Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Um.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Welcome to coffee is foreclosures. My name is Tim Brigham, and I'll be your host for January 2023. Today we're looking at the hottest mortgage trends. What's going on with real estate, but most importantly, who are the top producers? This show's for coffee drinkers only.
One of the hottest topics in mortgage lending right now is around the federal funds rate. On February 4, they raised it a quarter of a point as expected. But what we find is a common misconception is there's one rate that controls mortgage rates.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Right.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: What happens when that goes up? Did rates go up? Well, the truth is that federal funds rate has to do with when institutions lend each other money. It's a relationship.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Right.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: So it does affect. But I want to explain why when we go into a market that is already built into the interest rates you see today, now there's an expectation, right? If the fed raises rates higher than anticipated or lower than anticipated, that can cause a reaction to mortgage interest rates either up or down. So what happened on the first was expected, and we saw mortgage rates start to ease and cool because of the fact it was exactly what the market anticipated. Listen, my job is to keep you informed. So what you're going to do is make sure you hit that subscribe button on the corner, and I'll keep you in the know.
And here it is, the moment we've all been waiting for. Who were the top producers for January 2023 in Chicago? Starting off the list with Eugene Foo with eight and a half transactions.
Fadia with ten transactions.
Ben laws coming in with 13 and a shared transaction. Matt Larissey with 15 transactions. And the leader of the pack for January 2023 in Chicago was Greg Picarsky with 22 transactions. Fantastic work. But what's going on in the suburbs? Let's check in.
And in northwest Bird for January 2023. It looks like we had a ladies club. Started off with Jane Lee with three and a half transactions. Then we got Amy Durango with four. Coming in number four, Maria del Bacchio with five. Kim Aldeen with six. Families helped. And leader of the pack was Holly Connors with seven.
I had a really good interview with Holly Connors, actually, in episode two. We've linked that below. I would love for you to check it out. Also, I find it important to note that these numbers that were just listed were just on the individual producers themselves. Sometimes there's teams involved as well, but not listed here.
And stepping out west, who were the top producers for January 2023? Starting off the list, we actually have a quadruple tie with four transactions. Kevin Layton, Jennifer Lacino, Beth Gores and Tom Fosnaut. Fantastic work, but leader of the pack was Tim Schiller with 13 families help. Outstanding.
Coming up next, we're going to interview with a top producer you're not going to want to miss. Stay tuned.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: I get run staring at the sea don't give up.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: This morning just to.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: Be I was born I was come in.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: And for those of you just tuning in, this is coffee is foreclosers, and I'm your host, Tim Brigham. In my 20 year career in the mortgage industry, I've been blessed to be surrounded by some of the most incredible human beings in the industry. And with me today is one of them, Gregory Pikarski. Thanks for joining us, man.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: Thanks for having me on, man.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Appreciate it.
So tell me about yourself. You just crushed Chicago. You just did an amazing job in January. Your numbers are outstanding, and I'd love to hear about what you got going on. Tell me about you.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Thanks, Tim. First off, thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it. I love what you guys are doing here. It's an amazing thing for the industry. It's a lot of fun to watch, too. This set is crazy. This is amazing, man. Thank you.
Gregory Pikarski. I started Vesta preferred with Brad Robbins, my business partner. We started in 2009. We focused on luxury rentals, actually, from the beginning. And we were just two kids from Detroit. We really had no background in Chicago. We were like, let's try this real estate know and see what happens. So lots of trials and tribulations, but we have now the number one team in Chicago selling real estate, the Vesta team. It's been an incredible experience. Super passionate, super blessed to have it. We sell residential real estate in and around the Chicagoland area and have one hell of a fun time doing it, man.
[00:05:12] Speaker B: Listen, I got to ask you, with some of the people out there that are struggling in the industry right now, you're finding just this incredible success. What do you attribute that to?
[00:05:23] Speaker A: It's all about how we view how to be successful in real estate. The way that we see it's a marathon, right? We never focus on results. We never focus on results. Right. There's a lot of people that come in and they say, I want to sell $10 million worth of real estate this year, $20 million worth of real estate this year. And naturally, that's just the way that a lot of people operate in this business.
