KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Amir Cackovic - The sky is not the limit, the true limit is your mindset.

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

You're listening to Expansion, the podcast for EXP agents. Expand your skill. Expand your value. Here's your host, Glenn Sanford. Hey, everyone, Glenn Sanford here, founder of EXP Realty. And this is the Expansion podcast, a podcast about personal and professional development here at EXP. And today, I'm excited to welcome Amir Ketchkovic. He's a three-time icon agent out of us.

Sacramento, California. So also a mean chess player, meaning really good, not that he's actually mean. But Amir, how are you doing? Doing good. How are you? Good, good, good. I remember obviously at, I think it was in Cabo, you mentioned your chess.com handle as one of the places to connect with you. And obviously, you and I played a couple of games of chess.

but uh should we say the uh score or not not mention the score you get you kicked my butt yeah yeah and so i i i somehow won two games but i'm pretty sure i got lucky uh but anyway um you know maybe what's your background how do you get into real estate yeah with a little uh little revision is actually not four it's not three it's four-time icon and i'm on my way to fifth one because i kept in 27 days. So it's going to be five-time icon soon. So I got in real estate. My background, I'm originally from Bosnia and I escaped the Bosnia before the war and I end up being in Germany. And I learned a German language, which is not easy language. And I was able to get to the college. And during the college time, I was studying architecture. I was connected with one of the German

real estate broker. So I was drafting some 3D plans for him. And he said, why don't you help me with the sales and I was a college student in in Germany with my broken German. I was, I sold two properties in German. I said, that's pretty good. So once I immigrated to US in 2001, I started working in corporate America as an architect, but in 2005, I got my real estate license, started selling real estate part-time. And once I started making more money in part-time real estate selling than a full-time corporate job, I left my corporate job and started real estate full-time in 2011. Awesome. And so obviously you had success in Germany, obviously had success here. Now, your PhD, what's your PhD in?

In marketing. In marketing. So that's a good topic to be in real estate. So having master's in architecture plus PhD in marketing plus being broker. And in construction as well, it's a good combination, I would say. Oh, yeah, for sure. So now you were, I think you were a broker owner. Did you own your own real estate brokerage before EXP? Yes. Yes, that's correct.

I started my brokerage 2009, still having a full-time real estate corporate job. And then 2011, when I quit my corporate job, was full-time building my brokerage. My goal was 1,000 agents, you know, start with 500 as a market and grow to 1,000 throughout state of California. And I had five offices. My peak was 57. I was way way behind my thousand agents, but I decided it's probably not the best model as a small independent broker to build

because I cannot compete against big brokerages. I cannot duplicate what EXP has, right? So it would be spending millions of dollars in technology and by the time I build something, so EXP is already five steps ahead, right, or some other companies, not to mention liability. liability building your own brokerage. So knowing what I know now, so I would never, never build my independent brokerage. It's probably better to build brokerage under EXP umbrella because now you have

you have opportunity to build in 50 states instead of one state and multiple countries. Right. So as an independent broker, you will never be able to do this. Right. So I don't know any independent broker who can build it. Right. Well, of course, I make a little joke about this, which is that, you know when somebody is a broker owner they are broker as an owner because it's it is tough to run and i ran my own boutique brokerage prior to expe and it's a it it definitely um definitely tough to sort of figure out how do you compete when you're you're small if you don't have that that bigger um so if you allow me i can i can say one story as a broker owner what all the broker's owner what all the broker's owners, hopefully some of them listening to the podcast, have to think about it.

So as a broker owner, you're not only liable for disclosures and real estate transactions. You're also liable what your agents are doing. Right. So I had one agent who was 69 at that time, and she had a client who was 84. And a nice lady, she reminded me on my mom. So she was in business 30 plus years and she helped this person to buy a house during the process. They fall in love and they started dating. He was 84, she was 69, 15 years difference. And I don't care who is dating who, right? But they decided because her sons hated her.

