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

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

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

Ryan D'Aprile
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Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D.J. Paris 46:24
birthday,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New video feature! In addition to continuing to produce the long-form audio interviews with top 1% producers, we’re also going to serve you up some bite-sized video goodness!

Keeping It Real Podcast producer Liz Lape is here to guide you on an actionable strategy to help your business. It’s short, helpful, and also on video!

In today’s Liz Lesson she discusses how to market and retain Gen Z real estate clients through authenticity.

Liz Lape Keeping It Real Podcast

Transcript

Liz Lape 0:04
Hey guys, I’m Liz leg and this is your weekly list lesson. Attracting Gen Z buyers can be confusing. They’re new to the buying game and have different values from the generation before them. Take it from a fellow Gen Z or this generation values authenticity and personal connection with content, and they lose interest fast, especially online. This may come as a surprise but polished online advertising won’t cut it. Gen Z buyers tend to ignore online advertisements I reject the idea of being sold. Instead, create the personal bond Gen Z craves by sharing short videos stating your values as if you are having a conversation. This will increase trust and personal connection between you and the buyer. Another strategy is to try providing Gen Z buyers with online platforms like having your own Facebook business page, where clients can voice their opinions provided an opportunity to feel more engaged in the process. Thanks for watching those lessons and I’ll see you next time.

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

Fresh from her speaking engagement as a panelist at Inman Luxury Connect in Beverly Hills, Carrie McCormick tells our listeners some of the insights she observed. For example, the rise of the importance of staging – buyers expect homes to be move-in ready and staged. Also, how you can use video to tell a story better than pictures. I provide a marketing tip on how to personalize your holiday cards for clients!

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

Carrie McCormick D.J. Paris Monday Market Minute
Carrie McCormick Logo

Transcript

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

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made for real estate brokers by real estate brokers. My name is DJ Parris, I’m your host and guide through the show, as always, today, we have the Monday market minute, which we do every month with the great Carrie McCormick. If you are a new listener and you haven’t yet got it listen to any of our Carrie money market minute episodes. Carrie is one of the top producing brokers in Chicago and this is a huge deal because there’s 45,000 brokers Carrie is always in the top 1% of 1%. She is literally one of the very highest producing brokers. She’s been a high producing broker for 20 years with App properties. And she just came back from Inman luxury connect where she was a featured panelist and speaker in Beverly Hills. So we are so excited to talk to you. So Carrie, welcome back to Chicago.

Carrie McCormick 1:50
Well, thank you, it was such a fun panel to be part of it was a privilege. I was seated next to Kevin Thompson, who I’ve never met in person. I’ve always seen him on panels or in, you know, different write ups. But he’s the Chief Marketing Officer of Sotheby’s International based in New York. So I got the privilege of talking to him backstage personally for a little while. And then of course, you know, seated on the panel with him. And then another gentleman that I was with is dusty Baker. He is a top producer from Southern California, also with Sotheby’s and, you know, talking to these two gentlemen that, you know, one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast selling millions and millions of dollars of real estate it was it was such a privilege, and especially to be in Beverly Hills. I don’t know, you know, how many people been out there? I’ve been out there once before, but it’s, it’s kind of lala land. It’s really it’s really interesting place to be and, you know, millions of dollars of real estate are traded in that town. It’s unbelievable.

D.J. Paris 2:57
Yeah, so tell us a little bit about what you you know what you spoke about what you learned, let’s, let’s Yeah, the listeners. And

Carrie McCormick 3:05
so the panel that I spoke on was about, you know, luxury listings and how to market them. And the reoccurring theme between the three of us is how important staging a home has become. It’s the buyers in this marketplace have changed. And again, this is not just a local thing here in Chicago, it was across the US, there were people. Like I mentioned from New York, or agents from New York, there were agents from California and Texas that deal with these oil tycoons. The same thing is, is that staging matters, when a buyer walks into a home, it has to trigger an emotional feeling and that emotion needs to be I love this house, I can live in this house, I can move right in. And, you know, it’s our job now to create an emotion of feeling from these buyers. And that’s where staging has become key. Whereas before, you know, but like I said, I’ve been doing this for 20 years, you know, it just we didn’t have to invest in that we didn’t have to worry about staging, you know, we would just use what was ever in the home. But again, staging has become key, whether it’s real staging or Virtual Staging. For the people who are listening. Virtual Staging has become a huge hit for those you know, folks that don’t want to stage their home so I would definitely look into that if you haven’t already. The other thing that I opened up the panel with was about storytelling. I use a lot of video marketing in my advertising and marketing for a home and dusty Baker who is the gentleman I sat next to he disagreed with me. He said that he does not use video because he feels that no one is watching seeing the videos. So again, everyone’s got a difference of opinion on video marketing. But I love video marketing for two reasons. One, it does tell the story about the home because you can do B roll of neighborhoods of schools of coffee shops in the area. So not only are you marketing and selling the home, your marketing and selling a lifestyle, the neighborhood, what you know, when you walk out your door, what can you enjoy. And you can’t get that through just, you know, traditional pictures. So I love the storytelling feature of the video. And also, I love it just because the SEO rankings when Zillow or any other platform sees that you have a video content in your in your listing, it thinks it’s more important, it feels it raises you up a little bit on your ranking. So I think you get to fold with these video marketing. So that was, you know, between the staging and the video marketing, that became the hot topic of our conversation on our panel, we talked a little bit about print marketing, and we all agreed that, you know, if you place an ad in a magazine, there’s you’re not going to get a buyer for that home, you know, no one’s looking for a home in a magazine. I don’t want to name any but you know that, you know, you’re not working through a magazine and saying, Oh, look, look at this home, I wasn’t even thinking about it, I think I should buy this home. But we all agree that print marketing has become a way for branding ourselves as agents. So you know, our picture, our name becomes front and center in that print, you know, if we want to list a few homes in there to obviously show off our listings or you know, hopefully there is someone that does see a home that they may like and give you a call. You know, we’ve all agree that that has become a way to leverage the print the print part of it. But really it was, it was such an interesting place to be again, I was talking with people from coast to coast. And we all seem to be struggling with the same issues as far as the buyer market right now. You know, the market times are up. Again, this is across the United States market times are up, pricing is starting to level out. If you’re looking to move a home, you’ve got to price it right. It has to be staged properly. And you have to have an aggressive marketing campaign. Hands down.

D.J. Paris 7:33
Yeah, I have a few thoughts on on all this great stuff that you just said. And I wonder if a lot of it with a staging in particular, you know, we think about and we should really mention your Instagram account because it is one of the best if not the very best I’ve seen for what a realtor should aspire to do and Instagram, which is Carrie McCormack real estate. So go on Instagram and follow Carrie number one, everything she puts up is very professional, it’s a branding opportunity for her but also it’s there’s a consistency to the look the feel, and she does it all herself that she doesn’t have an agency posting for her. So it’s really very, very remarkable. And I wonder how much of this idea of now staging, whether it’s virtual or actual staging, I wonder how much of that has to do with the rise of the popularity of social media platforms like Instagram where we take pictures of our food, and we tweak it to make it look like it’s just absolutely incredible. And we post it and I think this idea of the pictures you know if you’re virtually staging, making the every room look perfect or again, actually staging so when somebody comes through, you know, I always heard years and years ago that you were supposed to leave the room as sparse as possible so people could imagine their own stuff in the room and I just don’t think that’s the case anymore. I think you’re right. You want it to look just perfect.

Carrie McCormick 8:57
Actually the moderator of our panel also brought that up is you know, she said Let we have to blame you know, these Instagram accounts and some of these. These TV shows like HGTV has some fabulous shows. But what the public is getting used to seeing is perfect rooms right with whites and these grays and these luxury this and luxury that and the consumers that’s in your face all the time of you know this is how a kitchen should be so when they walk into a real life kitchen that doesn’t live up to that expectation, the Instagram expectation or the HGTV you know kitchens, they get upset, you know and that’s what they want. So it’s it’s a hard dynamic to, you know, to work through. Another thing we all laughed about was that these and I love all these HGTV shows is you know they do these fix and flips and it takes you know you will I’ll just show for an hour, you know, the beginning to end the house has been renovated, but you know, in the show, it takes them two weeks. So when I coach a client through renovations, or how long it’s going to take or meet with contractors, you know, I tell them this, you know, this could take a couple of months, and they’re, they’re flabbergasted. Well, they did it in two weeks on the show, you know, how could that take, you know, six months for us to do. So it’s bringing, you know, some of these TV shows, you know, you gotta bring back the reality of, you know, what’s going to happen in the renovation. So it’s, it’s challenging.

D.J. Paris 10:36
Well, and also, for everyone listening, whether you’re a realtor who are looking for tips from from Carrie, or if you’re a seller going, oh, gosh, now I have to stage every room in my house. Well, the good news is, it’s never been more affordable. Obviously, you could always virtually stage it, which is, you know, very, almost almost a free service with photography studios now, but even if you’re hiring, you know, a staging company to come in and actually replace furniture and make, it’s not that expensive, if it’s going to yield a higher return. And I know many brokers and Carrie, I know you’ve done this as well, that will tell sellers, we need to get your stuff out and move stuff in sometimes. And and it’s just a great idea, because the the data suggests that help sells homes sell home quicker. And for higher price points.

Carrie McCormick 11:23
Absolutely. I’m starting to do that quite a bit. It’s I’ve got clients living in the house and will relocate all their furniture to one area. And then we stage a few other rooms. So they’re living in a half staged house, and you know, half of their furniture. So it’s it’s a really great concept and new new idea to sell a home.

D.J. Paris 11:46
Wonderful, any other takeaways that you could share with our audience from the conference?

Carrie McCormick 11:51
Well, it’s really like I said, it’s having a robust marketing plan. And the bottom line with a lot of this right now in the market is pricing home correctly. And giving feedback, I’ve started to give a lot more feedback on my showings to people and just, again, this was across the US agents are saying, Please give each other feedback after these showings, because it helps each other in our industry. communicate to our sellers of what’s going on, because if you do a showing, and then just go see each other, you know, and don’t give any feedback. It’s it makes more difficult conversations for our for our sellers. So again, just professional courtesy to each other, as you know, giving some good feedback.

D.J. Paris 12:39
Well, and it is called a cooperative commission. Right? So brokers are supposed to cooperate. And again, oftentimes, the broker might be too close to the situation to see something that other brokers who are coming in to do this, to look at the property with their clients might not see. So you have this opportunity to provide incredible feedback. And I don’t know what percentage of brokers provide feedback, but it’s not high enough for sure. So everyone listening, if you’re a realtor, and you get that little email saying, give us some feedback, please do that, or call the other broker and let them know. So that you guys can both work together and get some homes closed. Exactly. So I have a and I want to hear I want to get your feedback on this. So I have my marketing minute of the day. And Carrie actually gave me the suggestion, really, the credit goes to her. But I wanted to also get your thoughts on this because I was like, oh, what should I talk about? And the holidays are coming up, Carrie reminded me. And it was like, Okay, what what do brokers do? Or what should they do for their clients. And so I’ll just give you my experience, because I’m not a producing broker. So I’m really the worst person to ask, but I will tell you what I get in the mail around this time of the year. And I have lots of different professionals that have various services that I employ, you know, financial advisor insurance, you know, that mortgage, that sort of thing. And I really get very little, quite honestly, around the holidays I use, I usually will get a card or some sort of mailer. But it’s I can’t think of anyone and I’m not in any way insinuating the people that I choose for my taxes or for the other services I employ. I have no qualms with them. They’re great, I love them. But I don’t know that any of them really send me anything personalized. And so I was thinking about this and like sending out something is better than nothing. And if you’re just going to throw a holiday card in the mail, hey, that’s better than sending nothing. But I would think if you have the time, and you can start now because we’re only in in the middle of October is maybe even just write one or two sentences on the card specific to that individual. And again, I know if you have hundreds and hundreds of people in your database, that’s not going to be super easy to do. But I will tell you the idea of a handwritten note, and I’m not suggesting we all write handwritten notes for every single person for the holidays, but just a sentence or two about Something about that person, you know, even if it’s just hope you and the kids have a great holiday or hope you and your husband have a great holiday. And if you’re like struggling on what to write about, really, this is where social media comes in very handy, or LinkedIn, right? Go to LinkedIn, go to Instagram, go to Facebook, look up your clients see what they’re up to. And you could write on the Holiday Card, hope you have a great holidays. Oh, I just saw you got back from Barbados. That sounds amazing, right? Or that looked amazing. Anything like that? I think personalized is just because I get I might get 10 cards in the mail, but none of them have any personalization. So that’s just my thought, again, I know it’s a little bit of work. But I would remember that card would would mean a lot more to me, if someone took a few, you know, 30 seconds to write something

Carrie McCormick 15:46
that is a great tip. And that is so true. Because I do I get cards from like, the bank or tax accountants or whoever it is. And it’s just it’s, you know, got a printed label on the front, it’s got, you know, their signatures even printed. So it’s like, I’m sure they don’t even know that that card went out to me. And again, the gesture is nice. I’m glad I made their mailing list. But if someone wrote a personal note, even if it said Happy Holidays and had a hand signature, it goes much further. I love that idea, especially getting a little more personal with a trip or a baby or wedding or whatever it is. That’s that’s huge.

D.J. Paris 16:23
Awesome. Well, I think that just about wraps us up. But before we wrap up, I want to obviously remind our listeners, if you are a buyer or a seller and investor or renter, and you’re looking for a great realtor, if it was me, I would want to choose one of the top producing ones in Chicago, because that just seems like a good idea. So Carrie McCormick is at the very, very top of that mountain. So Carrie, if there are people that want to work with you, what is the best way they should reach out?

Carrie McCormick 16:53
Absolutely. So always call me I’m always working 24/7 So 312-961-4612 Or you can shoot me a quick email to Kerry ca RR ie at@properties.com. But please do if there’s any questions just about market in general, about the panel I spoke on about marketing. I’m always loving to give back and you know, give free advice. So anyone out there if you need anything, always just call me.

D.J. Paris 17:23
Wonderful. Well, thank you to everyone who continue to listen, we’re so grateful for our audience. So grateful to our guest host Carrie who comes on tirelessly and selflessly who does not have time to do this. We were actually supposed to book do this yesterday and she’s like, Oh my god, I have a showing and I was like of course you have a showing. That makes perfect sense. That’s how busy she is. So we’re so grateful to Carrie. So thank you on behalf of the audience and on behalf of Carrie and myself to the audience. Thank you for listening, telephoned pass this around to other brokers who you think could benefit from hearing from from from from Mavericks like care like Carrie and continue to listen and carry we will see you next month. Thank you

New video feature! In addition to continuing to produce the long-form audio interviews with top 1% producers, we’re also going to serve you up some bite-sized video goodness!

Keeping It Real Podcast producer Liz Lape is here to guide you on an actionable strategy to help your business. It’s short, helpful, and also on video!

In today’s Liz Lesson she discusses why real estate brokers should price their seller’s properties ONLY in multiples of 10k.

Liz Lape Keeping It Real Podcast

Transcript

Liz Lape 0:04
Hey, I was late producer for keeping it real podcast and this is a list lesson. Did you know that you should be pricing your listings in multiples of 10,000 for example, 300,000 or 310,000. The reason for this might not be so obvious. Let’s say someone is looking to spend 300,000 on home, and you’re selling a 300,000 home but President 299,000 to be competitive. The problem with this has to do with the way people search online. If a buyer is looking for a home on Zillow for 300,000, they might make 300,000 Their minimum and your listing will never be saved. In fact, studies show that by pricing and multiples of 10,000 these listings get 50% More views. So list all your homes for sale in multiples of 10,000 Thanks. See you next time.

Danielle Dowell is one of the most successful Chicago brokers, but perhaps the most incredible part of her story is that she moved to Chicago knowing only ONE person. After a year in real estate she became a top broker and has remained one for the past twelve years. As her business grew, she realized it was time to add more staff. Danielle founded The Dowell Group in 2015 which now has ten members. She’s routinely asked to speak at conferences, television, and now, on our podcast. In this episode she explains how she found success and how you can, too!

Danielle Dowell can be reached at 312-391-5655 and ddowell@thedowellgroupre.com.

