Welcome to the August episode of Learn with a Lender with Joel Schaub of Guaranteed Rate!
In this episode, Joel discusses why educating new agents in real estate business is crucial and how growing positivity will help them handle stress. Joel also talks about work ethics and the importance of having consistency, setting priorities and discipline and how they lead agents to good relationships with their clients.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Joel can be reached at joel@rate.com and 773.654.2049.
This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
We’re approaching our 500th episode. And I just wanted to say that the number one characteristic that I’ve learned from all of the agents that we’ve had on our show of top producers has been consistency. We’re going to dive into that today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.
Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Harris, I am your guide and host through the show today once again is our monthly series called Learn with a lender with Joel shop from guaranteed rate. Now Joel is the vice president of lending at guaranteed rate. He’s been doing loans at a high level since 2003. He’s got to that level because of what he does specifically for agents, which is he gives back part of his commission to the buyer on every transaction. In fact, last year alone, Joe gave back over $300,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with him and that puts Joe’s volume in the top 1/10 of 1% of all lenders nationwide. In fact, there’s actually 400,000 loan officers in this in the United States. And Joel is currently ranked number 137. Now this year alone, he’s closed. Oh my gosh, I just screwed something up. Joel. My numbers just got screwy. So could you please tell us your numbers? I apologize. My eye numbers are screwy
too. It’s crazy. I know.
Yeah, right now, I mean, we’re lucky enough to be just under $75 million close DJ for the year in purchase. And that’s 170 closed transactions year to date so far. Yeah, amazing.
That really is amazing. It is a tough year, a lot of our audiences probably, you know, feeling the challenges right now in the market. But what we do know is that consistency, hard work and discipline really pays off, it might just feel a little bit trickier today. But everything that people can do today is going to actually, you know, result in some bear some fruit here in the near future. So while it may feel I just want to address this because I run into a lot of realtors. So on my show, when this podcast when I talk to top producers, I’m speaking to the audience here for I just want to make a quick point that I hope resonates with everyone. So when I speak the top 1% producers, they get to where they’ve got by by tolerating market cycles, right? So they’ve been through UPS, they’ve been through downs, especially if they’ve been around, you know, since or the early 2000s. They’ve been through a few of these cycles. And they seem to understand the cycle. And so what I encourage anyone who hasn’t been through some of these cycles, and it’s feeling maybe a little tougher right now is, you know, seek refuge in some of these agents who have been around longer than you talk to them, ask them for the wisdom that they gained through these challenging times in the past, because they’ll give you all sorts of ideas of Oh, I wish I would have done this, you know, from 2008 to 2010, when the market was really, really struggling. And now you know, they’re able to do some of that today. And so if this is your first time going through a tricky market cycle, don’t don’t despair. It’s all part of part of the normal cycle of business. But we want to keep you motivated and encouraged to continue growing your business, which I know can be a little trickier. So Joel and I are going to focus on some things today that we really want to keep you engaged with your business even though you know right now, inventories low rates aren’t exactly where we want them to be. Yeah, that’s the rial Woody, and there’s things you can do to stay on top of it. So anyway, I apologize for that little rambling monologue there. But I did want to, I did want to make that point because we know it’s tough. And if you listen to my show, you know, we talked to these top one percenters. They’re like, everything’s great. This is so awesome. And it is great, because they’ve been through some of these hard times before, and they know how to navigate through them. So if you’re struggling, don’t you’re not alone. But we’re going to try to help you through that on this on this episode a little bit. And Joel has been around for a long, long time in this business. And he’s seen what top producers do throughout their time in practice to help you as well. So Joel, welcome once again to the show.
