Welcome to another episode of Coaching Moments With Ryan D’Aprile from D’Aprile Properties!
Ryan D’Aprile introduces his colleague Peter Moulton to help explain current trends in real estate market, both national and local. He also discusses how covid19 has affected real estate markets. Peter also shares the sources he uses to educate himself on the market and stresses the importance of this knowledge. Next, Ryan focuses on mindset, how to prevent burnout and how you can replenish yourself. Last, Ryan advises everyone to be grateful of what you’ve accomplished over this challenging year.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.590.6416 and ryan@daprileproperties.com.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. Today is our monthly coaching moments episode with Ryan de April. Now if you’re not familiar with Ryan, or if you’re new to listening to our podcast, Ryan comes on every single month to provide our listeners and our viewers a coaching moment and a coaching session. So let me tell you a little bit about Ryan. Now Ryan April is a progressive thought leader focused on providing for his agents and his staff at the April properties. His strengths are his motivational skills, his coaching style and his dedication to training. He has 14 offices throughout Chicagoland. Also he has offices in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan with hundreds and hundreds of top producers. Now Jay Paul properties is a coaching company with eight strategic coaches who work week in and week out with every agent individually focused on business planning, coaching and accountability. Now, if you’d like to take your career to the next level, or if you’re just not getting the attention you need at the current firm you’re at check out Jaipur properties, visit them at D April properties.com. That’s D a PR, I’m sorry, D AP R i l e properties.com. And one more thing before we bring on Ryan, we have a special guest as well on the show. But before we introduce our guests, for it to open the mics, I want to give you guys some exciting news. The Chicago Tribune just a few days ago, named both our companies Ryan’s and the company I worked for as a top workplace in the Chicagoland area, we were both in the mid size company category. And I think there was maybe only one or two other real estate companies honored. So cheers to both kale Realty, which is our company and D APR properties for making this list. And just to let everyone know what this list is for, and what it means any company across all industries can apply here in Chicago to be part of this. And then what happens is an anonymous survey goes out to every single person that works at that company, and those employees rank you and they just take basically take the highest scores and honor those firms. So this is a very, very big deal and a well earned win. And it really goes to show you the kind of company that Ryan and his team have created. So again, if you are looking for another firm to to consider, you know, deeper properties is obviously a good firm voted on as one of the best companies in all of Chicago. So, once again, Ryan, welcome to the show.
Ryan D’Aprile 3:12
Thanks, TJ. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. It’s always a pleasure to come here and sit with you and to brainstorm in mind share.
D.J. Paris 3:21
Yeah, it’s definitely fun. I’m doing this for everyone watching, they’re gonna see a different background. I’m not in the office, because I might I might be quarantining for the next two weeks, I believe I’m okay. But my girlfriend who actually works at April properties or herself, her might have been exposed to somebody in her building. So we are taking the proper precautions and quarantining until we get tested. So for those of you looking around, this is a this is my apartment and Ryan is in is in Indiana, I believe.
Ryan D’Aprile 3:51
Yeah, we’re in our office in Indiana. This is a beautiful office, we service the we serve the the year round and the lake home markets here in Indiana and Michigan and Long Beach and Beachwalk and new buffalo, Michigan. And Peter and I are out here and we’re we’re doing some coaching and some meetings of agents out this way. And Pete walked past me and I said, Pete, come join me on the podcast in 20 minutes. So I sprang last minute but you know, we had a we had Lindsay Miller on as a guest last time. And that went well. And right when I saw you, Peter said, Why don’t you he adds so much value to our organization, and work so closely with our agents. So I wanted to share a little bit of Pete with the rest of the real estate community here. So thanks for having me on TJ and Thanks, Peter for being here.
Peter Moulton 4:43
My pleasure.
D.J. Paris 4:44
Yeah, welcome to the show. Ryan, tell us a little bit about Peter. What he does it at D APR.
Ryan D’Aprile 4:50
Sure. Peter is our Director of agent services. Peter’s been in the business for a long time Pete works with our corporate staff as well as our agents. works with our coaches, our VP of sales, etc. And really just kind of helps us refine the company’s process the agents process in terms of articulating your value, knowing your market statistics, focusing primarily on skill set, understanding, you know, anything from your list price, the sale price equation to time at market to if it’s a buyers market, if it’s a seller’s market, your your price comparison, I’m sorry, Marian echo over here. Maybe Peter, I’m hearing you and the other office? Could be Yeah,
D.J. Paris 5:42
I’m gonna mute you just for a quick second. So we don’t get that would pull you back on.
