KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Building a Real Estate Brand with Referrals, AI, and Global Vision

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Summary:Ben Glynn shares his story of building a real estate brand focused on referrals, leveraging AI, and maintaining a global vision. He explains how he has successfully combined traditional relationship-building tactics with modern technology to create a scalable business. Glynn provides practical insights into using AI to enhance efficiency without losing the personal touch, and he offers a compelling perspective on how to think bigger and operate on a global scale, even in a local market. This episode is packed with actionable ideas for agents looking to innovate their business.

Wait to hear today's guest, Ben Glenn. He's out of Jacksonville, Florida. He started out with a team that had evolved out of necessity and then decided to eliminate it, also out of necessity. Stay tuned for more details on all of that because if you're thinking about a team, you're going to want to hear this. Welcome to Real Estate Riches, where Kathy Burns empowers realtors to achieve the success they've always dreamed of.

Starting her career at 55, Kathy built a thriving business that offers the freedom of time and financial independence. And now she's sharing her journey to help others do the same. Whether new to the industry or looking to level up, this channel is your hub for proven strategies, inspiring stories, and the tools you need to grow your real estate business. Join Kathy each week to explore global opportunities, successful systems, and expert insights to take your career to the next level. Get comfortable, pick a video, and start learning. Your journey to success starts now. Hey, everybody. It's Kathy Burns here with Real Estate Riches. And today I have Ben Glenn. And he is going to share some golden nuggets for us as well. So hey, Glenn. I mean, not Glenn. See, I'm already going with the first thing. All right to race that part, guys. So hey, Ben. How are you doing?

Great. Glad to have you on here today. And you're in sunny Florida. Is it actually warm down there? It is lovely right now. We are in our time where it's about mid-70s, like very low humidity. So this is ideal. I wish we could keep it this way for about eight months, but it only lasts another couple of days, and then we'll start gaining that humidity again. Yeah, darn it, darn it. All right, great. And so you want to give us a little background about who you are, how you got started into real estate and your story? Sure, yes.

So I currently am the team lead for the Glenn team with Berkshire Hathaway Realty here in Jacksonville. And I have been in the business, I'm kind of embarrassed to say probably about 20 years. now. But my wife and I actually started the business together. She was in the business before I started. My wife, Tracy, and her mom was actually a developer. And so she got into the business that way. And when I started kind of watching her and seeing what she did and she sold me my first house, and I watched that process and kind of learned a little bit. And then interestingly enough, when we lived, this was back when we lived in Wisconsin. We lived in kind of a smaller town, and there was a developer who had called her to do a new construction development in the area.

Wow. And so she was excited about it, but a little nervous hadn't ever put together like a business plan and a proposal and things like that. So she asked me if I could help her and go on the presentation with her to do that. So I did, and we did the presentation, and it turned out well. And they said, well, we're really excited. We, you know, we love the idea of the team and having you guys together. And I said, well, wait a minute. I'm just here to, you know, kind of help. She's really the one who does the real estate.

I'm in corporate sales. And they said, well, unless we have the team, we don't want to go forward with you guys. We like the team concept. So we talked about it a little bit. And I said, well, you know, I can kind of duck out a corporate for a while and get this started and get it rolling and then move back into corporate. well, you know, that was about 20 years ago. So never ended up going back to corporate. And then we moved out to Florida in 2013.

And I actually took a step out for a while and did a corporate role for a little bit. And then I got back into real estate full time in 2018 here in the Jacksonville area and have been in ever since. So did you guys have a trouble back in 2013 when you, well, when you moved to Florida, was that like reinventing yourself in a whole new area? It was. It was starting all over again. You know, when we lived in Wisconsin, that was where we'd both grown up. We, you know, we knew a lot of people. We had our whole sphere of friends and family and, you know, high school friends and college friends and everything else.