Well, I love that you’re talking about this. I love the tangent, you call it a rant. But I mean, it’s true. It’s really what we’re doing here is literally educating agents. Because if the negative news is all around, you surround yourself with positivity, I work with agents that right now can tell you what they would have done if they had all the time in the world, right? So if it’s, if it’s slow for you, right, think about what you could do to actually grow the business, right? Because these agents, if you’ve been around for years, we recall when we didn’t have any extra time on our hands. So if you’re sitting there saying, I have all the extra time on my hands, because I don’t have 20 deals closing a month, right? What do you do? Surround yourself, listen to these podcasts, right? Grow your database, right? Make sure that people know that you’re in the business. And so we’re gonna go through a lot of stuff today that will absolutely help you get even one more deal. Maybe it’s a new buyer, maybe it’s a new listing. But by tuning in, you’re really going to grow. So we applaud you for that.
I’m going to start with one that that I just heard, because I’ll forget in the next few seconds if I don’t say it now that I just heard from a former guest of of keeping it real. Also Joel, you know this person as well. He was a 30, under 30, National Association of realtor award winner, Jordan Pyle, he’s a local Chicago agent. He’s a, he’s a lovely, lovely guy. And I was talking to him recently, and he was telling me that one of the things he’s been doing with the extra time, as you mentioned, that he has now because he’s not closing 20 deals a month, is it in the sounds kind of it’s actually a really fun one, I think, at least it would be for me. And what he’s doing is he’s spending an hour every day. And that’s a lot of time. So if you have an hour, great if you don’t, you know, maybe you do a half an hour, and he literally is just replying to Facebook posts and Instagram posts for the people in his database. And he’s doing it in an authentic way. And what he’s doing is he’s looking at his his feed, I want to get really specific about this. He’s looking at his feed, when he sees a friend of his or somebody that is in his database, you know, goes on vacation, or maybe has some life event or just you know, goes out to a nice dinner and takes a picture of it. He comments on it. And he says it has to be authentic. He’s not just like, you know, it looks awesome. He he thinks about like a nice comment. He writes it and he goes, I want people to know that I care about their lives. And now I have time to demonstrate that through replying. And he goes, I do. I can’t remember if he does 30 or 50. I think it want to say he does 30 to 50 comments a day, and not not to the same people every day, of course. But and when I heard that, I said, What is that dude, he goes well, he goes, it generates a lot of goodwill. It generates a lot of people going wow, Jordan thought about me. And so that was my little suggestion.
Sure, it’s number one, we talk a lot on the show DJ about things that you can do that cost money. And the number one thing here, it’s not the number one thing, but this is one thing that you can do as an agent, if you stay consistent with it. So what is this rule? What is this, putting it into practice taking what Jordan Pyle did, and actually do it for yourself? Really, it costs no money, and your name consistently stays out there. And it’s not like you said, just that looks great. I did that for years, when I looked at listings, and I said, I really liked that color blue in the kitchen. That’s so amazing. Marcia, keep up the great work. And you just do this consistently. People know that you’re in the business, then you’re a realtor, right? If you’re listening to this, you could make sure that you’re out there doing the exact same thing. And how much does that cost? DJ?
Zero, it just costs time. All it costs us a little bit of time. And even if it doesn’t, even if it isn’t real estate related, what we’re talking about is building intimacy. We’re building relationships, you know, in the way that you build relationships beyond a sale is you care about somebody and what’s going on in their lives. And you show that you demonstrate that because I think intimacy has to be earned. And the way that you do that is by showing up.
Well, you’re exactly right. I mean, we kicked off the show talking about closing over 20 units a month, you know, different homes and I speak to agents daily that are saying I’d like to get to 20 closings in a year right. So if you’re doing 20 20 or 30 closings every single month? How do you have time to do any of this and you can kind of prioritize. So if you’re not at that level yet, and most people truly are, you do have extra time. And it’s all about what you set for your priorities. Right. So number one, that’s an easy thing to do. And the other one that I wanted to touch base on, of course, is making sure that you have a good database and adding people in refining it, and then doing small reach outs to everybody that’s there. If it’s a postcard, if it’s a pop by things that you can do, because this is still a people business DJ, right until the robots replace us, there’s still going to be somebody that needs to go out and show the homes. And they’re still going to need to be people on the lending, Attorney side title. So there’s real relationships that need to be built here. And it’s just getting back down to basics if you’re not extremely busy right now.
