From Overwhelmed to Unstoppable Through Systems, AI, and Purpose with Emily Terrell
Hosted by Mattias Clymer, a Realtor with Funkhouser Real Estate Group who leads Valley Homes Team in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Erica Clymer, a licensed therapist and real estate investor.
Emily Terrell is a San Antonio, Texas real estate coach who specializes in systems, social media, and AI and coaches and speaks for Tom Ferry. She explains how she builds checklists so her partner can run listing appointments without extra prep, and how she uses ChatGPT to delegate, systemize, and simplify each task she handles.
Read the Full ArticleChapters
- 00:00 - Welcome to The REI Agent Podcast
- 00:32 - Introducing Emily Terrell and Episode Focus
- 01:00 - Emily’s Background and Where She Is Based
- 02:00 - From Stay-at-Home Mom to Licensed Agent
- 03:40 - Entering Real Estate and Early Career Lessons
- 05:10 - Transitioning Into Coaching and Speaking
- 06:50 - Building a Team and Stepping Out of Production
- 08:20 - Systems Over Hustle in Real Estate Businesses
- 09:50 - Why Most Agents Struggle With Organization
- 11:10 - Using AI to Systemize Daily Tasks
- 13:00 - Delegation, ROI, and Buying Back Time
- 15:00 - Developing Better Habits With AI Tools
- 16:50 - Using AI in Everyday Life Beyond Work
- 18:30 - Integrating AI With CRMs and Follow-Up
- 20:20 - The Future of AI, Automation, and Client Care
- 22:10 - Emily’s Corporate Career Before Real Estate
- 24:00 - Motherhood, Guilt, and Building a Business
- 26:10 - Balancing Family, Childcare, and Work Growth
- 28:30 - Prioritizing Family Without Sacrificing Success
- 30:00 - Life Today, Travel, and Speaking Nationwide
- 31:40 - Golden AI Advice for Agents and Entrepreneurs
- 33:00 - Book Recommendation and Negotiation Philosophy
- 34:40 - Millennial Buyers and Modern Decision-Making
- 36:00 - Where to Find and Connect With Emily Terrell
- 36:45 - Final Thoughts and Episode Wrap-Up
From overwhelmed beginnings to unstoppable clarity, this episode explores how systems, AI, and purpose helped Emily Terrell build freedom, alignment, and long-term success without sacrificing family or values. See article: https://www.unitedstatesrealestateinvestor.com/from-overwhelmed-to-unstoppable-through-systems-ai-and-purpose-with-emily-terrell/ (00:00) - Welcome to The REI Agent Podcast (00:32) - Introducing Emily Terrell and Episode Focus (01:00) - Emily’s Background and Where She Is Based (02:00) - From Stay-at-Home Mom to Licensed Agent (03:40) - Entering Real Estate and Early Career Lessons (05:10) - Transitioning Into Coaching and Speaking (06:50) - Building a Team and Stepping Out of Production (08:20) - Systems Over Hustle in Real Estate Businesses (09:50) - Why Most Agents Struggle With Organization (11:10) - Using AI to Systemize Daily Tasks (13:00) - Delegation, ROI, and Buying Back Time (15:00) - Developing Better Habits With AI Tools (16:50) - Using AI in Everyday Life Beyond Work (18:30) - Integrating AI With CRMs and Follow-Up (20:20) - The Future of AI, Automation, and Client Care (22:10) - Emily’s Corporate Career Before Real Estate (24:00) - Motherhood, Guilt, and Building a Business (26:10) - Balancing Family, Childcare, and Work Growth (28:30) - Prioritizing Family Without Sacrificing Success (30:00) - Life Today, Travel, and Speaking Nationwide (31:40) - Golden AI Advice for Agents and Entrepreneurs (33:00) - Book Recommendation and Negotiation Philosophy (34:40) - Millennial Buyers and Modern Decision-Making (36:00) - Where to Find and Connect With Emily Terrell (36:45) - Final Thoughts and Episode Wrap-Up Contact Emily Terrell https://coachemilyterrell.com/ https://www.facebook.com/emily.terrell.946/ https://www.instagram.com/coachemilyterrell/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-terrell-a05704a3/ If this conversation sparked something in you, remember this: clarity creates confidence, systems create freedom, and purpose keeps you moving forward. Start building the life you want today. Visit https://reiagent.com
Questions This Episode Answers
- How does Emily Terrell use AI to systemize a real estate business?
- Emily Terrell suggests taking each task, even small ones like putting out yard signs, and asking ChatGPT to help delegate, systemize, and simplify it. She says ChatGPT can then lay out step by step how to hand that task off.
