KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Barb Betts – Owner/Broker at the RECollective

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

But when I talk to my clients, I don't say the word referral. I use the words introduce, connect me, right? Share us. But referrals are whatever agent should want to build their business by and have the majority of their business be that way. And what I found is as I teach agents how I do what I do and how I've built my systems, one of my key factors in building our business is consistent communication. You have to consistently show up in front of your clients or they will forget you.

You're listening to the Real Estate Sessions podcast, and I'm your host, Bill Risser, Executive Vice President's strategic partnerships with Rate My Agent, a digital marketing platform designed to help great agents harness the power of verified reviews. For more information, head on over to Rate Myagent.com. Listen in as I interview industry leaders and get their stories and journeys to the world of real estate. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 311 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast. As always, thank you so much for tuning in.

Thank you so much for telling a friend. Telling friends is important, right? Those relationships are critical. And my guest today is as passionate about relationships as anyone I know. I'm talking about Barb Betts. She's the broker-owner CEO of RE Collective. And she also has a couple of other companies, a marketing company, Relately Marketing.

There's Real Estate by Relationships Academy. She's doing all kinds of great stuff. And it's going to be a blast chatting with her. So let's get this thing started. Barb, welcome to. the podcast. Hey, thank you so much for having me, Bill. I'm so excited to be here today. Well, I'm really happy to have you here. You know, Molly McKinley has really been a source of guests for me lately. Nice. Love you. Yeah, you and I get to meet officially at an event this past fall, right?

Yes, we did. So at that time, you know, I, earlier to this afternoon, I interviewed Sarah Suda Chan, and now I'm interviewing you. So this is a great day for me. It's been a lot of fun. Yeah, it's a California Day for you. Yeah, exactly. Let's start there. Southern California. You're in, you're in the Long Beach area? I'm in the Long Beach area, which I always like to say is situated literally halfway between LAX and Disneyland. Perfect. That's a great way of looking at it. And are you a native? Did you grow up in Southern California? I did grow up. I actually grew up in Long Beach. So I also say born, raised, and brokered in Long Beach, California. That's nice. I grew up in San Diego for about almost 40 years I lived there. Yeah. Got the Southern California thing going. Now, I know

you have a son who plays baseball. I do. At a very high level. I do. Tell me, tell me about that. Yeah. So he is a, he's 24, almost 25 years old. And he was drafted out of high school, out of Long Beach Wilson High School by the Tampa Bay race. And he spent many years in their organization. Fortunately, has had some significant injuries that have been challenging you throw in COVID in the middle of that. So he played AA last year for them and was a free agent at the end of the season. But there's this little thing called the baseball lockout going on right now. And so it's been a little challenging this off season,

but he actually just yesterday signed a contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. So we have just moved into the Dodgers organization now at the minor league level, working his way up. So the fun fact is all my friends are like thinking they're going to see him at, you know, Chavez Ravine, you know. in April, and that's not quite the case, but super excited for him to continue his journey and, you know, play baseball at such a high level. What's his position?

He's a catcher. Ooh, you know what that's called. You know they call that, right? The tools of ignorance. Absolutely. He's a left-handed hitting catcher, which is very unique to the catching position. Wow. Left-handed.

Left-handed. Naturally born left-handed. Fun fact. eats, drinks, sleeps, golfs, everything left-handed. But my husband is challenged in a hype department. And when my husband saw him picking up Cheerios with his left hand, mom wanted to go get him a glove for his right hand. And dad said, absolutely not. I'm not going to have a five-foot 10 left-handed player that can't do anything. So true story, my husband bought him a glove for his left hand and threw balls at him in our living room at a very young age. And Chris can throw

a baseball harder than I've ever seen anyone throw baseball right-handed. Right-handed. And hits balls, you know, 400 feet left-handed. That's, that's fantastic because I mean, for now we're going to talk a little bit about this because I worked for the San Diego Padres for 12 years. I love, I love baseball. It's my thing. And the dynamics of obviously a left-handed throwing catchers an issue because the majority of batters are right-handed and they will be in the way of, you know, throws and it's tougher to throw to third, you know, way easier to throw to first, I would think. Probably kind of, you wouldn't have to twist around so much, maybe pick people off better. Yeah, hypothetically. Yeah, that's cool. That is really cool. So I was going to ask you before I knew

