KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How This Couple Built a Thriving Business Empire

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

It's Marguerite Chris Pillow and it's time for real estate real world. And I'm excited about this interview today because I've really watched this young lady grow and blossom over the years. And I remember when she was like not even a mom yet and not even married. And I remember doing a podcast with her years ago. And it's been really fun to just watch her and her life take off. And she's extraordinary on social media among the million other things. things that she does. I think if she doesn't have 200 million things on her plate, she wouldn't know what to do with herself. So that's okay. We've all been there, right? Us moms trying to pull it all

together. So today, my very special guest is Rachel Adams Lee. She's a small town girl making moves. She's a top 1,000 agent in the U.S., a multi-passionate entrepreneur and new mama. She runs four, count them four, six and seven figure businesses with her hubby and lives life on her terms. She loves helping others tap into their true potential and build the business of their dreams. Facts, positivity is her jam. You can find her snuggled on the couch in yoga pants, hair and a messy bun with her laptop. She's five feet tall. Loves all things social media and obsessed with being the mom that she is as well as an extraordinary wife to her great husband, Ryan. So welcome, welcome, Rachel. I'm so happy to be here. I know. I'm excited. I know we've had to we've had to mix this up

few times because life happens, doesn't it? It sure does. I think it's so funny because when I see people who have all this like perfectly laid out, organized plan and all that, and I'm like, life is what happens when you're busy planning because you can have this big old master plan. And especially right now, you have three kids under the age of four now. Yeah, we have four. We have four year old Henry, two year old Harrison and one year old Hayden. And I love watching a lot of your social media where you should. show how different their personalities are because I raise six kids and five of them are boys. And their personalities are so different. To this day, even now my kids are grown. The youngest

are 27 and 28. And they couldn't be more night and day. Yeah, I think about all the time, like one of them will, like our middle child. So our oldest is like very obedient, listen to the rules. He's a sassy four-year-old. So there's that. But he just, he's a rule follower. And then our middle one is hold my beer. And then. He's just like climbing on things and looks me in the face and is like, no. I'm like, you're probably would have never done that. So definitely he is my spirit, though, in my husband's body. So my husband is five feet or five feet tall.

My husband is six, three and tall and skinny. And I'm five feet tall and curvy. So he's, but I'm like all the sass. So he's got my personality, but with my husband's body, he's like a little string being. It's so funny because Jake is our middle child. And we called him the Tasmanian devil when he was. because he was just wild all over the place. And the funny thing is, I'll never forget, we were at Walmart one time,

and we lost him in the Walmart. He was like three years old, right? He took off. So the thing is, we tested out the Code Adam system because they immediately shut down the Walmart, put people at all these stations, and he had just wandered off into the corner and was playing under this little clothing.

And John, my youngest would always answer you if you'd say hey he'd always make a noise Jake cricket so you'd spend forever trying to hunt him down and figure out where he's out and what he's doing but they are my greatest joy they're my greatest joy they're the best thing ever and also exhausting and makes me want to drink wine so it's fine I have a big stash of wine trust me you can come over anytime you want so now you on top of being this great mom and you've married to the love of your life. And you have been building a few different businesses, but how I've known you primarily has been through real estate. And you got into real estate with 2012. What year did you get in?

2012. So I started my business with door knocking and open houses. So I door knock 200 doors a week and did three open houses every week. So my beginning of real estate was definitely intense. I didn't have people. People were like, your database, your buyers, your sellers. Like I didn't have it. I was like, I don't know what my database is. I've never sold houses before. And I really was like under the impression that once I got my license, everybody would just give me referrals. I thought that's how this worked. And I was like, weird. I have this business card.

Where are you? And so I door knocked 200 doors to three open houses every week. And I did that for seven months. It didn't sell any houses for the first four months. So like I questioned if this was the right industry, if I should like just change my whole tune. But I also at that point in my life, like I was in a really unhealthy marriage. I was doing everything for everyone else. Like, I didn't really have direction on what I wanted my life to look like.

But I heard that like the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting a different result. And so I had to make changes in my personal life. But then even though I didn't selling houses the first four months, I ended up selling 39 houses that first year. And then 100 and 123. So three years in, that's when I hit the Wall Street Journal's top 1,000 agents in the country. We still have that today. And it's been a wild ride, honestly, Marguerite. Like I've had, I've built teams, blown up teams because I did it the wrong way.