Ryan D’Aprile 5:48
Yeah, so So that’s, that’s what Peter does. And he’s a, a valuable resource for our organization, our agents adore Him, they love working with him, we do something on a quarterly basis where we send out to our, our agents, their market statistics, and, and, and we talked about the good and the bad for them. And so we can help improve the good. We also put into promotional marketing to help them promote. And the bad I shouldn’t say the bad, but hey, here’s some areas of improvement you can use. And Peter has helped us implement that as well. So he does a lot of things in our company.
D.J. Paris 6:25
Welcome. Well, welcome, Pete, we’re excited to have you still muted for the moment, we’re going to unmute you here here in a sec. And I was talking to Ryan, just before we went on. And today, if you’re watching this live, you know, of course, today is the day after the election where lots or lots is going on in the news. You know, the news cycle is really spinning, of course, because we’re not at this moment of recording, we’re not sure who our next president is going to be just yet. And we’re now at least I have been in I’m not somebody who watches the news 24/7. I’ve been watching updates every five minutes. In the various websites, I go just because I’m curious. And what I’m not doing is working on my business. And I hate to admit that, because I wish that wasn’t the case. I wish I was able to say I will check back in one time later tonight for a few minutes. And then I’ll go back to work. But I haven’t been and I imagine there’s a lot of us who are caught up in in the news of the moment. And I think what we’re doing today is really important because we’re going to not talk about the election, we’re going to talk about getting back and focusing on your business and and some of the things that you can be doing. So if you’re caught up in the news cycle at the moment, great time to pause, relax, and learn something to help grow your career a bit better.
Ryan D’Aprile 7:36
Yeah. And I applaud you for being on and and you know, I DGM, I told us to you, I might have said this before, I said probably a million times in 2008. Right around there, I turned the news off. And I really have not tuned back in I tuned in last night, this morning driving in, I turned on news on the radio, which I never do. And within five minutes, I gotta turn this off. I haven’t seen it since I feel so much better. I have some exercises and things we’ll talk about. And I’ll do it in the second half, I think of our session here today. But or maybe it might be good to talk about it first, you gotta get refreshed now we get into skill set. But yeah, it’s it’s crazy time, then, you know, it’s also very entertaining. And oh, sure. So it’s like, it’s like watching the Super Bowl, you know, election night, and it’s fine. But at some point, you know, we all need to turn it off. And I just want all the listeners here to understand is that the news is always overwhelming. Ly negative, and you get out of life, what you look for good or bad. And so I have three daughters, and I preach to them. There’s a reason why I don’t watch the news. And so grateful for the life that I have the family that I have the country that I live in. And the best way to become ungrateful for those things become miserable, is to become a news junkie. It is it is designed to scare you, and is designed to keep you hooked. And it’s just a nasty, nasty habit. It can be comfortable. But if you’re looking to grow as a human being you’re looking to expand, you’re looking to expand your business, the best thing you can do I did in 2008 because we were coming to the Great Recession. i The Wi Fi three girls still have now and and I had to go survival mode. And so I became acutely aware of my mindset. I turn off the news, I turned out to be one of the most ignorant people for the past, you know, 10 years or so. But it’s It’s okay. I you know, I there’s a lot of things that are going on that I’m not aware of, but I’ll take what I got over that.
D.J. Paris 9:45
Yeah, I agree. I mean, I know for me, I limit myself because there’s it’s unlimited news. It’s it’s designed to arouse and inflame the senses because that’s what you know, we know increases To addictiveness, and so it’s not, it’s one of those things that’s designed to just just like social media has a certain similar design, it’s designed to entertain you and keep you hooked, and keep that dopamine flowing so that it is feel the need to move. Because you feel like you’re doing something, you know, and
Ryan D’Aprile 10:17
really don’t watch the news at all. And so, last night, and the day before, we’re coming down, like, Alright, I’m gonna start and I started playing a game with my wife, right? So come home, have a drink. And I’m like, let’s see what’s going on. And I said to her, let’s go between the networks. And I went between, you know, MSNBC, to Fox News to CNN. And this is what I’ve been doing. For the past few days. Well, last night, the night before, and I’m done now. And I’m telling you, it’s not news. It is from both sides. It’s propaganda. It is there’s just it’s not reporting. It’s, it is and of course, it’s politics. But it’s even the new stages, like, what is going on is so obvious from everybody. I’m like, Addison bullshit, I’m turning it off. Yeah,
D.J. Paris 11:09
it’s definitely a good idea. And for those of us that are, where most of our listeners or viewers are probably caught up in it today, we understand that but really think about how much time you spend, being entertained, versus going out and doing things that you know, could help your your, your, your community, your family, your friends, as well as your business. So we’re gonna be talking about the the right mindset to get into today to be able to turn off the news when you want to, and be able to move forward in life.
