help them with that, right, you have to actually have that skill set. So I think you’re right, like joining a group or finding a mentor, or somebody you can tag along with and see what is a real listing presentation look like, you know, what does, what does a buyer consultation look like? What’s it like to meet at somebody’s home, and sit across from them at their dining room table and talk about, here’s what I’m gonna do

Jeff Proctor 20:46
for you now. And that’s, you know, some of the younger guys that we hire in, you know, I kind of curtailed all my marketing my material. So they’re, they’re different from App properties is a big company, it’s a great company, but I kind of took my own listing presentation and put it into my own marketing material. So and I said to the younger brokers, I said, take all this and utilize it to your advantage, right. And if you’re sitting, if you get a call from a million dollar person, you freak out, you don’t understand where to even start, I’ll come in, and I’ll literally sit down with him, and I’ll meet with a client, and we’ll try to just close the deal together. You have to get some guidance, because I’d say a lot of people that get into the business in general, I tell them, You’re not making any money for six months. So you better start making some calls now. And the people that are three months in and go Well, I haven’t heard from anybody, that’s because you haven’t done your job. So even starting out, like you know, get all emails, addresses, get their physical address, get their social media accounts, start up your own social media pages, and like start communicating as quickly as possible. Because if you just put one blanket post out there, and just hope your phone rings, it’s not going to happen.

D.J. Paris 21:56
I met with a broker once who was subscribing to the Brian Buffini monthly mailing system that he has, he calls it items of value anyway. So she was talking with me and she goes, you know, every time I send out these 100 mailers, I get a couple of deals. And she goes but I I’m just I don’t send out the mailers and I was like, then hire somebody to send out the mailers

Jeff Proctor 22:21
so easy. Yeah. So he’s in that’s a nice part of our company. Actually, we have a it’s a agent assist program, which is basically exactly that. So anything I need. So building contacts, addresses, farming buildings, listing agreements, things like that, we have a whole assistant department that really helps out with that. So that’s huge, huge saves a ton of time.

D.J. Paris 22:43
Yeah, I also want I just want to hear about how the markets changed, you know, from from the crash through now what what trends, you’ve seen what you sort of maybe see coming in your best guests, and maybe what advice you have for our listeners who are brokers who try to figure out how to adapt and change to it.

Jeff Proctor 23:03
Well, it’s competitive, right? I mean, it’s associated, once again, let’s go back to social media, that social media component has really changed how people mark it, of course, I think that a lot of people are utilizing that very well. But, you know, is everybody so truthful on it? I don’t know. But right. Perception is reality. Right? So I’d say the market changed. In fact of this an MLS is certainly not your only portal to get to properties, right. So I’d say all morning, you know, I found I went to a commercial site called CoreXY. To find a piece of property. At the same time, I’m looking through loop net, that same time to look through MLS for residential at the same time, we’re looking through top agent network, which is exclusive to the downtown market and top to 10%, of brokers. And then we’re doing we have our own in house app. So there’s so many different avenues that you can find property, right. That’s changing, everybody used to just sit there and wait for it to hit the MLS. And then once you got that little notification on the far right, you’re like, Oh, you would call your client or send it to him. I would say that 30 40% of the deals I send my clients are not even on the market yet. So it’s that’s the big change. And I think that’s going to also start to weed out a lot of brokers that simply can’t find things. So because if you’re not looking on the private listing network or the top agent network or off market, you really kind of missing out not getting your client what they need ahead of time.

D.J. Paris 24:30
Yeah, if it’s, if it’s just on the MLS, your clients can find that on their own through Zillow, Redfin or le and other websites. Yeah, you have to be you have to be able to provide additional value. And, you know, there are other networks out there, like the private listing network.

Jeff Proctor 24:43
Sure. The private listing network. I mean, that was a smart move by the by Mr. Ed. Right. I mean, they had to keep up with the other offline markets. But I mean, you have to also you also have to know the market like we talked about, I mean, you know, I’d say if I get a new buyer in and I’d say listen, I could send you a hunt. The property so that doesn’t do you any good, why don’t I just we’d have done 10 to 15. And these are your top 10 to 15 to start with, so and that makes it a lot more efficient to because I’d say a lot of brokers are just going out there just throwing darts, hopefully that one of them hits without knowing the buildings, the location, the client requirements, and everything else, because I see a lot of times where new brokers, unfortunately, but it’s a learning process come in and they, you know, they’ll look at something and the client looks at him and goes, this is absolutely not what I’m looking for. And then they just walk right back out. So it just is, you know, just being more efficient, with your time and your energy and being more focused on what the client needs and know the market. It’s good, but that’s gonna start weeding out a lot of these people because too many people got, you know, it’s it’s the same thing, right? We went through it and oh, 4207. And then now we’re going right back through it again, where the numbers are up to 14 1516 17,000 agents. So you got to stay competitive, you got to know the market. So

D.J. Paris 25:55
yeah, it’s funny, when I first started the podcast, there was 42,000 brokers in Chicago, including suburbs. Now, there’s 46,000 46,000. Yeah, keeps keeps growing. It’s unbelievable. And, and I always say, brokers at the very top, the top producing brokers, they’re not worried about the some of the other companies coming in, you know, offering discount services and pricing because they know their value, which is goes above and beyond what algorithms can can do. Especially there’s a lot of emotional value that that top producers bring to their clients. But so many brokers never really learn their market, or they never even define their market, you know? And if a broker gets a $3 million listing and Lake Forest and doesn’t know, like Forest, I don’t I don’t know, they should take it, I think maybe you should

Jeff Proctor 26:44
know 100% I mean, I listen, although we try to stretch different areas, we have a broker and each one of those areas, right? So Are you’re utilizing me from a marketing standpoint, a digital media standpoint, and everything else, but there is a local broker representing you. And if I if I don’t have a local broker, I have no problems referring that deal out, right. I mean, it’s just not you know, Naperville would be a perfect market for that. Unfortunately, I just don’t know Naperville, as well as they shouldn’t, I don’t have a broker there. So for me, it’s like, I’d love to work there. But you know, the transportation for me, for me to get there from the city is impossible, and I don’t know the market. So why don’t we find somebody local and give your client the service they deserve? Instead of you know, try to chase a deal down because of a commission?

D.J. Paris 27:31
Yeah, boy, I think that couldn’t be better said and for new brokers, don’t be afraid to refer out I mean, you always you still earn a referral commission, and you don’t look stupid when you when it’s because you know, you can, you can pretend that you know things for a while. But eventually, that becomes pretty evident when you’re not able to really give value like

Jeff Proctor 27:51
but stay but stay involved. Right? See, we can help. I mean, you know, you referring out the business doesn’t mean it ends there. You know, it’s obviously your clients, probably a friend or an acquaintance of yours sustains a lot and see if you know, make sure the deal is being handled appropriately. So. Just because you don’t know the area doesn’t mean you have to handle it, you know, 100%, so refer it out. And but you know, stay in touch, because that’ll that’ll go a long way.

D.J. Paris 28:14
Yeah. And I also just wanted to ask, because you’ve been in business for so long. And I’m curious to know, in between sales, I always think that, you know, I the firm I’ve met, we have hundreds and hundreds of brokers too. And I suspect, even though I think I think they’re quite good, I suspect they don’t, they could always do a better job of staying in touch after the sale. You know, you talk a little bit about maybe what your group does, just to keep keep conversation going, you know, homeowner moves in or sells, what do you guys do to make sure they don’t forget about you? You know,

Jeff Proctor 28:45
I I’d say just in general, I mean, you know, I’m more of once a reactionary, but I am I mean, you know, if I’m, if I’m in a specific area where I know, my client bought, you know, a year or so ago, and I see something pop up, I’ll be like, Hey, take a look, this is a pretty good number for the area. very casual conversations, we keep them in our CRM CRM database and keep getting updates, they keep getting mailers, they keep getting all the marketing materials that we’re sending them. So and at the same time, make sure if you have any questions reach out at any point, right? Right. So I were just always open like my cell phone, like I said, is my office so you can text me call me email me and it’s a pretty quick, pretty quick response overall. So it’s just that constant contact of just you know, listen, if I see if I know I’m in the ear of somebody or I know somebody who’s looking at something in some area want one funny story is that we looked at a house it was great on the inside but hideous on the outside right with the client and it’s still this ongoing joke where it just keep sending us pictures of the hideous houses. It’s but they’ve already been bought and they sit you know, they love their new place and it’s great, but it’s just constant. You got to keep your doors open at all times. So You just want to make sure that they’re more than welcome to reach out to you. But at the same time touch base with them every once in a while.

D.J. Paris 30:05
Yeah, and Jeff just said a lot right there, right? He had, he has systems in place. He has a CSS CRM, he has mailers, he has newsletters, he has all sorts of touches that are constantly going out. And then once in a while, you know, if he sees something that he thinks would be interesting to that individual value wise, he’ll shoot it over to them. And I, you know, it seems so obvious, of course, that everyone should have systems, but you have to have systems tap to automate a lot of this.

Jeff Proctor 30:31
Yeah, you have to, you have to, you know, one of the, I bet you there’s probably 5000 plus people that we have, and that’s accumulating addresses physical addresses from like, oh, three to today, right. So I mean, you just keep up updating those, you know, every six months, and you make sure that you’re getting the right address, and it’s always that gives you a really good opportunity to reach out to your client too. Because yeah, you’re saying, Hey, John, I, you know, I looked like I had an old address for you, what’s your update, address, hope all as well. And that’s, you know, just keep going from there. So, you just got to keep updating, if you don’t, if you don’t start that process early in, get that list at least started. You’re, you’re well behind the eight ball, you’re just not, you’re just not going to catch

D.J. Paris 31:11
up. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And you know, brokers can do that immediately, right? Even if you’re even if you’re years behind, call every single person in your database over the or hire someone to do it, and get that updated information, find out as much information as you can, so that you can find out other reasons to contact that person, you know, maybe, yeah, if you’ve, if you’ve, you know, I always say the more data you have on your clients, the more outreach you can do. And yeah, so awesome. So real quickly, too, because in case we have listeners here who are joining us towards the latter part of the show, Jeff is his team is always looking for brokers to add, and very specific type of broker they’re looking for. So Jeff, and also by the way, it’s probably a good place to wrap up. Because we have a lot of people who listen who may be clients or looking or PEEP buyers, sellers, investors, renters, who may be looking to work with a top producer, maybe they’re not satisfied with their, their agent they’ve used in the past, or maybe they’ve never used an agent. But if you’re a broker who wants to join a team, like Jeff’s, or you’re just an individual who’s looking for a great broker, can you give your cell phone one more time?

Jeff Proctor 32:22
Yeah. 773-517-6026.

D.J. Paris 32:29
And also, you can visit Jeff on his website, which is J proctor. group.com. Again, J. Proctor. group.com. And Jeff, do you mind also giving your email address in case someone wants to email you?

Jeff Proctor 32:39
So Jeff proctor je FF PR, O, C, T, O R? At? At property? So it’s at at properties? Jeff proctor? at@properties.com.

D.J. Paris 32:50
Awesome. Well, Jeff, you’ve provided a tremendous amount of value in this in this episode to our listeners, like you, I suspect this will be one of our most listened to episodes we’ve done. God, this will be like, I think a number 130 or 131. So we’re not Yeah, no, thank you. It’s all because of top producers like yourself who take time out of their incredibly busy day to provide value to our listeners. And we really, on behalf of our listeners, we appreciate you. And thank you for doing this. And also on behalf of Jeff and myself. To our listeners. Of course you want to say thank you for continuing to listen and support the show. Please visit us on Facebook, which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod every single day we find an article online that is designed to help Realtors grow their business in some way we post that also, of course, posting episodes like the one you’re listening or watching right now on Facebook. And we can always it’s always just a great place to have a conversation as well for best practices. So please do that. And lastly, if for our listeners, if you know anyone who’s a broker, a realtor, real estate agent, depending on where you live in the country, what they’re called. If you know somebody else that might benefit from listening or watching the episodes like this, please please pass it along. Jeff again, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you and have a have a great have a great 2020 Although I probably don’t need to say that because I’m sure you already having one. But keep up obviously the great work and thanks for being part of the show.

Jeff Proctor 34:20
Thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. Great show

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Why Top Real Estate Agents Need The Discipline Of Ironman Athletes • Amber Kardosh

February 6, 2020

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Prior to becoming a top Chicago real estate agent, Amber Kardosh was in the corporate world. Oh, and she was an Ironman athlete, too. In this episode Amber talks about her daily disciplines around client communication and prospecting. She provides tips on how to use LinkedIn to find out what’s going on in your contacts’ lives and how to rise above the thousands of other brokers to establish deeper relationships.

Amber Kardosh can be reached at 773.726.2070 and akardosh@atproperties.com.

Would you rather watch this interview on YouTube? Click here to see Amber!

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast and most listened to podcast made by real estate agents for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host and guide through the show and we are so excited to announce that we finally have video we are now recording with video every single interview that we do starting with Amber Kardos, who you are about to hear or see in just a few moments. Now, if you’re current if you’re listening to this via a podcast app on on iTunes, Google Play on Stitcher, Spotify, but nothing will change you’ll continue to be able to listen to the episodes. But if you want to see the episodes, there’s a couple of ways where a couple places you can go to watch them. First is keeping it real pod.com Our website we’re going to have links to every single video interview inside of the episode in the show notes. Also, by the way, in the show notes on your app, there’ll be a link directly to the YouTube video so you can always watch it right there. But we also really encourage you guys to go to Facebook and subscribe to our page. So it’s facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Not only do we continually post the links to the audio episodes, but now also the video episodes and sometimes we’ll even be broadcasting it live as we record it right on Facebook. So guys again facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Let us know how you guys like watching versus listening really want your feedback. And this will help us continue to make the show better. So you know just shoot us a message on Facebook or via our website. Let us know what you like how to make it better and we’re so excited and thank you for continually reminding me to get video up and running so we have it so guys, please continue to support the show tell a friend if you know any other realtors that would benefit from listening or watching interviews like the one we’re about to do with Amber, please pass this information over to them the more people you pass us over to the more episodes we can do the more people we can help so thanks again from from all of us on the keeping it real podcast team and now on to our interview with Amber Kardos.

Today on the show we have Amber Kardash oh sorry, car dose from the Phelps Hamsun Kardos group at app properties dedicated and driven to exceed her clients expectations in providing top notch customer service in an ever changing industry is what Amber prides herself on most as a realtor. Amber is a Top Producing agent in the city of Chicago and the western suburbs. Amber sets the bar high for quality of service, she does not make excuses. She provides results being a Chicago native for over 20 years. Amber’s experience, intellect inconsistent research of market trends enable her to create new opportunities for her clients in an ever changing market. She believes the key to being the realtor of choice means being an exceptional listener, educator and advisor for her clients. Welcome Amber from the Phelps Hansen Cardos group

Amber Kardosh 4:16
and our properties. That is a mouthful indeed, isn’t it? Yes,

D.J. Paris 4:19
thanks. Well, you’re worth it. Yeah, this is a really big deal for us. First of all, I want to tell the listeners and viewers that we tried to do this on Friday, and we had a technical difficulty. And Amber was so sweet and saying no problem. We’ll do it on Monday. So thank you for your patience with that.

Amber Kardosh 4:34
No problem.

D.J. Paris 4:35
So I know how busy you are. And this is a big deal for us to have you and you’ve we’ve wanted to get you on the show for a long time. And I know we’ve had Robin on before so we’re so grateful to have you. Can you tell our audience a little bit about how you got started in real estate?

Amber Kardosh 4:49
Yeah, it’s actually a really funny story. Because I get asked a lot like what made you decide to be in real estate and honestly, it was Robin like I had no desire. I was As you know, I always thought it was kind of fun like a car, you can talk to people. I love talking to people. That’s kind of cool. But it was actually so back in 2009. Robin was my husband will now husband’s realtor. And she was referred to him by a family member of his. So we I wasn’t really involved with the sale of his condo. It wasn’t mine. So I was kind of like the girlfriend who live there. So I didn’t really get involved. But I did talk to her. And you know, we kind of hit it off. And fast forward to 2012. We were ready to buy together after renting for, you know, years after she were both pregnant at the same time. And we were chit chatting. And I you know, I don’t remember exactly when this happened. But she reminded me about a couple of weeks ago, she’s like, do you remember? I was like, you’d be really good. I mean, you do Ironman? And like, Ah, wow. Not sure if that’s same, but thanks. So it was really her having confidence that I would do it. And I was like, I have no idea. I just know I like talking to people. So you know, I love Chicago. I love the history. I love you know, the different buildings and what they were and you know, I knew that far, but as far as real estate, I knew nothing. So

D.J. Paris 6:19
well. I mean, but that’s what’s See, I think the Iron Man thing is everything right? Because, you know, in order to do Ironman, you type events. You have to be so insanely like discipline. Isn’t that like a full time job in and of itself?

Amber Kardosh 6:35
It is I mean you have to be I think most triathletes are total Taipei’s, which I’m one of them. And you know, you really have to be dedicated. I mean, when I was training, it was workout, go to work workout, go to bed, and it was nine months of you so nobody.

D.J. Paris 6:50
Wow, yeah. How many? How many Ironman triathlons have you done?

Amber Kardosh 6:55
Well, so I’ve only done two. I did only done two. I mean, the people, that’s

D.J. Paris 7:01
an amazing number

Amber Kardosh 7:03
of people that I am around, you know, right? They do one or two every year. So two is like, yeah, and I did it in 2010. Because I had a friend who did her while she was training for her first in 2006. And unfortunately, she was on a bike ride training, and she got hit and she passed away. So she was really good friend. And you know, I My husband was doing it when I met him. And I’m like, You guys are nuts. I don’t know how you do it. So I decided to do it kind of like finish what she started. Oh, I did it in 2010. And I happen to qualify for Kona, and my brother in law, he was like you did, you’re gonna qualify, you’re gonna go to Kona, I’m like, Okay, I gotta do all I have to do was training again, you know, so it was just, it was great experience. But um, yeah, it taught me a lot of things that I think I’d bring forth in real estate in terms of, you know, my dedication and just drive and people who know me. I think it’s helped with referrals with warm introductions, and I think it has helped me along the way.

D.J. Paris 7:59
Well, I think it really speaks to an important quality, which is how hard you’re willing to work, right. And I suspect that people who do triathlons, in particular Ironman, triathlons, I suspect if I would be curious to see what types of positions they hold in the business world, what type of income because I suspect there’s a correlation between the amount of dedication it takes to put something like that together. And also, you know, that it seems like a skill set that naturally translates to real estate for sure.

Amber Kardosh 8:30
I agree. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, and I think I so now, you know, I have two kids. I don’t have time to do that kind of course. So now I do CrossFit. And is it again, it’s a type of workout that you have to have the mindset to do and I’ve met so many amazing, strong people and again, they they see what I used to do in the Cardio World or the you know, endurance world I do in the strength and you know, it’s been very, it’s very, it’s been very nice, kind of like meeting those type of people and I have all walks of life friends, I’ve CrossFitters triathlon, you know, so I think it’s been really helpful with real estate.

D.J. Paris 9:07
Yeah, we have Ryan, do presale on the show once a month. And Ryan talks a lot about what he does a coaching hour with us, you probably have listened to some of those. Yeah. Oh, thanks. Ryan O’Brien is will really appreciate hearing that because every time we get off the episode and Ryan’s like, so such a great human being, but he goes, was this good. And I do a good job. I said, every time you like, you don’t need me to tell you that but but he talks a lot about the investment you make into your physical body and how you know, you need energy to be able to sustain because you know, you were like, for example, we’re going to have Matt Lera see on the show in a few weeks. And Matt’s one of those guys who’s kind of famously like, I sleep four hours a night and I if I didn’t have to, I really don’t even want to do that. I just want to work 24 hours a day, and he just outwork everybody, and I find that to be very consistent. That necessarily doesn’t always have to be and you put in the most hours, but that you’re willing to go the extra mile. Pardon the pun with the triathlete. But really, that is such an important component of the success. It seems to be the consistent. You know, the one thing that everybody we’ve ever interviewed for the show, not one person is like, yeah, I only put in like, 30 hours a week, they would go like, Oh, no, I put in, you know, whatever the number is, but it’s usually much, much higher.

Amber Kardosh 10:25
Yeah, I mean, when I got into it, I, you know, again, not knowing anything, I just, I think I had the, the, the idea that most people trying to get into real estate, you don’t work a lot. And you make money, like a lot of money quickly. And it’s easy, right? And it’s completely opposite. I remember when I got into it, nothing easy about it. Well, and it’s the hours, why do I think I really worked 15 hours, I had no idea my nanny that I had, I was like, I have to let you go, I don’t think I’m gonna be working that much. You know, I’m not gonna play work for 40 hours, you know. And so after the fact, she’s now with a friend of mine, so I’m always like, four years after I’m like, she was amazing, anyway, and realizing I work more than I ever did in corporate America. But the difference is, I don’t feel like I do, because I enjoy it so much. Yeah, yeah.

D.J. Paris 11:13
And we also, before we get too far in and I forgot to mention this at the beginning, as is your group your team is looking to expand? Right? Can you talk a little bit about what you’re looking for? Because 99% of our of our listeners are brokers. So can you talk a little bit about what you guys what you guys are looking for?

Amber Kardosh 11:31
Yeah, you know, we’ve, we’ve been searching for a few years now. We’ve interviewed some people. And you know, we want people to have the same mindset as, as Robin. And I do like we are, we always joke, we’re the same brain. Like, we’ll be texting each other. And I’ll and I’ll ask her a question. I was like, I think that she was I was gonna say the same thing. And that’s just not to say that everyone has to be exactly like us. But we want people who are as passionate about what they do, especially real estate, and want to learn. And I feel like the people that come in, they want to make this big name for themselves. And that’s great. But you should probably stick, take a step back like I did, and just learn learn the process and continue to learn. I mean, I’ll be five years in in July. And I’m still learning I’m still that’s why I listen to your podcasts has been amazing. I’m always like, trade out how people have these little insights and helpful tips. And I take and I work yeah, so I think if you at any point, think you know, at all about real estate, it’s not a good idea. Because you there’s no buddy that knows everything about real estate,

D.J. Paris 12:30
for sure. And if there is a listener out there, who does want to talk with you guys to see if it’s a good fit, what’s the best way they should reach out,

Amber Kardosh 12:37
they can reach out, we actually have a email address. It’s pH que group at@properties.com. And that goes to both of us.

D.J. Paris 12:48
Perfect. So everyone who’s listening, if you want to hook up with a team that’s doing things right and doing things at a high level, and you want to men get mentored and add value to their team. That’s it’s a team I would consider joining as well. This is It’s funny, we were talking about being a producer earlier, and I’m not a producer. I’ve never produced real estate myself. But and I realized after talking to all these top one percenters, like yourself is like, Oh, I don’t have that much discipline, I couldn’t do it. I know what to do. And I know what I should do. But the reality of it is, um, the truth is, I’m not willing to put in that kind of time. And and I’m also my skill sets better served elsewhere. But I think that’s, that’s so you know, amazing that you guys, I know how hard both you guys work. And looking for, you know, a partner. Or another somebody to join the team can be can be tough, because you expect a lot and you want somebody to have a similar sort of work ethic and mindset and attitude. And but if anyone out there thinks that that’d be a good fit, reach out, we’d be I’d be happy to talk about. So. I want to talk a little bit more about specifically. So you’ve been in business five years. And Robin’s obviously she’s been on the show. She’s amazing. Um, can you talk a little bit more about why you think you guys have had tremendous and I say, Guys, I shouldn’t say that. Why the two of you have had? Yes. Why you two ladies have had tremendous success? Like, what do you think it is that you do differently? I mean, there’s 46,000 realtors, in the Chicagoland area, believe it or not. So why do you think it is that that both of you have done so incredibly well?

Amber Kardosh 14:24
Well, I think you know, regarding our sellers, we team up with a lot of our listings, because we feel you know, you have two people trying to sell your property. It’s much better, you’re not It’s no cost to you. And also we are very upfront and we’re very strategic. And we go by data, you know, it’s we don’t we don’t want to be a roadblock. Like if you think your property’s worth 100k more than what the data is showing. We certainly don’t want to be like okay, bye but we want to understand and try to compromise and figure out what’s best without you sitting because you want to sell and even though I know I’ve talked to a lot of sellers and I’m sure a lot of real estate agents are like, they talk to them. They’re like, we don’t need to sell. And understand, like, nobody needs to sell unless you want financial reasons, of course, but you’re talking to an agent because you want to sell. So here’s how best to do that. And if it means the relate, you know, you just want to talk through it and compromise at the end of the day, because you want you want to sell, we want to sell it for you. And so I think we’re very upfront in that respect. And for buyers. I feel like communicating and overly communicating to the point of giving them as many scenarios of the outcome as possible. Yeah. I’m very transparent. You know, early on, I tried to be this like really kind of a goofy person. That’s just my personality people. Sure. And they appreciate that. But people who don’t know me if I come at you, like we’re, you know, people are like, Oh my gosh, he’s a goofball. Sure. And I thought I was good at sometimes I can’t read people. So I try to stay, you know, neutral till I read people. And it was funny, because I have a client that I just helped buy a house, actually on my blog. And she was really hard to read. And I’m like, I’m gonna stay pretty professional, not going to show her my goofiness. And fast forward to a month ago, I invited her to this gathering, and we were joking. And I looked at her I go, this is me, this is like, actually how goofy I am. And she turned to me with the straightest face and goes, you think you hid that? I’m like, Yes. And everyone was just dying, laughing, including her. So I mean, I think I’m just one of those people. I guess I try to hide things. And what you see is what you get, and I think it’s helped. I think people appreciate that about me.

