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Tips From A Top Real Estate Coach • Debbi DiMaggio Sep 28, 2023

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Debbi DiMaggio an author, real estate leader and a coach talks about her experience in real estate business. Debbi explains the importance of being an real estate agent and how she loves working with new people. Debbi talks about her coaching program – Foundation for Success. Last Debbi emphasizes the importance of being present and why meeting people in person is the only way to get the real information about clients. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Debbi DiMaggio can be reached at (510) 414-6777 and debbi.dimaggio@corcorangroup.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today we’re talking to a top real estate coach about what you can do to finish the year strong. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide, and host through the show. And in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with top producer, author and real estate coach Debbie DiMaggio. Before we get to Debbie. Just a couple of quick reminders. Please, as always support our sponsors. You hear them at the beginning of the show. And then halfway through the interview. Let them know how much you love them because they help support and keep our show rolling. So check out their products and services. We appreciate that. And also tell a friend about this podcast. Think of one other agent that could benefit from hearing our interviews with top producers and send them a link. You can send them a link to whatever podcast app you might be listening to. Or you can send them right to our website, keeping it real pod.com Where every single episode can be streamed right from a browser. Alright guys, let’s get to the main event my conversation with Debbie Demacia. Today on the show, our guest is Debbie Demacia with Corcoran in San Francisco and LA she’s also leader of the DiMaggio betta group. She’s been practicing real estate for a long time. Also as an author, a coach. Let me tell you more about Daddy. Now who is a top one and a half. Sorry, one and a half. I’m going to start that one over. Debbie DiMaggio is a top 1.5% producer of all agents nationwide. I wanted to make sure I got that right because that is a truly impressive statistic. She has been an author four times over she is a mother of two a wife and a philanthropist. Her love of meeting people travel design and experiencing new cultures has driven her success in real estate and beyond. Debbie aspires to inspire by living her purpose and passion is committed to helping her clients through their first second or third transaction or when mentoring others on their own paths to greatness. She’s also a full time realtor and a partner in a real estate firm Corcoran icon properties and the marketing director and coach for the company’s ad agents. Debbie loves helping others achieve their dreams whether your clients or other agents helping expand her business into coaching she coaches agents, Debbie also will guide you towards achieving your goals while holding yourself accountable, keeping you on track, which is easier said than done. And as I’m thinking about this out loud and reading Debbie’s bio, I can’t think of too many real estate coaches who have been practicing for 35 years on top of coaching. That is really a huge asset. So please welcome Oh, and let’s do let’s get Debbie’s tagline. First follow your passion, live your purpose. I want to give a plug for Debbie’s books before she comes on. By the way we will have links to all of her books. In the show notes. You can find them anywhere books are sold Amazon in particular, but her books are called The Art of real estate. Real estate rules 52 ways to achieve success in real estate contained beauty and during COVID She wrote beauty at any age because age is just an attitude. Follow Debbie at her website, Debbie and that’s D BB I know II Debbie DiMaggio di MAGG io.org Debbie dimaggio.org We will have a link to that in the show notes. Also follow her on Instagram at Debbie Demacia will have a link to that too. Debbie, welcome to the show. Debbi Dimaggio 5:00Thank you. Wow, what an introduction. Thank you so much. Well, D.J. Paris 5:04you have done a lot in your career, and there’s a lot to celebrate there and our audience, I hope they’re impressed because I’m impressed. And I talk to top producers almost every day on this show. And I get so excited when I get to talk to somebody like you, who’s not only a successful agent, but also a successful business owner, mentor, author. And now coach. So I am I’m a huge fan of that. I think they are no and a mother and I taught them and it’s that expression, if you want something done, give it to a busy mom, right? They just get things done. So you’ve gotten a lot done in your career. And now your son is working with you on the team, which is really cool. I think that is really, really neat. But I would like to go all the way back to the beginning of your career because people like to hear the origin story. Where did you come from? How did you get into real estate? Why real estate? So can you walk us through sort of how that happened? Debbi Dimaggio 5:59I can so when I was growing up. People always ask you what do you want to do when you grew up? I had no idea what I wanted to do. I figured one day it would hit me. The only thing I knew I did not want to do was real estate. It my dad was he used to buy and sell he was always on the phone. He was managing his investors very different. I’m a residential sales for over 35 years. And he was it was real estate. Nonetheless, he was on the phone, there was no cell phones at that time, he was always tethered to his phone, he was always working. I didn’t like know that we couldn’t go on proper vacations because he always had it in the works. So I so for as long as I can remember until I was probably 27 when it when I finally started real estate. The only thing I didn’t want to do all my life was real estate. And then I realized when I was working for other people, I worked in magazines and did some different things. Some days, I’d have a job for a week, a day, two weeks, I said this isn’t for me. I know there’s something out there. And that’s why I talk about people living their passion is so important. I kept trying and thankfully I have parents who allowed me to continue to try. And it just I realized I can’t have a boss, I don’t want someone telling me what to do. I like to work really hard. And I don’t want to work really hard and not be compensated for that. So it all kind of populated into real estate, which started out in rent tools in San Francisco. And a friend of mine, Adam and my partner said Debbie would rentals and this is the time before Craig’s List 19. It was 1990 390-490-1990 1990. About there was We’re in San Francisco, there, there was no Craigslist. So you would as a rental agent, you’d call on owners, property managers in San Francisco, these big gorgeous buildings. So you call to get a listing, like one building might have you know, 20 listings, and you continue to call and then you would work with people to get them into rentals. And it was so lucrative and I loved it. But I will tell you when I was 25. And this is where my coaching when I go back and how I’ve written my coaching programs. When I was 25, I was so lost, I was living in LA I loved LA but I wasn’t liking what I was doing. My fiancee at the time says get get your real estate license, which I did, but I hated being home. So I was super depressed. And I wrote out what I like what I like to do, I didn’t know what it was. I said I love working with people. I love meeting new people. I love helping people. I love doing something different every day. I don’t want to be tethered to a desk and I like a beginning, a middle and an end. And so that translate a couple of years later into this call of a friend’s and Debbie should get into rentals with me. And real estate has a middle a beginning, a middle and an end. And I get to meet people all the time. of all different nationalities of all different backgrounds because I’m from a little town called Piedmont California. We’re near Oakland and near Berkeley and it’s only 10,000 people and 4000 home. So I grew up there we raised our kids there. My parents still live there. So when I say meeting other people I get so excited. As soon as someone walks through the open house. I’m like, Oh, where are you from? You know, you know, they’ll say where they’re from now or no or where did you grow up and there’s always some crazy long story and I’m like, I’m from Piedmont. I grew up in Piedmont, I went to Cal and anyway, so that’s kind of where the tip of the iceberg where it started. And I’ve been doing practicing real estate for over 35 years and I still love it and I still get to meet new people every day. D.J. Paris 9:50It’s an incredible story. As as a coach, I think it would be fun to kind of dive right in to what’s going on today and and obviously San Francisco has a unique market as well, that isn’t always tracking the same as as other other markets here in the country. But I suspect it’s happening in San Francisco too. Of course, you’re dealing with, with inventory issues. I mean, San Francisco always has inventory issues. That’s part of the charm of it. But it also makes it incredibly challenging for people to build careers there. But, you know, you you mentor agents, you coach agents, you’ve written books, helping agents, what would what are you telling your clients agents right now? Who are, you know, struggling a bit, maybe they’re not getting as many listings, you know, there’s not as many buyers flooding the market? What are you telling them to do now, just to sort of stay engaged and busy? Yeah, Debbi Dimaggio 10:49sure. So that kind of taps into my coaching program called foundation for success. And it’s, it’s back to it’s just basic things. Okay. First of all, you can’t sit at home, you know, waiting for your phone to ring, you’ve got to be out there engaging and connecting. So you. So the first thing I said, we hire a new agent, I say, you have to be in the office sitting next to Adam Adams very structured, he likes to be behind his desk, he’s there, that’s where he works for me. I’m up in our loft at our house right now I’ll be in the car working, I’ll pull over and work, I’ll be, you know, checking on one of our properties that we’re preparing for market, I’ll just stand outside, I’ll be on the phone. So with the new agents, I sit down in front of Adam, Adam will be talking to ad agents over the time people call him with issues and problems you can hear how he is speaking, and what kinds of problems arise, you will never know until you hear it. And there’s always different kinds of issues that come up. But when you’re sitting there and listening to him. So that’s the first thing be in be present. The other thing is, so when you’re there, and an agent like myself, we carry a lot of listings, we’re very busy, Adam, and I chase very grateful for that. But if you’re there, and I see you’re there, and I get a client, a buyer that for one of my listings, and I don’t want to write it and maybe Adams writing for another person, I’ll say, hey, Dre, I you know, do you want this buyer? I mean, because they’re They’re so mean being present, that is my number one be present. The years D.J. Paris 12:28before, I’m sorry, Debbie, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but it’s so funny. I, before I started this podcast, I’m from a little, not a little town, but a smaller town in Illinois called Peoria. And I interviewed somebody who was like the seventh best realtor there just because he was a friend of a friend, because that’s where I grew up. And so this is all before I had the show, and actually was the impetus for this building the show. And I said to him, Brian is his name. I said, Hey, Brian, why is it that out of the 1000? Realtors in the area? Why or why do you think you’re number seven? He goes, Well, I’m not smarter than than anybody, are everybody. And I’m certainly not more skilled than everybody. But he goes, I show up on time to the office. And he goes, he goes, he goes, you’d be shocked the people that produce. And this is a long time ago, and not everyone works in an office anymore. But But if he would say the people that produce her, they’re like, eight or 9am. And they start working, and they actually start doing things. And I go well, yeah, there’s more to it than that. He was not really you guys. It’s a lot about showing up and just doing the work. And I I know, that’s not always the most exciting thing to do here. But it is the truth. Right? So that’s the Debbi Dimaggio 13:39thing that there’s no science to it. You know, you don’t have to be super smart. You have to be show up, be present, be kind, communicate. I mean, I just did a deal with an agent. He said, Debbie, do you know I’m new? And I said, No. I said, I want to commend you. I know, you have been so communicative. It’s been amazing. We had a few little things, but because we you know, we jumped off of a text off of an email, how to voice to voice conversation, we knew what was happening. We knew the insurance was a problem, you know, with all our fires here in California, so but we talked through it so we you know, we and I said you come to the office, I want to hire you. I mean, he was so good. And there are so many agents who have been around and are not communicative, communicative. And it’s a it’s a bummer because it affects the deal. It affects how you’re feeling. I mean, yes, you’re always stressed with your seller, your buyer because they’re going through a big transition. So we’re supposed to advocate for them and we’re supposed to like, make it work and if you can’t get a hold of someone, it’s so aggravating it’s so it’s, that’s also very important. You have to communicate, it’s I can’t even tell you how important D.J. Paris 14:59you No, I couldn’t agree with you more. And I was just thinking, as you were talking about the texting versus talking, I was thinking, Well, why is it that texting isn’t as effective to deal with frustrations and stuff? It’s because I don’t know why necessarily. But on text, you don’t get to discharge that stress as easily, right? If you get a sort of a message that maybe is a bump in the road in a transaction, or the other side is doing something weird, and you’re like, God, you get all frustrated. And as you said, Hey, let’s chat on the phone. Maybe we can work this out. And you’re able to work with another human and actually talk about the frustrations. That doesn’t translate as well on tech. So I think you’re so right, that moving away from texting, you know, even just with the the co op broker, the other agent on the othe…

