Hold on tight! If you aren’t paying close attention you might miss a gem from this real estate rockstar. Leigh Brown is a successful REALTOR®, forward-thinking CEO, and #1 best-selling author. She runs one of the top real estate teams in the country, is a kickin’ keynote speaker, and LOVES everything baseball.
Leigh has a gift for motivating people to become a better version of themselves. She has achieved at the highest levels and has worked with the highest ranks in business today. Her career path allows her the experience to impact business growth both large and small and her inspirational speeches have been heard all over the United States and the globe – from Miami to Dubai! From CEO’s of premier companies to REALTORS® just learning their way, Leigh’s experiences can impact any journey. Whether it be leadership structure for the new era of business or rock-solid sales techniques to blast through your goal, Leigh wants to help YOU! Find Leigh on instagram @leighthomasbrown, facebook @leighbrownspeaker, youtube @leighbrownspeaker, or on her podcast Crazy Sh*t in Real Estate.
The following is a rough transcript provided by Otter.ai.
0:00
The computer lift the computer survive. Goodbye YouTube friends, I hope we’re up to 12 subscribers now. And if y’all didn’t tell a friend and you’re personally responsible for her not having subscribers.
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Hey friends welcome to hustle humbly.
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It’s Alyssa and Katie and we are two top producing realtors in the Baton Rouge market working for two different companies where we should be competitors. But we have chosen community over competition.
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The goal of our podcast is to encourage you to find your own way in business.
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So stop comparing yourself and start embracing your strengths. This is episode 14. I’m officially you aware of the episode and you YouTubers are gonna get all sorts of interesting shit the whole time.
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Hey, tell your friends because I guess we have two subscribers. Now we’re going to have four. We might.
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Okay, y’all. Lee Brown is here. And she’s going to tell us who she is. But I’m not lying. I’m a fan girl. I brought my own copy of and I’m gonna make you sign it as a
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submission.
0:58
I read that when it first came out.
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So I’m actually I’m on the third printing now. So yours is likely worth at least a nickel, I
1:05
think at the historical bookstore. Sure. Because
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Baton Rouge before I did, I was teaching ca with four years ago, it was a full day class. Yeah. And I had a cold member, they let me take a nap under the conference.
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Day and I was in that class, a lot became a fan. Okay, so leave, tell us who you are
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and what you do. Okay, I’m a realtor of 19 years. So going almost 20 years. So I have to think of a really good client party. So if you have ideas for my 20th anniversary, I’m anxiously looking for ideas. Okay. And let’s say I’m a mom, I have a 13 year old and a 14 year old as at the time of this recording. So if you listen to this a month from now, I’ll have a 13 year old and 15 year old Okay, got a birthday coming together they are because you know you lose your nerve. If you wait too long between your kids. I had to build up nerve so mine are two years apart. Well, two years. I’m not saying they start to argue about that time. And so you get on real close. They don’t know any different thing, right? They’re just used to and to be friends. So I have a husband too, which is kinda like my third kid. And yeah, I’m from Concord, North Carolina, which is just outside of Charlotte, the home of NASCAR. So that is actually where NASCAR was born. Okay. And my granddaddy was at the very first race there at charlotte motor speedway. And when Fireball Roberts died, he was there and he knew when Jr Johnson was running moonshine Oh, because my granddaddy was a custom home builder. Oh, my daddy said Mama sad. We were cotton farmers, everybody Oh, which is pretty good for real estate. Business base. Yeah. You’re not just no one on your kin to all of them.
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I mean, selfishly I just wanted you on the podcast not because I’m a fan but because also I want to just listen to your accent all day
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long. It is my Get Out of Jail Free card I don’t know why more southerners don’t use their accents I had from it. I we do. We’re the last people on earth you can make fun of Have you noticed that? Probably true. You’re not the only one that is politically correct to attack. It’s okay. Go up north and people deduct 100 IQ points. And that makes me angry because I’m smarter than they are. I
3:04
just kind of like to slip under the radar though. So you don’t think I’m that smart? And then Xingang
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I don’t like to have it under the radar girl. You know, we on top of the radar blowing it out of the water. Okay, tell
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me how your real estate team is structured. Because you still although your speaker and an educator you’re still a realtor,
3:21
I am actually working out a an offer right now. And I’ll tell you that’s one of my pet peeves. Now, I mentioned that realtors will say I’m bringing you a contract. I’m not bringing me a contract, you were bringing me an offer correct until people have agreed it is just an offer. And I wish Realtors would understand how important their
3:38
vocabulary is agree because if they told me I’m bringing you a full price offer, but they asked for $10,000. And
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it’s not full price now. Or we also want the refrigerator in the dining room table and art and the patio furniture that’s not full please things have value. Everything go on you’re working on right here, you sister. So my team is I am the team leader. And I have what we’re having to change. Actually today my full time admin is moving to a job that has benefits because unfortunately, in real estate, no matter how successful you are, we can’t offer benefits. So we’re super proud and excited for her. And her replacement has been trained for last couple of weeks. So that’s happening now. But I have one full time admin two part time admins. And then I have 1234 full time agents and then one brand new agent that we’re currently mentoring. He’s very enthusiastic about being mentored. That’s good. It’s really great. But we’re so not used to that. Because so many realtors that come in expect to just be turned loose with buyer’s or seller’s given the week, right. And I’m not giving a lead until somebody knows what they’re doing because what we do is too important. Yeah, but he’s got the opposite. He’s so anxious to be trained and to spend time with people that the rest of the agents are like, I mean, Chill dude, which is hilarious. We’re managing that but that’s my team. I mean, we’re we’re small and I, I’ve done the giant volume and we’ve pulled that back. Because first of all, I’m not there as much as I would like to be. So I need to be able to know what’s going on. But all of us are making the income we want to make. That’s all the matters. We don’t need to be number one. Yeah. 100 million. And that’s a big problem we have in our profession, because how many of our training classes are all about, you know, get 100 more listings? Yeah, this and this, and well, not everybody wants that. We’ll teach people how to hit their goals, right? Yes, agree. And that’s what our podcast is really about how to find your way and do your business and not feel pressured by the industry to do more and more more or to feel like you’ve got to go to the I love what you said this
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morning about realtor prom season. Ah, spoke to me. But listen, I plan to have an episode where we like throw all of our trophies in the dress.