D.J. Paris 16:30
You know, it’s funny, we’re pretty goofy at the company I work at. And so I’m in charge of our, like, our recruiting website. And so we got all these photos done, like in the last year. And just for fun, our owner said, let’s all do a goofy individual photo, in addition to our professional ones. And I went, Yeah, that’s kind of fun, whatever, we all did something silly. And then I was rebuilding our website, and I went, you know, we are kind of goofy and silly. Like, why are we not? Why am I putting our serious professional ones that look really nice? On the website? Why am I not putting our goofy ones on there? And we switched over to our goofy ones. And then we used to say, like our company management team, and I put a cross through the word management team and just wrote goofballs, and I thought I thought that was kind of silly and funny, but that’s really who we are. And it as a result, people talk about it all the time. When they contact me. They’re like, yeah, that was pretty funny. I mean, it’s right on our homepage. And I went, well, that’s kind of who we are. But it took me 10 years to go. Oh, yeah, it’s okay to be who you are. Yeah. Okay. To let your personality shine through.

Amber Kardosh 17:31
Yeah, I think I think it’s it’s nerve racking, right? Because you have this, especially in real estate, you feel like people want you to be super serious. And like, it’s super like, and I just, I can’t do that. And I found I think, I don’t remember who was on the podcast they were talking about, I think it was the YouTube guys. And they’re like, how they advertise about brewskis. And like, those are the people that work with them. And I kind of agree, like, if my personality turns you off, I may not want to work with you anyway. But I haven’t had that people appreciate it. And I have another funny story. I had a couple clients who they were I worked with them. They referred me to their friends. And it happened three times. But they all were laughing one day, they’re like, you’re funny, because you were so goofy, and fun. And then when it came down to like inspection and things, you just switch and you’re like, Okay, this is what we have to do. Yeah. And they found that fine. They’re like, it was just not we, we were used to, I’m like, I work hard. I’m and I’m funny when I need to do, but I’m serious when I need to be so

D.J. Paris 18:24
yeah, here’s a little here’s a little tip for everyone who’s afraid to show their goofiness. You also have to have that serious committed professional side. And people love to see somebody shift from goofy and silly into serious it is it is a I don’t know what it is in us, inherently that loves to see that. But it is like, Oh, that’s cool. So you definitely have to have both. But don’t be afraid to let both sides show and when appropriate, I think is probably the key message.

Amber Kardosh 18:56
Yeah. And of course I think on the buy side I think just silliness comes out a little bit more than the sell side and he’s still comes out but in a different way. Just because it’s a different approach.

D.J. Paris 19:06
Well, you and we should mention of course you work it out properties legendary firm in Chicago, largest real estate firm in Chicago, and masters of branding and they just do so many things, right? I mean, we’ve probably had more people on our show from our properties than anywhere. I’m such a big fan of everything they do. But you know, obviously brokers are coming in getting their license every every day probably here in Chicago and you know, they’re listening to our show. A lot of times students get worried that we have the show. So I’m going to put you on the spot just briefly and I apologize for that. But you know, if somebody’s just getting their license, do you have some tips about what they should start doing immediately to grow their business?

Amber Kardosh 19:48
You know what worked for me is just plan on meeting have coffee, have lunch have drinks have be get in front of people. I went on my LinkedIn and I was like searching for P But I haven’t talked to you in a while, and people who shipped jobs and like and one guy, I knew him back when I was at fitness formula working out in a previous life. And I saw that he switched jobs. I’m like, Hey, let’s grab coffee love to hear about it turns out, you know, we were talking, he goes, Oh, you know, I have a girlfriend who’s moving here, she’s looking for a place, like, oh my gosh, so I helped her. And then they bought an investment property. And then like, he bought one like, so it was like a signal. And then he sold his place, and then sold his place. I had four other listings in that built same building from an open house. So it was kind of like a domino effect. I think, if anything, just get in front of people, and just, you know, I think that is just relationship building. And it’ll, like, it’s not the goals of making X amount up for me. It’s not, I’m gonna make 5 million this year, I’m gonna make 10 million, you know, it’s, it’s all about working on the process, and figuring out how I can get even better for my clients, because I always tell my buyers, like, I want to make sure this is fun and not stressful. And I’m gonna do whatever I can, I’m gonna hold a literally hold your hand, I’m gonna text you. Okay, this is what’s next. This is what’s happening, because it is so satisfying when they’re so excited about this house. And you know, and everyone’s like, well, you like the closing because of the commission. It’s to me, of course, everyone likes money. But it’s not about that, for me, I love just the satisfaction of of helping do what I said I was going to do for my clients.

D.J. Paris 21:24
Yeah, no, I think that’s exactly right. And what a lot of times people forget, you mentioned LinkedIn is, and this is, you know, again, I’m not out there producing. But if I were, I would be checking LinkedIn every day number one for birthdays, because they show you but also, they tell you, when people switch jobs, they tell you, when people have new positions, they tell you when they have work anniversaries, and nobody knows anybody’s work anniversary, so you can go and say, Hey, I saw on LinkedIn that it’s your second year at Heinz or whatever, congratulations. Oh, by the way, I saw the Heinz Superbowl ad or whatever. You know, there’s lots of ways you can reach out to people in LinkedIn that you can’t do really on other social networks. And you know, it’s just a great opportunity to give a reason to contact somebody.

Amber Kardosh 22:07
Well, and it’s a good way to warm introduction, like cold calls, like I’ve never done, I’ve not been good at that. I don’t like it. I’m comfortable. Sure. But what I’ve done is I find out who like expired listings and cancelled I don’t spend a whole bunch of time. But if I see something like I’m like, oh, and I, the person on LinkedIn, know, someone whose first connection, I’ll reach out to that first connection, like how close you are you with this person? They’re like, Oh, I know them from blah, blah. Do you mind doing an intro? I’ve gotten a lot of listings that way. Wow.

D.J. Paris 22:34
Let’s say that again. Because that’s really important. And very few people would ever think to do that. So she was mentioning as she looks for, I’m sorry, is it called first connection? Is that right? Yeah.

Amber Kardosh 22:44
So on LinkedIn, you’re if you’re connected to someone that’s directly connected to Yeah, right. And then obviously, your second connection, that’s another way that you could kind of potentially get connected. But if you’re connected with the first person, it’s nice, because if they’re connected to that person directly, if they know them, LinkedIn has gotten weird, like people are asking you to connect, and you don’t have any idea who they are. So it’s less people going, Yeah, I know that person. But I do get a lot where they’re like, Yeah, I know this guy. And so they’ll send a personal introduction, and because they know me, not that they worked with me in real estate, but they know how I am and how I work personally, professionally, they just know. And so they’re very comfortable about absolutely, I’ll send you know, I’ll do an introduction. And it works.

D.J. Paris 23:25
Yeah, one of my one of my very earliest interviews with was Josh Weinberg, from Keller Williams. And obviously, Josh and Tommy are both legends in the Chicago market, of course. And I asked Josh on the show, I wasn’t sure I’m not sure if this was on the show or not. But I asked him at some point. Maybe it was off camera or off recording. But I said, Oh, what are your goals? This is before like, I didn’t know what to ask. And these interviews, oh, what do you what are your production goals? And he was like, Yeah, we don’t think like that. And he goes, it was so interesting, because he came up with, he said, all we ever care about is, and this, we assign this task to Tommy, but he said, If Tommy meets one person a day for the next 365 days, we won’t our production goals will take care of themselves. They just boiled it down to that one metric. And so I thought, and they’ve been in business for a long time, right? And like, I’ve kind of figured, oh, maybe at that point, they’re not still doing that. Maybe they just, it’s all referral based. And I’m sure their business is mostly referral based, but I just love that they were still doing that daily discipline. It’s like training for the Ironman. They’re just doing they’re hitting the pavement every day or jumping, you know, swimming or whatever. And it’s just that constant activity. So if it’s LinkedIn, or if it’s Facebook, or Instagram or going to networking events, I just saw there’s a guy who puts together networking events here in Chicago, his name is Tony P. It’s free plug for him. I don’t know him personally, but I get his messages and I was like, that’s a good idea. And I just think he’s some realtor. And he puts it together and he puts these cool events. I’ve never been to one but

Amber Kardosh 24:52
an open invites. I haven’t been to one Yeah, but but I

D.J. Paris 24:55
just love the fact that there’s so many opportunities to get out there and what I’ve heard that daily discipline is that you can do that. And there’s lots of daily disciplines, of course. So yeah, so obviously getting out there meeting as many people as you can, Brian Buffini always says meet two to five people every day if you can, which is really hard to do. But if you can do that, you know, all your leads will take care of themselves if you can stay in touch. And, you know, I think people sometimes miss the the, some of the more personalized touches to the handwritten notes and, and those things that most of us just don’t do anymore.

Amber Kardosh 25:31
Yeah. And to be quite honest, I’m not very good at them. I’m trying to be. But I think another way is trying to create value when not asked like, you know, I think one of the things that I’ve done recently over the last year that’s been helpful is I will sell a condo or something, a house and in the general vicinity, or in that building, I will try to find contact like email, and sometimes I’ll get them through the association contacts or whatever. And I’ll send an email saying, Hey, I just sold, you know, so and so’s condo, a service that I like to provide is to let other unit owner, unit owners in the building know that they don’t have their homeowners exemption. And I saw that you don’t. And I Oh, and so I saw the forms. And then if they’ve owned it for more than three years, I’d like and if you do this certificate of error, you can get up to three years in so I’ve actually had people go, Oh, my gosh, that’s amazing. Thank you. Hey, by the way, you know, I’m actually thinking about something. And it’s not like that, if I don’t get that like I’m like, but it’s just creating value and like having people go I had no idea. And then wow, yes. So that’s a that’s one I just started doing about last year.

D.J. Paris 26:37
I love that. In fact, when I bought my first condo 2005 or whatever, I forgot to do the homeowners thing. And for years, it just was like, oh, yeah, I should do that. But I didn’t know how and eventually I got it done. You know, years after the fact. But I there’s got to be tons of people like me that just never did it.

Amber Kardosh 26:56
Yeah, I mean, time, friends, and I just say hey, you know, you don’t have it. And when one of my friends is like, Oh, we make too much money for them. Like that has nothing to do. Like this is for everyone’s just like, Oh, great. So I had

D.J. Paris 27:11
Joel shop from guaranteed rate, we just put an episode live today, we recorded on Saturday. And I said, Hey, dude, this is before we were recording. So Joel, what do you do on Friday night? I think it actually did make it to the recording. But I said what did you do last night because Joe and I are friends. He goes, I spent all night riding everybody I knew who owned a house and or that was one of his clients in the past 12 months. And he just goes, Hey, I just wanted to let you know, rates dropped again, I don’t know if it’s a good time to refi or not, but it might be so I just wanted to let you know whether you use me or not. It’s not important, but reach out to your Lending Officer and ask them for a no cost refi and see what the rate is. He goes because everyone I’ve done deals for it’s better, you know, in the last two years, it’s better for them now to refi. And I was like Joel that is brilliant. Like, it’s so simple. And it’s exactly what you were doing with the homeowners exceptions, the same idea.

Amber Kardosh 27:58
Yeah. So and again, it’s nice to because I’ll get phone calls from people who bought or sold a home recently and they and that was it. That’s the thing. So sidebars, like when you get into real estate think everyone’s gonna use you. You know, you’re like, Oh, I know a lot of people this is gonna be great. And it was hard because I was like, wait, you have another agent. But we’re friends. We’ve known each other. Yeah, it was very hard conversation.

D.J. Paris 28:19
You’re my sister. No.

Amber Kardosh 28:23
But like, it’s just one of those things that I think now I respect it. Like if you have a good agent, and they do a great job for you. Yeah, don’t change, because I would hate for someone to say that. Well, I just got in the business. I don’t care. You know, I mean, so I respect it now. But it was something that I think people think they know a lot of people, they’re automatically everyone’s going to use them. So that was one thing that I realized I have to figure out how to get in front of people, not just my friends and family to make it so that’s yeah, that’s just one thing to kind of know for new people. Yeah, I

D.J. Paris 28:54
haven’t I Yeah. To piggyback on that, you know, Brian Buffini has really mentioned him a few times already. But he’s really famous for saying your contact list. Your database is not, no, your contact list is not your prospect list. I mean, it could be and those do happen. But he’s always and I’m just kind of probably misquoting him, but he, he’ll say like, those are the people that are your advocates, too. So maybe they may they might use you they might not. But those are the people that can tell other people about you too. So you know, if you’re brand new, and you’re wondering, you know what to do with your contact list, the very least tell them, hey, if you know anyone that’s looking to buy or sell or rent or whatever you’re looking at, you know, like, Please pass my name along. And sometimes that’ll even get you further because yeah, maybe their brother in law is also a realtor and they’re gonna go with him because it’s family or whatever.

Amber Kardosh 29:42
Right? Yeah. So I think and it’s kind of funny, you mentioned that because I was telling you that my husband got referred to from a family member. Well, that family member actually bought recently. And I it was so I mean, it was totally fine, but I was like, Well, you know, so well it’s Robin you know, she’s an Meeting broker. I mean, I wouldn’t be where I am without her. And I was like, yeah, no, she’s working with me. Right? She’s like,

D.J. Paris 30:06
Yeah, that’s, that’s super funny. But yeah, so this is a relationship business. And whatever you can do to, I always think the best way to add to build a relationship is to add value when the person like you were saying, isn’t expecting it, you know, I, I think anytime you can solve a problem for somebody when they’re not looking for it, or just make them feel wanted or needed, or appreciated, or you thought of them anything like that is always the way to go. And the good news is, and it’s not just with realtors who struggle to do it, obviously, people at the top, like yourself, do these things. But it’s kind of across all industries. I mean, I have a lot of different service providers in my life that make money off me every year for various services. And very rarely do they ever reach out to add value. I mean, they’re nice people. I like them. I’m not interested in switching to other people. But it would be nice if somebody ever reached out and said, Hey, I noticed it might be a good time for you to refinance. Like nobody even does that. So you know, these are all opportunities, realtors have to add value. And, you know, eventually people be like, let’s give DJ Ranbir a chance. So, no. So I have a couple of stories. I wanted to hear from you. I want to hear about the cardboard penis story. You don’t mind sharing it?

Amber Kardosh 31:26
Well, I guess at the time, it was probably more it was funnier than probably me telling you this now, but it was. I

D.J. Paris 31:32
think it’s funny now it’s funny. It was like it

Amber Kardosh 31:35
was a vacant condo. And we were we were touring some condos. And then we were going in and out. All of a sudden I hear my client go, Oh my God. I’m like, what? And she comes out. She’s like, look, and it’s just giant cardboard penis. And I’m like, why is that there? And I didn’t know how she was gonna like React. I mean, she’s pretty. She was pretty laid back on like, Oh, man. And then like, Can I take a picture of that? She was like, yeah, it was sweet. So I posted it and like, yeah, it was really funny because it I mean, it would be different if someone was living I don’t know if there’d be any different be still weird, but having a penis cardboard penis and I make bacon just

D.J. Paris 32:07
what just sitting out on a table or was there like they moved out?

Amber Kardosh 32:11
And we’re like, let’s just leave the car. Oh, they

D.J. Paris 32:12
left it there. Yeah. So yeah, well, I guess maybe you don’t move the cardboard penis that’s kind of a disposable. But then just the fact that somebody that you guys touched it is amazing. I would have like, grabbed like tweezers and why didn’t

Amber Kardosh 32:25
touch it. Let’s just you just took a picture. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 32:29
yeah. Oh, I love that. And then And then since we’re on the, you know, sort of a new kick. Tell me about the Sleeping Naked story where you had a tenant. Yeah. So traumatized.

Amber Kardosh 32:40
I don’t open doors that are tenant occupied to this day. It freaks me out on my clients work. Why I’m like you do it? Because it was one of the first places that we were looking and it was a buy, but it was for you know, it was tenant occupied. So I was told the tenants weren’t there. And you know, so the one it was a two bedroom one was open, and one was closed. And I just figured it was close. And I opened it. And it was like a guy face down. But naked. Luckily, it was down. But I freaked out. I closed the door and my clients like what like, Don’t go in there. There was a new admin and let’s go, let’s just go let’s just go and I got really uncomfortable.

D.J. Paris 33:16
Well, no, I mean, right. That’s a that’s even a potentially unsafe environment. Right. But it’s certainly uncomfortable to say the least. Did so they did not end up buying that that property, I’m

Amber Kardosh 33:28
guessing no. And now I’m like, I have nervous twitches every time I go into a tenant occupied. I’m like, no naked bodies.

D.J. Paris 33:37
I think hey, what, what what better place to wrap up than with a couple of naked or sort of, you know, genital stories, general calm genital stories. But yeah, so so just to recap a couple of couple of things, guys, first of all, the Phelps Hansen coders group is amazing. They’re top producers in Chicago, including the suburbs, western suburbs, in particular, but they’re all over and they’re willing, you know, to work with you, whether you’re a buyer seller or renter and investor, they are happy to talk to you. So if there are people who are listening, who aren’t realtors, but but the public who wants to work with a top producing team, or if you are a broker, as we mentioned earlier, that is looking to join a team and add value and and take your career to the next level. What’s the best way they should reach out to you?

Amber Kardosh 34:22
I mean, they can call me at my phone number is 773-726-2070. Or again, they can use our team email at pH. K group at app properties.com.

D.J. Paris 34:34
Awesome. And, guys, this was our first experimental video podcast recording video cast, I guess. So Amber was so sweet to be the first guinea pig to try it out. And we’re so grateful Amber on behalf of all the audience, that you were able to take time two different days to get this done. So thank you for you know, being with us throughout the some of the tech problems but I think this went really, really well. And we’re really excited to continue to provide these episodes to everyone. We’re going to be doing these probably every single time now. So we’re super excited you guys asked for video. So here it is. And on behalf of the audience Amber, thank you for taking time. I know how busy you are. And if you ever do another Iron Man, let us know so we can support you and maybe, you know, raise money or whatever on keeping it real amazing. Can Happen. Well, oh, can I just end with one silly this this is this is almost a mean thing to say. But you’ll appreciate it just as it’s just it’s just a joke. But whenever I see so Ironman, people probably could laugh at this. So you know, they put the sticker some people put stickers in the back of the car. It’s like 26.2 or Yeah, so I always thought and believe me, I’ve never run a half marathon. I’ve done a few five K’s and that’s plenty for me. So I am I am exactly the kind of person that should not be making fun. But whenever I see the half marathon, the 13.1 I always go. Am I supposed to be half proud of you? Or? And I’m only teasing. That’s still an amazing accomplishment. That was just a joke. I always thought was funny. But no. But anyway,

Amber Kardosh 36:12
I needed those stickers. So that’s, I don’t think you should because

D.J. Paris 36:15
Iron Man, people are just amazing. So anyway, thanks again for being on the show. We’re so grateful that you took time out of your day to do this. And we’ll see everyone on the next episode. Thanks.

Amber Kardosh 36:27
Thank you. I look forward to listening to more podcasts.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Why Real Estate Agents Need To Contact Their Past Clients Right Now • Learn With A Lender • Joel Schaub

February 3, 2020

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

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

How do you stay top of mind with your clients in 2020? How often should you schedule client appreciation events? What’s the best way to navigate networking events? And why did Joel stay in on Friday night emailing every client of the past few years? Another amazing episode with Joel Schaub of Guaranteed Rate!

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

Transcript

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

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents for real estate agents. Today we have our monthly feature which is learning with a lender with Joel shop from guaranteed rate. And before I talk about Joel’s bio which I’m about to read Joel is by far the best loan officer I have ever met and work with super honored to have him on the show. But if this is your first time hearing an episode with Joel, let me tell you a little about him. Joel is the vice president of lending at guaranteed rate. He has been doing loans at a high level since 2003. And has gotten to that level because of what he does directly for agents, which is he gives part of his commission back to the buyer on every transaction. Last year alone 2019 Joe gave back over $291,000 in closing costs directly to the buyers who worked with him and that put Joel’s volume in the top 1/10 of 1% of all loan officers nationwide. out of 410 loan officers in the country. Joel is in the top 150 year to date. And this is only January, he or sorry in the last year rather Joel did 326 transactions for just under 117 million in closings it was his highest year ever. It this year alone in the month of January Joel’s close already 6 million in sales. Now to get in touch with Joel he can be reached at joel@rate.com Again joel@rate.com or call him at 773-654-2049. Let’s say hello to the biggest Cubs fan. I know Joel shop.

Joel Schaub 2:36
Welcome, DJ, thanks so much for having me today.

D.J. Paris 2:39
We’re, you know, I wasn’t even joking when I said you’re that you’re the best loan officer I’ve ever spoken with. It’s definitely a high bar to clear what you’ve said. And would you mind before getting into what you wanted to discuss today? Would you mind sharing what you told me how you spent your Friday night, which you probably did not ask me to share? I would like but this just goes to show just how great of a loan officer your

Joel Schaub 3:02
DJ asked me. So before we got on there, he said, So how was your Friday night and I said, Well, I’ve kind of just stayed home. And I was emailing all the clients that had closed in 2019. And rates are so much lower right now. I mean, they’re crazy low. And anybody who bought in the entire year of 2019, when we fought like tooth and nail to get that really good interest rate, you know, we got down to four and a half or four and a quarter and we couldn’t believe it. Everything’s down way below that now. So I spent Friday night, four or five hours, my wife is like Come to bed. And I think I got a few more emails. So I was just sending them out to past clients and saying we should connect next week rates are way lower than where they are, when we closed, we should be able to save $100 to $200 a month. And I can get all the fees waived in full. So I was just doing some follow up you got to stay in top of mind.

D.J. Paris 3:55
Now before I met Joel, I’ve had a lot of other loan officers in my life with my own transactions. No one ever did that for me. And by the way, we should also mention one important point Joel, left out of the story, he copied the agent who was representing the buyer, you know, on that transaction so that way the buyer even looks like a hero as well. He’s like, wow, you know, he knows what’s going on as well. Or he or she rather. So

Joel Schaub 4:19
the agent. Yeah, it was just nice that the agent could know that. They’re being stayed top of mind. I was able to I copied the person that referred me. So client referred from an agent made sure that that agent was copied in on the email. And I got several emails back last night just with like thumbs up and like Wow, thanks for doing that. They’re definitely appreciative of it. So pretty easy stuff. It’s just one of the things that a lot of people fail to do or they they get so busy with their life on Friday night they go out and do other things. And believe me that’s not my every Friday night, okay. But it was cold. It was a good thing to do and as you know If you listened to the last time I was out of the country, almost half of January, we were kind of jet setting at a couple of different places. We were in Africa, and we were on the islands. And then we were down at a wedding in Mexico. So it was just good to get back. Get your feet settled, and I can’t believe it’s already

D.J. Paris 5:18
February. Awesome. Well, what would you like to discuss today? Well, guys, the

Joel Schaub 5:22
idea here, if you want to be top of the game, right, if you want to be in the top in real estate, you got to just stay top of mind. So I wanted to go over things that I’ve been doing for years and kind of perfected so that agents can go out there and do the same thing. So a couple of things that we’re going to touch base on would be client appreciation, events, networking events, gifts, and giving, social media, all these different things where we can stay top of mind. And I want to start with client appreciation events. So map out the year now, it’s still early, people are saying it’s really busy, right? It’s never too busy just to grab a calendar, and I literally printed all 12 months on a piece of paper. We sat him down. And we got to business on picking what events we wanted to do this year, and having them laid out and having a game plan. Don’t you think that kind of helps to know what you’re going to be doing? Versus Oh, we should do something in three weeks? How many people do you think come to an event? If you plan it for a couple of months versus plan it for a week? Yeah, yeah, it’s a world of difference. Yeah, you’ve been to a lot of events you got to do to slap this together yesterday, right. And these don’t have to be large events. And a lot of times you can just piggyback from other events. But the idea is getting it down in paper so that you know what your 2020 looks like. So you don’t have to actually go print 12 pieces of paper, like I did with all of the dates. But taking some time right now before it really does get busy to come up with one event per quarter. That’s easy. One event every 90 days that you’re out there, either doing a client appreciation event where you’re inviting a bunch of people, or you are piggybacking on another event, and you’re going there with purpose and making sure that you are out there in the community. And that’s one of the big ways that I over the years grew. My presence in the Chicago market wasn’t just doing my own events, it was going to events with a purpose, and trying to help people that are at those events.