all this, I said, oh, are you a Dodgers or an Angels family? But, oh, well. Well, up until yesterday. I was an angel fan, but we did own a Dodger hat, which is a good thing. But I never thought I'd say a bleed blue, being a SoCal girl and mostly being raised in the Orange County side of town. And so, yeah, we are Dodger fans overnight. We've made a lot of our friends very happy. We have a lot of Dodger fan friends. That's very cool. By the way, I live in St. Pete, Tim.

The raised play, it's a 10-minute walk from where I live. Oh, wow. Yeah. So it's too bad. Grateful they gave him, you know, his start. And it's just it's, but it's a good change. It's a fresh start for him. So excited to be Dodgers. Super cool.

I love that. Okay, we post you talks from real estate. The baseball fans love this, but there's always somebody who says, why do you spend so much time because I love it? And I want to have a great conversation. You're approaching 20 years in the real estate industry. Congratulations. I mean, that's amazing.

Yeah. There's always something. I love the story of how. how real estate found you. You know, I'm the typical realtor that had a bad experience buying a home. I had that experience where, and so many realtors can relate to this, where I thought, if they could do that poor of a job and make that kind of money, I could do better. And I also at the same time, so I was in accounting.

I was a glorified bookkeeper slash they called me a CFO. I was not a CFO. I was a bookkeeper. But I was really good at it. However, I hate numbers and I hate spread. Well, I love spreadsheets, but I hate debits and credits and that kind of stuff. And so I also was a young mom. And we had just had our son and our daughter was on the way.

And I worked for a very challenging boss who was female, fun fact, who told me one day when my child was very ill, told me that I need a nanny for situations like this because I'm a workwoman. And I thought, no. Yeah. And so I decided what can I do where I can have a balance of being a mom and have a successful career? And because I had a child so young, my son, we were 18 when we had him, I didn't go to college. And so I didn't have anything to fall back on. And I wanted something I could own.

I wanted something that I could say I'm an expert in. I wanted something that included like a license or a certificate. But that didn't require me to go back to four years of college. And so you combine the bad experience of buying a home with the wanting. that and everyone lands in real estate. That was a really easy answer. Yeah, it's very rarely. I have over 300 interviews on this podcast and I'd say 10 knew they're going to be a realtor at the age of 15. Yeah, not many people are going through high school and career class, you know, going to the career center researching and going into real estate. Yeah, yeah, that's true. So you started with

Prudential, which which is, you know, really not around anymore. They've been absorbed by a couple, a couple of places, but they were really well known for their really training and education, right, helping you, setting you up for success. Is that what you found there? Yeah. What I really found there was, was the manager. You know, he, he took time to say, I never forget, I went to the career night, you know, that we used to have back in the days of real estate. I'm aging myself here. And it was pouring rain that night. I will never forget. And I still went and no one else showed up. And he, we were in a training room. And he said, hey, let's go in the conference room and just sit down.

And I figured he'd just cancel. You know, one person there is it worth his time? And I'll never forget him, Richard DeWitt. And he's since passed. But he sat down and just and educated me. Wow. And gave me hope and told me I could do it. Now, I know more now that if you can fog a mirror and you have a real estate license,

you probably can land in a brokerage somewhere. But he made me feel special. He made me feel heard. And then, yes, to that point, they had a great new agent training program. They had a mentor program. They had all the things that I needed going into the career that I knew nothing about. More than just my own personal transaction. So yeah, definitely education and support is what attracted the initial aid credential.

Something tells me that you took some of those lessons from him and you still use them today. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. I love that. Now, you're talking about the early 2000s, 2004, 5, somewhere in that range. You're cruising along. I like to ask this question because you're a heavy user.

you understand social media very well, you teach and train, you have an academy. You had to be an early adopter, right? In the office? Yes. And were there old people running around going, you're never going to mount to anything? Why are you doing that? Well, fun fact. I actually was the first.

