Ep001: Helping People Find a Home They Love with Susan Elliott

Transcript

Welcome to the Connect Practice Track & Grow podcast. Habits, routines, motivations, and mindsets from some of the most successful real estate professionals among us. Check out the show notes at ConnectPracticeTrackGrow.com. This show is brought to you by the Strategic Resource for Real Estate Professionals, creating and coaching business opportunities and strategies that support and add value to the lives of real estate professionals at the strategicresource.com. And by ROOST Real Estate Co., today’s real estate agent doesn’t follow old rules. She makes new ones. Learn more at careerwithroost.com. Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Connect Practice Track & Grow podcast. My name is Chris McAllister and today I want to introduce you to Susan Elliott.

Susan is a real estate agent and broker in Ohio and agent in Florida and our market leader for the Southwest Florida area. And full disclosure, I’ve been working with Susan since when was it Susan? I believe 2015. 2015. So there you go. We’ve got some history together. So I’m incredibly excited for Susan to share her story with you today. So just a little background. Susan is incredibly intentional about making new connections. She’s good at nurturing relationships. She’s conscious about expanding her practice and tracking her numbers. Basically, she’s the poster child for Connect Practice Track & Grow. So I hope you’ll want to listen closely to our discussion because Susan’s going to discuss some pretty cool things.

We’re going to talk about her total return on portfolio. We’re going to talk about grocery delivery. Yep. I said grocery delivery and how Susan keeps it all together while time with her family, her grandkids, and we’ll also get to find out what her plans are for the future and beyond. So our goal for this podcast is to hope you find inspiration, some timely lessons, some actionable tips and tricks, maybe some habits and mindsets that you can use in your business to generate more leads, book more appointments, write more contracts, close more deals, earn more referrals and make more money because that’s what we all want. Susan, welcome.

Thank you. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. My name is Susan Elliott and I am now 48, but back in my younger days when I went to college, I majored in accounting and finance and totally thought I was going to be a stockbroker. And then I had children and that all changed. And I also found out at a young age how good I was with people and how good I’m not at sitting at a desk and crunching numbers. So I quickly transformed that plan into becoming a realtor. And that I did for several years when my children were small, but it was very difficult when the kids were little and I didn’t have the broker support that I have now.

And I didn’t have an understanding of the entire market. So it lasted until I saw that the market was declining and I went through a very bad divorce and then I decided to get a job at Hondros College, which is one of the real estate schools in Ohio. And I became a director of the campus, which is in fact where I met you. And I ran that school for several years during the market decline in the mid 2000s. And then I took care of my grandparents until they all passed away right after that. And so I honestly became a leasing specialist at a local nursing home also so that I could be around my grandparents while they were passing, but still stay tied to real estate.

And then I talked to you again and talked to you again and again and finally made the decision to go back into real estate. Best decision I ever made. So we started working together in 2015. You basically became my main person with what we talked about. You became the better me than me. Yes. So I’m interacting with my clients and making things happen. Yeah. So in 2015 when you wanted me to come and work for you, you explained to me how good you are with the things that you’re very good at, but then how bad you are with the things that you’re not naturally drawn to.

And so you hired me to be a better Chris than Chris, which was actually fantastic because you are very intellectual, very numbers driven. We connect on that level very well, but you don’t have the same relational skills that I had. So I was able to take over that part and make us a very dynamic duo that really couldn’t be stopped. So we did really well. And at that time foreclosures were really big. And so I sold everything from $7,000 on up. And I think that was the secret I treated everybody the same, whether they were buying or selling something that was $7,000 or $500,000. It’s still the same concept.

It’s still the same order that you put it in and you treat everyone the same. And then it’s good results. Exactly. And it’s still a relationship. It’s still that one-on-one opportunity to form a relationship with somebody regardless of the size of the transaction that is going to hopefully lead to a relationship for the long term and referrals down the line. And you embrace that concept from the start. What brought you to Florida? Tell us that story that you left Ohio and moved to sunny Fort Myers Beach. So I’ve always wanted to live in Florida since I was a young child. My grandparents had a home in Sebring and we visited often.

We went to Disney World all the time. And then my mom decided to be a snowbird in Okeechobee, Florida. So I continued spending lots of time here. But then we had a plan. When I raised my boys, we had a plan that when they got out of high school, we would eventually move south. And so my oldest son jumped the gun a little bit and moved without us and brought my grandkids here. And I made it a year without them and I couldn’t make it anymore. So I decided to move on down. And the rest is history, as they say. So you actually bought your house on Fort Myers Beach, wasn’t it, that December 2019?