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Step By Step Buyer Checklist For Real Estate Agents • Breaking Down Ali’s Systems • Ali Garced Sep 27, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to Breaking Down Ali’s Systems mini-series with Ali Garced. In this mini-series Ali will be explaining how she built her systems both for buyers and for sellers. In the second episode, Ali goes over buyer email number 3&4 and also her Trello checklist. Please follow Ali on Instagram here. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Ali Garced can be reached at ali@garcedrealty.com and (914) 318-4918. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Hello keeping it real podcast listeners. Today is a special episode with one of my great friends in this industry ally, the agent she’s been on the show, and she was nice enough to do a special episode just for you guys about exactly how she works with buyers. This is her buyer checklist part two. If you didn’t listen to part one, don’t worry. Listen to this one. You can always go back to the first one as well. You’re going to want to hear this. So without further ado, my friend Aligarh said 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. Ali Garced 1:49Welcome back to the mini series on checklists specifically for buyers. Again, this is Aligarh set or ally, the agent on all social media. And I’m looking forward to part two of the buyer series. If you remember from last time, I went over part one of the buyer series when I where I went over email one, which really is part of my Calendly. Now that’s where I have my buyer intake. And I also went over buyer email number two, which is where I send the clients once we decide that we’re working together that we’re committed to each other, that I send them the email with all of the attachments. So that way, they’re educated on all of the steps, and they get their contract, everything like that. So what today’s episode is going to be on is that middle portion. So pretty much like contract to almost close, we’re going to cover buyer, email three and buyer email number four. And of course, the Trello checklist that I use for every single buyer, every single seller, every single referral, every single agent that joins the crew, the onboarding checklist, I won’t be covering that. But so if you want to follow along, I suggest watching this again on YouTube. I also in case you can’t watch us on YouTube right now, I do suggest that you watch this on YouTube as well later on after you listen to this episode. That will probably give you the biggest the best idea of how I you can visualize it better, you know. And also, if you’re interested in these checklists, shoot me a text, my phone number is 520-341-2552 Text the word checklist and we’ll set up a call. And then after that you can receive these checklists, I’m here to give it out no cost. So also, if you’re looking to one day, grow a team or increase your team if you’re already a broker owner, this is a great way for you to leverage and give a you know front to end checklist for how to work with sellers how to work with buyers how to work with investors, referrals that you can give to the agents on your team or you can use as leverage for those agents to to do the work and then know exactly what steps are on what is next. So that way, nothing is left because there’s nothing worse than waking up in the middle of the night. And I know that every realtor has been there, where they’re like, oh my gosh, I forgot to send the due diligence report or you know, whatever it is. There’s you can you can avoid feeling like that. And you can help your team avoid feeling like that when everyone has a checklist of knowing exactly what they have done. What they have checked off what they have not yet. So again, my phone number is 520341 to five five to text a word checklists or if you’re interested in using this to grow your team, message me but anyway, so here is part two. I’m going to vocalize as much as I can Han, for those that are not watching this on YouTube, I do suggest if you find any of this helpful, please give DJ give keeping it real a five star review, or follow them on YouTube comment, any anything would help. And I really want to give back to DJ. So for having such a great podcast. So over here I’m sharing my Trello screen again. And again Trello. For those that have not used, it is a free project management tool free. Where you can create cards or boards and you can list out every single item on a checklist. And you can you share this, as you can see, I share it with my crew, and they can copy and paste it so in that and move it into their own board again, leverage. So you create the template and they can just copy and paste it and include their own address. And then yeah, so let’s go in here, the home buyer checklist part two. So the first time we left off at the end of the first section here, which was the buyer initiation, right? I’m not covering lead gen at this time, although I’m more than happy to do so in the future. And because at one point, I had so many leads, and I know that I know how this sounds, but I’d had so many leads that I had to form a crew, because I wasn’t comfortable. Like referring the leads out to someone in a different brokerage or a different crew where I didn’t know how they would treat my lead. Because the lead was that they’re my personal like friends and family. So I just wanted to make sure that they’re treated very well. So I was like, You know what, let me make this into a checklist. Let me make this into a process. Let me grow the crew. And that way I know, everybody that comes to me is taken care of in the same manner, nothing is left unchecked, literally. So we have sent them via email number two. And now there is a section here the next section, I hope that this was bright enough, let me make this brighter, is Doc’s needed to submit an offer. Of course, this is going to vary state to state. So the first thing on this checklist is when you’re calling the Yeah, when you’re calling the listing agent. You have to establish a good working relationship with them. I always a being that I’m with exp. I always call and you know, I compliment them on their listing. It’s a beautiful listing. And I say oh, by the way, you know, my name is Aligarh said I work with exp Realty, don’t worry, I’m not trying to recruit you. And usually they laugh because what do you know, some exp agents actually do sell. So that usually breaks the ice, but I do everything that I can to butter them up, right, because if they’re going to be working with with me, that does make my offer stand out over others over perhaps a grumpy realtor. It shouldn’t but it does. And just being a genuinely good person. And nice and incorporating some humor in this industry goes a very long way. I’m sure I’m sure you can attest that as well. So I always have it a point to always call the listing agent before you even submit an offer. Because without that relationship, they don’t know who you are. Sometimes they don’t even check their email you as you know, you’re getting tons of emails every single day, emails can get lost, they can go to spam junk the deleted folder, so always call them. Because at that point, you can as you’re over here, step number two in this section is I literally wrote butter them up. So ask what’s most important to the seller, and just let them talk. Sometimes they will say a lot. So that way you can make it a win win for your buyer for the seller. And then that way, hopefully it turns into more of a smooth transaction. So before you submit an offer step number three here is of course to tell the lender there, you don’t want to blind sight though the lender at any point, you want to make sure that the buyers qualify for that. You want to make sure you’re still keeping in contact with that lender throughout the whole transaction. Because what if something happens that the lender knows about although the you know, client had to take had to cut down from 40 hours a week to 30. Now they no longer qualify for that house. So always make sure that you’re keeping the lender up to date, hey, the client we looked at, you know, XYZ homes where we’re thinking of submitting an offer on this specific house. Are they good to go and you get the blessing from the lender. Excellent. So then at that point, of course you want with keeping the lender informed every step of the way. Just communication in general just goes such a long way. Then that way the lender can reach out to the listing agent and say Oh, by the way, my name is pretend on the lender for a second, my name is, you know, Aligarh said I work with XYZ mortgage, I just wanted to let you know that the clients that are about to spin an offer or that just submitted an offer, they are good to go, they’re fully pre approved, they are serious buyers, and I will do whatever it takes to make this a smooth transaction. If your lender is not doing that, ask them to do it, because I’m sure that they want to do that. Because the more that they also talk to listing agents, the more their name gets known. So if you shouldn’t have any issues getting a lender to do that, and there is a big difference between having them do that via email, via text or a phone call, always ask them to do it via a phone call. Because so many people aren’t. And on the listing side of things when whenever I say I get an offer, which is more often than not that that lender is not calling me. So I make it a point. And when I cover my seller checklist, I make it a point it’s on there. For me to reach out to a listing agent, I do not accept any offer until I have spoken to the listing agent until the lender, I make it a point to not accept any offer until I have spoken to the lender directly. And I know do they have to pull credit again, is there any chance of this falling out of contract, and, you know, XYZ. So carrying on here, send an email to the buyer introducing them to the TC because at that point, I hope that you have a TC if not, oh, once you hire one, you will be able you’re getting so much of your time back. So please, please do that. That way that email can say something like this. And we can, of course, plug and play the tea your TCS name. So hey, you know, Alex is my buyer, I want to introduce you to my TC, he or she is going to be taking doing all the paperwork, they do a better than me faster than me, and make sure that everything is in regulation that we’re on track. So add this email to your contacts. And and then of course introducing the TC to the client when you’re ready to submit an offer, and then at that point, this specifically is for my brokerage. So this is how to find within our, our database, which is which is what we call sky slope, that’s where you input the the forms, there is some stuff that you’ll realize, or you might not realize, I know that I actually don’t do so I don’t do any of the paperwork. But my first transaction I did, and that was a mistake. Luckily, you know, nothing, nothing happened there. But um, but it was just such a not the highest and best use of my time. So that is what a TC is, is there for a lot of a lot of people sometimes think oh, you know, I can’t, I don’t have I’m not at the level of production for me for it to warrant me hiring a TC to which I would say if you cannot hire a TC now, there is very little chance of you being able to scale unless your your goal is not to scale, which is totally fine to everyone has different goals in this business. You know, some people only want to do a couple and that’s completely fine. But I would say if you do like doing the paperwork, then I don’t know, maybe maybe just be a TC and scale that business. But anyway. So not everything on here is specifically what I do. But if for some reason you are still doing the paperwork and if you happen to be an ESB and happen to be an Arizona this might help you otherwise you can just ignore that part. Of course, you know, you can delete it after we meet and talk and you get these chocolates, you can just delete that portion of I will say though, you will be given a link to this. So copy and paste it. Please do not edit my checklist that I am sharing for everyone. So hopefully you shouldn’t have access to do that. But just in case, please don’t take this copy and make any edits to it. That’s the one thing that I asked. Okay, so then you send the buyer broker exclusive agreement, in case you haven’t already. And I’m not going to really talk about at what point I do it because everyone likes to do it at different times. Some people only like to do it when they submit the offer. Some people do it before they even like viewing house. A lot of different theories and pros and cons to every to every, you know, decision on that. So at whatever point you want to submit, you want to send and have your buyer exclusive agreement signed, then you can just drag and drop that which is super easy again on Trello. You can just drag and drop it to this card or before or after. Then you send these are the forms here that we have to send to our clients in this state. So again, make sure that that’s appropriate for your state. All of these forms here. And of course, I’m not sending these a TC is because again, that’s not the highest and best use of my time, I’ll tell you my first transaction that I ever did. It took me two, maybe even three hours to even find the paperwork. Three hours, after my first year in the business, I did the math, and I was per hour per client. On average, I was making like 250 to $300 an hour for me to spend three hours looking to even find where these forms are kept. No, thank you, that is not a way to scale. And we’ll never do that again. So I highly suggest hiring a TC because they only get paid at the transaction, they only get paid when you get paid. There are no overhead costs. Anyway, I’m going on a rabbit hole, I’m sure you guys are are with me also. So let me continue going down here, sending the purchase contract. That’s after you know, of course, all the details of what’s going to go in the purchase contract. And that is where I’m going to take you to buyer email number three, which is once you get to that point with your client, have, you know you’ve shown or you’ve hired a showing assistant to show your client houses, and they finally narrowed down one, and they’re ready to go. They’re excited, excellent. This is where I, this is my process. From there, I send this email. And again, I use superhuman, it’s a way to save a lot of time and easily have drafts or templates, like very ready to go. So I send this email to the clients. So obvious, I’ll put them in the To line by or email an email number three is with a subject line drafting the offer. And the next steps. Of course, I’m always adding next steps because that’s what the buyer wants to know. Great. This is what we’re doing now. But what do I expect tomorrow? What do I expect the next what’s next. So of course, like in every sin…