D.J. Paris 7:29
Yeah, and that’s really true if you’re in the Chicago land market, and you’re a realtor here locally. Of course, we have listeners nationwide. But Joel is everywhere. And he is really busy. It’s not he’s everywhere, because he doesn’t have much going on. He’s one of the top 150 loan officers in the country. He’s too busy to go to events, but he realizes the value of them.

Joel Schaub 7:50
And the the idea that a lot of people fail when they walk into a room. And this leads me into the next one, which are networking events. When you go to a networking event what most people do, they go there and they talk about themselves. They’re like, right, what’s the first opportunity that I can put in and tell them what I do? Why I’m the best. I rarely talk about what I do. When I go to a networking event, I have one goal in mind, I want to meet three people that want to get their business card. And then I want to find a way to send them a referral, send them something, okay. Most people go into this event or going to events and they end up with just a big stack of business cards and they don’t have any way to follow up with them. It feels disingenuous, because the only thing they want is something for themselves. Sure. How many times have you heard me say this phrase? givers gain? Yep. If you can go into a networking event and just try this, okay. Find three people, you’re going to talk to a ton of people, but at the end, you’re going to have three business cards, follow up with them and think of a way that you can refer them to somebody, okay, maybe it doesn’t have to be a client, you’re talking to somebody and they wanted to a great hairdresser, or a plumber. These are the types of things you have to go out there and look for ways that you can add value if you go out and the only thing you’re saying is I’m the best realtor, I’m the best lender or insurance person. Everyone else in the room is doing the exact same thing. It doesn’t work. And so that’s why I’ve been so successful over the years. It’s just adding value to everyone else in the room. People get to know who you are if you’re doing it the right way.

D.J. Paris 9:28
Yeah, this is called the law of reciprocity, right? So you you provide so much value to someone else expecting nothing in return, right but are as human beings we are wired to want to reciprocate people that do favors and are kind to us and compassionate and empathic and help us and it’s just natural and so Joe’s right givers get for sure. And it’s just a better way of living.

Joel Schaub 9:51
Yeah, literally it doesn’t matter how much money you’re bringing. It just feels good. That’s what I like it’s such a better way. I sleep well at night. They know that I’ve made real friends in the business. And you can, you can sense the difference between people that are just struggling trying to make it. And those that are out there really adding value. And being friends, it’s not the, the top people don’t have the perfect sales pitch, they don’t have the right thing to say at the right time. They’re just personable, and they’re friendly. And people want to be around him. So that’s one of the things that you can go and do at those networking events, is not make it about yourself, try as hard as you can, and go find some value for others.

D.J. Paris 10:37
And this applies really outside of business as well, if we want to just quickly take a quick detour, because I apply the same principle when I go to social gatherings, which again, are networking events or social gatherings. I try to, like what’s most interesting to me when I meet somebody new is I want to find out what gets them excited, or maybe where they’re struggling. But just beyond DJ talking about, you know, this podcast or my real estate stuff, I want to just learn about someone else, because I, to me, that’s more interesting. And I don’t like talking about myself. I know, Joel, you’re the same way. And you know, we just be interested, it’s like the Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, it’s basically get interested in other people.

Joel Schaub 11:19
Oh, my gosh, you kind of read my mind on what I’m going to talk about, like two prompts from No, I stole your thunder, I’m sorry. But the idea here is we want to be at the top of our game in real estate, you have to stay top of mind, right? So we got to go do those types of things that are outside of the house and outside of the office. But if we’re inside of the house, and we’re in the office, and we’re doing social media, there’s a good way to do it. There’s a terrible way of doing. So for social media, what we want to do is, you see all these people that are just liking every photo, right? Right. provide some context, if you are and it’s supposed to be social, right? We’re supposed to be having conversations with each other. So when you make a post, and you get all these comments reply to these people, it blows my mind. So many times we’re trying to put good out into the world. And I see these agents or I see insurance people, and they’ll make a post and they’ll get 30 likes, and they’ll get 15 comments. And there’s no replies talk to these people. Yeah, thank them and like start a conversation versus just commenting or just putting out photos. So the whole idea if you make a post, and people are commenting on it, reply back, get a conversation going.

D.J. Paris 12:33
Yeah, my my boss here at my company, instituted a rule with us about five or six years ago, he must have read it somewhere. And he said, because we have so many realtors in our own firm, and they’re constantly contacting us for support and training. And they he said, Whenever you get an email, always, you know, answer their question. And then if they write back and say thank you, because sometimes people just write back and say, Thank you, you write them back and say, You’re welcome. Right? You never you will always be the last person to email. You know, which is such a it’s such a simple thing, but it really people really appreciate it.

Joel Schaub 13:08
Oh, that’s the key. Okay, I like that, then it’s true. It goes a long way. Right? It means that people are actually feeling that they’ve been heard. Absolutely.

D.J. Paris 13:20
And, and also to people put information on social media, they want to hear your thoughts they want are, they’re interested in your comments. And if someone’s nice enough to spend time to write a comment for you, thank them, or continue the conversation, you know, from that thread. But yeah, you’re right. It’s a lot of things go unanswered or uncomment it.

Joel Schaub 13:40
And a lot of times, when I come on here, I always want to think should I be sharing all of these like mortgage tips, because that’s what I do. But I think a lot of my business is really focused on how I made so many connections and got to the level that I did. And so I really like this type of conversation where we’re talking about how you can stay top of mind and real, bonafide things that you can do in 2020. So that you can pick up one new buyer, one new listing, close one more transaction, and one of the focus that I do is gifts and giving. Okay? It doesn’t have to be something huge. But on every single closing, if you’re not sending at least a thank you card with something small in it, you’re missing an opportunity, right? Even up front when you get the opportunity and you were introduced somebody said hey, you know my sister selling a place, I want to introduce you handwritten card $5 Starbucks something or more importantly, figure out what that person liked or they had dog person $25 to Petco, something small a couple of dollars here and there are gonna go a long way. And so many people failed to do it. And even if you did in the past, and you started falling off from it 2020 I encourage you, if you’re getting a new client, right little note, put something of value in there. It makes you stand out if they’re talking to three agents about who to list the house to and I got a letter in the mail three days later with a little thank you, you know, I’m choosing you.

D.J. Paris 15:13
Yeah, I couldn’t, could not agree more that is so important. And it’s so you know, if you think to, for our audience that people listening are mostly Realtors 99% are probably realtors. And if you’re not giving something, even if it’s just a heartfelt handwritten thank you, you just made probably two and a half percent of the price of the home as a commission, you do something for that person, right? You just made a ton of money. And yes, you earned it. But you should, you know, always give back.

Joel Schaub 15:43
That’s where a lot of the referrals are coming from. We know this, right? We can put up billboards, we can do Zillow, we can do all of these things, but a person that you delivered for that you went for weeks or months to sell the property and it came to a conclusion and it’s a positive one, they will say your name to other people. And if you can give them even more of an incentive to do so even if it’s just subconsciously that you got something in a gift form. It’s not a lot of money, but you have to invest. I always say it like this, you wouldn’t expect that you could open up a McDonald’s franchise and not be able to afford the cups or the plates or, you know, the signage. You can’t be a realtor and not put more money back into your business to help it grow. And these are some small little things, gifts, be a given person be known as somebody that’s charitable and giving back and boy, it does come back to you. Five and 10 fold.

D.J. Paris 16:46
Yeah, I couldn’t agree. So do you mind talking about what’s going on with with rates? is, you know, I know there’s been some really favorable news recently.

Joel Schaub 16:55
Yeah, a lot of people are getting sick with this virus. It’s very favorable news DJ. There’s Coronavirus fears. And what’s really strange is that anything in this level of contagious when there’s these types of things that are happening, it does lead to lower interest rates. And so we just saw this thing. It’s a flight to safety. So instead of putting money into the stocks, all this money goes into the safety and security of bonds, when bond prices go up, yields come down. And so now even though we talked about this, just before my Africa trip on the last podcast, yes, rates were lower. Again, we saw another substantial leg down over a quarter point drop, again, we’re seeing these 30 year fixed rates getting really close to three and a half percent. We are seeing 15 year fixed rates at 3.1 to 5%. And we’re seeing a lot of the jumbo money. So stuff that is over $510,000. In most cities and municipalities on arms, we’re getting rates in the twos. So it’s absolutely crazy where the market is. And this is kind of like gas prices, they’re they, they they’ll come down, but they’ll spike right back up, you just don’t know when they’re going to go back up. So there’s an opportunity right now. Okay. And if I was a real estate agent, and I had 10 closings last year or 50 closings last year, I would get my list out. And over the weekend, I would make some phone calls. And it’s just the follow up to say, Hey, I’ve seen it in the news recently, the interest rates are low, I think you should reach back out to Jim and Susie, your lender, you know, and see if they can do a no cost refinance for you.

D.J. Paris 18:50
Yeah, that that is again, that is going the extra step. And, you know, they always say it’s never What’s the expression, it’s never crowded along the extra mile.

Joel Schaub 19:00
It’s true. And notice what I said there, though, I didn’t say call him up and see what the lowest interest rate was. So that you pay a bunch of fees to the banker, what I want us to do is, remember the old trick where we can call the mortgage company that has your current loan, okay, or the person that helped you so much during that transaction? And you say, I know that my rates are in the fours and I heard they were lower. What are the current rates today? What would you recommend? And then ask, what would be the rate that I could get? If you Mr. Banker covered all of the costs because it takes a couple grand or refinance a mortgage? There’s no secret there. Right? That’s why these banks and there’s banks that mail you stuff in the mail. There are banks that call you left and right. They’re not doing it because it’s free. They’re doing it because they hope you call and ask for the lowest rate that’s available and they’ll happily give it to you in exchange for a couple $1,000 in profit. St. George’s? Sure. So what we want to do is we really want to see if my interest rate today was at four and a half, and the best rate was three and a half. I might be interested in 3.75. If I had to pay $0, why don’t you go from four and a half down to 375? And pay nothing? That might be a lot better than going down just an extra quarter of a point and paying $3,000? Yeah, absolutely. So as an agent, we can go back and we can just provide this value. Remember, the whole topic here today is staying top of mind. And it’s so much easier to call them up with something that will actually hit their bottom line on a monthly basis. If these clients can save $200 a month, and they didn’t have to pay anything, boy, will they remember it because you prompted them, they know that the rates are low, but a nice phone call from the professional to help them and pushing them in the right direction. And if they didn’t have such a great experience with that lender, you know, somebody now because of me on this podcast that can handle a refinance transaction, you say, you know, you didn’t really have that great of an experience, let’s make sure that I connect you with somebody that I just learned about his name’s Joel at guaranteed rate, and they can do a no cost refinance for you. I love that business. But by no means is that a push for me, I really want this to be a focus for the real estate agent to go out there and connect with their past clients, so they can get one or two more deals in 2020.

D.J. Paris 21:27
Yeah, and in addition to that, you know, obviously Joel is happy to, to speak to your clients, but also, you know, job partners with brokers all over and basically can help them possibly with some of their own efforts, right. So, you know, definitely call Joe and when your clients need need a refi or, or they need a loan. But also, you know, this is the guaranteed rate, especially with Joel is a great partner to have. So if you’re a realtor that’s looking for a really solid loan officer who’s who’s going to really help you grow your business. And quite frankly, Joel is the only loan officer that I would ever recommend, because of how much he gives and gives back, Joe, what is the best way whether it’s a, you know, somebody’s looking for a loan, or a broker who wants to work with someone like you, what’s the best way they should reach out?

Joel Schaub 22:18
Well, right now, I’m actually looking for a couple of agents that want to really do marketing dollars. So if it is something that they’re doing as far as marketing, and it requires a lender to come in and actually spend some money. And I don’t care if this is five grand a month, or it’s five grand over the year, I want to work with like minded people, agents are actually out there trying to grow their business. And so an email to me as simple, we can use the short version, which is Joel JOE l@rates.com, R A t.com. So that is the quick email for my guaranteed rate.com email address. And just say, I heard you on the podcast, here’s my phone number I’d like to talk. And that’s it. It’s something simple so that we can start the communication, I can learn a little bit more about what you’re doing in your market, and how I can come in and actually spend some money RESPA compliant, and help you grow that business. So we’re definitely I won’t share on air the dollars that we’ve been spending because it’s sizable, but we’re definitely looking for some like minded agents that want to grow, no matter whether you’re right at the bottom just starting, or you’ve been doing it for a long time, we can definitely help grow and partner together no matter what state so we’re in all 50 states.

D.J. Paris 23:39
Yeah, well, let’s, let’s recap sort of what we went over. So we first talked about client appreciation events, every broker out there should be you know, hosting them, or attending them once a quarter right and hosting them. It doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, you can even find a volunteer organization and invite your clients to come help volunteer, Joel is very proactive and animal rescue. And he’s on the board of real estate to the realtors to the rescue. And, and there’s lots of organizations and the cool thing about about working with charities or volunteer organizations is every human being on the planet wants to volunteer more. So most people just get caught up, they’re busy, they’re living their lives. And so you can provide them an opportunity to do some good as well. And also, you know, create a lot of good feelings. So I always think some of the some of those are the best events

Joel Schaub 24:31
and map it out. Now. That’s the whole point is take the time right now in the next week or two to actually map out the year and get pen to paper so that you actually do it.

D.J. Paris 24:42
And then Joel also talked about networking. So if you’re going to a networking event, don’t make it about you learn about other people and think how can I add value to them? What can I what what pain points do they have, what problems can I solve? What value can I provide and then watch as all value returns to you after you provide value. And then also talked about contacting your clients. So anyone that owns a home, whether you help them, purchase it or not call everybody, all your clients, all your friends and say, Hey, I’ve been noticing that rates have been dipping, you know, and even if you don’t know their mortgage situation, I was just thinking about you, like Joel did last night for all of the clients he worked with last year. But you can do this as well with anyone you know, who’s a homeowner and say, I don’t know, you know, if you don’t know the mortgage situation, I’m not really sure your situation, however, you may want to reach back out to your loan officer. And if you don’t have a good experience, I’ve got a great person you need to talk to. So if you have the reluctance it

Joel Schaub 25:39
is to pick up the phone do an email as well, the whole point is that if they bought the last year, the rates are lower today by a big amount than anytime that they bought in 2017 2018, or 2019. It’s just the fact that there weren’t rates this low in any of those years. So if they were like a rate chopper, and they were so focused on making sure that they called the person that gave them the lowest rate, that rate is at least a half a point higher than what’s available easily today. So there’s something that can be done.

D.J. Paris 26:12
Wonderful, everyone listening, reach out to Joel, if you’re looking for a loan officer who is going to be your partner, if you’re a borrower, and you’re looking for one loan officer who actually gives you back on every time you close a transaction Joel is also your guy. So reach out to him at joel@rate.com which, by the way, is the smallest email address I’ve ever heard. And it’s so easy to remember. I love it. Thank God there You weren’t like the second Joel to join, guaranteed rate. Joel to rate that go. So joel@rate.com or call him or text him 773-654-2049 Joel on behalf of the listeners, we thank you. You are actually I was looking at our this is this is absolutely true, although I don’t have the data right in front of me. But I was looking at this two days ago. And your episodes are the second most listened to series. We have five regular guests on the show and you’re an Aeron second position, which is and I know that I know you don’t care. But that is how appreciated you are to our listeners. So we’re super appreciative appreciative to you. And on behalf of Joel and myself to everyone who is listening, please continue to listen, tell a friend, if everyone just tells one other realtor about this show, we can help twice as many people and obviously get twice as many listeners. And that opens up the opportunity for us to do even more episodes. So this really supports the show and support Joel reach out to him for all your lending needs. So Joel, thanks again. And we will see you next month.

Joel Schaub 27:48
Absolutely guys, it is time to stay top of mind. 2020 is going to be amazing. And we will be here for you every step of the way.

D.J. Paris 27:57
All right. Thanks again. We’ll see you next month.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Four Million to Twenty-Four Million in Two Years • Ben Lalez

January 31, 2020

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Ben Lalez of Compass grew his production from four million in 2017 to 24 million in 2019. That kind of growth in remarkable – even more remarkable as 2019 was Ben’s second year as a full time real estate agent. In this episode Ben discusses how he started in real estate, how he shifted into top producer status, and why having a previous knowledge of contractor work helps separate him from other brokers.

Ben Lalez can be reached at Ben.Lalez@compass.com and 847-452-9675

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your host and guide to the show. And if you’re brand new to the show, here’s what we do we talk to top 1% producers all over the country and ask them how they grew their business so that other realtors can learn from their success. You probably already knew that this probably isn’t your first episode. So thank you for letting me do that. But a couple of quick things before we get started with our episode with Ben Lalas. First tell a friend if you know even one other real estate agent that could benefit from listening to interviews from top producers like Ben shoot this over, you can listen to every episode we’ve ever done keeping it real pod.com By the way, new website is coming in about a week and it’ll be a lot easier to navigate and find the episodes you’re looking for. So I’ll let you know once that’s live. Also, we’re adding video. So all of the episodes going forward will be video podcasts. So not only will you be able to listen like you are now but you’ll also be able to watch our guests on YouTube and some other areas we’re going to be sharing that so be on the lookout for that the best place to find out exactly what’s going on with our podcast is on Facebook, visit us facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod again, keeping it real pod. And every single day, we post an article that we find online written by some expert industry expert about how you can help grow your business. And of course, we also post all of our episodes. So please go there and engage with the other fans of the show. And also send us your feedback. Any guests you think we need to talk to any ideas you have to make the show better. We are thrilled to hear that so you can always send us a message through the keeping it real pod.com website Facebook a million ways to find us. Alright guys, enough of me. Let’s get on to our amazing interview with the great Ben lawless.

Today on the show we have Ben lawless from Compass, you can visit Ben by the way on his team website, which has been lawless.com Ben started his real estate career flipping houses in Humboldt Park and Hermoza not wanting to deal with real estate brokers or general contractors, he went out and became licensed in both throughout the years working for himself grew organically into working for others. And brokering is now his full time job. Because of his background and construction. clients find that having an agent on their side who understands the nuts and bolts, literally of a home is exceptionally valuable. 2019 was Ben’s first year as a full time real estate agent. And he and his team did it an incredible, whopping 23 and a half million dollars in production. I cannot begin to say what a big deal that is, again, before we get started, because I always forget to mention before I bring Ben on, Ben and his team are looking for brokers. So if you’re a broker and you’re interested in joining a winning team at Compass, Ben would love to speak with you also they have an admin position open as well. So reach out to Ben Ben lawless.com. And anyway, welcome to the show. Ben,

Ben Lalez 4:23
thank you so much. I’m super excited to be on here with you.

D.J. Paris 4:27
I am super excited. Ben Ben, when we were getting ready to get started goes I make everyone on my team. Listen, listen to my show. Listen to the show. So I was really honored to hear that. Thank you for being part of short

Ben Lalez 4:37
shout out to Laura and I’m sure she’s listening right now she’s on my team.

D.J. Paris 4:41
So then you’ve had a tremendous amount of success in a very short amount of time in as being a broker. And your team has grown significantly since you guys have started so can you talk a little bit about how you got into real estate?

Ben Lalez 4:56
Sure. I kind of want to say first thank you for having me on, I think this podcast is extremely valuable to brokers in the city and, you know, nationwide, honestly, it’s unbelievable that you’ve put this together to, you know, for and for brokers to kind of share all of this useful stuff for free. It’s tremendously valuable.

D.J. Paris 5:20
Oh, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Really. It’s all because you guys, so you guys get all the all the things, but I’m glad that it’s helpful. And I appreciate your the kind words there. But yeah, tell us tell us how you got into real estate.

Ben Lalez 5:32
Sure, so I was actually interning with a construction company. It’s LG development group. They do business as LG construction. Now, they’re pretty reputable here in the city, but in Oh, nine, they were a little bit smaller, and I was interning for them. And we all know what happened in oh nine. And, and going into 2010 You know, I, I had had some good experience learning how to build a home, you know, working there. And as the market completely tanked. You know, I recognized an opportunity to pick up some property very, very cheaply. And, you know, the West Humboldt Park and or most neighborhoods. And, you know, thankfully, my dad was able to spot me with a little seed money, and I’ll actually never forget it. I bought my first house for $22,000 cash. Wow. And I walk in there, and there’s needles on the ground. Oh, no. Yes. Other stuff that we don’t need to mention. And then just an incredible and incredible amount of pickle jars. Just something about.

D.J. Paris 6:43
So what what were we Oh, for for waste?

Ben Lalez 6:47
I have no idea to be honest with Oh, okay. I mean, I guess I didn’t think of it like that. It just seemed like, I don’t know, if these people loved eating pickles. I don’t know what the story was.

D.J. Paris 6:57
Were there any squatters in the property? Or

Ben Lalez 6:59
no, it was boarded up. There were a lot of beds. So I think the bank finally got their act together and got everyone out. And there was, you know, it was it was a mess. And literally walking around. In hindsight, I should have been more careful. But I’m crunching around on these needles. Oh, no, yes. But long story short, we put in, like at the time 40 or 50 grand where we were able to sell it. Let’s just say I made a lot more than my salary, interning just on that one flow. So I was like, Okay, I guess this is what I am doing. So paid dad back, use the profits to kind of continue that game. So that kind of spawned into from 2010 through 2014. I was doing three or four projects at a time. So depending on how fast they turned. Yeah, it was it was really good there for a second.

D.J. Paris 7:54
Were you guys doing all flips? Or were you doing any buy and hold as well?

Ben Lalez 7:58
Yeah. So I actually still have some stuff that we held that we picked up in 2010, and 2011. But the majority of those nests was to, you know, fix, flip and sell as fast as possible. So as I was kind of getting that experience, I went out and got my general contractor’s license, because I wanted to cut out a middleman, which is kind of sacrilege to hear that coming from a real estate broker, but wanted to cut out the middleman on the general contracting side. Sure, and I did and that had its own growing pains, but eventually figured it out. But as the properties were getting ready to sell, it might I might be showing listeners My Type A personality, but I also wanted to take control of the selling side. So I got my real estate license as well.

D.J. Paris 8:46
Also very smart. And by the way, for everyone who’s listening, this is a very common path for people that are invest real estate investors, they, the general contractor side, seemingly makes sense. But also, just saving on the Commission’s alone is a huge thing to get your broker license, even if you never really want to work with the public and only do your own transactions makes perfect sense.

Ben Lalez 9:08
Yeah, exactly ended. I’m not gonna say I did everything perfectly the first even five times, but I mean, that’s what’s good about getting in early, you can make those mistakes with fewer repercussions. Sure. And yeah, you know, it was a good first step for me there.

D.J. Paris 9:30
And then how did you transition from investments, real estate investments to being a more traditional broker and working more with a public buyers, sellers, that sort of thing?

Ben Lalez 9:41
Sure. So I don’t think it’s too a typical what my process was. I you know, I have a lot of friends and family here in Chicago. I was born and raised in Chicago or in the suburbs. I was born in Glenview. And, you know, friends and family saw what I was doing and, you know, I wasn’t sure I about telling people what I do for a living, which I think is half the battle. But people began asking me to do their kitchens and bathrooms. And they also asked me for help renting and then eventually buying. So it happened very, very organically. So for the first, say, two, three years while I had my real estate license that only accounted for maybe five or 10% of my true income. And then over time, I saw that gradually shifting, and I found myself being drawn to real estate brokering more so than the construction side. And then from there, it just was a very gradual shift to full time real estate brokerage.

D.J. Paris 10:44
Yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s funny you say gradual, because of course, it was a gradual transition. But then once you decided to go full brokerage, you know, just the numbers you did alone, and we really cannot, is it? Okay, if I talk about your numbers? Are you comfortable with me sharing that no problem at all? Yeah, this is, uh, this is great. Ben’s a very humble person. But this is really something that needs to be shared. And I’ll brag for you because it’s so cool. In 2017, he in his team, they did 4 million in production, which is a very modest sum. And then the next year, they did 14 million. So they basically almost quadrupled their production in one year. Can you talk about? Well, actually, before we get to that, and this only is so timely, because 30 minutes before we started our podcast, I had a woman who is actually in the process of getting her real estate license, who’s at our office, one of the schools teachers here. So a lot of times the students come over and chat with me, before they finish up their classes. And they always ask, okay, what do you recommend I do once I pass my test and join a firm? And I always say, well listen to the podcast, because people like Ben, obviously, you know, will tell you exactly what to do. Because I sit here at a desk all day, and I’m not out there producing. So I just real quickly, only because it just came up. What advice do you have for a brand new broker? Who’s looking to get in? Because you’ve done leasing? You’ve done sales, you’ve done investments? What do you recommend for people these days?

Ben Lalez 12:10
Sure. So, you know, I have newer brokers who are on my team that asked me the same question when they come on board, right. And mine is, my advice is actually pretty simple. So everyone is good at something, right. And, for example, I have someone on my team he came over, he was actually an analyst, he has a very analytical mind very good with math, I actually have someone on my team who comes from a remodeling background, also kind of like me. And I tell people lean on your strengths. And, you know, make that what your, your message is about, you don’t need to know everything. But if you know, one thing, that’s good enough, so So I would say a lien on whatever that strength may be, for example, mine was general contracting. So any question I got from a buyer or seller, I always made it about the physical home, because that’s what I knew how to talk about. And that’s what I was comfortable with. So I would say your, that is one and then two is whatever strategy, you know, it is that they come up with. And if they join a team, you know, listen to your team lead or your mentor and kinda, you know, come up with a strategy. But after you do come up with a strategy, I think it’s pretty simple. From there. It’s do the work every single day. Yeah. And period, that’s, that’s the end of it, you have a system. If it’s sitting at a desk and doing fliers or calling or if it’s Zillow, it’s do the work every single day, follow up nonstop, and then wake up in the morning and do it again and again. And again. It’s simple as that.