When we started to figure out to actually look at the equation on how to actually be successful, we realized you cannot focus on results. You have to focus on the daily inputs. Right. Control your controllables. We call our controllables mmas. Money making activities.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: Love it.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Right. So it's. What are those things that you can do on a regular, daily, controlled basis? The things that you can actually control that we know that if you do this over a long period of time, you will be successful. Success is that doing something consistently over a long period of time will get you to be successful. That is how we operate. That is what we do. That's what we focus on.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: We were talking backstage and the consistency was a common thread. But you are so proud of your team, and what I love about you and your brand is that you're focused, really, on more about the team than you are yourself. Can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Yeah. So there's a reason why we are called the Vesta team and not the Pikarsky team, right. It's all about focusing on.
I call it the three Musketeer model, right. All for one, one for all. And we have done everything we possibly can do to curate a team that is the best in the business. We start with two core principles, attitude and work ethic. Those are the two things that I look for to start off with anybody that I look to hire on the team.
And it's not easy to find those two things on a high level from that point forward. Once you have that baseline, you get a culture of agents that just want to be great.
And what we've been able to do is cultivate this incredible team that supports one another, that all they want to do is we want to be the greatest together, but we also want to have fun doing it. We want to enjoy the thrill of real estate. Right. I feel like a lot of people forget that this is supposed to be fun, right. And we have a group chat. We are always throwing out our deals on there. We're all joking. We're all supporting one another. The environment at our office is music. Right. You will hear Brad and I singing consistently.
I love to do TikTok dances with my team. Right. I'm telling you, man, you got to be real and you got to be enjoying what you're doing, because if you're not happy with what you're doing, then success is never going to be achieved.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: I love this because it's such a contrast, right. I've talked to quite a few people that are successful, and there's not one necessarily way to be successful. You've found a way to really build almost a family environment around you. And your numbers speak for themselves.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: People are happy. They want to work harder. But mental health is important. You have to focus on being happy while you're doing it. Otherwise you're going to be miserable. Maybe put some numbers up. But how do you continue that? You can't replicate it. You'll burn out.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: Right. Tim, if I can touch on the mental health piece. Sure. I think that that is something that is not talked about enough in our industry.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: There are so many people that are extremely overworked, and they feel like they can't say that they're tired. They can't say that they need a break, because also, it's a seven day a week job you're constantly on. Right. There's almost, like, a feeling of weakness attributed to being in a place where you just want to take a break. Right. And I think that's bullshit, dude. Honestly. So what we did this year is we doubled down on our mental health promise to our agents. And have you ever watched billions?
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Love billions?
[00:09:28] Speaker A: You know? Wendy? Yeah, I found me a wendy. Wow.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Really?
[00:09:32] Speaker A: So we have a mental health professional, Jeremy Walton. He's unbelievable. Really? Yeah. He has this incredible brand where he focuses on movement, on mental health space. And what we do is, on a quarterly basis, we get the team together. And I'm like, dude, get in our minds. Get us meditating. Break it down. Build us back up, and get my team out there in a place where they can go back, and they can go back. Enjoy and push 100%. You cannot be operating at 100% if you're working nonstop without any breaks. I have an agent right now. She's out of town, right. And she actually was nervous to tell me where I found out that she was out of town, and I made it a point to message her to say, enjoy your time. We got you, but come back because this year is going to be a fucking movie. And she was like, let's go. But it's about that, dude. It's about the support. It's about feeling comfortable to know that it's okay to say you need help, man. Right. And that's what this team is all about, man.
It's about focusing on the right inputs controlling your controllables, but also supporting each other all along the way.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: I think that's something that's not talked about enough is how stressful real estate really is behind the scenes.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Is that there's lots of emotions.
One of my mentors taught me that what we do for a living, that's where they put their kids to sleep.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: What you do for a living is going to change somebody's life forever. So we have to get it right. So with that comes all this stress and all this emotion and all this pressure to make sure that you close, make sure that you sell, make sure you do what you need to do. But it's not talked about enough of that that wears you down. You got to push your set every.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Once in a while. So when we talk about how we coach and mentor our agents, right, we have to be a small team because of how much input we put in per head and the way we coach and the way that we mentor is on an input basis. Right? So when you think about it, we start with the foundation of great attitude and hard work. Right. So we can't coach that, right? Like, either you have it or you don't. Once you have that, there's only three places that you might be messing up and why you might not be performing at your best. It's abt, attitude, behavior, or technique. So every single week, we meet with our agents and we look at how their week went. But instead of being like, I don't know why you're not doing well or what's going on here, we look at the numbers, we look at the statistics, and we look at how their day goes. We start with attitude, right. If somebody comes in and they are down and just feels off, we immediately know something's off because everybody in my company just start. Has to have a great attitude. So we're like, what's going on? What's happening? Right. And success is 70% attitude. So that is the number one thing you have to be focusing on. Right. And everybody knows that. So that's culture that is in the office support that's constantly getting people to know that they have a family to be supported in the office and they can feel comfortable to come to us if something is bothering them. Right. So that's first and foremost.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: So usually it's not attitude based. Next is behavior, the inputs. So we have our CRM that looks at their day to day activities, text, how many texts there are, how many calls, how many appointments set, how many this or that is going on.
