23 Jun Ep. 43 St. Louis Realtors & YPN 30 Under 30 Panel

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In this episode, Realtor Adam Kruse, Realtor Shannon St. Pierre, and apprentice Caleb Lewis, recap the St. Louis Realtors and Young Professionals Network 30 Under 30 Panel that Adam moderated on June 14th, 2018. Find out what 4 different agents have done to become some of the most successful Realtors in the country.

Email questions to PODCAST@HermannLondon.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT’S INSIDE

0:47 Adam introduces Caleb Lewis, a young apprentice investor that attended the 30 Under 30 panel hosted by the Young Professionals Network and the St. Louis Association of Realtors
1:00 The Hermann London Real Estate Group has been getting a lot of great feedback about the St. Louis Realtor Podcast
2:16 What is the St. Louis Association of Realtors, now called St. Louis Realtors (SLAR)? What is the Young Professionals Network (YPN)?
2:30 Adam Kruse of Hermann London was the emcee/moderator for the 30 Under 30 event on June 14th, 2018 at the St. Louis Realtors building at 12777 Olive Blvd, St. Louis 63141.
2:36 YPN flew in 4 people that have won Realtor Magazine’s 30 Under 30 award
3:00 Why would a successful Realtor from another city share all their secrets to a group of St. Louis Realtors?
3:18 – The panel featured Jordan Salisbury, NAR 2018 30u30 Honoree Keller Williams Lake of the Ozarks Realty Osage Beach, Missouri; Isabel Affinito, NAR 2018 30u30 Honoree JB Goodwin, REALTORS® Austin, Texas; Jennica Holmquist, NAR 2018 30u30 Honoree Washington Lifestyle Homes Keller Williams Realty Tacoma, Washington; Michael Pennisi, NAR 2012 30u30 Honoree & NAR YPN Board Member Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage – Maplewood New Providence, New Jersey
4:54 What motivated Caleb Lewis to go to the YPN event and what is he doing in Real Estate?
5:46 Adam started the YPN event by asking rapid-fire yes/no questions to the panel
6:02 Do Realtors advertise on Zillow.com, Realtor.com, or Facebook.com?
6:10 Do Realtors do open houses, door knocking, or geographic farming?
6:32 What is a sphere of influence and how important is networking to a Realtor?
6:40 How many hours a week do Realtors work?
6:54 All of the Realtors at the YPN 30 Under 30 event were residential but there have been commercial Realtors there in previous years
7:00 How active does a Realtor have to be on social media?
7:40 Should a Realtor hire someone to help them out with social media?
8:02 Can a Realtor’s social media also show interesting aspects of their own life? Should a Realtor blog and vlog?
8:27 Should a Realtor hire an assistant and/or a transaction coordinator?
8:40 How should a Realtor pay their assistants and transaction coordinators?
9:55 What is the best use of a Realtor’s time?
10:30 What is a showing assistant and should a Realtor hire one?
12:14 A bird-dog in real estate is someone that is good at sending a Realtor referrals. What does it mean to have bird-dogs in the community?
14:53 Why does someone who gives referrals to a Realtor need to get their real estate license?
15:42 What did the YPN 30 Under 30 panel have when they started that their peers who quit didn’t?
16:30 How long does it take a Realtor to find their way and start becoming successful?
18:40 Why is it important for a Realtor to find their focus?
19:15 What is an average day like for Caleb during his apprenticeship with Adam?
22:24 What are Realtors going to do in the next year to change things?
23:00 How can a Realtor automate more of their tasks?
23:30 What things are changing in the real estate industry?
23:48 What are the details of the Zillow.com make me an offer feature?
25:46 How can Realtors prepare for another drop or downturn in the market?
27:16 What advice do successful Realtors have for someone who just got their license?
27:23 How can project management apps help a Realtor with their business?
28:51 How can a yearly review help a Realtor plan their business for the next year?
30:35 What is the 80/20 rule when it comes to marketing, advertising, and real estate?
31:16 How should a Realtor handle a bad real estate agent?
34:33 What happens when a title search finds a big outstanding bill but the bill is in someone else’s name?
38:07 What technologies do Realtors use? What is Trello, RealtyJuggler, and Loom?
43:55 What is Canva, PicMonkey, and Powtoon?
45:02 What is If This Then That (IFTTT)?
47:12 What is ListingsToLeads.com?
51:01 What books should Realtors read? What is ‘Mindset’ by Carol S. Dweck about?
52:43 The book, ‘4-Hour Work Week’ by Tim Ferris
52:56 The book, ‘You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life’ by Jen Sincero
53:14 The book, ‘How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life’ by Lilly Singh/IISuperwomanII
53:24 The book, ‘The 5 Second Rule: Transform your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage’ by Mel Robbins
54:14 The book, ‘Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It’ by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz
54:22 The books, ‘Ninja Selling: Subtle Skills. Big Results’ by Larry Kendall and ‘Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling’ by Jeb Blount and Mike Weinberg
54:50 Podcasts Realtors should listen to are Impact Theory, Bigger Pockets, and The St. Louis Realtor Podcast
55:46 What is whole-tailing?
56:03 What is pre-habbing?
56:26 What kind of accreditations should Realtors get?

TRANSCRIPTION

Adam Kruse : live from the rooftop of the Hermann London real estate group in beautiful downtown Maplewood it’s the st. Louis realtor podcast with your host Adam Kruse welcome welcome everybody to the st. Louis realtor podcast live from the rooftop of the Hermann London real estate group today is June 20th 2018 of course I have my fabulous co-host Shannon st. Pierre here in the on the rooftop with me Shannon say hello to everybody

Shannon:  hello hello

Adam: and today we have a very special guest we have Caleb Lewis he’s a new real estate investor and he was at this event with us that we’re going to be talking about today so first of all we wanted to just mention a couple things the Hermann London real estate group has been getting a lot of really good feedback from people about our podcasts we’ve had a lot of investors and of course friends and Realtors from other companies telling us that they like the podcasts basically right and so we just wanted to mention to people if you’re thinking about being a realtor or if you’re a realtor already and you’re thinking about being a Hermann London realtor just please call just reach out to me I’m the broker owner Adam Kruse you can call me 314-210-5115 you’re welcome to reach out to any of our agents if you want to call Shannon and or anybody else and just ask them about their Herman London experience or their kind of experience just being a real estate person you know we have a really wide variety of different types of Realtors and investors and property managers and and all sorts of types of people that work here and it’s a really diverse group of I guess business models wouldn’t you say