They decided to buy a house in Hawaii using a different agent there as a caller-banker agent. And then meanwhile, the old man passed away. And then she sued her for $1 million elderly abuse lawsuit because they used his money as a down payment. And then they sued the caller banker broker, etc. But somehow she sent emails with my logo in emails. signature line and just because of that email I got sued as well although they bought a house in

different state so as a broker owner you libel whatever your agents are doing so driving the car for example and and and you know hitting pedestrian of course I've won the lawsuit but took two two years and headache and all this I mean it's just not you know you cannot sleep when somebody's doing although you know you're not you you write but it's still it's still not pleasant But believe me, I'm living that experience right now. So if there's a, we're of course party to a few lawsuits as you, as you are well aware. Yeah, I know. It's crazy.

But it goes with the territory for sure. So now, what's your life, I hear you have a life motto. What is your life motto? Mindset is everything. So it's really everything because I turned 50 last year and my goal was to finish one Ironman race. And I never was swimming or running longer than six miles in my life. And Iron Man, as you know, I did half Iron Man first.

So it's half marathon. I never run six miles, but now you have to run a swim 1.2 miles, 56 bike, and then half marathon. But once you put mindset to it, you can finish it. And I finished one and after that, I finished another one and then full, full Iron Man, which is double the distance, you know. And I'm talking and teaching a lot of agents and a lot of people, agents asking me, hey, how can I be successful in real estate? And there's no magic pill.

There's no magic pill. Do this system and you're going to make quarter million on commissions. It does not exist. But a magic system exists. And that's consistency and discipline, which starts with changing your mindset. So once you're disciplined and consistent, everybody can run a marathon. As long as you have a healthy knees, right? But you have to run three times to five times a week.

If you want to be successful in real estate, you have to prospect three times to five times a week. And if you do this every week, that's impossible not to be successful. Impossible. Right. I did judo for 27 years. And one of my coaches, probably my most influential coach, that I and it was probably I was a brown belt by the time that he that I heard this and he said what's the what's the difference between a white belt and a black belt and you said a black belt is someone who shows up to every practice and you know if you show up to enough practices over time you will become a black belt just like you you said if you if you prospect you know consistently and then eventually you're going to have clients

and you will figure it out, it kind of goes with the territory. And now with AI, it's changing a lot of in our business, not only our industry, but many other industries, but AI is a huge thing which we all should start using it. Otherwise, we'll be out of business soon. Well, in fact, I think didn't you talk a little bit about AI in Cabo? Yes, yes. So how are you leveraging AI and where does that?

sort of fit into your lead gen lead follow-up organization yeah so when i say a i'm a lot of people think chat gpt right and everybody thinks about chat gpt and yes that's a chat gpt and most people using chat gpt for simple tasks like uh rewrite this email or rewrite uh listing uh description or whatever but uh chat gpt can be used as a full assistant you know like i'm doing giving some classes teaching agents to use a chat GPT to create your own personality. And then once you create your own personality, you save your personality. And based on your personality, you can ask what are the best lead generation systems I should use as a real estate professional. And then give me 15 different tips how to use for each lead generation system, etc.

Now, you can go to next level, create a protocol. And protocols are a combination of multiple prompts. and I'm using protocols to create within a few seconds description of my YouTube videos and titles and SEO optimized and everything else. Now, if you remember, so I presented the video avatars, you can create a save yourself and create three different avatars of yourself. And it's really realistic because not only you're moving face and lips, but you're moving hands and body as well. So it's very hard to see the difference, is it life or not life. Are you using platform like HGEN or what platform? HGN, yeah.

Yeah, that's HGEN. And then you can clone your voice, of course. My voice in HGN is cloned, but my accent is not cloned. But for accent cloning, I'm using 11 laps. So with 11 laps, you can clone your accent pretty much 995%. And now you can use 11 labs to create, you know, text, use a chat GPT to create a text, import to 11 labs and create audio file. And now you can create a whole podcast series for a whole year, right? So, and then it's all about content creation.

