Category: Podcast Episodes

In this episode we speak to top producer Niko Apostal of The Apostal Group. Although Niko’s family has been involved in real estate for over 40 years, he has blazed his own trail and become one the most successful brokers in Chicago. In this episode we talk about the importance of giving back to the real estate community through serving on boards and also tips that newer brokers can use to build their business. Niko shares one strategy that he estimates less than 1% of brokers use that skyrocketed his open house success rate! Lastly he talked about recently moving firms, and why he’s never been more excited than right now!

Niko Apostal can be reached at niko@theapostalgroup.com and 312.216.2424.

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:14
Hello and welcome to keeping it real the only podcast made by Chicago real estate brokers for Chicago real estate brokers. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host through the show. And coming up in just a few moments, we have an interview with top producer, and all are all around great guy, Nico apostle. But before we get to that, a couple of quick announcements first of all, thank you for listening and supporting our show. This is the first time ever hearing us and every episode we get new listeners. So what we do here is we interview the top brokers in Chicago and ask them what they did to grow their business and have them tell their story in the hopes that other brokers who are interested in increasing their production can learn from the very best. So one way that you can support the show, aside from listening, which we really appreciate, is to tell a friend, if you have other brokers in your office that are wondering what the top people are doing, tell them about our show, they can subscribe on iTunes, Google Play Stitcher, really anywhere podcasts are served just search for keeping it real. And there’s a few podcasts actually named keeping it real. So look for the one with DJs you know as my name and look for that, and that’ll tell you which one it is. But you can also listen to every single episode we have on our website which is keeping it real pod.com So all of our episodes can be streamed there. Also you can contact us so if you’re somebody who wants to recommend a broker that we should be talking to that maybe we haven’t reached out to and invited on the show, you can do that also, if you are a vendor and you want to advertise on our show, you can do that there as well. And then lastly, follow us on Facebook we post a lot of good content there and we interact with the listeners and that’s keeping it real pod on Facebook so check us out all right on to our interview with Nico apostle

Okay, today on the show we have Nico apostle by the way, Nico is one of the first people I ever met in real estate when I first got involved at my firm and this was like maybe seven years ago or so. So I’m really excited to have him on the show. But Nico, let me tell you a little bit about about Nico. He entered the real estate business in 2001. And he has established himself as one of the top residential realtors in Chicago and a leader in the Residential Brokerage community. His primary focus is his sales practice where he runs a high level brokerage team. He is part owner of the brand new Keller Williams Chicago Linkin Park office, which he helped launch last year. He is also co owner of our management offering leasing and rental property management for his clients. Currently, he serves on the board of directors of the Illinois realtor Association, and has recently served on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Association realtors, where he has chaired multiple committees and co founded the local chapter of the YPN which is the Young Professionals Network. In February of 2016. Nico was a featured broker on HGTV House Hunters renovation. He’s a lifelong resident of Chicago’s north side, and Nico comes from a family that has been active in real estate investment management, development and sales for more than 40 years. He has extensive leadership training, which he previously used to teach agents in Coldwell bankers new agent development program, and presently as a member of his local Keller Williams agent Leadership Council. Over the past decade, Nikko and the apostle group has earned a reputation for excellence and expertise as well as caring and personal attention earning recognition among the top 1% of Realtors in Chicago. So, no, he’s just a super nice guy. So welcome Miko to the show.

Niko Apostal 3:58
Thank you. Nice to be here happy to happy to support and look forward to this conversation.

D.J. Paris 4:04
Yeah, so our first question I almost always ask when I when it gets somebody like yourself is tell us how you got into real estate and I know you have the history because your mom is such a prominent figure in the real estate community too. But tell us that that story if you don’t,

Niko Apostal 4:19
well, real estate was always in our conversation. When I was growing up. My father was a biology teacher. My mom was a history teacher. When I was a kid and they would do real estate on the side. My brother, my father would buy buildings, fix them up and sell them or rent them or, or things like that. And then he’d rent a few things when you know, rent apartments and sell properties occasionally over the summers when he was not in school. And then mom when she became a full time mom, and did volunteer work for the local Lincoln Elementary School in some of the local community groups. She did real estate on the side sort of selling things and renting the things that my father would get involved with And then she, you know, when I got into high school, she went full time into real estate at a group called century 21. Stan Meyer, which is long gone. But was, was a really great move for her. So it was always part of the dinner table conversation. And when I graduated college, I lived in New York City for the first three and a half years and worked for a nonprofit organization. And then I moved back to Chicago in 2001, and end of August. And then I had all these job interviews lined up for marketing and sales type jobs. And then I was determined to sort of make my own way. But then September 11, happened, and nobody was hiring, no one was even calling me back. And I had, you know, student loans to pay, I had things to the head of rent to pay. So mom said, why don’t you come be my assistant while you look for a real job. So I did in started October 1, basically, of 2001. And I learned a ton from her and her colleagues in that couple banker office, it was a magical time for that office. David Hall was our managing broker and was one of the most inspirational mentors I’ve ever had. And he was it was a heady time, this was, you know, the market was really, really easy to sell things. And it was just, it was extremely fast paced, and feverish. And David was bringing in people from all these different industries, and they were bringing their knowledge and expertise, and we were collaborating to create, you know, new ways of doing real estate. And it was really fun. So I went off on my own end of Oh, two. And mom’s phone always just used to ring and I always thought it was pretty easy. You just sit there, the phone rings, and you help the clients out. And, you know, she would have lots of lunches and lots of breakfasts, and meet people here and there. And I always thought that was kind of silly. I also thought I was way more technically savvy than she. So I should probably be able to do this really easily right away. So first month, I had one of my friends by and I got a client off an open house. And six months later, I finally got my second client, my third, right. And I realized that all those silly, ridiculous things that she did, were things that generated those phone calls, and I was not doing any of those. And that’s when the big aha came and I said, the important thing is to, to stay involved in your, in your friends and clients lives. And that’s how you do it. So I pivoted, and I started helping every realtor out that I could find and did a ton of open houses, open houses, my stock and trade, I could not do floor time, I was terrible on the phones. The internet was not at a time when it was generating leads yet. But open houses was my was my game, it was the best thing to do, I would do three or four per weekend, and just load them up. And then the trick to making open house work is follow up relentless follow up. And I just had, you know, don’t, you know, didn’t care. And I had no fear and I had nothing to lose. And so I just went at it full force. And so by the end of that year, I think I had sold over 5 million my first year. And then the following year, I think I did 11. So

D.J. Paris 8:17
that’s those are amazing. First two years. I know. I wanted to go back to the open house for a moment. So I want to say specifically for people that are curious at how you got these open houses. I’m assuming you just went to brokers and said I will do open houses for you?

Niko Apostal 8:32
Well, yes, absolutely. And one thing I learned was, there’s a lot of brokers who will offer up open houses, hey, can someone set my open house this this Sunday, you know, from from 10 to 12. And I would the first few times I did that on my own, I realized those were crappy open houses wanted to sit no one wanted to sit them. So instead what I would do is when a listing came through the office, I would see the we published a hot sheet at the time the office did and I would just read it every week, every day when I came through and I would I would see what new properties came up and areas that I wanted to work in. And I would pick the open houses I wanted to do. And then as I got more proficient at this, I realized that the best way for me to establish myself as an agent was to show that I had that I was active in the industry. So while my friends knew me as a nice guy, but they didn’t know that I was any good as a real estate broker. Sure. So the way I countered that was by letting them know that I was not only a good person but really active so every time I said an open house I would plan it for not the this coming weekend but the following weekend to give me time to be able to invite my sphere to the Open House say Hey, I just listed this this property is just been listed. I’m sitting open house here this weekend. I’d love to have you join me. And I would try and just go through in my contact Next each week on that, on that morning before the open house, and I would text, you know, a dozen or so of my peep people I hadn’t seen or heard from in a while, and and say, Hey, I’m sitting here and I’m all alone, why don’t you come join me pop in for a minute come see this place. And so I built up a group of brokers in the office who loved to have me do their open houses, because I would always get double or triple the traffic. And it didn’t really matter of obviously, if, if any of those people were interested in the house, all it mattered was that they could report back to their client that they didn’t open us and they had 18 people come through and nobody liked the place, they better drop the price.

D.J. Paris 10:38
Well, and add it to your sphere of influence, it makes you look incredibly busy. Which of course, I do once a month we do I do an episode with Carrie McCormick, I don’t know. Absolutely. And Carrie might be about the best if what she her, her sweet spot is Instagram. And so Carrie constantly and she ever all of her posts look amazing, her pictures, but they’re constantly reminding you just how busy she is and just how successful she is. And it’s not even so much in a self promotion way. It’s its branding, and she’s able to say, I’ve got this going on, I’ve got this going on, come check this out. And you can’t help but think like, oh, and she is one of the most successful realtors in Chicago. But you would also without knowing that you would think that just by you know, and you were doing the same thing, essentially,

Niko Apostal 11:24
exactly. And I think that, especially if you’re new to this business, it’s really hard to get someone to trust you with the, you know, a very personal experience they have with with the largest financial assets they have, with a place where they’ve had raised their kids and had experiences and showed off their stuff and had parties and where they sleep at night. It’s very difficult for someone to trust you if you’re if you’re new. And the way to get around that is just to basically be in their face all the time and show that you’re a dynamo. And I had a lot of trouble at first, cuz I had an age problem, I looked way too young to be handling a property and Linkin Park or lake view or the Gold Coast. But what I made up for it with was I basically embrace it. And at first I started trying to be this guy that I wasn’t and I realized that no one was going to work with me. But instead what I did was I would always treat an open house like an interview for a listing, my goal has always been get listings, because if you have listings, you have something to advertise some way to get other clients. So I approach it that way. Each open houses interview for a listing, if I had if I could get to the open house an hour or two early, then I could door knock and invite the neighbors to the open house and say, Hey, I’m doing open house over here at this listing, why don’t you come out and see me I’d always dress nicely and always bring a listing presentation book, you know, no, CMA and inside, but just the presentation materials. And I would always say oh, yeah, I’m heading to a listing presentation after this. So I have this with me, why don’t you take a look at it. And just quite simply, you know, I would use the line, I would say who are you going to list your property with with Carrie McCormack, you know, she’s got 22 listings right now, which means you’re gonna get 1/22 of her time, I have no listings right now, you’ll get 100% of my time. And if I don’t sell your place, I don’t eat so right, you don’t have working for you. So basically, I embraced my nervousness as a as an asset instead of as a detriment. And I think that that really helped me to get some of those first listings. And over time, I obviously can’t say that anymore. But but you know, it was a great way when I was getting going to establish myself and to give myself credibility.

D.J. Paris 13:38
It’s so it’s such a brilliant move. And and I do want to like you went through this very, very quickly. But I want to back up just a step and say, I wonder or ask the question. And it’s more just a hypothetical. But I wonder what percentage of brokers who are doing an open house will ever knock on the next door neighbor’s door to let them know, I bet you it’s less than 5%.

Niko Apostal 13:58
So and it’s even less than that. Yeah, you’re right.

D.J. Paris 14:01
And so just the thought so so what did need to do, let’s go back, he first went around to the brokers in the office who had listings and said, I’m going to make you look great in front of your seller, I’ll do an open house for you, you know, for a property that, you know, he sort of wanted to be known as, as being active in that particular area. So Lincoln Park Lake View in particular, and then, you know, and that’s, that’s a win win for that broker with that listing. And then he went around to the neighbors and said, Oh, by the way, I have this and also promoted it in it with his own sphere of influence. And so all of a sudden, you’re like, Man, this guy, Miko is doing a lot of a lot of stuff. And, and it’s, that’s a really brilliant branding strategy. And so,

Niko Apostal 14:41
absolutely, and when you start off, you know, you spend a lot of money, relatively a lot of money to get into this business and the flow of revenue that comes is really intermittent. And sometimes, like in my case, I had six months of no money coming in. So you You learn you, it’s a difficult business to get traction in. But what you have at your disposal most when you’re getting going is time. And so if you use that time, if you really devote a lot of time, spend that free time that you have doing activities that will generate business that’ll get you in front of more people. That’s how I think a new broker can get going much faster and shorten that learning curve and shorten that, that you know that and flatten out that revenue curve, so that you can get going at this point. Now what I crave more than anything is time. Sure. And you know, it’s the one thing that you can’t create more of. So that’s where leverage comes in. That’s when you start hiring people and you realize, what’s my time worth? And could I pay someone else to do some of these things that gobble up my time so that my attention is best focused on those activities that will generate new, more business?

D.J. Paris 15:58
Yeah, let’s talk about the recent move to to Keller Williams, because you and your your group was at a Coldwell Banker forever. And I know you know, you have very fun things to say about Coldwell Banker, but talk about the transition and how that’s worked out for you. And well, I know you’re really excited about it. So

Niko Apostal 16:15
yeah, you know, I, I, I had such a great formative experience at CB and their training and their their environment is such a great place to get going and real estate and, and I really did like it there. I think what what the opportunity came out of the blue, sort of late summer of 2016. And for me, it was an opportunity to see if I could recreate that office that we had from the beginning where it was a collaborative environment where new people were coming in and got to work side by side with experienced agents. And we it was a culture of training and, and collaboration. And it was kind of I’ve always been a little bit entrepreneurial, I had started our management. It’s now it’s six years old. So I learned a lot from that experience. And then when Tommy and Josh, Tommy Choi, Josh Weinberg, Joe Zimmerman, Ameri hate approached me and said, you know, we’re thinking of opening this Keller Williams office, do you know much about the company, I didn’t actually know anything about them. But I knew that these were very smart guys that I’ve collaborated with in the past. And when the more I learned, the more I realized there was a ton of training and systems that the company offers, that are just on the next level that would take me from the business that I was doing to what do I do next, you kind of reach a plateau several times as you grow in this business. And I think I had reached a plateau at CB and, and this is not the right brokerage for everybody. You know, I think if someone wants to just do a few real estate sales on the side is like a side business, you’re probably better off at a more traditional brokerage, where they take care of a lot of things for you. But here, what you get is a community of brokers who were building this nurturing this community of brokers who, who want to work with one another who want to make this a full time career who want to build a legacy in the business that they can then hand down to the next generation that they can build, treat this business like a business and create, you know, sort of the next generation of top producers in the industry. And so I’m really excited about what we’ve been able to do our growth is staggering. We’ve been open since March. And we’re already up to I think it’s nearly 140 brokers in this office. We had lease additional office space. We’re bringing in trainers from all over the country and the Keller Williams network of agents across the country is tremendous. They’re extremely tight. And everyone is so generous with their time and knowledge.

D.J. Paris 18:57
Yeah, I mean, they you know, I’m a huge fan of, of the Millionaire Real Estate Agent, which is about you know, Gary Keller’s book, which I know has been recently updated. And that alone is probably about the best book on how to be a successful realtor that I’ve ever seen. So I suspect the the other voices that are traders of Keller Williams are amazing. The I did want to bring back to you mentioned Josh Weinberg, we’ve had him on the show. And he said, he said something that that was Tommy was not on the show at the time, but he mentioned something about Tommy which I thought was really interesting. sort of goes back to something you had mentioned very briefly earlier was that you were talking about you know, in particular for new brokers but I suspect you feel this way even today was that getting in front of more people obviously drives the business and and helps smooth out that curve of you know, when when the income comes in, but meeting new people is maybe that most important activity and when I was talking to Josh, I asked him I said What are your his own personal hit him and Tommy’s personal goals? For I guess it was sometime last year we asked him They go, Yeah, we don’t really think in terms of production. He said, We have really one goal, which was, Tommy needs to meet 365 new people over the next year, basically one new person a day, if he does, that, all of our goals will be met. You know, and I just love that because these guys are, you know, they’re already top 1% producers, they’re probably working almost exclusively by referral, they’re clearly you know, doing great. And yet, they’re still going back to that fundamental, get more meet more people talk to more people.

Niko Apostal 20:28
Absolutely. You know, and it is sort of, I mean, as I’ve learned, especially over this year, working side by side with them, as well as some of these new agents that I’ve met across the country, it really is, it’s a, it’s about doubling down on the basics. When you have something that works well, you just have to think, How can I make it more efficient, to be able to do more of that. And you know, when you boil down the numbers in your day to day activities, and down to the time to the minute, you realize, you know, everyone has their their source of business, their nugget, that thing that makes them special. And you should be building your business around facilitating more of that. You know what I’m saying? Yeah, and Tommy is probably one of the coolest guys I’ve ever met, you know, yeah, for sure. Yes. He just knows a million people. He does things from his heart. And you know, any any doesn’t, doesn’t does the results don’t matter. He just does it out of the kindness of his heart. And his motivation, I think is to, to see if he can improve the lives of everyone around him. And I was very much aligned with that philosophy, which is why I think we have such a great working relationship. And I think Joe and Mary are exactly the same way to their MKT team is amazing. And they’re definitely the office leaders. They are forging ahead, they are building a seventh level real estate team right now. That is incredible. I mean, I’m so excited to see what they’re going to do this year, and how that then I’m learning from their mistakes and their, you know, their accomplishments. As I build my team to reach new levels.

D.J. Paris 22:06
You will I do want to transition and talk about your involvement in the industry in the community, because you’ve been so involved. But before I do that, real quickly, I had a just a memory of something that you you had said and this is many years ago, we I was at a YPN event. And you were on a I believe you were on a panel. And the panel was interesting, because I believe it was a technology panel. And then I know you’re you’re always looking at systems and always looking for technology. And at one point, there was a conversation about what’s the best CRM to use. And so different people on the panel had different opinions about their preferred CRM. And, and you it was really funny, you sort of stood up and said, You know, I’ve tried pretty much all the CRMs and they’re all fine in ego. But you know, and maybe you don’t do this now. But at the time, it was really great. You said I kind of just went back to using Excel, or maybe it was Google Google Sheets, you’re like, yeah, yeah. And I thought that was great. You’re like, I just decided I didn’t really need those. And I it was more effective for me just to sort of, you know, go back to the basic tools.

Niko Apostal 23:05
Absolutely. You know, the, the tool is only as useful as your ability to use it. And so and your desire to use it. And I have, honestly, and I’ve tried to add another dozen since then. Sure. Try. I’m trying a new one this year again this year, but this one’s now done by a Keller Williams agent who’s running a team exactly like mine. So I’m hopefully this one will work but but I think what it comes down to is you has to be a tool that you understand that you’re going to love using because you’re going to use it every single day, it’s the single most important tool in this business is you know, like you were saying, with Tom he does best is getting in front of people and then following up with them. And that only works when you know who to follow up with and you keep their accurate information. So whatever you’re going to use, whether it’s a three by five, no card file, that’s alphabetize if that’s what you love, and you’re going to use it and it’s good working for you use it, but if you choose some fancy, you know, really expensive software and you hate it and you’re never going to use it, then it’s useless to you. So you know, it’s it comes down to building your business around the way that you work. Yeah, and that Yeah, and that’s true for hiring too. You know, don’t hire if you’re really great taking buyers out. Don’t hire a buyer’s agent when you need as an admin, you need someone to do the paperwork in the office because you’re really great taking buyers out of the office. You know, it’s a huge mistake that agents make is the first hire they do is another agent to do the same work that they’re doing. That’s a huge mistake. The bigger thing you need most agents need the best and most successful ones is someone to do the other stuff, because it’s a whole different skill set managing details than it is finessing people and it’s an entirely different motivation level entire different skill set. So when I hired my first assistant, that’s what I did. It was They said, Okay, this is all the stuff I hate doing. This is the job description. I’m, I’m right, I’m hiring for right. And so. So and then from there, the systems and the software follow. So, you know, you build it around the people, and the first primary person is who are you? And what are you the best at? So start with that? Where is your business coming from? What is it about you that brings a business in, and then from there build around that get someone to do the other stuff that doesn’t that takes you away from that, you know, do that 80% of the stuff that you have to do, but only 20% of your that stuff that you you know, that other 20% is the stuff that makes you the most than more money or that gets to the next level, if you can hire someone to do that 80% and focus on the 20%, or get a software tool that can do that. 80% so that you can focus on the 20% you should be doing. That’s how you you get successful. And that’s how you reach that next level.

D.J. Paris 25:58
Absolutely. Yeah, let’s, let’s transition I and by the way, very well said and I had interviewed somebody recently who said, you know, a lot of times when people build teams, they don’t realize they’re likely to take a pay cut additionally, meaning, you know, the overall revenue for that broker who is hiring, you know, but then over time, you know, if they’re doing the things you just don’t want to do, or they just take up too much of your time. You know, eventually, of course, that that should should grow the business. But

Niko Apostal 26:25
I tell people, if you have 15, to 20,000, to put into a checking account, set up, set up and, you know, incorporate and set up a checking account business checking account, if you put in $15,000. In that account, you have six months salary for that person. And then after that, if you don’t have it, and then if it’s not working after six months, guess what, you should probably let the person go anyway. So if you haven’t made more money than you did over the previous six months, because of that, then then you know, maybe you shouldn’t hire the person. Yeah. itself, right.

D.J. Paris 27:01
Let’s talk about getting involved in the in the community and and also in the, you know, giving back to the to the industry and getting because I know that’s a passion of yours. You’ve been very involved. You’ve been on YPN, you, you’ve founded one of the chairs of YPN, you’ve been Where you’ve done some work with car IAR. Can you talk a little bit about why you’re why you’re involved, what you do, and maybe what you’d like other people to know about that?