Shannon: yes and I think that that’s the thing that sets Herman London apart is that it is it covers almost all bases when it comes to real estate

Adam:  yeah we’ve got commercial and association management we’re doing a little bit of everything and a lot of some of it so it’s been great but anyway we just thought we’d mention it if you’re interested in talking about being an investor or realtor with us to just reach out so what we really are going to talk about today is we recently had a panel so we’re through the st. Louis Association of Realtors there’s a group called YPN I was on the board for YPN for like eight years and this year I came back as the MC for this event we call 30 under 30 and so what we did is we flew in or what YPN did is flew in for people who have won the National Association of Realtors and realtor magazines 30 under 30 award I guess you can say so each year they choose 30 spectacular realtors who are under 30 years old and the reason why the st. Louis chapter of YPN likes to fly these people in and Wine and Dine them and ultimately put them up on a panel so we can ask them a bunch of questions in front of people as the idea is that they’re super successful people in their own markets but by coming to st. Louis and talking to us they kind of have nothing to hide because they’re not our competitors so there’s no reason for them not to tell us about a little secret that they have or a way that they do things because you know we’re not competing with them right and so it’s really awesome and and this year we had I’m just gonna kind of go through and list out who he had Jordan Salisbury from Lake of the Ozarks and Osage Beach Missouri she’s with Keller Williams down there we had Jennica Holmquist by the way Jordan won the award in 2018 all three of them three of the four won in 2018 so Jennica Holmquist from Washington lifestyle homes Keller Williams Realty in Tacoma Washington she’s 28 years old and let’s see Michael Pennisi see he’s this guy is involved in everything but he’s a he was the 2012 winner but he’s on the National Association of Realtors board now and he’s from Coldwell Banker in new jersey and then lastly we had Isabel Affinito she won in 2018 she’s from a company called JB Goodwin in Austin Texas she’s 29 and she she also has her own podcast called funky homes of Austin podcast so if you’re interested in checking out her podcast and I’m sure you can find it on wherever you’re listening to this podcast right so what we what we did is we had this huge list of questions and I was standing up there and I just asked these people questions and they can answer however they want it to okay and so what we want to do on today’s podcast caleb and shannon is just talked through what some of the questions were what their answers were and what we thought or what we learned and that we thought was interesting but if you don’t mind caleb i’d like to ask you just to tell us tell the listeners briefly a little bit about yourself and why you know what were you doing at this event and i guess what’s your what you’re doing in real estate currently

Caleb:  so thanks for having me and first off i am a kind of apprentice to adam right now at herman london so i’ve just been learning about all aspects of basically everything in real estate and right now i go to school at Ole Miss so studying a little bit of real estate down there and hopefully want to come back up the st. louis after I graduate and start a career in real estate and the reason I went to this conference and the pain’ll is just to learn more about these young Realtors and how they’ve been successful

Adam: yeah and so it was interesting right we started off by asking them what we called rapid-fire questions which was just a bunch of basically yes or no or one-word answer questions and I I was surprised to hear that none no none of them advertised on Zillow none of them advertised on realtor.com some of them do Facebook advertising right and I guess almost none of them did open houses or door knocking or even Geographic farming right it seems like

Shannon: I think couple of [???] geographic farming

Adam: which one geographic farming

Shannon: yeah

Adam: I would guess that Jordan does because she’s focused at the lake of the ozarks but I think Jennica and Isabel were both kind of focused on their sphere of influence and you know just kind of like especially Jennica said that she focused a lot of networking and kind of getting out there and getting connected to people they all we asked how many hours a week they work I think all of them said a lot too many I don’t know I don’t keep track whatever

Shannon: wait yes and the hours blend in with the everyday personal life so you can’t keep track necessarily

Adam: right but all of them are residential people in the past we’ve had commercial people and there

Shannon:  so you also asked about social media social media is where you know they seem to cut it all be very active and then the sales teams if they have support assistants and they all said yes yeah let’s talk to kind of the the common thread there is the extra help the assistance the transaction coordinators and social media

Adam: so let’s talk about their social media stuff because they they kind of each had a little bit of a different approach right I think a couple of them hired social media people to sort of manage their Facebook or manage their Instagram remember the Jennica I think was like check out my Instagram my girls killing it right now

Shannon:  right so they all have someone helping him out with social media

Adam: okay and then but Isabel specifically I guess does a lot of her own social media like Facebook live type of videos she said she did a final walkthrough and made a video where she was in the pool but she does a lot of interesting videos it sounds like and and it kind of trying to be funny and relatable and which is what a lot of realtors approaches I think

Shannon: her main theme and the point was that you can do a video on anything so she the video where she jumped in the pool there was a really hot day was was not about necessarily real estate it was just something about it being very hot out and it didn’t necessarily have to do with real estate and she said that that is and has been her most watched or what her most watched recently

Adam:  so a lot of them I guess had assistants or most of them had at least at what they would call a transaction coordinator somebody that they paid to do their paperwork essentially and keep all their tasks and stuff like that in line they paid their transaction coordinators in different ways right a couple of them had a month’s salary and some of them paid per deal I think some of them would give them more money depending on how many deals they were doing you heard I don’t think I remember hearing any of them say that they gave necessarily like a percentage of their deals it was more like the more deals I do the more money you make but it was kind of like a still more of like a per deal thing

Shannon: yeah for the transaction coordinators it was still a flat fee except for the one that started and I can’t remember which one was get it was so busy that they just hired her on full-time and started providing a salary

Adam: yeah she used to use a transaction coordinator company and then that company was which was like one person and maybe her assistant or whatever and then that company ended up being dominated by I think it maybe was Isabel and so Isabel was like hey transaction coordinator you know 95 percent of the deals that you’re doing or for me why don’t you just come on and be like my full-time person and stop doing this for other people I really loved hearing this you know because I talk a lot about how I want our agents to get assistance and use transaction brokers and right and they kept talking about what my highest and best use as a Realtor is to be out meeting buyers meeting sellers and going on appointments essentially right and so they they all felt like if they’re sitting in the office forwarding contracts around or you know communicating the title companies that that’s not their highest and best use and I I just really love that they say that because it’s sort of backing up what I’m always trying to get our Realtors to do