I've always committed to personal production. But when I decided I wanted to be a mom, I didn't know that we were going to have the fertility struggles that we did. We've had four losses on our journey to make our family. I'm still trying to convince my husband for one more, by the way. Wait, now it's a hard no. And but I knew that if I was going to have a family, the pace of knocking all the doors and doing all the open houses wouldn't work.

being gone every single Friday, Saturday, and Sunday would not work. And that's when I decided I was going to really start to build through social media. And I'm self-taught. And I really learned about the algorithm. I thought there was a lot of pressure to be on every platform like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat. And I started with Facebook. And when I really got that dialed in, I then launched my Instagram channel.

When I got that launched, I then launched my YouTube. And for me, that was really the best way to be able to figure this whole thing. out because it was like, it was crazy. Like it was definitely intense. I'm a business. I like systems. And so I created a system around my social media so that I could truly have what we refer to as the life by design. So it's doing what I want to do when I want to do it with who I want to do it with. And what I love about building a business through social media is I have truly built this whole thing. Like we had over a hundred referrals come through last year through social media for real estate. And I get two types of referrals. I get client and community referrals, so people local wanting to use me. And then also

realtors around the country. And so I really have been intentional with making sure that every time I get on social, I'm adding value, whether I'm educating someone on something or I'm just entertaining and providing some laughter or making them feel like as a mom, I really share the beautiful, the messy, like all the things about being a working mom. I decided that I really wanted to focus on the working mom angle because that's what I am. And I was aware that I was aware that I was. I might alienate some people because I talk a lot about being a working mom. But I also watch my insights and I know that 77% of my audience is women. So I felt like I was okay with that.

So how everyone talks about the algorithms and I always get a little confused and overwhelmed by them, right? Yeah. Is how do you really figure out what those are and what direction to take? I know that a big percentage of my audience is also women. Yeah. I don't think it's quite 77%. but it's definitely a large following are women.

But it also varies by the portal. Do you find that as well? Is it different on Facebook versus Instagram versus like TikTok? Like I'm old school. I did. All I did was Facebook for a long time. Now I have Instagram and TikTok, but I'm still about it. I'm pretty across the board.

Like I detract more of a female dominant audience. The algorithms, I feel like they're this like weird, like confusing, sexy thing. where you're like, I want to be a part of it. I think I want to beat it. So the way that I think about the algorithm is the goal of any social media platform is to keep you on it as long as humanly possible. So whatever you're interested, it's going to give you more of that. So when I was pregnant, that I got babies, birth, onesies, pacifiers.

And I was interested in that. So it kept feeding me that, right? And the way I want you to think of the algorithm, even to break it down is like tools. You can make a post. You can comment on something. You can like something. You can go live. you can do a direct message, you can do an audio message. All of these things are tools within the

algorithm. The more tools that you use on a platform, the more I's the Facebook or Instagram is going to give you on your content. So there is a way to work with the algorithm to train it to give you more of what you want, but also put you more in front of the people who you want to be in front of. And that's really where I got super intentional and I said like, how can I add value to my audience? What are they looking for? And so what I really did is I decided that I was going to go and I was going to break my social media down within five different categories. So number one, I was going to talk about real estate, the industry that I meant. But then I'd come up with four other things that I would talk about regularly that had nothing to do with real estate. But people work with people they like and they want to know that they have something

in common with you. And so when I'm sharing every time I make a post at the end, what you'll notice, if you go on my Instagram and you look at any of my reels, at the very end, I say, follow Rachel Adams Lee and I tag myself so it makes it real easy for them to just click that follow button for more tips on building a business through social media, all things real estate, and being a working mama of three boys. So that's training the algorithm right there every single time. This is my audience I want. People that are working moms, like I'm a boy mom, like I put that out there, people that are realtors or interested in real estate and building a business through social media because I'm also a social media coach, right? So a really good idea is to come up with a little