Ryan D’Aprile 11:39
So let’s, let’s let’s segue into skill settings. Okay. Sure. And, Pete, I’m gonna hand it off to him and ask a couple of questions. And I’m gonna hand it off to you. And again, Peter, I know that that just really put you on the spot last minute here, but you’re so skilled at what you do. Let’s let’s talk about locally what’s going on here in Chicagoland and, and with the pandemic, and the elections, etc. Real estate is hyperlocal. Correct, Peter, totally agree. Yes. So tell us what’s going on in the marketplace and as real estate agents in Chicagoland for the Chicagoland listeners here. What can they be looking for in the different markets? And then once you’re done with that, for the real estate agents across the country that are listening, we’re places that they could find this information. So one once you take it from there, Peter,
Peter Moulton 12:33
thank you. So it’s really interesting. We’ve entered into the the new year in 2020, with a very fast paced market, and acceleration began to happen in the spring. And we all felt very optimistic about the market. And what’s interesting is that Coronavirus, did two things, it really put the brakes on the market itself on a national scale when we went into lockdown, but simultaneously, what it did was it created accelerated demand. And it’s been a really interesting experience in that we have nationally, we have 23% More showings than we did in 2019. We have 21%, less inventory. Right. So the law of supply and demand really clearly dictates upward pressure on pricing. And that we’ve seen that really accelerate, especially in the suburban markets.
D.J. Paris 13:41
Is this Pete? Just to to question sort of why this might be happening? Is this a confluence of people being cooped up and maybe feeling like they need more space, interest rate or lending rates being so incredibly low? And, you know, anything else? And anything else contributing that you see?
Peter Moulton 14:01
So I think I think exactly what you said, I think that we’ve seen the perfect storm from a consumer standpoint. And so the low interest rates, the historically low interest rates and the pressure, the downward pressure on interest rates, is going to maintain through at least the spring, and it’s going to maintain demand demand is going to remain high through this spring. Buyers, not a ton of inventory. Correct. And we’re gonna we’re gonna continue continue to see that scenario. The other thing that it’s done Coronavirus itself, put a really strong focus on housing and how we live. So put a very strong focus on home and defining what home is. And I think when people sat in their house for 90 days, they really became conscious of how they live. Yeah. And it’s really created a scenario where people are are engaged in the real estate market like they’ve never been before. And there’s a huge amount of pent up demand.
D.J. Paris 15:08
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I know for me, I’m in the process of closing on a larger place that I wasn’t planning on doing prior to the pandemic. But you’re right, I became more acutely aware of my physical surroundings, I was stuck here in my, in this apartment, and thinking, you know, I think I’d like some some more space. And I had more time to be searching as well, because I was, you know, not traveling to and from work. And I was just able to save some some additional time. So it was I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, I am a perfect example of somebody who started feeling this is a little too small and and started looking and found a place pretty quickly.
Peter Moulton 15:47
So there’s been a paradigm shift in how we define work. Yeah. So the paradigm shift is, we, for many, many people, they’ve been able to remove their commute. Yes, and are working remotely. And so that also affects your vision of home, and how you can focus and be productive within your home.
D.J. Paris 16:13
Yeah, Manos peep, most people are probably now thinking of upsizing, we’re seeing a flight here in the city, out to the suburbs, here in Chicago Metro. Because there’s more space, you can, you can, you know, your dollar may stretch a bit further. And, and it’s just a lot quieter. And if you’re going to be spending a lot of time, at home in the foreseeable future, assuming you don’t return to a an office scenario, the home has become a lot more important than I think it ever was before. Yeah.
Ryan D’Aprile 16:45
And, you know, for the, you know, for the listeners here, and as you know, the the segment is called coaching moments. I’m going to ask Peter here, the data that you just gave to us, because for the real estate agents listening, the experience tenure, the new agents, they always have to be sharpening your skill set to be adding value to their network, who are they going to be their clients? And so one thing is that was Pete’s national, then we’re going to come down, and we’re talk, how real estate’s hyperlocal. And I’ll ask you some information on that. But before we get that, for the benefit of the listeners, Peter, where would they find data like this? Where can they go out and educate themselves? You sounded so you know, brilliant, and what you said and and, you know, if I were buying and selling a home, and you were to speak to me like that, you’d be my real estate agent. And so we want to help the listeners, where do they find data like this? Where did you go out and research that data to just educate DJ on that?