Yeah, this is the time to focus back on the fundamentals. When’s the last time that you’ve gone through and pruned? Not so much to remove people from your database? pruned isn’t the right word. When’s the last time you updated your database with information? Like, do you know your your? I won’t say clients necessarily, but but clients and prospects? Do you know their wedding anniversary? Why would you want to know that? Well, because then you can give them a call on their wedding anniversary every year and say, I’m thinking about you grats on year number 17. How many how many service providers are even thinking about that probably very few in there, that client’s life or that prospects life, you know that these are little things you can do that when you have time, you find out the soft parts of someone’s life that are tangentially related to business. You know, I think one of the one of the best ways another little suggestion, if you know where your clients work, or at least you have in your database of their employer, you can set up Google alerts for that employer for the news section. So what this would do is actually send you in real time when Google notices oh, let’s say you have a client who works at Boeing. And you know, some Boeing gets some major contract or something’s and that’s a big huge company. So maybe that’s not the best example. But but you get the ideas. Anytime you know, somebody’s employer is in the news, you then gives you another two, hey, just saw your your employer did this. Cool. Congratulations. Yeah,
I love that. That really is true. And one of the things that I’ve been doing for like three or four years now is setting up reminders for clients birthdays, and instead of a phone call or a text, I started doing videos years ago, okay, so I don’t know if you ever saw that website cameo, right? We’ve talked about this offline, right? And so you get celebrities to send a video on on your behalf, right? And so, who’s the bigger celebrity right now, if somebody is getting ready to buy a home Leonardo DiCaprio or you the realtor, you’re more important. Okay, maybe, maybe Leo or one of these top persons are but think about the power of you actually doing just a 15 second video, say happy birthday. And I make mine fun and silly. So I literally start yelling and screaming Happy Birthday and spinning around in the chair and just being real. Instead of being like, that’s just who I am. So I like to have fun with it. And I sing off key and I say it’s a very special birthday message from your favorite lender, Joel shop. And it gets such great replies. So do what’s authentic to you. If it’s heartfelt, do that. If it’s funny do that. But doing something that’s different. I tell you, there’s not a lot of people sending video messages to people on their birthday. And you just set it up every morning, I look at my phone. And I can do it right through Facebook to see how many birthdays are today. And it doesn’t take but more than a few seconds and I shoot the videos and send them out. And it’s a it’s been a big hit.
You know, these are the people skills we’re really talking about. I also wanted to touch on the actual hard skills, the hard realtor skills that I don’t say hard meaning difficult, but the important skills I you know, I had a call today, we have a holding company, which is for agents that aren’t actively practicing but want to keep their license active but they’re basically out of the business. They just have a license and are not practicing. And I got a call from one of our holding company agents today’s asking me to run a CMA for comparable market analysis for her particular property. And I said oh, okay, you know, and I she goes, Well, we’re just trying to figure out if we should sell it and I don’t she said I don’t really trust this estimate the Zillow Zestimate. So I wanted to get, you know, DJ, can you run me a CMA? And I said, Well, I’m not particularly good at it, but but I’ll do my best. And, and again, I think this is another huge opportunity for everyone who has a database of people that own homes, whether you are their realtor or not, when they purchased you have the ability to say, Hey, I was going to I’m practicing my CMAs or I’m just running you know, I do this for all for everyone in my database once or twice a year, whatever you however you want to market it and say hi, I was wondering if I You shouldn’t even ask you should just do it. Hey, I have a market analysis for you. I just wanted to give you an updated thing of what I think your home was worth whether you’re moving or not irrelevant. I just wanted to show this to you. Because most of my clients like to know what their home is worth, you know, every so often. That’s a huge opportunity. And it’s if you’re a skilled realtor, you can knock these out in probably 30 seconds or a minute each. So it’s not that they’re not that challenging to put together. But they are really helpful because I think every homeowner, whether they’re selling or buying, always likes to know what their homes worth.