tagline that you put on every single post that you do at the end because you're training the algorithm who you're looking for because what the algorithm is doing is it's looking for keywords. Keywords that like, so you know how if you do a reel, you put work, you put captions on the screen, right? The algorithm is scanning that constantly and it's looking for, you. for what you're talking about, and then it feeds your content in front of the people that are looking for more of what you're looking for. So I get put on the explore page all the time

because people are looking for the content that I'm putting out there, and I make sure that I do two things. I do things to help realtors build their business, but then I also position myself locally as the buyer and seller expert for Northern California. So that's probably the best explanation I've heard of it, because I understand what you're saying about the algorithms,

because same thing, have a new grandbaby. And so all of a sudden, I started seeing all the, all the baby stuff everywhere. I was searching for things for my grandson. Of course. And so I was like, okay, now I'm going to start ending up with all this baby stuff. But it's training it both ways because it's what you're looking for, but you're making sure that your content has information that people are searching for, right? Exactly. I want to put myself in front of my ideal audience. So when they need to buy or sell a house, they're looking at me. And so this even goes for like hashtags. So you can people are like, do hashtags matter? Do they like people get stuck on it? Hashtags think of them like keywords. I'm talking

about buying a home, selling a home, Sacramento lifestyle. You can do up to 30 hashtags on a post, but geo hashtags are really important. So every time I do my 36 of minor geo hashtags and I say Sacramento lifestyle, Granite Bay Living, I specifically mentioned the cities that I serve. And that's called geo hashtags and that's training your algorithm when people are looking for real estate in your area it's going to pop you right in front of them so i guess i'm not even sure what a geo hashtag is then it's just taking a general hashtag and yes instead of saying buy a home it's sacramento home it's like sacramento lifestyle got it okay for the area the city you serve and you don't want to be like california because that's too broad you want to talk about the city that you serve hit four or five

cities or whatever. If you're just one city, then go deep on it. Exactly. That's fantastic. And so how has this related to your team and what you're doing with your team? Because I know that you have said you're rebuilding your team again, right? I can't even. Okay. I have had a team for almost 11 years. I just celebrated my 12th year this month, actually, in real estate. And I do think of it as a celebration because I think this business is beautiful and it's messy. And it's, it's hard and it's chaotic and it's rewarding. And so I love real estate. I really do. I plan on being in it the rest of my life. My grandma was a realtor and so was my dad. And I said I'd never, ever go into the industry, which I think is funny now. But when I first decided I wanted to launch a

team, I went to a real estate convention, saw all these agents on stage. And I'm like, the only difference between them is me and they have a team. So I'm going to go home. I'm going to ask all my friends to get their real estate license and come work for me. Now I said work for me, not with me. First mistake. My first team totally blew up. I didn't know what I was doing. Then I decided if I was going to build a team, I would honestly think of it like, like I would take a piece of paper and I would draw a line down the middle. On this side, I'm like, this is what you can expect for me.

And on this side, I'm like, and this is what I expect from you. So I got my expectations clear, my system's clear. And I decided, so 2023 for us was my most challenging year that I've been, that I've had in real estate since I got in 2012. I think for a lot of us, it was a really difficult year. And I found myself where I had an eight year and a 10 year agent leave the team. And I had the expenses of a 1.5 million GCI team. And I didn't have the production.

And I was like, okay, something has to change. Total transparency. And I haven't said this publicly. But I actually considered like shutting down the team. Like maybe I just call it and I just focus on real estate coaching because it's going so well. But I get so many referrals through social media. And I was like, that would be really dumb. So instead, what we decided to do is to dig our freaking heels in.

So this is what it looked like. The first thing we did is we slashed all of our expenses. We literally looked at every expense that we had and was like, what do we absolutely need to keep and what can we take away? The next thing we did is we took our transaction coordination business and made it with the virtual. So we hired a virtual assistant to do our TC and we still charge our TC fee. And that's been really helpful for us.

The next thing that we did is I recommitted to being in the office. So after pandemic, we all got, I think we got lazy and we got used to working from home, but I've got three kids. And if I'm home, I want to hug my babies. And I'm just not as focused as if I'm in the office. So I recommitted to regular business hours. So I'm in the office Tuesday and Thursday. And then the second and fourth Wednesday every month because I do team meetings.

