Show notes
Fee Gentry a coach and author talks about how she got into real estate. Fee discusses what you can do today to future proof your business. Fee also discusses the importance of positive mindset and what agents can do to protect it. Last, Fee widely discusses additional streams of income for agents and how they can leverage from their actual position. Please follow Fee on Instagram here. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Fee Gentry can be reached at 512.766.3255 and fee@feegentry.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Are you concerned about what the future may hold for realtors stop being concerned because today we’re going to talk about how to future proof your business. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solutions so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. I’m DJ Parris, I’m your guide, and host through the Show and welcome if you’re new, welcome back, if you’re returning, and as always, please tell a friend about our show. Other Realtors need to know we we have a huge audience 10s of 1000s of you listen to every episode, there’s like 1.6 million realtors, and I’m gonna put it on you guys, you got to get me in front of all of them. I’m just teasing. But that would be awesome. Just tell one person about us that would really help us and it would make make our audience even bigger. So thank you in advance for that. Also, check out our sponsors, guys, our sponsors are awesome. They’re so sweet and nice. They keep the show rolling, check out their products and services. They have awesome stuff. So please do that too. But let’s get to my main event. Today we’re talking to fi gentry and this is a real true superstar in the industry, not just the top producer. This is somebody at the highest levels of the industry and she is now consulting with agents and teams to help them take their business to the next level. So you really want to check this out. It’s very cool, but let’s just get right to it. My conversation with V Gentry. We have V Gentry on the show as our guest from exp in Georgetown, Texas. Let me tell you more about fee. A fee Gentry is a dynamic figure in real estate. She excels as an entrepreneur and investor a speaker, a coach and an author. She’s the visionary founder of the black exp network, a co founder of the one exp initiative and a former director on the board of EXP world holdings LLC since 2004 When she became a licensed Texas realtor. Her mission has been helping women and underserved individuals achieve financial independence through homeownership. With over two decades of entrepreneurial experience fee is the driving change both within and beyond the real estate sector. She’s currently the CEO of live better ventures running a business incubator and hosts the fellowship on YouTube. Now to for all things fee we want you actually to go to her Instagram which is at fi Gentry fi Welcome to the show. Well thank you DJ man, like when you read that I was like Who’s he? Who’s he talking about? Was that amazing? Lady really sounds like she sounds she’s a little superstar. Well, you are a superstar and I am excited to number one. You’re such a sweet person we were just chatting backstage and I’m really really excited to speak with you. But besides being just a pleasant and lovely person I really want to you have some really great things we’re going to talk about today specifically money that realtors are leaving on the table and also with the talk of AI and and just technology always you know increasing and trying to edge out Realtors what we can do to future proof our businesses. So we’re going to talk a lot about that. But before we get to, to that to that let’s talk about you and I’d love to hear about how you got into real estate because you have done a lot so tell us about that journey. Fee Gentry 4:51Man Real Estate DJ was like Plan F for me like I had it was nowhere on my radar. Actually I was in physical therapy school, so I had, you know, my goal was to be a physical therapist, and I, you know, so I went to PT school, you know, I did post rehabilitation. I mean, that was in fitness. That was my career. And D.J. Paris 5:10we should mention for anyone, I’m sorry to interrupt your your lovely story, but just to make a big deal about this. PT school is often talked about as being just as challenging to get into as pre med because there’s there’s fewer actually PT schools than there are med schools. And I don’t know if that’s still the case, but it is a big deal to get into a PT program. And so yeah, I’m sorry. So tell us tell us. Yeah, Fee Gentry 5:32so I was Yeah. So it was in the number one physical therapy program in the state of Texas. And I just, I just said, this is not for me, like, because I had, it was just weird. And I was, I’ve always been an entrepreneur since the age of like, 910 11 years, I’ve always had businesses. So I read this little book like a lot of people have write that book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad by keister in the in you know, that one little sentence says that 90% of people with millions of millionaires or people who have wealth are in the real estate business. I didn’t see the sales part I just saw in the real estate. So silly me, my mom was building a house in Central Texas sight unseen. And so her realtor was like, and who also happen to be the commissioner of the state of Texas was like, we I came to meet, you know, check on check on the house and meet with him. And he said, you would be really good. In real estate. He goes on to introduce you one of my friends who happen to be the, and she was there. I didn’t know who it was avis woocash happen to be the commissioner of the state of Texas made like you could be top 1%. And I was like, you know, I just didn’t even listen to them. And I blew it off. And I thought about it for a while. And I started having all these people recruit me into the real estate industry. And I promise you DDJ I did not know a, you know, a listing from a lockbox. When I got in the business, I had no clue. And so first year, I sold 39 homes, unbeknownst to me, I thought it sucked. I didn’t I was like, because I got this backup, this little bronze metal. It was it was at the Big Red company, kW. And I got this bronze medal. I was like, Oh, I don’t how do I get a silver? I D.J. Paris 7:02mean, how do I get a bronze, that’s the worst of all the metals. barely made it on the podium. Fee Gentry 7:07And, and if you don’t know this about me, but like, I’m 511, almost six foot tall. So, you know, former collegiate athlete love sports. So I’m, like, very competitive. So that’s how I got in the business of real estate. And so I just grew from there. So I went from being a solo agent that I grew that I became, like, I was in a smaller town, I was living up north. And so let’s come like this medium size fish in a in a small pond, and start growing a team of people and then wanted to start, I wanted to, you know, own a franchise. And that didn’t work out. Thank God because 2008 then happened. Oh, good. Sorry, my saved myself. But I still I mean, I still took a bloodbath like everybody else. But um, but yeah, so that’s how I ended up in business. Yeah. Wow, D.J. Paris 7:49that is, that’s quite a story. And your story doesn’t end there. Because from there, you went on to serve and in management capacities at the corporate level, you know, with exp in