Peter Moulton 17:54
Sure. So there’s several sources that I go to on a daily basis. One of the things that I do is I read CNBC has real estate section of their website on a daily basis, because they give great updates on mortgage, the real estate market, etc. And it’s pretty comprehensive. The Wall Street Journal also has a great real estate section, which I access on a daily basis. Crain’s Chicago Business, Denis Rodkin is the IS is an amazing reporter who covers the city of Chicago, I pay attention to Crain’s Chicago Business, there’s also a product for real estate agents that I think is really powerful. And it’s called Keeping Current Matters. And you’d go to keeping current matters.com. And there’s a monthly report that’s released on the 10th of the month. That covers the national real estate market. And gives you resources to be educated. And I think that that’s hugely important. One of the things that we really try to manifest at the APR properties is the most highly educated agent, so that they can go and articulate market scenarios, and they can articulate their personal value. And one of the things that our agents are taught to do is how to monetize their value for the consumer. And once you do that, you win in every situation. If I asked you what your job description is, and you were able to nail it, and then monetize your value, that is a really powerful stance.
D.J. Paris 19:29
Um, yeah, I agree. It’s, it’s, it’s an amazing, it’s an amazing, important thing to note in that you always want to know more than your client. And you don’t have to know 1000 times more information than your client, but you have to know more than they know. And some of these sources that Pete was mentioning, of course, most of them are available to anyone. So you have to be reading what your clients read number one, and then you have to even go beyond that so that you can give them information while you’re chatting with them. but they don’t already have,
Ryan D’Aprile 20:01
you know, DJ. Another thing is to add to what you just said. And what Peter said is, there’s a great author of quarter before Daniel Pink. And and he, in one of his books wrote about being the curator of knowledge. So, for example, Pete, how long does it take you to read those articles on a daily basis?
Peter Moulton 20:24
Oh, 3045 minutes.
Ryan D’Aprile 20:27
Okay, great. So 30 minutes your time, you could spend one two days a week, educating yourself. But the true value, you guys is being the curator of the knowledge because the knowledge is there. Anybody in the country in the world for that fact, can read what Peter read, what Peter did is he was the curator of the knowledge, and he brought it to us. So we live in the information age. So if you if you want to differentiate yourself, you have to be the curator of that information, and then be able to articulate to people and that takes practice and time. But you know, after enough time you do it. So Peter curates the knowledge for us as an organization, and then educates us in our agents, and then we go, and then we curate the knowledge for our clients. Okay, Peter, I’m going to switch on your hair now. All right, so you just gave us a national trend of what’s going on in the real estate. Let’s, let’s bring it down. And let’s talk regionally inherent Chicago, so the listeners that might be in Laguna Beach, or Nebraska, or wherever, you know, they gotta get down to their marketplace, what’s going on with our marketplace? And then, after you answer it, I’m going to have the follow up question for the listeners. Who are real estate agents. Where do you find that knowledge so so what’s going on here in our marketplace, Peter.
Peter Moulton 21:42
So there’s a lot of really interesting dynamics in play right now, in the Chicago real estate market. What we’re seeing right now, is the suburban and tertiary surrounding markets are exceptionally busy. They’re just exceptional demand. If you put a home on the market, and it’s compellingly priced in the suburban markets, under a million dollars, you are really going to have a huge flurry of activity. However, what we’re seeing in the city of Chicago proper in, let’s say, the loop, the South Loop, River North, the high density areas, we’re seeing what I would call a flight from density. And people are moving out of the densest parts of the city, and their inventory is growing, and buyer demand is going down in these particular areas. And so we are going to see a switch to a buyers market, which we have not necessarily seen from a consumer standpoint, since 2012. And it’s really what we need to pay attention to, is our ability to give correct information to the consumer. So that they understand the situation, because I was in the market all the way through the Great Recession. And I will tell you that it took 18 to 24 months for the seller psychology to catch up with the market. And people lost a lot of money because they weren’t able to react correctly. And I’m not saying that the world is going to cave in and the sky is falling. But what I am saying is that there’s a fundamental shift happening in the high density areas of the city. And people need to be realistic about it.
D.J. Paris 23:31
Well, I live in River North and I am staring out right now in these windows into the streets below. And I have noticed in the last six months, our own area there there’s there I’ve seen people moving out I haven’t seen a lot of people moving in. So that really speaks to to what Pete mentioned. And here in Chicago. It’s really neighborhood by neighborhood the further out you go you see a little bit more activity but but closest to the downtown. It’s it’s it’s it’s pretty it’s pretty tight right now there isn’t a whole lot of people moving in. So I imagine this is happening in a lot of metro areas all over the country.
Peter Moulton 24:07
Absolutely. And I think that there’s a fundamental plateauing of pricing happening in a lot of areas. And I think that as soon as the seller is able to catch up with this psychology, the better off they’re going to be. I do not see a drop off like we saw in the Great Recession. I don’t see that at all. But what I do see as a plateauing, I do you see some depreciation in some of the higher density areas but just as you said, if you go out to less dense areas, let’s let’s compare the loop to Lakeview. Lakeview is still hopping and it’s still really really busy. The loop is not so busy. It’s a different story.