That might not sound like a lot, but it's enough and it's consistent. And my people know they can count on me. Then I committed to my own personal production. So I've always really been big on social, but I decided to add back in expired calls. I used to have eight years ago, I called expired listings and have really good luck with it. So I'm back on my expired calls now. And that's going really well. And then what else did I do?

We started to recruit. So I've always recruited for buyers and sellers. I'm sorry. I've always lead generation, lead generated for buyers and sellers. So I started to lead generate for agents. what does this look like? I send out postcards to pre-licenses, new licenses, and other realtors I respect in the industry. I took over career night in my market center. So I run career night every single month now. I show up on social media and I talk about our team and I talk about

the opportunity and what it looks like to build on our team. Online ads. I do online ads for our team as well. And in the end of November, we had four full-time agents on the team. And now, I don't know when this is going to be airing, but we're in our first quarter and we have 17 full-time agents on the team. I have two interviews next week scheduled. Like my life is now I lead, generate for buyer, sellers, and agents. But the thing that I'll tell you that's different is we partnered with a company called Place and they're awesome because you don't have to leave your brokerage and it's a it's helped support they help team support and have more leverage but like I can recruit to literally like 85% subsidized healthcare I couldn't do that before so now I can

talk about coming to the team with healthcare which is a big deal but the bigger thing is like my system so I had previously a 90 day onboarding that you come on my team you'd have 90 days to do this training and we'd do stuff together and you'd come on a listing with me and then after six or eight months it's working or it's not working now I took my 90 day onboarding I re-recorded everything I have it like on a super streamlined Excel spreadsheet checklist with milestones and check-ins and they have two weeks they have two weeks to do this intense pre-launch is what I call it and it's two weeks for them for me to see how they show up and if they're going to do the things they need to do and two weeks for me to show up and them to see if I do the things that I say I'm going to do.

And then after they graduate the two-week pre-launch, they then move into our 86-day agent launch where the average new agent sells 3.4 houses in those 86 days, and the average seasoned agent closes 9.8. It's completely changed my business, Marguerite. Like, I'm able to bring on a volume of agents, but like the culture we have right now is like freaking magical. And the production, like we had nine open houses held last weekend. That's like in my dreams.

Like I've never had the culture that we have. I think we have, I think nine different languages spoken right now on the team. Like the team is we're representing all different cultures, all different languages. We can help so many more people. Like you can feel my excitement. I'm like, yeah, this is freaking cool. But it's taken me 12 years to get here. So let me ask you this because I think one of the biggest challenges with teams is in bringing on new agents.

because I think a lot of agents, a lot of people in general think we don't do a whole lot. So they think, oh, my gosh, I can go sell real estate and make a bazillion dollars. And they don't really realize the work that's required. So how does that work after a couple weeks? Are you willing to cut them loose if they don't do what they need to do? Yeah, we've had three that we call it deselected. You really have to have a standard. I think that I have, I like people.

I'm a people person. and I want to make everybody happy. I actually got last year, this is a fun fact for you because you and I have talked about this before. Last year, I got therapy to learn how to release people pleasing. And this year, my therapy is about learning how to release comparison because this business is rough with comparison. And social media, like, I know that I'm a coach and I should be above it and I'm not.

And so there are certain days where I'm like on it and other days where I'm tearing myself down because I'm not as far as someone else than doing this and doing that because I like people and I want to make them happy. I'm like, we can figure it out. It's good. It's not good. You have two weeks. I have two weeks.

After two weeks, we talk about it. And the thing is, they have to graduate. If they haven't graduated after two weeks, they're not doing the things they need to do. And it's not too much. It's intense, but it's not too much because we just had nine people graduate going through our pre-launch who then got to move on to launch. So the other thing that I will say about it too, it's pre-recorded. So I'm not like in the beginning when I brought someone on my team, I'd spend six full

days with them and I'd go through everything there's to know about real estate, but I don't have six days anymore. I've got three kids and I've got four companies. So everything's done through video. And what I love about it is it's self-paced. So like they get, this is their first tip of learning how to show up. And then the other thing, which this has actually in interviews, literally stopped people in their tracks. They have to bring 200 people on a database to our team before they can join. 200 people. And they're like, I don't know 200 people. I'm like, yes, you do. I don't. Like we've at stay at home moms that are like, there's no way I can do it.

