KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How I Made $200,000 GCI My First Year as a Full-Time Real Estate Agent with Agent Referrals

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Hey guys. I'm super excited. We've got Ali Garcide with us today. She's a phenomenal realtor with an incredible background and she's got, I think, a unique take on how she's built her business. And I think a lot of you listening will be like, it'll be an aha moment. And you're going to get a lot of value out of this. Allie, welcome to the program. Jim, thank you so much for having me. I am stoked to be here. It's always a pleasure talking to you. Awesome. I love it. Allie, I just want to start by talking about your background because I think it's interesting that you've, you spent a lot of time in the military and then you, you decided at some point, hey, I want to go into real estate. And I find that I've met a lot of people maybe in the

same position. I'm interested to see what hold you into real estate. So go ahead. Tell us your story. Oh, autonomy over my life. That's what I needed. Yeah. So I spent a decade active duty as an officer in the Air Force. I, out of those 10 years, I lived in eight different states and probably the same amount. of countries. And I just got tired of moving. I got tired of not having, you know, just overall autonomy over my life, choosing what I wanted to do with my day. So I got started originally in real estate with investing first. And what I did in the Air Force was I was I separated as a major. I was a special agent. So I worked for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, where we focused on felony level crimes. We investigated. A majority of our day was interviewing.

So that's like the biggest skill set that I took with me when I separated from the from the Air Force. And because now interviewing is no issue for me. You know, like, I'm not afraid to ask any questions. Veryively, right? Oh, yeah. So, yeah, after a decade, you know, I was like, should I spend another 10 years in order to get this pension? And out of those 10 years that I had remaining in order to retire from the military, three of those years, would have been deployed, year-long deployments.

So, you know, out of the three remaining years, seven are going to be somewhere in the States continuing to move. And I was like, I don't think the pension is worth it. Like emotion, you know, that was, so that was my emotional feeling. And then I was like, I don't make decisions based off that. So I was like, let me put this on paper. Let me see you financially if this was a good decision to make, to leave or not. And I did the math, you know, assuming I make, you know, lieutenant colonel,

and then assuming I make colonel, you know, at this year, this year compared to me being a real estate agent, you know, how much would I make? What's the, you know, pro and con at what point will I supersede one income over the other? And it was a no-brainer for me to go full time into being a real estate agent. So I went from Allie, the special agent to Allie, the real estate agent. And you're known on social as Allie the agent, right? Is that right? On everywhere, yes. Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of handed in. So that's kind of interesting. So you get into the real estate business, it's like, okay, I got this epiphany. I want to take control of my life. life, take control my financial future. What were the steps that, because you've been very successful,

what are the steps for you to kind of take control and run your business? I went ham. Like, I was, because my back, I felt like my back was against the wall. Was my back against the wall? No, but that's how I feel. That's like the type of person that I am. You know, like I could easily go to the FBI. I could easily do any other three-letter agency, but I didn't want that because that was, again, still very militaristic in let me tell you where to move your entire family and all of that, which is what I did not want. So I knew that I wanted to work for myself. So I got started as a real estate agent when I was still a full-time active duty. So my first year as a real estate agent, I was part-time, and I closed 20 trends. So my goal was to replace my major income, which at the time was like

$120,000, maybe a little bit more than that. And that was in Tucson, Arizona, where in other, it's hard to have a job in Tucson, Arizona that makes 120 unless you're at Rade the on. So, yeah, when I was looking about, like, looking around other career fields, I was like, this is going to be difficult, you know? So I became a licensed realtor. And I was like, you know what? This is my goal. Just to make 120. I would even be okay with 80. You know, like I'll take a pay cut as long as I get some of my sanity back. So, but I wanted to prove myself before I made such a big decision as to leaving the Air Force, which it would be very difficult in my position to go back in.

I wanted to make sure that financially I would be okay. And so I gave myself one year of that overlapping, you know, time frame to make $120,000. And I was like, if I make $120,000, replace my income in one year, I'll be okay. I will trust myself enough to know that I can do it again, especially if I go from part-time agent to full-time agent. And I made that in eight months. So I was going to say, wait a second, you're still in the military and you're selling a little at the same time? So you're doing, wow. I went ham, Jim. A lot. That's a lot of work. It was a ton. It was a ton of work. I locked out a little bit,

you know, because my boss was at the time I worked procurement fraud, so companies defrauding the military. And my immediate boss was actually not co-located with me. So he was in a different state. So I had a little bit autonomy of more autonomy over my schedule. But it was still a lot of work. I was still traveling with the military. Like I still was leaving the country sometimes. So, but I made it a point to like, this was it. I had one year to freaking prove to myself, can I do it or not? and do I like it? Right. And I check both boxes.