- How can a real estate agent get better answers from ChatGPT, according to Emily Terrell?
- Emily Terrell says better answers come from better questions, so she recommends creating a ChatGPT project called prompt writer and asking it to write your prompts. She says her own prompts typically run about four pages long.
- Why does Emily Terrell recommend going deep on one AI tool instead of many?
- Emily Terrell teaches one AI tool and one process per talk instead of going wide across many tools. She says breaking a process into smaller steps keeps people from feeling intimidated, and she gets few questions at the end of her talks.
- How does Emily Terrell use AI with a CRM like Follow Up Boss?
- Emily Terrell uses Revi, an AI tool for real estate agents that Tom Ferry built, to dictate new contacts, tags, and appointments into Follow Up Boss by voice. She says a list of appointments can land in her calendar about three seconds after she dictates it.
- What book does Emily Terrell recommend for real estate agents?
- Emily Terrell recommends Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. Her main takeaway from it is to tell people what you are going to do and then do it, even when the update is that you have no news.
Episode Transcript
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[0:00] Welcome back to the REI Agent. I’m here with Emily Terrell. Emily, thanks so much for joining us today. Well, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here. Emily, where are you coming out of? I’m in San Antonio, Texas. So down in South Texas where it’s hot and sticky all the time. I actually have clients in town right now from San Antonio who are shopping. They are not sure yet if it’s going to be a second home or if it’s going to be a relocation. Their kid is pregnant here and about to have a baby and they want to have another house at least to come to and help take care of that new grandkid. So it’s a small world. I know, right? And it’ll be a very big culture shock, whichever option they choose.
[0:43] San Antonio is its own thing, so it’ll be a definite culture shock for them. Yeah. Yeah. So you are, I see Coach Emily. So you’re a coach, a real estate coach. How long have you been an agent and what kind of got you started in this crazy world, this crazy business? Okay. So I’ve been an agent since 2015. I started really because I was a stay-at-home mom and I realized I was really good at that. I was okay at it, right? But I had this guilt. Even though my husband made enough money and we could afford it, I just had this like this intense guilt that I wasn’t contributing financially to my marriage. So I was like, okay, cool. I’ll just get my real estate license. It’s so easy, right? It’s just the easiest thing ever.
[1:28] I learned a little differently. So I became an agent, like I said, about a decade ago. And then about four years ago, I decided to make some major financial goals. And so I decided to start because I’d already been in that coaching role. So I started to become a Tom Ferry coach. So I coached for Tom Ferry. And then about three years ago, they actually asked me to start speaking. So now I get to do the fun stuff where I coach people, I still have a team that sells real estate and like to travel around and speak with Tom Ferry or with private brokerages all around the world. That’s awesome. How do you split your time up now? I mean, like, so you have a team that helps keep the business rolling.
[2:08] Are you, you know, do you have people kind of actively prospecting for you or following up with your former former clients? Are you still going on listing appointments or have you kind of moved a lot of that stuff into the team? Yes. So I have not been on an active listing appointment in at least two years, at least a buyer for five years. I run my team a little bit differently. So my job on the team, because I coach, right? So my specialty in coaching, because every coach kind of has a thing, they specialize in, I specialize in systems, social media, and AI, right? I’m also a little bit of an asshole, but you know, some people actually do ask for that, which is funny. Right. So systems, social media, and AI.
[2:50] So my role on the team is I am definitely behind the scenes. So I, for my partner, which is the person that, you know, my counterpart, my job for her is appointments show up in her calendar. So I set all of the systems, every way that we prospect. She does not have to do anything other than look at her daily calendar, well, she looks a couple days in advance, and then everything from the fact that an appointment shows up till we close and actually pass that, that’s her. But even then, I set up all the systems to where she doesn’t have to think about what happens. She doesn’t have to think about how to get prepared for the listing appointment. She just simply follows a checklist. So that’s my part of it.
[3:31] And so because of that, because I set all of that, everything in place is just her running and following the list that I’ve created and following the appointments that I’ve gotten set for her. And she loves it because she just follows the list. And I love it because I don’t have to talk to people. Yeah, it’s fun to, I mean, obviously, you would have likely had, you know, built a business already, you’d had like kind of like a reputation in San Antonio, you’d had it like that momentum going as well to kind of build the systems off of and have somebody kind of run for you. So that’s, yeah, that’s really cool. And everybody has their strengths. I mean, sometimes the systems part definitely does not give you energy.
