Epic Real Estate Investing - Real Estate Agent Coach - Alina Schumacher | 541

Episode Date: December 13, 2018

Meet Alina Schumacher, a host of The Alina Show Podcast, who specializes in working with real estate agents who want to succeed faster without being overwhelmed. Today, she shares her accomplishments, secrets, and pieces of advice she has for her clients. Learn about the factors that had the strongest impact on her success, why it is important to differentiate yourself, and what impact technology has on her real estate business. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terio Media. But when you come home and your kids are in bed or you're just not keeping up with simple things like doing laundry and getting your house in order and you just come home, you're so exhausted. You haven't eaten all day. You're living on coffee and on donuts. You know what I mean? Your health is going into the tank. And it's literally like that is the people. And I feel like, you know, I have a better way for you.

Like literally, I do have a better way for you. Hi, I'm Matt Terrio and welcome to today's episode of Thought Leader Thursday. Okay, so today I'm joined by a certified high performance coach, business and marketing consultant to real estate professionals. She's host of the Alina Show podcast and the author of How to Get Listings and Dominate Your Market. She specializes in working with real estate agents who want to go faster without the overwhelm, the detours, and the burnout. And she does that by teaching them her proprietary market domination process,

which enable her to become the number one local realtor, within two years of immigrating to Canada while homeschooling her three children, somewhat of a superwoman. And I'm glad to have her on the show. So please help me welcome to the show, Mrs. Alina Schumacher to Epic Real Estate Investing. Welcome, Lena. Thanks so much, Matt. I appreciate it. Greatly.

Really glad to have you here. All right. So, Alina, before we get into the show and what you're doing today, what were you doing just prior to getting involved working in real estate? I was a stay-at-home mom. We had literally just immigrated to Canada. six months before the idea of going into real estate kind of presented itself to be. And, yeah, I was a wife, stay-at-home mom, homemaker, and just doing those kinds of things. You know, they say just to mom, although you're supposed to drop the just, right?

Right. It's the part of the jobs in the world, they say. All the other jobs exist actually to support the only job in a world, right? Absolutely. Where did you immigrate from? We moved here from Germany, actually, but I was originally born. in Russia. Okay, good. And, you know, being a realtor, it's, you know, even though you may work for a brokerage and you've got a lot of support from certain organizations that you'd work for,

it is very much an entrepreneurial endeavor. Where did that come from for you? How did this become your first choice of transitioning from mom to something else? Oh my gosh, Matt. I never had any intentions. We moved to Canada so we could homeschool. I wanted to homeschool my kids more than anything. in Germany that's prosecuted. You go to jail for that. So we actually, yeah, we decided to literally uproot everything. We had a beautiful home in the country. Like we had it all.

My husband had an awesome job. But we decided to start from scratch. We moved to Canada and we bought a house through someone who I felt like really, really cared and went the extra mile for us. And I was just referring business to him. I mean, and before that, you know, I used to do like side jobs. You know, I was selling Tupperware. for a while. I did wedding cakes for people, you know, wedding decoration, just whatever fun,

because I just enjoy doing that. You know, I am an entrepreneur. I can't, I can't deny, right? But so this guy says to me, well, you're constantly sending business to me. Why don't you just get your license and at least I can pay you? And I'm like, what? I barely speak English. English is my fourth language, you know? And so, yeah, long story short, you know, I kind of decided, let's, let's pursue it, let's see what happens. And if I make it through the exams, you know, maybe it's meant to be, maybe it could just be a side job. You know, maybe I can do this on the weekend, so my hubby is home and whatever. And, you know, that never happened, right?

So, and yeah, long story short, you know, two years later, I was the number one in the entire area. My husband actually had to quit his business and come support me and help me to teach the kids because it just, you know, we had to make a decision. You can't do both, right? Right, right. That's great. So in two years, you're able to accomplish this. You know, our show is greatly around.

real estate investing, secondarily around real estate entrepreneurs. I've always said that, you know, when you say you do real estate, everyone just assumes you're a real estate agent. And having been both, I've been an agent, I was an agent for four years, four and a half years, and I've been an investor for over a decade. I know the differences. And I know there's not a lot of similarities. There's not a lot of overlap. There are two very distinct things. But the one thing that they do both have in common is generating business. and generating leads, talking to people, and making those conversions into contracts, whether that's a purchase agreement or a listing agreement.