And then by that evening, she sent us, I'm at 37. The next morning, I'm at 104. The next day, it's, it becomes this like exciting challenge because I'm like, it's you have people who you've gone to school with. You have friends. Your parents have friends. Your boyfriend, your husband, your sister. Like, you have them.

I'm not asking you to call them and ask them for business. I'm asking you to think about people who like you, who love you, who'd want to refer business to you if they knew someone. And I think that. the shift in that conversation is really cool. So how did you come up with that checklist that they go through? A place has an 86 day launch that they do that we get to help leverage by being a part of them. So I use that as my initial framework. And there was another guy who named Jay White, who did like a version of a pre-launch. And I took his and I took it all apart. And then I took

my 90 day. And I re-recorded everything and I rebranded it because the brokerage that I'm with is red. And stand the red. So I was like, I'm taking all red out of my colors. Like, I want neutral. I want to be like, I just brands matter to me. And so I intentionally rebuilt the whole thing. And it took two months. And so when I joined place, they have you do this and you go here and you do these zooms. And there's this whole launch thing. And I was like, thank you so much for your opinion. I'm going to focus on this. Because it's so freaking easy to get distracted right now. It is so easy to get distracted. And the hardest thing is when you have a team and you pour into these people and they're like, thanks for everything you taught me. And then they leave. It's so hard. And so I had to get to a place

where I could provide enough value that they didn't want to go anywhere. They were like this culture, this production, this energy, these leads. So we provide. We literally are like, okay, I have this like pie chart and I'm like split it down the middle. I'm going to give you the training, the accountability, and the coaching on your side. So you. can close at least 12 transactions a year. And I go through with them on their pie chart, what they're going to do. And then when you're showing up on your side and you do the things you need to do, I'm going to release my side.

My site is online leads, client events, my client referrals, right? And from that, you'll get another 12 deals. And so then every agent we're helping them close 12 to 24 deals. And it's changed the game. Like, I'm so excited where this year is going to be, especially after the beep show that was last year. It's funny because I was telling, I've said this a lot. over the last few months is that there's an entire generation of real estate agents and consumers

who've never lived through a down market. I just celebrated 30 years in real estate in December. Oh, congratulations. Crazy. Yeah, they have a new. I feel like I mean to say congratulations, and I'm sorry. They have a new Masters Club has a new like presidential thing now, right? If you're like 25 years. So I actually got that this year. Yet it go. But the funny thing is that you have this whole. generation of people who've only seen rising values since 2010 and low interest rates. And then all of a sudden, interest rates went up and everyone was like, oh my gosh, what do we like everyone freaked out. And I'm like, that's how that's the first 20 years of my business. That's all we had was seven, eight percent interest rates. So it's been a real

adjustment. And there's been a lot of stuff that have said 40 percent of these agents aren't going to make it over the next couple of years. And so it's inspiring to see what you're doing to change that trajectory, right? And it's like, what can we do to help these agents for those of us that are that trends have been around for a while to not only just survive but thrive? Because what I know from 30 years is great agents do well in any market. Yep. But you have to be willing to shift and you have to be willing to change and you have to

be willing to do the work. And sometimes it works way harder than it is. Like last year was rough on the majority of agents. We still did pretty well. but the majority of agents struggled last year, mostly because a lot of them never learned the basics. They never learned the important stuff. There's that saying most agents get in,

they piss off their family and friends and get out. Yeah, totally. I think like this industry, you have to be willing to ride the wave. If you really want this to be your career, you're going to have good months, you're going to have bad months. I really like to look at the year.

