From Stagnant to Unstoppable: Building a Purpose-Driven Life and Business with Justin Loncaric

[0:00] welcome back to the rei agent i’m here with justin long character justin thanks so much for joining us amazing to be here thanks for having me i got the last name right and then i stumbled on saying your your first name perfect it’s like you know you like work so hard to get something then you just like forget about everything else so i’m hoping the rest of this uh this conversation goes well justin thanks for joining us uh you are coming out of canada correct i am yeah i mean just outside of toronto ontario okay perfect um uh yeah and i know that we have a lot of similarities things some things are a little bit different but um definitely a lot of similarities between our markets or the way we do our business um you are a realtor uh you want to tell us kind of a bird’s eye view about kind of what you do um as a realtor kind of what what your niche is what you know your business looks like yeah so we uh so we we didn’t really have anything before so i’ll i’ll note that first like before 2019 2020 we didn’t have a niche we had nothing we were flying blind just trying to figure it out um and that was uh 20 odd years into my career so to put

[1:09] that into perspective and so um our niche now currently is move up buyers and sellers so families that are looking to move up to their next home their dream home whatever and from that standpoint uh that’s where our general focus is when it comes to marketing and the things that we do uh and that has uh done very well for us uh typically in our area um our average sale price tends to be around a million bucks yeah uh so that that kind of you know gives you an idea of what our market’s like here and and how we do things so uh but yeah no that’s uh that’s pretty much me we work for am i allowed to say our brokerage i know we haven’t even discussed that not that i’ve cared yeah uh yeah that’s fun yeah so i work for keller williams up here so it’s a it’s a it hasn’t been around for a while but um it’s a good it’s uh it’s been fun so yeah that’s awesome so wow okay so you you were in in there 20 years and and normally people kind of when they’re at that point might be more like just sitting around like the phone’s gonna ring um you know i have past clients i’ve you know follow up with them with the newsletter whatever um and that and they just kind of

[2:13] coast so you but you turned up the volume um you went into it um i i’m going out of order here but what what kind of made you niche down and what kind of got you to uh yeah increase we were we we were so i let’s go let’s go contextually here because i think i need you need context with how my career has gone so my the first 20 odd years of my career well let’s call it 17 years of my career i was i work with my mom so i joined my mom’s team right off the hop i fought real estate i didn’t want to be a realtor i tried everything to not be a realtor and then one day i was like i’m gonna be a realtor actually what happened was i met a woman who was the most incredible woman on the planet and i was like i gotta start doing something that means something otherwise this girl’s not gonna stick around so i decided to become a realtor joined my mom’s team did about 17 years went out on my own spent a couple of years failing miserably thinking that i knew everything and then one uh it was about august of 2019 my wife and i were talking about you know what do we do now like where do we go from here

[3:17] how do we build this more and she pointed out a training program that we that we that she had found somewhere and we joined and it was the catalyst of me going from i know everything to holy cow like i i need help and what does that help look like you know because what you would expect a 17 year veteran to kind of know what he’s doing or they’re doing yeah but i didn’t right i just i i realized there was so much more to what we were putting out there and what we were doing than than i thought um maybe i was sheltered by the team that could have been it um but uh ultimately i needed to learn more and so we hired this coach and at the beginning of that coaching i was wholly uncoachable like i’ll admit it and she’ll tell you my coach uh will tell you she said you were terrible until about six months in and something clicked with me and i was like i gotta just do this and i have to be malleable and i have to be coachable and part of that process was learning about niching down to a proper market understanding who that niche was building a marketing platform around that niche and effectively marketing in a modern way as opposed to the same

[4:36] old drudgery and same old crap that most realtors put out there quite frankly okay so there you go that’s the context okay well i got some clarifying questions first of all who is this uh amazing woman um and does your wife know about her first of all my wife chose her so and sent me to her so so yeah though um she’s her name is jesseline uvel she’s uh she’s got a company called uh the listings lab and some some of your audience may have already heard about it maybe she’s even been on this show for all i know i don’t know she hasn’t no so we should get her on the show but anyway so she’s um i was referring to the woman you talked about at the beginning so i i assumed that was and then ended up being your wife but no yeah right yeah so fair yeah the woman at the very beginning yes that ended up being my wife yes and then the trainer i i see what you did there you caught me off guard there no no worries it’s it’s funny how uh uh in my life as well i think i started taking things more seriously when uh i found a girl uh well you have to you have to provide that’s our job right we’re supposed to be the guy right so it is what was what was your uh mom’s like sales approach uh with