Niko Apostal 27:24
Sure, absolutely. I think that part of the reason I’ve been so successful is I just like collaborating with others. And it’s not just trying to get involved with members, you know, organizations within the community, like your local chamber of commerce or your local neighborhood association, or condo association. I think those are important too. And those definitely give you insight and knowledge. But it’s equally as important for a broker to get involved with your local real estate Association, and then maybe your state and national Real Estate Association. And there’s several benefits of doing this. Number one is you get an insight into how other people are doing the practicing the business and what they’re doing and how they’re doing, how they work. A lot of these people who come to these associations work in very different marketplaces, even if you’re, you know, the Chicago Association of Realtors, is 14,000 brokers and think about every neighborhood in the city and how different they are from one another. And there’s different needs and different approaches and different types of housing and each of those areas. So to sit there and hear what’s working for one broker in one area, which isn’t being tried in your area, it’s just a great way to collaborate and share knowledge. Likewise, I think also, I don’t know, do you remember that movie? It was a beautiful mind was Russell Crowe? And it was about that mathematician who said that Adam Smith was right. Right. And his so I’ve good friend of mine is a real estate developer. And he’s got an MBA in finance, real estate finance from Kellogg, and he took a lot of classes about that the, you know, the the guy who was in that. And he said, it’s really it’s not well understood, but the basic premise holds true, which is, I think that a trade organization, when run well, like a union or a guild of some kind, when Runwell can actually produce a higher level of quality service or product to the consumer, as well as a better quality working environment for the employee. As long as it’s not abused in one way or the other. So, meaning when we’re involved, we work together, we’re facing common issues. We can also set higher standards of practice, which you can invite other brokers to live up to. And by being a member of this community, you’re settling disputes between one another, you’re creating an efficiency of resources by by, you know, you know, going together with, to purchasing power and to get perks and benefits that you can do in bulk, which you couldn’t do as an individual. And then also you you are setting a level of, you know, an openness of communication among the industry, which helps business to be transacted a lot more efficiently. So, you know, I would very much encourage every broker, especially new ones who are in this industry for the first time and wondering, What should I do next? Or how do I get to the next level, to get involved in your local real estate Association, I don’t just mean show up to the to the parties to the drinking events. I mean, get yourself on a committee, there are so many committees in different areas. The managing broker of our office is a guy named Dave Nassau. And he’s phenomenal. He chaired the forms and contracts committee at the Chicago Association Realtors for several years, and literally rewrote our real estate, the association real estate contract to adhere to the trade regulations. And in that process is causes a whole series of communication that allows that makes our contracts better, that protect the buyers better and make more clarity for sellers. So the consumer benefits and then we as agents benefit by using a more concise form, that creates fewer problems between the contract and closing. So it’s things like that, you know, no

D.J. Paris 31:17
question. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you, I was gonna say if you whatever board you’re with whether you’re with Chicago Association of Realtors, Main Street NAS bar, Three Rivers down in Joliet, the easiest way to learn about getting involved in these ways is literally call them or go to their websites, and you will see a list of all the committees, there’s almost they are they are starving in a good way for your involvement. They want you to be on these boards, they need you to be on these boards. And there’s usually a pretty simple process to get to get involved and active. So contact your board. Do that. And I also know that you’re passionate about our PAC, I believe, as well. Is that correct?

Niko Apostal 31:56
Sure. Yes, the real estate political action committee is it’s an advocacy organization that is part of the National Association of Realtors, and is administered mostly on the state level through each state association. And then obviously, each municipal or City Association, then feeds into it as well. But a lot of people wonder why, you know, when you pay your dues for the association dues for MLS access, and things like that, they also try to tack on voluntary, you know, 30 or $40 contribution to our pack, and is really important. Those dollars have tremendous influence on our industry, you can see them at work, even in this tax plan that just came through. Well, you know, it is definitely not beneficial in the way it was written. For both for homeowners and for real estate brokers, there’s a lot of things that are not as great in there as the way we used to have it. It was a horrible, horrible Bill was much much worse when it first started out. And it was through the lobbying efforts of on both state level and on on a national level, to get in front of politicians and have the wording and language change and have certain provisions rolled back and things like that, that allowed that bill to be much less onerous than it was. And you know, it’s just a great, it’s also a great way to get in touch with the leaders in the industry. Because I what I find is some of most of the top producers in this industry, they understand the value of, of contributing to, you know, a political action committee, and they realize that it is it’s super important for maintaining their livelihood and for protecting their clients being able to protect their clients. So they get heavily involved. And it’s a great way for somebody who is new to get in front of and to get an introduction to some of these top producers. So there’s just tons of benefits for getting involved in it. And the way I like to think of it just from a from a basic standpoint is, you know, if it’s like paying your insurance, it’s like it’s like employment insurance, it’s protects our industry from outside influence. And would you know, would you contribute 1% of what you earn in order to protect the other 99?

D.J. Paris 34:27
Absolutely. I have for sure what not, it’s even way less than 1% Right? It’s literally like $30

Niko Apostal 34:34
Yes, your fair share contribution is something small, it’s like 30 or 40 bucks, depending on where you are. And

I mean, I contributed I think this past year I did $5,000 toward our pack because it was such a big year and those dollars go such a long way. There’s something there was some New York New York Times article that said that you get a something like on average at 26,000% return on your investment when you Do political action investment versus non thing, I mean, it’s a multiplying effect. And we have one of the most, you know, the most active and influential trade organizations in the entire country with with one of the largest memberships of any organization, that country and its fingers go into right down to the local politic political level, all the way up to the national level. And, you know, politicians love Realtors for their ability to network across an entire community.

D.J. Paris 35:32
Yeah, no question. And I was talking to you offline about I bought Beth Wallace, who I we interviewed. So if you’re interested in learning more about what these these lobbyists do on brokers behalf, and also not just brokers behalf, but also consumers go all the way back, I think it’s episode two or three, where we interview Beth, who is a lobbyist for our back, and she gets a lot more specific about exactly how to get involved and what they do and all the resources that brokers have at their disposal, like through Illinois Association of Realtors, that they don’t even know they have, and so that it’s a great episode to listen to, to really get more in depth and, and how that all works and why it’s important, but well, well. Well, I’ve taken up enough of your time. And this has been really, really great. What’s neat, if we do have any buyers and sellers, or renters out there that are interested in working with your group, what’s the best way or even maybe brokers that are interested in learning more about what your your, your your firm has to offer? What’s the best way that anyone should reach out to you?

Niko Apostal 36:33
Well, yes, I mean, obviously, I’m always looking for clients, but I’m also always looking for talent and people who have enthusiasm and drive and are looking for to make a successful career in real estate. There’s we’re hiring both at our management and here in Keller Williams, and even my team, I’m always looking for someone great, but best way to reach it to reach me is probably by email. It’s an ICAO at the Apostel group.com. That’s an ICAO at th e apostalgroup.com. And I check that email all day every day. So I would love to hear from anyone if you have questions. I’m always happy to help and we you know, if you want to see some of these teams and people doing high level practice in action, you’re always welcome to pop on our office. We’re an office of sharing and giving and just kind of the environment where where we want to support one another

D.J. Paris 37:26
wonderful and also visit Nico’s website tube. It’s a great example of a really effective and aesthetically pleasing broker website. And I find I am not usually saying that about people’s website. So I feel like you guys have done a great job, you know, explaining what your team does also in in just a way that I think looks really cool. So thank you so much for being on the show. Really appreciate your time. And it’s my pleasure anytime. Thank you so much. All right. Take care.

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In 2013 Rosario Terracciano closed 643 transactions, earning him the #1 position in the Chicago Association of REALTORS® and #4 in the United States (as reported by Wall Street Journal). More recently he has developed a tool, ClickInvest, to help investors locate the best single family home opportunities in Chicago. In our interview Rosario discussing the challenges he faced in building his business, why he believes most brokers don’t need teams, and why he’s happier today doing fewer transactions.

Rosario Terracciano can be reached at rosario@clickinvest.com and 708-369-3151.

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:14
Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the only podcast made by Chicago real estate brokers for Chicago real estate brokers. My name is DJ Paris. I am your host through the show, and we are excited to continue in 2018 and provide these conversations with top producers for you to help you grow your business to learn from some of the best and brightest producers out there and they’re nice enough to talk to us. So always grateful for top producers who are willing to share their secrets on our show today is no exception. We have Rosario Tara Ciano in particular how he pivoted from a traditional brokerage to investment and I think you guys will find this really interesting because his story is so unusual and amazing, and also how you can continue to support our show a couple of ways. Number one, let us know if you have any brokers or know any brokers that you think would be a good fit. We typically interview top one percenters, but we’re also open to you know anyone else that’s doing some maybe up and coming rising stars or just somebody that’s doing something particularly interesting and unusual, that’s working, you know, definitely reach out, let us know who those brokers are, and we can reach out to them. Also, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or anywhere else podcasts are served up, just search for keeping it real. And listen to all of our episodes. You can also get emailed every time we have a new episode by visiting our website keeping it real pod.com and drop us a line let us know what you like what you don’t like and what you want to see more or less of in the future. And we also have a Facebook page where we are always posting our episodes and who we’re talking to and interviewing, which is also keeping it real pod. And lastly, tell a friend if you have any other brokers that you think could benefit from this information, please pass this podcast along. We greatly appreciate it. And one more thing if you are a vendor, somebody who works with real estate brokers and wants to wants to advertise on the show, drop us a line and we’ll let you know how that works. Okay, you’ve listened to enough of my rambling so onto our episode with Rosario Tariceanu.

This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Loftus law. I’m sorry the attorney is busy with something more important is something you will never hear when you call Patrick Loftus of Loftus law. Loftus law is a firm focused on serving real estate professionals and their clients you want your deals to close on time without headaches and Loftus law is the solution. For more information on what Loftis law can do for you and your clients and special pricing of 299 per closing call 773-632-8330 or email Patrick at Loftus hyphen law.com.

Today on the show we have Rosario Tara Ciano, who is the co founder and CEO of click invest.com. Rosario began his real estate career in 2003, when he left the finance industry and partnered with a local real estate broker specializing in distressed real estate. Now in his 15th year working exclusively in investment real estate Rosario is excited to share the click invest system he pioneered, Rosario has represented investors rehabbers, builders, banks and institutions in more than 2500 transactions valued at more than 300 million. This is really important and one I want to make sure I talk I stress is Rosario was the number one broker in Chicago for 2013 and ranked fourth nationally by The Wall Street Journal. He has built a career working with investors to stabilize distressed properties, and now brings that experience and expertise to his venture. So thank you for Sario for being on the show.

Rosario Terracciano 4:24
Thank you very much, man. I appreciate it.

D.J. Paris 4:27
We do too. So tell us about how you got started back in 2003. How did you get into real estate?

Rosario Terracciano 4:34
So in 2003, I was trading s&p futures and Nasdaq futures at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. I wasn’t making any money, so I was clerking during the day to make ends meet was in a pretty dark place in my life at that at that point of time, and I actually came across a book called The Power of Positive Thinking. And

D.J. Paris 4:58
is that Norman Vincent? appeal. Norman Vincent Peale? Yeah, I have read that as well. Yeah, that,

Rosario Terracciano 5:05
that That book changed my life that led me led me to another book, what I call the the greatest book, the Bible. And I got out of a lot of a lot of my bad habits got my my mind clear, and decided to get out of the financial markets and jumped headfirst into real estate.

D.J. Paris 5:26
Awesome, well talk about that. What was it like when in 2003? When you got in? How did you get started?

Rosario Terracciano 5:32
So for the first time, in many, many years, I could think straight. And I read a book called another book, right? The Millionaire mentor, not sure if you’ve ever heard that. Russ Whitney was the name of the gentleman who wrote that book. And in that book, it said, you know, you’ve got a network, if you want to succeed in real estate, you’ve got to talk to the right people. Fortunately, enough for me, my cousin’s brother in law, was an REO broker. So I said, Hey, can you connect me to this guy? And he said, Look, he’s got no time for anybody. You know, you can try reaching out to him, but he’s not going to have time for you. And I blew that guy up for three weeks. Well, and let’s, let’s pause for a second. That guy is also getting called by probably every broker around who also wants that business. Right, everybody? Yep. Yeah. So I remember the first time I called him, he said, you know, yeah, that’s great. You know, your cousin’s my brother in law, but doesn’t mean anything. I don’t have time for you. And I said, Hey, can I come sit in your office, and he said, Sure, but I’m still not going to have any time for you. And I literally went there every day for three weeks. And then three weeks in, he had a drive out to a property in Naperville. And his office was down in Gold Coast, in the Gold Coast. And he said, once you hop in a car with me, we’ll drive out there. And then we’ll talk and we talked and hit it off at that point. So

D.J. Paris 6:56
Wow. And so so so what happened

Rosario Terracciano 7:00
after that, so I left the merch when I got my first deal under contract. So I was more of a bird dog or wholesaler at that point, I wasn’t, wasn’t a broker. But he taught me the investment side of real estate and said, Hey, there’s this whole market that existed that few know about, and I started going after fast track, I’m sorry, properties that were in Fast Track demo with the city of Chicago. So these are buildings that we’re gonna get torn down. So he taught me how to track down the the taxpayers who are who own those properties, and then contacted one of them, got it under contract wholesaled it out. And after that first deal, I left a mark and, and just dove in headfirst.

D.J. Paris 7:46
Yeah, and you built up in impressive business. I mean, you’re very humble person. But you did I think I read an article about you, then this goes back to I think 2014. But I think it’s referencing 2012 where you did almost 650 transactions that year. Yeah. 2013 2013. Wow. Was it just you did you have a team? Where was that all you?

Rosario Terracciano 8:12
I had a team a rather large team. So and if if the listeners get anything out of this, I think the biggest thing aside from you know, pushing on every day and having faith and even even those days where you feel like you’re getting kicked in the face and you’re not making any progress. It’s understanding margin. And how to make money. I mean, the the purpose of everything we’re doing, isn’t it just go out and buy nice stuff. Okay, like, yeah, that’s fun. But you want to build net worth, you want to you want to, you want to buy assets or build assets, and you want to look good on financial statement, you know, so I wasn’t mindful of those things. I was I just wanted to be number one. That was, that was my goal. back then. I want to be the top broker in the city and Florida and staffed up like crazy. And my margins at the end of the day were were nothing impressive.

D.J. Paris 9:11
Oh, gotcha. Sure, sure. So you weren’t you weren’t really running it so much as a business or at least your margins weren’t, weren’t as impressive as maybe the ultimate numbers to the average broker looking at what you were doing. Were

Rosario Terracciano 9:27
Correct. You know, I had guys when I got handed the award guys are like, Oh my gosh, you crushed it. And yeah, yeah, like sell 640 homes in a year. Impressive. Sure, but I rather sell 50 homes and operated at a super high margin, then sell 640 at a super low, more, super low margin. You know, because at the end of the day, I think that’s the facade of real estate or real estate brokerages. Build a team build a team build a team. Well, yes and no, you know, If you’re building a team, but your margin continually continually decreases every year, is the team worth it? You know, unless you’re really just turnkey, and you’re not working at all. But I know a few brokers that get to that point where it’s just on cruise control, you know, right.

D.J. Paris 10:19
Yeah, I think you’re right. I, you know, to speak to the margin. The margin concern that I talked to the many, many years ago, a person from a broker from Texas who was moving to Illinois, called in and he had been a broker in Texas for like, 15 years and, and he was interested in moving to Chicago, and he was getting his license here. And he was asking me about potentially joining our firm. But I said, just out of curiosity, what’s what’s like the number one lesson you learned in 15 years of doing real estate down in Texas and, and because he was a really fun person to talk to, and he’s like, the best lesson I learned. He’s like, it took me about 12 years to learn it. But he said selling a million dollar home is just as much work as selling $100,000. Home. Yes. I went oh, yeah, that speaks to margin right there. So yeah,

Rosario Terracciano 11:04
absolutely. And, and efficiency and systems. Sure. Hands down. I mean, we’re. So we’ve got a team of six people now. I mean, back in the day, it might peak. And mind you, I was so I was doing REO disposition. So I was selling Oreos for the banks. Sure. And I was also representing hedge funds on the acquisition side. So it was a perfect storm. Right, right. Institutional client on the sell side, institutional client on the buy side, high volume,

D.J. Paris 11:33
non emotional decisions, just make the numbers work.

Rosario Terracciano 11:35
Yeah, cold and calculated, you know, there was no repeat business. But we had an operation of almost 60 people. Wow, peak, between brokers, external staff field ops, we have virtual assistants, property management, transaction coordinators, closers, offer negotiators? Yeah, I mean, it was this massive operation. We, we had two people full time just submitting offers every day. Sure, of course, it was their job. Just write draft contracts and send them you know, so

D.J. Paris 12:11
I can’t imagine how many offers you must have submitted. To get to 642. It had to be

Rosario Terracciano 12:18
a lot. Yeah. So it was 150, depending on the week, 150 to 200 a week. Wow. Yeah. So well, north of 13 14,000. Authors.

D.J. Paris 12:31
It’s, you know, it’s funny, once in a while you I don’t hear it as much from brokers who are interested, maybe coming to work our firm, because that’s my day job is I talk to brokers and, and about our firm. But once in a while, you’ll hear a new broker, these more new brokers, people who just get their license, and they, they’re, you know, they’re like, how do you get involved in the reo business? I don’t know. A lot about it personally. Do you have any opinions about getting involved as a broker in Arios? This in 2017, or just 2018? Now? Is it a viable market? Is it a tough market? Do you have any particular opinions about that? I think

Rosario Terracciano 13:08
REO today is is probably the hardest market to break into. Sure. Real estate side. When I started in REO disposition, it was 2009. So I learned the game from 2003 to 2005. I then went off started buying rentals and investing in real estate from Oh 5208. And when the market turned, I got wiped out. So I launched resurrecting real estate in 2009. And the timing was right on for that because REO inventory went through the roof, right? Sure, sure. So back then there was a huge need for brokers to get an REO business because there was so much volume. And the banks were looking for guys that understood systems. And I was a systems guy. So sure, it was perfect. But right now, the inventory is at its lowest level in years and a decade. Right. So to break in now is very, very hard. And I would honestly, where to even start today. I mean, you’d have to go to conferences. And what’s crazy is I didn’t even go to any conferences for the first few years. But you there have to know somebody, you know, go work for an REO broker. There’s a lot of REO brokers out there now that are tired. So maybe go talk with an REO broker and say, Hey, teach me the business and I’ll take it over for a year or something, you know, go work for somebody. Because when, when there’s when the volume is so low, the asset managers games are really on point because there’s not a ton of assets for them to scrutinize. Yeah. And you might bust your butt to get in with with an asset manager and then after the first few deals or, like now you’re not that good, and then you’re fired. So it’s a tunnel. Work tunnel work to get in. And you better have liquidity and capital because takes a lot to do it.

D.J. Paris 15:07
Yeah, I imagine. Yeah, it might be that the salad days or the halcyon days or maybe maybe if past at least for for getting into REO as a broker, at least, you know, for the foreseeable future. But we were talking but prior to us going live here about, you know, treat you had mentioned that treating, you know, the the brokers business like an actual business you think is just so important. Can you talk a little bit about that, and how you how you did that maybe advice you have for brokers?

Rosario Terracciano 15:40
Yeah. So I, I made the mistake, and, and I have a feeling that a lot of the listeners make the same mistake that you get into real estate for freedom, because you don’t want to work for anybody else. You want to work for yourself. So we’re all very driven people, right? Sure. And most of us don’t like paperwork. And don’t like the plan. We just sort of just winging everything, right. But what happens is, so like what happened with me, I launched resurrecting real estate in February 2009. In our first year, we sold 150 homes. I, I never did REO brokerage. So we turned the lights on, made the right connections and then took off. I went from one employee to 12 employees within a few months, and then at our peak 60 employees. I was never, I’d never ran a team. Sure. You know, I didn’t understand personalities. And I didn’t do any disk, you know, assessments or disc profiles. And literally, you’d walk in and I’d find a way to connect, because that’s what I do I connect something where do you grow up? Where do you go to school? All the wrong questions. So where do you go to school? Who do you know? Oh, yeah, yeah, I know this person. Great. You’re hired. You know, it’s like, so stupid. So you win. There’s a great book out there called Good to Great by Jim Carr. Oh, sure. Yeah, classic, write people on the bus wrong people off the bus. But it’s not just about getting the right people on the bus, it’s getting the right people in the right seats. And I didn’t do that I just kept staffing up throwing people at problems, right. Where I should have invested in what I found out, you know, five years later, I should have been investing in technology and in my systems, rather than in personnel. And it may sound insensitive, but I was running a ship with 60 people on it that probably could have ran with 10. Wow. And the right systems in place. So you know, I think number one is, is getting help. I after all this happen? I’ll fast forward so you guys can understand the pain. So if that’s fine, if I can dive until Okay, so 2009 launched resurrecting real estate 150 homes, 2010 250 homes 2011 350 2012, broke 500 was like 501 and in 2013 640. So it just straight up, right? Like a rocket. And every it seemed like every other month, we’re hiring more and more and more people. Well, no business plan, no marketing plan. It was just sheer just grit. And let’s just bust our button. Let’s make this happen. And then just keep throwing people at it. Right? Well, 2014 comes around our biggest client on the acquisition side, their orders filled, they were an institutional client. They said Okay, we’re good. Thanks. No warning, just like, Thanks. We’re good. We bought everything we wanted. We’re done. Wow, my payroll was 130,000 a month. Okay. Just payroll. And then I had the disposition and the reo side. Well, at that point, I took my eye off of the reo because the acquisition side was so much easier. Sure. And so now I’m like, Oh, my gosh, I already started to creep out of reo. So now that volume is down and the revenue on that side is down. And now I can’t weather the storm. So when you’re dishing out 120 130k a month, if the revenue is not meeting it? Well, who’s got to ante up to me? So I’ve got to float this company and pray that we get another big client, you know, so I went through that whole transition laid off nearly Gosh, I don’t know. It was like 80% of the people over the next six months. It was a bloodbath. Sure, and very, very, very depressing time. And I sought counsel. So I went through a program at Goldman Sachs called 10,000 small businesses, and great program and if you’re, if you’re a business owner and you’re struggling, I will plug them all day long.

It’s a scholarship so I applied for it. You open everything up, you open your books up to them. And, and you go through this six month course at nights and weekends. And they helped me understand what it means to run a business. And what’s the end goal? You know, we always start, we just the typical broker, you go out, you start selling real estate. And then guess what, you start buying a house, you start buying cars, and then your your lifestyle continues to increase, right. But what happens the second, you have a rough year, or a rough few months, well, your lifestyle is not going to adjust your lifestyle is now you know, a 200k lifestyle or 300k lifestyle? Well, if you don’t sell as much that year now, what do you do? Right? Or now you want to bring on a team, but now you have to cover the cost of the team. So you just took a pay cut? Right? Right? So really sit down and build a business plan and understand what do you want? Do you want? What’s the end goal? Is it to build a book of business and sell it? Is it to build a team? And then sell it? Or is it to stay in real estate for the rest of your life, which is totally fine. But then at that point, get a couple really good assistants that just want to be assistance, right? And that’s okay, and build a good book of business. and off you go. But don’t just defer to building a team thinking that’s the solution, because it may not be, you know, right

D.J. Paris 21:30
now, and so yeah. And so talk about how you, you’ve pivoted into click invest and what click invest is and so how that business got built.