Shannon: right so the number one thing that they all did was get a transaction coordinator pretty early in the process

Adam: yeah and so then some of them have assistants too that would do things like some of them I think Jordan had like a showing assistant which is someone that she could just have go out and basically open the doors for her if she was too busy to show properties to someone they would she would send out her showing assistant who would literally just go open the doors but then if the people had any specific questions they were supposed to come back to Jordan right

Shannon: right

Adam: and she would pay that showing assistant a percent a small percentage actually of the deal if the people ended up buying the house that she showed them and then some of them had assistants that would like go get my laundry or they’ll get my dry cleaning and that kind of stuff right and then some of them had assistants that would do things like you know handle my marketing and update my LinkedIn or anything like that actually I think most of them said they don’t use LinkedIn but that they had like assistants who sort of do some of their non-specifically transaction related stuff and it’s great I was I was really surprised but i all [???]

Shannon: something [???] family business

Adam: yeah

Shannon: yeah

Adam:  I was surprised by how many of them had all these different employees and stuff you know these are these are young realtors fairly new to the business but they’re doing great and I love it

Shannon: I think it is interesting because everybody on this panel this year did have multiple people on their team maybe not as employees but they have the transaction coordinator they had like an assistant they also had some social media person so it seemed they had at least two or more and as where last year I feel like they all had transaction coordinators but not necessarily additional team members

Adam: right so speaking of teams you know yeah it seems like they all kind of talked about their teams and and Michael Pennisi he I thought made a really interesting point you know everyone we asked what their first hire was for their team and they basically either said that’s assistant or they got a buyer’s agent you know and he had this totally different approach like he did for most of the panel or most of the interview or whatever that he his first hires were what he would call bird dogs

Shannon: yes and that is widely interesting concept

Adam:  wasn’t it so he went out and found like random people in the community for example a hotel manager

Shannon: yes

Adam: and somehow convinced this hotel manager go get your real estate license I’ll pay for it I’ll pay all the expenses related to you having your real estate license but then when someone comes into your hotel and has a real estate need refer them to me

Shannon:  right

Adam:  and if I close a deal I’ll pay your referral fee

Shannon:  it’s an interesting concept I think I had it thousand other questions behind how that the logistics of it that we obviously didn’t have time to talk about on the panel but it would be something that

Adam: I guess some of my questions are like because he acted like he would have a lot of these bird dogs out there right and so it’s he also mentioned that he paid for their licensing and their schooling and then all their  yearly realtor fees and stuff like that

Shannon: and their monthly MLS

Adam: and their monthly MLS  all that stuff so they can’t have that he can’t have that many of them out there doing it but if it is successful like with the hotel manager I mean first to me I’m like wait so people are coming in town to stay to Hotel cuz he said that guy sends him a lot of sellers I’m like what are these people staying at a hotel for in town if they have a home in town to sell

Shannon: yeah so there was a couple conflicting statements like the hotel manager to me I look at a hotel manager and think yes they come across a lot of people but I don’t feel like it would be a lot of local people and they’re coming into town for the ballgame or they’re coming into town for to visit family or st. Louis or to go the arch but not buy real estate that doesn’t seem like what a reason you stay at a hotel unless I’m missing something I don’t know that’s where

Caleb: yeah

Shannon: like this is there’s a thousand questions here that and

Caleb:  the craziest thing about it was that he said the hotel manager was the one that brought him the most business throughout his whole career

Adam: I guess so for example when we just had our 10 year party down at the Lumiere hotel because you know the man is sort of a reversal but that manager was looking to buy a home and so our agent Krista who is with me was like hey I want to be a realtor you know and she so she almost got a deal out of him but if if people maybe are getting married into having like events and stuff with these hotels maybe that’s where they’re meeting people from in town that are kind of having these transitional points in their life

Caleb:  I just thought it was really interesting

Shannon:  but the reason just to kind of cover the reason he had these people go get their license is so that he could legally pay them a referral fee

Adam:  so they’re probably actually not necessarily real tours with the MLS and with super keys and all that stuff they’re probably real estate agents who are basically I have their license what we would call on referral

Shannon: yes

Adam: and so their yearly fees are significantly lower which helps which definitely would help him out they all had they all had these teams one other interesting members or their teams did they have it I don’t think any of them had a listing agent right they were still all focusing as the listing agent

Shannon: accept maybe Michael

Adam:  Michael used to have a team and then he kind of like passed his team off to his wife because now he’s just acting as their broker for his office

Shannon:  Okay

Adam: so I don’t know if he before he passed his team off if he had a listing agent or not so that one of the big questions that kind of got them all going is we asked what do you have that others who started when you did or before you and aren’t as sex as success don’t have so that question is a mouthful but I think what we were getting at there is a lot of people get their real estate license right and if ten people get their real estate license it seems like and I’m just making this statistic up but it seems like two of them will still be licensed three years later and eight of them will not be licensed right so to me that question was saying you sat in real estate class you probably made some friends with the people in class and now those people are either not Realtors anymore or they’re not doing as much business as you write and they’re certainly not here on this panel today and so they all had a little bit different answers to that

Shannon: yeah except for actually what I got it from that answer was something that was I think more validation for me and so that’s what I remember is that they sat there and they all confirmed and said and stated that it took about three years three years was that turning-point I think we’re used to hearing you know stick it out for a year just your first year in real estate it’s really hard and then it’ll turn around I’ll get better you’ll start getting business that you know just you got to really stick it out I feel like that wasn’t necessarily true for me I feel like you know my first year was just kind of you’re getting your feet wet and then you’re just still like for a couple just still kind of trying to find your way

Adam: yeah

Shannon: and so they all said three years three years three years I’m like that that’s dead-on I’ve never heard anyone else say that to me because it was always that’s always that first year and how many drop out after the first year because it is so difficult but it and so that’s what I kind of remember about that question is if you just hang in there for three years you show up so you can’t be hanging out on the couch for three years but if you’re showing up

Adam:  I really love that you’re sharing that you know I think you’re kind of being vulnerable and saying that you know yeah it’s been my first three years were a challenge you know