[5:46] the team like did did you have were you kind of like at first like a buyer’s agent like kind of how did you start what was the team structure like yeah so i was a buyer’s agent the whole time right so anybody that tells you that you can’t make good money being a buyer’s agent only is wrong yeah if you put your mind to it and do it you can um so i spent all that time essentially working with mostly buyers there was a couple moments where i had to work with her sellers because she was away or and i needed to help them but i just focused on that and what i love about that approach and having those those things separated on a team buyers and sellers and capacity is the idea that you can really focus on those that particular person you’re really focusing on your buyers as a buyer agent i would get up every morning and my tasks were the same i would go through my lists of buyers that i had i would go through all the new listings in the last 24 hours and try to connect all those people together and those listings together and that was it and then i would show houses in the afternoon right um as a listing agent as i shifted over into my own team and i was a listing agent my day

[6:47] consisted of hand holding sellers day in and day out especially now more than ever because they need more than ever in this market um and making sure they were taken care of and and completely and utterly comfortable with what we were providing as a service because the second communication breaks down and you forget about somebody or you’re not communicating with them they’re not wondering they’re out there wondering what the heck’s going on with me and why i’m not talking to them and so being able to focus on those spaces separately allowed for karen’s team karen’s my mom to flourish quite a bit she’s been as of this year she’s in the business about 50 years wow so she’s been doing it a while my grandmother was a realtor in montreal in the summer and florida in the winter west palm beach um so she was she did well so i’ve it’s in my blood at the end of the day but having that breakdown and learning as a buyer agent was so critical because i understood what it meant to genuinely talk people through the sale of a home you know walking people through the idea of like here’s what this house has for it here’s knowing what to look for in home inspections i’m not a home inspector

[7:55] but having some preconceived ideas yeah what to look for before the home inspection allows people to have expectations right and having been through hundreds and hundreds of home inspections you know you can’t learn other than being in those inspections yeah no i’ve i’ve suggested to new agents that it’s a good idea to try to get in as many home inspections as you can even if they’re not your own right because you do start learning and i think it’s a really easy way to build trust with a with a buyer or or my favorite is when when you show up to a new you know first time home buyer you’re going to a new house for the first time they bring their parents and the dad’s got a flashlight and you’re and you’re like that’s just the golf ball the golf ball for the floors just put the golf ball down let it roll oh it’s so funny yeah and then what my goal is in that those situations which that’s like like a meme for realtors right like the the you know the daughter’s dad or whatever is showing up with the flashlight or with a tool belt and uh and my goal always there is to kind of like ease that guy up like like like look i’m i’m looking out for them too like i’m i probably know more about

[9:01] this house than or i’ll be able to discover more than this about this house and you will and i’m going to show that by because i’ve been through hundreds of home inspections and you know these are the common things that always come up and and i can see that right now and there’s a crack in the foundation is that something that can be concerned about so technically i’m not a you know an expert i’m not a structural engineer but normally uh you know a stair-step crack is not something that we are going to see raise a flag in in the home inspection process you know depending on the stair step but yeah things like that your your logic is very solid because that that situation starts early on you you’re not the the buyer and seller the the son and daughter-in-law or whoever it is they trust you they’ve been working with you the dad hasn’t been around right whoever the the relative hasn’t been suddenly the relative shows up for that one showing right before they want to offer or even just during the home inspection and their whole goal is to crap on everything that happens in that moment right they want to walk in

[9:58] and tear that place down so they can get a better deal or whatever the things are that’s or save their kid from a horrible mistake or whatever right exactly exactly but that comes from a place of um of of protection for the for those buyers right and so you got to understand that understand that even if you’re not a parent because i’m a parent now you know understanding that a parent is always going to try to protect and so resonating at that level with that person separately is something that it becomes an incredible skill and it just takes time because i’ve butted heads with those people like whoa whoa i appreciate what you’re saying but or however or whatever language you want to use for nlp or whatever otherwise you know here’s here’s the reality of the situation and the beauty part is sometimes you can google things and show them google things and whatnot but i think the hardest part is stepping back and not trying to be confrontational because sometimes they just want to say stuff for the sake of saying stuff and be heard or they’ll yeah they’ll say wrong things like the right