5:49
Okay, so don’t Did you know that most of the trophy shops will take them and recycle away. So there was an association and I wish I could remember where it was. But they told me about it when I was there to speak Wow. And their little it is like a little locally owned trophy shop that makes all the belle of the ball trophy. Yes, yes. They put out the word all their members bring in your plaques and trophies. Because think about it when people change brands, which Realtors change all the time. That’s true. Especially don’t want those. Yeah. And so they must have recycled several 100 Miles laying and smart, we typically just toss that stuff out. So that could be a great event to do. Actually,
6:23
I would like what I would like to see happen is the award ceremony season turn into who got the best review or testimonial. And that’s the winner. Like who who was best perceived, but like who gave their clients the best? Actually, we
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have to flip that because it’s too hard to get consumers to fill out reviews because they have a scarcity of time just like we do. So what if we turned it into a just a nomination season where you put it out to the public through the news channels and the papers? If you have your realtor turn oh man, okay for great stuff so that they’re not feeling like the realtor is not putting the pressure on. It’s coming from externally. Maybe we could reshape it. But I mean, I get it. It’s so hard in this business because we are all alone. Yeah. And even if you’re running a little team, you’re a tiny little tiny micro business. We do have to celebrate our successes. And I just get very concerned because we are forever celebrating only the monetary success and there are realtors out there that are I mean, look at what the what the National Association does. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched the Good Neighbor Award Ceremony. Okay, but you talk about emotional train wreck. And so you already had this with Carl Cratchit. We love him so much and what he’s doing with Beverly foundation. There’s actually some work happening at the national association. Carl is the chair of the presidential advisory group working on safety. So love it. He’s the one driving the train, which is so stinking perfect. But anyway, the Good Neighbor awards every year, the National Association of REALTORS gives out five awards to realtors that are doing like big things. So we do things in our communities. But you look at the good neighbor people and they’re like changing Whole villages in Africa, bring him wagon, you’re like I’m a slacker, I’m a total slacker. And so they give those out. And every year at the National Conference, they tell each of the stories, and then they win some money for their group. Well, that’s cool. And then there’s also the second tier of that, which is very underutilized, very not known at all. And it’s called volunteer works. And basically, it’s like farm league for Good Neighbor program. So we take people who started an idea and it needs to be mentored and guided into becoming a bigger project. Wow. So we’re spending money on that as an association, which makes my heart so glad. Yeah. And that’s what the realtors are actually working on. How do they get that message out more? How do we get our members to say, Oh, look, this woman, one of our winners this year, she’s put together a program for TBI with just traumatic brain injury. So she’s doing all of this work in her community to help people move out of that space, and she’s providing help to their caregivers at CES. It is so good. And so I look at that. And that’s what Realtors should be talking about. Because that’s really, I think that’s where most Realtors hearts are in their communities. They just don’t know how to tell the story because they’re just used to seeing it told a certain way. And let me show my award. Yeah, filter into what’s already been done.
9:14
It’s very interesting. Okay, on your team, I want to ask you this. Do your agents list or are you old school Rainmaker? All the listings are Lee Brown, and then they are buyer’s agents.
9:26
So all my team, they have specialties but they can do anything they want, right? Because you’re always gonna have the client who loves you the most Yeah. And they want you to handle their listing and their boss and we’ve worked through all these different ways to set it up. Ultimately, it has to be at the decision of the person who’s hiring right. So one of my agents is the listing partner but she does some buyers and then I have the buyer partner and she does a couple of listings, but they’re kind of hilarious because while they enjoy going off topic a little bit like none No, nope, nope, nope, no, that’s the reason I like buyers. No, that’s reason I like sellers and they landed back in their space. Because we know that in real estate over your lifecycle as an agent, you find out which one you’re better suited for. Because it’s really, you’re working with two different sides of your personality because on listings and sellers, you have to be able to handle confrontation and deliver direct information that may hurt somebody’s feelings, right to get them their desired outcome. Yeah, and with buyers, you have to be mushy and gushy and Huggy. And lovey, because they’re all about the, this this house feel right. And sellers don’t care about if it feels right, they care about the numbers and the showings. And so the agents who tend to have that personality that influence or I personality, gravitate toward buyers, and then the direct driver type personality gravitates towards sellers, but everybody has all personality types in them. And so you do chameleon like that, but you let them go where it needs to go. Pretty much where we have a better impact is if you are sending someone to me who’s moving to Charlotte? Well, when I talk to you, we’ll find out more about the buyer or the seller, and I’m gonna try and match them with an agent that fits their personality. Because more so than the fact that my girls work, we’ll have to say my my people now because we have Dan now and he’s a new boy, we had all girls, so currently have listings, and we have bars. If somebody comes in and they are an engineer, accountant C personality where they belong with Virginia, my listing partner, because that’s her primary she’s gonna see, she’s so good with systems and processes, which makes her an excellent listing agent, right? Because listings are all about the process process. And then if they come in, and they need to have your handheld, and they need to have you help them pick up the kids after school so the kids can look at the house, the kids like their room, Lady Wanda, because she will hug them and love them and nurture them all the pieces. And so the personality match is actually more important than the transactional piece. That’s
11:52
a good way to do it, though,
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that makes more sense makes everybody happier to have the agents, happy buyers, happy sellers, right your business.