January 2020. January 2020. So just, I was thinking, I think we had talked about it before the holidays. So basically you pack up, move your entire life to Florida and eight, nine weeks later, it was COVID. Yes. What a devastation I thought. Because even though there’s rumors that Florida is open and it’s not rumors, Florida is an open state. But Fort Myers Beach actually went through a closing period. Even the beach itself wasn’t open. So all the plans I had to grow my business and create relationships were squashed at that point. Because I couldn’t get out of the house and meet anybody. So I was really struggling and struggling with the fact that I, for a long time, very diligently.

And then all of a sudden I didn’t have a plan that was in the works. So you and I met several times and I really had to get creative and think outside the box. So I started listening to Zoom meetings for the Fort Myers Beach Town Council. And that really started to get me thinking that there’s other ways to do this without leaving the house. So I started listening to every Zoom meeting I could that was local and trying to learn whatever I could about the area, get names together of who ran, what businesses had, what owners, what their businesses were. And that really helped light a fire again and say, you know what, I can do this.

I will do this. And I’m not going to wait around for everything to open up. So that’s where I really started. Yeah. So you immediately started to immerse yourself in what was going on in the local community regardless. But before we get really deep into the other things you did, I just want to share your numbers with our audience today because I think they’re incredibly impressive. In 2019 you were just doing great big dollars, making a lot of money in Ohio and taking care of tons of people because you had so many transactions that year. And then we hit 2020, which is your first year in Florida.

It’s the COVID year. And that year, and these numbers are rough, but for the calendar year 2020, even after you had left Ohio, you still grossed $83,000 in commissions in Ohio after you left that year. And surprisingly enough, in your very first year in Fort Myers Beach during COVID, you still did another $19,000 there. So while 2020 was less than half of what you had enjoyed 2017, 2018, 2019, you still in a moving year in a COVID year managed to do six figures, which is incredible. And then we move on to 2021. And the numbers just continue to be impressive. So what happened in 2021, your Ohio business did drop by about half, but you still grossed about $42,000 in business with previous relationships that you’ve maintained in Ohio.

But the cool thing is your second full calendar year in Florida, you grossed $98,000. So within the 24 months of being there, you completed your second year at Six Figures, just shy of six figures in Florida alone. And then as I look at your numbers in 2022 this year, and today is May 26, 2022, your Ohio business is off as it should be. You’re referring business out and you’re getting a smaller percentage, but you still have eight grand in for the first roughly five months of this year in Ohio. And you’ve already got a hundred grand in Florida that were five months in. You’re at a $250,000 gross earnings per year clip and you’re just barely into your, not even halfway into your third year in Florida.

So I think those numbers are just tell such a story that you had relationships in Ohio, that you maintained, that paid you as you made this transition. And you did everything that you’ve done your entire career in Florida and it worked again. So just broad strokes, how did you pull that off? How did you make these new connections in a place where nobody knew you and you didn’t really know anybody else other than the kids? How did you pull that off? First of all, yeah, thanks to my Ohio clients because they really helped carry me through. I really realized the impact of those relationships that I had created and nurtured for many years because those people did not let me down and due to COVID, they didn’t want to meet anyone new.

They wanted their trusted realtor and they didn’t care where I physically was because honestly, they didn’t want to meet anybody during COVID either. It just worked out for me and then I was able to introduce Priscilla into the mix, which has helped me tremendously. And then a couple other ladies that have helped me through the way with taking care of my clients in Ohio. So that was fantastic. As far as growing the Florida business, I got a little bit lucky. We hung out with some neighbors in the very beginning during COVID because what more is there to do but hang out with neighbors in the driveway and talk and go to the beach after it finally opened.

And I had a neighbor that had someone moving down from Chicago and he referred them to me. So that was my first sale and that was fantastic. And the sale price is a lot higher here than what my average sale was in Ohio and that certainly helps. And then I started working on people from Ohio. We saw a real transition in what people were happy with and what they weren’t. And if people could work remotely, they certainly don’t want to be in Springfield, Ohio. They want to be in sunny Southwest Florida. It really started to click in my head that I really needed to market to some of my folks that I had already built relationships within Ohio that would then refer me to friends and family or even use me themselves when they wanted to move to Florida.