And then we came to Florida and knew nobody. So it was really starting from absolute zero and starting with, you know, internet leads and trying to get people that way. and then kind of slowly building the practice. And about year three was when I finally started feeling like I was established and started getting some repeat business and some referral business, and then it's kind of built its way from there. Yeah. And boy, that repeat business is so essential,

but it's tricky to keep. So what's your lessons on creating a repeat business? Yeah. Great question. And it is. I mean, it's something that I thought. focus on, and I really tell, you know, newer agents and anybody who asked me to really focus on your group, because the statistics are mind boggling on this as far as, you know, it's 80-some

percent of people, you know, will work with the first realtor that they talk to, but about 26 percent of people use their original realtor for their second subsequent purchases, which was always amazing to me. But a lot of that is because there's just no communication. after this. And so we really make it a priority to do basically a minimum of 12 touches per year to all of our past clients. And a touch can be anything from as simple as a, you know, a text message, hey, how are you doing, reminding them of things like, you know, taxes or insurance information or any changes that have come on the market. We'll do a quarterly newsletter. And then we also do at least one annual client appreciation party. So we can see people in person and, you know,

shake their hands, give them a hug, you know, find out how they're doing. And so it's really, you know, again, focusing on that. And then there's also two companies that we use that do little gifts and, you know, kind of freebies to local communities in the area, local, you know, whether it's a sandwich shop or a, you know, restaurant and anything like that. Just to, again, and kind of keep us as top of mind as possible. Yeah. Do you follow like Brian Buffini or something? Is that where you got that 12-touch system?

So I didn't. I do follow him. That's not where I got the system. We got it from two brokerages ago. There was a broker that I talked to who was starting their own business and they were very detail-oriented and had a whole, every year they put together their plan on exactly what day they were sending it out and what the content was going to be.

And unfortunately, I'm not that. detail-oriented. I wish I were more like that, but it is something that I definitely took to heart and keep in mind. And Berkshire Hathaway also has some really nice processes in place to help with that. So it's kind of a set it and forget it type of thing, which works well. But I also, you know, really do like to talk to my clients regularly and whether that's just picking up the phone and giving them a call or shooting them a text message, trying to stay, you know, again, that top of mind as best we can. Hold on second. I feel like I'm about to sneeze.

Thank you for season here. Oh, I did that too. I had a business partner, oh, a couple years in when I started in the industry, and she followed Brian Buffini, and she would do all these handwritten notes, and we switched it over to send out cards. And then I created a card that was called I Got a Guy. And so I got a guy and a gal too. That would be the cover of the card.

And you could do it online and even had an app, but it would send it U.S. mail. It still does. I use it all the time. Oh, I love it. I created a list of my past clients that I wanted to do business with. You don't want to always do the business with the same. And also with different vendors that I worked with. And I would promote a vendor, one vendor a month. I never gave my whole list.

And I would promote the vendor. The left side would have his logo, something from their website, and then all their contact information. The right side would have, hey, this is my monthly letter, on my monthly card where I send you somebody that I respect and honor. I'm not paid for this. Here's why I love this person. And if you know anybody that needs this, let them know.

And if ever I don't have a guy, I got a guy who's got a guy. And then the back was branded. And I would send that out every single month. And the reason I sent it to the vendors that I would, all the vendors, because I'm in a networking group and I would send it to all these vendors, because if I promoted them, they promoted. promoted me. Sure. So it was, I'm in B&I, so it was a givers gain philosophy, which is all biblical. And I've gotten so much business through the years. Matter of fact, I got my

biggest listing ever, a $5 million listing. It took 12 years, but I stayed in touch. And I sold her several homes throughout that time, but she had this big one when I first met her. And 12 years later after just dripping and dripping, selling the little house here for her son or her sister, she goes, I'm going to sell the big one. I go, how about me? You're the one. So that was great. That is great. And I love that the I've got a guy. Yeah. You're welcome to steal it. Well, it's funny you say that because that's a tagline that I use with my clients. And it drives me nuts because I go out of my way to tell all of them, look, if you're ever doing anything in your house, whether it's any kind of renovation, anything new, anything to the house at all,

please give me a call because I've got a guy. And if I don't, I can find somebody that, you know, reputable that either I've done work with, other clients have done work with. So, you know, I'm confident that they're going to do a good job. And I've had so many people that'll call me and they'll say, oh, you know, I just had this done and it really didn't turn out the way I thought and I spent a lot more money and I said, Why didn't you call me? So it is, it's a great philosophy and it really helps because I can't tell you how many clients,

especially in our area, there are very few people that are actually from Jacksonville. Sure. You know, most people are coming from all over. Yeah. They don't know those people that can do that work. And so it's a real beneficial service to offer. Yeah. We definitely try and promote.