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Listen, I have talked about teams a little bit on the show, because both of us are solo agents. And she does like upwards of 90 transactions a year ourself crazy. Now she has a not a buyer’s agent. She has an agent who will do assistant type tasks for her by the hour. But she pretty much just hustles and she is gone. Like I said, and so I’m doing this by myself. But one of the agents in her office was in the YPN meeting with you earlier and texted her and said, the best thing I’ve heard so far today was when Lee said Do not let real estate be the center of your life. So tell me a little bit about what that means to you. Because I know you have political advocacy and you run for office and you obviously have your family life. But what does it mean to not let real estate be the center of your life?
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Okay, so there’s there’s kind of two angles on this, I’ll start with the angle I was discussing with the young professional group. We see this with our lifelong volunteers in real estate space. And what our buyers and sellers in our communities have zero understanding of is the amount of advocacy work that Realtors do to protect their property rights and stop silly taxes and sign laws and idiotic things. And it takes realtor volunteers to make that happen. Because the realtors on the ground tell the staff what to go do. And there’s a big misconception in the public that lobbyists are out there just sleazy taking money, well, no lobbyists are carrying your message to elected officials. And so realtor lobbyists are carrying the message of individual realtors to lawmakers and realtors get it from their public, right. So that’s really critical work. However, once you start volunteering in the association, whether it’s for educational events, or it’s for making members have better networking opportunities, or it’s for advocacy work, it’s a lot of different moving pieces. We see people turn into career volunteers, right, and they start doing all of the work because this becomes their social outlet. Suddenly, then they’re 80 years old. They’ve developed no hobbies, and they’re divorced for the third time, and they’re estranged from their kids. And they have nothing except real estate life. And once you are older, and you have nothing else, it becomes really hard for you to let go. Somebody else can take your space. Yeah, because in a healthy and thriving volunteer organization, you take term right? And your job as a volunteer is to come in and bring your energy and your ideas, see some things to fruition and most importantly, replace yourself with somebody else so that you can watch everything morph into the better version of itself, because none of us comes up with the best idea, right? Yeah, it’s us working together. And so I worry about that. I see it on the local realtor level when you see presidents that recycle over and over. You see it on the state level where we have people who are jockeying for position and refused to step down, which is partly why the National Association of real Walters has a board of directors, it’s over 900 people, oh, wow, which is not an effective board. And they’re currently working through some ideas to update the governance. But part of the issue is you have lifelong volunteers who have earned their spot on the board, they won’t let it go. And that they have nothing. If you took this away from them, they have nothing. And that concerns me, and you see it as well. On the production side, what happens is you say it’s just one more showing. It’s just one more listing appointment. Suddenly, you’ve gone from a manageable weekend with a realtor, a manageable week is 60 to 80 hours, we work far more hours in most professions. And our problem is we brag about it. We brag about being available 24/7 We brag about working 14 hour days and act like it’s something exciting, which means the public demands even more of you, right? If I don’t answer it, now, I’m going to have to deal with it in the morning, I’ll just deal with it. 11 o’clock just be done. Right. And she thinks she’s done. But what happened is her brain didn’t turn off because she’s not resting properly, right? When you don’t rest, you can’t be creative. And part of the fun part of our job is the marketing creativity that we get to do for our clients that we get to figure out how to position their houses, and we get to show houses to buyers and help them see the potential. And if you’re exhausted, the best part of you is not wide awake for your community. Right? And so she’ll work, work, work, work, work, and then she’ll decide I have to take a day off. Well on her day off because of these nasty little things that that Netflix show the Black Mirror, have you watched black mirror with? Oh, no, don’t don’t mess with your head. This is the black mirror. So what happens is it’s a day off, and we just I’ll just do some emails and you start working. And then you’re like, I’ll just answer these texts. And I’ll just work and then I’m going to make one quick phone call. And let me check my Facebook messages in my IG messages in my Twitter messages and all of a sudden your days gone. You did not RAS Yeah, realtors have forgotten how to read because they’re addicted to real estate. And we do our clients a disservice. And that’s what kills me the most is that your most driven realtors are making great money. And they aren’t they have some happy clients. And then they’re gonna lose a listing about Ah, why didn’t they pick me? Right? Maybe they didn’t pick you because you weren’t on your A game? Because you were exhausted. Right? Why didn’t that buyer buy that house? I told them to buy it. Well, sometimes we don’t position things correctly. Right? When we’re exhausted. Yeah. And we let our friends go. And I see with realtors all the time. They’re supposed to go to gee, you know, girls night out people don’t know what she knows. And they don’t go because they have one more listing one more buyer. I’ll just go see I’ll do it next month. Next month never comes right. And as a profession we have a higher than average divorce rate. Because we put our spouses on hold. I could see it look down all night. Let’s look at Jay over here is literally in the corner on his ear. totally ignoring us because he he’s wearing earphones, because he’s not listening to us. No, I was listening for sample purposes. Now. I told him it’s gonna make me nervous. But this is so cute. He’s not looking at us at all. Now can’t even see on the video he’s working. Y’all can see you can make an eye contact with us. He’s in the room. We could say 14 more times. You’re so safe right now. Good. Did you shave your legs today? Are you hooking him up tonight? Because you know, this thing will even shave our legs, right? Which is a signal to any husband in the history of humanity that we’re gonna hook them up. Yeah. And then you’re like, you know what, I know we have date night. But I just gotta finish this one client, I gotta do this one phone call. Well, that’s why I’m
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glad he has his earphones on right now. He would sell me out right now he’d be like, This man literally brought bought me this computer. I don’t remember four years ago, because I kept going to do one last thing at 9pm. And my old computer was taken too long to boot up. And he was trying to speed that along. I got you a new computer girl. So now you work twice as much because you can work faster, it’s actually gotten better at boundaries. And that is my next question for you. And I’m glad we’re here. So clearly, you have client boundaries, how do you put them in place and communicate them to your clients?