Ryan D’Aprile 24:49
Um, so Peter, you know, I am a real estate agent in San Antonio, Texas. Where am I finding this data to look what’s going on in the greater San Antonio area? Yeah, then the suburbs of San Antonio, which I’ve been to one time. So I might bring up San Antonio, I have no idea. But I like high school high for the benefit of the listener here who’s tuning in to to sharpen up the skill set, we’re going to find that data.
Peter Moulton 25:14
So we’re fortunate in the Chicago metro area to have a great MLS that provides overall statistics. So there’s a product called info sparks, that is available to us through the MLS that gives overall market data. So one of the things that we pay very specific attention to at the APR is month supply of inventory in a specific market. And I will, I’ll go through it very quickly. So one to four months of inventory is a very solid seller’s market, between five and six months. There, it is a neutral market, there’s no advantage to the buyer or the seller. And anything above six months is very solidly a buyers market. And what we’re experiencing in high density areas right now we’ve seen inventory grow to 11 or 12 months worth of inventory. Now when you go into our the suburban markets, we’re experiencing from one to three months worth of inventory. So there’s a huge paradigm shift that’s happening. And it’s it’s been Coronavirus, has had an impact. The civil unrest has had an impact. I believe that the election to some degree has had an impact. But the market itself has remained very strong. And I think that’s driven largely to a shortage of inventory. And exceptionally low interest rates.
Ryan D’Aprile 26:48
For our listeners, you know, dive into your local MLS last year on the last dive into the tools. There are so many tools that are out there, they’re under utilized. And and I do want to give Peter kudos because he does a great job of making our company acutely aware of all these resources that are out there for you. Because you have to take time and you’ve got to work on your skill set. DJ, should we move over to mindset now or anything? Yeah,
D.J. Paris 27:14
I just I just have one thing to tag on before we do that, which is for all of our listeners, if you’re a member of a local association, if you have MLS access. You know, there’s various different software providers depending on what local association you belong to here in Chicago, the software we use is called M read. I don’t think it exists anywhere else in the country. So you probably have your own unique software. And when Pete was mentioning is m read is connected to this. This, this additional piece of software called info sparks, which provides great data, you may have something else called something different. But the way to find that out is call your whoever provides the software for your MLS. Here in Chicago, they we have what’s called the M read Help Desk. You can also call your local association and ask them, hey, where can I get statistics on on, you know, the area’s I that I serve, but call them and find out because there’s a good chance you might already have access to data like this right in your MLS and you might not even know it.
Ryan D’Aprile 28:11
You’re right. I mean, we are members of you know, we have Wisconsin we’re Metro I’m Alaska and kinara and Indiana and Michigan we have our you know our company has multiple MLS says that we’re members of because of our of our span and the for the different states that we’re in and whatnot. So yes, it it’s out there, Peter, is there anything else you want to to add to what we’re talking about with what’s going on in the current marketplace,
Peter Moulton 28:36
the only thing I would add to the conversation is what we’re going to begin to see again, which we saw in 2010 through 2014 is a flight to quality. And agents that are able to articulate their value and have a track record of success and are able to articulate it are going to win. And agents need to position themselves as the ultimate resource of valuable information because the value proposition of being a real estate agent has changed 1000 degrees since the year 2000. And as Ryan suggested, we’re the curators of information. And we are the ones that are the sort of the gatekeepers of what’s relevant. And if you can maintain relevance, you will get their business.
D.J. Paris 29:31
Yeah, I’ll I’ll finish by saying you know, Pete started off by saying, Ryan was saying, How much time do you spend getting this information that you’re able to relate to clients to let them know that you know, what’s going on in your local area and even nationwide as well. He said, Oh, I spent about 30 to 45 minutes a day. Imagine if you did that for even just one week, five days in a row just five days in a row. Imagine the amount of of knowledge you would have and then imagine doing that, you know 20 to 20 business days. A month, and then 12 months out of the year, if you just spent 15 minutes a day, if you don’t have 30 minutes do 15 minutes, you will within a year you will be an expert in your local market, and hopefully also have enough information to be able to talk, you know, in a more national sense, too, but you will be one of this one of the most knowledgeable realtors in your area because most realtors are not taking that time everyday to do it. And what we’re talking about as sharp, as Ryan said, and Pete have talked about sharpening that those tools you have to put the time in this is it might not feel like you’re growing your business. But boy, if you get in front of that big client, and you’re able to give them more information than the other three brokers that they’ve that they are interviewing, good chance they’re gonna go with the person they think knows the most.
