Welcome to the January edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick from At Properties!
In our first Monday Market Minute of 2020, Carrie discusses the real estate market both nationwide and locally in Chicago. She also talks about the importance of making a home look as close to perfect as possible before listing it – buyers are demanding it in the Instagram and HGTV era! I provide a tip about how to send mailers in a way that adds HUGE value.
D.J. Paris 0:00 Today’s episode of Keeping it real podcast is brought to you by nest egg. Looking to add value to your investor clients recommend nest egg a Chicago based app that is everything your clients need to manage their rentals in only minutes a month. Nest Egg is the only app that gets things done at the rental including on demand maintenance, and services like tenant placement and snow removal. Also nest egg is free to use which makes your clients investments 20 to 30% more profitable. Join nest egg today by downloading the app or by visiting mistake dot rent. That’s nest egg dot rent use promo code keeping it real to get your first hour of maintenance for free. And now on to the show.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made for real estate agents and by real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host and guide through the show and today we have another one of our Monday market minute which is our regular feature a regular episode we do every single month with a Chicago legend Carrie McCormick from App properties. If you are not familiar with Carrie, she is one of the top top top producers in Chicago the top 1/10 of 1% Out of over 46,000 brokers in the city. She has been a top producer for over 20 years. And by the way should all check out her new website which is Carrie McCormack r e.com. And also follow her on Instagram. She has the very best Instagram account I’ve ever seen for a realtor, which is Carrie McCormick real estate. So go to Instagram, look for Carrie McCormick real estate. We’ll also link to it in the show notes. But once again, welcome Carrie, thanks for being on the show.
Carrie McCormick 1:53 What an intro. Thank you so much for having me. As always, this is one of my favorite things to do.
D.J. Paris 1:59 Well, we’re super excited to have you and the fans and the listeners love it. And you just bring so much great content, you’ve actually are our oldest guests, you’ve been on the show for several years. Like oldest, no, not oldest in that way you are since the beginning. You stuck you were with us when we had no listeners. And now you have 1000s and 1000s of people who listen to every episode. So we’re super grateful that you’re with us, and the fans. Love you. So we’re glad to have you.
Carrie McCormick 2:24 Awesome. Well, thank you very much. And I appreciate that. And I always like to start by saying, you know, it’s about giving back in our community as well. You know, and so if there’s any listeners out there, whether you’re a broker or not a broker, if there’s any questions that you have, you know, always, always here and available to answer any questions that people have or just bounce some ideas off of. So always feel free to reach out to me directly as well.
D.J. Paris 2:48 Yeah, it’s amazing how, how approachable Carrie is, you know, for how busy she is. Her numbers are beyond incredible. She ever worked seven days a week, and yet still finds the time to help give back on this show and a lot of other ways as well. So this is really, really honored to have you. Well, thank you. You’re welcome. What do you want to talk about today?
Carrie McCormick 3:11 Yeah, just a few things. So just a little bit of forecasting into 2020. Since we’re, of course, you know, kicking off the year. And I wish I had a little bit better news. And I read a lot of different articles. And of course, I’m engrained in the real estate market, but it just seems like it’s going to be a little bit more of the same as last year. So it’s going to be a little bit boring. But the forecast shows that we’re going to have slight dips on in the market. And but it’s there’s such small dips, that it’s essentially just gonna be a flat market. So we’re not going to see much different here in Chicago. So it’s kind of like we’re just going to be steady here. In a lot of that. Last year, as everyone knows, there was a few things that attributed to our market. And the number one thing that people talk about is, of course, is the taxes, you know, here in Chicago, so that’s been a big a big issue. And then, you know, some talks of the pensions, you know, so and just our local politics and our local issues that we have here. So, you know, between taxes, pensions, local issues, people just were, you know, extremely hesitant about making purchases and or selling. So it just it became a little bit of, you know, tough talks last year. And I do predict that we’re going to see a lot of that the same this year. The good news about this year is, you know, predictions are hard. But you know, as far as in articles that I read in people that I talked to, you know, there might be a few other or a few more interest rate drops, which they’re so low right now, but it would be good to see a little bit further dip in the interest rates. I think that’ll get some of our buyers off the fence, right? Yes. So once we see them come off the fence. We’ll Pick up some, you know, some more activity in in the marketplace. There’s also been talks about uncertainty of the US economy as a whole. And believe me, this is not my forte, but I’ve got a ton of clients in the financial arena. And, you know, they’re pretty excited about the market as a whole, you know, they don’t really see they think that 2020s can be a great year for for the US economy. So I hope that that is correct. So I think, you know, in our stock markets, and just more of the big picture, the economy is going to do well, I think just you know, Illinois has got to deal with their, their local problems here. But, you know, there’s some areas like, I always think of Chicago is a market within a market, right, so like the West Loop versus, let’s say, Linkin Park, or Lakeview or Bucktown, they all are very different, you know, the housing stock is very different. The absorption rate in each of these markets are very different. So when you look at Chicago, even as a whole, you’ve got to take a look at all the different we’ll call them sub markets within Chicago, like, for example, the West Loop, right, that’s one of our hottest neighborhoods right now. And we’re seeing bidding wars in in the West Loop. But then you go over to I’m not gonna pick on Linkin Park, but you know, you’ve got some, you know, two $3 million homes and Linkin Park, that their market times are hitting 200 days, you know, so it’s, they’re all just, it’s all very different. So when you’re working with buyers and sellers, you’ve really got to concentrate and dig down into each market.
D.J. Paris 6:36 Yeah, I think that’s right. And remember that, you know, real estate is hyperlocal. So you need to know those trends you need to know more than your clients about those particular neighborhoods. Now, do you know of any cities outside of Chicago that I’ve seen been seeing decent growth?
Carrie McCormick 6:52 Oh, a lot. So, you know, when my sellers are selling, they’re doing one of three things. They’re either one moving completely out of Illinois, which is sad. They’re either renting or they’re staying in, you know, local, you know, whether downsizing or upsizing. So there is a big push out of Illinois and the places that are seeing the biggest growth to answer your question is Arizona, so Tucson, Arizona saw a 10% growth? And this one will shock you? Boise, Idaho? Wow. 11% increase in 2019?
D.J. Paris 7:33 What is it? What’s in Boise, Idaho?
Carrie McCormick 7:37 I have no idea. I haven’t really looked into it. But my guess is, you know, when people are moving out of Illinois, it’s, you know, jobs. So wherever some of the tech industries are, which, you know, I’m seeing a lot of Nashville, Austin, not so much California. I mean, they’ve got a lot of, you know, great tech industry out there. But I think the cost of living out there is a lot. Sure. You know, Arizona, as I mentioned, Oregon, Portland is a big one. You know, but I don’t know with Boise, Idaho, they saw 11% growth. So I’m kind of curious of what’s going on in Boise, Idaho.
D.J. Paris 8:10 Wow, that yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. It is, it is interesting that, you know, Illinois has seen I think negative growth over the last several years, and our taxes are high. And a lot of people move down like Florida, where their taxes are much different. So, yeah, it’s one of those things that I think Realtors need to need to be abreast of and be able to answer those questions when their clients.
Carrie McCormick 8:31 So you know, I feel as a realtor, I’m, you know, from Chicago, I’ve lived here my entire life will probably never leave Chicago, this is my home. And, you know, I feel a little bit of a responsibility of what do we do and just educating our buyers and sellers and, you know, having them stay here. So one big trend that’s been happening to help our clients and to help our sellers is understanding our market and what the buyers want. So right now, buyers don’t have time, everyone is so busy. buyers don’t have time to come into a house and renovate, right? They want to walk into a house that is at least 95% done meetings. They just don’t have time to do it. And they don’t have the vision to do it. And I blame that on my Instagram account. I blame it on I blame it on, you know, HDTV, you know, we’re showing all these beautiful, great things and people that they get that in their mind, which is great. And so when they walk in the house, they’re saying well, you know, this isn’t what I want. So now what sellers have to do is sellers have to do the work, right. So if they have a house that has you know, older finishes, you know, it’s just it’s not going to fly in this market. So either a they’ve got a price it lower or the seller has to do the work. And just as buyers don’t have time sellers don’t have the time so what I’ve seen my Roll has turned into is very much a concierge service like I’ve got an army of professionals that can come in and, and do these jobs. And I’ll just, you know, a few of them that I use just to share with everyone. One is a company called renovation sells. The owner, his name is Mike, I’ve met with him one on one amazing guy. And you look at some of the work that they’ve done. You know, he’ll come into a house, he’ll give a quote, and he just he sends his guys in, and gals in just to do the work. So it’s done. So renovation sells, there’s a company called Kirby Oh, that does the same thing. I met with the owner, Tom of FIX IT people another fabulous company, where they you know, especially with like punch list or inspection items, you know, they’ll come in and take care of everything. But my point of all of that is, is sellers don’t have the resources, or they don’t have the time or both. So our job is to help coordinate all of that, because if we can get all of, if we can get the home market ready. And we can get the price up, it’s just going to help overall help our statistics here in Chicago market times will end up going down prices will kind of bump up a little bit. So you know, we’ve got a responsibility as well of helping kind of boost our market, as well.
D.J. Paris 11:26 Yeah, it’s so important that homes are ready to show and it used to be I think, many, many years ago, the prevailing thought was keep it pretty empty. So people can visualize their own stuff inside of various rooms. And I think that’s gone away, as you said, with all of the, you know, television, programming, HGTV, Instagram, where everyone’s showing their food and how perfect everything looks, it really does I walk, I walk into places that I expect them to look perfect to. And that’s what’s so great as a realtor is there are these these companies that will come in and make adjustments and fixes their staging companies. And they can they can do that for your client. And this, this statistics, I don’t have any in front of me, but I know, doing that, you know, sells homes faster. And for more money.
Carrie McCormick 12:10 It does, it does. So you know, again, a part of our job is to, you know, to be more of a concierge service and get all of this done for our sellers. So that would be my recommendation is get your army of people behind you. And you know, when you’re talking with your buyers and sellers, again, even with a buyer, if you tell the buyer, you know, we can buy this house at a great price. I’ve got the people that can come in and do this for you, Mr. Mrs. Buyer, you know, let’s put an offer in and get the work done. And then you kind of have to help facilitate that.
D.J. Paris 12:41 Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And that’s that’s something that I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, there are some brokers that still don’t even use professional photography, and they’re in their listings, which, which is insane. So, you know, you need to go one step way beyond that, which is, you know, you need to have an honest conversation with the sellers and say, look, I can sell this home for, you know, more than what you know, of home that wasn’t staged or wasn’t fixed up, you know, could be. So let’s, let’s get that rolling. And I think sellers really tend to appreciate that sort of level of honesty, although those conversations can be difficult.
Carrie McCormick 13:14 Absolutely. But you know, you do it once or twice, and you’re golden.
D.J. Paris 13:19 Yeah. And it also really separates you from all the other real estate professionals out there that just want to get the listing will do anything, the seller says and is so desperate for business that they aren’t willing to have the find the courage to have those conversations, and then the home sits on the market for for you know, a lot longer of time. And then that realtor is blamed anyway. So you might as well do it right from the beginning and have that conversation. And that’ll really separate you and probably win you more business ultimately. Great. So I have so this is my marketing minute, for this month. And I was just talking to Carrie about this offline. So we had a I got a mailer. I’ve been getting a mailers from a former guest on the show Michael Rosen lives, I want to credit him because I think this is a really, really cool idea. And I imagine it takes a bit of work, but I appreciate the work that he’s put in. So he happens to be the realtor who sold the most homes in my building. The reason I know that is I get a mailer from him a flyer once a month that says that any you know, which is a very awesome thing for him to have accomplished. But here’s what he does on top of that, that is incredibly useful. So for everyone out there who’s doing mailers, flyers, I thought this was such a good idea because we get mailers and flyers all the time from tons and tons of Realtors, but but mostly they’re just one offs. Maybe I get one a quarter, maybe one a year, and I often just forget. And I you know I tossed it away but with Michael we get them every single month and here’s what he does, which is really cool. He lists on the front of the of the flyer all of the homes that have currently sold or that recently sold in I think the past three months and he lists the type of weather It’s one bedroom, two bedroom, and then the the price and the square footage. And then he also says, Here are the ones that are currently on the market. And that’s all on the front page. And he his face. I’m not even sure his face is on the front page or his name. And then when you turn it over, it’s got his name. So I thought, wow, that is so cool. Because everyone who lives in a building, in my case, it’s, it’s a, I guess it’s I don’t know, if it’s technically a high rise, we’re at 2020, some floors, but it’s there’s a lot of there’s over 200 unit owners in our building, every one of them is always curious what homes are on the market. And we always forget that the average person isn’t really paying attention to that unless they’re in the market to buy or sell a property. They’re probably not going on Zillow, and looking up to see what’s available in the building. So this is a great way within five seconds, I looked at this paper and I went, Oh, I know exactly what’s going on sales wise, and I’m in the business. And I don’t know what’s going on in my own building. And I thought that is really, really smart. And then I turned it over. And then there’s Michael and and the other thing I want to mention that he did for anyone out there thinking, Well, gosh, that sounds expensive. And I’m sure it is expensive. But it was co branded with a lender. So for those of you who are going well, I don’t really want to spend that kind of money. Well, I don’t know what the situation is with Michael and his lender. But I assume that the lender helped cover some of those costs, because the lender also wants some advertising. So on the back it says Joe’s Michael and then whoever the lender is that he used with it. So I just thought, Wow, what a smart idea instead of just a flyer saying, Hey, I’m a realtor, I’d love to work with you. This was actually I thought a real item of value, as like the people from Brian Buffini would say, I thought boy, that is so smart. So I just wanted to give a shout out to our former guests for for doing something that from a marketing perspective. I thought boy, that is smart.
Carrie McCormick 16:43 That is great. I love it.
D.J. Paris 16:46 Well, I think that wraps up our Monday market minute. Once again, we had the great Carrie McCormick on the show, I want everybody to do two things, I want you to go visit her website because talking to Carrie about this on offline just a few minutes before we started. And I love it because it’s simple. It’s clean, it tells the story of what who Kerry is what she’s all about. And it’s just I think the perfect example of what what I build websites. So the idea of her website is just so so smart. So go visit Carrie McCormick, r e.com. This will also be a link in the show notes. But more importantly, check out her Instagram that is a living breathing thing she posts. She creates posts almost every single day. They always are amazing. They’re not only informative, they’re funny, sometimes they look good. And they’re exactly what a broker should really be modeling. If they want to build an Instagram following and she’s got over 6000 followers, she gets tons of engagement on her posts, which is which is really the goal of Instagram is so that people can react to things. So please check out her Instagram, which is Carrie McCormack real estate. And then Carrie, if we have any buyers, sellers, investors who are interested in work with you, or maybe other brokers that would love to talk about maybe even joining your team, what’s the best way that someone should reach out to you?
Carrie McCormick 18:07 So I always say just call me 312-961-4612 Call text email Kerry at@properties.com. And everyone who knows me I respond very quickly. And we’d love to hear from everybody.
D.J. Paris 18:24 Yeah, I want I really encourage our listeners to to reach out in particular. Specifically, if there’s anybody who’s looking for a realtor, Carrie is literally one of the very most successful realtors in Chicago she would she earned, which is a very impressive thing. So everyone should be checking out Carrie go to her website, go visit her on Instagram and follow her there as well. So carry on behalf of the listeners, I want to thank you for being with the show for several years now. I was saying in the very beginning, and I used a poor choice of words, but you are the guest that has been with us the longest and that’s really no surprise because of your reputation of being somebody who gives back in the industry. She’s constantly speaking, giving her time to help other realtors and of course her clients as well. So thank you so much. And on behalf of Carrie and myself I want to thank the listeners for you know, being supportive and paying attention to our show and also sharing it with a friend if you know any other realtor that could benefit from listening to people like Carrie, definitely pass the information pass the podcast over because the more you pass over, the more episodes we can do and the more people we can help. So thank you to everyone and Carrie we will see you next month.
Can realtors use YouTube as a source of buyer and seller leads? YES! Jackson Wilkey, one half of Portland and Seattle’s famous YouTube Agents is living proof that prospecting on YouTube works! In the past four months they’ve closed 12 million in production ALL from YouTube. They’re on pace to close 100 sales transactions in 2020. In this interview Jackson shares his YouTube secrets that anyone can do to drive more qualified leads right to you!
D.J. Paris 0:00 Today’s episode of Keeping it real podcast is brought to you by nest egg. Looking to add value to your investor clients recommend nest egg a Chicago based app that is everything your clients need to manage their rentals in only minutes a month. Nest Egg is the only app that gets things done at the rental including on demand maintenance, and services like tenant placement and snow removal. Also, nest egg is free to use which makes your clients investments 20 to 30% more profitable. Join nest egg today by downloading the app or by visiting mistake dot rent. That’s nest egg dot rent, use promo code keeping it real to get your first hour of maintenance for free. And now on to the show.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host, and guide through the show. And in just a moment, we’re gonna bring on the YouTube agents who get 100% of their business through YouTube. And they’re crushing it. I’m super excited. They’re from Portland. That’s a good time to mention that this show is now nationwide we’ve always had nationwide listeners. But now we’re getting nationwide guests. So if you know someone in your market that we need to feature on our show a top producer doing unique things that people need to know about, then you please let us know you can always visit us at our website to contact us which is keeping it real pod.com Of course we have every episode we’ve ever produced streaming on that website. And of course, you can subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play Spotify, Pandora, anywhere you listen to podcast, just search for keeping it real look for the one that has the name DJ, that’s me. And because there’s a few others with the same name, but you’ll find us pretty easily and guys, also, please tell a friend, we are committed to doubling the number of episodes that we did last year this year. So we’re going to do that but we need your help. We want to double our listenership. All I’m asking you to do is think of one person, one real estate agent that could benefit from hearing the secrets of top producers and pass this over to him you’ll be doing this a huge, huge favor. And thank you very much in advance for that. And lastly, guys, follow us on Facebook. So that’s facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pot every single day we post an article that we find online that is designed to help you grow your business. That’s pretty much all we post along with updates to all of our new episodes. So our whole intention is to help you take your business to the next level by talking to people who are already at that next level. So thanks again for your continued listenership. Thanks for telling a friend and oh one last thing. I keep asking for things, saying it’s the last thing but this is literally the last thing. Please rate us if your specifically whatever system you’re using to listen to our show, whether it’s iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, etc. Please do us a favor and rate us the more ratings you do the better we show up in the search results and the more people we can help. So thanks again guys. And now onto our episode with the YouTube agents.
Today on the show, we have Jackson Wilkie one half of the YouTube agents from next home Realty connection in Portland, Oregon. Now Jackson and his partner Jesse have successfully cracked the code of building a massive real estate business through YouTube. With our obsession with the SEO video and all of their in depth knowledge of YouTube related topics. What they’ve been able to do is transition a successful traditional real estate business into a YouTube lead machine, where 90% of their business is now coming through YouTube, which is unbelievable. They are on track to close 100 transactions from YouTube alone this year. And I also want to give them another shout out because in the last four months, I believe they closed 12 million in production, mostly from YouTube. You got to check out their YouTube channel, which is called YouTube agents. And they have a course that they want to teach you about how to use YouTube and you can go to the YouTube agents.com. And we do have a promo code put in the promo code DJ and you’ll get a certain percentage off. But anyway, welcome Jackson to the show.
Jackson Wilkey 4:43 Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. I’m pumped to talk about this.
D.J. Paris 4:47 I am so pumped because this is not an exaggeration. You are the first realtor first to realtors, you and your partner that I think are actually doing the most important thing with respect to staying in touch with The public, which is providing actual content that people care about and need, instead of just going, Hey, I’m gonna post a Facebook ad. And here’s my new listing. How cool is this? Like, nobody cares, right? But if I’m moving to Portland, I’m gonna find your videos, because they’re all about what I need to know before I moved to Portland, and what neighborhoods and it’s so brilliant. And of course, I’m going to reach out to you guys, because you’re the ones providing all that great content anyway, I’m getting way ahead of ourselves. Tell me about tell me about you. How did you how did you get into real estate?
Jackson Wilkey 5:30 So pretty funny, I actually and this is the kicker, I just moved to Portland two years ago. So I don’t know anybody. Nothing. I came here from a little town in northern Idaho, to get to the big city came for a sales job. And it was actually had a friend or my wife had a friend whose husband worked in the escrow business. So I got on as a sales rep for an escrow company. Basically, everybody knows that title. Rep. And sure, I had no idea what the hell I was doing, because I just came from a, you know, a blue collar town where I was building power lines. And so Anyways, enough of that I got into sales at this escrow company and learn quickly that Realtors really wanted value. You know, that’s what we hear all the time. So I started figuring out that, like, video was this thing that all realtors wanted. And so I just kind of got super in depth of learning it, editing, shooting it, all of that stuff. And after literally 10 to 11 months, I was like, What the hell am I doing? Like, I’m on the wrong side of this, I feel that I could, you know, really leverages myself to get business. And then also I met Jesse, my business partner. He’s a very traditional style realtor who in his first year did like 12,000,011 point 5 million. Wow, traditional cold calling, boss, right? So anyways, we kind of hit it off, he really wanted to bring this like marketing and video to his business. And I was like, screw on jumping over. So we kind of like, teamed up, kind of per se, I got into real estate. And I’m like, I’m just gonna crush it. I know it. Well, I found out literally the first four or five months like this is hard as hell. Yeah. And so I was doing cold calling because he was so good at it. It was like easy for him. For me. It’s the hardest thing in the world. Like, I can’t ask for business. I can literally go anywhere. And I’m going to stand out and people will know me. But I couldn’t call call couldn’t do or not couldn’t do that kind of stuff. So I was really leveraging video. That’s how I got into real estate. I don’t know if you want me to keep going. But like, yeah, no, I love the story. Yeah, so because the story is kind of what got us to where we are today in a very quick timeframe. So like, literally, I’m getting to a point to where like, I’m gonna work myself back into working a real job. And, you know, it’s pretty stressful. But I’m like, I got to start leveraging this video. So here’s what’s really important. Everybody knows who Gary Vee is. And he always talks about being the digital mayor of your town. And so doing these interviews and restaurants and shops, and we started doing this really, really hardcore, like going to all these bars, restaurants doing the interviews and the town, the business owners, they all loved it. We put it to Instagram, we put it to Facebook everywhere, man, and it was killer. But we never got one phone call from it, dude. So I’m like, What the hell? Like, none of this works, man. What do so now I’m like, Okay, it’s real crushed. I need to figure out like I love video, this is how I’m going to get business or I’m going to get out of real estate. And I got down this just absolute rabbit hole wormhole of SEO, search engine optimization or, and leveraging the second largest search engine in the entire world. YouTube, YouTube. Sure. Yeah. So that’s really how it started. And then I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. So there was a lot of trial and error. But now we’ve got we got the systems Absolutely. Dial.
D.J. Paris 9:03 Yeah, let’s talk a little bit about the kind of content you guys provide. Because for our listeners, who are mostly real estate agents, yeah, brokers, realtors, you know, every state calls a realtor is a little bit of a different term, but, but we have realtors, and essentially what what you guys have done is what I’ve been preaching. We have 650 Realtors at our company. And I tell all of them to do this. Nobody does that, of course. But this is really important because essentially what Jackson did, and he talks about cracking the code, and there’s a lot to this. It’s not He wasn’t just, you know, throwing darts in the dark. But essentially, he started you know, you can also think of it logically too. It’s like, what’s the kind of content that somebody who’s moving who is going to be transacting in real estate, especially if they’re moving to Portland or within Portland? What are some of the videos they might be seeking out prior to them buying or selling right? And so that’s what that’s what Jackson’s did and Jesse and they now have a huge treasure and library of this content, where it’s like, we’re the best neighborhoods. Hey, here’s some things you need to know before you move to Portland. So they created all this unbelievably smart and good content because it doesn’t, you can’t just put the content out there if it right up high quality because someone else will outrank you, based on you know, how long people watch and all of those those metrics. But basically, you guys probably just sat down at a whiteboard and said, What are the topics that people need to know when they’re thinking about moving either to Portland or within Portland? And then you started creating great content? Right?
Jackson Wilkey 10:35 Right. So there’s a lot there. So what real estate agents traditionally do is usually Gary Vee was very, I reference him a lot. He’s definitely a motivator, but talked about like 90% of people who like on on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, put out selfish content, like does that help?
D.J. Paris 10:52 Yeah, we were just, we were joking. We were just joking about this offline. It’s like, yeah, hey, you know what, what Realtors do because it’s easy, is they’ll post a link to their newest listing and say, Hey, guys, I have this listing for sale. And that’s great. And that’s fine. But it’s not really providing value to the 99% of the people that follow you who actually aren’t in the middle of, you know, wanting to buy or sell a home. It’s nice, and it makes something hey, he’s doing well, that’s great. But it doesn’t really provide them any value.
Jackson Wilkey 11:17 Well, here’s the number one thing it was never searched. So that’s, that’s the true and that’s, that’s the difference. And so, it I always reference it. It’s like on Facebook, when you look at like you’re scrolling through your feed and your friends sitting there and he’s at the Subaru dealer every single day talking about come down and buy a Subaru from me like you just go right past it. So real estate agents, not not because it’s easy. They just don’t know better. Like they see agents posting their open houses and listings, and maybe their principal brokers are older, and they’re telling them to do these things. And so that’s what you see. But they’re always starting with the verbiage of look at me in my open house and look at me and my listing. And none of this assertion, it kind of comes off as like selfish. And yes, I think if you wrap your head around, like, you know, the value proposition. So what we did was Yes, I got absolutely obsessed. I’m like, holy, I don’t know if you cuss on here, but like, Sure, whoa, holy shit, I figured out there was I have the documents still on my screen on my computer. I found 13,200 searches every single month that had no competition. And that was 27 video titles. And I’m like, holy crap, now I’m cracking into something here. So I started just writing video titles down and then clicking on them. And what I’ll use this is, you know, anybody listening, you can download Keywords Everywhere. It’s a Chrome extension that used to be free when I started. Now, it’s $10. And you get 100,000 keywords. So literally, you can search for months and months and months, every day, you will not run out of your keywords. So 10 bucks is the most worst thing in the world. So what it does, sure, it attaches itself to your I use Chrome. So it attaches itself to Chrome as an extension. Anytime you search anything on Google or YouTube, it’s going to tell you how many times that is searched. what it costs to pay for that, that longtail keyword or that keyword and the competition. So what you do is you just start typing in random things, and you need to wrap your brain around. You really need to wrap your brain around what people are searching for. This is an absolute search engine. People want answers to their questions. So I found out like, hey, people, when they’re moving to my city, they want to know how much it costs. So the cost of living in Portland, Oregon, well, that was searched almost 6000 times a month. And guess how much competition zero. So now I rank for that video, I have the number one video that gets 130 130 to 300 views every single day now just cracked. You know, we’re close to 20,000 views on that video alone. And guess what? I shot it with my cell phone, edit it for on iMovie for free. So yeah, man, it’s it. That was the game changer right there.
D.J. Paris 13:57 Yeah, this is really important because as marketers or as realtors, we’re constantly thinking about how do we get in front of our clients? And more importantly, we often think how do we show up number one on Google, right? Well, for a realtor that’s really hard to do. You’re competing against for and when we talk about showing up number one on Google, we’re talking about showing up for phrases, wherever whatever your specialty is, right maybe you specialize in a particular neighborhood in your in your in your town or your city and you want to show up number one for Best Realtor in Lincoln Park or somewhere in Portland, right? But the problem is, you’re competing against a ton of other players in that space. Right? You’ve got Zillow. You’ve got Redfin, you’ve got, of course, all the brokerage firms that also want that lead. Right. So we’re talking about Google searches. Well, it’s really, really hard to rank organically in the top three slots. In on Google just really difficult. It costs a tremendous amount of money even to earn your way up there. You can certainly buy your way up there with ads, but it’s really difficult to actually earn a natural spot there. However, the most forgotten about a search engine for this type of business is really YouTube, right? So people are still searching for those exact same phrases and keywords on, as Jackson said, the second largest search engine online, which of course is YouTube. And as Jackson said, there were no other players in his space for those those key phrases.
Jackson Wilkey 15:20 Yep. And that is exactly right. So when you look at it, like Google, and blogs, there’s billions and billions and billions of blogs or blogs, and it is so hard to compete. It’s basically impossible. So that was what we did is, is I started looking into YouTube, which, if you don’t know it, Google owns YouTube. So it’s literally the same search engine. In fact, you would be surprised how many people reach out to us or when they’re here for tours. And we always ask, you know, like, how did you find us? We know it’s through YouTube or through video, but which one? Or how, in a lot of our like, actually, I was just searching on YouTube, like, you know, neighborhoods in Portland, or cost of living in Portland, in your videos actually popped up first. And so I clicked on him. And then I’m like, holy crap. And I literally went down this rabbit hole of watching all your videos, which are really great, by the way. Thanks for doing that, sir. Yeah, do you like Google even understands that there’s too many blogs. And Google understands that everybody’s watching video. And so they’re starting to pull videos over into their platform. But once we realize that, like, like, people are wanting to really figure out what it’s like to live there. And it’s a stressful situation. Nobody really just like plans their move for two or three years. And it’s graceful. Usually, it’s like a job move or relocation or something happens in like, Okay, I’m moving. That’s two years ago. That’s what happened to me. And guess what, what do you do? And I started researching a bunch, where to look for family? You know, I got three kids. So I gotta figure out where the schools are. You got to figure out what’s the best place to live. And guess what, when you look at it on a map or read a blog, it just doesn’t give you what it feels like. And so that was really when things changed for us is when we actually started figuring out what people were asking about living in our territory. And then we covered it with those videos. How does the traffic Well, me and Justin went and got stuck in traffic and showed you how bad the traffic was or how to avoid it. You got, you got family, we talked about the top 10 neighborhoods for families, you’re a single we did the best neighborhoods for single. So we really just capitalized on on the search engine on search engine optimization, figuring out what people were searching, and doing exactly that title, that longtail keyword in YouTube and ranking very quickly for it.
D.J. Paris 17:34 Yeah, it’s brilliant. I was it was funny, we are recorded got a little screwy. So we’re gonna, just sorry, Jackson is actually covering something we covered, but you guys won’t won’t know that. So I’m going to tell the story again. So I apologize, Jackson, but it’s a good story. And this is really important. So I was on a trip to Ireland with with my father earlier last year. And we were going from town to town. And as you do when you go to Ireland, and of course, there’s so many towns, and there’s so many things to go see and do. And there’s a million pubs. And there’s just there’s so many restaurants and places to stay. And it is super overwhelming, especially if you’re trying to cram in, you know the number of places that my dad and I did. And so what we ended up doing is every day we’d look at our our book that we had about touring Ireland, and we would go to the specific city and see what all the sites were. But then sometimes that didn’t even give us a really good sense of like, what we should actually go see you have to really trust the author of that book. And the author was good, but wasn’t always right. And so what we ended up doing after about the third day, we realized, you know, we really need to check out some of these things ahead of time. Right. So we went on YouTube for these and we would start searching for Okay, top 10 things to do and Dingell or whatever town we were in Kilkenny or wherever. And then we would actually see because people would do a tour of different sites, it would say, Hey, that looks pretty cool. Or maybe that one. And we would do that. And even sometimes we would just listen to the audio as well if we were driving and couldn’t watch the video at the same time. But the but the point I’m making is that even though I had searched online, I had read all the blogs and there’s a million blogs about touring being a tourist in Ireland. And I saw a lot of pictures and I got a general sense the videos really clinched and and after three days, we just abandon everything and watch videos. And so we were this is a perfect example. And there believe it or not even for Ireland, which is one of the most touristic company countries in the whole world. There weren’t that many options, believe it or not. So. So this is exactly what Jackson’s talking about.
Jackson Wilkey 19:27 And I’m you know, I’ll mention it again, if I can’t remember the beginning of from our recording thing, but like I’ve actually worked myself out of real estate in less than a year. And I want to make that a point because real estate really wasn’t my thing Jesse’s like the greatest real estate agent ever. But in Listen, in basically six months, I’ve figured out how to leverage a platform where there’s 2 billion people on it and figured out that you know what, even though there’s billions of videos on There, there’s really nothing about your city. Like that’s really informative. And maybe it comes from somebody who just lives there and happens to do a random video in their apartment, right? So to get out into your community, and this is when it really changed for us is when we started vlogging with a GoPro Hero seven, like, it’s a $40 camera, it’s the greatest camera of all time. And we literally just hit the ground running and started just showing you what these neighborhoods were showed you with downtown Portland was we bought a drone, which if you don’t have one, there’s a million photographers out there who have them, and they’ll sell you pictures or give them to you, if you give them credit, which started putting the drone in the air and showing you like, Hey, look at this neighborhood. And we would get up in the air, talk about the main streets. And then we walked down the main one, here’s all your restaurants, shops, bars, your walking distance of ease your 15 minutes, you can actually see down the road, you can see the towers of or the buildings for downtown, you’re 15 minutes away. So if you’re going to be working, yada, yada, so we really started figuring out what people were searching. And found out, there’s really no good content on YouTube about our city. And we went from getting a viewer day three views a day to now we get sometimes 1500. So that’s in, you know, six months, basically 10 months since our first video, hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of views. And now we’re the number one most suggested channel. And that’s what’s important. So if you type in anything, Portland, Oregon, and you don’t happen to catch one of our videos, which is rare, you’ll watch one and at the end of it, they’re going to suggest our video. So we get a lot of views from the suggested platform. And people are watching us like sitcoms, because when you are moving or you’re traveling to Ireland or whatever, that’s a real like right now situation. And you want to just engulf your brain with as much information as possible. And so they go down these rabbit holes of watching our videos for hours and hours. And guess what? Every phone call that I get? Imagine this. Every phone call we get is somebody that’s just like me that likes the things I like that likes my personality. Yeah, we get the hater comments all the time. But I don’t want to work with them. I get people I mentioned brewskis all the time. I love beers. And I’m always like, this is my favorite join my family and I just went here last weekend, we got some brewskis. So people call me like dude, Jackson, we’re coming up by the house, hey, when we come for a tour, we’re buying a brewskis these people are my people, like I’m friends with these people immediately. And I’ve never met them. And here’s the funny thing. We do so many tours now. And again, I’ve worked myself out of this. I literally just do YouTube videos every day because we branched over to Seattle, Washington, because again, nobody’s doing that. And when I was doing the tours and stuff, I would be like, oh shit, like, I don’t know what these people look like. So I would park and I’d kind of like just look around and I would look at whoever it was. And they’re like waving their hands.
D.J. Paris 22:53 They know you are of course.
Jackson Wilkey 22:55 Oh my god, Jackson, it’s you like that must be them. So it’s a really good feeling. And yeah, there’s there is. It’s really tough. It’s not easy. I don’t I don’t want to say that. But there is no competition. If done correctly and optimized in SEO, holy crap, it can literally change your life. Change your business. It really quick. Yeah, and
D.J. Paris 23:14 it’s a marathon, right? It’s definitely not. You put up one video, maybe you get lucky. Probably won’t. It’s kind of like this podcast. So I started it. I thought, boy, if I was I’m not a Producing Realtor, either. I thought, wouldn’t it be cool, because we have so many Realtors here in Chicago. I said, if I was producing, I would want to know what the top 1% is doing to grow their business. And so I thought, you know, I know the realtors that our firm, would we have some of those people, of course, but not all of them. I know, they would want to know. And then I started interviewing, I said, I wonder if those top 1% Realtors would be willing to talk to me. And of course, they were thrilled to do it. Because it’s a way of giving back as well. And even producing these videos, whether or not you get leads from it, you’re giving back to the community. And you’re giving back to people in a way that’s really, really valuable. Now, of course, you want to do it to generate business ultimately. But if you go into it from I’m going to create the best possible content for my audience, even though my audience doesn’t even know me yet. And you just put your head down and keep doing it and learn. There’s there’s obviously a lot of technique there. But at the end of the day, the content wins over everything. And so we started doing this podcast for that exact same reason you’re doing it and and I don’t even promote the firm I work at because when I’m interviewing brokers from other firms, they probably don’t want me doing that. So I never have and sure enough, just as you were saying, people find you people have found me going, I’m hooked on the show. I love the content you provide, hey, what’s going on at your firm, right? And that’s where I get so we have a very similar idea what I’m not doing however, and you’re getting such a great idea is utilizing YouTube. So I write a lot of content, I write blogs, I write for magazines, I do a lot of those things, but I don’t make the videos and so what you’re doing is creating so for everyone listening that There’s a lot that you can take away from this right? So start thinking about what’s your specialty, that’s really the most important thing is, what geographic area? Do you specialize it? And if it’s a particular neighborhood, depending on how big your city is, or if it’s a suburb, or if it’s the city itself or whatever, figure out what gets you the most excited what you like what you know the most about, and then don’t always just talk about real estate, right, figure out what kind of content that people are thinking about moving into this area? What would they need to know? What are they interested in? Yes, of course, real estate is part of it. But like, they probably want to know, all what this what schools are going on here and, and what the local cuisine is like, and also what bars brewskis are available. Right?
Jackson Wilkey 25:40 Exactly. And you add on that real quick, like, you need to work to your avatar to and you need to work with people that you know, you think are going to be buying houses. And ultimately, and I don’t want to say this in a negative way, but like who have the money and resources to buy houses. And so we kind of cater to that. And that’s something that you will really test and as a blog writer, you probably find out like, oh, this title works Oh, in this area, right? So we have these video titles that really work well. And when I started really talking about at first I was kind of nervous to tell people I wasn’t from Portland, I just kind of came as like, you know, important real estate shares and doing these videos and then I’m like, Man, whenever I tell a story, you know of my like something that I did or Jesse tell the story like that watch time is longer, the video performs better. And so I did a video like, you know, moving to Portland, Oregon, my story and I literally just talked and it’s just a headshot stop video green screen video about when I moved here. The struggles, you know, daycare. There’s so many families that daycares were so backed up. So please, please, please set up your daycare before you come that caught me off guard. And yeah, so I worked towards these avatar and when you said schools that really hit because, you know we have hundreds and hundreds of reach outs and so like literally 8070 80% of them people are coming. They either have a job already or you know, most of them already got the job already and they need to find schools like here’s the here’s the one thing I want to get across to that it’s just kind of popped up before for forget. So they’re looking for schools, right? They haven’t even searched three bedroom, two bath house, four bedroom, three bathroom house. We are literally catching these people before they get into Zillow and Redfin. We are so like at the top of the funnel, these people don’t know what house they want, yet all they know. They’re all they want to know is where to be living. And then the house comes second. So as everybody gets scared of Zillow and Redfin, and all these big, big neighbors, like, we’re getting ahead of them. And so these people were like, well, I don’t really know the house I want yet, you know, I guess we’d like you know, three bed, we want a yard, you know, we’d like a little bit of space, you know, whatever. So they go through it then, but they hadn’t thought about it. You know what I mean? That’s pretty powerful. So then when we sit there and go, perfect. These are probably like the top three areas that we really recommend. And they usually say, Yeah, we like this area in that area, too. We’re like, okay, so when you come, we’re going to set up your tour date, and we’re going to show you those, but we’re going to take you to the areas we think I’ll fit you in like 90% of the time the two areas they pick or like they’re like, No, I couldn’t live there. We’re like we knew that. So here, we’re going to take you where we think fits in there, like, Oh, this is the best. So we know it. We set that up. But then, you know, we give them a freaking custom property search in our CRM, and they think it’s the greatest thing ever. You can do that. Like Sure, yeah. It really easily. And so, yes, you talk about value and content, like these people are just wanting to know what it’s like to live there. And then they will literally use you for everything, everything else. They use our preferred preferred lender, they use our agents in their state, like we literally just take over this whole situation because they trust us more than anybody with their move.