[4:08] Some people just want to talk to people all day. And, you know, that’s where it’s important to know kind of where you like to be. So as a coach, and just talking, because I go to conferences all the time, so I talk to people all the time, right, the two most common things that I asked, or that people say they need help with is systems. And then usually social media is a second. But that in general, everybody’s like, I need to systemize their business. And they’ll they may say in different ways, they may say, I need more time, because they need a time block. Really, they just need to be more organized. Instead of just throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall, they need to actually like have those plans.
[4:45] And most people, that’s what they struggle with. Or some tips you can give us to, you know, help structure your time a little bit better to create systems that will free you up and organize you better. So one of my favorite things to do right now is, of course, AI, right? So it is one of the absolute most popular things that anybody ever hires me to speak about. So one of the things that you can do to help systemize your business is actually to take each task that you do, every task, even if it’s small, right, for example, putting out for sale signs, right, and go into chat GPT. And now there’s there’s some more parts to it. So I’m going to simplify it. But it’s to actually ask chat GPT to help you learn to delegate, learn to run AI with that task, learn to systemize it, and then learn to simplify it if you need to.
[5:36] Right. So running that lens, the delegate systemize, I forgot them all already, a simplify and, you know, running AI with it, like looking at that lens at every task, and then chat GPT, believe it or not, will actually give you a step by step example or reasoning of exactly what you need to do in order to take that task off your plate. Because as real estate agents, like, I mean, if you think about it, let’s just use our example of putting a sign out, you shouldn’t do that. No real estate agent should be doing that on their own. Yes, they need to go out. But it’s not a high ROI activity, meaning like, you’re not going to make a lot of money by physically putting a sign out. I know some people watching this, you’re going to go, well, no, that one time I got a sign call.
[6:16] Yes, something that one time you got a sign call, right? Maybe I think one time I got a sign call and it actually led to something. So signs need to go out, but it doesn’t have to be you doing it. The problem is that most people, like most agents can’t stop and think, OK, like, how do I make this happen? They want that control, but they don’t know how to actually like give up that control to let other people help them. So I always like to go back to chat GPT and there’s other AI tools that you can use, but chat GPT is going to be a great example of just having it figure out how to create systems for you. Yeah. There are projects you can make in chat GPT as well, so you could probably somehow create a…
[6:58] I’ve been using projects more recently and I’ve used chat GPT to actually create a prompt and not a prompt, but it’s like an outline of like the task of that project. And so you could kind of take maybe the principles of buy back your time or who, not how that kind of like those books and kind of take those concepts and create a prompt or instructions for that project so that you could then feed all your tasks into that project and then have it help you think through, you know, this is a $15 an hour activity, you’re at a $250 an hour activity level or whatever it is. And that makes a lot of sense to how you could really start processing that all. Yeah. I mean, the big thing is like, I’m sure you’ve heard of the, you don’t know what you don’t know.
[7:45] We’re in an age of, I have no idea my limitations. I’m actually thinking about, I do know my limitations and I know that AI, whatever tool you use is going to open up and give me more access and it’s going to be able to do it faster, better, smoother, you know, it’s going to simplify it, it’s going to take all of that. So, but if you’re overwhelmed by it, just go into chat GPT and ask it a question like, how can you help me? I need to do this. Help me. And it’ll actually teach you how to use it. That’s how I write my prompts. Yeah. Yeah. Who better to teach than itself? My prompts are actually really not to toot my own horn, but my prompts are about four pages long, typically. And they’re so good that when I put them back in and I have chat GPT run them, it starts with this is an extremely well-written prompts and I’m like, thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks.
[8:38] It likes to compliment me on the work it did itself. What kinds of concerns do you often hear when you’re speaking on AI when like the Q&A at the end? I mean, of course, every once in a while, I get the like, you know, oh my gosh, is it like Big Brother? Is it that? Yeah. The answer to always to those types of questions are listen, that ship sailed a long time ago. As a society, the amount of information we put out there, we are screwed. So just don’t don’t stress, right? Those are more of off the wall. The biggest concern that people have when it comes to AI is it’s overwhelming, right? Because and this is why I love to talk about AI. But when I talk about AI, you know, there’s always a concept of going really wide.
[9:25] And actually, what’s funny is I was just having this conversation with another speaker today. He likes to go wide. He likes to say, well, this tool is cool. This tool, this tool, this tool, this tool, this tool. And instead of that, I like to go really deep. So I like to pick one AI tool for one talk and go through one process. So this way, at the end, anybody that goes to my talk and say, OK, she said to A, B, and C, and we will this is exactly how you solve for this one problem. And what I found is that when I go, you know, when I do that, when I go deep, it actually helps people not be intimidated by the process because they it gets broken down into smaller, more manageable steps. And so they’re able to understand it funnily and funnily enough.