Rosario Terracciano 21:39
So when we were working for the institutional client, I mean, literally, we had analyst, like I mentioned earlier, transaction coordinators offer negotiators. So our analysts would have to identify these these single family rental deals that would fit the client’s parameters, right, and their net yields and everything we’d have their assumptions, we’d plug in addresses, we’d plug in rental amounts, ARV is everything. And we’d have to underwrite hundreds of properties a day to submit 30 to 40 offers a day. Sure, right. So I had this massive operation to do that, well, when the when the client stopped buying or their order was filled. And I’m like, Oh, my gosh, we learned so much. I mean, we’ve underwritten 10s of 1000s of properties. We’ve bought, you know, hundreds of properties for them. What am I going to do with all this knowledge now, and I at that point, this was early 2014. I said, Let’s build this system out, that can do what I had, you know, 2030 people doing on a daily basis. And let’s figure out how to do this with a handful of people. So click invest was born through that, through that trial, through that tribulation through that pain. And essentially what it is, what click invest does on a daily basis is takes every deal in the MLS and underwrites it within our system based on algorithms that we’ve created. So taking what I learned in the trading space, you know, 1213 years prior, we built a system out that acts as a giant filter. So whether a client’s looking for a buy and flip, or a buy and hold all in the single family room, our system will identify those opportunities amongst the 10s of 1000s of properties out there, and then drop them into a queue for our analysts to do a final underwriting and then send it to the client with all the comps all the analysis put together. So they can review they can review it in under a minute, click a button to submit the offer and get their off their offer accepted within minutes.

D.J. Paris 23:51
Gotcha. So you guys, you guys have basically just created models and you dial into the MLS and look for deals essentially. That’s, that’s awesome. So So is it a is it a subscription service? How does how does someone get get access to that information?

Rosario Terracciano 24:11
Yep, so our clients pay a monthly so all of our clients or investors they they pay a monthly fee of 295 a month and then we are their broker on all their purchases through the platform. So if they have outside sources or outside brokers are working with we’re not exclusive so they’re free to work with any broker outside of click invest sure for their own deals or for any deals that are brought to them outside of click invest but if it’s a deal that they click Submit offer on within our system, we’re representing them

D.J. Paris 24:43
make sense? That’s That’s great. And then and you guys set up the you deal on the financing side as well or or No,

Rosario Terracciano 24:49
we’ve got we’ve got referral partners but I wouldn’t even say referral partners it’s more strategic because we don’t we don’t make any money on the referrals. But yeah, we’ve got lender as contractors, attorneys, insurance agents, so we’re really the hub. So a client will come to us, for example, one of our clients did 25 flips last year, this year over 50 flips. So we’ve helped him double his business, right? So what we do is a client will come to us and say, hey, I want to grow my business. Here’s where I’m lacking. You know, I need more contractors, or I need cheaper money, or I need this or I need that. And that’s where we come into play.

D.J. Paris 25:28
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So essentially, what you what used to take dozens of people to do by hand you guys have systematized which is which is really smart. I know. Do you is it all residential? Is there commercial as well or

Rosario Terracciano 25:43
only single family? So residential, single family, that’s, that’s our bread and butter. That’s all we focus on.

D.J. Paris 25:50
And how long has click investment in been been out live?

Rosario Terracciano 25:54
So live ads, click invest May of this year. And then in October of this year, we rolled resurrecting underneath or we merged, resurrecting with click invest. So now it’s it’s one. It’s one operation under one banner.

D.J. Paris 26:15
Gotcha, gotcha. So so if a broker, do you have any broker subscribers, or is it mostly just investors who are who are clicking best customers?

Rosario Terracciano 26:24
It’s all it currently in its current version. It’s all investors. We’ve toyed with because we’ve had brokers approached us and say, hey, well, can I license this and use it? Yeah. Yeah. We’ve toyed with that idea. It’s going to take significant amount of development to build to build a brokerage fees externally. But it’s definitely something that I think could happen in time. Not sure. Sure. And is making predictions. Is there?

D.J. Paris 26:56
Are there? Is there a lot of competitors in this space? I mean, obviously, more on the commercial side, you have. You have, oh, gosh, I’m blanking on costar loot net, who have this this data, they’re not really packaging it, then they’re more on the commercial side. But they’re not packaging it in any way, the same way you are. They have the they have data as well. But I’ve taught what to what I’ve heard, I’m not familiar with any other systems like this. It’s very impressive.

Rosario Terracciano 27:24
There. Yeah, thank you. So my partner used to work across the table from me. So he worked for our institutional client on the buy side. So Jeffrey Kirschner, he’s a financial modeling wizard. And this guy, I mean, I’d put them up against anybody. So when he came on board, so he left the institutional client last May, we connected, he got a peek at the system and said, Oh, my gosh, like, I need to be a part of this. So we partnered last August, and he’s really helped push it to the next level. So the goal is to get into multiple markets and really be the hub for investors to come to. But yeah, there’s nothing out there like it, you know, there, there’s software out there, but the brokerage piece where it’s a one stop shop, where you’re leveraging our track record our experience and, and have the ability to work with our brokers in house that have been trained and in are proven. Doesn’t exist to my knowledge.

D.J. Paris 28:22
Yeah, that’s a really good point. Because you know, the financial model, the algorithms per se, are, is are there. But you also have an impressive history of getting deals closed.

Rosario Terracciano 28:35
Yeah, executions, everything I can, I can send you the, you know, the fanciest tool in the world. But if you never, if you’re never able to get a deal through it, you’re like, great, it’s just a fancy tool, you know.

D.J. Paris 28:48
And I imagine even for your own, you know, for as a brokerage, this just saves you guys so much time when you’re doing deals yourself in just, you know, I imagine that used to just be a grind. And now you’ve you’ve automated it by getting access to MLS data. And so for now, it’s just the Chicagoland area.

Rosario Terracciano 29:07
Correct? Yep. And then our goal God willing is to be in Florida by February. That’s the next jump.

D.J. Paris 29:15
Now that’s that’s fantastic. Well, if if there are investors who are listening who are interested in getting more familiar with click invest, what’s the best way they should, they should do that?

Rosario Terracciano 29:27
They can email me, Rosario, R O S, A R I O, at click invest.com. Or you can go straight to click invest.com and just request the demo. So I’m always doing demos love doing demos. So we we dive in and show the power of the system. And for brokers, so if you have if you’re a listing broker and you’ve got properties, your listing on the market, we’re a great source because we’ve got at any given point So as of today, we’ve got 82 vetted investors that are starving for deals. So if you’ve got any deals that are coming up, you get dual agency if you bring it to us, so you don’t have to, you don’t have to co op the commission at all. Oh, wow. Yeah. So we’re here to make money for everybody. It’s not just about us, it’s how do we add value to, to our colleagues? And how do we add value to the investor community as well?

D.J. Paris 30:25
So and if there are brokers out there who want to learn just more about getting involved in investments, do you have any resources, you recommend that that you think is a good, a good place to get started?

Rosario Terracciano 30:40
I know Eric workman brought this up. I heard him on the show, and it was great. Andrew Holmes, Chicago Ria, is a great source. I’ve, I’ve talked to a lot of different sources out there. And I’ve, I’ve been very skeptical of everyone. Sure, right, just going through it and losing money and being on that side of it. But I’ve had the privilege, the privilege to work with Andrew homes and enroll in their team over there for several months. And they’re, they’re legit. I mean, these are guys that own properties or flipping own rentals. They’re there in a day, every day. And, and, and they’re the proof is in the pudding.

D.J. Paris 31:19
Sure. Yeah, I’d also recommend to the listeners, if you’re not, you know, it’s this kind of a no brainer. But if anyone’s not familiar with bigger pockets, that’s a great place to bigger pockets as well to get, you know, to get acclimated to the community of investors. And there’s a lot of good learning that goes on at bigger pockets.

Rosario Terracciano 31:37
And, and I would say this one other piece, you know, question everybody and question everything. Because nowadays, there’s a lot of snake oil getting whipped around. Sure. And people are spending a ton of dough on all sorts of things. So just, you know, when you go into something, question everybody question everything. And the best experiences hands on experience, for sure. So learn for yourself.

D.J. Paris 32:03
I couldn’t agree more. Well, if if anyone’s interested in learning more about what Rosario does click invest. Obviously, you can reach out to him and visit click invest.com Request a demo and, or as he mentioned his email Rosario at click invest.com. And well, thank you so much for being on the show. We’re sorry, I know you’re incredibly busy. So this was a real thrill for us.

Rosario Terracciano 32:29
Well, thank you for having me. I’m I’m very grateful for the opportunity

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Hasani Steele dropped by to discuss how he morphed from traditional real estate broker into niche renovator and investor with his company Steele Consulting Group. Hasani attributes part of his success to the disciplined he installed by playing college football for Northwestern University. The Chicago Association of REALTORS® has recently named Hasani “Renovator of the Year” and you’ll learn why he absolutely deserves this title by listening to this incredible interview!

Hasani Steele can be reached at 877.724.0070 or via his website.

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:14
Hello and Happy Holidays Welcome to keeping it real. The only podcast made by Chicago real estate brokers for Chicago real estate brokers. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your host through the show. And this is our final episode before the holidays are upon us. And we also anticipate getting at least one more episode before the end of the year. So thanks for listening during your most likely well needed break. So thank you for being listener. Whether you’re brand new to the show, or you’ve been listening from the very beginning, we really appreciate it. And the best way of course, you can always support our show is simply by telling a friend let anyone know who potentially is a might be interested in this information, wants to hear from top producers, any brokers, you know, maybe even in your own office that might benefit from this shoot this, this podcast over to them that really helps us a lot. And also, if you are a vendor for real estate brokers, right, maybe you’re a lender or a real estate attorney, or title company or anyone, photo company, for example, and you want to get in front of about 5000 Chicago brokers, you can sponsor an episode. So reach out to us, you can always do that to our website, keeping it real pod.com. Also download and stream all of our episodes right from there. If you haven’t already subscribed via iTunes or Google Play, you can do that right from our website, too. And drop us a line as well let us know who we should be talking to you have anyone that you think has a great story, or is doing things in a really particularly interesting way that would would make for a great interview. Reach out to us we’re always open to talking to new brokers. And thanks again have a great holiday season and onto our interview with renovator OF THE YEAR Hassani steel.

This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Loftus law. I’m sorry the attorney is busy with something more important is something you will never hear when you call Patrick Loftus of Loftus law. Loftus law is a firm focused on serving real estate professionals and their clients you want your deals to close on time without headaches and Loftus law is the solution. For more information on what Loftis law can do for you and your clients and special pricing of 299 per closing call 773-632-8330 or email Patrick at Loftus hyphen law.com

Okay today on the show we have a sunny steel with over 16 years and 40 million in sales combined with a proven record of results including 45 day average market time and a 97% list to sales price ratio steel consulting group is led by Hasani steel our guest today who offers real estate consulting, sales and marketing from conception design construction pre sales through delivery. Some call him the market maker. Most are more notable accolades for assignee include 2016 renovator of the Year from car Chicago Association, realtors, and the number one Northern Illinois REMAX agent 2003 for residential sales. He received his bachelor’s from Northwestern and was a member of the 95 to 99 Northwestern University football team, where he where they were consecutive big 10 champions, and he has been to the Rose Bowl in 96. In the citrus bowl in 97. The sun he enjoys spending his time with his wife and their three daughters as well. And I find this most interesting building and flying radio control airplanes. So Sunny, thanks for being on the show. Welcome.

Hasani Steele 3:59
Wow. Thank you for having me. And that was quite an intro. Well, you

D.J. Paris 4:04
have accomplished it. So I was I was honored to read it. Thanks. Thanks for spending time with us. Tell us a little bit about how you got started in real estate. So I know you’ve been doing it for gosh, 16 years now.

Hasani Steele 4:16
Yeah, you touched on my interest and the radio control airplanes. I love airplanes. I thought I was actually going to be a pilot but from a very young age, you know, I was basically looking for opportunities to make money. So I had you know, a lady that worked with my dad that eventually kind of became my, my, my godmother, but she would rehab properties and she paid me you know district wallpaper. You know, just paint I would be glamorous work. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And at the time, I kind of felt like a karate kid was like you know, you’re just trying to get through this stuff. But then over time you start to realize that, you know, you start to you know, I have a vision because you see all these old places and like you’re going through doing all this work, you know, like, what is going on here, you know, but eventually, you know, they were, you know, refurbished and either leased or sold. And, you know, that was just, you know, one of the experiences that now, um, I realized later, you know, that kind of played a role in establishing my vision, you know, in real estate, but I did it at a very young age. And then, you know, after middle when I started high school, I got into football, and I started to do more in sports. But when I went to Northwestern, I majored in computer engineering. So after football, I had graduated and started working for tel labs, and then 911 happened, and then like, you know, a few years into engineering, you know, I was laid off, so I started, you know, just, I’d already started buying, you know, properties and redoing them. But that’s when real estate, you know, I basically had a another round, and, and then I started working part time. And, and then, you know, one thing led to the next and, you know, I eventually started growing my business and, and, you know, helping basically people do exactly what I learned to do. And it’s just led and just constantly grown from year to year, and it, you know, kind of leads us to where we are now.

D.J. Paris 6:28
Yeah, that’s, that’s a really interesting story. Can you tell us a little, you know, I’m always so fascinated by people who played sports in college, because most of us who played sports, you know, petered out in high school. And, and obviously, you kept going, and I always think, discipline, of course, is so critical to anyone who’s who’s playing at the collegiate level, have you found that that discipline that you obviously had back then is that really helped build your real estate practice as well?

Hasani Steele 6:56
Absolutely, I use it every day, sometimes when, you know, work gets really stressful, I’ll have like dreams about football, and I’ll know, you know that, okay, you know, things are getting pretty tough. And, you know, during that time, when I played football, I was studying at the same time, I would do three a day practices, you know, on level, you’re not getting paid. And this is something you know, that you’re pretty passionate about, but you’re putting in, you know, I’ll ton of time, but one of the key, the key lessons that I took from even playing at Northwestern was being fortunate enough to watch the program, you know, the turnaround on the program, because when I was the last recruiting class for Coach Barnett, and I use so many of those same just techniques and discipline, you know, culture building type of skills, you know, in my business today, because we work in a lot of emerging markets. So, you know, we don’t really necessarily get the benefit of the doubt, you know, as we’re taking an area and we’re revitalizing it, we’re having to come in and in, you know, basically deliver something, you know, that’s greater than, than where we started. But I watched that happen to Northwestern, and it just, you know, the attitude, you know, the, the, the goal setting that you have to do, and just the the positive, you know, attitudes and just relentlessness that you need in order to be good, and especially after you win the big 10 one year and then to come back and do it again. And, you know, when when people are really, you know, preparing even more for you, those same types of disciplines and lessons, you know, I use today, you know, because this real estate industry is ever changing, you know, so absolutely, I that is probably one of the that along with my experience that I learned on the construction side early on, is definitely you know, made me you know who I am today.

D.J. Paris 9:06
Yeah, let’s talk about it because you’d have won recently this award with cars as the as the renovator of the year. Can you talk a little bit about that talk about how that relates to your business?

Hasani Steele 9:19
Yeah, so um, the Chicago Association of Realtors, the board, I think every year, gives that award and it’s based on you know, just the number of projects that you’ve worked on and the impact that you’ve had, you know, in the industry and your consistency. So that is one of the things that I’ve really tried to work on and that and that continued effort is as we grow, making sure that the product that we deliver, you know, is just as good or better than the last one because you don’t you’re only as good as you know, the last thing that you do, you know, so the Chicago Association of Realtors, you know, based off of The developments, you know, that we do the number of them, also, what those developments do to impact the market, you know, the surrounding market and the neighborhood, and how it, you know, helps the industry as a whole also is taken into consideration. So, you know, we were given the renovate OF THE YEAR very honored to receive it, you know, and, yeah, that basically summarize it,

D.J. Paris 10:26
can you tell us a little bit about those projects, and because it’s clearly something your team is passionate about?

Hasani Steele 10:31
Yeah, so we, when we’re building a market, going into an area, some of the first properties that are rehabbed are going to be single family, you know, when, you know, it’s just, it’s one property to do, when you’re looking to work with investors, you know, especially when you don’t have the national banks involved. You know, you start with, you know, single family home or, you know, lower density type of property. And those properties in those neighborhoods, you know, the scope of work, is more than just paint. And like surface level finishes, like, you have to get these properties out, like, well, if you go to our website, you’ll see, you know, the properties that we do, they’re basically completely brand new, except for the shell, the shells, like the exterior brick, and many times, even then, you know, we have to, you know, re face the property or things like that. So the properties that we do, when we say gut or rehab, our definition includes, like everything, it’s not like, you know, more surface level, so all of our properties that we do, you know, are completely gutted out. So on the single family home side, we have like a number of properties, without going through specific addresses, but basically 3500 square foot, single family homes, the finish and decor is going to resemble, you know, like a brand or discipline similar to what you might see in an Architectural Digest. So we’re going to pay attention to every detail, the cabinetry, the tile work, you know, we’re creating a spec sheet software right now that, you know, that’s going to allow us to, you know, count every screw in a house, basically, but just the detail and the paint and how you do everything the finished carpentry is really why what our buyers are looking for, you know, our purchasers are purchasing our property for the house, they’re not necessarily looking, or like, they’re not, they’re not purchasing for the surrounding neighborhood, they’re, they want the accuracy in the home, you know, so if I were to describe, you know, kind of the properties, you know, that that one, you know, they would be maybe greystones, or, you know, properties that, you know, from that that’s very accurate, and that match how they were built originally, especially on the exterior, we do a lot of historical places that that many others might shy away from, they take a little bit longer to do, but you know, they’re very accurate. And then we’ll do the finishes with you. There may be gray cabinets, you know, a mixture of that, you know, updated, still stone marble tile that might have some timeless install patterns, you know, but through and through completely gutted, you know, restored the exterior, just like artistic, amazing work.

D.J. Paris 13:36
And if you want to you really should go to Kota Saudis website, which is what a steel with an E, as last name, what is steel.com? And you can see the pictures of many of their developments. And it’s, it’s truly remarkable.

Hasani Steele 13:52
Yeah, you can, you can basically see the process from start to finish, from when the property is originally secured, all the way through demolition, and the complete restoration process to, you know, the final photos and what we started to incorporate now is a new technology that allow you, you can get those Samsung goggles. And you can virtually walk through these properties even at the demo stage and kind of experience, you know, being able to walk through a house that’s in the middle of construction.

D.J. Paris 14:27
It’s truly remarkable what you guys have done. And let me ask you so if we get to the very beginning of the development process when you’re finding these places to rehab, how are you finding them what what is I’m sure through probably lots of methods, but are they are these properties that go on the MLS? Are they typically off market?

Hasani Steele 14:49
That’s a good question. So there it’s a mixture of both the many times it’s like just driving them and doing research in the tax records to work backwards. and see who owns these properties. Sometimes properties can kind of like fall by the wayside, so to speak, if a particular bank or you know, you know owns it, or it might be in a state or something like that, when you’re reaching out to them, you might be reaching out to an attorney, because that person may have passed away, or, you know, you might be reaching out to a family member, and they just had the property for a while it might be paid off. And it’s just, you know, sitting there, so we come across those others might, we will get people that will call in, and they’ll say, Hey, I know, you know, I live in the community, you know, I know the kind of work that you guys do. You know, a friend of mine has his property, you know, you know, and it might just fall in our lap that way. And then we also work through tax buyers, and people who watched the auctions. And many times when those properties aren’t bid on, or anything like that, you know, we’re will actually take them, you know, so we don’t really cherry pick, when you’re making a market, you pretty much know, okay, I’ve got this area, this region that we’re going to be working in, and it’s, it’s quite, you know, it’s more vast than then, than others. And then when the properties pop up, you know, then you just kind of have to figure out, you know, how you’re going to, you know, raise capital or find investor or somebody that wants to come and take part, you know, and work on it. So, there’s a number of ways we get on but, you know, more, more times than not like, we’ll get people that reach out to us. And they’ll just, they’ll see us as being a buyer, and they’ll bring up

D.J. Paris 16:42
Yeah, it’s, it’s truly remarkable. I mean, you’ve done, gosh, you’ve had to have done over 100 of these, or at least right around that number of if, if that’s it, and they’re all just gorgeous, of the interiors of these properties are truly remarkable.

Hasani Steele 16:58
Yeah, we’re, we’re getting excited, because for when we first started, our average price point was probably around 200, to 250. And it’s just like that, sometimes when you’re, when you’re, you know, just trying to work with the amount of capital that you have, and the investor pool that you have now that we’re growing, you know, we are able to take on more, you know, so we’re doing properties, you know, anywhere up to, you know, a million and a half 2 million, even. But what’s nice about that is it’s like when you look on our website, we tell clients that you cannot tell the difference.

D.J. Paris 17:38
You know, that’s, that’s very, that’s I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. But that is absolutely true. Because I went down to one of the earlier properties that seemed to be listed in the low to hundreds, and it looked like a million dollar interior. I was about to say, Boy, that is an impressive interior for that price point. I mean, it’s beyond impressive. It’s amazing. The level of detail. Now, are you involved with a lot of the interior design of the interior architecture? Or do you leave that up to other team members?

Hasani Steele 18:08
Yeah, I, um, started as we’re growing, I’m starting to delegate that. But But yeah, for the most part, you know, it started because when you go into property, you’ve got to order trim, right? So it’s like, okay, what trim do we order, and you and you want to try to avoid having the contractors pick it, there’s nothing wrong with that, but when it’s not in the scope, to have a cohesive type of design, but what ends up happening is you end up picking it. So it’s like, I kind of fell into that role. Because I would, I’m trying to guide my clients, like if I have a developer that I’m working with, you know, I know what buyers want, because, you know, we do brokerage, you know, so, you know, I would start by, okay, well, we got to do this trim, or I would find you know, you know, an article or something, or a photo or a compilation of pictures, and I would pick, you know, the trim the doors, the door hardware, the lighting, you know, and I just turned into, you know, a designer in the sense. And then when we started doing the consulting services, you have to know construction, like you have to know how to build a place to be able to present a project to a developer or an investor, you know, and say, Hey, this is what it’s probably going to cost and this is the, you know, the look that you do, and this is your target buyer, you know, so yeah, we, I basically, you know, do a lot of the design and finish. Now we’re starting to incorporate other team members. And that process as well. And we’re starting you know, as our brand is now you know, pretty established. And so now we’ve got others taking part in participating

D.J. Paris 19:53
how many development projects do you have going on at any one given time?