D.J. Paris 28:56 Well, yeah. And you just brought up a good point. And this is really important too, because of course YouTube is global. And people from Portland are not the only people who are searching for this content, they find it somehow and all of a sudden they’re like actually I’m moving to you know Santa Barbara and you’re like Hey, no problem. We have a partner there I can find the best realtor there and get that over to you. And then oh by the way, that’s a referral fee to you. So this is a huge referral machine. So when you said you you talk your way out of real estate, you’re really not kidding what you’ve become is a lead generation machine of course, and that’s free every broker once you did it for the brilliant says you did it before they ever met you. That’s brilliant. They haven’t met you in person but they already know you because they like your content because it’s good. And it’s and it’s available and they can find it and it’s you know better than anyone elses for that particular though
Jackson Wilkey 29:46 certainly everything people have taught you about providing value and making these people trust you like you know you but actually like this is how you do it. This is exactly how you can do it. Very quick and it there is no more powerful platform and YouTube is only growing. Like I said, Google is putting way more videos on their platform. YouTube is sponsoring it was sponsoring the Major League, playoffs, everything like YouTube is growing at a rapid rate. And it is a incredible search engine that is just wide open in our space. So we love teaching it. And people always ask, like, why are you giving all these tips like my YouTube agent channel, it’s literally the YouTube agents. I give so many tips in there because one that just opens up more doors for me if you’re in Lansing, Michigan or something and you have somebody from Portland moving there, then you’re gonna reach out to me and say, Hey, someone’s moving from Beaverton, Oregon, can you take care of him? Yep, for sure. It just opens this, like, we want to build channel partners. And that’s how we really start searching. If, if we don’t have an agent in an area, we go to YouTube and search and see if we can find one. And usually we can’t, in fact, most of the time you can’t. So then we try and find somebody who’s really good social and can close these deals. But yeah, we’d love to build these channel partners out and, and connect.
D.J. Paris 31:05 So if you’re if you’re a broker who’s listing a realtor who’s listening, and you want to learn how to do this, and you should learn how to do this, because look, you know, you can always buy Zillow leads, you can buy Redfin leads, there’s a lot of places that will sell you lead leads, because there’s a lot of great lead generation companies. But what we’re really doing, or what Jesse Jackson are doing, and there’s nothing wrong, of course, with purchasing leads, that’s great. There are a lot of great services that do that. But what what we’re what we’re really doing is introducing the people you don’t yet know to you through really important content that they seek out, so that you’re not even pushing it their way going watch my video watch, but they’re finding you. So there’s a lot less resistance. If they liked the video, and they like you, then of course, hopefully they would reach out when they have a real estate transaction.
Jackson Wilkey 31:53 Yep, that’s what it is. And I mean, there’s a lot that goes into optimizing a video so that you can rank and just know if you do start. It’s a beast man, it takes a lot. I like I said, I built a new channel living in Seattle, Washington, and I don’t even live there. But it’s wide open. So I do a lot of screen screen videos. And then we’ll we’ll drive the hours up there to get some B roll footage. But holy crap, starting over again, I was like, This is so hard. I’m getting like one view a day or four views. And it took me four days to get another subscriber. So it it takes time. And that’s probably another reason why there’s nobody in this space. But if you can dedicate even just one, one video a week that is keyword research, and you did that, you know you’re talking 50 videos in one year, you’re gonna be ranking, you’re gonna have some videos at the top, and you’re gonna get phone calls for sure. So optimizing, you know, thumbnails, titles, tags, descriptions, there’s a lot to it. But man, I started from not knowing a damn thing to really perfecting it quickly. So it’s definitely doable.
D.J. Paris 32:57 Yeah, it’s funny. So when I started this podcast, we did it, I did it entirely for free, on top of my my full time job for about a year and a half. And occasionally we’d have a sponsor reach out to us and say, Hey, can we buy a spot as a live read on your show, with a little onesie twosie here and there, we never sought them out. And then all of a sudden, about three or four months ago, we had a national sponsor reach out to us on their own going, Hey, your show is getting a lot of attention. And we can see that you guys are probably getting a lot of downloads. And even though we were only focused on the Chicagoland area, we’re talking to brokers who are successful here. And they said, We want to buy 13 episodes, and they threw stupid money at us, and we had to take it. And so then all of a sudden, I went, Oh my gosh, this could this, this could be a business. It’s not a, you know, a huge business for us at this moment, because we’re really just focused on providing value. But now all of a sudden, we have lots of national sponsors that are reaching out and now every episode is sponsored. But it took I can’t even tell you the hundreds of hours I’ve put into this, over the last two years just focused on providing value good quality content, just like Jesse and Jackson do in Portland and now Seattle, their whole focus is on we want the best quality videos for the keywords and the and the questions that people are searching for on YouTube. And and then of course optimizing it, and that’s what they’ll teach you how to do. So I could not be a bigger fan of them. And let’s let’s promote your your, your your your course, as well. So it’s the YouTube agents.com. We’ll also have a link in of course, the notes and we’ll promote it also on our Facebook page. But there is a discount which we’re figuring out right now. But there will be a discounted put in the the code DJ. So just the letters D and J both capital my name, DJ and you’ll get a bit of a discount but to talk just a little bit about the course.
Jackson Wilkey 34:48 Yeah, so what I wanted to do and that’s the thing with real estate, there’s so many courses as you know, and I’ve gotten into a few and unfortunately there are ones about cold calling stuff so I didn’t really gain I think from it, but they were very long, there was hour, hour and a half videos. And I don’t think anybody’s attention can last that long for a long time. And then there’s like 12, like 12 sections at all. So I really broke it down into like three minute videos, the longest video I have, I think is like 10 minutes. And that’s really like diving into editing and stuff. So instead of buying like an editing course, and, you know, SEO course, in a YouTube course, I combined it all. So even if you don’t have a YouTube channel, like the opening section is creating your YouTube channel, show your channel art, all of your channel tags, what settings need to be set, so that this thing turns into an absolute mousetrap lead machine, and then it’s, Hey, let’s figure out all your titles. Let’s get 20 3040 video titles real fast. And then let’s let’s shoot these my first videos and when you talked about quality, that isn’t per se, like these flashy listing videos dry, it’s more like content. My top two videos are still ones I shot on my cell phone because I gave true true true answers cost of living and the pros and cons. And I told you my pros and cons and they dominate. So I literally these people typed in pros and cons of Portland, Oregon, which is searched a shitload and I did a title. And I told you five pros, five cons, five things in the middle. So like I gave them answer, and they stay throughout the whole thing. So quality is, you know, we’re getting a lot better now. But quality is it’s a search engine, you need to be answering questions. So if somebody asked you that question offhand, how could you answer it. So I teach you this in the course. And it’s like, really building your videos with the hook, the intro, the the meat, the call to actions, like, there are certain ways to do this to really grow fast. So it is literally a to z. And then when uploading is very important to optimize and rank even for tougher keywords. I know how to do that now. And it’s through optimization, where other videos other creators did not optimize using descriptions, titles, tags, all of that, and then creating the most clickable thumbnail. So there’s a lot to it, but it’s all broke down into little three, five minute course era videos, and a lot of them so you can reference back and it really, it’s one of a kind that if you look, there’s no Realtors doing this really anywhere. So it’s one of its kind. We’re really trailblazing this and man, don’t be the second third, fourth Realtor in your market to do this because it you will own your market if you can get out there. And if there’s somebody, I’ll teach you how to get above, Okay,
D.J. Paris 37:30 wonderful. Well, hey, I think that’s a great place to park and I think, you know, I would love to have to have you and even Jesse Of course, as well on the show on a regular basis, because these are, you know, we could do a lesson, you know, a month or at least something to consider, but I know our audience is going to eat this up. So even if this is our only time doing this, depending on how busy you guys are with the videos, you’re doing, man, good. But we definitely want to promote, again, go to the YouTube agents.com Check out their course, also, you know, they also provide content for you the realtor on their YouTube channel as well. So there’s that he provides a lot of content for free. So it’s not Yeah, and that’s really important because as we know, you know giving away quality and when I say quality content, I want to just go back for a moment just to make sure because you brought up a really good point Jackson, about the about the the quality, I didn’t mean the quality of the video being shiny and bright and beautiful and sharp and having really cool edits and all of that’s really cool and useful. But the quality of the content reigns supreme and I just mean answering the questions in an authentic way giving the most best content possible you know, and answering those is always going to win and then yeah, you’ll get better at editing just like you did right but and but you know what I want to do is have you guys on more regularly, but in the meantime everyone should go check out the YouTube agents.com and and just to let you get this are this Jackson has been in business less than two years in real estate moving to a new city, Portland and now also doing the same thing in Seattle, which he had never, you know, never lived in either. And now from from you know from Idaho out to Portland and now is on pace to close 100 transactions and then you know, within this year has done 12 million in the last six months, all from YouTube. Like that’s, that’s an it’s it’s crazy.
Jackson Wilkey 39:22 Yeah, I got this thing dialed man. So we branched out to Seattle. And I’m like, All right, I’m going to use everything, all my tips and tricks my knowledge. So it took us about three four months in Portland to really get reached out because I’d figured out and in Seattle in five weeks we had nine reach outs already and their median home price there’s like well over a million bucks so and we’re going to be doing lots a lot and we won’t close any of those. We actually have a team there that’s agreed to give us 50% of every commission back so nice. We will feel that every call we will get our team in in Seattle to we set up a zoom call and I’m just keep going but I will come back every month. I’ll come back every other week. Like hey, I’m so passionate about this stuff I forget Love it. And I teach a lot of it. But yeah, we do zoom calls. So these people call and the first thing we do is get them on a zoom call with our lender, with our buyer’s agent. You know, we had hired buyer’s agents. How great is this? She’s brand new, she’s never had to pick up the phone and call one person, she answers three to 10 calls every day. So she feels these calls, she sets up the Zoom calls, where we get face to face and half the time they’re so starstruck, you know, it’s just really funny. And then we plan out their trip there, you know, whatever we and then sometimes you get the homerun where you just write offers without them even come in, but we’re at the process absolutely dialed in if you know I’m always available to me and find me anywhere social message me, dude, I love it. I’ll will rap back and forth about it. So yeah, man, it’s wide open. There’s really no one doing it. And this is the way of as as a lot of big disruptors are out there. Hey, providing answers to really tough questions moving to your area is still number one.
D.J. Paris 40:59 Perfect, well, Jackson Wilkie from YouTube agents and also from next home Realty connection in Portland, and Seattle. And of course, really, from all over because you’re on YouTube. So we’re just
Jackson Wilkey 41:09 everywhere, you’re everywhere, I will mention one thing that I’m super proud of. And Jesse really took the reins on this, we started a Facebook pro group $49 a month and it’s just filled with agents. It’s growing like crazy, who want to grow channels from all over. So it’s not one of those groups where you post your video and get likes and subscribers like it’s not that it’s literally training, access to me. And it’s going to be a huge referral platform. So what you know, when it when these leads come up, it gets posted to the group, and whoever’s in those areas scoops up those leads. So it’s a killer, one of a kind, pro Facebook group, too. So that’s on the YouTube a team.com. Got it, you can sign up for that you can check it out. It’s the pro youtube for YouTube agents pro Facebook group, you can check it out. But you’ll have to sign in to the YouTube agents first to get in. But yeah, we’re everywhere. Awesome, guys.
D.J. Paris 41:57 So again, you the the YouTube agents.com Use promo code DJ for a discount. And I this is going to be so well received, we’re going to have you guys on on a regular basis. But there’s two things you can purchase. One is the full course. And that’s what the promo code discount. And the second one is the Facebook pro group which is getting direct access to Jackson and Jesse and all the other members to support each other get tips tricks on how to do these videos. Because, look, guys, I mean, technically, I did have a podcast before I started this one. But that was years ago, and I was just kind of screwing around. I learned how to do all this stuff on my own too. If you just focus like like Jax was like, do one video a week. And by the way, if you just turn your phone around and film yourself for the first several months doing those videos, as long as the the the content, the quality of the content is good, it’s good enough for now and then you can get better and better. But it’s if you do this I like I’m living proof of this Jackson’s living proof of this, you do this. And eventually if the if the quality of the content is good, eventually listeners in your case viewers show up. And then of course, sales are results as well. So thank you so much for being part of the show. We really appreciate I’m so glad that we connected and it’s this is awesome. So thank you on behalf of the listeners. I appreciate you guys Jackson and Jesse was was on for just a moment. We appreciate you guys being part of the show and sharing your knowledge with our audience. So thank you. Hey,
Jackson Wilkey 43:21 buddy. Yeah, let’s get back on there. Hit me up. I’ll come back on and if you get any questions, you know, in your comments, reviews or whatever. We’ll answer those on the next
D.J. Paris 43:29 one. Awesome. We’ll do thank you so much.
Welcome to our BRAND-NEW monthly feature, Social Bootcamp With Gogo Bethke!
Gogo Bethke is the author of Gogo’s Bootcamp, the #1 real estate social media training program in the industry. She came to the U.S. with no money, no sphere of influence and no experience. Within a few years Gogo became a top 1% producer through her social media strategies. She’ll be on the show each month teaching you how to drive more business through social media. Today’s topic – what realtors ® should be doing in 2020 to increase their Instagram effectiveness.
D.J. Paris 0:00 Today’s episode of Keeping it real podcast is brought to you by nest egg. Looking to add value to your investor clients recommend nest egg a Chicago based app that has everything your clients need to manage their rentals in only minutes a month. Nest Egg is the only app that gets things done at the rental including on demand maintenance, and services like tenant placement and snow removal. Also nest egg is free to use which makes your clients investments 20 to 30% more profitable. Join nest egg today by downloading the app or by visiting mistake dot rent. That’s nest egg dot rent, use promo code keeping it real to get your first hour of maintenance for free. And now on to the show.
Hello, and welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made by real estate agents for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide, and host through the show and we’re just about ready to have gogo from gogos bootcamp.com. Come on and talk about social media and what Realtors need to be doing in 2020 to up their social media game. Before we get to go go, I’m asking everyone for a huge favor. Could you think of just one realtor, one real estate agent that you know that could benefit from listening to top 1% producers? Right? Of course you can we all know at least one who’s eager to learn but maybe doesn’t exactly know how to get those tips and strategies from the very best producers. Well, this is what this podcast is all about. If you’re listening you already know that but a lot of brokers don’t yet know about the show. So if everyone goes out there and just tells one other person that will double our listenership we’ll be able to do more episodes. Just this month alone, we have 12 episodes booked and scheduled and ready. So this is our year 2020 to literally double the number of episodes we’re going to provide. So we’re asking you to help us double our audience. So just think of one broker one realtor that could use this kind of information, pass it along, we’d greatly appreciate it. Also, if you’re a sponsor or you have a product or service that Realtors need to know about we are taking sponsorships. So reach out to us visit keeping it real pod.com and you can send us a message and our sponsorship team will get back in touch with you. Also, we have a new casting director Her name is Ana She’s amazing. So if you know another broker anywhere in the country, that would be a great fit for our show. Send her a note you can do that also through our website where you can of course listen to every episode we’ve already ever done. And also follow us on Facebook visit facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and every single day we send an article that we found online that is designed to help you grow your business okay guys, that’s enough for me let’s get on to our episode with Gogo.
Okay, today on the show, we have to go go back keep GO GO came to the United States in 2003. To build her American dream she was broke, had no sphere of influence, no experience, barely spoke English and with only $6 to her name. So that left her with nothing else but Facebook to grow her business. And that’s where she started, she created gogos real estate and her real estate career began with the power of social media gogo has sold over 45 million in residential real estate transactions. She shares the good, the bad and the ugly side of real estate and her honest snippets into her everyday life have earned her 10s of 1000s of followers on social media and in the real estate community and she earned the nickname the social media queen. Now after being asked to present at various realtor events. She has built a social media bootcamp called Go Go’s Bootcamp for realtors, you can find that Go Go’s bootcamp.com Today she has a team of 130 agents by the way. Last time we did this she had a team of 106 So that’s how quickly she is growing and she’s growing nation wide. Her goal is to help as many agents as possible make a name for themselves in real estate on social media. If she can do it, this girl from Transylvania Romania with no US education, no sphere of influence, no money, no experience and an accent then you can definitely do it to follow go go on Instagram at gogos that’s Gee Oh gee, OH S Go Go’s real estate. And we’ll post links to that as well. Anyway, welcome to the show again. Go go.
Gogo Bethke 4:49 Well, thank you for having me. I love it. It’s exciting.
D.J. Paris 4:52 We’re super excited to have you Thanks. Your your last episode was one of our I think it was our third most listen to episode ever, which is super big for us. And we’re so excited you’re back with us. So what do you want to talk about today? Oh, hold on before it before I’m interrupt you. I apologize before we have to talk about your new programs you just updated Go Go’s bootcamp.
Gogo Bethke 5:18 Yeah. So we updated go was boot camp for a couple reasons. A because I, even though I do everything organically, so I don’t run ads. And I will tell you, when I do run ads, it’s a little bit different. I run ads for events. Sometimes most of my events fill up organically. But if they don’t, then we run a couple events to fill up the seats. And then I also run ads for Google Ads bootcamp. But other than that, I don’t run ads. So everything is that I do is organic. But some agents through experience after buying the original goggles, boot camp, they want to throw some money at it, they want to throw 10 bucks a day and run an ad and how should they do that? So my digital marketer, Sammy has a class for that. It’s called finance digital media. And he is that’s what he teaches, he teaches how to build that brand, and how to lead generate and how to get eyeballs and everything that you’re posting, with the power of Facebook and Instagram and running ads in stories and in your feed and things like that. So that got added to the boot camp for pretty much the same price that we were running for my birthday. And I think the the birthday special is still up. So you get that then on top of it. We added a private Facebook group only for boot camp members. So everybody that purchased at any point, I mean, I used to have my bootcamp at $49. So back in the day, when I was slowly building it for everybody who trusted me at that time and purchased that they get access now to everything that I came out with ever since. And so also when they purchase it, now they get access to the to the Facebook group. And once a month, we are going to do live training where myself and Sandy, my digital marketer will set in and we’ll have a different subject. And we’ll start from the basics. So the very first training is the 27th of this month, I think it’s at one o’clock in the afternoon, Eastern Time. And then everybody comes on live. And then we start from the ground up where I literally walk you through how to build up your profiles, and what to do what not to do. And then everyone just we add on and on and on until you have everything that I have. And that’s going to be a 12 month series.
D.J. Paris 7:19 Awesome. Well, everyone should check that out. You also just go to Go Go’s boot camp.com. And she has a wonderful website and explains in great detail, and there’s a money back guarantee, so there’s nothing to lose, right? If it makes sense, you’re going to stay with it. And it will make sense because it makes sense for the 1000s of people that are already members. And you know, on our show, I do not promote things lightly. I almost never promote anything. And this is about the best thing I’ve seen out there, especially in the realm of social media. So definitely check it out Go Go’s boot camp.com. So what are we going to talk about today is it’s now 2020.
Gogo Bethke 7:58 Yeah, so that’s exactly what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about what’s new in 2020, when it comes to social media, what works or maybe that work last year, it doesn’t work anymore. And so you kind of just like anything else, any systems and, and processes that you may be using. And you might have been successful with that in the past, that doesn’t mean that it’s going to work in 2020. So figured let’s go through some of the changes that the algorithm changes and things like that, that Facebook and Instagram has implemented so that you can adjust with the time so you can have just as successful if not more successful, you’re in 2020 that you did before. Great. How’s that sound? Sounds good. Okay. So if you don’t mind, I’m just kind of going through my notes and just kind of blurring out the ideas that are the notes that I took here. So giveaways are very, very, very important. From now on. Instagram, especially and Facebook, if you look at my Facebook, it’s only I think 3000 followers, it’s really hard to grow a Facebook page, because Facebook only allows 2% of your followers, the already followers to actually see your post.
D.J. Paris 9:00 Right. And this is important. Let’s I want to say this again. So if you have a group or a page, specific to your business, or even just your friends, the people that follow you or who like your page only on average, two, or maybe 3% of your lucky of those people who follow you are actually going to
Gogo Bethke 9:18 see that button and they said I’m interested in and I want to see what God was going to post from now on. Even though they showed interest, Facebook only going to show it to 2%. So if you’re 100 people, two of them are going to see it, it’s going to show up in their feed. So the reason why they do that is because when you turn it into a page, the reason why they allow you to reach people that you can’t organically and unnatural on your organic page is because they want you to advertise, they want you to throw money at it. So yeah, you have the ability to reach strangers and get their eyeballs but I want you to pay for it kind of scenario. So it’s kind of hard to grow it organically. But the one way that you can and it’s very very effective and you can get hundreds of followers well granted depending where you’re at as giveaway As and our business as realtors, we have local businesses. So I don’t sell in Chicago even though I can through my team, but I won’t do that. So if I’m trying to generate local leads, you want local followers for that. So the very the one of the very best ways of doing so is to collaborate with local businesses and then do giveaways. So for example, let’s say you call it a giveaway, Tuesdays, whatever.
D.J. Paris 10:23 I love this, by the way, this idea alone has never ever been brought up by anyone I’ve ever interviewed. So I’m really excited about this.
Gogo Bethke 10:31 Okay, so let’s do this. So you can do like giveaway Tuesday. So just tried to say with any, just like everything else, if you cold call her and you consistent with and you cold call every day from eight to noon, then when you decide to do a giveaway, you’re going to be consistent with it. And you’re going to call it giveaway Tuesdays and you’re going to do it every single Tuesday. So then every week, you go and pick a business that’s local to you that you go in and you say, Hey, I’m gonna go, I’m a local realtor, I built my business on social media, I’m trying to build yours and mine at the same time try to generate local sales for myself. And with that local sales for you, is there anything in your business that you can give away, then it’s not costing you a trillion dollars, but it will generate traffic to you. And with that giveaway will generate traffic to me?
D.J. Paris 11:12 Why that’s brilliant it because you know, these local businesses, here’s what they’re always getting these phone calls, if you have a small, if you have a local business, you’re getting phone calls from billboard, advertisers, newspapers, radio, which all of which want your money. And now you’re offering them as a realtor, hey, for you know, if you can, apart with some something, I can promote your business for you.
Gogo Bethke 11:34 Yes. And then also you get their followers. So the way you do that is that you may take a picture of the item that you’re giving away, I do recommend though, instead of being just the item, you should be in the photo, maybe even the owner of the other business, the local business, you guys should be in the photo holding the thing that you’re going to give away, then you’re going to say, then you’re going to name the terms of the giveaway, you always want whoever is participating in the giveaway to follow both of your businesses, you’re doing this for the traffic, you don’t just want to give them something, you give them something for the future eyeballs, because as long as you can stay in some of them, that’s your free advertising for the future. And they always be reminded that you’re a realtor, and they always going to see your posts. And if and when down the road. They need a realtor, they wouldn’t be able to think of anybody else but you because they see you all the time. Plus, you already gave them something. And people feel like I got something from you. I have to I owe you now. Right. So the law of reciprocity. Yeah. So they’re going to choose you over another realtor because they already feel like you gave them something already. So with the giveaways, there’s a few terms that you always want to make sure that you plug into that giveaway. So first of all being the photos. Second of all, when you say these are the terms of and you’re going to put the date on which it ends. So you’re gonna say if you’re doing it every Tuesday, then you might say, Okay, you make your posts on Tuesdays, and then they have to follow to the terms and then you will pick the winner on Sundays. And then you do another one on Tuesday, pick the winner on Sunday and another one on Tuesday, pick the winner on Sunday. So you say they must follow you and the other business. So that right there grows your audience. And yeah, then they can. The other thing is they can tag three friends to entering this giveaway tag three local friends. So now you just not only gain their following, but you get gain three of their friends following, right. And then when you choose the winner, you’re gonna go through their profile, and there’s two buttons, there’s one following and followers, you’re going to make sure that they’re actually following you, then you’re going to look up the other business, make sure they’re following them. And then you’re going to go to the notes, make sure they tag three friends they did they qualify, that’s the winner.
D.J. Paris 13:35 Love it, for what type what type of businesses you think are good prospects for realtors out there thinking to implement this.
Gogo Bethke 13:43 I mean, really anyone from a dog walker, to a restaurant to a yoga studio to a doctor’s office. I mean, as long as it’s local, because you’re going for that local market. Now I usually do giveaways like I just gave a book away. And I was talking about on Sunday how you know, I love reading and when I was younger, I actually paid other kids to read a book and tell me what it was about because I I hated studying. I was so clever of cheating my way through college and all that, you know, you get older, you learn that I cheated myself. Now the professors. Sure now I was talking about reading the book. And I pretty much said I named the terms of the thing. And I said, everybody who follows me name three friends, whoever is going to be the winner yet to pick and I have my Amazon store. So I told the winner just go to my Amazon store, pick a book that you haven’t read yet. I’ll personally mail it to you. So if you’re doing something like that, that’s more of a nationwide audience. But I wasn’t going for that Local Lead Generation purpose. So just depending on what your purpose is, with that when you go nationwide, yeah, you can get referrals. That’s not out of the window. Like that’s a 25% of a commission. Sure. You do it nationwide as well. But I’m just saying stay true to your what you’re trying to achieve.
D.J. Paris 14:57 Right. So you want to just immerse yourself in your community and this is another way of number one helping a small business, and also working together to cross promote each other.
Gogo Bethke 15:06 Yeah, and also video works best. So if you feel really good about this, then you can take this one step further and create a quick one minute video, if you’re going to put it in your feed, or if you’re willing to take it longer and do an IG TV style video, which is a vertical style video, you’re going to shoot a video, let’s say with the owner of the business as constructions. When did you open this business? What are you guys famous for? Is there a dish that is just so good, and you may you know, you got the whatever five stores local restaurant or like anything about them that it gives them knowledge about the local business, and also in the same time makes you that local expert, and that local brand where everybody knows now. And so then you do don’t give away via video.
D.J. Paris 15:46 And I want everyone listening to realize that nobody starts out with hundreds of 1000s of followers, we all start out with essentially, our friends who follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. But it all takes time I interviewed these guys, I was talking to go go about yesterday who are YouTube guys, and they go, but they make videos about Portland. They’re hyper local to Portland. And they said, you know, for six months, we just never looked at our view count because we knew it was going to be like two views a day. So don’t worry if that’s where you’re at. If you have few friends, if you’ve always go to Go Go’s bootcamp, we’ll teach you how to obviously increase that over time. But this is a marathon guys,
Gogo Bethke 16:26 just those two, the way I look at it in real estate, everybody needs a roof above their head. Yes, if you saw it, and one of them buys a house, we’re talking 1000s of dollars in commissions
D.J. Paris 16:37 huge. Yeah, and guys, and even if you only get one entry, right, that’s still one person who cared enough to get excited about your promotion and now is tagged three additional people, so don’t worry.
Gogo Bethke 16:50 So when they want and you you pick the winner, and they receive the final item you personally may have delivered it or you may, however you got it to, you always ask them to take a photo with that item and tag you or send it to you. It’s even better when they tag you. So they take the item posted on their wall, when they tag you, the system notifies you and then you can share it. So now it shows to the rest of the world that may have questions. I’m like, Oh, are you really gonna give them away is someone who’s gonna win when they see that they did win. And they tagged you now when they tagged you, you got all of their friends eyeballs. And then when they tagged you, then you generated their friends over to your so it’s like a cross promotion? I guess because it made you locally jet that whatever you said you will do you follow through and you actually did it.
D.J. Paris 17:35 Yeah. And we I want to talk to because I live in a big metropolitan city. I’m in Chicago, you are in the exact opposite of of where we are. Because a lot of it look, it would if our roles were reversed. And you were in Chicago and you had 1000s and 1000s of followers. Somebody who’s listening might say, well, of course she’s in Chicago, everybody you know she has this huge market, but you are not in Chicago, you are in a very small town.
Gogo Bethke 18:01 You can find it on the map. It’s very small. Yeah. So it’s called Pinckney, Michigan, very tiny little community. I mean, I moved from a high rise in the city in Europe. So when I moved here, and everybody has an acre and we live off of a dirt road, and the closest neighbor is like, hi, your name. It’s like I was so weirded out, there was one grocery store one gas station. It was just not what I was used to now after being a mom of two and the boys being able to just run around outside and shoot their BB guns in the backyard. I learned to love it. But yeah, it’s not that metropolitan area. We don’t have 1000s and 1000s. You know, the real estate opportunities, I guess.
D.J. Paris 18:43 Yeah. So I guess the point I’m making listeners is don’t worry about what your follower count is today, where you live, what you perceive as maybe I’m in a more rural area go Go is in the most rural area, and she has built up this huge following. And you she wants to teach you of course how to do that as well. But yeah, what a great idea. So go to local businesses say I would love to promote you. Also, you know, let them know like, hey, this helps my business too. But more importantly, I really want to help you guys, this real estate’s a hyperlocal business and we should support each other.
Gogo Bethke 19:15 And then another tip, if you like postcards, which I used to do them, but I think they work just like clockwork, this is not a social media tip. But this is a good tip. You can take you can go to the local restaurant, ask them if they can give you a coupon for something. So they may say a free appetizer with an order of entry, or they may say to drinks with an order of an entry or whatever they can give you restaurant can always give you something. Now you’re going to go into your database, you’re going to get all of your mailing addresses you’re going to design it design is beautiful postcard that you are on the front and you talk about your business and the back you print the coupon. Yes, so they have a reason to hold on to because otherwise your postcard just go straight into the trash.
D.J. Paris 19:53 And I haven’t even a thing to tack on to that. So this is a great idea. So let’s let’s recap what gogo just said. So in addition to doing these giveaways, right, when you’re talking to the owner, say, Hey, by the way, I’m thinking about doing a postcard mailer, you know, to help to try to drum up business for me, and I thought maybe we could do it together, ask them if they’re willing to give you a, you know, some sort of discount coupon that you could promote via mailers, postcards. And then if you’re like, Well, I don’t have the money to do that, right? Obviously, maybe the, the restaurant or salon might be willing to co sponsor that. But let’s say they’re not and you don’t have enough money. This is where partnerships come in. So if you have a lender, if you have an attorney, a title company, these are all ancillary partners to your business, which you probably have and say, hey, I want to co sponsor this, can you guys help cover the cost? Right? A lot of these institutions, lenders, attorneys, etc, will do this for you and cover the bill.
Gogo Bethke 20:48 Yeah, I know in Michigan, and I’m not sure if every state is different. There are regulations of the size of every if you are searching size in the lender has to be searched in size in order to split it halfway. But yes, that’s saving you cost.
D.J. Paris 21:02 Yeah, it’s huge. So yeah, guys, that’s what’s known as make sure it’s No, there’s not a RESPA violation. But the the like if you’re working with a lender, in there a reputable lender, they’ll make sure but yeah, definitely just a way to co sponsor and keep your costs down. But well, what an awesome idea. So you just gave two really strong ideas about how to work hyperlocal with businesses?
Gogo Bethke 21:21 Oh, good, good. Well, that’s the goal. The goal is for all of us to make money, you know, I mean, and helping one another making when you’re supporting a local business, and they’re supporting you, everybody wins, we all feed our children.
D.J. Paris 21:32 Exactly. So what else is going on in social media for 20?
Gogo Bethke 21:37 Engagement. So as we talked about the 2%, that Facebook is going to allow them to see your post engagement is very important how many followers you have in the new algorithm, it doesn’t matter, you can just use that you can have two followers. But if those two give you the time of the day, and they watch every video that you posted, and yada yada, that’s what Facebook and Instagram cares about. They care about how much of their attention are you able to capture? How many people take the time to comment? How many people take the time to like how many of them they will DM you 101 will skip the video when you post it, how many remember, watch it all the way through. So what you want what it’s called now, engagement, you don’t want necessarily just the likes and stuff you want them to engage to give you the time of the day. In order to do that. You want to share fun stuff, you want to ask them questions, because when you ask them questions, they have to do what respond. When you find that’s considered engagement. Yes, when you do these giveaways and things like that, and they have to comment and tag people. That’s that’s all engagement. And that’s the reason why you’re doing it is so you to mass natural to mass organically with the algorithm, so you don’t have to pay for ads to get likes and followers.
D.J. Paris 22:45 Yeah, so So guys, this is really, really important. So think about it from the social medias company’s perspective, what they really are trying to serve up to the people who visit their sites, is to make sure they’re giving the best possible content the way they judge. Now they can’t watch every video, they can’t read every post, obviously, they don’t do that. Well, all they can go on is how engaged the audience is with that content. So what that means is, you know, like if gogo said getting people to share it, getting people to comment, getting people to tag their friends in it that shows the social media providers that wow, this is a high quality post look at how much engagement there is. Google curious about this? Because I’ve heard about this in the past. And I don’t know how effective these are. It’s a little bit of a gray area. So I want to get your opinion on it. I don’t have an opinion myself. What about creating groups that are engagement groups? So you’re commenting? I
Gogo Bethke 23:43 would say that because you see that next thing I was about to talk? Oh my
D.J. Paris 23:47 gosh, that’s so that by the way, guys, we did not set that up at all. That is so she’s literally pointing at the word engagement groups.
Gogo Bethke 23:53 And we are on two groups.
D.J. Paris 23:56 i Great minds think alike, I guess. Actually.
Gogo Bethke 24:00 That’s the exact order. I wrote them down. I mean, that’s funny.
D.J. Paris 24:03 So let’s, let’s it’s funny, because I first heard about this about 10 years ago with Facebook. And because I had a blog, I had a very successful blog outside of real estate as a humor blog. And we used to do this, but I kind of forgot about it until just now. So let’s talk about it.
Gogo Bethke 24:17 Yeah, so Instagram does limit you though, to how many people you can have in the group. I think it’s 35 or 25, or something like that. So if you have more people like that, like in my team now what we call team Gaga, there’s 130 of us. So we have multiple groups. So we call it tingle the one to go to Tim go go three thing to go for as people joining your groups, you just add them on and then you create a new one and you automatically add a new one. So then you have multiple groups. So what I do, and we are recording this, so I don’t know if you ever going to post it or not. But I can show you when you go to your posts. So open up your last post on Instagram, and then you’re going to see that little triangle right there. You see that whatever that’s called, like a paper, arrow or whatever it is. Yeah, you’ll click that and it’s going to ask you where do You want to send it and you see my team? So it says yes. So you just send it into the group very quickly, just so it’s more like a reminder for them for like, oh, Google posted something. So then that everybody from that group can come over, take the time to like and comment. But the point of the group is you have to play fair. You can everyone, everyone can expect them to comment 10 posts on yours, but then you’re not going to return the favor, because you’re gonna get.
D.J. Paris 25:25 So guys, right, let’s go, let’s, let’s dial this really get specific here. So here’s what you’re going to do. If you’re a realtor, you’re going to reach out to other realtors who are active on Instagram, you’re gonna say, hey, we know that engagement is everything and Instagram cares how many likes, but an additional likes, they want to see comments, they want to see tags, they want, you know, shares, why don’t we support each other? And each time we both posts, we’re going to share comment and like and you can get a whole network of people to do this.
Gogo Bethke 25:57 Yes. So you do it to mess with the algorithm? Pretty much.
D.J. Paris 26:01 Yeah, this is this is a way this is a way to to show Instagram or Facebook or whatever, that people are engaged with your content. And it guys, it is perfectly okay to do this. This is a great, great idea. Yeah.
Gogo Bethke 26:14 Okay. Next one, tag location, always. So our business is a local business. Yes, in order to generate eyeballs from that location from people that may not know of your existence, you always have to tag the location. So in your post, when you make a post, you look above the post that shows your location. That’s because you tag the location just before posting it is allows you to do a couple of things. So you plug in the photo, then you can write the blah, blah, blah, then you can tag a person or you can tag your location, those and you can then share it to Facebook, those steps are all built in to your Instagram posts, you want to make sure to do all of them. And always, always, always take location. What that does, though, puts your post on a map. So if I go, let’s say you’re in Chicago, if I’m in Chicago, and I’m bored, I don’t know what to do in Chicago. Today, I’m going to go on Instagram, put in location, put it in Chicago as a location and see what’s going on everybody that tag Chicago, I see who’s who’s eating, where if there’s an event going on things like that. That’s the reason why you tag your location, because you want those people from that location to get eyeballs on your post, even who might not be you know, they could care less about your open house this weekend, or the newest listing or whatever you take the location for. But by clicking that they get to see your storefront what I call your actual profile advertising to them, they’re going to follow and that’s all you want. You just want them to follow. So if and when they’re ready down on the road, they’ll call you.
D.J. Paris 27:42 Quick question. This is cool. I’m curious if you ever thought about this? And the answer might be it doesn’t matter. So you’re talking about sharing posts from Instagram, and GoGold mentioned Hey, you want to share it to Facebook because obviously Instagram is owned by Facebook. And it’s an instant, you just basically click a button and it’s going to share it. Question question if you think it matters, if you instead of sharing it from Instagram, if you organically post it as well, not as well. But instead, it’s instead of slow. So when you’re out you’re going to be posting it to places Instagram, same exact post you’re gonna post in Facebook, do you think it matters? Whether you share it from Instagram? Or take the extra step not share it from Instagram and just art and post it uniquely also in Facebook?
Gogo Bethke 28:27 Yeah, I don’t think so. I think it used to matter in the past before you buy one another where it showed like it was an Instagram post. And now it’s fair to Facebook, it doesn’t show it any more. Now it just looks like a Facebook post. Even
D.J. Paris 28:39 I feel the same way. I just was curious because you’re the You’re the queen of Instagram. So
Gogo Bethke 28:43 from Instagram, so my account so I strongly recommend everybody to have a business page on bonus, I don’t do business on personal for many reasons a because my friends who didn’t sign up for that,
D.J. Paris 28:54 right, they don’t want to see your your social media bootcamp stuff.
Gogo Bethke 28:58 And then be it’s because you’re limited on your personal you’re limited to 5000. So believe it or not 5000 may sound like I don’t know, 5000 people. But if you do this right, in less than a year, you’re going to be past that. And then you’re going to have to boot people. And so do it on a page. Now, you’re going to have to start over and do it on a page because you’re going to outgrow that platform so might as well just start and do it right and do it on a page on both sides.