I think that's the biggest advantage now would we have with AI. A lot of people were having trouble in the past how to create a content because ideas and, you know, how are you going to create a content? So now with AI, with chat GPT changed, right? you can ask chat gpt a very simple question give me 52 topics for whatever and now you have 52 weeks of content but now next step is you use a hey gen hay gen you can create a bunch a bunch of videos import to different AI like opus clip and different different ones which automatically edits and now you can upload to your social media and youtube channel etc and it's all about creating brent and doing this you can create get more interaction online

and get more clients. Yeah, I mean, one example is going with SOI, so the sphere of influence. So you should, let's say you have 500 clients in SOI. It's hard, that easiest way to take the phone and create a video and send to, you know, thanks for coming for my open house or interest rates going down or whatever. So, but you should get personalized video like, hey Glenn, this some year. And then hey Jennifer, that's some year. So you have to record 500 different videos, which is very time-consuming.

That's AI called be human, letter B and non-human. So you can upload your database there. You record video once, and then they merge the names and take your video with your voice and your video is saying, hey, Glenn, hey Jennifer, hey John, and then send personalized videos with one click. It's like merging the mailing addresses in a world, right? So instead of writing 500 letters, you do one letter and then merge with a spreadsheet. And that's the same here, but just in video format. Okay, now be humans.

So it's kind of like it's similar to Hagen, but it's a different, different platform than obviously HGN. Yeah, correct, correct. And there's many others. So it's every day something else coming on the market. So it's crazy. Yeah, one of my new favorite ones is, have you played with yama.com? No. Okay, well, it's with one prompt, it will build you an entire pitch deck or buyer presentation or listing presentation or all kinds of different things.

And literally build you however many slides you want for that particular presentation. So when you're going in on a presentation, you can actually just use that. And there's some ways to sort of tweak it beyond that. So it's a pretty cool platform, and I've been having a lot of fun with that one. Yamma. Gamma. Gamma. Okay.

Gamma. Okay. Now, what are you using CRM-Y's to manage all of this? well before i had a lion desk and different stuff and then when i joined exp we got kv core right and i didn't pay attention for first year right so i joined march and then in december russell actually one of my friends he moved with us and then he was paying uh 800 dollars a month to kv core with a different company and i said man so this guy is paying 800 bucks and i'm getting this included in my EXP, let me at least take a look. And I started playing with it at this in December time,

because it's a little bit slower in holiday season. And by January, I got first leads and I closed cash transaction by end of January. So I said, this is awesome. Since then, actually last three and a half years, I'm using KV core only. And it's a great software. It's pretty much, as you know, you can create unlimited number of squeeze pages, et cetera. So if you do it, strategically you can get leads. Awesome. So is that your only CRM now or are you using any others? Only CRM now. Okay. Awesome. And you're obviously, you mentioned that you're almost five-time icon. You've been, your production's been increasing substantially using sort of the AI and elements. You mentioned these AI elements with be human.

How much of your lead generation is generated through AI versus, say, either PPC or organic showing up on Google or some other method of lead gen? What's your sort of division of lead gen labor? That's a good question. Over time since 2010-11, I developed 23 lead generation systems, 23 different lead generation systems. And based on those lead-generation systems, I was growing my company, and now with the XPN, growing my group, organization with helping other agents. But I have from social media targeted marketing to list brokers, a lot of people don't even know list brokers than EDDM to, you know, Heroes credit. I set up Heroes Foundation to, you know, for military firefighters, you know, teachers and medical professionals, police officers,

and then to 3-D mailers. For example, you know, mailers instead sending the letters, I'm sending in a medical bottle. So it's a 3D. I'm pretty sure it's 100% opening rate. I have a system how to leverage Craigslist, but I say Craigslist, I mean a lot of free classified ads. So because a lot of people, if I ask,

and then one of the events I asked 200 people, how many agents using a Craigslist. Only one person said yes and $1.99 are not using, which is very good for me, whoever is using it. And it's all different combination. I mean, from AI, strategically from AI, probably not much leads generated right now. It's more for branding purposes.

I'm trying to figure out the way how to do. generate with AI specifically now searching from specific distressed sellers or highly motivated buyers because as you know I mean people buying and selling houses when a life changing event happens and that's different ways now to go after sumable loan for example I have two listings right now they have a 3% and 4.87% interest rate so they are more desirable to buy because you're getting 3% interest today when the interest is I don't even know 7% so And then if you go strategically after houses with a sumable loan with a low equity, not high equity, because you don't want too much equity because people will have to come up with a lot of money.