Shannon: Right

Adam:  and from the brokers perspective what people always ask is how long until I’ll make money you know and the sort of the spin I think that brokers put on that is sort of like answering how long until you make your first check right and I think maybe that’s what they’re asking but what they really should be asking you kind of part of our conversation now is how long until I’m making money right until I’m actually like making a living

Shannon: yeah it’s not so much me even making a living because yes that is one aspect of it but really getting your business going and where you’re you’re in it long enough where you’re actually getting referrals and you know and somehow you’ve found a niche that supplies a chain of customers

Adam: so they all sort of did different stuff I guess for their first three years which everyone’s answer was sort of like I just ran around crazy

Shannon: that’s what you kind of do is trying to help figure out what you’re because even as a broker every brokers like what’s your niche where’s your focus where’s your focus if you listen the podcast what’s your focus what’s your focus and then you’re like I don’t know I don’t know and it’s pressure it’s stress and yet all of these confirmed that it did take that long it does take that long to just kind of figure it out

Adam: Caleb for you from you know you’ve been doing this intern or apprenticeship for like a month now or something like that have you been surprised by how kind of weird and different everyday seems to be

Caleb: yeah I’ve actually kind of like motivates me to pursue this career like even more than what I had already like thought about doing it and hearing that three years is kind of like reassuring for me because like I was kind of wondering that also like how long is it gonna take me to make that first check or make it be able to make a living being in this internship and not like having the experience before in the real estate world like it’s just kind of opened my eyes to the possibilities that you could have in the different scenarios and different avenues you could go down on the real estate world so

Adam: yeah we you know I think I did the same thing I ran crazy my first three years I got so many stories you know and I mean I still do but I just had no idea really what I was doing or why I was doing it I just try to get myself in as many different situations as I possibly can or could and and I think that that’s kind of like what our goal is for new agents at our company to you know we don’t try to we don’t try to like force them in some sort of niche right off the bat we give them lots of opportunity our lists and different things that they could do but then we try to help narrow it down so that there’s a little bit more of a focus there but it’s it’s I really wish that they every new agent could have heard them say that because I think people think that it’s gonna be easier than it is and so when we have a new agent and I’m like you need to work really hard you need to work long hours you need to be doing everything you can I think they sort of hear that but almost shrug it off because they just assumed that I don’t really need to do that it’s this will just come to me you know

Shannon: right and I had a meeting yesterday with a newer agents and I think she should get licensed in August and so I was having a coffee with her and I think she’s in that struggle point what’s my focus where what am I supposed to be doing how come this isn’t easier and I and she’s like am i doing the right thing and I’m like you are like every other agent let me confirm that this is a total normal path I said I think for the first couple years maybe at least I think I said that at least once a week and probably what am i doing should should I just go get a job you know that actually pays the salary insurance and like all this is so I said you still have a while probably of doubting that but if you really love real estate which is my thing I really love real estate just stick with it it will come just just stick it out

Caleb: yeah I think that’s like one of the like really interesting things about real estate is every day is something different and you know you just have to work really hard the keep pushing through and become successful and that’s something I’m looking forward to

Shannon: it’s a shiny object syndrome to when you’re new you’re like you’re trying everything because you don’t know what works and that’s a hard part too

Adam:  Caleb you probably had no idea you were gonna be on a podcast today

Shannon: [???]

Adam: what what are you going to change in your business in the next year we asked them that question did anything from that stand out to you guys

Shannon: know so I don’t feel like even answered that question necessarily and then you changed it and I think pose do you thinking things going to change in the industry or maybe Michael kind of repositioned that

Adam: my favorite answer too what are you gonna change in your business in the next year was one of the people I forget which which one it was but she talked about how she’s gonna continue to try to basically automate things right and she’s trying to systematize things

Shannon: right

Adam: and you know I love that right so anything that we can automate or systematize or I don’t know if this was her Isabelle’s answer to this question but anything she can take off her plate again to allow her to be out there with clients is something that she’s gonna try to do

Shannon: yes

Adam:  and I think I you know any tools or anything that we can use to do that is great we’ll talk a little bit about some of the tools they shared coming up but what do you think is going to change in our interest in our industry I think that’s where Michael had a lot to say and he was talking about the different companies that have come out that will you know I’ll list your home for a nickel right and then the different brokerages that have come out that say work here and you know have a closing and throw me a nickel right and and what else was he saying about the changes that he saw in our industry

Shannon: well I think they addressed the changes as Zillow it has rolled out what does that program called where you can sell your own home earth

Adam: yeah we’re they’ll make an offer on your house

Shannon: yeah make me an offer type of whatever that they’ve rolled out in a couple markets and our testing and he he said if you want a really good laughs kind of go through it and look at some of the details of it and I have done that and it is a nine percent fee that they are charging for that and you have no one walking you through the process

Adam: and they only offer you as it’s 70 or 80 percent of market value

Shannon:  well that’s if so you can I think list your home I think obviously but yeah the the but where they’re buying it it’s 80% of the value but we all know that zest events are not always correct

Adam: yeah so I think he was saying and which I agree with this right I’m always worried and everyone probably always worried about all these new technologies and all these new companies and stuff that come out and they’re we’re gonna do it for less you know and

Shannon:  I can help you sell your house by yourself

Adam: by yourself there there’s all these different things that come out because they’re trying to change their realtor industry but what I love is that a the fact that there is 80 things out there trying to do that it causes a lot of noise and it’s harder to pay attention to any particular one of them which gives them less traction I think but then also the thing is like if something is too good to be true then it probably is so all these things that are like will sell your home for a nickel right it’s like wow that’s great but what a you know that’s too good to be true right so there’s all sorts of things there that you’re missing or Zillow says I’ll buy your house yeah for like half of what it’s worth or whatever you know and so there’s there’s always kind of like the fine print and and I definitely liked having them sort of

Shannon: validate validate that realtor’s are going away I think that they just are going to be challenged in other ways