Ryan D’Aprile 30:45
So let’s take this and you know, let’s make it a power packed podcast here. And let’s now switch over. And it’s got a mindset and let’s talk about burnout. Okay, DJ, sure. Get rid of burnout before. Oh, sure. Of course, we all burn out, right? And when we become successful, more stress comes from it. And what happens to people who are in a sales based high performing role is when you become stressful, you tend to self destruct. And if somebody says, Well, what does that mean, self destruct. So I’m gonna share two stories of two individuals in our organization that I was just coaching with and helping them with the burnout and what we do, and I have burnout. And so you got to understand if you’re a loan officer, if you’re a real estate agent, if you’re an insurance agent, if you’re a management consultant, and you have to generate the business, not administrative, but generated, a lot of stress comes with that. So you’ve got to have a way to center yourself, so you can be prepared to go back into it. Because the alternative isn’t that great. We can self destruct, but then we’re like, oh, shit, no, I’m starting all over. And I’ve seen so many people start all over again, I had, you know, one of our loan officers. You know, a young lady 28 years old, was coaching the other day. And, you know, we were having a great moment, you know, we were talking about burnout. And, um, you know, I asked her a few questions. And, you know, one of the questions was Insell, about money. Okay, I want the listeners understand this, but it’s finding, but I just want to kind of get to the point because we’re, we are high producers here. And this is what we’re here for. But, you know, I asked this 28 year old loan officers been doing this for years. What’s your income this year, said $188,000, I think is what I’ll end up at. And then I said, What was your income four years ago. And it was three, four different jobs, trying to make ends meet. Now, there’s a lot of stress in mortgage lending. You have buyer’s agents calling you you have sellers, agents calling you have buyers, attorneys calling you up sellers, attorneys calling you you’re waiting on the title company, you’re waiting on the attorney to get the docs who’s gonna blame you for not having to work with the attorney that say the document time, you got kind of questionnaires you got kind of DAX, it’s incredibly stressful, same in the real estate business. And so you have this moment where it’s like, holy shit, is this worth it? And the answer is, it is worth it. What are you doing to replenish your energy? You know, I’m here in our Indiana office, and another one of our real estate agents. I mean, this is a young man, he’s I think, 22 and he relocated from San Diego to Indiana. It didn’t know anybody. And you know, he’s, he’s just over $10 million in production this year. And he had no, he also is starting to invest in real estate. I’m really proud of this guy. And the building next door to his building, was on fire. And so he had a rundown in the fire department. I saw look on the kid’s face. And I did the same thing. I said, Where were you four years ago? And the reason I asked that is I’m trying to always help people bring gratitude, because we got riddled shit sandwiches every day, right? That’s why I don’t watch the news. I have enough drama in my life. I have enough. I have enough my own chaos that I have to do. But I’m in one of our core values, you know, it’s developing your own self and others. And I’ve got so many people in our company that have helped me and one of our agents. She’s, she’s, she she’ll do with that 37 million in production. She gave me a gift my birthday earlier this month, and it was gratitude book and a journal. And you know, I I did daily gratitudes and I journaled for about seven years. And the past three years I just have fallen off it and the other day If I was early in the morning, 530 in the morning, and I looked to my right, and there was a gratitude book is out and pick it up. And there was a great read. And I shared it with the company on our internal Facebook page. But I wrote three things down that I was grateful for.