Well, and I don't think unless like the card makes us top of mind every single month. And it's, it's, it's, I'm known for that card. I'm known for a few things, but the card is one of them. I love that. Yeah, that's a great idea. And it's catchy. It comes in a great envelope. It's like a, it's like a birthday card kind of envelope size, right? Okay. And the envelope is blue. So it stands out in the crowd of all the junk mail. Yeah. So people report to it. And I get a lot from vendors as a result. Okay. Yeah. And that's why I want them included in the card. Right. But then it's like, hey, can I be on the card this week? Let's see.

I love it. I love it. Yeah, I've been doing that probably since, I think, 2012. So forever. Okay. Yeah. It served me well. Well, that's great.

So you talked about you were in, it was, do you say Minnesota? Wisconsin. Wisconsin. Yes. Pretty close. Wisconsin. Well, when you were there, you mentioned before when we were talking that you had a team. So a lot of agents feel that the way that they're going to grow is to build a team.

And then they find out that it's kind of not as glamorous as they thought or not as profitable as they thought. Tell us your thoughts on that. Yeah, I think that's true. And there are some people, I mean, I'm somebody who I love teaching. I love helping. I've always enjoyed that and watching people kind of learn. and do things. But, you know, it just depends on what you want to do and really what your personality is, but also what your goal is, you know, what your personal passion is. And for me,

at the time in Wisconsin, when we started the business, our business was very unique in the fact that we had three developers that we worked with. And so just about everything we were doing was new construction. And it was a lot of, you know, being a site agent, so being on-site, on location, but I was also kind of a mini expediter. I also went to all the board meetings to you know, pitch the projects and talk to people. And so as a result of that, we would need people on the back end to either sit in model homes or help sell the buyer of the new construction home. You know, they had a house to sell. And I couldn't take those listings. And so I would, you know, give them to team members. So that really worked out well.

And, you know, for the most part, we had six agents and those six, five of the six were experienced. So it wasn't that they were new agents that needed a whole lot of training. It was more, you know, kind of coming over and working with us. And I liked that because it was, you know, I was just there for the occasional question. It was when they got stuck with something or kind of a one-off unique situation, you know, then we would find the answers to that. But building a team is hard. You know, it takes a lot of work.

There are a lot of questions. There's a lot of liability because at the end of the day, if you're the broker, you're responsible for anything that your agents do or say. Right. And so, you know, there's a lot of liability there. And for me, you know, looking at back at what we did in Wisconsin, I wouldn't have changed that because I like the setup and what we did there. But when we moved to Florida, you know, we made the conscious decision to,

to not have a team. So we could really kind of focus and fine tune our business and not have to be responsible for anybody else. It's not to say that we don't help and do team things and collaborate with people. We do that all the time because we really enjoy it. But it's just we didn't like the idea of adding more people onto the team just because it was, you know, kind of our brand, our reputation, and that's how we wanted to keep it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now when you moved to Florida, and you probably knew next to nobody, how did you launch that business? It was starting brand new all over again as if I was a brand new agent. And so it was starting with internet leads was the way that I got started. And at that time, I had a brokerage that had

basically paperclip ads that they gave and they were $25 a lead. So it was very inexpensive, but it was also very low returns. Yeah. You had to get a thousand of them and make the calls and do all the follow-ups and the, you know, 10 days of pain or whatever you want to call it. But I, you know, that's what I did and kind of slowly and surely built up the business. Then I figured out a little bit about Facebook ads and marketing. And that has been actually a real beneficial source for me because I've been able to, you know,

fine-tune that a little bit and get some good results from that. and then I dabbled a little bit with Zillow and with Realtor.com and with some of the other bigger, you know, companies as well. And it was really just a matter of, you know, tracking your spend and seeing where the ROI return. Right. It took me about three years before I kind of felt solid and stable in the business and started getting some repeat business and some referral business. And then it's kind of taken off from there. That's great. That's great. So one of my questions when I asked you to respond to,