D.J. Paris 29:24 Got it. I will say as far as the sharing there is also a Share button to Twitter and I know Twitter isn’t as popular of course as it used to be if you are going to share to Twitter do not share to Twitter via the Instagram app because it just posts a link and Twitter does not love that so as as Go Go saying hey, you can click the share to Facebook and it shouldn’t negatively affect the Facebook rankings but if you’re going to do Twitter, yeah copy and paste it over. And also, you know put the photo in organically. Twitter does not love driving traffic to Instagram so if you do it from Instagram, it just posts a link to your to your your Instagram posts, guys, so if you’re using Twitter, which probably most Realtors aren’t these days, but if you are just organically posted in Twitter,
Gogo Bethke 30:07 yeah, Twitter is a it’s a totally different level of English. I never been able to understand I’m happy I can speak basic English. I don’t Twitter English, so I never did it.
D.J. Paris 30:18 Yeah, yeah, it’s well, and Twitter is struggled over the last 10 years to really gain its foothold. But yeah, so guys, so let’s just recap a couple of those ideas. We talked about working with local businesses, right. We talked about doing giveaways, we talked about doing mailers, then we talked about Facebook or Instagram. And we talked about tagging your location, we talked about having a you know, the the giveaways and making sure people are engaging, right. It’s all about engagement. And then we also talked about sharing, you know, how do we how do we share our posts, to other social media networks and having an engagement group, don’t hesitate, reach out to other realtors in your area. If you don’t know who is heavy in social media in your area. Just ask around or look online or google it right you’ll have or look on Instagram do searches, you will find there are many, many realtors who love Instagram, and guess what they all want engagement. So reach out to them and say, Hey, let’s create a little engagement group and support each other.
Gogo Bethke 31:16 Yeah, and it’s easy to find on Instagram, especially if they’re using the right hashtags. So for example, I’m in Michigan. So if I’m looking for Michigan realtors that have social media presence, I would search for the hashtag Michigan realtor. Right? Every single one of them that’s on there. So if you’re in Chicago, you’re gonna do Chicago realtor, Cleveland, realtor, Ohio realtor, whatever area that you cover, you can just put that in and search for those and they will pop up and then just message them.
D.J. Paris 31:41 Great. What else is on your sheet? I don’t want to guess anymore. Because probably, I already guessed perfectly once and I’ll probably not.
Gogo Bethke 31:53 So personalized brand is no longer optional. Okay, so what that means to me and in my language, let me break it down to you, you don’t sell real estate, you sell yourself and you’re selling your services. So if you are not in the posts, if you are not in the pictures, if you’re not in the videos, you are going to lose them, you might not even gain them in the first place. But if you gain them at some point, you’re going to lose them. So if all you post is your last listing and open house this weekend and a nice kitchen, people are an average on the market for every seven, how do they say every seven to 10 years for six months, if we do is realistically in between, you’re going to lose them. People are curious about how other people live their life or do their business. And that’s how you’re going to gain their eyeballs. So personalize it as much as you can. It has to be about you. So if nothing goes to change this year, but you’re going to put yourself more often in front of the camera, you’re going to skyrocket your business.
D.J. Paris 32:52 Yeah, this is important. So guys, here’s a really silly example, but a good one. So let’s say you’re going to take a picture of the food at a restaurant that you’re at, which of course we all love to do, right, everybody does that. I would encourage you and look, it’s really cool if you can get that shot just right. But how about putting yourself behind the food as well so people can see that you’re at the restaurant with your husband or your boyfriend or your girlfriend or whoever just alone. Like people want to see you in addition to the perfect meal that you’re about to eat, put yourself in and in fact just test it to Tupac do two different things on two different days show just the picture of the food you’ll get a ton of likes, show yourself in the in the in the picture for a different restaurant with a different food and see what the difference is. I will almost guarantee you’ll get more likes when you’re in the pit.
Gogo Bethke 33:39 We’ll take it one step further and create a quick little video story about you taking that first bite of that food. That’s the reason why went to that restaurant. And then you let people watch your facial reactions while you swallow that first bite and it’s so good. And next thing you know you have 1000s of views and now they’re at their restaurant open ordering the same food tagging you oh my gosh, I can’t believe I didn’t know about this place.
D.J. Paris 34:05 I just did this with my family. We they were in town. And my we were some restaurant in Chicago down downtown and they had whatever you order walk guacamole. It’s a Mexican place. They give you a bowl of crickets of dried fried crickets. That’s one of their specialties and it’s kind of a novelty, but it’s a nice restaurant. And so I’m like, Oh, I have to eat this right. And of course we have to video in the eating a cricket because that’s kind of funny. And you know, I got a few 1000 views just from doing instead of doing a picture of a cricket. Look. I’m about to eat a cricket. Nobody cares. They want to see me eat a cricket. Yeah, right. And I was just doing it for fun and
Gogo Bethke 34:46 that cricket going on. Yeah.
D.J. Paris 34:48 So that’s a really good you guys. It doesn’t have to be an extreme thing like that. But it’s silly as it’s I did this I ate live octopus in New York like five years ago. And I did the same thing. I’m like we got a video this week. Yeah, yeah, it was well live in that. Yeah, yeah, they were all squiggling around on a plate. Now that one actually got some people didn’t like it because they were like, That’s animal cruelty. They didn’t understand that the tentacle is already severed. And it was just the nerves were moving around. So it wasn’t like, I pulled it off of a live octopus, but it had been pulled off of a live octopus and then they anyway it’s a bit of a delicacy.
Gogo Bethke 35:24 Anything so if you want to take ever any one on one of those shows, where you win things, if you eat things, you want to eat anything, but are made to live octopus.
D.J. Paris 35:35 All right. Anything else we got for today?
Gogo Bethke 35:39 Yes, video video is a must. Cute little stories, just not stories that you plan for like stories, what I mean, like, literally, you have this gadget with you all the time, your cell phone, grab that thing, go to your stories on Instagram and just blah, blah, blah for 15 seconds, whatever’s on your mind whatever’s going on in your day, show that you walk into your your closing and what is your closing gap show that, you know, you’re one to Starbucks, and you order this coffee, because you’re meeting with this client, like whatever that’s going on, just show snippets, people are curious how you live your life, people are curious how you run your business, people are curious of your work ethic. And there’s no better way of showing it but showing it in action. So video is very important. And try to make sure that you know at least 80% of the time you are in that video. And you’re not just shooting random happenings in your life and around you but you’re actually in it and you’re the subject of the video. LinkedIn is the next very important thing LinkedIn is now competing with the Facebook’s and Instagrams, and so allow, they are allowing way more eyeballs right now than Facebook and Instagram does, because they want you to use their platform to get that, that attention. So use LinkedIn, the way I do my post is I start everything on Instagram, I automatically feed it to Facebook. And then I take the same link and go over to Instagram and post it. So technically, I post twice, I don’t type of the blah, blah, blah, before I post the blah, blah, blah and Instagram, I copy it. So then I go to LinkedIn plug in the photo, paste, the blah, blah, blah post literally takes 20 seconds to post on all three platforms. So that the ad costs. So Facebook, what happened is when they opened it up where we can run ads, they ran out of geological locations. So multiple people were able to cover with their ads, the same location. Now there’s, it’s oversaturated. And in order to fix that, the only way to fix that is by raising the cost. So they’re going to raise the price and assume that the ones that can afford it anymore, it’s just going to fall off. Facebook ad cost is going to get much higher, my understanding is in 2020 Don’t quote me on it. So if you were planning on running some ads, you want to do it now and you want to do it fast. So you can hopefully stay in the game. Very smart, a lot of fun, then new ones come in. I don’t know if you guys realize but on the Facebook app, again, if you have sorry, not just the app, but Facebook altogether. If you have a page, now you have an option to share your calendar. Yes, people can literally plug themselves into a vise like if you go to my Facebook and Google’s real estate. You can see how it’s set up. I have a buy side consultation and the listing site consultation and in syncs with my personal calendar. So it only gives them the opportunity of the times when I have set up when it’s open for a half an hour interval and they literally plug themselves in to a consultation. I just wake up I’m like, Oh, I have a buyer consultation and 11 today. Yep,
D.J. Paris 38:28 I use the same thing for realtors that are interested in joining our firms. So if you go to the page for our my company, yeah, it there’s a book appointment thing. And yes, you guys it takes like two minutes to set this thing up. And yeah, very smart.
Gogo Bethke 38:42 Next one is template based marketing. If you are using a third party, or it’s template based where they they are using beautiful stock photos, they’re beautiful, but they’re stuck. It’s not personal. There is no correlation, there is no real relationship between me and photo on the other end, so that those things don’t work. So if you are paying for a service like that, stop it right now. Even if you’re not willing to do real estate, you’re wasting your money with that it’s not going to work, it’s not going to generate your business. And you probably know it already, because you probably followed for a while and not seeing the results. And that’s why it’s because it’s not personalized. So the template based got to go create your hashtag so you remember we were talking about the Michigan Realtor will find someone hashtags are an Instagram are kind of like search words. So if you would go to Google and search for something, how would you search so imagine those words plugged into one little more but the hashtag in front of it. So you create your own hashtag. The reason why that’s important is because that is your brand. If somebody is looking for Google’s real estate, they’re going to plug in Google’s real estate and they’re going to find me because I tagged myself every single time with my own hashtag. Very smart. So you want to a figure out what is your brand being create your own hashtag and creating your own hashtag that just means guys, that when you make a post you’re going to have stick that brand. So if yours is keeping it real podcast, then you’re going to make a post. And every time you make a post, you’re going to do hashtag keeping a real podcast every single time. So when I go on there, and I’m gonna be like, What is this keepin it real podcast about I’m gonna go on there putting keeping the real past, and then I’m going to find every post they ever made. So the more there is, the more legit it’s going to look. And also when other people start using your hashtags, that really makes you more legit. So when your listeners, you could do a giveaway. And you’re saying, Hey, guys, everybody who tags keeping a real podcast this week, in your posts, and the end of the week, I give away blah, blah, blah. Now you had 100,000 of your followers tagging you once that’s 100,000 tags. Huge. That’s just made you really legit,
D.J. Paris 40:48 right? Yep. Awesome. Great idea.
Gogo Bethke 40:51 So hashtags are important. voice notes. So if somebody reaches out to you don’t just send back a normal message of like, yeah, that sounds great. Hold that little voice note button and say yes, as Jessica and call them by the first name. So go to their profile, look at their first thing. Call them by their first name, because everybody loves hearing their own name out of your mouth. Because that means you recognize me, you see me, you hear me? I exist. Yeah, my
D.J. Paris 41:17 girlfriend does that for me on text message, which is she’s the first person that’s ever done that and I love it. I love hearing your voice. So instead of calling me sometimes we’ll be texting back and forth. She’ll just hold that button and do it. You guys can do the same thing on Facebook. So just voice
Gogo Bethke 41:31 my voice notes. So when somebody reaches out to you and said, Hey, I would love to you know, buy a two bedroom condo in Howell Michigan. Now just sending back a message saying, oh, yeah, I would love to be a realtor, you can be like, Hi, Kevin, thank you so much for reaching out, you know, I have this and this going on today. But would you please just type up exactly what you’re looking for. I need your full name, your email address and your cell phone number. I will, you know, log you into the system, I will email you everything that’s on the market by the end of the day. And once again, thank you so much for reaching out to me. So it’s something that is just way more personal. You call them by the name, you give them the time of the day, and more than likely they’re going to do business with you because it’s more personal.
D.J. Paris 42:07 Awesome. Let’s stop there only because you have so much stuff that you I know you want to get to. And I don’t want to get all of it away this month, because I want people coming back next month they will anyway, but I am putting the brakes on it because I want people to start utilizing what they’ve learned today. And then we’re gonna follow up in a month and continue on. So yeah, this was so amazing, guys. So what we don’t want to do is overwhelm you with too much ideas. And gogo is ready to just keep going for the next hour because she’s so amazing. But here’s what you guys need to do right now. Go to gogos bootcamp.com. Guys, I don’t promote anything. This is the only thing I promote. It’s that good. I mean, listen to gogo, she is ready to talk for another hour about this. Her course is incredible. I am doing her course, we this is embarrassing. We don’t even have an Instagram account for our podcast because I could never figure out how to promote a podcast on Instagram. And I finally realized, because I’m kind of a dummy. I finally realized by going through our program, how to do that. So we’re going to start doing this. So join this journey with me together, right? Obviously I want to grow with podcasts. You guys want to grow your businesses and real estate gogo is the person to do it. She’s done it for 1000s of people continues to do it. And how nice is it that she comes on our show out of the goodness of her heart to talk to you and give you guys all these great tips for free? Like how amazing is that? So guys, Go Go’s boot camp.com. It’s a brand new program, even from just a few months ago, and it’s awesome. And she is a speaker. She goes all over the country talking about this she gets paid a ton of money to teach what she’s giving you right now, but she wants to teach you in the privacy of your home. So definitely Go Go’s bootcamp.com is where you need to go and follow her on Instagram as well. Which is Go Go’s real estate at gogos real estate.
Gogo Bethke 43:56 Thank you guys so much. I love this opportunity. I truly love what I get to do like this is like my hat. You know, I mean, it’s fun. It’s so fun.
D.J. Paris 44:04 And you know, look guys, we’re gonna have her on every single month. So here’s what we need from you the listeners, we need you to do two things. Actually three things you need to go to Instagram and follow Go Go Go Go’s real estate you need to go to, you need to go also to Facebook and followers. Well, you also need to follow us on Facebook guys every single day we post a link to an article that we have found online to help you grow your business. So at keeping it real pod and soon we’ll have an Instagram account too. So you guys need to follow go go on Instagram, Facebook, follow us on Instagram, and you’re gonna go out and tell a friend as well about this podcast. All you have to do is turn to the realtor next to you in your office and say, Hey, do you guys do you want to learn how to grow your business on social media? We’ve got I just listen to this podcast to this amazing woman. It just gave like 10 really great ideas. You’re gonna tell them about our podcast and then and really that’s all you got to do if every one of our listeners tells a friend we’re going to double our listenership, which we did last year, we want to do it again. So I want to thank you Guys on advance for helping build, build up your business by listening to these podcasts and also help your neighbors business. Tell the person next to you in the you know, while nobody Realtors don’t work in offices anymore, but everybody you know, tell them about this podcast right? And make sure that they know about gogo and you know, we just want to keep our whole intention guys is legitimately to help you grow your business. That is what we do. And how cool is it that we do it for free on these podcasts? So,
Gogo Bethke 45:28 so let’s let’s ask their opinion what they want to know. So yeah, that’s leave us messages. DMS is leave a note on any of our posts just say hey, I just listened to your keepin it real podcast. And I would really love if you covered this
D.J. Paris 45:42 guy’s this, this is for you. So we need to know what you want to hear. So reach out to us you can go to by the way, every single episode we’ve ever done, including the Google episodes are all on keeping it real pod.com. We’re also on Apple, iTunes, Google Play Stitcher, Pandora, all the places you can find podcasts, just pull up in a podcast app, look for keeping it real podcast, I promise it’ll pop up if not reach out to me at our website, and I’ll help you. But guys, we want to help you grow your business in 2020. Gogo, thank you so much for being on the show. Once again, we’re going to have you back in a month, assuming you’re willing to write and we we love it Go Go’s boot camp.com. Guys gogo is one of my favorite people ever for this show. She’s just perfect and the audience loves her. So on behalf of our listeners, go go. Thank you. And on behalf of gogo and me to the listeners. Thank you for listening.
Gogo Bethke 46:32 Thanks so much for having me on if you will take the time. When you do see the results of anything that I shared here today if you would just send me a message I want to make I just added it makes me fluffy and makes me feel good knowing that whatever I put out there and generates the results and everybody’s happy with it. So I would love to get your notes when you see the results.
D.J. Paris 46:51 Perfect guys get stay in touch. And thank you so much. And we’ll see you next month Gaga.
Welcome to the January episode of Coaching Moments with Ryan D’Aprile!
Over the past decade Ryan D’Aprile has personally coached hundreds of real estate agents to top producer status. He has devoted his career to sharing the strategies that have worked for him (and for countless others) to help agents get to the next level. In this episode Ryan provides the disciplines needed to make 2020 your best year ever in real estate. Follow his suggestions and then send him a thank you! 🙂
D.J. Paris 0:00 This episode of Keeping it real podcast is brought to you by nest egg. Are you worried about balancing your rental properties with your day job, worry no longer because nest egg is here to help. Nest Egg is an all in one management solution that handles maintenance, expert advice and rent collection for you. There 24/7 Help Desk will take care of all of your management needs to keep your properties running smoothly. Best of all pricing starts at free. So please give it a shot. Visit nest egg dot rent to sign up today. That’s nest steak dot rent. And now on to the show.
Welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made for real estate agents and brokers by real estate agents and brokers. My name is DJ Paris. I am your host and guide through the show and today we have our monthly episode called coaching moments with Ryan de Abril. Ryan is a progressive thought leader focused on providing for his agents and staff. His strengths are his motivational skills coaching style and his dedication to training. He has 14 offices throughout Chicagoland and in Wisconsin and Indiana and Michigan, and hundreds and hundreds of brokers deep real properties is a coaching company with eight strategic coaches who work week in and week out with every agent individually focusing on business planning, coaching and accountability. If you’d like to take your career to the next level, or if you’re just not getting the attention you need at your current firm. Check out dia real properties visit deep real properties.com welcome Ryan de abril to the show.
Ryan D’Aprile 1:52 Thanks, DJ. How are you doing, buddy?
D.J. Paris 1:54 I’m good happy holidays. And happy new year.
Ryan D’Aprile 1:57 Yeah, New Year’s right around the corner. We’re coming in early next week. And we it’s that time of the year right where everybody starts reflecting on the previous year and coming up with these new year’s resolutions. I think in our last session, I said everyone should treat the end of each quarter. Like, like a new year. I think a lot of people come out of the gates running. But then 10s of fizzle out. And we’re going to come into that time where we make our New Year’s resolutions. We’re ready to rock and roll. You blink your eyes and it’s February 15. And the excitement’s faded. So I think that happens a lot of people. So coming into this, keep this in mind you guys, when you end the first quarter of next year, which will be here before you know it. Think of that last week of March as another new year because I think if you really focus on doing what you need to do each quarter, four quarters in a row, you’re going to continually improve and be more and more satisfied with your career. You know, personally and professionally, I believe so. But yeah, here we are, and you have any plans for the holiday?
D.J. Paris 3:02 Well, I just got back from Florida and got to spend time for unplugged a little bit, which is hard for me to do. I imagine it’s even harder for you. But I unplugged for a few days. And now I’m back. And yeah, I mean, you know, I think so much of we have between your company and the company I work for we have I don’t know, probably about 1000 brokers total. And it seems to me to be that habits are the cornerstone of success, right daily habits, weekly habits, monthly habits, quarterly habits, and just seems to be what wins the game?
Ryan D’Aprile 3:37 It no and it truly is. The the action that is required to get yourself ahead is the actions the tasks are incredibly simple. What’s difficult is people being consistent. And I think what is the issue there is really kind of how people talk to themselves their internal belief systems. You know, we tend to follow up the stories we tell ourselves. And unfortunately for the majority of us, that story is overwhelmingly negative for many different reasons. You know, the information age, social media, everybody’s showing these, you know, these, these, these lifestyles that they live in, but they’re really not true, if it get beyond the app, but what people do, they tend to compare themselves. And it’s just this this snowball effect of negativity then really takes people off track to doing especially if you’re in sales, the simple tasks, which is essentially relationship building activities to grow your business. So yeah, it is habits and you gotta you got to be very conscious and aware of, of your habits and the habits you want to have and put some structure and guideline in place. So you can make it easier for yourself to do these simple tasks that we’ve been talking about this whole this entire pasture and I figured, you know, DJ, why don’t we talk about this past year and some trends that you’ve seen? And I’ve seen, and then we’ll have some coaching moments as well. Great. So what did you see this past year? What did you What did you notice, within your with your, in your marketplace?
D.J. Paris 5:16 One of the things that our brokers and you know, in Illinois, we call everybody broker in other parts of the country, it’s of course, agent. But what our Realtors were reporting to us is that, you know, years and years ago, there was prevailing wisdom that you wanted to keep rooms really sparse because you wanted people to be able to visualize their own stuff inside of the rooms. And, you know, the idea was, you know, keep it really bear and let people sort of dream and visualize as they walk through. And I think that’s shifted a lot. And the rise of staging companies has become, I think, a lot more relevant and popular. And I wonder if that’s largely due to us being on social medias, particularly Instagram, where we just see perfection every single day, every single day, all day long, nothing but perfect food, perfect homes. Perfect. You know, the we look perfect, because you call it you tap on the picture, and it changes all of our wrinkles, and everything just looks perfect. And so I’ve noticed that staging companies seem to be more relevant than ever. I was curious if you saw that as well. Yeah, I’ve been
Ryan D’Aprile 6:20 seeing more and more of that coming along. And I’ve seen a lot of agents getting skill sets, or vendors that they know of, and working with it, to to add value to their sellers homes. I think it’s important, I think there’s so much we do as real estate agents, I think, still today, the number one value that we add to the marketplace is emotional intelligence, because it’s such an emotional transaction. It’s the biggest financial transaction. But I think it’s also the biggest emotional transaction that so many disruptors have tried to come in and change the model of our business. But you know, they’re still losing 10s of millions of hundreds of millions of dollars. And you’re not grasping the fact that this is really a human experience people are going through. But then the next level beyond that is, yeah, it is it’s that staging, or it’s at that touching the house up and moving things around, you know, a number of my agents are incredibly talented, actually using the stuff that is in the home, but just rearranging it. So it’s organized in a different way. And just, you know, moving things around. And so yeah, I’ve seen more and more of that. I see more and more that come but as a real estate professional, and as majority of the listeners here are real estate professionals, I think that’s something to to be aware of. But it’s don’t go down that rabbit hole making that your sole focus, because I think that’s one of the things I’ve noticed with a lot of agents is, is you see a trend or something like a trend that you just mentioned, you know, with the staging, and that coming up in HGTV and everything else. But at the end of the day, we are in a sales function. And you need you need to focus on generating business generating leads, what’s a lead? Somebody wants to buy or sell? Where do you find those people? Well, there’s many different categories. The best category, the best place is your network. And so I still think that 80% of your focus in your activities should be that relationship building activity. And I think the other stuff that comes along and selling a home comes naturally to most of us.
D.J. Paris 8:27 I think I think you’re you’re so right. And I talked about this in a another episode I did recently, where I said make this the year that you demonstrate how much you care about the people in your network, and what that what I thought that looks like and I’m curious to get your opinion, and maybe you could even give us some additional strategies or some additional thoughts around it. But I thought, well, how do you show that you care, you’re to your sphere of influence individually, if you you know, it’s hard to do that if you don’t know much about their lives. And I thought make this the year that you do keep tabs in a in a positive way on what is going on with the people that you do care about your sphere of influence, take notes know about their children know where they work, know what’s going on in their lives by this is a Rhian tip from from a long time ago is follow them on social media check in see where they’re vacationing, what’s you know, what big life events do they have? And this gives you a reason to reach out. And
Ryan D’Aprile 9:26 that’s your Yeah, DJ right? That’s, and for everybody listening here. You guys. That’s your job. That is your job. That’s what you have to do. People hire real estate agents that they know like and trust. You know, it’s cool to be the next Instagram star and have the greatest stories out there. But if you’re not connected with these people, they’re not going to care. They really aren’t. And so social media is a great tool. I say it’s an r&d it’s research your network and develop a relationship with them. That’s what I use it for. I actually don’t think it’s the best advertising tool I’m sure there’s a lot of people just You know, you’re out of your mind. But you know, we’re not selling a commodity, you know, again, it’s a huge emotional transaction. It’s a huge financial transaction, the sales cycle seven years. And what I mean by that sales cycle seven years is that most people live in their home for seven years. So the transaction, you know, is a longer cycle. So you gotta be focused and do make that this year, make that every year actually. And until I see something, you know, for almost 20 years, I’ve been in this business. And I’ve been in this business since the, you know, the dawn of the social media and the Zelos. And still nothing can hold a candle to an agent who has a relationship with their neck network, nothing. So, you know, until something shows me, you know, there’s a lot of trends, there’s a lot of instructors as a huge money out there, then these hedge funds in these publicly traded companies that are willing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. I’m not willing to, as a individual real estate agent, I don’t need to follow those trends. I’m going to follow what’s tried and true. And that is really being in connection. In flow with your with your network.
D.J. Paris 11:07 I asked a recently asked to one of the very top top top producers here locally in Chicago, Melanie Julio, what’s the secret of her successes? I think she’s a top 10 out of 46,000. brokers. And I said, if you had to narrow down to one cornerstone activity, what what is it? And she thought about it for a second, and I wasn’t sure that she would even have one because obviously, realtors, everyone listening, you do a million things for your clients. But she’s like TJ, if I had to say one thing, she goes, it almost sounds silly to say this, because of course I do this. But she goes, I don’t think everyone does. She goes I call every single client. Now this is once their client. She says I call every single one of them every single week just to give them an update, whether there’s anything to report or not. And I said, Oh, okay, that’s a pretty simple suggestion. She goes, you’d be shocked that pretty much nobody does that. And that’s, that’s just once they’re a client, right? There’s so much you can do to stay in touch, Like Ryan said, the sales cycle seven years, what are you going to do for the next six years? To demonstrate that you care about your client?
Ryan D’Aprile 12:11 Yeah, and what Melanie said, she said, you said something that just triggered me. She said she shocked by how many people don’t do that. And I want our listeners to hear this, to be in the top 5% to be the top 5% producer in your marketplace. It’s simple. It’s easy. And it’s it’s a choice that you make the other 95% choose not to be in it. I mean, that’s it’s that simple. They make daily choices not to be in it. There is nothing that is complicated, difficult. In fact, most people are overthinking this. And like Melanie said, I mean, what a common sense, you know, approach call your clients once a week. Yeah, right? Of course. Right? Right. In Melanie’s brilliant for saying that, right. I’m just I’m talking to the 95% who don’t like this is what you have to do. You’re in a service business, you’re in a customer service business. And either the you know, and even if it’s not your customer, your network will if you want them to be your customers and clients, then you have to serve them, you have to have a focus on them and the relationships.
D.J. Paris 13:16 Well, that and that’s once you know, you’re right. And that’s once you get them as a client. But as Ryan, as you just said, look, there’s a sick, you know, six to seven year window of time where they don’t aren’t looking to buy or sell or transact in any way in real estate. That’s the heavy lifting, right? That’s where you need to stay in touch. But then a lot of times, at least brokers here at my firm will say, Well, why do I Why should I? What do I say? What? When should you know? Why would I call them? It’s like, well, that’s when you should know everything about their lives. So it gives you a reason to reach out so that you can consistently show them that you’re paying attention that you care that you’re involved in their life, you’re interested so that when that seven year marker comes due, obviously, they would hope to go to the person who has cared the most for the last seven years.
Ryan D’Aprile 14:02 Right. And so those tools as individuals, right, it’s one thing is they’re going to ask the question, What do I say? And then I say back to them is that is that’s a defense mechanism you’re using to put off doing what you need to do you know what to say, you’re going to find out what to say. And the truth is if you want to have if you want to have more, you have to become more. And you know, any any top person in their field has depth. And you have to have depth and it takes hard work. It takes commitment and you know, born and raised in this amazing country they have we’re programmed for quick and easy. You know, you know, I have a large organization that we built over the past 787 to eight years. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t immediate. And it still isn’t easy today. I mean, it’s Saturday, and I’ve had three appointments this morning, by the way, to those that that might scare you. Do. I’m also a family man, I have a wife, I got three daughters, I coach my kids basketball teams as well, they weren’t in basketball anymore, but I’m with my kids all the time I travel with them. So don’t be afraid of success, either. There’s more than enough time. In the day, I think, you know, in our last podcast, DJ, you know, I said, What does? Like remember the names? But what Warren Buffett? And what’s the Virgin Airlines guy? Richard Branson, right? And Elon Musk, what do they all have in common? 24 hours in the day, we all have 24 hours in a day, a lot of people are afraid of success. Don’t be afraid of success, success will give you more time. It’ll give you more freedom. And it’ll give you the ability to make choices. What you have to embrace is discipline and structure. Because there’s so much time in a day to do all these things and not get out. And the things that we’re talking about the activities, and it’s going to take your business to the next level, I mean, really only takes an hour and a half to two hours a day, and that everybody has an hour and a half to two hours a day. But I want you this year to make a New Year’s resolution is to call yourself out on the excuses. You know, when when you start to make excuses to yourself. So yeah, I had this and yeah, that don’t Don’t, don’t allow that anymore for yourself. Everybody, including myself, we need to stop looking outside, we got to start looking in, we got to look in the mirror. And we have to hold ourselves more accountable to doing the things that we have to do. And again, to be in that top 5%. It’s a choice. And it’s simple to be there. Most people choose not to be there.
D.J. Paris 16:36 Yeah, I think you’re right. And because the the path to success is well trodden, it’s not a secret. It’s a readily accessible hack. Listen to any episode in this entire podcast, and you’ll hear the exact steps to success from top producers. And it is rarely mind blowing and novel and, you know, secretive, it is always usually the same exact message repeated over. And I would say once you develop whatever those daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly activities are to grow your business, most important one, I think being daily, you know, what can you What are repeatable tasks you can do daily, then I think it is so helpful to have an accountability coach, or a partner, or a firm that can hold you accountable. Because in, you know, Ryan and I are similar is is we need that as well in our own lives with with our own businesses. And, you know, we can’t do everything ourselves. So
Ryan D’Aprile 17:33 well, I learned a great thing about time management. And now this is now I’m speaking to the, to the top producing agents, right. And, again, you know, there are a lot of real estate agents making 234 $500 million a year in this business in Chicago. It’s an incredible business, you can make a lot of money doing this business, but you do have to get into time management. I saw somebody the other day, and I can’t recall who it is. But he said, you know, if you’re making $500,000 a year, you’re making 250 bucks an hour. So, you know, I think about myself or a close friend that’s in the business and in this individual set. So if you’re, if you’re mowing your own yard, or if you’re doing your own laundry, and you are actually capable of earning that kind of money to doing those tasks. And so you could pay somebody 20 bucks an hour to do that. You’re costing yourself $230 an hour to do your your yard work, or $230 to do your laundry like look, I love gardening, and I love yard work. So I think that’s a bad example, maybe on a Saturday or Sunday, I need to get out. But I do think coming to doing the laundry and, and even sometimes grocery shopping. And if you are a top producer, one of the most important things is that you maintain that. And so you got to think about the willpower you have and these daily tasks. And I think one thing you should think about in this next year is what at your home, can you outsource. And again, I’m a father of three girls, and if I was outsource housekeeping, with somebody, a housekeeper coming in half to three days a week, you know, my parents, my children are going to look back in their life to say, we were worse parents because somebody else folded our clothes. You know, we’re able to provide a lifestyle for them. Because for us to do the laundry class, my wife $230 An hour uses track what it costs us to pay somebody to come in and keep the house clean. So it’s tangible when you brought that up. It just brought up a good point. And I want to
D.J. Paris 19:39 Well, and I think you oh what Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the most important thing is quality time, right? And that’s what you never want to sacrifice. But it’s funny, I have a friend and she works in a completely unrelated industry. And I want the point I’m about to make here and I’ll make it first so that you guys can understand the context of the story is a lot have times people who are listening go, Well, I can’t, I don’t have an accountability partner, I don’t know anyone or I can’t afford a coach. I’m going to challenge that in. First of all, there’s always people you can meet that, that you can hold each other accountable. But if you want to hire someone you can’t afford, you can’t afford it not have a coach. I agreed, if you’re agreed, I want to share just how inexpensive it can mean. And this isn’t a coach so much as an accountability partner. But this is how inexpensive so I have a friend and he is in a completely unrelated industry. He’s he’s in us, he has a salary job, and he is struggling waking up in the morning. And I know for those of us that have no problem waking up early, and getting to work on time, we sort of know how to somebody struggle. But look, everybody struggles with something. This is what he struggles with once he’s at work. He’s a total superstar, he wins awards. He’s a total great guy, employee, except he just gets to work 10 minutes late, and his boss is about ready to kill them. And so he goes, I cannot afford to lose this job. This I’m screwing myself up in this, but he just can’t do it. So I said, Well, you know, you can hire somebody that will wake you up every morning on the phone. And he was like, What do you mean? I said, Well, you can hire people to do anything. And he found somebody, I think they’re in the Philippines. And they wait, they call him like three times in the morning. And they force you know, sort of forced him to get out of bed. His best all yesterday was answered the phone. So anyway, this, the solution has worked for him. And I have a solution for that. Well, I just want to Yes, and I want to hear that. But this this, what’s amazing is the total cost for this is trusting him $10 A week, $10 a week to save his job. And so my point is, is we live in this gig economy where people are willing to help, like Ryan said, you can have somebody come in to fold your clothes, it might be less expensive than you think. But again, look to see what you would be earning. If you were working or maybe spending time with your family. You know, that’s there’s a cost associated with that if you don’t do it, right.
Ryan D’Aprile 21:51 If you don’t, and I even think of my wife, she’s a Top Producing agent she sells. I think she’ll sold $22 million in real estate this year, right. And these past weeks, she’s just slaving over wrapping the gifts not just for the children, but for her clients and everything else. And we’re, you know, again, none of us are perfect, right? And I’m running it, you know, a million miles an hour, and I heard this person on a podcast is Oh my God, Jesus, that’s brilliant. Why aren’t we hiring somebody to do these gifts for her. So she’s not exhausted at the end of the day. And she could focus on what she did to do another 20 plus million dollars in 2020. So hey, you know, a DJ, I want to shift focuses here, and, you know, and continue to add value to the listeners. Let’s talk about some market trends of what we saw. And I recall last year, also in the first quarter last year, seeing just a drop in activity. Do you recall that? It was I don’t know if we’re going to it was remarkable. I said, oh shit, what’s going on here. And we started seeing a lot of shifts in supply and demand. And in June or July, it was around June or July, I was going over some supply and demand data with you. I figured why don’t we look back at the year and look at where we are right now. And let’s just look at the entire Chicagoland MLS. Let’s look at some of that data. And then let’s look at the city Chicago, and let’s look at the attached and detached market. That’s fine. Okay with you. Okay, so we saw a huge drop in the market in the first quarter. And then activity really picked up. We as a company finished very strong, I believe a lot of other companies did. We’re up almost 20% over last year, our organization and you know, our organization is a little bit unique. Because we’re not such a hardcore recruiting company. We’re in our marketplaces, you see these agents shifting from office to office. As you know, a lot of our agents were not licensed five years ago. So we saw a lot of so what I’m what I’m pointing to is not something about org organization. It’s more about the marketplace. A lot of our agents started with us five years ago. And we seen when we had a an O ship moment in the first quarter, what’s happened in the marketplace, we finished really strong we were up almost 20% over last year. Now looking back, I’m going to look at the ship. Let’s see here, like put my data here. I had it and I just lost it. So let’s look at the entire MLS. And let’s look at the detached. Let’s look at the detached so the single family home market and the entire MLS and let’s look at let’s look at some supply and demand. And this is the you know supply and demand is the cause. And price is the effect. So
D.J. Paris 24:33 and this will be really helpful because we know we do need to recognize patterns and trends and market is cyclical. And I’m really excited to see what is in store for the future with mortgage rates being very reasonable right now. And you’re still we’re now seeing a lot of activity our business as well is up 20 to 30% with our brokers so I’m I’m we’re very we’re very excited and grateful for that. But I’m curious to know what the future is going to bring Um but also to look back and see see what finally we saw that ramp up and you know later last year and it was it was very well received because we were nervous earlier earlier in the year with the slowdown
Ryan D’Aprile 25:12 was so many all. So this is detached in the entire MLS so it’s all Chicagoland area this is the entire time period over two years, inventories up 12% But the good thing is under contracts up 6% And the sold rate is outpacing what’s for sale by 1%. So 13% more single family homes and the entire MLS have sold. So, um, you know, this flies up, but the demand is still there, which is great. So now let’s look at the all MLS price for single family homes. Okay. What we’re seeing in single family home market is in the entire Chicagoland area, the entire MLS. home sellers are asking 11% More in November than they were two years ago. There are, they’re going under contract for two and a half more than our price two years ago, but they’re actually closing for 7% more. So I’m seeing still a healthy, healthy market where we were starting to see a shift in June and July, right, we had a slow first quarter. And then you start to see in half mark halfway mark of 2019, you are seeing a rise in demand and a huge opportunity, a rising supply and a fall in demand. But a lot of markets. Now this is you know, real estate’s hyperlocal. Okay, so this is the entire MLS, but then you zeroed into a lot of markets and a lot of sellers get very savvy and they drop their prices and and what has happened and in relationship that is that they actually homes are selling for more. And this is where it’s hard to convince your sellers. But if you ask less you actually get more versus the other way around. So that’s in the entire MLS let’s see what’s going into the city, Chicago. Okay. Any questions on that? DJ? Does that make sense? So let’s look at the condo market in Chicago. And we’re gonna go into supply and demand. Holy cow. Okay, I wasn’t I didn’t know this information and prepare for this. So in Chicago, in November of 2019 versus November 17. There are 32% More condos for sale than they were were. There’s negative 6% under contract. But there are 4% More that sold now this is supply. So we’re seeing a huge influx of supply. Here. Let’s look at what’s happened with price. So which says there might be some downward pressure on condo prices. Here, let’s pull up. And this is the kind of information to our listeners. Regardless if you’re in Chicago, or you’re in Florida or work California and you’re listening to this podcast, this kind of information, you need to go to your broker and research on your own and find out and have at your fingertips so that when you meet with your clients, you’re you’re educated and you can help them make informed decisions here. So let’s go and look at the condo prices in Chicago. This is the city of Chicago. Now, this is not Chicagoland. So you’re getting a little more local, but I’m really more regional here than local. So people are asking a percent condos are are for sale are being offered 8% More than they were two years ago. They’re under contract for 3.3%. So the trend is following. And they’re selling flat as they were two years ago. So we’re seeing a shift in the kind of market in Chicago. Because does that align with what you’re saying?
D.J. Paris 28:55 Yeah, I guess so. You know, I haven’t really I’m not out there producing so it’s easy for me to to know or not know, or they’re easy for me to not know. But yeah, I mean, we are I am hearing that from our brokers.