Adam: and the other thing that Michael said that was interesting is that he kind of two things a he sort of looks forward to this like if there’s gonna be a downturn sometime in the next few years he sort of looks forward to it because he feels that the him and his realtor team aren’t gonna be prepared for it you know because what he because I guess of the training and stuff like that that he offers but also his point is at anytime there’s a downturn some Realtors sort of like run towards it and they you know double their advertising they increase their market share during the downturn because they’re saying I’m here I’m strong and let me take advantage of this downturn and most Realtors say oh my gosh there’s a downturn I need to kind of have that what would we call that a fixed mindset and they say oh I need to cut my advertising and yeah like you say tighten the belt and what they end up doing is getting less business and losing their market share during that time so for me that listening to that I was like dang I think I can be guilty of that sometimes being like I don’t know maybe I won’t you know do that major update to our website because it’s who knows what’s gonna change or you know I don’t know maybe I won’t do that mailer because who knows what’s going to change and so I was glad that he said that and I think it I have to kind of remind myself of that mindset when I’m having that mental thought

Shannon: but I think that that’s a basic marketing strategy if you even in the marketing world outside of real estate the best time the advertise is in down markets because that’s when you can increase your market share

Adam: yeah so we also asked what advice do you have for someone who just gotten their license did that hit either of you guys do you remember their answers for that

Caleb: I think one of the things it might have been on this question that they said was just different project management apps that they use and just how it helped them like kind of organize everything and see like where their money was coming from so like he kept track of the money that was coming in from the hotel manager how much revenue he was making from that Avenue of marketing and then he would have another section of the management app that would show them how much money is coming in from sending out postcards or just just different things like that so you can focus on the thing that’s most successful for you

Adam: so I also like that thanks thanks for reminding you that because you know we do a yearly business planning meeting at our company and actually this year we’re gonna do a bi a yearly one we’re gonna do one in a month or so and I think that what we’ll do we always give out your numbers right like hey Shannon here’s your numbers from the last year and these are all the sales that you had all the closings that you had and it gives you the address right but we just sort of put that in your folder and move on I’m guessing and based on what he said I think there would be value to us having you take a few minutes and break down okay this closing where did this one come from this one there where did this one come from and kind of break that into categories of like this is fear of influence this is from Facebook Ads this is from networking or whatever and so you our agents can really see where their business is coming from

Shannon: yes so they all said that they’d all at the end of the year so they do track if they track it in different ways and one guy just uses Excel spreadsheet which is amazing to me but they all did state that at the end of the year they do a review of where their business came from and they all confirm they’re like yeah yeah I definitely sit down in December and was like I sit down in January and that helps me plan out see where my business came from and it’s surprising sometimes where it’s come from and so then they start honing it and it more and more you get to hone it

Adam: that’s how they a couple of them I think that’s how they stopped advertising on Zillow

Shannon: so specifically I think it was a Isabel who was saying that she quit Zillow because while she did profit from it so if she said specifically if we were making a dollar 50 and we only spent $1 but the amount of energy and the and that had to go towards to get that dollar 50 was exponential in terms of how the rest of her business was go being

Adam: closed three deals and make make like an income off one of them so technically you made an income but could she have [???] 2 deals by some other way

Shannon:  yes and meanwhile you’re running around just trying to please twenty buyer’s or buyers and/or sellers that never come to fruition so it’s it’s just this in which is one of my big issues with Zillow to which will be another podcast

Adam: it’ll be interesting to see our hole where people do that evaluation because

Shannon: I think you should do that at the mid-year 1/2 so far this year sit down that where the your businesses come from

Adam: because it’ll be fresh in mind and they’ll be able to probably everyone will probably be able to remember more but the whole like 80 20 rule where they might find that 80% of their income comes from 20% of whatever they’re doing and hopefully that means they should focus a little bit more on that stuff would you agree that you in general can’t just like stop doing anything else like that with the 80 20 rule you can’t exactly only do that 20% of stuff you still kind of have to do at least some of the 80% of activity that breeds the 20% of the results

Shannon: yes I think that yeah they all said the focus has to be that 20% there is some of that on the 80% but that’s where they’re trying to create the automations

Adam: so one of the things that we deal with in our business a lot and and luckily I guess it’s not as much as it could be in I get calls sometimes from some of our agents new yeah our new or old right our new or experienced I guess I should say and they’re dealing with an agent who’s being super rude to them who’s being like nasty right and just just totally unprofessional calling them names cussing them out making them cry whatever and that’s it’s so it’s way more common than it should be that our agents have to deal with agents from other companies that are just nasty to deal with you know and so I like we asked them how do you guys deal or what advice do you have for young Realtors dealing with a difficult agent in a transaction and it was funny to hear because you know they’re from all these different markets across the country but they all have experienced the agent who says well I’ve been in the business 30 years and I’ve never seen this you know and I love it I don’t love it what I when an agent says that to me I sort of love it because I’m thinking to myself like glad I could teach you something

Shannon: right

Adam: right you know and so what advice did they have for dealing with these agents

Shannon: I think Michael is like that he doesn’t know everything and as long as he’s been in the business and as long as he’ll be in the business he’ll never know everything there’s unique situations almost every deal so

Adam: yeah he kind of spend that into like an educational thing and like he likes to learn and so the reason that he’s successful now is because he takes on all these new learning opportunities and all that kind of stuff right I think the other agent talked about how she she’s in her mind says maybe that was Jennica that’s like I’m going to win maybe I’m not gonna win on this little negotiation here or maybe you’ll still be mean to me but eventually we’re gonna be friends right and I think she said something like you don’t know this yet but I’m taking you for drinks or something like that

Shannon: oh did she i would love that one [???]

