Alright. And good morning, everyone, and welcome to Real Estate First Friday. My name is Louis Furman, executive VP here at LPT Realty. And today, I am not joined by my co VP, Matthew Hodge. It's actually his wife's birthday today, so he's out celebrating. He went to Disney World with the family and herself. So a lot of, happy birthday wishes to missus Hodge today on her special day. But I am joined here today by, coach, Dean, mindset and productivity coach, and also Natalie Cox, our VP of agent community. How are you guys? Good morning. Doing great. Ahead. How are you? I am doing well. It's it's Friday again. It feels like we keep getting to Friday, and we keep saying it's Friday again. How's y'all's week, treated you? It's been good. I, it's been pretty busy. I I've wondered if there's a full moon or not, but I don't think there is yet. Yeah. It's been great, though. Lots of real estate activity. Awesome. Awesome. There's been there's been two full moons there, Natalie. It's been a lot longer. Yeah. I love I love to hear that. Well, let's kinda jump in today, and I wanna start today's real estate first Friday with, you know, an experience story that I was able to have with one of our agents, earlier this week. So a few months ago, I actually got approached by one of our real estate agents, and, you know, he was struggling during listing presentations. You know, he was expressing to me like, hey, Louis. I've been preparing. I'm, you know, preparing my presentation for my customer. I'm in front of the mirror going through dialogue. I'm, you know, having my power packs and my tools available. And, you know, I'm I'm I'm trying to succeed in this side of work, but every time I go to one of these presentations, I'm I'm I'm struggling to ultimately get the listing agreement executed. And this conversation again happened a few months ago. And and at that time, we kind of went through, like, me understanding, what his issue was. You know, it kind of walked me through, let's call him John Smith. You know, what is your process when you go to these presentations? And he kinda described his process as, you know, pretty usual. You know, you go in, you do some introductions. He would do the tour of the property. He would then show the the customer the CMAs and the market analysis of the properties. Then he would showcase the power pack and the box. And then he indicated something that I that at that time, I kinda recognized as being his possible pitfall, which is he would immediately then turn without any further conversation, without any further dialogue. You can have all of these services for two and a half percent commission rate. Like, he immediately jumped to his rate. And then he kinda described how the processes went thereafter, and it was one in which the seller then would be like, no. Well, I wanna come in at one percent or one and a half percent. He would say two and a quarter. They would say one and a half or one and three quarters. It became like this commission negotiations. And then ultimately, you know, he would say time and time again, the seller would say, hey. Let me think about it, and I will call you back. And then when he would follow-up with his customer, it's for whatever reason, things kinda got off the rails. And it kinda led me to understand, like, he was going in there from the very first moment, basically, negotiating or or or trying to sell his commissions and not ultimately selling himself. And that became the biggest shift that we've been working on for the last few months. And, you know, most recently, he was able to share with me earlier this week his success stories of, you know, how that little shift has positively impacted his business. Mhmm. And I kinda wanted to use that example here today to kinda become that talking point for for real estate first Friday where oftentimes we see our customers or or or agents, basically selling their commissions with their customers and not ultimately selling their ultimate value proposition or selling themselves. So I'll kinda stop there and kinda, you know, turn it to Natalie and coach Dean to kinda get your initial thoughts on that that experience from your vantage point. Well, I think this is go ahead. Go ahead, Natalie. No. No. Sorry to interrupt you. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it's really important that we're giving we're diversifying our proposition when we're approaching a seller, and explaining to them their different options. I know a lot of people have had success with maybe structuring different services that are included with their listing package, maybe at different tiers, and you can walk through that idea of what this includes at this level with your seller and give them some options and power. I really identify with what you said about selling yourself. I think people forget that sometimes that we get bogged down in the process or the minutiae of the presentation, and so we don't step back and realize, how important it is to create that relationship, connection, empathy, all of that with, the seller and really understand their goals and give them the power to make the decision about what they need and how you can structure it to win the listing. I think it's really important. Absolutely. Absolutely. I will say this to that to that statement. If you start off with money being your key component of what you're bringing to the table, you will end that way. See, the number one reason people sell houses is because of motivation. It's not because of price. It never has been. I've been doing this for twenty one years, and it's always been about why are you selling your home, not how much am I gonna get. They make it that way because the agent makes it that way. If you start in with the talking about your services and what you're able to offer, that service has a price point. I took commission totally out of it. I gave I gave them options. I love what you