[11:03] it’s never it’s never great when they’re around let’s be honest i had one um my favorite one was a home inspection where house was built in the 70s and as we all know in the 70s we had aluminum wiring wreaking havoc on houses across the across the north america quite frankly because aluminum was the neatest greatest thing and uh and next thing you know houses are burning down everywhere and the reality that we now know about aluminum wiring is that it is safe if you have if you use it correctly and you manage it correctly so that’s you know that’s the simple solution yes people will remove it yes people will pigtail it and all the things we go to this home inspection and the father was a fire captain in the 70s in the 70s so he would he put out fire after fire after fire that stemmed from aluminum wiring and i didn’t know that until he showed up to be honest if i had known that before i might have been a little more prudent about what we were doing in the wiring in the home so we get to the home inspection and my home inspector does the outside first and then straight to the basement and works

[12:07] his way up every time and so he goes to the basement which is where the electrical panel is and we were out of that house in 10 minutes as soon as we discovered aluminum wiring and it was the most devastating thing for me because i was like but what and it was early in my career too because i didn’t have much experience with it and uh we walked out of there and we shut down that that deal and we went and looked in but see that’s the thing now we shift to neighborhoods not built in 1970 yeah that’s the conversation you could have um right beginning um right kind of like lead-based paint uh you know that’s it’s like one of those things where you know i just tell people like you know assume that it has it if it was built before 1978 and just kind of treat it accordingly if that’s a problem it’s not like somebody’s going to gut the house like there might be a paint over top of that lead-based paint but it’s probably there and so if you take a wall out or you do something there’s going to be dust in the air it’s going to potentially be an issue um if that again if that’s an issue for you let’s maybe look at newer houses and yeah it’s one of those things you can try to be proactive with

[13:11] well i wish i’d have learned that before see now that i went through that right those questions come up now right you gotta ask a lot of questions that’s how you learn i mean like that’s how it works as you go through those things and you have those kind of experiences and at the beginning when a deal falls apart it is it’s hard like it’s you know that’s you try not to have the commission breath you try not to like be you know thinking about the outcome you’re not trying to add up your commission um but you know it is harder at the beginning and then as you go along as you’re busier like you realize yeah i will just get them another house it might just be you know another month but at the end of the day they’ll respect you more for what for doing that and taking more time and walking away from the deal that was there than they will if you’re trying to force through the deal that’s making them feel uncomfortable yeah right so at the end of the day you’re building more trust more rapport and what we like to call my my mom came up with this term i don’t think she came up with it i think someone else did she read a book somewhere called raving fans i

[14:11] think the book was called so you’ll have more raving fans if you’re if you’re actually working with people in a meaningful way that’s not driven by your personal need to close a house or have a stat or make the money or whatever yeah and and i find that people genuinely appreciate the calm tempered time that i take maybe i take a little longer maybe i’m not as high pressure as some people fine i don’t care because i’ve developed a system that works for me that allows me to make good money feed my family but also create people that are just in love with the things that we do yeah 100 i don’t think people enjoy pressure sailing um yeah that’s not a thing anymore i mean i don’t care you know even scripts i love scripts for the sake of if you don’t know what to start with and you have no understanding of what’s next but we just hired a buyer agent on our team and she was asking you know what am i going to say to these people that i call and i go just ask them if they’re buying or selling

[15:13] there’s no amount of like funky scripting in my opinion that’s going to get people to do something that they don’t want to do anyway right so when you call and you’re like hey uh it’s been a while since we chatted with you just wondered if you’re still looking for a home that starts a conversation oh no no no oh cool the the the email that gets the most traction when we send out mass emails is seven words i think it’s seven words the the comment or the subject line is hey and then it’s are you still looking to buy or are you still looking to sell a home and we get the most traction on that email as opposed to whatever other emails you know newsletters and other stories and posts and things that we connect to newsletters with longer things that seven word email gets the most traction there you go any other email that we send okay and you actually find clients because people go yeah i am and you’re like whoa wicked so i thought i had to kiss some babies first before i got right right um yeah no so so i think also like the you know then if we want to get back to like the buyer versus seller the natural transition then to being a seller’s agent is that you know