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5 Videos To Make This Week To Grab New Clients • Video Boot Camp for Real Estate Professionals • Kim Rittberg Sep 26, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to another episode of Video Boot Camp for Real Estate Professionals with Kim Rittberg. Wondering how to get more clients? Making social media content but not seeing impact? Not showing up enough on video? Award-winning Real Estate Video Coach Kim Rittberg has VIDEO BOOT CAMP starting in just a few short weeks! Join the hundreds of real estate professionals who’ve learned how to show up and grow their revenue through video. Apply here through her website. Keeping It Real Listeners get a special bonus when they sign up! If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Make sure to follow her on social media on Instagram. Don’t forget to grab Kim’s Free Download – 10 Tips to Amazing Video <here> and follow her on Instagram. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today social media expert Kim rip berg is going to share with you five videos you need to make this week to help you get more 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 solution 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. Kim Rittberg 1:32Hello, my friends. I always love being here. And I love getting your feedback on Instagram, LinkedIn, and even through my website as well. Hi everyone, I’m Kim Rydberg, I help real estate agents become the go to agent in their area to boost their revenue, right, grab more clients. That’s what it’s all about. And I’m really excited to teach you today, the five videos that you can make this week to get clients. And you obviously don’t have to make all five. I mean, that’s a little excessive, but I’m giving you videos that you can choose from. So before I start, I wanted to let you know, I have an amazing video bootcamp. I’ve had hundreds, dozens, a lot of real estate agents, I taught hundreds of agents in the past year, my video book can take you from frustrated and overwhelmed to super confident on camera and getting referrals, getting referrals, getting more leads all of those things. So I really remove the overwhelm and just teach you how to get a great system that can be found on Kim ripper.com, our IA TTP RG or you can drop me a line on Instagram at Kim Rydberg. And let’s get started. So when people are designing a real estate agent, you know, they really have to trust you. So what are the five videos that can help build that relationship? So you, as I mentioned before, do not need to do all these videos, but I’m listing all five. So there’s something for everyone because I’m generous like that. So one of the first things I’m going to talk about is authentic videos. So what the actual video is, it could be a variety of things. But the important part is that it’s not super polished, super finished, it has to feel a little more real. So for any of you who are on Instagram, maybe lurkers and not posters to Instagram, they you see people posting stories, the little circles on top that disappear. That’s a great way to open yourself up, be more relatable, have a little more authentic content out there. That isn’t like all super polished real estate content. It really lets people get to know you. And it does really build that trust. It’s interesting. One of the things that I found with my clients, a lot of these real estate agents I work with, they feel a little weird, posting more personal stuff or soliciting engagement. But the ones who are doing it are seeing a ton of engagement. One of my agents, she was from Idaho. No. Yes, I don’t. Anyway, so we were talking about she wasn’t feeling comfortable on camera. But she started showing up. And then this one video, she didn’t want to post and I was like, You got to post it right? You just got to post it very first video, you might feel uncomfortable, but it’s the third, the fifth, the seventh, everyone gets better. She ended up posting this video to her stories. She was like hands over her eyes feeling weird about it. But then she got a response from someone going, Oh, that’s an interesting point about the market. And they weren’t like, oh, what’s wrong with your hair? What’s wrong with your outfit? People are actually interested to hear what you have to say because you are the expert in the field. They do want to know what’s going on in their area. So authentic videos. A good way to do that is go on Instagram stories. Just start talking a little bit about what you’re seeing another one of my my students from awesome, she’s from Florida, and she was telling me about what she was seeing in her neighborhood. I’m like, great, go on your walk and start filming it. And she was talking about seeing more construction and new development and she’s actually taking people along along the ride. She was very hesitant to show up when she started the video bootcamp. But like a few weeks into it, we worked on her confidence and she started showing up and she’s seeing a lot of engagement because she’s talking about what’s happening in the area of You talk show showcasing her expertise in a great way. And it’s very visual, right walking around your neighborhoods very visual, so, and you’re looking to expand your sphere of influence as an agent. So in Instagram Stories, you’re reaching a lot of different people, and you never know who’s gonna respond. So one trick is add, go into the little smiley face sticker area, and hit the word Pol, Pol. And just write a poll in there about whatever it is you’re talking about. Maybe you’re grabbing a cup of coffee, and then you’re saying, Do you like coffee? Would you like tea? Maybe it’s nighttime, and you’re like, Oh, my day is finally over. It’s eight o’clock at night. In your poll, you could say, Are you a night owl, or a morning person? These questions might seem simple, but people are like, zoned out right there. They’re scrolling on Instagram and the abyss, they just want something fun to play with and connect with. And that’s a great way to open those relationships, reopen those relationships, and you will be very surprised who is connecting with you. You never know, it could be your next client, it could be a referrer, it could be coming from 10 years ago. That’s what I see happening all the time to my students and my clients. The second video is a local video. So this is interesting. You know, we talked about being a local expert, that is your role, right? You want people to say, oh, Joe, Jane, they really know this area, I’m going to trust them. I trust that they’re getting me the best place for the best price, their knowledge about the rules. And by really positioning yourself as the expert in the area that pushes that forward, expert in the area. An easy way to do this, is you’re in front of a restaurant or bar or store in your area on your main street. Go with somebody, have them film you. And just answer have them that person asked you. What are your favorite spots in X town? So someone would say, Ken, what are your favorite spots in Brooklyn? And straight to camera, I would say, all right, my favorite spot is there’s a cocktail club called Clover Club on Smith Street. I love the croissants at this new French place in the area. And I love the park because it’s super quiet. And there are birds like chirping in the city, which you would never think. But I do love those spots and and clothing wise, there’s an awesome spot called and article down the street from me, which has great dresses. This might seem like, who cares? That’s not such a crazy video. But I’ll tell you, people have very strong opinions about their favorite spots in their neighbor neighborhood. And they’re very passionate about this. So one of my clients, he’s in California, we sat down and did this video. And it was like, Hey, Josh, talk to me about your favorite favorite la stores, or we picked a certain area. And he just, you know, let off his first his favorite restaurant, his favorite store and his favorite clothing store. What we made sure to do was to tag those stores, and the hashtags that were specifically local. And he got like 5,000% more engagement than his normal posts. So people feel very passionately about their area, and the local stores are going to be psyched to get that publicity, right. And then they’re going to feel more connected to you. And then maybe they’re going to do an event with you. And maybe they’re gonna refer you to people. But maybe it’s just another way to expand your sphere of influence. So you’re trying to position yourself as a local expert, so people trust you and give you money, sell a home with you buy a home with you. So a local video is perfect, you could do my three favorite things in this neighborhood. Let me take you to a new bar. Again, this does not need to be like a really high quality high velocity video, you can shoot it with your iPhone, it can be very casual. And if you want you can just put it in Instagram Stories. Again, they disappear after 24 hours. So if you’re really feeling shy about stuff, that’s fine. Alright, video number three, and authority video. What do I mean by that? You want to position yourself to buyers to sellers as the go to person that people trust, right? They’re giving you a lot of money, they’re investing with you. So if you have awards or accolades, actually, almost all of you do have awards or accolades, remind people of that, yes, you can post that, you know, square Hi, I’m the top 10 teams in my neighborhood. So proud. Thanks to everyone for trusting me. There are other ways to do it. One thing that I did personally, so I got an award for a big video production series that I did. And I was really excited, my kids were excited. And in addition to posting the actual logo, like a square of the award in your social media, or on your blog, and your website, I made a video where my kids sat with me and the word and they were like hugging and kissing me. And, you know, that sort of lets people know who I am what I’m about. I’m a working parent that connects to other people who are working parents. And it’s just another way to also showcase your authority, right? It’s like a way to say, you know, I’m a person who’s serious about what I do. I might be cool might be fun, but like I do this, well I do this right? I take a lot of pride in my job. And so just thinking of different ways to showcase your authority. And don’t forget you can take things from while ago like even if you have something from six months ago or four months ago, people don’t see everything you post only about 10% of people see any given post so Feel free to, you know, recycle it and every few months. Educational Video number four is an educational video. So I’m very bullish on educational videos, I think it’s a great way to actually educate people. But be it’s a great way to show people how knowledgeable you are, like, you do your job, because you will love it. You know what you’re doing, whether you’ve worked for one year or 40 years, you are an expert in your field. There’s nothing that says expert than actually hearing from that person. So allow yourself to be on camera and explaining a little more about the market. And I know some people just feel uncomfortable sort of talking to a phone, I get that it’s not a normal thing. Totally. Right. So one of the ways that you could do that is a you can set up your phone. And instead of it being like right in front of your face, it could just be like right next to someone else. And someone else could ask you those questions. And you know, get an accountability partner, get another agent, they can ask you, you can ask them, it’s a little easier to answer someone’s questions than it is to talk to a blank screen if you’re not used to it. So that’s a good way around that. And again, pick topics that your clients ask you, what clients want to know, that’s a perfect topic for an educational video. And the fifth video that I recommend doing is put your opinion in there. I want to know if the markets up markets down. What do you recommend for buying for selling for renting? What do you think about new development versus versus, you know, all of the things that are happening in your area? What’s your perspective on it? Because really, everyone can get a website, an article, a blog, that’s fine, that information is searchable. But what’s your point of view on it? And when you’re working with someone, like what do you see? When do you think should they wait? Should they buy now? Like should should they rent for a little bit, they’re looking to you as their partner, right their partner in a big purchase a big rental, a big purchase. And it’s important to show your perspective. Otherwise, like why you right and they can just get this information online, they can put it together, they can do it themselves, right? They can be like, Oh, I don’t need an agent. I’m an expert on my own. So start putting that perspective in there. The point of view, you have that and the educational content really helps remind people who you are what you’re doing. All right. Now I want to recap and give a couple of examples of the videos I’ve recommended doing. So we are talking again today about five videos that you can do this week to get clients. And one is authentic videos, we are talking about showing up in a raw and candid way. If you have a pet up, put your pet name amazing. Take a walk in the mountains, take a walk by your lake with the dog, everyone loves a dog. And then don’t forget to add something for engagement. and tag me tag me I love when my agents tag me. And I really, really do. I’m very proud when people are learning from me, it’s really fun for me to get to teach people. So tag me when you post things, a local video, go to a local restaurant, taste that new bail in your neighborhood. Try it on a sweater and then new store, but really be the local expert feature and you don’t even this doesn’t even have to be video, you could just post new happenings in your area. You could post that on your stories you could post on your feed you put that wherever you want. But I recommend putting in your perspective, I think really bringing people into who you are having them hear your voice. So your Cadency Your personality is very powerful. Authority, video, anything, any awards you want any speaking events that you’ve done, any panels you’ve done, recycle those, if you posted it once, put it in a montage. If you posted it a few months ago, post it again, people do not see all your content. So don’t be precious about it. Don’t think oh, I posted this already. They don’t see all your content once an educational video, sit down and teach someone something. Start with the four questions you get asked the most. That is the easiest way to start and the most valuable. If it’s something we get asked a lot. Well it’s something people want to know. So start with that. And lastly, put your opinion somewhere in there. You know your opinion on the market your opinion on whatever it is. But put your perspective in there…

Full show notes at the publisher

The Importance of Mentorship • Caroline Hobbs Sep 21, 2023

Show notes

Caroline Hobbs a coach from Saint Jose Broker at Reward Realty talks about her experience in real estate as a third generation in the business. Caroline discusses how easy it was to be driven by this legacy. Next, Caroline discusses how helpful it is working with a top agent and learning from them. Caroline also discusses the importance of having a mentor. Last, she emphasizes the impact of a leading platform that she and her team are working on and how it will help agents in their business. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Caroline Hobbs can be reached at caroline@rewardrealty.org. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today we’re going to talk about the importance of mentorship. And by the way, almost everyone I’ve ever had on my show, which are top 1%. Producers have all had mentors. Let’s talk about it today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads in interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. 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. My name is DJ Parris, I’m your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment, we’re gonna be speaking with top producer and also software developer Caroline Hobbs. This is a really cool one, you’re going to want to listen to all of it, because there’s lots of great stuff here. Anyway, before we get to Caroline, one thing that you can do to help our show out two things actually is leave us a review. So you might be listening to us on Apple podcasts or any other podcast app. Please let us know what you think of the show helps us improve and obviously meet your needs more effectively. And please also tell a friend about the show. Think of just one other agent that could benefit from hearing from top producers like Caroline and let them know about the show. We appreciate it. Alright guys, let’s get to the main event my conversation with Caroline hops. Today on the show, our guest is Caroline Hobbs. She is a broker and owner of reward Realty in San Jose, California, which is the heart of Silicon Valley. Let me tell you more about Caroline. Now, Caroline, if there’s anyone who understands the stress of uprooting one’s life, and finding the best place to raise a family, it’s Caroline. She’s the Tao mother of two’s career kicked off with Keller Williams in Palo Alto, where she learned everything that she knows from some of the world’s leading agents, some of them have even been on our show. Using her knowledge and intrinsic passion for helping clients achieve their goals. Carolyn built reward Realty from the ground up. As the team lead and head broker Caroline’s spends her days turning mundane listings into irresistible opportunities for local homebuyers and investors. When you work with Carolina, you can be rest assured that you’ll feel heard supported and respected by somebody with decades of experience. Now to learn more about Caroline’s brokerage, please visit reward realty.org again reward realty.org We will have a link to that in the show notes. And she is currently working on a new tech product specifically for realtors. We’re going to be talking about that at some point in the show today as well. And we’ll give you some information on how to learn more there. Caroline, welcome to the show. Caroline Hobbs 3:57Hi, thank you so much for having me. D.J. Paris 3:59I am so excited to chat with you. And I don’t get a chance to talk to as many broker owners as I would like. So this is kind of a treat for me, because you really are wearing a lot of hats. Not only are you running your brokerage and your own personal business within the brokerage, and managing agents and doing all of the all of the hats that owners do that were and also working on a tech product at the same time. So I’m excited to talk about that. But why I always like to start off the show learning more about our guests. So tell us how you got into real estate. Caroline Hobbs 4:35So I’m actually a third generation real estate professional. My grandfather was a contractor who had his real estate license. My mother has been in the lending industry for over 40 years and is just getting ready to retire. And so while I was in college, I was introduced to a real estate agent who was number one in Keller Williams international and started working for her as her open house host and assistant. D.J. Paris 5:06Yeah, what’s it like to work for the number one, I just recently had the number one REMAX agent who happens also in the world who happens to be in California, not not in your neck of the woods down in downtown Los Angeles. But it was interesting talking to like the number one person in the world and he really hearing how somebody at the very tippy top of the mountain does it, not just the people who are just slightly underneath them who are also superstars, but the person at the very top you got you got that experience. So tell us about what you learned from working with some I mean, what a gift that is, I imagine 100% Caroline Hobbs 5:41I, honestly, I don’t think I would have figured out my strengths as an agent. Even in tech, without my start working with that agent, I had open houses to host and get face to face connections with clients very, very early, like before I was licensed. So from the get go, she used to joke that I posted more open houses than anybody else in Silicon Valley, because I hosted them every single weekend for years. So learning how to convert clients, talk to them, understand their concerns, hear them out, that was all super invaluable. But in all honesty for running a business, I think I learned a lot because this agent had not only her real estate license, but she also had an MBA, and what is a certified accountant. So she she was like the ultimate business person. So I like to say I stole all the knowledge that I could. I worked with her for six and a half years, and got to see the ins and outs of how she runs her business. How she conducts it, how she talks to clients how she closes the deal. But even more so I was in charge of running her database, which this is in 2008 2007, she had over 10,000 people in her database. Amazing. So this is way before most people even had a database most people were working off of, you know, a notepad, maybe an Excel sheet if you were advanced. Right. D.J. Paris 7:15And we should also mention that this is right at the most challenging time to be a real estate agent. This is when the market crashed. We had all those subprime loans were really brought the housing market down, by the way that is not happening now. Thank goodness. But you were you hurt getting doing this in a very difficult time? Caroline Hobbs 7:36Absolutely. Also, with the area that we are selling in our office, we’re with Keller Williams, and our office was in downtown Palo Alto, which is actually the number one office in the country as well. A lot of times, it’s just because of the price points that we’re at, you know, they’re at a much higher level, most people need to sell 510 20 houses to equate the same kind of price range. But just being surrounded by those agents who are really a lot more business minded than I find a lot of realtors to be was really inspiring the other person that was at the office at the same time with me, well known agent who started his own brokerage called Dalian Realty. You know, back when we were at Keller Williams together, he sold the most expensive home in America, which was over in Woodside for about $100 million. And he took that and reinvested it back into himself starting his company. So I like to think that I kind of learned from those around me. And that’s the path I ended up choosing as well. It’s D.J. Paris 8:43really, it’s really, again, such a gift, it’s a good reminder to our audience that if you currently don’t have a mentor, or you don’t have open houses to sit on weekends, beg anyone in your office as much as you can to go ahead and sit those open houses, you’re doing the seller a favor. And clearly you’re doing yourself a favor by not only learning how to talk about real estate to people that walk in off the street, but also possibly get some leads as well. And hopefully, you know, show those people other homes to buy. So this I cannot encourage people to do this. More. I think it’s it’s so critical. And everyone who’s listening probably already knows. Yeah, I know. I’m supposed to, you know, sit open houses. But I can’t think of an example. We’ve done about 500 episodes. I’m sure there’s one person that never said an open house on a 500. But that’s about it. Yeah. And I only talked to the top top agents in the country so and the very top agent at Keller Williams was like, oh, yeah, by the way, sit open houses. So yeah. Yeah. So even if you read Gary Keller’s book, it’ll tell you to sit open houses. So anyway, that that is just a good quick reminder. So when did you decide to sort of break off so you learned all this great information from your mentor and got to read really see a lot of high end sort of transactions and sort of the white glove approach, which is absolutely needed for you know, those kinds of transactions. And you were able to take that synthesize what you learned, and then build your own brokerage. Tell us about that. Caroline Hobbs 10:15Yeah. So my adventure with reward Realty started about 10 years ago, April was our 10 year anniversary of being in business. So I started this in 2013. And my goal was, I at the time, there was really, really high splits with the the major players. And as a newer agent at the time, well, not new, but like, I was a young agent. So I didn’t have a whole lot of resources. A lot of sweat equity went into it. But I wanted to create a place where agents could come, they could keep more of their commission, they could have access to the best tools, and really find themselves like a home. I very much am very involved with all of my agents at my brokerage. Today, as we’re recording this, this is Wednesday, we call it party day in our office. So we have our local broker tour that we go on. We all go to the meeting together, I actually sit on the board for our Real Estate Association. And we come back to the office, I have my agents in the other room right now kicking off the 100 days, to 100k with Tom Ferry, all the printed out books ready to go for them. So they’re listening to that while we record this right now. But we also do we do lunch, we we invite lenders and we roleplay. So really trying to you know, hone those skills, make sure that my every agent at our office is a beacon of information for all of their clients. D.J. Paris 12:04You know, it’s so funny because you say that, you know, this idea of having this once a week, sort of tour, you know, you call it part party day, and you get to go out and see some listings, you get, everyone gets the experience of walking through, there’s information that’s being shared. And then you come back and digest it all and then actually do some additional work with the Tom Ferry program, as well as role playing, which is I think one of the most invaluable exercises. Of course, this is awesome. I I’m thinking here we’re in Chicago, there are hundreds of brokerages here. I am sure that maybe one of them does that I’m sure. I’m just guessing. I don’t know of any personally that do that weekly. Again, I’m sure there are. And I’ll probably get some emails from people afterwards saying, Yeah, we do this, but it is very rare. And so I will, I will really honor you for that. And by the way, I always forget to say this until the end, if anyone is in the San Jose area, and would like that sort of experience as they’re growing their business to learn from somebody who learned from the very best. And also, practices at every single weekend literally teaches you and shows you how to do that. Check out reward Realty against reward realty.org. And by the way, no franchise fee. So how exciting is that? So you don’t have to pay that like mysterious 5% to the mothership, because there was no mothership. It’s just Caroline and her team. So that’s awesome. I love I love this idea of really building the skills of your agents, which is, I think I’ve seen a trend. I’m curious to get your take on this. I’ve seen a trend where managing brokers, people who are in charge of all of the agents, you’re I’m assuming you’re the managing broker as well, that yeah, so you have you wear a lot of different hats. And what I’ve seen over the last probably 10 years is this trend of the managing brokers are now being asked to do more recruiting because it’s getting more competitive, people are moving around a bit. And especially now, and they’re not they don’t have as much time to train. And so I think a lot of the training initiatives are being pushed off to teams, which I guess sort of makes sense in in a way. But I like the idea of joining a brokerage who actually the brokerage itself has amazing training. So I applaud you for continuing to support your agents in that way. Let’s talk about let’s talk about your your other venture because you were a little bit dissatisfied with database stuff. You wanted to do more. You’re right in the part of the country that loves tech, and it all of our tech, you know, sort of breakthroughs you come from your part of the country. So tell us a little bit about what you’re working on. This is actually really cool. Yeah, Caroline Hobbs 14:53absolutely. So we are essentially tied to Other some of the leading platforms follow up boss and open to close and building our own customized client portal, which will be client facing. So between the follow up boss and the open to close, we’ve actually created full cross functional usage of it. So currently they’ll link during Zapier, but we have a much more robust way of doing this, essentially allowing agents to solely work out of follow up boss, admins and transaction coordinators to solely work out of open to close and have everything sync all of the information showing up in the client portal to be accessible to your clients. And also be able to invite agents from the other side of the transaction to access the documents and things like that. So we can do an AI transaction management, kind of scanning the documents, reducing risk by by making sure that there’s not any kind of missing signatures missing, you know, questions skipped anything like that. And really having everybody worked together to get that file completed without a whole lot of trouble going back and forth. D.J. Paris 16:10So let me see if I understand because I think I do although I am a little bit under the weather. So I may just be making this up in my head, and you’ll correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I understand. So the problem you’re solving is, hey, clients oftentimes don’t really know where they are in in a, in a transaction. There’s…