said, Natalie. We need to be advisers, cons consultants. We don't need to be real estate agents which go in and say, okay, this is what I'm gonna do and this is how I'm gonna do it. It's like, here's some options for you. Which way would you like to go with that? And the one important thing is and I've had these conversations with the agents these last couple weeks, is that when you start off with a service, then that's what they're purchasing that service, and they need to be totally educated. That's the other thing you need to be as an educator, Totally educated that we can't go backwards. We can't or can't go forward. We can't give you more for that. We can't take away. We we can we can, you know, stay with what we've our program is. If we wanna change things, then we change everything. So so this isn't any business. But for the for for many times, agents in general have a feeling that they feel that they have to be the low ball on the on the block in order to get the business. And in essence, when you start counting at the end of the transaction, what you actually made for what you did, it's never pretty. So you gotta lead with service and end with service. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean and that's such a great point. Like, you know, being able to identify your value proposition adequately is such a good, you know, initial layer to start, you know, selling your services versus selling a commission or selling a specific rate. And, you know, I want you guys to kind of understand this as well. Like, there are certain things that are, you know, what I would call at par or neutral that every agent is going to do that is not what I would call distinguishing. Right? And those things are, you know, kind of how I kind of explained, you know, this example of this agent, how he conducted his listing presentation, doing an introduction, walking around the home, doing a market analysis in a CMA. That's baseline. You know, that is the basic fundamentals of what you do from a listing presentation perspective. And there's a baseline that also exists on the buyer side of the equation in terms of the minimal services that we can conduct. And you can only go so far with, you know, trying to make it unique by creating an amazing CMA or an amazing market, analysis or trying to tell the seller what they ultimately are wanting to hear. You gotta have different layers and different pillars of the pyramid to give you that those distinguishing aspects. And, you know, the collateral pieces that we receive here at LPT Realty is a is is a very first great jump point that we can incorporate to really start distinguishing yourself. Because, again, this is hard material. You're presenting to them. A lot of other agents aren't doing these things. But then you don't wanna pull the parachute and immediately go inside of commissions. You know? Let's start talking about commissions immediately. You never had that opportunity to, like, build a conversation with your customer and really be that resource for them because I would call the very tip of that spear, the very tip of that pyramid is you gotta be that counselor for them. You gotta make them feel like you're watching around the corners even before they understand that that corner even exists. Like, they gotta understand where the landmines are, where the pitfalls are, even before those pitfalls and landmines even arise. And by you being a counselor, by listening to them, understanding them, you'll be in a much better position to tackle that very tip of that pyramid, but, strategically to ultimately help increase your likelihoods of of positioning yourself accordingly with your customer. Yeah. For sure. Yep. Absorbing stress. Right? Absorbing stress on behalf of your seller. You know? And that comes with educating yourself, being detailed, things like when you're having discussions about getting the house ready, are we considering the four points of the home, the age of them, how that could impact my seller's bottom line and their net? Like, being very detailed in your approach to here are all the things that are going to affect your net, and here's how I'm going to help you, whether that be you know, I worked for a team for amount of time. Some people have big staging companies they bring in. Right? And they pay top dollar for those. It could be as simple as showing up to your seller's house on a Saturday and being like, hey. I'm willing to put in some elbow grease with you today. I'm willing to put in some sweat equity, help your home get ready for listing photo, and we're going to reorganize your kitchen and add some plants. I brought some in the back of my car. It can be as simple as those minor details that help show the seller when you're going through the process. Process. Like, here's what I can do for you. Maybe that's something you include in one of your tiers. Getting creative. So like Lewis said, you are distinguished. You do stand out. You're not just gonna put their house on the MLS and cross your fingers and hope for the best. Right? So creating that reputation of service to your seller for sure. Yeah. And I think you definitely have to do what other agents aren't doing, and I will venture to say and challenge that no one is doing what Natalie just mentioned, is doing the extra. And, you know, you have to understand when you're building relationships with people, it's about the little things. It's not about the big stuff. Anybody anybody can do the big stuff. Right? So it's all about these little things that you can put into this. And, you know, Louis, you mentioned something about the one the one word that changes your business a hundred and eighty degrees. Listening. You have got to listen to what the seller is saying and what their motivation is. You got to listen to the buyer and find out what their real needs are because the buyers normally don't under don't really know what they want