Today I wanted to take a moment and talk about things that I wish I had known when I had started my real estate business. Over the past couple of years, I've really been asked a lot, "Hey, I'm thinking about getting into real estate." Or, "I just got into real estate, and these are the things I'm struggling with. How do I deal with that?" Or, "What would you do?" And I thought it would be good just to kind of summarize some of the most important things to realize and consider before you get into real estate or when you start real estate. And if you're not doing either one of those, then I invite you just to join in for a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at what it's like to be a realtor.
10 years in Real Estate
This summer, I actually celebrate being in real estate for 10 years so. And I say celebrate because this career, or this business, has been such a blessing to me in so many ways, but there's so few people that actually make it this far into the business. I mean, I think the stats are that after the first year, 50% of the people that started will be gone, and by the end of the second year, you can cut that number in half again. And so the attrition rate is really really high in real estate, especially in those first couple of years. And you might think, "Well, why is that?" And I think it has to do with a bit of the HGTV effect. I think that HGTV has painted this picture of what real estate is like, and being a realtor is this fun job where you get to go around and look at beautiful homes and show fun people houses, and eventually, they decide to buy one, and then you get paid a big fat check. But it misses the biggest biggest part of what it is to actually be a successful realtor and have a long-lasting career. And that is the fact that it is a sales business. They never show you how those people got those clients. And the reason they don't show it is because it's kind of boring and mundane, but honestly, it's the most pivotal part of being a realtor.
Gaining Clients
There are so many different characters in real estate, and I think there's good reason for that. I think there's reason there's all sorts of different characters in life, and people often want to work with people that are similar to them. But I also think that there's some realtors I look at, and I think, "Man, how are you still selling real estate? How do people still work with you? Because you are just so bad, in some ways, at what you do." But the reality is they've mastered the element of sales, or lead generation, or finding clients, whatever you want to call it. Is they've gotten really good at that, so that no matter how bad they are at the other parts, they can go out and find new clients. If you don't know how to generate leads, if you don't know how to find clients, then you career's not going to be very long-lasting. I'm at a point now where most of my clients are either past clients, or referrals, or by word of mouth, or I'm generating leads off existing business that I already have. Whether that's people calling me on listings I have for sale or other means.
Marketing
Advertising, obviously, I'm doing at this point as well. But in the beginning, I mean, I sat in open houses. I took leads from other realtors that were too busy to deal with them. I knocked on doors. I cold called people. And to be honest with you, I didn't love any of those things, but it's what I had to do to get my real estate career started. I basically came to London, and the only other person I knew was a realtor. A good friend of mine was a realtor, and he wasn't gonna buy a house for me. So I had to go out and find people. I had to find strangers that wanted to work with me. If you're in the fortunate position where you actually have a lot of friends and family in the town where you're selling real estate, then I think you're fortunate because you can go to them and say, "Hey, listen, I got my real estate license. Are you thinking of buying or selling?" And a lot of times they will give you a chance way more so than a complete stranger will. So I would encourage you to do that, but you need to think long and hard about how you are going to find clients and how you are going to generate business when you jump into this career.
Time and Money
So those are the two resources that you have when you get into real estate. You've got probably lots of time and not a lot of money. So you need to spend those resources accordingly. Don't overvalue your time and think that you're some sort of top producing realtor who thinks that their money is worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars per hour. The reality is it is not. Your time is not worth that, and so don't go and spend a bunch of money. I've watched realtors literally spend their whole budget on one ad in the "The London Free Press" or a newspaper and kind of let it all ride on black type thing. And they just, it blows up in their face because that's not how advertising works. It's not this one big push. I mean, you need to have a budget to do advertising consistently. And the reality is is you probably don't have the budget to do that when you start. So go and do the things that you can commit your time to. Sit at tons of open houses, chase down tons of leads, post on social media yourself, record videos like I'm doing right now. All those kinds of things you have the time to do. So do those things. Give your time to lots of things that are potentially going to generate business. And as your career grows, this is what's gonna happen, is you're gonna have less and less time to give to things, but you're likely gonna have more and more money to allocate to either paying people to do the things you don't have time to do or don't wanna do. You're gonna have time to pay for advertising to help you generate leads. But you're going to get more and more picky with how you allocate your time. And your time is likely gonna be spent much more on meeting clients and going on appointments, and that's about it. And other than that, your time should be given to trying to generate leads.
Whether that's figuring out what your ad campaigns are gonna be, or how your advertising looks, or literally picking up the phone, or knocking on doors, or however you choose to do it. So time and money, think about how you are going to spend those resources when you get into real estate, and my advice to you would be talk to other realtors.
Effort = Success… if you’re smart about it
I have had moments in my career where I've poured tons and tons of effort and time into things to have nothing to show for it. Sometimes it's your own fault, and sometimes it's other people's fault.