I have an annual goal and then I break it down by quarterly and then I break it down by monthly. and then weekly. But still, like, being a working mom, every single Sunday, we're looking at my calendar and we're like, first thing I do is I'm like, what can I remove? Not like, how busy am I? What can I remove? What do I not need to do? What can I move to a Zoom that doesn't need to be in person? Because we're, it's really easy to just say yes to everything. But like, I am pulled in a lot of different directions and now having all these agents, like I was telling my husband, I went to the gym this morning. I am committed to getting myself back in a healthy place after having these littles. And I was

went to the gym this morning and I walked out and I had seven messages from agents on the team who all needed something. And I was like, okay, this is new and this is okay. And so then what I do is I go back and I set the expectation with my team that when they reach out to me, I'll be back in them with, I'll be back in touch with them within two hours because I was like, I'm going to tell them at the gym from this time to this time. He's, nope, don't give them your schedule. That's too much for them to keep track of. Just set the expectation that you'll go back to them within a couple hours. And I was like, okay. because it's just we are not saving lives. We are not brain surgeons.

We're selling houses. Our clients make us feel like everything's an emergency when in fact, like, it's just docuSign. We'll figure it out. But I think it, there's just, there's a lot of pressure on us. And so learning and understanding how to really navigate this business, it's a whole different ballgame. How has it worked with working with your husband?

So as I had a brokerage for 22 years and worked and my husband worked, we worked side by side. But we learned pretty quickly. to stay in our corners. Yeah. If that makes sense, like these are his responsibilities and the things that he needed to do. And then this is what I needed to do. And he didn't get into my stuff and I didn't get into his stuff. But you guys worked really closely together and have for a while.

How did that come about and how has that worked out? That's a good question. I'm sure my answer would be a little different than it is. So when I met Ryan, we met on Tinder, mechanical engineer. So he was selling commercial air conditioning systems. and he did really well. He did like multiple six figures. Like he did super well financially. But when we went on our honeymoon, he was like, I wish we could stay a couple extra days. And I said, me too. And I was like, I can because my schedule is flexible. But he was a nine to five and he had to show up.

And so it planted this little seed for us of what would life need to look like so that we could work together. And when we came home, he was listening to me on a coaching call with my business coach. And we hung up and he was like, do you just talk numbers with him? And I was like, no, we were talking about door knocking. And he was like, yeah, but if you door knock this many doors with this percentage or conversion, you make this much money. And I was like, you are now our productivity coach. Like, welcome to the team. And he had a draw with his company. And he said, I need to make at least $10,000 a month to consider quitting my job. And I was like, okay. And at the same time, we had been presented an opportunity. I'd never done network marketing. I thought it was super

slimy. And I was like, not about it. But I was presented an opportunity. that I said no to for seven months in a hair care company. And I was like, that's weird. I'm a realtor. I'm not going to sell hair care. But at the same time, my hair was falling out. It was thinning. It wasn't holding color.

And I was like, I'll try the product. So I ended up trying it, loving it, and decided that I have no problem sharing like a movie that I love. So why not share this other company? And Ryan was like, we'll do it together. So we hadn't had, because real estate was mine, then this could be ours. So we started doing that together within three months. We were making 10,000 months.

So then he quit his job. And then we've been in that company now for six years. We made six figures every year in that company. So that was cool to have that on the side. But real estate's always been my primary. And so what happened was I was like, why don't we do this together? Why don't we run the team together? And we added him to the corporation documents.

And I thought that was really big of me to do. And then we started working together. And every idea he had, he would start talking and my insights with Titan. and every change he wanted to make my insights with Titan. And I was like, let me tell you why that's not going to work. And that's not a good idea because. And so what I started to do is I was slowly just taking his man card. Like it was not, it wasn't good.

And he was like, why did you want me to come over if every idea I have, you're going to shoot down? And I was like, oh, crap, this isn't going well. And we believe in being proactive in our marriage and our business. And so we immediately signed up for our marriage counseling. and we got some really good advice, which is sounds like how you run your world. She was like, okay, Rachel, what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?

Ryan, what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Great. Stay the hell out of each other's sandboxes. Yeah. And it's been awesome ever since. So I really just had to learn. I'm a control freak, so I tend to run.

And I ran the show myself for several years before he came in the picture. But what I realized is if I gave him an opportunity to shine in his strength zone, like truly every company we have is better because he's a part of it. So he runs the back end operations. He makes sure all the systems go. He handles the operations team. He's the director of operations for our company and the productivity coach. And so he helps the agents achieve their goals.

He listens really well. He understands the numbers. He talks about their production. Then I'm all sales. So I teach them how to go on the listings. I'm going with them. I'm teaching them how to work with the buyers, the scripts, the objection handlers, writing the contracts.