So this is really going back. So people that realtors who are listening who think that internet leads started with the portals, let's just call them that to keep names out of it. Yeah. It didn't start like that. It actually started with Yahoo.com. It was the first site to generate buyer and seller leads online. And they partnered with Prudential only.

And it was called The Portal. And each office in our Prudential system had an assigned agent that was the portal agent. Awesome. And I was the only agent that was willing to take it on because all the other to your point senior agents we'll call them we're like that's never going to turn into anything the internet's never going to sell a house no one's going to go online and look for an agent well interesting we now know where we are now and so that is how so when i tell people before i got my acting gear and figured out how to do business that that sustained me and my family and allowed me a balance

i did stay up till two three in the morning answering internet leads and i was working you know 37 days straight with no break. Technology and that whole world, you know, there were a lot of agents who said it would never, never work, which is why this whole NFT world and everything else that we're in, hey, I don't understand it yet, but I'm not saying never say never. Yeah, I agree. It's weird watching the swings in the value of crypto, but that's all part of, maybe that's all part of the process to get your place.

You never say never. No, I completely, I completely, I completely, agree. Part of your, as you, as you, as you're, as you're, as we look through your career, you know, you were well prepared or I'm not sure if you joined in the REO world prior to or during, you know, the, we'll call it the dark days. But that had to be huge for you. Because now, I mean, really think about the, the value prop you're bringing into today's world with, okay, way early on understanding how internet leads work. Not all of them close. It's just a small portion, but you've got to be consistent with all of them. And now you're also schooled up and skilled.

on how to handle that kind of market, right? Yep. Yeah. The combination of, you know, learning to work the internet leads and then learning what I became passionate about, which I continued through my career, is the power of doing business by relationship. And so learning that those internet leads absolutely have the potential to turn into relationships. And although they were frustrating and although they were irritating and although some of them were very challenging and they were sometimes non-responsive, sometimes, you know, go

to you on appointments, things like that, the good ones turned into relationships that I still have today that I laugh when they give me referrals or we have conversations or they come to one of our parties and it just cracks me up to think we met online 20 years ago before internet leads were even really a thing and then you fast forward to the as I my good friend Glenn calls it the great inconvenience of real estate right because we all know what happened in 06 and 07 and yeah I absolutely did I thought I've got to not ignore this this if you will REO world that is that is is going on. And again, relationships got me an REO account. A good friend in Arizona, who was an REO machine, she handed us a binder of all the REO contacts she had and said,

hey, girl, go build some relationships. Wow. And that's how we got our first REO account, which led to obviously more REO accounts. And we never were a heavy, like we didn't have like, we weren't getting 50, 60 new homes a day like some brokerages were. But I'll equate it to this last refinance boom. I'm really glad I didn't in that period stop working my relationships because a lot of real estate brokers did. They focused on their banks and they left all their other people behind. And then when the Oreo world stopped, they came up for air and their clients had moved on to other agents. So I was glad that we kind of, the ario's in my and my husband's world were kind of the icing on the cake at the time, right? They were just the extra. It was nice to have kind of a guaranteed

five or six deals a month coming in. But we never forgot our relationships. And then we got through that and then, you know, it's been crazy ever since. Yeah, those relationships, some of those relationships needed you more than ever. And after that was a big part of what you were doing. You know, learning the short sale market was probably the best thing that we did was we didn't shy away from that. And that was, those were the hardest days of my career. You know, this market's hard right now. Don't get me wrong.

The speed and the exhaustion of the market right now is so hard. However, the short sale market, when you're having to go into someone who you just celebrated with two years ago, pop the champagne, gave them their keys to their first home. And now you're having to go in and have an adult conversation about how to break up with their home and how to divorce their mortgage. And that was hard, very hard, because these are people you love. REOs, they're gone, right? Or you have no relationship with them. Short sales, they were a lot, they were a lot more challenging. Yeah. You have your own company now. We're going to talk about that. But there was one more stop along the way. You actually made a shift,

over to Keller Williams. What was behind that? By then, my husband had joined me. We had a small little team and, you know, Prudential, there was some leadership changes at the time and it was a, I'll be honest, it was an aging brokerage and it didn't have the technology. It didn't have the forward thinking. No one was sitting around talking about ideas and what's coming next, right?