And then my dad who said he was never going to like Southwest Florida because he was an Arizona guy. After four trips down, I ended up selling him a condo. And then his friends wanted to follow along and I ended up selling them a condo. And all of those things, you just led one thing led into another. I remember saying to you early on, if I could just sell three properties, I would be fine. That’s all I need is three properties because I can take those people and I can grow them. They will meet me. They will love the way I take care of them and they will send me to everyone.

And that’s what I explained to everyone when I first meet them is what working by referral truly means. And what it truly means is that I give them an outstanding experience so that they have no choice but to think of me when somebody else is talking about real estate or is interested in making a move. And then I get the referrals. And it works every single time, doesn’t it? Yes. So you told me a story about grocery delivery. Can you kind of tell us how that went down? Oh, that kind of ended up funny. My son, when we first moved here, he had it. He took a job that was less than what he was used to doing.

And so on the side, he was doing Instacart deliveries on the beach. He stood to earn a bonus. I think it was $600 or $800 cash bonus. If somebody would be referred into Instacart and make 90 deliveries in 30 days, which is, believe me, nearly impossible, I would do anything for my kids. And I really didn’t have a whole lot going on because of COVID. And I thought this is a perfect opportunity because I’m going to be able to learn the area in a whole different way. I’m going to be able to drive into these gated areas, get a look around and get a sense of everything.

So I in fact did 91 deliveries in 30 days on Instacart. And it ended up being probably the best thing I did to get to know the area because so many areas are gated here. It’s not like Ohio. You can’t just drive through every neighborhood. And at the time, COVID blocked most of the showings. They were wanting you to just look at the videos and send it to your clients. So this was the perfect way for me to get into these condo complexes, especially waterfront ones. And just to get a look around and see what was going on in the neighborhood. So there you have it, folks. The Susan Elliott Total Immersion Strategy.

You want to get to know your brand new market? Try out Instacart. That’s fabulous. And you get paid. And you get paid. That’s right. So when you’re meeting the neighbors and all that, how do you introduce yourself? How do you let them know what you do for a living without, I guess, you feeling awkward and they feeling awkward? How is it that you put the middies and let them know what you do? I don’t really look at myself as a salesperson. I look at myself as a relationship builder and somebody that wants to be a total resource for everyone. That’s where my husband plays in.

My husband knows everything about fixing anything and he can answer questions for people and do things like that. And so we just always talk about our lives. I don’t feel like I’m pushing myself on anyone because I’m able to offer assistance to everyone. Our way of doing things at ROOST is finding a group of people. You find a roofer, you find a plumber, you find an handyman. You find all of these people and you build relationships with them. And you get to know their business and they become your trusted resources. So then when one of the neighbors needs something, who do they call you? And then once you become that trusted resource, of course, when they want to sell or buy a home, you’re the first one that pops in their mind.

So it all happens organically if you just become the trusted resource. I agree 100% no question about it. So how do you meet these people and it really is one relationship at a time? How do you stay in touch with them after you’ve been introduced and had that first initial connection? So we use Buffini Referral Maker and it’s a database where we put all of the information in and then we mail to them every month a thing called ROOST ramblings, which is a funny little postcard that gives you fun facts and makes you laugh at the same time, but keeps you top of mind in every situation when somebody pulls that out of the mailbox, you’re the first person they think of.

So even if you haven’t made a direct contact with that person that month, they see that piece of mail and you’re back in the top of their mind, which is why you always want to stay. Perfect. The other thing I wanted you to elaborate on is how do you use social media to improve or grow your business? And I shouldn’t even say to grow your business. That’s a misnomer about social media. Social media is an amplifier, but it doesn’t create business from nothing. So I guess the better question is how do you use social media to further your connections and the relationships you already have?

I learned early on when I was working with you. I was working with you and trying to help you with your side of the business, but at the same time I was growing my own business. And I realized very quickly that Facebook was helping me tremendously. People that I had substitute taught for when they were in the first grade were contacting me at 19 and 20, 21 years old and wanting to buy homes. They were acquaintances or friends of my oldest son, Devin. And I saw that really taking off and I was really shocked by it. I would have message after message of people, hey, I remember you when you substitute taught me or I know your Devin’s mom, Coby’s mom.

I want to talk to you about a house. I simply realized what a resource that was for me because people are obviously seeing me out in the community doing my thing, but that was the way they were choosing to contact me. So it’s very important for the younger community, especially that you are involved with social media. And I saw Priscilla has always had a fantastic social media following and she nurtured that really well. So a little bit followed in her foot. You have to post, you have to put things out there, but it really honestly helps get your listings out there and all kinds of things.