D.J. Paris 13:48
Yeah, it’s it’s simple. I always say, it’s simple and hard, right? It’s the it’s like, push ups. I remember when I first started working with a personal trainer years ago, they went through all my goals and what I was looking to accomplish and the training sessions, and then he’s like, okay, we can get started. And he says, like, I need you to do 40 Push Ups. And I was like, push ups. That’s, that’s not very exciting. Like, I can do that on my own. He’s like, are you doing it on your own? I was like, no, because then do the push ups. And I realized, oh, yeah, push ups are really good exercise. And every day, you know, every time I went into see, and we started with push ups, because it’s just a good daily discipline. And so that same idea, obviously applies to building a real estate practice, is put your head down and figure out what your daily disciplines are and, and rinse and repeat every day.

Ben Lalez 14:36
Exactly. And that kind of ties into I think, as early as possible, if you’re able to even if there’s 10 people in your CRM in a client relationship management tool, if you can figure if someone is smart enough to get that figured out as early as possible, and to have that be the basis for how they’re doing their follow up or their marketing efforts or whatever the case may be. be having that organizational tool early. I think I wish someone told me like I use Salesforce now. And I’m telling you the the first year after I implemented it, there’s money that you’re just literally, you know, it’s slipping through the cracks without you even knowing it.

D.J. Paris 15:19
Yeah, I agree. It’s a lot of times brokers to they look at their contact list, the, you know, or their CRM, and they say, Okay, what am I like? How should I reach out? What should I do? And I always say, Well, you know, there’s a million reasons to reach out if it’s somebody’s birthday, that’s a reason to reach out. And if mortgage rates drop, call everyone you know, who owns a home and say, Hey, I don’t know your mortgage situation, it’s really none of my business. But in case you didn’t know rates have dropped, it might be a good idea to refinance, call your lender, if you don’t have a good one, I’ll refer you to someone, but anything that adds value and a birthday announcement adds value, but just have a system, have a reason to contact them and consistently add value. And, and you’re right that Ryan April, comes on once a month. And he always says, The 16% of the people, you know, are transacting in real estate in the next 12 months. And the question is, how many of those 16% Are you going to capture. And if you don’t stay in touch, you know, people just forget that, that that’s what you do.

Ben Lalez 16:22
I wouldn’t even take it a step further, you don’t necessarily even need to. And best case scenario, you’re reaching out on a regular basis. And we have a system for that. But I tell the people on my team, like put everyone in your CRM, and we have a system for how they’re supposed to or how I’d like to see them reach out, but it counts that their name is in front of your eyes on a regular basis. So you’re thinking about them. And then you know, when the opportunity is there, that you can reach out via text, email, whatever the case may be, at least you’ve been thinking about them. And you’re able to put something, you know, cohesive together to put in front of them.

D.J. Paris 17:00
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. So I would love to know, so. So you guys had this huge growth in like a one year period? Is there any one thing that really exploded that growth? Or was it just hey, we just put our head down? We did our push ups every day. All of a sudden? Well, that? I mean, really? I’m sure that’s probably the real answer. But you had such a big growth. I was just curious if there was any one event that really spurred it, or it was just No, we just did our work every day.

Ben Lalez 17:30
Yeah, so I think there’s a few answers to the question. I’ll make it as concise as possible. But, you know, we went from 4 million to 14 million and I, a big part of that was my attention was on my general contracting business. And as my, like, attention became more focused on real estate brokerage, you know, that alone, you know, just having the work ethic and applying it, full force, full force, excuse me into one avenue that helped but along with that, early on, I recognized that my value was on bigger picture stuff. So I put an assistant in place really, really early. And I know I’m not the first person to say that I think that’s one of the main takeaways that many of the top producers in the city have said on the podcast. Sure. So that coupled with having a really robust CRM, so that leads aren’t slipping through the cracks. And then, frankly, I I invested in Zillow. in some capacity, I spent some serious money on there and I had a system in place where we ended up being among the top in the country for lead conversion on Zillow.

D.J. Paris 18:43
Wow, it’s I’m really glad you’re mentioning this because I love I love Zillow as a company. I like I know a lot of brokers have mixed feelings but I think they’re awesome. And I and people who purchase leads from Zillow will and who are successful obviously Ben is and his team obviously one of the most successful teams in the country with Zillow leads and they will tell you that even though that lead might be you know, other people might be seeing that lead there really isn’t that much competition. If you if you have a system to work those leads the average broker who gets a lead like that maybe tries to follow up one or two times and then drops the lead. And I’m sure and Ben knows know it sometimes there’s many phone calls many many phone calls before before that lead actually converts.

Ben Lalez 19:33
Well, I mean, I’m still working Zilla leads from 2017. Some some of which ignore you for a year. And then you know, our CRM, we apply a certain priority to them and leave a little note in my calendar to reach out to them in you know, June 2020. Or you know, and you just follow up then you can ignore it until then.

D.J. Paris 19:56
I was at an event Yeah, that is that is so true. I was at event with Matt Larissa where he was speaking. I need to, by the way, get him on the show, of course. But yes, you do. Yeah. Yeah, he’s he’s it for those of you not in the Chicagoland area he’s he’s a top broker here as well. And he was like pounding the table going, you never give up on a lead, you never ever give up on a lead. And it was a good reminder, just as Ben just said, You just always follow up, because the Slow and steady wins the race. And, you know, oftentimes people’s decision making process. I mean, same thing for me, I recruit more than I mean, I don’t produce at all but I recruit, there’s people that go, I met with you a year ago, and I’m finally ready to switch over. And I go, Oh, great, you know, because I’ve stayed in touch with them over the time. And everyone’s timeline is different, you’d never give up on a lead and have. And if you have a CRM, like Ben has Salesforce, which is like the preeminent CRM, in, in, across all industries, you can you can automate a lot of this. And you know, it’s really, really hard, but you never ever give up. Right?

Ben Lalez 20:57
Going back to what you were saying about not get about not giving up is we have a team policy that a lead isn’t dead, and we have a priority literally called dead. And they’re not dead until they tell you to eff off in some regard. via text via email, like stop calling me stop texting. Yeah. And that’s, and that’s fine. And you know, you have to have a little bit of a thick skin, but you don’t get what you don’t ask for.

D.J. Paris 21:24
Yeah, so that is I mean, that is an incredible growth that you guys had, and you continue to have. And then a year after doing hitting 14 million, which is almost a four 400% increase. Now, then you went almost an almost doubled it again. And last year, you guys did almost 24 million, which is just again, it was there any any thing else that that changed? Or was it like no, this is just what happened as a result of us following our process.

Ben Lalez 21:53
So there’s a few things that I would like to credit it. Like how I would like to credit it. And I think adding social media to our ordinary push really, really helped. So if I don’t know if DJ, you’ve seen the video content that I put out regularly, we do a once a week video post that’s long form, and then we chop it up and put it across all other platforms. Yes, I have. Yep. So I think that coupled with, you know, our ordinary efforts, it social media is an interesting game. And a lot of people I think are thinking about it the wrong way. People expect strangers, for example, to reach out and say, Hey, I saw your video because of XYZ and I want to work with you. But I think of it a little bit differently. And that’s raising the floor kind of on retention of existing clients, and you know, friends, family referrals. And also staying in front of those people regularly. So and that also helps with our, you know, our Zillow investment, because I really believe that the second I get off the phone with someone, they’re Googling my name, of course, and they’re going to see 2030 videos of me talking about real estate, and you know, we have a very targeted demographic that we’re going after. And, you know, I’m speaking directly to them. So, you know, I get connected via a live Zillow connection, and they have no idea who I am, they Google me, and they’re like, oh, like, this guy actually knows what he’s doing. And that legitimizes you. So whereas I was losing, and I don’t know if these numbers are accurate, but I feel like I’m picking up an additional 10 or 20% of clients that would have just fallen by the wayside. Just by the social media efforts that we’re doing.

D.J. Paris 23:47
Yeah, the videos are such a such a strong and powerful idea. And we oftentimes forget, YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the planet. And, you know, of course, people are going to search, they’re going to look to see if you have reviews, they’re going to look to see if you have video content, Google prioritizes video in their search results, if someone searches your name, and you have some videos that that are, you know, Google has deemed important enough to show in the search results. And you show up and of course, especially on a lead, a click to call lead from Zillow, live transfer, you know, while they’re talking to me and be like, Oh, who’s this bad guy, and they’re gonna look you up, and they’re gonna want to make sure that you know, and by the way, the other thing about having videos is it shows who you are physically. It’s like, oh, that’s a real person I’m talking to here’s a video where I can see and hear him providing, you know, content or valuable content to me, and it humanizes you too as well, which is really smart.

Ben Lalez 24:44
So kind of piggybacking off of that. There was that car 2020 outlook thing that will happen last week or two ago, and they were talking about how millennials are, you know, they accounted for 50% of new mortgage edge origination and 2019. Wow. And kind of thinking about that I have a story about. So there’s this one guy, he’s 28. And he actually found me on Instagram. And I, you know, I just touted that that’s not what it’s about finding strangers. But this is the story about, you know, one stranger who did reach out via Instagram. And I’m like, Hey, like, how did you find me? And he’s like, Oh, I know, I knew I needed a real estate broker. And I started my search on Instagram. And that’s, that blew my mind. So you’re talking about how YouTube is the second largest search? And yeah, millennials are using Instagram using LinkedIn. Right? As the search engine. Yeah. And I was floored. So I mean, you can see the tide turning, for millennials, for sure.

D.J. Paris 25:49
And so for those of you who are listening, who are brokers thinking, Okay, well, what do I do? The first thing you want to do what, whatever social media platform you want to really focus in on whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, I mean, there’s there’s a lot of options. But what you want to do is create content that people who need your services want to know about. And I think oftentimes, and I’d be curious to get your opinion. I think brokers oftentimes only post about their successes, like here’s a new listing, and I understand that, and I support that, I think that’s great. But if that’s all that you’re doing, I think you’re missing an opportunity to really tell people, you know, content that they might be interested in. So if you want a special like I saw, I know you did a thing on restaurant row recently, which is really smart. And that was yesterday. Oh, that was yesterday. Okay. Yeah, it’s hot today. So really, really smart. So Restaurant Week here in Chicago is coming up. It was a really good time. I’m sure that was not coincidental that it coincided with that time. But you know, if you tag your posts appropriately, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, we tag our stuff to for the podcast, and sometimes people find us just through a tag. So that’s, you know, we think, Oh, if somebody hasn’t following me on Instagram, they’re not going to, they’re not going to find me. Oh, no, people find you, Carrie McCormick, who comes on our show from our properties is like the queen of Instagram. And you should she puts it fifth 5000 tags and every post and like, why do you do that? I mean, I know why she doesn’t like it, does that really work? And she’s like, Oh, my God, she doesn’t get so many clients that way. People just find her because of the content she puts out. And obviously, you’re having similar success.

Ben Lalez 27:37
Yeah, and I think you kind of brushed on it. It’s about putting out relevant content. But I think the part that people are missing is, again, I’ve kind of touted it, just putting your head down and doing the work. But you have to have a consistent approach to social media, anything that you’re doing, but particularly social media. Because consistency counts, the more you put it out there, and the more relevant it is. I don’t claim to know the algorithms behind all of these sites, but they prioritize you eventually, that they see that you’re putting out consistent stuff, high quality stuff that’s getting engagement. So yeah, I think putting out consistent relevant content with a key on consistency is, I think the key

D.J. Paris 28:25
it is and also understanding to the listeners that having them understand that social media, whether it’s you know, whether it’s YouTube videos, or cool Instagram posts, or Instagram stories, or videos, or all of it, it’s it’s a marathon and you are likely not to see results right away. And that’s same thing with even doing this podcast, which is a form of it’s really a social media thing to you know, we barely anybody knew about the show for the first a year or so. And then, you know, eventually people said, Oh, this contents helpful, and they told other people and now here we are, but, but I just had to put my head down. And I still have to put my head down and do it. And I will tell you back to your point about hiring an assistant I forgot to mention this. I have an assistant as well for for the podcast. And she’s amazing. She’s our she’s our casting director. And she keeps me on target because this year we our goal is to double the number of episodes that we’ve done, because left to my own devices, even though I’ve had helpers in the past I don’t I just don’t stay on target. And so for those of you who are listening who think well gosh, I can’t afford to have an assistant or I’m just not at the level there are other options versus hiring somebody you know, down down the street from you or or here locally, there are virtual assistants that you can you can hire. And they’ll of course vary in quality just like any anyone, but if you find a good assistant, it doesn’t necessarily you know, today you need to break the bank. It’s a very achievable thing. I’ve seen lots and lots of Realtors hire virtual assistants and it’s for a very affordable price, and then it really helps them, you know, do what they do best, which is typically working with clients. And Ben was saying, Hey, we’ve got an analyst on our team, right. And so that analyst is probably best spent, you know, analyzing deals and analyzing the market. And, you know, there’s, you can even hire somebody to help you with prospecting and, and there’s lots of assistance you can get. And a lot of times people just think, well, I have to be a top producer first. It’s like, Well, it certainly helps that, you know, you have the income to do it. But you can do it for pretty much on the cheap, because now we’re in such a global gig economy, that you have people from all over the world that that will help you for a very affordable pricing.

Ben Lalez 30:41
My, my first assistant was actually in the Philippines. I actually found her on upwork.com. That was, again, I love it so much. That was back in 2015. So I had, I think I mentioned we did buy and hold some property and I needed to rent it. And you know, at some point, I had three, four or five rentals up on the market. And again, I property managed it myself doing. Yes, so I have all these places up on Craigslist, and Zillow, etc. And my phone just won’t stop ringing. And I’m like, I cannot function like this. So I actually hired someone she was in the Philippines, she worked to Chicago hours. And I feel bad saying how much I paid her. But I’m pretty sure it was a living wage in the Philippines, but it was $3 an hour. Yeah, just to give people an example. And that’s not I mean, I think you can still find people to work for that dollar amount. Now even

D.J. Paris 31:41
I will share a similar story. So I have talked about daily disciplines. And I have a series of disciplines and things I struggle with will say that I should be doing on a daily basis. And, for example, this is a really embarrassing one because I’ve had pets now for 11 years, I have a cat and a dog. And embarrassingly, this is partisan, embarrassing, but my cat, not that the listeners care, but she needs to have her litter box cleaned twice a day, that’s just her she’s particular that way, there’s no way around it. If I don’t do that, over time, she’ll start peeing outside her box. And that creates a lot of problems. So I would love to say that it was just natural for me to clean the litter box twice a day. Sadly, I am not that on top of things. And also I’ll let myself off the hook. So I have this is just an example of one of the one of the reasons why I hired somebody to help with that. Now she lives in the Philippines as well. And I pay her a slightly slightly more than then. Ben’s but she she but that this is many years later, but it’s not much more. And I think I give her seven or $8 an hour, but she only works a couple hours a week. But what she does is she calls me every morning. And she has about 10 things that she goes, Did you remember to clean your cat box twice yesterday? And it sounds silly. Wow. But it’s worth the money. Because by doing that I avoid other problems. Also my cats happier and it’s not she’s not just calling for that. She says hey, did you work out yesterday? Did you check on your finances? Did you you know call your parents and things like that. So

Ben Lalez 33:17
level man.

D.J. Paris 33:18
Well, I would love to say that I came up with this idea I did not I learned it and I should give credit to a basically the foremost leadership expert in the world. Certainly in this country. His name is Marshall Goldsmith, he like Council’s presidency councils top Fortune 500 companies. He’s the guy’s a PhDs, a statistician. And he I watched him I got the chance to see him speak somewhere. And he said, he has an assistant and this is a local assistant, he probably pays them a fortune to do exactly what I just mentioned. And I was like, Oh, that’s really smart. Because I struggle with a lot of stuff too. And so every morning for the last two years, my my person names all the she calls me every morning at 730 It’s about a 92nd phone call. And she just relaxed rattles off a list of things. And it really helps me stay on target. So the point is, that Ben and I have mentioned is there are people globally, you know, worldwide that you can find and that are you will pay them a living wage, they will tell you how much they need. And then you can determine if that’s acceptable or not. And boy, it’s amazing the kind of help you can get these days. So think just think about for everyone listening where you struggle, and can that be you know, are there I have a friend this is embarrassing, so I won’t mention their name. But I have a friend who pays somebody from the Philippines to call them every morning and wake them up. This person has a a full time job where she struggles to get to work on time. So I mentioned this to her I said you know there’s there’s probably a lot of solutions. We know you can pay somebody to call you and bug you until you get out of bed. And she was like well that’s really embarrassing. I was like there’s nothing embarrassing about that, like everybody struggles so and she pays somebody now and she gets bogged down until she gets out of bed and she’s never late. So

Ben Lalez 34:59
good work. If I might steal this idea from you.

D.J. Paris 35:03
Well, I stole it from Marshall Goldsmith. So feel free. Yeah, and you know, we talked about your social media, we should plug your social media. So Instagram obviously is a big a big one for you. By the way, you can get to all of Ben’s social media on his website, Ben lawless B and L A lez.com. But Ben, can you promote your Instagram handle as well?

Ben Lalez 35:24
Sure. We are Ben Lala as real estate. So L A L E z on Lola’s, Ben Lala is real estate, on Instagram, and you should be able to find, I mean, you say this all the time, DJ, if someone can’t find you, just by typing in your name on Google, you’re doing something wrong.

D.J. Paris 35:45
And by the way, if you don’t have a social media presence, or you don’t have time to post or you don’t have time to set up, you know, here’s what I always tell people to like, what if you just hired somebody to help get you reviews. So in other words, you hire somebody who every time you have a closing, or every time you’re working with a client, or whatever you think an appropriate time is to remind your clients that it would be helpful if they left a review on either Facebook, Google, Yelp, Zillow, wherever you want reviews, you could pay somebody a very small amount to, you know, reach out to your clients very politely and nice. And ask them, you know, whether it’s email, phone call, whatever, you know, and that’s a good point that people are going to Google you even the referrals that you get are going to Google you and you want to make sure that you have a robust number of reviews, or that you have some content on there, that’s helpful so that people can see what you’re all about. So you can hire people for that too.

Ben Lalez 36:41
And not to mention that there’s services for social media, for example, we use Buffer. I don’t know if you’re familiar, I use Buffer everyday love buffer. So there you go. So you can put all your content for the week or month up there. It’s tough for video, but any static content, you write the copy for each piece and set it and forget it.

D.J. Paris 37:01
Yeah, so we use Buffer for our Facebook page for our podcast, which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And it’s funny because Ben needed mentioned buffer so so I so somebody from the Philippines, who is not her name is Rhea. So Rhea works on the show as well and RIA posts every day, through buffer schedules, all of our posts, our intention is to post one valuable, or we rather what we do is we find a valuable piece of content online, and we post it through through buffer and we schedule it and takes her like an hour and she gets all the posts done for the week. So Buffer is great, because you can schedule all your postings and cross post among different social media networks. And it’s awesome. Hootsuite is another great one for that purpose as well. But yeah, so I wanted to ask you this, just because I thought this was kind of an interesting, funny story. You had mentioned that when we were talking to you. But before we started about that you had a final walkthrough and basically somebody had come to move in. When you notice that during the final walkthrough. Yeah.

Ben Lalez 38:08
Sure. So for all intents and purposes, it was a very normal transaction. I was on the buy side, it was a single family home and Irving Park. And couldn’t couldn’t honestly, I couldn’t be more normal. So you know, day of closing, we show up for the final walkthrough. And, you know, I’m with the listing agent, and, you know, the keys not working. And he’s he’s very confused. He’s like, I was just here for the appraisal, you know, two weeks ago, the key works fine. Like it wasn’t cold, so it wasn’t frozen. And we had no idea what was going on. So like, I don’t know why he thought to knock, but he knocks on the door. And this like 15 year old boy walks to the door and goes, Can I help you? And we’re like, what do you what do you mean? Can you help us like, what are you doing here? He’s like, Oh, I live here are like, no, no, you don’t. He’s like, Oh, thank you very much. Goodbye. And he closes the corner.

D.J. Paris 39:11
And we’re looking at each other. Like we say what? Yeah, the best. The best defense is a good offense. Go I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Ben Lalez 39:18
No, so we we have no idea what just happened. We’re looking at each other like, well, what world is this? And we realized quickly what happened? Or we thought someone just broke in or Lord knows what happens. So we call the police. And for once, they actually showed up, like, right away because I don’t know what I said, but it smelled fishy to them. So three cars pull up. They knock on the door, the guy opens the door again. And five minutes later, they’re taking the guy out in handcuffs. And it was a young guy it didn’t seem like like there was no violence or anything like that going on but so they take him into the squad car. He rolls away. And so we go in because we’re still there for final walkthrough. Right. Okay. So we walk in, and we realized that this guy had changed the locks. He had mounted a TV, he had his ex box setup, the fridge is filled with food, there’s furniture, that was not the sellers. This guy had actually broken in, moved in, there was a mail sent to the house in this kid’s name, and had fully just taken ownership. And you know, having been in the business long enough, there’s like, I think we all know that there’s issues, especially once mail is getting sent there. Luckily, we didn’t have to deal with any of that. But yeah, some guy just moved into my client’s future home.

D.J. Paris 40:45
And we see really a 15 year old or was he older pretending to be younger or

Ben Lalez 40:49
no. So at the end of the final walk through, the kids father showed up, I think he wanted to kind of smooth things over and make sure we weren’t going to press charges. But for sure, a minor I don’t know exactly how old he was. But he’s definitely a minor.

D.J. Paris 41:09
That’s incredible that that somebody who’s a minor would even have the wherewithal to do that big of a sort of transition first to know how to get into a property second to then move in. And boy, that’s, that’s incredible.

Ben Lalez 41:23
Yeah, it was, I mean, I haven’t experienced anything like it since and I don’t actually know what like the takeaway is, like, maybe visit the property more often. And but I think it was just a really unique situation. And maybe the kid maybe knew the people who were living there and saw an opportunity to get out of his parents house. And, you know, live it up for a couple of weeks.

D.J. Paris 41:47
Did the did the buyer, was the buyer spooked at all? Did it affect it? Did it affect the closing? Or no,

Ben Lalez 41:53
this client in general was just very laid back. And in the end, I mean, even day up, we just laughed about it. We, you know, I was there with the inspection report. And we made sure that nothing else was crazy. They got a and you know, there’s a relatively new flat screen on the wall. That’s a melee and we’re like, what do we like, what do we do with this? Who does this belong to? And I was like, I guess just like, we’re not gonna ask questions. I guess it’s yours. Let me know if someone comes knocking on the door for it. And that was kind of the last I heard of it.

D.J. Paris 42:30
That’s incredible. You got to do TV out of the out of the deal.

Ben Lalez 42:34
Yeah, exactly. I think you got an x max out of it to

D.J. Paris 42:37
me. Yeah. And, and, and some furniture. Although I don’t know that I’d want furniture a 15 year old and a half. But who knows, maybe a very good point. And then you also had a story, I’d love to hear about where you got into a street race. Running away from people. I don’t know if this is a scary story. So I apologize for laughing, I would love to hear the story.

Ben Lalez 42:59
It is a bit scary. So in 2010 2011, when I just started flipping houses, I entered into a, like a business relationship with an investor on the south side, they would buy up single family homes on the south side. And you know, having mentioned I had my general contractor’s license and real estate license, but flip, I was only flipping one house at a time and I had time on my hands, honestly. So I was looking for ways to kind of fill that time. So they would give me a list of 30 addresses and they had a list of criteria that, you know, they were looking for. And it was very, very specific. Like if the street is not wide enough, don’t like we don’t want to offer if there’s more than x number of board ups on the street we don’t want to offer. So I had this rule where I would drive to the front of the house. And if I didn’t feel comfortable getting on the car, I just wouldn’t and they were cool with that. So I’m in front, I’m in front of this one house. I have like a clipboard and I’m looking you know, I’m looking at the right side of my car at this house just taking some notes. And I turn to the left and there’s a car with four young men in it. Like pressed up, like almost touching my cart to the point where I like cannot like I was scared to even drive away to scratch scratch my car. And I look at I look at the driver and he’s giving me the Roll down your window signal. And I’m like, Shit, I’m like shaking my head. No. And I don’t know for all I know they wanted directions or I don’t know what they wanted. But I go into fight or flight and I’m on like 84th street and Halstead on a side street. And at the time I was driving this little Volkswagen Jetta and I just floor it and it’s a narrow street and I you know, I start driving and they actually start following me so they’re already racing right Behind me,

D.J. Paris 45:00
like your biggest fear is if I drive away, they’re gonna follow me. And then they do.