The Dowell Group Chicago Real Estate

Transcript

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

Hello, and welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made for brokers by brokers. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment, we have an interview with the great Danielle doll. Before we get to Danielle, a couple of quick items. Everyone who is listening, you need to follow us on Facebook. So go to facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod why? Well, we wanted to make give you an actual reason to follow us on Facebook, we post daily content, we find articles all over the web that will help you build your real estate business, we post one of those a day plus, our producer, the great Liz Lape does a video once a week called Liz lessons where she for about a minute or two talks about something that you can take action on immediately to grow your business. So again, go to facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And also if you want to stream all of our old episodes, which you can also find on Facebook, go to our website, right, which is keeping it real pod.com every single episode we’ve done, we’ve done well over 105 or six of them at this point, you can go back and listen to every single interview we’ve done and learn how to grow your business like the top 1% producers do. And then lastly, don’t forget to tell a friend the way that we have grown this business by spending literally $0 Since we started is by word of mouth. So if this content is valuable to you, and I suspect it hopefully would be if you’re listening, make sure to tell every other real estate professional, you know this exists. And also if you have ideas of people we should be interviewing and talking to on the show, send us that information as well. Again, we always say thank you to our listeners and also to our wonderful guests who take time out of their busy day. And they don’t have time to do this right. The people we interview are way too busy to talk to a dummy like me, but they do it anyway. And we’re super grateful so and we also of course are grateful to all of you who listened. So thank you guys so much. And now on to our interview with Danielle doll.

Today on the show, we have Danielle doll of the dowel group. Daniel is a top real estate broker since 2007. She founded the doll group in 2015 with a goal to provide consistent service for clients from the city to the suburbs. And their group actually is pretty interesting. Instead of having everyone do his particular role. What they prefer to do at the doll group is match clients to agents and brokers based on personality, price point and area. Adele group provides attention to detail to all their clients aware that the business they love is dependent on relationships, they will always go the extra mile Whether you’re buying, selling, renting, investing or building, they are there to lessen the stress of Sodhi associated with your real estate transactions. You can follow them at the doll group r e.com. Go to their website. Check it out. Also they are on Facebook, Instagram, just search for the doll group. It will pop right up and today. As I mentioned, we’re talking to Danielle who is the the lead the team leader, the founder and somebody who is a huge powerhouse in this industry. So welcome, Danielle. Thank you.

Danielle Dowell 4:15
Thank you. Thank you for having me on your podcast.

D.J. Paris 4:17
We are so thrilled to have you. You’ve been on our guest list for like since since the beginning. And so we’re so grateful that you have the time to do this. You have such an amazing origin story. Tell us how you got into real estate.

Danielle Dowell 4:32
So I got into real estate I was in the hospitality industry and I lived in a couple of cities Dallas, San Diego St. Louis was the last city that I lived in before moving here. And I didn’t like the hospitality industry. I was 24 I think and I thought man, I don’t really like the late nights. I had an associate’s degree I had. I was supposed to play sports in college decided not to last minute which was I think the best thing I ever did But I didn’t have a bachelor’s and I thought, well, what can I do to make the most money and that I’m going to like, and that wouldn’t be all these nights. And at the time, I had some friends of mine girlfriends owned an appraisal company in St. Louis. So I kind of helped them out decided that wasn’t for me. My brother was in mortgages at the time, he was younger than me. And so I thought, well, I’ll get try to get to cells. So I moved to Chicago. I didn’t know anybody. I knew one person. And I got onto Craigslist. They moved in 2007 2007, like late 2000. I think late 2006. Actually, like I want to say I moved in like November. Yeah. So I got on Craigslist, in which I still hire off of Craigslist. I love it. But so I got on, and I kind of looked and I found a woman that was a top producer. And she was looking for an assistant. And so I went in and interviewed with her. And then I became her assistant for probably a good, I would say probably two and a half years, if not a little bit longer than I helped her with showings and things of that nature afterwards. And then stayed on her team. And then my sister moved here for a while and helped me for about five or six years. And then we just kind of decided that we were ready to do our own thing. And so we went off. And that’s when we started the dowel group.

D.J. Paris 6:16
Wow. And how many team members do you have today?

Danielle Dowell 6:20
Right now we have 10. So we have two office managers who are licensed everyone in our team is licensed. And then we’ve got eight agents.

D.J. Paris 6:30
Yeah, and that’s, and we should mention to all our listeners, and normally we wait to the end, which is really stupid of me, because not everyone makes it to the end. Because, you know, they don’t want to hear my voice for 45 minutes. But Danielle is team is always looking for brokers that might be a good fit. Can you tell the audience a little bit about what you’re looking for and who might be a good fit for your team?

Danielle Dowell 6:52
So yeah, so I’ve never really recruited, but I’ve come through different avenues of finding people and some people have reached out directly to us. So right now we’re looking for we do city and suburbs. So we’re trying to build a little bit more in the suburbs right now. So in the suburbs, I definitely am looking for someone on the North Shore, also looking for a western suburb agent. And then in the city, we definitely looking for someone on the south side. So that’s kind of who we’re looking. But even if you’re anywhere else, if you think you would be a good fit. If you think the personalities would match, like I like to sit down with everyone. And it has to be a win win. So I have to be able to give someone that’s coming on the team something and they’ve got to I’ve got to be able to see that they’re going to be able to give something to the team.

D.J. Paris 7:36
Sure. And the best way they could reach out is just through your website, or through social media, I

Danielle Dowell 7:41
guess. Yeah, I mean, you can call me you can email me. Yeah, either way, social media is fine. If you’re interested, one of the best hires that we’ve had over the years, she actually had reached out to us two years before I hired her. And she was asking if I needed a buyer’s agent. And that’s not how our team works. Exactly. So I said, you don’t that’s not how it works. But I said, I’ll meet you for you know, I don’t know lunch or, you know, for breakfast, or coffee or something. And she said, Oh, it’s okay. And she came back a year later. And we ended up connecting at that point. And she’s been on the team for a while, and she does an amazing job.

D.J. Paris 8:18
Yeah, that’s really important point, too, is a lot of teams are not structured the way you guys have structured, which is everyone has their own agent, and you’re matching the client up to the individual versus hey, this person is the transaction coordinator. And this person is, you know, the person who has the showings. And is that is that? Do I have that? Right?

Danielle Dowell 8:36
Yeah. So I mean, I felt, I think what we do, it’s not the easiest, and I guess, the most proficient way financially to do it. It does cost more money, I think, than how other teams are structured. But I think it gives the client more individualized. You know, we’re know the client better everyone is on the same page, they’re not getting passed off to someone that they’ve never met or haven’t been dealing with along to the transaction, which I always felt strange when that happened. So kind of how we put together is it’s to two agents per team, and then an admin, so there’s always someone that can answer an email a question, there’s always someone that can show the property because we probably do about 75% sell side. So there’s no reason for us not to be able to show something I mean, and if if anything happens, even if those two people can’t at least there’s someone else on the team that can and I just think it’s for us this you know, type of clientele that we have, it makes them feel more at ease. They’re always getting consistent feedback. And so my thought processes, give more feedback, give people more information than what they know what to do with and then usually they won’t, you know, try to call you.

D.J. Paris 9:49
That’s actually so my my boss who was my real estate agent back in like 2005 When I was in the IT world. He had a philosophy that he told me said Is that he said, I never wanted a client to have to call me first. So which I think is a great customer service philosophy like I will I will give all the information. So I know and I never had to call and say like, what’s going on? What’s, what’s the next step? He just always told me?

Danielle Dowell 10:15
Yeah, I think that’s great. Because, you know, when people start calling, there’s a reason why they’re calling because they’re not getting something that they want. So if you’re giving everything to them upfront, and you’re giving them the ideas that you think that they need to do, but letting them make the decision on them, I filled the transaction goes much smoother, and everyone’s always happier.

D.J. Paris 10:35
Yeah, more communication versus letter more information versus less, I guess, isn’t that probably

Danielle Dowell 10:40
for sure. I mean, even if you have something sitting on the market, give them ideas of things to do. They may say yes, they may say no, but at least you’re still trying to work on it. And you’re trying to push them past the goal line.

D.J. Paris 10:53
Yeah, and we should mention that you are just an amazing worker, like, in addition to building your own business, you have a development company in Missouri, you’ve got another you have a home there as well. And you just you’re a you’re a good worker, obviously. You wrote something super funny. So I would Daniel’s permission, I asked you if I could read this just because I thought it was super cute. She goes I have no kids. No and nor am I married, nor do I have plans to and I thought that was funny because I was I was actually just on my way to Tiffany to get you a ring.

Danielle Dowell 11:25
That I wouldn’t take the ring.

D.J. Paris 11:26
Okay. The good news is it’s 17 Karat. The bad news is it’s cubic ciconia. So well, that’s that’s the trade off. We just were just keep that to ourselves. And yeah, that’s okay. All right, then I’ll just I’ll keep the room for someone else. But anyway, no, but that was it was very cute. The point is, is Daniel treats this like a business because it is her business. And she’s incredibly busy. But also, you know, finds the time to give back to our podcast. And she you just did actually WGN thing with our managing broker and Joel shop, and which I saw a few weeks ago. And anyway, you’re you’re out there and constantly giving back. And I think that’s really, really a Hallmark and really consistent among all the people, these top one percenters I’ve interviewed, they always find time to give back. I think that’s really cool. So thank you.

Danielle Dowell 12:14
Yeah, I think you should it’s, I think it benefits everyone. I know, when I was first in the industry, I was trying to talk to as many people as I could to figure out how they can become successful, or I just watched a lot of people. And so I think by having these certain outlets, it’s good for anyone that’s coming up to be able to understand what they can do better, or how they should go about proceeding. Because the one thing in real estate is everyone does it differently. So there’s not just one way to do everything. So I think it’s really important too. I like working with a ton of different people too. So I can see how they all work. Because I take a little bit from everyone. And then there’s some stuff that I don’t like the way they do. So I don’t do it. But in the stuff that I like, and I’m like, oh, that’s genius, I should add that into my plan. So I think you constantly have to be learning. And so these type of things are very, you know, you can turn on the podcast, you can listen to a bunch of these top producers, and take little bits and pieces that you like.

D.J. Paris 13:07
Yeah, that’s the whole intention of our show here. And obviously, a lot of the other things you’re that you’re involved with is listening to you know, you’ve been on a lot of panels, and discussions about how you built your business. Can we talk a little bit about that? So you moved here, and I understand you were an assistant, so you probably got a great education with the person you were working with. But you know, at some point, you did decide to go off on your own at that point. Did you know a lot of people in Chicago, were you still was your network still pretty small? Or how did you build it?

Danielle Dowell 13:39
No, at that point, it wasn’t I was we were like my sister and I were already producing fairly well, just on a team. And so I we never I never had thought of building a large team. I went off thinking me my sister Assistant, we’re just going to do our thing and just continue on. And then I had people contact me, oh, hey, can I be in our team or, you know, I need to sit open houses, you have a lot of open houses, it was just really random. So I just kind of hired whoever came to me within reason. And most of them I had known were like friends in the industry usually hadn’t been in the industry that long. And we’re just looking for a little bit more help and mentorship. So that’s how it started. And then since then it’s been a massive learning curve. So now it’s just not the same way. Now we’re much more particular about who we hire, we want to make sure that they get along with us cultural wise, because our team is very tight. We have a really good team, we spend a lot of time together. And I am very aware that like one bad apple can really do horrible results to any sort of group or any sort of whether it’s a company or industry or whatever. So I want to make sure that everyone’s on the same page and they understand that what we’re all doing is for a common goal for everyone. And then also, like I said before, I want to make sure if you come on the team that you’re not just coming on the team blindly like there’s something I need to be able to give to you and there’s something you need to be able to do To me, because that’s the only way that a team’s really going to work where relationships really going to work. It has to be a win win for both parties. Yeah, I

D.J. Paris 15:07
think I think that’s right. And I think that’s a really great attitude. And we probably attract a lot of great people as a result of not only your reputation, but being able to offer that to to someone coming on board and saying, look, it’s a symbiotic relationship, you know, what can you do? And here’s what we do. And let’s make it work. I have a question for you. Because you’ve been you literally moved here knowing nobody, or one person, I guess, but And you came from a tiny town too. So it’s not like all your friends in town moved to Chicago, you know, from Missouri, where I grew up in Peoria, which is, you know, a moderately, like, sizable town in Illinois. But a lot of people I knew moved to Chicago, you probably knew nobody that moved from, you know, the Ozarks up to Chicago. So if you were newly licensed, and you were listening, and wanted to hear like advice from you about or someone at your level, what would you tell somebody to do, who’s either new to the business or really wants to, like, take this to the next level.

Danielle Dowell 16:03
So what I did well, back in the day, nobody did rentals. So the market was so good. So I emailed every agent in the office and the company saying I would do the rentals. And so I did that, that was a ton of my business. And a lot of that turned into buyers down the road or even, you know, sellers down the road. So that’s what I did, I also set a ton of open houses I would set for a weekend. So I set like two Saturday to Sunday, I would only set certain areas, mostly new construction, I would look off market for other realtors, I knew this whole new construction, ask them what they had coming up so that I had a list of off market opportunities to when I was at these open houses. And then I would tell these people, you know, hey, I can offer you information that no one else can have, we would probably go and look at some of these places, but they always ended up buying something on the MLS. So I had a really good year of where I did a lot of those and the woman that I was working for had those listings. And then I would just also anyone else in the company that had listings, I would just search, I would set myself on a search for like certain listings that I wanted in certain areas. And then I would ask them if I could do their open houses, which most people don’t really complain about. They’re like, yes, yeah. And by the

D.J. Paris 17:08
way, I’m gonna cry, because you just said something really brilliant that I don’t want to gloss over. So what Danielle says a lot of people listening are like, Well, okay, how do I get open houses? And here’s, here’s what Danielle essentially did. She went into the MLS and set up search. And you can easily do this, where she probably put her company name, she defined a geographic area, which you can now just draw, you know, in the, in the tool, geographically where you want. And literally, you could just get new listings, you know, sent to you every single morning. So you could do that. And then you can reach directly out to those brokers, even if you don’t know them personally, and they’re in your office or affiliated with a company and just say, Hey, I would love to do an open house for you. And Daniels, right like that. It’s usually a win win, because it makes the seller look great. I’m sorry, it makes the listing agent look great to the seller. Yeah. So if you don’t have this, like search setup, like it’s, it’ll take 30 seconds to set up. And then you get notified every time somebody in your office. It has a new listing in an area you’re interested in, like brilliant. That’s a brilliant idea.

Danielle Dowell 18:12
Yeah. And then I just kept those lists. So I think the first I think year and a half I was in I did not keep a list, maybe even tears, I could kick myself for doing it. But I’ve made every single person sign in. And I would have that list. So I still have those lists. And I put them into like, you know, I have a spreadsheet. So I have like a eblasts list that I continued to eblast. And just started to build people up that way. I always I was actually working at I worked at some bars to part time, I would always get people’s cards, I would always immediately go on to LinkedIn, and friend them. And that in all this stuff doesn’t it’s not going to get you business in like the first six months or a year. But like when people start to see your name and down the road, it’ll get you business the next two or three years. So if you plan on staying in the industry, longevity. It’s great. It’s like it’s you. You have like the spirit. And people at first are kind of like, yeah, this bartender just as such, he’s a real estate agent, sure, whatever. Everyone’s a real estate agent. Because I mean, that’s kind of what you know, everyone thinks, and it’s pretty hysterical. But once you start to get successful, you start to build a business behind you. Those people recognize it, and then they’re like, oh, wow, you know, and then you get to have their business. So it’s just collecting as meeting and collecting as much information from people that you can and just making sure that you input it. So I hear so many people to get business cards, or that said open houses and they never are consistent with keeping the information and put it into whether it’s a CRM and Excel spreadsheet, whatever you whatever you use. It’s just you have to be consistent with it. And it takes a lot of time and it’s super boring. And I remember when I first started before I had any sort of help or assistance. You know, I would get up in the morning at like six and work until 12 at night because I was consistent because I did everything I was supposed to do. As soon as I met someone for lunch or coffee. I immediately sent him an email that day follow up saying hey, it was Nice to meet you, hopefully we can do this business together, you know, how can I help you here? Like I was always very, very consistent. And I mean, it took for five years, I call it like my dark period, I really didn’t do much. I mean, you know, that’s I just focused on my business, especially not having anyone here. I mean, I didn’t go to college with people and couldn’t call them my family wasn’t in the business before. Like you said, I didn’t know a single person here. So I had to be very diligent on my, on the way that I kept myself organized. And as far as like contacts going, and knowing stuff and reaching out to people about certain things. So, you know, I saw something that that made sense for this person to see. So I would send it their way, you know, it’s just, it’s, it’s that’s just doing being consistent. I think that’s the number one thing in the business, no matter whether it’s selling, marketing, whatever you’re doing, you have to be consistent.