You can boost your posts, you can choose the neighborhood you want. You can do all kinds of different things to drive your sales on Facebook and Instagram. And so that’s what I utilize it for. And then I also utilize it for ads. Like I had an open house at the new office on Fort Myers Beach and we used it for ads. And you can tell how many people you’re reaching. So we were reaching five, six thousand people off just sometimes even a $7 boost. So the amount of people you can touch through social media is just far greater than any other form that I have been in contact with.

And one thing I would just share as a tip is it’s important that all of us go through our database continuously, but at least every six months to a year, we should go through our database and go see if those same folks are friends on Facebook. And if they’re on Facebook and not friends, we need to friend them and vice versa. The vice versa is it’s also a pretty productive exercise to go to Facebook, scan your and see how many of those friends you need to be adding to your database. So you can be more intentional about making connections. So one definitely amplifies the other and you do a terrific job at that.

So do you feel like you have a certain niche or a certain specialty on the island that you’re digging deep into? Or is it more of a broad net that you’re casting at this point? What do you consider, I guess, a personal niche for you? At this point, I feel like it’s a broad net at this point. I do have areas that I definitely want to target, target being waterfront condos, certain areas of the beach that I want to target, but being new, I definitely wanted to explore and I have been able to do that. Fort Myers Beach is centrally located basically between Cape Coral and Marco Island.

So I have a very broad area that I can work and I’ve really enjoyed having that broadness and getting to know all of the areas. And one place I really didn’t expect to sell was Naples and I think I’ve probably sold more in Naples than I ever anticipated. I really like getting to know different types of people and the different types of people are dramatically different here from Cape Coral to Marco Island. So it’s really been fantastic for me. You never get bored. You never have the same person over again. And so it’s been really interesting for me. So you’ve shared amazing things about how you connect, the connect part of your business.

And I just want to touch base a little bit on your practice, the actual practice of real estate. It seems everybody in Florida has a real estate license. I’ve never seen so many people with a license. It’s completely different than the percentage of the population that has a license in Ohio. It’s just crazy everybody’s, if they’re not a realtor, they have a real estate license. So what do you think in your own words? I have some ideas, but I’d like to hear from you. What sets you apart from the competition in Fort Myers Beach in Southwest Florida? I was intimidated by the large number of license in the very beginning.

And honestly, you helped put that to rest by doing a little bit of research and finding out that very few of them actually produce. And even the ones that produce, I have a friend in the business and he is a very high producer. And we do two totally different types of things. So I do believe that there’s room in the market for anybody that really wants to work hard. That’s the difference. If you want to work hard, it’s going to work for you. If you want to do the steps necessary, it’s going to work for you. So I don’t let that bother me anymore. But what was, I’m sorry, what was the exact question?

What sets you apart? One, you’re in this to build a business and build a career. I guess that clearly sets you apart from most of the people who have a license. Absolutely. And what sets me apart is Florida is a very transactional state. Even our contracts and everything allow everything to be very transactional. And as we’ve discussed, I’m not transactional at all. I’m a relationship builder and I have no interest in just making money and letting somebody go. I have a total interest in becoming their trusted resource for everything and talking to them, not only through the real estate process, but even later. And what’s really been cool about being in a resort town is that I’ve really been able to amplify that into working with vacation rentals and all kinds of different things.

So there are many opportunities here to just keep doing that and just setting yourself apart. There’s not a lot of people that sell retail real estate and do vacation rentals. It’s interesting when you really look at it objectively, some people, a lot of people have licenses and they never ever do anything with it. There’s also quite a few people whose only goal for their quote, business is to do one, two, three transactions a year. And they can actually make decent money doing that in Florida because in your area, because the average prices are so high. It’s actually, it’s very unique that somebody’s in it to build a business.

And when you talk about growing your practice, improving your practice, enhancing your practice, doing multiple transactions, regardless of the value of those transactions, is what makes you a better professional. It’s how you learn to add more value than your competition. And from my point of view, I think the thing that really sets you apart is your dedication to providing more value to the people that you meet than they ever expect. And quite frankly, more than they’re probably ever going to pay you. So it’s that continuous drive to add value. I get those comments of people wanting to tip me or pay me extra. And of course I don’t ever accept, but it’s a complete compliment when somebody says that to me.