So I'm that side. but he's all the systems in the back end. And it's so fun, but I'm, like, insanely obsessed with him. He's my favorite person. Like, I'm on a listing. I leave that. I've been with him all day. And then I go on a listing appointment as soon as I'm done,

I call him all the way home to drive home to him. But when you get to find, when you meet your person, it's you want to. I think I sent you my book, didn't I? Did I send you my book? Yes. A hundred things all about you. Yeah. That would help us figure out how to stay in our corners and stay in the area.

Because you guys just super different. Oh, we're very different. Yes and no. If you look on the disc profile, I'm like a 99D, like the. And but Joe is much more the, he's a high eye, but he also has some of that like analytical stuff, the S and the C in him, which kind of surprised me when we did the disc profile test. He's retired now. So he does stand up comedy and. Yeah. That's done with that. So he's completely out of the business at this point. And are you still in production or do you have a team or do you just mostly run like your expe group i have all of the above so i run a team with my business partner mitsy de la cruz who's now in columbia tennessee yeah so mitsy and i she's in columbia i'm here in california so i still handle a lot of her california business and then we're

building a team in columbia and then i have my expe organization and then my podcast and i'm doing a little bit of coaching and putting together some products more product based products. That is one thing we're super heavily leaning into this year because like webinars and online like digital products like a $4.25 billion industry right now. And so we're one of the things I'm doing. So I committed October 1st. I was like I'm so tired of feeling the way I feel. It was the same day I partnered with place. And I was like, I'm going to change my health. And I have been on every freaking diet under the sun. I have tried all the things. And there was this woman in my brokerage and she went from a 3x to a 2 and not a 2x but a 2 and I was like holy crap

what did you do and she's oh I hired a nutritious and a trainer and I'm like mhm like like nobody wants that answer and then we want the easy button totally I'm like can I just get the pill fakes and then she was like do you want me to send you my meal plan and I was like sure so she sends me her meal plan and I thought she sent me a mistake because it didn't make sense to me in the but essentially you're eating small meals more often and they're clean, which sounds simple, but I in from October 1st to December 30th, I lost 30 pounds. The first 60 days, all I did was focus on nutrition and then the last 30 added in workouts that I've continued now.

And I'm five feet tall and I'm down 37 pounds. And I finally feel like I feel so much better. But I feel like I've like finally figured out because I was raised unfortunately with some body image issues and food have a really unhealthy relationship with food. And this is like the first time in 39 years, I feel like free, like of that. And so I'm turning it into a digital product. I'm literally, that's the thing I had next to me because I was working on it last night. But actually, truth be told, I made Ryan work on it on date night because I'm a crappy mean lady. But I literally am doing like, okay, this is limiting beliefs around like weight loss and body image. This is mindset. This is the

nutrition. This is the water. And I think it's important to be like even with real estate. or any of this, just to be honest about it. Like, I'm going to tell you what you should drink every day in water. And I don't think I've done it a single day. Right. I'm going to tell you what you should do. But it doesn't matter if you're selling houses or you're selling socks or you're just trying to be the best mom.

You're going to have good days and you're going to have bad days. It's all beautiful. It's all messy. It's, but it's a journey. Yeah, I'd love to offline maybe we can chat a little bit more about products because I'd love to talk a little bit about that. Oh, I'm totally down. Yeah.

I have a whole plan for that whole side. Happy down. Yeah, that would be amazing. So tell us about the product that you did create, though, as we wrap up today. We'll talk a little bit about your social media, your reels. Tell us about that. I've been watching you with that. It's been fun to watch.

Video is the number one thing. The algorithm favors above all else. And I have realtors reach out to me all the time. And they're like, Rachel, can you run my social media for me? I'm like, no, because your people want you. But what I decided I would do is I would create, we launched a company called get social leverage. And one of the products that we offer is the weekly. reels. And so what it is, every week, I pick a reel that's trending in real estate and I record

the example reel. Then what you do as the client is you, I say, hey, I want you to walk towards the camera smiling for seven seconds on your cell phone talking and you walk past it. Then you send that to my team. Then I edit it. I put the captions on the screen like the hook. I put the call to action in there. So you get your hook, your call to action. Then I write your actual caption. so I write the post for you because one of my strengths with getting over 100 referrals is conversion. I know how to convert a client. So I write this. I edit it.