D.J. Paris 20:49
Yeah, no, you’re right. And what’s funny, we have Ryan to April comes on once a month. I don’t know if you know, Ryan, but he he does a coaching episode. And he has a statistic, which I didn’t know, which is 16% of your network transacts in real estate every single year, and some transact twice. They sell, sell and buy, right. So anywhere from 16. If you just know, 100 people that could possibly be 16 to 32 transactions in people you already know, but how often are you staying in touch? How often are you, you know, letting them know that if they ever do have those needs, you know that please contact you. And obviously you did those things, but a lot of brokers don’t. So it’s a good reminder of the fundamentals of like, stay in touch, make sure you’re consistently sending people items of value, as Brian Buffini would say, to make sure that they think about you and they actually eventually need a real estate broker.

Danielle Dowell 21:41
Yeah, and if you don’t have much business to or if you’re not from Chicago, so I called all my family and friends and people that I knew, because I’d actually lived in several different cities before this. And you know, at the time, we were younger, so a lot of them weren’t buying, but I still call them and I tell them, hey, if you need a top realtor, you know, obviously now we’re top realtors, but we can I can get you a referral. Sure. And so even be able to get like a 25 or 30% referral after doing absolutely nothing. I’d rather do that all day.

D.J. Paris 22:11
Yeah, me too. That’s, that’s a brilliant idea. It’s funny too, because like, I have my license, I don’t produce and I was thinking, I always use myself as an example. I’m like, I’ve probably too busy. I have a you know, sort of different job. But I said the reason why none of my friends have ever asked me to help them buy or sell a home is they have no idea. I’m a real, I have a real estate license, because I don’t do that as day to day. And as a result, nobody asks me to help them buy or sell a home, which actually is fine for me. But it’s a good example of everyone else should know what it is you do if this is your profession, even if it’s part time. And you know, it’s just one of those things, that consistency is everything. And just like you were saying, just reminding to reminding the audience to consistently stay in touch. Let’s talk about you know, in the gosh, there’s so many different brokers who do it so many different ways. Tell us a little bit about the client experience for your team. So you know, a buyer seller and investor or renter comes your way. How do you guys feel that you’re different from from other teams and other brokers out there.

Danielle Dowell 23:12
So we don’t do just buyer or seller. You know, I don’t have just the buyer seller agent, because in my mind, in order to be able to negotiate, you need to know how to do both sides really well. And when you’re on the buyer side, you’re doing the same thing you would on the sell side, but opposite, right? But you need to know how to talk to all parties in a way that you’ve done both sides. So for us, I think our biggest differences that we do, I put people together on the team, it’s not like a round robin, oh, you’re next to have the lead. It’s nothing like that. Like it’s all who I choose to put on to the different transactions and all of my transactions I could list with. So you’ll every transaction, you’ll see in them a lot size code list on there, it’s because I always call us with someone on the team. So, um, but yeah, so basically what we do is based off of where they’re looking neighborhood price points, and obviously you have clients to you have to understand that maybe they are going to want a little bit more of you, instead of having someone else. A lot of our clients now that we’ve worked with for years are like we don’t care, just give us whoever we know that will be done. Well, and I think we’re totally upfront about it, too. So we show up at the listing presentation, especially if it’s somebody that’s brand new with both people that you’re going to be talking to I don’t go to the listing presentation and then throw someone else on the deal because obviously I could see how that can be upsetting to any client I would be upset with it. So we make sure and put the extra effort in to have both people there so they’re meeting both people so they know who they’re working with. And you know, and then immediately everyone is CCD on the transactions, whether it’s text, email, etc. But I think matching up personality, price point neighborhood everything like that is really important. So you know, even from like if we go on, let’s say a cold listing presentation like we’re Googling and finding out all we can about the background of like who we’re meeting at their house because why would you not right The more information you know, when you have, you know, the easier it is to talk to the client and to find out like what you have in common. Yeah. And

D.J. Paris 25:08
by the way, I want you to pause for a second because not to disrupt your flow. But you just said something that triggered something with me that I thought would be really helpful to the audience. So Daniel is talking about, hey, do your homework right, before you go meet with your sellers, your buyers, make sure you know, at least enough make sure you know at least more about that person than maybe the other broker that you don’t know who you’re up against. Who’s an invisible person because they’re interviewing three realtors, right? So what like, what would that actually look like? Well, this just happened to me this morning. So I was publishing a podcast episode. And I, we podcast, we published the links, just like we’ll do for this one on LinkedIn, and Facebook and Twitter. But anyway, I was on LinkedIn, because I had, like, had to fix this link. And I and I always forget, this is a thing, that if you go to LinkedIn, and you go to the your little feed, you can see every one, I think they do it a couple times a week, everyone who’s gotten a new job, they just, they just aggregate it for you. And you could just literally click and part of doing your research, obviously, on your people that you’re gonna be meeting with is, you know, look them up, find where they work, maybe even find out a little bit about the company, they work for us, you have something to talk about, or what their hobbies are, or whatever. But even if you don’t have clients, you should be congratulating everyone, you know, on LinkedIn, whenever they get a new job i and i just realized like, oh, yeah, I you know, anyone could do that.

Danielle Dowell 26:24
Oh, absolutely. I mean, we definitely should. And I think LinkedIn too. I mean, I think it’s getting used more often now. But for while they’re, you know, people randomly I think you said they didn’t use it as much. So when you did respond to someone on LinkedIn, in my opinion, you got a much better response than you would like on a Facebook or Instagram or something like that.

D.J. Paris 26:42
Yeah, for sure. But yeah, so you know, what Daniels team does that I think is really interesting. And again, not the way that the vast majority of teams I’m aware of work is, you know, they meet as a team, they figure out who would be the best fit, and then that person takes the lead. And then Danielle is always there to assist if she’s not the primary person. And yeah, that’s huge. And tell us a little bit about how you feel you’re different than other brokers, like what are you guys? What do you feel that you guys are doing? That maybe sets you apart from aside from the team structure?

Danielle Dowell 27:15
Well, I think there’s, you know, a lot of things. I don’t know, it’s, you know, I think it’s gets a little bit too hard. It’s hard to differentiate yourself sometimes. Right? So it’s just kind of who you are, and like, how you think about things and what the bigger picture is. And so for me personally, and I think what I try to, you know, tell the team and explain to the team is like, with real estate, there’s so many ways to make money. And so like, even within our team, like we talked about doing some rehab work together, like I do some flips a couple of year, you know, someone on the team is like, hey, like I can do one with you, I maybe can’t put as much money in. But you know, I’d like to experience it, I’d like to do that. So that kind of stuff we’re trying to do more of. Also, I always thought like building the team. And this is just kind of internally more than like, I guess, externally for the clients. But I think it does help the clients out too. I mean, when we have people that know construction from the beginning to the end and know how to rehab a home, that’s only going to help our clients out. But so a lot of its internals, what I’m saying about the team, but like even for Timo, you know, when I started, I worked so many hours, I mean, it was insane how many hours I put in and how hard I worked. But I’ve always been a hard worker, I’ve always had like two or three jobs. I played sports competitively on tons of teams, like that’s just always been my natural personality. I assumed that that was everyone else’s personality, I realized that Absolutely. Is not everyone else’s personality.

D.J. Paris 28:37
Expression. It’s never crowded along the extra mile, right?

Danielle Dowell 28:40
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so what I found, though, is that plenty of people are really good at what they do. It’s just you have to kind of help them find that spot. And you also can’t expect people to do as much as you do. So what I did is I thought, well, if I you know, on the team, if we can have a system and granted, this is still in the making, and it will be for a while. But if we can do something where everyone can still come, they can still make good money, but they can actually take a vacation, which I don’t think it took a vacation my first five years. You know, if they can have that downtime, I know that that downtime allows you to really be creative and to be able to come back and do things in a much better way. Whereas I think just working people to the bone, I mean, people will do it. I mean, I’ve done it, but I don’t think it’s the it gets you the best benefit. And I don’t think it actually it doesn’t it doesn’t end up helping your clients outright. So to me, like it’s just a lot of things internally in the team that I wanted to change that I wanted to be and make really positive inside in order to hopefully create that positivity and to carry that outside to our clients. So it’s not so much what we do differently to our clients. It’s know much what we do inside differently that then helps our clients.

D.J. Paris 29:54
Yeah, I mean balances balances everything. It’s funny too, because I saw Daniel speak at um I’m at a an event just a few weeks ago, and she was on the panel with Matt Larose, who’s who’s not yet been on the show, it will certainly get him on, hopefully soon. But he’s, he’s an anomaly, right? Because he wants to work 24/7. And then it came to you after he was, you know, sort of shocked, like, stun the audience by saying, I just work around the clock, and I love it, it feels like I love it, too. But I also need time off. And having that balance, for sure helps you, you know, treat your clients. I mean, assuming you’re somebody that needs balance, which, you know, maybe Matt, you know, he’s happy working as much as he does. But yeah, I think I think you’re right, having that balance enables you to be a better broker, right?

Danielle Dowell 30:37
Well, yeah, and I just know, when I’m super busy, and I’ve got a ton of stuff going on, you know, I think that it’s you, you’re my emails are shorter, right? They’re not as the salutations aren’t as good. And no matter how much you think that you’re just getting the information across, at the end of the day, if you have to spend an extra two minutes to write a nicer email, people are going to remember that they’re going to remember that you said, Hey, how are you doing? I hope all as well, instead of just see a five, right? So, you know, that’s what I think is going the extra mile what make people pay attention, especially in a world right now where everything’s just so immediate. It’s just like, yes, no, yes, no, this that. Plus, you know, when it comes to a text and an email, you sometimes it’s hard to really read how the person is feeling, right. And so for our clients, we definitely don’t want them to feel that we’re being short, or that we don’t have the time for them. So you know, we want to go that extra mile. And which brings up kind of something that we haven’t talked about, but I’ve always believed in. And this is probably because honestly, I don’t have kids, I’m not married, I have probably extra income to do so. But hiring more people and doing it in a timely manner, so that you’re not playing catch up, and also that you have the time to do these really small things that actually matter that matter a lot, in my opinion. Yeah, can

D.J. Paris 31:49
you talk a little about a few of the small things that you now have more time to do?

Danielle Dowell 31:54
Yeah, so for me, I mean, even for me to be able to go and to do more appointments and to do more meetings and things that I need to do for myself hiring you know, another in house person that can sit and at the office, that can even if sometimes there’s maybe they’re they’re not doing a ton of stuff like they do enough, you know, and everyone that works for us is really good, because I have to say, the women that I have in my office right now are the best, I mean, they will work nights and weekends if need be. So if they’re not working at some point in time during the day, or if they want to, like stay home and say can I work from home, I don’t really care, I don’t care actually where you work from as long as the work is done. Now, granted, we do have to have people in the office for printing and for, you know, stuff of that nature. But I mean, at the end of the day, like to me, it’s just do the work, if you’ll do the work, I don’t really care, you know, per se when you’re doing the work, if that makes sense. So, but for me, I hire people beforehand, because I feel like I can always have seen when things are gonna get a little bit more heavier, it’s gonna be a little bit more busier. And in all honesty, I mean, we need time to train people to and to make sure that they know what they’re doing. You just can’t hire someone to expect for them to be ready to go. I mean, it takes months. So to me, I’ve always rather put money into the business, I’m also a person to that didn’t start making money. And they just went out and started like buying all sorts of crazy things. And not to say that I mean, everyone can do their thing. It is what it is. But I’ve always been more like probably because of how I grew up just a definitely more financially conservative within means. But if I know something could make me money, then I’m not financially conservative. That makes sense. Yeah. And for people

D.J. Paris 33:30
who are listening who may be, you know, feel like they don’t yet have the resources to hire people to help them you probably do because we are now in such a global gig economy that there are websites you can go to to say, here’s what I’m looking for, maybe it’s a virtual assistant, maybe it’s somebody to help with your marketing. And you can find people from all over the world that are incredibly inexpensive and effective. And so even if you just wanted somebody to, you know, help you with staying on top of your client, your your network, and making sure you’re, you know, staying on top of that they people can help with that. And it’s not that expensive, either. And then, you know, if you want somebody full time, you know, and they’re here in the office, that’ll be more expensive. And maybe you can work up to that. But you can always hire people ad hoc to on the way along the way.

Danielle Dowell 34:15
Yeah, I think a lot of people get scared about hiring someone because number one, it’s the cost that’s associated with it. But also it’s like, what if I don’t have the business, but I think the big thing that you have to understand when you hire someone is you yourself have to be organized. So if you’re not, it’s never gonna work, hire someone. So I get up at six in the morning every day to start sending out emails and to get my day plan for people that I have to get stuff to. So you have to be prepared to do that. Because hiring someone it makes life easier after a while, but it’s also another job. So now you’re having to manage and you know, take care of people. So it’s not as easy as like hiring someone and just throwing everything at them and saying like, Oh, it’s great. Now I can go hang out at the pool all day and go golfing. Like that’s not how it works. So you have to really be in it and a business sense and really understand what it takes to hire someone, it’s, it’s, it’s not definitely the easiest thing in the world. But once everyone’s trained up, then you can start seeing the levels of your productivity go up. It’s amazing.

D.J. Paris 35:12
Yeah, I’ve always felt like you should focus on the three things that you really love and are the most passionate about, and then get you the best results. And then try your best to offload them offload all the other stuff to you know, other people, you can delegate and delegate, it’s never been cheaper to be able to do that. And a lot of it is stuff that you know, the same skill set that is great for sales and marketing might not be the same skill set. That’s great for paperwork, right? So you can find places people to do that side of it. And you know, and then you can be out there doing the thing you love to do the best that probably will make you the most amount of money to absolutely. Well, I look, I think you’ve said it all. And I want to remind all of our listeners that if you are a broker and are interested, alright look, whether you’re a broker, or whether you’re a client, a buyer, seller, renter, investor developer that is looking to either work for Daniel’s group or work with Danielle and her group. Daniel, by the way, they can always visit your website, which is the dowel group rv.com. We will also put that in the notes. You can also find them of course on Facebook and Instagram, just search for the dollar group, it’ll pop right up. And then what’s the best way that someone should reach out to you? You mentioned phone and email before Do you mind sharing that with the audience?

Danielle Dowell 36:26
Oh, yeah, you can reach me on my cellular device anytime. It’s 312-391-5655. And then my email is D dowel at Danielle dow.com.

D.J. Paris 36:40
Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy busy day to do this. I know you do a lot of these kinds of things. So we appreciate it. And, again, we want also want to thank all the listeners for continuing to support us. We’re over 100 episodes now. So we’re super grateful that everyone continues to listen and share. Please share this with a friend if you know any other brokers in your office that might benefit from hearing from people like Danielle, obviously, turn them on to the show, I will not be giving this cubics akoni ring to Danielle. So if maybe a future guest will want to

Danielle Dowell 37:19
anyway, a Halloween costume or something. I can use it somehow.

D.J. Paris 37:24
You want to hear a really funny story real speaking of cubic zirconia. And before I sign off i a million years ago was in a different profession. And I had a woman, I’ll try to keep this vague as to not reveal who it is. But anyway, it’s a woman who was I mean, it’s not embarrassing. It’s just I don’t even remember this point really who she was she was married to but it’s a woman who was married to a professional hockey player. And she had this beautiful ring and we were just meeting to do a business thing. And I sent home that your ring is amazing. She goes she sort of like whispers it’s cubic ciconia. And I go Oh, really? She goes yeah, my husband’s like this big, big time hockey player. But she goes, I thought it was kind of silly that he would spend like 30 grand on a ring. So she goes so we got a fake one. And we just think it’s hysterical that everyone thinks it’s and I was like That is so funny. And there was like just a joke between them. But that was literally her ring. So I’ve always thought that was kind of a funny story. But

Danielle Dowell 38:15
I mean, whatever works for you. I think you know, I mean, see these aren’t bad. I mean, think about that, though. She’s out and about if someone steals it.

D.J. Paris 38:25
Yeah, I mean, you could just leave it at the table at a restaurant and wouldn’t feel too bad about it. Well, anyway, everyone who’s listening, work with Danielle, whether you’re a broker, and you’re looking to join a team, reach out to them to see if you’re a fit. And again, if you’re a client, obviously, their reputation speaks for itself. She and her group are in the top 1/3 of 1%. That’s how how a crazy amount of success they’ve been having. So they’re obviously doing everything right. So visit them on the web as well, doll group, the dial group, r e.com. And Danielle, thank you so much for taking time to be on the show.

Danielle Dowell 38:59
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me and for that new marketing statistic that will now be on all our posts.

D.J. Paris 39:05
All right. All right. Well, for everyone listening. Thank you and we’ll see you guys on the next episode. Thanks, Danielle.