Ryan D’Aprile 29:07 Alright, so let’s look what’s going on in the Chicago single family home market. Okay, there is negative point seven. So there’s 1% Less homes for sale than there were two years ago. So there is a downward shift in supply. It’s almost flat, though. And it’s up under contracts of 1.4% and sold up 1%. So the single family home market in the city of Chicago is much healthier than the condo market is. And let’s look at what’s going on with the price then. Chicago detached price. Well, people are asking 18% More than they were two years ago. They’re selling 8% more and they tune it they’re under contract for a percent more in goodness. They’re selling at 11.8% More than they were two years ago. Now here’s the thing. I want all the listeners especially the Chicagoland listeners to understand This is I think in I think in Chicago north, there are like 42 different neighborhoods, in Chicago Association, realtors, North any of Chicago rules, association, realtors, south, this is all Chicago. So you really got to dial this in, this is more of a regional conversation what’s going on. But real estate is hyper local. So this is totally different. I could get in a geographical area of Wicker Park or Ukrainian village or, or Roscoe village and you know, Lakeview or whatnot, I could do all Lakeview I could do Old Town, Linkin Park. And, and, and, and things shift. So there’s a lot of data out there. And there is a great author, and I can’t remember his name, but he wrote the book to Sell Is Human. But he said, Dan Dean, what’s his name to sell to human? Oh, come to me. But it again, your job, your number one focus, if you want to move the needle, and be more successful in this business, you need to focus on relationship building. But then you have to focus and shift over to some skill set building. And this is a skill set that I think really consumers are looking for. And what this is, is being a curator of knowledge. So we live in the information age, this information is at everybody’s fingertips matches mine, your sellers, and your buyers, they have access to it too. They just don’t have time for it. So we have to be the curators, and we have to be able to explain to them what’s going on and help them make decisions, especially if they’re selling their home. And they gotta understand why are selling their home, and always talk to their why. And then say, Hey, here’s the flags that are blown in the wind, this is what direction now you get to make the decision. And I think as real estate professionals, if you are really good, if you’re really good at daily activities and creating relationships, and you spend a few hours a week on your skill set and understanding the data and what’s going on here and there. And then like you said, DJ in the beginning, you know, maybe look at some staging and some other value adds don’t go crazy don’t know, be a master of few, right? Not a master of all because What’s it saying jack of all trades and master of none. Right pick pick one or two things that falls in your wheelhouse, which we like to call your dharma and in make yourself shine by focusing on that skill set activity with the activity that’s going to really move the needle in your business is the relationship building activity.
D.J. Paris 32:29 Yeah, that’s, that’s really I think both are so important. And so if you think about it, from everyone who’s listening might start saying okay, well, how do I do this? Well, maybe you alternate if you’re first of all, you need to have a communication policies, right. So think about all those people in your sphere of influence, who aren’t looking to buy, sell rent, you know, in the immediate future, but you want to stay in touch. So maybe one month, you’re noticing that they went on vacation, and you can contact them and say, Hey, I saw you just had a great vacation more of a human connection, more of, uh, shows that you’re paying attention to their lives. But then you know, that’s right. And so that’s really just some of what you need to provide, you need to also have a skill set about your, your career, your your industry, so that you can provide additional value. So that’s another reason to contact Hey, I just saw that you guys are in Wicker Park right now homes or condos are selling for 11% more than they were two years ago. I don’t know if that’s of interest to you. I don’t know if you guys are thinking of moving but I just wanted to share that with you. So you were in the loop on what’s going on in your in your neighborhood. That’s a tremendous value add that, again, all your competition is not doing. But these are the people that want to work with you, they like you. But they also want to be reminded from time to time that you do have this skill set that you are good at your job. And Ryan looked up that data and all of 20 seconds, right? This isn’t hard to find. But you need to be able to provide this to be able to I got a postcard recently in the mail from Michael. Michael Rosenberg. And it was he has sold more condos in my building than any other realtor. The reason I know that he put it on the postcard, which I thought was very smart. And then not just that, then on the backside, it had all of the current condos for sale in my building. It had the mons who have recently closed in the last 90 days. And I could easily see. I mean, think about how much value there was in just that postcard. I now know what’s going on in my building. I now know who sells the most. And and I know Michael personally is a wonderful guy. But I just thought well, boy, that was a great postcard. Right? So you have to think about how do you continually add value? How do you how do you get that sort of information out to your to your sphere of influence, right?
Ryan D’Aprile 34:41 And I think you know, to wrap this up, you know, for all the listeners out there is you know, we’re going to come in next week. It’s New Year’s Eve and we’re going to have a new year and when you guys listen, this is probably gonna be the first week of January whatnot. Now as you know, now’s the time, you know, to start to organize your business and to focus and and first thing you do is you got to believe in yourself, you got to understand how powerful you are as an individual, and that you have a network or that you can create one over the course of a year and a lifetime moving forward, you got to believe that if you create relationships in your network, everything else will fall into place. Because it will and opportunities will just unfold. So it’s really the belief that you have in yourself that you need to focus on daily, I believe in you, but that’s not enough. You need to, and that’s where it really starts, it doesn’t matter what I think, or your spouse thinks your parents are, or your friends, it’s what you think. And it’s what you think about yourself. Everybody else is So, you know, really wrapped up and you know, what, you know, self doubt, anxiety, self loathing, we’re all so wrapped up in ourselves. So just focus on that, like, how do I make that belief positive, so that I could do the simple things that I have to do day in and day out? That can really change this year, which that can be the catalyst to change in my life. Absolutely. And,
D.J. Paris 36:07 you know, if you just focus on how do I demonstrate to the people who, who liked me the best, and who I like the best, my sphere of influence? How do I demonstrate that I care? And you break that up into several categories? One is a personal connection, right? Do you know what’s going on in their world their life? Can you celebrate with them and be there for them when they’re struggling? And then also, how do you demonstrate that you have a skill set about real estate because as Ryan said, they have access to the status, Zillow is available to everyone, and everyone’s going there anyway. But do they have the time to really drill down into the data? And I would say, you know, look, every time I’ve ever had to refinance, my mortgage lender at the time, never called me and said, hey, it’s a good time to refinance, I had to get that information. And maybe there’s a reason maybe they’re not incentivized to do that. But boy, as a realtor, that’s a great reason to pick up the phone, it’s a great reason to let them know that homes are selling for more or less, or now’s a good time to buy. And just making sure that they know that you have that skill set in addition to also caring about them as as individuals. And you can do this daily, right? This this is not a massive undertaking, right? This, you know, your your sphere of influence is what 300 people on average, somewhere around there, you know, break that up.
Ryan D’Aprile 37:24 And I’ve got I’ve got several agents that have less than 250 people in their database, and they do over $10 million annually. That’s, it’s less is more people. Yes. You just go deep.
D.J. Paris 37:37 And the only way to go deepest, do consistent action. So every day have a certain number of people that you in your database that you are contacting and demonstrating value to right this is goes back to that old Brian Buffini thing is how do I win the day. And of course, you have to work with your existing clients and your that’s going to be the bulk of your day, then you’re going to but don’t forget the the building relationship part as well. So the exhausting part of the day is dealing with clients stuff. But remember, how do I add value to the people who aren’t yet my clients are in between sales. And I want to make sure they are always remembering that I care about them. And if you just have, you know, put them on a schedule, and every month they’re being contacted, or whatever your schedule is have something to talk to them about
Ryan D’Aprile 38:23 it. And I’ll break it up for you guys here. And I think maybe DJ we wrap on this, I think it’ll be a strong one for everybody to to make a plan for next year. Okay, let’s say you have 250 people in your database. And let’s say your business is plugging along and you’re happy where it is and you want to maintain it, then I think you really should connect with everybody wants a quarter meaningfully, right. And I call them asking for a referral. And I call them asking if you know anybody wants to buy or sell, you’re gonna call them send them a text message, write a handwritten note, send them a Facebook or LinkedIn message, commenting on something you saw was just thinking about them. Now, if you have 250 people on your network, and your dashboard was what we call here, if you have 250 people in your CRM, your dashboard. That’s that and you work Monday through Friday, take Saturday and Sunday off. It’s for context that day. That’s less than 30 minutes of work. Come on. Now. We all can do this, right? So I say Come on, like, really make it a mission to do that. Now, if you want to get your level and you’re not at $10 million a year, and you want to be at $10 million a year. Great. Then do it once a month do for 12 months in a row. Now remember, you have to have an automated marketing plan. That’s a whole other conversation. You know, your network should get direct mail from you. Every other week, they should get an email marketing from you on a monthly basis. You should have some type of digital presence and they should really forget about it because that’s just branding. The work is the relationship building. But if you’re not at the $10 million mark and you want to get there, okay then there are 20 working days in the month. There’s 20 So if you take the 250 People need divided by 20. That’s 12 contacts a day, again, 12 contacts a day. And let’s just say it takes 10 minutes to do a contact to send somebody a Facebook message or a text message. Forget email, email is the worst, okay? It’s really, it’s meant to be personal. It’s to be a call, a text message, a handwritten note, or a direct message via LinkedIn, or whatnot. It’s two hours, it’s 125 minutes a day for five days a week. You know, we have two hours to do things subconsciously, running errands, taking dry cleaning in and out, why don’t we spend those two hours on an activity that’s going to really move the needle for you so, so think about where you are, reflect on 2019? Hopefully, everybody had a wonderful 19. And if you want to maintain your business, stay in flow with everybody wants a quarter. And if you’re looking to have a breakthrough year, do it once a month, make this year a commitment, break it down? Each quarter, see how you do reflect in the last week of March? How did you do in first quarter, but guess what? If you botch it, and you didn’t do it, that’s okay. You get the second quarter start all over and do it again, spend two hours a day contacting those? What is it 14 People 200 divided by 12, not 20 was 12 people a day to be in contact everybody in network once a month, you will guarantee guarantee authors.
D.J. Paris 41:25 I mean, and let’s not gloss over that word guarantee. Ryan’s not using that word lightly. That is absolutely the truth. So you know what, here’s one simple thing we do.
Ryan D’Aprile 41:35 I’ve never had anybody that I’ve coached follow the system not have success. I’ve had a lot of people that I’ve coached, that have not been successful. But that comes from the belief system themselves, and then not doing the activities after they leave, or they follow a trend or they do this and do that. But quite honestly, anybody who has came and followed this path has had total success in a short time period in three years. Now I’ve worked people for two years, and it’s take them two years to get on board. That’s a whole different conversation. But the ones who get on board that buy into this, it takes two to three years to have to be in that like, top 20% in Chicago. So I’m 12 $15 million real estate here, it’s guaranteed to happen.
D.J. Paris 42:19 What we need to have your your wife on here, one of these days, I’d love to hear her perspective on what it’s like to not only raise 333 daughters, but also produce an incredible amount of production, or produce a number of sales per year, I’d love to have her on one of these days, too.
Ryan D’Aprile 42:36 Yeah, I have a lot of agents that that actually do that a lot of a lot a lot of mothers and fathers in our company that are doing the kind of production my wife is doing. And you just let me know and I happily have them come on in and we can do
D.J. Paris 42:48 a q&a that would be that would be great. And a really a great place to to also mention Ryan’s company is always looking for brokers who are wanting to be coached, or wanting to go to that next level. And this is exactly the kind of service they provide. They have eight coaches, there’s 14 offices, and they work they really do work individually with every single agent to help get them to where that agent wants to go. Um, Ryan, if there are realtors out there that are looking for a new home, maybe they’re not getting the attention that they need or deserve. And they want to, you know, work for a company like yours, what’s the best way that they should reach out?
Ryan D’Aprile 43:25 Sure, yeah. So to go back with what you’re saying is, you know, everybody needs to have a coach. And if you don’t want to pay for the coach, we have a traditional brokerage that we run 13 offices, we’re approaching 500 agents. And every one of our coaches meets with our agents on a weekly, bi weekly or monthly basis on the schedule that the agent and the coach work out together. And it’s included essentially in as who we are as a company. And then we actually do your marketing for you a lot of things that I’ve realized is that I’ve coached and I’ve preached agents to do their monthly marketing, we have shifted, and we’ve just taken another hands and we’re just doing it for them. You take those two, those two elements, you put them together, you have a great formula. And if you want to explore it, you know you could reach out to me or any one of our managing brokers, you go to our website, reach out to one of our major brokers or you just pick up the phone and give me a call three one to 5906416 we’re local, we’re here in Chicago, we’re throughout the suburbs, and except time to meet with you and one of our coaches and just do a consultation, see where you are and see where you want to go. And
D.J. Paris 44:34 and also go to do real properties.com You know, don’t worry about trying to spell that because it is in the notes of the episode here. So if you’re listening on an app, just go to the notes on deep real properties.com And we’ll of course link to there and were so gracious and by the way. If you’re here in Chicago, you know in there are a great option. If you’re looking for a new firm. If you’re not here in Chicago, maybe they’ll expand tend to your neck of the woods. But there are companies like Ryan’s probably in your own area. But reach out, you know, you deserve a managing broker in a firm that is able to provide you with that, that help because we all need help. And we can’t all do it ourselves and Ryan, and I have coaches and we need help. So you probably could use some help as well. So look for someone in your neck of the woods that is able to provide that support. Ryan, thank you, once again, we had a great 2019 as a podcast, your episodes are so popular and so well received. We’re so grateful again, for you spending the time that I know is not easy for you to carve out for. So very much appreciated. And for everyone who’s listening, please tell a friend we have actually I was telling Ryan just before we started, we’ve actually doubled our number of downloads from last December through this December, which we’re super grateful for and that’s all because of you the listeners. So make sure to tell a friend if you have any other realtors or anyone else in his service or sales related industry that could benefit from this information doesn’t have to be realtors, but especially Realtors let them know that this podcast exists, help spread our message so we can continue to provide this content for you on a regular basis. And we really appreciate it. So Happy Holidays, Ryan, to you and your family. And also thank you thank you for all of your hard work with our podcast this year. Thank you for the listeners for continuing to support our show and telling a friend and beyond. I guess what that will end with a Happy New Year message and we’ll see everyone in 2020
Welcome to the January episode of Learning With A Lender with Joel Schaub!
In this episode Joel Schaub talks about the importance of aligning yourself with a cause that you believe in. Not only is it the right thing to do, but you’ll see that over time clients want to work with brokers that give back. Next, Joel talks about joining groups (such as a college alumni program or an online neighborhood group) and providing value there and over time you’ll start to attract more clients! Last, Joel discusses how loan limits have changed and how borrowers can house-hack more easily than ever before!
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00 This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Joel Schaub at guaranteed rate. As a realtor it’s important to partner with only the most trusted name in mortgage lending. Joel has 1000s of satisfied clients and gives $1,500 of his commission back to your buyers on every closing. He is known for his ability to close even complex deals start to finish in only 14 days to learn what 1000s of others already know. Make a note to call Joel at 773-654-2049 or email joel@rate.com Guaranteed Rate is an equal housing lender licensed in all 50 States Consumer Access Number 2611 And now on with the show
Welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast in the country for real estate agents made by real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host and what a year it’s been we have doubled our traffic and our listenership and we have now expanded nationwide with our guests and also with our listeners and we’re so excited to continue to bring you this kind of content today on the show. We have our monthly episode with Joel shop from guaranteed array called Learn with a lender if you are new to the show. Let me tell you about Joel Joel is vice president of lending at guaranteed rate. He has been doing loans at a high level since 2003. And has got to that level because of what he does directly for agents he gives back part of his commission to the buyer on every transaction every time. Last year alone, he gave back over $271,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with him and that put Joel’s volume in the top 1/10 of 1% of loan officers nationwide. out of 380,000 loan officers nationwide Joel is ranked number 181 year to date, he has closed 317 transactions for just under 113 million in closings in the month of December alone, which is no closings happen. Joel has already done 10 million in closed transactions. And Joel can be reached at joel@rate.com. Or you can always call him directly at 773-354-2049. Let’s say hello to the biggest Cubs fan. I know Joel Schaub Good afternoon, sir.
Joel Schaub 2:39 Hey, DJ, thanks so much for having me on again. And the accolades and the numbers that you you know, you share with the listeners, they’re great, but I love this time to come on and give back and go through some of the things that I’ve seen other agents doing that can help them really, really grow their business, and not spend a lot of money. I’m gonna go through several things that I have seen other people doing and really give back here today. So I’m really excited to be on the show.
D.J. Paris 3:11 And, and thank you, we’re so excited. You’re a fan favorite. And we’re so appreciated by our audience. And I would like to tell the audience, just how dedicated Joel is. Joel is catching a flight tomorrow to go out of the country on safari, which is super exciting. And he does not have time to do this right now. And yet he’s doing it. That’s how dedicated he is. And we’re so grateful that you’re able to do this for us.
Joel Schaub 3:35 Well, I’ll do it again in January, if I make it back and I don’t get eaten by a lion, a tiger, whatever the other animals there are going to be and we’re excited. So yeah, my wife and I tomorrow we fly and we’re doing Christmas in the Seychelle islands. So we’re going to do six nights there before going to Cape Town, South Africa. And then that’s where we’re going to spend almost two weeks doing Africa stuff.
Unknown Speaker 4:02 We’ll be there. Well, I
Joel Schaub 4:03 hope miked up and
D.J. Paris 4:05 I hope my girlfriend isn’t listening because you’re now making me look bad because we’re she and I are just going to Florida. Not as exciting,
Joel Schaub 4:12 as warm but it’s a once in a lifetime thing. As a child, I always wanted to go. And I wanted to go to Egypt. Here’s the two things DJ I wanted to do. I wanted to be a major league baseball player and I wanted to go to Egypt and I was so bad at sports. Like I struck out at T ball. I wasn’t athletic at all. So that’s passed me by but at least I can take my beautiful wife and we’re gonna go spend some time there. We ended in Cairo. So we get back middle of January. So it’s gonna be a good three weeks plus warm to get away. And before we go, let’s go through some things that we can really do as real estate agents and professionals that are on the podcast today, to get ready for 2020 What are some of the things that we can do to put our minds in a mindset for growth? Okay, and the one thing I want focus on is just giving back data. How many times do I talk about this every single time? It’s truly what it is. People don’t care about how much you know, until they know how much you care, okay? And when you can literally grow your business based on giving back, not only do you sleep better, do you feel better, but the referrals that come to you are so much better. Okay? As agents are so many different agent options that are out there. So if you got a referral from somebody that was a friend, a family member, or a co worker, where you really were involved in the other person’s life, it’s a lot easier to work with that person, they’re less likely to say, Oh, I’m gonna go call five different real estate agents and see which one’s going to give me the lowest commission. That’s a race to the bottom, we don’t want that, what we want to do is build our people. So giving back a couple things that we can do be out there and actually pick a charity that you actually could get involved with and spend some time it doesn’t have to be a lot of money. But my wife and I have been part of the real estate to the rescue, we’ve been on the board of directors. And when you align yourself with something, naturally, you’re seeing people that see you as a giving person. And if everybody knows what you’re doing in real estate, you will get more deals from it. So it’s so simple, but it’s so many people fail to do this, go out next year, and find something that you’re passionate about, and asked to join on the board.
D.J. Paris 6:30 I do this. For me, it’s miserable Cordia here a local place in Chicago. And it is not only has it helped me, business wise, which is not why I do it. Same with you with real real estate to the rescue. But it is something we both care about. And I will tell you, it just transformed my life. When I started getting involved.
Joel Schaub 6:51 It is and then you’re actually connecting with people that are like minded. And it’s surprising to me how many people say they will do it and not do it. So just the first step, find a charity, find something that you’re passionate about, and then give back and then let every single person know this, you know, it’s a little self serving, but let them know I’m in real estate. I want to be the person that helps you on the next transaction. And people want to help people that are helping others. Okay. Okay, so that’s charities, the next one is groups, whether it’s a mommy daddy group, a school group, or some kind of former college athletic or university connection, join groups, okay? And make sure that you’re doing the exact same thing you’re giving back, you’re being present, and you’re helping some organization or cause grow. It doesn’t have to be a charity, the one that I really love is just where did you go to school? Right. Lastly, online neighborhood groups, okay, if I was a new agent, and I didn’t have a lot of money, I literally would be doing five or six hours a day just on the group’s Okay, that seems crazy. But literally five or six hours a day, just answering questions chiming in, being that person that knows about real estate, okay, and it will take time. But if you don’t have a lot of money, to go out and do big time, advertisements, and budgets and parties, being on these neighborhood groups, as the professional that is in your community. It’s a long game. But it’s one of the most cost effective ways that you can be an expert.
D.J. Paris 8:33 And so what Joel is talking about, and this is a great thing, because I’ve interviewed people for the show that have built these groups, if there isn’t one for your neighborhood or your suburb is go on Facebook and do a search for it. For example, if you’re a mother, guess what other mothers in your community want to know about all the kids stuff that’s going on in that community. And you can start posting here, all the events coming up. And then as you start to do that you become a fixture in that Facebook group or other social group, you’ll start people start going well, what is it that you do and all of a sudden, you’ve added so much value, that you start getting clients as a result? You’re exactly
Joel Schaub 9:09 right. This is not an opportunity to sell. You are literally providing value and giving answers and actually being a resource that naturally does come to you people make the mistake of going on, and blasting advertisements and I see it and I would never call that person. Right? Yes, it does call somebody that’s actually providing value that’s helping that’s giving answers that are spending time and writing a reply. Whenever somebody needs a plumber or needs a roofer or needs a handyman, if you can be the person that’s referring people out, you become that neighborhood expert in Facebook groups is a great way to go out and grow your real estate business.
D.J. Paris 9:51 Wonderful. I couldn’t agree more.
Joel Schaub 9:53 So you’re talking off air. You’re seeing a lot of different things that people are doing for advertising. What’s going on? What are you seeing
D.J. Paris 9:59 So this is this is just funny, fortunate timing. And it’s going to sound like I’m doing a commercial for guarantee rate, which I would always do a commercial guaranteed rate because I loved guaranteed rate. But this really happened two nights ago. So I got home, I live in a high rise downtown and in River North, and I in my, my mailbox was a an eight and a half by 11. Color, you know, basically front and back. And it was from a very successful realtor who’s actually been on our show, and I won’t mention it just in case he doesn’t want me to. But what here’s what was great about it, it was on the front, it had all of the current listings for my building that were on the market. And it showed in the past, I think 30 or 60 days, what has closed. So I could look at this very quickly and say, Okay, here’s what the places in my building are going for. Here’s what they’re selling for. And guess what, it was co branded by who else guaranteed rate? Yeah. And I handed it to my girlfriend, and I said, look at how brilliant this marketing is. Because is it providing value? Yes. Right? Like that is exactly what everybody who lives in a building wants to know is what are other things going for, because maybe I want to sell or maybe I maybe I want to buy another property in my own building, right? I just want to know what’s going on and most time and I’m in the business, and I don’t know what’s going on in my own building. And I said, this is brilliant. And I said, Oh, how funny is it? Because I’m gonna have Joelle on in a few days, I need to really talk about how I’m not kidding, I get a ton of I get a ton of advertisements from other realtors who partner with other lenders, and it’s just, hey, use me I’m great. And all that’s fine. But I thought wow, this is a piece of, of advertising that is hyper targeted. And I go, how great is this, that, you know, they’re partnered with guaranteed rate because we’re about to come on the show. So really, I couldn’t have been more impressed. And within a minute, I looked at this, I knew what was going on in my building, and I got value. And I and I remembered it. So I you know, this is the kind of things that as agents, we want these kinds of partnerships, right, we want partners that can provide and help us with our marketing efforts. And Joel is exactly the kind of person that can do this with
Joel Schaub 12:11 you. And that’s the nice thing right there too, is that you actually hit the nail on the head, I love that you said a partnership, because there’s a lot of great lenders, there’s definitely people at all different banks and brokers that do it right that know how to do the process. But are they actually partnering with you to help you get more transactions, and you hit the nail on the head, doing the marketing dollars and CO advertising is how I got to having over 100 good real estate agents in the city of Chicago, that say just called Joel. And so I give a closing cost credit back to every buyer that comes over from that agent. So I do a $1,500 credit out of my commission, it goes right on the closing settlement statement. And that helps the buyer bring less to the closing table. And it also gets the listing agent, or the agent that was referring the person over to me more deals because that buyer then is so happy that they got somebody that was at our level, but also giving back.
D.J. Paris 13:17 Yeah, and guys, this is not just a marketing gimmick, this giving back, this is huge. Most lenders do not do this, this isn’t an option at a lot of places Joel does this himself. It’s how he’s built his business. And everybody here locally in Chicago knows Joe and there are probably 1000s of different lenders. And Joel might be the most well known because of his ability to give back. And he doesn’t just give back financially, although How great is that you get to bring that to your client, hey, I’ve got a great lender for you. Not only will you close quickly, with a great rate, but also my lender is going to credit you back, you know, up to X amount. And I think that’s so huge. So you’re providing value, Joel is providing value, and everybody wins.
Joel Schaub 14:04 Yeah. So if you’re an agent that’s on the podcast here today, in 2020, I am definitely looking to expand and have some additional agents come on. And so you can just do a quick email now. joel@rate.com. So it’s j o el@rate.com. And then just in the subject line write marketing, and then I’ll give you a follow up. And we’ll schedule some time to see how we can actually help you through the CO branded marketing the flyers through the credits back, help you grow and in 2020 So I’m happy to happy to throw that out there to somebody that really wants to expand and grow their business.
D.J. Paris 14:42 And to all the listeners look we have 1000s and 1000s of listeners do not delay on this there is a finite amount of people that Joelle can partner with and if you really are serious and looking for a partner immediately as soon as you’re done listening to this, shoot that email out to them so you can have that conversation because at some point he’s going to get fit The emails, and that is going to be hard for him to manage all that. So be one of the first people that reaches out because he is. I mean, here in Chicago, he is a legend. If you’re outside the Chicagoland area, he will, he’d love to still work with you. But definitely reach out because he is a busy man and gets a lot of requests. So shoot that over to him immediately. So you guys can work on your 2020 business plan together.
Joel Schaub 15:23 Okay, got one more thing. I’m all about providing value. So if you are in the real estate space, you’ve heard about this. You’ve seen other mortgage guys or agents talking about the loan limits getting increased? Did you hear anything about this? Like, one day there was 15 posts, and everyone was just saying 510,005 10? They’re just saying this number that now the loan limit is up. But what the hell does that even mean? Right? If you’re outside of the industry, and you’re just buying for the first time? Why does this matter? Right? What does it mean? So let’s actually talk about what that loan limit was because you could always borrow above the old limit, right? There wasn’t a limit on what you could borrow, right? You could borrow $1,000,000.08 100,700. So what this is, is the limit got increased from the cutoff point for a conforming mortgage to a jumbo loan. Okay, and all it means is that now, first time buyers in those without a large downpayment, can borrow more on the lowest downpayment, options, 3%, down and 5%, down all the way up to $510,400. So as an agent, what this means is, it’s good to know that it’s on that number for a one unit property. But my focus here is, there isn’t just one loan limit, there are loan limits for two units, three units and four units. Okay. And so, right now, there’s a really big opportunity for borrowers to go out and buy a two to four flat building. Okay, so if you’re an agent, why go help somebody buy a $280,000 condo, and you can help them buy a $590,000.02 unit or a $700,000.03 unit building? Okay? They can how’s that one of the units? Yeah, well, you could live in one and you could literally collect rents that cover the entire mortgage payment if you get a good agent that can find some of these diamonds in the rough. Okay, so a four unit limit. This is not jumbo, the four unit limit on Fannie Mae now is $981,700. Yeah, a four unit building, and there’s tons of them. Okay. And for most people, if you’re just a regular salaried person $900,000 Seems like a complete pipe dream, how can I ever get a bank to approve me for this type of loan? Well, if you’re buying in a building that has three other rents, your person that’s just maybe making 80 grand a year as a teacher, very easily could go buy a four unit building, if they’ve never bought a place before. They could buy it with 5% down and have the rents cover the mortgage. So those are some of the tips that I wanted to focus on. And give a little context in color to this number that you keep seeing on social media 510 510. That’s one thing. But these two to foreign unit loans have increased as well. And there’s a real opportunity to go to your database, and start having these buyers that maybe are renting, move into a multifamily purchase.
D.J. Paris 18:37 And guys, you don’t have to have these conversations alone. This is why you partner with someone like troll, he can talk to your clients and have those conversations about what we call house hacking, this ability to buy a multi unit living in one and then have you know, the the more of the rent mortgage is paid by the rents in the other. So definitely, let’s let’s continue to reach out to Joel, he is your great, greatest resource to helping your clients get to that next level. They’re not just homeowners, now they’re investors as well.
Joel Schaub 19:10 And now we’ll refer you more business when you genuinely put these people first and not just look at as a commission, you will get more deals. And I’ve seen this for year after year with agents where I’ve taught them and teach them how they can actually take a small group of buyers, and year after year get more referrals from them by putting them first just it feels good. It’s the right way to do business.
D.J. Paris 19:33 That will And that does it for the end of the year. Joel is on his way to Africa and he’s actually got a conference call in two minutes. So we’re going to sign off and we’re going to first thank you Joel for the entire year all the hard work you’ve done on this podcast. Joel does not get paid to do this. He does this because he truly wants to give back. And if if I could ask all of our listeners, our Realtors, our listeners who might be buyers sellers, use Joel reach out to Joel He is honored to earn your business and he wants to earn your business. So Joe, what’s the best way that an agent or a buyer can reach out to you
Joel Schaub 20:09 joel@rate.com J OEL at r a t e.com 773-654-2049. And before I go, just big shout out to you, DJ and everybody that it takes to put this together. You’ve grown so much. We really love what you’re doing. And we’re really excited to partner with you in 2020.
D.J. Paris 20:32 Well, we’re excited, the honor is all ours and so have a great holiday season, Joel, have a great safari with your lovely wife, who I adore. And also we’ll see in January, when you guys get back, we’ll keep doing these episodes. And to all the listeners, thank you for continuing to support the show. And the best way to support the show, aside from telling a friend is support Joel, you reach out to him he is your resource, he will help you make more money as a real estate agent, and I’ll help your clients save money on their their lending. So please, please reach out to him. You know, we’re so honored to have him a part of the show. So, Joel, thank you so much and have a great time in Africa.
Joel Schaub 21:11 I appreciate it. Thank you, everyone.
The fact that Steven Koleno has closed over 300 sales transactions this year (his second year doing sales) as a real estate agent is astonishing, however, it’s not surprising. In 2016, Steven closed over 1200 MLS rental transactions. He wanted to perfect that model before moving on to sales. Steven is currently the #13 highest producing agent in Illinois (out of over 60k brokers). In this episode Steve shares how he builds systems to become more efficient, effective, and how you can do the same!
D.J. Paris 0:00 This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Quicken Loans real estate professionals. When you work with Quicken Loans, you have an agent relationship manager available to you and your team. These dedicated experts are part of the agent relations team. They serve as your single point of coordination, so you can count on them to keep you in the loop throughout your client’s entire home buying process, call 888-980-2891 or go to real estate dot Quicken loans.com. Today, call for cost information and conditions equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states NMLS consumer access.org Number 3030. And now onto the show.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made for real estate agents, by real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host and guide through the show. And we’re in December and it’s starting to get cold here in Chicago. Hopefully it’s a little warmer, wherever you are, as so thank you for continuing to listen and support our show. We have actually doubled our numbers from the since this time last year, I just looked them up, which is really exciting and cool. And we have sponsors and so we appreciate everyone who continues to listen. And if you want to continue to support our show, tell a friend if you know any other realtors out there that could benefit from listening to secrets of top producers like Steve, which you’re about to hear in just a moment. Please pass this podcast over. Anyone can find us on any podcast app, just search for keeping it real podcast. If you’re an iTunes person where their Google Play Stitcher, really anywhere podcasts are served. And also you can stream every episode. For those of you that aren’t really into podcasts, you can stream every episode right from our website, keeping it real pod.com. And lastly, join our Facebook group which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod or just search for keeping URL podcast. And the reason for that is number one we post. We post every time we have a new episode. And you can obviously get you know notified when we have new episodes there. But also every single day our producer Liz comes out and posts an article that she finds online specific to helping you grow your business. We do that every single day. So guys go to facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and like our page so you can get those notifications. All right. I hope everybody has a wonderful holiday season. We’re going to crank out a few more of these episodes before the end of the year. But right now on to our great interview with the great Steve Kalina.
Today on the show, we have Steve Kalina. Over the past few years deep cleaning has quietly built a successful track record representing investors in their real estate transactions. Steve began his real estate career in 2006 as a real estate investor himself and spent the next 10 years specialising in the single family rental industry, from building his own leasing company of 60 rentals to later becoming responsible for the overall operational performance of 820 million in assets and 4900 single family homes as vice president for the largest publicly traded SFR REIT in 2016. His leasing career hit its peak when his team closed 12 153 MLS rental transactions, I want to say that again. In 2016, he closed 12 153 MLS rental transactions. He has been recognized by car as a top 1% producer for both rentals and sales. Steve transitioned to sales only two years ago in 2017. And this year, he and his team are on track to close 300 sales transactions. This is only his second year in sales full year in sales. We are so honored to have you on the podcast. Steve, welcome to the show.
Steven Koleno 4:14 No thanks for having me. Great introduction. Thank you.
D.J. Paris 4:17 Thank you know, we were really excited. And it this is one of those things where earlier just before Steve and I hit record, Steve says I do things a little differently. I’m not sure the audience’s I said no, this is exactly the kind of thing the audience wants to hear. So we’re so we’re so honored to have you. By the way before we get started every effort to follow Steve and all of his different efforts, go to visit him at connect with steve.com and there’s links to all the social profiles there as well. So Steve, tell us a little bit about about your journey and how you got into real estate.
Steven Koleno 4:48 Yeah, you got it. Yeah, I know the some of the numbers are a lot different than most people and you know, you only know what you know. So I’ll give you my background and I think some of it will help make a little more sense but I mean, started basically back in 2005 2006. So I was I’m an engineer by trade. So even though I’m an I consider myself an older man going to be 50 Soon around the corner, I have always bet had that technology, you know, side to me. So I was an engineer, I worked in a health care company as an engineer for about 12 years for a large healthcare company. And then in 2005, and six actually got a back in 2005, and six, we came across a i, it sounds weird, but there used to be something called Carlton sheets.
D.J. Paris 5:35 And we know who that is, by the way, for the listeners who aren’t familiar Carlton sheets is a real estate investor, really a trainer, probably more than anything. And if you’re somebody who’s in the investor space, you’ve you’re familiar, probably at least with his name, and maybe some of his courses.
Steven Koleno 5:51 Yeah, it sounds funny, because it’s, it’s almost embarrassing, right? It’s like he was a late night infomercial. And one night sitting there. As a younger guy, I came across it. I remember reading through it going, man, this just makes sense to me. It really does. And I talked to one of my buddies, a good high school friend, and he’s like, Hey, our other high school buddy, who I lost touch with, was doing it in Arizona. So long story short, 2006, five, started thinking about my license 2006, we bought 23 single family homes. So it actually started where we started buying rental property. I wasn’t planning on being a real estate agent, I was just going to see if I can buy a couple of rental properties with a high school buddy, I would do the legwork. He lived in Arizona, he would bring the finances because he made some money down in the you know, in Arizona when the market was peaking back into 2000, you know, 234. So we went ahead and started doing that. And by the fourth house, I soon learned even though I was still an engineer that I could make some real estate Commission’s if I just went out and got my license, so never really worked with the public at all. I never went never became a real estate agent for that. I just did it to help us buy homes. So 2006 We bought 23 homes by my 27th house rental that we bought, we brought in a couple other like high school friends more so investors, friends and family investing. And by my 27th rental, we bought single family rental, I quit my full time job in 2007. And long story short by 2009. We own 65 single family homes, which sounds great, but we all know what happened in 2009. So I went through some pretty tough times between 2009 and 2012. And although we had a very successful business, at that time, I got to be an entrepreneur, self employed. It all came to an end kind of in 2012 timeframe, where we just finally couldn’t do it quick. And it wasn’t that it’s the the unique situation with that is it’s not that we necessarily failed. It was the bank started failing. We had actually made at that time 3100 mortgage payments on time and had never been delinquent. And then the bank started calling our notes due and that just it was kind of crazy to think about it. But ultimately, yes, yeah, we would have come because as we started buying more houses and you start getting in 4050 units, you can’t put them on your credit anymore. We did some mistakes. Of course, early on, I wasn’t an investor, right. So you made all the wrong mistakes, putting it on your own credit, sooner or later, you couldn’t do that. So we went to commercial local banks with commercial, you know, credit unions, local banks, and those are all commercial loans. They’re not 30 year loans that are locked in. So they’ve got different rules. And we got caught up in some of that. And long story short by about 2012. We were exiting that after we fought hard to try to keep it keep it around but and then ended up going into I knew I could go back and be an engineer probably make more money. But I still had this passion for real estate. It changed my whole life. I mean, when we were you know, an investor recruited a rehab company and did all this stuff and rehabbed every house from 27 to I have bought with partners, of course, we bought like 73 single family homes in our life. So I don’t do that anymore. I’m completely out of that. But back into 2013 14 timeframe. As we’re starting to try to figure this out. We went ahead and landed a job with a large private equity company out of New York who is going to come out and buy 2000 single family homes. So now we’re on the other side of the downturn, there’s a lot of there’s some good pricing and now some big kind of private equity companies or Wall Street companies are starting to come in and possibly buy some of these right. We got in there to help open up the market and buy the 280 property they bought and we leased and did all that and that was my first you know, kind of leasing within the corporate environment. I’m they decided to pull out
and stop buying houses rather. So sooner than later here, I worked my way over to another company, which was at that time the largest publicly traded company in the world that did this. And they owned I think when I started there, they own 27,000 single family homes. They were, you know, be at publicly traded, and within a year there because I’m, I’m kind of a workhorse and extremely passionate and hard worker. I became vice president there and ended up running a team of 46 people. And we manage 4900 homes in three states with my biggest market being the Indianapolis market. One month, we actually leased 252 houses just in the one month and in the Indiana, it’s a big number, and I wasn’t the broker, I wasn’t the they weren’t my MLS transactions at that time. But sooner than later worked my way over to one more institutional company, where I was the leasing manager over multiple states. And some of those big, big numbers you mentioned at the beginning, were working for one of these large companies where I ran a team of eight agents, I had six assistants, I did all the MLS activity, negotiated all the pricing, did all the pricing and had a team of eight agents who would take anywhere from five to 800 rental leads a week and show them Yeah, so I but I was an employee, right. As I tell people, the numbers sound great. It helped my branding and everything. But I was still an employee, you know, barely making over 100 grand a year. And it’s just you got to learn these fantastic systems. So yeah, absolutely. Yep. So in 2007, so it’s kind of weird. So because as I was going through all that certain people, ex, you know, old managing brokers, if I had my license in between while I was an investor would always tell me, you should just become a real estate, a real estate agent, like you could be they saw it, and I didn’t, because I never worked with the public, they’re like, You should become a real estate agent, you can be a mega agent, your skill set your drive your passion, there’s people who don’t have that, who make lots of money. In real estate, you have that and it just took me long. It’s funny, it’s to help, it’s basically comes down to the health benefits, like for for ever with kids. And I had a new kid on the way like I just My daughter just turned seven. But back then she was younger, I just couldn’t make that because you you know, to start in real estate where you have no, even though I have been licensed since 2005. I never worked with the public. So I don’t have a database of past clients. I don’t have anything. So it’s still scary to get started that way. But I did have this amazing corporate experience with systems and processes and business planning and goal setting. And that part I had so 2017, I had the opportunity to where I’m at now I’m with a company called worth Clark Realty, it’s 100% Commission model. And they had a unique opportunity where they were going to they’re one of the top brokers in St. Louis, and actually in the country now, but they were coming to Chicago. And I became managing broker at that time of worth Clark Realty. And it gave me the opportunity to give me a little bit of a salary and go out and do all the sales I could do. And gave me some health benefits. It was a unique situation, and it was all I needed to kind of get started. So in 2017, we did that for only about eight months was a managing broker. And then my sales career really took off so so really starting in the second part of 2017, we closed 16 deals that was it right? I was struggling to get started. At the end of 2017 we It sounds goofy. A lot of my story sounds goofy, but we bought that mat with that Matterport camera. One day I was. Yep, one day I was coming home and I and WGN we had one of the top agents who’s usually on TV. And I saw that ad and I thought if I want to be one of the top listing agents, I have to you have to compete with all these other agents and offer this so we actually bought the camera my wife now does that. Basically full time does all our Matterport you know, obviously the floor plans and laser measures your walls, it’s just it gave me the confidence, I think because I didn’t have confidence going into the sales side as much as I did rentals. So because I hadn’t done it right. So but we got through our first 16 transactions kind of with the general public in 2017. And then it kind of all took off in 2018. We ended up closing 124 deals different you know, I think car had me at 118 or something a little different because some of those were co listed.