And it sharpens your skill. So think of this. I love what you said there. But I’m going to take it one step further for agents that probably haven’t done a lot of CMAs. Who are they going to go do these for DJ, right? They don’t have a long database of people to do it for, you can still run CMAs for people that weren’t your clients that have bought with another agent, right? With values being upright now, it’s not good enough just to trust the Zestimate. And even if they’re not interested in selling, now you’ve given somebody something. So now taking that database, people that you know that know you doing some work for them. It’s not only going to keep you top of mind and when the time does come for them to sell. But it helps strengthen the skills that you’re going to need when somebody actually does need you. Right? Yes, I love it. I
agree. That’s, that’s, it’s, it’s excellent. And I also want to just to make one other suggestion. So if you haven’t, if our listeners haven’t yet fully embraced chat, GBT, don’t worry, whether it comes for our jobs or not as is up to the gods. But for now, it hasn’t totally taken over. But you can actually do some really fun things to keep you well actually, I’m going to give you a couple ideas here. First thing I want you to do this is not chat GBT, this is for for you that Joel, this is a Joel thing I want you to reach out to Joel and and subscribe to his newsletter which comes out in the middle of the week, usually. And it is for realtors to understand what’s going on in the lending world so that they can effectively you can effectively communicate with buyers and sellers about what’s going on without having to, you know, sit through hours long lectures about what’s going on in lending. So they sent out this newsletter, I want to do give a plug for that real quickly because it is so helpful. Guys, this gives you reasons to pick up the phone reasons to talk to people and it makes you sound intelligent, because of course it’s information that’s current and up to date, Joel, if somebody everybody should do this, just do it. Trust me, it’s going to be super helpful. What’s the best way that they should email you to get on your mailing list?
Well, I call my little nuggets, right. So it’s a weekly digestible newsletter that actually gives you talking points without sounding too smart or too dumb. That’s me. I’m like right down the middle. And that’s the way I like it. Right? Email, it’s so simple, literally, you could just send me an email saying please add me to your newsletter. And it’s Joel JOE l@rate.com Ra t.com. And the subject line could simply be add me to your newsletter. And in the inside, please add me or thank you or I heard you on the show. One sentence, you’ll get added. And then every single week, you’ll get one or two things that you can absolutely use to grow your business, pick up another buyer help a seller in ways that is not so nuanced that you feel like I’m just reading paragraph after paragraph really good stuff.
So yes, everybody please send an email to joel@radio.com asked to be added to the newsletter, trust me, it will help you in your business when you’re communicating with with buyers and sellers, and you won’t have to seek this information out because Joel is gonna send it right to your inbox. So I was asked to be on a radio show recently. And they asked me to prepare some some information. And the back to this is back to our chat GBT thing. And so I this is for homebuyers and sellers. And so I thought, Oh, this will be interesting. So I went to chat GBT and I said give me five reasons why it is a perfect time to buy or sell a property here in Chicago because it was a Chicago radio. And then I said give me five reasons why it’s not a perfect time. And the reason why I wanted both sides is because I wanted to be able to understand both perspectives and I wanted to see the data for both perspectives. And and this is really, really an important thing to understand. I have learned from interviewing hundreds of top Realtors across the country, that one of their skills that is really a really difficult skill to to learn. But once you have it really puts you in an upper echelon is understanding all sides of an argument, especially around buying and selling this will help you in your negotiating, it will help you understand the motivations of sellers and buyers. So what I like to do is as chat GBT, now you have to make sure that you’re getting current data and chat GBT is not necessarily always accurate. So um, you do your own research too. But I love this and I was able to go into this radio station with pros for buying and cons just in case it came up where somebody says it’s not a good time to buy a home right now I could say, Okay, I understand sort of why they might think that. And then I was able to go to the other side and say, but here’s some reasons why it might be a good time. And vice versa. You can do this for yourself every single day, you could say, you know, give me some some data about why it’s a great time to buy a condo in my in my, you know, my market area, or it’s a bad time to buy kind of these are good good things to know. So that you can, you know, be seen as as really, really knowledgeable and you don’t have to search on Google and go through everything anymore. Chat, GBT is going to search on Google for you and bring you those stats.