Real estate is a statistics game. It's a math game. Right. And we know our numbers. It's the most important thing in success. You have to know your numbers.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: You have to. Your numbers are everything.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: So if you know how many leads you got, you should know how many appointments you should have had. If you know how many appointments you should have. You should know how many contracts you should have. How many contracts, because how many contracts should be out of to be deals, right. And actually go through because contracts fall through. It's okay. So if their attitude is great, their behavior is on point, they're not missing their activities through our CRM. The last thing is technique.
If you are talking to ten people and not a single appointment is going on, something's going on in those phone calls. So we listen to those phone calls and they want to be listening to those phone calls because they know something. They're not saying the right thing. Right. And we tell them, hey, you should be asking for the appointment this way. This is how you should be pitching yourself. This is how you should be pitching this property. This is how you should be talking to the people. They go on appointments, they don't get contracts. Okay, well, what are you saying during the appointment? How are you converting all of these things? And that's how we coach abt, right. And we are able to catch people on the down and quickly coach them on the up because we meet with them on a week by week basis. And it is unbelievable when you get the right person with the right characteristics, with the right coaching, what can do? We are seeing ten to twelve x on our agents on a year basis in regards to how quickly they ramp up their business. Wow. Yeah, wow.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: And it shows in your numbers, right? For those of you tuning in, listen, if we work together, I've been preaching this about knowing your numbers, and here's proof right in front of you talking about the importance of knowing. There's so many salespeople that go through this job and they don't run a real business. They don't know, they just do activity. They have no idea what their activity is actually equating out to. Where's the lead source you're getting it from? If you don't have something coming from this other area, you have to be able to identify that, not just a list of names of people that you're calling and trying to convert.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: If I could just talk to the viewers, because I think a lot of the viewers are real estate agents. If you ever have that feeling of, man, I'm busy and I'm running around, I feel like I can barely breathe, right? I feel like my head's just above water. And you have those days where, you know, you were busy during the day, but at the end of the day you were like, what did I do today? That's a problem. You have to have structure in your day, you have to know what your mmas are, your money making activities, because you have to be able to build. So you have to know how many numbers you got to call to hit your numbers, to be able to take people out, to be able to then make the sales that you want. Don't say you want to sell $10 million worth of real estate. Say that you want to call 30 to 40 unique people a day, because that's going to get you to $10 million. Focus on your controllables. Also, once you do, you'll realize you don't have to be running around all day. You could be done by noon, by 01:00 in the afternoon, and then go enjoy yourself. Go golfing, go get your hair done, whatever you want to do. Like, go get your nails, go get a massage, whatever you want, right. These real estate agents, they feel like if I'm not busy, I'm not being productive. Bullshit. If you're not doing the right things, you're not being productive.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: You seem like somebody who explained this a very simplistic way, but is it easy to do? Is it easy to join your team and just get plugged into this system?
[00:16:25] Speaker A: Unfortunately, we have found that we are about a 3% acceptance rate on our team. So I don't know the numbers, but I have to imagine we're one of the most difficult teams to get onto in the Chicago area, for sure. I don't know, in the country.
And I don't mean to say that in a way that it is cocky, arrogant, or whatnot.
The avatar of the agent that's perfect for us is a very unique individual. Right. Starting with a great attitude and very good work ethic. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of people that are like that, just in general. Right.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: But you have to ask more of yourself. Right. And what it comes down to is really being a professional and looking in on yourself. Figure out if that's what you want out of it.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Sure. But also, it's not. So once you get there, and I find a lot of people that are great attitudes and strong work ethic, but some people don't like being on a team, and that's okay. Right.