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The Very Best Idea For Real Estate Newsletters • Nicole Hajdu Sep 20, 2023

Show notes

Nicole Hajdu with Hajdu Group Dream Town talks about her experience and how she got into the real estate business. Nicole discussed how she got influenced by her father to get her real estate license and how she began thinking about business. Next, Nicole emphasizes the importance of marketing and how it impacts the real estate business. Last, Nicole discusses the importance of sending personalized letters to clients and how this helps maintain the relationship with them. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Nicole Hajdu can be reached at (773) 727-2199 and nhajdu@dreamtown.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today you’re going to learn my favorite tip of all time for creating amazing real estate newsletters. Oh add a lot of other great stuff to 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. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host through this show. In just a moment we’re going to be speaking with top producer, Nicole Heidi but before we get to Nicole, just a couple of quick reminders please tell a friend about this podcast. Think of one other agent that maybe could use some tips from top producers like Nicole or maybe somebody who is already a top producer but is struggling a little bit and wants to hear from other top producers I’m sure you we all know other agents out there who are struggling. It is 2023 and it is a tough year for agents let’s help them out. Tell them about our show. That helps us out we thank you for that. Also leave us a review we really appreciate that whatever podcast app you’re checking us out on let us know what you think of the show. And you know what let’s just get right to the main event my conversation with a friend of mine and one of my favorite people in this industry. Nicole Hi do. K today on the show we have Nicole Hi do from the high do group with Dream town here in Chicago. Let me tell you more about Nicole. With over a decade of real estate experience under her belt Nicole’s unmatched local expertise and dedication to our clients is evident in every real estate transaction. She provides her clients with highly personalized, collaborative and stress free stress free real estate experience. Nicole takes the time to listen to the needs of her clients and help them navigate the real estate process with ease. She is a highly driven individual and attributes her real estate success with her passion for learning and development. Nicole has also been named a Chicago Association of Realtors top producer and a dream town top producer every single year since 2016. And most recently was awarded at the five star professional. She’s I’m sorry, she’s a five star Professional Award winner and member of the Forbes 500 list as the founder of the high new group. Nicole and her team are proud to offer clients the best in class experience and strategies that they deserve. The height of group brings together the art and science of real estate relying on the tried and true methodologies to achieve success while elevating this process for clients. Please, everyone follow Nicole at the high do group real estate and I will that is spelled H A J D you but I will have a link to that in the show notes. So you don’t have to type it in. Because you would probably not get it through the way I’m pronouncing it. But also follow a goat please visit our website the how to group.com Again, that’s H AJJDUHAJD. You Nicole, welcome to the show. Nicole Hajdu 4:25Thank you, JJ. Thanks for having me. D.J. Paris 4:28I would like before we get started just to say what a fantastic person Nicole is, at least to me, because this is just what a giver she has. And I don’t know that anyone will even care about the story but it meant something to me. So I’m going to share it. So Nicole is somebody I did not know we had no interaction I believe up until I somehow started receiving some emails from her. I probably signed up for it somewhere. And I started getting these really cool emails that I was very impressed by that she was sending out to her sphere of influence, and just on an off chance that she might want to chat with me or maybe even know who I am. I assume she didn’t. I sent her a message, I think on her email saying, I’m so impressed with this. Could I call you I just have a few quick questions. And she was like, Oh, my God, totally. So I called her she was in the middle of a conference, I think, with Tom Ferry, and like, somewhere in the southwest part of the country. And she just immediately picked up and we were talking like we had known each other for a long time. And here we are today, getting to speak to each other on the show. I’m a huge, huge fan of Nicole. She’s lovely, sweet person. And I’m glad to have you here. So Nicole, welcome. Nicole Hajdu 5:38Thank you. And I do remember that I remember, like yesterday, because you’re a bit of a celebrity in my eyes. It was a nice day. D.J. Paris 5:46I don’t have any awards, you have lots of awards, you’re the celebrity. Nicole Hajdu 5:52But I do remember that. Yeah, D.J. Paris 5:54actually, it’s funny, they make up awards for podcasters. And we’ve gotten about 20 different ones, or more than that. And they’re like, they’re not, they’re not really awards. They’re just, you know, somebody makes stuff up, and you know, whatever, but, but you get real awards that you’ve earned in one. So I am very impressed. But let’s, um, let’s, I don’t really know your story. So I’d love to hear how you got into real estate and why and, and, you know, sort of what keeps you going, Nicole Hajdu 6:21Okay, well, I got into real estate in 2007, when everybody was getting out of real estate, because it was the crash, right? And everybody was getting out, I got in and I didn’t think twice about it. I took I got my my license when my kids were four and three years old. And I remember that like yesterday, too, because I’d have to put them to bed and study and, and get my highlighter out and do fun stuff to pass that test. And I actually had three different jobs. I had my own business, I had a little print business, I was running, I worked in remodeling. And I was I was starting to do a little bit, you know, just getting into the real estate, right? So I was I was running around like crazy with these two kids. And my my then husband was in the police department and he worked opposite shifts. So it was me alone with the two kids and studying and got my license that way my dad was really influential me getting my license because he had his broker’s license. And but the year before he passed away, he said, get your license, you really need to do this, you need to either get your license become an agent, or you maybe own your own brokerage do something with it, because I’ve always wanted to own my own business. My dad was small business owner had a second generation plumbing contractor, commercial plumbing contractor. So being an old school Sicilian owning a plumbing company from 1929, you can imagine he put me to work when I was 11 years old, doing payroll. And you might remember this payroll was done on a ledger with a ruler, right. And I hate that somebody’s doing that 11 So I was working for him from 11 years old. And it really, really taught me a lot about business, integrity, you know, showing up when I needed to and structure and business planning because I got to live that life for so long. So he’s the one who influenced me into real estate, I got my license. And shortly after that, I had my daughter and about a year after that I ended up getting divorced. So I had three kids that a one year old, you know, a five and six year old and ended up winning my remodeling gay guy was there because I was in corporate and I went to Loyola University and I studied creative writing and photography, nothing nothing used for my career directly. But it was a good legal Critical Thinking type of major I had and gave me the ability to pretty much do anything I wanted in my life, which I’m grateful for, for having that education. But you know, being on my own and I’m glad my dad told me to do that and and get my license, but being on my own and having to have that flexible schedule. Because I needed to pick up my kids, I couldn’t have a nine to five. So it was pretty much baptism by fire. And I did that in 2007 Getting into market when nobody was getting in. I really was getting out so I really had to hustle, learn everything I could possibly learn through not podcasts then but through just training, Googling everything I can classes and I really just immerse myself in everything just to learn so I can be on my own with the with the three small kids. So it took me a few years, a few years to get to that point. But that’s how but that’s how I got started. So D.J. Paris 9:58it’s fine. I love the expression, if you want something done, give it to a busy mother or just give it to a mother, because it’ll get done. And I always find, you know, I’ve had a lot of moms on the show who started their career while they had children, like you did. And you know, you just think about how challenging that must be. And yet, people do it. So I always I applaud the mothers who take this as a career because I, I am a single person who does not have children, and doesn’t have a lot of responsibilities that I’m absolutely tied to. And I find it much harder to even, you know, stay on track myself, but boy, moms are really impressive, with, of course, everything they do. And so also, I was thinking too, that you got in the business 22,007, right, when things were not looking good. After the height of the market, like 22,005, and then 22,008, everything started to crash, maybe even 2007 A bit. And that is a very challenging time, at least, a lot of our agents today, or a lot of our listeners rather, they may be feeling a similar sort of way. Because of course, the market is a little challenging. Right now we know, interest rates are gosh, I was seeing today, like 7.2 is the average for a 30 year fixed, which obviously is much higher than anyone would would like. But it’s just a tough time right now, there’s a lot of people sitting on the sidelines, not a lot of listings, as well. So I think this is a really good timing for to have you on because we can talk about how you sort of persevered through a very difficult several years. So how did you start prospecting? Once you were, you know, getting into this career? What worked for you then? And how did you sort of start finding clients? Nicole Hajdu 11:50Well, I had to really think about how I wanted to do this and get the word out. And why would people trust me, especially with selling their home? Like buyers? Sometimes when you’re starting out, we all get more buyers than we do? listings, right? It just the net, just human nature for people to trust you maybe to drive them around and purchase a property more so than just that. So I’ve really kind of dug into, okay, what are my skill sets? What do I do? Well, what would make a difference in this industry? I always knew that I wanted to own a business, run a business and act like a business and not just have it be maybe like a you know, like a hobby. And I think people sometimes forget that in real estate, and forget that they have to run a business. So it was it was something I was doing at the same time like okay, business mind, and what are my skill sets and I looked at, okay, my college education. I started my own businesses from when I was younger, different little things I was doing. But I also worked in corporate. So I worked in TV production, I worked in advertising. We had big clients like Pillsbury, and Air Transat. And then I, and then I worked in. So I was first a print company, they knew a lot about print, then I worked into advertising, and then I went into TV production. So it was all aspects of marketing. So I took my background in marketing, and business development in terms of like project management. And I moved into real estate. So I wanted to get that out there. Yes, I know a lot about marketing, and I can market your home. And there’s I know about print and I know what quality is. And I started elevating that and reaching out to people through really just meetings like my neighbor. My neighbor told me that was my first deal with my neighbor. He’s like, we’re gonna look at building a home. I said, Listen, I’m getting my license right now. Please, please do not list with anybody. I’m going to list your house and sell your house. And every day I saw her I might almost I’m getting my license give me like two more weeks, two more weeks. And she was my first client. And she ended up we ended up selling to a really wonderful couple who I’m still friends with to this day. And that was 2007 was my first my first deal. And then I started marketing to my blog. Okay, well people know that I’m here. They know that I’m in real estate, or they heard that I’m in real estate because I’m telling them. We had black parties had mentioned that. I would send out postcards around the block. I would make phone calls. And I know right now I’m at Dream town. Uvalde Danny, who is the founder of dream town, he is really, really big on pick up the phone. If you just pick up the phone and call people. You never know it’s such a great opportunity to hear what they’re saying. Talk to them about whatever how’s the kids now we have we have access now to people’s lives that we never had before in 2007, right? Like I can See what you’re doing. I could see anything about your life and people could see about my life and pick up the phone and call and ask, right. And sometimes it leads to the best conversations or a connection. Or, hey, you know what I was just thinking about selling my house or my mom needs to sell our house, whatever it may be, it’s usually just organically happens if you reach out. So that’s what I started doing. I just started putting myself in opportunity in the way of opportunity. And I think people forget that too. You got to get out there and put yourself in that space to receive some opportunity. D.J. Paris 15:36You said a lot there. And a lot of great things to unpack. One of the things that I wanted to touch on was the phone that you mentioned, being that you and I are in a in the same generation. So we grew up with the phone, you and I grew up talking on the phone to friends, you were probably asked out on your first date via telephone, or at least that’s how it worked for where I grew up. And it was it was a lot of phone phones were really, really important. And of course to people today, anyone under 30, or even probably under 35 even, just don’t, they didn’t grow up using the phone. It wasn’t it wasn’t significant to them.…