until they see it. It, and you have to be that guiding factor. We've got the buyer presentation pack that actually has everything in it to help you lead them and to bring that value. We need to kinda change things around in our mindset. Our mindset needs to get away from listing presentations, Get away from buying presentations, consultations, and turn them into conversations. Thus, my script practice is not script practice. It's script conversations. Because, see, scripts will get everybody in trouble. When you got too many words in front of you, you're trouble. I have four words sitting in front of me right now. I don't have a whole script of what I'm talking about. And you will sound like you're reading something. And if you all don't wanna sound like a market a telemarketer, and I hear it all the time. Oh, coach. I just don't wanna sound like a salesperson. I don't wanna sound like a telemarketer. If you're reading material, that's exactly what you're sounding like. If you get that material and you internalize that, and there's a scientific way to do that, and I teach that on my classes on how you can internalize that and make it you, Then you come up with four or five words. It's called an outline. There I've been a public speaker for a long time, and you have manuscripts where you read it word for word or you have a outline. And the outline gives you thoughts in your head of what you talk about or what you know. When you get off of that, you are no longer presenting anything. You're having a conversation with someone. When someone takes them off in a little story and they wanna take you to la la land somewhere, let them go. Go with them. Have a conversation with them. Right? And then when you're looking at words with words, you can bring them back. With sentences, you're looking at the sentences. You're not hearing anything that you can say that that they're saying. And the worst thing a communicator can ever do, therapist, doctor, any of the the worst thing you can do is ask the question that they just answered. That's when you lose them, and that's when we're losing them. As agents, we're not listening. And in order for them just to listen, we've got to be more focused on present or not presenting, but on having conversations. You know, if you call me up today, anybody here on the call calls me up today and starts just talking to me, there's no scripts. There's no words. There's conversations, and you're talking to me about what your problems are. You're talking about what you're dealing with. We're having a conversation. We're not going through any scripting here. So we need to kinda change our business around because that's what the market is calling for us to do, is to have conversations with people. And the more we convert, the more we converse, the more we add to our funnel, the more opportunities that we have to be able to, talk to people and get more business and to change your life, not just the lives of the ones that you're helping. Yeah. That's that's definitely a very interesting way to look at it, you know, versus going in there, you know, via a presentation type of mindset, you know, going in there with more of that conversational mindset. And that's such a true statement because oftentimes, like, we can apply this, like, in other industries when we're out there maybe car shopping or going to a retail store. And if we feel like someone's gonna come to us, you know, to give us a presentation, to try to sell something, what's the first thing we do? We say, you know, we're just looking or we throw our guards up or our shields go up and we're less receptive. And we're more we're more inclined to wanna negotiate or try to go in there to try to battle or or or diminish the value that someone else is trying to provide. But if you go in there with the the lens of conversation, the guards naturally will start falling. And I'm sure you guys have experienced this in your businesses, right, where you're maybe communicating with a customer. And at some moment, like, maybe the initial, you know, start of the conversation, you can notice their gloves are up, the shields are up. They're very hesitant to communicate with you. And then during the course of that conversation, what happens? The shields come down, the gloves come down, and now you're really able to start tackling business. That becomes the biggest, you know, one of the biggest shifts to try to master in in in communicating with your customers is how do you have more of that conversation with your customer, less of a presentation, maybe having those, you know, cards in your back pocket to interject that would naturally trigger more conversational type of dialogue versus presentation type of dialogue. And oftentimes, what becomes to be the biggest hold back of even trying any of that is like fear. You know, this fear of doing something different, the fear of doing something new. You know, it's very easy to, you know, prepare a script and go in there and ultimately be an autopilot. You know, finish the autopilot presentation, get inside of your car and feel great about it. I got through my page. I got through my script. I got through my introduction, my body, and my conclusion. But at the end of the day, that conversation was never created. And we have to be able to overcome that fear to go in there and just, you know, just try to be more conversational with your customers. That does not mean to not accomplish your mission. You still have the things that you ultimately need to extract. But there's a way to do it where it doesn't perceive it to be where you're presenting or pitching them or trying to sell them on something. Because if your customer feels that, their initial inclination will be to beat down on your commission, beat down on your rate, beat down on what you're worth versus going in there and breaking those barriers and being much more conversational. But it starts with