[10:12] There you go. I don’t actually get a ton of questions at the end of my when I talk, mainly because it’s it’s just really thorough and it’s broken down in a way that most people can really go and do it. It’s great. Well, I’m a little bit jealous of that. So in the therapy world, we’re still trying to figure out how to use AI for note taking. And so that’s like a whole different conversation. Have you seen one of these? Yes. It’s a plot. Yeah. And I actually I was just thinking about it. I’m like, I forgot to pull my plot out and record it. Yeah. You think about recording everything. Yeah. When you have one of those. Yeah, you know, Emily, we before we had plot, Mattias would take the kids to the doctor’s appointments and I’d be like, how did it go?
[10:57] And he’d be like, it was good. Well, they say they have an ear infection. We had to go pick up medication. Listen, I forgot. I will. I will really quickly tell you a story. So my dad came and he went to a doctor’s appointment and I was like, hey, how did it go? He goes, well, they say they got to take my bladder out. And I was like, oh, my God, that’s huge. That’s a big thing. Oh, my God. No, no, no. It was his gallbladder. Oh, that’s a little different. I know. I was like, I asked my stepmom and she goes something with gallbladder. I was like, oh, my God. That’s like that’s a Tuesday afternoon surgery. Right. Versus like a totally life changing not having a bladder. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Absolutely.
[11:34] I love the taking it to doctor’s appointments because that’s a that’s a pretty big difference. Right. Of like being able to use it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, think about it like this for your therapy sessions. Right. I know, of course, you know, you’ve got HIPAA, you’ve got all that I don’t have to deal with. So you’d have to figure that out. But, you know, I do for a lot of like other conferences I go to and the talks that I do and even my coaching calls, I record it all of the time with Claude. And then in my projects, actually, into GPT, all of my coaching clients have their own threat with all the instructions are put in there. So every time it goes through and now what I do with my coaching clients is I go through and I have several different prompts.
[12:17] So one of the prompts that we do is I have them update their three goals that they’re working on. Right. So it’s always updating like, hey, this is what we’re working on and what we want to accomplish in the next 90 days. And then it gives them like, hey, this is the, you know, milestone that you should be hitting. And then this is what you should be doing this week. So it always updates based on where we are. Then another prompt that I put into it is one of the three questions that I should be asking that coaching client in order for us to continue to reach their goals. So it always goes through. And then I do have another prompt that I don’t run every time, but I always I’ll write down like, hey, give me just three sentences that I can use as a handwritten note for encouragement for them.
[12:56] So this is one that I was supposed to send to one of my clients, Jason, a while back where I wrote down a handwritten note for him and I actually mailed it out to him eventually. Right. So I do those types of things where I’m always constantly updating their information so that as a coach, it helps me better. Because even then, I like to ask you to like what and there’s a prompt to it. It’s not just this, but it’s what can I do better as a coach to help them? Yeah, it’s a it’s a crazy tool. And I think back to your point earlier about, you know, the ship had sailed. I was thinking that it has a slightly different angle of that, like maybe a lot of your data is out there already. But but the ship has sailed also is that like, you know, not using it is just going to make you like antiquated.
[13:43] It’s going to be you have to learn how to use this. It’s going to be everywhere. It is already everywhere. And I feel like it’s just the beginning. You know, I always say this, but it kind of reminds me of, you know, back when when Google first came out and I was the teachers were impressed with how we knew how to like, you know, search for something in Google. And it was like, you know, very basic and simple understanding to me. But you had to like learn how to use Google, like the people that would, you know, go to Google, type in Google dot com, click on Google dot com and type in what they wanted to say. You know, like just use something regularly so that you can, you know, start understanding when to use it.
[14:27] I think if you don’t ever open it up, if you never know what to do with it, I mean, you just have to have some repetition. You have to start trying to have it. Yeah. Right. Then that’s the biggest thing. If you if you have like no indication of where you need to start with, I read if you’re like, I don’t even know where to start. Just start making it a habit instead of going to Google. Yeah. Go to complexity, for example. Right. Go there or go to chat GPT. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Just go somewhere else besides Google because it’s going to give you, you know, it’ll give you a better answers. And there’s there’s a lot of complexities. We won’t go into them because it’s a whole other discussion.
[15:04] But just get into the habit of not asking Google. Yeah. Going to A.I. Right. And for example, I have an Instagram channel to faceless Instagram channel. Kind of faceless. But I literally just cook recipes from A.I. I just go and ask. And I’m like, I have this in my fridge. I want a high protein meal. Like, I can add other things, but I have this. And then it puts out a recipe and I cook it. And sometimes they work out. Sometimes they don’t. That has been how I had a friend come visit us the other weekend. And she has like six allergies. So I use chat GPT for that. And I said, like, here are the allergies. We need to work around these. Can you give me, you know, like three breakfasts? And two dinners? And it was great. Yeah. Yeah.