Full show notes at the publisher

The 3 Tools You Need To Make Amazing Real Estate Videos • Video Boot Camp for Real Estate Professionals • Kim Rittberg Sep 08, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to another episode of Video Boot Camp for Real Estate Professionals with Kim Rittberg. Wondering what to buy to make amazing videos to grow your real estate business? Award-winning Real Estate Video Coach Kim Rittberg is here with tips on what to buy and what not to buy! If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Make sure to follow her on social media on Instagram Don’t forget to grab Kim’s Free Download – 10 Tips to Amazing Video <here> and follow her on Instagram. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today we’re going to be talking about the three tools you’re going to need to make the most amazing real estate videos. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. 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 Kim Rittberg 1:29I am super excited to be here with you. I am going to teach you today the three tools you need to become the go to real estate expert in your area. With video. I’m really excited I love teaching real estate agents how to grow their business. My name is Kim Rydberg I help real estate agents become thought leaders and become the go to agent in their area using video and podcasts. How do I know how to do this such a good question. I spent 15 years in big media Netflix Us Weekly inside edition. I actually launched the video unit for Us Weekly. And now I teach real estate agents from coast to coast I spoke at the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices convention spoke at the Women’s Real Estate Investment Summit. And I teach a lot of agents. I do one on one and group coaching. And I hear from them a lot of times, their first question is what equipment should I buy? And I’m like, nothing. I don’t think you actually need nothing. But the truth is you need very little. So let’s get into it. What are the three tools you need to grow your real estate business? I am not talking about the people who are filming real estate tours, who are videographers whose business is to is to film real estate tours. I feel very strongly and not just I feel strongly my professional opinion and knowledge is that as a real estate agent, you need to become the expert in your field. And just listed and just sold will not get you there. So I’m not necessarily talking about how to film a better home tour. Because I don’t think that our home tour is going to grow your business. I am talking about how to film so that you stand out you as a person, because that is the differentiator I see with my agents, the ones that I’m working with, that are showing up consistently, are getting referrals. They’re getting leads, they’re getting cold listings directly from social media, it used to be like, Oh, well, maybe that’ll happen down the line. I recently had someone in my video bootcamp, her second video posted, she got two people for discovery calls. So it happens all the time. Another agent of mine kept showing up and he got a co listing for a multi million dollar new development. And it’s because they’re showing up consistently. It’s not the home tours that they got. It is them showing up. Because when you’re putting yourself out there, your job is to establish yourself as the go to person, the most knowledgeable person, their local expert, their best friend. And so that’s what I’m teaching you today about what tools we need. So I’m jumping right into it. The very first thing you need is a tripod with a ring light. These are so inexpensive, so easy going to Amazon, if you email me, I will tell you which ones to buy in Ringly. And a tripod is so important because you need to have a steady video. If you’re holding your hand holding hands Holding, holding my hand a video when you’re talking for a long time, it’s gonna get wobbly. I do a lot of handheld videos, I think those are fine. But in general, as you’re going to film a lot more content, it’s super efficient to set up a tripod. Your your phone won’t move a lot. The ring light that is so amazing why it lights you you’re going to look like on a list movie star. The thing about a ring light is it creates an even glow on your face. If you’ll notice you’re ever on a zoom call. You’ll look at yourself and you’re like, Oh, I look at them in a cave. That’s because you’re not getting good lighting and it’s hard to get good lighting. A lot of buildings that lighting is overhead so it’s casting a shadow. Oftentimes I see people sitting with a window behind them. That’s a big no no. The point is you want to bring light that’s gonna give you even lighting. So this tripod and ring light you can get a desktop one or you can get one if you Have the room in your actual room, the floor one, I personally use a floor tripod with a ring light, and it has a little connector, I can also make it become a desktop. So that way sometimes if I’m actually filming, like sitting on my desk on my computer, I can just use the ring light. If I want to look great for a Zoom meeting, like I do zoom meetings with clients or someone’s considering me for a speaking engagement, I want to look really good. So I’ll use that red light. So that’s my first thing, a ring light, and a tripod. So I know a lot of agents are out in the field, you know, you’re you’re out and you’re busy. One of my agents actually from my course, or my group coaching course, my video boot camp, she likes using a battery operated ring light. So you don’t always have to worry about finding a place to plug in, and you can set it up no matter where you are. I think that’s an awesome idea. In terms of handheld, if you want to, you can use a selfie stick, so you’re not so so so close. People ask me about all this other crazy equipment, but I’ll be totally honest with you. Unless you’re really into technology. It’s just gonna sit in your house collecting dust. I can’t tell you how many things I bought that I never used. You know why I don’t love filming. I don’t love editing. I like writing I like coming up with the ideas. I like directing. So I keep it simple. And I teach you to keep it simple, because your main job is to sell houses, or rent houses or apartments, whatever. And it’s not to be a cinematographer. It’s not to be an editor. So I want to arm you with the skills that I have, that regular people can use and take advantage of. Alright, so we went over tripods and relights. People ask me about steady filming, there are some tools you can buy about filming. To make it steadier, you hold your hands on the side, it helps you be steadier, there’s a thing called a gimbal. If you don’t want to tap don’t buy that stuff. I’ve tried to use these I use one once I found my own house for when I sold my own house, don’t hate, don’t hate me Don’t hate me. It kept spinning around and frustrated me after the first time I loved it the second time I hated it. So if you don’t love technology, don’t buy that stuff. It does help obviously make smoother shots. But if you don’t want the technology, don’t use it. One thing to get a steadier shot as you’re filming, is use a steady stance. So lean up against a wall, stand in a firm stance like your legs apart and kind of keep your body even, that’s a really great way to ensure you’re shooting in a steady way. And if you’re having a move, like if you’re panning across a venue, I’m not going to talk about how story you know how I feel about how stories are not going to make you rich. Let’s say you’re filming in a restaurant, a local restaurant in your area, you’re going to hold your camera and shoot really slowly move it very, very slowly. Alright, the next one I’m talking about is editing equipment. I am not going to tell you to get editing equipment that Hollywood editors use. Unless you love technology, don’t get it. So editing go with the simplest editing tools. If you really do not like editing and do not love technology, edit it inside the apps. So Instagram has tools in the app, these are made to be very, very user friendly. If you do not love editing and you do not love technology, I would say that is the simplest way to do it. If you’re okay with editing or Okay, the technology, there’s very simple apps called in shot I use that a lot of people use cap cut. And again, you put a video in it, and you edit it very simply. I’ll be honest with you, I have taken at least three different editing courses. And I’ve asked my editor friends to sit down and teach me I compensated them many different times because I was a TV producer. And I did need to learn to edit because I worked with editors. And now I edit myself because I’ve taken so many classes in the past, but I still don’t love editing. So if you don’t love editing and you really hate the technology aspect of it, outsource, hire someone hire a videographer, hire an editor, have a social media manager do it for you, Teacher Assistant, or come to my video bootcamp and I will teach you how to do it. All of these things you have to do in the way that works for your business. For example, I am okay with filming I’m fine with filming on my iPhone. I’m, I’m alright editor. I don’t love it. When I have a lot of editing to do I outsource it is not my greatest skill. It is not my biggest moneymaker. Right? If I’m spending three hours editing something to bad use of my time, it’s a bad use of your time too. So think about that, in terms of time is money. If it’s taking a really long time to edit one video, consider outsourcing it. Tools, other tools. So we’re talking about editing, there’s lots of apps that can make your videos a little more fun. So you see those big words appearing on the screen as people talk. People use the captions app for that that’s a super simple app to use. There are other ones people use descript these are very simple and user friendly apps they’re made for everyone they’re not made for experts are not made for movie or TV producers. Another one that I do like using depending on the level that you’re Using it out, there’s just like all these different user friendly videos, different apps that can help with editing. Alright, the last tool I’m gonna give you, I’m gonna make you have, I’ve been very strict about this confidence, confidence and the right mindset. That is truly the most important thing. So, a lot of times people come to me and they’re like, really asking about the equipment. And I’m like, before we get to the equipment, are you showing up on camera? Do you feel good about being on camera? Do you watch yourself back? Are you working on videos, and then every few months, you’re like trying to level up your videos with more education? Or you’re sort of analyzing what’s working, what’s not working? You really have to start with the right mindset. Getting on camera is always the first thing. So I love my agents. i The keeping it real people are a little blast. They always like connect with me on social media, and we’re friends then. So connect with me on Instagram, at Kim Rydberg or LinkedIn, wherever you’re at Facebook, send me you on camera, show up, you could show up on Instagram Stories, you can just show up and just tell someone what you’re about to do today. I’m gonna say, Hey, I’m Kim. Today I’m walking around Brooklyn, New York to show everybody this cool new art gallery. Right? Do you love art? And you can put a poll yes or no? Do you love art? Yes or no? So it’s very, very, very important to start putting yourself on camera. And the reason why that is, is because people hire people, right? And it’s not just one home you’re selling, you’re always selling yourself when you’re on camera. And every time you pop up in that video, it’s a time to rekindle old relationships and build new ones. And I think that we all feel that it’s like, Am I really going to make a new relationship with a stranger on social media? And the answer is, absolutely. My agents across the country are having that happen. Sometimes it’s an old relationship, someone you knew from two years ago, seven years ago, 15 years ago, popping back up, because they’re seeing you show up. Other times it’s brand new relationships, new refers, that’s what I’m seeing from my clients. Both ends, some people are having new refers directly popping into their social media, Hey, I saw what you’re posting, I really liked that I have a buyer in my state looking for a home in yours. Let’s connect. I’ve had that happen to my agents recently. So it is happening and it happens all the time. So you do though have to be on camera. These are my gauges that are on camera. Not all of them will be on camera. One of them I had to pull teeth, she came to one of my big speaking engagements where I taught like hundreds of agents, and she didn’t even show up she had never been showing up. She was feeling really weird about it and really insecure. And she came and she did a video bootcamp. We push through that let’s show up on camera. And then we went into what are we making now that we’re on camera? What are we making. And she got two calls within the first week. So it happens all the time, you have to have that right mindset of it is important for me to be on camera. If I’m feeling that negative voices, I’m turning those down, and I’m getting on camera. So to wrap it up. You’re not a filmmaker, that’s no problem, you can still grow your business with video, not just you can still grow your business with video, you don’t even need those skills. I will say you don’t need any of those skills. You just need to learn how to use the basic skills and how to understand the strategy of it. And I can help you do that. Of course I do one on one plans. I do. group coaching video bootcamp, I do those where we all learn together, how to show up with confidence and how to make really good strategy, strategic videos that grow your business. I love doing that. It’s been really, really fun. So again, you can find me on Instagram at Kim Richburg r i t t b e RG and I have a free download make sure to connect with me I have a free download on how to make awesome videos and how to be confident on camera. And to wrap it up the three tools are you need that tripod and ring light and get one for your floor or one for your desktop. That is to get great even lighting and to have a steady steady video. The second tool you need it is an editing app. You can use a very simple one like cap cut or in shot or you can you can edit inside the social media app. They are made for regular people. So play around with them. I have tutorials you can message me and I’ll send you to my tutorials. I have lots of amazing how to videos on how to use that if you follow me on social you will see them and then lastly, the tool you need confidence, confidence. You need to have the right mindset to be on camera. Alright, thanks so much. It was great. Make sure to drop me a line on social and tag me when you show up on camera.

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The Importance Of Confidence & How To Cultivate It •Susan Santoro Sep 07, 2023