Danielle Dowell 39:10
Thanks. Have a good one.

Before real estate Danny Lewis was a public relations and advertising executive. He offered to sell his grandfather’s home, and after that transaction, realized he had caught the real estate bug. Danny converted the marketing skills he had developed into a successful real estate career quickly, building not only a successful practice for himself, but also a strong team now known as Lewis Real Estate Group. In this episode Danny discusses not only how to build a team, but also why he recently moved to Dreamtown. As one of the youngest top 1% brokers in Chicago, he continues to expand his reach and success!

Danny Lewis can be reached at 773-988-9092 and lewischicagorealestate@gmail.com.


Transcript

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

Welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate brokers for real estate brokers. My name is DJ Parris, I am your host and guide through the show. As always, we want to start out by saying thank you to our listeners, and our hosts both who are spending their time either listening or contributing to the podcast, we greatly appreciate it. And a couple of quick announcements before we get started, we do have a sponsor that will be coming on a future episode. So we’re very excited about that. And if you’d like to be a sponsor, for any of our upcoming episodes, you can always reach out to us, the easiest way is go to our our website, which is keeping it real pod.com By the way, that is also the place where you can stream every episode we’ve ever done. Also, of course, we’re on iTunes, Google Play or any podcast app that you might have on your phone. Just search for keeping it real podcast, and you should find us right away. Also, please join our Facebook group, which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. We not only post of course links to all the episodes, but also links to articles that we find online that will help you with your business, as well as links to the host or sorry, the guests that we promote. So you can get an idea of what they are doing a digitally as well and follow them on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and their websites, of course. So again, thank you for listening, we are gosh, well over 100 episodes now we’re going strong or to keep going strong. And it’s because of you who continue to listen. And our waiting list to for guests to be on the show is now approaching 100. That’s how popular this podcast has become. And we’re so grateful that it seems to strike a chord and help people but we also always need your suggestions. So don’t hesitate to reach out to us, through our website through Facebook. Any way you can find us and say here’s what I want on the show, here’s who I want. And that’ll help us give you guys the best content that would be helpful for your business. So, again, let’s now move on to a really exciting interview with somebody I’ve known for many, many years. He’s a true superstar in Chicago, and a super great guy, Danny Lewis.

Today on the show, we have Danny Lewis of the Lewis Real Estate Group with Dream town. Danny is a Chicago native with a strong background in customer service sales, Public Relations and Marketing industries. See he specializes in the home buying and selling process as well as an investments leasing income producing properties and commercial, his organization attention to detail and ability to fully understand his client’s needs set him apart in the industry. He has been a top 1% Producer consistently almost since he started in real estate, which is incredible. And his production, his personal production and his team has been growing year over a year. You can visit Danny’s website at Lewis Chicago real estate.com also find him on Instagram, which is Louis Chicago real estate. And on Facebook, Danny Lewis real estate, I will post links to these for the listeners. Danny, welcome to the show.

Danny Lewis 4:10
Thanks so much for having me, DJ.

D.J. Paris 4:13
Yeah, and you and I have known each other for a number of years, I’ve always been a big fan of all the amazing success you’ve had like very quickly. So before we get to all of that, I want to hear the origin story about like, why you chose real estate how you got into real estate, if you don’t mind sharing that. Yeah, of

Danny Lewis 4:31
course. Again, thank you so much for having me on the show today. I’ve always been a fan of it is really cool to actually be on it. Yes. So let’s throw it back to 2010 I was coming out of a job in PR and advertising and working in marketing. And at the time my grandfather who was 92 at the time, decided to move to a retirement home so he was going to sell his home himself and at the time he was 92 he had his wits together and all that kind of stuff but at The same time, you know, he wasn’t he didn’t have an email address, there was no way he could sell a place on his own. Sure. So at the time, I watched shows like Million Dollar Listing and house hunters, and I saw all these Realtors making seemed like a lot of money, and having a good time doing it being their own bosses. And I thought, you know, why don’t I give it a shot. And so my first pitch was to my grandfather to convince him to let me sell his home on his behalf. And he did and he let me do it. And I just fell in love with it. I fell in love with the process, I fell in love with the fact that I had to be social, I fell in love with the fact that I was my own boss, I was making my own hours. And finally, I fell in love with the paycheck once it closed, it was, you know, a lot more than I was making in PR. So to me, it was a no brainer to transition to real estate right after that.

D.J. Paris 5:48
Wow. So you, you sold your grandfather’s home? And then you decided to I guess do this full time?

Danny Lewis 5:54
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I got my license online, the Institute online.com sure took like, what, six weeks, maybe five weeks or something like that. It wasn’t too hard to get the license. And then once I got it, I started immediately. I got my license in October 2011. I didn’t make my first paycheck until May 2012. You know, I know at least started and probably the worst time to start in terms of October. Yeah, really? Yeah. But on top of it was 2011. And I remember that was like one of the worst years for real estate in general. But turns out actually one of the best years to buy looking back. But yeah, in terms of being a brand new broker, it was it was not easy out the gate. And there was a lot of failure and frustration to start before eventually succeeding.

D.J. Paris 6:39
Yeah. And you know, it’s funny, we’ve now interviewed, or Gosh, I don’t even know close to 100 people on the show who are all top one percenters like yourself. And the idea of not earning a paycheck for you know, six to eight to 10 months is not an uncommon story at all. In fact, it’s really unusual when somebody says, Oh, yeah, close my first deal in the first month or two, that is almost never happened on any of the people I’ve spoken with, unless, you know, they were just very lucky or had a friend that happened to be in that timeframe of when they got their license and needed to buy or sell. So can you can you talk a little bit about what you did. If you can remember back to that time, I know, everything’s so much different for you now, because you’re so successful. But back then what were you doing to setup future sales and future clients,

Danny Lewis 7:20
I would say in trying and failing. So, you know, when I was originally starting out, I was one of the first people to invest in Zillow and Trulia advertising at the time and 2011, Zillow was still brand new. So it was truly anilao. The realtors who, you know, did really well, in the great years of real estate and up to 2008. I feel like they kind of got lazy and they kind of fell off afterwards. In 2009. They didn’t really put a lot of investing and money into Zillow and Trulia, they kind of thought that people who looked on websites weren’t legit. They just felt like it wasn’t serious. So I took advantage of that. And I started out by advertising in Lincoln Park, and at the time, I think 100% was available, which is insane. That isn’t, that is insane. It is now 0% is available. Now there’s a waitlist whenever you try to get on it. So yeah, I mean, I would get these leads. And at first, they would just sit in my inbox because I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t have the confidence to say anything, I didn’t really know, you know, what I could help these people with, because I was so brand new, I didn’t have that confidence to take that, that first step. And eventually I did, obviously and made that phone calls and call people back and, and I started trying these different ways to you know, get these leads to become my clients. And I tried all these different types of, you know, pitches, all these different types of intros, etc. And eventually, I found what worked for me and settled on it. And then eventually, over time, you know, started teaching my team members how to do it. And, you know, like I said, there wasn’t immediate, like, there was a good six or seven months of zero income. But you know, once I got over the hump, and once I figured out what my niche was, and once I figured out what my pitch was, that’s when it all changed for the better.

D.J. Paris 9:09
Yeah, that is so well said. And it’s absolutely right. It’s funny, I was just at an event. Oh, actually, you were at the event with me. We were at the Zillow event a few weeks ago. And I can’t remember what the statistic was. And I think they showed it to us then, because I do a lot of things with Zillow. And it’s amazing how many leads they sell, where the broker does not really follow up, you know, maybe have one phone call because they live transfer the call and then the broker, you know, the person isn’t ready to buy that moment. And maybe they’re six months out and that person is likely not to stay in the brokers probably not staying in touch, and they’re paying a fortune for these leads.

Danny Lewis 9:45
Yeah, and that’s actually why they started doing that and to be honest to kind of screw people like me over because I was one of the people who would respond quickly and I hire people to respond quickly. Sure. And now and this is a whole other spiel. If you want to get into this at some point I’d be happy to have The way that Zillow leads work now, it’s just so jumbled and so quick. And I feel like it’s so forced, compared to how it was before. But yeah, I mean, like I said, if you want to get into that, that’s a whole nother combo we could have as well.

D.J. Paris 10:13
Well, it’s, I guess, the point of all of it. And yeah, I mean, certainly their whole systems have changed. But the point is that you were very diligent over over this, you know, the incubation period, have you got, you know, they always say, you know, now I don’t even think they call them leads anymore. They call them contacts. Because really, that’s that’s what it is, right? And you know, that better than anyone? And I guess if you think about it, as well, this is somebody who’s looking to buy, well, maybe they’re not looking to buy right now. And so the people, the broker who stays in touch, obviously, over time, ultimately wins the game. And obviously, you did that very successfully. Yeah, are you? Are you still doing a lot with internet leads? Or have you become sort of too busy for that, or

Danny Lewis 10:53
I’ve started to wean off and go more towards referrals. Now, you know, internet leads, make sense, if you’re a brand new realtor, or if you’re just trying to get your foot in the door, know, when you join real estate companies, they always say, you know, tell your friends and family or in real estate, you know, push it out there, let everybody know, I figured out really quickly, the reason they do that is so they can get their brand

D.J. Paris 11:12
out to my friends. Ah, interesting. That’s probably true. In my opinion, they

Danny Lewis 11:16
didn’t really care about whether or not I would get business from them. They cared about saying, Hey, Danny is now at x agency, or take a look, etc. So my whole idea is how do I get people who I would have never met complete strangers to know me and refer me business. And that’s how it started in this online advertising. You know, the whole idea is with your sphere is you know, you have one circle, and that circle then pushes out to all their circles right up, you know, you as a realtor, if it’s just friends and family, you know what that first circle is, but if it’s a complete stranger, now I had like 50, or 60 circles pushing out to their sphere. And it just really made the process and multiplied it by 20 cents. So that’s why I got into online advertising. But now that I’ve been established per se, and been around for a good amount of time, you know, now those you know, complete strangers are now my referral army. They’re pushing me out to everyone. They’re referring me to their friends and family. So instead of my friends and family referring me I have complete strangers are not strangers anymore. refer me out to their friends and family.

D.J. Paris 12:23
Yeah, it’s funny, I heard somebody talk about recently, the switch from because they became too busy to work internet leads. And they said, Well, it’s actually now a lot cheaper because I don’t have to pay the the, you know, the Zillow fees or wherever they’re purchasing leads. However, they say it actually is more expensive in a way because but in a good way. Because I now invest, I’m investing so much time with my clients, and taking such great care of them that they do refer business, but in a way, it’s like, I’m actually, you know, the time value of money. And this is a good thing. But I’m, you know, I’m spending more time with people I care about. So, you know, I don’t know if it’s technically cheaper to do it that way. But it’s certainly more fulfilling, right. And you have now this huge army, like you said, of people who are just sending everyone business. And again, that’s evidenced by all the success you’ve had. I am, I’m really curious to know, too. At what point did you decide I need a team? Because I feel like you did that pretty quickly, like within a, was it just a few years? Or was it a little after that?

Danny Lewis 13:22
It was actually in the first year, so amazing. And to go before that, what I really figured out real quickly was that I needed this system. And that was the first thing I figured out. Once I got the assistant thing nailed down. Then I said, I need a team. You know, when I was starting out in the first six or seven months of you know, being a realtor, I realized how much time I was spending, setting up showings calling agents chasing them around trying to figure out my schedule, calling leads etc. And I thought, You know what, honestly, like, these are things that I could train someone to do. And then I could focus on prospecting and finding more clients and, and just, you know, making more time for myself in a sense. So it’s risky and and it’s an investment, but it was the best thing I’ve ever done was to get an assistant and to get help. Because that really did freed me up because now I could think about the other important things. You know, their top Realtors I know. My friend Josh Lipton, for example.

D.J. Paris 14:18
Oh, yeah. Josh has been on our show

Danny Lewis 14:20
love Josh. Yeah, great guy. He does all his own. Well, he’s more into developing now. But when he was, you know, mostly working in real estate, he did all his own showings, he set up everything himself and like, how do you do that man? Like, how do you like have a life he has a kid now to, you know, how can you possibly be able to successfully have a personal life while you’re still chasing around agents who want to reschedule a showing at 230 to three and blah, blah. It just blows my mind that there are realtors out there that can do this by themselves. And you know, God bless them. I think that’s amazing. I personally am not one of them. I need help. I know I need help. And that was one of the first things I figured out when I got into real estate. I got my first Since then, when I had maybe a million dollars total in, in sales in general.

D.J. Paris 15:06
And it’s funny too, because like conventional wisdom would say you had no business getting an assistant with only a couple of deals under your belt. And yet you saw the future and saw this will actually make me more money in the long term.

Danny Lewis 15:19
There was conventional wisdom and my dad, my dad, I told him, I was getting an assistant, he was like, Why, like, what do you need this system for? Sure, just do it all yourself. Exactly. And at the time, like, I really probably, you know, didn’t have enough work to keep them busy, from nine to five. But you know, I figured out real quickly what I can do to keep them busy. And on top of that, once I did have like a whole thing set up for them, now I became freer to talk to clients to be able to, you know, prospect myself to be able to go to events, to have a life, these are things that, you know, having an assistant freed me up to do, and then eventually, you know, grow a team. So you know, the whole idea behind the team was I did start to get a good amount of leads. And I did start to get a lot of people just sitting in my inbox waiting to hear back from me. And I realized it would take me two or three days, sometimes to get back to people because I had so much else going on, I couldn’t focus on these people who are reaching out for my help. And that’s, that’s huge. I mean, if I’m spending all this money on leads, why am I wasting it if they’re just sitting there in the inbox, so the idea was at the time I was at Conlon was to send out an email to the company to even put on Craigslist, no looking for, you know, motivated brokers who can take over leads and start, you know, calling these leads, turning them into clients, and then I would just get a referral fee. That way, I wasn’t wasting money, they weren’t just sitting in my inbox that way, you know, these people who are asking for help are getting the help they need. And that way, you know, these newer agents can now have the experience of having clients of their own, and then eventually build their own, you know, rapport with these clients and having them refer them business.

D.J. Paris 16:54
But by the way, I want to pause for just a moment for the listeners, because I want to, we just Danny just said something very profound that no other person we’ve interviewed on the show has has mentioned, and maybe other people have done it, I’m sure, you probably aren’t the first, but you’re the first person to talk about it on the show. And I think this is really interesting. So obviously, Danny’s an entrepreneur, you can hear it in the way he speaks, he happens to be in real estate, he’s passionate about real estate. But at its core, you know, he’s he runs a business. And even early on, he realized, Hey, maybe I can still purchase leads and refer them to other brokers and earn a referral fee. That is a really, really important and intelligent way of thinking about leads as maybe you’re not even giving them to yourself, you know, and you earn a referral fee. That is a brilliant idea. I’ve never heard anybody think I’ve never anybody taught me that they did that.

Danny Lewis 17:45
I mean, that’s the whole basis of my team too, as well. I mean, like, like I said before, I mean, there’s two needs for it, it’s, you know, the need for yourself to make money, etc. But obviously, the bigger need is to make sure these clients have what they need. And that’s a realtor who’s 100% dedicated to them, who has the time to speak with them wherever they want, who could take them out on showings whatever they need. I understand I’m only one person, so I can’t really physically do that myself. So instead, I’d rather train people to take the leads as I would take them and then hand them off and then take a referral fee.

D.J. Paris 18:15
Yeah, I guess then naturally, that leads you to build your own team, because then you have and I know that you, you know, it’s obviously there’s a million teams out there. And a lot of them promise a lot of different things. The one thing I know about Danny and his team, because I know people on your team, and I know people over the years that have been on your team, they’re like he gives me leads. I don’t you know, and that’s really somewhat rare. Actually, I don’t know how common that is. And you actually deliver on that promise, which is probably why you’ve built such a successful and loyal team.

Danny Lewis 18:47
Yeah, I mean, when I started the whole team thing, and thank you, by the way for saying that. And when I started the whole team thing, I want to put myself in their position. And that’s what I do with everything in real estate with my clients, etc. I always tried to turn the tables and say, what would I think if I was them? What would I be looking for? So the whole idea with the team that I came up with was the exact opposite of everyday team, which means that you know, today’s normal real estate teams as brokers who do deals for their agents, once they close the deal, they do the deal under the team leaders name, the MLS, ID, etc. You know, when they have listings, it’s the team leaders name that’s on the sign outside. That’s not me. You know, my idea is I want to build a resume for these people. I want to make sure that if and when they decide to leave the team, they have something to show, and also, how not an egomaniac. And I’m not saying people who are team leaders who take the credit are egomaniacs, but personally, I don’t need the credit. I don’t need to take sales that I had nothing to do with so whenever my team members do a deal whenever they have a closing it’s always under their own MLS ID whatever my team members have their own listings as always their own signs out front. The only time that they you know say that they work under me or with me, per se, is you know, when we’re dealing with clients who know me already and who I’m introducing them to. But otherwise, these leads, these are just their own personal leads. And like I said, once they become clients of theirs, and they get referred business from these leads, that’s 100%.