I put the captions on. I write the actual post for you. Then I give you your trending audio as well as your hashtags and your geo hashtags. And it's so plug and play every single week you get a reel. What's cool is I also have tips on how to get confidence on camera, the equipment you need to use. And the results are my favorite part because we have clients that are like my engagement on social media is up 415%, 1097%.

Like I just got my first referral from my reel. And that's the stuff for me where I'm like, heck yes. Because I know it works for me because I'm consistent with it. But when I can, so many realtors don't know what to do and they don't know how to do it. So this took it from that. And that's really cool. So we'll put the links to that program and her other social media links in the show notes below. So if that's something that you're interested in, it's been really great to watch.

I know I've been really fascinated by it and paying close attention. I'm like, I'm going to wait and talk to her. And it's been really exciting to watch and see. And I do agree. So many are struggling in those areas. And they really need help with it. And for me, I'm like, oh, do I just go back to old school what I did? Or do I try to learn the new stuff?

Sometimes it's a little bit overwhelming for some of us who are a little more advanced in age. But I did do in the month of November, I made a commitment to do. It was my birthday month. So I made a commitment to post something every single day for 30 days. And it was the first time I'd ever done it. And I made it through the whole month. But then I was like, okay, that's done. Now what?

Yeah. You're like, who, I know the thing, too, is I feel like there's a lot of pressure to show up every day. I don't show up every day. Like I, what I did the other day with one of my agents as we went to a new build community

with two outfits. I recorded 15 reels, me typing on, I brought my computer. I brought an empty coffee, mug in my purse. I sat at their kitchen, like sipping coffee. I type at their desk. I did all these different videos, but I got 15 pieces of content done in one day and three hours. And then I can use that for the next month. Yeah. So there is a way to be more efficient with this.

And that's what I help with. They also have a, I do one-on-one coaching where I audit people, social media and help give them a game plan too. So there's all kinds of things. It's fantastic. This has been so awesome. getting to know you a little bit better and hearing about all the fun, exciting stuff. I think my favorite video you did was the one with Henry where he was talking. Oh, my gosh, when he was a realtor. Because I have this picture of my son, Jake. I should have pulled it out.

I have this picture of my son Jake when he was about, I don't know, two maybe. Yeah. And back when you used to be able to go to the place at the mall and get the pictures done. And with his little suit, he had his little tie on and his little hat, he looked like his dad because Joe used always dressed to the nine. Yeah. And it's such a cute picture, but none of my kids are interested at all in real estate. None of them. They have zero interest. Like, all right, we'll see. Yeah, I know. You say that now. I was like, the reason I didn't want to do real estate, though, is like, no one talked about work-life balance when I was a kid.

And my dad would like miss dinner because he was doing showings. And I was like, I don't want that life. And so I, he was a great dad, but there were a certain times where he just missed stuff or he'd have to do a call. And like, I just, but what I've done is I've, I've worked my world around my kids. I'm like, hey, I've got an appointment from six to nine tonight. I can call. And my appointment is dinner with my family. They don't even know what it is. And I think that if you tell people your schedule up front, they're really respectful of it.

I haven't worked Sundays for the majority of my career. Because my voicemail says I work Monday through Friday from 830 to 5.30. I work evenings and Saturdays by appointment. I take Sundays off to be with my family. And I find that the majority of people are really respectful of that. that. Obviously, there's exceptions. You have an out-of-town client or things like that happened. But for the majority of my career, I've not worked some days, and I'm pretty proud of that fact. That's awesome. I think it's possible for people. Like, your family's got to take precedence.

You wish that you did if you didn't. Totally. Yep. Rachel, thank you so much for being with us today on Real World. You are definitely the real world and the real deal. So I'm honored to know you. Me too. I'm a cool friend. And I'm grateful that you're here. So. Thanks again. Thank you everybody for joining us on Real Estate Real World where we get to talk to all the cool people. And we make sure that we help you have the tools that you need in the business world right now. So thank you so much for joining us. Go out and make it a great day.