Show notes

Susan Santoro from Susan Santoro team with William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty talks about her experience as a realtor, and discusses how she was motivated to get into this business by her husband who is a real estate developer. Susan discusses what is her drive to keep going and being successful as she believes that it’s important to believe on your decisions because in the real estate business you wake up every day unemployed. Last, Susan emphasizes that every agent should be very confident in their job and learn how to sell themselves. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Susan Santoro can be reached at +1 203 605 5297 and ssantoro@wpsir.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Today’s a special episode of Keeping it real as we get to speak with an agent who has been practicing for 39 years. Does she have some wisdom to share? Oh boy, does she stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with 39 year real estate veteran Susan Santoro. Before we get to Susan, just a couple of quick reminders. Please, as always support our sponsors. We love our sponsors. They help pay the bills for us and help us keep producing episodes. So check out their services and products and consider investing in them. And then second, please tell a friend about the show. Think of one other realtor that could use the wisdom that you’re about to hear from Susan and share this episode with another agent so send it over. Also leave us a review. I guess I asked for three things. Oh well. Thank you for everyone. We love you. We love our audience our listeners. We appreciate you but let’s get to the main event my conversation with Susan Santoro. All right, today on the show our guest is Susan Santoro from the Susan Santoro team with William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty in New Haven County in Connecticut. Now let me tell you more about Susan. As since 1985 Susan Santoro has held a prominent position as one of the most distinguished agents within the greater New Haven shoreline region. As the foremost agent in sales at William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty is Guilford brokerage, she has garnered a reputation as an unparalleled performers securing the number one agent title and claiming the number three spot across the entire company. operating as a cohesive unit Susan leads the Susan Centauro team, which is a dedicated assembly of accomplished full time realtors, whose excellence earn them the distinguished top real estate award from Inman based on sales, amassing over 73 million in transactions just last year. Now year after year. Her achievements are underscored by multiple awards including the prestigious Connecticut magazine five star real estate agent Award. She secured the highest ranking for overall satisfaction. That’s a client award distinction showcased in Connecticut magazine. In addition to that she’s super into philanthropy and giving back she’s actively engaged with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, a testament to her unwavering dedication to fundraising and also is involved with the Ronald McDonald House trees of hope. And we are just so honored to have Susan on the show before I bring up before Susan comes on. want everybody to follow her at Sue’s Instagram, so go to Instagram Susan Santoro underscore realtor. Now we will have a link to that in the show notes as well as Susan’s website. Susan, welcome to the show. Susan Santoro 4:35Thank you. Nice introduction. Thank you. D.J. Paris 4:38Thank you. Now the last time I was for anyone who isn’t I’m going to interrupt myself now twice as getting through this. Anyone who isn’t familiar with New Haven, New Haven is just outside of New York. It’s right on the basically right on the shore, and it is known for a number of things. Most probably most notably, people of New Haven will tell you and they will tell you with a straight face that they invented pizza. Now, I don’t know if that’s technically true or not. And that is a debatable topic and I am not here to be the final authority on whether it was in Naples, Italy, or New Haven, but New Haven people are very, very proud of their pizza. And I have eaten New Haven pizza and I’ve eaten the very famous Pepys clam pizza, which sounds really gross for a lot of you listening, but it is delicious. So Susan, I am a big pizza fan. And I love the fact that I’m talking to a New Haven person because I love your pizza. Susan Santoro 5:36I look forward to treating you to it when you come, but it’s between puppies and Sally’s. We have these pizza wars all the time, and everybody has their favorite. in Wooster street. There are plenty of other places in New Haven also. And the pizzas good everywhere. I D.J. Paris 5:51went to chat GBT for the official answer. And again, chat, GBT. It’s not exactly the oracle at Delphi, but it’s a it’s close to accurate. And I said, Where was pizza originated? And it said, while people of New Haven will tell you that it’s originated there, we believe it actually is from is from Naples. But it’s still not totally clear. So we’ll go with new cars. Susan Santoro 6:15And you can get New Haven style pizza in your hometown too. D.J. Paris 6:18Yeah. So for any Chicago people, if you are familiar with piece, which is always on the top, Chicago pizza places list, it’s not Chicago style, which is the deep dish stuff, but it is it’s thin crust, more of a tavern II sort of style. But But no, not tavern, but thin and big. And just delicious. I am a huge fan of of New Haven style. So anyway, we are talking about, I can talk about pizza. I will. But we want to talk about Susan and all of her amazing real estate accomplishments. Now, Susan, you’ve been in the industry nearly 40 years, which is so amazing and impressive. And you are still crushing it all these years later, I would love to start at the very beginning of your journey, like how did you get into real estate and why? So it Susan Santoro 7:13was kind of an accident. My husband is a real estate developer and kind of ran out of land needed a place to build. And I was like, why don’t you get your real estate license and go and look for some land for me to build on. So that’s how it started. And then I thought, Oh, we’re gonna have a family, I’m going to be a stay at home mom. And then, you know, once you have a couple of good sales under your belt, you’re either born with it, or you’re not that adrenaline, that fire in your belly, you can’t wait to make the next sale. And then it becomes addicting. And so by the time my daughter was born, five years later, it was a major career. And I still wake up every single day with that fire, and I can’t wait to see what the next deal is gonna be. D.J. Paris 7:58That’s amazing. And it is it is fun. I would like to ask you, what is the what what fuels that fire like inside of you? I never really asked this question. But I think it’s a good one. Like, what do you do? Are you aware of what it is inside of you that is just so eager to keep going forward? Is there certain goals you’re looking to hit? Is it just a feeling of satisfaction? Is it about helping? What is it? Susan Santoro 8:23So it’s a lot of the above except that I except for the goal part? I am not believe it or not most successful people always say, Oh, I’ve got this, you know, board or this, you know, the goals of my year. I don’t like goals. I just like to keep on going keep on going. And you know, not many people have asked me you know, kind of like, what is your why? But the truth is, is I dropped out of college after my first year, I was never meant to go to college. My mom was not happy and told me that, you know, if you want to be successful in life, you have to have that opportunity and go to college and get a degree. So and my dad who ran a major corporation was CEO of a major corporation also didn’t finish college. So why think it was one of those things like I’m going to show her and now we just you know we laugh about it every time I get an award I send it to my mom and I say no let me know when I’m going to become something so that was kind of my why it makes my dad super happy still checks in on me weekly wants to know my sales. And you know it gets a big smile on his face. So I think I think he remains my why he wrote a wonderful book called pilot your life. It sits on my desk and it’s my motivational Bible. It’s a great motivational book for people in business and he’s definitely my why. D.J. Paris 9:50Well let’s Yeah, let’s give a plug for that books say the title one more time and Father’s Day life. Susan Santoro 9:54Pilot your life. My dad is Ronald Shaw. He was the CEO of the pilot and corporations? D.J. Paris 10:00Oh, well, we certainly know who they are. In fact, I have they have offices here in Chicago. And I have I have friends that work at pilot, oddly enough, I have one friend that works at pi or did. I don’t know if she’s still there. But oh, that is wild. Oh, my gosh, yes. That is a big company. Wow. And isn’t it amazing, not not an MBA, not a college grad. And he was a CEO. Incredible. Susan Santoro 10:26Yes. And a lot of the book kind of talks about that, you know, and it’s just that that competence level, you know, I raised my daughter saying, you know, make a decision, believe in it, own it, it’s yours, and then just follow it. And that’s just sort of a simple way of life, whether you’re making a decision on going to a party or not, or whether you’re making a decision on a business transaction, I think it’s all the same. Once you own that, you believe in it, you just keep going. And that’s how I feel about my business. And I tell my team and other agents who asked me all the time, how do you still do these hours, you know, it’s 6070 hours, sometimes a week, how do you still do this, after all these years is you wake up unemployed every single day in our business, and you have to go out and look your best. You know, if you wear makeup, put on your makeup, put on, you know, get dressed, just go out and present yourself the best way possible, and you will be a success, you’ll be confident and it’ll show. And with that comes success. D.J. Paris 11:32You wake up unemployed every day, you know, that is so true. And it is, you know, I know there would be people to say, well, that’s a negative way to look at it. But you know, what, I have found that having that thought of, you know, it’s something that’s pushing against me versus something I’m running towards, like, the idea that I’m unemployed, oh, my god, I gotta pay my bills. That is, I think, a more powerful motivator than like, for example, if I was, if I was being chased by somebody with a knife, I think I’d run faster than if I was running towards a million dollars, I bet I would run faster with the guy chased me with a knife. So even though I would like not to be motivated by by pain, the reality of it is it’s true. We are as agents, we are unemployed every single morning when we wake up. And it’s an opportunity to not only find business, but to keep the business that we do have, and really treasure it, because it can go away at a moment’s notice. That is a really great lesson, we’ll Susan Santoro 12:34come up to you at parties, people come up to the grocery store. Everybody wants to know how the market is tell me about real estate or asking you about a particular property. And so that’s where again, you’re selling yourself constantly. D.J. Paris 12:47How when, how important is it for you to have that information about the local market? On hand ready to talk? It may be, you know, to varying degrees of detail, I’m sure. But how important is it when you’re at the grocery store? And someone’s like, Hey, Susan, you’ve been doing this forever? What’s the market? Like? How do you typically address a question like that? Susan Santoro 13:08So it’s very important, and I am a statistics person. So I do look at the numbers every day, whether it’s against, you know, me, my, I don’t want to call them competitors, but it just associates other associates. But I always kind of know what’s going on. I look at percentages in, you know, I just wrote an offer, for instance, in Fairfield County, and I usually based just out of New Haven County, but because Yale New Haven Hospital has bought up a hospital down in Fairfield County, we now have a lot of our doctors that are going that way as well. So I was just down there, and their business is done very differently than ours. But before I went down, I went and I looked at kind of where the numbers are. And I’m seeing that things are going approximately 13% over asking. So it was such an important tool for me to be able to share with my clients. We crafted a great offer the first time they didn’t want to go that high over and and they didn’t get the first house and the second one, they listened to me we crafted a perfect offer the sellers could not say no to and it went approximately 12.5% over asking, but our offer got signed. You know, so I think knowing the numbers is very important knowing your market. And then of course, you know, you can always, you know, tell someone you know what, I’m going to get back to you later, I’m going to look this up for you and good reason to make a phone call back to that person. Absolutely. You’ve captured them. It’s like being stuck in an elevator. And you know, D.J. Paris 14:43I love what one of I just want to go back to one thing that you said that for me was was pretty rough. It’s something that I can’t remember another one of our guests saying in all the episodes we’ve done, so I just want to step on it a little bit because I think it’s is really, really a great idea. So what Susan said, and she said it very quickly, and I just want to make sure that everyone heard it. She said, You know, when she was about to produce an offer, she looked at, you know, obviously comparable places, she looked at list price, and then sales price, and just did the quick math on what you know, that percentage over was, that way she can bring that data back to her clients say, here’s why we should consider this type of offer based on you know, other other comps, I don’t know that a lot of agents do that. And that is, you know, a lot of agents are like, Okay, Mr. or Mrs. Buyer, how much do you want to spend? Okay, maybe we can go a little bit over. And it’s more of just like finessing like the feeling of the of the buyer, but not actually bringing the hard data saying we should offer X based on I think that is a really great idea for anyone who’s working with offers, do Susan Santoro 15:51your homework, you know, before you go…

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How To Level Up Your Communication Skills • Cathy LaMon Aug 30, 2023