What we do is we're a huge lead based model, right. Everything we've done is we've perfected on how to get leads and how to curate an amazing lead flow, right. So that is something that we provide for all of our agents, and that's how we input into their business so they can constantly grow. Some people don't like the high volume stuff, right. So they be like, I want to work on my own. I like working with my people and that's great, right. And that's you. But we need people that are ready to take on leads. Our phone rings, we pass out leads from 08:00 a.m. To 09:00 p.m. Monday through Sunday. Right. So it's this type of style of business that somebody has to be willing and ready to go with. But I'll tell you what, the second that somebody can come on, and we agree that they're a good fit and they agree that they're a good fit for the team, we change lives.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: It's amazing. So I love what you're about. I would love to hear from you about, I'm a mortgage lender, so I'm dealing with this daily. What is your take on the current state of interest rates and what's going on in the market and how are you advising clients on the street?
[00:18:22] Speaker A: So there's a lot of information, right. There's so many things being thrown out there. Interest rates are going to skyrocket. Recession is looming, all of these things, right. What I see out there is a normalized market. What do I mean by that? Is there is still a supply and demand issue. Right. So there's still not enough supply for the demand out there. Interest rates going up higher for sure limited the amount of demand. Right. So put down the amount of buyers that were in the market. However, the supply is still not enough. So I'm still seeing multiple offers out there, especially now.
But it's the first time in a few years where I've won multiple offers below asking price. So what I've realized is that buyers are starting to take the market back into control of where they think and feel the value is. And sellers can't push that as much as they were able to in the last few years. Right. You're not seeing $150,000 over ask prices. Right. You are seeing buyers that are educated and know where and what the value is and they ain't paying more than that. So in my opinion, the recession that's here is just a normalized market where instead of 20% growth, you're seeing the normal two to 3% growth, but it's still a healthy market.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: What are your thoughts on a hot topic that just recently came out is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are looking at lower FICO scores. Right. And they're talking about adjusting rates to it. How do you think that's going to impact your business?
[00:19:53] Speaker A: The question is, why are they doing that, right?
Because after end of March, any new loans that are being created, they're going to get hit with these fees. Right up to 780 credit score, you can get hit.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: So anybody listening, it's called a loan level price adjustment. It means that with a lower FICO score, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are coming back and saying that they want to offer a little bit higher interest rate or give a hit with lower FICO scores and then higher dtis. And a DTI is your debt to income ratio. So your borrower that has a little bit more challenges. It seems like a penalty in the industry's eyes.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: But what's crazy is that before 720 plus was like the creme de la creme golden borrower. Now up to 780 is going to get hit with fees and all this stuff. So I think that people have gotten and they're smart about this, right? They know when to level this stuff out. People have been conditioned now with higher interest rates and all that stuff. I think what's going to happen, because inflation continuously keeps going down, interest rates are going to go down. So I feel. Tell me what you think about this. I feel that with a lowering interest rate market, everyone did the two to one buy downs. Well, I'm going to Refi. No, you're going to Refi, but we're still going to get our money because we're going to hit you with these fees. So I think that those fees are going to get transferred to seller credits. I don't think it's going to stop because people still need to buy. Because what I'm realizing is that where people haven't been able to buy a house in the last few years and they were like, all right, well, maybe I can last a little long, a little longer. People are busting at their seams and now they have to move, right? So they're going to be almost forced to get these loans, right?
So I think the demand will continue to essentially outpace supply. And that's all economics is, right? So as long as the demand is higher than the supply, we'll have a healthy market, which I'm still seeing signs of. It's just people are going to be pissed and they're going to be like, why is this happening? Because it's a government agency that is putting on these fees for no reason. And I have a question for NAr. Why are we not fighting this enough, right? Why is nobody talking about this?
[00:22:01] Speaker B: The good news is that there are the association of Mortgage Brokers and all that they're all fighting it. They're all going and lobbying against us. We'll see what happens when it pans out. But truth is that I agree with you. I think it is a money grab situation. I think they're doing this to penalize or try and put revenue back into some of these loans. But as we've been talking about, you marry the house, you date the rate. We think that rates are going to come back down and that we should see a lower rate environment in the future. And hopefully with these new mortgages reporting on their credit report, that improves credit scores and hopefully there's debt to income ratio, things that get resolved as well. I mean, you've got things to work towards, I guess, as an industry to help resolve.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: The Fed has been on a full on assault to do the soft landing through real estate. And it's like, back off, man. These are the most important, in my opinion, consumers in our market that have been saving money, that need to make a massive decision for their family, that already have so many fees stocked up, and their whole plan is to lighten the load on the market and help the whole recession by hitting the housing market.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: I don't understand where it doesn't make sense. It doesn't seem like that. If we hit a finally announced recession and we come to the reality of what's going on, it isn't going to be real estate this time that causes the subprime meltdown 2008, we're going to have some Wall street adjustments, but it's not going to be housing, it's not going to be mass delinquencies, it's not going to be mass foreclosures like we saw previously. Because to get a home these days, you do have to have a good credit, you do have to have a down payment, you do have to have honesty behind your loan. Whereas before it was, you're writing paper with a napkin and saying, yes, I make x amount of dollars per month.