But yeah, and then this year we are we are on fire so we were We were just closed our 260 at the the year, we had in extremely good may where we close 45 deals. So we close yeah, it’s it’s not Steven think about I think before that month we had never closed like, we were 18 and 22 was just pushing the envelope. But uh, back about a year ago when I started going from 50 to 60. I kinda I was kind of, even though my wife was doing my marketing, I was doing all my own paperwork, had noticed no assistance. I did every listing agreement every back agent transaction. And then I hired one of the best things I ever did was hire professional coach. Back in the middle of last year 2018. About August, we had closed about 50 deals, I had about 6065 listings. And I just needed to do something to try to help and that’s all it took. I mean, a coach saw you in there like you’re doing, you know, even though you got business going there like you you’re not, you’re doing it all on your own, this is going to be easy to easy to fix. Yeah. So now I have three full time admins, a part time MLS assistant, my wife does all my marketing full time. Now it’s a lot different. But I don’t run a team we’re in we decided to stay individual agent, and pretty much just focused on the listing side where we just implement processes and systems for everything. And I work pretty much with not all but a lot of investors. Right. So I worked with some really large investors from my background.
D.J. Paris 16:29 Got it? So are you predominantly looking for opportunities and then presenting to investors? Is that a good chunk of your time?
Steven Koleno 16:37 Yes, yeah. So I we don’t do as much like you know, battling it, I don’t have a lead problems. And I don’t have some of the same problems maybe an agent does, because because of where my background is, and where I decided to focus. When I started doing this in 2017, because we came off those pretty large numbers from doing rentals. My goal was really to be one of the top agents in the country, you know, in five years or so I didn’t know what the goal was, but I was putting it out there. And I actually study I’m uh, I am honestly that huge. Like business strategist, visionary with the stuff like I am trying to do, every moment of my day is trained to be different than everyone else. And I studied it in you know, like, at that time, the top agent in the world and in the Guinness Book of World Records had close 5800 Like, if you look he closed 5800 MLS deals, one guy 73 years old with three assistants. And we don’t, right, we can’t get that we don’t know. But when you research it or listen to him, he basically created a technology that list a property for 65 He works with 65 different builders in Texas, and within 12 minutes the home hits the MLS, so he’s not going on listing appointments. He’s not right, he builds a relationship creates a system and a process. And then don’t that meets their need. Right? Not how we see through traditional real estate, but meets that need of those builders. So it’s I went out with that mindset going, how long is it going to take? It sounds weird? I know, how long is that? But I hear 300. And I’m it’s I’m just you honestly are trying, you’re just getting started? And it’s not I’m not saying that to be cocky. But my mindset is going how does this guy do 5800 And I can only do 300 It’s just all irrelevant. It’s all irrelevant. So my goal is always trying to figure out how to increase it more now. i It’s different, right? Like when you’re doing a business, because I study it a lot. There’s two different ways there’s emotional, and there’s transactional, right? So a lot of agents work the emotional their work in their sphere. I have never worked my sphere. I’ve never sent an email to a family member. I just, it’s uncomfortable for me. And, and I can’t I don’t have 1500 friends. So like when you start thinking that mindset, it was it was too small. And I didn’t want to do that. So I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. It’s just my mindset coming off of the background I had was just thinking bigger. So we kind of went out and started backwards. I said, Hey, I’ve got this track record of knowing systems. Let me go out and work the biggest clients in the world and start there and work my way down. And that is exactly what I did. I am a like a, I am crazy on LinkedIn like I I reached out to see I have no fear when it comes to reaching out to CEOs of big companies, private equity companies, because I used to be in there right? So that that confidence has given you me an edge to kind of work backwards instead of working from the one transactions here. Let’s work with the ones who own the most property and work our way backwards. You know, I haven’t gotten into builders yet. That’s one of my biggest things for next year. I want to start working that because I think my background would fit good. Just took my first couple REO listings. I’ve been working really hard trying to work with some REO broker or you know, banks and stuff and I finally got in sold my first REO a couple months ago just took my second listing with an REO. So obviously with the volume in the systems that probably fits more my mindset, but some people, but I can go the other way too, right? I’m a people person I’m excellent with for sale by owners and, and all of that too, because I can offer a different perspective than the average agent. So from more options for more, it’s just it’s a different approach. I think. Part of it being where I’m at, like the brokerage I’m at, you know, it sounds crazy, but like the brokerage, I’m at my cap is $8,000 a year. I kept February 11. And my broker has my Yeah, my broker has not made one more dollar off of me since February 11,
D.J. Paris 20:42 your broker is going to do?
Steven Koleno 20:45 So but yeah, so it is unique, but I did that on purpose, right? Like I put myself where my costs are low? Because I yeah, I know, I didn’t need the help of a big brand realtor just based on my experience, I knew I was going to probably do okay, when I entered. But yeah, I just kind of set myself up that way in look for those opportunities to offer my clients more value, easier technology, not technology, but easier processes, right, because I’m looking for the repeat business from people who have lots of potential business.
D.J. Paris 21:17 And you’re also looking in sort of the non emotional space, right? You just want to be able to provide opportunities to your clients. And the numbers either make sense, or they don’t versus Okay, now I’m going to have to convince so and so to list their home at a certain amount, when maybe they have an emotional attachment, or I have to convince them that I’m the better broker versus the Baird and Warner at properties XYZ broker. So it’s totally a different space. You’re,
Steven Koleno 21:45 it’s it’s a totally Yeah, it’s a totally different space. But I think the funny thing is, as I’ve talked to more people or more people find out about our story and want to know why they think you’re not emotional. And that’s the difference. Like I can compete with any agent at a listing presentation. Because you’d have those people skills, and I have the confidence to believe we are a better option than most. So I’m very competitive is the biggest thing. And I’ve been like that my whole life. But I think it’s because we’re so competitive. We try to I and and because I’m not under the traditional borders of a big brokerage say, I think that oh, freedom, they whatever. What is the concern holding you up? I don’t want a long term. You know, I don’t want a long term listing Well, we offer a happiness guarantee that allows you to cancel anytime you want. And we do we have that, right. So we offer all of that we’re in 2019, we’re offering a communication guarantee, if they don’t think we communicate with them enough, they can cancel anytime. All these different things you can do to try to find out with the clients, I think the best thing we do is we I learn in study what consumers pain points are. And I try to solve their pain point where in I like I mentioned, I’m professionally coached, but I even bump against my coaches because they still teach door knocking in a lot of traditional things that I get for a new agent starting out is extremely important. I understand that, but I don’t fit that mold anymore, either. And I do bump heads, trying to figure out you know, different strategies, but I guess I’m always just trying to separate myself. I’m trying to make the competition irrelevant, which is a book that came from but then I am trying to compete in the space of one point. I think we just went over 1.4 million Realtors this week or submit national or you know, the association. So
D.J. Paris 23:47 sure, well, it’s it’s great to because and I love talking to people like you. And number one because you’re unique and have this really interesting story. But this idea of systems in pain point you just mentioned something very important that you said I am always looking to identify and solve the pain points for my clients. And so this is always funny because I go to a lot of events with Zillow. And so they come to town and sometimes I get invited and that’s very nice. And I think that was the coolest thing ever. And I’m not a producing broker. So I don’t you know, I have a different perspective. I’m a marketing guy. But I said Zillow is brilliant because they identified a significant pain point, you know, 15 years ago and delivered it better than anyone else can and broker some brokers dislike Zillow, other brokers recognize that if this now frees up their time, that Zillow can do some of the work for them. Whether whether it’s accurate is another question. But you know, it’s Zillow created an amazing consumer experience to solve a pain point, Steve, I imagine you’re constantly looking for like, How can I create systems that will do similar things?
Steven Koleno 24:48 Well, yeah, that’s that’s an understatement. Like, as I’m talking to you, I have a huge board with it. I’ve kind of a mad scientist with this stuff. So but yeah, I don’t look at any of those companies as disruptors. I don’t look at an open Door who’s not in Chicago yet but, you know, going through putting offers as a district disrupter, I just don’t see it that way like they pay. You can go on their website right now they pay agents to bring them business, Zillow, Zillow still, you know, I know some some of the articles, you know, people are that they’re becoming a while right now they still work with agents. Redfin works with agents, all these comp not every one of them. But all these companies still mostly have agents at the center. So I don’t look at it as a threat when if a new open door comes out, or the next eye buyer that’s being announced every day, it’s just one more potential partner you can partner with. It really is. And that’s how we got started like those first six 816. deals in 2017, I didn’t have a sphere, I don’t door knock, I don’t do all that stuff, I had to figure out how to get business, I reached out to some of those players. And the one over the one I spent close 17 deals with. So and I would pay them a referral fee, I didn’t have to pay upfront for it. And now I joined I still join a lot of those. I’m like, if I mean home lights, a big one, I’m a big home light fan. And as you as your rankings go higher, and as your you know, you elevate as an agent, it’s easier to get those referrals from those companies, I can tell you that firsthand, because I can see the volume picking up as your numbers kind of go towards the top in an area. But yeah, I’m not afraid to partner with all of those people. We I just don’t see it as disrupting it. I just see it as another product. Good example. And I don’t know if I’m supposed to be mentioning individual names. But yeah, a company like compass, right? Always in the news. They have this new concept your program, right? Well, I don’t offer that I don’t have the money for that. But I can now partner with a compass agent, if it get a referral fee. So I think the part that we see a different and like if you saw my office, what I have on there is I’m trying to not be a salesman and trying to be like a trusted adviser, even if I’m not the best option. And that’s I think, where I see some of real estate going five years from now, it’s the same way travel agencies and stockbrokers. They’re still stockbrokers around, but you know, the trades of the world took away a lot of the business, but they’re still there, and the ones who have the elite skill, and that elite division will still be around, but you know, but some of the agents who can’t get up to scale quick enough, who can’t get that skill set, that could be a struggle over the next five years, you know, three to five years, probably sooner than that. But
D.J. Paris 27:44 yeah, and you know, to talk directly to the audience here, you know, Steve is creating these, these partnerships, where everybody benefits, so maybe Steve gets this crazy, big commercial lead, and maybe he’s not equipped to actually process it, because it’s outside of the scope of the resources he has. So he then, you know, contact someone like Marcus and Millichap or Cushman Wakefield, or one of these big, true crazy commercial people and says, I would like a referral fee. And, you know, all of our listeners can start creating those partnerships. And it’s, it’s huge.
Steven Koleno 28:17 It is, it’s and actually, that’s exactly how I pretty much that’s my one of my main goals moving forward is exactly that kind of be in center of that whole, the real estate universe there as a trusted adviser. And if I can’t do it, now, my backgrounds, you know, I’ve managed a lot of property, I’ve rented a lot of property, we’re now selling a lot of, I can help a lot of people, you know, but there’s think, you know, I am not a luxury agent, you know, like, if I get a list, somebody finds me, and it’s a 1.6 million, I may try, right, just to get into it, or I may just pass it to somebody else and make a pretty good referral fee on something. So I’m not afraid to do that
D.J. Paris 28:54 and do very do very little work for that 30%, or whatever the referral,
Steven Koleno 28:58 that’s exactly it, because sooner or later, as your volume gets up, and I still want to push my numbers, you can’t do everything. So you have to find those partners, but they’re critical. I mean, some of my top, you know, top, my top investor entity I work with, you know, I’ve closed 70 deals with, you know, I have other ones that close 12 I just we have a flipper out in the western suburbs, they’re probably eight or nine in the last 18 months or so. But it’s just those relationships that once you earn them, I don’t have to go do a listing presentation. Again, I do it once. And then my my focus is honestly, making sure my processes are seamless that I’m creating less hassle. We just had an investor who implemented a couple of weeks ago, we have to now start walking every prep. So I have to come up with a team of people who is going to drive each property every two weeks and and present it on a certain report. So we just as that happens, we just implement a process for it. We have process from you know, we’ve taken over 700 offers this year. I have a system anyone who’s put an offer on one of our properties, we have a offer platform we use a company called transact Li and we just it’s we just use it and they can submit their offers automatic complete transparency, my clients, the sellers, Dubai, everyone gets it within seconds of it being submitted. So we, but we did that on purpose, right? We’re trying to create more transparency, going actually going back to the pain points when you studied it, or ask or study or review, what people’s pain points are, people’s pain points are, they think real estate agents make too much money a lot. That’s what they say. They don’t know what we’re doing to earn the money. So you have to show them what you’re doing to earn the money. And they, and a lot of them, one of the biggest complaints people get if you, you could Google this, this is all over. They believe agents don’t communicate enough once they get the listing. So you have to just solve their pain points with that right or wrong, right? We could argue if it’s right or wrong, but if you look at the research, that’s what it’s saying. Yeah, I’ve
D.J. Paris 31:01 interviewed a lot of top 1% producers like yourself. And Steve is not only just the top 1% producer, he’s in the very top 1% of 1%. And what’s amazing is, sometimes when we ask well, what’s the differentiator? Now Steve obviously has a lot of differentiators with systems and process. But for more traditional realtors, oftentimes differentiators is communication. The main challenge that means challenge that as you know, it’s in this is whether somebody is a financial advisor, maybe an accountant, realtor, mortgage lender, insurance agent, that the clients all they want are the rather the number one thing they want, or the number one reason they fire a professional is due to lack of communication. And that’s just study after study after study. So oftentimes when I’m interviewing people like Steve, and more traditional realtors who play in in, you know, with that same level of volume, they say communications, everything, they they’re like, Oh, I call every client every week. And that’s their process. And that sometimes is their main differentiator between all the other brokers
Steven Koleno 32:04 that they actually that’s that’s probably the number one tip for a new agent, like you just said, because when you do study the pain points, the number one of the number one pain points is that communication. And if you could just implement a communication guarantee something in there that basically says I’m gonna call you every Tuesday at 1030. They may say no, they may say no to it, but you offer it, because now they know you’re a professional who’s going to handle this right? And, you know, and put, you know, put it down, hey, if if I don’t you have a reason to fire me, you know, this is it, but I’m going to do this, it’ll keep you on track hold you accountable to that. And it’s a great way to try to sell because agents still don’t do that. It’s a good way for a new agent to do it. It is absolutely amazing. Yep.
D.J. Paris 32:49 Well, and Steve and I full disclosure, we both work for firms that have similar commission structures. And, and so Steve, as your firm continues to grow, like like ours does. What’s amazing is is we have to have systems to so where we you probably see the same way as in some ways, you know, you’re broke, or at least from our perspective, since I’m in management, our brokers, our clients. And so we think, along the same way, as a broker would think to how often should I communicate with other clients? Well, we have 650 brokers at this point, which is way too many people, too, we never we’ve, we only see 1% of them, really. So we have to think, okay, and we have a system in place where each one of them is getting called every month until they like you said until they tell us okay, you don’t have to keep calling, but we just call them and literally what we say is, do we were just thinking about you, which is true. Are you okay? Are you happy? Are you getting what you need? By the way, here’s a couple of things you might not know about. And we’ll call you in a month. And it sounds simple and silly. But it really helps with retention. And for all the brokers listening, you’d need to, and I would do it far off more often than once a month. But, you know, have a communication strategy and policy that, you know, if we know that that’s the number one pain point, and it likely is?
Steven Koleno 34:01 Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. Yeah, it’s still in. And I think that’s what’s going to happen more in the future. You know, people who are tech savvy and get it, you know, business will increase you’ll figure it out. But it’s still a people business, you still have to build it right. Like I found a way it’s not I didn’t create it, but I found a way where I don’t have to communicate as much because once you build that relationship, they just want performance. Right? And, and I love that that’s what I’m a competitor, like I said, so I want to be based on performance, I want you to compete me with other agents to do that. But it’s a different it’s a different struggle, right? Because it’s I’m trying to create processes and then somebody breaks my process and then it’s an assembly line and then you gotta fix that process and, and implement a new one, instead of trying to battle you know, where the next leads coming from. So I’m definitely in a good spot. But communication is huge. So
D.J. Paris 34:51 let’s, let’s talk if you don’t mind and I know again, you’re not as traditional of a broker as a lot of our listeners, but you But you do that too? I do. Yeah. And you do it quite well, of course, do you have any suggestions of a few changes that or maybe a different process or a structure that maybe some of our listeners haven’t yet considered? That are pretty easy? Or really, you know, easy to implement?
Steven Koleno 35:19 Yeah. Well, I’m I’m an open book. So, you know, everything I say may not hit people the right way. But we’re an open book with that. I hopefully this answers the question in the right way. And, and I hope it doesn’t come across wrong. I think people, I think agents need to spend more time improving their product, and their service. Everybody says they’re the best agent, everybody says, it’s just, it’s unbelievable. So everybody says that. But yet, as technology gets more, it’s harder to prove that. So I think like, our trick was when we implemented that Matterport, I’m telling you like, because you know, now we can do on a regular client, my investor clients demand different things. But on a regular client, you know, we do drone footage, professional photos, drones, we do the Matterport, we do the floor plans on every deal. And oftentimes, you know, my pricing might be a little cheaper to be competitive to get the listing. And I believe we’re offering and other people who offer all that are offering more than the average agent who’s not. So if you’re a new agent, you have to find a way to implement that it’s the same way I did I, once I got that it changed my confidence, because now I can go in and offer professional photos, drone footage, and that’s only a couple 100 bucks there, figure out the Matterport figure out a way or something similar, right, where you’re offering more, and then offer that communication guaranteeing that you have a better product right there, right there, even if you’re a brand new agent than 80% of the people out there. And in my opinion, you know, we might be favored this little if you’re at a brokerage, that’s not taking a huge percent, it helps
D.J. Paris 37:05 you now have it helps you have the ability to go in and and compete on price as well. And I don’t know whether you do or not. And I mean, probably in commission. So Steve has the ability because of the structure of the firm. He’s at just like at our firm, we have a similar thing where people can go in and our brokers aren’t worried about somebody saying well, Redfin is going to do it for one and a half percent. Because at a firm like yours or ours, like they can match that if they want to know that’s up to them. But there’s, there’s no freedom to do that. And and a lot of firms, of course, to take a percentage of every of every sale, they’re not going to be as keen, most likely to allow for that flexibility. So it in of itself that makes you inherently more competitive, right?
Steven Koleno 37:44 Yeah, in me telling you without going into details, telling you, I’m a competitor, I use everything in my arsenal. To do that. Everything I have all kinds of programs, I have auction plant, like like we were talking about some of the other companies, I have an auction platform that offers 0%, seller, paid commission, because it’s a 5% buyer premium. Any agent can join that right now, any agent can offer that. Now, I’ve only done two. But I am telling you, every time I meet with somebody, I tell them that because I actually make more commission on that if they did bad option than normal listing. But it’s another tool that nobody else is offering. Once you explain it, a lot of times, they just take my normal listing because you have to explain it all out in an auction platform. And that scares people. But just by having that I’ve only used it twice. That’s it. But I promoted as one of the services. So I think the difference is also options. As you as we start getting into a technology driven world, and people can now go to their, you know, Apple TV and select 20 million channels and it like people are okay with options, you don’t want to give them 150 million options. But you have to give them a in my opinion, you have to give them an option more than we’re the best. This is our technology and we charge five or 6% you just I think you have to give them more options nowadays. And I know giving them more options is the best ability to get more people talking to you. Even if they don’t use it, I don’t have a lot of people using my unique options. They still use my bread and butter, the one that you know, our traditional full service. But having those options to try to get the attention of a for sale by owner it’s way easier if you if you come through a different approach.
D.J. Paris 39:33 Can we talk about for sale by owners because without you giving away the secret sauce, which of course would not ask you to do but this is oftentimes new brokers and I think this isn’t as quite as popular as it used to be. But you know, it still is somewhat well known is that oftentimes people who start in the business, you know, they say well, you can buy a list of for sale by owners. There’s lots of services that will sell it for almost nothing. And it’s a you know a way to start con Acting people but these, and Steve, maybe they’re not difficult for Steve anymore because he has the process in place. These are very difficult phone calls, if you’re a new broker, these are these are these can be, you know, challenging calls. Can you talk a little bit about and again, without giving away what you know, your your competitive advantage, but maybe talk about how you guys think about those calls maybe differently than other brokers? Yeah.
Steven Koleno 40:22 So, like I said, I’ll be very upfront with you. So I really have never implemented a full strategy on that, because I started to, and they are so difficult, I can’t do it. Like me, personally, I can’t do it, it was too it was too hard. So when I came across was if you approach him from it, and I’m stuck, because next year, I’m implementing something bigger to get in front. And I can tell you part of what that is, I think might help but they’re tired people are exhausted those for sale by owners, when their property expires, you’re one of your one of 20. And they get mad by the end, if you’re the 12th person to call, they are pissed off. They are mad, I just think it’s a different, you know, it’s I can just see that it that’s a tough road to go and I get why agents do it. And you know, I’m professionally coached, and my coach still tells me to do it. But it is a tough road. And I tend to want to do the things I like to do, as my wife would tell me, I only do the things I like to do. And so I don’t focus too much on that. But I’m trying to focus on being different. So like one of my strategies, actually heading into next year that I’m about to implement is trying to reach those folks who are tired of all the agents bombarding them to give them options to give them options. And I have a whole I can’t get into that now, but a whole URL, a whole different strategy that I’m going to implement next year to try to just be different. And as some of these people are exhausted with the process, real estate agents, some of the processes they use, I want to look different, right? Like look at the community person, the the kind of the leader over here, who gives you a bunch of options, and I am not, you know, we’re going to do 300 deals. You know, Mike, if I don’t get that listing, it’s not life or death where sometimes for an agent it is right if you’re just starting out. And so I when you don’t have that stress, because not every deal is the end all it’s different to you’re relaxed, I am very confident when I go in, you know, we close 45 deals in May, after I did that we were extremely confident, right. So all of that helps but but when when I didn’t have that confidence 2017 And, and I went to do my first listing appointment, and I lost it and I and it was I lost it for the strangest reason. And it’s this is gonna sound bizarre from a top producer. It’s doing 300 deals, but 2017 I had my first listing appointment for a sale with the general public 2017 in Downers Grove. And I lost it because the guy asked me, I came in with my rental track record, and I was already into who was who, because of my rental stuff in Chicago, and he asked me who my professional photographer was, and because I didn’t have one lined up before I went for the appointment, I am positive, I lost it, because he saw me stumble over my words, and didn’t didn’t have it. So you bet I called every photographer in the world. The day after I went back, they sold it with a big broker, and it sold in six days. And that could have been my very first one. And I just learned quick, right? So you’re like, Okay, I’m gonna have photographers, I’m gonna have this, I’m gonna have better everything. I do not ever want to go to a meeting and not have the, the the proper response or the best response from somebody. And sometimes the response is, the best option does not mean if somebody says they want somebody to do an open house every weekend, I am not their best option, because I’m not a huge open house fan in my business model. Right? I just can’t, I can’t take that much time to do that doing the volume. So I would refer them to somebody else. And that might be somebody else in my office, and I’ll still cold list with them, and that type of thing. But But yeah, that’s kind of where I see
D.J. Paris 44:07 that. Yeah, no, that’s that’s true. And it’s, you know, it’s also a thing that I almost wonder if this would stop a lot of agents in their tracks. And you certainly have an answer for this, but it’s in the same, the same vein, which is brokers oftentimes, you know, when we talk about, you know, are they charging too much does the public feel they’re charging too much? I don’t know that it’s the public fields are charging too much the public feels like they’re not sure why they paid that much for what they got. Right. So which is a little bit of a different a different take on it, which is to say like I met a broker, you’ll appreciate this. years ago, she came to interview at our firm, she ended up not using our firm she was with I believe Berkshire Hathaway at the time and maybe still is and she said, Is it okay if I charge up 10% to my to my listing clients, and at the time I and I said well, at our firm you can choose choose whatever you want. And I said do you really think you can you charge an Out 10%. She goes, No, right now I charge 7%, which was still above, you know, the traditional pricing. And she goes, but I’m going to get to 10 in two years. And I said, I’m so fascinated, I said, Tell me, tell me how and why. And she looked at me dead in the eye and explained it for about 90 seconds, and it made perfect sense. And I went, she’s going to get to 10%. Now, whether that’s right or FERS, another question, and she ended up not choosing her firm, but I was like, I want to watch her trajectory, because she absolutely knew the answer to the question of why she’s worth 10%. And I thought it was really impressive. And I bet there’s a lot of brokers who maybe they’re charging 5% 6%, whatever, who really can’t even know how to answer that question about why they’re worth that amount. So even if that’s all you do, and I know Steve can answer that question, for sure. But I suspect a lot of brokers don’t know how to answer it. Just like who’s your photographer? Well, we have a lot of photographers, I could, you know, yeah,
Steven Koleno 45:52 exactly. No, I got you in it. I have a similar story. So at my brokerage, when I was the managing broker for a short time, when we started, we had an agent who, who was, you know, 3035 years in the business, and I think charging 7% and had some questions early on, which, you know, trying to understand our technology just to get it up and going. And I think she’s out of the business. Now. She retired, but I remember charging her charging 7%. And my mindset was so different. But we take everybody, so I said, What do you do for that, and she hurt hurt literally, she takes she’s was still taking photos with her iPhone and, and all of that no professional photos did no other marketing. She’s like chia, her answer to me, was I put it on the MLS, and I was doing everything I’m doing ever I’m running around, I have systems Matterport, and I’m charging way less. And I could see why we were going to be successful. I saw it, I’m like, This is why we’re going to be successful. New agents, you have to find a way not to be that agent times of change, you used to be able to get away with that. New agents just find it focus less on upfront about trying to find the lead, make your process and what you offer the best, you could be new and offer a brand new, shiny object, make sure it’s shiny, make sure it has what the pain points are for the clients. Then when you talk to your fan fans, or family and friends and all of that sphere, it’ll be way easier because you do you’re offering something better, I think, I think coaches managing brokers, everybody is that we have to find a way to improve the product to the consumer, before we start talking to people, and we’re not expert ship. Like I think that’s one of the biggest things I see people missing, that I live in breed with. I mean, I do this 16 hours a day and love every moment of it. I’m a workaholic, if you want to call it that I don’t look at it as work. I’m one of those people. It’s, it’s it’s what I want to do, right? I’m doing my dream job period. Anyone who knows me sees that. And I think sometimes based on the volume and the numbers, people think it’s all computers, and you’re just I’m very much a people person. I’m just trying to do it with folks that you know, higher levels up who might have more access to properties who needs solutions like us? Right? They don’t need somebody telling them they’re the best charging 6%. But they need somebody to say, Hey, I’m gonna sell 70 houses this year, can you help me? And that’s who that’s what you want. But it’s still a people business, I still gotta get in front of them. I still got to know my stuff. I still got to be an expert in my field, and kind of go from there. Well, wonderful. Well, I
D.J. Paris 48:33 think you’ve said it all. And this is been really great for our listeners to understand that focus on a number of things, obviously process, right? Where are you being inefficient. And, you know, Steve talks about having assistants, you know, a lot of times brokers don’t realize who go gosh, you know, I can’t really afford to hire a full time assistant, you might be able to because there are what’s known as virtual assistants as well. And they could be from another part of corner of the globe, who might charge a bit less than, than people here locally. And there are these are people also that you can hire that have been doing this for other brokers across the country, and who already have processes in place, you can leverage their process for maybe a fraction of what it would cost here. And that is a really popular thing right now. So even you know, whatever you’re doing in your practice that is causing you to be inefficient, there are options, and not it’s never been more affordable. And also, I love the idea of coaching. You know, Steve, you talked about that, like you’ve just done what a handful of transactions and you’re like, I need to hire a coach. Because oftentimes we’re we’re like little too close to our own business to be able to step back and say, Oh, maybe you shouldn’t do this, or you should do that. Can you talk just a little bit about how before we wrap up how coaching has really impacted you?
Steven Koleno 49:48 Yeah, oh, absolutely. So in the weird part of this, like, remember, I came I was an executive manager at really large real estate corporations, right. So I knew it I had assistants, but I got 252 53 deals and had a bunch of listings. And I still didn’t hire my first assistant. It doesn’t make any sense, right? I know I need to but you got so caught in the fast growth of your your business. And I love being the salesman. I don’t love hiring people, right? So I am horrible at only doing what I like to do. Hiring the coach makes you accountable to your own goals. It is unbelievable. I told him what my goal is. And he holds me accountable to it. And they’re uncomfortable calls, if I don’t do what he told me to do, I immediately within hiring, I hired a full time admin did not come from the real estate backgrounds unlicensed, trained her. She’s fantastic, because of all, you know, all the volume we’re doing now. But she doesn’t know any other way. Right? She didn’t come from a real estate. She only knows our way. I actually, you didn’t know this, because we’ve never talked, you know, other than a couple minutes before the call is I do have a virtual Isa, they work five days a week full time, I pay a lot less for them. They work from three to midnight, five days a week and on weekends to cover. So I have like 16 hour coverage five days a week for all my big clients and a lot we take a lot of offers. So I constantly have to have those submitted in certain ways in certain systems. And, and then obviously, my wife does all our marketing, social media stuff and does a lot of our Matterport. So we kind of got set up that way I immediately created an LLC. Now I have a 401k The whole thing is crazy. But it’s all from coaching. Even now some of our lead generation, some of our follow up systems, I don’t have to generate the amount of leads that you think I do too, because of our clientele but but I have systems for all that I have automated different systems that do that I don’t do automated dialing and bombard you know, for sale by owners like we talked about. But
D.J. Paris 51:53 when I tell ya just it just doesn’t work. And it’s and it is
Steven Koleno 51:57 and when I get leads in, but I got to respond to them fast. And like I said, I’m a study or have kind of the craft and one of the little sidebar, there’s a guy, I don’t remember his name Rogers slack, I think or something in Florida. You’ll read about him next year, because he’s going to be the number one team in the United States. He’s going to close 4000 deals. And he was a used car salesman when he was 68. I think he’s 72 now and he went from not being a real estate agent for 68 years to having a team that’s going to close 4000 deals. And he does it all by now his strategy. I watched one video on him a couple of weeks ago. And his strategy is he just buys realtor.com leads in mass volume and responds to them within two seconds. And he just he created it doesn’t matter your age, he created a system that fit the need that allowed him to do that same way that guy in Texas did it. One of the easiest things for new folks that I knew agents that I watch, especially because I was managing broker is transaction coordinators. Now there’s so many companies that my coaching does it this the other company I use transaksi does it you can get a transaction coordinator for $250 or something in that realm that you pay only if it closes like you can everybody can have an assistant, and you only pay when it closes when you get your nice big commission couple 100 bucks comes off, and you have a full time transaction coordinator. Everybody should do that immediately.
D.J. Paris 53:25 I’ll I’ll tell you. So this is funny timing. So at our firm, we have like 650 brokers. And we’re so you know, you know, a thick headed, it didn’t occur to us to create for our own brokers a transaction coordinator platform now we were still helping people, of course, and we still do, but if somebody really wants someone else to take over from list to close or from purchase to, you know, from contract to close, we’re like, because because we were our brokers were starting to use some of these services. We think that the greatest thing ever, and we’re like, oh, maybe we could offer that because we’re, you know, pretty thick headed. And then we we just launched that a few weeks ago. Well, what we did is we pulled our brokers to understand their pain points and say, hey, if we were to offer this service, number one, would you pay for it? Number two, what would you pay for it? And you know, and like not 87% of our brokers wrote back and said, yes, we’ve been waiting for you guys to launch this. So we just now launched it. But yeah, you know, there are a million companies that do this. And that’s where we got the ideas. We saw all these companies popping up online. And so if you’re a broker out there, and you’re not using a TC transaction coordinator, just Google it, there’s a million options. And yeah, for two or 300 bucks, gosh, they’ll do just about everything for you. And they do it well.
Steven Koleno 54:34 Yeah, yeah. And that’s that’s that’s like that for me, based on the volume we were doing when when that happened. That was life changing. Like that was because I was stuck. I couldn’t sell more than this. Like I was struggling going okay, I can see how I can get to 80 by myself, which I know that’s but I’m like there’s no way I’ll ever get over that because you can’t but once you brought that person in and they started doing every DocuSign they started doing all my paperwork. They started to iPhone cuz once again on the things I love to do that you’re good at doing. And that’s, that’s really the trick of the business. And we always hear people say that, but I even me coming from a corporate background and pretty knowledgeable in real estate, you know, based on my background, I couldn’t hold myself accountable to it, I, I had to hire the coach to do it. And it’s, it was a game changer for me. And now we’re at numbers, I would have never thought I would be at this fast. I thought I’d get here someday, I just never thought I’d be here this fast. You know, this was the five or 10 year plan, not the two year plan, you know, but
D.J. Paris 55:32 that’s amazing. And everyone, by the way, we should we should mention that Steve does, of course, work with traditional clientele as well as investors. If there are any buyers, sellers, renters investors that are looking to work, Steve with you, what’s the best way they should reach out to you?
Steven Koleno 55:48 Yeah, so we have a website I just created, have people reach us easier. So you can just go to connect with steve.com Something easy to remember, we operate as the Colino group. So you can go there. Or also, we have like a community website called LNI. Residential, but connect with Steve is the easiest way if you just want to reach out. I appreciate that. Yeah. Wonderful.
D.J. Paris 56:09 No, we appreciate you being on the show. And Steve, this was so interesting. So this is really funny. So it Steve said, we’ll just say this as as a kind of behind the scenes thing. So and Steve sent over his bio, I looked at it and I go, Well, maybe he missed type the numbers or because I didn’t I don’t look anyone up ahead of time, which I should do. And I said to Steve, oh, these numbers, right? He goes, yes, they are. And I can’t wait to explain how it works. And you did so so well and elegantly. And it’s such a refreshing take on traditional brokerage and how you’re doing things in a way that is really inspiring and so exciting. So I think all on behalf of the listeners, we’re gonna be excited to watch your continued continued ascent. And you’re already now one of the very top producing brokers in Chicago, including all the suburbs. And that’s just within a couple of years. I mean, that’s just beyond remarkable. So congratulations.
Steven Koleno 56:59 I appreciate I appreciate you. I’ve avoided trying to because I’m not sure what I could offer the value like we talked about before, but I hope some people get some things out of that. I know the numbers might not necessarily relate, per se, but I’m hoping that there’s things in there that a new agent can maybe grasp onto right? Because I was there I like I said two years ago, I’m struggling and I lost my first listing because I didn’t know what photographer like don’t let those little things make you look like you’re you’re you’re not the right person. I was probably the right person at that time. But I wasn’t prepared at that time. So now I feel like I’m more prepared for you know, whatever hits Yes. So
D.J. Paris 57:35 well, that’s that’s perfect advice. If the Boy Scout Motto right? Always be prepared. That’s a good one. So anyway, on behalf of Steve and we thank the listeners for continuing to support the podcast couple of quick notes. If you’re not already a subscriber, whether you have an iPhone, or an app or an Android device. You can find us on iTunes, Google Play really anywhere Stitcher, Spotify, anywhere podcasts are served, just search for keeping it real podcasts, you won’t have any problem finding it. Also, you can stream all of our episodes right from our website, keeping it real pod.com. Last thing, please everyone who is listening, follow us on Facebook. Not only do we promote, of course of our podcast episodes and links to the shows, but every single day, we try to give an item of value to our listeners, we find an article online that was specifically designed to help brokers grow their business, and we promote it there. And we just do one a day. So we’re not going to bombard your Facebook feed and show you pictures of our dinners and things like that. It is literally just going to be things that you find helpful. And of course, you continue to tell a friend right anyone else, you know, that could benefit from listening to people like Steve, obviously let them know about our show. And that keeps our numbers up so we can keep producing these for you. So Steve, thank you on behalf of the listeners for taking an hour out of your day, which I know you do not have. So thank you so so much. And we’re so excited to continue to watch your growth and on behalf of Steve and myself. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you guys next time.
Welcome to the December edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick from At Properties!
In our final Monday Market Minute of 2019, Carrie talks about how the real estate market has performed both nationwide and locally in Chicago. She also mentions how important staging a home prior to listing is in this era of Instagram. Carrie makes some predictions for 2020 and I provide a tip about how to demonstrate care to your clients in the new year.
D.J. Paris 0:00 This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Quicken Loans real estate professionals. When you work with Quicken Loans, you have an agent relationship manager available to you and your team. These dedicated experts are part of the agent relations team. They serve as your single point of coordination, so you can count on them to keep you in the loop throughout your client’s entire home buying process, call 888-980-2891 or go to real estate dot Quicken loans.com. Today, call for cost information and conditions equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states NMLS consumer access.org Number 3030. And now onto the show.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made by real estate agents for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host and guide through the show. And today as we do every month we have our Monday market minute with guest host and superstar producer in Chicago, Carrie McCormack of add properties. Carrie is one of the top real estate brokers here in Chicago out of 46,000. She’s routinely in the literally the top 20 At any given moment. That’s how big of a producer she is. And she’s been in the business for over 20 years. And we are so excited to have her on the show. And once again, welcome Carrie,
Carrie McCormick 1:36 thank you so much, you always give me such a nice introduction. So I appreciate that. But I’m really happy to be on the show. And I will say that, you know, after we we do the show, and throughout the month, I do get calls from some of the listeners in emails with questions. So I want to just start off the bat by telling everyone I appreciate that. And I think, you know, part of our job as realtors in the community is you know, giving back as well. So feel free to call me email me whatever it is, you know, with your questions. I love to hear from everybody and love to help anybody out.
D.J. Paris 2:10 And what’s the best way that one of our listeners can reach out to you if they do have a question?
Carrie McCormick 2:14 Yeah, I’m always accessible. That’s my motto, I’m 100% accessible. And it’s true. I mean, people call me all time. But really, it’s call me 312-961-4612. Or you can always email me, I look at both my email and my text messages all the time. So Kerry, CA RR ie at@properties.com.