Hasani Steele 20:00
I’d say involvement can range anywhere from, you know, marketing a property only. And I’d say those are very few are pretty hands on, on on many of them all the way so full, like, you know, management of a project, I say maybe about 15 to 20. And it kind of depends, because when you’re doing consulting, you don’t have to do every aspect of every different job, you kind of fill in and you offer services, in whatever category, that particular client, you know, knees, so we work with people that are just armchair investors, all the way through, you know, established developers, it’s been developing for 30 years, you know, so, you know, depending on the product that we have our involvement, you know, kind of varies in terms of the time, but yeah, I’d say about 15 to 20, at any given time, and it works out well, when you’re, you know, making markets and establishing markets, because you need a constant flow of sales comparables, you know, the buyers that buy from you, they want to know what’s coming next, they want to know, okay, well, what else you doing? Well, what’s going on with this other one across the street, or what’s, so you have to have a pipeline, you know, and it helps, and it works. And that way, by doing the volume in that regard, you don’t have to have projects that like are making like, you know, for lack of a better term hand over fist money, like, the margins are, are, are fair, I should say, you know, and, you know, if I’m talking to an end buyer, if I’m talking to a developer, you know, they’re happy, and they think it’s reasonable, it’s not like, you know, some of these crazy ratio margins that some people are making on these flips, where they’re not putting any money in the house, but they’re taking all the equity, right, you know, so by doing higher volume, and keeping that going, it works out for the buyers, and it works out for the developers and investors, because it helps with our appraisal values. And, and keeps, you know, encourages other competing developers and people in the market to showing them, you know, and providing sales, comparables and sales for them so that they can, you know, do their projects.

D.J. Paris 22:24
Yeah, we have a lot of investors or brokers who are investors who work with investors at our firm as well. And they they’ve always said almost universally, that one of the biggest misconceptions that brokers have about working with investors is finding the investors actually the easy part, it’s finding the deal, that’s the hard part, it’s, it’s getting the numbers to work. And once you get the numbers to work, the money seems to show up. And you in particular, you’ve have such an amazing product that I imagine, you know, that the investors are probably lined up ready to work with you.

Hasani Steele 22:54
The investors are lined up, you’re exactly right, getting the numbers to work. We have we, I basically started by just offering consulting services a while back, just because I would hear certain investors, you know, I’d say, hey, well, you know, we have to use this, this tile, you know, this certain tile on this project, whatever. And, you know, how are we gonna make that work for the budget, you know, and we had to go and, and create accounts, you know, with vendors, and pool a lot of our purchases for all of our investors so that we could even it, you know, save 10% or 15%, you know, and so we actively took on that role, because, you know, we don’t have products to sell, you know, we don’t either, you know, so we, you know, have preferred accounts, with every single item that you find in a house, we’re able to get for the best price, the best value, the best service. So, you know, and that, I think, is a large part in how we’re able to get these buildings built with this amount of detail and have the numbers make sense when you’re developing a market. And, and, you know, maybe there’s enough room, because you might be selling at a substantially higher price point or what have you, you may not necessarily be forced to have to shop or really try to, you know, make those day to day savings on that material. Well, the nice thing about it is when we go to like Linkin Park, but not only are we able to build for less, we can we already have we already are using, you know, top line finishes, we actually ended up coming in and we’re able to, you know, construct a property or put a project together, where, you know, many of our competitors that, you know, don’t really have a business that’s, you know, surrounded around, you know, we’re finding, you know, merchandise, purchases, things like that we’re able to compete against them. and deliver a better product. You know, so the key is making sure that you’re you’re efficiently purchasing all of your material, you can’t just always run to the local, you know, store, you know, and and just get, you know, one of these and one of these, you have to plan ahead. That’s the only way

D.J. Paris 25:19
that it works. Well, I know you, I think you’ve basically said it all. And I know you have a commitment. So we we probably should, should finish up. But I want to make sure that everyone who’s listening can see some of your work which so if you haven’t yet gone while you’re listening to me, you’re not driving go to what a steel.com, which is steel with an E, it’s Saudis last name, and take a look at some of the work they’ve done it is it is truly impressive. What is also the best way if they’re already investors, or potential buyers, or sellers who want to work with you and your group, what’s the best way they should reach out to you

Hasani Steele 25:58
just go on the About Us section on our website and click and just do a submission and just say what it is you’re looking for, if you have any particular passion or goals, and yeah, reach out to us, and then I’ll come to either myself or our manager, mark or Christian. And we’ll reach out to you and set up a call. And that’s basically how it starts. People will call us that already have properties or they might be, you know, attorneys that may want to invest and do something that might be you know, so many of them sometimes our past clients that you know, you know, may want to invest as well or established developers just go to our website, click on there. If you’ve been looking through and you’re clicking on through the site. You know, any page you go on, you can reach out to us and we’ll be in touch. All right, Sandy, well,

D.J. Paris 26:51
thank you so much for your time, and I just absolutely cannot get over how beautiful the interior and exteriors of the property is. But in particular, the interiors are just absolutely stunning. So keep up, keep up the wonderful work. And thank you for being on the show.

Hasani Steele 27:09
And thank you for having me, DJ, we appreciate it.

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Luminita Ispas is originally from Romania and her initial real estate goal was to construct the tallest building in Europe. While that’s still a future goal, for now she’s become one of Chicago’s most successful brokers! She believes educating her clients in achieving financial freedom through real estate investing. She has been teaching these seminars for 15 years and still does to this day! Lumi is also finishing up a book about this very topic coming out next year!

Luminita Ispas can be reached at 773.392.2906 and luminita.ispas@century21.com

To attend one of Lumi’s seminars…

Date: Last Saturday of every month
Location: 1161 W Madison, Chicago, IL 60607

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:14
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the only podcast made by real estate brokers in Chicago for real estate brokers in Chicago. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host through the show. What we do here is interview the top brokers real estate producers in the Chicagoland area and ask them to reveal what they do and how they built their business and how they have treated, how they treat their clients what they offer, and maybe what separates them from the rest of the pack. And today is no exception. We have Luminita Espace coming up in just a couple of minutes. And she is a wonderful, and I think you’ll really enjoy this because the way she built her business, I think, is is very different from how a lot of brokers have. And we’re nearing the end of 2017. We’re 30 some episodes in and we’re very grateful for everyone that has continued to support our show by telling another broker in their office that they should listen. In particular, I find that new brokers seem to really appreciate these interviews to learn from what the top heavy hitters are doing. Also, we have sponsors now. So if you’re someone that would like to sponsor the podcast, you can sponsor an episode, you just reach out to us, let us know. And of course, if you’re not already a subscriber to this podcast, you can do that on iTunes or on Google Play, or stream episodes live at keeping it real pod.com. Also, drop us a line, let us know if there’s anyone that you think we should be interviewing for the podcast in a future episode, or just to let us know what you like and maybe what you don’t like. Now, one thing I did want to make sure before we start this great interview with Lumi is one thing that we forgot to do is plug her she does these investor seminars every month, you’ll hear about how she did that to actually grow her business from the very beginning. She does it to this day. And we just simply forgot to explain and brokers are invited to come and learn as well not just buyers and sellers. So she wanted to make sure that that we gave information to the listeners about how they can learn about these and maybe even attend one, the name of the seminar that she does is how to become financially free in five years or less with little down by the way, she is writing a book too, that talks about this very subject but the seminars are they are available last Saturday of every month, and they are located at 1161 West Madison, Chicago, Illinois 60607 And they are from 10 to 12 o’clock, so last Saturday of every month 1161 West Madison or just reach out to Lumi and her team and they’ll give you that information. So thanks again we’re finishing up the year here with just a few final interviews. We’re going to go strong in 2018 with Carrie McCormack, which we do a monthly episode with and now we’re adding in ERIC workman to do a monthly episode around investments. So we’re really going to do some big things here and thanks again for supporting the show.

This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Loftus law. I’m sorry the attorney is busy with something more important is something you will never hear when you call Patrick Loftus of Loftus law. Loftus law is a firm focused on serving real estate professionals and their clients you want your deals to close on time without headaches and Loftus law is the solution. For more information on what Loftus law can do for you and your clients and special pricing of 299 for closing call 773-632-8330 or email Patrick at Loftus hyphen law.com

Okay today on this show, we’re really excited because we have Luminita, otherwise known as Lumi. Looney is spus from Century 21 SG R. And normally we read this big long bio bio of our guests and Lumi certainly has one of those BIOS because she’s accomplished so much, but just a couple of the key highlights she is a top 1% producer. She’s also a top century one producer with a Gosh, dozens of awards. She’s won over the last 15 years. She’s been in the business including the Centurion award last year, which I’m assuming is about the highest award she can get as of century 21 broker. She’s also a mentor. She’s an investor, she works with investors, she teaches classes on investments and she’s also an author or almost author about to be an author. So We are so excited to have you on the show. So welcome looming.

Luminita Ispas 5:03
Thank you, TJ. Excited to be here. Well,

D.J. Paris 5:07
thank you. So you know, you do have this storied and impressive history and a series of experiences over the last 15 years. Can you tell us how you had to get involved in real estate?

Luminita Ispas 5:18
That’s a great question. I’ve always dreamed to become a realtor. Yeah, right. So, my life, I always wanted to be actually a developer to build. I wanted to build the tallest building in Europe. And when I came United States, in March 2000, I came actually with about 200 bucks in my pocket. So you’ll probably notice that not was not getting me closer to build but the tallest building in Europe. Right?

D.J. Paris 5:44
And where did you where and where were you living prior to moving to United States,

Luminita Ispas 5:48
Romania. So I was living human. Yeah.

D.J. Paris 5:51
And that’s where you were born and raised? Correct. Right,

Luminita Ispas 5:53
Eastern Europe. And I was looking, you know, for capital, their time trying to see how I can learn more about building and to build a capital and get find by partners. And of course, talking to a lot of investors, I discovered that most of the people became wealthy through real estate investing. So it was interesting how, you know, wanting to build, I realized that investing in SEO to get me there. And at that time, late night, there are these advertising for no money down real estate, creative real estate. So I started buying those type. And I became very well versed in how to finance creatively, or we cash on developments and buying properties. And I starting helping all my friends to buy real estate, as a friend, right?

D.J. Paris 6:42
So this was like, this was early 2000s, I’m guessing 2002 1002.

Luminita Ispas 6:45
And at one point in 2000, some of my friends asked me why I’m not getting paid for this, you know, why am I doing all this work and not getting paid for it? And, you know, it was a big opening, I said, Well, real estate selling real estate. That’s interesting. I don’t know if I can do that. And my friends were like, well, you’re already doing it, you are going with us at approaching properties. You are telling us how to finance them. A lot of times you know more about LLC is that our attorneys, so why don’t you start selling, and it was so interesting, because as soon as I started selling, I discovered it, it was kind of like my life calling right, you find something that you fell into it and you discover that’s exactly what you should be. Because I love people, I love real estate, I realized that as an investor on that side. I mean, as a real estate broker, you should have a book of business, you should know people, just knowing the business, it doesn’t make you successful, right, you have to have buyers and sellers. So yeah, so as soon as I got my license and start working with clients, and real, I realized that this was my dream business, actually, helping people change their life was was a big deal, especially as the beginning I was working mostly with, with immigrants, because I felt a connection with them being an immigrant, of course, and or, and, you know, they didn’t know didn’t understand credit, they didn’t understand on payments, or how buying a home will help them and being almost a little bit a mentor for them and working with some of them a half a year or more to build their credit, file tax returns and being able to buy credit A B connection. So when at the beginning, it took me a lot of open houses and networking events and talking to a lot of people to find clients. After a while my business has become mostly referrals and repeat clients. Because those people realize that I spend a lot more time with them than that other agents. And you know, I was there for them. I was not dropping them if they were not ready to buy or sell at that at the moment I met them.

D.J. Paris 8:54
Yeah, I think that’s really interesting and puts you in a very special niche where there’s a lot of brokers who maybe wouldn’t work with somebody unless they were ready to purchase, right, unless they were already pre approved. And you sort of took a different approach where you work with people that maybe didn’t even know that they could be buying or didn’t know the path to ownership. And you became their educator, their teacher, their mentor, and then not only helping them purchase, but also explaining investment opportunities as well. Would you say that that was that’s accurate as far as how you found a lot of your business?

Luminita Ispas 9:30
Oh, yes. And I have a lot of stories of people that completely change their life because of their first property or, you know, the investing couple properties.

D.J. Paris 9:40
Yeah, so so for those brokers who are thinking, Oh, you don’t work with somebody until they’re pre approved till they’re ready to buy. That’s, you would probably disagree with that. I imagine.

Luminita Ispas 9:50
Exactly. I mean, I will not take someone out to look at property if they are not ready. Right? By working with them. You know, I put him in touch with somebody who We’ll help them build credit with the lender to share with them, you know, what they have to do? If they are 1099, you know, self employed, you know, they have to explain them a little bit more about how to file taxes. Sure, accountant and, you know, it’s a lot of people that they that they need to be put in touch with. And you know, some of them, they had to learn how to save money. You know, it’s interesting, it’s one of the books that I give away the most, it’s the richest man in Babylon, because it shows you the 10%, right? Pay yourself first. And yes, it’s so it starts with small things like that, you know, teaching them to save 10%, helping them with gifts and putting them in touch with nonprofits, if that’s not an option, if they’re already otherwise. So it’s a lot of little things that people need advice on. And in time, I realized that it was not just the immigrants that didn’t know, you know, how to set the financials. But a lot of the people born in the States, they don’t understand the system. And,

D.J. Paris 11:02
you know, I apologize, I don’t mean to interrupt you. But I was I was one of those people where I did not know, really, I was, I didn’t understand what it would take to purchase a property. And this goes back about about 12 years, and I was 29 years old. And all pretty much all of my friends had already bought a place by then. But I, I was I really just didn’t understand how it worked. And quite frankly, the only reason I know is I had a friend who was a realtor who said, You shouldn’t be renting anymore, you can afford to buy a place. And I said, Oh, really, I was too embarrassed to have asked on my own. So he was nice enough to explain it to me. And quite honestly, I probably would have rented another few years before figuring it out myself. So you are so right, when you say you know that in I was somebody who you know, I was I was actually in a position at a different firm, totally unrelated to real estate, but had to do with finance, and I still didn’t understand it myself. And I was too embarrassed to reach out to people. So I think your your sort of strategy of being that educators, it would have helped somebody like me even maybe a few years before I ever did purchase. So right? I’m a perfect example. Well, congratulations

Luminita Ispas 12:10
on buying your home. It did help you right move in life. Absolutely. I mean, one thing that I mentioned to people that do not think that they can buy or they don’t see the value of buying, I share with them that at this point, the net worth between the tenant and the homeowner, it’s about 45 times larger. So you can imagine if you buy real estate, if you buy a property, your network can be for every 1000 that that a tenant has saved. A homeowner has 45,000 and net worth and equity. Yes, which is an unbelievable number. And 2013, the network was 36 times over, the net worth of a homeowner was 36 times larger. And by 2016. Hence, the number increased to 45 times based on real estate going up in value. So when you look at those number, even if you don’t understand financing, you know which side you want to be on, right? Which side of the fence sure want to be a tenant or do you want to be an owner? And if it takes you a year or two to get there? I mean, isn’t that worth it? You know, a year from now, you’ll be there no matter what, right? But what if you save some money, if you fix a little bit your credit, you pay off your debt, and you’re able to buy I mean, how far forward in your life you’ll be and how your life will change in the future. Right? If you purchase? Absolutely.

D.J. Paris 13:32
Yeah. And I think what you’re talking about to is so important, because, again, going back to me as an example, I was an educated smart person who didn’t understand homeownership, and was too embarrassed to ask anyone. And so as a result, I just I stayed a renter for probably a few years longer than I should have. And when I when I finally went when my friend finally explained to me how lending works, and all the other like the tax benefits, for example, in the interest of deduction for taxes, and everything else. I was like it was life changing for me. And quite quite frankly, there has to be a ton of people just like me, who are probably being ignored by a lot by real by a lot of realtors who just don’t think well he’s renting now. He’s when he was ready to buy he’ll call me. It’s like no, I didn’t know I was ready to buy. Well, someone told me Yeah, so I think that is it. I mean, it is life changing exactly what you said it was. It was a life changing experience. And as a result, of course, I used my friend he was the one that gave me all the information and he became my realtor.

Luminita Ispas 14:38
Exactly. And another time it taketh I wanted to share with you was after I bought my first building, I started seeing other benefits. I start seeing the extra tax deductions I was getting right the depreciation into cash flow and things that you know, when I had a single family home I wouldn’t have right plus US property was getting paid off faster, because now you know, the property was larger, right? Price wise and I was paying a bigger portion of principal every every month, plus the three, four flat buildings tend to go up in value much quicker than single families and condos. And again, this is at least in the last 10 years, that’s what has been happening, but we’ll see from that one. And when you buy a building again, you get a lot more benefits. So learning that and sharing that information with my clients, has also changed my business a lot. And the most of the buyers understood how their life will change how their family life will change. And I’ll give you a very quick example. About 10 years ago, this, this gentleman came to me and he had $100,000. I mean, 10 years ago, you know, choice actually happened? Sure, it actually was in 2010. So I’m sorry, about seven, eight years ago, because the market was down. And you know, people didn’t have a lot of money or didn’t want to spend it right if they had the money.

D.J. Paris 16:07
Or it was it was hard to get financing. So

Luminita Ispas 16:09
he said a team and his brother wanted to buy two flat two each for each to live in one unit, and rent the third, the basement, maybe and get some cash flow. So I sit down with him and ask him I said, Well, what’s your goal? So what’s your financial situation home? And what’s your goal? And he says, Well, I have my home, my wife that works as a cleaning lady. And, you know, we have a nanny that takes care of our two kids. So you know, after my wife’s income covering the nanny, you know, where she’s left with four bucks an hour, right? And no insurance? Well, I’m self employed to self employed, we have no insurance would really, really like and a little bit of extra income. And ask him what he does. And he working constructions, both him and actually and his brother worked in construction. So I said, Why don’t we take a little bit of a different approach. And we bought investment properties, we bought multiple, they fix them up? Well, long story short today, which is, let’s say eight years later, they own about 12 homes, so probably about 20, a little bit over 20 units, he the wife went back to school quit because you know, the cash flow was allowing her to do that went back to school, she became a registered nurse making over 60,000 a year with insurance and everything else, right. And then they have about, I don’t know, 25,000 a month in cash flow, because a lot of the properties that keep buying, refinancing them after they fix them up or rent them, and they pull up the cash and bought more. So they not just change their life, they change, they have a completely different lifestyle. And they were talking about the fact that they won’t need to give their money to their kids. Because now they learn how to teach their own kids do the same thing that they did. So the way I saw this thing was when you teach someone how to reach financial freedom, and how to build wealth, you teach a generation of people, because the kids will see and the kids will do the same thing. And again, you change the life of a person because they can live the life of their dreams. Like this lady that had to was able to quit being a cleaning lady staying home with the kids for a few years and just going to school. And now, you know, having a third kid and again working in the nursing industry.

D.J. Paris 18:20
That’s an incredible story. And I you know, you’re right, you’re teaching that family who teach who sees in the children to see the residual income month after month, indefinitely, you know, and wow. Yeah, that that is truly truly amazing. And I imagine they must think very highly of you for having been the educator and helping them get on that path. So let’s talk a little bit about that. Because you do teach this talk about sort of how you teach it, where you teach it, that sort of thing.

Luminita Ispas 18:51
Sure. So I teach monthly investment seminars, sometimes do the restaurant together with with a mortgage lender that’s helping financing the restaurant, sometimes in my office in the west loop. It usually does last Saturday of the month. However, I’ve been also invited to speak in front of investment groups nonprofits. So different groups now are starting inviting me more and more out to teach what I actually personally do and you know what my other clients have done, they see this financial freedom through my method. And it’s a great way to also meet more people because if you but the thing that I always tell them bring, you know, few friends that are interested in this business, bring your brothers, your sisters, and I’m starting having kids that are 14 year old in the seminars, and you know, their eyes get get so bright. You know, by the end of the seminar, they’re like, Okay, this is it. As soon as I get my first job, this what I’m doing. I mean, my 16 year old daughter that’s been sitting in the seminars to help me as strong. She’s been telling me that too as soon as she goes to college, you will buy a single family home with multiple bedrooms. Oh my god roommates Perfect, that’s right. And, you know, these kids are so bright and so quick to learn it, you know, they see therefore the parents and they learn for themselves. So it’s amazing. I mean, I get a lot of people from, you know, different backgrounds, I recently had a client that told me that he grew up, you know, in the project in the section or section eight housing, and he bought at three flat where he’s going to live for free and make 500 bucks a month in cash flow, that is a

D.J. Paris 20:26
huge victory, a huge victory to to live for free and earn income. On a property in particular, coming from a disadvantaged background is a amazing, and you know, it’s it’s so funny, because we have, there’s so often brokers and we have a GZ. But at our firm, we’ve got almost 600 brokers. And so few of them do these kinds of seminars, and I always tell them, it’s really, I mean, obviously, you have to learn enough information to be able to present this to to the public. But there, you can partner up with attorneys, with lenders with title companies, who will also share the cost of hosting these and talk about their portion of real estate transaction. So you can have these partners who will gladly help put these sorts of seminars together. And I think it’s a such a missed opportunity for so many people, so many brokers in particular. So I’m glad you’re talking about it. You’re also almost finished with your with, is it your first book? Can you talk about it, you might

Luminita Ispas 21:30
be sure. So my life dream was again to make a difference, right? One was through building Romania, the tallest building in Europe as this way attract, you know, tourism and bringing attention to my country, which I think is one of the most beautiful in the world, by the way. And that one thing that again, I’ve learned, especially when I got here was education, it’s actually the way that we can change the world. I think in capital generation, you know, if we change the way we think, and if we learn new things that will change our life and change others, you know, we can change the world. So one thing I learned was, you know, I don’t have to be someone talking to the whole globe, right, I don’t have to be a president or I have been, I have to do is change the life of one person at a time. So financial freedom, I discovered it is the first step, it’s hard to follow your dream, you know, let’s say if you’re an artist, and you can make money, it’s hard to follow that unless you put food on the table, right, and you have a roof above, above your head. So I thought if I can teach people how to become financially free by buying properties, and, and you know, they can buy from, even if they make 10 bucks an hour, right, they will be qualified for something for a little bit of a loan, and they build from there. So if I can start people, I’m sorry, if I can teach people to how to become financially free, then they will help others and they will help their own families to repeat what they did. And then go and and do what they were meant to do in life, be able to quit the job that they are not happy with, and follow the dreams, right? So in my book, I’m teaching financial freedom with using leverage using low down payments, and how to also become a millionaire. So by the time you retire, you don’t need to rely on Social Security, you don’t need to rely on anybody to help you. Right, you can support yourself from your investment properties from the cash flow. And especially if by that time the properties are paid off, you know, you’re going to be a multimillionaire and have maybe 10s of 1000s of dollars in cash flow.