Adam: yeah it’s I love that idea too I mean not that you want to be friends with this kind of nasty person necessarily but like you are the attitude there is what I think I like where it’s like you might win this you know but ever but you don’t have the power to ruin my day and and I mean I’m sort of adding my own angle on the but you know the whole idea of like you don’t have the power to make me mad you know so you can call me and be as nasty to me as you want to but you I’m not going to let that affect me

Shannon: right and it is really hard in your first few years because of the insecurity by going up against agent maybe that’s been in the business for a really long time and I think someone said like alluded cut into that but it’s hard because you you feel insecure but it doesn’t mean that you’re wrong it just means that it’s a unique situation and even you write like how often do we come and ask you a question you’re like okay let’s talk this through let’s think about this and even at our sales meeting a really wild thing came up with inspection notices and right so yeah it’s for an agent to say I’ve never seen this before you go well okay and I mean that’ll be how it is

Adam: by the way just I’m getting distracted because off slightly off topic but along the lines of what you just said you know I just wrote an offer on a house this morning and I was meeting face to face with a seller and along the lines of like you never know what’s gonna happen so this seller and I are looking through the contract and she and I mentioned that hey it might come up because she’s selling like it’s not her house she’s getting it through a trust or whatever I’m like it may come up through the title search that there’s some sort of big bill there might be like a lien from the sewer company or mechanic’s lien from the guy who put the roof on or whatever you know we don’t know and she was like well where does it say in here that I have to pay that you know like if there’s a big sewer bill where does it say that I have to pay that and I’m like thinking to myself and I even said to her I’m like I don’t know if it says that in here because you just the bill is like in your name so that’s what says do you have to pay the bill right but let’s look through the contract together and see where it says that

Shannon: oh my gosh its awesome question

Adam: it is awesome question because it doesn’t say it in there from what I could find

Shannon: thats a smart question

Adam: yeah

Shannon: yeah and homeowners association fees come up all the time yes they would trust so there’s

Adam: there’s you know the title paragraph that kind of listed out the title stuff that we were talking about and basically said if I find something as the buyer that I don’t like maybe in the survey then I can present it to you the seller and then we can negotiate and maybe kill the deal or maybe come to an agreement right but it didn’t say anything about if the seller finds something that she didn’t know about and I think that the way that the contract is written is good because it protects the buyer who and me and Mike in this case could have had a lot of money invested into this deal hundreds of dollars in inspections tons of money and two appraisal lots of money into survey whatever right and so it wouldn’t really be fair to me if then three weeks later the seller finds out oh gosh that roofer did place that lien on my property you know and I do have to pay him but I don’t want to so I can’t sell I’m not gonna sell to you you know that wouldn’t be fair to the buyer from my perspective but I’m like I don’t and then the other paragraph that we looked at was the paragraph that lists out what the different closing costs are and you know buyers closing cost of the seller closing counselors but even that paragraph didn’t say like it’s very direct and clearly at least that the seller has to pay their old bills you know and so

Shannon: yeah really now I’m super intrigued [???] yes because that question comes up I’ve had buyers say what if there’s liens because that when I explained what a title company is what they do then sometimes they say well what happens if there is a lien or an unpaid bill or something [???]

Adam: yeah and oh the seller has to pay it but where does it say that in the contract and maybe it doesn’t it’s just assumed you know but I’m like

Shannon: but then you if they don’t pay it well and there is time so in especially foreclosures and I have seen where you have to pay all past liens

Adam:  yeah so we’ll dig deeper into that and you know I don’t I’m not giving legal advice on this podcast right you can interpret the contract however you want or ask your attorney if you have specific questions about that but it was just a fun example of like yeah even this morning something came up when I was like Lana I just really don’t know the answer to that question you know

Shannon:  so what about the technologies let’s talk about the technologies and tools that that did any of them strike you

Adam: I loved hearing that Isabel uses Trello because you know I’m a big Trello lover

Shannon: Yes

Adam:  and she is I use Trello.com it’s a free app or a free website I guess with the head

Shannon: Do you have app

Adam:  yeah and so I use that sort of for more like big-picture planning and kind of like project management you know but like I have a board that’s all about my banking stuff and when I keep track of all my credit cards and not you know like logins and things like that should I even say

Shannon:  no you do

Adam:  I don’t actually I think that fact I take that back I don’t have that I’m deleting it right now the thing that I don’t have but you know if we’re gonna do a website project right and that’s a great place for me to go and add what they call cards for different updates that I want to make to the site and then I can assign those cards to the different people you know

Shannon:  and then we have one for the park we have one for this project ideas

Adam: so podcast ideas guest ideas topics to talk about and all that kind of stuff and then we have I always have a left column that’s what I call assets so we list out like the opener for the podcast and that kind of stuff but she uses it specifically to keep for task management right so we asked what are you guys using for task tracking or task management our company mainly what we use is RealtyJuggler most of our agents what we use is RealtyJuggler which keeps track of tasks and assigned some dates and due dates and puts things onto calendar and all that kind of stuff but I love that she uses Trello for that and she makes it not public but she shares it with her client so they can you know I’ll the whole idea I love the idea of accountability right so your client can log in and see the things that you’re doing and be like whoa what’s this one you haven’t done this one yet you know that might be annoying but I love the idea of accountability and also since our company is all about educating our client I think it’s great that our client would then be able to log in and see what we’re doing and ask questions about it and she makes videos about each thing that her clients can watch

Shannon: right so this is the part of the where the 30 under 30 where my ears perk up and I really start to make the notes cuz I look over at cable Caleb and my for all your notes look at all those things yeah I just have a couple things written down because I love technology and I like things that can that are really cool and so I see the rehouse she uses Trello is she has a buyer board and a seller board specifically she has a generic one where she has all the tasks right now and in those tasks she does on some of them include video and so every time she has a buyer seller she immediately set set up sends it over to them and then that’s where she starts pulling it over so she makes a copy of that so she just has a generic format which is which was public so I did google it and I did dig deep enough and I found it so

Adam: Oh good

Shannon:  I and I it’s obviously going to be a little bit different because it’s different states but it was definitely inspirational so I thought it was really a really fabulous thing and how she uses Trello but within Trello she was talking about for the video and video recording she uses loom which is a Chrome extension

Adam:  yeah so loom is awesome I used loom recently I don’t know if you remember but I made a bunch of videos that I put on our internet I used loom to make these little training videos about like how to use Docu Sign or my gmail tips and some stuff like that for screen sharing it was free it was really easy to use

Caleb: no idea but I hopefully will use it in the future but I think like the reason cheese is it and like you said she puts it in there on Trello is every time she gets a new question from a buyer seller she puts it on that document and she basically can walk through the seller or with the seller with the buyer on like where they need to sign or what this means or what that means that way she doesn’t have to answer phone calls and explain it

Shannon:  yeah so she again with her automation her major push for automation she kind of was a little bit funny in that comment in if she tries to list out everything if there’s anything new she adds it and her whole goal is to not have to answer 88 questions because they’re already all the answer and so I thought it was just