D.J. Paris 2:37 Wonderful. Well, what are we going to talk about today?
Carrie McCormick 2:40 So I thought, since we’re at the end of 2019, to summarize, kind of the economy as a whole, because the economy, you know, it drives our real estate market, and just you know, how people are feeling. So I just wanted to touch on a few points. To summarize, you know, 2019, which is just our economy. First of all, our overall, it’s still looking very real robust, we’ve had a great economy, the word recession, which I hate that word, but you know, everyone talks about it, and no one can predict it. But really, you know, I’ve got a lot of wealth managers, and, you know, people in the financial markets that I talked to, and I would say 95% of them. Again, no one can predict, and I’m not predicting either, but they say a recession is not likely, there will be an adjustment in the market. And even if, you know, there’s a big adjustment in the market, that our real estate market should not be affected dramatically. That’s what I’m hearing. Strong grab job growth, of course, low unemployment. So when you have a good job market, of course, your consumer confidence, you know, is up and when consumer confidence is up, people like to spend money. We’ve got increasing wages, low inflation, low mortgage rates, so all of that stuff is good. And again, this, this type of environment leads to people to spend money. Just talking about the low mortgage rates and interest rates, houses have become very affordable for people. As a lot of Chicagoans know, our rent, prices have risen dramatically. And when that is starts to happen, which it did this year, people will turn and look to buying a home because again, they can potentially purchase a home for the same amount of money as they’re paying in rent, sometimes even less. So we’re seeing a little bit of shift from renters becoming homebuyers because of that environment. And then lastly, in some areas in Chicago, we’ve got very low inventory and just kind of the general demand, economics of supply and demand. When inventory is low home prices will rise. So we are seeing that in some areas of show cargo as well.
D.J. Paris 5:01 Yeah. What about our market here in Chicago? You know, what do you see is challenges predictions, you know, for the upcoming year?
Carrie McCormick 5:10 Well, it’s hard to predict. But I can just talk about from my experience, and what I saw over 2019. And what I predict for 2020. And keep in mind, this is just my, you know, my thoughts on it. And, first of all, there’s just not enough product for first time homebuyers. I see a big gap in the market where there’s this very high end luxury market. And then there’s the middle road product. But we’ve got a lot of first time homebuyers coming in, and there’s just not a ton of inventory for them. So I see that as a challenge here in Chicago moving into 2020. Also, this is the biggest challenge that I see is that there’s not enough what I call a quote unquote, moving ready, inventory. And what that means is, the buyers today have become extremely picky, and they want what they want. And they want the white cabinets, the dark floors, the gray walls, you know, the move in ready, just move in and do nothing. We’ve got a lot of inventory that’s on the market, that’s, you know, 1015 year plus homes, and they haven’t been updated granite, they’re great properties, right? The bones of the house are great, but they’ve got maple cabinets and Ooba, Tuba countertops and maple floors. And buyers just don’t want that anymore. So we’ve seen this big shift, all different brokerages have come up with their own program of renovations. Right. So now we’re becoming consultants to help renovate a home and bringing in a third party, to paint the cabinets to redo the floors to paint the walls, all of that stuff. So you know, what buyers are demanding and what they want, sellers are going to have to make a shift and give the buyer what they want. Also, buyers don’t have visions, I’ve walked into a property that’s had, you know, red painted bathroom or green bedroom, and a buyer just cannot visualize this house. So you know, we’ve got different techniques that we use, whether it’s different digital software, or like I just mentioned, we’ve got a company that comes in and paints for them. So renovations have become a big deal in 2019. And I see that that’s going to happen in 2020 as well. It’s just a challenge for us as brokers is to again become a consultant for the sellers on how to get their market ready. Just a prediction on pricing. Home prices in Chicago, in 2019 in Chicago is made up of all different neighborhoods, as we know, and I call it a market within a market, it depends on which neighborhood you are in depends on what type of housing that you have. But just to give a blanket statement, you know, prices kind of flatlined in 2019. And I’m not saying that’s for all neighborhoods, but just as a whole. And I think in 2020, we’re going to see a lot of the same. And not that it’s a bad thing that it flatlines. But it just means we’re not gonna see any big highs, we’re not gonna see any big lows. So I think just, you know, remaining steady is not a bad thing. Luxury markets here still, you know, seem to be a little bit of a challenge. And I think the pricing of the luxury homes, and when I say that I’m thinking 2 million plus, they’re gonna have to shift a little bit, especially if it’s not new construction, they’re gonna have to shift to the market. And last but not least, I hate even saying these words, but I am seeing a lot of people unfortunately leave Illinois as a whole, not just Chicago, but just Illinois, you know, our political climate here has has Danford a lot of people’s viewpoint on Chicago, and they’re choosing other markets to make as their permanent home because of taxes, because of the politics because of the pensions that are coming up. So there’s a lot in our political marketplace that that is driving people out of our cities. So I think we as Realtors as a community need to, you know, advocate for people staying here and buying more properties here.
D.J. Paris 9:16 Yeah, I think I think the solution to that is for all of us listening is to get involved in whatever way you can with your community and advocate for the things you believe in that you think would be helpful to the community at large. And, you know, it’s not to sit passively by and let other people make those decisions. Right.
Carrie McCormick 9:33 Right. And I’ve there’s different tax software out there to or different tax attorneys that you can connect with to because if there’s a property that I’m working with right now that their tax bill is $48,000 and it’s been a it’s been part of the reason why this house isn’t selling, you know, because no one wants to take on this tax bill in this particular price point. So, you know, we’ve been Working with a tax attorney to reduce the taxes and you know, we’ve had to do a little marketing around that. And, and it’s become a, you know, part of how do we sell this house. So again, as our jobs as realtors, we have to be more advisors in all different areas. Again, we can’t, I’m not a tax professional, I’m not an attorney, I am not a contractor, you know, but I definitely have my resources that I have to use as kind of consultants to come in to get a house sold. So you’ve got to be a little more creative in our job.
D.J. Paris 10:33 Well, yeah, and those are the things that will stop somebody from placing an offer, obviously, the taxes are a huge thing. And that’s where you know, the conversation with the seller needs to happen, but probably pre listing or right when it’s listed. So here’s what’s going to happen the moment somebody sees that $48,000 Bill, which I’m sure you had that conversation, but for all realtors out there. Don’t be afraid to have that conversation, have somebody on your team, that’s a good tax attorney that you could say I’ve got somebody that you need to talk to. And we really need to, and oh, by the way, you have a red bathroom. And here’s what’s going to happen the moment somebody sees that, yes, of course, they can change the color. But we live in an Instagram world where everything looks perfect. And people are constantly seeing perfection, perfection, perfection, they aren’t using their own imaginations as much to fill in the gaps. We need to make this look perfect. And here’s what we have to do. And I think oftentimes realtors are afraid to have those conversations. But the reality of it is it’s the truth. And you need to always share the truth with your sellers. Right?
Carrie McCormick 11:29 Absolutely. And I don’t know, if I mentioned to I was at the luxury Connect. Conference in California, I think there’s now about two months ago, you’re right with this Instagram world that we live in. And you know, I’m a big advocate, and I love Instagram as well. I tried to pepper in some Instagram, I tried to pepper in real photos, and you know, befores and afters and all of that good stuff, but it is our, our consumers are just they go and they see these beautiful homes. And when they walk into some properties here, they’re just they feel like, I can’t live here, you know, because they’ve, they’re living on their phones and seeing all this other stuff. So it’s, it’s very interesting. And I think we need to embrace this. And again, you know, help educate our sellers, and what the buyers want. And if the sellers are not willing to do that, then it has to be priced accordingly. And it has to be priced where a buyer will come in and see the value of what’s there and want to take on the work themselves. So it’s, it’s interesting, but I see a lot of that happening. And 2020, I think it’s going to be a good year, I don’t think we’re going to have anything super negative here, I think we all are just gonna have to work a little bit harder, I think we’re all going to have to also work as one big Chicago real estate team and help each other out to help make the market move.
D.J. Paris 12:50 Yeah, remember, all every broker listing it is called a cooperative commission, supposed to be cooperative. So everyone should always keep that in mind. So you guys can get deals closed. Well, thanks, Carrie, that that was awesome. And I am going to spend just a minute. And I’m going to keep my marketing minute very brief and short. So I have as we’re getting into the end of the year and thinking about our business plans for next year, I have just one idea. And it’s very simple. But it’s something I think every broker should consider for their sphere of influence their previous clients, anyone in their contact database is think about instead of thinking of what are my marketing campaigns for next year, which of course you’re going to do think of this and this may be the most important mark, important marketing campaign of all is, how am I going to show each one of the people in my database that I care in 2020 about them. So instead of just how many mailers am I going to send out how many postcards how many, you know, email newsletters, which of course is all fine. Think of just one way how you know that you’re going to know one thing about each one of your contacts, that is important to them, and you’re going to somehow show them that you care about that for them into 2020. And make a list to have every person in your database and say what’s most important to this person and you might not know right? You might not know what’s really important well get on social media, start looking at their profiles, look on Instagram, you know, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, see what they’re up to find out what they care about, you probably already know, maybe it’s their kids, maybe it’s their career, maybe it’s vacations, maybe it’s food, whatever their hobbies are find. Or maybe it’s a cause that they’re involved in something that’s important to them, write it down, put it in your CRM, and make sure that you think about okay, what can I do in this next year to show them that I I noticed what they care about, because I will promise you that everybody wants a real estate professional that cares about them. And if you can show them that, you know, boy that’ll that’ll always win the game. So as you think about that over the next few weeks as we wrap up the end of the year, just think about each one of your players people and how can you show them that you care because that will get you the Business. And it’s also fun to do that too. Right? So
Carrie McCormick 15:04 that’s awesome. That’s a great tip. Yeah, thank
D.J. Paris 15:06 you. Well, with that being said, we’re gonna we’re gonna wrap up this year in the Monday market minute. And Carrie is, of course, going to be on board, hopefully next year until, I mean, she is so busy and oh my god, I only want to ask her how many listings she currently has, because it’s so nasty. Don’t ask that many. It’s not many.
Carrie McCormick 15:25 There’s a lot. But that’s a lot. There’s it. This has been a great year. And I appreciate all the time that you spend with me to on this show. And I appreciate everyone that listens to this. And I’m looking forward to 2020. And hopefully, I’ll get to work with some of the listeners one on one.
D.J. Paris 15:41 Well, I know if I was a listener and I was looking to buy or sell a home, I would want to choose you. So if somebody’s out there listening or maybe some a broker who’s interested in looking at your team, maybe as an option to join, what’s the best way a buyer or a seller or an investor or even another realtor might reach out to you? Let’s say that again?
Carrie McCormick 15:58 Absolutely. So just call me 312-961-4612 Or email me, Kerry at@properties.com. Or you can also go to my Instagram account. I’ll do one last plug for it. Yes, it’s, it’s awesome. So it’s Carrie McCormick real estate. Feel free to check it out comments, give me any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you.
D.J. Paris 16:20 And Carrie is probably on her way to another showing so we’re gonna let her go so she can go do her job. But from the bottom of all of our hearts, all the listeners we thank you for being part of the show. And on behalf of Carrie and myself to the listeners we thank you guys for supporting us to support Carrie reached out to her and we’ll see you next year Carrie
Carrie McCormick 16:39 sounds great and happy new year. Happy New Year.
Welcome to the December edition of Coaching Moments with Ryan D’Aprile!
What does every professional athlete have in common? They ALL have coaches! And so should you! In this end-of-year episode Ryan discusses the importance of coaching, and how you can implement coaching for better accountability into your business for 2020.
D.J. Paris 0:00 This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Quicken Loans real estate professionals. When you work with Quicken Loans, you have an agent relationship manager available to you and your team. These dedicated experts are part of the agent relations team. They serve as your single point of coordination so you can count on them to keep you in the loop throughout your client’s entire home buying process, call 888-980-2891 or go to real estate dot Quicken loans.com Today, call for cost information and conditions equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states NMLS consumer access.org Number 3030 And now onto the show.
Welcome to keeping the real the largest podcast in the country made for real estate agents by real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris I am your guide and host for the show. Today is our monthly coaching moments episode with Brian De April. Ryan is a progressive thought leader focused on providing for his agents and staff. His strengths are his motivational skills, coaching style, and his dedication to training depot properties has 14 offices throughout Chicagoland and also in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan and hundreds of brokers. A depot properties is a coaching company with eight strategic coaches who work week in and week out with every single agent individually focused focusing on their business plan, coaching and accountability for the agents. If you’d like to take your career to the next level, or if you’re just not getting the attention you need from your firm, check out the April properties you can visit them at D APR properties.com. And welcome the owner of deal properties and the founder Ryan Ryan D APR. Welcome. Thanks, DJ.
Ryan D’Aprile 1:57 How are you?
D.J. Paris 1:58 I’m good. I’m really I love these episodes, because really you are the crux of what we are trying to do on the show. And we do it through various different ways by interviewing top 1% producers. And we’re so grateful that you who is really 100, a full time coach and a trainer to the trainer’s is willing to come on once a month. So this You’re exactly what we’re attempting to accomplish. And we get so much great feedback from your episodes. So really excited to have you on again.
Ryan D’Aprile 2:26 I appreciate It’s my honor. How you how you Braving this cold?
D.J. Paris 2:29 Good, so yeah, so for those of our listeners who are luckily not in Chicago, you’re not? Well, maybe in other parts of the country. It’s this cold too. But yeah, it’s pretty ugly this week. Lots of ice and snow, how about you
Ryan D’Aprile 2:41 nowhere, like just boom, and I’ll hit us the snow in the cold but, but that’s why we live here. And that’s actually it’s why I love it here. I love the change I love, I’ll get sick of the cold and snow Come on late February. But right now I’m kind of enjoying this and wait for the decorations that go up.
D.J. Paris 2:57 And we should also mention, you know, you it’s funny, because I have made my world very small. My the office I have is a mile from where I live. So the weather never really affects me that much. But we should mention sort of what you do, because it’s really important. And probably it’s kind of a peek behind the curtain. Ryan’s like a super busy guy. He has hundreds and hundreds of agents, over a dozen offices, several businesses, but really what he focuses most of his energy on his traveling from office to office helped make make sure that the agents are getting the training and support they need. So you’re probably you probably had a rougher week than I did with travel.
Ryan D’Aprile 3:30 Yeah, but you know, it’s not bad. Because I’m a I’m a podcast and an audio book junkie. So I get a lot done in the car. But it’s free in the brain kind of stuff. And I want to talk about I was inspired by somebody. I’ve been listening to the past couple of weeks, I’ve been sharing it with my agents and whatnot. And I think we’ll talk a little bit about some of the things I’ve learned from him. And I do want to tell everybody that it’s like everything that I coach and I preach, I learned from somewhere else. This is not like, you know, sometimes you go on your coach, and from my perspective is like, you know, oh my gosh, I feel like a phony. This is what somebody else said, but you know, you have to understand it. I’m embracing it. And all I’m doing is I’m being a conduit from what I’ve learned from all these great minds. And if I’m coming in touch with somebody who’s in the mortgage lending or the real estate brokerage business or whatnot, just kind of try to help them with the, the nuggets of knowledge you learn from these. These, you know, these gurus these brilliant thought leaders that I listen to on the podcasts are various audiobooks.
D.J. Paris 4:32 Yeah, and that’s exactly what we do here, too. We have this whole idea of what they say Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, right? So Ryan’s a giant, all the other fortunate guests we have that are generous to to give their time are also giants and we’re learning from the best. And so that’s what we do here.
Ryan D’Aprile 4:49 And I think, you know, given that, you know, we’re a week away from Thanksgiving, we’re coming into that six week holiday stretch that we go into, and the real estate business tends to hibernate a little bit or so lot activity, I think this is a great time to talk, start talking about business planning, and your next year and how to prepare for it. Um, so before we
D.J. Paris 5:10 before we get to I just wanted to pop in with a quick thought, a quick idea, because I was talking about this on another podcast yesterday, which probably our listeners wouldn’t know about. So I mentioned it here, just in case they won’t see this on the other episode I did. And I want to talk about Thanksgiving, because Ryan is a huge proponent of staying in touch with your prospects, your sphere of influence your past clients, everyone that you’re looking to get additional business from, and just, you know, have a strong working relationship and personal relationship. And we’re coming up on the holiday season. And of course, this is a time where brokers are going to be sending a lot of holiday cards, a lot of holiday greetings, and that’s all great. And all of that’s awesome. And then I realized, very few people ever do anything for Thanksgiving. And I thought that’s one way to separate yourself, this would be a great opportunity to get in touch being that it is a bit slower to get in touch. And maybe instead of if you were saying, Well, I’m only going to do either holiday greetings in December for my clients and prospects or in now, I would say maybe do it now you’ll have less competition from everyone else who are sending those same cards. Yeah, I
Ryan D’Aprile 6:17 think I mean, it’s a good idea, I do think you know how they card Thanksgiving, or Christmas, there is a clutter of them. And I tell everybody, you know, your job is simple. It’s creating relationships with the people in your network, quite honestly. And statistically, you know, 60% of them are going to transact every year. And so and each of them know, people who are going to buy ourselves a little bit of referrals you receive from your network. So one thing that I do work with a lot of our agents on when you know, again, you kind of kind of do this in it, we get in and week out bi weekly, monthly, at the biggest time sprint span. And we tend to forget and I don’t count holiday cards as as a as a touch with you, I don’t count as a touch I kind of marketing. And I think it’s something great. And I think it’s something everybody should do. You know, I walk into my house and I have, you know, come December 20. It’s like our islands got dozens and dozens of pictures, and I enjoy looking at them. But from a professional standpoint, and what we do for a living, you know, what comes first, right? The client, right? Or the fail and the client is what comes first? And how do you get a client and it’s a byproduct of these touches that we’re talking about. And you have to you have to be you have to be discipline, you have to be consistent, you have to have the right mindset to understand and be aware, right, and being aware of what you want, is going to trigger the actions you need to take. So I do think it’s a great idea, DJ. But I do also want to say is don’t slip into that, that that little trap where you think yeah, I didn’t touch you sent them a card for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I think what you’re saying does have its avail point centered Thanksgiving because there’s less clutter. But you really should contact everybody your network in the fourth quarter, like you should every single quarter, to continue to build on a relationship, you do it a couple of years in a row, you’re going to receive the compound effect, the snowball effect, where you have a deeper relationship with these people. And then you have a marketing plan that’s going that you’re not even thinking about. And then essentially you’re attracting sales and you’re not chasing sales.
D.J. Paris 8:34 Yeah, I think that the biggest mistake brokers make, or one of the big mistakes brokers make, and it’s very common, it’s the same thing we do where we go to the gym once. And then a week goes by and we’re like, I should probably go again and you just don’t have it scheduled regularly. It’s the same thing. I live in a high rise building in River North and I get about once a month, I get a postcard from a random broker. And you know, it’s part usually partner with the lender. And it’s nice, it says, here’s all the listings I have in your neighborhood. And here’s all the success I’ve had. And it’s cool. And it’s like, okay, and then I don’t hear anything more about from that person for maybe six months. And then I get another postcard. I think they sent me one six months ago, there’s not there’s no consistency. And you know, you have to you know, so if you’re going to do a thanksgiving greeting or holiday greeting, okay, well, that’s one thing, but have a communication policy where it’s like every single person I talked to gets touched 12 times a year. And he and I’m going to just draw out the calendar and ever you know, and I’m going to do it this way. And there’s lots of ways to do it. As Ryan has mentioned, you can you know, write them a post on social media, you can call them you can email them, you can text them, there’s a lot of ways to do it. But you have to be consistent, you have to realize you probably might have to touch them 30 times, you know, over time before you get any sort of traction
Ryan D’Aprile 9:48 and taken a bite sized bite sized pieces because what’s special about January 1?
D.J. Paris 9:54 Well, it’s it’s resolution time it’s the beginning of the new year.
Ryan D’Aprile 9:57 Right it’s resolution time, I think everybody And now it’s the new year, it’s resolution time. It’s also the beginning of a brand new quarter. So I try to tell everybody take the last, you know, two to three days of the last last two, three days of the quarter, and the first two to three days of the quarter and treat it like a resolution, you should have for quote unquote, New Year’s resolutions a year. Okay. And what I success in this is, you know, one of those audiobooks, I’ve been listening to Robin Sharma, I don’t know if you’ve ever listened with He’s phenomenal. He says, and I just love this success is created. Success is created through the consistent practice of simple, I love that word, simple fundamentals. I think the 80% they’re struggling, you know, the first thing that they’re struggling with, is with mindset, and they have that somewhat of a victim mentality where they think that the others are lucky, and it’s just not for them. And with a negative mindset comes negative or no action at all. So the first thing we got to work on, like we discussed in last podcast is you got to really set yourself and work on your mindset. So you can take the action, and understand that the people that have success, they created it, it was not bestowed upon them, it was created. And quite honestly, it’s simple. But you have to be consistent. And consistency plus discipline will equal freedom.
D.J. Paris 11:31 And consistency plus discipline does not include talent, it does not include raw talent, right? Every discipline and consistency will almost it will rise to the same level as talent, if not above talent. So in other words, if you say, Well, gosh, this, this real estate is not my natural inclination, it’s a lot of really successful realtors. It’s not their natural inclination, either. But they’re hard workers and they’re consistent.
Ryan D’Aprile 11:55 Right. And so you know, I, let’s, let’s break down the month, okay, and let’s work five days a week, let’s treat this like a job. Let’s treat it like a career. It’s interesting, mostly real estate agents. You know, a lot of fearless people get their real estate license, they watch how they treat their career, they work so much harder for somebody else for a paycheck. It might even be a dismal paycheck, but they’ll show up five days a week for that check every two weeks. And here they get an opportunity to work for themselves. And they don’t show up. They work one hour, one day, every two weeks, and then they get frustrated and upset or they come and they do busy work, you got to focus on what’s going to move the needle man, you got to focus on what’s going to move the needle in your business and stop subconsciously going through your day. And working on things that might release dopamine, because it’s making you feel like you’re productive, but it’s not activities are going to move the needle, there’s 20% of your actions that are going to produce 80% of your results. And then there’s 80% of your actions that are gonna produce 20% results. And most people spend 80% of time and the 80% of the actions that’s only giving 20% of the results. And they don’t focus on the activities that will move the needle. So if you could take a month, and you could break it down into working days. All right, in taking out holidays in you know, five week months out there. On average, you’d have 20 working days, a month. Okay? So you hear hammering going on right now.
D.J. Paris 13:30 It’s okay, though, it’s perfectly fine. One of
Ryan D’Aprile 13:32 our offices has been remodeled, and I’m backing over and one back offices. So um, so if we take a month and we break it down, you should have 20 working days, because it’s gonna be two days off a week. Now, can you spend an hour and a half every one of those working days working on what’s going to move the needle, then you can do whatever else you want, with the other six hours in that working day. Yeah, and
D.J. Paris 13:57 by the way, just just to pause for a moment. This is Brian Buffini taught me a very similar thought didn’t teach me personally. But I went and saw him speak this is a million years ago. And he said treating your business like a business for real estate agents is important. And he mentioned that he sort of saw it as a stool and there were three legs to the stool, and one of those was client acquisition. So that’s kind of what we’re talking about now marketing, branding, staying in touch. And he says that’s probably only an hour or an hour and a half a day, but it’s the most important hour they and the maybe the rest of the day is customer service, you know, maybe six hours of the day is doing, you know the stuff with your existing clients. But he said that hour, hour and a half, you know whether doing some sort of touch to generate business is the most important hour of the day.
Ryan D’Aprile 14:38 Yeah, you know, I’m factoring that this plant has actually been talking about three legged stool and so three or four legged stool, but it’s a little bit different. It’s upon it’s the lead the lead segment you’re gonna go after and I’ll talk a little bit later on, but that’s a great that’s a great line. And yeah, and that’s that what he says the most important part, that’s what’s going to move the needle. If you can Hidden if you do this five days a week for an hour and a half, you’re and you do it for three months in a row. Robin Sharma calls it the 9091. Stick 90 days, which is three months, that’s focused 90 minutes. And that day was an hour and a half on the one task, that’s going to move your needle. And that is the relationship building. Real treat your career as a real estate professional, or a loan officer, or insurance salesperson or a doctor, an attorney, whoever’s responsible for acquiring clients. If you don’t treat that part of your business with respect and discipline and give it the attention it needs, you’re going to have a frustrating career. If you can dedicate that time. And if you can’t get a coach, you guys, you need to have a coach, you have a coach, he could check in with me once a week and maybe get good maybe check in every other week. I have an agent. I’ve been coaching him now for going on three years. knew the business four years ago. He’s going to he doesn’t have a team as an individual agent, average price points $220,000. He’s going to finish the year at 14 and a half million dollars. We coach every two weeks, much time is spent on the phone when we coach.
D.J. Paris 16:20 I bet not that much minutes. Yeah.
Ryan D’Aprile 16:24 But he does what he’s supposed to do. And if he doesn’t, I chew him out for it. And I don’t chew him out. I’m like, Well, what did we you know, he gets it. And it’s accountability, we do have some good in depth conversation at times. And sometimes it’s not 10 minutes. But is that accountability that just separates you from the bottom 80%? Well,
D.J. Paris 16:43 every professional athlete in the world, every professional athlete in the world has a coach, now the very best at what they do.
Ryan D’Aprile 16:50 Now, if you’re an employee, somewhere, you might not be the coach. Or if you’re in a sales position, where you have a salary, and you’re required to come in five days a week, you don’t need a coach, because guess what, your managers your coach, you got one, right, but real estate’s not like that, you don’t get a check, you’re not being paid, you’re working for yourself, you got to if you if you don’t have it naturally in you to be discipline inside it, go find yourself a coach. And I’m going to tell you, the process is simple. So 20 days a week, alright, five days a week, 9091 90 minutes. All right, 90 days in a row, an hour and a half on the one thing that’s going to move the needle, the one thing that’s going to move the needle is creating a relationship with the people that’s in your dashboard, or your CRM, those are the people that are your network. And most agents stay in touch with the same five people day in and day out with their network, that’s not going to get you anywhere, you got to get beyond your comfort zone. And you got to create a relationship with the other 195 people or more and realize that’s your job. Because if you have a relationship with them, and then you have a marketing platform that’s consistently hitting them, the sales are just going to come to you. So coming into the holiday, you know, Marathon we’re about to come in to make sure you spend these days, this time catching up and getting that over with. And then let’s look at next year. And let’s treat every you know, last week of the quarter as a great business planning and almost like a rebirth your business so you could have four New Year’s, New Year’s Eve for New Year’s release resolutions, you know, quarterly resolutions, what did I do? What are my hat about? What am I regrets? Now, what am I going to do differently? This next quarter, we’re just we’re gonna be coming into that. Now the three legged stool that you’re talking about that Brian refer to? Brian, like I know him, or the four legged stool, you know, that I was thinking about is what’s your business planning strategy? Where are you going to find these clients, right. And so our job is to find somebody who wants to buy or sell a home. And there’s a lot of different places you could buy them, or presumably find them from you can buy them. You can find them though from one, the major one is your network. So that should be one of the legs of your stool. That should be we’re by the way your network. People call it sphere of influence and whatnot. That is we’re a percent of your time should be spent. That’s where you should focus all of your time because it’s going to give you all the results. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have any other strategies. You could have another stool, maybe it’s gonna be open houses this quarter. You’re gonna get into three to four open houses a month to get out and meet buyers or seller’s. Maybe another stool might be I’m going to do a purchase web lead. I’m going to buy Zillow ads are truly ads this year to meet people that could be another lake or you could say I’m going to have Oh farm, I’m going to farm my community. And when I’m sending a postcard, every single month for two years in a row, I’m going to try to create a brand name for myself in my community. And I’m going to commit to sending a postcard every single month, for a minimum of two years. By the way, if you send a postcard to a farm, and you’re only going to two to three times, just don’t do it. Yeah, don’t save your money, save your money, do it for two years and create a brand. So that was the three to four legged stool that I was going to talk about and actually done talking about it. But look at your business as a three or four legged stool. The number one should be the network, you need to create the network, you need to take care of the network, your job is to create relationships with that network, make sure there’s a marketing campaign going out to them, and then look at the other opportunities that are out there and pick out a strategy plan, and then execute it over the next 90 days. And then when you come to the last week of the quarter, which we’ll be coming to do in six weeks here. Plan again, plan for the next quarter. Sorry for the construction going on here.
D.J. Paris 21:02 No, no, it’s fine. I think you’re absolutely right. And I think the easy part that brokers tend to miss it’s it’s the it’s the wake up and do your push ups thing. It’s like every morning I say to myself, and I don’t always succeed, I say I’m just going to wake up and immediately hit the ground and do 50 Pushups. And by the way, I don’t always do that. But if you don’t, what’s
Ryan D’Aprile 21:22 it called? When you tell somebody why you did it’s called a what? An excuse, an excuse. But the thing with excuses, they’ll make you feel better, but they’re not going to get you ahead. This is another thing, and I’m sorry if I cut you off, but he just said that. And again, I gotta give credit to Robin Charmin for this. Because it was, it was just brilliant. She said, and Mike butcher this a little bit but Richard Branson, Warren Buffett. Right? Who’s another ultra successful individual that’s out there? Elon Musk. Okay. Let’s talk about the people at the top of the top right? They all have something in common? You know what that is? No, what’s that? We all have 24 hours in the day. Right? How many hours a day do you have 24. Right, and what they do different, I believe, as they prioritize their time. And so many of us, let errands and tasks that are not going to move the needle, get ahead of the efforts that we need to take, that’s only going to take an hour and a half to move your business. So whenever you’re in that, and you’re making an excuse, or you’re frustrated, you’re really not looking in the mirror, and you’re looking outside for either the solution to your problem, or the blame to your problem. Got to look in the mirror. And you said what am I doing with my day and my time? Why is this person doing this? I tried to say don’t compare, because that’s the thief of all joy. And I didn’t make it up. I use it all the time. Because I struggle with self doubt. I struggle with anxiety, I struggle with depression. I’m I’m trying to be open to that with everybody. Because it’s something that we all need to know that we’re all battling. Right? And, you know, but but when I get in the right mood, I’m in the right headspace. I say what am I going to do today? What’s the hour and a half to two hours that I can spend? That’s going to move the needle, that’s the Network tab. That’s the activities that are going to create relationship with the people in your network that are going to generate you not only new clients, but referrals and relationships that go well beyond that day. So sorry about that. I’ll cut you off.
D.J. Paris 23:46 No, no, no, you’re right. And I think it’s easy, especially once you start getting a few clients to allow the customer service part of the job, which is once you get the client and doing it’s easy to let that take up the entire day. And you you get to the end of your day and you go well, I was busy. And it’s yes, you are. But did you carve out some time to do your push ups to do your do your marketing? And if the answer is no, then the question is, did I really win the day? Well, not really. I mean, I was busy and I service to my clients. And that’s important. And I have to do that. But Did I did I do my push ups and that’s the important thing is to just carve out that time and that’s your time to build your business.
Ryan D’Aprile 24:29 That’s exactly right. And so, you know, I think DJ just to wrap up maybe this coaching session is to you to come full circle back to what we’re you know that that that saying is that success is created. It’s not bestowed on anybody. Success is simple. Success is created through the consistent practice of simple fundamentals. There’s nothing complicated about what we’re talking about doing it sending a text message hey, how are you just saw this, sending a message on Facebook or any Instagram message not running on the wall, sending them a message saying, Hey, I just saw this happen is so cool. It’s just think about your whole balls. Well, you’re not saying oh, by the way, you know, we were looking to buy or sell, you’re not making the sales call, we will talk, I think I think we should talk about how to make the kill, maybe in our next coaching. So you do have to have a killer instinct you do not you do have to know how to make a closing. And maybe you and I should talk off air about how we’ll talk. Maybe we should talk about that next session. But I just wanted to, you know, cover in this episode, while we are coming into the holiday season, don’t neglect the hour and a half that you need to spend on it’s simple process of simple tasks that will create great success for you.
D.J. Paris 25:49 Yeah, and I think too, I wanted to give credit to a interview I listened to that you can probably find online, it was with Tony Robbins interviewed coach John Wooden from UCLA before he passed away. So winningest coach and maybe still the winningest coach in NCAA history. And I believe I have this right. And I’m like, I know nothing about sports. But I think he won seven NCAA championships in a row. And so he was a fascinating person. And he had said, I was listening to this interview, not knowing much about him. And Tony said, How did you win all those championships? And he goes, Oh, was all fundamentals, he says, I try every single day, everyone had to shoot a certain number of free throws a certain number of foul shots, a certain number of, you know, just regular baseline shots, etc. And we tracked everything. And we and then at game time, we just ran our fundamentals. We never use I never as a coach once ever looked at the scoreboard. And Tony said, Well, of course he looked at the scoreboard. He goes, No, he said, I didn’t care. He said all I cared about was executing fundamentals. And the scoreboard took care of itself. And he said, and that’s just the truth. And it’s a it’s an amazing thing. So when Ryan says don’t compare to other people, don’t look at the scoreboard, focus on your fundamentals. Fundamentals always win the game, they always, always, always win the game. Unless you get lucky. I mean, maybe you can get lucky. And maybe you’re that one in a trillion person that hits the lottery, or just has million dollar sales fall into your lap, but I am not that lucky. Ryan’s not that lucky. None of our agents or his agents are that lucky, you have to just just work hard at the fundamentals, keep your head down.
Ryan D’Aprile 27:21 You do and we will compare and I compare and I want to share with people that I have anxiety and self doubt and depression everyone time to time because you know, I, I’m an eight personality, right? I’m a high driving hard driving person. And you know, and sometimes it’s just like, Oh my God, why am I not doing this one man? Do we all do it? So you got to stop you got to take care of your, your body, your health, you got your flat, you got to think about what you scrape before and all the things Yeah, and that’s time I look at my wife and I think my kids that health and like oh my God, everything is going for me. And I get my my mind back on track. And then I get back to the actions are gonna move the needle.
D.J. Paris 28:00 Couldn’t have said it better myself. And I don’t say it better myself, which is why you’re on the show. And we appreciate your on the show. And by the way, most of our audience, I don’t know what percentage will say 99% because that’s probably true. Our brokers here in our local Chicago area. And Ryan’s company depot properties is always looking for people that are looking to take their real estate career, whether they’re brand new, just got licensed, or they’ve been in the business a while and want to get to that next level. What Ryan’s company does, that’s really different from pretty much all the other companies I’m aware of his they focus so heavily on coaching and training that every firm says they do that but Ryan has actually do that they have strategic coaches, which I’ve never heard of another firm having. So if you’re interested in finding a firm like Ryan’s Ryan, what’s the best way that a broker should be reaching out?
Ryan D’Aprile 28:52 It’s easy, you can email me to call me you can text me, my email is Ryan at the APR properties.com D APR i Le, the prilled the APR, pick your pronunciation? The APR properties.com. Or you could shoot me a text or call 312-590-6416. That’s myself.
D.J. Paris 29:14 Wonderful. Well, I wish all of our listeners is probably the last episode we’ll do before Thanksgiving. So everyone will hopefully hear this before Thanksgiving. So we wish all of you on behalf of Ryan and myself a happy Thanksgiving. Also a happy holiday season and this is a great time to refocus on your business plan for next year. And your business plan should have a daily activity of getting a deepening your connections with your existing sphere of influence your network, as Ryan is fond of saying your network is your net worth to steal his phrase and then also to make sure you’re looking to acquire more new clients as well and deepen those relationships and if you can do that, I mean if all you did, if this was your entire plan, which is not a complete plan, but If all you did was meet two new people a day for the next year, and you met for 500 people, oh my god, you’d have all and you should do a lot more than that. But if you could even just meet one new person a day and deepen existing relationships everyday to boy, you’ll have so much business you won’t know what to do with it.
Ryan D’Aprile 30:16 DJ, Happy Thanksgiving man. Thanks for having me, Ben.
D.J. Paris 30:19 Thanks for having us as on the show. Thank you for all of our listeners. quick couple of points if, if everyone out there by the way, I want to deepen relationships with you. If you enjoy the show and listening to Ryan, as well as our other guests, send us your questions. Let Ryan know what you would like him to coach you on on our next episode, the way you can do that visit us on Facebook even go to facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. In addition to posting links to all of our episodes, every single day, our Associate Producer Liz finds an article online that is dedicated to helping agents grow their business and posts an article. It’s the only thing we post on there every single day along with all of our episodes. So you can go get your daily dose of agent secrets and actually build your business and then also tell a friend if everyone just tells one other broker about this podcast, we’ll double our listenership. And what that allows us to do is it attracts more people, sponsors to the show and enables us to do even more for you guys. So thank you so much, Ryan, for doing so much for our audience. I know on behalf of them, we thank you. And on behalf of Ryan and myself, we appreciate everyone listening. So we will see Ryan we’ll see you next month.
Ryan D’Aprile 31:32 Thanks, DJ looking forward to it.
Welcome to the November episode of Learning With A Lender with Joel Schaub!
In this episode Joel Schaub discusses the recent rate cut by the Federal Reserve and how this is NOT necessarily going to reflect mortgage rates decreasing. Often these cuts are predicted (in-advance) and lenders already have baked them into current rates. Also, Joel provides a strategy about asking your loan officer for a no-cost loan, and why that often is preferable than the lowest rate (plus fees). You’ll be able to call your contacts with this information and provide incredible value!
D.J. Paris 0:00 This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Joel Schaub at guaranteed rate. As a realtor it’s important to partner with only the most trusted name in mortgage lending. Joel has 1000s of satisfied clients and gives $1,500 of his commission back to your buyers on every closing. He is known for his ability to close even complex deals start to finish in only 14 days to learn what 1000s of others already know. Make a note to call Joel at 773-654-2049 or email joel@rate.com Guaranteed Rate is an equal housing lender licensed in all 50 States Consumer Access Number 2611 And now on with the show.
Welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate brokers for real estate brokers. My name is DJ Parris. I am your guide and host through the show today we have our our regular episode learn with a lender with Joel shop. Now if you’re not familiar with Joel Joel is the vice president of lending at guaranteed rate. He has been doing loans at a high level since 2003. And it’s gotten to that level because of what he does directly for his agents. And what he does is he gives back part of his commission to the buyer your client on every transaction. Last year alone, Joel gave back over $271,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with him and that put Joe’s volume in the top 1/10 of 1% nationwide. Now out of 380,000 loan officers in the country. Joel is ranked number 181 year to date, he has done 268 transactions for just under 98 point 6 million in closings. In the month of October alone, Joe’s closed 14 million in sales averaging over 10 million a month. And by the end of this week, Joe will hit a huge milestone in his career, and it will close over $100 million in one year, not even a full year in loans truly incredible. If you’re looking for a mortgage professional, Joel is the very best in the industry. And he can be reached at joel@rate.com Again, joel@rate.com and also on telephone and he answers the phone at 773-654-2049. So let’s say hello to the biggest Cubs fan that I know Joel Schaub Good afternoon.