We would accept that as income as an industry. So the amount of stability that's been created, the amount of checks and balances there, why would we penalize housing? It doesn't make logical sense. And that's why I think there's a lot of us fighting this in the.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: Industry, but not enough because no one's talking about it.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: But did you see what happened last?
A Andy Walton came out and had a report on CNBC. Did you see this?
[00:24:19] Speaker A: I did.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: He was talking about the amount of locks, for example, was up 43% in January. That's insane. The demand is there demand?
[00:24:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: These people are not out there playing games. They're out there to buy housing, typically for owner occupied moves of really trying to move their family to another state or upgrade their family from an apartment. These are strong, able borrowers because in this day and age, that's what's out shopping.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: So to penalize that, it's an unfortunate reality that if it hits, they know that people still need to buy. Right. I feel like it's going to.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: What do you think is going to happen to housing prices? What do you think in the future?
[00:25:07] Speaker A: As long as supply still stays the way it is and it's tight. It's still super tight. It's not going to go 15, 20% above, but you're going to see a normalized growth of 3% or so. It came out that Chicago was one of the best markets that is going to be the most stabilized for the highest potential for growth, which was like nothing crazy. It was like 2%, right. The coasts are the ones that are seeing 15% drops and 70% drops, rightfully so, because they saw the most growth, right. The most hypersensitive growth. Chicago, steady Eddie, man, we're hard work, right? We don't mess around.
We went up during the pandemic, we kept our pants on, we kept going. Nothing was crazy. Sure, the suburbs, some of them saw some crazy things and you heard stories here and there, but overall the market was pretty stable, right.
I always thought, and always still think that Chicago as an urban center is the best investment as a big city because it's so livable, right. Comparatively to what you get in the city. We get a lot of heat on us, a lot of people hating. But, man, we keep getting number one best city to live in. We got the best stuff going on. Like, get the fuck out of here, man. Chicago is the best.
[00:26:21] Speaker B: The Chicago way is really interesting. We saw this big boom and I lent all over the country, right? So I'm dealing with Arizona, I'm dealing with California and Florida. And the temperature was so different. When you talk about 100 to 150 over ask, I was getting phone calls of people putting 100 and 5200 over. Chicago didn't tolerate that. No, you saw it. It happened, but it was super rare. Chicago would go, I'm not doing that. We have an even keeled. Even though there was demand, even though there was panic, we didn't ever get to this insanity that we saw in other markets that lends towards stability.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: We're Midwest, man. We're real.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: You know what I mean?
[00:26:59] Speaker A: We're no bullshit. You know what mean? Like, we're just going out, go, we do work, we appreciate what we got and we keep our heads on. Right. Unfortunately, we still have a supply issue, but going out with buyers in Chicago, they are extremely educated. They are ready to buy, but they're not ready to buy. Bullshit. Right. And they want a good product. So it's also a lot of coaching on the seller's end of what to expect when it comes through, when how to present a real estate property. Now, if you present it well, right, it's going to sell, it's going to do really well. But if you present a property that needs work, man, buyers do not want to do any work right now. Rightfully so. People remember the pandemic and how difficult it was to get stuff done and whatnot, and it still is relatively difficult to get things done. So, buyers right now, if you can get a home as ready as possible for market, and you do the staging, it smells nice, get the citrus in there, right. Get some music playing, and you position this right with the right photos, you're going to get a very good turnout from buyers.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: So our audience for the show, right, is typically real estate agents. They're looking for tips from top producers like yourself. And this is a moment to kind of pick your brain and really hear about the secret sauce, hear about what it is that you do that maybe is a little different or that they could implement in their business. Are you willing to share any trade secrets that you think that maybe is missed as a real estate agent?
[00:28:27] Speaker A: So it all comes down, right? Like, at the end of the day, we are the biggest industry for overnight success, right? What is that model? What's the next gimmick? What is the next thing to do? What do I got to chase? Where do I got to focus on, right? Like, what's the next TikTok dance that's going to get me my next buyer, right? I still haven't been able to find that out. And man, do I try, you know what I mean?