overcoming that fear to even initiate that type of process. Yeah. Absolutely. I think the intent like, I think the intent of just helping some someone. People can feel that energy and vibes when you walk through their front door. As coach Dean said, I'm not leading with commission. I'm not leading with I'm walking through their front door. I'm trying to set up my PowerPoint and do my presentation. But I'm leading with the intent of, hey. How can I help you sell your home? Tell me what's going on. Your home is beautiful. Can you show it to me and tell me Yeah. Tell me what your situation is? What are you guys looking to accomplish here? How can I help? I say that all the time. How can I help? You know? It's important, like coach Dean said, to listen and have that conversation. And that goes back, you know, a lot to our confidence too as realtors, especially with all the market changes in twenty twenty four. Everything we've been through, having the confidence in ourselves to be conversational, step away from the script a little bit because I know, that I am educating myself as a realtor, that I have done my absolute best to get the answers I need in this new market with all the new commission structures and things that are happening like that. But I also know that if I don't have the exact answer, that I will serve my client to the best of my ability. I will find out the answer. My intent is to help them. And so, yeah, I mean, I think confidence plays a big part to dispel a lot of that fear that you guys are talking about. When we do cling to the presentation and we're not as apt to listen and sit down and and process with the client, for sure. Yeah. And if you see that sequence of events, right, you're not confident. And if you're not confident, who else is feeling that? Right? The person that you're talking to is feeling the same thing. And confidence is huge in being able to convince someone that they the way they where they wanna like you. You know, they they know you now. They wanna like you, and then they have to trust you before they'll do business with you. K? And it doesn't come and and, you know, Robert and Matt talk a lot on motivational Monday about building relationships, and I don't want everybody here to get this misconstrued. It is not about building a a real estate relationship. Okay? This is about building a personal relationship with that individual. People will will have you have to reverse what happened twenty years ago when I started this business. I was a realtor that had great marketing. See, now we have to be that marketer, that educator, the consultant, a friend, then a realtor. We gotta put it push that way down deep into our our arsenal. People will do more business with you. The agents that I'm coaching now are getting more business because they didn't come at them thinking that they had to get them to act on signing something to commit to be with them. When you come at somebody in business, that's all you do. If you open up your entire, portfolio and you have, resources that are more than just real estate, now you've just funneled more opportunities for people to come into you and talk to you so that, oh, by the way, this is also what I do. Right? Well, I've had agent I've had people call me and say, Keith, you know a great realtor? Yeah. I'm gonna send that contact over to you right now, man. This guy is on fire and does an amazing job, and it's me. Right? Oh, that's right. I forgot that you were in real estate. See, that's how this all works. It doesn't work by us just going and thinking that we're gonna get business at our first conversation. You gotta talk to people ten, twelve, fifteen times before they even know who you really are. I have agents sending out thousands of cards or or or or, you know, mail outs to a neighborhood, and they say, I didn't hear anything back. Well, they don't know who you are. I mean, you know, if if one of a famous movie star sent out, you know, those types of video yeah. It was it those invitations, they get all kinds of mail back. You know? But you don't you're not that person. So we have to create that person, and people need to get to know you, and this is how we do it. So, you know, this is a different mindset. But I'm telling you that if we do that this year because this is the same stuff that worked for me when I was doing business, at a at a hundred percent level. And it's why I was selling sixty plus homes a year. You know, Natalie is a success of her selling what she sold was because of relationships with people, not relationships as a realtor. Because I gotta say this, guys, Who cares that you're a realtor? There are dime a dozen. There's tons of them out there. What makes you different? You actually care you actually care. You actually converse. You actually find out really what you can offer to them. And we're breaching in our toolbox, and we're pulling out materials that literally can help them. We've got the tools, everybody. You know, that's the one thing most real estate brokers are lacking is tools. We got them, but they mean nothing sitting in the box. You gotta pull them out and put them to work, and you gotta build relationships with people before you start throwing up on them. We gotta give them a little bit and just a little bit. One of the key factors in my business was not trying to get people to work with me because I convinced them, but people came to me and asked me to list their home. That's a different feeling. That's a different business. And you can all do it. You have the tools. You have the knowledge, and you and you have coaches and mentors here that are willing to help you get there. That's right. That's right. And you gave and you gave a good example that ties very well with, you know, maybe where some of the lack of confidence can ultimately stem from. And that was the example where you said, hey. I've mailed houses. I've done these things. And for