I love it. So in that year where you, I mean, a lot of agents, I mean, 50% of agents in America don't close less than two transactions, right? So you came in, you closed a ton. You made 80 grand, which for a lot of people would be a life-changing amount of money, right? 120. Yeah, 120, right? Yeah. So you came out there and crushed it.

What did you do? I mean, how did you create that kind of business? What was your system? I told every person that I have ever made contact with. You know, like, hey, hey, Jim, we haven't seen each other in 13 and a half years, you know, but just to remind you, my name is Ali Garzad. I've, you know, like I literally found your name in my phone book and my contact list, you know, I'm not that old.

And I just wanted to catch up. Like literally, I was sparking conversations everyone. It sounds so basic, but that's because it is, you know, like, I think a lot of people really want the glamour of like, oh my gosh, using AI to score a thousand one deals your first year. It's freaking texting and calling. And I'm actually more of a fan of texting. I did a lot of my. So I closed 20 transactions my first year as a part-time agent. And then since then I've been licensed less than three years and I've closed 100. Yeah. And I since then, because a lot of my my audience, my friends, my family, being that I was in the military for 10 years, are military.

I knew of a lot of people moving, but they just weren't moving to my area. So that's great. You know, like in the beginning, I was like, oh, if you're not moving to Tucson, dang, okay, next, you know. But then I was like, wait, I can make referrals from this. I can connect you to like a good agent that actually knows their stuff when it comes to the VA loan and a good lender that knows their stuff that can help you get your property. you know, your offer approved. So I turned my business, my second year in the business doing this to more of an outbound referral agent. I fell in love with the act of prospecting and I connected my people, my military, you know, serving members to agents that are worth their while.

Yeah. So this is interesting because when you're coaching agents and I coach agents across the country, you know, we're lucky if they get 10% of their income from referrals. But obviously, you've turned it into a whole business model here. So this is really fascinating, actually. So what's that look like? Is it because of the military connection and military people are by nature moving a lot? Is that the secret of success? Or is it a combination of things? That was the secret to my success, being that I had such a bit, you know, my Instagram, all military followers, you know, and some from my high school days in New York. But mainly it was people that were all over the country, sometimes all over the world. So I highly suggest this to other potential, to other agents who have moved around a lot in their lives.

Yeah. Do not sleep on referrals. This is a little bit harder to get into if you have only ever been in one location. Right. So what's your messaging when you're putting it out there like, hey, I'm, I'm your referral agent. I'm your go-to. Is that how you put it out to? What is that?

How do you get the messaging out? Is it through social? Is it emails? Is it a combination? What's it looks like? It's actually, so it's a mixture of both I Can Connect You type of like call to action as well as I am doing this myself helping people in St. Paul, Minnesota and Tucson, Arizona. So because the proof of concept, you know, like, oh yeah, Ali's an agent and she's actually in the

business, you know, like, so putting any sort of, what do you, what's the phrase like document instead of create, you know, when it comes to content, don't just make stuff up, like just document what you're already doing because people want the behind the scenes anyway. So like one of my most recent reels recently, or I don't know if I've scheduled it to post yet, but I did a did two weeks of equity reviews. So anybody that hits me up, no matter where you live, I will do an equity review for you. I'm going to, I'm going to, if I don't already know of a good agent there, I'm going to connect with them to see what their, you know, thinking is strategy is on the market.

Yeah. And so I have a reel coming out. how I did a couple of equity reviews. So no matter where in the world, if you've ever thought about selling or you just want to know how much equity you have in your house, reach out to me.

Brilliant, brilliant. Because oftentimes we think, oh, we can only do the local, but that's not true. If the referral, you can do it anyway, right? Love it. 100%. Yeah.

So when you're, let's talk about the selection process now with agents. When you're choosing the agent you're going to refer this business to, how do you go about that? What's the process for finding a great agent

on the other side? I'm glad that you asked this question. So I have checklist for everything. I am a checklist nerd, checklist queen, whatever you want to call it. So I have a checklist specific on how to find an outbound referring client, an agent, a lender, how to make sure the conversation is going okay, how to make sure you get paid, and how to make sure to do it again. So in our community, we have a bunch of military members, sometimes the military,

members are still active duty and real estate agents, you know, dual career or sometimes they're veterans or military spouses. I love those communities being that those are my clients. So they speak the same language, you know, like when are you PCSing? What's your report or later than date? So it's key phrases that lock you in, you know, as opposed to being like, what's a report no later than date? You know, like at that point, you've lost the report. So I look at my network first. If I don't have anybody there, then I go to the, so that's my network of my partners, right? Like within my own sphere.