There is no secret to this game.
It is about input. It is about mmas, money making activities. That's all it is. And if I was to talk to my younger self, right, this is what I would tell him, is that you go to a top producer and you talk to, let's call it as many as you can, and it's pretty amazing how giving top producers are, right? If I have somebody reach out to me and be like, hey, can I just grab a coffee with you or can I just grab 15 minutes of your time all day, man, let's do this, right? And what you want to do is you want to ask them, how does your day look like? What do you do every single day to get business? What are those unique things that you do? And you have to understand numbers, right? At the end of the day, it's a numbers game. And you have to also understand where ultimately you want to go to, because there's so many different pathways in this business, right? So you got to figure out, do you want to sell luxury homes? Do you want to be a big rental producer? Do you want to be the biggest first time home buyer representative, right? And you look at once, you figure out where you want to go in the field of who's doing the best in that. And then you go back and be like, what were those activities? What did you do to get original business, right? And they're like, well, I talked to this amount of people. I went to these types of things.
I had these types of inputs. And then you build your day, and then you say, okay, so it looks like you got to talk to, let's call it 100 people to then get, let's call it five sales, right? So that's an example. So then if you want to talk to 100 people, then you look at what's realistic on your day to day basis. If it's 20, that's great. And so then you line up 20 people, your goal is then 20 calls a day, because you know that those inputs is going to ultimately give you the success that you want, right? Very early on in my career, everybody was like, what's your magic wand? Regardless of what I was doing, whatever, selling rentals to houses and whatnot, and they're like, man, what is it? What is this magic sauce or whatever? And I'm like, fucking work, dude. It's smart work. It's the smart inputs. That's all it is. There's no secret here. It is just putting in and knowing your numbers and showing up, doing things consistently over a long period of time. The long period of time is where everybody falls off. The consistency over a long period of time. That's where everybody falls off. If somebody just does something for 18 months straight, they will be a top producer.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: I was just having this conversation. It's funny, you keep bringing up TikTok, right? I was just talking to an agent about TikTok, and a mentor of mine came to me one time and said, you know why most agents don't put videos out? Because they're so worried about it being this crazy production, and they just aren't willing to turn their phone on. Right. They spend all this time doing a video. They finally put a video out, and it takes all this energy and all these things, they put it out, and then they don't get any responses like, oh, that was a waste of my time. Listen, it comes down to consistency. You hear it here first. If this is you consistent, you need to build a brand. You need to continue to look at your metrics, continue to look at what you're doing day in and day out. What are your goals? And stay on it. And then measure those metrics.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: But like what I said before, the beauty of understanding your mmas, it gives you a consistency in your day. It puts rhythm into an unrhythmatic day of a realtor. Right, right. And once you have that, you realize that if you start your day at 09:00 a.m. If you just focus for three to 4 hours, you can do more than what most people do in two to three days, even a week. And if you do that, you've become so much more productive that things start to make a lot more sense and you start to have a lot more fun, because then you're like, the things you actually like to do. Right? That's certain workout class. I love boxing. Right. A certain.
I'm terrible at golf. But my business partner, Brad, he's amazing at it. He loves to go to the range. Go to the range. Right? Go enjoy your day. Once you're done, you're done. Go. Stop worrying about it. It gives you this rhythm to your day that realtors are all craving but don't know how to achieve. Also, like, real quick, what we should have done, we should have absolutely done a TikTok dance on this set. This is perfect. This set is fucking perfect for a TikTok dance. Why are we not doing TikTok dance on it?
[00:33:00] Speaker B: We might have to get it right.
So on that note of boxing and whatnot, I thought you'd say TikTok. Well, who's your biggest competition?
[00:33:09] Speaker A: All right, so I know that Ben Lawless would love for me to tell the Cameron audience, know he's my bitter rival, and we duke it out. And I love the my. He's my dear friend, and I need that competition right now. We're neck and neck, and our teams are constantly competing. And, man, we get heated on instagram. We love to beef on there, and it's something that I need that push. Right?