D.J. Paris 23:40
Absolutely. It talk about if you don’t mind, tell us a little bit about how you go about finding investment properties for your clients is there are are most of them on the MLS, are they off market properties?

Luminita Ispas 23:55
That’s a great question. Because that’s one of my biggest challenges right now. So when we say MLS, especially in the last several years have been was easier than today. With the pricing going up, of course is getting a little bit more, a little bit harder. But in general, I do maybe three quarters MLS and core off market. So I knock on doors, if I need to, I would if I see a property I think it will match one of my clients interest. I also developed a relationship with a lot of brokers through the years so because I sell a lot of three four unit buildings, you know, when I when I’m the I’m on the buyer side of the transaction, I always tell that listing agent if you get any other three four flat please make sure you call me first because I have ready willing buyer that will pay top dollar for this property and the transaction will be seamless. And you know I’m closing on every transaction because my clients are serious and, you know, we’re not atypical. We want to close we want these homes. So you know I got the report Usually they close on my deals. So even multiple offers, sometimes I get the property, because I’m known to to be involved in the deal, you know, I have an assistant and we make it easy for the listing side, and we close. And so between that and MLS and like I said other other people that are contacting me, that’s how I get my properties. Oh, and to mention that, again, I’m an investor myself, I buy property myself, so I’m on investor list also. So I receive emails from sellers, big investors that are selling their portfolios there other properties that they might have. So this way, I get to access to properties that only investors get.

D.J. Paris 25:45
What advice would you have to a broker? Who says, you know, I really don’t do this part of the business where I’m working with, with educating the public about investing, and I need to get educated myself, you know, as a broker, what would what resources would you recommend, where they could start to learn how to, you know, be able to share this knowledge with with with their clients?

Luminita Ispas 26:08
That again, that’s another great question. Well, number one, they can always come to my seminars. That’s true. That’s open to them. And actually, side note, I do help a lot of realtors buy their own properties, just,

D.J. Paris 26:20
I bet you do. Yeah. But

Luminita Ispas 26:23
I always tell even all the new agents in my office, buy a property yourself by yourself, you cannot teach what you don’t know, you know, paper knowledge is not the same at hands on knowledge. So no matter how much I share with you how to choose a tenant, how to run the numbers for a building, they’re not going to make sense until you own your own building, and you see around, you know, rents coming in and expenses, and you have to actually pay the gas bill every month and the water bill every month. You won’t understand that until you own it. So to the brokers that want to be to work with investors, I always tell them, you have to buy first. Plus, a lot of investors actually ask you, how many properties do you have? Imagine if you have nothing to say, well, sorry, I would mean how many I have none, right? It’s just as a work. Because those brokers are going to I mean, I’m sorry, those buyers are going to lose trust in you. And the Love Actually, of the buyers I’m working with and the investment side, they have worked with multiple brokers before me. Oh, I’m sure I’m sure. And you know, we meet who knows where we start talking about real estate, not even trying to convert anyone to work with me and see my knowledge, seeing what I do, you know, I’m ready to build right now a building and I just remodeled a couple of properties this year. So it’s kind of like when they see the amount of knowledge they they just said, Hey, by the way, I was looking to buy two, can you help me? And as we start working, I always cuz I always ask, I say what do you have a broker to work with? Because if you do, you know, you should work with that person. I mean, they put the time in. And they will say, you know, I’m sorry, but I can work with them. I mean, talking to you and talking to them, it’s a big deal. They don’t understand what to send me when they send me to fly, they send them to me, because they’re beautiful. They don’t get the numbers, or they say, oh, disagree theory of it, if the half a million dollar property $2,000 Rent a month, it just doesn’t work. So, so again, my advice is guys, put your money where your mouth is buy investment property, you know, fix it up a little bit, find tenants, and then when you know, all those sides of the business, you know how numbers work, how to fix a property and where to find contractors How to Choose tenants, you know, the tenant process gets in Chicago, it’s not easy, you know, to be a landlord. I mean, there are a lot of rules. So you have to understand all the paperwork and be able to and willing to give it to your tenant to your tenant and advise them on that. You know how to set up an LLC is right if they are investors, have the attorneys at ready to send them to mortgage broker, again, you when you work with a mortgage broker that owns property, it’s easier to invest to send to an investor. Because, you know, these investors, some of them have a lot of properties. So they want a mortgage broker that understands, you know, what they’re standing and how to find finesse, right, the financials to work to make them work and to advise them. So, again, this is the biggest investment, I mean, advice, read books, go to seminars, investment seminars, everybody that comes in town, and then buy yourself properties.

D.J. Paris 29:22
Well, you I think you said it all. And I think that was so well said and succinct. If there’s any, you know, clients out there that are interested in working with you and your team directly what’s the best way they can reach out to you?

Luminita Ispas 29:38
Thank you. Oh, number my cell phone it’s 773-392-2906 My email it’s my first name dot last name@gmail.com So Luminita that especially gmail.com and I’m at Century 21 is gr

D.J. Paris 29:57
well illuminate at Lumi this was Such a pleasure. And you said it all. And you said it? Well, you know, again, just this idea of investing and learning about investing to be a better broker to your clients. And again, you know, somebody had the conversation with me initially about buying, but they didn’t take it to the next level and say, actually, instead of buying a condo, you should probably buy a three flat, right? So as a result of that I didn’t buy a three flat because I didn’t know. So had I had, you know, had somebody who was able to have that conversation with me at that time. It may have changed everything as far as how I purchased the property going forward. So I think your advice is awesome. And thank you so much for your time.

Luminita Ispas 30:42
Oh, my pleasure. Thank you.

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Karen Ranquist has been not only a top producer for the past twenty years, but an involved top producer! In addition to earning a spot in the Berkshire Hathaway Hall of Fame, she’s also served on many boards and helped shape the Chicago broker market. We’re honored she took an hour out of her schedule to talk about how she got into the business, what advice she has for brokers looking to increase production, and the importance of giving back to the community.

Karen Ranquist can be reached at 312.475.4542 and kranquist@KoenigRubloff.com

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:14
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real. The only podcast made by Chicago real estate agents for Chicago real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I am your host through the show. And I forgot to mention at the beginning of last episode that we have officially crossed over the 30 episode mark. And we’re so grateful and excited that people are interested to keep listening to the show, our audience keeps growing, we keep getting more people to interview. And we’re also grateful, of course, to those top producers who graciously give their time to share with you their story of how they started in real estate and have grown their business to today and in hopes that you can take something away from that and help your own real estate practice. A couple of things to mention for 2018, we see very big things for us and a couple of changes or additions rather, we’re going to continue Of course with Carrie McCormick, we do a monthly episode called the Monday market minute. It’s the first Monday of every month where Carrie talks about here’s what brokers need to know about the market. And she answers your questions if you’re ever curious, what you’d love to be able to ask questions of a top producer Kerry’s 18 years and veteran top producer. And she she does that. And then also we’re going to be doing another regular episode once a month buy from Eric workman and this is what brokers need to know about investing. And Eric is a top producer as well, exclusively really working with investors and doing his own investments. So he is going to be doing a regular episode, we’re gonna recording our first first one next week. So we’re really, really excited to bring Eric into the studio as well for that. And also, please continue to share this podcast with other brokers that you think could be interested in learning what top producers do tell a friend and also send us your questions. Right. So we’ve gotten a lot of great suggestions from our brokers, which helps when I interview brokers I ask those questions and or ask them to carry and so please continue to send those to us. You can find us on Facebook at keeping it real pod and also our website which is keeping it real pod.com We’ve got a few more episodes to go up before the end of the year. Today is a fantastic interview that we did with top producer, great person Karen Rehnquist. I’m really excited to share this with you here in just a moment. And then lastly, we’re doing we now have a sponsorship opportunity. So you’ll hear an episode or rather an advertisement here in just a moment for a one of our sponsors. And if you’d like to sponsor an episode, just let us know and we’ll tell you how that works. So thanks so much and onto our interview with Karen.

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Okay, today on the show we have Karen Rehnquist. Now Karen started her real estate career in 1997. Prior to that, she worked for five years as a licensed social worker and Chicago Public Schools. She became a full service agent in 1999 and was instantly recognized as Rookie of the Year at her initial company. In addition to being a broker with now she is with Berkshire Hathaway, a coding we should say BHHS coding ruble off Realty Group. Karen is also the primary real estate broker for a highly regarded builder of custom properties in Chicago. Karen’s expertise lies in working with contemporary single family homes, condos, row homes and new construction projects throughout the city. Karen has been an annual Top Producer over her 20 year career she is in the top 1% of producers in Chicago Association of Realtors, and her current individual production has ranked her number 73 As of September 2017. And this was pulled from the MLS and also published by Chicago real producers magazine which I happen to have a monthly column in that magazine as well. So shout out to Chicago producers magazine. She was also just recently inducted into Berkshire Hathaway’s Hall of Fame, which is a very big deal because they are I don’t know if they’re the largest real estate company in in the country, but certainly one of the top two or three care Aaron has also been featured in Crain’s Chicago, social ces interiors, curved and Chicago magazine for her real estate opinion, she has remained active in the community, including serving for over five years on cars Grievance Committee. And also she was a former vice president of the Women’s Council of realtors. So Karen, thank you so much for your time.

Karen Ranquist 5:22
Oh, TJ, thank you so much. I’m so glad to be here. And thank you for that great introduction. I really love what you guys are doing with this podcast. And I feel like it just fills a void for a place that realtors can share tips and ideas and things like that you don’t you you don’t have the opportunity to really hear from other realtors in this in this light and about their practice. Well,

D.J. Paris 5:47
that’s the intention. And it’s so funny, because just yesterday I got a, a message. I think it might have been through Facebook, but it may have been an email from a Berkshire Hathaway agent. And they, you know, just out of the blue and unsolicited message saying how much they love the show. And here we are. And I think you’re the first Berkshire broker we’ve had on the show, and I’m sure we’ll have many more, but we are so happy to have you on the show. So tell us about how you got started in real estate.

Karen Ranquist 6:15
Gosh, it was so long ago. But I would say while I was a social worker was obviously a very demanding job. But in the mean, in the summers and some evenings I was working on rink was had some projects out in the suburbs, and I started doing just some stuff out on the weekends and kind of morphed into doing some of the closings. And I really had this like natural affinity, this this, I really enjoyed doing sales and being with people helping people. And, you know, one thing led to another and the timing was just right, we had started a project in the city and I was wanting to become a full time agent, I got my license, I moved over to a large company that provided me with some great initial training, some great mentorship. And we took our you know, our first project, it was a building on in, in East Village and at 839 Hermitage, our first kind of city project, kind of the rest is history as far as building a niche for that type of property. And and, you know, growing over the years in in new construction, and the sales aspect of it was just so it was just so fun for me.

D.J. Paris 7:33
Yeah, it tell us a little bit about how, you know how you’ve changed your business over the 20 years? What have you seen change?

Karen Ranquist 7:42
And yeah, I bet. You know, I feel like, oh, go ahead.

D.J. Paris 7:48
No, tell us what you’ve seen change. And it’d be you know, well, let me give it a bigger context. So I know coaching and mentoring is really important to you. I know you mentioned you have a coach, which I love that somebody with as much experience and successes as you has a coach and what I find is almost everyone I interview who are they’re all top one percenters for the podcast, they all have coaches too. But But talk a little bit about, you know, what advice, what you’ve seen change and what you coach and mentor brokers who may be newer to the business, you know, throughout your experience that you’ve seen, you know, is more meeting more relevant today than ever.

Karen Ranquist 8:25
But definitely, I mean, all those things. I mean, I think when I started it was, you know, it was kind of before the big building, boom, and we were able to kind of get our feet wet start with some smaller buildings, really did some resale at the time had, like I said, I had some about three very strong agents that helped me guided me in the very beginning, I came in with a girlfriend who was her and her husband were buying and selling a place and she trusted me to to kind of hit the ground running. And I quickly paired up with an agent that had actually sold our first house that we had built in the city. And you know, under her kind of guidance and mentorship, I was able to really service my my first two deals very well which being at that open house led to meeting a client and so on and so on and so on. So, you know, I think initially it was just gathering information and then building that new construction arena was was so strong for me, I mean, it it’s very different than than a resale transaction because with the resale transaction you can see feel and touch and you know, you can really go in and tell people what they need to do. And you know, well, staging wasn’t as big as it is now but you know, kind of learning from the very beginning truly from the ground up and you know, a new construction project can be two, two and a half years from from start to finish. So, you know, it really is a fun full time job in itself, but also being able to fill in, you know, fill in some of that with, with the, with the resale business with the buying and selling. I think if you’re asking more like what are what is kind of happened over the years, you know, so many different things from from then and, you know, as the market continued to grow and everything was just so great. And then all of a sudden it wasn’t. So I think one of the things that really kept all of us that that are, you know, that are still around, was sticking to the basics, you know, going back to two hard knocks, sales tactics, and I think I’ve heard you on some of the podcasts talking about writing letters and working your sphere and your contacts and stuff like that. And, you know, I think you you just always have to you always have to, to, to go back to that and go back to cash, I’m kind of losing my train of thought about it. But you know, it’s hard to go from, like, the very beginning to to now but I think, yeah, I think to get through the harder times and, you know, continue to be successful in the business. It’s, it’s taking the things that you learned and, and being able to really guide your client to making the right decision. You know, it’s it’s a huge decision. And it is such an emotional transit transaction. It’s the biggest thing that most your clients will do in their lifetime. And they’re entrusting you to such a such an important thing that, you know, I find it so important and valuable to be the best resource that I can for them.

D.J. Paris 11:46
Yeah, and what advice do you have for newer brokers aside? Obviously, you know, we talked about fundamentals and always coming back to the basics of you know, okay, working your sphere of influence, meeting new people staying in touch? What advice do you have for brokers who are newer, who really want to specialize? Because I know you specialize? Let’s talk a little bit about your special because we talked about it a little bit where you do both resale and and new construction or in development? Can you talk a little bit about what the breakdown is in your business? What percentage of the time? Are you working with developers or, or the public? Can you talk a little bit more about?

Karen Ranquist 12:24
Sure, sure. So you know, in the beginning, I was as we were growing the development business, it was probably close to 5050, as which gave me a great basis and starting ground for how the real real estate, you know, a seller or buyer transaction is going to work and how to really learn the ins and outs of that aspect of the business. But at the same time, as we were growing the new construction business, it kind of naturally progressed into kind of moving from the large company, I went to a company that only worked on new construction, I kind of brought our construction there, gathered as much information from my as I could from from that broker, he was so gracious and wonderful. And then it really kind of again, naturally progressed into just working on my own with our, you know, with our rank was prior to product, I would say that for a very long period of time, though, I think I was on my own for what, nine years almost. And I did almost all of our new construction business with my resale really starting mostly to be our past clients, and then some other small developers as well. So really a long period of time of 75 to almost 90% of new construction, and always trying to get in, you know, some some resale there. But the 2008 happened 2009 happened, everything slowed down. I was able to really draw upon the relationships and people that I had been working with and keeping in contact with and having a little more resale of business at that time to kind of sustain things and was also a time where I thought I could really use some more support and that was when I moved over to Berkshire Hathaway, which was about seven years ago. So kind of last year, your main question being the advice to a new broker and all those things you know, sticking to the basics I again I’ve heard you talk a lot about that the art of even writing a letter and being in touch with people and you know, making it your own you know, everybody can can be on social media and send out eblasts and mailers but I tried to really make it personal like I will scour the internet and gosh, you know, for instance, I had these great clients, they were such such great people and I sold two houses for them and they had this incredible home one of my favorite homes in Wicker Park and they had this like, you know, kind of like in the 70s where you had like a pit in a lower pit, but it was just it was so amazing I have a couple of it on my you know, pictures of it on my, my Instagram, but I, you know I’ll find on on like dwell or something on another site, I’ll see something else I’ll see something similar and just thinking of them and just sending them a text, you know, be it like midnight going, Gosh, I can’t help myself, this just makes me think of, you know, of your place and how much I liked your place or, you know, I have somebody that lived in a building that was 100 years ago, it was a bar and I found a picture of their house as a bar and I’m like, Oh my gosh, I have to send you this so so you know, constantly touching out to those clients that do you have, it’s such a intense relationship for such a period of time with these people. I mean, you you know, you really like miss them after the transaction is over. Because you really go through so much with with these people that you you know, you they become your friends, they become people that you think about and, you know, everything like like keeping up with the year that a year that goes by and then the next year that goes by and kind of you know, birthdays, birthdays, just everything you can do on a on a general level. But I really feel like if you can find those special things about those special clients and and and think, you know, you’re really I’m thinking of them if I see something on social media, I’m like, I’ve got to send this to them or just a random article, I’ll screenshot it and I you know, I hope they appreciate it and kind of get a kick out of it. And we can have a little laugh about a you know, funny story that happened in the transaction or something like you know, like, the place that used to be a bar or something really unique like that make it make it really personal to me is something that that is more my style. Kind of transitioning to the other part of your question about advice for a new agent, there’s so much technology and I I am I’m on board it is amazing it is what we can do and find and see for our clients and and how the the market is moving. It’s just just amazing. To start back literally when there were books they used to um that old where you’d like flip through them for the for you know, I mean it was it to what we have now and it is just truly just just incredible and

D.J. Paris 17:21
now it’s moved so much from you know in what Karen’s referencing is the MLS used to not of course be online and there were books and you would have to go typically you’d go to a real estate office and look through all the homes for sale and and that’s transitioned of course to the MLS being online but now it’s even sort of beyond just being because it’s crazy don’t even need you tend to see the MLS right like clients do not need brokers to get access to the MLS but

Karen Ranquist 17:48
they’re not you know they need to get access to the right information and ended up kind of you know us the the real estate agents I think you know, there’s there’s no secret to this business, any real estate agent that’s successful works nonstop anybody that there really is no secret we all have a different style we all have a different you know strength or a reason why we hook up with the people that we hook up with but but but but but there is no secret I mean it really it is all about hard work and you know it you know a client can find something on a site but is that the most current information is it is it you know, I have an amazing client that I’ve done a bunch of transactions with that I just I like her you know, she’s just so much fun and such a great person and I you know, really enjoyed meeting her as a client and just maintaining a friendship with her. She you know, she’s like and she has a lot of she’s in a big business and very well known and you know, has a lot of contacts and when she thought of this dear friend of hers, she’s like Karen you know everything there is to know about schools you have two kids you’ve been in the city forever you have to work with this friend of mine and I just was so touched that she you know in in having so many contacts and and people that she knows that she’s like you know not only knows that I would really really really take care of her friends so well but that I can offer this insight to being a mom in the city with two kids and how to navigate and being a working professional with the ins and outs of what it’s like to you know start with your kid and 18 months out you know I’ve been in the city my kids been in the city their entire life so so something like that to me it’s just you know, the referral basis is where the majority of my businesses and to have that past client refer me to this client it just it means so much to me as an agent and just reminds us that we you know we all have our strengths and things that we can bring to the to the transaction and to our clients and I think it’s really important just to focus on what what you know the best so you can be that best that best partner for your client and and you can’t find that online and and I don’t think you’ll ever be able no matter where the internet and social media goes there’s, there’s things we know about each city block and each park and each, you know, where you can have dogs and where you can’t and where you know how many steps it is. Anyone can tell you how many steps it is to the train, but we can tell you what I can tell you what restaurants and, and how far away the Starbucks is, or the stands doughnuts. And it’s just a service that I think makes makes us kind of kind of internet proof. And in that sense,

D.J. Paris 20:25
agreed. And I think it’s nice to know that clients can access a listings without a broker, because then it’s like, Okay, now what do they do with that information? And that’s where the broker gets to come in and really shine to say, okay, true. These are, you know, it’s not under lock and key anymore to see the the database of available listings. But here’s what to do with that information. I’m here to guide you through every step of it. And I think that’s, that’s particularly useful, I’ll share this just happened in over the Thanksgiving holiday last week. So my parents are they have a home in North Myrtle Beach and they’re trying to it’s a condo, they’re trying to sell it and they’ve been trying to sell it forever. And it’s, it’s, they’ve gone through a number of Realtors, my parents are very easy clients. But for whatever reason, it’s just the markets, not very strong out there and whatever. But my dad was saying, because I was curious. And I said, Oh, who’s your realtor now? Because they’ve gone through several of them over the over the years. And, and, and he said, Oh, it’s so and so. And I don’t remember the name. But he’s I said, Oh, do you like him? Is he doing a good job. And he’s, he said, he goes, I’ll tell you the one thing. And over the years out there, my parents have used like five different realtors. And he said, The reason I like this guy, everyone is basically telling him, Okay, here’s the right price. And that’s all pretty universal with the brokers he’s worked with out there. But he said, what this guy does is whenever there’s a showing, because my parents aren’t, aren’t there, they don’t live there. So it’s this remote sort of situation. He he, the broker, the listing agent, this, this gentleman will make a really big deal to contact and continually hound, the broker representing the buyer after the showing just to get feedback. And we all know that m read, the system sort of sends that automatically a lot of times brokers don’t fill it out. And you know, it’s that information is kind of oftentimes by the wayside. But this broker makes it a point to really like keep calling and saying what’s your client think we want feedback to, to make improvements and changes. And then he relays all of that information to my dad. And I mean, it’s a simple thing that more brokers probably ought to do, but my dad thinks it’s the coolest thing ever. Because he goes, nobody ever did that. Nobody ever told me, here’s the feedback we got, we’re getting. And it’s always little cosmetic things like oh, we, you know, we noticed the paint was a little chipped in this one room. And my dad’s like, this is great, because I didn’t have this information, you notice,