I’m like, I pay you enough for what you do for me. And I really love to hear that from my clients. I love to offer that benefit. Why don’t you tell us about the vacation rental strategy, how that came about and why it’s worth it to you? Because we do a lot of property management. And property management can be absolutely thankless, especially if you’ve just got a handful of households that you’re looking after. So tell me about why property management, and it sounds like vacation rentals in general, is something that’s helped you grow your practice. Accidentally fell into that. It was back during that COVID period of time and actually all rentals were shut down.

No one was allowed to come to Fort Myers Beach and stay in these Airbnb, as VRBO listings. And so it really got me thinking. And one of my neighbors down the street who has become a great friend of mine, Shelly, I reached out to her when everything opened back up and I from talking to her that she was struggling filling up the dates. And I asked her if I could help her with that for a very low commission rate. I just wanted to see the whole picture. And when I started helping her, she was pleasantly surprised how easy things got on her and how I was filling up the dates.

And to be specific, one of the first dates that I filled was a client that was moving here from Hong Kong because their business had shut down in Hong Kong. He was a management consultant and there was no work there because everything was shut down in Hong Kong. So his company sent him to America to work in some American factories and he needed a short-term place to live six months. I got him in her downstairs unit. He and his wife stayed there for six months. And then since they had an American address at that point, I was able to sell them a home on Fort Myers Beach.

So it turned into a $725,000 sale. Wow, everything started to explode in my brain and I thought, this is how it’s going to work. This completes the circle. I made money, but very little money off of the rental, but I was able to build a relationship with Shelly that was it’s foolproof at this point. She trusts me more than anything in the world because I’ve been able to fill that rental for her consistently. I have an amazing cleaning team, which is the hardest thing to find. And they’re very loyal to me and they do an amazing job. So our reviews are sky high. We don’t have any bad reviews.

Everyone raves about the properties that I rent. And then I was able to turn it into a sale. So $725,000 sale. And then it’s a double also. So as soon as they move back to Hong Kong in eight months, I will be running both units as a vacation rental. It just really opened up everything to me. My brain just started going crazy and I thought this completes the whole circle. And that’s when I called you and said, oh my gosh, I got to get involved in this vacation. I think that’s a perfect illustration of what’s set you apart from other agents is the fact that you’re willing to go the extra mile and help people with all of their real estate needs.

The few dollars that you make each month from doing the actual management function is not worth the time that you put in. But the relationship that you know, you strengthen and deepen and the referrals that you get in the sales, you get make it all worthwhile. And that’s what we like to talk about. We had a couple of the major vacation rental companies that merged with national companies. And so they don’t have a personal touch anymore. The guy that takes care of our pool during COVID, I used to talk to him every week because I was home and he ended up referring me to four very strong clients that I took over their property management.

And they are four people I would have never met on my own. And they’re spaced all over the island and now I rent all their properties and that has opened up a lot of doors for me. And I’m very confident that if any real estate transactions come up in their life, I will be their agent. And I like to think of that as a total return on portfolio. If you were just putting yourself out there as a vacation rental manager, I’m not even sure that it wouldn’t be a great living relative to the life you’re living now for sure. But when you think of all of the opportunities that come from doing that activity and adding that additional value for your clients, that total return on portfolio is just astronomical.

So if you’ve got even half a dozen or a dozen households or doors under management and those turn into even one sale a year and it sounds like those are turning into far more than one sale a year for you, that return is astronomical. And let’s not let anybody listen to this podcast. We don’t want them to know your secret, but way to go. And the key is we’re up to 13 and I started 11 months ago. Yeah, it’s fantastic. So we’ll utilize that money then that we are making on a person to send in the office and help me out because you and I opened this new office on Fort Myers Beach, which is fantastic.

But because I work a lot, I can’t just sit in the office all the time and answer the phone or do things like that. So that money operates that portion of the business, which is that’s always been the beauty of property management in the ROOST business model is nobody’s necessarily getting rich from property management, but it covers a tremendous amount of overhead. And helps even out the year when sale, you know, whether sales are higher, whether sales are low. So fantastic. So we’ve covered how you connect with your clients, how you practice your business. And the third thing great agents like you do is they track their business, they track their numbers.