So to go from zero to number one in your market in just two years, that's pretty remarkable. So looking back on that, what would you say were the biggest factors? What had the most impact for you to be able to do that so quickly? You know, number one, probably finding my niche. people would know me. I was everywhere. Literally, I went to the real estate boot camp the moment I started. And I figured, like, you know, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to be good at this.

Because I don't like to start things and then just not do them well, you know. So I made it my business to know everything about everything in real estate. I went to every house. I, you know, I'm new to this country, to this city, to this area we live in. So literally I would drive on every street, try to understand what's what, what's where, right? understand the culture, understand the community and so on. And people started to know me as that German immigrant girl, you know, and I looked like I had just literally barely graduated from high school.

I was young, what can you possibly offer, right? Because you don't even speak the language properly. You still look like you just graduated from high school. I'm a grandmother. I have my third grandbaby on the way. That's right. You shared that with that's amazing. Yeah.

And so basically what I did is I turned around what other people thought was my weakness. I don't know anyone. I don't speak the language. I have no business experience. And I basically started to truly advertise my connections abroad. I knew other people that were immigrating from Europe. And I started literally running wanted ads after I started to really get to know the market really well and prepare for opportunity. Because, you know, like John Wooden says, when opportunity comes, it's too late to prepare, right?

And so I started to run direct response marketing ads where I would just say wanted this and this, cash buyers from Europe, this particular. location has to have this certain size, blah, blah, blah. And it was the truth, right? So people would invite me to do home evaluations for them. And this is where it's easy to think, well, you kind of lucked out, right? No, I didn't. Because if I hadn't prepared, you know, I would have looked like a phony. And people wouldn't have trusted me, right? And if I hadn't actually had the buyers, people would have quickly, word would have spread. She just makes it out, right? So that was one thing. The other thing I think that really, really gave me that competitive edge is I literally stumbled on onto this and it's personality-based selling, understanding human behavior.

And understanding people's motivators and understanding their greatest pains based on their personality style. And then adjusting my personal communication style accordingly where I would intentionally and strategically alleviate people's fears. and speak to their motivators. It's very subtle. And I believe it's called ethical influence if you practice it correctly, right? And from the heart as you're supposed to in sales, you're supposed to actually care about people, right? And so I believe that was a big one where I was able,

even though I was so young, I was able to connect with people, build trust with them very, very quickly, where other people would just come across as, you know, another typical sales person that's just looking for today's sale and not looking to build a business that's generating long-term repeat referral. Right, right. Fantastic.

I totally agree with all of that and accept it as absolute truth because it's very similar to what produces success in the real estate investing side. One thing that you touched on is that what most people would consider a weakness, not speaking the language, being very young. You know, a lot of people give up and accept those as truths and make excuses to never even get started. You recognized where your strengths were and you found your niche and you went all in there. So I think that's really important. I think that anyone in any industry can learn something from that for sure.

And the big part that we have mostly in common is are the people skills. Whether you're looking for a listing or you're looking to help a distress seller and purchase their property quickly, you've got to build the rapport, right? You've got to understand their personality. You've got to create that connection. And you've got to find out what's ailing them and then propose the solutions that's going to fix it. And I like what you said, ethical influence.

I think that's a powerful way to put it. Did that come naturally to you? Or did you learn that from somewhere? Well, two things. If you're familiar with the aneagram, I'm a number two. I'm a befriender and a helper. What is that? The anagram.

Enneagram? If you're not familiar, the personality test type thing? It's not personality testing. It's more about understanding your own, what drives you, your motivators, what's,

you know, understanding who you are and why you are the way you are, but then not getting stuck there. It's not about labeling a person, but it's actually really empowering you to then take what you have and make it better, right?

And there's nine personality styles different. I don't want to call them personality styles. You know what, literally go pick up the book from Ian Crone, the road back to you. He has an awesome podcast as well. Changed my life. But anyways, that would be one thing probably that I'm naturally a people person.