Show notes

Cathy LaMon with The LaMon Team talks about her experience in real estate and how she switched from working in IBM to building her business in real estate. Cathy discusses the importance of having great communication with clients and the role phone calls and voicemails play in that regard. Last, Cathy discusses how important it is for new agents to not stop learning and trying to find what path best suits them in this business. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Cathy LaMon can be reached at (404) 805-2273 and cathy@lamonteam.com. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00survey show that the number one quality that buyers and sellers want in an agent is great communication. Today we’re going to show you how to do that. 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. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show, by the way, we just celebrated the only reason I know this is LinkedIn told me, but we just celebrated our sixth year doing this podcast. So I just wanted to say thank you to everyone listening right now. And of course everyone that has ever listened to our show, we have millions of downloads 10s of 1000s of regular listeners and we could not be more grateful to all of you. When I started this six years ago, I had like three listeners and they were you know my family. So I am glad that it has spread beyond that and we are about to be speaking with Kathy Limon top producer. But before we get to Kathy please help us continue to grow let’s go another six years, but I want to reach twice as many agents as we have. There’s 1.5 million realtors out there not all of them know about this show. So please help us out let it let other agents know about the show. Everybody wants to learn from top producers. So let’s let them know that this exists and it’s free. And also please support our sponsors. They are paying the bills and we love our sponsors so please check them out, buy their products and services and tell other people about them as well. Alright guys, let’s get to the main event happy sixth birthday to all of us and our birthday, I guess anniversary whatever. Happy six to all of us listening and let’s get to the main event, my conversation with Kathy Lamont. Today on the show we have Kathleen Lemond with Keller Williams in Atlanta. And let me tell you more about Kathy. Now Kathy Lemond began selling real estate in 1992. After leaving the corporate world of IBM sales, where they were offering incentives to downsize their workforce. Kathy took advantage of that and joined a locally owned brokerage with about 500 agents and set to learn all that she could by attending trainings and conferences all over the country. In 2001. She was given the opportunity to invest in a new Keller Williams office in Buckhead where she has been ever since. And she has a small team consisting of herself, her husband, and a full time licensed Operations Manager. And their goal this year is to help 42 families build a life they love. And her average price point is about $750,000. And she works her and her team work predominantly by referral. I want everybody to visit Cathy’s website because not only is she our guest than we should always support our guests but she has a really beautiful looking website, Lemond team.com, L A m o n team.com. You can also find links to all of her social channels there. We will post links to that in our show notes as well. But Lemond team.com is where you go to learn about Kathy and her team. Kathy, welcome to the show. Cathy Lamon 4:39Thank you DJ and glad to be here. D.J. Paris 4:41Thanks. We’re glad you’re here at well as well. i It’s funny when you were I was when we were thinking about your bio and I actually was in Buckhead in 2001 with Anheuser Busch. I was they were having their conference in Atlanta and they had rented out a good a number of the bucks. had bars for this conference. The conference was at the CNN Center, or I don’t know what it’s technically called. But over there downtown, and then in Buckhead was they had all these fun nighttime activities. And then I went back and visited Buckhead, men probably, I don’t know, five or six years later, and it had really blossomed. And even now it’s obviously blossomed even further. But what a fun area to have an office you picked a great location Cathy Lamon 5:27is fun, fun things to do a lot of good restaurants, great people. And never a dull moment in Buckhead. D.J. Paris 5:37Lots of fun to be had. And it is really a fun place to visit. So if you haven’t, if you ever ever been to Atlanta, go to the world of coke, and go visit but Cathy Lamon 5:48yeah, I think it’s called World of coke. Yeah, it is. It is. There’s a beautiful Georgia Aquarium right next door to that. So it’s a great place to bring families and good place to visit. D.J. Paris 6:01Yeah, well, I love Atlanta. So Kathy, I would, you know, I understand you were in really the IT world. You were in sales before when you were at IBM. And and I understand you had an opportunity to take a nice exit package and then decide to switch to careers. Why did you decide to switch careers to real estate? Cathy Lamon 6:19Well, at the time, I had little kids and thought, oh, real estate, you know, you can kind of set your own hours do your own thing. I’ll try real estate. Well, anybody that’s in the business knows that, yes, you’re very flexible, unless you have a client and especially an out of town client, and then your time is their time. But it did work out well to just be able to pick up my daughter’s a little bit more often. And just give me the opportunity to be a mom a little bit more often. So it was it was a good move. And I, you know, I loved IBM, it was a great place to learn, it was a great place to start my career I came I went with them right out of college. And what I’ve realized about real estate is there’s even so much more growth opportunity, both personally in terms of training and growth opportunities there, as well as income, IBM kept me, I was on commission. But if you sold too much too early in the year, they would just raise your quota and you’d be back making the same money. So it was it was very tightly controlled and real estate in the US people say the sky’s the limit, and there is no ceiling and no floor. But it’s a great business. D.J. Paris 7:44It is. And I also to want to put this in perspective, because when you started the world, I mean, obviously the world changes every year. But it really has changed since when you started you were pre internet. So we’re talking 1992. I mean, technically the internet was sort of around but not Yeah, certainly wasn’t adopted by the by the public. And I remember I went to college in 1994. And that was the first time that we started seeing web browsers, and the ability to sort of and it still wasn’t widely used. So you were I’m guessing we were on the phone a lot with people who did not grow up pre 1994. They don’t know how to use the phone, they don’t use the phone today, they don’t communicate that way with their friends, I still think the phone is a really great way to communicate with people. And it’s kind of a bit of a lost art now. But I do think that and even though people may not be as accustomed to being on the phone as they once were, I think we have this yearning to actually interact of voice to voice. Obviously, we could do FaceTime. And there’s ways to do voice and picture at the same time. But I imagine you probably still pick up the phone quite a bit is that is that Cathy Lamon 8:58I do. As a matter of fact, I’d set a goal to make 10 calls every day. And a lot of those end up being voicemail and you know, there’s always this question, Should I leave a voicemail? Should I not and I just choose to leave the voicemail. I think if someone does take the time, it’s nice for them to hear my voice and maybe it’s a little more personal. I also I use text a lot too, though, you know? Yeah, there is D.J. Paris 9:27something to be said about a phone call. And that’s also one of the nice things about being on the phone these days is you are going to get a lot of voicemails because, you know, you get to choose now who you want to speak to and, and it’s it’s really I think made the phone a lot easier to use as because you’re like, well I’m probably gonna get a voicemail and then you get to leave the lovely message and my thought and Kathy, I know you’re right. It’s like are they even going to hear the message? I think most people listen. I don’t know. I mean, I’d be curious to see stats on this because maybe I be wrong, but I Oh, it depends on the age range, I think, yeah, well, if you’re listening to our podcast, you’re a realtor, you should be listening to your voicemails because there may be some business in there. But I understand the idea of like, God, am I just wasting my time leaving voicemails? I don’t think so. Because, for example, Kathy, if you called me on my birthday, to wish me a happy birthday, for example, you just came up in your CRM, I probably wouldn’t answer the phone, not because I don’t like you. But because it’s my birthday. And I probably don’t want to answer the phone. But maybe the next day or later on that day, when I go back to listen, I would I would very much go. That was sweet of her. That was Yeah. So for those that are like, Ooh, I’m a little nervous talking, most people aren’t going to pick up but you can still leave them a nice, thoughtful message. Cathy Lamon 10:43Well, what I realized to DJ is, when I do get people, I find out things that otherwise I would never have found out, you know, somebody has been sick in their family, or they’ve just gotten some kind of news. It’s, it’s amazing. And, you know, that’s one call, maybe out of 20. But if I hadn’t made the call, I would never know. So I’m always like, Oh, I’m so glad I made that call today. D.J. Paris 11:11Well, it’s true, too. Because a lot of times, you know, we think Well, how else do we get our news about people in our lives? While we might look on social media, and you know, when things are maybe not going well, for a family, or they’re going through some sort of, you know, difficult time, maybe they’re not posting about that on Facebook, some people do, a lot of people don’t. And so you might not know, unless you picked up the phone and reached out. So let’s talk about how you did get started. Free Internet, right, like you still had to go out and prospect. And obviously, you know, we’re talking about a long time ago, but I think, you know, a lot of the ways in which you probably prospected or built your business, then still are applicable today. Because I think fundamentals typically don’t change. So I’m just curious, you know, back in, in the early 90s, when you were starting this new career, how did you grow your business, where you didn’t have a background of being in real estate? Cathy Lamon 12:05Well, that’s one of the first things I did when I got into the business. Even before I got in, I had an IBM discount to buy a laptop, and I bought a laptop, and I loaded everybody that I knew into a database. So just you know, that’s the bare fundamentals. And that has not changed today. If people that’s how you get started as you build a database, so I did that, you know, we, we had computers that would access. So I, when I started, I called expired, listings for sale by owners, those were out on a computer, you had to go to the office to get it, you know, to key it in, and you could see the listings that are coming up, but you had to go into the office to do it. So that that is very different. But a lot of it was the same same old, same old, get on the phone and call those expireds. I eventually got to the point where I decided that really wasn’t what I wanted to where I wanted to live. And that expired for sale by owner world. So I ended up doing much more of a referral based business once I got a little traction going. D.J. Paris 13:14Yeah, I have. But I think even though you’re like oh, the expireds and for sale by owners aren’t for me. And I think most agents probably have a similar experience with for sale by owners, you have to be a special kind of personality, I think to be able to withstand some of the difficulties of calling expireds. And, and for sale by owners. They are tough calls, or they can be tough for us. But certainly the Kinder are students and kinder I’m sorry, the gentler approach is the working by referral, made, you know, famous, made famous by a lot of people. But in the real estate industry, Brian Buffini is sort of associated with working by referral live the easy life is one of his slogans. I know you’re a fan of Buffini systems, I am as well. And you’ve not just worked with the Feeny and his company, but other other systems too. But how important was it because I know you really dove into this, probably I’m guessing, getting the training at IBM where training is so important. And there’s such a white glove firm, that you probably sort of thought I gotta I gotta get my knowledge up. And so talk about going to conferences and the importance of that for you in those early days. Cathy Lamon 14:29In the company that I was with had good basic training, in terms of you know, when you’re getting started, and what’s the contract and what do you need to know. But for anything more advanced, I found I had to travel somewhere and learn and that suited my personality. So well. I I’m very learning based. I love learning new things. I think if if I didn’t if I stop learning in this business, I would not want to do it anymore. But even after all these years, I feel like I learned something new every day. A but I would go to conferences I went to there was a guy named Howard Britton that assembled all these top agents from all over the country and I went to that I went to the Feeny I went to some other trainers as well, just learning and trying to figure out what fit me and what felt right. And then my style now is a mixture of a lot of different trainers that I’ve heard over the years, my core is Buffini that just working by referral, that’s the core and I still love that system. And, you know, you can add on top of that, add the videos add add all the fun things, but at the core, it really needs to be in my opinion, it needs to be about a relationship. And digging deeper and going deeper with with people serving them at its deeper level as we can. D.J. Paris 15:56I could not agree with you more. I apologize our internet, it may be a little choppy. So if anyone’s if I’m chopping anyone, I apologize, but I absolutely agree with you, Kathy. You know, I was thinking about Brian Buffini, when what I liked about what I liked abo…

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Step By Step Buyer Checklist For Real Estate Agents • Breaking Down Ali’s Systems • Ali Garced Aug 29, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to Breaking Down Ali’s Systems mini-series with Ali Garced. In this mini-series Ali will be explaining how she built her systems both for buyers and for sellers. In the first episode, Ali describes how she breaks apart her process working with buyers into 6 different segments. Please follow Ali on Instagram here. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Ali Garced can be reached at ali@garcedrealty.com and (914) 318-4918. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00Hello and welcome to a very special episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. Why Is today a special episode? Well, in just a moment, I’m going to be turning it over to Ali gar said Ally’s actually been on our show, actually recently. And she had such a great reaction from our listeners and fans, that we asked her to come back to do a couple of special episodes for just for you guys. And so today, she is going to be going step by step through her buyer checklist. And this is probably the best buyer checklist presentation I have ever seen. So guys, this is a literally step by step instruction to help level up your buyer checklist process. So without further ado, and by the way, we’re going to do more of these from some of our guests like Ali, please let us know if you want more of this because I think this is really really cool stuff. So I hope you guys enjoy it. Let us know your feedback. And now let’s turn it over to my friend Ali gar said also follow her on Instagram, Ali, the agent, its ally underscore the underscore agent. So we’ll have a link to that in the show notes. But let’s turn it over to ally. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our show Ali Garced 2:40Hey everyone, it’s Aligarh set again or ally the agents on all social media that spelled a Li and I am back with my first segment of the buyer checklist. I promised DJ that I would share everything in my checklist. So originally, you know the checklists were the buyer’s checklists, the seller checklist, the investor checklists, the onboarding checklist. Originally everything was for my just for my downline, but I really want to I really hope that this helps just better the industry altogether. So I am giving away my buyer checklists, my seller checklists, my 200 Step onboarding checklist for agents, no matter what level or like level they’re at is still just for my downline, but I am giving away my homebuyer checklist and my seller one so this is part one of maybe two or three for the buyer side. We’ll see how it goes. And then I’m also going to have a two part buyer or two part for the seller checklists. So I am on Trello. And I am going to be walking through how I have everything set up on Trello. If you want to follow along, watch this on YouTube because I am sharing my screen. And if you can’t, that’s okay, I’m going to make it I’m going to vocalize as much as I can. So in that way, it’s as if you are following along. So I’ll start with what is even Trello right Trello is a free project management system. You could use your CRM, but I started using Trello because it was free. And I kind of just stuck with that. So I’m going to show you and vocalize how I have this laid out. Starting from the very left side, I have a whole section for sellers and then a whole section for buyers and then a section for referrals as well. And what I do for those in my downline is I give them access straight to this Trello checklist they can copy and paste it but for those that are outside of my downline, I will be sending you a link to it. So that way you can have access to but not the full access that I have given that I’ve poured my heart and soul into for my downline specifically. So on the left hand side here I have it I have sellers and buyers broken into three different columns. So one is like far out sellers and I’m calling like see sellers be sellers is you know, three to six months out, again to make sure that you’re hitting everyone on that specific tempo, then I have the third column is a seller’s getting ready to list, you know, you need to go on an appointment today and meet with them. Then I have one week before going live. The next column is once they are live on the market. The next column is once they’re under contract. Because again, as you start getting more and more, you know, properties under contract and working with more buyers and sellers to scale, you’re gonna get overwhelmed. So you need to have this organization in the beginning. So as if you’ve never used Trello, you can like drag and drop little cards. So you can you know, as soon as someone’s under contract, and then they’re they’re out a week out from closing, just drag and drop the card. Now, you know the numbers change for how many are about a week out from closing. Then the next column is the size of for sellers, then on the buyer side, which I will be focusing on today is how I work through my buyers. So again, see buyers about a year out but be buyers about six months out ish. And then a buyers, hot buyers or hot leads talk to them today. Then, of course under contract has its own column one week out from closing, once they’re closed for 2023, or whatever year we’re in, when you’re listening to this, then an archived one close but in the past, you know, before are further out than a year ago, if that makes sense. And then I also have a dead lead column as well. And then I go into the referrals. I have everything consolidated onto this Trello board. Again, this was for this is for the downline so they can just see how I organize things, I will show you mine, he is crazy. It has the same exact thing. But in order to make this as clear and easy for you to follow along. And for the agents to follow along. In my crew, I made it as simple as possible. So this is a template. So let’s start. Let’s open up this Trello checklist. And in the beginning here is the source. That’s the first thing you need to be tracking is who is giving you business where’s your business coming from because that is what you want to replicate double down on, you know if it’s all coming from Zillow, then double down on Zillow, if it’s all coming from a couple people that you know that consistently give you business, you show them some love, give them some gifts. And, and say thank you. So you need to know you need to track X I’m such a huge proponent of tracking everything, a track where your leads are coming from. So then, of course, I have like just the typical questions of of what you’re going to be asking what you need to know once you’re starting to work with the buyer. I have some attachments here, they might not apply to everyone because this is a buyer broker specifically for our area. critical dates list. Of course, this might not apply to you, but that’s okay. You can include your own attachments. And then buyer initiation. This is the first portion of the checklist. So I have my checklists, sorted into different segments and segments. So when we first start talking to a buyer, first thing is add them to your calendar, add them to your CRM. So that way, you know to follow up at what tempo what are the notes of what you previous previously said. The second for the second portion here is take the intake from the Calendly. And this is what I used to have as buyer email number one. For my buyers, I have buyer emails one through six, it’s canned, it’s template, it’s evergreen. So I just copy and paste all I do is just change this who the recipient is for, but I used to have this as buyer email number one. Now what I do is I send all buyers to my Calendly Calendly is a paid service. It’s about $160 a year, I highly recommend you sign up for it in case you haven’t already. But and if you want to follow along there too, with whether you’re looking at the screen or not. I you can go on mine and copy the exact questions that I have. It’s open to the public. So if you go on calendly.com/guard said Realty that’s spelled G AR C Ed Realty slash buyer will see exactly what my buyers are filling out before they meet with me. So I’ll show you here. Go as if you’re going to be booking an appointment. I’m getting their name, email number, I have a next up is the box that says you know, will you be selling another home before during this this next purchase? Yes or No? If yes, what’s that address what the zip code of the home you’ll be selling? Because when we meet at the time that they scheduled for, I’ll be asking if they want are a realtor in that area to help them sell their home before they purchase with us? What’s the reason that you’re buying and selling? Then I also have I also ask, what are the top three must haves? Very important, as you all know, what are the top three wants? What are the top three deal breakers? And the catch all? Is there anything else that you’d like me to know to be better prepared for our meeting? So this they might come out with something out of left field better that they put it in this Calendly now before your appointment with them, instead of you know, on the fly, where you might not know the answer, and you could have researched it beforehand. And this last section is for them to send text messages for calendaring to send text to the whoever’s booking the call. What this is only portion one, right I’m not, I’m not going to go into Calendly. Today, although I can on a on a next meeting, if you guys wish. But in the back end of Calendly, I also go into the work flows tab, because I want to make sure that I’m not going to be stood up. So I have the automatic email and texts sent out to the buyers or sent out to anyone who books with me saying thanks for you know, confirming you know we’re on for XYZ you scheduled this, this specific type of meeting. And then I also have a 24 hour out meeting in case they book out more than a day out. And then I also have the hour before it sends them a text it sends them an email saying hey, we look forward to seeing you in one hour for the home buying consultation. So let’s go back to my Trello checklist. That is what I have all the buyers fill out this is what used to be in my buyer email number one, so I will not be covering Berryman number one because instead now I have Calendly save so much time. So you take the information of what they put in the buyer appointment, and you start looking you know, you already start thinking about what kind of homes are looking at, who’s going to be in the meeting, etc. So then going down this checklist here, ask the buyers before going under contract with them. This is while you’re meeting with them over zoom, and I meet with everyone over zoom. Because a lot of my a lot of my meat and potatoes clients are actually out of state. So because I do have a military background. So a lot of them our PCs thing is what they call moving in the military. So but then I got used to that. And I figured that that was such a better time spent, even if they are local in the area. Nobody wants to drive to an office, nobody want this was a power move, I think. So save the time for them. And for you meet over zoom. And that is where you go over a couple of questions, even more questions, because Calendly only allows 10 questions. So that’s where you ask them? How often do you expect to hear from me? What how can I be the best agent for you? And a lot of agents have issues with that question because it kind of like shifts the power dynamics, if they if you want to call it that. But don’t forget that not only are they interviewing you as an agent, you are interviewing them as clients do not work with someone that doesn’t make you feel good. You know, there’s so much business to be had, especially now that so many realtors are leaving the business, scoop up the rest of the business. Don’t Don’t be afraid to say no, because they’re every single client that you take on, I’m probably preaching to the choir here. But every single client that you take on, that you don’t feel good about, you know, you have like that. Like those bad butterflies in your stomach, whenever they call you or text you that is a sure sign that you are not meant to be working together. And that is okay, let them go. Because all the time that you’re spending with them is time that you could be spending with other clients that make you feel good. So anyway, then also ask them what’s the best method of communication? Of course, because some people only like phone calls. Of course, as you guys know, I don’t, I don’t like phone calls. But if they do, guess what I’m doing phone calls, text, email, whatever it is, what I like about Trello is I can add these notes to the very, very top. So as your Trello board gets busier as you’re adding other clients here you can easily you know, see, say Emma buyer in this city, this type of property, text or call, so that way you don’t have to remember who does MLA tax. Let me look at that calendar and let me see that email that came in. No, it says right there, Emma likes text messages. Then add them to your CRM over here. I have KB core and I love KB core. I didn’t in the beginning but wow. Like I really really like I only know about 30% of what it handles and I’m actually testing this out too. So if if you want a copy of this checklist and you haven’t already reached out to me on on social media, text the word checklist to Oh 520-341-2552 more than happy to send it to you. Then of course, you want to contact the lender or connect them to a lender, I usually do like a group chat with the lender, then of course, set them up on a search. Next on the Trello checklist is check in three days after setting them up on the search. And this is I also have setup on my CRM. So as I add each client into the CRM, in Cavey, core specifically, and I’m sure others do the same thing. I add tasks. So in three days from when we met, I’m going to add a task to notify me to reach out to the client saying, Hey, did you like everything on the on the search? Is there anything I could switch super easy for us to do? So just let us know want to make sure we’re not sending you trash? So then, here, as you can tell, next step is I had to send buyer emails one and two. Now, of course, by email number one no longer exists. So let me know let me change that right here. Send Email number two. Let me show you email. Number two, what does buyer email number two have? Ally? Well, let me show you. I use superhuman, it’s a way to do a lot of shortcuts. But you can do the same thing. With just saving this as a template on either Gmail or Outlook, whatever you use, but templated emails, do not be copying, or do not be writing the same email over and over again, that’s not a way to scale. And you want to be able to scale I imagine if you’re listening to this…