God does it sound so cheesy and cliche and whatever you want to all the naysayers out there listening, holy shit, did it put me in the right mindset for the right for the rest of the day. And I tell you, I’ve been doing it every day. And I just feel so good, because I’ve got so much to be grateful for. And yeah, there was a time that I said, What am I doing? I sell a company, why am I dealing with this shit? I want to retreat. We all want to retreat. But what’s the alternative? I mean, I love what I do. I love the challenge. I love the purpose. There’s the frustrations, there’s the headaches, there’s the getting yelled at. There’s the goop doing the good deed and getting punished. You know, these cliches are they’re real, right? They’re cliches for a reason. No good. No good deed goes unpunished, but we’re good people would do good deeds, and we’re gonna get punished for it and so on so forth. But what’s the alternative? You know, we’re living fulfilled life. We’re living for personal, purposeful lives. We are working for ourselves. We’re creating something that nobody can take away from us. You know, we’ve we we’ve seen these, what do we quickly calm disruptors, right? For 20 years now trying to disrupt our business. Hey, guys, the only person who’s gonna disrupt your business is you. That’s it. The only person who’s gonna disrupt your business is you. We are like high performing athletes. What gets us there is our network, period. Nothing else? Sure, you might have one person who’s a, who’s a zillo freak, and another person whose Cancel for sale by owner champion. Cool, those are outliers. And they’re great night, and I applaud them. But the easy path, it takes a little bit of time. I mean, like a little bit time, like six months of discipline activities, is your network. And you have to do a daily routine of being in flow with your network. If there’s 200 people in your network, and there’s 20 working days, in a month, 20 working days, that 30 days, that 31 days, that 28 days, 20 working days, Monday through Friday, you divide that by the 200, that’s 10 Simple connections a day, it only takes an hour or less. Do you choose to do it or do you choose not to do it, and either you do it, or you don’t do it. And if you do it, and you do it consistently, you might not do it for five days. But if you do it for days of the week, some weeks you kill it, you do five some weeks, you don’t do school, good, you do too. But the next week, you jump back on you do a four, I’m telling you, your business is gonna grow year over year over year, you need the accountability partner, you need to coach you need somebody don’t go this, don’t go it alone. Because this is too hard to go along. The emotional intelligence, the the barrage, that everything that we have dealing with us, you need accountability partners, you need, you need a friend, you need somebody to lean on, you need the right tools, you need the right CRM to track your goals. You can’t go it alone, but But you got to you got to reset, and you really need to start your morning, every day, the right way. And look around. And even though if you’re going through the hardest time of your life, I bet you’re gonna be able to find three things that you could stop and be very grateful for write it down, it’ll put you in the right spot.
D.J. Paris 38:31
Yeah, and even if you’re in a really bad spot, even if you just say, Hey, I got another day, I woke up I was given another day today, that’s a big win. A lot of people aren’t going to get that. And I don’t mean to be morbid, but we you know, we not everyone wakes up every day. So we’re really lucky. So even if you just wake up and that’s all you can be grateful for, hey, that’s something and that’ll get you in the right direction.
Ryan D’Aprile 38:56
So that’s I think that’s all I have for my little segment on mindset and being grateful for this great business that we all have, whether we’re in the real estate, no mortgage lending, business, anything else DJ that you wanted to cover?
D.J. Paris 39:07
Not really I just wanted to give a suggestion Ryan had had mentioned aside from being you know, being grateful and you can find gratitude partners if this would be helpful for you. I know for me, I will often let myself off the hook. However, if I have an appointment with somebody who’s who’s relying upon me, I will never miss that appointment, which is why I have a personal trainer because I don’t go to the gym on my own but now that I I have personal trainer I’ve never once missed. So you can find gratitude partners. These I used to there are plenty of resources online just Google it it’s there’s lots of free places for people from all over the world that you can wake up every day and say we’re going to we’re going to share three things we’re grateful for. Sounds like a silly thing, but it actually works because it’ll get you to do it. If you’re like me, and you you know it’s helpful to have an accountability partner. The other thing I wanted to mention real quickly before we leave, Ryan talked to out your net worth being everything. And he talks about making those connections every day. And a lot of times you might be listening or watching and going, well, what is how do I do that? And I just have, and Ryan could give you a million suggestions. I’m gonna actually take one of Ryan’s suggestions that he’s given in a future episode or sorry, in a previous episode and give it to two now, but also add to it, which was use social media as a research and development arm so that you can find out what your contacts are doing. And you can comment on them. I’m going I’m stealing this from Ryan’s notes. No,
Ryan D’Aprile 40:29
that’s, that’s and I gotta interject. Because I think one of the biggest mistakes agents do is in loan officers as well. They look at social media as a marketing platform. Sure, it’s a marketing platform. But it’s even better r&d. It’s a better place to research and develop relationships. It’s not about you, it’s about them and your business. And the number one Maslow, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You’re so much smarter than I am Maslow’s hierarchy. One of them is significance. Yeah, everybody wants to be significant. You can make anybody in your network significant, if you talk about them, and not you. So you know, it’s not about you, it’s about them. When you’re in life flow. It’s not about hey, by the way, do you know anybody looking to buy or sell a home? It’s not Do you know referral? It’s it’s cut between that get on social media, find out what’s important to them, than just send a message saying, I chip I just saw that you you know, you’re you sponsor to a dog shelter, or I just saw your your kid graduated kindergarten and your your granddaughter just got married? Congratulations. How are you how you been?
D.J. Paris 41:37
And on for everyone listening. I’ll also add on to that LinkedIn does a really good job of this for you. So if you go into LinkedIn, and you look at your feed, which I bet most of you don’t do, every day, it will tell you who started a new career or a new job at that same company or a new company, it will tell you whose birthday it is, it will also tell you who’s celebrating a work anniversary. So if you’re like, I don’t know what to talk about with my clients today, or they’re not really posting on Facebook and Instagram don’t really have anything to mention, go to LinkedIn and just go Oh, my God, I just saw you celebrated three years at XYZ company. And then awesome, that must be great. How are you feeling about it, I guarantee that’s the only phone call they’re getting that day about that particular anniversary. And again, it’s significance, you’re showing them that they are significant to you. And then when they go to think about buying, selling, renting, investing, hopefully they they think back to the person who made them feel significant. So great place to cap off.