[16:29] there there there was a time or maybe this is happening more for you again uh where sellers were doing like you know pre-home inspections like before they hit the market that kind of stuff to try to get their house ready and not have surprises and um again going through 100 home inspections you can kind of do some of that for them you can kind of see like what might come up like one of the common things um that i i like to do is if the hvac is a little bit older it doesn’t even have to be like five five six seven years like even that old certainly if it’s like 13 14 years old um like have it serviced like just show that you’re taking care of it and if you have it serviced within the past six months that just gives um them a lot more comfort it had a clean bill of health from a certified technician um and then also change your air filters before oh my god don’t get me started about that oh geez so funny so simple like but so funny that people don’t it’s it is the funniest thing to me in the world when you go to a home inspection and there is like an air filter that has been like not changed for like two years plus and it’s just like that is just so easy to

[17:36] and i think one of the one of the forgotten ones is the is the gas burning fireplace i mean i know like we it’s just there and people get used to it being foggy all the time and you’re like wait wait let’s clean that glass shall we you just get someone to service it clean it up make sure it’s working properly and they’ll clean the glass and by the way just for anybody out there that’s thinking oh just throw some windex on it it’s not like glass glass it’s like a ceramic glass so it needs to be cleaned properly so don’t be throwing anything that you don’t know on it you need to do it properly or have a service guy come and do it or girl come and do it just but yeah like simple things like that that are so obvious that people just miss yeah well i would go i’d i’d add um to that uh like you know we talk a lot about investing in this in this show as well and then flips and that kind of stuff uh but going through some renovations it could even be for your client i mean like like they want to fix some things up uh but but seeing some transformations seeing some having some connections with contractors

[18:35] in the area and and yeah kind of like starting to be able to see the vision of what it could be makes a huge difference and so like really getting good at like kind of getting this show the like getting the house ready for the big show right like to to unveil the like the listing and like having staging having like you know some rooms painted uh you know hardwood floors maybe refinished um like if it’s hard to recommend that it makes you nervous as an agent because you want to make sure they get the return on what they’re spending and it’s always common that they’re going to paint it anyway they’re going to paint a different color um which is could be true but like when you start seeing some of the transformations i think that’s another area where you can add tons of value to a seller um let’s let’s uh let’s i got a hot take yeah staging for me is bs yeah yeah um this is a new thing that i’ve been talking about lately on my social so uh i just want to bring it up and have a conversation about it because i think it’s an interesting topic um the idea of staging is good the the the direction that it’s going is not good in my opinion um i think we put too much emphasis

[19:49] as realtors on the value we bring and the only value we tend to bring is i stayed your home right and so what ends up happening is you get a home just using generalized terms from 1973 that’s you know grandma’s moving out of and you shove modern interesting furniture in it that doesn’t match yeah when people walk in homes what’s the first thing they say oh this place is staged they say that all the time yeah right and so it gets a little bit dicey when you’re in that position where they’re focusing on the staging rather than the home itself and i look at it like i almost want them to feel like it’s lived in and comfortable and someone lives here for real because this is what it’s going to look like lived in now do i mean leave it all cluttered and gross no absolutely not there are certain principles of staging that are incredibly important but i just i need people to understand that i believe that you need to be more mindful of your staging and what you’re putting in homes because when you have a am i allowed to swear i’ve been dying to swear it’s the internet if if you have a shit box of a home and you put this fancy furniture in it it’s not

[20:57] going to make it better people are still going to go this is a shit box right and so my other problem with it becomes that staging is getting so expensive that it’s hard to keep up with being able to stage people’s houses in a market like this where houses are on the market for 60 90 100 100 days sometimes in certain circumstances um and you want to you want to just give it a good experience so for me what we tend to focus on is we’ll bring the stager in we’ll have her or him come in and do the do the breakdown and and show them what they need to move around and yes if there is certain furniture pieces we need to pull in and pull out we will but we’re very careful and selective about it on a home per home basis because yeah you know we got a five million dollar listing up north of here and you know we put staging in and i was super worried because the house hadn’t been renovated since 1987 and i was super worried that they’re going to put this modern furniture in here and it’s not going to look good because it just doesn’t flow anymore and the stager did a great job i have to give her credit