So Susan, what does tracking your business mean to you? Yeah, I’m not the best at that. I’m going to be honest. That is my area that I need improvement. I do it, but I do not do it as diligent as I need to. We have access to referral maker, which I should be putting every transaction in there and tracking it that way. And I honestly do not do as well as I should. I think there’s more to it though. We used to talk about a personal business standard and I’ve rebranded that as a personal connection standard. But one of the things, yes, tracking your numbers is important.

But as you shared with me, you’ve gotten tremendous insight in just tracking where your business comes from. Yeah, that I do. You just told me. That I do every month. I look at where the business has come from and then I groom those resources. Yes, that is tracking. And very few agents do that consistently. The fact that where your business comes from, you can see the patterns because you said that you get so much from your kids and their friends. And just tell me a couple of the patterns are one of the key patterns that you’ve seen from tracking your business. Definitely from my oldest son.

He carries my cards with him everywhere he goes, which is even more important now because he is a plumber on the island. And he carries a stack of my cards and anytime something comes up about buying or selling, he’s my biggest fan. He’s always giving my cards out. My youngest son’s a little quieter, but he’s actually passing out a lot of my cards now. He’s a car painter and he comes across a lot of people that are also looking for homes and he’s referred me to a few people. My husband is a great resource if he’s out and about. A lot of times just standing in our driveway, we live in a resort town and people will walk by and admire the front of our house or the fact that we live near the bay and the beach.

And my husband says, hey, my wife’s a realtor, give her a call. I’ve actually picked up two clients like that. But you had a real aha moment when you first consciously realized how much of your business was actually coming from Devin and Kobe. And then you went after it. Yes. Absolutely. I definitely sell to a lot of my kids’ friends. And it’s amazing. I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s honestly the best thing in the world to watch those kids grow up and then be able to sell them a home. The personal connection standard, I just want to elaborate on that for the folks that are listening.

One of the things that we’ve learned from our years being the Buffini & Company clients and using the Buffini & Company training and coaching and so forth is that the agents that are absolutely consistently successful for the long term, they have a personal goal for how many calls they’re going to make in a given week to their database, how many personal notes they’re going to write. And probably most importantly is how many people that they’re going to add to their database every week. And even if the standard is, and then the fourth thing is how many pop-bys, casual quote unplanned interactions with people in person that you’re going to do.

So calls, notes and pop-bys and adding additions to your database. That’s a people who decide how many of those activities are going to complete every week. tend to build very sustainable businesses over time and I like to refer to that as a personal connection standard and it may be okay I’m going to commit myself to doing two personal notes this week to pop-bys and I’m going to add at least three people to my database. And I think that’s critical and I think that’s part of tracking to the other thing I just want to touch on and get your thoughts on to you mentioned a few minutes ago.

ROOST Ramblings, what we do at our company is we have this postcard and we do it as a postcard because it’s easy to see. And it’s what we call the perfect mix of did you know, conversation starters and useless facts. There’s nothing on there that has to do with sales per se. It’s just a fun postcard that every one of our agents clients get every month without fail, regardless of whether they’re busy or not because the office does it for you. But it’s got only your contact information on it of course and so forth and one of the things that I’m watching as I track the business in the offices is when you look at the number of people that each agent is sending their ROOST ramblings to every month.

Any every agent we have that’s sending between 100 and 150 ROOST ramblings every month to their key clients, they are doing six figure plus businesses. But they have been very intentional about adding people to their database over time. Now we’re not talking about adding people that you don’t know the standard is if you ran into this person at the grocery store, could you recognize them and have a conversation with them. Those are the people that you want to get to that magic hundred hundred fifty number. But ROOST ramblings is a terrific thing because those numbers correlate to how well how big a business those agents have and all of even our agents who are sending less than 100 anywhere around 50 or less.

They may be making a living but they’re not building a business and I want to continue when we meet again to talk more about tracking because I’m convinced that great agents who are fantastic at making connections are very professional in their practice. That figuring out which metrics to really pay attention to whether it’s where your business came from last month or what your personal connection standard is, etc. I think that I think that’s the thing that I’m excited about helping all of our agents dig into as we go through 2022 and 2023 because I think there’s a huge payoff there. I agree. And you’re a great coach.

Thank you for that. So I’m sorry to ramble there a little bit but we’ve been cruising on for almost 40 minutes now. One more thing I want to touch base because great agents connect practice track their business. And if they do those three things, the fourth thing that they do because they can’t help it is they grow. And I’ve watched you grow since well before 2015 when we started working together on a daily basis. But if you could think through how has your approach to the business of real estate changed over the past few years? I just try to learn something new to improve my business on a regular basis.