Karen Ranquist 22:49
and I’ll try to be very honest with this with with show, you know, when I’m representing the buyer, because I would want you know, I appreciate that as well when I can get, you know, if I have three realtors say, you know, Karen, we, my client loves the house, but it just, it’s just priced too aggressively or, you know, it’s too open or it’s too this or it’s too, you know, it’s it’s very, it’s very important to me, I think to get we you know, we don’t have a crystal ball we can we can go through CMAs and work on past sales. And, you know, the market is, especially in today’s market, it’s so ever changing, it’s so it’s so unpredictable on some, in some senses that to get feedback, actual feedback from your, you know, your colleagues is so important. And you know, it kind of leads to the relationship we have with our colleagues and how how vital it is to me. And again, I’m also thinking of like, what advice to give to a new agent, you know, this relationship of kind of aligning yourself with other successful brokers, and what do they do in their practice that makes them successful? And, you know, what can what can we learn from from them that we’re not doing and what can we offer them as as as advice because we don’t, you know, we all don’t know everything, and each person can offer some insight that that maybe we didn’t think about or we might have overlooked or whatnot. So, you know, I feel like I have, you know, just for instance, like I so respect and admire to women, you know, they’re just your friends and for many, many years, you know, Ivana accouterment COVID and Sophia Copus. And I, you know, if I’m having a really hard time with something just to have the ability to say, you know, what, do you guys think of this price? Or what do you think of that and, and hopefully being able to reciprocate a little bit to them, and really just say, Hey, how is this working for you? I’m trying this new thing on a website and have you had success with that or, or whatnot. And I think too, you know, even with this podcast, I think it’s so great because we don’t know I mean, there’s there’s some things work better for others and some things just aren’t as successful and to hear what other you know, agents that that you respect and admire their business to be able to have them share that with you, it’s just so important and means so much to me to be able to have, you know, the relationship with with our colleagues. I mean, because that nobody in real estate knows how, how many hats we wear, and how crazy this business gets and how many different things we have to do for our clients except other realtors. So to approach a transaction, you know, not adversarially but but but but with it. Of course, it’s such a weird relationship because we represent the sellers and buyers, we’re on opposite ends, we may be at opposite even if we’re in the same company, it’s it’s, it’s such a weird variety of relationships and different, you know, lawyer personality and inspectors and no situation is the same. But, you know, if you can kind of go in with, you know, a feeling, you know, I know this agent and I know how they are going to do the best they can and, and work, you know, have that camaraderie and assurance that the agent’s going to be a professional as well. It just makes everything else so much more pleasant, because we know, in any transaction, something crazy is going to happen. And, you know, to try to remain calm and supportive. And, and and, you know, just to get along is is crucial, I think to these transactions that are never easy. They’re never easy. Well, let’s

D.J. Paris 26:20
Yeah, let’s talk about some ways people can get involved with the community because obviously, not everyone works at a large firm. And not everyone works at a firm where there’s a lot of collaboration or over

Karen Ranquist 26:33
the course, of course, I worked on my own for nine years. And I struggled I needed that, that that camaraderie I needed that and I think you’re, I have a feeling you’re gonna lead into something like WC er, or one of these other great networking organizations that that can provide that.

D.J. Paris 26:50
Yeah, to talk about some of the organizations that you’ve been a member of, and in the benefits you’ve received, like, for example, Women’s Council of Realtors, yeah, you

Karen Ranquist 26:57
know, especially when I worked on my own it was it’s, it’s a hard it’s a hard it’s hard to not have, you know, I just I love being at Berkshire and you don’t let me check with my managing broker. It’s just such a, it’s such a wonderful thing to, to have that I didn’t for all that time. And, you know, I really craved being with other agents and getting their knowledge and support and the networking. So I did two things I did join W CR I gosh, I can’t even remember what led me there. It was years ago, because I started as a member for a little while and then I went into a different position. I think it was with membership because we were really starting to try to you know, turn things around and get get more members this is this is a while ago, and then I kind of moved that into to Vice President and just found that the networking the relationship with the other members and and of course the programming the programming was great the people that would come in and talk about what they did with their business and bring in a lender and current trends and staging and a million different topics but and and that they were hosted in different like, you know, development offices or different offices in different places throughout the city that was like, you’re getting so much in an hour and a half or something like that, you’re getting the networking and a training, and you’re and you’re getting to view a cell center. So it was it was a great experience to be a part of it. And it’s such an important counsel to have an outlet look for us as agents to be able to, you know, to talk to one another.

D.J. Paris 28:35
Yeah, there’s there’s a lot you know, there’s a number of these types of organizations Women’s Council of Realtors, which by the way, is like $100 a year, it’s the best $100 you’ll you’ll ever spend. I agree something like that. I don’t think it’s much more than that. And then you know, there’s the there’s the YPN, which is if you’re a car member are actually they have the YPN and all the different boards, whether your main street or car, Northshore, Barrington era, they all have the Young Professionals Network, and those are amazing as well. And you don’t have to be young, I’m certainly not young. I’m part of it. And but all of these places are was so funny, as before we started recording this, Karen and we were talking about some Karen was nice enough to have listened to some of the other episodes. And probably she listened to get it to get a sense of the show. But also she’s like those are some of her friends. And I suspect it’s not just because top producers all hang out together. I suspect there’s a little of that. But Karen’s just really, you’re really, really involved. And I think just as a nature, I bet you probably know 75% of the people we’ve interviewed for this show, and it’s not because there’s a special secret club of 1% producers, where you all hang out on the weekends. But you’re just you’ve been around for for several decades and you’re really involved in the community. You’ve also been on cars. You’ve been on boards at Chicago Association of Realtors,

Karen Ranquist 29:50
yeah, I worked with the Grievance Committee for a number of years and that was just such a great board and such dedicated people and it was a tough board. You know, I got it. I learned a lot lot on that, but it it, it was really a great learning experience and the people that were involved were, were really wonderful and people that I see out you know, he Do you have a special relationship with them, I’ll see them at a showing or at an event or somewhere and you’re, you know, you kind of have a special fondness for, for the time that you spent or serve together at on a board it is a it is a really, you know, it’s an important thing to do. And I think you get a lot out of it, as well as putting, you know the little what you put in, I think you certainly get get more out of it. And, you know, certainly a great place for new agents to start and, and meet other agents, it’s so it’s so nice and in your buyers, you know, like when I when I go to showings or when when Realtors come to a showing of mine and we have a relationship or a camaraderie and a general comfort with one another when we’re doing the showing it just the buyer feels feels feel sad and can say like, if some you know, the biggest compliment is if I come with a with a buyer to a showing, and the agent says you are in great hands with Karen. I mean, it just that means so much to me that that, uh, you know, another real estate professional can can say with with, you know, hopefully sincerity in front of my client that, you know, she’s gonna take care of you and and, and I, you know, I feel the same when when I have people come to my listings, and it’s just that I’ve had a positive relationship or transaction or interaction with that agent. And, you know, it really is all about the relationship. And that’s what this business is, I mean, you know, you can have people that are in jobs, where they’re negotiating all sorts of money and all sorts of different deals and, and so many different things. And, and, and it it’s a different, it’s a different transaction, I mean, what you do in in, in other negotiations just isn’t going to kind of be the same as what you’re going to do when you’re buying and selling your own piece of property. There is absolutely an emotional component to it.

D.J. Paris 32:04
Yeah, and the other thing, too, is, and I always like to make this point about, you know, fine getting involved with the community and and really learning from realtors, obviously the show is is about talking to two top producers and asking them what they do. But I just want to make the point to the audience that I mean, aside from character who I met, I think I met you prior to this podcast even happening, I don’t think the podcast was even existed, which was you know, it’s only been around several months now. But but but when I met you is just very, very briefly, but aside from that, I think maybe only one of the other people we have about 30 episodes, one of the other people I knew the rest we just reached out to and said, Hey, would you like to be on the show? And would you be kind enough to share some time to talk about how you became successful. So if you you know, if you’re a broker out there who isn’t connected as deeply into the community, and you maybe you don’t have as supportive of an environment where your office or it’s not a big network? You know, the reason why I’m able to talk to someone like Karen, is we reached out to Karen and said, Would you be happy to? Would you be grateful enough to or we’re very grateful. But would you be generous enough to devote a few minutes to talking to the public and she cared? Obviously, it’s extraordinarily kind to do. So but so is everyone else that we’ve interviewed. And these are just people we reached out of the blue. So I just want to make a point that if you’re a broker out there, you’re like, Well, I don’t know anybody in the industry, get involved go to the Women’s Council of Realtors, even if you’re a man go to the Women’s Council. Yeah,

Karen Ranquist 33:28
it’s definitely yes, definitely, that’s a good place to

D.J. Paris 33:32
go to the YPN events reach out to these top producers. And not all of them will have time for you. But some of them will. And you’ll be absolutely surprised and shocked at how few how few times do these top producers even get asked for advice or help it is they’re they’re very busy with their own business, but they don’t get as many requests. I don’t know if Karen, you may be the exception to that. But I don’t know how often people come up and say I’m brand new, you know, would you get to give me a few minutes of advice. I’m obviously you’re doing that here on the show, but it’s um, it’s surprisingly easy. People are very kind.

Karen Ranquist 34:08
Yeah, and they are I mean, people people are I mean, there are I think that, you know, you go through so much as an agent and you you know, you go through so much as an agent and you you just if certain parts of transactions, you can just kind of go oh, well at least, you know, I know that aid, you know, this agents going to do the best that they can and that’s really all you know, it’s really all you can do. But just to have that that relationship really makes the you know, it really makes the transaction much more much much smoother, much more enjoyable and honestly at times more tolerable because sometimes things can get pretty tricky when we when we do this this business this business is is it’s tough business and it’s it’s good to have to have allies and you know, kind of going back to having, you know, colleagues that you can, can can lean on and count on for support and, and, you know, kind of going outside of your comfort zone and reaching out to other agents, like you said with these newer agents to, to, you know, approach a more experienced agent I did, when I started, I’ll never forget the people that helped me. I mean, even when I was navigating, you know, the most basic things and, and now, I mean, I, you know, I’m not the greatest on technology, and I gotta ask, you know, I have to ask people all the time for help, and it is really, it is important to, you know, to help each other out. And, you know, I think one other thing, too, you know, on the, on that new agent thing that, and we’ve talked a lot about, like, you know, how amazing the internet and technology and how much it’s changed from the very, very beginning. But, um, you know, it don’t forget, you know, not just going back to basics, but so much like, is on a text message or on a this or that, or, you know, we have to if we’re not going to meet face to face everyday, but there’s so much to be said, for just picking up the phone and talking to somebody because we all know that emails can be misconstrued. And God knows a text message is even less personal than that. And that we’re also busy, but just, you know, if we’re negotiating or finding out information, you know, just pick up the phone, let’s just talk about it. Because there’s so many more things that we can, you know, we can figure out together on the phone or in person than just a quick text back and forth. So it’s, it’s very, you know, it’s great to embrace technology, but we also can’t forget about what, you know, what, what, what really connects us. So, you know, that would kind of be my, my last piece of advice if we were talking about a new agent, and what you know, and what to do.

D.J. Paris 36:42
Yeah, I think I think you’re so right about that. And you talked at the beginning of when we were at the beginning of this conversation about really looking for those personalized connections, where are pits of information, where it’s like, oh, they had that they had that in ground tub, you know, that 70 style, sort of walk down into a bathtub. And I saw another picture of one so I’m going to send it out to my client or I know my clients, you know, their, their daughter is starting first grade and that’s probably a really stressful and hard time for you them to you know, see their daughter off to school or whatever, it might be anything personalized, where you can have that reason i i Always I’m going to I’m eventually going to have a podcast episode called nobody wants to read your newsletter. And it’s more than just a tongue in cheek but nobody wants to read your newsletter but what they do want not that you shouldn’t have one and that’s fine if you do but in addition to having a newsletter it’s like pick up the phone and call them and see how they’re doing and ask them about their lives and remember their birth

Karen Ranquist 37:48
year I mean there’s you can’t do that with with every client but there’s you know, there’s there’s clients that you will be in contact and then there’s there’s there’s different you know, different kinds of ways you can reach out to people on a broad sense to you know, tell people in a certain area that you have a new listing or to give statistics on a certain area that somebody would be interested in but but these people that have bought and sold with you and people that have referred you and people that you know that that are you know a source of business for you you you want to you know it’s fun, I mean you love it it’s a great way to connect with people and and you know, kind of think of a funny story that happened with you guys or you know, if you like to you know to work out and I’ve heard another one of your agents talk or one of the agents at talk talked about that and you know, it’s funny I going back when you and I were talking earlier I’m going to jump really far ahead and hopefully we can kind of go back a little bit more to kind of the nitty gritty with like the the marketing and other things that I just love and kind of fill in that like what might make me different as an agent but but um you know, one of the things as far as like, ways to touch out with those people that are important to you or source of referral or business or whatever I have after all these years I have been an independent realtor, I’ve had assistants I’ve worked with other agents as as as partners. But but as far as a team, I’ve really never established that and, and and boy after 20 years of you really just can’t do it all. I mean, you really can’t and to you know balance my kids and some sort of a social life and whatnot, it is you know, there is something to be said for for for bringing somebody on and you and I have a mutual friend in in in Sook who has joined my team with me. And you know, just last night we had an event for her, where she invited her her some of her closest people to kind of say, Hey, I’m in real estate now. And let’s make this fun. We had it at a gallery in the in the west loop, this amazing woman and I could give her information as well, that does jewelry design, and she was kind enough to open up her studio to us. And then we had another dear friend of souks, who is a makeup artist and hairstylist that did a presentation a small presentation for all of us on like, literally how to use the makeup that’s already in your bag. And it was just such a great fun night and such a great way to you know, get people together kind of say, hey, you know, Sook is taking this transition, she’s working with Karen, you know, I have this long history in the business, and couple it with some wine and some some food. And, and this, this just like, I learned so much about how to actually put on makeup, it was really, it was just a great night.

D.J. Paris 40:59
Yeah, those events are so wonderful. And I think, you know, are a lot of brokers, you don’t have to spend a fortune doing them either. times, a lot of times, you can, you know, you can reach out to partners like lenders or attorneys, or, you know, title companies who will actually help subsidize some of these events too. And so if you’re a new broker, and you maybe don’t have a huge budget to do client appreciation events, or you don’t know exactly how to set these up, like you have resources,

Karen Ranquist 41:30
really like use your friends. I mean, it was great for for her friend to be able to, you know, she wasn’t there to sell anything by any means, but the product was worse so and they kind of sold themselves. So same thing with the jewelry. I mean, one of the you know, women somebody bought this beautiful ring from the gallery and, and then, you know, I definitely bought some makeup last night. You know, I was definitely not her Stacy’s intention, she was really there just to kind of teach us a few tricks and how to make the stuff we already had in our purses, and in our bags, work more and it’s just, I mean, we were there were lots of questions and it was just a you know, a really small but but I’m just a great little way to kind of kick off the holidays and introduced, you know, Sook into A into this new, you know, endeavor for her with me. I

D.J. Paris 42:19
love it. Let’s talk a little bit about your team and some you know, and we’ll finish up with you know, tell us about how you’ve now you know, it’s not just you anymore, you now have you know, you now have a team I’m talking a little bit you talk a little bit about that and sort of, you know, what

Karen Ranquist 42:35
we’ve known each other you know, for for a second I’ve known each other for over you know, over 20 years and it really was through the business when I was at the small development company, she was there as well. And you know, we’ve just kept in touch and been friendly for years, but she brings years of styling and fashion and graphics to to to the table and a whole different database of people that we can hopefully you know, guide and help in their real estate transactions. So it’s really exciting for me like I have, you know, been doing so many things independently that have probably and I’m sure most likely limited. My ability to even grow further and faster. And you know, it’s so exciting that even in just such a short period of time, and getting all of our systems together and systems that I’ve kind of always had in place but never really really really organized and took advantage of to the to the full extent and you know taking all this information that I have and all these amazing you know architectural photographs of past projects and taking her creativity and graphic background to you know, really show people what we can do. I mean I’ve always been about real estate to me you know, it is a passion, the architecture and the design and I can appreciate all different kinds of styles and price points and whatnot but I I just want people to really like where they’re at you know, I want them to be really excited and you know, it’s always been like it’s not I’ve never really looked at at it as how do you say it like I don’t really look at it as just a home you know, it’s just like it’s like an extension of who the person is. And even if it’s somebody that doesn’t even realize it to you know kind of be able to get in there and and be out there with this this client and see them responding to a property and helping guide them to to what what ultimately ends up being their home and having that ability to kind of read between the lines and and help them get there is so you know is so important to me and you know on the app and on the sales and I do a lot of representation of sellers a lot of our past I mentioned our past buyers and I just love that I love getting into someone’s home and now having soup you know really helping me style a home you even you know even better than before and getting it ready for the, you know, for photos and kind of stealing a word from from Ivana, I kind of like having all these tools in my toolbox, and, you know, adding a new resource to to help us, you know, get our buyers and sellers in the best position they can be in is it’s really exciting. I mean, we’ve just, we’ve worked so hard these last few months, and I just can’t wait to see, you know, to see where we go from here. Yeah, I

D.J. Paris 45:28
think that one thing that comes through and really everything you’ve said, and this is a testament to you is that you care so deeply for your clients. And I think that it as a realtor, as a broker as our listeners who are mostly realtors, that your client should feel that way about you that they should feel that wow, my realtor cares about me and is connected and gets it and understands what I need, and takes really good care of me. And I think that really has come through and probably ever, I suspect your clients would all say that.

Karen Ranquist 46:04
Oh, I hope so. Because I really do, you know, I love that I am not good at paperwork, but I love being out in the field. And I love like, you know, helping people just find that place. It’s like fitting in the puzzle pieces and, and and, and then helping them come up with strategies and ideas for marketing their home. I mean, I you know, one of the things I love about where I’m at at Berkshire is I was afraid that after all the years of being on my own, and our marketing when I worked with the rate all of our rank was projects, our marketing and the style and the beautiful way we could present our product was so so very important to me. And I wanted to really be able to keep kind of a part of me, but get the support and encouragement from a full service brokerage, which I wish I certainly have. And, you know, I feel like just even our marketing team really gets, you know, gets me and can take these these great photos and, and things that we can bring from my resale business and my my new construction business and the marketing is, it’s so important to me to just make this person’s home as as as interested, you know, as cool and the marketing material that we put out just to really make it so unique and so specific to them, that you know, I’m just so happy that, that I have the tools that I can continue to do that, you know, to do that for my clients and really think outside the box, you know, I mean, just who are we marketing to and just just all sorts of ideas, just you know, like, who do you know, mailers and creative ideas to have a party at somebody’s house with with just this thing with Stacey with the makeup like, you know, I have a new construction house coming up and we’re gonna, you know, bring in a local restaurant, we’re gonna do a post drywall party and bring in like, have it be like a daytime thing and bring in all sorts of different you know, fun things that uh, you know, people can come by and walk through the house but, but just you know, have some pizza from the neighborhood pizza place and put in just just just do like, you know, tying in all these different things where it’s so much more than just having your listing on the MLS, it’s just having the creativity and the ability to always think about ways to get your, your clients home marketed and seen by by other eyes, I mean, having a database of tons and tons of realtors to send an E blast to in case they missed it on the MLS and, you know, using social media and using just all these, you know, creative outlets to get your client’s property seen by eyes that they may not, that may not have seen it otherwise, that that’s a really, really important part of, of what I hope I can do for my sellers. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 49:00
well, let’s talk about if there are any, any buyers, sellers, renters, or even developers who are interested in working with you and your team, what’s the best way they should reach out to you?

Karen Ranquist 49:12
Oh, they can call me on my cell phone at 77344763607734476360. Or they can touch out to me through you know, Karen rank was Realty Group on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, any way that’s easiest for them.

D.J. Paris 49:32
Well, Karen, thank you so much for your time. I think again, I hope that it’s I’m sure it’s obvious to everyone who listens, but your passion and the fact that you care so deeply for your clients. Which by the way, if you’ve been listening to this podcast, speaking to the listeners, you you’ll hear a lot of that almost everyone is so passionate and cares so deeply. And I suspect that’s not by accident. It probably makes for extraordinarily happy clients and Karen’s perfect example. She works almost exclusively by referral has built this really outstanding business over 20 years and is very well respected and liked. maybe more importantly, she’s well liked to the community. And she’s also really involved. So I think that’s really the recipe right there. It’s, if there is a recipe that might be that might be it. So thank you for sharing all of that with the listen.

Karen Ranquist 50:22
Oh, gosh, thank you so much for having me on. I really, really appreciate you guys thinking of me. Well,

D.J. Paris 50:28
you’re very welcome. And all right. Well, we’ll see you on the next episode. So thank you, Karen.

Karen Ranquist 50:33
Oh, great. Thanks again. Have a great weekend.

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Robin Phelps Hanson of The Phelps-Hanson Group has crossed over 20 million in annual production this year. However, she feels she could have done it much faster! We discuss her rise to being a top producer, challenges she faced, and what she wished she would have known back when she started. This is a perfect episode to check out if you’re interested in what a rising superstar in the real estate industry does on a daily basis to keep moving forward!

Robin Hanson can be reached at robinphelps@atproperties.com or 773.469.5423.