Joel Schaub 2:39 Thanks for having me on DJ every time I hear the numbers, it just reminds me of how much We’ve both grown since the first time I’ve done the show,
D.J. Paris 2:47 we were just talking about this, I couldn’t believe that you’ve grown to $100 million. That is, it’s almost like a fantasy number. And you’re there. So this is what you’re 16 for you in the business, something like that.
Joel Schaub 3:01 16 years, it doesn’t happen overnight. But it’s all about that giving back and teaching and educating. And that’s really what we pride ourselves in. So it’s not just the numbers and the accolades. That’s all great. But you know me, you know me off air. And it’s I’m the same way on these as I am. If you meet me in a room, I’m I’m open, I want to give back and want to see how I can help these agents achieve the numbers that I’ve been doing. And I think we got a good show today. We got some good stuff coming up.
D.J. Paris 3:33 Yeah, and I’d like to tell the listeners because this is a big milestone for Joel hitting 100 million in 11 months, which is truly incredible. And I just want to tell people who might be newer to the show how Joel got to be on this podcast, talking about giving back. I met Joel at an event that he was a sponsor for. And I didn’t know Joel and Joel certainly didn’t know me. And I knew he was working the desk when people were coming. And he was saying hello, he was greeting people and giving them their name tags, because he was one of the sponsors. And he said to me, he says, I listened to your podcast, you don’t have a lender on your show you need I need to be on your show. I have so much great information to give to your audience. They need to hear this. And it was I will tell you, I’m listeners that every single day, a lender will reach out and say I want to be on your show. I want to be the next guest on your show. And but what they never say is here’s all the great information I offer. And as soon as we met Joel, we’re like, Well, that’s it. Joel is our guy. And that is his passion is really giving back. And as Joel will tell you, he is a lending nerd. And so he comes on every month and tells us careful, be careful. Hey, I love nerds. I’m a nerd too. Yes. So we’re excited to have you. All right. What do we want to talk about today? Oh, actually, I would I have a thing I want to bring up so and I want to get your thoughts on this because I did a little research on what’s going on in lending right now. And I saw an article on MSNBC just published today that said refinances are up. As of last week, I believe up 188% over last year. Can we let’s talk about that.
Joel Schaub 5:13 No, it’s absolutely true. I mean, the roadmap for the show today is I am going to talk about the Fed cut that just recently happened. I’m going to discuss the winter market and the opportunity for buyers and some things that they actually don’t think about. And then I’m going to wrap up with a prediction on rates for 2020. Just so that we can kind of get a roadmap of where we’re going. And you’re right, the refinance volume is up almost 200% year over year, and to kind of do a little deep dive and kind of understand what that means. I was telling a story last week, and and this really hit home to the buyer. I explained remember when you bought in 2018. And our focus was all about the rate, isn’t it? So true. DJs people are just so focused, when they’re closing, what are your rates, right? There’s 100, things that go into a transaction or more, sometimes they just get stuck on that one number. And they feel like I gotta call five different places and find the bank, that’s gonna give me the lowest rate. That’s not necessarily the best way about going about it. We’ve discussed this in years past on the show, maybe finding the person that has the lowest rate is equivalent to finding the cheapest eye surgeon
D.J. Paris 6:25 Exactly. And I will tell you, when I got my laser eye surgery done 10 years ago, I did not go with the lowest cost provider. And there are places that we were doing it for pennies on the dollar. And I spent a significant more because I wanted the surgeon that had done 1000s of these. And he charges a little bit more because of that experience. And that was worth it to me.
Joel Schaub 6:47 So what happened here was no matter what year, you know, what they bought in the last three years, so 2015 1617 and 18, that’s four full years. Rates today are better than any time they close. That means all of the time that they went in, they spent shopping trying to find the lowest rate, just with one simple phone call today, the market rates because of the recent fed cuts three in a row, the markets better. And so there’s an opportunity, and that’s why people are flocking back and taking advantage of the refinance rates right now.
D.J. Paris 7:20 So what should Realtors be doing to not take advantage of have the courage but but to see the opportunity that lies in this scenario?
Joel Schaub 7:32 I have my agents going through and doing a very specific thing for most of you, you’re looking for touch points, if you’re a good agent, the idea that you could reach out with some value is paramount. Can you find something that you could reach back out to those clients that you closed? And provide them some value? Okay, so how many agents? Do we have that? They’ll call back? And they’ll say, Do you know anybody buying or selling? I’d be a great referral.
D.J. Paris 8:00 That yeah, I’m never too busy for your referrals, that kind of thing? Yeah.
Joel Schaub 8:05 That one? Well, sure. Yes, I bet. But that doesn’t, that doesn’t do anything. For me, I loved you when you helped me buy the house. So I’m a big fan of educating the buyers and providing something of value. So the conversation looks like this, you take your list of the last two years, and now that it’s getting close to the holidays. In even if you’re a really busy agent, you don’t have hundreds of closings, right? You take the last two years, if you have 50 or 100 clothes, you’re You’re doing good. For the average person, you might have 50 clients that you closed over the last two years. It’s a really manageable number. Okay. And the conversation goes like this, you reach out to them and you’re providing value, and you’re letting them know something that you learned today. And here’s the takeaway. You can refinance your mortgage, you can lower the interest rate, but nine times out of 10. When you call the bank, they want to charge your fees, right. And that’s the way they advertise everyone advertises interest rates, okay. They rarely talk about closing costs, they want to kind of bury it, or hide it or not talk about it. Okay. So here’s the takeaway, there are two different types of mortgages that you can get when you refinance, the one that makes the bank a bunch of money, and the one that’s better for the client. So let’s think about it. If the best rate in the market today is three and a half percent, and you call up the bank, they want you asking for that three and a half percent rate, because they’re gonna charge you two or three grand and fees to refinance your mortgage. And they’ll say since you’re at four and a half, it definitely makes sense to go from four and a half to three and a half. And you’ll make that up in a couple of years. You know, maybe you save $100 a month and over $3,000 It’s 30 months if you’re going to be In the house for 30 months, great. Okay, that’s what the banks want you to do. Okay. And here’s the little secret. Once you call your own bank and you say I’d like to refinance, you ask them what the best rate in the market is no, provide it. And then you’ll say, now what rate? Can you get me if you don’t charge me anything, and you cover all of the costs, the title fees, the appraisal and the lender fees? Bingo. Now, the now the mortgage guy will go, okay, yeah, I’ll tell you what that is. And the idea there is maybe it’s 375, or 3875, maybe it’s more than the three and a half percent. And they will be. But I can go from four and a half percent, down to 3.875, for free. And I’ll still save $150 a month, or I could pay a ton of money and take the best rate in the market. Now.
D.J. Paris 10:53 I will take the gamble that you’re going to be there for that amount of time before the break even.
Joel Schaub 10:58 I love a no cost refinance, I love being able to educate clients on a no cost refinance. I think that most mortgage guys don’t want to talk about a no cost refinance, it makes them a lot less money. In the end, that’s the reason that I do so many transactions in a month, you know, it over 14 million, that’s a good year for a lot of mortgage guys.
D.J. Paris 11:21 And that’s a that’s a just an average month for you.
Joel Schaub 11:24 That’s a good month. That’s that was you know, that’s it’s because of the education piece of it. So here’s the second piece of what we were talking about here. So now that you know, you can do a no cost refinance, I talked to agents all the time. And they say, and I didn’t know that or I thought about that. But I didn’t know the components or the exactly how that worked. And so again, it’s very straightforward. It doesn’t have to just be me, whoever you got the mortgage through, you call up the mortgage company and say, What’s the best rate you can get me right now? Once you determine that, you’ll say now what rate can you get me if you cover all the fees? If the rates lower than what you’re paying, it probably makes sense to take the no cost rate, especially since we think rates may be continuing to come down. So we don’t want to pay for a rate that a few months from now or next year, we could get for free. And we don’t want to just wait. Okay, everyone says Should I wait, hey, things are gonna go down further. They might, but there’s a very good chance that they do not. So let’s take the best way you can where you’re not paying anything right now. If it goes down further, great. But at least you didn’t pay any money and you got instant savings.
D.J. Paris 12:33 That makes perfect sense. And I want to let’s bring that I want to bring this back for a moment to the listener because Joel just said some really profound things. So we’ve always said whenever rates have dropped, I’ve always with the brokers we haven’t even our own company and certainly other brokers I mean, and on the show though all of our listeners we say call your clients call everyone you know that owns a house and is paying a mortgage and say hey, rates have dropped great time to call your loan officer and see if rates refinance is a good idea. But what Joel just gave you a second level conversation, that by the way, this is not an email, you should be sending your client Hey, great time to refinance. By the way, here’s how you want to ask for a no cost loan. And here’s how to compare that is not an email that is a phone call, and maybe even an in person meeting if, if, if possible, but certainly a phone call. So this goes so far beyond Hey, great time to refinance. And by the way, when you call your your lending institution, here’s what you want to ask for. And boy, Joel, that is really, really great.
Joel Schaub 13:33 Take two three hours, guys, literally, this is an action plan. After you listen to this. You get your database for the last two years that people that had closed, okay. And the conversation is as follows. I know rates are down, you probably see it everywhere. I was just listening to a podcast, I got some really insight information, some real high level details. Did you know that you could call your mortgage bank back in once you get the best rate in the market? Ask them, what’s the rate you can get for free? Right now there’s a really good chance that you can actually save some money. Okay, that right there leads to one or two things. Wow, that’s so great. My sister is getting ready to buy a place. Can you help her? Right? This is what it does. givers gain if you literally are out there providing value and I am a dork for this type of stuff. But if you’re out there literally giving good to the universe and you’re giving back in all these ways. Agents tell me left and right. I took one of your techniques. And I have three new buyers or I got a new listing off from it. And you have to you just have to set some time. And while it’s slow, this is a great phone call. And that’s how you do it. That’s the easiest one. Right now rates are low. I want you to call back. You know Jim who did your mortgage remember he helped us he was great. Call him. But do this trick where you ask him what’s The fees, what’s the rate you can get with no fees?
D.J. Paris 15:03 Why what is it’s great. And this is again, this is why Joel is on the show. And I will do I want every one of our listeners to consider using Joel for their clients, or even their own transactions with their own investor, or just pricing or refinancing their primary residence because by supporting our partners like Joel, you help support our show. And it keeps Joel wanting to come back. And he has got deals from people who have listened who have reached out to him. So Joel, what is the best way that one of our listeners can reach out to you to to start that relationship?
Joel Schaub 15:37 And I’ll say it, but I want to preface that it’s not a sales pitch for us at all. I really want you guys, if you had a good relationship with that last lender, that’s what you do, you stick with it, you’re build loyalty, you have a relationship. And that’s paramount having that. Now if you have a really bad lender on the last one, call me, I definitely want to help them out. If it’s a brick and mortar bank, and they took a long time to get your paperwork or nobody answered at seven or eight at night or on a weekend. I’m here to help those types of things. So yeah, people can always reach me, I mean, it’s joel@rate.com, it’s J OEL at r a t e.com. And the direct line to me from 9am to 9pm, is 773-654-2049. And the focus here on that phone call guys wasn’t to say, Hey, call Joel, it’s literally you’ve provided value. And what I want you guys to get out of it is it really truly will pick up, especially around the holidays, you’ve called them before, they get to see friends and family and they have people in their house and they’re traveling. And if they actually take advantage of this, and do the work and make a phone call. They’re going to be talking about it around the Thanksgiving Day table. You know, hey, my realtor called me and gave me some real value. And now my payments down $150 Less. Don’t you think that’ll get you some more listings?
D.J. Paris 17:07 I would certainly hope so. And guys think about this, too. So the the holiday seasons coming up, we have Thanksgiving, we have the December holidays, and everybody who sends out something sends out a card on the holiday at the holidays. And by the way, that’s great. That’s fine. That’s better than nothing. But now you have this great opportunity before the holidays to do what nobody is doing. And I’d say even if it’s not somebody that you worked with, in the past, just call everybody you know who owns a house and say, Hey, I don’t know your mortgage situation is certainly none of my business. However, I’ve got this little trick that you can use to take advantage of the current dip in the rates. And here’s what you want to ask for. You know, I want to just pass this over to you thought you’d find it helpful. By the way, happy holidays, right? That’s so much value you’re providing. And the funny part is, what’s that expression, it’s never crowded along the extra mile. Just like Joel said, spend three to four hours. I mean, if it was me, and I was a producing broker, I’d spend like three to four days doing this because it is the biggest no brainer win in history, right? It’s a reason to pick up the phone and deepen that relationship.
Joel Schaub 18:15 That’s exactly what you do, you’re gonna get a lot of voicemails and just so to add a little extra value here, what it sounds like is Jim Suze, it’s Joel, I’m giving you a ring, hey, give me a ring back. I just wanted to connect with you. I know there’s a lot going on interest rates in the news, I have something that would be very valuable to you. Give me a ring back when you have a moment. And then you get them on the phone and you go through it, you’re going to get a lot of voicemails people don’t pick up I don’t pick up the phone. When it’s the cell phone, right? I pick up my business phone all the time. But these are consumers, they just bought a house, they’re not like us as far as real estate professional, so you’re gonna get a lot of voicemails, and you just, you provide the value, you let them know I have something that would be helpful for us. Can you give me a ring back and then you can share that information? Beautiful. Alright, so there’s that. I’m excited. Okay, can we talk about the Fed cut?
D.J. Paris 19:09 Let’s do it. So this is the big news, right? The Fed just cut rates. What does that mean? Okay,
Joel Schaub 19:15 I’m gonna blow everybody’s mind here for a moment. And I’m gonna let you know that just because the Feds cut rates that didn’t have an impact that they had mortgage rates that one bit,
D.J. Paris 19:27 but it’s, it’s every headline, every headline is saying that the Fed cut rates and you’re saying Yeah, well, maybe that’s not so important today.
Joel Schaub 19:37 So let’s talk about why what did the Fed do the Fed that day cut the prime rate, okay, Prime was at 5% and they lowered the 475. Remember, rates are already below four. Okay, so mortgage rates right now are in the threes. They did not call the mortgage banks and say, Please lower your rate today by point two 5% Okay. But that’s what the headlines say rates are down. So everybody that’s buying a house tomorrow, they think, Oh, my rate should be a quarter point less. And that’s not the case. Okay? Those rates have been baked in for months now, we knew that the Fed was going to be cutting rates DJ. So that’s a little bit of controversy where people think, Wait a minute, the Feds cut rates in the mortgage rates didn’t move. It’s really true. What we knew that was pretty baked in meaning there was no announcement, it actually that they slightly worked against mortgage rates, because we kind of have an administration that wants us to cut rates even further. Okay, I won’t get into all the politics buying anything, I always like to stay right in the middle. But since the Feds didn’t cut rates more, that’s why the rates were slightly flat to the upside.
D.J. Paris 20:54 Got it. So the bottom line is, don’t be that concerned about rate movement. As it’s happening.
Joel Schaub 21:05 REITs speak with a trusted professional know exactly where you stand. And the point is like on a 30 year fixed rate. If the rate is 3625, or 375, it’s still so much lower than it’s been, at any period of time, don’t get caught up in these small little moves. It’s a long term thing that we’re looking at right now, the trajectory is flat to lower.
D.J. Paris 21:31 So this could also go into the voicemail that you’ll likely be leaving, as Joel said, you know, people outside the real estate world don’t always answer their phones. So you have to figure out a strategic way to leave a message that’s engaging. And again, this is something to mention and say, Hey, you might have seen news about the recent fed cuts, I actually have some insight, or I wouldn’t say inside a fridge, but I have some additional information that I think would be really valuable to you, that can help you possibly even save, give me a call back. So
Joel Schaub 22:00 it’s exactly right, DJ, you’re providing value. And you’re making sure the agents know exactly what’s going on in the market.
D.J. Paris 22:08 Well, this is a great, I don’t I want us to end at this. Because at this point, everyone listening should have a whole bunch of great, exciting work for them to do, as we all know, as real estate professionals, that one of the hardest things to do is think about reasons to contact your existing clients that have already bought a home from you six months ago, it’s like, okay, why do I call them? How do I call them, we know that if you stay in touch, you’re gonna get referrals. But as Joel has said, time and time again, every month, you have to come with value, you have to bring something of value, otherwise, you’re just asking for referrals. And nobody really wants that. Nobody really wants to be asked for referrals. They want somebody in their life that’s consistent as providing value, as Jill just said. So this is by the way, how did Joel get to 100 million in 11 months, it wasn’t by accident. It’s because Joel is constantly providing value, not just on this show, Joel is on WGN. Constantly, he is out and about. Everybody here in our local market in Chicago obviously knows him. Because he is constantly out there and what he’s what he doesn’t do self promote. Nothing turns me off more than self promoters, right. That’s just me personally, but I think it’s a lot of people. What I love is people that come with value. That’s what this show is all about. That’s what Joel is all about, which is of course why he’s such a no brainer to have on the show every week and every month rather. And if anyone listening is looking for a new lending professional, Joel is a great fit. He won’t do a commercial for himself. But I always will, because I’m his biggest fan. So Joe, one more time, if anyone out there is looking to speak with you what’s the best way should they should reach out?
Joel Schaub 23:47 If you found value in what was going on today, it’s fine. Let’s reach out and just have a conversation. And I want to hear more about you and what you’re doing in your business. And we can do some of these many one on ones where I can actually help you in the buyers that you have navigate the mortgage business in a much easier way than what you’re probably used to. So 773-654-2049 or just an email. It’s my name, Joel JOE l@rate.com.
D.J. Paris 24:18 And by the way, for those listening who aren’t here in Chicago, because our podcast is listened to nationwide, but I guess worldwide, really, but nationwide. If you’re somebody who’s not here in Chicago doesn’t matter. Joel can help.
Joel Schaub 24:31 We’re licensed in all 50 states. When I started there was 171 guys at the company and now I’ve helped build it up to over 5700. We have 300 offices nationwide. And we’re all about value. It’s trust. We are one of the biggest mortgage companies that you’ve never heard of. So that’s what we do.
D.J. Paris 24:49 Well here in Chicago, everybody knows the name guaranteed rate because they just have come in like like a hurricane or a slow hurricane and just come pletely built up. And so if you’re not familiar with them, they’re huge. I’ve used them in my own refinancing, and they were amazing. And again, you should use them too. So reach out to Joel and, guys, everyone who’s listening couple of quick items, before we wrap up, please tell a friend. So as I’m saying, reach out to Joel for all your mortgage needs. There are lots of realtors out there that need to hear this information need to hear what Joel just shared. So please, if you know any other realtors that could benefit, pass this podcast over to them. Boy, that would really help us out we’d super appreciate it. So definitely send that over. Also, you can stream every episode we’ve ever done, including all the jewel episodes from our website, which is keeping it real pod.com. And lastly, and we’ll talk about value, how do we bring value to our listeners? Well, obviously through these episodes, but you might not know this, every single day, our producer Liz goes online and looks for an article Realtors could or should read that will actually give you an actionable strategy that you could take advantage of immediately to help grow your business. And we post it on our Facebook page. So Liz was just in here an hour ago. And she said you have to tell the listeners to start following us on Facebook. So go to facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And every single day you’ll get a tip that shows you another way to grow your business. And Liz also does her weekly Liz lesson video, which we’re going to post shortly as well. So guys, tell a friend, follow us on Facebook. And of course, subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher, anywhere, Spotify, anywhere podcasts are found. And Joel, thank you once again for being a part of the show. We couldn’t do it without you. You’ve been a great partner, and we want to keep doing these episodes. So everyone listening. Thank you and Joel, thank you.
Joel Schaub 26:43 Thank you so much for having me on every time we do it. It is absolutely a pleasure. And just big shout out to you. It is what you do that keeps everyone tuned in. You’re amazing. And I look forward to doing it again soon.
D.J. Paris 26:56 Well, I will say we were both amazing. That’s easier for me to say. But I’m just the guy who asks people like Joel to be on the show who really provide the content. So guys, again, thanks for listening, Joel, thanks for being part of it. And we’ll see everyone next month.
Gogo Bethke arrived in the U.S. with only $6, no sphere of influence, and English being her third language. She proceeded to get her real estate license and start marketing on Facebook. Within a few years she sold 45mm in real estate and today commands a team of 110 agents. In this episode the social media queen talks about how most get brokers get social media wrong and provides best practices that you can implement today to find more clients online. We’re HUGE fans of Gogo and you will be, too!
DISCLAIMER: Gogo’s 30-day moneyback guarantee is no longer valid.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00 This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Quicken Loans real estate professionals. When you work with Quicken Loans, you have an agent relationship manager available to you and your team. These dedicated experts are part of the agent relations team. They serve as your single point of coordination so you can count on them to keep you in the loop throughout your client’s entire home buying process, call 888-980-2891 or go to real estate dot Quicken loans.com Today, call for cost information and conditions equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states NMLS consumer access.org Number 3030 And now onto the show.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest real estate podcast made for real estate agents by real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host for the show and coming up in just a moment. We have gogo from gogos boot camp. She is a social media superstar in particular on Instagram. So for so many realtors out there wondering how do I get my social media to actually work for me? How do I find clients? Gogo is going to show you how to do that here in just a moment. So in addition, I want every single listener to think of another realtor that you know that could benefit from hearing this sort of interview right where not only do we interview top one percenters, we also interview social media experts gogo is both a top 1% producer and social media expert. We’ve got over 117 of these episodes. So I want everyone to think of someone that could benefit that really wants to learn from top producers how to go about building their business and send them a link to this podcast, you can simply send them a text with the URL, keeping it real pod.com. That is right for our website, podcast. Every episode, you can stream directly from there. You also please everyone follow us on Facebook, we are located@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pot every single day, we find an article online about helping you grow your business and we post it there and we also do a weekly video. So follow us on Facebook. And lastly, thank you for continuing to listen, we really appreciate it. We’re going strong. Now if you are by the way, if you’re a sponsor or somebody who would like to be a sponsor of our show, let us know we’ll definitely can tell you more about how that works. But guys, thanks again for listening. Thanks for telling a friend. Thanks for following us on social media and onto our interview with Gogo.
Today on the show we have gogo Beth key from GoPro boot camp.com Gogo came to the US in 2003. To build her American dream she was broke, she had no sphere of influence, no experience barely spoke English and only $6 to her name. So that left her with nothing else but Facebook to grow her business. And that’s where she started. She created gogos real estate and her real estate career began with the power of social media gogo has sold over 45 million in residential real estate transactions. She shares the good the bad, and the ugly side of real estate and her honest snippets into her everyday life to her 10s of 1000s of followers. And in the real estate community she earned the nickname the social media queen. After being asked to present at various realtor events. She built a social media bootcamp which is called a Go Go’s boot camp.com. This is for realtors, and today she has a team of 109 agents growing nationwide and her goal is to help as many agents and brokers as possible to forge and create a name for themselves in real estate and if she can do it, she’s this girl from Transylvania, with from Romania with no US education, no sphere of influence, no money, no experience and an accent than anyone can do this. Please follow gogo on Instagram at gogos real estate gogo Welcome to the show.
Gogo Bethke 4:20 Oh my gosh, I think this was the best description of me ever.
D.J. Paris 4:24 Well, I’m pretty good at it. So no, no, this, I am so excited. I have to before we get started, I just want to tell the audience, this is a really big deal for me. And so gogo is so sweet. And she’s too busy to even do these kinds of things. And the fact that she’s taking time is we’re so honored. We get requests every single day, really, like legitimately every day from people that say I want to be on the show. And you know, most of the time 99% of the time we say hey, thanks. But a lot of times, you know we’re not sure about what kind of value they can bring. So we turn people down. And gogo is one of the first people she actually made me a Video, which is so cool. And nobody had ever done that. And sometimes just going the extra step, because normally, we probably would have passed, not anything personal to gogo, but just, we weren’t sure it would fit our model. And she sent me a video and he she goes, here’s what I can do for your listeners. And it was exactly the perfect way to, you know, get our attention. And this is exactly what she does and how she has grown her own real estate business. So I just want to honor you for that. Because I will tell you out of the hundreds of other people that we’ve turned away, nobody has ever made me a video and said, Here’s the value I can bring to you. So thank you for doing that.
Gogo Bethke 5:38 Well, that was a really good idea. Just as you said, it’s always better to send a quick video because that way your clients, your potential future client can see a face with the name versus just being a realtor out there that just left him a voicemail. So I try when I have a minute to send the quick, you always want to keep it less than 30 seconds. If possible, just do it, I want you to have a face with the name this is gonna go, I would love to be a real turnoff to have the opportunity call me back, this is myself. And
D.J. Paris 6:03 I love it. And I bet you less than 1% of all realtors do that. So what a great way to separate yourself, especially to if it’s a purchase to lead if it’s through Zillow, or op city or, or any of the different lead providers realtor.com If especially if it’s a purchase lead, because they definitely don’t know you.
Gogo Bethke 6:22 Exactly. And you’re just one of those emails that ends up in their spam you out of the 100 other ones that are going to send them an email at the same time. Not only that, but if you think about it, text message gets open 99% of the time, email gets opened less than 2% of the time. So there is your rate right there. Which one’s going to have a higher rate of return.
D.J. Paris 6:41 Yeah, and by the way, you can also send a link to the video in via text as well.
Gogo Bethke 6:46 Yeah, I usually just shoot the video, if you keep it less than 30 seconds, you can text it directly to them. That’s a very good point, too. Yeah. So you don’t have to upload it to YouTube or whatever, you just send them directly the link.
D.J. Paris 6:57 So I want to go all the way back to 2003. When you came to United States, I love to hear how you got to where you are today. If you don’t mind starting us at the beginning. Can
Gogo Bethke 7:07 I step back a little bit further. So you understand why I’m in the United States. So back into the up until 1989. It was communism in Romania, which means if we’re cut off from the Western world, so finally when when communism ended, and we got access to the Western world, I remember my dad coming home with a colored television and a VCR player. And he brought two VCRs home it was the 48 hours by Eddie Murphy.
Unknown Speaker 7:31 Everyone, everybody thinks like it’s
Gogo Bethke 7:33 coming to America. It’s not that movie that made me come to America. It’s actually Eddie Murphy is 48 hours. I just thought he was the funniest human being I’ve ever seen. He was the first person that I knew that black people existed because when you are in the Western world, or Eastern world, I should say and cut off from the Western world. All we knew is white, like there’s no there’s no diversity. There’s zero diversity. As diverse it gets as we have gypsies, it’s pretty much as diverse it’s going to get in Eastern Europe. And so opening my eyes to I’m like, hold on a minute, like there’s a whole other kind of human being out there. And to me, he was so funny. I that was my first recollection being eight years old. I’ve thinking that I’m going wherever that man is that coming to find out it’s America. So that’s my recollection, I’m going to I’m going to America one day, and then it’s very hard to get a visa to the US. So I was 21 I was in college in Hungary actually. So I was raised in I was born and raised in Transylvania, but I’m Hungarian by nationality. So I went to Hungary in college in Hungary. And in the third year, we were supposed to take an English exam. And my professor said to me, I’m never got to speak English, like literally failed English. And I said, Okay, well, that’s going to have to change because I have to pass that to get my diploma. So I figured the easiest way to learn the language is to go and live with the ones that speak it. So that was my second kind of action of okay, I’m going to America, the only way at the time was to be an au pair. And so I applied with an Au Pair agency, a family here in Brighton, Michigan picked me and that’s how I ended up in Brighton, Michigan, out of all places.
D.J. Paris 9:02 What and then how the move to real estate from being an au pair.
Gogo Bethke 9:08 So I press like a little bit of a process of elimination. You know, I tried anything from data entry in a warehouse to sales in a jewelry store, to coding company, to being a waitress. I mean, I’ve done a little bit of everything trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. And I was a stay at home mom at the time when my neighbor who’s the marketing director of Capitol title came to me and she’s like, you’re so social. You have so many friends. You should be a realtor. I already talked to real estate one, go and talk to them. And so I was like, I watch HGTV. Sure sounds like a great idea. Like that’s, that’s all I did. And they look make it look so easy on HGTV like it’s a walk in a park. I joke and usually say Jurassic Park, but it’s a walk. It’s a walk in the park. And so I went in and talked to real estate one. They are one of the largest real estate companies here in the state of Michigan. But They’re family owned, and they are only in the state of Michigan. They offered me the job. They said, If I pass, they will pay for my school. So I paid upfront, but they reimburse me with my first closing. And so I was with them for six and a half years I was the baby, I was about 30 years younger than the average agent in the office. And I really had a really good like, I always joke and say, I could get away with murder, but I really could just do whatever might be the heart desired. And so that’s where my real estate career started.
D.J. Paris 10:25 So how did you with really no sphere of influence? And I mean, other than, I guess you knew the family that you’d worked for, and you had other jobs but but really no established base of clientele. And also brand new to the industry? How did you build your How did you find your first client, for example?
Gogo Bethke 10:42 So you and I thought about this, I don’t remember who my first client was. And I have to go to the files and see who they were and how they got to me, but probably, within so let me tell you this story. So I was so excited. When I went into the office, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is gonna be awesome. It’s so easy. I watch HGTV is going to be just like that. And I think give me an office and it had a window and I was like, whoo, I made it. It’s not a corner office, but it has a window. So it’s not a cubicle, I’m doing good. And yeah, I you know, I’m very social, like I’m a social butterfly, I’ll talk to anyone. So I went around at every office, and I introduced myself and I talked to them, and I wanted to pick their brain and see how they do things. And I remember my excitement went lower and lower with every door I opened, realizing that hold on a minute, everything they are doing, or I don’t feel comfortable doing or I don’t have the budget for it. So many of them were you know, cold calling. So every day they would call call from at less than three hours a day 250 calls, maybe you know, 24 of them will answer seven of them, they get a face to face, one out of the seven will actually sign as a client. And I can not call it God like it’s so it’s against every bone in my body. It gives me the heebie jeebies. I cannot beg someone for their business, I was like, I can’t do that. So then went to the next office. And then she was like, well, we spend $4,000, our marketing budget this month. And I was like, I just want to make $4,000 Like, I don’t have $4,000 to spend. And so slowly by you know, entering every door, I was like, okay, hold on a minute, like, this is not gonna work for me. And so I figured out I also knew I’m a researcher. So anything I put my mind to, I will get to the end of YouTube and and Google to see what it’s truly about. And I realized that 80% of the agents will give up in the first two year. And I’m also very competitive by nature. So I’m no loser. Like, if I start something, I will finish it. And I will finish on the top. So I was like, okay, so I cannot be part of that statistic. So what I know what I’m not willing to do. So I’m not door knocking, I am not cold calling. I’m not spending $6,000. I’m not buying Zillow leads, I’m not doing this and that. So what am I willing to do? And so and what I can’t, what can I afford to do? And that what came down to Facebook? At that time? I was like, Okay, I start a page, which probably I was one of the first ones that had a Facebook page at the time. You know, what, eight, eight years ago? Yeah, nine years ago, something like that. Eight years. Yeah. 2011. And so that’s how I started, I just started posting everything, posting things. And I’m like, This is what I learned today. Because a lot of things that you imagine this is how you go, how it’s going to be in the real estate industry and come to find out nothing like it. So I would share things like that I would share silly things that I saw at homes and pictures of like, What the heck is this? And then people would comment, or that’s an old gas tank or oil tank from the 1800s. You know, I mean, so things like that would would keep them entertained. And it wasn’t just like, oh, this is my newest listing. This is the, you know, the open house I’m holding this weekend, it wasn’t like that. And to be honest with you, it wasn’t like that originally, right? Because I
D.J. Paris 13:29 didn’t didn’t have things to brag about.
Gogo Bethke 13:33 Exactly. So I had to post the stuff that this is what I learned this is what’s going on, this is my hustle, that kind of stuff. And it just kind of realized that that’s the that’s the stuff that gets the interaction. When I did started getting listings that I would post that it would maybe get one or two likes, never really gets a comment. Nobody really cares that you got a listing because they not on the market for a new home. They follow you because they find it exciting to see your progress in an in an industry. And so that’s pretty much what opened my eyes to what’s working and what doesn’t because you see the interaction. Yeah, I just want to pause for
D.J. Paris 14:01 a second because this is my belief. And I want to get your opinion on this. And because I have this in again, my backgrounds, I’m a marketing guy, I was in the IT field, I worked in health care I was in anyway, I couldn’t be further away from real estate. And, and when I when I got into real estate, and I started paying attention to how realtors use social media, it was mostly Hey, look at my new listing or look at my award that I’ve won. And look and that’s nice and fun. And there’s you know, nothing inherently wrong with doing that. But there’s a little part of me because you talked about hey, there were things I don’t do or I won’t do it just doesn’t fit my personality, cold calling door knocking buying leads you didn’t have the budget for but these were things that just were like, well, that’s just not me. And I always thought when I looked at realtors and it seemed to be that’s about all they posted were Hey, look at this new deal I just closed. There’s a little part of me that was turned off by that. And I don’t mean to for our listeners who do that. Like I’m not here to judge that if that works for you. Great. But there’s I, as a consumer and somebody not from this industry always thought, well, like, I don’t brag about all my awards and things for my career. So I always felt that was sort of a strange thing to do. And I don’t I wonder if it even turns people off a little bit? Possibly. I mean, again, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just, I’m just have that opinion that I’m not I don’t really love it when people brag on Facebook.
Gogo Bethke 15:24 Yeah, so I think if you don’t show the process, because I show the process of how I got there, it’s exciting because they can all celebrate with me, because they all follow the process. They follow the ups and downs of it. You know, I mean, like, I just met with somebody and they’re like, did you get that listing? Because I posted the video how one of my listings expired, my very first listing that ever expired, and it’s a hit to the ego. You know, I mean, like, I tried everything I possibly can. And I could just not sell that house, I can tell you why. So in the meantime, my husband got licensed, and he was like, Do you mind if I take a shot at it? And I was like, No, go ahead. He’s like, can you come to the appointment with me? I’m like, well, that’s kind of uncomfortable. Exactly. And my husband is like, Are you seriously going to put your ego in front of a paycheck in front of putting food on the table for your family? And I was like, You know what, you’re right. So I ended up going to appointment with him. I created a quick little video prior to that I do most of my bragging so seven worst of my life, you know, showing my life in real estate and Instagram that automatically feeds to Facebook. So it did this little video, I said, Hey, we are heading to a listing appointment. It’s kind of painful, because, you know, this listing was mine, and it expired. And now my husband’s taking a shot at it. And so this was couple of weeks ago, I’m in New York meeting with an agent who I’ve never met. First question out of his mouth was did you get the listing? And I was like, wow, like it does work. People want to read you. And if you share the process, not just like, hey, I’m the best in the industry. If you don’t, if you don’t show the process, how you got there to be the best in the industry than it is bragging. But if you show the hustle in the meantime, and you’re celebrating what
D.J. Paris 16:58 people want, and you know, study after study, and just we all know this in our heart that everyone wants to connect in the way that we connect is through vulnerability, right? And so you had the courage to say, Hey, guys, this is kind of a painful thing. I wasn’t able to sell this home, but and probably nobody ever posts about that. That is never done right. Everyone just posted their success but that’s what everybody wants. People want to connect because that’s real life, right? They want to know your actual real life.
Gogo Bethke 17:30 Yeah, yeah. And I also don’t like when all they do is negative logo. This doesn’t work out on my deal fell apart or you know what I mean? If things like that, that also doesn’t work. But if you’re just truly showing your hardship not to be negative Nancy about it, but you’re showing that hey, listen, yes, my my listing expired. But here I am, put my big girl pants on and put my ego aside, I’m back I go. I’m trying to get the listing for my husband this time. I think that just shows you that you’re human, you’re not perfect. And even though I tried my best is wasn’t good enough. And we are still plugging away at it. We’ve tried to sell that home, because at the end of the day, that’s my sellers best. That’s their need. And our job is to get me donate.
D.J. Paris 18:10 So yeah, let’s talk a little bit about social media and how you think about it. So what I don’t know if you want to start with a particular, you know, medium, like if you want to start with Instagram, or Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever, but or just your overall philosophy, but what what do brokers Miss? What are they doing wrong? Other than we just mentioned, only posting, hey, look at this great new listing. And if that’s all you do, you know, there’s more you can do. So tell us a little bit about your thoughts and how you grew your following.
Gogo Bethke 18:40 Yeah, so I originally, as I said, it started on Facebook. So I created a Facebook page, and I was a little bit more careful. I was that I wouldn’t want to say that typical realtor. But yeah, I posted my listings in my open houses. And in between I posted this and that it was more personal than more most agents make it but I still had that homes and open houses stuff. And then about four years in, I started getting to the point where most of the people who followed me on Facebook for my clients, and I was getting to the point where I needed to, can I use this word bitch beep it out if you have to. I just had to like vent a little bit and Mitch a little bit about the process because there’s the ugly side of real estate, the cutthroat side of real estate, the ones that if you don’t have thick skin, you’re never gonna make it. And so I felt like I needed to talk about that I just kind of released that because if not, it piles up and you’re gonna blow up and leave the industry. And so I wanted to release it. So I started my Instagram account. Same thing goes real estate. All platforms are Google’s real estate. That’s very, very important, by the way that all of your names are the same on every platform. We can talk about that in a minute. But so I started Instagram, just so I can vent and because I was showing the good, bad and the ugly side of being a realtor on Instagram, most of my following on Instagram automatically just became Realtors because they were the one being able or entrepreneurs I should say because there’s a lot of entrepreneurs as well, business owners that just can relate of dealing with clients and and egos and how that goes down on the day to day basis. So, um, yes, I started Instagram. And a few years later, I always had a LinkedIn. But I didn’t have a huge LinkedIn presence because I wasn’t posting very often, I just had it more. So if people Google me, then I look legit. And now I also feed everything over to Instagram, from Instagram to LinkedIn. So usually, I make my posts on Instagram. And then I choose which one goes where. So for example, let’s say if there is a selfie, or I’m on a beach, enjoying the fruits of my labor, that works perfectly fine on Instagram, but it won’t go very well on Facebook, and it really not gonna go well on LinkedIn. So you just kind of have to understand the three platforms and how they work and how they are different from one another. LinkedIn is the most professional one bathing suit photo is not going to work on their Facebook, it’s okay, but bathing suit photo, it’s kind of pushing it. And Instagram just kind of goes whatever you want to do. So you kind of feel your audience and each platform. So because I post everything from Instagram, I pick and choose of which one I’m going to send where. So sometimes I send it to all three, sometimes I like not LinkedIn material, I’m not going to push it over to return. So as soon as the more time you spend on these platforms, you realize how you fit in, and what you should and should not post on these platforms, and it will grow your audience because you are posting the stuff that they want to see.
D.J. Paris 21:23 Yeah, I mean that for all of our listeners, you should constantly be thinking just as you think about when you work with your clients, and you say, I wonder what it’s like for them to go through this home buying or home selling process. And in particular, if it’s somebody who’s buying their first property, we know how scary that is. Or at least you should know how scary it is because it’s very scary. And it’s a huge deal for any first time homebuyer and brokers always need to remember just how difficult that is for the client. And they can then you know, have empathy and compassion and actually communicate in a way to alleviate a client’s fear, right? So we all know that we’re supposed to do that. Put yourself in the client’s shoes, make sure they’re comfortable, walk them through everything. Same thing goes for social media, right? So if you know, hey, what do my Instagram followers want and need? What is my Facebook followers want need? You can start developing content based around those needs.