So definitely you have a bit of an advantage. You know, on the disc, I am a high S with a bit of D, not a lot of D, but a lot of S. So I'm also, I'm kind of people-oriented, but I'm also really good with the details. So I think it probably was one thing. But discovering that really and putting a name to it and starting to use it more strategic it came with just a lucky Google search. I was just honestly, like, I was at the very beginning of my career,

and I was just Googling how to get more listings. And then there was this side ad on Google that popped up by Dr. Tony Alessandra, the Platinum Rule, you know. And if you haven't read that book, that's awesome as well. It's very similar to this personality, just different names and whatever, right? But when in the beginning,

I would have assumed everyone is a certain way, way and I'm just this nice person who wants to be everybody's friend, right? When I started to put a name to it and understand the strategies, how people are different, how some people are more closed when it comes to expressing their opinions and how people are more task oriented, you know, or more direct or more indirect, right? I started to understand people so much more differently. And the empowering thing is you don't feel offended anymore when somebody just kind of brushes you off just because they're very direct, right? Or if somebody says, hey, I need to sleep on this.

You don't need a strategy to overcome the objection. You literally just let them sleep on it because that's the kind of personality they are, right? And if you push them, you're basically repelling them. Right. But if you ask them strategically the right kinds of questions and you know how to follow up the next day, you're golden and you get the referral, right? That's great. You know, you and I, we met in a fairly high-end mastermind group.

And I sat next to each other, accidentally two days in a row. And as I got to know you, I really started to connect with you in the sense that I saw a lot of similarities. I think we're both very resourceful. We don't accept no for an answer. Like if we get like the weakness thing, we know we got strength somewhere else that are very valuable in another way. And I think the other thing we have in common is we both invest a lot in education. We invest a lot in ourselves. We're both of our craft, students of our games.

Am I right there? Yes, sir. Absolutely. Yeah, totally. And, you know, money is not an object if it's going to produce an ROI of, even if it's an intangible ROI, I think you and I, we have that in common. We both go for it. So with all the education that you've consumed, what would you say is some of the most impactful things? What has had the most value to you?

Is it a type of education or a specific course? I don't know. I don't know if you even had a question in there or something. I just knows about you and I never shared that with you. But can you speak on that a little bit on what has had the biggest impact on that? For sure, for sure. You know, it's really funny. I was talking to a client this morning to a coaching client and she asked me the same thing,

you know, like obviously, and this was a strategy call, so she is considering to coach with me. And she was asking me the qualifying questions, what makes you different? And obviously sometimes there's this big ticket, okay, so it costs so much and I'm focusing on this number. So what about it, right? So I brought to her, look, I understand. I understand the big number thing. In fact, right now, I do a lot of coaching. As a matter of fact, within the last probably four years,

I spent about a quarter million dollars just in personal development and coaching. And the interesting thing is a lot of that was spend on stuff that really did not serve me and taught me what not to do. I don't know. Do you ever feel like that? You get something, you sign up for something. You're like, okay, well, so this is one way I don't want to do things. Or this is one way I don't want to launch my product or to sell my staff or market, right?

But then the mastermind group where you and I met, well, that's one that really has been a godsend to me, right? Where I feel like, oh my gosh, you know, everything is making so much more sense now, right? Because it's so in line with what I want to do. Right. So to answer your question, you know, the two probably main resources that have really helped me as a human being. would be my certification with Brendan Breschard as a certified high performance coach. I just don't think there is a lot of people out there like Brendan who can connect the heart and the mind and the soul so beautifully

and truly express it so that it makes sense and you just want to hear more and you want to have that to be part of your life. And the other thing would be John Maxwell. And I am a certified John Maxwell coach as well actually. first things I did back in 2012 when I started to spend money on personal development. And John, same thing, leadership development. And his classic question, right, what's your plan for growth? Because if you don't have a plan, well, is next year really going to look any much different

for you than what you're doing right now? If you're just, you know, going all kinds of detours, instead of having a clear line, here's where I'm starting, here's where I'm going, and here's the plan how to get there. So that message probably really spoke a lot to me, you know, John Maxwell's message on leadership and very strategic personal development. Good. Thanks for sharing that. That probably leads us to a good transition with that history, the resourcefulness that you have, the investments that you've made in yourself. Now you've got a thriving new type of business. What does your business look like today? Who do you help? You know, I am living the dream and I've been afraid of stepping into the dream for quite a few years. I've literally last year, I closed my brick and mortar real estate office and went full time into being a coach.