18:58
So first of all, you will never ever, ever, ever, ever in a million zillion bazillion years. And you can look back at all of that timelines. And I’m a bleeding edge person. I’ve been on all the networks since they were allowed us to never have a set of available 24/7. Right. Realtors who say I’m available 24/7 have opened Pandora’s box and you told the public that you belong to them not that they belong to you, right? And you have to understand whether you’re in real estate or mortgage or insurance or any field. You’re the one who has ultimate responsibility for your schedule. Yeah. So the first thing you have to do is mentally give yourself permission to set boundaries. For me those boundaries are a don’t work on Sundays. Okay? That’s for me is worship and family. And I haven’t worked a Sunday in years unless I decide that I want to go show one house, which very rarely happens because I need to guard that day. That’s when I do meal prep for the week. Yeah, that’s when I make sure that the permission slips are signed and the house is reasonably straightened up and the kids have pitched down. So I have Sunday For all this all afternoon plus Mom’s got to have her nap. I like a Sunday afternoon nap sister. Naps are magical, the best but if I don’t guard Sunday, what happened and you say this with your realtor friends, you’ve done it to two o’clock comes, you have to show that one house. I don’t want to go show this house. Oh, maybe Oh, I’m gonna do it. They’re all on the couch comfortable watching football. I want to watch football too. And then you try to go show it. But because it’s happening when you didn’t want to do it, but you decided you had to do it. Now you’re walking out of the house with a half two instead of a won’t? Yes. So I started safeguarding my son days when I had my daughter, and that was four years into real estate. And up until that point, I pretty much worked 24/7 Just like every other real Right, right? Because I was single and I didn’t have you had. I didn’t have a reason not to. Yeah, well, once I met my husband, and frankly, Sundays, before I met my husband, I would go to church and immediately go to the ball field. And I would just play softball all day, because I played in a co Ed League, right? And as we all know, if you’re a girl in the CO Ed League, you pay for one team, but you could play on all of them, because you’re always needing to pick up girls who can play Oh, wow, that’s actually where I met my husband. And so after I met him, we kept playing ball for a while then after we got married and then got pregnant. My days of playing ball were now over right. And I had to make a decision, then what’s my real estate business going to look like? Because as the child of a realtor, you right knew what this looked like. Yeah. And my dad, we went open houses, and we helped with flyers and everything else. And it was never a burden. But I do know that my dad was never at my track mates because they were in the middle of the afternoon. And he was showing houses because he was trying to provide for his family. So I know the logical side of my realtor brain gets it. But the emotional side was man, I wanted my daddy, right. And I said, I’m not doing that to my kid, right? Well, the crazy part is once I carved out Sundays, I was then able to carve out Saturdays. So if I worked on Saturdays, it was in a pretty short window, right? But I didn’t want to give up all of my Saturdays. Yeah, well, then I said, You know what? As I’m carving, my business is increasing. Because when you make yourself scarce, scarce, people understand that you are desirable enough to wait for for sure. So I don’t do listing appointments at night, right? I mean, right now, if you call my office and you want to list your house with me, Lee’s listing appointments are from 730 to 230. Monday through Thursday. Well, I get why 730? Because I’m a morning person. And if the potential client is also a morning person, fine. How often do we as Realtors even get that as an option? No, we don’t we tend to go for evenings because we make the assumption. That’s where the clients, but I am worthless, right? At seven o’clock at night. In the morning. Correct? Great in the morning. Sure. But at night, I’m done. Yeah. And why 230? Well, I did I started that because my kids were getting out of school at three o’clock and I really wanted to at least be a partial Pinterest Mom, I’m not cut out to be a stay at home mom can do the whole thing. I mean, I’m more Pinterest fail. But I wanted to be there after school and get back to Sunday. So carving out time you’re after you carved out Sunday, you’re able to carve out Saturday, and my business starts to increase as I start to lay out the boundaries of when I’m available. Well, it sort of set you up as a professional. But I absolutely let’s not even sort of adopt it. Because here’s the thing, when you want to go to the dentist, do you even remotely expect them to be available outside of their hours, you just know that they have hours
23:31
aren’t even there on Friday, half day, ya know, they’ve