[15:46] I mean, but just that habit, right? Like, I don’t create my own recipes anymore. I don’t, you know, I mean, well, sometimes I do because I just sort of random stuff. But there’s not a lot that I do anymore. That’s not just supplemented or at least verified with A.I. Yeah. So I have a question. I don’t totally understand this myself. So I want you both maybe to speak on this. But how do you use A.I. with like a CRM? How could that be a tool? Listen, OK. So well, this I’m absolutely going to shamelessly plug something here. But Tom Ferry, for example, right. So Tom Ferry just created an A.I. tool called Revi, R-E-V-I-I, right. So Revi has this really cool feature where you can grab your phone and you can dictate to Revi and you’re like, hey, Revi, you know, I just met Emily Terrell at Home Depot.
[16:37] She’s interested in selling her investment property, but she’s you know, I just met her doing trim. Can you please add her to follow up boss? Her phone number is 210-400-96-96. Her email address is this. Go. And it will literally add a follow up boss. And then you could tell like add the tag this. Let’s say you add the tag investor. And within follow up boss, if you have automations already set to where everybody that’s tagged investor gets an action plan going, you can automatically take care of adding all of that. Now, the other cool thing that I do, I do the same thing, but I created a person in follow up boss and his name is Mark Kedding. You got it right? His name is marketing. OK. Yeah, everybody looks at me that I’m like, his name is marketing.
[17:21] So with Revi, you can add appointments. So what I do is I’m like, OK, I need to do these. Like I need to do like these things on these certain days for marketing. So I just put them all on a list on a notepad, copy them all, throw them into Revi. And then maybe like three seconds later, they’re all in my calendar. And I say my calendar because, you know, my my assistant, my VA, they look at those and they take care of them. But it’s just it’s a much quicker way of getting it. Plus then, you know, my team can look and follow a boss and they can see they they know to go to marketing for all marketing stuff. So if it’s like a team run of marketing, I just name it a certain way so they know to take care of those things.
[18:02] But it’s just a really quick and easy way. Now, if you don’t have Revi, which I think it’s really cool. The reason I like Revi is because it’s a tool for real estate agents built by real estate agents. But other than that, a lot of other common uses for AI with your CRMs is to build all the long term follow up plans using AI. The drip campaigns, like the the emails. Yeah, there’s there’s got to be there’s going to be some big changes, I’m sure, kind of coming in the pipeline with that. You know, if if if, for example, you are recording everything that you ever talk with your client with your plot, right, and you take all those transcripts and you have them in your CRM under their contact card, just in theory, if that can all like, you know, magically go together through an API or whatever.
[18:57] And then and then, you know, your drip campaigns, your follow up, automatic follow up takes that context and AI and AI generates a response specific to that person, specific to all those scenarios. It’s like crazy how that future could be. I mean, maybe more of that exists than I’m aware of, but already. But it’s it’s going to be pretty hard. For example, Revi Revi is actually working on because FollowBoss can record phone calls. Now, it doesn’t only go to FollowBoss. It’s just what I use. Yeah. So FollowBoss can record phone calls and it’s actually working to push the phone calls from FollowBoss to Revi to help you with scripting and to help you with some of these like automatic email replies and stuff like that.
[19:39] So all of that is, I mean, all of that’s already in the works. It’s more of just learning to use it and getting in the habit of using AI for everything. Yeah. One of the things that, you know, from, you know, me now having used chat GPT mainly to, you know, just thinking of new ways to use it all the time and just, you know, just from looking at my office and trying to make it. How do I make this office feel a little bit better, a little more inviting and using like the video feature as you talk to it to kind of scan around? It gives you some feedback. You know, that could be a staging idea as well to, you know, just recently I listed a luxury property in kind of a rural area, but it’s perfect for fly fishing.
[20:19] And the target buyer is likely not in that area. They’re likely in bigger cities. And, you know, I’ve never had to target fly fisher people before. In a Facebook ad. So I asked at GPT and it like gave me like the most like the most genius like things to put into a Facebook ad. Like, you know, I think it was like a Patagonia fly fishing. Like, you know, that’s one of the interests or something. It’s just like a bunch of things that I wouldn’t have known right away or it would take me a lot longer to figure out. It’s just, yeah, it’s so incredibly useful. Yeah, I mean, and realistically, like I always tell people the limitation for AI is not AI, it’s you, right? You just have to think outside of the box of like, what do I need help with?