[21:57] she uh she came in and actually you know when that idea of like what’s old is new again this modern furniture actually had a 1980s roundabout feel to it so it worked really really well and she was i really applaud our stager for doing that that well so yeah you have to be very mindful of the situation you’re in i think staging’s great but you need to do it properly sorry i agree that was my hot take no no i agree overall and i think um you know i think there’s a couple of goals here i think one of the ways i explain uh getting a house ready for the market in general to a list a seller is that we the goal is that we are going to have like we have your narrative of the house right now right like you have a narrative of of what your your 20 years you’ve spent in this house the children that have come and gone all this stuff is your story within this house but we’re wanting the buyers to tell their own story and like in in the house and we don’t want anything to uh distract them from that story they’re telling so that involves getting the house ready as far as you know landscaping we don’t want them to come and think oh i’m going to be spending all the time out here like you know

[23:02] taking care of this jungle uh because it’s really hard to maintain when you know what if it’s just landscape it doesn’t look like it’s hard to maintain because it’s all sure um that’s fixing things up you know like having some if there’s like obvious things that need to be repaired things like that that helps and then you know obviously the depersonalization so like having the pictures of the kids and that kind of stuff that takes them out of their own story they’re in somebody else’s house um and then on top of that i think uh it is also maybe staging would be explaining a weird space like that’s probably the most important thing if there’s like a space that doesn’t really make sense how am i going to use this that’s correct having furniture there to kind of help explain it is is important and and then yeah to your point like if it just doesn’t fit like it doesn’t really help them tell their story they’re not like imagine themselves living there because they’re taken out by like what is this like furniture well the thing about stagers right though is that they’re a bit artistic right so

[23:59] it’s a bit of an art right so yeah we find up here anyway a lot of our stagers have a style so we have one stager for example that all of her logo colors are gold and black and all the things and a lot of the things she puts in houses tend to be the same so you have to be mindful that like gold and black may not fit in this house you know or that house or you know the other lady that we know has a lot of teals and turquoise in her logo and she brings that through the through the uh the home a lot too and i’m like i i don’t think that color works here and if you try to ask so you got to be mindful of all those things so finding a good stager that’s able to be malleable to the each home individually is incredibly difficult because they all have their own style in this artistic way and not to say that it’s bad i’m not i’m not saying they’re bad at what they do i’m just saying that sometimes it doesn’t work in certain circumstances with every home it’s not a blanket thing right like it needs to be individualized it’s a custom experience for each home and that’s what it should be quite frankly

[24:56] yeah it almost reminds me of and i i have no idea who this photographer is what her name is she’s really famous uh but she does portraits and like every portrait she does is just like very like the person it’s just very yeah and i feel like that’s probably what you’re you’re getting at it’s like it’s not that every portrait is going to be this editing this light this backdrop it’s like you know it’s got to tell their story um 100 we walk into listing appointments and part of the pre-listing package that we send uh with an email is a questionnaire called the story of your home and we ask clients what is the what is the what is your favorite room in the house what is your favorite memory in the house right things like that that elicit the experiences they’ve had because the reality for us becomes most of us anyway if you look at the demographic breakdown of each area where these houses are it doesn’t matter where almost anywhere you’ll know who’s moving in and you’ll understand that these people moving out now new people moving in are probably going to buy it for the same reasons they they bought it when they moved so having those

[26:04] stories in a connection in a very um raw way and using those opportunities to use for marketing and use for staging and to understand what the best rooms are in the house to understand how they’ve used the house is highly important to be able to really tell the story of the home in a customized way to your point of like customizing for that house right that house is totally different than the neighbor’s house the demographic may be the same but the way it was used because this one’s a side split and that one’s a two story so they’re totally different but they have a similar um they have they have the family in the home allows for uh the story to be told in a meaningful way right in a meaningful way that that allows other people to absorb it and when we tell those stories so stories for example most people go three bedroom two bathroom natural light beautiful this beautiful that you know we’re telling stories stories in our real estate write-ups about imagine yourself sitting around a countertop with family blah blah blah things like that it’s a whole different experience when you read our listing write-ups

[27:04] that connect to the story of the home that allow the end user we have people walking in buyers coming into our open houses going i totally felt connected to this home before i even showed up here right and that’s what marketing is yeah marketing is not three bedrooms two bathrooms you know 50 by 100 foot law blah blah blah that’s just telling facts stories are are like 40 percent more memorable than facts yeah right so why not tell more stories to yeah for people to remember your home i love that and you know you’re kind of making me want to rework some of my um processes because i think uh it could be really helpful to have that story that that written up before the photographer goes out uh because if they could read through that they could then also make sure they’re highlighting the things in the way you’re describing it so um yeah i love that’s really cool so we transition that into our videos too so so when we do a video on the home if you if you have five minutes and you’re listening to this podcast and you want to make me feel really good and boost my ego go check out my go check out my videos that we’ve done recently