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got to really set up nicely hours. And my hygienist worked two days a week. But she’s working like 12 hour days, like I could still dig that because I’ve worked those every day, right? But in real estate, there’s a fear amongst realtors that if I don’t do it, somebody else will get it. Now that’s totally a possibility by you have to rewire your brain to have the attitude of abundance instead of scarcity. Because when you are worried about losing it, you probably will Yeah. And I tell agents, that’s when you have commission breath and the other person can smell it. Oh, and that’s when they start standing back from you because they can tell you need the sale needed. They need the good of counsel and advice, right? So I carved out Sundays and then I started carving out Saturdays. I mean, I’ve shown one weekend and pride this year, and I showed it Saturday and it’s a girlfriend I’ve known since elements it was gone. Well I wanted to see her as I wanted to get caught up and we chatted for a while about some gossip and I sold them their house seven years ago and so we were talking about you know, we have to get together about selling it but in our market right now you’re better off buying before you sell because it’s easier to sell than it is to find something to buy, especially based on the neighborhood they’re in but of course real estate is local and so is in each night. In each market. You have specific differences in price points and zip codes and that’s part of why you need a realtor because websites right can’t tell you the intricate details about planning right. So you get make that choice. And then as I was mentioning, mentally my kids were in elementary school, when actually this started when they were in preschool. I wanted to pick them up in the afternoons. And so when I pick them up, my phone goes into airplane mode. And my kids know this, they’ve been watching me for years, go to airplane mode. That’s awesome. So if I, if I have the kids and I pick up my phone, they’re like airplane mode. You’re right. So you can train your kids to guard you, right? But they need our undivided attention. And too many of us are given them the leftover pieces of us, when our most important job as a parent is to as I say, I’m trying not to raise a flock of assholes, right? So I don’t believe my children are assholes. I’m super proud so far. But I have to give them the boundaries that they need to give them the counsel and the advice while they’re under my roof. Yes. And realtors will give that piece of themselves to this buyer and to that seller at the expense of their kids, the expense of their spouse. And back to this whole real estate can’t be the center of your life. I mean, how many Realtors scheduled date night with their spouse? And then you go to the bathroom to work a deal on your phone? Yeah, in 45 minutes later, you emerge. And you think and nobody noticed while I was gone, and the person you love is sitting there? Pissed, right? Because you couldn’t even give him supper? Yeah, we’re doing right. And all of that is for what? Five? $6,000. Right? And you then think about what’s it gonna cost you to divide by two and you lose that spouse? Right? I can divide by two, right? I know what the cost will be if I don’t take care of my husband. Yeah. Plus, I pretty much told God I was gonna do it. And so here I am, right. So yeah, well, realtors who are not married need to have a hobby, they need to have friends who are unrelated to this business. And I think that’s probably where I got to them in that little meeting earlier is I know that they’re making friends with each other because that’s what you do. And Young Professionals Network. And it’s part of the reason you volunteers to build the relationships. But you have friends that aren’t related to this, your best friend from high school, and every one of us has that one friend, who you could talk to today that you hadn’t seen her in 40 years and dislike yesterday because they know your history. And even if you’re not super close today, because something got in between you. That’s the one friend you could fix. Right? So as humans, why are we not fixing that one friend, instead of trying to sell 10 more houses? And I do worry about our people. Yes. So I try to drive that message home because you’ll sell more houses when you’re happy. For sure. The public knows when you walk through the door and you’re comfortable and confident. And they’re there then comfortable and confident selecting you right?
27:37
I like that. We’re going to talk about your podcast
27:40
crazy shit in real estate. Love it. Yes. I love my podcast on episode 55. You were like super early episode. I’m almost at 200 Now think I’m at 180 You know why
27:50
there’s so many crazy stories and realist and they’re all different. But what I love about him, I’m gonna ask you that what I love about the way you do the show, though, is that you take whatever crazy story it is and explain why a realtor was necessary there and why they were professional or were not professional, but it really comes at it from an angle of hey, public, these are all the crazy wacky things that are happening. But they needed that professional there for XYZ.
28:16
So what’s fascinating, is it since you were on the show, yes, my audience has moved so we’re a little over three years old now. And when the show started, the listeners were primarily my realtor people who follow me because they’ve heard me speak or whatever. And now three years in the listenership is 70% consumers. Yes, it’s crazy. It’s like HGTV for the years. Except it’s realistic HGTV rates way better than HGTV because HGTV we know their formula now. On a 30 minute show, the couple’s going to meet with a realtor, there’s going to be completely pointless in the show. Yeah, they’re gonna look at three houses. They’re gonna Oh, what do we do? And they’re gonna pick the house number two,
28:56
what they do, because they bought it six months before?
28:58
Of course you did. I’ve done one of the show. And I had to make my people move out for the for the video. When they moved back in for the
29:06
shots aged vacant, like you have to restage it, that’s a commitment it is they get paid for that. No.