[21:05] OK, great. Like I, you know, I have an RV. And so I got new countertops and new backslash in my RV. And I was like, OK, now these cabinets don’t match. I just took a picture and I was like, hey, give me some cabinet color suggestions. So gave me three. And by the way, gave me like name brand paint and the color and everything. And then I was like, oh, go ahead and render the photos. So now in my taggy BT, I have three photos with those specific colors, which, by the way, I’m going with the dark green cabinet. It’s actually called a black green by Sherwin Williams. But because of the rendered photos. And it looks amazing. But that’s how quick it was. And it took, you know, like three minutes to figure out which one I was going to do and take care of it.
[21:44] That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s a game changer for sure. Yep. Emily, I want to go back a bit to, you know, you were talking about how you started off as a stay at home mom. And and I I want to hear you talk a little bit more about what that was like for you. And then and then also the process of figuring out how to transition into something different than that. Oh, so I so I had a corporate job, right? I, you know, you get the phone call. That’s like, hey, let’s talk about your car’s extended auto warranty. Yeah, I mean, I mean, you call in to us, right? So I mean, when you call to talk to us about your car’s extended auto warranty. So, you know, I worked for a company and I ran the marketing department.
[22:32] My budget was actually larger than payroll for the company. So I spent, you know, I I was very good at actually creating the systems of doing all this. And then when I had my first child, I I probably would. I went back to work at six weeks, but I went like I should have waited three months, right? I should have. I probably would have done a little more. And so I decided, you know what? I don’t I don’t want to be in this world. I want to spend time with my son. So I did. And I was home with him for probably about six months. And, you know, I kind of I looked back at just like how every day I was just like I was afraid to spend money because I felt bad about spending it because I wasn’t contributing.
[23:11] I’m a very I’m a high D.I. figure that out. Right. So I’m a very high driver. So for me to like pull back and let somebody else take the reins, you know, it was just hard. I mean, that nothing to do with my husband is extremely supportive. You know, it’s great. He’s an amazing man. But for me, it was just what I needed to do. So I, you know, from there, we had sold our house. We’ve lived in the Dallas area and we had sold our house. And I thought it was a fun process. So, you know, again, I thought it would be easy. And I also, you know, I was a server for a really long time and I got along really well with people. So for me, I was like, yeah, this seems like a natural fit. So I went, you know, stereotypical, let’s become a real estate agent.
[23:49] And so, you know, when I came in at a very different market, actually not that different from where we are now. And for me, it was a very natural fit. So when I would tell people that I was a real estate agent, they’re like, oh, yeah, we get it. That’s you. That’s your personal. Wasn’t a surprise to anybody. Not at all. Anyway, super for anyway. What was that like for you to so? So let me make sure I’m in the on the right timeline here. So your son would have been around six months or so when you started real estate. I think actually it was like nine because I did. I worked for a little bit and then he was like, yeah, nine, nine to 12 months. Somewhere in there. He was, you know, it wasn’t it wasn’t very old.
[24:29] But I was definitely like, yeah, he’s around nine to 12 months. OK. Can you walk me through what the the days were like for you just schedule wise and rhythm with work, building a business, family? I don’t know how he slept at night, but our kids didn’t sleep great at that age. And just, yeah, just what that was like for you. That’s really because it’s very different now than it was then. Right. Actually, you know what? That was pretty easy. I was putting him in daycare. There was a lady. Her name is Kathy. She was in the area. She I had actually like grown up with her daughters. So she actually, you know, when I started getting busier, because I was really successful my first year, he actually went to daycare.
[25:09] So that that helped out quite a bit. The difference, though, was when I had my second son. So in 2018, I had my second son and I was doing really well. Like, I think, like in 2017, I had him in December of 2017. And that year I sold 76 transactions by myself. So by myself at the time. So I was really selling a lot. But I decided for my second son that I wanted to keep him home with me for a while. So that was actually that was difficult because I had a new board. Right. I had my four year olds. And I had a newborn. And I wanted to keep him home with me. And actually, I couldn’t get him into with Kathy until he was nine months old. So that was harder. What I ended up having to do, I I relied significantly more on texting because nobody wants to call you or you could call them and have a baby crying in the background.
[25:59] Not that he cried all the time, but, you know, just the case. And then the, you know, the second thing I did was, is I actually just hired in parts and help. So like three days a week, I would have somebody come in for two hours and she would come in and not that I would go anywhere, but I would do work. And she was available if I needed help. So which was really, I mean, that was extremely helpful for me because if I needed help, which I, you know, I did. But also it allowed me to not have to constantly have eyes on him. She could do that. And so I was able to really get a lot done during those times. And then once he got to nine months old, then he went into daycare as well. My oldest then was in pre-K and my youngest was in daycare.