[00:33:34] Speaker B: The friendly competition.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: The friendly competition, dude, sure. But at the end of the day, my biggest competition is myself. Right? The way I want to explain that is everybody has a personal rating and everybody is either zero to a ten unless they understand that or they don't. But everybody sees themselves in a certain light. As a realtor, you have to see yourself as an eight or above, because if you are anything less than that, you are looking and becoming your worst enemy. And you can either be in this business and in life in general, either an enemy or an ally to yourself. And you have to love yourself and you have to be pushing yourself consistently. All I do every single day is I focus on making sure I maintain at least an eight. It is very difficult to get to a nine and ten. So I'm not going to say I'm a ten out of ten. Some days I feel like I'm on top of the world. You know when you have those days when you're just like, driving down Lakeshore drive and it's like, beautiful, and the music's on, you're just like, yeah, fucking amazing. That's a ten out of ten feeling, right? And you're constantly trying to get there, but you have to be at least in the eight out of ten. And what that does is it changes the perspective on how you see failure, right? And where people that are less than an eight out of ten, what they do is they look at failure and they say that, I suck at this.
I'm not any good, right? You make 100 calls and everyone says to fuck off. I want this business. You're like, man, it's just me. I suck at this. But what an eight out of ten does is, I know my numbers. I know that I should have gotten three people to say, yes, I just got an unlucky day. Tomorrow is a new day. And you buck up and you go and you get after it. And that eight out of ten allows you to stay consistent over a long period of time. And that attitude is what you need to stay that consistent. That's why attitude is so important in this business. So my biggest competition is myself.
[00:35:32] Speaker B: You know who you sound like?
[00:35:34] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: I don't know if you ever heard that. You sound like Kobe.
[00:35:37] Speaker A: You're saying, right, is no one's ever put that. That's incredible. Thank you for that.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: That's his big thing is he said that, you know what? He may have a bad day, but then he wakes up tomorrow and it's a fresh day. And if you go and listen to what he talked about, I mean, that's exactly what you just said. And that consistency is everything is that every single person, no matter what level you're at, you're going to have a bad day now. You're going to let that bad day control your life, or are you going to go, okay, it's part of. It's math, right? Time to keep going.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: It's time to keep going. If I can give you an example of early on in my career that I now look back and realize that I've always had a high personal rating of myself was. I remember when I was doing rentals and I had a week where I took 13 people out, right. Not a single application. And it was like the first six months of this career, by the way, I just want to be very real. Was the most difficult, insane time of my life. I thought I sucked at this. I was like, I'm no good at it. I was definitely below an eight at that time in my life. I couldn't pay rent. It was a bad, bad time. And around that time is when I had this week. And at the end of the week, I was like, fuck, man, that was terrible. Not a single application.
But what I did was instead of being like, man, I suck at this, I'm never going to be good at this, I started to think about my week and I started to realize, man, I didn't qualify any of these people. I got so nervous that I wasn't making any money. I took anybody and everybody out. So the qualification never happened.
And what I did was I learned from that time that how important the power of knowing this business is, right? You cannot help everybody and anybody and whatnot. You have to be able to control and protect your time. And that was a massive learning experience for me because then I started to qualify better. I had better appointments, and then my conversion started to happen. Right. But if I didn't have that self reflection ability, I would have fallen off and I would have given up and I would not be at the number one spot right now.
[00:37:35] Speaker B: I've never met anybody who's successful in this industry without a moment of pain.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Right?
[00:37:40] Speaker B: It's part of it. It's math. It happens. It's just, what are you going to do about it? And I love what you just said. You went back and analyzed what you did.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: You have to.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: And picked it apart. Okay, now what are we going to do differently? That's fantastic, man.
What does your typical schedule look like? How do you run your day?
[00:37:57] Speaker A: Dude, I got these two little ladies in my life that are everything to me, and they're little monsters, so they're a full on time suck. I mean, you're a family guy, dude. You got two boys. You get it, man. So the only time that I can ever consistently get to myself is the morning, right? The morning is the secret sauce in success. Everybody always talks about it, but it is extremely important for people to understand that if they want to be successful. I personally think that you have to start an early morning routine. So typically, I get up around 530 and I work out and I try to meditate or have some sort of mental headspace where I'm just getting ready to take on the day, right?
And then that kind of typically takes on until about 645 07:00 in the morning. And then it's baby girl time, girl dad time, and I will never miss a morning with my wife and my girls. And it gives me all that energy and that boost that I need to show myself why I'm doing and working as hard as I am. So from about seven to eight, we are breakfast, getting dressed, brushing hair. Man, I can do a braid.
[00:39:17] Speaker B: Really?
[00:39:17] Speaker A: A braid now, man, it's incredible. I'm, like, learning these things.
[00:39:21] Speaker B: You learned that on TikTok? What, vacuum?