Then I go to my brokerage and I look up in our database there. Who's there? I look up their reviews. If for some reason, if you're not in like a worldwide or cloud-based brokerage, then you can just Google and call and vet. And so what I do is I actually do not focus on the one with the most amount of five-star reviews on Google because they're going to pass them off to somebody else. Even though, like, chances are if they're that big, they specifically are not going to be the one

servicing your friend and you don't want your friend to get bad service. So I love focusing on those between like that have between 10 and 20 five-star reviews on Google or on Zillow. So that way they're active in the business and they're hungry. Yeah. So yeah. So what I do is a 30% referral good for two transactions every single time because again, my clients are military. They're going to be buying and then they're going to be selling. Sure.

And yeah, I usually what I do is I stay. This may sound too much, but it works. You know, like I've got this down to a system where it works. I'm in the group chat throughout the entirety of the transaction. Am I poking in and am I saying stuff? you know, like, no, it's not my, it's not my market. I don't, and I will never, any question that the client asks of me, I will always refer back to you, Jim. Hey, you're the, you're in Pennsylvania. Like, if you want me to say anything that helps you out, that's truthful, obviously. I'm here to be

a reinforcement, but I found before I was making that group text, the drop-off rate would increase a lot. So having the group chat with me on it throughout the entire of the transaction, it, you know, longer have to update me on, hey, I went to the listing appointment. We got the listing. Hey, we're under contract. I see it. And this is really, really interesting. So I've never this before. This is a brand new idea and concept, which I love. And I've been doing this for 35 years. So this is brand new. So group, when you're, when you're calling them signing up, when you call somebody to say, hey, I saw your reviews and you have a referral, I'm going to send them to you. Here's it. Here's the yada yada. You say it's required that you, we set up a group chat and you are

going to be having me linked into the group chat, the whole transaction is that we say to that? To the agent? Yeah. I don't use the word required, but yes. Usually what I say is, so like I just made this call yesterday. Yeah. What's this conversation like? Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, Jim, I saw that you're a kick-ass agent out in Dover, Pennsylvania. How are you doing? I'm great. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah. So my name is Ali Garcid.

I am a licensed agent with EXP Realty and I'm in Tucson, Arizona. And I also serve St. Paul, Minnesota. And I have a client that's looking to purchase. I'll be helping them in the purchase, but they're looking to sell their property in your area. And I'm calling around to see who they might best work with. And that way they can get the most for their, you know, biggest bang for their buck. And you have some really, really good reviews. The first question that I want to ask you is, are you going to be, do you work with clients directly

or is there anyone else on your team that's going to be working with the clients? Only me. And assistant. Okay, cool. Awesome. And the assistant is that going to be like a showing agent? No, just a behind the scenes admin. Perfect. Okay, cool. Yeah. Yeah. So typically what I do, it will actually, I should also ask, do you have availability to take on another client? Absolutely. Love to help. Okay. And do you service this zip code frequently? Yes. Yep. It's my number one area. Awesome. Yeah. Sweet. That sounds great. Yeah. So my clients are military. And,

Do you know how many like VA loan, uh, VAL loans you've worked with over the last like 12 months? I've probably done three of the last 12 months. Okay. Okay, cool. Is that, does it seem to not be too common in that area then? It's not as common as you might think. So it's just, you know, I get a sprinkling of them, but not a ton of it.

Yeah. Do you find that there are those offers, the VA loan are kind of harder to, uh, to sway to get accepted? Um, it just depends on the conversation with the seller and the seller's motivation. You know, if they're competing, you definitely, you know, you definitely got to think about that whole strategy overall for sure. It's a strategy session. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I saw that you have really, really good reviews. That's the reason why I called you. And so what I normally do is 30% referral, good for two transactions normally, but since you're going to be helping them sell and I'll be helping them

buy, it'll just be good for one transaction. As soon as I'll sign the paperwork over, I'll send it to you tonight. As soon as it's signed, I will start the group chat. And I do ask, though, Jim, that I stay on the group chat throughout the entirety of the transaction. And that's because I find that my clients will not ghost you if I am there as well. So is that something that would work for you? Love it. Yes. Yes, that's a great idea. Love it. Yeah. I do the same thing when I get some inbound referrals because I don't want anybody ghosting me. And I've already established that level of trust there. So I want to make sure that I'm just there.