[28:08] and we genuinely like first of all humans and anything draws more attention so just the video of of houses and and homes and rooms and things with nobody and no talking no nothing it’s a little boring and a little drawn out people don’t often spend a lot of time watching those but if you have a human in it walking and talking and telling the story of the home again more effective just functionally and subconsciously for people to watch more but then when you read the stories so you talk about having that done before the photographer i write a script before we even get there that talks about the home and i do it in chat gpt i’m going to be honest i write it all out in the style that i want and it writes me a beautiful script and i edit it as necessary and i get there and we video the home in that way with my story involved and that photographer is now learning those things about that home for when they do the photography and they do the rest of the video so it’s quite an integral experience to have that story written at a time exactly as you mentioned that’s awesome yeah um well this is maybe a good segue because you talked about off air before we got on here about your uh your

[29:13] social media your you you had a podcast like what tell me about how you’ve been attracting uh clients through social media through videos through yeah there are a lot of realtors that use just sold just listed and maybe third-party companies to post on their social media and it’s the same as 4 000 other agents out there posting the same thing that that company provides um and a lot of that gets lost in the wash there’s billions and billions of social media posts out in the world every single day you know you got to be different and um the thing is is that real estate is a social business we are human beings connecting with other human beings to do something for them it’s not just a an online transaction it’s not just a product that you use that you know is just a physical product that’s in your hand that’s not um not alive we’re human beings so at the end of the day um we try to post using three buckets of content uh the first bucket being authority content everything we know about real estate you know everything we know about kytech plumbing or or you know uh aluminum wiring or whatever anything like that we will do posting around that uh the second bucket of content would be

[30:25] um pr or social proof so uh being on this podcast becomes pr for me you know i’m going to then use this link out in my social media to be able to say look what i did and people will review it and then hopefully get to know me a little better based on the conversation we’ve just had um and then obviously uh the social proof would be your client’s testimonial saying nice things about you and creating content around that and the third bucket that most agents really don’t do that well or or very at all in a lot of cases because they don’t look at it that way and my mom i’ll be honest like 50 years in the business she’s very old school right she has these we’ve done content for her she’s like don’t do that i don’t like that anymore personal content right i’m a human being i have a family i have two dogs i live in a house i i have a life i had a whole set of life experiences before even becoming a realtor and you know in the last five years doing what i do and so people like to know those things they like to hear those things they like to get to know who you are as a human being before they decide they want to use you

[31:27] so if you do this effectively and you create content around those three buckets incredibly effectively um and not just chat gpt content i mean you can edit it and make it more you know more real and usable you got to be careful with chat gpt i’ll be honest yeah um too many dashes in chat gpt um and so um but at the end of the day if you use those those three pieces of content the three buckets of content effectively at about 33 so 33 33 33 of the amount over time you will start to attract audiences that are like you because there’s nothing worse than having a client that doesn’t like you and you butt heads and you’re constantly arguing about things if you’re putting out content that is about you that has your personality on show and that is completely completely open and honest personal content as well as really open and honest authority content that talks about real things like me talking about staging being bs that could be construed as controversial stagers probably don’t like me whatever it’s fine but at the end of the day that draws attention to me but it also allows people to understand who i am so if you’re able to

[32:35] effectively post that like that for a period of time um and you have to be consistent with it we’ve consistently now this is gonna be too much for most people but we post every single day and we have done consistently for five years six years almost and so that’s difficult but we have the support system in place to be able to do that that’s just me right and you know there you can see top agents like you know big time agents around the country probably have the same facility but you don’t have to make it fancy and you don’t have to do it every day you just have to do it and stay consistent with it because most people will do it for like two weeks 10 days 30 days whatever and then oh shiny penny business business business and then they’ve completely forget about the rest of it it’s the same conversation we’ve had all these years about phone calls and things like that oh you phone phone phone you get a bunch of business you know and door knock door knock door knock get a bunch of business and then you forget about all that stuff because you’re out doing business you still it’s the same conversation just with social media yeah