And so I just, it just felt right. It just felt like a change was appropriate. And I actually was a founding member at the, at the Keller Williams that I went. too. So that was exciting because we got to kind of build something from the ground up and have some influence being on the ALC. And yeah, we moved and we grew our team there. And it was a great experience and we're super glad we did it. They were a great company. But like many successful realtors, agents, entrepreneurs, you are going to do a lot more than just work for someone else. You're going to open up your own brokerage. You start your own marketing. I mean, you do all kind. Talk

about, you know, that first of all, making that leap of faith. It's a little bit of a leap of faith because now you're in charge of a lot of more things responsible for a lot more stuff. It is. So I had gotten my broker's license in 2016. And just because, not because I ever thought of opening my own brokerage, because I felt like it was the next step. It was like getting a master's in real estate. Sure. I already had the bachelor's. I was very successful. And I thought, I want to have that higher level of knowledge. The other reason I did it was, I remember prudential in feeling kind of suffocated that I had to find somewhere else, right? Yeah.

I got to myself, if that ever happens again, I don't want to be forced into finding something else. And that was kind of my backup plan. Like, well, I can just always be on my own if I ever need to leave or if this company closes their doors. Then again, a kind of a culture shift happened. And my team was unhappy and we were unhappy. And so we thought, you know what, this is the time.

But having the confidence to do it is a big deal. It's not easy opening your own brokerage. But we had the team support and I had my husband's support. And so we did it. And we've never looked back since. We've been open four in a half years now. And it's the single best decision that we ever made. Yeah.

Love the name Relately, Relately is the marketing company. Yeah, that's the marketing company. The real estate company is the RE collective. RE collective, which has a really cool ring to it. I wonder, was there any thought ever? of putting a K in there instead of a C? I'm just kidding. You know, now that you think about it, where were you out when you were coming up with it?

Oh, God, there was a lot of thoughts that went into that. And of course, everyone thinks it's recollective. But once you hear it one time, then it's all great. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. So what is related? What are you doing there? Yeah. So I'm, I'm a relationship junkie. I've been, I've been and seen and built our business by relationship. And I understand intrinsically the power of building a business by relationship. And it's not just by referral, right? I actually don't like the word referral. If you know me well, you know, I use the word referral internally with people like you.

But when I talk to my clients, I don't say the word referral. I use the words introduce, connect me, right? Share us. But referrals are what every agent should want to build their business by and have the majority of their business be that way. And what I found is as I teach agents how I do what I do and how I've built my systems, One of my key factors in building our business is consistent communication. You have to consistently show up in front of your clients or they will forget you.

And you don't have the time always to talk to every single person in your database. And so I believe in the power of mailing to your database and not large geographic neighborhoods. I'm talking a list of relationships. And so we started creating postcards that we mail to our database. Big, large postcards. We create the content every month. we do a combination of personal and professional. Like, I love you versus this is what's going on in real estate, right?

And agents started asking me for them. And they were like, I don't have the time to create them. Can you create them? Can I have your templates, this and that? And so my staff and I sat down and I thought, you know what, I want to help the industry. But frankly, I'm not going to just give it away. We've worked hard on all of that. Yeah, sure.

So we decided to launch a marketing company that helps realtors market relationally to their database. So we prepare a custom postcard. And what I mean by custom is, yeah, they all look the same. I'm not creating one for every different realtor. But the back of the postcard, we work on a custom template for you with your photo and your information. We've got our mail house and they send it all out for you. You don't even have to think about it.