D.J. Paris 20:10
Yeah, and it also gives a team member, one less reason to ever consider leaving, because they they’re not going to, like you said, putting yourself in their shoes. They’re not thinking, you know, I’m really building his brand and not my own. And you, you have essentially solved a pretty serious problem that exists in a lot of conventional teams. And again, I’m not in any way criticizing that structure, like you were saying, you feel the same way. You know, there’s a million ways to do it. But I would understand the inclination at some point for somebody, especially as they get more successful on your team to think like, well, I’d rather build my own brand than than someone else’s. So that makes perfect sense, really smart. That’s the

Danny Lewis 20:49
whole idea is to not have these people be on my team forever for them to eventually start their own team and do their own thing. And that’s how I got started, you know, I was on a team, when I started out was understand this bill G, he started me on a team, there’s only three of us, or four of us or something like that. And you know, whenever I had a question, at Friday, on Friday, at five o’clock, or you know, in these weird hours, he would always get back to me real quickly. And I remember that. And so it’s kind of like I always say, it’s like going to Starbucks, and the person in front of you pays for your coffee, you’re not going to just take the coffee and leave, you’re going to pay for the person behind you. So that’s how it is me as well. You know, I as someone who helped me out, it would be a huge waste if I didn’t turn around and give as well.

D.J. Paris 21:29
Yeah, and we should talk about recently, in the last few months, I believe, I don’t remember the exact date. But I know you just recently transitioned yourself over to dream town, which I love dream town. Actually, many, many, many years ago, in a previous career out, I worked for the company that built originally built their website. This is when they were the they far as the websites go. And this is pre Zillow. And I mean, they crushed everybody’s, you know, all the all the big firms, because they were so tech focused, and they just weren’t, they were young and cool. And they still are young and cool. And I just have always been a big, huge fan of them. i A lot of the brokers, they are just great. We’ve had a lot of them on the show. But tell us a little bit about why you chose dream town. And you know, how that transition, you know, went and that sort of, yeah,

Danny Lewis 22:15
so I’ve known evolved the owner dream town for a good amount of time, and I want to say is recruiting me, but he’s known me and he’s, you know, reached out to me for like the last four or five years, whenever I had questions. Whenever I needed something, I would reach out to him and ask him and he would always help without asking for anything in return. And that always stuck with me always. And, you know, just for people in general who are listening, you know, karma does come back. I mean, if you give, you know, everything does come back around. So yeah, I mean, I knew the company, obviously. And most recently, I’ve become more of a listing agent more than ever, you know, having legitimate sales materials and advertising for my listings is now more important than the commission I make. Because obviously, the more listings you get, you know, the more help you need, in a sense. And I realized I needed help. And the company I was at before is a great company, but they weren’t as marketing focus as I would want to be. You know, they had, I think one person in the marketing department, whereas in dream town, there’s like, 14, and I have a dedicated person to me, who basically does all my marketing for me reminds me what I need to do stuff. I spent more time on marketing the last three months, and I didn’t my last seven years of real estate, it just, it’s mind blowing. And, you know, the resources they have for my clients are awesome. The the agents that work there, that culture they have, it’s something that I want to be a part of. And, you know, it’s been everything that I’ve hoped so far it’s been, you know, four or five months, but in these four or five months, I’ve learned how much I’ve been missing, in a sense, and it’s been awesome. It’s been a great experience.

D.J. Paris 23:51
Yeah, dream job is just one of those companies that has seemed to figure it out. And they, you just never You rarely, I mean, rarely, I mean, I’ve never I saw saved, you know, basically never ever hear anybody unhappy. So, you know, customers or brokers, it’s, I’m a recruiter so so I don’t even try a dream job brokers, because I know they’re just happy, typically. And that’s a real testament to that. So So I applaud you and your choice there.

Obviously, you don’t need my approval, but I do think that I think it’s a good choice. Yeah.

Well tell us a little bit about about, you know, is it you know, because there there are brokers that are listening that are always looking for, you know, for maybe a different opportunity, and you know, what is it that you looked for so, obviously you talked about marketing Were there other things that that were really important or was that the primary thing that was like

Danny Lewis 24:45
the primary thing but you know what, I could say that anyone who’s listening in any broker who’s out there, you’re the wintertime is one of the debt is time in real estate, especially in Chicago and December there’s really no reason for us to be here at all right sales are down everyone’s focusing on the holidays, etc. So what I always recommend is at the end of the year, you know, once you have your resume, quote, unquote, put together of sales, that’s when you go around to all the major agencies call all the managing brokers set up meetings with each one of them, and go see what there is out there to offer. You know, I’m not going to do that for a while, because I’m happy where I’m at now. But, you know, at a point, you know, the last couple of years or so I realized how important it was to not just make connections with those managing brokers, because now when I go out, and I see them, you know, I’m friendly with all them, they all know me, well, even if I didn’t, you know, choose to go to their company, they do realize that I’m not going anywhere in terms of real estate. So it makes sense to still be friendly, for down the road, you know, just going around and seeing what these other cultures look like to see what these other companies are offering their agents, and then take that idea, take that ammo and use it towards your own business. I mean, you can go to a meeting with a company that you have no intention of joining whatsoever. But they could say something in that meeting that you think, Oh, why am I doing that with my business? Or why isn’t? Why am I talking to my managing broker about doing that with me? It just gave me so many ideas. And it gave me so many different levels of thinking about our jobs that I never thought about before. So you know, I would say no matter what, no matter what your intentions are, no matter what motivates you, in terms of, you know, a company that you work for, just go out there and meet the managing brokers of all the major companies see what they’re offering their agents, and then take that and use it have your life.

D.J. Paris 26:25
Yeah, and it’s in no way a betrayal of your current situation. It’s just, you’re just looking because cultures change, managing brokers change. And all of a sudden, you know, a firm that maybe you weren’t interested in before, or an office of a larger firm or a smaller firm, they get a new managing broker, and it changes everything. And all of a sudden, they become so I think that’s, you know, as somebody who I would prefer, our brokers never leave our firm. Of course, they do. You know, some do, and it’s totally okay, and maybe other firms are a better fit at some point. And so, and maybe we’re a better fit at some point. So I exactly pletely understand that inclination. And, you know, it’s something that I think, you know, it’s funny, like, I used to see ads, where you somebody would blast out an ad saying, come join our firm, and it would say, like, private confidential conversation, I’m like, it doesn’t have to be a scary thing that you’re afraid of getting caught. It’s just normal business, you know, it’s, you know, and, and things change that it’s never almost ever even personal. When you find a firm, that’s a better fit. It’s just, I think they’re better fit.

Danny Lewis 27:30
I mean, you. I mean, you said exactly what was about to say, it’s in no way, a personal thing. And I think I’m pretty sure at this point that every managing broker realizes that that, you know, it’s real estate is just how it is. I mean, when you’re a free agent, in a sense, an independent contractor, you know, you’re only looking out for yourself, you’re not really looking out for the company that you work for as much. And I get that. And I think that most managing brokers and owners get that as well as at the end of the day, we have to pay our own bills. And if the company that you’re working for isn’t doing that, then you got to see what else is out there.

D.J. Paris 27:59
Yeah, and speaking of your team, and and also, you know, recruiting in general, I know, you’re always looking, or you’re looking currently, see if there’s more people to add, that would be a good fit. Can you tell us a little bit more about like, what, who would be a good fit for your team, because we have so many listeners, and I’m sure there’s plenty of people that would be interested in exploring what you guys offer.

Danny Lewis 28:20
For sure. You know, starting out, obviously, in the beginning, it was a lot of newer realtors, people who are brand new to real estate. So you know, as you know, I was helping them take these leads and training them on how to turn these people into clients. You know, I’d also be training them on the MLS, and train them on pretty much everything in real estate, you know, writing contracts, etc. Now, it’s come to a point where, you know, now we’re looking for established, you know, experienced brokers, people who have the experience of working for companies, people who had the experience of having their own clients, maybe they’ve been in real estate for a good amount of time and, you know, hit a standstill and want some help. That’s what we’re looking for now, and actually have a couple brokers on the team, who have been in real estate longer than I have, you know, 1015 years, but, you know, they kind of swallow their pride in that sense and realize, you know, what I’m doing right now isn’t working, this guy is doing something that’s working for him and his team. Why don’t I find out about it, let me reach out to him and see what he’s got. And it’s worked out beautifully. And the other thing too, is, you know, I have team members, good amount of team members now that are pretty much located in every part of the city, but there still are a good amount of parts of the city that I’m missing out on in suburbs as well. So you know, suburban agents, people who are, you know, a little bit further out than what I’m used to, like 2030 minutes away, or 2030 miles west or north. Those are the type of brokers that we’re looking for now. So more than ever experience counts for sure, in terms of joining the team, but you know, also people who are in areas that aren’t served as much, I’m always interested in talking to them as well.

D.J. Paris 29:53
That’s great. And if, since we’re on the topic, if someone is interested in reaching out to you to see if they’d be a fit and that you’d be a fit for them as a new team member, what would be the best way for someone to reach out to you,

Danny Lewis 30:05
you can just reach out to me my email, which is Louis Chicago, real estate@gmail.com. I mean, on real estate DJ, if you can’t find me on that when something that’s true, we’re also

D.J. Paris 30:16
going to, we’re going to post that email address and your phone number as well for listeners who are interested so they can easily reach out to you. So yeah, he’s Danny’s easy to find, and he’s a marketer by trade.

Danny Lewis 30:27
I’m doing something wrong. That’s true.

D.J. Paris 30:29
You know what, that’s a good point from going forward. I’m never going to mention how to get a hold of anybody. If you can’t find them, you probably shouldn’t join they’re actually a really good idea. Be funny. I also just just to wrap things up, I wanted to just because the story I want to hear this because I don’t know the story. But I want to hear your sex shop story if you don’t.

Danny Lewis 30:52
That was taking some clients out. They were actually online leads. Really nice older couple of very conservative, very quiet. First couple showings, didn’t say much, you know, we’re very respectful of the sellers and the owners. And so we had the third showing, I think, was the last showing of the day, walk in, and this isn’t a kid show, right? Like, say whatever you want. So we walk in and there’s like a giant dildo like write this as soon as we walk in, that’s amazing. My jaw drops, and I realized I look around, there’s like, like, maybe 300 deals, all put around on tables all like stacked up purposely and etc. It turns out, the owners were renting the unit out to someone, a tenant who used it as a sex shop. And it was the most awkward thing in the world. And you know, I know is you know what it’s like to tour in places with clients who no one said a word like everyone’s head was down. We didn’t talk about not even after we

D.J. Paris 31:51
couldn’t even just like joke about it, because no one was there for it. Yeah,

Danny Lewis 31:55
not with these guys. They were way too conservative. They were older. You know, if they’re my age, if you know, there are people who I thought could handle that who looked at me or you know, laugh a little bit were in there, I would definitely say something. But it was just so awkward because we acted like nothing ever happened or like, no, like it was no one there. So that was it wasn’t really the section that was funny. But it was kind of like the reaction afterwards of how awkward it was and how strange it was not to even like pretend like we were just in there.

D.J. Paris 32:23
Like, how does the listing agent not go, Hey, broker bring the buyer by just FYI, here’s what you’re gonna walk in like that, to me is crazy, right?

Danny Lewis 32:33
So that again comes back to the whole idea of why I have a team and why having an agent at the properties as they’re showing it is so important. So this was obviously a lockbox scenario, I called the agent afterwards and told them and they had no clue they had no idea what was going on. So amazing. You know, for all you agents out there, when you’re pitching people on or pitching, you know, sellers, and why you should be listing their property. One of the things you have to include no matter what, and this is why having a team is necessary, is that you will be showing the place in person every single time. And it’s crazy that we have to say this, I mean, with the amount of money that we make off of commission of the amount of money that we make in terms of you know, sales price and percentage. We should be there physically for every single showing, there’s no way that you should walk away with a check for $7,000 If you’ve never walked through the door, and all you suburban agents out there, they’re listening. God bless you. I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how you get listings. As you know, I have suburban agents that didn’t even show up to closings or inspection. Right. It’s it’s the culture of how they do it out there in the city is not like that. And it’s so important, so important to be there physically for showings for exactly situations like this.

D.J. Paris 33:40
I love that the listing agent had no idea that is that’s amazing.

Danny Lewis 33:44
None no idea. I was the one who had to break it to her like, by the way, you should probably know that your listing is being used as a snack shop right now. Wow.

D.J. Paris 33:53
Well, I think that’s a great place to wrap up because we can’t tell that story. That’s, that’s about as good as I’ve ever heard. But anyway, again, as Look, obviously Danny and his team have had tremendous success. He’s got an incredible reputation in the industry. Everybody knows him. They everyone loves him. He’s a great guy. Obviously, his clients and his team members already know this. But if you are looking for a realtor and you want a team, or you want to work with Danny’s specifically or someone on his team, again, I will post links to it. But what’s the best about you? Obviously, they can visit your website. Let’s give that again. That’s Louis Chicago real estate.com. Danny, Do you can you bring up the email address one more time as well?

Danny Lewis 34:35
Sure. That’s my last name Louis. Oh, ew is Chicago real estate@gmail.com.

D.J. Paris 34:41
Awesome. And we’ll post your phone number as well so that anyone who’s listening who’s looking for a broker or is looking at who is a broker, and as you know, an experienced broker who’s looking to join a team, I couldn’t recommend Danny more highly. Obviously he doesn’t need my my recommendation, but I certainly know him personally and he’s a great guy and and takes really good care of his team members, which, you know, I don’t know how common that really is. So it’s, it’s a big deal. So with that being said, Danny, thank you so much for spending time on a Friday with us, which I’m sure this is a busy day for realtors. So I appreciate your your flexibility and timing. We’ll get this episode out very shortly. And on behalf of Danny and myself to everyone who’s listening, please continue to listen. We’re so grateful that that everyone who is listening continues to and also that you make sure to share this with a friend if you have other brokers in your office or you know that could benefit from listening to interviews, like the one here with Danny obviously passed the word. So on behalf of Danny and myself, we say thank you and Danny appreciate your time.

Danny Lewis 35:44
Vijay, thanks so much again, man. I had a blast. I can’t wait to hear it in here the future episodes as well.

D.J. Paris 35:49
Awesome. All right. Thank you

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

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

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

Ryan D'Aprile
daprile properties logo

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to the August episode of Learning With A Lender with Joel Schaub!

In this episode Joel Schaub partners with Christine, a renovation loan expert at Guaranteed Rate, to explain everything real estate brokers need to understand about these products. They get into detail about FHA 203k loans and how to use for both home improvement and home purchase. If you’re not familiar with renovation loans, you will be by the end of this episode!

Joel Schaub can be reached at joel@rate.com or 773.654.2049.

Joel Schaub

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:13
Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made for real estate brokers by real estate brokers. My name is DJ Parris. I am your host and guide through the show today we have our monthly regular segment called Learn with a lender with Joel shop from guaranteed rate. If you’re not yet familiar with Joel, let me tell you a little bit about him. He is a vice president of lending at guaranteed rate. Joel has been doing loans at a high level since 2003. And it’s gotten to that level because of what he does directly for agents and their clients, which is he gives part of his commission back to the buyer on every transaction. Last year alone, he gave back over $271,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with them and that put jewels value in the top 1/10 of 1%. nationwide. out of 380,000 loan officers in the country. Joel has been ranked number 181 year to date, he has closed 163 transactions for just under 58 million in closing. In the month of July alone, Joel’s close to 15 million, which exceeds the entire amount he did in the first quarter. And it’s not like the first quarter was slow. Joel is never slow. By the way, if you are looking for a lender, you really need to look no further. Joel is your is your person. He’s your guy. The his slogan is just called Joel because when you do, he actually will take such great care. You’ll never need to call anyone else. Here’s how to get in touch with Joel can be reached at Joel JL e l@rate.com. Or you can reach him on his phone which is 773-654-2049. So let us say hello to the biggest Cubs fan. I know Joel Schaub Good morning.

Joel Schaub 2:00
Hey, good morning, everybody. I really appreciate it. That warm introduction. All the accolades aside, it’s really about giving back. And I think today is going to be a really good show, because we have some knowledge that’s going to help the real estate agents actually close more transactions. And isn’t that what it’s about? We want to be able to provide some value. And I know that we have some great topics for today.