The coaching agents for quite a few years, right? And I always like to say I raised quite a bit of my competition, you know, if you want to call them competition, right? but literally I was fighting the idea of going full time into coaching because I just couldn't bear the thought of losing that baby that I had built so faithfully, you know, the unique brand and and this whole presence I had created in the market. I'm like, I can't just close my doors, right? But with the years more and more, it was more evident for me that my heart's just drawing me into helping realtors on a larger scale. And so now I get to work with real estate agents all over North America. I have quite a few coaching clients now. I have selling thousands of

books, you know, that just came out in April actually. And it's so humbling and, and just amazing to see that people would take, you know, those words that came straight from my heart and where I literally shared, here's how to do it. Here's not what, here's what not to do and here's how to do it better, right? And that it would have such an impact on people's lives and their businesses. I mean, I'm getting so many incredible messages every day. And literally, could there be anything more fulfilling that knowing that you truly are changing people's lives and helping them to get there faster, right? We've got a private Facebook page or a group for our community. And what you just said, I think one of the more rewarding things is when people say, oh, my God, this works. You know what I mean?

It's like, well, I'm not teaching stuff that doesn't work. I mean, that would be ridiculous, but a terrible business that would be. And it works differently, right? Because my, my, ideology and my philosophies are very, very different than what's typically out there. And that's not to say what's out there is bad and my stuff is good. It's just that really, it's just very different, you know, because if you want something that you've never had, you have to be willing to do something you've never done, right? And if you're not happy with your results, well, look at what you're doing and start changing those kinds of things. And to me, like I said before, you know, some of the coaching things that I've been doing just weren't working for me. And that's not to say,

those are bad coaches, those are bad programs. You just want to be. And just, learned for me. And so for me, I wanted to create something that would connect people that are like me and that are about community, about integrating the heart and the soul into your business, where it's not just about, you know, cold calling 500 people every week and trying not to die doing it. It's not about just the numbers and the money. All that stuff is important, but to me it was important to actually make a bigger difference and a wider impact than just putting bread and butter on my own table. You know what I mean? Sure. Yeah. So who is your ideal client? Right now. My ideal client is the real estate agent who is doing pretty well already,

who already has quite a bit of forward momentum, but is stuck. And you'll find a lot of those. Literally, there's, I feel like there's three groups of realtors. There's the newbies who don't know how to start. And I do have some resources for those people. There is the people who are super successful, but they, for the most part, are either burned out or they don't have a life. And then there's people that are just before that phase. Okay. So they're doing okay, you know, like they're able to go on a nice vacation once a year and they got their signs out, but they're not consistent. You know, they're going feast of famine. They don't really have a system. They don't really have a consistently gen technique. Like literally a lot of it is just luck, you know what I mean? And, and those people,

People just work and work and work and they just don't feel like they're getting the ROI on the time spent. And most importantly, I guess, like I say also on my website, is those people just don't have enough time to spend at home, which is where I came from. And that's why that's my passion. You know, I did burn out. And it's it's the true story. You know, like I did get very, very successful. I had it all. But I didn't have a life.

I got to the point where I was kind of. constantly on the phone. I was constantly out and about every weekend, every evening. I was constantly out there. And, you know, it's nice to go on a vacation four times a year and it's really, really awesome to have the resources and, you know, to have the respect in the community. But when you come home and your kids are in bed or you're just not keeping up with simple things like doing laundry and getting your house in order and you just come home, you're so exhausted. You haven't eaten all day. You're living on coffee and on donuts. You know what I mean? Your health is going into the tank. And it's literally like that is the people. And I feel like, you know, I have a better way for you.

Like literally, I do have a better way for you. Awesome. So give me an idea. So your typical client that comes to your ideal client, what is, say, the most common challenge that they're dealing with, what would be the traditional advice to deal with that challenge? And how is your advice different? You know what? Most people think that in order to have more, they have to do more. So if you don't have enough consistent leads, you've got to make more call calls. You have to go more, knock on more doors. You have to send more postcards. You have to advertise more. My strategy is you first have to be more. If you want to have more, you have to be more. And this is what really, really differentiates you.

And my approach to coaching and to sales has for quite a while already been lead with questions. If I, as a salesperson, feel like you're wrong, you're the prospect, and what you want to do by selling your house privately is bad for you, but what I want for you is good for you. So now I'm trying to convince you that you need me and that I'm better than everyone else. and that I've sold more houses than all these people, and that my commission is lower, and that I market better, and that I do drone video and better, whatever, right?