[33:34] yeah so that’s what i do it’s a pretty simple philosophy and how i do the content and who i am that’s going to differ for everybody because everybody’s different right i have a guy in toronto that i know very well who said to me my wife would never use you if you talk to this guy on the podcast he would sound like this hi my name is dave he’s a super nice guy i love him like and he’s super friendly and he’s really nice but his personality is very flat like this and yeah his wife loves him so of course she’s not going to use me look at me right like i’m i’m loud and boisterous and all these things and you know like she we wouldn’t get along right right and so you want to attract people like you because those were the people that are going to listen to you more and actually work with you better and i can honestly tell you that over the last five or six years i really don’t fight for commission anymore i just tell people here’s my commission i really don’t fight for too many like listings against other agents anymore i know this kind of sounds a bit too good to be true like i do still have these things but not as much as most agents probably do because people just call up

[34:37] because they’ve seen me so much on social media that they’re like hey come come and list my house right yeah so being consistent over five years has created this ongoing funnel where people just keep coming back right yeah well like you talked about uh the you know fighting for listings or having multiple um you know uh you know clients gonna have like five different agents over to to you know decide who’s gonna list their house um there’s a book called the full fee agent um that has this uh theory in it that they would basically not do anything to uh try to earn that business until they’ve decided they’re gonna work with them or or like doing a bad job explaining this so like if if you they’re the theory is is that that person is probably already has their favorite agent in mind and if you can determine that you’re not that person in a conversation like you’re wasting your time like would you go to would you would you go show houses to a buyer that’s also like interviewing five different other buyer agents and they’ve all like shown houses like to this person probably not you wouldn’t waste your time doing that and in the same regard like why would you spend all your time

[35:53] explain to them how you’re going to list their house give them all the strategies of how you’re going to do get the most for them do a whole cma give them valuation do all this stuff that is really a huge part of of what the value you give the like you know having that expertise of getting everything ready and pricing it right to sell it effectively is a huge part of what we do and so why would you just give that away um when you’re probably not going to be the one that gets the listing and so it’s it’s something that yeah i’ve almost like more beta tested in the background um and um you know one of the times that this happened uh i gave my analysis and i was thinking back in my head i shouldn’t do this i shouldn’t do this they went with somebody who was going to list it for like a hundred thousand dollars more and yeah that happens nope yeah that happens too right like probably two years ago i went into a house and it was this lovely young lady she was a bit of a hippie very unconcerned about money i gave her a price well i gave her 1.4 that was the price i gave her went through all the things i lost out to a team that said 1.6 but guess what it sold for four

[36:59] months later right like i mean yep you can’t lose if you’re honest right even if you lose the business you’ve got your integrity yeah and that’s the most important thing for me and then this house of course ended up selling for less than i had initially said because it sat on the market for two yeah that’s right yeah exactly exactly and that’s that’s the danger in it right at the end of the day you you’re first of all remember that you as an individual no matter who’s listening to this who you are what how many years you’ve been in the business you could have got your license yesterday you are valuable because you’re you that’s your value like there’s all these things that that we bring to the table great we have tools and things cool but your value is you and you as a human being having care and compassion for the client that you’re that you’re working with there’s a lot of agents that don’t i gotta say i’ve seen it and it doesn’t work and people come to me and go wow this is the experience i had i never named names but but at the end of the day your value is you so don’t ever discount

[38:01] yourself no matter how long you’ve been in the business because action is better than perfection right getting things done is better than not doing anything at all being terrified of oh and thinking about oh i’ve been in this business two days and i don’t know what i’m not just go do it yeah right and i think people forget that you know forget the fact that oh if i don’t have staging fully in my package oh people won’t use me well of course they will because you’re you and you bring other things than just staging to the table right and that’s where you got to just shine and be you and that’s where the social media thing boosts that process right being able to have that social media to back you up and for someone to go holy crap this guy’s posted 365 posts this year i can’t even get to the bottom there’s so many posts like cool and it’s all value content value driven content they will learn the value of who you are through that now again it doesn’t have to be once a day but you know what i’m saying yeah totally yeah that’s awesome oh there’s been many golden nuggets that we’ve shared already