It includes birthday cards and home anniversary cards and all the love cards and notes that I send everybody, social media content, really marketing tools for realtors that want to work relationally and don't know how to get the message out there and don't have a team and a staff to do it for them like you do. So that's how it was birthed and it's been super successful. We're really happy with it. You ever get somebody who says, no, I know these are the first sphere, but I do want to send them to some leads. You have to tell you. I don't care. They can put whoever they want in their database, right? But that's why I'm launching the academy to teach them how to do it the right way. But what we don't do is we don't let you nitpick the content. There you go. You've got to trust us that

this works. Yep. You got to trust us that we're doing this the right way. And oh, by the way, You're getting the content that I used last year and I know it works. That's awesome. I love that. Let's talk. You mentioned real estate by relationship and the Real Estate by Relationship and the Real Estate by Relationship Academy. Correct?

Yeah. Let's go there next because I mean, first of all, I'm just thinking you, you don't have a whole lot of free time. Is that? Everyone says that, Bill. The good news is, so my husband and I still saw real estate. I still work a lot of base and we are still, we are active owners. I'm the broker. He's a realtor, but we are, you know, I'm an active broker. I was on a listing appointment yesterday.

I couldn't do what I do without my husband, though. I got to get major props in this. He has transitioned to take over a lot of our day-to-day sales activities. I still do a lot of rainmaking. I still do a ton of generation. I still go on certain appointments, but he's at the appraisals and the inspections and showing the properties. When people are like, how are you doing all this? Well, the reality is I've got a fantastic partner. But the academy, again, was birthed out of realtors asking me for it. You know, I share a lot on social media. I share a lot on Facebook and on stories. And I talk to a lot of realtors. And that's my passion, quite frankly, if I didn't have a child at 18, is I was going to be a teacher. No doubt about it, I had from five years old on, my favorite store was the teacher supply store.

It was not true for us. And so I have a passion for teaching and educating. And so I started teaching and educating clients, right? That's how I found the passion. And then now it's transferred over to, I love mentoring and training the real estate industry. Because I see so many realtors that were like me that are running with their hair on fire, have no direction in their business,

are constantly starting their business over and over again every year because they're chasing internet leads or chasing open house leads and sign calls. And basically a bunch of cold, passive stuff when they can be actively working with people that already know them and like them and like them and applying a system to get them to trust you. Right. Because I'm a firm believer. No like and trust does not happen. And trust does not happen because someone knows you and likes you.

If they know you and like you and you give them a reason to trust you, you are more likely to trust you. So the academy I've been building that I've been asked to build for a very long time is everything from A to Z. It's 12, probably 13 modules, about four or five lessons in each one of them. It's all the PDFs and downloads of everything I've done in my career from beginning to end. And I'm excited about it because I've got so many people that are excited about it. And it's just time because there's only so much of me to go around. Right? There's just so many lives I can do.

Let's create a way for realtors to learn the systems that I've learned, make them their own. Right. I learned them too, but I made them my own, make them your own, but learn the foundational principles of what I've done and learn what I know I wouldn't do over again, right? But most importantly, the academy is taught from a 2022 perspective, right? Like what's going on right now? Social media. Social media, you got to be on social media and you need to learn how to do it relationally because there's there's, there's, wrong way and a right way to do it. So it's all that stuff combined into one giant academy. Wow. Now, have you hired an ex-teacher yet as an agent?

I'm just curious, because it seems like it's such a... That's a great question. Yeah. No, actually, none of my agents are ex-teachers, but fun fact, I have, there's a six, a girlfriend group of six of us that are ride and dies, and five of them are teachers, and one of them is not. Ah, there you go. Yeah, I totally surround myself with teachers. Yeah, I find it the second most, the job that is in number two positions teachers.

Number one that turns into a realtor, number one is hospitality, bartender, servers. They know exactly how to build relationships. I have lots of those. I have lots of those on my team. Yeah, lots of those. And quite frankly, a lot of ones that were moms, that their job was being mom. That's huge. They wanted something to do.