Knowing both sides of it. It’s what makes me a great husband to think about this. Knowing both sides and understanding things right makes you a better partner makes you a better human. And But all joking aside, yes, you can always make an argument for either side, right? And so I tell people all the time, you’re not in the right position to buy, like with the last lender said, the last letter wanting to commission. Right? Everyone’s focused on number one, right? But if you actually step back and talk to a buyer and say, this actually right now isn’t the right time for you, we should actually do X, Y, and Z. Boy, do you help people boy to people come back to you, right. So it’s hard if you don’t have a lot of transactions, but it takes time, once you have so many people, you can actually just be real with them, right? And try to help them. So I love the idea of using the chat GPT to go through and just get more information I’ve been digging in, I’ve read two books on it now. And it is not as cumbersome as you think, Boy, it can really help you do things. So if you haven’t done it, dive right in the trial version, of course, is free, there is an upgraded version at $20 a month as well. But you don’t need to don’t pay any money go in test. And it’ll help you be a better agent, for sure.
You know, you just said something really profound. And I think the ultimate, the ultimate skill that I or rather, there’s not one, one of the ultimate skills that top Realtors seem to, you know, have in their arsenal. And I understand this is going to take time. But this is where having a mentor or having people you could ask who are in that upper echelon can be very helpful. This is around under gosh, I just lost I apologize. I just lost my train of thought. It’ll come to me in a second. But the idea is that, you know, once, boy, I completely forgot, Joel, I know you’re
talking about this offline. I know exactly what you’re going with here. So the idea of like working, refining the skill about how you can write the right offer, right, this is weird. Thank
you. So let’s just go through it right. If you’re an
agent, right now, it’s pretty true that the top 90% of agents are winning most deals right, like so the same 90% of people, which means so many people are not winning deals. So if you’re out there, and you’re submitting offers and not winning, believe me, a lot of people are but the same agents are winning, what are they doing? Right? So they’re writing offers that are designed to win. So I just wanted to walk through the three things that I think make the most sense, and this is what we were talking about before. So when you’re submitting an offer, just keep it simple, right? That’s the number one thing a seller is looking for. So you’re trying to determine what would you want if you were actually accepting the offer? So although we talk about rate by downs and escalation clauses, at the end of the day, simplicity wins. So it’s not always the highest offer? It’s, there’s two words there, right, DJ, its highest and best. Yep. Which one’s the best doesn’t have to be the highest offer, right? So learning ways, what worked before and don’t complicate it, right? So that’s one, working with the right inspector always ends up either helping your deal or killing your deal, right? We got to keep deals together, if we’re lucky enough to win and get under contract, having an inspector that spooking the buyer, right? There’s always going to be a problem with some homes, right? Put it this way, there’s probably going to be some problem with every home, it’s just can you work with somebody that can describe it correctly, because if you go under contract and the buyer cancels over a minor inspection issue, we’re back to square one, right? And then three, it seems self serving, but work with a good lender, right? Work with the right partner that actually knows how to make the process simple. So that the buyer can get clear to close as soon as possible, and go through those steps so that they can actually refer more business back. Ok. So submitting the right offer, working with the right inspector and having a good lender or two in your pocket that you can call on. Those are the things that keep deals on track right now.