[39:05] but what golden nuggets would you want to share to the listeners i heard this quote that has been incredibly impactful on me and i was listening to another podcast and it was it’s not his quote but he said it he quoted someone else it was uh neil degrasse tyson who i love i’m so nerdy that way it’s crazy that’s why i have glasses um i said to my wife earlier i should have been an astrophysicist that that’s just me um this quote is incredibly impactful for me and just been i’ve been rolling it around in my head for the last 24 hours uh be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity so that’s a bigger deal than just a golden nugget in real estate this is this is this is a life quote this is a life nugget for me where it’s like well what are we doing to create some sort of difference in humanity did you have kids maybe that’s it maybe whatever everybody’s is going to be a little different but at the end of the day my job isn’t done until i’ve won some victory for the people around me and humanity as a whole right and your job is to go out and help people move which is one of the biggest transactions in their

[40:16] lives and create a wicked experience for them instead of having them feel stress and all the things they may still feel that but you come out the other end allowing them to experience something incredible um and experience one of the biggest things they’ll ever do in their life in some cases right and so having that impact on people that way i think is an important thing to remember so treat it with respect we we we need to treat this industry with a lot of respect and treat our clients with respect um and treat the opportunity that we have to have an unlimited income in this industry with respect so yeah that should fire some people up that’s i hope so i’ve been thinking about it it’s just rolling around in my brain like crazy for the last 24 hours so that’s great um how about a favorite book it could be something you think everybody should read um that’s getting into the business that’s been in the business or maybe a current favorite oh we got one i got it so um this is one of my good friends books um and uh her her name is jesseline avell we talked about her a little bit earlier she’s my my coach and again i’m not trying to sell her product i don’t care if you like at the end of

[41:21] the day she’s a great human she wants to help the industry get better but more money less hustle think about that right and that’s the this book gives you the framework for being able to um work efficiently using tools that are effective in today’s market right so the idea behind this would be to say okay listen we can make more money by automating this and automating that and using this internet and using this type of online source like being able to remove yourself from the grind because the grind isn’t a thing anymore it used to be but i don’t think it’s a thing that people appreciate anymore um even you hear people like gary vaynerchuk doesn’t even use that word as much anymore right so at the end of the day this is an idea of using the tools and resources ai the internet the things like that that we have at our disposal to be able to create more flows of income for us with less grind which sounds wonderful you still have to work but this book is a great framework for it and i hate to say this i don’t know if this is the wrong thing to say but like the last chapter the first line of the last chapter is

[42:37] you know i’ve told you about the system put these pillars in place for the sake of anonymity we’ll call this agent justin oh who do you think that is so there you go a little bit of a little bit of an ego boost there for me too i like it why not awesome that’s great um and then where can people find you uh to to get your you know one post a day what social media what websites etc so we have 5 000 friends on facebook so don’t friend me because i can’t friend any more people because it won’t let me and all my agents are being culled off my list so that i can have civilians on there uh and my niche which is cool too uh so uh best to either follow my business page on facebook justin long carrick realtor or uh justin long carrick realtor at uh on instagram and uh you’re those are free and open for you to follow and see all my posts and take my content and look at it and understand it and how we do it and um yeah i am that type of guy that if you are watching this and you’re like i have a question and you literally reach out to me i will answer your questions i believe that this industry needs to elevate each other yeah i believe that we need to work together to elevate each other quite

[43:47] frankly and there’s too much infighting and trying to jump over each other for money and business and all this we don’t need that anymore we need to work together to grow the business there’s enough business out there for all of us to enjoy a good life right so absolutely ask me questions i’ll answer i don’t mind i love talking to people across the country i’ve even had people say hey next time you’re down here i’ll take you to a san francisco giants game and i’m like yes that’s the only reason i do that but um no no such thing as altruism no right i’m totally kidding just so you know i’m i’m just trying to but yeah no i’ve had i’ve had agents from across north america you know from the training group i’ve been a part of and other or other groups on facebook that i’ve been a part of reach out and i just want to help people get better i just like the idea of our industry being viewed as something respectable and something where people you know want to come to us with an open arms and open heart and say wow those guys are great yeah so 100 well justin thanks so much for being on the show it’s

[44:46] been a lot of fun yeah no you this is a great opportunity and i appreciate your time too thanks for listening to the rei agent if you enjoyed this episode hit subscribe to catch new shows every week visit rei agent.com for more content until next time keep building the life you want all content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy it is intended for entertainment purposes only