Yep. That's huge. You really embrace at the association level, whether it's local, state, national, you have volunteered quite a bit. Once again, that's, that's just your time. It's, your time is your most precious thing as busy as you are, but here you are doing this as well. I'm sure it's helped you build relationships. What else has it done for you? Yeah, I mean, you hit it right on the nose. I've always made my paperwork for me, right? But this is what else that's helped me down is. Number one, I'm probably, I would put myself as one of the most educated brokers in the Long Beach area, as far as my agents, there's nothing blindsides them. No MLS new rule blindsides them. No new policy, no new contract, because I already

have extreme knowledge about it before it comes. Different things going on legislatively, politically. I'm able to get my agents on the front lines of all of that, and they appreciate that so much. secondarily to that, it's what being involved in organized real estate, especially through my local, obviously California and national, but being involved in California, you know, I got attracted to this little event called Woman Up that CAR has trademarked and promoted all over the United States through national events. And I went to my first Woman Up event in early 2017. And that is what propelled me to open my brokerage finally, right? It's not that I didn't already have the thought in my head, but going to this event and hearing

female broker after female broker after female broker talk about their success and what held them back and why they waited so long and why they wished they wouldn't have and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And two female brokers pulled me aside in the hallway and they said, I just met them the night before. We're dear friends now. But they were like, what, what are you waiting for? And I was like, well, you know, I'm not going to make as much money because I'm going to have all this overhead and Kendall Young was like, girl, stop it. You are making excuse after excuse after

excuse right now. We had a great conversation and I got in the car that day and I said to my team, all female team at the time besides my poor husband. I say poor husband, but he has a lot of benefit from that. But I got in the car and I said, if, if Harold and I were to open our own brokerage, would you guys come with us? And at that time, I only had two female agents and then I had a female assistant with me. And the agents both said, when can we leave? And so California realtors and CAR and everything that I've learned from organized real estate really is what has propelled me into opening my own brokerage. And then the last thing I'll say about being involved in organized real estate is your clients notice. Our clients really are interested in, my clients

think I run the real estate world. That's awesome. They think I do. Now, I know I don't and I tell them I don't and I correct them, but that's how they look at going to D.C., going to Sacramento, right? My clients who are involved in lobbying for their own industry think it's really freaking cool that we're in D.C. talking about protecting the, you know, capital gains exclusion. Sure. They all think that's really cool. And so it also just makes you for a really good as a person giving back to your industry, right? This industry is given so much to us. And if we don't do it, there's no.

when to do it. So I always tell agents, you know, you don't have to go crazy like me because they look at me and they're like, I never want to do what you're doing. You're gone too much. I don't want to do all that. I get it. Just volunteer on the local committee at your local association. Just start there. Yeah. You can be as involved or not as involved as you want to be, but it promise it will give you something back in return. You've mentioned Kendall Young. I've had Kendall Young on the on the podcast. And yeah, she could be a little direct and fiery. I'm just. Oh, yeah. She takes my rare. That's for dang sure. Yeah. Well, that's great that you ran into her. That's awesome. Not one person I've talked to said, oh, in March of 2020, I knew it was going to explode that summer. Now that we've come out of it,

right? What do you see? How are you feeling about it? The numbers are that interest rates are going to go up a little bit. We think everything's we think. But are you positive? Do you think there's going to be this continued growth, maybe not at such a great rate? Or is there going to be a correction? What do you what do you think that there is going to be, and this is interesting, I think there's going to be correction and appreciation because this 25 to 30% appreciation. Yeah. It's not normal. No. That has to be corrected. We can't, we can't financially sustain that. No. That will break eventually. And don't get me wrong. I'm a homeowner. I'd love my value to

continue to go up 30% a year. Who would it? Right. But it's just not reality. We have to remember that the average across the last 30 years is somewhere in the eight to nine percent. range, right? And this year, NAR is projecting five. So I do think that will happen. I think we will nudge up. And you're going to think, oh, it's a terrible market because my home only went from a million. Oh, my God, it only went up 5%. It didn't go up 30. Yeah. Normal, right? I do see that happening. I do think rates are going to go up. I think they have to. I don't think the feds are lying when they come out and say, we're going to raise them. But we all know the Fed rate does not directly control a mortgage interest rate. And let's face it,

mortgage rates are already going up right now. So I personally think we'll be at 4% by the end of the year. But this is what I don't think will happen. I do not think there's a crash coming. I hope every realtor who didn't sell in 06, who didn't know what happened in 03, 04, 05, which is when I learned real estate. I didn't think there was anything wrong with an appraiser,

not even coming to the property. I didn't think there was anything wrong. Oh, by the way, if you don't realize that back in the day, mortgage officers would meet you. you at the appraisal with a bottle of Don Perry own for the appraiser. Yeah. That stuff really did happen. Yeah.