Ben Lalez 45:04
Yeah, yeah, my biggest fear. We don’t need to go there. But right, so I started driving in a, I cannot find a major street for the life of me. So we’re like zipping down the side streets. And then eventually I find I think it was Hall stat or something. And, you know, my heart is pounding. And I eventually, you know, I eventually drive home and nothing came of it. Maybe it was just for fun, but I doubt it. But that was a Yeah, so the next day I stopped working for them. I told them, is that really? Yeah, this isn’t worth, you know, my, my life here. So thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure working for you. And that was it.

D.J. Paris 45:47
Yeah, I have I have a question too, because we have a lot of female listeners. And, you know, they, obviously, and this affects both men and women, of course. But certainly women are need to be super conscious of where they go, who they meet with. And you know, where they’re going to be, you know, with clients, in particular, since you work with Zillow leads, you know, which, again, are largely, you know, perfectly safe and normal. But of course, you never know. What is your what, what advice do you have for people, you know, men and women who are maybe meeting a client, that isn’t a referral, maybe they got it through a lead source, like Zillow, or just a random phone call or email, you know, as far as where to meet to sort of maximize safety?

Ben Lalez 46:31
Yeah, that’s a really good question. Because, you know, I am handing off certain Zillow leads to people and I have that fear also. So we try to do it, if possible, on a Saturday or Sunday. Hopefully, there’s an open house, but I won’t say unless I’m, like, very confident that the person is legit. I won’t send people unless it’s middle of the day, Saturday or Sunday. But yeah, you know, DJ, I have to be honest with you, it’s, it hasn’t been an issue for me. And I guess it’s not an issue until it is, but I’m happy to hear your thoughts on it.

D.J. Paris 47:07
Yeah, you know, I don’t have a ton of thoughts other than just meet in a public place, you know, and sort of assess the situation from there. So I know a lot of brokers meet people at Starbucks, or coffee shops, or really anywhere, if you need to meet a client, and you haven’t met with them, and you’re getting a goofy feeling. Anytime you get any sort of feeling, that would be a good time to, you know, find a public place to first meet and sort of suss out the situation. And you could always walk away from a client to of course,

Ben Lalez 47:36
yeah, and you’d be surprised a lot of times because I, I take all the calls and I do all the intake and you can tell really quickly if the person is a real buyer or not. And oftentimes, you know, if I do get that feeling, it’s just like, Okay, this guy isn’t real, but the vast majority of people who are especially on Zillow, who are moved to click on a button and be connected to an agent and then let’s listen to our spiel and then schedule a time granted they could be up to no good but we just have I haven’t seen it at all yet.

D.J. Paris 48:15
Yeah, yeah, that’s yeah, that’s that’s a that’s a good point. And and just you know, people just obviously need to use their best judgment and not try to avoid situations that could be potentially dangerous and real quickly, so I just wanted to end with with this one suggestion because obviously you are very systems focused. You know, we talked about nurturing leads and staying in touch with with your sphere of influence your contact list. Do you have any just general advice or specific advice around how brokers should be staying in touch? Because I get that question a lot. It’s like well, okay, I have these 100 names in my CRM and I’m not totally sure what to do with it. Do you have any just any any ideas for to help

Ben Lalez 48:59
them it’s funny you said that DJ cuz 2019 was my first year full time and I discovered this podcast probably the beginning of 2019. And I give myself a lot of guilt because I don’t do flyers and I don’t do cold call I don’t do cancelled expired. So what I would say is like whatever that person is comfortable with for me, I I’ve always been comfortable texting the people that I interact with on a daily basis like everyone wants to text with me so I don’t over think it but going to your system idea. I put in a date once a quarter to touch me literally every single person in my CRM granted the people who are active buyers or sellers I’m reaching out to obviously daily, but you know, you have to systemize it or else you’re gonna drive yourself nuts. So I have a day in my calendar where that is you Every quarter where that is the day that I’m reaching out to 50 100 people if it spills over to two days, so be it.

D.J. Paris 50:08
Yeah, just have have a process, I guess. And, and yeah, that texting is great too. I was this is so funny. So we use for when brokers want to meet with me to learn about our company, we use a scheduling system and I realized this scheduling system, well, I won’t mention it, because I’m going to speak about one thing that they don’t have, which is maybe it’s not possible, but we send out these text reminders about the meeting. And there are lots of scheduling services that will do that, which is so helpful. And so we send out like a day before the meeting, hey, quick reminder, your meeting with DJ in a day. And then an hour before the meeting, we send out another Hey, just a quick reminder, you know, DJ looks forward to seeing you. And it’s it’s a simple little text message. We also send an email as well, just an automated system. But what I’ve realized is, recently in the last year, I’ve had a lot more people that just didn’t show up for the appointment, which is strange, because they set the appointment. So I went Hmm, why would somebody not sure if it’s so weird that I would call them and say, hey, just you know, you missed your appointment, we can reschedule you no problem. And they go, Oh, I replied to your text. And then I went, Oh, and then our system, the system we use just doesn’t allow for people, like they can reply, and the person doesn’t know that we didn’t get it. So they think we got the text because of course people reply to texts all the time. So now I’ve realized I need to really find a system that allows for that two way texting, because we automate all that. And but yeah, you’re right. It’s so smart to do it through tax, because that’s, that’s the preferred method of communication for a lot of people. So very, very smart to stay in touch that way. And then I started dialogue on text.

Ben Lalez 51:40
Yeah, and I am sure you know, the stat. But I think like the open rates of texts are what’s like 98% versus I don’t know who it is on email. But

D.J. Paris 51:50
yeah, maybe five? Yeah, well, let it for everyone who’s listening, especially if you’re in the Chicagoland area. Ben has a very successful team at Compass, obviously, great company. And Ben’s, obviously in his team have had tremendous, tremendous success in the last several years. And they’re growing. And they’re looking for new brokers and an admin position as well. So but in addition to that, for all of our listeners, maybe you’re a buyer or a seller and investor or renter, anyone who’s in the need of wanting to work with someone like Ben, or if you’re a broker who wants to join a team like Ben’s, Ben, what’s the best way someone can reach out to you.

Ben Lalez 52:31
Kind of like what we just said, easiest way is text 847-452-9675.

D.J. Paris 52:38
Right. And you can also visit Ben, Ben’s website, which has been lawless.com, Ben la lz.com. And of course, links to his Instagram account, which everyone should check out because the content is really impressive. And you can also find him all of you can contact him through email that way, through his website, as well. So Ben, thank you for being a dedicated listener to the show, which I did not know before, before you came on board. So it was really nice to know that it’s been helpful for you and your team, I really appreciate the kind words there and, and also for being part of the show is really, really special to us. So we appreciate your time. I know how busy you are. So this is a really an honor for us. And on behalf of Ben and myself to all the listeners, you’re the reason why we keep doing this. And Ben, of course is you know, it was when we were talking with him before the show, he said whatever I can do to help other brokers. That is what I want the message to be. So that’s the kind of person Ben is. So we’re super, super grateful, Ben to you. And for everyone listening, one way that you can help our show is number one to support our sponsors. But number two, to make sure that you tell a friend right everyone knows another realtor who would love to increase their production. And that’s what we do on the show. So definitely let other brokers Realtors real estate agents, depending on what they call them in the state and city you’re in. Let them know about the show and you know, have them subscribe. And also one last thing, since I’m asking for things I’m just asked for one more, if everyone who is utilizing like iTunes or Google Play or, or Stitcher or Spotify, whatever you’re using and listen to the show. If you could leave us a review that would really, we would really appreciate it. So the more people we reach, the more interviews we can do and we can continue to keep this train rolling. So Ben again, thank you so much for being part of our show everyone go to Ben lawless.com. And if you want to join Ben’s team reach out he’d he’d love to talk to you.

Ben Lalez 54:31
Thank you so much DJ

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Success Through Authenticity & Transparency • Sam Shaffer

January 30, 2020

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Sam Shaffer of Chicago Properties is not only a top 1% producer, but one of the most respected brokers in Chicago. In our conversation Sam talks about starting out at the bottom and how he built his massive real estate practice (and brokerage) through consistent follow through, honesty and integrity. His energy is electric and Sam provides tips that all agents can utilize to take their business to the next level!

Sam Shaffer can be reached at sam@chiprop.com and 773.297.9792.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and your host through the show and in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with Sam Shaffer a true legend in the Chicagoland area. Before we do that, a couple of quick announcements. Number one, we are doubling the number of episodes in 2020. So you’ve probably seen an uptick in the number of episodes we’ve been releasing regularly since the beginning of the year. And we will continue to do that because number one, you’re asking for it. And number two, we have sponsors now that help us do more episodes. So if you notice at the beginning of this show, we have a sponsorship, if you are someone who has a company that promotes to real estate agents, products, services, and you would like to sponsor an upcoming episode, by the way, we have 1000s of listeners on every single episode nationwide, let us know reach out to us through our website, keeping it real pod.com. By the way, speaking of the website, it is going through a major overhaul. And in about a week, we’ll have a brand new website up and running for you. And we’re going to be grouping together different types of episodes. So as you know, we do our interviews like the one we’re about to do with Sam. And we also have other regular segments. So we have episodes with regards to what brokers need to know about what’s going on in the lending. And our training. And all sorts of other are Monday market minute. And so we’re going to be doing that you’ll be able to pull all of those in a much easier way right from our website, which again, is keeping it real pod.com. And lastly, Oh, and one other thing before we get to the last, we’re going to be starting to do video as well. So starting also in about a week, you will be able to watch these interviews, in addition to listening them the way you are right now through your podcast app. So be on the lookout we’re still working out the technical arrangement there, but we’re almost we’ve ever pretty well figured out so we’re excited because a lot of you would rather watch than listen, or while you’ll be able to watch and listen as opposed to only listen, you get what I’m saying. And then the last thing please tell a friend think of another real estate agent that you know that could benefit from learning from top 1% producers like Sam Shaffer and pass this podcast over to them. Guys, you should also be following us on Facebook. It’s facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod why every single day we post an article that we have found online that has information that will help you grow your business. So again facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our interview with Sam Shaffer.

Today on the show we have Sam Schaefer of Chicago properties. Sam is the managing broker and owner of Chicago properties who ranks among the top 1% of producers in Chicagoland with sales exceeding lifetime $800 million. And Sam has been labeled by numerous client reviews as stellar, phenomenal, incredibly responsive, and with outstanding efficiency. Sam truly Well, I’m gonna give you a quote from Sam. I truly love my job and get the most satisfaction when I find my clients their dream property, or sell their homes so that they can start the next chapter of their life. The icing on the cake is the wonderful relationships I get to develop with them. You can visit Sam at Shai approp, CH I prop prp.com Welcome Sam Shaffer. Appreciate you being on the show.

Sam Shaffer 4:43
DJ, thank you for a very lovely introduction. And I truly appreciate having the opportunity to speak with you and being invited on your amazing podcast. Thank you.

D.J. Paris 4:54
Well, thanks for the invite. I’m not sure it’s so amazing, but you are amazing for sure. Sam was actually in our very Very first well, I should say we there was no way it was just me at the time. When I first started this thing, Sam was at the very top of our list and I’m so I apologize for not getting to him sooner. But we’re grateful that we did get we were able to find time together because you’re somebody who’s extremely important and well respected in the Chicagoland market. And we have listeners nationwide. But you’re so well respected here. And we knew we wanted to feature you. So let’s I would love to start and our listeners love to hear about the journey. How did you get started in real estate?

Sam Shaffer 5:33
Well, I’ve been at this for about 18 years. And before I was in real estate out of college, I was a do gooder. And that really translates nicely to real estate, how I run my business, but I was basically running camps for kids teaching different sports classes. And I was involved in a nonprofit organization called the Jewish Community Center. I worked there for about four years was a great place to start. And after I realized that my financial trajectory was going to flatline. Sure. I made a jump into the.com sector. So I was in a very volatile, exciting market back in early 2000. Or, you know, the end of 1999.

D.J. Paris 6:21
Oh, right, right before it all came crashing down. Right. So it

Sam Shaffer 6:25
was interesting, because I was working in a in a very volatile internet market that was fast and furious and exciting. And colleagues next to me, were being let go for no reason. I mean, they would work hard and they had produced but it was so volatile. I fortunately, was in a position where I continued to climb the technology sector. But I was always nervous that one day I get a tap on the shoulder, and I would be let go. So I had a close friend’s father, who was a very successful businessman in Chicago, who got into real estate. And he asked me to come work for him. And I had the utmost respect for my friend’s father, who was a very successful businessman. So I ended up getting my license, and I show up at his door. I’m like, Here I am, I’m ready to go. And my friend’s father says, Well, I don’t have a job for you. So I had a close friend from college, who was a great guy, a one man show that had his own real estate company that he was basically buying and selling real estate for himself. So he said to me, you could hang your license with me. And here I am. 18 years later, we’re best friends. And we are running a very successful real estate company. And I guess you can call it serendipitous that I get to work with my best college buddy. And we’re, you know, running a pretty nice boutique real estate shop here in Chicago.

D.J. Paris 7:57
Wow, what a great story Ives a few parallels to your story. So I was in the IT sector as well. And I have received that tap on the shoulder. And the reason I received a tap on the shoulder. Funny, just funny, quick aside, the week before I had had my annual review, I got like a 99% and a pretty big raise. But I ended up at that point because of that raise while Yeah, because of the raise being one of the highest paid members at the company. And they were looking to sell. And so all of a sudden on the balance sheet, I became a liability for them in order to attract investors. So one day a week after that, I got that exact tap on the shoulder. And I was I was devastated because I was a good employee and I had been well, you know, regarded. And, you know, the powers that be said, This guy’s making too much money. And so it was easy for them just to make the numbers look better so and then I got into real estate for the almost exact same sort of fear. Or it was from my case, it was the reality. And then I now work with my friend as well. So we have a lot of parallels there. And I can definitely appreciate that. I have a question. And this is a question I get a lot because I end up talking to a lot of new brokers who reach out to us on the show who have just become licensed. And I know this is part of your history. So I want to get your opinion on it as it was, you know, maybe back then and also today about rentals. So it’s probably the number one question we get from new brokers is should I do some rentals? You know, assuming these people, these brokers don’t have a ton of sales clients right away. Maybe they have none. What’s your opinion in today’s market on rentals?

Sam Shaffer 9:35
That’s a very good question. That’s how I started in the business. So my college buddy, who was a one man show was buying and renovating buildings for himself. So his end game was to be a landlord. Sure, and when I came to work with my buddy, his name’s Dan Kravitz. He likes to keep a low profile, so hopefully you won’t be upset that I’m giving him some accolades. But basically I’d left my full time job. Now I make zero money. In order to make money, I have to go out there and hunt. So this was really a great opportunity to actually make income by, I call it low hanging fruit, where I had the ability to rent out apartments, and I would make a half a month’s rent. But the beauty of that was that I was busy. And I’d say that to new brokers, that it’s very, this is a hard business. People looking from the outside think it’s very easy, but it’s difficult. And you have to kind of manifest your own destiny here. So by having something to do, by being active, have reason to get out of bed or reason to show up. Learn how to make appointments, interact with people, be comfortable with contracts, grow your business, it’s a really great way to start, I always say that you have to have a story. And as a new agent, it can be very lonely, because if you show up to an office, and you have nothing to do when your friends and family asked you what did you do today, you’re drawing a blank. However, the narrative could be today’s a great day, I have three appointments, a meeting a potentially a new person that’s interested in looking for a rental, I could show them different properties. I have another appointment later that afternoon where I’m going to help a landlord rent out his apartment. I’m starting to advertise on Craigslist and other mediums, Zillow, etc. And now you’re creating a story and you’re really building upon that to have that exude that ability that you are confident and you are active and busy. And that’s really important.

D.J. Paris 11:51
And you’re also getting a lot of experience talking about real estate, you know, it well there’s a there’s a few extra things in addition to you know, actually staying busy. You also are starting a relationship with somebody who may become a buyer in the future as well. And we know that, you know, renters, some renters become buyers or rather, almost all buyers were on point a renter. And now you have this amazing opportunity. Because the vast majority of first time homebuyers National Association of REALTORS verifies this in a new study they do about every two or three years where they say, Hey, how’d you choose your realtor? And the vast majority of first time homebuyers go, Oh, I knew someone you know, and or I was referred to someone. So I think it’s such a great opportunity. I mean, I remember when the reason I chose my realtor who’s now my boss. And the person I mentioned earlier, was because he was my friend, and he was a realtor. And we know that’s that’s how it works. And I, you know did not have somebody helping me with rentals before that when I was renting. So I just happened to have a friend. But I that was only one person I knew, because I was somewhat new to Chicago, and I could have easily not known somebody, and then I would have just not been sure how to find. So if you can help somebody with rentals, and you stay in touch with them, and they like you, there’s a very good chance they’re going to use you when they make that first purchase.

Sam Shaffer 13:07
Yeah, I agree. And I can’t emphasize this enough. This is a business where you need to be confident in how do you how do you build your confidence, it’s very easy to get knocked down. And it’s difficult to get back up. But I tell my agents, I have two full time agents that I pay salary to. And I also have three other agents that are independent contractors, contractors in my office, that my theme is a win a day and build on that. So if you can go out and meet a new client or rent out an apartment, that’s a win, and you could build upon that. So I think that’s really important to kind of use that momentum to grow your business and exude that confidence that people are looking for.

D.J. Paris 13:54
Yeah, I think you’re right. And you know, it’s it’s funny, we talk about this a lot on the show, because it’s really our number one biggest question is okay, how do I how do I stay busy? And you know, Brian Buffini who a lot of our listeners are going to be familiar with, if you’re not definitely look him up. He’s got the largest training program are the most popular training program for realtors in the country. And he’s been doing it forever. And he always says, How do you win the day? And so you need to define a couple of Cornerstone activities, where you know, maybe it’s Hey, I met three new people today and told them what I did got their email, and I’m going to follow up and let you know, stay in touch and now they’re in my database. Or maybe it’s Hey, I scheduled an open house with another broker in my office who was nice enough to let me do an open house this weekend. Or maybe it’s oh gosh, I’m going to try to get some some renters. You know that that might be looking for an apartment, you know, a few showing opportunities, or I reached out to my friends and said, Hey, please make sure to tell your friends about me. I will but there are Cornerstone activities and disciplines that I imagine, you know, you’ve been doing now for 18 years. But I was just curious if you had you know Have a suggestion for somebody who’s brand new gets their license. You know, what, what should they do? Or really? Yeah, what should they do? Actually? Do you have any suggestions for sort of a day one kind of experience?

Sam Shaffer 15:13
Yeah, so I’ve had two people that work for me, come into my office actually three, with very little to no experience. Sure. And it goes back to the BOE being able to tell a good story. So on day one, I’m having them go meet in an appraiser, sit in inspection, meet a photographer, you know, Shadow me, while I put together an offer, listen to my phone conversations. So when they come home that night, and if they took, they just got their license, and they have collaborated with the 20 other people in their real estate class, I can say, with a lot of confidence that they’re going to get such a quick education from doing those little things, where the people that they were sitting next to in class are gonna be like, Are you kidding me, you want an appraisal? Right, we sent an inspection, you met a photographer, I’m still you know, I’m showing up with a pad of paper and a pencil with nothing to do. So I think being able to, to align yourself with someone that’s producing is invaluable. And before you know it, I feel that my agents that that work for me, and I say, work with me, because that’s the relationship we have. They’re getting a college degree, which normally takes people in this industry, three, four years, within a year, because we’re doing so much volume. And I really feel and I hope this doesn’t come across as arrogant. But it’s a very confident statement that we’re doing business the right way. We collaborate with other brokers were very detail oriented, we’re very buttoned up. We, we play nicely in the sandbox. And I think that’s really helped to take our business to the next level as far as volume, and reputation.

D.J. Paris 17:06
And you certainly have both volume and reputation on your side, and you’ve earned it. And I think that’s really important. And also the reason why we’re so excited. You’re here today. And I would say for everyone who’s listening, who isn’t a newly licensed broker, who’s going well, I work at a firm and gosh, I’ve never sat in with an appraiser, I’ve never talked to an inspector, I don’t really understand loans as much as I should, or the closing process. And, you know, these are opportunities for you to do this yourself too, right? Reach out to an inspector or appraiser call loan officer say, hey, I want to sit with you and really understand what you do, so that I can provide better service to my clients. And boy, you know, it’s funny, we’ve done 120 I think this will be our 120/5 episode or so over several years, and you’re the first person we’ve ever interviewed who is suggested to do that. It’s such a wonderful idea. So this is a great opportunity. So if you work at a firm, where you there are resources available, go to your managing broker and say, Hey, who do you know, who’s who’s a good Inspector, I want to just have a conversation with them or or shadow them? Or can I sit with the top producer in the office or maybe shadow them on a on a call, or maybe do an open house with them or for them? Huge opportunities there. So thank you so much. That is such a wonderful idea. But if you’re if you’re working at a firm where those opportunities aren’t as, as available, then make your own luck, right? Get you know, go on Google and look up the most successful appraisers, inspectors loan officers, we have Joel from guaranteed radon on our show every month, he would be honored to talk to you and explain what he does, so that you can further you know, promote not only his business, but also do a better job for you know, for your clients, because they’re going to look to you for all of these answers. Anyway, what a great suggestion.

Sam Shaffer 18:50
Thank you. Thank you. It’s a funny, funny story is when I first got into real estate, and I was starting to build my business. I’d have friends come up to me and say how you doing? How’s the market and I had this very humble approach, where I’m like, things are going okay, and I didn’t really elaborate. And my wife, who I loved dearly, she looked at me she pretty much grabbed me by the collar. She’s like, you tell people, you’re fucking killing it. God damn it. I’m like, Yes, you okay, you got it. And, you know, I say that facetiously. But literally the next day, I started to elaborate on what I was doing. And I kind of put it out there into the universe. And it really has been super impactful. So I’ll never forget that conversation I had with my wife. And it’s true. So when a new agent comes in, and I’m training them and we’re growing and learning together, they have a story. And the story is truthful. And that’s another thing how we we we brand ourselves is we’re very transparent, we operate with with the utmost integrity, and I don’t want anyone to lie. So when you want To promote yourself, you have to have a story. And it’s very simple. When a new agent comes in that guess what they did, they did all those things. Hey, I just met with an inspector. I’m racing to meet the appraiser right now. I’m taking out a buyer later this afternoon, I’m busy, things are going great. And it’s truthful. And that’s really important.

D.J. Paris 20:20
Yeah, and I know, a big, big thing for you is authenticity, integrity. And we find that to be consistent among, and no surprise among all the top 1% producers that we’ve had on the show, maybe there’s a few exceptions, but we tend to not feature those people. But the vast majority, literally almost everyone we’ve ever had on the show has made a big point to talk about that being so important. And in order for someone who’s listening to be able to have those conversations with clients, if they’re asking, Hey, how’s business going? And you know, you might talk about your activity, as Sam mentioned, hey, here’s all the things I’m doing. And then all you really need on top of that, and because I get this question a lot, since I’m a management, I’m not a producing broker, I know very little about what’s going on in the market. As a result, I say I’m in marketing, which makes it easy, because the moment I say I’m in real estate, when I meet people at a party or out socially don’t want to ask me about the market. And I I truthfully don’t know. So I will say I’m in marketing, I don’t really know much about the market. But you need to know, right are brokers not you, Sam, Sam obviously knows. But everyone listening needs to have a few data points about what’s going on locally in a hyperlocal market. So you know, you need to stay abreast you don’t need to know 10 minutes worth of conversation, but you should have a good minute or two of bullet points. So know know what’s going on with with lending rates and know what’s going on with particular neighborhoods, at least the ones you want to focus on, you are the expert. So it’s not hard to get this information either talk to top producers ask them, what do they say when they when their clients ask them? How’s the market going? What’s going on in Chicago with real estate? Have those things locked and loaded? Because, you know, that’s what the clients are looking for? They want they want somebody who really has that knowledge?

Sam Shaffer 22:03
Yeah, absolutely.

D.J. Paris 22:05
I’m going to talk about specifically you know, your process. So because you have grown this incredibly impressive business where you with your own production, your firm’s production, the the the employees, you have the other brokers that are independent at your firm. Can we talk a little bit about what what do you think has been the secret to your success?

Sam Shaffer 22:27
A couple of things. I feel like my business really elevated when I started embracing some of the peripheral websites like Zillow, realtor.com, etc. I remember when I first started marketing on those websites, I reached out to all my past clients, and I asked him to post a review of my services, and just an objective review. And I realized that I had a lot of momentum. And I was able to really take that to the next level. So to me that that really helped jumpstart my volume. I was always doing really well. But I felt like that took it to the next level. But to answer your question, the way that I run my business, and my agents that work with me, who are very like minded operate is in the client’s best interest. So we’re very client focused. And I know that’s kind of a cookie cutter thing to say. But it’s it’s authentic. And it’s truthful, we treat everyone like they’re our only client, and we wear the transaction on our sleeve. It’s really important to us to for them to have the best experience. And the way that we do that is I think we provide a very communicative approach to the business. And we’re very detail oriented. And I have a very specific template that I follow and a talking point how I negotiate offers for my for my clients, which I’m happy to elaborate on.