That's all just more noise. Right. But if as a salesperson, I take on the role of a guide and I ask the right kinds of questions and I help my prospect to come to a different level of awareness about their own personal truth and their own beliefs

that might not be exactly what the reality is, but I help them to come to that conclusion on their own. It's so much more powerful. I have an awesome story in my book. I don't know if you have time for it or not, but I have an awesome example of the story that taught me this technique from back in 2000, back in Germany, a story that happened to me with a vacuum sales guy, a guy who literally knocked on my door and wanted to sell me an expensive vacuum cleaner and the lesson of a lifetime that I learned that completely and forever changed my view

okay well you can't leave us hanging with that and because because this part what we're talking about right now this specific at this specific moment is very much it's going to apply to both real estate agents and real estate investors for sure so go ahead so this guy knocks this guy knocks in the door and you know it would have been around noon because I was I had a six months old and I had a two-year-old two and a half year old sorry and I was about to put my baby's four for their nap, right, down for the nap. And my doorbell goes. I'm like, oh my gosh, who is this? So I opened the door and this guy stands there was this expensive vacuum cleaner. And I knew the brand. I knew they were like about a thousand bucks. And I knew I couldn't afford it.

I have a vacuum cleaner. And he's like, excuse me, ma'am, may I ask, do you have any carpets in your house? And I'm like, I do. What am I going to say, right? And he's like, um, how confident are you that those carpets are actually clean. And I'm, what a question, right? And he's like instantly before I could even answer, because literally I had just vacuumed an hour ago and I vacuumed every single day. Right. I have babies on my rug every day. I'm a clean freak, right? And he's like, would you permit me to demonstrate to you how much dust is still in your rugs? And I'm like, okay, talk about letting it a stranger, right? So he came in and then he saw my baby. And he And then he made a nice comment about the babies, you know, which is as you know, called pre-framing.

You know, he made me feel good about myself. And then he pulled out this dust bag right in front of my eyes, put it in the vacuum cleaner, vacuumed a couple of scruffeat of my rug. And then he showed me all this dust. And he showed me pictures of dust mites. And he showed me what that dust does to my family and how icky and yucky it is. And then he said, and this is the carpet that your babies crawl on. every single day.

I felt that coming. And what he did, right, like boom, sales made. What he did is he entered the conversation I already had in my mind as a mom, which was about keeping my baby safe. If he had knocked on my door and asked, do you want a vacuum cleaner? Remember, do you want to buy a vacuum cleaner? I said, hell no. First of all, I don't need it.

I got one. Secondly, I can't even afford it. Thousand bucks. Give me a break. We're a young family, right? But this guy entered a conversation that I had in my mind every single day, and that is how can I make my life or my children's life better and safer, right? And I asked him to come back in the evening when my husband was home.

He did not pressure me. He didn't say, oh, no, you need to make a decision right now, right? Literally, he came home that, he came to our house that night and we bought a vacuum cleaner. And to me, that was the most powerful thing. He asked me, because literally, had he asked me, would you like to buy a vacuum cleaner, I would have said, no, don't need it. Got no money. sorry sir come in 10 years right and all of us then ask me please where did i have the thousand

dollars like where all of us then did that money surface from right it's there is no such a thing as no money it's just there is just bad marketing and that's the issue in the absence of value right yeah and if you can if you can communicate your value right and not just have them focus on cost oh my goodness and you do that with asking good questions right right Good, great. There's gold there for everybody listening. And I think in every capacity of life, even professionally or personally, with that said, what is some,

now that you're a coach and you're more connected, probably to a slightly different type of industry with, and you recognize and you observe, you can't help but do it, observe what other coaches do and say, what's a piece of advice out there that you hear all the time that just like gets under your skin? You know, it's like, oh, don't tell them to do that.

Cold call. Cold call. Drives me nuts. I believe in being the flame that attracts the moth instead of being the lighter that chases the moth. You know, everybody out there is chasing, chasing, chasing, convincing, trying to say how much they're better. I believe in attracting.