[00:39:22] Speaker A: No, not yet.
My wife, I'm watching how she does it, but I'm like, dude, I'm going to be as involved as I possibly can be. Like those things that scare a lot of guys and whatnot. I'm like, no, man. I want to learn how to do this thing right. Own it.
I get their hair ready. They're looking all cutes. Make sure they feel great about themselves. We're on the way to school. Have you listened to Snoop Dogg's affirmation song?
[00:39:50] Speaker B: I have not.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: He's got. It's called Doggyland.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: Really?
[00:39:53] Speaker A: And it's all snoop Dogg kid music, and it's an affirmation song. So I'm driving my oldest to school, and we're singing along to it, and it's like. It's singing about how it's really good to know that you're loved and it's okay to have feelings. And it says, she's like, we're singing, we're dancing. I drop my girl off either at daycare or at school, depending on where and how we split them up for the day. And then it's after it. We're getting after it. 08:00 onwards, it's business, business focus.
And then I never miss a pickup of either again. My youngest or my oldest. Then it's dinner time. It's time with the family.
It's difficult, but I try to have my phone away from me so that I'm really focused on them. And then if I have some work and whatnot after 07:00 I tell my clients that's when you can reach me again. But honestly, I try after 07:00 to just have as much time for downtime as much as possible. Because if you're constantly, like I said, if you're constantly, go, go, you will exhaust yourself and you will break. And that's happened to me before, and I cannot have that happen again.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: Well, it's absolutely incredible to sit with you. You're inspiring to me and I'm sure to our audience as well. I appreciate you sharing all the things you've got going on and how amazing or work ethic you have. I want to shift gears. Just one.
[00:41:11] Speaker A: Let's do it.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: Before we leave.
I know that you're involved in a big charity that I actually was a part of for one of the years.
[00:41:18] Speaker A: Oh, yeah?
[00:41:18] Speaker B: Called the real estate rumble.
I know it because I actually fought in it and I lost.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: I'm not afraid to never lose at the rumble, man.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: Never lose. You show up, right? And if you show up, here's life. This is right. Tell me about the rumble. For those that don't know.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: So Ryan Cotter and I, about ten years ago, this can be the 10th year. This year. Wow. A decade, man. Wow.
[00:41:41] Speaker B: We got to do it big this year.
[00:41:42] Speaker A: We are going to be doing it big. About ten years ago, we had this chance to take over the real estate rumble, and I think it was called broker boxing at that time, and it was more commercial based. And the guy that was running it, he's an awesome guy, but he was like, I didn't really want to do it anymore, so can we take this over? And I was like, we got to take this to the residential arena, man, that people will eat this up. And it's exactly what it sounds like. It is a boxing event where you get super amateur lots of times. People that have never boxed before, real estate agents and affiliates that come in and they come in, they train. We have about eight fights. We already have our fighters for this year. And the night of event is amazing. It is partnered with a charity this year it is mercy home for boys and girls. So we always try to do kid based charities, and while they're training, they are raising money for that, sponsorships, all that stuff. And this year it's at the park west on May 25. The thousand people come to this thing and it is like, I'm telling you, it is the real estate event of the year, man, it's intense. People are like, they're not going to actually fight. I'm like, no, man, they're boxing. We got a fighter this year. Michelle from my team is.
It's an amazing evening for the industry to come together and this is going to be one of the first events, big events, since COVID Right? So, like, getting everybody together and everybody in this industry loves to get together. Party. All for a good cause. Brokers are extremely charitable, mortgage bankers are extremely charitable. So it's just a great night to celebrate the industry in a very fun, unique way.
[00:43:24] Speaker B: It's fun, but it's also. I was so impressed with how professional it is. I mean, they've even got the times just under, so it doesn't count towards your card. I mean, if this is something you want to get into, but it's official referees, the whole real coaches, the whole bit ring. It's amazing. So it's outstanding event and if you're watching this, you've got to check this out. May come, but Greg, thank you so much for coming and business today.
[00:43:45] Speaker A: Amazing, man. Thank you for having me.
[00:43:47] Speaker B: Appreciate you.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: Incredible. Now we're going to so much TikTok dance time. Yeah. Let's do it. So this is how you do TikTok.
[00:43:52] Speaker B: Like this.
[00:43:53] Speaker A: Start like this. Tim, let's go, baby.
[00:43:55] Speaker B: I'm not doing that.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: Where are you going, bro?