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:15
Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the only podcast made by Chicago real estate agents for Chicago real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host through the show. And if this is your first time listening to the podcast this episode, what we do here is we interviewed top, actually the the very top producers in Chicago There are currently over 35,000 realtors in the Chicagoland area, we literally are only talking to the top 1%. And what we’re doing is asking them how they built their business. How did they become successful? What are they doing differently than other realtors out there and having them share that with you. So I think we’ve started this about three or four months ago, we already have about 30 episodes done and about 5000 of you are listening on a regular basis. So we’re really grateful for that. A couple of ways you can continue to support the show so we can keep providing this to you in the coming year. Tell a friend if you have any other brokers that you think could benefit from listening to these kinds of interviews, shoot shoot them our information, you can obviously subscribe on iTunes, Google Play any Podcast Directory out there, you can find us. Also send us your questions once a month, Carrie McCormack, and I do a show where an episode where we interview, or rather she talks about what’s going on in the market and answers your questions. And we’re also going to be instituting a new regular episode in the next year where we’re going to be doing an investment episode once a month. So send us your questions whether you want to hear from a top producer like Kerry McCormick, or a top investment producer, Eric workman is going to be our regular guest on that show. Send us your questions, and we will answer them live on the show you easiest way to do that you can visit our website, keeping it real pod.com Or visit us on Facebook keeping it real pot. And the other thing that’s really exciting. And I promise I’ll wrap this up in just a moment and get to our great interview with Robin Hanson is that we have our very first sponsor on this episode. So you’ll be hearing those short commercial in a moment right before we get to Robin. And if you are someone who would like to advertise on the show and get in front of 1000s of brokers, every couple, any particular episode, you can do that. So reach out to us and we will give you that information. So thank you so much. This has been really exciting 2017 We have a few more episodes before we finish out the year and we’ll go strong in 2018. And also lastly if you have any anybody that you think we should be talking to any really successful brokers out there who maybe we don’t know about or we haven’t reached out to shoot us that information. We get a lot of our interviews from you guys who give us those suggestions. So thanks so much really appreciate it and on to our interview

this episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Loftus law. I’m sorry the attorney is busy with something more important is something you will never hear when you call Patrick Loftus of Loftus law. Loftus law is a firm focused on serving real estate professionals and their clients you want your deals to close on time without headaches and Loftus law is the solution. For more information on what Loftis law can do for you and your clients and special pricing of 299 per closing call 773-632-8330 or email Patrick at Loftus hyphen law.com

Today on the show we

have Robin Phelps Harrison and Robin is a Chicagoland native and a broker with at properties. She is the founder of The Phelps Hanson group, a top producing real estate team. Robin has found her niche within the luxury single family market as of late, but equally enjoys working with first time condo buyers and sellers as well as investors. Robin lives in the north center area with her husband, their five year old daughter and 11 year old dog. Welcome Robin to the show.

Robin Hanson 4:22
Thank you so much.

D.J. Paris 4:24
My dog is also nearing that age so but she’s mine’s a little chihuahua. What type of dog do you have?

Robin Hanson 4:30
Okay, so ours is actually part Chihuahua and part rat terrier. So Oh, not unlike yours and she doesn’t have any teeth. She only has a couple of teeth. So we have a lot of challenges in that in that arena.

D.J. Paris 4:45
I do as well. So mine is nine and a half and she has had 13 teeth polled. She has none of all the important teeth are still there as of now but we’ll probably be going away at some point. People don’t realize that chihuahuas in particular, they have too many teeth or they’re live little mouth. So

Robin Hanson 5:01
I didn’t realize that either we’re over 20 Now extracted,

D.J. Paris 5:06
quickly catching up with you. Mine is sleeping underneath the desk here at the office. Okay, so but this isn’t about me and my dog. Let’s talk about you. How did you how did you get involved in real estate? Tell us your origin story.

Robin Hanson 5:19
Okay, so about 15 years ago, I worked at a tech startup company. And I was there a little bit over a year. And then they closed their doors. And they gave all of us a severance. I was single, late 20s. And I decided to take that money and take real estate classes. And I was lucky enough to live with my best friend, Heather, who owned a beautiful condo and said, you know, you can actually even use my car while you’re starting off with clients. Because I didn’t have a car. I took the L downtown to work every day. She had a really nice BMW. So for the first two years of my career, I drove around her in her BMW and everybody thought that was my car, my clients, other agents. Heather would ask to drive her own car. And I would be like, yeah, no, I’m sorry, I need it today. So we kind of, she was very happy when I was able to afford my own car, which was, you know, literally two years into the business. So I was Rookie of the Year, the first year at the habitat company, I literally loved it from day one, loved everything about it.

D.J. Paris 6:37
That’s amazing. And not only getting rookie of the year, but just back up that you have a friend that was willing to give you not her broken down Honda Civic, from 1997. But literally her nice BMW and you got to drive it around, I hope you have done at least sent her a nice bottle of wine

Robin Hanson 6:55
I have and I paid her back for the boot that she got on it for me not paying the tickets. So it was all good. But I, I ended up joining a team that was doing a lot of condo conversions, you know, vintage buildings that they were gutting and turning into these beautiful condos, and they were very affordable for first time buyers. So I was lucky enough to join this team. And literally, I was slipping a contract under the team leader store every weekend, and we were just we were killing it, you know, is 2005 for something like that three, maybe. And it was just an awesome experience learning how to choose the finishes and negotiate. And we were open both days every weekend. So we were meeting a lot of buyers. And I thought that was so valuable. But that was really, when I worked for the habitat company that was the beginning of learning how to pick up a buyer and an open house. You know, convert them to your own client, we were actually getting a lot of sellers out of these. So it was really an awesome opportunity that I was given from the start to join a team like that. And these guys, there were my mentors, and they’re still now there with our properties. And they’re still good friends.

D.J. Paris 8:11
So yeah, it’s amazing. And I know that was a bit of a different time back when there was a lot more development. And it was kind of a feast or famine, a situation if you were a broker and you got in with some of those developments. It was amazing. And then But then But then the market crashed. And how did you like pivot your business or adjust? You know, well due to them?

Robin Hanson 8:33
Yeah, I mean, that was rough. And I feel a connection to all of the brokers that have been in the business through that period, because you’re, you know, doing it if I’m doing a deal with one of them. And maybe I haven’t done a deal before we get to talking. It’s like, oh, gosh, that was such a hard time. I mean, I did a lot of rentals. Just because, you know, it wasn’t a source of income. And a lot of those renters were then converted into buyers later, which of course, is our hope. So, you know, it wasn’t easy, I think my I was lucky enough that my sphere of influence was built up in a way that I had enough people that were still buying and selling. But you know, there were so many foreclosures and so many short sales and and it was it was tough financially and also emotionally because, you know, a client would call me over to speak with them about their home and they’re telling you there underwater, you know, they’re about to go through a short sale, that bank is calling and you’re, you’re trying to be a good advocate for them and give them good advice and you really don’t even know what to say to get them through it. So that was a tough time. It’s it’s, it’s nice to work with clients. It’s nice to be in a market again where people are borrowing money and successfully and you know, putting 20% down or whatever. And, you know, there’s there’s I’m meeting with clients who I can actually come in and say, Wow, you have $150,000 equity, you know, this is going to be fun. So that’s that’s a much, you know, happier way to do business.

D.J. Paris 10:11
Yeah. And you’ve you’ve really had tremendous amount of success recently. You I know you’re closing the year at at a record high, which is awesome.

Robin Hanson 10:20
Yes, thank you. You know, I think so I’ve been doing this, like I said, about 15 years, I’ve been with the app properties for 10. I was always, you know, very comfortable around that seven, 8 million mark. And then, you know, I was lucky enough for two things, I started working with a builder who gave me a few opportunities that were really, you know, very important that I succeeded that I did a good job for them. And I did, and they, they were happy. And we continue to have this relationship, which I’m so grateful for. But, you know, I think that I took the confidence that I built in these situations with them, and, you know, met other sellers and buyers. And I started going into listing presentations, feeling like, I really believed that I was the best person for the job. And I shouldn’t say best, there are so many amazing brokers. But I went in maybe feeling better about myself as a broker. And I, the success just started coming to me. And of course, you know, it was fun and exciting. And I think that you always feel like you could be working harder. No matter how hard you’re working, you always feel like you could be working harder. And I still feel that way. And I think that’s also what’s keeping me going I am not, you know, everybody’s exhausted in this business. But I’m not finishing the day saying, Oh, my gosh, I’m done. I’m just kind of going well, let’s see what tomorrow brings. And that has, you know, changing my own mentality, I think has has helped. So I’m very grateful.

D.J. Paris 12:04
Yeah, one of the things you mentioned before we started recording, which I think is really very honest, and and also humbling, and I like it very much when people are able to say, you know, because I know your closing the year out really, really your high numbers. And you said I really should have got there a few years before? And can you talk a little bit about you know, the shift, and maybe why you think you could have done it sooner I would have done?

Robin Hanson 12:31
Yes, I I think that I am a very strong believer that social media is our best tool. And I started using Facebook for a lot of, you know, for posting listings, and for just kind of posting Hey, everybody, I’m out here, if you need me and me and my, my partner, Amber, we do a lot of just kind of post showing who we are and what we’re up to. And I’ve had people come into my open houses that said, Oh, it’s nice to meet you in person, your face is following me around the internet, which is because I’m using ad works. And I’m purposely following them around the internet. Sure. And all of these tools that are available to us, you know, they obviously they, they grow and they get better and better every year. But I feel like I’m just now sitting down almost daily and saying what’s available? What’s out there, I just attended the national shows, excuse me, National Association of Realtors Conference and McCormick Place. And me and my friend walked around, say, oh my gosh, look at this, look at this. And there’s so many awesome tools out there to help, you know, tell the public about you. And that you’re you’re here and you’re ready to help them. And I just really don’t think I was taking advantage of those like I should. And that’s huge for our business this year.

D.J. Paris 13:52
Yeah, I absolutely agree. There’s definitely ways to do it, I think two that are more effective than than others. I see. I see a lot of realtors maybe only posting hey, here’s my new listing, which I guess is better than doing nothing. But there’s a lot more ways you can engage the the audience. And so it sounds like you’re doing a lot of that. And that’s, that’s really interesting, you know, so we have a lot of people who listen Are you know, brokers who maybe they’re stuck at at their own production level, and they wish they could break out of that whatever ceiling they feel as sort of the is there? Or maybe they’re new to the business not sure what to do. And I know you have a very specific sort of thoughts about working with friends and family and could you share some wish you what you wish you would have known dealing with friends and family?

Robin Hanson 14:40
Oh, definitely. So I mean, your friends and your family are going to be your best referral source. And I was very fortunate to start at, I think I was 27 or 28 and some of my friends had just gotten like the good job, you know, I mean, they had started entry level out of college and they were starting to get the better jobs. and saying, Oh, I don’t want to rent anymore. And I mean, I think I sold eight condos in the first two months to people that were good friends of mine. And, you know, as we I’ve my business has grown, and quite frankly, the dollars amount amounts have gone up. I’ve noticed that, you know, working with your friends, is difficult sometimes because, you know, they’re expecting maybe a little bit more from you than they would from another agent. And maybe you’re in I’m expecting more from them, you know, give me the benefit of the doubt. Yes, yes, I’m doing that, of course, I’m doing that. And I have to stop and think, you know, they don’t know what I’m doing, I need to tell them, I need to tell them every week what I’m doing to sell their house, just like I’m telling Mr. Jones, with the listing down the street, you know, so I think that I have to stop even now and say, okay, you know, they are equally as important. And nothing that I do for another client, you know, I should be doing everything the same for them. And, you know, if you just do that, and you can hang out on the weekends and be social and not talk about work. But when it comes to selling a home for a good friend or family, it’s just I just kind of, you know, proceed like any other client. And I wish that somebody would have told me that it was going to be hard, because, you know, I think when I first started, I thought this is going to be great. I’m going to work with all my friends. And I’m, I continue to be very, very grateful to be able to do that. But it’s, I often have to take a deep breath. Because you you want to almost be offended if they’re asking you what are you doing to sell my house? So so and so sold this and you just want to say, Come on, it’s me, you don’t trust me. But you can’t do that, because it’s professional, and you have to stay professional.

D.J. Paris 16:45
Yeah, I just, you know, you said something really, really important in there as well that are that I thought was a real good takeaway for anyone listening, who’s got clients who are, who are trying to sell a home, or you’re starting to sell their home, which is let them know, every single week what you’re doing, regardless of what happens,

Robin Hanson 17:02
you know, my goal every week is for is to email them or to call them before they call me. And I feel like if they’re calling me and checking in, and I’ve, I’ve failed in that category, because I want to give them the information that I know that they you know, have the right to get before they come to me and say How was Saturday, and I overdo it. I mean, I shouldn’t say overdo it. But when I do a listing presentation, I tell the seller, you know, we’re going to be so close that when this is over, you know, you’re going to really miss me and we’re going to have to get coffee twice a week, because I’m going to tell you, I’m going to give you a lot of feedback. Every time I have a showing and I like to do that I like to report back almost immediately. I’m I probably sent 500 text messages a day. So and I you know, they never have to wonder what’s going on. Because they always know. I’d say

D.J. Paris 17:56
that is an amazing customer service policy. And the I know when when I bought my condo, which was like 2006. And I was in technology doing marketing for technology for I knew nothing about real estate, I still really don’t know too much, even today, but but back then I knew I knew literally knew nothing. And my friend, who was my broker, who is still my friend, he had a policy that I asked him after the fact I he said I never wanted a client to have to call me first. I always thought what a great policy. So it sounds like you have that same policy. So sure. But I was laughing earlier because when when we asked you some questions, which we do to everyone that we talked to we try to get a sense of what they’re all about, so we can bring it up on the show you this one is amazing. I can you please tell us about the sculpture story?

Robin Hanson 18:51
Oh, yes, absolutely. So this was maybe 10 years ago, I did a listing presentation for a family that was selling a home on the north side. And as she was giving me a tour, my eyes kept going to a certain part of the house, this bright white thing and I didn’t know what it was. And then she kind of walked me in and said, you know, my family made this. I know it’s a little odd. But you know, we made this together. And it was a sculpture that was I mean, gosh, the size of maybe a lion. I mean, we’re talking huge and it was made entirely of feminine sanitary products.

D.J. Paris 19:33
Tampons, specifically

Robin Hanson 19:34
campaign specific. You set it up for ads. These are Yeah, yes. And, you know, it was you really couldn’t help but stare at it. And I said to her this is you know, don’t get me wrong. This is just

D.J. Paris 19:47
This is beautiful.

Robin Hanson 19:49
Yeah, I love it. Frankly. No, I mean, I just you know, but however, you know, and it was it just couldn’t be moved. It was on this big stand And so I said, Okay, well, you know, I’m not going to photograph it, but it’ll be here. So every showing I had so, and I thought about hanging Christmas lights on and just, you know, I thought maybe we should play this off, because it’s obviously not going to be missed at a showing. So anyway, any everybody who came through this house would say to me like, oh, Ken, do you mind if I take a couple pictures of the, you know, the crown molding, but I knew what they were taking pictures of show their friends. So, yeah, it was I definitely never had that one happened to me again, or, you know,

D.J. Paris 20:35
were they artists are just Oh,

Robin Hanson 20:37
yeah, they were artist. So and I’m sure at the studio, there were other things, but this was the one that they chose to bring home.

D.J. Paris 20:45
And chose it. Were they surprised when you said, you know, maybe, maybe everyone else’s sensibilities? Might Yeah,

Robin Hanson 20:53
you know, they were surprised just like a seller, if you tell them to take, you know, a picture, a nude picture down of some sort of painting of them topless or something, which of course has happened also. So

D.J. Paris 21:10
that’s, I guess, the same mind that would have that would create that sculpture is not the same mind is the same mind that would be like, What do you mean, why do it? Why would I have to move this? Right? So it’s not like, oh, yeah, we get it. It’s a little odd. Well,

Robin Hanson 21:23
and in this case, it was a hot market. And it was a really nice listing. And I knew that it was, you know, kind of this, I just kind of had a feeling that we could just make it fun. And the eventual buyers, you know, of course, joked about writing it in the contract and things like that. So luckily, we did not, you know, they were able to get to take it with them, because I’m sure they still have it to this day. Well, that’s

D.J. Paris 21:48
not something you throw in the garbage that No, I would say no, it’s it’s literally made of things you throw in the garbage. No, this is true. That’s all that is, that is amazing.

Robin Hanson 22:01
I actually have another one too. They, I had a very, very old home that I was selling. And in the attic, there was just one single rocking chair just sitting there. And it just gave me the creeps.

D.J. Paris 22:18
It was a beautiful start rocking on its own. Yes.

Robin Hanson 22:21
Every time I went up there, I pictured that. And I never ever told the seller that I was you know, creeped out by it. I you know, I never mentioned it. And, you know, he was a funny guy. And he started to kind of mess with me, and move it to different areas of the addict and what’s great. And then he would tell me, you know, I haven’t been up there in like a year. So it was in eventually I said, Okay, you’re gonna need to either come clean, or, you know, I’m not going up there anymore. So that was good.

D.J. Paris 22:54
That is funny. Um, what advice would you have have to brokers who are feeling stuck or stifled or not sure how to take their business to the next level? Is anything come to mind? Yeah,

Robin Hanson 23:07
definitely. I would advise them to get education to take advantage of what the association has to offer or you know, even at their independent brokerage at att properties, they do amazing training, I mean, you can, you can be a one year agent or a 30 year and sit in this training and walk out feeling motivated. But you know, as members of the association, you always have those options. And, I mean, I probably call my managing broker or one of my mentors, at least twice a week and say, Can I run this by you? And, you know, I would say, to try to have a meal with a new person at least three times a week, whether it’s a meal, or a cup of coffee, or something, and even if you sit down, and that person proceeds to tell you about their brother who’s a realtor, and you know, you think, oh, gosh, well I wanted to be their realtor, it really doesn’t hurt. You might learn something, they might tell you something about a piece of land that their brother is selling in their neighborhood and you go wait a minute, my my builder was looking for land over there and then suddenly you’re connecting so you know, it’s it is difficult. We all go through slow times. And the best thing to do is to just get to the office or wherever you feel comfortable working and prospect and you know, call people that you trust and say, you know, what do you do when this happens and everybody’s been through it? And I used to one of my old managing brokers used to say when things are slow go on a trip, and not an exotic trip but you know, go to Michigan or Lake Geneva or something for the weekend and and your phone will start ringing you just need to get your mind off of being slow.

D.J. Paris 24:50
Sure, yeah. Yeah, I have a suggestion for for people listening. One of the things that you can do in particular after you close A transaction with a client is that’s a good excuse a good reason to take them up to coffee or to a meal, just obviously, to thank them for their business. But what you can say, if you really enjoyed working with them, is you can say, hey, you were like the ideal client. I wish I had more clients, just like you have any suggestions for me about how I might get in front of more people just like you? Yeah. And it’s different from saying, Hey, do you know anyone else that’s looking for to buy or sell or, you know, which could be awkward or uncomfortable? Or it could be that they just don’t know anyone? But when you ask them for their advice, I’m like, gosh, if you were me, how would you get in front of more people like you? You know, people will tell you though, they’re flattered that you’re asking for their opinion, which is different from necessarily just asking for referrals, which you can do too. But I love the idea of just saying, Gosh, you know, I you know, I love to meet more buyers or sellers just like you. And if you had any suggestions of how I could, you know, get in front of more people that would really be helpful. And you’ll be shocked at how, especially if you had they had a good experience with you? Would you be the only reason to do this don’t don’t, you know, obviously Oh, for

Robin Hanson 26:06
sure. And to your point, you know, planning a meal after closing is a lot of fun. Because you can, you know, sit down and have a glass of wine. And I you know, I like to get to know, people, if I get any indication that somebody will tell me their deepest secrets than I usually go for it. I just like to really dig in. And I feel like that’s a great time to do that to say, hey, you know, your sister had stopped by that day, we were there. So like, you know, where you guys close growing up. And it’s just fun. Because we’ve closed it, we have some relief. And we can, you know, maybe go over some of the funny things that happened during negotiations, because now it’s done, and everybody knows it’s done. And that’s always a great time Exactly. Like you said, to just kind of say, it was really fun working with you. I wish all my clients were like you, you know, maybe you know some people.

D.J. Paris 26:56
And I wonder how many what percentage of buyers or sellers do not get that invitation from their broker after the transaction, even though just to have coffee, or some sort of, hey, thanks aside for maybe a gift you might send them I’ll bet you 90 Some percent of buyers and sellers do not get that invitation. So even just doing that alone will separate you from just about everyone else.

Robin Hanson 27:20
Definitely. And it doesn’t have to be a big expensive steak. You know, like you’ve said it could be a latte. And you could just say, I just wanted to, you know, say thanks. And you know, have a little time with you. So it goes a long way.

D.J. Paris 27:35
Awesome. Well, Robin, this has been a really fun conversation and not just because of your growth story. But no, but let’s talk about if there are buyers or sellers or investors or renters even who are interested in working with you, what’s the best way that someone can reach out to you?

Robin Hanson 27:53
Oh, yeah, definitely. My email is Robin Phelps. All one word pH. E. LPs, like the swimmer at@properties.com and my phone number is 773-469-5423.

D.J. Paris 28:11
Fantastic. Well, Robin, thank you so much for your time. And you know, best of luck with good and continued success. Your by the way. We should mention Robin is a top 1% producer. I forgot that I forgot. I forgot to mention that in Chicago. And so she is she’s killing it very humbly killing it. But she is she is a big deal. She wouldn’t say that but I’ll say. Anyway, thank you so much for being on the show.

Robin Hanson 28:33
Thank you. This was so fun. I appreciate it.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Top 1% producer Mike Opyd has a bone to pick with traditional real estate firms. He feels brokers are paying WAY too much for the value they receive. At REMAX Next (the firm Mike co-founded) brokers choose their own commission structure and create their own branding. He believes in “disrupting” the established relationship of a broker to their firm, and compensating them higher at the same time. Mike is also a big believer in coaching and mentoring, and talks about how he maintains his own successful individual practice.