[26:43] But I will say the greatest piece of advice I got during that time was when my son, it was, you know, I was I was still still selling. And my son, my second was about to go into daycare. And I remember I went to a Tom Ferry conference and, you know, we the whole day, we got all the days there. It was the last day. And I got a chance to ask Tom. I was like, hey, how do you get over the mom guilt? Well, not you, because how would you suggest I get over the mom guilt? Right. And I remember thinking, like, because I knew how to regenerate. And I told him, I was like, look, I know how to regenerate. I know how to do all this stuff. That’s not my problem. I want how do I get over that guilt of like now putting which because I only wanted two kids, putting my son in the daycare, you know, putting myself first.
[27:26] And he was like, oh, he’s like, well, include your kids. Like, you got to take them, you know, if you want to spend time with them, you spend time with them. Put them as part of your goals. Right. Make sure like spending time with your kids is a goal. If you need to prioritize and prioritize them and just be unapologetic about it. If that’s what you want, do it. And that kind of shaped everything that I do. So now I live my life of if my kids are the most important thing, then they are put first and then everybody else can really they can love it if they if they have problem. Yeah, that’s great. What does that look like now? I’m trying to do the math. You have probably our daughter was born around the time your son was, and she’s eight.
[28:04] So he’s really eight and a 12, at least seven. He’ll be. Yeah. Seven and eleven. They’ll be. But they’ll be eight and twelve this year because they’re more towards the end of the year. Oh, OK. Yeah. Yeah. So now it’s a little different because I do travel quite a bit. I travel roughly on average every week and a half to two weeks. But I do. So I, you know, still have my team. I coach throughout the Monday through Thursday. I do a ton of webinars, you know, either for people that hire me directly or I do public webinars. And then I travel and I do a lot. I do public events and I do a lot of private events. So, you know, I travel quite a bit. And then my husband and I do like to actually spend time together and travel sometimes, too.
[28:46] But now, I mean, so I don’t start coaching and I don’t start my day until nine thirty. I also delegate for my team quite a bit. Now, I do make less money, but it also frees up my time significantly. Yeah. And then depending on where I’m going, sometimes if my kids are off, I will bring my kids to conferences sometimes. They’re old enough to, like, handle themselves for a couple of hours. Now, never private ones. But when they’re public ones, I will bring them. And they think it’s the best. I guess that will get the good layers. And they’ll say like they’ll say their names and they’ll say VIP attendee on there. Oh, that’s fine. They, you know, my my youngest, he’s, you know, he’s seven now. He he got to go with me for something.
[29:30] And he’s like, Mom, am I VIP? And I’m like, yes, you are. Everybody loves it. You bring your seven year old and then the 11 year old. That was his birthday trip was he got to go. He got to go to Denver with me to a conference. And he was just beyond ecstatic because he was VIP. So they love it. And then you’ll be included. And they think it is the absolute most amazing thing that their mom talks about. They think that’s so cool. You get to be a cool mom. I am because I cannot work their their iPads. I don’t just. But it’s like I don’t want to work their iPads thing. I don’t want to deal with it. So I don’t. But then they’re like, but, Mom, you do AI. And I’m like, it’s totally different, guys.
[30:14] It’s a different thing. Yeah, it’s a good exactly. I mean, you use it all the time, right? So, I mean, you get good at what you you exercise. You get strong with the exercise. Absolutely. Yeah, I’m curious if you have any like golden nuggets you’d like to share with the listeners here, like if they’re maybe getting started with real estate or maybe struggling to get the systems together or struggling to have find time for their family. I mean, is there anything that you would want to pass on to them? Yeah, so we’ll do an AI tip because, you know, right. So my biggest thing when it comes to AI, if you’re wanting to get better responses, the answer always is to get better questions. Right. And how do we ask better questions?
[30:57] Well, let’s just use chat GPT. So my recommendations when you create a project, right, create one called prompt writer and go in there and ask. You could just use that thread over and over again. But ask chat GPT to help you write all of your prompts. So now moving forward, you’re going to have better, longer, more well thought out prompts that will build on each other over time. So if you want to create, you know, some of these award winning four page prompts that I write that give you amazing results, just go to chat GPT, ask it to write the prompts for you, tell it what you need, ask it to write the prompt for you, and then use that prompt to help get better responses. I love it. That’s awesome.