D.J. Paris 24:11
Yeah, you know, I think just want to make a quick point because I do want you to elaborate this I want to elaborate on this. I actually just wrote an article for a magazine about reviews, and how the importance of them we live in a review culture of course, with all the technology, especially you know, we you know, we all look at the reviews on Amazon before we buy a product. We certainly if we’re going to use a local business, we’re going to look at the Google reviews possibly Yelp. So in you know, you can get reviews on Facebook and other social platforms as well. However, I always tell our brokers here at our firm and also a lot of our listeners as well about pick at least one that you want to focus on in Sam’s case it was Zillow, and Zillow is a great idea because number one, all of your clients are using Zillow anyway, so they’re going to Zillow and they want to Do not probably see, you know, a zero reviews next to when they see your name. Now, if it’s your best friend, it probably doesn’t matter, they’re going to use you anyway. But every, every client you work with, you want to start to really politely ask them to review and explain to them, this really helps me, please give an honest appraisal of your experience with me. But you know, this would really help me with my business so that I can spend less time marketing and more time focused on my clients, like I hopefully did a good job for you. And you need to be persistent with asking and do it in a polite way. But also under understand that boy, it’s so important because even your referrals, the people that come to you from other clients are likely going to look up and see your reviews, just to confirm that, you know, everything is still going smooth. So I think that is such a great, great idea. I just wanted to make that quick point. And you know, you need to have a template to do that. You need to say, okay, the day after it closes. I’m, and I’m just using that as an example. I don’t know the exact perfect time to ask for a review. But it’s just as you need to specifically ask for those. And, you know, maybe ask a few times. And then thank the client for writing the review, of course. But yeah, I would love to hear more about your process outside of reviews, of course.

Sam Shaffer 26:14
Well, sure. So I think my approach to it, there’s two different approaches, one’s working with sellers, one’s working with buyers. But this is kind of a segue to a funny story. So I was working with a client that was working with another broker that had a horrible experience, I believe she did find me through some of my online marketing. And she was very detail oriented, somewhat high strung. And we had planned to do a marathon tour on a Saturday morning, taking us all the way through the evening. I’m very healthy. But this was a situation where I was like, deathly ill the day before. Sure. And I’m like there’s no way I’m not going to rise to the occasion. So I set the expectation that, you know, I’m going to be able to, to work with her. And she was appreciative that I showed up and she knew that I was deathly ill. But I put on my game face. And we went out there and we hit it hard. And this is a nice segue into, you know, my, the narrative about how I work with buyers. So we’re out touring a few places. And I call I look at her and I have no read whether she likes the place or not. She has like the ultimate poker face. So after we see a place, I take her aside, he said, What did you think? And she looked at me, she goes, I love it. Like you love it. I’m like, I had no idea. I said, you know, you’re allowed to express yourself when we’re at the showings to let me know what you’d like and you don’t like because it will help me. And then also, as a listing agent, you want to work with someone that wants to buy the property and that wants to get to the finish line. So I think you’re doing yourself an advantage by expressing how you feel. So after I explained that to her, we went to the next place. And she was very vocal, and we walked through the master bedroom, and this must have been seven, eight years ago. And I remember her saying, Wow, that’s master Licious. Like that. She’s really she’s like she picked up on it. She’s getting into it. So she expressed how she felt and the listing agent at the time she was a cold fish. But she turned us on to another property that wasn’t even listed yet. So just through the course of vocalizing and verbalizing, you know, how you feel and communicating. That’s okay, so we went to the next place, and she fell in love with it. And it turned out that the cold fish actually told someone else about it as well. So it was a multiple offer situation. So at the time, we did an escalation clause, and I got to call my client and tell her the great news that we got her the condo, and the official purchase price was 666. She’s like, what, there’s no way I’m gonna, I’m gonna have my purchase of my home be 666 battlement. So I called back the listing agent. I said great news. We just have to slightly make an adjustment to the price. If you’re okay with 665 She said she said fine. So But speaking about how I work with my clients is I want to portray my buyers to be the people that sellers and listing agents want to work with. So it’s a fine line. Like I don’t want to come across as my clients are pushovers. So it’s the Jedi mind trick where I tell the listing agents through how I communicate our bedside manner. Our professionalism, how we put together offers, that we’re the right buyers to get to the finish line. Don’t worry about the price I know might not be the exact price that your sellers are hoping for. But we’re the known entity He that are going to close a deal and make this a smooth and seamless transaction. And I think that’s, that’s really important. And it’s really helped grow my business and build my reputation amongst agents in the industry.

D.J. Paris 30:12
Wow, you just said something really impressive. And I don’t want to move on from it for a moment, because it’s again, something I don’t know that anyone else has articulated, that we’ve ever had on the show this idea of again, we, we sometimes brokers will forget that it is called a cooperative commission, right. So we just call it the coop, and we forget, maybe that stands for not maybe it definitely stands for cooperative. And so what Sam just said is really, really important, is being able to communicate to the listing agent, when you’re working with the buyer, like no, we are here to make this happen. And we’re very sincere and and, and developing that relationship with the list agent is so important, because it just makes the transaction go a lot smoother, and also sets the right the right expectation. And then you said something else even before that, that I also want to touch on, which was about setting the expectation, and or the process for your client who didn’t know she was allowed to express her opinion about the property in advance. You didn’t you know, that wasn’t expressed to her in advance. And what a great lesson to learn, because, of course, somebody who’s new to purchasing might not understand what the rules are, am I allowed to say something? Is it rude? What should I you know, and selling to them? I hate and you said this earlier, it’s like, you know, your job is to tell me how you feel about this so that we can continue to make adjustments and find the perfect place. And you’re right, I bet there’s a ton of buyers who have no idea Am I Shall I say something is it, you know, impolite. And so I just want to honor you for that. That’s a huge lesson to learn. I love it.

Sam Shaffer 31:47
Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. It’s, it’s really important that the buyer communicates how they feel, and that it’s done in the setting that will be advantageous to help them not only get the property, but hopefully at the best terms and the best price. I remember I put together an offer with a client. And I was going through my process with him and telling him how important it is that you’re going to be working with my preferred lender, Inspector, an attorney. I’m going to articulate this in the summary of the offer. I’m going to outline everything for the agent. Let them know how much you love it, that you’re truly over the moon. And this client. He was at my office, this was before Docusign. I mean, they were actually at my office signing. And he said to me, he’s like, no, none of that’s gonna matter, Sam. He’s like, the seller only cares about the best price. So I called him up. And this was such a wonderful phone call to make. And I said, I’m letting you know that we weren’t the highest price. And he’s like shit, and I said, Congratulations, we got the condo. Wow, did you do it? I said, I told you, I gave you the recipe. I walked you through it. He’s like, I didn’t think you were serious. I didn’t think that was going to work. And it doesn’t always work. But in that situation, it was really, really helpful to be that known entity for the other side.

D.J. Paris 33:19
Yeah, I mean, we always, you know, forget that the price isn’t always the most important characteristic for to get a seller to agree or on the flip side. What often will help is hey, this guy, Sam Shaffer, I know him, he’s great. He will get this closed. He has a great reputation. And you know, that influences the other party quite a bit. And so I think you’re so right about integrity, and and playing nice in the sandbox with others. Can you talk a little bit about how the process is when working with sellers

Sam Shaffer 33:56
working with sellers is potentially a little bit more stressful. I feel like you have a little bit more skin in the game. But it’s important I feel to have both the seller side and the purchase side. So when I work with sellers, I don’t want any drama in my life. Okay, I have two spirited boys at home 10 and 13 They’re cool kids I love them. So there’s you know you walk into your house and there’s family commitments and things like that so I don’t want to have to add any extra drama into my already crazy life. So what I tell my sellers is that I’m doing it all Okay, so I’m going to market the property on all the majors syndicated syndicated sites, big social media presence, and then I’m gonna spare no expense for my marketing. Okay, so that’s going to be high resolution photos, 3d walkthrough, floor plans, video, etc. So I’m doing it all I’m running open houses. I’m overly community Get communicative with my sellers. So I’m hard on myself because I take things personally. But I set up all those processes ahead of time and know that I’m doing everything I can to advocate for my clients and for specifically for my sellers, and it helps me, you know, rest, rest assured that I’m doing all the right things for them.

D.J. Paris 35:25
Yeah. And, you know, again, I don’t, I don’t think that every broker out there does all of those things. I know they don’t. And it’s, it’s one of those things that is so important that, you know, if you’re, you know, going to work with a seller, you owe it to them, to really give them the best opportunity to sell their property, which means doing all those things like high resolution photos and floor plans and 3d walkthroughs. And making sure it’s distributed everywhere online. And a lot of brokers, maybe they don’t do that. Now, I have a question what happens when you have a seller that is adamant on an unrealistic price? This comes up as a question from our listeners all the time saying, Well, gosh, what do you do when somebody’s just not willing to budge? And you know, it’s not going to sell at that price?

Sam Shaffer 36:11
Well, you get good at walking that tightrope you talk out of both sides of your mouth. Yeah. Okay. So you say, you know, I’m going to continue to fight and advocate and do everything I can to get you the best price and the best terms, the markets, most likely going to dictate what someone’s willing to pay. But you know, I’m willing to continue to, to advocate and to do everything I can to try to get you that price that you’re looking for. And you push, you push back on the seller, and you push again. And then you then you be quiet. So specifically today, before I jumped on this podcast, I have an offer on a listing, we’re a little bit overpriced, we countered at a number. The buying agent basically, is willing to come up, we basically we countered at 320. And they were 300. Logically, you’d think we’d land this deal at 310, which is a sweetheart deal for my seller. And he’s firm at 320. Yeah, so I did the tap ends. And I told him, Hey, I think you know, we could probably split the difference and get a deal done. He’s like, I’m not gonna go below 320. So I said, Okay, of course I understand. Let me go back to the buyer, I’m going to try to get you is the best price the best terms as I can. My read on it is the highest, we’ll go with 310. But you know, maybe we can catch lightning in a bottle, we’ll catch him at 320. If not, we’ll continue to hunt and fight. And you know, there’s a chance we may be having this conversation a month or two from now. We’re not, we’re not willing to throw in the towel, we value the relationship, and we’re going to certainly do our best. But hopefully, we don’t have this conversation if we do. You know, maybe we have to, at that point, make an adjustment to expectations. Surely it’s more work for me. But it’s difficult. And this is a hard business and people that are in it understand it’s hard and the outsiders looking in, don’t necessarily think that this is a challenging business that we’re in. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 38:18
know it, for sure. It for sure is. And I mean, I run into this even when I sold a condo myself, and I knew better. And I still was like, No, I need to get this price. And of course, I was no way I was going to get that price. And stupidly, I kept it at that price for a couple of months or a month. No, it wasn’t a couple of months, it was a month. And I paid that mortgage again. And I was like I that was a an expensive lesson to learn. And even though I knew better emotionally, I needed it. I wanted it to be at a certain level. And I really needed an objective third person to go Hey, stupid, lower at $10,000. And let’s let’s close this thing. And, and as soon as I did that, I got a million more showings and I got an offer like two days later. But you know, we forget that it is it is a tough thing for a seller to understand about price. So as Sam was saying, you have to be compassion empathic, but also firm, you need to be able and the cool thing with with em read the software that here is used for the MLS in Chicago, for our listeners who aren’t in our local markets, but I suspect in the MLS is that you utilize this feature exists is you can see the number of eyeballs that have looked at the property on the MLS. And then you can use that as data to as feedback to provide to your seller to say, you know, look, we had 300 Realtors look at this property, at least on the website, and we didn’t get one showing. That is in my experience that is particularly unusual. So it may be an indicator for us to be more flexible with our pricing. But you know, always having that data is helpful because it takes it away from you would like it to be at a certain point to be going no here’s what the market is telling us. And I think sometimes we forget that those tools are there to help give us that data to then further Are you no help our cause and trying to get the deal closed? Yeah, tell us tell us a little bit more about about your firm. I want to know more about Chicago properties, because you guys are a boutique business very successful. So I feel even strange to use the word boutique because it, it suggests small and it is by no means small. And the amount of production you guys are huge, are quite large. So talk you talk a little bit about, you know, how you guys run your business, you and your partner, and sort of what the clients, the clients that you’re looking to work with.

Sam Shaffer 40:31
Yeah, so I’m comfortable with the word boutique. I call it my work family. And we’re very like minded. I definitely am set in my ways. But I’m also open to learning and sharing with people in my office, the knowledge that they bring. So I think it’s a very, again, they use this word collaborative approach. We all kind of learned from one another. And I want people to steal the good ideas, and I want to steal their good ideas. I have a client that wants his buyers to be over the moon. And I said, Oh, I like that. So I stole it. So now, I want my clients to be over the moon and we use some cheesy cliches and we let them know that we’re our clients know that we are using cheesy cheesy cliches. So I always say part of my cheesy, cheesy cliche, but let’s turn over every stone before you know or kiss every frog before we find our prince or princess. And we have we operate with a lot of levity to in our office. Sure, well, we laugh we have a good time. And I think that’s that makes it very a fun environment to work in. We have a really cool office, we did a beautiful build out we have a pool table that gets used on Friday nights, we have a stock bar. If you go behind our office, our parking lot leads into the grand and Western liquor store. So when any one anyone comes to our office, we have I can guarantee we have exactly what they’re looking for to drink. And for those that don’t drink, we have a nice array of you know, CBD sodas and, and fun drinks and teas. And we’d like to have a good time and entertain. And I think that’s when you have fun and love what you do. It makes it a lot a lot easier to be successful.

D.J. Paris 42:32
Yeah, I think that’s true. We i did i do our, our website for our company. And we we had all these very serious pictures of our management we have there’s like 10 of us. And we had these very, very stoic pictures and we’re serious. And then my boss is joking, joking around with me goes, we joke around all day, why do we have serious pictures of us on our I mean, we bring our dog we have two dogs in the office right now, the dog should be featured on the website, we should be. So we hired a photographer, they came out. And we took goofy pictures, professional photos, but goofy, where we’re all doing something silly individually. And then collectively, we did a silly one. And my boss goes, that’s our personality. That’s what we do. And so I was like, and I’m our marketing guy. So I should have been realized this earlier. And I went You’re right. And then we made our website a little sillier. Now not that’s not everyone’s approach. And you know, again, it’s not a good fit for a lot of people who want to maintain a more professional atmosphere. But we’re just not that professional, quite frankly, we’re a lot of fun. And we’re very serious. And, and we we take really good care of our brokers. But we’re not that’s you know, we’re joking around kind of guys. And so we did that. And the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Because as as Sam saying, it’s showing on our authentic self. And I think that’s something that you need to look at all your marketing materials. And again, I’m not talking to Sam, of course, but all of our listeners, look at how you’re being portrayed on on social media. If you want to share that with your audience, make sure that your true personality comes through, look at your marketing materials. Look at your website, if you have one. And making sure that all of that is consistent with the message that you want your clients to understand about you. That’s That’s true and authentic. And it’s don’t try to be something you’re not I guess, right?

Sam Shaffer 44:18
Yeah, it’s definitely an interesting era we live in where it’s a fine line between bragging. Yes. Or it’s called the humble brag, which is still just a straight out brag. or providing value or showing the personal side of things. So it’s kind of art and science and yes, I don’t want to overly post and promote the things that I’m doing. Obviously I can’t wait to tell the world about the keeping it real podcast. Well, thank you. So that’ll be a humble brag, but you know, I I also like to post personal things of my family and vacations and things of that nature. But I’m also cognizant to of posting pictures when I’m vacationing, because I don’t want my clients to be like, Well, what’s Sam doing? Why isn’t he running an open house? So it’s the art and science behind it. For sure.

D.J. Paris 45:20
I have one, one last question for you. And this comes up a lot. And I’m curious on your thoughts. And we’ve seen study after study has shown us that the reason why a client will not use a realtor a second time, which by the way, the statistics are, are far and away that they are likely to use that same broker a second or multiple times after the first transaction. But for the times that they don’t, it seems to be that in the research, I’ve looked at that it says a lack of communication after the sale, right, so the transaction closes, you know, clients happy, you’re happy. And then it seems to be that a lot of brokers are going to move on to their next transaction. And as they continue to build their business, maybe the people that closed in the past aren’t as communicated with. And so I’m curious on, I imagine you likely do stay in touch with your clients. Do you have any suggestions for our listeners about what they should do after the sale?

Sam Shaffer 46:20
Is that Yeah, absolutely. You know, it’s, again, going back to this is a difficult business. And there’s aspects of the business that aren’t difficult, it’s not difficult to answer your phone or to show up for an appointment. Those are really easy. But sometimes you feel or I feel that it’s hard to pick up the phone and call a client three months later, because where’s the authenticity with that? Are you calling them because you want to check in and see how their dogs doing and how the moves going, or you have a ulterior motive, which is Tell Tell your friends and family how awesome I am. Right? So I tried to be respectful of my clients. And if you’re doing a lot of volume, there’s a lot of people to touch. So I think utilizing some of the social media components are important. But I also try to do personal touches, like I send out gifts every year for Christmas, or for the holidays with a nice card of me and my family. A little gift, I have a branded, we partnered with Dark Matter coffee. So we do coffee beans that are with our logo and a nice little brand of little lettering that talks about our, our style and our office. And we send that out every year and do little things like that, which I think are helpful.

D.J. Paris 47:40
Yeah, those are great suggestions. Yeah, it’s the bottom line is guys don’t lose touch. But also understand that there’s a way to authentically stay in touch, which is maybe it’s not that phone call three months. And if that doesn’t fit with your sort of personality, or maybe what the client, maybe the client doesn’t want to talk to you three months from now, they’re busy, they have their own lives. But there are ways like Sam was saying, utilizing social media if you are paying attention to what your clients are doing on social media, and you’re noticing on Instagram that they just want on a vacation, you know, shoot them a text and say Hey, I saw you were on you know out in wherever on Instagram that looked awesome, great, you know, glad to see you guys were enjoying yourself or or lob a phone call or an email over it doesn’t always have to be real estate related, but demonstrating that you’re noticing and paying attention I think is the most important thing and also, you know, remembering them when it’s holiday time and remembering to do things that are nice and and also you know basically it’s funny I was thinking I get I get a lot of from the service providers that I have in my life insurance and loan officers and you know, financial advisors and dentists and all of the people who who you see on a regular basis and you get a lot of you get a lot of cards that seem to be you know the that are just stamped with someone’s signature but you know I don’t get a lot of gifts in the mail either. Right so even just something as simple as what Sam mentioned, which is not simple but but certainly a lovely thought. I mean I didn’t get any gifts this year for many of my service providers who make money on me every single year. So you know it’s time to you know, you want to be generous and you want to make sure that people know that you’re still thinking about them. Yeah, and

Sam Shaffer 49:22
one other thing I do is I am on Facebook and it’s been pretty profitable website for me to use. When I see that someone has a new baby I send the baby gift. And I have so I have a relationship with red balloon they have my credit card on file, I call them up I said send them a baby gift. Here’s a template and I’ve had clients that the gifts I’ve sent them their children’s still have like that same little stuffed animal is like their go to stuffed animal that’s pretty special,

D.J. Paris 49:53
really special. It shows number one that you’re paying attention and number two that you care, right and those are care enough to actually do something about it. Boy, what a great suggestion. Well, I want to tell our listeners, by the way, that if you are a broker in the Chicagoland area and you’re interested in working for a firm like Chicago properties, and of course, Sam’s and his team don’t obviously work with every broker who comes their way. But if somebody is wanting to work with you, what is the best way they should reach out to you? And also, by the way, if I’m sorry, saying, Let me interrupt. Also, if you’re a client, if you’re a buyer, or a seller or renter and investor, anyone looking to work with someone like Sam, who’s so well respected in our community here for what he does, and his what his brokers do, what is the best way anybody should reach out to you? Well, I

Sam Shaffer 50:44
would say the best way is just to call me on my cell phone, which is 773-297-9792 or email, I can be reached at sam sa m, at shy prop calm, that is CH I like Chicago, P R. O P, like property, Sam at shy prop.com.

D.J. Paris 51:08
And by the way, even if you’re happy at your current firm, or you’re a client or a potential customer, and already have a great realtor, and you appreciated this episode and listening to Sam, shoot him a message, let him know that, that you appreciated some tips, because this is, out of all the episodes we’ve done, you might have given just about the most tips as anyone’s ever done. So we really appreciate that. So on behalf of the listeners, Sam, we thank you for being part of the show. And I appreciate your patience, we had a small little technical difficulty at the beginning and Sam was was really patient throughout. So this I think is indicative of how he treats his clients. Because even how he treated me it was was very cordial and thoughtful. And I appreciate it. And you got us all the information that this is kind of a behind the scenes things, guys, we always send out a pre interview packet and say, Hey, could you answer a few questions for us? 90% of the time, we have to hound the person to say, Can you please and we know that everyone’s busy, Sam got this back to us with probably more detailed information than we’ve ever received. So I am making a pitch for Sam that if you are a client, and you’re looking for somebody who is detail oriented, you gotta go with Sam, because not only is his reputation stellar, but I have first hand experience about how much time he put in just to answering our own questions. And of course, if you’re a broker looking to work with somebody like Sam, I would, I would give the pitch the same pitch as well. So guys, reach out to Sam, you can visit his website, as Sam mentioned at shy Prop C H I P R O p.com. And you can find all of his social media platforms as well. Links on his website and reach out to him that way or call him or shoot him an email. So Sam, on behalf of listeners, thank you and on behalf of Sam and myself to everyone who is kind enough to find value in what we do here. Thank you. Also, please tell a friend if there’s ever any other brokers turn to the broker in the office next to you if you work in an office or just somebody had come across and say, Hey, if you want to hear from these top producers, check out our podcast. This helps us in innumerable ways. And also leave us a review too. There’s plenty of places you can do that. But just being a listener is good enough but so thank you to to our listeners, Sam. Thank you and we will see everyone on our next episode and Sam again, thanks for being on the show

Sam Shaffer 53:21
was my pleasure. Thanks for having me, DJ

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Will The 2020 Real Estate Market Be Flat? • Monday Market Minute • Carrie McCormick

January 27, 2020

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Welcome to the January edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick from At Properties!

In our first Monday Market Minute of 2020, Carrie discusses the real estate market both nationwide and locally in Chicago. She also talks about the importance of making a home look as close to perfect as possible before listing it – buyers are demanding it in the Instagram and HGTV era! I provide a tip about how to send mailers in a way that adds HUGE value.

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

Please follow Carrie on Instagram by clicking here.

Carrie McCormick D.J. Paris Monday Market Minute

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made for real estate agents and by real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host and guide through the show and today we have another one of our Monday market minute which is our regular feature a regular episode we do every single month with a Chicago legend Carrie McCormick from App properties. If you are not familiar with Carrie, she is one of the top top top producers in Chicago the top 1/10 of 1% Out of over 46,000 brokers in the city. She has been a top producer for over 20 years. And by the way should all check out her new website which is Carrie McCormack r e.com. And also follow her on Instagram. She has the very best Instagram account I’ve ever seen for a realtor, which is Carrie McCormick real estate. So go to Instagram, look for Carrie McCormick real estate. We’ll also link to it in the show notes. But once again, welcome Carrie, thanks for being on the show.

Carrie McCormick 1:53
What an intro. Thank you so much for having me. As always, this is one of my favorite things to do.

D.J. Paris 1:59
Well, we’re super excited to have you and the fans and the listeners love it. And you just bring so much great content, you’ve actually are our oldest guests, you’ve been on the show for several years. Like oldest, no, not oldest in that way you are since the beginning. You stuck you were with us when we had no listeners. And now you have 1000s and 1000s of people who listen to every episode. So we’re super grateful that you’re with us, and the fans. Love you. So we’re glad to have you.

Carrie McCormick 2:24
Awesome. Well, thank you very much. And I appreciate that. And I always like to start by saying, you know, it’s about giving back in our community as well. You know, and so if there’s any listeners out there, whether you’re a broker or not a broker, if there’s any questions that you have, you know, always, always here and available to answer any questions that people have or just bounce some ideas off of. So always feel free to reach out to me directly as well.

D.J. Paris 2:48
Yeah, it’s amazing how, how approachable Carrie is, you know, for how busy she is. Her numbers are beyond incredible. She ever worked seven days a week, and yet still finds the time to help give back on this show and a lot of other ways as well. So this is really, really honored to have you. Well, thank you. You’re welcome. What do you want to talk about today?