Adam:  if you were a client and you asked me hey Adam what’s a survey and I responded to your email with the video that basically answered the question but sort of had some other stuff in it do you think you’d be okay with that or would you want me to like specifically answer your specific question just to you

Shannon: well I don’t know so I guess I’m more of a I like the personal aspects of everything and how it applies specifically to each scenario because I think it can be a little bit different like a survey survey it’s probably a really good idea if you don’t if you’re gonna build a fence in the city where the on the gutters are almost touching you know maybe that so you can’t really answer all those questions without it being too general that’s why I like the specifics but then at the same time what is a survey it’s great video to watch and then handle their specifics

Adam:  so maybe they’ll ask less questions if they would have already seen some of her other videos I think

Caleb: that’s the point that she puts all these videos on there so that if they have a question they go and watch that video and hopefully that answered their question and if they have a further question they can ask her

Shannon: yeah so I think it minimizes the videos minimize the questions that she has to answer over and over and over again

Adam:  so did you look into canva I think

Shannon:  I use canva I haven’t in the past you know you know use canva

Adam: there’s canva the thing that makes like really easy like Facebook pages and landing pages and stuff

Shannon: I don’t use it for that but no just images

Adam: what does do

Shannon:  it do like so you can it’s like PicMonkey have used

Adam:  your a technology girl

Shannon: it’s kind of just one of those so you can make some really cool just anything from flowcharts to just it’s an easy way to do graphics

Adam: you might video remember a few months ago you made some sort of video explaining the home buying process or something

Shannon: oh but that was palate and probably through powtoons

Adam: okay okay

Shannon: oh oh yeah for my first time homebuyer class yeah so that was through powtoons yeah

Adam: so what does canva

Shannon: so it’s the same it’s a it’s canva PicMonkey in essence is a way to allow allows the everyday person to do graphics

Adam: okay so you could make a flowchart or whatever okay interesting

Celeb: what was the one social media site that you use that you talked about in the sales meeting that like post your Facebook ad each month

Adam: oh yeah so I love this site called if this then that if TTT.Com is the website and

Shannon: you can go in a rabbit hole on that thing

Adam: you can get in a rabbit hole in that so to me the best thing to do is as you can look through some of the I think they call them recipes or something like that the more popular recipes that they have and then you can go specifically to like Facebook or Gmail and see what kind of recipes are available for that but like I have it set up to say if one of them that I use is if it’s I don’t know the morning or 7:30 a.m. or whatever then text message Adam the weather

Shannon: right

Adam:  so every morning I get a text message that tells me with the weather and st. Louis’s for the day right or if it’s the first of the month then tweet out to Adams Twitter wake up wake up wake up it’s the first of the month

Shannon: right

Adam:  well I also have one now that goes to my LinkedIn every single day that says like happy Thursday everyone right

Shannon:  I thought you just did it on Tuesdays

Adam:  LinkedIn is every single day and that’s what the that’s you know a little off-topic again but that’s the crazy thing about LinkedIn is that I think it’s a). so underused and  b). so many people have so many friends on there that when you log in once a week or twice a week or whatever

Shannon: once a year

Adam: once a year whatever it is people don’t see they don’t log in like they do to Facebook 25 times a day so even though I’m posting on there every single day happy Monday everyone happy Tuesday everyone the same people aren’t really seeing that over and over again and it’s amazing to me when I log in to my LinkedIn two or three times a week that I get people liking that all the time hey thanks hey like like like like don’t you notice that I post this thing every single day and kind of wonder what’s going on with that but I don’t think they’re seeing it anyway if this then that is my social media share I guess for this podcast

Shannon: so that one of the other ones that they brought up was listings to lead and so of course I always run back to my computer and start researching all this

Adam: yeah

Shannon: and it did look really interesting so I guess it it’s depending on how many listings you have a month you pay on that basis so zero to ten eleven to so on and so forth so it will I think create landing pages and then all these posts and it I haven’t used it yet but it looks pretty powerful in the way that you can take one listing and really cover all your bases with advertising from social media to creating a landing page

Adam: yes so to me the thing that would be really valuable is if it does all this posting and stuff for you automatically right because our through our company we have several different tools that we use to make landing pages for listings and through our lender we have another tool that does it and we have all these things have all these tools and technology that you can use you know every company out there every real estate company has a thousand different tools and technology that you can use the problem is it’s crazy overwhelming there’s way too much of it right and so

Shannon: it’s all in one place I feel like most is in one place so that that’s good like on the total experts okay most of its in one place I was but then this I think I don’t know that we’ve need it but it had some other functions like property evaluations so I don’t know how that would fit into the pricing model exactly because it really is geared towards the number of listings that you post or do a mom know but it it looks like this kind of houses everything in one spot not just most everything

Adam: so to me are kind of our strategy this company has always been like find the best solution for each problem and we’ve kind of taken an approach that’s like not to find one app or whatever that one thing that does it all because we want to find a thing that does it best that’s why we use MailChimp and not you know real geeks for our mail that’s why we use DocuSign and the free ones from this website that’s why we use RealtyJuggler for task plans that’s why we use wizza right and that’s why we have all these different tools that we use but if those listings to lead if I get a listing does it automatically make this landing page and then automatically post it to my facebook and then automatically send any leads that come from that to my CRM and then automatically text message that person and then automatically add them to my email a drip campaign now we’re talking I wanna

Shannon: Bad i not answer I was going to test it out it’s not all that expensive if it really does everything that I have in my head and it’s not clunky it’s very user friendly very easy to me I think it’s worth it but again haven’t tested it but I have obviously this listing coming up that’s launching this week that I was actually going to test it out on

Adam: yeah I’d love to hear about it I just at this thing it’s so interesting and most of these apps don’t do exactly what we want them to do like I just said we use all these different apps for like each specific thing but then we’re able to sort of like tie them together through like if this than that or through zapier.com which is kind of an if this than that competitor and so you know it’s interesting I’d love to hear more about it from you let’s see did you write down any of the books they suggested

Shannon: yes off course because of i am also [???]