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Why You Should First Work On Consistency • Learning With A Lender • Joel Schaub Aug 28, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to the August episode of Learn with a Lender with Joel Schaub of Guaranteed Rate! In this episode, Joel discusses why educating new agents in real estate business is crucial and how growing positivity will help them handle stress. Joel also talks about work ethics and the importance of having consistency, setting priorities and discipline and how they lead agents to good relationships with their clients. If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube! Joel can be reached at joel@rate.com and 773.654.2049. This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks. Transcript D.J. Paris 0:00We’re approaching our 500th episode. And I just wanted to say that the number one characteristic that I’ve learned from all of the agents that we’ve had on our show of top producers has been consistency. We’re going to dive into that today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show. Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Harris, I am your guide and host through the show today once again is our monthly series called Learn with a lender with Joel shop from guaranteed rate. Now Joel is the vice president of lending at guaranteed rate. He’s been doing loans at a high level since 2003. He’s got to that level because of what he does specifically for agents, which is he gives back part of his commission to the buyer on every transaction. In fact, last year alone, Joe gave back over $300,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with him and that puts Joe’s volume in the top 1/10 of 1% of all lenders nationwide. In fact, there’s actually 400,000 loan officers in this in the United States. And Joel is currently ranked number 137. Now this year alone, he’s closed. Oh my gosh, I just screwed something up. Joel. My numbers just got screwy. So could you please tell us your numbers? I apologize. My eye numbers are screwy too. It’s crazy. I know. Yeah, right now, I mean, we’re lucky enough to be just under $75 million close DJ for the year in purchase. And that’s 170 closed transactions year to date so far. Yeah, amazing. That really is amazing. It is a tough year, a lot of our audiences probably, you know, feeling the challenges right now in the market. But what we do know is that consistency, hard work and discipline really pays off, it might just feel a little bit trickier today. But everything that people can do today is going to actually, you know, result in some bear some fruit here in the near future. So while it may feel I just want to address this because I run into a lot of realtors. So on my show, when this podcast when I talk to top producers, I’m speaking to the audience here for I just want to make a quick point that I hope resonates with everyone. So when I speak the top 1% producers, they get to where they’ve got by by tolerating market cycles, right? So they’ve been through UPS, they’ve been through downs, especially if they’ve been around, you know, since or the early 2000s. They’ve been through a few of these cycles. And they seem to understand the cycle. And so what I encourage anyone who hasn’t been through some of these cycles, and it’s feeling maybe a little tougher right now is, you know, seek refuge in some of these agents who have been around longer than you talk to them, ask them for the wisdom that they gained through these challenging times in the past, because they’ll give you all sorts of ideas of Oh, I wish I would have done this, you know, from 2008 to 2010, when the market was really, really struggling. And now you know, they’re able to do some of that today. And so if this is your first time going through a tricky market cycle, don’t don’t despair. It’s all part of part of the normal cycle of business. But we want to keep you motivated and encouraged to continue growing your business, which I know can be a little trickier. So Joel and I are going to focus on some things today that we really want to keep you engaged with your business even though you know right now, inventories low rates aren’t exactly where we want them to be. Yeah, that’s the rial Woody, and there’s things you can do to stay on top of it. So anyway, I apologize for that little rambling monologue there. But I did want to, I did want to make that point because we know it’s tough. And if you listen to my show, you know, we talked to these top one percenters. They’re like, everything’s great. This is so awesome. And it is great, because they’ve been through some of these hard times before, and they know how to navigate through them. So if you’re struggling, don’t you’re not alone. But we’re going to try to help you through that on this on this episode a little bit. And Joel has been around for a long, long time in this business. And he’s seen what top producers do throughout their time in practice to help you as well. So Joel, welcome once again to the show. Well, I love that you’re talking about this. I love the tangent, you call it a rant. But I mean, it’s true. It’s really what we’re doing here is literally educating agents. Because if the negative news is all around, you surround yourself with positivity, I work with agents that right now can tell you what they would have done if they had all the time in the world, right? So if it’s, if it’s slow for you, right, think about what you could do to actually grow the business, right? Because these agents, if you’ve been around for years, we recall when we didn’t have any extra time on our hands. So if you’re sitting there saying, I have all the extra time on my hands, because I don’t have 20 deals closing a month, right? What do you do? Surround yourself, listen to these podcasts, right? Grow your database, right? Make sure that people know that you’re in the business. And so we’re gonna go through a lot of stuff today that will absolutely help you get even one more deal. Maybe it’s a new buyer, maybe it’s a new listing. But by tuning in, you’re really going to grow. So we applaud you for that. I’m going to start with one that that I just heard, because I’ll forget in the next few seconds if I don’t say it now that I just heard from a former guest of of keeping it real. Also Joel, you know this person as well. He was a 30, under 30, National Association of realtor award winner, Jordan Pyle, he’s a local Chicago agent. He’s a, he’s a lovely, lovely guy. And I was talking to him recently, and he was telling me that one of the things he’s been doing with the extra time, as you mentioned, that he has now because he’s not closing 20 deals a month, is it in the sounds kind of it’s actually a really fun one, I think, at least it would be for me. And what he’s doing is he’s spending an hour every day. And that’s a lot of time. So if you have an hour, great if you don’t, you know, maybe you do a half an hour, and he literally is just replying to Facebook posts and Instagram posts for the people in his database. And he’s doing it in an authentic way. And what he’s doing is he’s looking at his his feed, I want to get really specific about this. He’s looking at his feed, when he sees a friend of his or somebody that is in his database, you know, goes on vacation, or maybe has some life event or just you know, goes out to a nice dinner and takes a picture of it. He comments on it. And he says it has to be authentic. He’s not just like, you know, it looks awesome. He he thinks about like a nice comment. He writes it and he goes, I want people to know that I care about their lives. And now I have time to demonstrate that through replying. And he goes, I do. I can’t remember if he does 30 or 50. I think it want to say he does 30 to 50 comments a day, and not not to the same people every day, of course. But and when I heard that, I said, What is that dude, he goes well, he goes, it generates a lot of goodwill. It generates a lot of people going wow, Jordan thought about me. And so that was my little suggestion. Sure, it’s number one, we talk a lot on the show DJ about things that you can do that cost money. And the number one thing here, it’s not the number one thing, but this is one thing that you can do as an agent, if you stay consistent with it. So what is this rule? What is this, putting it into practice taking what Jordan Pyle did, and actually do it for yourself? Really, it costs no money, and your name consistently stays out there. And it’s not like you said, just that looks great. I did that for years, when I looked at listings, and I said, I really liked that color blue in the kitchen. That’s so amazing. Marcia, keep up the great work. And you just do this consistently. People know that you’re in the business, then you’re a realtor, right? If you’re listening to this, you could make sure that you’re out there doing the exact same thing. And how much does that cost? DJ? Zero, it just costs time. All it costs us a little bit of time. And even if it doesn’t, even if it isn’t real estate related, what we’re talking about is building intimacy. We’re building relationships, you know, in the way that you build relationships beyond a sale is you care about somebody and what’s going on in their lives. And you show that you demonstrate that because I think intimacy has to be earned. And the way that you do that is by showing up. Well, you’re exactly right. I mean, we kicked off the show talking about closing over 20 units a month, you know, different homes and I speak to agents daily that are saying I’d like to get to 20 closings in a year right. So if you’re doing 20 20 or 30 closings every single month? How do you have time to do any of this and you can kind of prioritize. So if you’re not at that level yet, and most people truly are, you do have extra time. And it’s all about what you set for your priorities. Right. So number one, that’s an easy thing to do. And the other one that I wanted to touch base on, of course, is making sure that you have a good database and adding people in refining it, and then doing small reach outs to everybody that’s there. If it’s a postcard, if it’s a pop by things that you can do, because this is still a people business DJ, right until the robots replace us, there’s still going to be somebody that needs to go out and show the homes. And they’re still going to need to be people on the lending, Attorney side title. So there’s real relationships that need to be built here. And it’s just getting back down to basics if you’re not extremely busy right now. Yeah, this is the time to focus back on the fundamentals. When’s the last time that you’ve gone through and pruned? Not so much to remove people from your database? pruned isn’t the right word. When’s the last time you updated your database with information? Like, do you know your your? I won’t say clients necessarily, but but clients and prospects? Do you know their wedding anniversary? Why would you want to know that? Well, because then you can give them a call on their wedding anniversary every year and say, I’m thinking about you grats on year number 17. How many how many service providers are even thinking about that probably very few in there, that client’s life or that prospects life, you know that these are little things you can do that when you have time, you find out the soft parts of someone’s life that are tangentially related to business. You know, I think one of the one of the best ways another little suggestion, if you know where your clients work, or at least you have in your database of their employer, you can set up Google alerts for that employer for the news section. So what this would do is actually send you in real time when Google notices oh, let’s say you have a client who works at Boeing. And you know, some Boeing gets some major contract or something’s and that’s a big huge company. So maybe that’s not the best example. But but you get the ideas. Anytime you know, somebody’s employer is in the news, you then gives you another two, hey, just saw your your employer did this. Cool. Congratulations. Yeah, I love that. That really is true. And one of the things that I’ve been doing for like three or four years now is setting up reminders for clients birthdays, and instead of a phone call or a text, I started doing videos years ago, okay, so I don’t know if you ever saw that website cameo, right? We’ve talked about this offline, right? And so you get celebrities to send a video on on your behalf, right? And so, who’s the bigger celebrity right now, if somebody is getting ready to buy a home Leonardo DiCaprio or you the realtor, you’re more important. Okay, maybe, maybe Leo or one of these top persons are but think about the power of you actually doing just a 15 second video, say happy birthday. And I make mine fun and silly. So I literally start yelling and screaming Happy Birthday and spinning around in the chair and just being real. Instead of being like, that’s just who I am. So I like to have fun with it. And I sing off key and I say it’s a very special birthday message from your favorite lender, Joel shop. And it gets such great replies. So do what’s authentic to you. If it’s heartfelt, do that. If it’s funny do that. But doing something that’s different. I tell you, there’s not a lot of people sending video messages to people on their birthday. And you just set it up every morning, I look at my phone. And I can do it right through Facebook to see how many birthdays are today. And it doesn’t take but more than a few seconds and I shoot the videos and send them out. And it’s a it’s been a big hit. You know, these are the people skills we’re really talking about. I also wanted to touch on the actual hard skills, the hard realtor skills that I don’t say hard meaning difficult, but the important skills I you know, I had a call today, we have a holding company, which is for agents that aren’t actively practicing but want to keep their license active but they’re basically out of the business. They just have a license and are not practicing. And I got a call from one of our holding company agents today’s asking me to run a CMA for comparable market analysis for her particular property. And I said oh, okay, you know, and I she goes, Well, we’re just trying to figure out if we should sell it and I don’t she said I don’t really trust this estimate the Zillow Zestimate. So I wanted to get, you know, DJ, can you run me a CMA? And I said, Well, I’m not particularly good at it, but but I’ll do my best. And, and again, I think this is another huge opportunity for everyone who has a database of people that own homes, whether you are their realtor or not, when they purchased you have the ability to say, Hey, I was going to I’m practicing my CMAs or I’m just running you know, I do this for all for everyone in my database once or twice a year, whatever you however you want to market it and say hi, I was wondering if I You shouldn’t even…

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