[31:41] I’m going to go do that right now. Hold on. Emily, what about any books that you’d recommend? Ones that you think would need to be fundamental for people that everybody should read. It could be real estate specific. It could be mindset, business, whatever, or just one that you’re currently really enjoying. So I like personally Chris Voss. I had to think about it. It’s oh, my gosh, I’m blanking on the name of it. Never split the difference. That one. Yes, never split the difference. That one. Yes, never split the difference. That one. Yes, never split the difference. Never split the difference. That one. That honestly is like one of my favorite. Yeah. And one of the big reasons, there’s a lot to it, but my favorite part of it is, and I use this as a philosophy for how I train my agents to do it.
[32:27] Now for my team, when I would go on listing appointments, is you tell people what you’re going to do and then you do it. So even if you’re giving them an email that says, I have no update, you still send them an email that says, I have no update for you. But that’s my biggest takeaway from that book. However, there’s so much to it, right? But I really recommend Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. It is probably one of the biggest impactful books that I had when I was working with buyers and sellers, in a way to say. Yeah, that’s a really good one. There was one that I think he co-wrote or had a little bit of a part of, too. I think it’s called The Full Fee Agent, maybe. It had some interesting things in it.
[33:08] And the biggest takeaway that I got from that one as well was talking about, if you go to a listing appointment, not giving them recommendations on what to do to their house and not giving them analysis until they agree to work with you, if they’re interviewing multiple people. And the comparison, and I’ve been kind of beta testing this in the background and thinking through, because I’m not sure I really want to do that. I experimented with it on one and didn’t get the listing. But that was mainly because the other agent was willing to list it for like $100,000 more than it would sell for. And it sold for less than I told them it would.
[33:46] I haven’t read the book. But this is the only thing I’m going to challenge on this. Yeah. What is the largest group of people that are buying and selling or doing any real estate transactions? What generation is the largest?
[34:03] It’s it’s it’s not millennials anymore, is it? It is millennials. It is millennials. It’s an overwhelming amount. It’s like, oh, I think like 65 percent. It’s something crazy, right? It’s a lot. Almost everybody is millennial that are buying and selling houses, right? So in saying that, do you know what characterizes like the characteristics of a millennial as far as when it comes to information and deciding to work with somebody or deciding to buy with somebody or something? It’s the idea that we want the information and we want to be able to digest it. Yeah. Back to you. Like, I don’t need your fluff. I just need just give me the information and let me go and do my thing. No, no. And I think the bigger point here was that if they are interviewing multiple people, they typically have like the they’re the one they’re probably going to work with already in their heads.
[34:52] And you can kind of try to tease through like, you know, are you that person or are you just kind of them thinking they need to do a little bit more due diligence and then maybe use your information to work with the person they want to anyway? And their whole point was like, don’t spin your wheels and things that are probably not going to work out. So, again, I’m in the background beta testing this a little bit. But I think you’re right. I mean, like ultimately, like giving people the information they want. If you could have it fully prepared before you even meet with them, it’s going to, you know, increase the chances of working with you. And I do mostly referral based business. So like 99 percent of the time, I’m not going to get it.
[35:30] Yeah, I’m not in a, you know, three different agents and fighting for the same listing. You know what’s crazy? Can you guess the percentage of people that actually interview more than one agent? I have no idea. It’s only 20 percent. OK. People actually just go with the one only agent that they talk to. That’s yeah. I mean, that’s definitely feels true for me and or probably even maybe slightly higher just because I don’t do much cold stuff. But yeah, so that’s that’s just another one. I don’t think I actually finished that book. So I should I should read it again since Chris Moss is so good. I know I might have to. It’s sitting right over here on my shelf of, you know, all my books. I might have to read it myself again.
[36:11] Or I have to read Never Silt the Difference again, just because I always love to get fresh up on it. Yeah. Then what about if anybody wanted to reach out to you about coaching, follow you on social media? Where where would they go? Yeah, absolutely. So you can go to one of two places. You go to my website. It’s just Coach Emily Terrell dot com. Or you can also go to Instagram. Instagram is actually the easiest way to reach out to me. Just Coach Emily Terrell. Sure. You know, she’s got my smiling face, not this smiling face, a different one. But it’s just Coach Emily Terrell. It’s the easiest place to find me. Plus, they can answer all the questions. I put a lot of tips and tricks about, you know, systemizing and AI and a lot of content there.
[36:49] Plus, any time I’m doing webinars or podcast drop or anything like that, it all goes there. So people have, you know, a great way to see what’s going on. Sure. Well, cool. Well, thanks so much, Emily. Yeah. Thank you, Emily, for the conversation. That was great to have you on. You’re welcome.