fond to see about coming on the podcast was about AI. And you said, you're kind of limited on that. I am. So I do use chat GPT. And I'll use that for anything from, you know, writing a listing description, doing some of social media posts, some of that sort of stuff. But I know that there's so much more capabilities and capacity in there. And so I'm one of my goals is to basically take at least an hour a week and learn more about AI because it's so prevalent and there are so many different use cases for it. And it's stuff that I just need to really learn and kind of focus on because that's definitely a technology that's going to be around for a long time. And I think can be very beneficial if you know how to use it to your advantage. Yeah, I agree. I teach it. And I have a

webinar that's free and there's a downloadable guide. I'm doing them every month. And Every month, I change it up because every month it's evolved. So it's going at such a rapid pace that any realtor that chooses to only dabble in it will be really blown away by the ones who dive into it. I'm diving in. So I'm two and a half years into it. And as soon as I found out about it, well, I'm a techie, so I love this stuff. And so I, a matter of fact, I have full on communications.

it's like it's my buddy on a regular basis. There's, I ran out of space, which I didn't even know was a thing until recently. And I do the paid for version, the $20 month, not the $200. Okay. But you can create your own personal persona so that it always knows you when you ask a question. It's based, it knows everything, how you trained it. And that is simple to do. And it has a task feature in there where you could set up tasks for it to do, remind

you have tasks. Like, I have it at 6 o'clock every morning. It's supposed to tell me any updates that it's had and how to do the updates. And they're pretty consistent the happening. And I'm like, holy cow, okay, fine, I'll keep up with that. You know, the pictures, the videos, the things, how you can convert pictures into videos, it's staggering. I did the whole guide that I downloaded in harmony with chaty pt. And you can do presentations with Gamma, which is another whole thing. You just tell it what you want your presentation to be about and it creates these PowerPoint slides that are stunning with all the key points that you want, and you can adjust it and be done in nanoseconds. So the efficiency that it can bring.

And there's another one called Hoosie.a.ai that it just does everything. And for realtors, it's just too good. That's $99 a month. Very worth it because it organizes your whole business. It helps with your emails, your text. There's an AI component into it. I'm going to put all those links in this video just so you know people. I was going to start writing them down. Yeah. Well, in the webinar, I'm going to be doing that at the end of every month,

except for June because I'm gone in June. But every single month I want to do those because realtors aren't paying attention enough to this. The ones that are, because AI is coming at such an accelerated speed in our world that every industry will be affected by it. And the efficiency that it can offer those who choose to work with it is mind-blowing. The content that it can create for you, mind-blowing. I work in Portugal a lot.

I do outgoing referrals in Portugal. Okay. You may have people down in your area that want to invest in Portugal. You've got to reach out to me, buddy, because I will help you with agents that are over there. I'm trying to teach agents to think bigger, think outside their little circle, because we are a global economy because of tech. And Florida is a hot spot for investing in other parts of the world. Goodbye.

You mentioned Portugal. My wife is dying to go to Portugal. Oh, I'm going to be there almost the whole month of June. Very excited. Yeah. And so much to know. I did, I asked Chat Chupit, I said, I want to do business in Portugal. So I want to start doing LinkedIn articles.

about Portugal for the next 15 weeks. I want you to give me an outline of what would be key things that would be topics for a LinkedIn article. Boom, it gave me 15 things. I said, all right, every LinkedIn article needs a summary post. So will you create that as we start to create this? And it said, yes. Now, I'd already trained it on my style, how I write, how I talk, how I think.

So that it writes as if it's me. And now I can tweak things. And then the summary, in the summary, I said, I'm going to need hashtags that are going to relate to that that are SEO strong. So it creates that. And I said, okay, I'm going to want to do an Instagram post based on this. So that only allows me 1,200 words. So summarize it down to 1,200 words, include hashtags that relate to it because I have a whole different model on Instagram than I have on LinkedIn articles and I have on LinkedIn posts. Each one has a different algorithm that I wanted it to write for.