Because when you’re submitting Aw, thank you, Joe. Those are great. Three great things. And I want to also say aesthetically, this is just an aesthetic issue. When you’re submitting an offer, make it super easy to read, put the important stuff in bold, make sure it’s so obvious that they can look at it and fives, I saw an offer letter yesterday, I don’t know why. Maybe I’m have a negative opinion of this. And it’s not actually a negative thing. But I saw an offer letter that was made to look like a certificate, and it was kind of cute, whatever. And it was like visually, it was kind of cool, because it looked like a little certificate, like they won some sort of award. Okay, but it was really hard to read. And I was like, Okay, I guess it’s cute and whatever. But like, I had a hard time even looking and understanding what it was. And I was like, Okay, points for making it cute. But points taken away. Because you’ve made it harder for me to actually see this, I see what you’re trying to do. And if you didn’t, you’ve probably seen a million things like this.
handwriting, I’m still against this. I mean, I see people scribbling in with a pencil, right? type these up, ladies and gentlemen, type up, type it up. Okay, if you’re not typing it up, then write legibly. I mean, you shouldn’t be writing in the year 2023. We shouldn’t be using a pencil to write a purchase contract, we shouldn’t actually be signing pretty soon, we’re gonna get past that with all the digital signatures. For now. The idea that you’re writing these offers, and there’s missing blanks and you don’t have it complete, and you’re writing and pen or pencil. I know I’m gonna offend a lot of people here who are old school and they write but I bet you they have better penmanship than half of these doctors that are writing these up. It’s like the old saying that you can’t even read the prescription notes, right? So just simple things. If you if you don’t have good handwriting, let’s let’s start typing. Okay, can we get on the bandwagon like that?
The last thing I wanted to mention, yes, and absolutely. The last thing I want to mention is about having an opinion, I think this is one of the most important skills that that top realtors have is they have opinions that they share with their clients, a lot of realtors are afraid to share an opinion because they might think I don’t want to I don’t want to quell the deal. I don’t want I don’t want the deal to fall apart, I’m just going to be Switzerland, I’m gonna stay on the fence, I’m going to just play nice, and let’s get this deal closed. And yes, that’s part of the job too. And I for me, I will pay extra for any service provider in my life that has an opinion that I value, I will pay a premium for that I will I would pay a premium to a realtor who’s like I charge 7% or 8%, or whatever the highest amount is because but here’s why I charge more. Because I actually know if this is a good idea for you or not, or I believe I know if it’s a good idea for you or not. Now that takes time it takes experience, it takes skill, it takes a lot to get to a place where you can actually say this is a good buy, this is not a good buy good sale, not a good sale. This is really what I think separates the wheat from the chaff right like this. These are the agents that are at the very top they’re willing to say, just like you were saying, Joel, this is not a good decision for you, Mr. or Mrs. buyer or seller, I am advising you against this, that is worth its weight in gold. Most realtors are I believe, are really not willing to do that. And so the ones that are willing to sort of say, based on my experience, my knowledge, here’s what I actually think you should or should not do. Really, I think those are the agents that all that are successful.
It’s all boils down to why are you different, right? We’re commoditized, right? Agents, lenders, etc. Right? So you gotta be different in the beginning. I’ll challenge you and say it’s hard to take a position, right? You want to cater to everybody. So if you’re listening, brand new, that’s scary. It really is. What if I offend somebody? I need that deal? Right? What if, you know, what if they’re on the wrong side of the aisle? What if it’s, you know, you try to do that, but until you know why you’re different. Okay, it is hard to do that. So why are you different? What can you do and refine it so that you know it? In the lending business? For years, I’ve been the guy who gives back part of my commission on every transaction. And that changes the conversation from Hi, what is your interest rate? To I’ve heard all about you. In rates across the board. Most banks to be frank are the same. It’s a gimmick thinking like one banks drastically different than the next right? There might be somebody that’s a few dollars higher or a few dollars lower an interest rate. But there’s not too many people that consistently are willing to give part of their commission back. So I described that in great detail. And when they’re interviewing three lenders, nobody’s talking about that. They’re just saying I can go get you the best rate. We’re the cheapest. It’s it’s not true, right? So I stand with confidence. And I say, over the last 17 years I’ve given back back hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of dollars a year to clients just like you, I’m going to get you the best rate I can. But I’m also going to do something a lot of other people won’t. And that’s how we win the business. Okay, so I challenge you as an agent to figure out what it is that you want to do, what are you doing that’s different? Or what would you like to do that’s different, and not be afraid to go out and say that on every single appointment? And it takes some time. But you’ll get there and it has to be authentic and from the heart.