D.J. Paris 2:23
Great. Let’s get started. Oh, let’s

Joel Schaub 2:25
jump right into it. Right. And so here’s where we’re at. The market was strong. And I think right after the fourth of July, what we saw was a slight amount of this softening. And so what we want to do is help agents out there that maybe you have a property that’s in a perfect location, but it needs updating. We’ve seen this a lot, right? DJ, there’s properties that are great, but what is it you walk into? And there’s something wrong with it? Yeah, maybe it’s not the right kitchen, maybe literally as a big amount of space, and they want to do an addition. So I get phone calls all the time about can we do renovation loans, okay. And if you’re if you know anything about me, I don’t do anything unless I really know it. Right. I’m an expert in what I do. And on the call, I have an expert in all things renovation. So Christine, are you there? Good morning. Good morning. Christine, is part of my team, I want you to introduce yourself, tell everybody how long you’ve been with us and just in the business in general so that we get an understanding of what a true boss you are.

Christine 3:31
Great. Well, I started in the business in 1996. And I fell into a renovation situation about 2006. When that was the start of what we call the bubble, the housing bubble. Had a friend buying a property and the entire kitchen was missing for our real estate transactions where we’re encumbering a mortgage. You can’t get a mortgage if there’s no kitchen, because it’s not habitable. So that’s when the entry happened for me on how you could help people who could not pay cash for a home, get a kitchen to make it habitable. And that’s how it started. Was it about 2006 Since then, I’ve closed over a billion dollars and renovation loans, new construction, jumbo VA, you know, everything the gamut. We try to help people get into these homes that that needs some TLC or just need updating.

Joel Schaub 4:30
Christine literally done more renovation loans than anybody in the entire state that I know. And so the knowledge that she brings to these types of transactions because they’re not easy, DJ. It’s not something that you can just jump into with anybody who says, oh, yeah, I can also do renovation loans. You need an expert. Okay. And so on this call today we’re actually going to be able to identify several ways for the average real estate agent or even top real estate agents. How they can take advantage of some of these programs. Sound good? Sounds great.

D.J. Paris 5:04
And welcome, Christina.

Joel Schaub 5:06
It’s good. We’re so excited for. So Christine, tell me one of the typical situations that we have when a buyer comes to us. And we’ll start with probably the FHA, right, and it’s one of the two or 3k loan type of products that you offer. Just walk us through a typical situation that you’ve actually done. That has resulted in a big success.

Christine 5:28
For FHA 203. K, they offer two different programs, one’s more of a streamlined version for simple cosmetic updates. So how it will help the realtors is if they’re looking at a property, FHA has a little bit tighter restrictions on the appraisal process. And if they notice some things like maybe some, you know, crack windows, some GFI outlets, you know, not right, you know, maybe the biggest thing we see in a municipality, for example, Chicago is that the back porches need to be up to code if you’re buying a two, three or four unit, and those can run 20 to $30,000. And FHA is a low down payment at three and a half percent. So we’re able to help the realtors find financing to do these type of repairs to get the homeowner into the property. So those would be success stories is is getting, you know the buyers into the properties that need some repairs. Like if they’re missing kitchens, or bathrooms, or maybe they have water damage, we see a lot of foreclosures, that they don’t winterize properly, that may have some water damage from the roof leaking. That home is not financeable with a regular real estate mortgage, we would use one of our renovation programs to help the buyer obtain the property with a low down payment and give them a lot of money to fix it. You know, it can be 10,000, it can be 200,000. It just depends on what the buyer would like to do.

Joel Schaub 6:57
Let’s say it’s a $200,000. Let’s say it’s a $200,000 property. And it does need work. And I’m going in and buying my real estate agent saw several offers several listings that said cash only they think that it has to be cash. Is this something that FHA two or 3k loans will allow you to still finance even though it says cash only?

Christine 7:17
Yes, that’s I think a big misconception for some agents who maybe are not aware of renovation financing, if they walked into the property, and let’s say there is some water damage, and maybe, you know, the kitchen was removed for some reason, you know, if it’s a foreclosure and we have that a lot of agents will put cash only, and they’ll get pennies on the dollar for that type of listing versus a financed offer, which we would bring in a financed offer, which should be stronger, and allow the border repair the property. So I think there’s a big misconception that homes that are outdated or distressed, have to be cash only because it’s just not true. They are not aware of this program.

Joel Schaub 7:59
Now, DJ, have you seen agents come to you and ask you the same type of questions? How do you think this could help some of the agents that are on the Oh, yeah, I

D.J. Paris 8:06
think it just in particular, you know, removing some of the misinformation about renovation loans is huge. And I think you just provided a great service, because agents aren’t loan specialists, right? That’s not their job, and typically not what they’re best at. So you know, they need somebody like you and Christine to be able to, you know, set the record straight and just let them know what options are available, in particular with things that get a little bit more creative like this.

Joel Schaub 8:34
That’s beautiful. Christine, on that scenario here for $200,000. How much can they borrow? Is there a limit? Or is there a general guideline as to what the after repair costs? Walk us through what that looks like? Please?

Christine 8:48
Yeah, that is going to vary based on county. So if any, you know, one does have a question, we go off their county of website for FHA loan limit, for example, in Chicago, which is Cook County, that loan limit is around $365,700. So we would have to maintain that loan, with the client putting down three and a half percent. So in your example, if it was $200,000 purchase with 100,000 of repair, we’re fine because we’re below the loan limit. And they scale up. Our conventional program has typically higher loan limits. We have high balance locations, such as New York, Massachusetts, California, where loan limits can go almost up to 800,000 for single family, then we step up again into our jumbo renovation, new construction, where loan limits can go up to 2.5 million to 3 million depending on location. Because you do have some areas where in California, Alaska, Hawaii, New York, there’s there’s much more higher price points. So we’re able to really do the full gamut, you know, anywhere from 100,000 up to 3 million in the renovation and new construction that farm.

Joel Schaub 10:00
So I want to hit those loan amounts again. So for Cook County here, let’s just get the basis for some of these people on the podcast and really start to identify their people listening now that are out there helping buyers look at different properties. And so this is going to open up the door and I hope hopefully lead to them closing more transactions in the next quarter. So on FHA, I heard you say, just north of 365, and is that the full loan amount, they could not buy something at 365 and then borrow more under that scenario, right? Well,

Christine 10:34
they can always bring in the downpayment to make up the difference, if you bought something, just call it 350. And they needed 50,000, we could do that they would be required to put down $32,000 towards downpayment, but then we’ll give them 50,000 back. So it’s definitely case by case when we do some analysis, what would help for them, a situation where it might not work is if it’s a higher price property for 400,000, that needs 100,000. In that case, it probably would not make sense to do an FHA 203 K. And it also steps up depending on property type. So for example, single family is at 360,000. Whereas a two unit would be able to go to 471,100. And it will continue to step up three unit and four unit, the loan amounts go higher, the more units you’re buying. Conversely, do a conventional program, Joe, which we’re seeing that we’re having to use a little bit more, in Cook County, the loan limits 484,350, that’s almost $115,000 Higher, and can help more people with that loan amount.

Joel Schaub 11:45
That’s amazing. That’s real numbers that people could go out. Those are real numbers, that people could go out and start looking at properties and then put a plan in place so that they can acquire something in a great area that just needs renovation, and they most people think they have to come out of pocket, or that the renovation loans are tough, that they take six months. Let’s talk a little bit about that. It’s not your typical two or three week close, but but let people know that it’s not some month after month process, right? What is the typical timeframe on a closing that you guys are doing every single month

Christine 12:23
on a closing for cosmetic simple repair, we can do those between 45 and 60 days on a addition or major rehab, we definitely require 60 days. And the difference is the first 30 days is when you are vetting what we call your contractor and consultant information and maybe getting your architect plans. But typically, all of our loans are closing in 60 days on renovation.

Joel Schaub 12:50
It’s absolutely amazing. So let’s say it again, 60 days is what’s needed. They don’t need to have five and six months. And I have so many people come to me and think oh, I’ll never take an offer because it’s got a renovation loan. That’s simply not the case. Right? Yeah, we

D.J. Paris 13:05
should also mention to for the listeners who aren’t in the Chicagoland area, Joel, Christina and myself are however, guaranteed rate has loans all over the country. So even if you’re not local here, Joel can assist you, Christine can assist you as well. So definitely reach out to get those limits and information since it is county based and state based to reach out to find out what what those are in your area.

Joel Schaub 13:30
This is how big your reaches. I think I told you this last time when we were talking not on the podcast, but you have a nationwide reach I received a phone call just over two months ago. And he is in Boston, we closed a transaction for somebody who heard us on the air and was buying a investment property in well outside of Massachusetts. So that’s absolutely your reach. Bravo, DJ.

D.J. Paris 13:58
Well, I’ll tell you the reason the reach has grown as I would love to take credit for it. But it’s for all the guests we’ve had who had been so generous, including Joel and Christine, were really quite frankly, are too busy to do this. And yet they take time out. And you know, they do it out of the goodness of their hearts to educate people to provide value. And, you know, I know Joe very intimately as a friend and this is his whole life is about giving value. And everyone I’ve ever met a guaranteed rate is very much that same way. So this is why the reach I think is grown because these top producers we interview or people like Joel come on and say how can I help educate, and we’re just grateful that people listen.

Joel Schaub 14:41
Beautiful. Okay, Christine, tell us a little bit about some of the other scenarios that somebody on the podcast could really benefit from that. You can can share with us, please.

Christine 14:55
Yeah, I think on the real estate side for realtors, just having the education About this program can separate them in a real life example because I like to use these it really resonates with with our real estate brokers, we had a state sale where the parents had passed away. And there were four adult children, all with a realtor. I mean, I’m sure you’ve run into that DJ. So all four, brought in their realtors to say, you know, can you move our parents home, we need to sell it. The first three Realtors said, Oh, it’s outdated, you know, they’ve lived here 16 years and you’re talking about something close to the children’s heart, that’s where they grew up. So the first three Realtors came in with more of a maybe negative tone, like you know, it’s outdated, it’s going to take a lot to move it. And then one of Joe’s Realtors went in and said, Hey, we have this great program, we can show before and after photos, this is a great house, it has great guts, it needs some updating, but we have financing for it will be able to list it, you know, properly with a strong value. Instead of just giving it away and having a negative connotation. They spun it as a positive with this amazing financing. That realtor became, you know, the listing agent, they hired that realtor that that had the knowledge of the program. And they sold the property within 60 days using our platform, and our materials, which really helps, you know, put everything together for the realtor.

Joel Schaub 16:26
That’s amazing. So now. So now what we’ve seen as real life scenarios where agents on the podcasts that are listening can obtain a new listing, right instead of going in and saying, Oh, I don’t know how we’re ever going to sell this. I’m your person, we can get this listed, I’m going to make sure that one of our contexts at guaranteed rate, we’ll do the financing on the renovation loans. For any buyers that come in, we’ll create the marketing pieces that we set out at that open house. And let people know that it’s not a long process, and that they can do it. So now we’ve talked about how agents can get new listings, because they can have this in their back pocket. And we’ve also covered how buyers can go out and with their agents and actually acquire these properties. So if you’re a realtor that’s listening, these are two big things that can help us grow, because now you have somebody in your pocket that can help you close these transactions and open up a whole bunch of new transactions for

Christine 17:29
you. And Jill, just to add to that, on the realtor side, if you’re working with your buyer, sometimes there’s like certain school districts or they need to be close to their parents who might help with their kids, you know, maybe needing to be near work in a certain location. Sometimes the inventory is not that strong, where there’s a large selection. This allows them to maybe buy a property that needs updating or expansion in a specific school district or near their parents or near their job. And we can customize the home for them. Again, giving the realtors the insight to share this knowledge with their buyers and say, Hey, we can get you in the area. And you can update the house to how you want it since we’re not seeing exactly what you want. So it’s something for the realtors to keep in their back pocket for not only the listing side, but also on the buyer side.

Joel Schaub 18:20
Christine, does this also work on investment properties? Or does this buyer have to live in the property?

Christine 18:29
For a majority of our programs, they’re for owner occupied. We do mixed use for units through our FHA program. But they are all pretty much for every residence, the only Ester options we offer is for long term hold where let’s say an investor’s buying a property, wanting to update it and hold it for a couple years as a rental. We are allowed to do that on one unit property only like single family condo Townhome. Other than that we do not have investor properties for mix mixed units or for jumbo they don’t offer that at this time.

Joel Schaub 19:05
I could buy a house that I’m going to rent out and I could get a renovation loan. I just can’t get into this, renovate it and flip it right. We’re not that’s not our target market for any of those underwriting things. Right. That’s not the way it works. Okay. That’s a lot here, DJ questions for us.

D.J. Paris 19:26
Now, you know, my question is always thinking about the broker. You know, who should they be talking to about this? You know, with this respect to investor clients, you know, this is a conversation that really needs to originate from the realtor side and I think we just we just gave some really good talking points, but any ID any ideas about how they should reach this or broach this topic with their investor clients?

Joel Schaub 19:56
Well, Christine, you’ve probably seen this before, were they the age Doesn’t the agents, the one usually getting this brought to them by the buyer? They’re saying, Hey, can I do any renovation loans? And the agent goes? I don’t know. Right? And so this is the reason that being on the podcast and learning that yes, all you got to do, you know, just cultural, they will connect you with Christine. And we work as a team on all of these transactions. It’s not just that I hand it off to Christine, and that we’re not involved, we work hand in hand on all of these transactions, so that the buyers can go out there and look at places that they just never thought they could get into. So it’s a it’s a win win for the agent, because they’re going to be able to close more transactions, because they now know some of these little tips on how they can do renovation loans.

D.J. Paris 20:42
Perfect. You know, I’m interested in hearing your take Joel AND and OR Christine, on the recent news that just happened, I believe, this morning, where it was reported on by various news outlets that the Fed may be cutting, cutting rates, interest rates by a quarter of a point. Any thoughts on how that may or may not affect loan rates?

Joel Schaub 21:08
I’d love to talk about what that means and what it doesn’t mean, right? Because there’s a lot of misinformation about what a Fed cut does, to mortgage rates. Okay. So the day that the feds cut interest rates, they don’t call the mortgage companies and say, Please lower your rates today by this amount. Wouldn’t that be great? If it was so orchestrated that way, but that’s not what it is. Weeks and weeks have gone into this? This is DJ the, what we call on the floor here, the worst kept secret, right? We know that the feds are cutting rates, and they’re going to do it again at their December meeting. So six weeks ago, the traders priced in almost a 100% rate cut for today. That’s when rates dropped. That is why July, we’ve had more refinance activity and closing activity than I had in the first quarter of 2019. The rate cuts are here. The actual announcement today is just happenstance. Which is pretty cool, though. So what it does is it will be another way for your agents out there to have a talking point. So what does it do? Hey, did you hear that the feds cut rates reach back out to your lender now you should be able to qualify for more of a house and pay less on the same property. So it’s going to get buyers off the fence. So this is a great talking point for agents right now, tomorrow and in the weeks ahead. It’s going to be in the news Feds cut rates. What we know now based on what I just told you that the rate cut has been here. But it still means that rates today are lower than they’ve been in almost three and a half years, which is crazy.

D.J. Paris 22:54
I was looking that excuse me on average rates are about 100 basis points, which in layman’s terms is 1% less than it was November of last year even today?

Joel Schaub 23:05
You remember Anna? You’re exactly right. That’s a big drop.

D.J. Paris 23:10
Huge drop. So even if you aren’t working with any current buyers, but you have previous clients, what a great opportunity to call and say, Hey, I don’t you know, know your current mortgage situation. However, did you know that rates are much lower than they were even last year might be time to call your you know, your your loan officer. If you don’t have one? I’ve got somebody and obviously you can reach out to Joel.

Joel Schaub 23:34
Yeah, no matter what bank they talk to the rates are down right now, which is great. It doesn’t just have to be me your guaranteed rate. The banks right now on a 30 year fixed are down around 3.75 As of this morning and 3.25% this morning on a 15 year. So these are some talking points that you can say with your buyers, because they probably don’t know that for all of last year, all of 17 rates were in the fours and like you’d said in November, they were in the high fours even with 20 and 25%. Down the lowest rates were just below 5%. So we’ve seen a major move down where a 30 year fixed rate now has 3.75 on average.