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Does the real people want to be on HGTV real way too bad and they’re just the cutest couple ever? Sweet. My little producer was like, they cut all of my good bits. I’m
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like your one liners all of my clients were
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like, well, that’s that’s how she shows houses and they’re like, he’s like you belong on Bravo. Not on HGTV. Yes, yes, that’s not people because I’ve made a comment about how much but anyway, what are we talking about? My podcast? Now we have consumers listening. I think it’s because they they’ve done real estate okay. And something probably happened in their transaction right? And so often the consumer thinks when they go through something with us they have the wild repair issue like they had one house had a natural spring in the crawlspace Wow, we told the buyer don’t buy it she wanted the house anyway cuz she was in love. Six months later, she’s like, I probably shouldn’t have bought it. We’re like, yes, thank you. This is why we told you not to. But anyway, so she thought she was the only one who’d ever had a wild scenario. So as consumers listen to these episodes, you’re like, I’m not alone, everybody, and there’s a huge space in the human psyche. That does not want to be alone. Yeah. Oh, for sure. I think that’s rather dialing in. They’re entertained, but they also feel like, alright, I thought it was wild and crazy. I’m actually pretty normal.
30:24
Okay, 180 ish in? And do you have a craziest, crazy shit and real estate like the one that was just like you couldn’t even believe it? Well,
30:34
every time I get one of these news stories, I’m like, because I did one with Paula Bran and Mississippi a couple of weeks ago, where she was talking about a buyer who had presented her with their child’s foreskin. safely, and I’m like, what, okay, well, it was just one of those moments. I’m like, oh, man, and Paul has been on twice because she called me she’s like, Girl, I gotta never gonna believe this, which is pretty much how most of my episodes come to me. They’re like, You are never never and I’m like, get you on the show and talk about it. That’s so fun. It but then I was reminded, I haven’t yet done an episode telling my own stories, because the whole show has been about showcasing what other people do. Because as you know, it is my passion project. And I’m trying to make people understand what professional realtors go through. So at some point, I’ll have to tell my own stories, but you should, it’ll be like a three hour episode. So we’ll have prior to the stream out on YouTube. So maybe it’s streaming on YouTube, but we’ll have your eight subscribers here, because we’re making progress, I can tell every minute. That’s why we’re getting in our subscribers. For the podcast people,
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we do have a YouTube channel that had all of two subscribers before
31:40
li K. Now we’re gonna see it triple, quadruple and see what happens gonna be massive.
31:46
So when we talk to I mean, our audience so far has been mostly newer agents, or maybe agents just looking for a little direct
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evidence because they need love and guidance direction, and they need some
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permission to like figure it out and see there’s different ways and not just follow the path of the industry, you shouting at them. And I think the big feedback we get is that there’s so many different mixed messages. So then they’re even more confused, like, well, this, people tell us to do it this way. And these people tell us to do it that way. But we talk a little bit about some tactical stuff. And I started using your buyer and seller intake form when I took the class, I mean, I still physically have to they live in mud everywhere, many, many classes, and yours is the one that really, I implemented the most stuff. Very glad. You’re so welcome. I just it was great. And so the buyer and the seller intakes and put just having systems in general, yes, I think that’s the problem that a lot of agents have, they don’t even have a system, they don’t even know that they should or should or what it would do for their business. And earlier when you were talking about your intake sheets, again, in that class, you were basically saying that the consistency in your business comes when you put those things in place.
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And it’s so funny, because they’re pretty much in every class I ever teach. There’s just no one thing everybody could do. Yeah, because if you look at your best realtors or even why people became one is generally because they really liked people. And they’re good at connecting to people. Which means that by default, they’re probably terrible at organizational practices, because those are two very different skill sets. Yes. And if you give somebody a tool, it can usually be a launching place for future tools, but you have to start organizing somewhere. But I think our bigger issue with our new Realtors because they are overwhelmed with noise. There’s nobody out there tell them how to pick their first broker. Yeah, oh truly had a new agent reached out to me by Facebook probably a month ago. And he’s like, I don’t know how to pick my first broke right and pressure from this brand. And it was one of those. Let’s just call it a Ponzi scheme brand, whose focus is not on selling houses as much as it is on luring other people into the brand. And so he was feeling very icky about it. And so first of all, if you feel icky, don’t go there, right? Because your gut intuition absolutely has merit. And so we talked through how he could interview brokers and so I finally rolled out a video I guess it’s it’s either this week or next week, it comes out about how to select your first broker. I love it. But we also have to tell agents it’s okay to change brokerages because they have this massive sense of loyalty to people who aren’t loyal to them, right? And then they have inertia because they’re like, ah, but I got this one person coming up and it’s too much work. I just, I’ll just go to Facebook and figure it out. Well, you’re finding that your best agents have a really good relationship. It’s symbiotic with their brokers and the broker wants them to grow to support them and they want their broker to stay in business. Yeah. And then you have the parasitic relationships where the broker is eating commission from the agent and giving nothing in return. That’s not helpful. Yeah. And then we have agents that are parasitic on brokers, and they’re unethical and they don’t work hard and they want to be given what they haven’t earned. So the agent needs to know what their goals are. Whether the goal is I want to be a part time agent