Carrie McCormick 3:11
Yeah, just a few things. So just a little bit of forecasting into 2020. Since we’re, of course, you know, kicking off the year. And I wish I had a little bit better news. And I read a lot of different articles. And of course, I’m engrained in the real estate market, but it just seems like it’s going to be a little bit more of the same as last year. So it’s going to be a little bit boring. But the forecast shows that we’re going to have slight dips on in the market. And but it’s there’s such small dips, that it’s essentially just gonna be a flat market. So we’re not going to see much different here in Chicago. So it’s kind of like we’re just going to be steady here. In a lot of that. Last year, as everyone knows, there was a few things that attributed to our market. And the number one thing that people talk about is, of course, is the taxes, you know, here in Chicago, so that’s been a big a big issue. And then, you know, some talks of the pensions, you know, so and just our local politics and our local issues that we have here. So, you know, between taxes, pensions, local issues, people just were, you know, extremely hesitant about making purchases and or selling. So it just it became a little bit of, you know, tough talks last year. And I do predict that we’re going to see a lot of that the same this year. The good news about this year is, you know, predictions are hard. But you know, as far as in articles that I read in people that I talked to, you know, there might be a few other or a few more interest rate drops, which they’re so low right now, but it would be good to see a little bit further dip in the interest rates. I think that’ll get some of our buyers off the fence, right? Yes. So once we see them come off the fence. We’ll Pick up some, you know, some more activity in in the marketplace. There’s also been talks about uncertainty of the US economy as a whole. And believe me, this is not my forte, but I’ve got a ton of clients in the financial arena. And, you know, they’re pretty excited about the market as a whole, you know, they don’t really see they think that 2020s can be a great year for for the US economy. So I hope that that is correct. So I think, you know, in our stock markets, and just more of the big picture, the economy is going to do well, I think just you know, Illinois has got to deal with their, their local problems here. But, you know, there’s some areas like, I always think of Chicago is a market within a market, right, so like the West Loop versus, let’s say, Linkin Park, or Lakeview or Bucktown, they all are very different, you know, the housing stock is very different. The absorption rate in each of these markets are very different. So when you look at Chicago, even as a whole, you’ve got to take a look at all the different we’ll call them sub markets within Chicago, like, for example, the West Loop, right, that’s one of our hottest neighborhoods right now. And we’re seeing bidding wars in in the West Loop. But then you go over to I’m not gonna pick on Linkin Park, but you know, you’ve got some, you know, two $3 million homes and Linkin Park, that their market times are hitting 200 days, you know, so it’s, they’re all just, it’s all very different. So when you’re working with buyers and sellers, you’ve really got to concentrate and dig down into each market.

D.J. Paris 6:36
Yeah, I think that’s right. And remember that, you know, real estate is hyperlocal. So you need to know those trends you need to know more than your clients about those particular neighborhoods. Now, do you know of any cities outside of Chicago that I’ve seen been seeing decent growth?

Carrie McCormick 6:52
Oh, a lot. So, you know, when my sellers are selling, they’re doing one of three things. They’re either one moving completely out of Illinois, which is sad. They’re either renting or they’re staying in, you know, local, you know, whether downsizing or upsizing. So there is a big push out of Illinois and the places that are seeing the biggest growth to answer your question is Arizona, so Tucson, Arizona saw a 10% growth? And this one will shock you? Boise, Idaho? Wow. 11% increase in 2019?

D.J. Paris 7:33
What is it? What’s in Boise, Idaho?

Carrie McCormick 7:37
I have no idea. I haven’t really looked into it. But my guess is, you know, when people are moving out of Illinois, it’s, you know, jobs. So wherever some of the tech industries are, which, you know, I’m seeing a lot of Nashville, Austin, not so much California. I mean, they’ve got a lot of, you know, great tech industry out there. But I think the cost of living out there is a lot. Sure. You know, Arizona, as I mentioned, Oregon, Portland is a big one. You know, but I don’t know with Boise, Idaho, they saw 11% growth. So I’m kind of curious of what’s going on in Boise, Idaho.

D.J. Paris 8:10
Wow, that yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. It is, it is interesting that, you know, Illinois has seen I think negative growth over the last several years, and our taxes are high. And a lot of people move down like Florida, where their taxes are much different. So, yeah, it’s one of those things that I think Realtors need to need to be abreast of and be able to answer those questions when their clients.

Carrie McCormick 8:31
So you know, I feel as a realtor, I’m, you know, from Chicago, I’ve lived here my entire life will probably never leave Chicago, this is my home. And, you know, I feel a little bit of a responsibility of what do we do and just educating our buyers and sellers and, you know, having them stay here. So one big trend that’s been happening to help our clients and to help our sellers is understanding our market and what the buyers want. So right now, buyers don’t have time, everyone is so busy. buyers don’t have time to come into a house and renovate, right? They want to walk into a house that is at least 95% done meetings. They just don’t have time to do it. And they don’t have the vision to do it. And I blame that on my Instagram account. I blame it on I blame it on, you know, HDTV, you know, we’re showing all these beautiful, great things and people that they get that in their mind, which is great. And so when they walk in the house, they’re saying well, you know, this isn’t what I want. So now what sellers have to do is sellers have to do the work, right. So if they have a house that has you know, older finishes, you know, it’s just it’s not going to fly in this market. So either a they’ve got a price it lower or the seller has to do the work. And just as buyers don’t have time sellers don’t have the time so what I’ve seen my Roll has turned into is very much a concierge service like I’ve got an army of professionals that can come in and, and do these jobs. And I’ll just, you know, a few of them that I use just to share with everyone. One is a company called renovation sells. The owner, his name is Mike, I’ve met with him one on one amazing guy. And you look at some of the work that they’ve done. You know, he’ll come into a house, he’ll give a quote, and he just he sends his guys in, and gals in just to do the work. So it’s done. So renovation sells, there’s a company called Kirby Oh, that does the same thing. I met with the owner, Tom of FIX IT people another fabulous company, where they you know, especially with like punch list or inspection items, you know, they’ll come in and take care of everything. But my point of all of that is, is sellers don’t have the resources, or they don’t have the time or both. So our job is to help coordinate all of that, because if we can get all of, if we can get the home market ready. And we can get the price up, it’s just going to help overall help our statistics here in Chicago market times will end up going down prices will kind of bump up a little bit. So you know, we’ve got a responsibility as well of helping kind of boost our market, as well.

D.J. Paris 11:26
Yeah, it’s so important that homes are ready to show and it used to be I think, many, many years ago, the prevailing thought was keep it pretty empty. So people can visualize their own stuff inside of various rooms. And I think that’s gone away, as you said, with all of the, you know, television, programming, HGTV, Instagram, where everyone’s showing their food and how perfect everything looks, it really does I walk, I walk into places that I expect them to look perfect to. And that’s what’s so great as a realtor is there are these these companies that will come in and make adjustments and fixes their staging companies. And they can they can do that for your client. And this, this statistics, I don’t have any in front of me, but I know, doing that, you know, sells homes faster. And for more money.

Carrie McCormick 12:10
It does, it does. So you know, again, a part of our job is to, you know, to be more of a concierge service and get all of this done for our sellers. So that would be my recommendation is get your army of people behind you. And you know, when you’re talking with your buyers and sellers, again, even with a buyer, if you tell the buyer, you know, we can buy this house at a great price. I’ve got the people that can come in and do this for you, Mr. Mrs. Buyer, you know, let’s put an offer in and get the work done. And then you kind of have to help facilitate that.

D.J. Paris 12:41
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And that’s that’s something that I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, there are some brokers that still don’t even use professional photography, and they’re in their listings, which, which is insane. So, you know, you need to go one step way beyond that, which is, you know, you need to have an honest conversation with the sellers and say, look, I can sell this home for, you know, more than what you know, of home that wasn’t staged or wasn’t fixed up, you know, could be. So let’s, let’s get that rolling. And I think sellers really tend to appreciate that sort of level of honesty, although those conversations can be difficult.

Carrie McCormick 13:14
Absolutely. But you know, you do it once or twice, and you’re golden.

D.J. Paris 13:19
Yeah. And it also really separates you from all the other real estate professionals out there that just want to get the listing will do anything, the seller says and is so desperate for business that they aren’t willing to have the find the courage to have those conversations, and then the home sits on the market for for you know, a lot longer of time. And then that realtor is blamed anyway. So you might as well do it right from the beginning and have that conversation. And that’ll really separate you and probably win you more business ultimately. Great. So I have so this is my marketing minute, for this month. And I was just talking to Carrie about this offline. So we had a I got a mailer. I’ve been getting a mailers from a former guest on the show Michael Rosen lives, I want to credit him because I think this is a really, really cool idea. And I imagine it takes a bit of work, but I appreciate the work that he’s put in. So he happens to be the realtor who sold the most homes in my building. The reason I know that is I get a mailer from him a flyer once a month that says that any you know, which is a very awesome thing for him to have accomplished. But here’s what he does on top of that, that is incredibly useful. So for everyone out there who’s doing mailers, flyers, I thought this was such a good idea because we get mailers and flyers all the time from tons and tons of Realtors, but but mostly they’re just one offs. Maybe I get one a quarter, maybe one a year, and I often just forget. And I you know I tossed it away but with Michael we get them every single month and here’s what he does, which is really cool. He lists on the front of the of the flyer all of the homes that have currently sold or that recently sold in I think the past three months and he lists the type of weather It’s one bedroom, two bedroom, and then the the price and the square footage. And then he also says, Here are the ones that are currently on the market. And that’s all on the front page. And he his face. I’m not even sure his face is on the front page or his name. And then when you turn it over, it’s got his name. So I thought, wow, that is so cool. Because everyone who lives in a building, in my case, it’s, it’s a, I guess it’s I don’t know, if it’s technically a high rise, we’re at 2020, some floors, but it’s there’s a lot of there’s over 200 unit owners in our building, every one of them is always curious what homes are on the market. And we always forget that the average person isn’t really paying attention to that unless they’re in the market to buy or sell a property. They’re probably not going on Zillow, and looking up to see what’s available in the building. So this is a great way within five seconds, I looked at this paper and I went, Oh, I know exactly what’s going on sales wise, and I’m in the business. And I don’t know what’s going on in my own building. And I thought that is really, really smart. And then I turned it over. And then there’s Michael and and the other thing I want to mention that he did for anyone out there thinking, Well, gosh, that sounds expensive. And I’m sure it is expensive. But it was co branded with a lender. So for those of you who are going well, I don’t really want to spend that kind of money. Well, I don’t know what the situation is with Michael and his lender. But I assume that the lender helped cover some of those costs, because the lender also wants some advertising. So on the back it says Joe’s Michael and then whoever the lender is that he used with it. So I just thought, Wow, what a smart idea instead of just a flyer saying, Hey, I’m a realtor, I’d love to work with you. This was actually I thought a real item of value, as like the people from Brian Buffini would say, I thought boy, that is so smart. So I just wanted to give a shout out to our former guests for for doing something that from a marketing perspective. I thought boy, that is smart.

Carrie McCormick 16:43
That is great. I love it.

D.J. Paris 16:46
Well, I think that wraps up our Monday market minute. Once again, we had the great Carrie McCormick on the show, I want everybody to do two things, I want you to go visit her website because talking to Carrie about this on offline just a few minutes before we started. And I love it because it’s simple. It’s clean, it tells the story of what who Kerry is what she’s all about. And it’s just I think the perfect example of what what I build websites. So the idea of her website is just so so smart. So go visit Carrie McCormick, r e.com. This will also be a link in the show notes. But more importantly, check out her Instagram that is a living breathing thing she posts. She creates posts almost every single day. They always are amazing. They’re not only informative, they’re funny, sometimes they look good. And they’re exactly what a broker should really be modeling. If they want to build an Instagram following and she’s got over 6000 followers, she gets tons of engagement on her posts, which is which is really the goal of Instagram is so that people can react to things. So please check out her Instagram, which is Carrie McCormack real estate. And then Carrie, if we have any buyers, sellers, investors who are interested in work with you, or maybe other brokers that would love to talk about maybe even joining your team, what’s the best way that someone should reach out to you?

Carrie McCormick 18:07
So I always say just call me 312-961-4612 Call text email Kerry at@properties.com. And everyone who knows me I respond very quickly. And we’d love to hear from everybody.

D.J. Paris 18:24
Yeah, I want I really encourage our listeners to to reach out in particular. Specifically, if there’s anybody who’s looking for a realtor, Carrie is literally one of the very most successful realtors in Chicago she would she earned, which is a very impressive thing. So everyone should be checking out Carrie go to her website, go visit her on Instagram and follow her there as well. So carry on behalf of the listeners, I want to thank you for being with the show for several years now. I was saying in the very beginning, and I used a poor choice of words, but you are the guest that has been with us the longest and that’s really no surprise because of your reputation of being somebody who gives back in the industry. She’s constantly speaking, giving her time to help other realtors and of course her clients as well. So thank you so much. And on behalf of Carrie and myself I want to thank the listeners for you know, being supportive and paying attention to our show and also sharing it with a friend if you know any other realtor that could benefit from listening to people like Carrie, definitely pass the information pass the podcast over because the more you pass over, the more episodes we can do and the more people we can help. So thank you to everyone and Carrie we will see you next month.

Carrie McCormick 19:38
All right, bye bye

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

How Real Estate Agents Can Use YouTube To Close 100 Sales In 2020 • Jackson Wilkey • The YouTube Agents

January 24, 2020

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Can realtors use YouTube as a source of buyer and seller leads? YES! Jackson Wilkey, one half of Portland and Seattle’s famous YouTube Agents is living proof that prospecting on YouTube works! In the past four months they’ve closed 12 million in production ALL from YouTube. They’re on pace to close 100 sales transactions in 2020. In this interview Jackson shares his YouTube secrets that anyone can do to drive more qualified leads right to you!

The YouTube Agents have a course for brokers to learn this process. Click here to check it out!

Use promo code “DJ” for a special discount!

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host, and guide through the show. And in just a moment, we’re gonna bring on the YouTube agents who get 100% of their business through YouTube. And they’re crushing it. I’m super excited. They’re from Portland. That’s a good time to mention that this show is now nationwide we’ve always had nationwide listeners. But now we’re getting nationwide guests. So if you know someone in your market that we need to feature on our show a top producer doing unique things that people need to know about, then you please let us know you can always visit us at our website to contact us which is keeping it real pod.com Of course we have every episode we’ve ever produced streaming on that website. And of course, you can subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play Spotify, Pandora, anywhere you listen to podcast, just search for keeping it real look for the one that has the name DJ, that’s me. And because there’s a few others with the same name, but you’ll find us pretty easily and guys, also, please tell a friend, we are committed to doubling the number of episodes that we did last year this year. So we’re going to do that but we need your help. We want to double our listenership. All I’m asking you to do is think of one person, one real estate agent that could benefit from hearing the secrets of top producers and pass this over to him you’ll be doing this a huge, huge favor. And thank you very much in advance for that. And lastly, guys, follow us on Facebook. So that’s facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pot every single day we post an article that we find online that is designed to help you grow your business. That’s pretty much all we post along with updates to all of our new episodes. So our whole intention is to help you take your business to the next level by talking to people who are already at that next level. So thanks again for your continued listenership. Thanks for telling a friend and oh one last thing. I keep asking for things, saying it’s the last thing but this is literally the last thing. Please rate us if your specifically whatever system you’re using to listen to our show, whether it’s iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, etc. Please do us a favor and rate us the more ratings you do the better we show up in the search results and the more people we can help. So thanks again guys. And now onto our episode with the YouTube agents.

Today on the show, we have Jackson Wilkie one half of the YouTube agents from next home Realty connection in Portland, Oregon. Now Jackson and his partner Jesse have successfully cracked the code of building a massive real estate business through YouTube. With our obsession with the SEO video and all of their in depth knowledge of YouTube related topics. What they’ve been able to do is transition a successful traditional real estate business into a YouTube lead machine, where 90% of their business is now coming through YouTube, which is unbelievable. They are on track to close 100 transactions from YouTube alone this year. And I also want to give them another shout out because in the last four months, I believe they closed 12 million in production, mostly from YouTube. You got to check out their YouTube channel, which is called YouTube agents. And they have a course that they want to teach you about how to use YouTube and you can go to the YouTube agents.com. And we do have a promo code put in the promo code DJ and you’ll get a certain percentage off. But anyway, welcome Jackson to the show.

Jackson Wilkey 4:43
Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. I’m pumped to talk about this.

D.J. Paris 4:47
I am so pumped because this is not an exaggeration. You are the first realtor first to realtors, you and your partner that I think are actually doing the most important thing with respect to staying in touch with The public, which is providing actual content that people care about and need, instead of just going, Hey, I’m gonna post a Facebook ad. And here’s my new listing. How cool is this? Like, nobody cares, right? But if I’m moving to Portland, I’m gonna find your videos, because they’re all about what I need to know before I moved to Portland, and what neighborhoods and it’s so brilliant. And of course, I’m going to reach out to you guys, because you’re the ones providing all that great content anyway, I’m getting way ahead of ourselves. Tell me about tell me about you. How did you how did you get into real estate?

Jackson Wilkey 5:30
So pretty funny, I actually and this is the kicker, I just moved to Portland two years ago. So I don’t know anybody. Nothing. I came here from a little town in northern Idaho, to get to the big city came for a sales job. And it was actually had a friend or my wife had a friend whose husband worked in the escrow business. So I got on as a sales rep for an escrow company. Basically, everybody knows that title. Rep. And sure, I had no idea what the hell I was doing, because I just came from a, you know, a blue collar town where I was building power lines. And so Anyways, enough of that I got into sales at this escrow company and learn quickly that Realtors really wanted value. You know, that’s what we hear all the time. So I started figuring out that, like, video was this thing that all realtors wanted. And so I just kind of got super in depth of learning it, editing, shooting it, all of that stuff. And after literally 10 to 11 months, I was like, What the hell am I doing? Like, I’m on the wrong side of this, I feel that I could, you know, really leverages myself to get business. And then also I met Jesse, my business partner. He’s a very traditional style realtor who in his first year did like 12,000,011 point 5 million. Wow, traditional cold calling, boss, right? So anyways, we kind of hit it off, he really wanted to bring this like marketing and video to his business. And I was like, screw on jumping over. So we kind of like, teamed up, kind of per se, I got into real estate. And I’m like, I’m just gonna crush it. I know it. Well, I found out literally the first four or five months like this is hard as hell. Yeah. And so I was doing cold calling because he was so good at it. It was like easy for him. For me. It’s the hardest thing in the world. Like, I can’t ask for business. I can literally go anywhere. And I’m going to stand out and people will know me. But I couldn’t call call couldn’t do or not couldn’t do that kind of stuff. So I was really leveraging video. That’s how I got into real estate. I don’t know if you want me to keep going. But like, yeah, no, I love the story. Yeah, so because the story is kind of what got us to where we are today in a very quick timeframe. So like, literally, I’m getting to a point to where like, I’m gonna work myself back into working a real job. And, you know, it’s pretty stressful. But I’m like, I got to start leveraging this video. So here’s what’s really important. Everybody knows who Gary Vee is. And he always talks about being the digital mayor of your town. And so doing these interviews and restaurants and shops, and we started doing this really, really hardcore, like going to all these bars, restaurants doing the interviews and the town, the business owners, they all loved it. We put it to Instagram, we put it to Facebook everywhere, man, and it was killer. But we never got one phone call from it, dude. So I’m like, What the hell? Like, none of this works, man. What do so now I’m like, Okay, it’s real crushed. I need to figure out like I love video, this is how I’m going to get business or I’m going to get out of real estate. And I got down this just absolute rabbit hole wormhole of SEO, search engine optimization or, and leveraging the second largest search engine in the entire world. YouTube, YouTube. Sure. Yeah. So that’s really how it started. And then I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. So there was a lot of trial and error. But now we’ve got we got the systems Absolutely. Dial.

D.J. Paris 9:03
Yeah, let’s talk a little bit about the kind of content you guys provide. Because for our listeners, who are mostly real estate agents, yeah, brokers, realtors, you know, every state calls a realtor is a little bit of a different term, but, but we have realtors, and essentially what what you guys have done is what I’ve been preaching. We have 650 Realtors at our company. And I tell all of them to do this. Nobody does that, of course. But this is really important because essentially what Jackson did, and he talks about cracking the code, and there’s a lot to this. It’s not He wasn’t just, you know, throwing darts in the dark. But essentially, he started you know, you can also think of it logically too. It’s like, what’s the kind of content that somebody who’s moving who is going to be transacting in real estate, especially if they’re moving to Portland or within Portland? What are some of the videos they might be seeking out prior to them buying or selling right? And so that’s what that’s what Jackson’s did and Jesse and they now have a huge treasure and library of this content, where it’s like, we’re the best neighborhoods. Hey, here’s some things you need to know before you move to Portland. So they created all this unbelievably smart and good content because it doesn’t, you can’t just put the content out there if it right up high quality because someone else will outrank you, based on you know, how long people watch and all of those those metrics. But basically, you guys probably just sat down at a whiteboard and said, What are the topics that people need to know when they’re thinking about moving either to Portland or within Portland? And then you started creating great content? Right?

Jackson Wilkey 10:35
Right. So there’s a lot there. So what real estate agents traditionally do is usually Gary Vee was very, I reference him a lot. He’s definitely a motivator, but talked about like 90% of people who like on on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, put out selfish content, like does that help?

D.J. Paris 10:52
Yeah, we were just, we were joking. We were just joking about this offline. It’s like, yeah, hey, you know what, what Realtors do because it’s easy, is they’ll post a link to their newest listing and say, Hey, guys, I have this listing for sale. And that’s great. And that’s fine. But it’s not really providing value to the 99% of the people that follow you who actually aren’t in the middle of, you know, wanting to buy or sell a home. It’s nice, and it makes something hey, he’s doing well, that’s great. But it doesn’t really provide them any value.

Jackson Wilkey 11:17
Well, here’s the number one thing it was never searched. So that’s, that’s the true and that’s, that’s the difference. And so, it I always reference it. It’s like on Facebook, when you look at like you’re scrolling through your feed and your friends sitting there and he’s at the Subaru dealer every single day talking about come down and buy a Subaru from me like you just go right past it. So real estate agents, not not because it’s easy. They just don’t know better. Like they see agents posting their open houses and listings, and maybe their principal brokers are older, and they’re telling them to do these things. And so that’s what you see. But they’re always starting with the verbiage of look at me in my open house and look at me and my listing. And none of this assertion, it kind of comes off as like selfish. And yes, I think if you wrap your head around, like, you know, the value proposition. So what we did was Yes, I got absolutely obsessed. I’m like, holy, I don’t know if you cuss on here, but like, Sure, whoa, holy shit, I figured out there was I have the documents still on my screen on my computer. I found 13,200 searches every single month that had no competition. And that was 27 video titles. And I’m like, holy crap, now I’m cracking into something here. So I started just writing video titles down and then clicking on them. And what I’ll use this is, you know, anybody listening, you can download Keywords Everywhere. It’s a Chrome extension that used to be free when I started. Now, it’s $10. And you get 100,000 keywords. So literally, you can search for months and months and months, every day, you will not run out of your keywords. So 10 bucks is the most worst thing in the world. So what it does, sure, it attaches itself to your I use Chrome. So it attaches itself to Chrome as an extension. Anytime you search anything on Google or YouTube, it’s going to tell you how many times that is searched. what it costs to pay for that, that longtail keyword or that keyword and the competition. So what you do is you just start typing in random things, and you need to wrap your brain around. You really need to wrap your brain around what people are searching for. This is an absolute search engine. People want answers to their questions. So I found out like, hey, people, when they’re moving to my city, they want to know how much it costs. So the cost of living in Portland, Oregon, well, that was searched almost 6000 times a month. And guess how much competition zero. So now I rank for that video, I have the number one video that gets 130 130 to 300 views every single day now just cracked. You know, we’re close to 20,000 views on that video alone. And guess what? I shot it with my cell phone, edit it for on iMovie for free. So yeah, man, it’s it. That was the game changer right there.

D.J. Paris 13:57
Yeah, this is really important because as marketers or as realtors, we’re constantly thinking about how do we get in front of our clients? And more importantly, we often think how do we show up number one on Google, right? Well, for a realtor that’s really hard to do. You’re competing against for and when we talk about showing up number one on Google, we’re talking about showing up for phrases, wherever whatever your specialty is, right maybe you specialize in a particular neighborhood in your in your in your town or your city and you want to show up number one for Best Realtor in Lincoln Park or somewhere in Portland, right? But the problem is, you’re competing against a ton of other players in that space. Right? You’ve got Zillow. You’ve got Redfin, you’ve got, of course, all the brokerage firms that also want that lead. Right. So we’re talking about Google searches. Well, it’s really, really hard to rank organically in the top three slots. In on Google just really difficult. It costs a tremendous amount of money even to earn your way up there. You can certainly buy your way up there with ads, but it’s really difficult to actually earn a natural spot there. However, the most forgotten about a search engine for this type of business is really YouTube, right? So people are still searching for those exact same phrases and keywords on, as Jackson said, the second largest search engine online, which of course is YouTube. And as Jackson said, there were no other players in his space for those those key phrases.