Yeah, and so, you know, this is a great thing to think about as an agent is what are your clients consistently asking you for? And that’s a great place to start to think about, oh, how could I differentiate myself seems like my clients asked me a lot about certain topics or certain positions, this is where you can then start to build your knowledge base, and start learning more about X, Y, and Z so that you can, in fact, bring some of that to the table. You know, in Joe’s right, you know, the real reason why Joel is successful outside of all the great marketing, he does, to make sure that everyone knows about, you know, what he provides, is when it comes down to the actual work, Joel and his team are literally like the best I’ve ever worked with. So the reality of it is, is like, you have to be really super skilled. Because like Joe was saying, you know, yeah, there’s, there’s always going to be a realtor that charges a lower rate or a loan, a lending company that charges a lower interest rate, there’s always going to be lower cost providers out there. But if you can really have a good sense of like, know, when you work with me, we’re going to make this thing as smooth as we can. And that is worth a lot. That’s actually worth a lot of money, even though it’s not. It’s, it’s not it’s an invisible sort of savings. But it is a it’s a real savings. Because if you can get through a transaction smooth, it’s kind of like this. I haven’t I have a mechanic who I trust implicitly, I don’t go to another mechanic, I don’t get a second opinion. So he could be ripping me off. And I wouldn’t know, I trust that he’s not because he has demonstrated such incredible skill that I just go, I don’t have time to go and talk to other mechanics. And we can all relate to this. We all know how tricky it is we’re like, do we trust this mechanic or not? I finally found a guy. And I’m like, You know what, you’ve got my business. So if you if you’re, if you’re going to start ripping me off, I won’t even know. But I hope you don’t. And I’m sure he’s not. But my God, I love the fact that I don’t have to think about this anymore. And it just is. And I pay a premium for it, I’m sure. But it’s worth it.
Be that for your agents, right? If you’re an agent, right now you want to go out. And that’s how you’re building clientele. Right? Everything can be a race to the bottom, if you’re the cheapest person here, all that I realized years ago that I couldn’t control the market. I couldn’t control rates. But I could control how much I gave right? In the beginning, before I was at the level that I’m at now I gave my time. And I gave my knowledge and I gave my expertise later on. It took time to get the expertise, right. And so in the beginning, figure out what you can give, the more you give, the more you’re going to get. Okay, so if you can’t give back in terms of discounting your commission, right, because it’s just not works. Maybe not right now, if you can’t give back in terms of throwing large parties and spending money, right? Figure out what you can do to give back. Right? You can give back like we talked in wrap up here and go back to social media and make sure that you’re adding value in comments. Why do people make posts to read the comments? Right? Who’s seeing what I posted? We all are guilty of it? Right? Totally. So if you can put really poignant post comments down and people start seeing that you’re a genuine person, you’re just gonna grow your business right? So in in years past you couldn’t control the market you still can’t today but you can control how much you give and find ways that you can do things to give back you’re definitely going to grow
Yeah, the market is a lot like the weather it just is whatever it is, it is and we can we can have a feeling about the weather or the market and we can have that affect us and Okay, fine. And then we can also make additional choices to to move beyond what is uncontrollable, the weather the market. And so I think today, we just gave a tremendous number of opportunities for you to stay engaged, stay busy. And by the way, guys, another chat GBT suggestion if you just need to be motivated every day as chat GBT every morning. Can you motivate me today with with some you know, I don’t know. You could ask anybody to do anything. But start thinking about you know, if you need a little boost in your day as to LGBT for a little boost, like what can you tell me to get me motivated? I bet you had to come up with some pretty interesting ideas. But the point is, is you don’t have to do this alone. There’s lots of help out there. There’s podcasts like this. There’s people like Joel who will actually help you grow your real estate business as well. Oh, so this is another good opportunity. If you have extra time, maybe it’s a good time to evaluate your ello your loan officer and determine maybe there’s a better partnership out there for you. And Joel does partner with agents. So first thing, obviously get on his email marketing, or start his email newsletter, which comes out as nugget list every week, which specifically says, here’s what’s going on that Realtors need to know about how to communicate with lending rates and interest rates. You know, go to Joel Asare, send him an email joel@rate.com. And he will add you to that. But also, if you think that you would like to partner with Joel maybe doing some events, you know, just working together to get deals closed, Joel and his team are on your side. So reach out to him joel@rate.com and ask him for some partnership opportunities you guys possibly could work together as well. It’s a great time to start evaluating, you know, your your ancillary partners in real estate since you have extra time.