Mike Opyd can be reached at 312.929.8910 and mike@remaxnext.com

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:13
Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real. The only podcast made by Chicago real estate agents for Chicago real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host through the show and hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving and relaxing time, and are probably finishing out the year this month. If you’re a broker, you’re probably trying to get some final deals in for the end of the year, or maybe even thinking about what you want your 2018 year to look like. And we are gonna have a ton of episodes in our backlog. So we’ve been accumulating them and then you will we will be cranking them out here in the month of December. So we’re probably on pace to do about three a week. So be on the lookout. Best way you can support us is to telephone and if you have other agents you know that are interested, or that might be interested in learning what the top producers out there are doing. Tell them about the show they can subscribe on iTunes, Google Play or streamed directly from our website. Also send us your ideas and questions. Whether it’s for Kerry McCormick when we do our our monthly Monday market minute and she talks about what’s going on in the real estate world as all and also answers your questions. Or if it’s just hey, you got to interview this person, he or she would be great for the show. And they have an interesting story. We are always open to that. So send us a drop us a message either on our Facebook page, or on our website, which is keeping it real pod.com. Today on the show, we have Mike open, which this is one of my favorite interviews that we’ve done this year because Mike is a disruptor in the real estate industry. And he’s going to talk about how he’s doing that in his own way. So enjoy the show. Tell a friend and thanks for listening.

Today on keeping it real. We have Mike opet, Mike graduated college and after two years of corporate America he quit without having a job to move to. And after a phone call from his cousin he was hooked and started in real estate just as the market crashed perfect timing. For the first few years. He did not do a lot of business. But what he did instead is immersed himself in all the things real estate and was determined to know more than everyone else. And I personally also think that is an awesome, awesome goal. After surviving the crash and working for a few different companies, his partner, and Mike opened up his own firm which is now called REMAX next and they’re in the West Loop. Their goal is truly putting agents first and allowing them to design their business as they want without the limitations of other outdated brokerages. Thanks, Mike for being on the show.

Mike Opyd 3:03
Thank you, AJ happy to be here, man.

D.J. Paris 3:05
Awesome. Well, I would love to hear about the you getting into the business right at the probably the most challenging time in recent history, and sort of how you weathered that storm and also how you learn so much along the way.

Mike Opyd 3:20
Yeah, so you know, when I graduated college, I had a finance and then a master and a degree in management. And I wanted to jump into finance that I would take over, you know that world quickly realize sitting in a desk staring Excel spreadsheets, doing partnership, tax accounting, which is just as sexy as it sounds, was not for me. I stuck it out for two years. And then I just basically just quit without actually a job to come back to. So started looking for a job couldn’t find one. The economy was pretty much in the tanks, or getting the tanks to that point. It really was just a call to my cousin who’s been a top real inner city for a long time. And I was just really asking questions about investing in real estate. I mean, I had no money I saved up a little bit, but was in no position here to invest in it, but just was curious, you know, just from the finance standpoint, really was about a 30 minute phone call. And when I hung up, I was absolutely hooked. I just I saw real estate is something that I think I could take my energies and my inability to sit still and kind of target or focus everything I had into it. So I went out, got my license a couple of weeks later and started off with my cousin as part of her team started doing that for a number of years. Then I end up separating to go off and do my own thing. At this point, you know as part of the team we had switched from Keller Williams to dream town. So then at that point, I was on the Young Professionals Network board at the Chicago Association Realtors I met another person who was starting up a group during that time. So I worked for him for a couple years, about four years. And at that point, it’s you know, it’s always kind of been my goal, to separate and do my own thing and start my own company. And it just so happens as I was nearing the end of my time work. And there, I was kind of gearing up of how I can do that. separated from the group started actually creating my own company. I had the LLC done, the website was getting work done. So all those things were coming into place. And then my partner came up to me and and want to just grab lunch. And little did I know that he was going to introduce me to REMAX. And, you know, my mindset was always that I just when I did my research on all these companies, whether I was going to work for one, or maybe even consider buying one, I just never found one that I really thought was going to fit the profile that I really wanted at a company where we’re allowed to do our own branding or marketing and really customize it so agents can, we could center on just helping agents out, never considered REMAX my partner told me about it, I thought it was too good to be true. Went up to meet with the corporate people, they further emphasized exactly the same thing my partner told me, and a couple months later, we had a franchise and officially opened up last July in the West Loop.

D.J. Paris 6:26
Congratulations. That’s a That’s That’s fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, and let’s let’s get right into, you know, sort of what your vision is for for your firm. Because you you were you have a very specific sort of feelings about agent training and, and sort of what you’re providing. And I’d love to hear sort of, you know, the frustrations that maybe you’ve had seeing other firms out there and sort of your solution and what what you guys are doing differently because I love firms that are sort of disrupting the industry with just better offerings.

Mike Opyd 7:03
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s actually one of our favorite words to use is to disruption. You know, when I was doing my research, what I found is these brokerages were still living in the era of the 80s and 90s, where no, the Internet didn’t really exist, people would have to have a big brokerage name to work for, because that’s what the consumers want. And that’s what the sellers and buyers were looking for is, you know, the big name real estate companies, people would walk into an office and look at a book that had all the MLS listings of what was available. But you know, times have changed. And now we have the Zillow, the realtor.com, you know the MLS is online. And I think 93% of consumers start their search online. Yeah, but in my but from what I’ve seen, is that these brokers are still living in an era that defined by people walking into an office and needing that big name, to attract agents, and they’re still treating the agents like that big name is a reason why their work in there. And they’re going to they’re going to kind of pay them accordingly or allow them to market accordingly. I’ve never agreed with that. And so one of the things my brokerage is what we’re doing is we’re really giving agents an opportunity to one choose their own commission split, which we have a number of options, and an agent literally decides which one they want to go with which, you know, whatever one they’re going to be more comfortable with, which is unheard of for any brokerage that at least I know all day allows an agent to decide that.

D.J. Paris 8:42
Right? There’s firms typically have depending on your production, you may have some negotiation power, but it’s it’s Hey, we’re willing to offer you this, Hey, can you bump it up a little bit? Maybe a few percentage points here and there. But yes, it is. It is not a choose your own adventure sort of scenario.

Mike Opyd 8:59
No. And you know, what I spoke to if we never did was for 10 years, I spoke to a lot of agents that I know some really close friends and it really hit home for me when one of my good buddies has worked at a company for a while. You know, he’s a loyal guy, not a not a major producer, right? He’s probably been there for 10 years does five, 6 million, you know, pretty decent amount of business over the course of the life. He’s been there and he wants to speak to the owner and ask him like, hey, you know, I’ve been here for a while, can I bump my commission up? He got a 2% on. And I’m just like, it may like dead like, you know, pissed me off. I just I could not believe that. And I know the owner of that company, and I was just like, you gotta be kidding me. So loyal client or loyal, essentially a loyal client because that’s exactly who that person is. Right? It’s been to that owner. That’s right. So things like that had pissed me off and I just I see it over and over my partner dealt with it with his old company that he worked for, and he was he’s, you know, a major producer and he went to negotiate his commission split and you know, he’s doing 20 or 30 million they told him he was there long enough to get a higher split ever. Right? Right? Like, you gotta be kidding me, this guy is literally keeping your lights on and eating your pocket. So one of the things we designed is our business around the structure that an agent can take their own commission, something they’re comfortable with. And then they can start to build their business that way, you know, take that extra commission put it into their marketing or their advertising or whatever it is. So that was one of the main things that we focus on. And then the second thing that really ticked us off is, you know, if you drive around Chicago, and you see these signs that agents put up when they have a listing, you know, that brokerage name is plastered all over that sign.

D.J. Paris 10:46
And that’s correct, great advertising for the firm, or the firm.

Mike Opyd 10:49
But the reality is, the firm doesn’t have any relationship with that seller, zero, you know, I can go to an owner and be like, Hey, do you know my seller on 123 Main Street? And they’re gonna be like, No, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Well, then my next question is why the hell is your information all over to sign and mine isn’t? Right. So that’s one of the things that pissed us off too, is that these these brokerages are using you as an advertisement for them when they have no relationship with that seller, or even the buyer if it’s other type of marketing. So we allow these people to design their own marketing 100, like pretty much however they want it is what they do within obviously, legal boundaries. But we’d like to say that, you know, if you’re putting a sign up, you’re 95%, that sign is your face, your image, your whatever, if you’ve a group, your group logo, your information, We’re the 5%, that’s down here at the bottom left hand side, that we’re not going to really see as much as that agents information, then who do you think they’re gonna call, they’re gonna call that agent, they’re not going to call that brokerage that has the brokerages name on it. And number, they’re gonna call the agent, right? So that’s how we feel like agents should be able to grow their business, not because there’s some name behind it, because those times have passed, but I don’t feel these brokerages have really changed their model. And it’s the same over and over. And we’re just really tired of that. So we took kind of some of the pain points that we’ve experienced, and like how do we build a business around really just helping an agent grow themselves and their company, because that’s essentially what they are, they’re their own company.

D.J. Paris 12:25
Right. And boy, you just You said so, so much that that is I agree with and I work at a firm has a very similar philosophy with respect to advertising, it’s like, this is your brand. And ultimately, and ultimately, as a firm, because I’m in the back office, I’m not out there in the field. You know, we don’t want we don’t want the phone calls anyway. Right. And I because those should go directly to the to the listing agent, obviously. And also, the most important thing is, is buyers, they don’t care to see our brand, our brand logo up there either. Like it doesn’t matter to them, they just want to see who do I contact to get more information about this listing. And obviously, we don’t want those phone calls to begin with. But the broker doesn’t want us to have those phone calls either. And so I think that is such an important and well set point. And it’s so funny because the the the firm’s that we’re sort of referencing who do take what we I think we would, we would both you and I would agree or probably more of an agent’s commission than they ought to, are able to justify or one of the ways that they justify it is by saying, hey, our name is really important, and it’s out there and you can see it everywhere. I’m not so sure that I agree that that’s all that important to a consumer and I think you obviously feel the same way. As you know, you put your your company name, which you’re required to have for IDF PR, but you know, just doesn’t say how big it needs to be. And you just kind of hide it away in the corner. Because obviously it defeats the whole purpose for the broker so that I could not agree more with everything you just said, I’m so glad you know, there’s other people out there thinking the same way. Let’s and you know, it’s kind of ironic, too, because, you know, you have all these progressive thoughts and you literally joined the largest real estate company in the world, but they just happen to also be incredibly flexible, you know, with their commission structures. And you know, I know different REMAX offices are structured differently, but it’s sort of a funny thing that just happens to be the biggest one has the most flexibility.

Mike Opyd 14:26
Yeah, and that’s I mean, it was crazy when I started hearing about REMAX because like I said it wasn’t so there’s not a huge presence of REMAX in the city. They’re typically in the suburbs. So it really wasn’t even on my radar when I was looking at other companies. But what I really enjoyed about them is they is that they allow us to create our own brand, right so sure never see like a Coldwell Banker next Keller Williams next, right? They’re not allowed to do that. But we can take a REMAX name which like you said biggest real estate across the entire world. And we could put our branding our logo on it. And then we can use that to you know, brand ourselves however we see fit, you know, we, we have some pretty aspiration pretty big aspirations and goals that this isn’t just going to be a real estate company, we’re going to have multiple different companies. And we could take that next and really use it in a bunch of different ways. Like if we want to start our own janitorial company. I mean, we could just call it janitorial, you know. So those are the things that we were really looking forward to. And when we when we learned that REMAX really is independently owned and operated, and we can make all our own decisions, and, and really create a company based about our passions and our goals. And our vision, it was like a no brainer, you know, we have all that support behind us have the biggest name and all the relationships they’ve built since the 70s When I started, but we can make it our own. And so when we found out that when I found out all this stuff, it was for me is a no brainer to buy a REMAX franchise is like, Well, why would I waste all my time and trying to build relationships? And, you know, and try to find all these people to help my office out when all this stuff is set up for me already. I just gotta pay for it. You know, it’s, it was kind of it was really just like the easiest decision ever at that point.

D.J. Paris 16:21
That’s, that’s awesome. And I think a lot of firms and it must know this, but like your friend, the example you mentioned of your friend who moderate producer asking for an increase in his commission split, and having them say, No thanks. And, you know, they would have to know, and I know, his production level isn’t enough for them to care that much. However, it’s free money for them. And you would think that, obviously, they must know he could leave and go to any other firm who you know, is willing to better that commission split, and every single one of his clients is gonna go right with Him. In fact, he could go to a firm with even the world’s worst reputation, you know, and probably still bring every single client over. And I always marvel at firms. And maybe they just it’s maybe the numbers aren’t big enough to where they care. But I have always found that to be so puzzling. But, you know, I guess you’re right, there is the bit of a kool aid that is still drink today about the brand that you know, the firm that you work at is, you know, they probably think they’re a bit more important to the brokers business than maybe they actually are, at least I would I think you and I both agree that’s probably true. If you’re not getting a tremendous amount of value, you know, for paying for that for that. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, your process of how you guys bring on brokers and what you look for, and, and you know, that and sort of how you treat brokers once they’re on board.

Mike Opyd 17:50
Yeah, so we so that’s one of the things we set up from day one was kind of like an onboarding system to help them out. Because we know the transition is never easy from one brokerage to the other. So, you know, we’re out there, and we’re talking to agents, and we’re explaining to him our concept and who we are showing them our office and things like that, you know, we’re really looking for personal agents that are, can see the vision, I guess you could say, you know, so you know, really the people that I think have been in industry for 4050 years, and maybe they’re just comfortable with the company they’re at, they’re they’re a little bit older, they will get this and we’ve seen that experience, as we brought agents through who are curious about what we had to offer, kind of the older clientele, they just it was to them, they were just they just didn’t really see it as much as we saw it. So we’ve had younger agents come through and the millennial generation is a very entrepreneurial generation. You know, I am a millennial, so one of the first millennials, as you say, I’m not born early 80s. So I can’t say I’m part of the middle of that generation, but I know enough to be dangerous. And I see how we operate. And, you know, because there’s so much material agents are going to want that are joining the industry are going to want that flexibility that these companies have because that’s how our mind test them. So for us, we’re really a brokerage that is going to be really appealing for agents that are maybe a year into the business couple of years on a business doing one to 5 million in production, have kind of seen the industry a little bit learned about it learned or companies heard about other companies, and then they could use us as a comparison of how we are so different than anything that’s out there. So that’s one of the things when it comes to like you know, bringing agents on board and recruiting I guess what I think is gonna be the best for us and what we can offer the most benefits to and then when we get them in the door, we have like I said a whole onboarding system so we sit them down. We get all set up with all the REMAX stuff and everything and REMAX offers their own website, you know, applications, different things like that. So we get them all set up, we get their heads shots done, we pay for them, we get them their own business cards, we pay for that we have them then sit with our marketing director. And she will design whatever they want, whether it’s postcards, mailers, group logos, whatever they can envision, our graphic designer slash marketing director will help them out with, you know, so for us, the the idea is the first you know, let’s say, two weeks or 30 days is to really, really ramp up that business, from what they were doing before and maybe trying to correct some of the errors that are making, you know, we have a bunch of partnerships in place to that can really help them with their marketing, whether it’s sending out postcards for free or, or helping them get exposure in different ways running Facebook ads, different things like that. We’ve created those partnerships with the people that are working with our office to help our agents out. So, you know, one of the biggest focus too is, you know, how do we take these guys or girls who are erzeugen men or women who are, you know, maybe making 2 million or doing 2 million in production, how do we get down to 468 10, you know, if that’s where they want to go, and we try to put these relationships and play so they can, you know, kind of take the money that they’re making, put it back in their business, and at the same time, have all these free things, to supplement them to really grow and build upon what they want to do. top of it. I’m, I’m obsessed with helping agents, I think that’s my biggest passion really, is helping people. So I you know, I mentor a bunch of agents in the office already. And I, that’s one of the things I’m passionate about is you know, if someone needs mentoring, or just need someone to to keep me on track or keep them liable, you know, that’s the type of thing that we want to help them out with as well. So it’s kind of a mouthful, but those are some of the things we’re doing to help our agents.

D.J. Paris 21:53
Yeah, no, that all makes perfect sense. And I think it’s, it’s smart. And it’s, it’s, you know, the idea that you have a marketing. So I’m the marketing person for our firm, but I don’t, I can help people design things, but I don’t specifically do a ton of that. And I think the fact that you guys have that is so important for somebody who’s, you know, in that one to 5 million range, because they probably haven’t designed their own stuff yet. And or if they have it probably could be improved upon. And to be able to offer that as a service when somebody is on board, I think is I’ve never heard of another from doing that. Let’s just put it that way. I think that in and of itself is revolutionary, but I also think it’s a really good idea. So we need to yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s awesome. What I wanted to also ask, is I wanted to make make, just make a reference back to a point you made a few moments or minutes ago. And this is something where if you’re, you know, if you’re at a firm or if you have your own firm, or if it’s just you on your own, and you’re your own managing broker, and or you’re starting out in the industry, and you don’t have the financial resources to do some of the external marketing activities. Like for example, if you wanted to do a mailer, but couldn’t afford it, or, or flyers, or that sort of thing. You know, Mike just brought up something very important, which is, you know, relationships and his firm has built relationships where some of their partners can assist with, you know, the payment. And, you know, you can also build those relationships, some of those as well. So I always think that brokers sometimes miss the bigger picture, like you can reach out to lenders, you’ve worked with attorneys you’ve worked with and said, Hey, can we do a co marketing effort, and oftentimes those lenders and, and various ancillary services to real estate, realtors are more than happy to do that, you know, we’re in the process of getting advertisers for the show. And, you know, we have 1000s of listeners. Now, almost, we assume everyone is a broker. I don’t know, almost everyone’s a broker, for sure. But um, you know, we’re now reaching out going, Hey, do you want to advertise on our show? And, you know, we’re starting to get a good response to that. But that’s, that’s what Mike’s team sort of does for us. They reach out they have partnerships, relationships with vendors, and they’re able to assist and I think that’s, a lot of times brokers don’t need don’t in their firms certainly aren’t maybe offering that too. But brokers themselves don’t always think to do that. So I think that’s really smart. Absolutely. I wanted to ask you just because you wrote us a couple of funny things. I wanted to hear about the time you had seven Starbucks meetings in one day.

Mike Opyd 24:29
Yeah, that was probably the most caffeine and humans ever consumed in a lifetime. It was just happened to be this one day, and I didn’t realize it, but I had a bunch of different meetings set up for different things with partners, buyers, sellers, and a couple of just agent meetings set up. And I saw I didn’t realize that at the time, but I end up setting up seven meetings at Starbucks. And it just so happens that every single time I went every single meeting I had there were a different Starbucks’s. So I was all over the place but every single one I went to the person bought me a coffee there for me and I’m I love the taste of coffee. I’m obsessed with it. I have some next to me right now, for some reason, it’s just one of those things I just love. So I’m not going to turn down a free coffee. I would say by the time I got done with seven coffees that day, I was shaking. I was I realize what’s going on. Like my wife was asked me like, what’s wrong with you? I couldn’t sit still. I went out and I actually bought a fidget spinner. And I’m sitting there on our couch and I’m just sitting there shaking spinning this thing. And it got to the point my wife thought that they’re like I was having a seizure or something like that. So I was like shaking so much and spinning this thing. And my knees were bouncing and I mean, I probably got about two hours of sleep that night. I just couldn’t fall asleep. I kept getting up I kept going out and like reading and math was I don’t know it was just way way way too much caffeine for 124 hour window I highly suggest never doing that.

D.J. Paris 26:07
Yes, it’s funny I don’t drink coffee. So whenever I I mean I do I do a regular episode once a month with Carrie McCormack who’s a properties broker and we do a fun a fun episode and she she and I have met at Starbucks because she prefers to meet there and I don’t drink coffee but she’ll buy me a coffee or I figured while I’m there I might as well get one and I don’t drink a ton of caffeine and so that I always end up the same way and I gosh, I can’t imagine doing seven of those in one in one day. Yeah, and I want I want to make sure we we plug your your office and so if there are brokers out there listing that are interested in learning more about REMAX next, I know they can visit their website which is REMAX next.com What can they Is there a way they can get in touch with you directly?

Mike Opyd 26:58
Yeah, I’m always available. So easiest, probably either shoot me an email Mike at REMAX next.com Or just give me a shout on my cell phone or text me whatever is easiest. 312-929-8910 Of course, also Facebook, I’m all over social media. So reach out to me, you know, if you have questions, happy to answer anything, explain more of what we’re trying to do here. Very, very easy to get a hold of though. Well,

D.J. Paris 27:27
yeah. And definitely, you know, reach out to Mike because I really love firms like Mike’s who are, you know, disrupting the industry and and really providing it, which I what I hear and what Mike has been saying, from the beginning is just offering more value, you know, and, and offering a the commission structure that makes sense for the broker. But you know, what I what I don’t hear Mike saying in any any sense of the word is, you know how much he wants to earn, off off of his brokers he wants to help he wants to provide for them and let them you know, take the lion’s share, which I think is is commendable. Certainly I’m on board with with those sorts of values. And I think as you’re right, as far as who this appeals do, I think it appeals to a lot of people in particular, you know, younger brokers who aren’t so much sold on the fact that the brand is worth 50% of someone’s income, right? Or maybe it is, but I don’t know, I think a lot of people would would challenge that. So firms like Mike are out there to say, Yeah, let’s challenge that.

Mike Opyd 28:30
To further emphasize really quick, what you were just saying, so my partner and I just throw it out there, we don’t take a dime out of this company. And we’re not planning to for a while. So, you know, for us, we’re putting every single thing, every single dime the company makes back into the company and into our agents until at some point, we could step away and start, you know, earning an income off it. But we’re talking two years down the line before we ever do that. So we’re still gonna sell in the meantime to pay our own bills. But, you know, we’re not taking a dime out of this company at all for a while. Well,

D.J. Paris 29:03
I don’t know how many firms can say that they’re doing that. And I would say that is a really important point is would you like to work for a firm who says we’re going to reinvest everything in better off better offerings to our brokers and being able to provide better and better services. So well, well done. I think that is quite commendable and, and very forward thinking. So congrats there. All right, Mike. Well, we appreciate you taking time out of your busy day to be on the show. So Mike, by the way, I would like to mention since we Mike is a very humble person. He is also a top producer. So this is he is also on top of this, you know, doing his own production and he’s incredibly successful there too. So the fact that you’re doing both of this and had time to be on our show is is really something so we appreciate it.

Mike Opyd 29:44
Alright man. Thanks for having me.

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