D.J. Paris 24:18
And I can almost guarantee all of the brokers out there listening that your clients are not getting called by their their loan officer to tell them that you know, loan officers are too busy and it’s just not typically those calls aren’t made by many of them. And so here’s a golden opportunity for you to be a hero to your clients say hey, I know I already helped you purchase that home however, might be time to look for a refi another great reason to reach back out after the sale and keep that relationship and deepen it and continue to provide value. So huge.

Joel Schaub 24:50
I love that. Why don’t we like doing that? Isn’t that such a great thing. We’re all salespeople but what most people fall in this habit of is either not calling Little pasture your past clients at all? Or when you deal you’re asking them for business, Oh, do you know any friends or family? That could refer me? You know? No, they already know this, they would refer you. But if you call them with something of value, hey, just want to check in with the kids the house, hey, rates are down. Remember when we closed, I know that you had a rate in the fours, call your mortgage guy back, you know, remember, Jamel helped you close, I bet he didn’t get that rate down right now. And it means that there’s a lot of rates, if 375 is the best rate in the market, you can be a little bit higher than that with no fees, right. So if you have a rate right now, that’s at four and a half percent, and you could lower it to four, and not pay anything. That saves 10s of 1000s of dollars over the life of the loan for your average three or $400,000 loan, and you don’t have to pay any fees you can refinance. Typically, you’ll ask your banker, what’s the lowest rate in the market? And also what is the rate where you will cover all of my fees to refinance this mortgage? So I as a buyer, don’t need to pay anything. And then you can make the decision which one makes the most sense for your financial situation?

D.J. Paris 26:09
Wow, that’s a great place, I think to wrap up and by the way, everyone who’s listening who wants to speak to a loan officer like Joel and you should, because once you speak to him, you probably won’t need to ever speak to another loan officer. Joe, what’s the best way someone should reach out to you whether they’re a broker or client directly?

Joel Schaub 26:30
Yeah, email me directly. I really liked the communication and we could do the phone call as well. So I’ll start with email, which is just my name. It’s Joel JOE l@rate.com. So that is short for Joel at guaranteed rate. Even doctors and attorneys I always get people that misspell guaranteed. It’s like

D.J. Paris 26:48
that was a smart move. That was a smart move to make it the email simpler.

Joel Schaub 26:52
Jolin rate.com. And then 773-654-2049. And then with Christina on the phone, please do the same tell us the best way for you to connect with the folks on the call. And did we lose Christine,

D.J. Paris 27:12
we may have lost.

Joel Schaub 27:15
Tell them where you can be reached.

Christine 27:19
I can be reached at 773-848-4144 or Chris, Chris de like david@rate.com.

Joel Schaub 27:33
You’re awesome. This was really great. I really enjoyed what we covered today.

D.J. Paris 27:37
And thank you so much, Christine Angele on behalf of the listeners for taking time out of your two busy days to provide value to our 1000s of listeners. So I want to remind the listeners that please to support our show, we can do two things. One, give Joel a call whenever you have a client that needs a loan, whether it’s renovation loans, traditional mortgage, anything, reach out to him he will do his best along with Christine. So support our guests. And the second thing is to remember to tell a friend, right if you know other brokers in your area get we are nationwide. So there’s a huge pool that doesn’t yet know about our show, let them know pass this over every week we have on a top 1% producer and once a month we have on specialists like Joel to help you too. So on behalf of the listeners, Joe and Christine Thank you. And on behalf of Joel Christine, we thank you to the listeners for continuing to support our show, guys. We will see everyone on the next episode, which will be coming out shortly. Also Lastly, please join our Facebook page we post links to every single episode including as well as every Dr. Associate Producer Hanna sources, an article that will help you grow your business that we find online. So we try to provide value every single day of the week. Because we only do these episodes about once a week. So thank you if you are already a member of Facebook, if not the way to find us go to Facebook, just do a search for keeping it real podcast you’ll find us and also our website, we can stream every single episode keeping it real pod.com Oh, one more thing. You can also send in questions. Let us know your lender questions and we will pass those over to Joel and Christine and we will get those answered on a future episode right through our website or Facebook. Send us your questions and we’ll get to them. But anyway, Joel Christine, thank you so much. And we will see you both on receiving the next step. Which will be in a month. Thank you DJ.

Christine 29:35
Thanks DJ

Welcome to the August episode of Investor Insights With Brie Schmidt!

Brie Schmidt is one of the most well-respected buy-and-hold investors in Chicago. Each month we’ll be discussing an investment topic brokers should master.

In this episode Brie discusses different lending options available for investors. First she talks about hard money lending, what investors can do to qualify, and what terms are generally included. We also have a conversation about how to find investors, how to structure the deal, and how finding money is usually the easiest part of real estate investing (assuming you have found a great opportunity!).

Please visit MyRehabAcademy as mentioned on the show.

Brie Schmidt
Midwest Real Estate Networking Summit

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:15
Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the only podcasts made by by real estate brokers for real estate brokers. My name is DJ Paris today we have our regular series investor insights with Bree Schmidt. Now, if you are new to the show, let me tell you a little bit about my co host. Brie Schmidt acquired her first investment property in 2011 and left the corporate world in 2014. She came because she became a full time real estate investor. She is the managing broker of Second City Real Estate which is a full service brokerage firm, working with new investors and seasoned investors looking to expand their knowledge of the industry and their portfolio. For us a lot. Bri utilizes her extensive knowledge of building and managing a portfolio to teach clients about all aspects of buy and hold investing. She’ll teach you how to analyze potential properties, calculate your ROI, best practices when marketing and leasing your properties, and also how to be a landlord while you’re building a portfolio. Bree is co founder also of the Midwest real estate networking summit, which is a nonprofit educational summit for real estate investors she hosted several times a year. It’s a three day annual event. And it’s awesome. I got to I was lucky enough to be able to attend briefly and the last one. So anyone who’s interested in working with investors or being coming in investor yourself or just getting more knowledge as an investor, check out the Midwest real estate Summit. With all that being said, By the way, you can learn more about the Midwest real estate summit by mid west RV summit.com. We will put a link to that in the notes for this podcast episode. But anyway, without further ado, welcome Bree Schmidt Hello, how are you? Good. Should we tell everybody just how pregnant you are? Can we?

Brie Schmidt 2:01
Yeah, I’m 34 weeks to go.

D.J. Paris 2:04
Four weeks to go. Credible site.

Brie Schmidt 2:07
Awesome. Chicago weather of like 90 degrees has been perfect for me. Let me tell you,

D.J. Paris 2:13
and you just moved. Yeah. And when up to Summit, and you just finished up a summit with hundreds of people. And you had to organize all the speakers, the the event space, everything. It was all the advertisers. I mean, it’s incredible.

Brie Schmidt 2:28
It’s a lot of work. But it’s said like I said you came it’s really worth it. We really focus on no gurus, no pitching, no one’s out there selling their get rich quick scheme. It’s all real investors who not only focus on you know what they do well, but where they’ve messed up and how they’ve, what they’ve learned throughout their their investing career. And that’s really what makes it a little bit different. And people are telling their real stories, not just, Hey, this is the greatest thing in the world, you know, you can retire early, and you know, and it’s not that easy. And everyone makes mistakes. And so that’s part of the focus is talking about those mistakes and how we can learn from them.

D.J. Paris 3:12
Yet everyone should get on her mailing list. So go to Midwest, R e summit.com. And make sure that you’re getting these updates, because you don’t want to miss the next one. What is the next one’s date set yet?

Brie Schmidt 3:26
It will be in May of 2020.

D.J. Paris 3:29
Gotcha. So plenty of time, but you re sends out a lot of good information along the way as well. So get on that mailing list. Okay, so for today’s episode, we actually had a question that we thought was a such a strong question that we thought we’d do a whole episode around it. So I want to read first read the question. This comes from one of our listeners named Daniel, which basically says, and I’ll paraphrase, because he wrote us a really nice note. But he wanted really to ask Bree, uh, her thoughts about hard money lending, he says, hey, I can find deals, but I’m struggling with the funding. He says hard money is something he’s looked into, but not sure if it’s the only option when it comes to now in his case, flipping homes. But so let’s dive into that topic of hard money lending or any types of funding that you think is appropriate.

Brie Schmidt 4:17
So flipping homes is actually it’s a lot. It’s hard. It’s it’s a lot of work. And it’s really hard to get started. Because when you go to approach a wonder, let’s say a hard money lender, one of the first things they’re going to ask is what’s your track record? You know, if this is your first project, and you don’t have a track record? Well, they’re putting risk into you by giving you the money, you know, can you perform? Can you execute the project? Will your sale price, be on target, you know, will you be able to stay in our budget, these are all risks that they’re taking for a new investor. So typically their rates are a lot higher. So I think one of the biggest misconceptions people have about hard money lending is that they’re they’ll Do 100% financing and that’s not true, they’ll typically for a seasoned investor want at least 20% of the acquisition plus the rehab costs. If you’re a new investor, they may want 30 40% cash to show that you’ve got skin in the game. So one of my actual one of my business partners is a hard money lender, and he lives across the country. So we’ve had many discussions about, you know, how he does his portfolio, and he does about $20 million a month, nationwide, through hard money lending. And that’s how we met was he was funding a flipper here in the Chicago market years ago, and had met me through networking events, and the flipper wanted a million dollar line of credit. So they didn’t want they didn’t want every single deal analyzed, they had been through the process a bunch of times, they just wanted a million dollars cash to do what they want with it. So this guy called me up and was like, you know, I’ve heard of you, we know, kind of know each other, you know, about to give these guys a million dollar line of credit, but I’m not local. So if they don’t, if they start dodging my calls or things get, you know, fishy, I want someone in the local market that could go down there and check up on things for me, I’ll pay you, you know, and that’s how we started our relationship. So there’s a lot of risk involved for the hard money lender. Sure, if you’re a newbie, and this is your first project, you’re gonna expect 30 to 40% down payment on the acquisition plus the rehab. As far as terms, you’re still you’re probably looking at four points. If you don’t know what points are, it’s a flat fee up front, due for the loan amount. So for every $100,000, you finance, four points would be $4,000. So that can get really expensive, really quick, if you’re doing, you know, a 678 $100,000 project, and they’re charging me four point. Yeah. And then for a new set for the new or newer investor, that’s not very experienced, you’re probably going to pay between 12 and 14%. And those terms are typically interest only. And they will, depending on the type of project and the scope of work, they’ll do between six and 18 month loans on that. Sure. So to answer your question is hard money, the right route to go? You and because you don’t have the cash to do the deals, the problem is, you still need the cash, right. So alternatives until you’re building up your book would be private money. So private money is typically friends, family, there are private money lenders in the marketplace as well. But again, they’re going to want to see someone with a track record. We had a great private money lender come speak last year, who’s you know, I’ve he’s done a couple, you know, most of my project for me, actually. But he, you know, they underwrite everything, and they’re very diligent about your, your experience and your track record. So if you haven’t done at least, you know, 510 deals, they won’t even have those conversations. So private money within friends and family and your own personal network, right, then you can negotiate terms, they probably won’t charge you points. But then you’re in a position where, you know, you better make sure you know what you’re doing. Because if you, if you mess up and you lose money, it’s your friends and family money.

So be careful with that. The other option, as well as finding a partner, you know, partnerships, as is a very good thing if it’s done correctly. And so if you can find a partner that has the maybe construction experience or the track record, you know, no one says you have to go do this alone, and has a different skill set than than you, then you can leverage their experience with these hard money lenders and get better terms. Because once you get experienced, you know, you you if you’re let’s say you’ve done five to 15 deals, you’re probably looking more around two points, and more around 10% interest, give or take. And then once you’re becoming, you know, a professional flipper, and this is your job and you know, you’re doing 1015 projects a year, then you start getting into the the private money lenders, who will give you much better terms, because they’ve they’ve had a history with you, you’ve proven yourself essentially.

D.J. Paris 9:28
Yeah, that’ll make sense. I know that for anyone listening who’s interested in putting these kinds of deals together and finding alternatives to hard money lenders, you know, if you know, where you mentioned, friends and family if you have people in your life that are cash heavy. These are the people that are looking for a reasonably you know, modest return a quick modest return. So you know, make sure you have your numbers right but you know, oftentimes People who are cash heavy and there are professions that are cash heavy, you know, people who are traders are oftentimes cash heavy. And we, you know, if you’re here in Chicago, we have a huge trading community here. Sometimes they make good partners, because you know, they’re there have they have the means and are looking for maybe a safer return than dumping it in the market. So there’s lots of ways

Brie Schmidt 10:21
and considering mean, even a high yield savings account as a 2% API, offer friends and family 8% return on their money, you know, then you’re getting a great deal at 8%. And they are also putting their money to better use. Um, so on the topic of God,

D.J. Paris 10:42
no, I was gonna say, this is exactly the kind of topic that is discussed at the Midwest real estate Summit. And again, I know it’s, you know, we have some time until the next one. But this is a constant conversation that happens between investors, right? People are always wondering, Hey, how are you doing it? Who are you working with, so you can get networked in with some of these private money lenders, hard, hard lenders, personal investors sort of thing if you are connected to the investor community. So for those who are listening, if you’re you serious, or wanting to get serious about investing, you should be part of bigger pockets, it’s the place to be as, as most of the listeners will already know. But that’s another place where you can source you know, and get, get put feelers out there and see, you know, what other people are doing.

Brie Schmidt 11:27
Yeah, and even though we have 10 Mountains to the summit, there’s plenty of networking groups locally. And so you can find them on meetup.com. Also, on bigger pockets, there’s a network tab at the top. And underneath, there’s a events link, and most of the events are free, the networking events, you know, I’ve been to and spoken at, you know, 1520 of them. And one of the things that I like most about them is going with the investor community, you know, no one’s no one’s hiding their secrets. A there are no secrets. But be if you ask someone like, hey, you know, who are using for it, hey, can I get a GC referral? Can I get a hard money lender referral? Who are you using? Who have you found to be successful there? Nine times out of 10 very happy to share that information with you. No, I’m so that’s how I said most of my contacts have developed throughout the years is through the meetup that I’ve been running for about six years now. And Norwood Park area, just because you know, investors come and they talk, they’re happy to share their their experiences.

D.J. Paris 12:35
Yeah, that’s been our experience as well. It seems to be the investors I know, say that the lending portions actually not super difficult, because there’s always people with cash. Once you plug into the right communities, you’ll find these people it’s the deals that seem to be the harder of the of the two tasks is find the deals and the investors will find you

Brie Schmidt 12:55
depends on where we are in the market. That’s true. Well, years ago, you know, no one was giving out money. And there were plenty of deals. So there that’s the problem with the real estate cycle here, like in general, is either there’s deals or there’s money. And you there’s never there’s never money when there’s deals I was actually at I spoke at I am and I am on does a middle market forum. They’re doing one this October in Chicago. I spoke at last year’s event too. And that was the biggest takeaway is, you know, these were mid market players in the multifamily world is everyone had money, or everyone had really easy access to money, but nowhere to put it. Right. That was the big conversation. So if you can find the deals, you know, finding money isn’t that hard at this point of the cycle? The problem though, is that make sure that what you’re what you’re looking at isn’t actually a deal. One of the things to watch, I’m not sure if you were I don’t think you were there Saturday morning, we had Sue Hoff, who runs a company called my rehab Academy. I absolutely love what she’s doing. So she’s a GC, I think for about 20 years now. And she’s started my rehab Academy, which is classes for investors. And they will teach you everything from you know how to run electric, sweat, copper, they do like one day workshops, how to build a kitchen, how to tile a bathroom, you know, these are all things that you might not want to know the hands on part of things, but if you’re a flipper and you’re doing a major renovation project, it’s probably a good idea for you to know what proper copper insulation looks like. You know what like the things so if you know how to do it yourself, then you know what to look for when you’re doing rehab projects. But one of the things that she also offers which I find very interesting is she will because I had her come to my house to she will walk through a project when you are during your acquisition period. It’s a flat rate. It’s a couple $100 And she will walk through the project with you talk about your scope of work, and then come I’m gonna check the comps. So I was talking with a mutual friend who was doing a project with her up in the north suburbs and like that, and, you know, Sue came in and gave him, you know, hey, here’s what the comps are. And their original plan was essentially to over develop the property. You know, she was like, You’re based on the comps. And based on the materials, your plan is actually probably too expensive, and you’re going to price yourself out of the market. So if you dial it down a bit, here’s the materials list she provides for you. Here’s the cost of all the materials as well. This is what is in line with the market and will give you the best return on your investment.

D.J. Paris 15:39
Wow, that’s seems like it’s worth a few $100? For sure.