whatever reason, it doesn't work. You know, oftentimes, when we think about having a lack of confidences stems from, you know, us entering into an unknown or something we've never done before. But lack of confidence can also arise from being discouraged that something does not work. Work. And we have to be equipped to be able to overcome those moments because, you know, inside of real estate, there's naturally going to be these inherent volatilities that exist. And there's a lot of things that could discourage us throughout the process, whether it's maybe we thought we put our best foot forward to get a buyer agreement executed or a listing agreement executed and we didn't. You know, maybe we got all the way up to the closing table and we were counting on those dollars for the closing and for whatever reason the deal is falling apart. You know, this is a a a business that does have a lot of emotional interjection, and we gotta be able to find ways to, like, rebalance that to get the cart back on the tracks as easy as possible because the reality is the business is still gonna keep moving. The industry is still going to keep moving whether you're prepared to ride those rails or not, and you gotta find things internally to be able to get you there as quickly as possible to get you back on track and get you back accomplishing your goals and breaking through the the barriers that you're ultimately feeling at that particular moment in time. And one good strategy that are in are in a lot of, literature books is, you know, overpowering some of that negative with positivity. And when you are in that, you know, positive mindset, like, creating a list of the things that you just enjoy to do in your day to day lives, you know, whether it's going to the gym, going for a bike ride, going to a dog park, whatever those things are. And when you feel like you're getting tested with some of this discouragement that's creating a lack of confidence or something is happening inside of your businesses, pull something from that list and just go out there and do it because it's gonna create the endorphins. It's going to create the adrenaline. It's gonna get you back on track to then go and be able to accomplish what you need to do inside of your businesses in a business that's already against at times very emotionally taxing with what could ultimately happen. But with that said, I know we're creeping up on time. I do wanna kinda pass the mic around for kinda final words. Natalie and coach? Go ahead, Natalie. I would say bank your confidence in your intent to truly help others, because I don't think you can fail with that. I think that walking through the door, whether it's a buyer, a seller, if you are wholehearted in your service and intent to help a person, I think that that ultimately can win more objections than just some kind of script or, a process that you could put into place. There is a time and a place for all of that, but I think that just your determination to contribute to the greater good of that person and seeing them win in accomplishing their goals, whether it's a home sale or home purchase, is a really big deal for how you approach people, and it makes a big difference in tone, in how the conversation goes, in how the presentation may or may not come across, lead with that willingness and intent to actually help and serve your customer. Awesome. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think the biggest thing is is don't don't worry about failure. Run toward it. You you just gotta do there's there's there's comes a time that you you get the education and there comes a time that you gotta put it to work. When you go to a class about open houses, then go do an open house. Go visit an open house. Don't just have be educated on how to do a good open house when you wanna talk to people. And the other thing is just converse with people. Look. This is not rocket science. We all okay. So understand this. One of the qualifications in your resume to apply to be a real estate agent is overthinker. Right? That's one of our every real estate agent overthinks everything. Oh, I gotta know before I go out and talk. No. You just gotta know so you can go out and be dangerous. Right? Just go out and talk to people. I'm telling you, there here's here's real estate. Here's real estate in a nutshell. People talking to people. No more, no less. We're making it too much. We're making it too much. We have the tools. We have the we have the items that we need to do. We have the education. We have the mentorship. We have the coaching. We have what we need. Don't don't use it, and then do it. Right? Do it. There's a there's a video we play at boot camp. Just do it. Right? Al Williams. I worked for the man. The guy who had nothing. He was a nobody in becoming into a billionaire because he did what? He looked at something and he just did it. And then if he failed, he just did it again. You know? And and that's why we have that video on that boot camp because we just gotta do it. We got the tools. We got what we need. If you got this much information about real estate, right, you've got this much information more than the person that you're talking to across across on the phone or across way from you because you're at their house talking to them. Right? We just gotta go like, this is people talking to people. Just talk about what you know. Don't be afraid. Be afraid to to don't be afraid to succeed because that's what happens. You're just afraid that you're afraid that you don't know and so you're not. When you succeed, you'll know it. And if you need help, that's why we put this brokerage together. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us here today, and I look forward to seeing you guys next week on Real Estate First Friday. Go out there and conquer the world over the weekend. Thank you, guys. Got it. Have a great day, everybody. Great week. Thank you. Bye, guys.