When I first got into the business, I just soaked up everything you said to me. It was my second time being licensed and I didn’t do the first time. Rather I had kids little didn’t have the right broker, whatever. It wasn’t the same experiences I had when I started working with you. So I soaked up every bit of intelligence that you were going to throw my way and tips and tricks. And then I started to tweak that into my own. And now I’m just constantly looking for someone new something new like taking on vacation rentals and just doing different things. I am very intentional every single day.

Real estate doesn’t really honestly ever leave my mind. I’m always thinking of what I can do to be better for my clients, how I can better service people and how I can make the business grow. And that never leaves me. So I’m always open to new things. And for instance, I was in my grandson’s pool party yesterday into the year school pool party. Yes, they do things different here on the beach and it’s fantastic. And then a conversation sparked up about rentals and I may end up actually getting this lady licensed and she may be coming to work for us. And she owns four rentals.

The conversation has to always be you have to be ready for it if it comes up and you have to be able to explain how you can add value to their life and their experience in real estate and what you can do to help them out. And as long as you’re open to that 24 seven things happen for you. If not for the money, you do it for the experience. I’m very passionate about real estate. I’m very passionate about my clients and I really truly never set out for it to be about money. And that’s probably why I’m not the greatest at tracking the amount of money I make, because that just happens.

If you do things right for the right reason, then the money just follows. Yep, it’s a symptom or an outcome. But the beauty of it is I know real estate never leaves your mind, but I also think that I think you’ve done a really good job down there or maybe a better job than you did in Ohio integrating your work in personal time. I think you absolutely love where you live. You and Greg are taking full advantage of everything the island has to offer when we get to come down and visit. It just seems like you’re living that dream life and paradise on the beach.

That is true. I am so insanely busy in Ohio. I couldn’t figure out how to relax and I have definitely found time to niche out for my grandkids, my children and the lifestyle of being in Southwest Florida. I decided I was not going to give that up when I moved here. This is my dream come true. I’m 48 years old. I’ve waited a long time to have this life and I just was going to make it happen. But it certainly doesn’t mean that you don’t work hard on the side, but the two have to go together and you have to carve out that time. They taught me very well about looking at a calendar and marking out certain time for personal time because it’s just as important as the work that you.

What does the next level look like for you? What do you see happening or what do you want to see happen over the next couple of years? I would like to get up to 30 to 40 rentals. I think that would really be sustainable and we could still have a personal touch and still have an agent or two working in the business and working in the office and having admin. I would also like to grow my retail sales. I would like to at least double them next year. I feel like I’m on a trap to wanting to better myself each and every year at this point, but also just to grow ROOST in general.

And I’m working on my broker’s license in Florida. I am a broker in Ohio and once I get my broker’s license in Florida, we will be starting on with Lucky Town, which is one of your other companies. And I want to grow all of the things ROOST and Lucky Town. I think that sounds great and I’m hopeful that as the market leader down there, I think it’s important that you get your broker’s license, but that piece of paper isn’t going to change who you are. But legally and from a marketing perspective, it’s certainly going to help us. But what’s interesting is in this, we are not a body shop.

We don’t have the agents that work for us are committed to the business. They’re committed to relationships. They’re in it. They’re full time job. They’re fully committed to making it their full time job at some point. And consequently, how we do things, not every licensee, every realtor is a perfect fit for how we do things. But having said that, I’m hopeful that within the next couple of years that we have, I would hope at least three to four agents working with us down there. And within that beautiful office space you’ve got now, there’s room to expand. And I think that we will attract. Susan, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if we had a dozen solid agents.

Some will be new. Some will be experienced. I think we’ll have a fairly significant market share down there within the next couple of years with you as the market leader. So I have high hopes for that. I’m really proud and willing to do the work to get there. I know you are. All right. Thank you for being our first guest on the Connect Practice Track and Grow podcast. And if this wasn’t too painful, I hope we can do it again and check back in. For further progress in the next few months. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Sounds great. I appreciate it. And there we have it.

Thanks for listening in. If you want to continue the conversation, go to www.ConnectPracticeTrackGrow.com. That’s Connect Practice Track Grow.com where we have additional information about the podcast, archived episodes, and an option you can select to be a guest on the show. We’d love to hear from you. So that’s it. We’ll be back next time with another episode of the Connect Practice Track and Grow podcast.