Yeah, DJ above and beyond the newsletter, I get people all the time saying I know you have a lender introduction template where you do waive the fees, I have a buyer that I want to refer to you How do I do that. And it’s the same thing, it’s joel@rate.com. And you can say, please send me your lender, introduction template email, and it’s already written out for you. So that you can introduce the buyer with the direct link to the online application, where when they complete it, they get a $1,500 closing cost credit. So now they’re working with a top lender in the United States where they’re actually not paying any underwriting fees. They’re not paying any appraisal not paying any points. And it’s gonna be a completely different setup for them compared to if they just call their bank, or the broker that they’re working with right now. So that’s an email joel@rate.com Send me the lender introduction template. And people always call to, they’re shocked to hear that I’m actually answering the phone, right. So it’s 773-744-1968. You can call if you get me live, it’s crazy the number of conversations, I’ve had DJ with agents all across the United States because of the show, and you’re just doing something really great here. So I love every single time I come on, and there’s a lot to be positive about guys, this is a really good reminder that the sky isn’t falling, there’s deals to be had stick with it. This is one of the defining years. If you can make it through this year, there’s greater sites ahead, okay, this is gonna be a big one. So stick with it.
Absolutely, the sky is not falling. And I’m not even seeing any indicators that that there is major tragedy ahead of us. Obviously, anything can happen. I can’t. It’s like the weather, anything can happen. But what we can control is our own effort. Reach out to Joel, he’s fantastic. His team is fantastic. He truly wants to help you. And, you know, just reach out to joel@rate.com. Also, everyone please tell a friend help our podcast grow by telling one other agent that you know about our show. We’re trying to keep agents engaged, interested and positively motivated throughout this. And by the way, guys, it’s not that bad right now it can feel that way. But it really isn’t historically, we are not in a terrible spot, but it can feel that way. But podcasts like this, we are trying to get you out of the doldrums into action. So tell you know there’s gotta be somebody you know, that’s a little bit bummed out who’s a realtor right now send them a link to this episode. Maybe this will kickstart them and have them help. You know, the real estate community at large. Let’s send them over to our website keeping it real pod.com Or they can just find us on any anywhere podcasts are served, keeping it real podcast, please hit that subscribe and like button and also, you know, support our sponsors too. We are so grateful to have sponsors. They’re the reason that we can continue to pay our staff and do these episodes. So please check out their products and services as well. Joel, thank you so much. Once again, you’ve been with me five plus years on the show since almost the very very beginning. And we are so grateful for your your contributions to the show on behalf of the audience. Thank you. On behalf of Joel and myself thank you to the audience reach out to Joel get on his newsletter joel@rate.com reach out to him for any partnership opportunities that you may be able to to do withdrawal oh and by the way, even if you’re not here in Chicago, Joel’s company guaranteed rate they are in every single state so reach out to Joel no matter where you are. Guaranteed Rate is the bomb. So Alright guys, thank you so much, Joel. Thank you. We will see everybody on the next episode.
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