who learns this over a year. You’re well, my kids are finishing preschool Right? Or I’m a full time agent single mom who needs to crush it quickly. That’s two different brokerage types right there. Yes. So ask better questions. But you need to find out what are you going to get beyond that first two weeks with your broker? Right? When they tell you here’s how the company does this. And your company does that. You have to know what next right? And what next should include some tangible things that you could get your business going with is how many calls do you make a day? So in my office, my recommendation is to every agent, you make one phone call a day. That’s it. Right? And that’s out of your contacts in your phone. That is not random cold leads or door knocking? It’s out of the people you already know. Yes. Hey, how you doing? I was thinking about you feel like if you need anything, let me know. Yeah, really low key really simple. None of this old school. Hey, who do you know, that needs to buy or sell house? Because too many real estate training programs are completely icky. Yeah. And most of us are not good with canned crap, because that’s not who we are in the first place. Exactly. So I get my just make one phone call a day and what they find, is it usually somebody in their phone, like some answers the phone, and then they have a good phone call. Now you’ve had a good phone call now what can I do right now go to the dry cleaners to the library or to the elementary school and volunteer and go be in your community and be visible. And they feel confident doing it because you talk to somebody, and it was positive. And that person now knows they’re in real estate? Well, you’ve planted a seed. And if you do one every day, over the course of a month, you’ve taught to 20 to 25 people. And then the next month is 2025. More. Yeah. And we know by the statistics 10% of your outbound calls turned into a sales opportunity. Wow. So if you make 20 calls a month, two will eventually turn into something. And that’s all it is. Is one call a day. Yeah. So I will tell you, that’s probably my most successful help for new agents because they get so lost. I don’t know what to do next. Right. It’s one call today at 8am. Yeah, first thing you can’t wait till five because you’re too tired. And they don’t want to talk to you right at 8am. The day has started. But they’re busy. They won’t keep you forever, and neither will you. So you start you off, you’re like, I can do this. Yes. And you’ve accomplished something now your day can move. And so over the course of a year, you will actually have closings from that just from the easy part. And and this used to be easy, Katie when we’ve been talking to people, but the devices have separated us from people because we rely on text and Facebook message instead of face to face I like
37:31
to call, people start texting me and I pick up the phone and I call them like, sometimes I just lie and say I’m in the car. But I’m correct. It’s faster to just want to talk to you. Can we just get this out? Because if you can’t understand the intention and attacks, half of it’s misspelled, I don’t know what you’re taught.
37:48
Like, it’s just like, it’s because we read a text in the space that we’re in eight. And they sent a text in the space that they’re in and you can’t hear it because you don’t have the inflection. Yeah, as a body language. And we make all these assumptions. Yes. I mean, how many fights do Realtors get in with each other? Transactions? Right, because of a poorly worded text or add Russia answer, and 30 seconds on the phone to solve it.
38:14
So true. Okay, so I think we’ve talked about your message for new agents. And I think that you know, I love that you’re so into video, and I love your videos. I think they’re all amazing and hilarious. This is sort of my last ditch question. What is because we’ve been
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talking for a while and we have rambled about a lot. I know, right? So
38:32
much fun, it’s fun. I want to let you get back on any of stuff to do today. How has video impacted your business?
38:38
Video has made me a human right. So before video was a big thing, which is not that long ago is kind of wild to look at the trajectory. So from 2000 to 2000, I guess nine was my first viral video. I think it was nine when I got angry at Bank of America. And I made this little black and white video that was on CNBC and all these websites and it was early viral. And they called it the best bank rant ever. Why couldn’t get the bank to return my phone call and that was my last resort was making the video. And then people shared it out because people hate banks then and now. And prior to that I was taught produce from a market now Charlotte’s a big market and so I am killing it. But people don’t like it when you’re killing it. Right? They assume things you know they call me and you know you’re a bitch and you’re aggressive and you sell and blah blah. It’s because I’m a driver driver person. Yeah, you asked me a question. Boom, I answered Bumble, right? I’m just crushed out my day. Well, when I made that little video, it was all of my fiery soapbox. He self pushed out on the internet. And I found out the power of video and suddenly my competitors were much nicer to me. Oh, and as I use more and more video they started understand my personality because I can’t hear somebody’s voice I text or an email, even back then you couldn’t And even on the telephone because I’m a driver, it winds up being bom bom video, you can see somebody’s energy because you can write their eyes and hear their voice. And you can see the contextual surrounding. So I started doing more and more video, which means my competitors understood who I was more because I would show my kids and my husband and my life, well now, multifaceted Lee Brown, who also sells houses instead of just a machine. So it’s been impactful in a way I did not anticipate. The reality is from a business perspective, video has been enormous. And what’s hilarious now that I’ve been doing it for almost 10 years, when a person calls me to sell their house, they’ve watched everything I’ve put out there, wow. So they know what to expect. They know that I’m going to be honest, and I’m probably going to be funny. And they know that I’m not going to lie to them. And they know that my bills are paid, whether they sell or not. And they know I’m not going to budge on my commission, because I’m absolutely worth it. And so all of the messages that would normally have to deliver are done for me, with years of video. They also know how I feel about the public schools. They know how I feel about faith related issues. They know how I feel about the Second Amendment. They know how I feel about politics, because it’s all out there. Right. So it could be that there are people that don’t call me because I don’t G and hall with