Ryan D’Aprile 42:36
It is you know, and now that we’re coming into the holiday season, you guys, and it’s seasonality is a real thing in our business, with Thanksgiving and the holidays, and it starts to slow down. I was coaching an agent of ours. This individual will do 65 transactions this year. He’s an individual is not a team. And, you know, he was talking about building a team because he’s so busy. And I said, Well, I think that’s a great thing for you to consider. Maybe in February, let’s just start playing it out. Because you’re going to start signing because you know, I don’t feel as slammed right now. I said, How many buyers did you close this past year? And he went to his dashboard? And and I think the number was 37 buyers? I said every listener would tune in here. Okay? Please, I said you need to over the next two months, send a handwritten note. Insane. I remember, you know, looking at the homes with you, I remember our journey. I’m so grateful to be a part of the journey. I hope you’re enjoying the first holiday season. send that out. Alright, send that out, you know, to your 37 buyers that you represent. And by the way we could talk about that. He did another 30 Something listing but I said this is the time to go deep with your network. Because the spring summer the fall, we’re busy. And you know what those 10 contracts a day I get it. It’s a lot, especially when you have everything going on. But as we come into this seasonality slowdown this dip, you need to go deep, and I’m telling you, it will pay huge dividends for you in the spring of 2021.
D.J. Paris 44:13
Yeah, really well said and also just remember that most other most of your peers who are Realtors aren’t going to be doing that. Most of the other people in your clients lives the other professional services. They may be using attorneys, accountants, physicians, you know, financial advisors, they’re probably not doing it either.
Ryan D’Aprile 44:33
95% won’t manufacturers that won’t, but I’ll tell you guys that are listening. It’s really fun to be in the top 5% And it’s really not that hard. It’s just your choice. Keep that in mind. That’s what I want to leave you on. It’s it’s your choice to be in that group. And it’s yeah, be aware of your actions and what you’re doing. And if you choose to, you will have it
D.J. Paris 44:59
and Making people feel significant will make you feel significant and will make you feel like a good citizen, regardless of whatever business comes to you. And if you’re if you’re dealing with some tough feelings right now around what’s going on in the political climate or just the economy or jobs, it’s a tough time and the holidays, the holidays are stressful, this is a time where you can actually recharge by giving. So give to your clients make them feel special, they are special, do it from an authentic place. And you know, you’re going to reap some pretty serious rewards, which, of course, is not the reason you’re doing it. But as a real nice side effect of making people feel significant. So that’s a great place to wrap up up. Peter, I want to thank you for being for your debut on our show. We appreciate it. Boy, you’re probably one of the most well spoken guests we’ve ever had. So we really appreciate you jumping on the call and helping our listeners understand how they can educate their themselves and can continue to increase their their knowledge.
Peter Moulton 46:01
Thanks so much for having me.
D.J. Paris 46:03
We really appreciate it Ryan, as always, we appreciate you and everything you bring to our show. Ryan is our exclusive coaching partner. And I want to also tell everyone who is in the Chicagoland area who’s a realtor who also maybe as well, maybe Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin, if you are looking for a firm, that is you know, that caters to agents helping them really grow their business and increase their knowledge and help them with their marketing to do properties is a great fit. So check out J APR properties.com. On behalf of the listeners Pete and Ryan, we say thank you for being on the show taking time out of both of your incredibly busy days to share your wisdom with our with our listeners and viewers. And on behalf of Ryan, Pete and myself we want to thank our listeners and viewers for continuing to support our show we ask everyone to do just two things for us one telephone, think of one other real estate professional or mortgage lending professional, we have a lot of mortgage lenders who listen to our show that could benefit from hearing this episode and send them a link to the show. Easiest way to do that find us on on our website, which is keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done is there and if you just wanted to binge watch or listen all to all the Ryan episodes, you scroll to the bottom you can find his coaching moments section and watch them all in a row. Second thing is to follow us on Facebook every day we find an article that’s written specifically designed to help agents grow their business, we post it there and of course, all of our episodes, we post there as well. So facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And once again, congratulations to the April properties for your big win with the Chicago top workplace thing. And also, we just wanted to say thank you again for everyone, and we’ll see you next time. Thanks, guys. Thanks, TJ.
Peter Moulton 47:52
Thanks so much.
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