So I'm giving it the homework assignment. It already has the 15 topics, right? But here's the formula that I wanted to write. Now, my article I wanted it to be three to five minutes no more, because that's typical for an article on LinkedIn. And then I said, all right, now I'm going to need a picture to be my standout picture for this post. So give me four or five ideas on the perfect picture for this post. And then tell me where I can go get a picture like that for free.

Tells me all that stuff. And also the first part was it was creating a blog for my website. And I said, all right, I'm going to name you Betty the blogger. And every time I come back, Betty, I'm going to say, do number one. And now number one's going to be all those components for me in one powerful thing. And I'll review it. And then I'll just post it. So I said, and after that, I'll say, okay, number two is up next.

And it will do the exact same thing. I said, are you ready, Betty? and it says, yep, tell me when you're ready. I said, okay, go, number one. And it gave me everything I needed. I review it. I post them. It takes me maybe 15 minutes to post.

And I did that for 15 weeks. And that started to change my business in Portugal. Because now people are seeing me right all about Portugal. I would also say in there, if you're thinking about moving to Portugal, I have contacts in Portugal now. And so people would contact me and I would get outgoing referrals. I did a hotel for five million. I have an equestrian estate for two and a half million now and I have a potential castle. We don't have a price point on that one. That's the kind of things that start to happen because people are saying, who is this Kathy Burns? What's she doing out here? And why is she talking about

outgoing referrals. I want everyone to think bigger. I want the agents to look at their pool of clientele and see who's looking for investment strategies. Some of them may want to buy over in Portugal where because they have incredible rentals or they have short-term stays, much like we do here, right? But a buyer may say, boy, I'd love to go to Portugal once a year. I just love it there. and my favorite spots in the Elgar. And I'd say, okay, if you could buy something that would help you pay for the lovely place that you could have, where they could be furnished and you could rent it out and it was all property managed, decorated for you.

You got to stay there. You pick your time of frame that you want to go and they'll manage running it out and you can have this investment. And depending on the amount that you did it in, you could probably get a visa on it because that's another whole thing that could happen. And I have money exchangers that help with the money exchange. I have high-end luxury agents all over Portugal that can help. And that's what happened by starting to do those articles. Wow.

That's incredible. Yeah, it's pretty exciting. Yeah. I've got an attorney in New York and she is from Portugal and she works on getting the visas over there and getting things set up. So I'm building my army. Right. because I would like to go hang out in Portugal and have a place in my own as well.

So what made you pick Portugal to begin with? Well, funny enough, I was there probably 35 years ago and from a cruise. And I was, went up to, we landed in Lisbon and we went up to Sinta. I have a watercolor picture that I got from someone on the street. And I forgot about it. But it's been with me, all my moves that I've done. Sure. And EXP, that's company I'm with, they're in all these different countries.

And I said, boy, I'd like to go back to Portugal, you know. And we're in Portugal there. And I said, dude, maybe I could start doing outgoing referrals to Portugal and earn some extra money. I'm also going to be 75. I don't want to keep buying and selling. So I want to have residual income and a cool place to go hang out. And it's a good idea. Yeah.

Yeah. That's great. I love it. So start thinking of your database. And reach out to me any country, you almost name a country. I'm going to Spain at the end of June. I'll be in Portugal, the majority of June, but I'm going to Barcelona the last week. And I'm going to be making connections all over there as well because that's my mission.

And Spain is really revered as well. And Italy and France and England. I have, well, and I have Australia and New Zealand too. Wow. Very nice. I mean, just haven't dove into them yet. My next stop is Spain. So I'm working on that one since I'll be there at the end of June.

I love it. I love it. So anyway, all right. So other questions with you. I'm happy to send you that information, though, about the webinar. So you could get started on that. And that's complimentary. So any other tips you've got for people?