I won't be annoying. I'm not going to do anything. I don't know your market. So awesome. So I'm going to send over that referral to you. You should see the next like two hours or so. And then likely tomorrow or as soon as a paperwork signed, I'll start the group chat. And yeah, I'll give you more information there. Awesome. Thank you for the referral. Beautiful conversation. So I love the way you roll that. Now, just let's get technical for a second. The group chat, are you doing that through Messenger? Are you doing it through just your iPhone or whatever? Or how are you doing the actual chat?

Yeah, text. Yep, just iMessage. I message. Okay. I didn't know if some people like only use messenger or whatever, but okay, perfect. And then the other interesting thing that you're doing, which I think 90% of agents aren't doing is the two, you know, I know you did in this case, but the two deal referral. And that's brilliant.

I want to ask you, how do you track that over time? How do you make sure that they're sticking with you for both transactions? are you it's because you're in still constant contact with your client or how is it how are you tracking that it is constant contact because the referral you know it's it's it's okay you know it but at the end the day it's a piece of paper and so yes it's always up to you if you want the business it's up to you to track so they're on my tracker forever okay cool so what does this look like in terms of like how many referrals are you standing out a month a week what's that looks like for you So last year was my first year full-time real estate agent, and I made $200,000 GCI just off of outbound referrals.

Wow. Incredible. Yeah. Yeah. And if you think about that, that's a lot of business because you're only getting 30% of the transaction, right? So it's a tremendous amount of referrals, really, when you think about it. How do you equate that? Do you know the number of referrals that you sent?

I mean, the actual number? Oh, man, you know what? I usually love my numbers, but I don't have that number. Okay. Yeah, I track how much money ends up in my pocket. Plus, so, 2023 also had a lot of referrals out to California, too. And this year has actually been a lot to Georgia.

And like the panhandle. So it's like different price points, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's talk about your database size. I mean, a lot of people today talk about you have your social audience size, which is a different thing than your CRM size. And I'm curious, just because you're generating so much business, how big is your CRM day of a size to generate that level of referrals? Not that big, actually. Yeah, 1,500 people in my CRM. Well, I mean, I consider that not that big.

I guess that's big for most people. Okay. Yeah. And then I only really have on Instagram, which is my biggest lead source platform right now, Instagram and YouTube. On Instagram, I have fewer than 5,000 followers. And on YouTube, I have less than 1,000. And YouTube is actually, YouTube and Instagram are the highest converting. With your 1,500 people, because that's a big number for you being in the business, you know, less than three years. How did you get to 1,500? That's a lot. That's a big number. So I know you don't think it's big, but it is big. So how did, is Is that people that you're converting from, hey, I saw you on Instagram and then they go into your CRM? Or are there people that you actually know, like and trust you?

I mean, what's their defining difference there? When I first started out, it was no like and trust, but people that I actually wanted to talk to. You know, I'm not going to throw, sometimes I will throw people on there and I literally will use the hashtag asshole. So that way, I will not talk to them. You know, like, right? And then so as I continue or as I started doing it. transactions, then it, you know, people naturally find my website or hear me on a podcast or whatever. I will then add them from them following me on Instagram to my KVCorp.

Gotcha. Okay. So they're flowing from one to the other to grow it out. Yes. But I don't talk to them on my KVCore because that's a new number. If they're comfortable on Instagram, we're going to do Instagram until I refer them out. Then it's going to be a text message. You know, I'm not going to just throw an extra. phone number on there. A lot of people don't even know that I have my KB Corr number. They just have my personal or they just have my Instagram, Facebook, what have you. Got it. Okay. And so I'm curious too. So that, so you had $200,000 plus in business that way, but you're still selling some real estate where you're locally like traditional buy sell deals or

it's all or use your business all referral. In the beginning, I was helping clients, buyers and sellers individually. Yeah. Then I realized majority of my, my, my, uh, clientele or majority of my followers were not in Tucson. What do you know? So I switched to outbound referral. I also since then have moved though from Tucson to St. Paul, Minnesota. So I am starting another YouTube channel just on listings. So I will be focused on listings selling in St. Paul while also continuing the outbound referrals. The outbound referral really started because I had this sounds like very cocky to say I don't know what other way to put this, but I had too many clients to handle and I wanted things done my way with my checklist, like for the buyers,

for the sellers, for everything. I got a checklist for everything. So that's how I started growing my community. And now we're up to 65 agents in two countries. That's great. So let's talk about your social strategy because you've got you're on YouTube and you're on Instagram primarily. What does that look like for you? What's the posting schedule called how many posts are you putting out video content versus traditional photo content? that kind of thing. I started with one channel, and it was one long video a week. And by long, I mean like over 15 minutes.