particular, and just, you know, continually coaching consulting, writing. You, you do it all, and it is, it’s it’s so impressive, and there’s so much we could talk about. And I think, you know, being that you were so connected to agents, I would love to talk about, you know, 2024. Now, this episode might not actually publish until early January, or potentially late December. But regardless of it’ll be, you know, 2024 is on everybody’s mind will no matter when this actually drops. But people had to tough 2023, or at least the eight most of the agents I knew. And every so often I talked to an agent and said, I’m having my best year ever. I was maybe 1% of agents I talked to so. So for for most of us, it was it was a tricky and difficult year. And I think, you know, for somebody like yourself who’s so disciplined, so focused, so just committed to finding solutions. I really do want to talk about what agents can do in 2024, just to help keep their keep stay in business and keep their business rolling forward. So just any advice or guidance that you might have for what agents should be focusing on right now during the winter months when we know things are slower anyway, but how they could set themselves up for possibly having a better 2024 2025? Right. Fee Gentry 9:19That is an amazing question. I get that question a lot. And I and I talk about that a lot. We wish we’d have started in October. So the people that I work with we say let’s start in October that 90 day window right? But since it since we can’t do anything about it, let’s start today like so what can you do today? And I always talk about what do you need to do right now to future proof your business right for 2024. So that so my goal here for your audience is just to help set them free, right, free from you know, worry about artificial intelligence taking over free from, you know, the text from these major, you know, institutional investors and I want to set them free from any other outside forces because the first part that The we have talked about is let’s sit there, let’s let’s get their mind in check, right? So I want them to I don’t want to be a victim of the economy, I want them to, you know, first of all, let’s talk about your mindset, you have to make a decision. So that’s the very first thing I talked to people about, make a decision that you should thrive in 2024. Number two is to have a plan, like and not have people keep writing business plans, but I’m talking about an action plan because we we all feel good about planning. Oh, well, I wrote my business plan for 2024. Well, what are you going to do? What are the action steps that you’re gonna take in the first 30 days, and, and I always talk about this, is keep it simple. We write these elaborate business plans, and I’m just talking to people about in 2024, we’re going to just have to keep it simple. Like and go back to the basics and the fundamentals of of everything, yes, we need to leverage artificial intelligence and learn how to use that. But we need to leverage it in and I’m calling collective capitalism is or collect, you know, or collaborative capitalism this year, that’s what people should be focusing on 2020, for who it’s not what you need to do, or how to do it, who do you need to connect with, in order to get through the next year to two years, and possibly even three years, because I believe, Mike, this is the you know, according to fee disclaimer, right? These are just my own thoughts, beliefs, I believe that real estate is going to substantially change in the next 24 to 48 months, whether it’s from the Department of Justice, you know, the court cases, or whether it’s, you know, technology, or, or the consumers who’ve just decided, we’ve just, they’ve got a different feed, and they want to, and they want to do something or the the collapse of nor I mean, I don’t know, we don’t know, I have a crystal ball. But either way, like I said, my goal is to set your audience free to, to do something different this year. Thank D.J. Paris 11:46you. And I think, by the way, a wonderful goal and very appreciative to you to come on here and and share some of your wisdom and knowledge. And we should, you know, I was thinking, as you were saying about keeping it simple. So I recruit agents for a living and I, our audience, a lot of them don’t do that. But I think you can pause our audience can possibly relate to this little quick story. So for years and years, every week, we’d have a management meeting, and it would they would say, DJ, how many people did you hire this week? And that was our measure of how well DJ I was doing. And I’ve been doing this 13 years. So that’s just a standard metric. It’s like, how many sales did you get, you know, that kind of thing. But it was how many people that I recruit. And then we finally realized that what we call our key performance indicators. That’s just the end result of me doing all the other tasks. And so, you know, assuming that I never get better at recruiting, what is the actual driver? It’s how many conversations do I have on a daily basis. So it reminds me of that Brian Buffini, old Brian Buffini thing that where he would say, you got to meet two to five people every day, if you’re a realtor, and just add them to your database. And and I was like, well, and there’s a lot more to it, of course, but if we’re looking at the most basic activity that a realtor should probably consider if they don’t have enough business right now is keep adding people to your database, keep having conversations, meet new people, get them into your CRM. And so for me, I don’t focus on how many people are recruited anymore. It’s how many conversations that I have this week with agents. And then you know, we track my close ratio, and all that. But really, what we’re finding out is we know DJ needs to talk to 20 different agents a week if he’s going to get, you know, five people to join or whatever. So, so I really appreciate you saying that, because we can look at the end results, sales, you know, deals closed and go. And then we can go, that’s a lot of stress. If we go back to just I gotta beat a whole bunch of people, and I go, that’s not the only thing anyone needs to do. But it’s it’s a way to think about scaling back your, you know, what do I actually need to do on a daily basis? Fee Gentry 13:45Absolutely. That’s the one. If you do nothing else, that’s it. D.J. Paris 13:49You never improve your skill set. I mean, this is what I always say to like, with me, if I never become any better as, as a recruiter, if I just double the number of people I talk to, in theory, I should double the number of recruits that I have. So and of course we everything. But But yeah, so So let’s, let’s talk a little bit more so. So thinking about, yes, there’s all of these outside factors. You know, you mentioned technology. We talked about the rise of AI, the flight to teams, there’s lawsuits, there’s all these things that and I want to go back to mindset just for a moment because I I was curious of what your advices for you talked about first making a decision that I’m going to have a good next 12 months Yes. How do you protect that mindset? Because we know that it’s, it’s, you know, when things are good, it’s easy to have the mindset and when things are strong, are challenging, it’s harder. So do you have any, any any suggestions to protect…
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