Like, do you use systems for staying in touch as far as like your clients' CRM or something? I do. So we've got. A CRM that we used, we had KV Core, and now we've got something called Real Scout. And that's been very helpful. But I will, I mean, for me, what I do with all my past clients, and this is something that I learned from the Ninja training class, is I'll actually print out a hard copy of a list. And I will literally, you know, go through and check off just for a text message or a phone call or whatever it is. because I know that they get things automated as far as postcards,

there's that thing. But as far as a personal touch, I want to be sure that I have that as well. And so I'll literally print out a hard copy and just cross it off because it's always in front of me at my desk. I always see it. And when I've got some downtime, I can knock out four or five of them in a day and that's get it done. That's smart. That's smart. So how do you see your business for this year? What are you doing different in this interesting market? Yeah. So, I mean, so far. this year, we've been off to a really good start. I know that this year is a little bit tougher for us, for a couple of reasons. One is we've just got more inventory than we've had for a long time. I mean,

for COVID, you know, with Jacksonville and with the state of Florida to begin with, you know, we were one of the states that were open during COVID. And so there was a mass of people that came here. And interestingly enough, now what we're seeing is a little bit of the reverse, because there were a lot of people who came and they thought that either their family was going to follow them or something else was going to happen. And long story short, you know, for whatever reason it didn't happen or the company that they work for now allows them to work from home. So they can work from wherever they want to work. And so a lot of people that moved in 2020, 21, 22 are now moving back to where they were from. because they don't have to, you know, they can do that.

They have the flexibility to do that. Now, with all that being said, there's still a ton of people that are moving to Florida. Sure. And so, you know, that's, you know, that's, we're fortunate in that respect. And we're just getting, I mean, there was just an article last week that in March of this year, we had the largest number. So in St. John's County, which is one of the larger counties here in Jacksonville. and it's the county that has the best schools in Florida.

So it's a very desirable area. A lot of people come here for the schools. In March in St. John's County, we have the largest number of increase in inventory than we've had since 2019. So, and, you know, that was staggering, but we're still getting back to kind of a quote unquote normal market, which people have forgotten about because we've been so, you know, abnormal of the last a couple years and we've had those definite unicorn years during COVID. But we're back with what I would say is a more balanced market and there is a little bit more inventory. The days on market is a little bit longer. And so, you know, the biggest thing for us is really dealing with our sellers and trying

to prepare them and let them know, look, you know, I'm sure you heard the story about your neighbor who sold their house in two days and had 30 offers. That was a year and a half or two years ago. Yeah. or back to a more normal market. So it's probably 65 to 75 days is normal. And, you know, that's what we're looking at. So it's really just setting that expectation and giving them the data to support that information front. So they know that you know what you're talking about and they feel comfortable with what you're doing.

And then the other thing is just, you know, consistently being in contact. We do at least once a week. We reach out to our sellers just to give them an update. Oh, yeah. happened this week. This is how many showings. This is what's going on. If we haven't had any showings, you know, is there a reason why? Do we need to do a price change or some other sort of adjustment to the home and just, you know, make sure that they're, again, comfortable with the plan that they're seeing what you're doing, that you're not silent and they just think you stuck a sign in their yard

and walked away. Right, right. So that's a cool part of it. Well, that's great. Any last words of wisdom or we got covered at all? No, I mean, you know, You know, I think I love your idea of thinking more globally and thinking bigger. That is something that's key. I mean, we make a lot of referrals to partners throughout the U.S., and it's critical to do that. And we also like to find agents in different states that can be our referral partners. Because once you can get somebody who you're comfortable with, then that takes all the guesswork out of it. And you're just able to send them that way and know that they're going to be well taken care of.

Yeah, yeah. Definitely building that database is huge. Right. So now start thinking global. We'll help your white finder spot. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right.

Thanks so much for being on here, Ben. I really appreciate it. Lots of good stuff. Of course. Yes. Thank you. I had a great time. Okay.

Great. Well, if you like that, stay tuned for more because we got lots of good people coming on and lots of good nuggets for everybody to benefit from. So hope you enjoyed it. Subscribe below and we'll see you on the next one. So thanks for joining me on this episode of Real state riches wasn't that great I'm sure you've got a nugget or two I know I did so if you liked

it please subscribe below share it with everybody make some comments we really find that invaluable and if you're thinking that you would love to talk about this a little bit more let's get to a business strategy call I'll have the link below let's see if we can't mastermind together and see if we can't empower each other that would be great so until next time signing off hope to see you on the next one