And now that I have four channels, it's, I can't do one a week. All right, I could, but that's like all I would be doing. So now I pretty much have one to two videos a month. And those videos, I try to be as beefy as possible. A lot of my videos, very long. Yeah, a lot of those videos are like 30 minutes plus. So, and then also I also switched my social media strategy to where in 2023 I'd posted a short, like a real every single day in 2023. And it was really just not sustainable.

And it was more of like a top of mind if someone happened to be scrolling when I posted. And I wanted something a little bit more evergreen, 100%. Yeah, and that's kind of like where it comes back to what kind of struggle, good or bad, or, you know, what kind of client review or what's happening with your current clients. So proof that you're actually working and then turning that into a video. But otherwise, like if it's going to be a newer-ish idea, of course, the idea has always come to me in the shower. So I hop out of the shower. I have a Trello where I have all of the different just titles. or if I have thought more deeper into it than in the body of that Trello card, I'm going to add

like certain quotes that I want to say or bullet points, statistics, anything that really has come to mind. And then on Saturdays and on Wednesdays, I try to shoot long form videos. And that's where I pull out, I look at the list of everything I've created so far, which, I mean, I have, I don't even need to be, I should not be adding more to this list. I have way, way more than necessary. Then I pick a couple that I want to talk about and I record. Gotcha.

And are you doing all the editing? Are you handing that off to a third party editor? Absolutely not. I don't know how to edit. I don't know how to do a thumbnail. I've never been on Canva. I'm not cutesy like that. I hire out like the least amount of work that I can do.

That's my motto. Who can I pay to do it? Right. Well, that's brilliant. It's the who not how, right? I don't want to know how. I'll just have somebody else to it, right? Yes.

So when you're just down to YouTube, I'm just curious. Are you boosting things? Are you paying the YouTube algorithm, like to push people into your channel, or is it all organic? All organic. I've taken a bunch of YouTube courses. I've consolidated that I've paid for. I've consolidated everything that I learned from those YouTube courses,

and I actually made a YouTube video on how to do YouTube for real estate agents. And that's actually one of the things that they say to never do is never share your channel, never share the link, and don't pay for advertisement. So I made the mistake on one of my channels to pay for a listing that I had. And that was more so for like proof for the next seller. Like, hey, this is how many views we received on this past seller. But I saw that it did stump the growth of that channel because I started two. channels at once and one has double the amount of subscribers. So that's the only difference aside from the topic. So yeah, so I do not share my channel out and because the worst thing that YouTube sees is

someone going on to, you know, Jim's YouTube channel clicking a video and then Xing out. So the worst thing you can do is say, hey, Jim, like I just finished a YouTube video. Can you like, can you watch it or can you just like it, even if you like it, if you didn't watch all the way to the end and then watch another one of my videos, I wasn't worth it to you. And therefore, YouTube thinks I'm shit. Right. So that didn't bridge it. Gotcha. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. In terms of like, let's talk about branding for a second, because branding is a big deal. Are you, do you, have you had a professional brand created? Are you got a certain look and a certain skins that you're using all the time? How does that, How's that playing everything?

I do not. Yeah, I do not. You know, I have the Allie, the agent, and I don't have like a specific color for my newest channel for Minnesota with the Vikings. I chose like that color purple and yellow, whatever. I don't even do football, but I'm like, I'm sure it'll resonate. So go sports. But like, as far as like a color palette or a low,

I think I have one somewhere. It's just really not as important to me. What's more important is my personality. So the more that I can showcase that I curse, a military, you know, this is what you're going to get, take it or leave it. The more my people come. So yeah. So you got to know your audience. Your audience is that's going to appeal to them. They're going to like that, right? So I think that's really interesting. Wait until they're doing this whole time. Right. I love it. Then reach out. Allie, you've just given us a bunch of really unique fresh content and ideas for us to use in the business. Thank you so much. Incredible. Good job. If you like this content, you want to see more. You want to join us here at E real estate coach

and the podcast. Give us a like, give us a follow. Give us a review. We'd appreciate it. Thank you, Ellie, for being here today. Thank you, Tim. Have a great one. Thank you.