Gogo Bethke 22:16 Yeah, so it’s kind of it’s it’s kind of cool. Because when you create a page on these profiles, so I don’t have personal, I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have personal accounts and all of these profiles, but I do not do business on personal. So everything real estate related my business life, my hustle is on Google’s real estate, which is a business page. Now when you have a business page on these platforms, it gives you what’s called the insight. So these are the numbers in the background. This is how if you want to invest, and ads or boosting, then you know where and who you need to target and what time of the day and what city because you see where your audience is. So because you see the inside, you see what they liked how many people commented, you know what to post because the proof is in the pudding. It shows you this have the biggest head so you know, I need to post more like this.
D.J. Paris 22:57 Yeah, so this is really important for everyone listening. So all social media platforms, especially with the business, like for example, I use Facebook a lot for our podcast. And every day we post links to articles that we find online that would benefit broker realtors to grow their business. And but then we were always looking at our insights and some of our stuff gets no likes at all. And I go, that’s unfortunate, because this was a really great article. Well, guess what? DJ, nobody cared. So. So as much as I think it was cool. Turns out it didn’t work very well. Okay, no big deal. Now I have that data. And sometimes when we’ll post like a little silly meme, well, that might get more traffic. Okay, well, people seem to like, you know, that sort of thing. videos get a certain certain type of reaction. So the good news is, this is all free, these tools are free, the analytics are free. And if you’re not looking at it, and it only takes a minute or so every week to really look at it. I mean, it depends how often you’re posting, but you need to know what your audience is responding to. Otherwise, you’re just throwing darts in a dark room at a dartboard? You’re not even sure where it is.
Gogo Bethke 24:00 Exactly. So I love the fact like I speak three languages so for me numbers come very quick if you if you think think about it, I still think in Hungarian translate and speak in English, there’s a you know, three second delay. When I look at numbers, I don’t have to translate numbers numbers make sense? In the same language no matter what language mind you’re looking at it numbers number. So when I look at it inside it, it’s just it’s awesome. I can understand it right away. It shows the backside of my business. It shows that if I want to throw 10 bucks at Instagram, where should I spend it, you always want the best return on your investment. So you want to spend the least amount and get the best return and insight allows you to do that allows you to see who’s following you what is their age range. Where are they located? What time of the day they look at it what they looked at, and then you know what type of people to target when you are boosting something?
D.J. Paris 24:45 Yeah, let’s talk let’s talk about Instagram. Let’s let’s focus on that because obviously it’s one of the biggest players in the social media space. realtors use it and but very few realtors use it in a way that’s really serving them. So We’ll talk a little bit about mistakes that you see Realtors make and maybe some solutions.
Gogo Bethke 25:06 So one of the biggest mistakes I mean, let’s let’s let’s dissect it. So open up your Instagram and go to your profile. Most agents don’t even say that they are a realtor. Huge mistake, because they don’t say where they are realtor, that’s even a bigger mistake. Because if I’m looking for a Brighton, Michigan realtor, I’m going to go to hashtags and I’m going to put in hashtag Brighton realtor, writer, Michigan realtor. So then everybody who ever used that hashtag is going to find me same with your Chicago realtor or Chicago real estate. I’m going to go in there, I’m going to hashtag Chicago real estate search for that hashtag and see who pops up anybody who ever used that hashtag will pop up. That’s how they’re going to find you. So if you don’t put that into your bio, if you don’t have hashtag realtor, when somebody searches for realtors, you’re not going to find you. It think of it as Google search words. If I’m going Google and I need a Chicago realtor, I’m probably going to put in Chicago realtor. And I’m going to click in the top three, that’s going to pop up same with Instagram when you hashtag that it’s your search words when somebody hashtag or searches for that word, you’re going to pop up as a result. And that’s very, very important. Also your brokerage. I work with exp so for me it’s very important for people to know that I’m with exp. So it says my name gogo Baqi, how I hold license and it says brokered by exp. And I think every agent, no matter if they’re kW, ReMax, whatever whoever they are, where they should be proud of that. And I also think it’s I don’t know if it’s the same in every state, but it is a state regulation in Michigan where you have to disclose who your brokerage is. So if you have a business page, you should have your brokerage under because in the end of the day, you work under their umbrella. So you should if you have any links, so for example, Instagram only allows you to have one link in your profile. And one link for us is never going to cut it because there’s so many different things that I do. I mean, there’s public speaking events, there is giveaways that I do there is my websites than I do. There is my blog was bootcamp than I do. I mean, my listings, my open houses, my team, you name it, if they if someone wants to plug themself into my calendar, there is access to my calendar, because Instagram only allows you to have only one link. Most people don’t even go further to figure out is there a way for me to include multiple links? Yes, there is. It’s called link tree. So it’s li n k, t or e. So you go to link tree, that platform allows you to add multiple links to one link only. So then after you created your link to go back, you plug that into your profile. Now it looks like you have one link and when somebody clicks it, it’s going to take you to the profile, take them to your profile, it’s going to show you all of the different things that you provide.
D.J. Paris 27:36 Yeah, I’m actually looking at link tree right now because I was not familiar. So guys, just Google link tree and look it up. Because this is a funny, this is really funny. So before we were speaking, before we started recording, I are actually yesterday, go go had said, Hey, what’s your guys’s Instagram, I want to take a look and see what you’re doing. And I said, we don’t have one. And I knew that she was she was so polite, because I knew she was about to say, Hey, dummy, you need to do that. And here’s what I said. I said, Well, the reason we don’t have one is because it’s really hard to link to our things. Because it only has one link, it’s in the bio, no one’s gonna see it. Yeah, you could put the link in the comments, but I don’t know that anyone’s gonna see it. And you were very quiet. And I knew you were just being polite. And I was like, I should probably ask her, there’s gotta be some solution. Yeah, and
Gogo Bethke 28:22 you can do and you can do swipe ups as well, you can create ads with with swipe up. So in order to swipe up organically without a fee, you have to have 10,000 followers. But if you create an ad, you can do a swipe up if you’re paying for the advertising. So you can always do that if you don’t have 10,000. But as soon as you have 10,000, then you can do organically a swipe up and just take them directly to this. So right now we could have taken like a call on Instagram, for example, where your face and my face is on the same screen, we could have screenshotted that and we say hey guys alive. Come see us. Here’s a swipe up listening to our podcasts and you take them directly to the site where you want them to listen in, which I did or that are already a couple of days ago for you. I just didn’t know, I just didn’t know when we’re going live. So as soon as I know the date, then I can disclose it again. And they can go and go to the direct episode. And listen.
D.J. Paris 29:10 So this is huge for us too. Because you know, and I’m somebody who I do all of the social media for our company and also for for this podcast. Well, we I have some help with that too. But this is something we’re not doing. And this is an opportunity because, you know, I didn’t even know myself How should I be using Instagram for this podcast? So this is yeah, I can I can hear you. Well, you’re already helping our listeners. So guys, what let’s just recap a few things that gogo sets, you can actually take this and start using it right. So as the first thing she said is you need to work on your bio. So go into Instagram, go into your bio, you of course want to want to use link tree to be able to link to various things, but you want to make sure your hashtags are there. And just because you don’t search by hashtags and Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, other P or LinkedIn even other people Do right so so go go. You might say, Well, gosh, you know how many people are searching for Brighton realtor? Well, I guarantee at least one person is a month and it’s probably more than that. And I guarantee that probably go goes the only person that has that in her Instagram profile.
Gogo Bethke 30:15 I mean, I got a I got a message couple of days ago with somebody from Brighton Michigan annoyed that my posts always pop up in the Brighton Michigan area. I was like, I’m gonna you know, you don’t have to look at it like you can skip it, you can unfollow me, because well, why do you always hashtag Brighton, I said, because my business is in Brighton. So if I have something going on in Brighton, I’m going to, I’m going to tag the location because I want everybody from Brighton and their mother know that I’m a realtor in the Brighton area. And if I happen to be in New York, then I’m going to tag New York because I want everybody in New York to know that I exist. And if I can help them with their social media, then they can find my existence. You know, I mean, so there’s so much power in social media. And I wish I could go through all of these, all of these tabs for you. But I’ll give you two more tips that are very, very important. That comes with your Instagram bio. So the photo, the photo has to be and I emphasize has to be the same on every platform. You can if you Google me, you will see the lady in the red dress and every single profile that I have. If and when I decide to change it, I’m going to change it on every single profile as well. The reason why I do that is because you want that brand recognition. If you close your eyes, and I say imagine Starbucks, can you imagine it? The target logo. So that’s what you want to achieve. You want people to close their eyes. And imagine that lady in the red dress, and her name is Gaga.
D.J. Paris 31:36 I will say that gogo chick has shown up already in all the communication you and I and our team has had. It is the lady in the red dress with the blonde hair. That that is you. Yeah, it’s my cross. Every
Gogo Bethke 31:52 email signature is my yard sign. It’s my Instagram profile, my LinkedIn profile, my business cards, my you name it, it’s it. And you want people to recognize and I also do recommend have this photo 30 years from now. So if you don’t look like that lady anymore, you have to change it. I also meet with agents, they look nothing.
D.J. Paris 32:10 Oh, and by the way, let’s talk about that for a moment. This is a little bit of side two from social media. But if you don’t look like your picture, because by the way, I understand the inclination to smooth out every wrinkle and to look perfect. And but if you don’t look like that, don’t use it because you want to look real, right? Because when people
Gogo Bethke 32:28 that’s the way I look at it when I run into an agent that looks nothing like themselves. It’s their high school photo. And now they’re 62. And I meet you You already lie to me. Exactly, exactly. You already lied to my face. So why would I ever take you seriously if you look nothing like that person. I’m not saying if you follow me you will say thank God for Mako of course, because you will see a lot of videos and I look here at and then you see a lot of videos when I look at. And it’s thanks to makeup, it’s really the only thing in between. So you do have to show your real side, I’m just saying Don’t show your side from 20 years ago, show your current side with or without makeup with or without bra, whatever is your daily style is just your real sight. So then they don’t feel like you already lied to them when they need to.
D.J. Paris 33:09 And we need to remember and everyone needs to remember is people don’t relate to perfection. They relate to imperfection, people connect, they connect with real when gogo made the video for us. I mean, she looks nice, she always looks nice. But she there’s I don’t know, if you’re wearing any makeup or very little makeup, you looked like a real person. And you said, guys, here’s what I think I can do to help you. Do you know how authentic and honest that was, it wasn’t a sales pitch. It was hey, I’d really love to get on your show. I think I have some value to add. And let’s do it. And it was so refreshingly honest, and not polished. But really, it was your authentic self coming through. And that’s I think one of the biggest lessons in social media is tell the real story tell the truth.
Gogo Bethke 33:53 Yeah, so when you decide to take the route of social media, you also can’t fluff numbers, you can’t, you know, make things look better. You just have to show the good, bad and the ugly, like the true side of your business, and then he never bites you in the butt. The problem is when you try to fluff something, because it makes it look better about yourself. And then the truth always comes to surface and that is just, it’s going to bite you. So don’t do that. So if you decide that you want to take the route of social media, you have to disclose right away, then you always will say
D.J. Paris 34:21 that I don’t want to go back to you posting, you know, content around not being able to sell a property and how disappointed you were in that that result. And I will tell you Look if I’m looking to hire a realtor, and obviously I want somebody who knows what they’re doing and is successful, but I love the fact that somebody would be upset and willing to share that gosh, you know, this didn’t work and I we’re not exactly sure why and I’m really upset about it or I’m sad about it.
Gogo Bethke 34:48 Can you imagine showing up at that appointment
D.J. Paris 34:51 and the appointment going
Gogo Bethke 34:55 on? My husband is pitching everything that he can bring then I couldn’t do
D.J. Paris 34:59 it again. That’s life. And that happens, right? And so instead of pretending that everything doesn’t go that everything goes perfectly which it never does, you know, people connect to the, to the real stuff. And, and look, we feel sad when our friends are sad. And when somebody’s you know, struggling in whatever way, we want to know that so we can provide support. And even though your social media followers aren’t necessarily your friends, although some of them will, can and will be, they want they want to cheer you on, and they want to know what’s really happening. So I love the fact that yeah,
Gogo Bethke 35:30 I met so many awesome people through and that’s the other thing, so many opportunities come of it. Some agents were like, well, I posted and I didn’t get a lead, when it doesn’t work like that. You know, I mean, I posted I actually did the math one time I posted I think over 37,000 times in the last eight years. And that, you know, that took me to about $45 million in production. So I broke it down to what does that and how many posts I had in this time. And then what does that mean income mean and commission. So it comes out to be about $32 a post. So the way I look at it, it’s not necessarily that you’re going to get a lead from this. From one like, I got an opportunity to go to a Tony Robbins event for free as Tony’s guests because of Instagram, I get free stuff, I get invited to events I get, you know, I get access to places and people that otherwise I would have never know of their existence, they would have never known of mine. I have people reach out to me all the time. They are in like North Carolina and like oh my gosh, I wish you were in our area, I would love for you to be my realtor, we are buying our first house or whatever the scenario may be. And I usually I’m like, I know I can be the leg on the ground. But guess what, I have an awesome team member in the area, then I would love to make the recommendation. Can I have your number and email address and I’ll introduce you guys and they usually give it to me, I introduce them and that right there is a 25% referral fee. So that’s money that you’re able to make by all you need to do is respond to someone’s message by letting them know that you’re a realtor, they reach out to you. And the next thing you know, you make the introduction and 25% of a referral fee, it ends up usually being 1500 hours or more. I mean, that’s 1500 hours that you personally didn’t have to work for all you did is made an introduction right.
D.J. Paris 37:01 Well, let’s talk about the content. So aside from we sort of joked about posting some of the hard stuff, you know that the challenges but but on a day to day basis, what do you recommend for for realtors, to what kind of content? Should they be curating and producing? And how often?
Gogo Bethke 37:21 Yeah, so for me, social media is not for everybody. So if you want to take it serious, so the way I look at it, this is my job. So when I decided that I’m not going to cold call and not going to Dornoch, I decided okay, for those three hours where the other agent is door knocking at cold calling, that’s what I need to do, I need to do social media. So then I would post I would comment on other people’s, they would respond to mine, I would create video content, things like that. So I look at it that it’s my job. This is how I’m going to feed my family and continue to have money coming in. So I take it very seriously. So if somebody wants to build it to this level, then I recommend them to look at it. And it’s their job. And definitely post stories every single day. So at least 10 stories a day, you have your cell phone with you, I never go anywhere without my cell phone. So whatever is happening, I literally just grabbed my phone and take a quick video or take a quick photo, or things like that. You can do swipe ups, you can take locations, you can take people your way, you can steal their audience, and they can steal yours, you can show the events that you’re going to so you can gain the expertise. So set in their eyes, because they can follow along of your progress posts, I usually do the actual so there’s a difference between story and feed. When you visit someone’s profile, the photos and the videos that you see on their profile that’s called their feed, that is going to be there forever. The stories are the ones when you visit someone’s profile, you click their profile photo. And those are 15 second little video snippets into their life into their daily life. So you actually get to follow along with their days. So those stories, I would recommend at least 10 a day, make it as personal as possible and add a bunch of selfies, you actually have to show who you are and talk about what you stand for and show your hustle and your ethics and all that. And then posting probably once or twice a day into your actual feed.
D.J. Paris 39:07 Yeah, and so for those of you that aren’t familiar with Instagram Stories, this is a way to tell your ongoing narrative, right? This is what’s happening to me, you know, today, and just you can just repeat that and it can be these short little snippets. I always say imperfect is better. So the lighting doesn’t have to be exact. You know, you can have the shaky camera and just get out there and tell what tell what’s going on in your life.
Gogo Bethke 39:35 Exactly. Exactly. And the stories people you showing your real sight so people get to relate. So they follow you because you’re not selling them something, you know your value because your life is interesting.
D.J. Paris 39:46 Yeah, and we should also we should also mention that that you do not live in a place if you live in a lovely area, but a very a place where there’s not it’s not a lot of what’s going on. There’s not much going on. All right, you’re not you’re not in a major city. There’s not you’re not showing this, this sort of glamorous, exciting fly by the seat of your pants life, right? You’re out in a rural area.
Gogo Bethke 40:11 Yeah. So I’m in the boonies of Michigan, we live off of a dirt road, everybody around us have at least an acre, takes 15 minutes to get to the highway. So it’s, it’s totally not that gated community fancy schmancy with chandeliers and champagnes all day long. So it’s not nothing like that. It’s, you know, like we were listing a house today, it’s $182,000, it’s pretty average for this area, nice home, two bedroom, all that. So when my husband goes out there, and for the photoshoot today, of course, he’s going to take photos and videos of that. So we let the market know that this is coming, he tags me so I can share it as well. So there’s just so much you can do with the power of social media can potentially sell it before it even hits the MLS. I mean, we get the the three day prior to he just listed period, you can also do that. I mean, this way you don’t have to buy from the Zillow is and the and the other lead generating sources, when you can become your own lead generation system.
D.J. Paris 41:03 How long should somebody? So I’ll give you an example of our podcasts because one of the questions that people will ask is, okay, so I’m posting on a regular basis to my Instagram, or Facebook, or whatever social media platform that that you find works for you. Or rather, maybe none of them are immediately working for you and you but you like one better than the other. So you commit to Instagram or Facebook. And and this is the same thing that happened to our website, or sorry, our podcast, when I first started it, I told my boss, I said, I really want to do this, I think it’s a good thing for the industry. And I won’t even mention where I work. So I don’t want people to think I’m using this as a recruiting platform, I’m legitimately just going to try to provide this value. And I hope people like it. And he said to me, Hey, that’s great. It’s a good idea, and we should do it. But you have to commit for a year, you have to do it for a year. And by the way, you know, doing couple episodes a week for a year with no listeners is not the most fun thing to do, right. But as a result now now all of a sudden, we have 100 plus episodes, we have national sponsors, we have an audience of 1000s and 1000s per episode, I never thought it would get to the level it does. And and now I’m going to obviously continue to do it. But it took at least a year before we saw any real major growth. So how do you find that that works in social media?
Gogo Bethke 42:21 Let’s see exactly the same. I mean, it takes time for people, you have to create the content. So just by creating one folder and posting it, you’re not going to have the 40,000 followers show up on as your content goes viral, and you just did something so out of the ordinary which most people don’t feel comfortable doing. So it is a progress. I mean, just like any other job to become good at it, you have to give it some time and effort. And you have to be consistent, just as you said. So yeah, try it for a year. And especially if you do a page you see your results. So when you post something you realize, hold on a minute, this didn’t work. So don’t do any more things like that, post something else and see how that works. So my butcher, what do they call it error, trial and error. You’ll figure out what works, what’s your style, or people that your people your, your crowd wants to see and listen to. And you post more of that. And eventually, I mean, it’s not like I woke up one morning and I have 40,000 followers like this is seven years in.
D.J. Paris 43:12 Yeah. And I want to I want to tell listeners a great story. And we’ll call this the myth of going viral. And this relates to something gogo said earlier about getting to attend a Tony Robbins event based on her her Instagram. And so a very similar thing happened to me. So in this, I totally forgot about this until you just said it. But it’s a great lesson for everyone. And so I went to a Tony Robbins event, I don’t know, let’s say 10 years ago. And back then I was writing a blog, and I need to get back to writing my blog. But I would a pretty successful blog, me successful meaning I had 1000s of people that read it. And I was posting almost every day, it didn’t make any money. It was more just for fun, but I had a decent following. I never figured out how to monetize it. But that’s okay. It wasn’t really trying to. But I got back from this Tony Robbins event. And I thought of a really funny thing that happened at during the event. And I’m a humor writer. So I wasn’t trying to write a motivational piece. I was just sharing this kind of interesting, funny thing that happened. So I wrote it didn’t think anything of it. Well, somehow. And of course, I promote all of my blog posts on the various social media channels. And at the time, Instagram really wasn’t a thing. So it was Facebook, LinkedIn, I had not even LinkedIn it was Facebook and Twitter. So Facebook and Twitter is where I posted it. Well, somehow it got to Tony’s people, they sent it while they said they sent it to Tony, who actually knows but somebody saw it. And then Tony Robbins tweeted it out. And I didn’t ask him to just kind of randomly happen. And what happened is he has millions of followers on Twitter, of course. And so immediately what happened is they sent me a message they said, Tony just tweeted out your story. We just wanted to say thank you. He thought it was funny or whatever. So again, who knows we actually wrote it, read it, but they sent out a tweet from his account about my story. And I thought oh my gosh, I this is amazing. And I was watching my analytics and all of a sudden with about 10 minute period 30,000 people visited my website and it safely, it didn’t crash, it almost crashed. Because when you have that kind of traffic 10 years ago, I didn’t have the bandwidth to support it. But thankfully, it didn’t crash. So all these people read my stuff. And I went, Oh, they’re going to fall in love with me. This is amazing. I now have made it, these people are going to read every word I wrote. And then here’s what happened two days later, it was back to the normal traffic, right? Because it didn’t change my life it and I realized, okay, I have to go back to the drawing board and just keep writing content. And I you know, so it’s not like gogo had this unbelievable picture or video on Instagram, and all of a sudden got 20,000 additional followers, she posted 30,000 times over eight years. And and even if you did go viral once, maybe that would have like, it happened to me, it just kind of falls away after a few days and life goes back to normal.
Gogo Bethke 45:49 Yeah, I mean, I do get when you have your insight, you see what’s you know what’s there. And in weekly basis, I reach about a quarter million people. So in a month, about a million people that I reach. So that’s a huge amount of touch. I mean, just imagine I’m nobody, I’m a little girl from Romania, Transylvania out of all places. So if I can do it, anybody can do it. But that shows you right there. If if I can reach a million people a month, imagine what everybody else can do if they just put their mind to it.
D.J. Paris 46:14 Right? But the in the secret is you have to commit to consistency, right? So like gogo said, look, make sure make sure your profiles are set up correctly, have a nice picture that looks like you and make sure it’s consistent. It’s on your website. It’s on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, everything is consistent and the same. Now I want to talk just real quickly about content. So aside from stories, you say, hey, a couple times a day on Instagram, you make a post? What do you recommend as far as content for realtors to sort of talk about an Instagram, which is a very visual, obviously, it’s a visual medium. So what do you sort of suggest? And what don’t you suggest?
Gogo Bethke 46:51 Well, I do a little bit of everything. So I do usually six photos and a quote. So every six posts I do is a quote usually my quotes or something I come up with about probably 75% of the time. Sometimes it’s called done, I still sometimes it’s a meme. That’s really funny, just as you said, I posted when a couple of days about a couple of days ago about an offer being sent over via fax. And I was like, listen, Susan, I can’t fax from where I live. And she goes, where do you live? Like I live in 2019 you can fax from here, but he just said listen, Susan and I just thought it was so funny. So I shared that and he got a huge I think over 12,000 views and stuff. So things like that. So every six is a quote I think codes just show who you are and shows your character and people get to relate to you and so if they if they’re quirky, just like you are you just found your own monkeys, you just found your own group of people that if you were to put in the same room, you could talk until the end of the world and nobody would be bored. So that’s why that’s why I do the quotes because I want people to get to know me and how I work and what I stand for. And then find photos so to be honest with you, the ones that you are in personally works the best so if you have a listing let’s see that comes up make sure that you are in the photo take the photo in the best part of the house let’s see is the kitchen the best part of the house then you take a photo in the best part of the house maybe you sit on the kitchen counter with your arms up in this you know in a Fest and you’re like oh my gosh I’m so excited I just got this listing is going to be listed for 430,000 is three bedroom two bath 1500 square feet located you know walking distance from downtown Dallas or wherever you’re at. So this way they actually something captured their eyes because they happy for your excitement. Most people are in the market in average every seven years for six months for a new home. So your newest listing is no excitement to them at all whatsoever if they’re not on the market for a home just like that, or they might not even be in your area. So why on earth should they follow you and your newest listing and Pinckney Michigan, you know, I mean, so you have to give you have to be in the photos and you’ll see the more you share about yourself and your success and downtimes in the real estate market, the more followers you’re going to have. So I do probably out of the six I probably do three photos of me one quote and two photos of like interior design or travel or something like that, then, you know, even though I’m a realtor, I love traveling. I mean, I work to travel so I can spend my money in other places and countries. And so that’s that’s my what is it that dangled the carrot and the end of my success rope. And so I share things that you know, excite me and whatever I stand for. So I think it’s very important for the agent to be in about a good 50 60% of it. And by
D.J. Paris 49:26 the way, you can always turn the camera on yourself to if you’re in a property that that your your listing or you just listed and there’s something really cool or unique about it. Like gogo was saying at the beginning. She would take pictures of cool things she saw in homes and say, Hey, what did does anyone know what this is? Or this is really cool. You can literally turn the camera on yourself and highlight something say guys, I just have to show you this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. And you can show that right and that again, whatever gets you excited comes through and it has to be authentic, right. It’s so so so that’s something that you can do it Every single listing, there’s something in that house that you think is already on the outside of the house, or the landscaping, that something is cool. And you really should get excited and say, Guys, I’m so excited about this listing. Let me show you the garden. I have to show this to you. And then
Gogo Bethke 50:14 yeah, when I had one of my one of my videos that went viral, it was also I don’t know, if you saw it, it was a while ago, it was talking about I got so sad, discriminated against. So we go into multiple interviewing process for a listing, and they narrow it down to me and this other guy, and then they end up calling me. So it was the grandstand and I was talking to the grandstand cause because while grandpa grandma really likes, likes you and would like to work with you, but they were wondering if you have a different business card, because your business card is a little rusty. And I was like, okay, caught me off guard for a second. And I was thinking, hold on a minute, what do what do my boobs have to do with my ability selling their home? My boobs, the fact that I’m a woman, and I have the absurd and I’ve canceled out my brain. Okay, you can have you can have both you can have booze and brain at the same time. It’s not against, you know, biology. And I was thinking for a second and I told the guy who said he listed? So since my body parts is that question here it, it really, it’s a decision making factor, and my ability of selling their home? How big is the other guys? How big is that? Since we’re talking about how big my boobs are? How big is his, and I use the D word to be honest with you. And it caught them off guard and guess who got the job? I did. Because in the end of the day, really all you’re deciding if I can sell your house, based on the fact that I have boobs? Did you did you ask him to show his his size or it’s only just my boob size that is questioning question here. So by showing what really goes down in the real estate market, and what it takes to get a listing and the discrimination and the and the thick skin that you have to have some times in order to make it, it just really shows all the other agents that they are not the only ones that are going through this because trust me, we all go through this in order to make it you go through a whole lot of I don’t even know what the right word is to use here. It’s not all roses and pink butterflies to make it in this industry. So I think if you can share all that the truth, everything that really goes down, not just the pretty bad, the ugly to it will get the other agents and the end the industry and everybody that has any interest in in real life to follow you. Because it’s interesting.
D.J. Paris 52:21 And had you not got that listing, I imagine that becomes something you content for your social media to write Had that not fall in your way if somebody decided, well, you know this, for whatever reason, they just didn’t like the way you physically presented yourself. And you know, that could happen, right? And that’s outside of your control. And somebody just goes well, I don’t like the fact that she’s you know, looks a certain way, then you can talk about that. That’s content, you can say, Hey, I just had a really unfortunate thing happened to me. And it sort of bummed me out. And here’s what’s going on. And boy, every woman on the planet would relate to that story. Right?
Gogo Bethke 52:58 Exactly. And I feel like you know, we talked about 2019. Gosh, we almost in 2020. And the fact that I’m supposed to hide my body, because that makes me look smarter. I can’t believe you’re having the conversation in the end of 2019. I’m like, Are you kidding me right now? Really like my education and brain capacity. And everything that I bring to the table now is suddenly washed away? Because I have boobs?
D.J. Paris 53:20 Yeah, it’s funny. I think a lot of people think that women who look a certain way might have it easier because they look a certain way. And the truth is, in some cases, in some ways, it’s because
Gogo Bethke 53:30 they assume that I’m because I’m blind and I have the herbs. And because sometimes they are out there. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you can follow me they’re not out there. You know, I mean, but I might have a lower cleavage or something where you can actually see that I’m a woman, God forbid, it’s not a turtleneck. You know, I mean, and I feel like in some cases, some people just assume if you’re blonde and good looking that you must be a bimbo. Like you can’t be smart, too at the same time, somehow one cancels out the other.
D.J. Paris 53:58 Yeah, and that probably forced you to work harder as well, because you had more to prove you were like, I am more than my looks. And it made it a little bit harder. And as a result, the perseverance is there. You’re like, No, I am going to make it and obviously you have and yes, you are not selling sex appeal. Right? That’s really important for the listeners to realize is this that’s not what gogo does. And it’s it’s apparent if you follow her that she doesn’t do that. But yes, of course, you know, you have to be very conscious of, you know, especially in social media, as it is gogo said at the beginning, you know, is this what audience is this for? What do they respond to,
Gogo Bethke 54:36 but I think that’s why video in my case, it’s so important because if all I did was, let’s say photos, and no video to come along with it, they may not be able to tell that I actually have a brain. You know, I mean, so if it’s just photos that you do, then you might come across as you you know, they might just assume certain things about you that it might not be true. And by doing videos and then not only see your looks but they also get an insight so they don’t only Getting the book by the cover, they actually able to read the content. And I think it’s really important if you take the social media out to show your brain, not just your looks.
D.J. Paris 55:09 Well, I think this is a good place to really talk about gogos boot camp, which by the way, everyone should be checking out Go Go’s boot camp.com. This is a social media program, it’s dozens of hours, when you factor in all of the extra freebies, it’s literally a step by step process, from A to Z, where realtors can figure out how to create, manage, and and, you know, consistently give great social media output to actually increase their fan base, and the people that follow them and eventually get more deals, and you need to have a structure, you shouldn’t just try to wing it. But here’s what I love the most about gogos bootcamp.com. And I haven’t yet got a chance to go through the program, I’m very excited myself to do it, because I need help with even our podcast getting it out there more than it is. And what I love about it is and it is you know, there’s a cost to it, just like there’s a cost to anything valuable. But here’s what I love 100% guarantee. And the reason for that is gogo is very confident that you will not need to exercise that 100% guarantee because the content is so strong. So for everyone who goes to the website and thinks, Well, you know, if I paid that, and it’s not good. Well, if it’s not good, you get your money back, but that’s not going to happen. So everyone needs to go to Go Go’s bootcamp. But can we talk a little bit about what people receive when they sign up?
Gogo Bethke 56:23 Sure, sure, absolutely. So originally started out I mean, I have clients now when I started at when he was 49 hours a series. So we started out with three series and each series got released. Originally, the very first series is about social media, they it has a ton of different videos, probably 10 different videos of explaining the basics of social and what you should and should not do, and how to use all of the features of social media. And then the second part is operation. So what it takes to work in your business, so anything from creating a CMA, what do I take the listing appointments, what are my closing gifts, everything CRM programs, how to use them, smartphone numbers, things like that. And then the last one is eventually get to a point in your career where you want to remove yourself and you want your business to function without you. And that is systems and how to when to hire an assistant how to pay an assistant how to structure that CPAs CPAs, financial advisors, anybody that legal advice, anybody that you need to run a business, because eventually it’s not just you anymore, you know, you need all of those outside third parties to make sure that the money that you make is invested properly, and you’re paying your taxes properly and not paying too much, and all that stuff. And then this assessment, you know, you realize you’re a certain way, and the people that you want to work with naturally you are drawn to the people who are just like you, if they are just like you do, you should not hire them, because that’s not who you need. The reason you need somebody is because you don’t want to do certain things or you’re not good at doing certain things. And so you have to hire somebody who’s not like you at all. So that’s where this assessment comes in. So it’s pretty much just explaining business from start to finish, how everything happens here and Google’s real estate and then how they can take their businesses to that point. And if they are already there, then maybe I can just add certain things to that. That will help them with the whole social media aspect of it. There’s so many Rockstar realtors out there that do hundreds of millions of dollars but have zero social media presence. And when it comes to the millennials soon if you don’t exist on social media, you don’t exist to a millennial, they are not going to call you they don’t want to talk to you they will maybe DM you and asked you know they text you best case scenario where they will not hold the phone call with you. And if you think about it, that’s our one of our largest population that is going to buy now their first home and soon upsize and so you need to be in front of them. And then we also have what’s called the workshop. So the workshop is Margie and myself. We do what we did, I should say a 10 week series. And each is about an hour. So the whole bootcamp it’s probably over 20 hours of videos. And each week we just covered a different subject in different parts of the being realtor. And that’s the workshops I’m trying to go to the list. So the first week was branding, and pretty much how to brand yourself and you know read name recognition, brand recognition, photos, videographers, all that stuff. Second week was social media then CRM program and database management, buyer’s agent strategies, Listing Agent strategies, Open House strategies working on your business, hiring the perfect assistant how to build a team and building residual income. And so it’s pretty much each of these are an hour class that we shot in our brokerage and they get access to that.
D.J. Paris 59:30 Yeah, so guys, again, check really in all you need to do is go to Go Go’s boot camp.com Watch the videos, read the copy, read the website, read everything, see if that’s what you need, because I know I am going through it myself, because it is what and I’m not a Producing Realtor, but I’m going to use those same strategies to help promote our own business and the podcast. So it’s it’s something that no matter how proficient you think you are, here’s somebody who’s actually having tremendous SAS, and you know, gosh, I would pay a fortune for that information. And people, you know, people are, thankfully it doesn’t cost a fortune, it’s actually quite cheap. For for what you get, I mean
Gogo Bethke 1:00:11 to say it’s 497 right now and we are coming out to sometime in November. We are coming out with Google’s bootcamp 2.0. The reason why is because this class is about a year old now. And Instagram has changed their algorithm a couple of times since. So there’s a few things that I need to update. And also, because in the first time when I did it, because social media comes so easy to me, I don’t know what you don’t know. So I am explaining it at a level that might be too high for some people who are brand new to it. So the 2.0 will literally walk you through like step by step how to post an IG TV video, how to tag a person how to tag location, why, to tag that. So literally step by step I’m screen, I’m sharing my phone screen and walking you through all of the different buttons, and these platforms to make sure that you’re doing it properly. So that’s 2.0. Also another series getting added to it. It’s called the mindset series, it’s over 50 videos, I realized that a large percentage of your success is your mindset and the belief of what you believe of yourself what you’re capable of doing and what you can imagine yourself doing down the road. And so there’s a few life lessons that I learned in my life. And I want to share that with everyone because I feel like if they could learn from my life lessons, then hopefully they don’t have to learn it the hard way. And so that is going to add it to be added as well. And then when the two new series come out, then the price will go up. But everybody that purchased it in the past, if they get it at 497, then they are just automatically going to get everything added for free.
D.J. Paris 1:01:35 Or that that’s that’s wonderful. So basically guys, just to recap, if you buy it, now you’re going to get the future updates. And there’s there are a tremendous amount of updates coming a 50 videos just for attitude and mindset. The bug gogos bootcamp 2.0 videos are going to be redone with updated information about how to use the social media platforms and even at a more remedial level. If you’re like, you know, I don’t know how to tag people, I don’t really understand even the basics, she’ll have it covered. So now’s the time to get in so that you get those updates for free. Thank you great well, and by the way, I am going to try to convince gogo to come on here more often, because I think this can be a regular series on our show. So I’m gonna do my best to persuade her to do that. But we are so grateful that you took the time to even do this episode. So go go, I think this is a perfect place to talk. We went almost a full hour and there’s so much more to cover. So we’d love to have you back in the future. So everyone who’s listening, go to gogos boot camp.com Buy the program, what do you have to lose, it’s a money, there’s a money back guarantee. To me, I love things that have very few things in life of a money back guarantee. And especially when you’re paying that, you know, a sizable amount of money, which I don’t think this is sizable, but for some people it will be this is a no risk situation. So I couldn’t recommend it more. She knows her stuff, she gets results. And she’s been doing it for the last, you know, gosh, I don’t 15 years really in real estate. And now she has a team of 106 agents. Her network now is 106 agents nationwide, at her at her office and as a recruiter, I know how difficult even that is to do. So this is somebody that you want to follow because she gets things done, and she does it the right way. So go go. Thank you so much for being on our show.
Gogo Bethke 1:03:23 Thank you so much for having me. You’re awesome. And I did the math while you were talking. So the 45 million and I sold with everything that I learned on social media generate over $1.3 million in commissions. So I would spend 500 To make 1.3 If it was me. But I’m not saying they will make 1.3 I’m saying that if they implement everything, there is a very easy way to double their income of what everything they’re doing already.
D.J. Paris 1:03:47 Well guys, you just heard it here. And this is an important thing, you could legitimately Double Your Income simply by by purchasing this course. And again, you have nothing to lose, it’s a no brainer. So anyway, we’re so grateful that you came on the show. Again, thank you for spending the time that I know you don’t have that you’re willing to do just for our audience. And I love that thank you so much and we’re gonna have you on again so guys go to Go Go’s go to gogos boot camp.com and go go and I will hopefully see you in a future episode. By the way before we go, everyone follow us on Facebook and I’m going to start an Instagram account based on what I’m learning gogos boot camp, but for our Facebook for now go to facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod, which is where every single day we post an article that we find online that we think is actionable, something you can do immediately to grow your business. Obviously we post the links to all of our episodes including this one that will be that will be coming shortly as well as all of our previous episodes and we also do a weekly one minute video which I should also put on Instagram, but I don’t for now it’s on Facebook, which is just a quick little tip are one of our producers does that and she’s wonderful. Her name In this list so guys, follow us on Facebook facebook.com forward slash keeping it real powder. Just search for keeping it real podcast. Also, you can go to our website and listen to every episode we’ve ever done, stream it live from our site, keeping it real pod.com and also a follow find us on iTunes, Google Play Anywhere you are using an app to listen to podcasts, just search for keeping a real podcast, we pop right up and subscribe. And lastly, tell a friend, that’s the best way you can support this podcast is tell more brokers, realtors agents that could benefit from hearing from people like go go about our show and really appreciate it just if you tell if everyone tells one person. Well, we’ll double our audience. So please continue to do that. And go go thank you again, and we’ll let you get back to your busy social media empire.
Gogo Bethke 1:05:46 Thank you. Thank you so much. And if I may, can you guys also follow me on Google’s real estate on all platforms?
D.J. Paris 1:05:52 Yes. So find her on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter everywhere guys, Go Go’s real estate. Just do a search for it. And we’re gonna post the links to all of that too. In on this in the description here of this podcast episodes. If you don’t know where to go, just look at the notes from the podcast episode. They’ll all be right there for you. So go go. Thank you so much.
Gogo Bethke 1:06:11 Thank you guys. Thank you have a wonderful week.