But high equity and a sumable loan, they can sell for more money because they have a very good interest rate. Right. And that's different ways. If you go after, you know, you need to reverse engineering your lead generation. as you know, I mean, go after the stress sellers, which, you know, would be divorce, death in the family, et cetera. So they have a higher motivation to sell versus somebody else who doesn't have any motivation, right? Any life-changing event. Right.

So obviously, 23 different lead gen systems. If you had to pick one that you were using, that you had to use today, and that's the only one that you could use, today and then if you could pick one that you think is going to be the future what would I know AI is probably in there but I don't know for sure but what would be the one way that you would say hey use this way you're going to generate your leads and hopefully enough business to to serve your needs as an agent that's very easy answer mails mailers mail us so either direct mailing or EDDM. between my 23 late generation systems, I do not have door knocking and I don't have a call call.

Because I'm not strong in that, I don't like it. But mailers is the best. So especially, I mean, I'm using mailers to do my flips. I'm using mailers to get my listings because instead of you chasing the leads, buyers, sellers chasing you. But you need to present and reach out to them. So mailers, it's probably the best for me. I do understand for a brand new agents, the mailers are probably not the best option because of funds, financial funds, right?

So either you have time or money. So once in the beginning, you have time. So then you invest and the calling and door knocking, but not door knocking the farm, but door knocking more targeted door knocking. So for example, for sale by owners, it's potential NODs, these stress sellers, et cetera. But once you have funds, which I would recommend 15 to 20% of each closing put on the side as a separate marketing account, use that money to reinvest in your business. Because you're building the business, right? So you have to reinvest the business.

It doesn't matter if you're a real estate agent or you owning the restaurant. So if you own the restaurant, you have to reinvest in the marketing. Otherwise, nobody will know about your restaurant. And the same here. So you have to reinvest in the business to generate elites and then. which I'm not saying wasting money, spending money. I'm saying investing money because investment, you invest one dollar, you get two, three, five dollars back.

Awesome, well, good stuff. Well, Amir, this has been a lot of fun. One last question. If you could give one piece of advice to agents at EXP, what would it be? So in terms, I mean, first of all, as we all know, EXP is probably,

not probably, it's the best company right now, right? So they may change in 20 years. We never know. We don't have a crystal ball. But as of right now, it still puzzles me.

I mean, why somebody will not be with EXP because of different reasons, right? So we have multiple streams of income. You can build your passive income, residual income. Unless somebody wants to sell real estate

until they're 92 years old, which I don't want it. But with EXP, so spent invest time on building your clientele, meaning buyers and sellers. That's our bread and butter. So because we're in the business of helping buyers and sellers buying and selling houses, right? So and then invest some of your time, either 5% or 20 or 25% and building your team, building your organization, because that's the key for the secure and safe retirement because it's much better to go to sleep and wake up

and make passive money than go and work for money. money, right? But in the beginning, we need both, right? So, and then once, and that's why I like about real estate, once doors open to different opportunities like investments, long term, short term, rental, et cetera. For example, I bought some properties in Panama, right? Panama City and Santa Catalina, so for the long-term investment. So it's, with the real estate, you can start building your real state portfolio, not only in the U.S., but internationally as well. And that's, as you know, nine out of 10 millionaires worldwide are made with real estate. That's why I like real estate. myself awesome well great great stuff amir thank you so much for for joining me today

hopefully you guys picked up some clues out there i know i did and you can also check out ameer on his website at amir and it's uh chakkovitch um c-a-c-o-v-ic dot com so you can see if you're watching the podcast, you can see his name here. And with that, thanks again. And until next time, take care, everyone. And Glenn, accept my chess request at chess.com. So I'm waiting for you. Okay. Send it over. I'll accept right now. Yeah. Awesome. Good stuff. Thanks, everyone. You've been listening to Expansion. Tune in every Tuesday for new episodes. Thanks for being the best part of EXP.