I can remember I listed a house for a couple. They never told me that they were actually in financial distress. I got them an offer on their property, and it wasn't enough money for them to cover all of their debts, and they actually decided to go and declare bankruptcy. I never sold that house. The bank put it back up for sale a couple of months later, and it actually ended up selling for less than what I had on that property. Now, a lot of that is, in my opinion, my fault. I didn't qualify those people. I didn't get their financial information well enough to actually figure out what their situation was and protect myself from wasting my time and effort. Now, on the flip side of that, being as far as I am into my real estate career, I have learned much better how to qualify people so that I don't waste my time like that. I would say I'm famous for saying, "Where there's a will, there's way." And I’ve found this: if you have really really good clients that are qualified, and they're pursuing something, and they really want it, and they have the means to do it, but there are hurdles along the way, usually that is a situation where if there is a will, there's a way. And the effort will equal success. I think that if you are worried about putting forth effort into something that may result in nothing, then talk to another realtor, talk a realtor that's been down that road before, that has the experience, and allow them to kind of filter some of that, or qualify some of that for you. And then you can determine whether it's worth putting forth the effort into whatever that may be, so that your outcome is actually desirable, that it's actually worth the effort.
At the end of the day, if you figure out and learn how to qualify people, qualify situations, it will serve you so much better. Mentorship is something that I probably didn't take seriously enough when I was starting out in real estate.
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
If I could give you one piece of advice, and if I could back and do it again, I would join a team. I would join a team that has a realtor that is down that road so much further. They're looking for you to come on as buyer's agent or some part of their team, and if there's a certain demographic of the market that you wanna work with, in a certain price range, or neighborhood, or whatever it may be, and you find a realtor that's already working in that area, then go and join that team, even if it means that you have to join for free. Even if you have to work for them for six months for free, I promise you it will be totally worth it. It will speed up your learning. It will also allow you to have somebody else worrying about generating leads, and they will kick them onto you, and you will gain so much experience in such a short period of time. Something that you could learn in typically three, four years, you'll be able to accomplish in one year. And if at that point you deicide, "Hey, I'm gonna go out on my own," it is totally worth it. If you don't wanna join a team, and you wanna go the route of being a single solo agent from the start, then at least find a mentor that is willing to help you. The challenge is that so many successful realtors are so busy that it is tough for them to give their time to you, and there's really no benefit or reward to them. Or if you say, "Hey listen, I'm looking for you to help me out, to mentor me. Would you be willing to do that if I were to pay you a referral fee on some of the transactions that I have you help me with, or some of the deals that I do if I were to pay you a 25% referral fee, would you be willing to take some of my calls and answer some of my questions." I've learned that there are a few great people in the industry that are willing to give you their time for free just because they wanna see you succeed. And I managed to find a few of those people once I was already kind of on my journey and down the path, and I now try and do that for people. Figure out where it is again that you wanna focus on, what part of the industry you wanna be in, and find those people that are already doing that, so they can help you along on your journey.
Prioritize
While I talked about the fact that in the beginning of your career, you will feel like you have so much time, and you don't necessarily know what to give it to. I think you still need to prioritize your time to the things that are important. I see so many successful realtors in London that have wonderful careers, but the rest of their lives are in really tough shape. I've seen realtors that I feel like I've kind of looked up to in the beginning who have now grown their careers or opened their own brokerages, and they sell a lot of the other parts of their life away in order to accomplish a great real estate career. And at the end of the day, I think, "Why are you trying to be successful?" What is the point of having a successful career if you lose it all, the rest of the things that are important in your life, at the same time. I mean, this is something for me that I made a priority right from the start. In fact, throughout my whole 10-year career, I've basically been home almost every single night for dinner. I've been around for bedtime most of the time. And it's actually something that I explain to my clients, and say "listen," particularly buyers who are, you have to be more active with them, particularly in the evening time or over weekends, I say, "Listen, I do have a family, and I try to be home for dinner and bedtime." And I almost never work on Sunday, and that's because I want it to be family time. I want it to be a rest day, a time to take a break from all the real estate goings on that I'm dealing with. So prioritize your time, and what I find is most people will actually respect you even more for doing that. They completely understand. And set that up with them. Make that kind of parameter and that framework that you work within, and they will understand when you don't necessarily get back to their texts that they sent you at six o'clock, or that you wanna book a showing for seven o'clock at night instead of 5:30. They will understand that, and they will get that.
So that's it for me. This is by no means an exhaustive list. I hope that you found it helpful. If you have any questions, if you're thinking about getting into real estate, leave a comment below. If you feel like I've missed something big, leave a comment as well. That's it from me. I hope you're all having a wonderful day, and we will chat soon.