If I can clearly communicate to you what I do, and, you know, this classic example, if I'm standing in the middle of the desert and I got a water stand of beautiful, fresh, cool, ice cold water, and somebody comes by my stand who has. had any water in two days, I don't have to convince them to buy my water. They'll buy it. It doesn't matter how much it is, right? So I just want to be that water stand in the desert and I want to be found by the people because there is no point if they're circling the desert and they can't find my water stand and that's what marketing comes in. Right. So what are some examples that you would do to stick with that metaphor? How would you, first of all, where would you find the desert and then

how would you position your water stand so that those thirsty people actually see you. You got to be different. Most people start with fishing. Okay. Most people, well, I shouldn't say fishing. I should use a different metaphor for this. Most people start with trying to reap a crop before they ever seeded any seeds or planted any seeds. So one of the strategies that I teach you in my book is creating community events and community marketing campaigns that are of a very different caliber than what most agents.

do and not do it to just, you know, here, look how awesome I am and my name is this and I'm with whatever company and call me if you want to sell your house. None of that. And what I had created is, and to me it was like, you know, I feel like everybody, we're selling homes and not everybody knows what it feels like to have a good home that's safe and that's warm and welcoming. And to me, it's always been, you know, like there's so many homeless people out on the street and I want to help, but I also kind of feel, well, what you guys just, just, get a job like we do right like you know we have to work for our money too right well like why don't you why don't you just have a normal life right and then what i started to do is i started to um

research because i want i was looking for for a place where i could just just do donations where i could make a difference and work i could contribute and and this particular shelter in our city was having a completely different approach instead of just you know feeding um uh giving a man of fish they were actually teaching men to fish right So instead of just feeding them soup and giving them clothes and making them dependent and taking away the dignity, they would teach them how to get out of the thing. They had systems and everything. So for me, I'm like, okay, so how can I raise money for this?

Because I'm so behind this. I sell homes. Not everybody can have a home. So I want to help other people who don't have a home. So that was my mission. And it wasn't just about raising money. I also wanted to educate people. I wanted to take away the cliche of homeless people are just bums that are too lazy to work.

And surely, I'm sure there are a son. But you know what I mean? In general, there's people that, you know, who have different situations and circumstances in their lives that they sometimes just can't cope with and just make bad choices, right? And so I created that particular year, I did a bake sale and we had some dynamite marketing. You know, my brand, I don't know if you've seen any of my Instagram stuff, but my whole brand was revolving around my name, Schumacher. So my slogan was driven to finish. It was me in the red race suit, Enzos and Ferraris in the back.

I had the checker flags, you know, all that kind of jazz. And when our properties were sold, they weren't sold. They were finished. And so people would constantly talk about that, right? So for this particular big sale, my whole marketing campaign was, hey, join me in raising so much money as I trade my race helmet for a baker's hat. And I literally did all the baking. I had a couple of people who helped me.

We raised a ton of money. And then I'm like, okay, this is awesome, but this is absolutely not sustainable. You know, we raised $13,000. Fantastic. We had a great experience in the community. people were talking about it for years, right? It was an awesome experience and I'm talking about it in the book. And so the next year, I'm like, okay, I got to do something better. And so what we created is was a benefit concert where I would sing. I invited people to come on stage with me. I very strategically selected very, you know, well-known people out of the community who were, who would emcee the event. And so we would basically host this benefit gala every single year. And now you can strategically align yourselves with local, businesses to come and serve with you on the committee, you know, who can help you to get more donations, more prizes for the auctions, whatever. And it becomes this big thing where everyone is

working together for the common good where we're educating people about the real reasons of homelessness. We're also getting all this free publicity because we have all these TV interviews, we have all these radio interviews, and nowhere ever do we, you know, to their own horn and tell people how awesome we are, that we're real church and we're doing this because we want to be seen. We just don't, right? And so this was one way of truly seeding trust in goodwill within the community. So that then later on, once you start to fish and you planted all these seeds already, I'm going between these two different analogies.

But literally, once you're ready to actually put out your direct response marketing, people know about you. And you know that you're so different. You're not like, oh, I'm so much better than she is because I sold 10 more houses. or my commission is a percent lower. You know how it is, Matt, right? Because you're a lot of business. And so that is, you know, like by really, really being different

than differentiating yourself. So, you combine that with a message that, you know, speaks to people's fears and uncertainties, combined that was asking the right kinds of questions and your role as a guide and not being a push, pull, and drag kind of a person, right? and the rest takes care of it. Stuff like that doesn't get forgotten.

So that's, it sounds like a lot of effort, a giant endeavor, but the rewards will pay almost indefinitely as long as you're active in your community, right? Well, that's the thing. Do you want to just be a realtor for this year and dabble in the business

and just have a side job to pay your bills? Do you actually want to do this long term? Because if you want to do this long term, then you need different strategies, right? 100%. 100%. Yeah, when I was an agent, In 2000, I started, got my license in 2002, I believe.