Brie Schmidt 15:42
Um, so yeah, I think what she’s doing is great. So she does the classes, she also does that sort of service for clients. And it’s, I think, very beneficial, especially if you’re a new investor. You know, we all especially as agents, I think, because we know the agent side, we think we know everything. And I’ve seen it, I’m sure you’ve seen it to tons of times where an agent goes to do their own flip project. And, you know, something goes wrong along the way, and then it’s on the market, right. And that’s the last thing you want to do. And we get so excited, because this is our profession, you know, that we want to get, you know, like, oh, I want to do a steam shower, or you know, I’m going to do this grand thing, and it’s going to look great. But that doesn’t always mean that’s in line with what the market wants. Right. And if you’re doing a three, one starter home, you know, in some neighborhood that the average price points 350 If you over build with custom woodwork and steam showers, you know, and now you’re all in is 400. With cost like that you guys sell it for 50. Now you’re priced out of the market, you know, you overdid the project and sometimes the simplest, you know, way is the best. So Sue, that’s what Sue does. And I, I would definitely look into that if you’re a first time flipper.

D.J. Paris 16:58
Yeah, we’ll post a link to her her website on the notes so that people can check her out. And I think one of the big takeaways is you just got to plug in or you don’t have to, but it’s certainly a good idea to plug in to the investor community, the investor community is actually very communal, they they do like Bree said they have meetups, you know, they congregate online, or locally, you know, and if you you know, if you’re a BiggerPockets member, you’ll find out there’s a million things they’re always doing. And members are doing meet up, you know, you just search for real estate investor and you will, you will plug in and get you know, great ongoing support from people who are doing exactly what you’re doing. And I would say it was interesting, and I’d be curious to get your thoughts on this as I almost think the investor community, which a lot of them are brokers are really more communal than even just traditional realtors, I don’t find traditional Realtors community commuting all that much. It’s such a, you know, maybe a solo sport, but, but investment investments might seem like a solo sport, but boy, you can get a lot of help. If you look for it.

Brie Schmidt 18:03
It’s very different, um, you know, even just this weekend was my housewarming party and 75% of our guests and investors that were, you know, became friends over the years. The ID that the investor community is, is all really about paying it forward. You know, no one, there’s really no competition like or as with agents. You know, even even I get with clients, you know, we have if one property comes up sometimes, like we’ve had times where we had eight showings with one house. You know, we had a situation two summers ago, where we had six offers on one house with our clients, which is very, very rare. But usually I always tell them like, listen, even though you’re you all have the same endgame. You all actually have different strategies and different preferences. So people recognize that. And again, usually within the investor community, someone helped them out along the way, and they want to pay that forward. So when I said when it comes to any sort of like lending, referrals, construction referrals, those sorts of things, I I’ve never run into a situation where I’ve asked for a referral and not and someone said, No, this is my guy, I’m not going to share that information with you. Super uncommon.

D.J. Paris 19:24
Well, Daniel, who is the listener that wrote this? And hopefully this answered your question about about hard money lending. And Bree also provided some alternative ideas about you know, getting plugged into the community, and we’ll post a couple links to some of the talking points in the episode. But that also brings us to another point, which is as we’re wrapping up as you’re listening if additional questions came up in any capacity with respect to real estate investing, Reshma is absolutely the person to answer them, which is why we’re so honored that she does the show at eight months pregnant And so please send us your questions, you can do that through Facebook, which you can find us by typing and facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod or just search for keeping it real podcasts, you’ll find us that way. Also go to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com, which you can also submit questions that way as well, or, you know, just send them to me or Bri directly if you have our personal information. But, you know, this podcast, of course, is to help all the listeners learn more about real estate investing. So I will let bring it back to her final stages of pregnancy, and all the other things you’re doing, which is incredible running a business and doing investments. And gosh, you do it all. So in planning next. Yeah, but

Brie Schmidt 20:44
thank you. Yeah, planning. That’s not for a while we needed a break from that. We usually take the summer off, and then we’ll start back up October, November,

D.J. Paris 20:55
good. How many properties are you do you own? What’s How big is your portfolio?

Brie Schmidt 21:00
Actually, I just sold some properties. Oh, I just sold a few properties this spring. And I’ll kind of go into this, but I actually hired an economist. So through through networking with investors, I attended and spoke at an event in Philly last year. And one of the speakers was an economist. And so I ended up hiring him to explain things to me, because I understand the real estate market, what I don’t understand is the stock market, you know, the other what economic indicators, what a yield curve is all these things that are kind of outside of my realm, but affect my realm. So I hired him to, you know, explain things to me. And part of that was him reviewing my portfolio. And I’d went back through, you know, five years of data and gave it all to him. And he pointed out to me that for some of my properties, while they were performing, and doing well, my equity position in them was so great, that if I sold my property today, I would get at least 10 years plus cashflow up front. So yeah, so I ended up I sold five properties, the spring, because they were they were above that 10 year trigger for me. Um, and then I’m looking to reinvest that capital in more passive options. But so now I think I’m down to like, 84 unit. It’s a lot of work.

D.J. Paris 22:25
Yeah. Plus, you also run a real estate company. And on top of that, so incredible. And so, you know, and by the way, I just a quick pitch for one of our other regular episodes, which is with Ryan Day, April, where we’ve actually done this where we’ve worked macro to micro or we’ll call it, you know, more national to hyperlocal, where Ryan actually shows some of the trend data, which isn’t always necessarily specific to real estate investing. But just for our broker listeners who are brokers who work with their clients, you need to be able to explain what’s going on in the market. We’ve done some episodes around understanding some of the trends that are happening, you know, from a larger, higher altitude perspective and then going hyperlocal. So definitely check out our Ryan coaching monthly episode too. But on behalf of Bree and myself, we want to say thank you, for everyone listening, we’re over 100 episodes now. So we’re super grateful for that, and that people are still listening and passing this over. So please tell a friend if you know anyone else that is either a real estate investor or someone who is a broker who is interested in learning more about real estate investment or not or not somebody is not a broker who’s interested, you know, pass this podcast over to them. And we’ll keep doing this and send us your questions. And Bree, thank you so much, and we wish you the very best with your final final days of pregnancy.

Brie Schmidt 23:48
Thank you.

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

This month Carrie talks about how, despite it being the busy season, sales are actually down year-over-year. She discusses best practices around working with buyers and sellers in this climate, and also discusses why many of her clients are selling their homes and renting luxury apartments. I provide a marketing tip about delivering inexpensive back-to-school care packages for your contacts with children.

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

Carrie McCormick D.J. Paris Monday Market Minute
Carrie McCormick Logo

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:14
Hello and welcome to another episode of keepin it real the old the largest podcast in the country made by brokers for brokers. My name is DJ Paris and today we have our Monday market minute with Kerry McCormick. So if those of you new to the show, who aren’t yet familiar with Carrie, she is a top 1% That top 1% of 1% Producer at in Chicago, I misses out of 44,000 Realtors, she’s consistently year over year in like the top 20 of 44,000 Realtors, she’s been in the business for 20 years, a total superstar clearly and generously donates her time to speak to you the listeners once a month about what’s going on in the Chicagoland market so that you can better educate your clients or maybe your client yourself that wants to just know what’s going on in the business. So welcome once again, my oldest co host and friend Carrie,

Carrie McCormick 1:16
you can’t say I’m the oldest Am I the oldest? Sure

D.J. Paris 1:19
that didn’t sound good. You’re You’re, you’re the you’re a seasoned co host I have. I know I should have, we should I should redo that. Because you’re certainly not old. But it’s funny. It is funny. By the way, before we get into it, I want to plug, make sure that everybody who’s listening goes and follows Carrie on Instagram for a couple of reasons. One, because it’s really good. The quality of content that she puts out there on a consistent basis is incredible. And it’s a real example of what good quality content looks like in social media. So follow her on instagram.com forward slash Carrie McCormick real estate. We’ll also post a link to that in the notes, but just look for Carrie McCormack that’s to season recording real estate, and you’ll find her so what’s going on? Carrie,

Carrie McCormick 2:12
thank you so much for that great introduction. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate everyone listening and being here. So here we are, we’re in mid year 2019. And overall, I would say it’s really been a challenged market. The volume has been down about six and a half percent this year. And we just we’ve got tight inventory right now. But even though that the volume is down, you know, real estate is selling the number one thing I’ve seen is it has to be priced. Right. I know everyone keeps hearing that. But it just I’ve tested a few different things this market and with marketing and just different strategies. It all plays together. But really, you know, you’ve got to be priced right. And in addition to that price growth is slowing. So usually in Chicago, our typical growth is about 2% a year. And now this year, it’s down to about a half a percent. And, you know, there’s a lot of contributing factors to that, but one is the tax consequences that happened about a year ago. And that’s really affecting, you know, everyone’s affordability in the real estate market. The other part is the luxury market. So, you know, homes over a million so in the first half of 2019. We saw 614 homes in the city trade hands for a million or more. Which if you look back to 2018 It’s a 15% drop, which is a huge, huge drop. However, the altra like the tippy top ultra luxury market, over 4 million is actually up a little bit, which is interesting, but we’ve got some Uber luxury buildings such as like one Bennett Park, we’ve got nine Walton that has these, you know very super, you know over $4 million properties and we’ve seen a little bit when I say a little bit it’s been like three or four property uptick but it’s it’s interesting to see that the Uber wealthy, you know are still buying here in Chicago. One thing I wanted to talk about which for me has been a change in my business is rentals. So for the first time in my 20 years, a lot of my sellers are downsizing in instead of buying you know two or three bedroom condo, they are deciding to rent right and all these great rental buildings you know, it’s it goes back to you know, taxes it goes back to just wanting to live in easier life not worrying about maintenance on a home, you know, the roof, the lawn, you know the tuckpointing etc, etc. And then again the unknown with the taxes. But because I’ve done a lot of rentals recently I’ve been and touring and visiting all these class a rental buildings, and I’ve noticed that there’s an amenity war going on. Yes. So it’s the amenities have become a big factor in clients making decisions. So like rental buildings like the old town park in the Sinclair, they have spas, they have spa services, you can do massage rooms, saunas, steam rooms and gyms. When Bennett Park which is one of my favorite buildings Nima Essex on the park, they’ve got this new service, which I love. It’s called Hello, Alfred, that allows the tenants to schedule like in home grocery deliveries, you could do maid service, you could get fresh flowers delivered daily to your home, you could actually even get turned down service. Yeah.

D.J. Paris 5:48
I was gonna say I dated a woman recently who got turned down service. And I was like, I didn’t know that was it? But yeah, they’re all doing it.

Carrie McCormick 5:55
I mean, think about that. It’s it’s like a simple life, meaning, you know, I mean, you pay for it. But it’s just this ease of not worrying about anything and having everything done for you. So rentals have become very socially acceptable they’ve become we’ve got a ton of them here in Chicago. And they’re just to me, it’s really amazing. It’s an amazing opportunity for some of our, you know, sellers to go into.

D.J. Paris 6:22
Yeah, and it’s also one of those things that it’s typically a temporary thing anyway, right. So you help somebody with a rental, you know, you and then eventually they’ll probably purchase something in the future to even if they came from selling a home and they rent and they’ll probably buy something down the road anyway. Right? Yeah, so

Carrie McCormick 6:39
it’s a good little stepping stone. Another thing I wanted to talk about is buyers. So there’s a lot of new agents that have entered the marketplace, new real estate agents that have entered into our space. And I get a lot of questions I love, you know, helping new agents and coaching and problem solving. So anyone listening who’s new and want some advice, I’m always, you know, happy to help. But one question I’ve got recently, quite a bit was about working with buyers, and how to minimize the risk of, you know, their time and effort, because you can work with a buyer for I don’t know, you know, weeks months, you know, I’ve got one that’s going on a year. And I always say that, you know, working with buyers is always risky. Because you know, you spend a lot of time your own time with them and efforts. In it, there’s no guarantee that they’re going to buy something. And you know, even if they find the right house, are they going to buy it or they’re going to put an offer in is that offer going to be accepted is the you know, is the appraisal going to appraise out. So there’s a lot of things that can go wrong, you know, even when you get someone to make an offer on a home when they find the right home. But you just need to know that and you need to manage the process very closely all the way through. And it’s just important to have open communication with your buyers. And always be honest and be a good listener. And to be solution oriented, because things will go wrong, nothing’s ever smooth. And you just need to be patient, communicate and be solution oriented.

D.J. Paris 8:24
So yeah, and also to remember to that buyers need your guidance, they need your emotional guidance, along with the financial guidance, like, obviously, you’re the one that’s going to tell them, you know, give them advice on on what to you know what to submit a bid at and when to submit a bid, but also, it is a very stressful experience, especially for a first time homebuyer to know what’s happening next, you know, and just to manage expectation and emotion and that’s, you know, the, the job of a great realtor does that.

Carrie McCormick 8:57
Yeah, and you know, things like I mentioned and you know not to be pessimistic, but things go wrong. And every agent out there has had, you know, a deal blow up or something go wrong, or you know, someone’s upset but it is you need to just take it step by step with the process. And if it does go wrong, you know, don’t let it get you down. I mean, it’s happened to all of us is you just have to learn from it. And, you know, learn from it and move on you. It just it’s part of it’s part of the job and you know, anyone that’s listening, if you ever need any advice, like I mentioned, I’ve got 20 years of experience and I’m a good listener, I’m a good problem solver. And sometimes it’s just helpful to you know, talk it through with somebody and you know, everyone’s got a managing broker and colleague so you know, use use all your resources to learn and do better

D.J. Paris 9:48
one. Speaking of working with buyers, you have a new development that you are working with. So tell our listeners about this because it’s very exciting.

Carrie McCormick 9:56
Yeah, thanks for mentioning that. So at properties and myself we just are working with L Cove in Wicker Park. It’s a new 55 unit development. There’s 55 condos and 12. New townhomes, brand new development delivering fall of 2020. It is, if you want to look it up in the MLS, it’s 1255 Polina Street, we do have a beautiful sales gallery that’s located at 1295 North Milwaukee Avenue. We’ve got a full kitchen in there. We’ve got finished samples, floor plans, we’ve got a great VR. So I would encourage everyone listening, stop by our sales center, take a look at what’s new, it’s hard of Wicker Park. It’s an amazing location, and really great floor plans and community. So feel free to visit that website. That

D.J. Paris 10:48
website, by the way is and I’m looking at the pictures it’s incredible, is alcove M. d B. So Mary David Paul alcove, Mary David paul.com. And I’ll put a link to that in the notes. It is.

Carrie McCormick 11:01
So everyone asks what what does it stands for? St. Mary David Paul, but it’s good question. It’s Milwaukee division, and Polina. So it’s this really great alcove community that we’re creating right in that intersection.

D.J. Paris 11:20
That’s very cool. And I love I love that intersection. I just think that is such a fun you have adages, right there and super cool place everyone go visit that. And so congrats on that development. That’s very, very exciting. Okay, speaking up, we do have listeners who, who are buyers, sellers, renters also investors, and if they are interested in working with you or your team, what’s the best way they should reach out to you

Carrie McCormick 11:50
always call me it’s the best and easiest way 312961461

D.J. Paris 11:56
To awesome. And real quickly, I’m gonna give a quick marketing minute it is we are now in August. And I had a quick idea. So everyone who is listening thinking, gosh, like how can I reach out to my my network, we know that your network is your net worth. Here’s a good reason to do that. I actually had two reasons. But I’m just gonna give you one today and save the next for next time. And the first is it is back to school season, right? Or we’re getting close to that. So think about all the people you know, in your network, who have children who are going back to school, whatever ages that is, and think about maybe dropping off a little care package. You know, school supplies, you know, it’s simple, it’s easy, you don’t have to worry about branding yourself on it. If you’re you know, pinched for time you just go to the Walgreens or wherever and get some notebooks, pens, paper, folders, anything like that. Kranz if the children are young enough, and just deliver you know, a little care package for you know, a few dozen of your clients that is so huge and simple and easy, and it will be appreciated and use the most important part. So anyway, that was my quick marketing minute.

Carrie McCormick 13:05
I love that. It’s so cute.

D.J. Paris 13:07
I love it. Well, anyway, that is that’s gonna wrap it up for this time. Kerry’s got a crazy busy Sunday, as per usual and she was so generous with her time. So on behalf of the listeners, we thank her as always, and on behalf of Carrie and myself to the listeners, we thank you for listening. Remember to follow us on Facebook, you can download any of our episodes right from our website, which is keeping it real pod.com In fact, you don’t have to download it. You can stream it right from your browser. Obviously any podcast app you find that you use on your phone, just search for keeping it real podcast and you’ll subscribe to us that way too. So anyway, thank you Carrie once again, we will see Carrie next month. And thanks for everyone for listening. So thank you