them. Right? And that’s okay. Right? Because that means that they’re finding somebody who matches them better. Yeah. And when you have an attitude of abundance, you realize it’s okay, yeah. Because not everybody’s gonna like everybody else. That’s one of the big problems we have in society today, is I’ve been told you have to make everybody happy all the time, when in reality, there’s a whole subset of people determined to be unhappy all the time. Well, I let them be over there. I’m over here with my happy, honest and direct people. Yeah, and it works out really well. But the thing was, video is like, it’s your third video and you stop being scared. You always hold your camera up so that your chins go back when you look better. And then there’s bats in the cave. It won’t bother anybody. Most of mine are selfie style videos. But consumers like selfie because of the authenticity of Yes. And I really don’t know why more people don’t embrace it. It’s such a an inexpensive tool, because you already have it. It’s just a little bit scary to put yourself out there. But in reality, it’s what we do as realtors, we’re putting ourselves out there on the line, our name and somebody’s yard, to help them achieve their goals, right knowing that we might fail, and our name is the one that’s at risk in front of their house. They are never at risk. It’s us. Yep. Well, you’re already out there. So use video as an additional marketing tool for your seller clients use it to help your buyers enjoy things, right. You use it to share information, my latest gig over the last few months I’m spotlighting local businesses, which has been ridiculously fun. And it’s also how I found out that the downtown I’m in which is Concord, I’m interviewing the local business owners and I’m promoting them, most of whom have no marketing budget, and they don’t have any followers because they’re tiny micro businesses to well, over half of the businesses in downtown Concord are women owned. Oh, yeah. And it was like the heck nobody that added that up and even the Downtown Development Corporation had never why added it up. Because if you’re not looking for the data, sometimes it doesn’t appear. Well. My girlfriend who helps me with my videos PA and we were out in PA is in all my videos. It’s kind of like our wills Waldo and our ally, another woman owned business. Wow stamp. And so we’re trying to figure out what do we do with that message? We’ve got an accidental incubator here. How do we encourage and promote and support which is bigger than real estate short but which feeds real estate? And so I guess video has that twofold opportunity to make your impact bigger while it’s also far more market market niche driven. I
43:52
love it. That’s so awesome. Okay, at the end of every episode, I didn’t tell you this. We toast somebody. Oh, I thought we were gonna do like a we’re gonna do like a hand clap. No, no. Hey, clapping. You get to toast another agent or someone who has had a success story that you’re proud of that you’re impressed with. We like let the guests pick who they want to toast if you need a minute out. Doodle editing for
44:14
you. Oh, I know who I would post right here in Baton Rouge. Oh, yeah. Girl, I post people every day. These handwritten notes of it. Okay, tell us what you want to toast. So I will toast one of your local Baton Rouge realtors. Pat HwaDam. Love Pat. I love Pat so much. And she’s been a realtor for ever. She’s, of course been realtor of the year and she’s volunteered and she’s one of the most sharing giving humans I’ve ever known. And Pat is not just a realtor. She’s an artist and I have her art from the first time she started talking about being an artist when she was deciding to dial into it to where she is today because she’s taking lessons and she’s displaying in galleries is amazing. It’s really good. It’s like it’s really great to say this because sounds mean like it’s artistically A realtor over something like us realtor good. Not it’s not realtor good. It’s artist good. Yeah, she’s like getting paid for that. Wow. And she does all of that. And she does a lot of real estate business today. And she’s caring for her aging mom, who it’s a challenge to deal with aging parents, and nobody really warns you about how hard that is. Right? So I’m looking at all the things that she does. And she always has a smile on her face. And she is forever looking to other people to see how she can support them. She’s always staying active in her musical life because she plays Yeah, as well. I mean, I just I just love her. And if I see her, she never fails to ask me how I’m doing and give me a hug. And I’ve learned from her all these years. I mean, she’ll tell you how to be successful at real estate. So I will always every time I’m in Louisiana. Oh good. We’re gonna put in a toast toast or pat water. Cheers Harris pass. So happy to have you in our market. Yeah, I know and her partner Linda Gasper, too, we love Linda too. I just know Pat better Linda. So don’t take it personally. But you’re cute as a button. And we matched today. And then Debbie, who’s worked with Pat for years. I just love Debbie and Debbie is of course a survivor. So HAFA for kicking cancers ass love it. So let’s just toast Debbie and Linda and Pat love it and probably all the other people that I just love here. But you know, I will tell you this, if you’re a newer realtor listening to this, you’re going to feel alone in real estate at some point. And the way to overcome that is not to go on Facebook and brag about your real estate business. You need to volunteer and show up at the Association for events and classes and get to know some other realtors, and especially find an older mentor because they’re the most honest, you’ll find and often they will tell you that it’s okay to have a bad day. And it’s also okay to celebrate your successes. Yes, but there are people out there like Pat in every single market, and they’re filled up when they see other people succeed. And I think it’s one of the beauties of real estate and it’s why I’m so glad for what you’re doing on your podcast because you’re reaching a market that may or may not feel heard or valued. And we know that with the average age of Realtors being 56 We have to have new Realtors come in because there’s organically going to be retirement and death. So So bring it on and go follow people like Katie who will make you successful because it was given to her and she’s given it back. That’s
47:18
right. Oh, thank you, Lee. That was awesome.
47:21
It’s true. Okay,
47:22
we did it and the computer live. Thank you so much for tuning in to the hustle hungry podcast. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at hustle humbly podcast.
47:34
If you have an episode topic or question please email us at hustle humbly podcast@gmail.com Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. See you next week.
47:50
This is goodbye