Adam:  one of them said mindset by Carol S. Dweck which to me is an amazing book I love it I think anybody it’s not just for real estate it’s actually it’s not even about real estate I don’t think but remember fan Merrill he suggested that book when we interviewed him for the podcast and I’ve then since read it and listened to tons of her interviews and I’m like lecturing my dad but the other day my dad we were playing basketball with my nephew and he’s like eight and my dad’s like you’re a natural talent Lucas and I was like dad you can’t say that don’t call him a natural talent because everything that I learned in this book mindset says that that would then teach Lucas that he’s just naturally good and not give him any motivation or reason to like practice to get better

Shannon: yes

Adam: and so then all of a sudden someone else will practice and get better and be better than Lucas at basketball and Lucas will just think I’m not good

Shannon: it was just funny because the other person they brought that book up to there they said how amazing the book was but it the one thing they followed that up with was how it changed their parenting style I’m like oh my gosh I need that

Adam:  it’s amazing and so that’s that Mike my nephew’s crazy good at soccer and I’m like you practiced really well look it’s like great effort today at getting better instead of being like you’re just a natural talent you know

Shannon: right

Adam:  so I’m no mindset expert

Shannon: [???] his little girl said okay we all get hard on ourselves like you know I can’t do that and he adds yet you can’t do that yet and I guess that came from the book

Adam: okay what other books and podcast

Shannon: 4 hour work week by Tim Ferris which I think I’ve read years ago but

Adam: I need to relist into that one I listen to that a long time ago it’s all about automating

Shannon: Yeah

Adam:  get out of your own way it’s not being the bottleneck in your business

Shannon:  how’d it be a badass but I could not find that one exactly

Adam:  I don’t think it’s spelled badass I think it’s like B asterisk D or bad I don’t know it’s not you know it’s that other one you like to sub the art of not giving it F word it’s probably something like

Shannon:  that and then another one was bawse but it was BAWSE

Adam: because she has like that’s some sort of acronym

Shannon: yeah

Adam:  it wasn’t how it wasn’t it be a boss or it was the title

Shannon: just boss I think

Adam: okay

Shannon: um five-second rule

Adam: what’s that one that’s a Mel Robbins one is that about like you can as so as long as you can get over that fear you can do anything and

Shannon:  no I think the five-second thing is a Mel Robbins saying it’s like five four three two one just do it like tight like in expands on all that but I haven’t listened to this book yet

Adam: you know I’ve heard at some point like kind of like what you just said five four three two one just do it it’s sort of like the anticipation of doing something that holds people back not the actual doing of the thing

Shannon:  yeah like everything the simplest task of like getting out of bed like hitting your suits but you just go okay five four three two one and you

Adam:  and I’m out of bed and you’re like oh okay this isn’t so bad I was right before you jump in the pool oh my god I dont know i dont know oh that’s great

Shannon: right so I don’t know all the philosophy behind that one um never split the difference

Adam:  that’s a negotiation vocab okay

Shannon: and then Michael had and then just selling and financial prospecting

Caleb: fanatical prospecting

Shannon: Fanatical

Adam: fanatical prospecting I think I have that book here [???] I’m interested in the ninja selling one because you know my my business model I guess you could say is like having great relationships and building a referral based business and I think he said that book is kind of about that  and I don’t want to read a book about like making phone calls [???]

Shannon: okay and then the only two podcast I had written down was impact theory and bigger pocket did you get anything else

Caleb:  I I actually have listened to a couple of bigger pockets and I I like

Shannon:  you do you like that one

Adam:  Caleb what is I mean I’ve heard from bigger about bigger pockets almost always from people who are listening to podcasts about real estate that must be like the number one one what is it all about

Caleb: I think it mainly tailors more to like the real estate investor there’s a lot of different videos and like just different ways that you can go about like the invest in real estate like wholesaling and whole tailing and just flipping properties and they actually I have a couple different like kind of calculators that kind of tell you if it’s a good deal for different aspects of it so

Shannon: better than our calculators

Caleb: our spreadsheet that we use [???]

Adam:  so Caleb we had lunch yesterday with that guy and he would kept using the word hoe tailing and now you’re using it what would you what that

Caleb:  I’m not really sure I need to look more into that

Adam: so I’m thinking that’s a wholesale deal where instead of selling it off market to an investor they sell it to an end buyer

Caleb: yeah maybe i think so

there’s something they also call like pre having and whatnot where they are doing where they’ll buy a property and do a very light rehab or just even like a clean-out like

Shannon:  put on a new roof do some typos and get the outside that more lately

Adam:  but then an investor will still buy it and or maybe that’ll make it so that like a first-time homebuyer who’s handy or something like that would buy it hard anything else we want to talk about today

Shannon: you asked about accreditation and I thought that Michael was interesting as well you know he was the whole time he was in one of the accreditation regard was the accredited staging professional and not that you wanted to be a stager but he wanted to understand the philosophy behind it to better help his sellers understand why we asked them to do what we do when we’re asking him to declutter and how they eye moves from left to right and when you scan a room and you walk into a house like this like the psychology of and if you have something a lot of knickknacks the more you break that eye a penny the more you break up that scan that the less they can take in and focus on the house

Adam: I love his concept which is a simple one you know never stop learning

Shannon: right and that’s basically yeah he was and then he there was some other accreditations that he mentioned that I thought were really interesting but not available around here

Adam: well CRS is

Shannon:  all that I have

Adam: certified isn’t that certified residential specialist

Shannon: but his was CRS 204

Adam: it’s a specific class right [???] I’d like to consider getting my CRS designation

Celeb: I think the other interesting thing you said about the accreditation Zoar whether you call those the different certifications you can get is that he actually got a couple deals because he had that and the other realtor didn’t have accreditation

Shannon: so it’s a staging one [???]

Celeb: it was the second and he said like he knows a little bit about it but he doesn’t know everything that a staging professional would know but the lady that was looking for the realtor list her house was saying that that she wanted somebody that knew a lot about staging and he was able to say well

Adam:  I’m a credit staging professional

Caleb:  so it got him that listing

Adam: and if nothing else he gave him the confidence to talk about it to you know alright let’s go ahead and wrap it up we’ve been here about an hour now and I just I want to thank you both for sitting in on this I really wanted to kind of give an overview of the the panel before a before we forget and for everyone else to listen and kind of get some ideas this is definitely a podcast that was tailored more towards realtors but we love our listeners so if you have questions or topics that you want us to cover in the future like always please email PODCAST@HermannLondon.com and let us know what you wanted to hear and thanks so much for listening take care