Jackson Wilkey 15:20
Yep. And that is exactly right. So when you look at it, like Google, and blogs, there’s billions and billions and billions of blogs or blogs, and it is so hard to compete. It’s basically impossible. So that was what we did is, is I started looking into YouTube, which, if you don’t know it, Google owns YouTube. So it’s literally the same search engine. In fact, you would be surprised how many people reach out to us or when they’re here for tours. And we always ask, you know, like, how did you find us? We know it’s through YouTube or through video, but which one? Or how, in a lot of our like, actually, I was just searching on YouTube, like, you know, neighborhoods in Portland, or cost of living in Portland, in your videos actually popped up first. And so I clicked on him. And then I’m like, holy crap. And I literally went down this rabbit hole of watching all your videos, which are really great, by the way. Thanks for doing that, sir. Yeah, do you like Google even understands that there’s too many blogs. And Google understands that everybody’s watching video. And so they’re starting to pull videos over into their platform. But once we realize that, like, like, people are wanting to really figure out what it’s like to live there. And it’s a stressful situation. Nobody really just like plans their move for two or three years. And it’s graceful. Usually, it’s like a job move or relocation or something happens in like, Okay, I’m moving. That’s two years ago. That’s what happened to me. And guess what, what do you do? And I started researching a bunch, where to look for family? You know, I got three kids. So I gotta figure out where the schools are. You got to figure out what’s the best place to live. And guess what, when you look at it on a map or read a blog, it just doesn’t give you what it feels like. And so that was really when things changed for us is when we actually started figuring out what people were asking about living in our territory. And then we covered it with those videos. How does the traffic Well, me and Justin went and got stuck in traffic and showed you how bad the traffic was or how to avoid it. You got, you got family, we talked about the top 10 neighborhoods for families, you’re a single we did the best neighborhoods for single. So we really just capitalized on on the search engine on search engine optimization, figuring out what people were searching, and doing exactly that title, that longtail keyword in YouTube and ranking very quickly for it.

D.J. Paris 17:34
Yeah, it’s brilliant. I was it was funny, we are recorded got a little screwy. So we’re gonna, just sorry, Jackson is actually covering something we covered, but you guys won’t won’t know that. So I’m going to tell the story again. So I apologize, Jackson, but it’s a good story. And this is really important. So I was on a trip to Ireland with with my father earlier last year. And we were going from town to town. And as you do when you go to Ireland, and of course, there’s so many towns, and there’s so many things to go see and do. And there’s a million pubs. And there’s just there’s so many restaurants and places to stay. And it is super overwhelming, especially if you’re trying to cram in, you know the number of places that my dad and I did. And so what we ended up doing is every day we’d look at our our book that we had about touring Ireland, and we would go to the specific city and see what all the sites were. But then sometimes that didn’t even give us a really good sense of like, what we should actually go see you have to really trust the author of that book. And the author was good, but wasn’t always right. And so what we ended up doing after about the third day, we realized, you know, we really need to check out some of these things ahead of time. Right. So we went on YouTube for these and we would start searching for Okay, top 10 things to do and Dingell or whatever town we were in Kilkenny or wherever. And then we would actually see because people would do a tour of different sites, it would say, Hey, that looks pretty cool. Or maybe that one. And we would do that. And even sometimes we would just listen to the audio as well if we were driving and couldn’t watch the video at the same time. But the but the point I’m making is that even though I had searched online, I had read all the blogs and there’s a million blogs about touring being a tourist in Ireland. And I saw a lot of pictures and I got a general sense the videos really clinched and and after three days, we just abandon everything and watch videos. And so we were this is a perfect example. And there believe it or not even for Ireland, which is one of the most touristic company countries in the whole world. There weren’t that many options, believe it or not. So. So this is exactly what Jackson’s talking about.

Jackson Wilkey 19:27
And I’m you know, I’ll mention it again, if I can’t remember the beginning of from our recording thing, but like I’ve actually worked myself out of real estate in less than a year. And I want to make that a point because real estate really wasn’t my thing Jesse’s like the greatest real estate agent ever. But in Listen, in basically six months, I’ve figured out how to leverage a platform where there’s 2 billion people on it and figured out that you know what, even though there’s billions of videos on There, there’s really nothing about your city. Like that’s really informative. And maybe it comes from somebody who just lives there and happens to do a random video in their apartment, right? So to get out into your community, and this is when it really changed for us is when we started vlogging with a GoPro Hero seven, like, it’s a $40 camera, it’s the greatest camera of all time. And we literally just hit the ground running and started just showing you what these neighborhoods were showed you with downtown Portland was we bought a drone, which if you don’t have one, there’s a million photographers out there who have them, and they’ll sell you pictures or give them to you, if you give them credit, which started putting the drone in the air and showing you like, Hey, look at this neighborhood. And we would get up in the air, talk about the main streets. And then we walked down the main one, here’s all your restaurants, shops, bars, your walking distance of ease your 15 minutes, you can actually see down the road, you can see the towers of or the buildings for downtown, you’re 15 minutes away. So if you’re going to be working, yada, yada, so we really started figuring out what people were searching. And found out, there’s really no good content on YouTube about our city. And we went from getting a viewer day three views a day to now we get sometimes 1500. So that’s in, you know, six months, basically 10 months since our first video, hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of views. And now we’re the number one most suggested channel. And that’s what’s important. So if you type in anything, Portland, Oregon, and you don’t happen to catch one of our videos, which is rare, you’ll watch one and at the end of it, they’re going to suggest our video. So we get a lot of views from the suggested platform. And people are watching us like sitcoms, because when you are moving or you’re traveling to Ireland or whatever, that’s a real like right now situation. And you want to just engulf your brain with as much information as possible. And so they go down these rabbit holes of watching our videos for hours and hours. And guess what? Every phone call that I get? Imagine this. Every phone call we get is somebody that’s just like me that likes the things I like that likes my personality. Yeah, we get the hater comments all the time. But I don’t want to work with them. I get people I mentioned brewskis all the time. I love beers. And I’m always like, this is my favorite join my family and I just went here last weekend, we got some brewskis. So people call me like dude, Jackson, we’re coming up by the house, hey, when we come for a tour, we’re buying a brewskis these people are my people, like I’m friends with these people immediately. And I’ve never met them. And here’s the funny thing. We do so many tours now. And again, I’ve worked myself out of this. I literally just do YouTube videos every day because we branched over to Seattle, Washington, because again, nobody’s doing that. And when I was doing the tours and stuff, I would be like, oh shit, like, I don’t know what these people look like. So I would park and I’d kind of like just look around and I would look at whoever it was. And they’re like waving their hands.

D.J. Paris 22:53
They know you are of course.

Jackson Wilkey 22:55
Oh my god, Jackson, it’s you like that must be them. So it’s a really good feeling. And yeah, there’s there is. It’s really tough. It’s not easy. I don’t I don’t want to say that. But there is no competition. If done correctly and optimized in SEO, holy crap, it can literally change your life. Change your business. It really quick. Yeah, and

D.J. Paris 23:14
it’s a marathon, right? It’s definitely not. You put up one video, maybe you get lucky. Probably won’t. It’s kind of like this podcast. So I started it. I thought, boy, if I was I’m not a Producing Realtor, either. I thought, wouldn’t it be cool, because we have so many Realtors here in Chicago. I said, if I was producing, I would want to know what the top 1% is doing to grow their business. And so I thought, you know, I know the realtors that our firm, would we have some of those people, of course, but not all of them. I know, they would want to know. And then I started interviewing, I said, I wonder if those top 1% Realtors would be willing to talk to me. And of course, they were thrilled to do it. Because it’s a way of giving back as well. And even producing these videos, whether or not you get leads from it, you’re giving back to the community. And you’re giving back to people in a way that’s really, really valuable. Now, of course, you want to do it to generate business ultimately. But if you go into it from I’m going to create the best possible content for my audience, even though my audience doesn’t even know me yet. And you just put your head down and keep doing it and learn. There’s there’s obviously a lot of technique there. But at the end of the day, the content wins over everything. And so we started doing this podcast for that exact same reason you’re doing it and and I don’t even promote the firm I work at because when I’m interviewing brokers from other firms, they probably don’t want me doing that. So I never have and sure enough, just as you were saying, people find you people have found me going, I’m hooked on the show. I love the content you provide, hey, what’s going on at your firm, right? And that’s where I get so we have a very similar idea what I’m not doing however, and you’re getting such a great idea is utilizing YouTube. So I write a lot of content, I write blogs, I write for magazines, I do a lot of those things, but I don’t make the videos and so what you’re doing is creating so for everyone listening that There’s a lot that you can take away from this right? So start thinking about what’s your specialty, that’s really the most important thing is, what geographic area? Do you specialize it? And if it’s a particular neighborhood, depending on how big your city is, or if it’s a suburb, or if it’s the city itself or whatever, figure out what gets you the most excited what you like what you know the most about, and then don’t always just talk about real estate, right, figure out what kind of content that people are thinking about moving into this area? What would they need to know? What are they interested in? Yes, of course, real estate is part of it. But like, they probably want to know, all what this what schools are going on here and, and what the local cuisine is like, and also what bars brewskis are available. Right?

Jackson Wilkey 25:40
Exactly. And you add on that real quick, like, you need to work to your avatar to and you need to work with people that you know, you think are going to be buying houses. And ultimately, and I don’t want to say this in a negative way, but like who have the money and resources to buy houses. And so we kind of cater to that. And that’s something that you will really test and as a blog writer, you probably find out like, oh, this title works Oh, in this area, right? So we have these video titles that really work well. And when I started really talking about at first I was kind of nervous to tell people I wasn’t from Portland, I just kind of came as like, you know, important real estate shares and doing these videos and then I’m like, Man, whenever I tell a story, you know of my like something that I did or Jesse tell the story like that watch time is longer, the video performs better. And so I did a video like, you know, moving to Portland, Oregon, my story and I literally just talked and it’s just a headshot stop video green screen video about when I moved here. The struggles, you know, daycare. There’s so many families that daycares were so backed up. So please, please, please set up your daycare before you come that caught me off guard. And yeah, so I worked towards these avatar and when you said schools that really hit because, you know we have hundreds and hundreds of reach outs and so like literally 8070 80% of them people are coming. They either have a job already or you know, most of them already got the job already and they need to find schools like here’s the here’s the one thing I want to get across to that it’s just kind of popped up before for forget. So they’re looking for schools, right? They haven’t even searched three bedroom, two bath house, four bedroom, three bathroom house. We are literally catching these people before they get into Zillow and Redfin. We are so like at the top of the funnel, these people don’t know what house they want, yet all they know. They’re all they want to know is where to be living. And then the house comes second. So as everybody gets scared of Zillow and Redfin, and all these big, big neighbors, like, we’re getting ahead of them. And so these people were like, well, I don’t really know the house I want yet, you know, I guess we’d like you know, three bed, we want a yard, you know, we’d like a little bit of space, you know, whatever. So they go through it then, but they hadn’t thought about it. You know what I mean? That’s pretty powerful. So then when we sit there and go, perfect. These are probably like the top three areas that we really recommend. And they usually say, Yeah, we like this area in that area, too. We’re like, okay, so when you come, we’re going to set up your tour date, and we’re going to show you those, but we’re going to take you to the areas we think I’ll fit you in like 90% of the time the two areas they pick or like they’re like, No, I couldn’t live there. We’re like we knew that. So here, we’re going to take you where we think fits in there, like, Oh, this is the best. So we know it. We set that up. But then, you know, we give them a freaking custom property search in our CRM, and they think it’s the greatest thing ever. You can do that. Like Sure, yeah. It really easily. And so, yes, you talk about value and content, like these people are just wanting to know what it’s like to live there. And then they will literally use you for everything, everything else. They use our preferred preferred lender, they use our agents in their state, like we literally just take over this whole situation because they trust us more than anybody with their move.

D.J. Paris 28:56
Well, yeah. And you just brought up a good point. And this is really important too, because of course YouTube is global. And people from Portland are not the only people who are searching for this content, they find it somehow and all of a sudden they’re like actually I’m moving to you know Santa Barbara and you’re like Hey, no problem. We have a partner there I can find the best realtor there and get that over to you. And then oh by the way, that’s a referral fee to you. So this is a huge referral machine. So when you said you you talk your way out of real estate, you’re really not kidding what you’ve become is a lead generation machine of course, and that’s free every broker once you did it for the brilliant says you did it before they ever met you. That’s brilliant. They haven’t met you in person but they already know you because they like your content because it’s good. And it’s and it’s available and they can find it and it’s you know better than anyone elses for that particular though

Jackson Wilkey 29:46
certainly everything people have taught you about providing value and making these people trust you like you know you but actually like this is how you do it. This is exactly how you can do it. Very quick and it there is no more powerful platform and YouTube is only growing. Like I said, Google is putting way more videos on their platform. YouTube is sponsoring it was sponsoring the Major League, playoffs, everything like YouTube is growing at a rapid rate. And it is a incredible search engine that is just wide open in our space. So we love teaching it. And people always ask, like, why are you giving all these tips like my YouTube agent channel, it’s literally the YouTube agents. I give so many tips in there because one that just opens up more doors for me if you’re in Lansing, Michigan or something and you have somebody from Portland moving there, then you’re gonna reach out to me and say, Hey, someone’s moving from Beaverton, Oregon, can you take care of him? Yep, for sure. It just opens this, like, we want to build channel partners. And that’s how we really start searching. If, if we don’t have an agent in an area, we go to YouTube and search and see if we can find one. And usually we can’t, in fact, most of the time you can’t. So then we try and find somebody who’s really good social and can close these deals. But yeah, we’d love to build these channel partners out and, and connect.

D.J. Paris 31:05
So if you’re if you’re a broker who’s listing a realtor who’s listening, and you want to learn how to do this, and you should learn how to do this, because look, you know, you can always buy Zillow leads, you can buy Redfin leads, there’s a lot of places that will sell you lead leads, because there’s a lot of great lead generation companies. But what we’re really doing, or what Jesse Jackson are doing, and there’s nothing wrong, of course, with purchasing leads, that’s great. There are a lot of great services that do that. But what what we’re what we’re really doing is introducing the people you don’t yet know to you through really important content that they seek out, so that you’re not even pushing it their way going watch my video watch, but they’re finding you. So there’s a lot less resistance. If they liked the video, and they like you, then of course, hopefully they would reach out when they have a real estate transaction.

Jackson Wilkey 31:53
Yep, that’s what it is. And I mean, there’s a lot that goes into optimizing a video so that you can rank and just know if you do start. It’s a beast man, it takes a lot. I like I said, I built a new channel living in Seattle, Washington, and I don’t even live there. But it’s wide open. So I do a lot of screen screen videos. And then we’ll we’ll drive the hours up there to get some B roll footage. But holy crap, starting over again, I was like, This is so hard. I’m getting like one view a day or four views. And it took me four days to get another subscriber. So it it takes time. And that’s probably another reason why there’s nobody in this space. But if you can dedicate even just one, one video a week that is keyword research, and you did that, you know you’re talking 50 videos in one year, you’re gonna be ranking, you’re gonna have some videos at the top, and you’re gonna get phone calls for sure. So optimizing, you know, thumbnails, titles, tags, descriptions, there’s a lot to it. But man, I started from not knowing a damn thing to really perfecting it quickly. So it’s definitely doable.

D.J. Paris 32:57
Yeah, it’s funny. So when I started this podcast, we did it, I did it entirely for free, on top of my my full time job for about a year and a half. And occasionally we’d have a sponsor reach out to us and say, Hey, can we buy a spot as a live read on your show, with a little onesie twosie here and there, we never sought them out. And then all of a sudden, about three or four months ago, we had a national sponsor reach out to us on their own going, Hey, your show is getting a lot of attention. And we can see that you guys are probably getting a lot of downloads. And even though we were only focused on the Chicagoland area, we’re talking to brokers who are successful here. And they said, We want to buy 13 episodes, and they threw stupid money at us, and we had to take it. And so then all of a sudden, I went, Oh my gosh, this could this, this could be a business. It’s not a, you know, a huge business for us at this moment, because we’re really just focused on providing value. But now all of a sudden, we have lots of national sponsors that are reaching out and now every episode is sponsored. But it took I can’t even tell you the hundreds of hours I’ve put into this, over the last two years just focused on providing value good quality content, just like Jesse and Jackson do in Portland and now Seattle, their whole focus is on we want the best quality videos for the keywords and the and the questions that people are searching for on YouTube. And and then of course optimizing it, and that’s what they’ll teach you how to do. So I could not be a bigger fan of them. And let’s let’s promote your your, your your your course, as well. So it’s the YouTube agents.com. We’ll also have a link in of course, the notes and we’ll promote it also on our Facebook page. But there is a discount which we’re figuring out right now. But there will be a discounted put in the the code DJ. So just the letters D and J both capital my name, DJ and you’ll get a bit of a discount but to talk just a little bit about the course.

Jackson Wilkey 34:48
Yeah, so what I wanted to do and that’s the thing with real estate, there’s so many courses as you know, and I’ve gotten into a few and unfortunately there are ones about cold calling stuff so I didn’t really gain I think from it, but they were very long, there was hour, hour and a half videos. And I don’t think anybody’s attention can last that long for a long time. And then there’s like 12, like 12 sections at all. So I really broke it down into like three minute videos, the longest video I have, I think is like 10 minutes. And that’s really like diving into editing and stuff. So instead of buying like an editing course, and, you know, SEO course, in a YouTube course, I combined it all. So even if you don’t have a YouTube channel, like the opening section is creating your YouTube channel, show your channel art, all of your channel tags, what settings need to be set, so that this thing turns into an absolute mousetrap lead machine, and then it’s, Hey, let’s figure out all your titles. Let’s get 20 3040 video titles real fast. And then let’s let’s shoot these my first videos and when you talked about quality, that isn’t per se, like these flashy listing videos dry, it’s more like content. My top two videos are still ones I shot on my cell phone because I gave true true true answers cost of living and the pros and cons. And I told you my pros and cons and they dominate. So I literally these people typed in pros and cons of Portland, Oregon, which is searched a shitload and I did a title. And I told you five pros, five cons, five things in the middle. So like I gave them answer, and they stay throughout the whole thing. So quality is, you know, we’re getting a lot better now. But quality is it’s a search engine, you need to be answering questions. So if somebody asked you that question offhand, how could you answer it. So I teach you this in the course. And it’s like, really building your videos with the hook, the intro, the the meat, the call to actions, like, there are certain ways to do this to really grow fast. So it is literally a to z. And then when uploading is very important to optimize and rank even for tougher keywords. I know how to do that now. And it’s through optimization, where other videos other creators did not optimize using descriptions, titles, tags, all of that, and then creating the most clickable thumbnail. So there’s a lot to it, but it’s all broke down into little three, five minute course era videos, and a lot of them so you can reference back and it really, it’s one of a kind that if you look, there’s no Realtors doing this really anywhere. So it’s one of its kind. We’re really trailblazing this and man, don’t be the second third, fourth Realtor in your market to do this because it you will own your market if you can get out there. And if there’s somebody, I’ll teach you how to get above, Okay,

D.J. Paris 37:30
wonderful. Well, hey, I think that’s a great place to park and I think, you know, I would love to have to have you and even Jesse Of course, as well on the show on a regular basis, because these are, you know, we could do a lesson, you know, a month or at least something to consider, but I know our audience is going to eat this up. So even if this is our only time doing this, depending on how busy you guys are with the videos, you’re doing, man, good. But we definitely want to promote, again, go to the YouTube agents.com Check out their course, also, you know, they also provide content for you the realtor on their YouTube channel as well. So there’s that he provides a lot of content for free. So it’s not Yeah, and that’s really important because as we know, you know giving away quality and when I say quality content, I want to just go back for a moment just to make sure because you brought up a really good point Jackson, about the about the the quality, I didn’t mean the quality of the video being shiny and bright and beautiful and sharp and having really cool edits and all of that’s really cool and useful. But the quality of the content reigns supreme and I just mean answering the questions in an authentic way giving the most best content possible you know, and answering those is always going to win and then yeah, you’ll get better at editing just like you did right but and but you know what I want to do is have you guys on more regularly, but in the meantime everyone should go check out the YouTube agents.com and and just to let you get this are this Jackson has been in business less than two years in real estate moving to a new city, Portland and now also doing the same thing in Seattle, which he had never, you know, never lived in either. And now from from you know from Idaho out to Portland and now is on pace to close 100 transactions and then you know, within this year has done 12 million in the last six months, all from YouTube. Like that’s, that’s an it’s it’s crazy.

Jackson Wilkey 39:22
Yeah, I got this thing dialed man. So we branched out to Seattle. And I’m like, All right, I’m going to use everything, all my tips and tricks my knowledge. So it took us about three four months in Portland to really get reached out because I’d figured out and in Seattle in five weeks we had nine reach outs already and their median home price there’s like well over a million bucks so and we’re going to be doing lots a lot and we won’t close any of those. We actually have a team there that’s agreed to give us 50% of every commission back so nice. We will feel that every call we will get our team in in Seattle to we set up a zoom call and I’m just keep going but I will come back every month. I’ll come back every other week. Like hey, I’m so passionate about this stuff I forget Love it. And I teach a lot of it. But yeah, we do zoom calls. So these people call and the first thing we do is get them on a zoom call with our lender, with our buyer’s agent. You know, we had hired buyer’s agents. How great is this? She’s brand new, she’s never had to pick up the phone and call one person, she answers three to 10 calls every day. So she feels these calls, she sets up the Zoom calls, where we get face to face and half the time they’re so starstruck, you know, it’s just really funny. And then we plan out their trip there, you know, whatever we and then sometimes you get the homerun where you just write offers without them even come in, but we’re at the process absolutely dialed in if you know I’m always available to me and find me anywhere social message me, dude, I love it. I’ll will rap back and forth about it. So yeah, man, it’s wide open. There’s really no one doing it. And this is the way of as as a lot of big disruptors are out there. Hey, providing answers to really tough questions moving to your area is still number one.

D.J. Paris 40:59
Perfect, well, Jackson Wilkie from YouTube agents and also from next home Realty connection in Portland, and Seattle. And of course, really, from all over because you’re on YouTube. So we’re just

Jackson Wilkey 41:09
everywhere, you’re everywhere, I will mention one thing that I’m super proud of. And Jesse really took the reins on this, we started a Facebook pro group $49 a month and it’s just filled with agents. It’s growing like crazy, who want to grow channels from all over. So it’s not one of those groups where you post your video and get likes and subscribers like it’s not that it’s literally training, access to me. And it’s going to be a huge referral platform. So what you know, when it when these leads come up, it gets posted to the group, and whoever’s in those areas scoops up those leads. So it’s a killer, one of a kind, pro Facebook group, too. So that’s on the YouTube a team.com. Got it, you can sign up for that you can check it out. It’s the pro youtube for YouTube agents pro Facebook group, you can check it out. But you’ll have to sign in to the YouTube agents first to get in. But yeah, we’re everywhere. Awesome, guys.

D.J. Paris 41:57
So again, you the the YouTube agents.com Use promo code DJ for a discount. And I this is going to be so well received, we’re going to have you guys on on a regular basis. But there’s two things you can purchase. One is the full course. And that’s what the promo code discount. And the second one is the Facebook pro group which is getting direct access to Jackson and Jesse and all the other members to support each other get tips tricks on how to do these videos. Because, look, guys, I mean, technically, I did have a podcast before I started this one. But that was years ago, and I was just kind of screwing around. I learned how to do all this stuff on my own too. If you just focus like like Jax was like, do one video a week. And by the way, if you just turn your phone around and film yourself for the first several months doing those videos, as long as the the the content, the quality of the content is good, it’s good enough for now and then you can get better and better. But it’s if you do this I like I’m living proof of this Jackson’s living proof of this, you do this. And eventually if the if the quality of the content is good, eventually listeners in your case viewers show up. And then of course, sales are results as well. So thank you so much for being part of the show. We really appreciate I’m so glad that we connected and it’s this is awesome. So thank you on behalf of the listeners. I appreciate you guys Jackson and Jesse was was on for just a moment. We appreciate you guys being part of the show and sharing your knowledge with our audience. So thank you. Hey,

Jackson Wilkey 43:21
buddy. Yeah, let’s get back on there. Hit me up. I’ll come back on and if you get any questions, you know, in your comments, reviews or whatever. We’ll answer those on the next

D.J. Paris 43:29
one. Awesome. We’ll do thank you so much.

Jackson Wilkey 43:32
Yeah, you bet.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

« 1 … 54 55 56 57 58 … 69 »

Category: Podcast Episodes

What It Takes To Become The #2 Top Producing Broker In Chicago • Matt Laricy

Transcript

200 Real Estate Sales Per Year • Matthew Arminio

Transcript

The Ideal Mindset Of Top Real Estate Agents • Coaching Moments • Ryan D’Aprile

Transcript

500 Million In Real Estate Sales • Jeff Proctor

Transcript

Why Top Real Estate Agents Need The Discipline Of Ironman Athletes • Amber Kardosh

Transcript

Why Real Estate Agents Need To Contact Their Past Clients Right Now • Learn With A Lender • Joel Schaub

Transcript

Four Million to Twenty-Four Million in Two Years • Ben Lalez

Transcript

Success Through Authenticity & Transparency • Sam Shaffer

Transcript

Will The 2020 Real Estate Market Be Flat? • Monday Market Minute • Carrie McCormick

Transcript

How Real Estate Agents Can Use YouTube To Close 100 Sales In 2020 • Jackson Wilkey • The YouTube Agents

Transcript

Never miss an episode!

Category: Podcast Episodes

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Never miss an episode!

You have Successfully Subscribed!