I didn't know there was anything wrong with that. I was a baby in the business, right? None of that's happening anymore. There's so many guidelines in place. So I don't believe a crash is coming. But what I do believe is the problem and won't be fixed, which is why we're going to be in this continued pressured environment is we have no inventory. Yeah.

And unless someone builds three million homes tomorrow, we, and in my area, yet there's nowhere to build. Right. And unless you want to move far east, the prices don't change very much. And so I think we're going to be in a continued crazy pressured environment. But my hope is that it softens a little bit just to allow buyers and frankly, realtors, to breathe a little bit because we have no time to breathe right now. And it's not healthy.

Yeah. Yeah. And I just feel so bad for buyers agents in this environment, especially people who love to help buyers and just the story after story after story of, you know, we're on our 30, you know, 30 second home we're offering. It's just real. And, you know, obviously, I think most people that listen to your show here are real estate agents.

And I'm really worried about realtors right now. I'm really worried about the mental health of our realtors. I'm really worried about a lot of good realtors are getting ready to leave because they're frustrated, especially if you don't know what the other side of this looks like, Right. If you just entered real estate and let's just even call it 20, even 2018, sure. You know nothing else than this. Right.

We're tired and exhausted and there's no hope for you. Where I came into real estate in 2003, so I know that there's something else that looks different than this. And I know we'll get back to it. Right. Something of difference. And so my message to realtors, if you're listening and you're stressed out and exhausted is you need to get help.

You need to partner with some other good agents that maybe you can balance the schedule off of. You need to get really good at buyer consultations and being direct with your buyers to set expectations. And you need to drive the buyer around meaning you need to control it, not them. And I had one of my agents say to me, is it okay that I tell this buyer I'm not going to show them the $700,000 house when they only qualified a $715 max? I said, yeah, I mean, absolutely it is when the $700,000 house is not overpriced, right? Yeah, it's going to go up. It is absolutely okay to take control of the situation because otherwise you're going to lose your sanity in this market.

And then, more importantly, the buyers are going to think you don't know what you're doing. Correct. You're there as a fiduciary guide. You have to help them. That's a great point, Bill. Agents forget we do have a fiduciary duty to be honest with them. We have a fiduciary duty not to string them along, right? So it's just that's my fear in the market right now is not the market.

It's the agents that are serving the market are just. exhausted. Okay, good. Well, Barb, this has been so much fun. I've already, I burned up the 30 minutes. I asked if you, I'm going to ask you the same, I can't wait for this answer. I'm going to ask you the same final question. I've asked every guest, you know Jay Thompson, since Jay Thompson in 2015. And by the way, his answer was pretty simple. It was pick up the damn phone. That was it. That's all he said. Okay. So answer the damn phone. Okay. So what one piece of advice would you give a new agent? Everything in real estate is about relationships. Everything.

I love that. Everything. Everything. From clients to your affiliates to your family, everything is about relationships at the end of the day. I love that. Barb, if somebody wants to reach out to you, I imagine there's a website or two. If you mention them here, we'll make sure they show up in the show notes. Of course.

Well, if you're interested in Relately Marketing, it's Relatlymarketing.com. I have my own speaker website, Barbuts.com. And then, of course, we have our R.A. Collective real estate website. And then in social media, really, that's the best place to find me. Instagram and Facebook. I answer all my DMs. I share often on those platforms. And that's really where I love to have conversations with other agents.

This has been fantastic. I will recommend you to anybody looking for that stuff. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time today. All right. Bill. Thank you for listening to the Real Estate Sessions. Please head over to rate thispodcast.com forward slash RESessions to leave a review or a rating and subscribe to the Real Estate Sessions podcast at your favorite podcast listening app.