And I was an agent through, I don't know, to 2005 or so. And I remember back then, I was like right, right when the dot com crash had happened. And the whole internet was starting to take hold in our society. And realtor.com became a big deal during that period. And all this different technology. And I think the smartest minds in Silicon Valley were all figuring out, how can we get in on this real estate industry and get these big commissions for ourselves? with just this automation push of a button.

And it just panic and hysteria inside of our office and inside of the whole realtor community at that time was just it was just permeating all through the whole industry. And I looked about a year ago and there were just as many real estate agents today as there were then. So obviously they're all still employed. That was what 20 years ago or something like that, 15 years ago.

But I'm still hearing that hysteria. What are you seeing or what are you hearing from maybe from your clients or from your peer? peers. As far as technology, how do you feel about that taken over or impacting our business in the future? Here's my take on it. I believe... I'm really interested to see if this compares to mine, but go ahead. Well, chances are pretty high so far. I believe that the new marketing of 2019 is actually going back to a conversation. And I'll tell you something, Matt. I cannot tell you how many times I get a message from a realtor where it's like, oh my gosh, you're responding to my

email? You're responding to my message so quickly? I thought you'd have like an assistant doing this. And I'm like, never. There's no way in hell I'm going to have this opportunity. I'm going to give up this opportunity of building a relationship with the people that I am so desperately, not desperately, but so passionately wanting to serve. Right. And so I feel like in a day and age where everyone wants to automate everything, you know, chatbots and everything is supposed to be like, quick, click off a button and everybody's dabbling in video and doesn't know how and is afraid and it's awkward and it causes more confusion and more frustration amongst agents, right? I feel like, you know what?

If you go back to the basics, it's all about a relationship. It's all about that, you know, one-on-one interaction where people can really hear your heart and feel that you actually care and see that you're genuine and that you really want to help. No chatbot can ever. You can never program a chatbot to sound human enough for me. You just can't. And I'm not against technology. But I believe in service, you know.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think there's two aspects to it. One is the purchase of a house and a home. It's going to be the biggest purchase that most people make in their lifetime. It's where we're going to spend their life. And I don't think technology can really disrupt that anytime soon until they figure out something. But no one's going to make that purchase with a click of a button and have no agents involved or no people involved. Not anytime soon.

Second thing I was thinking was when you said it's 2019 marketing is going back to a conversation, I couldn't agree more. There's a, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk, we all know who he is, wrote a book a few years ago called The Thank You Economy. And the more high-tech business becomes, the more low-tech your customer service needs to become. That's good. We've embraced that and it's had such an impact. We're not perfect with it. Things fall through the crack. I mean, with the Internet and the volume that can be generated with the people you have to talk to.

It gets difficult sometimes. But we've had our biggest impact where, what's something you just said? Oh, my God, there's a person on the other end. This isn't an automated email. You actually sent me an email. You actually picked up the phone. So I think for both of our industries, that should be embraced if you really want to separate yourself from the competition.

Absolutely. Very good. All right. I keep trying to find people to come on my show that disagree with me, but I can't find anybody. Maybe that's what I'm attracted to. I'm going to go out and find some real naysayers and we'll have a debate. But Alina, this has been an absolute pleasure.

I'm so glad I invited you on and I'm so glad that you accepted my invitation. I definitely want to do it again. If someone wanted to get in touch with you, what would be the best way for them to do that? You know what? Ideally, just go to my website, Alina Schumacher. com. I'm sure you'll have a link somewhere in the show notes. Instagram,

I'm super active on Instagram, Instagram stories. If you want to see what my real life looks like, unfiltered. And of course, you know, the good old Facebook page, right? All right.

That's Alina Schumacher. And I think you had said something that you'd brought some free gifts. If you want to. Yes, sir. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Go ahead. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? I would love to give away some books here. So if any of your listeners are interested, call in, you know, first 10 to get a free book. Just shoot us an email and we'll make sure we'll hook you up.

Perfect. And that email address would be... Just send an email to support at alina shoemaker.com. Perfect. All righty. Well, I'm going to see you real soon. I'm looking forward to that again. And thank you so much and stay in touch.

You bet. It's been a pleasure, Matt. Thank you so much again for the opportunity. You bet, you bet. All righty. So thank you for joining us here today. We'll see you next week on another episode of Thought Leader. Thursday. Take out.

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