KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How to Dominate the Listings Game

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

Summary:This episode features an interview with Knolly Williams, a top real estate coach, who provides tactical advice on dominating the listings game. The conversation, recorded at a live event, focuses on a three-pronged approach: mastering the initial listing presentation, using effective marketing, and converting more leads. The episode is highly actionable, offering specific scripts and strategies for agents to position themselves as the go-to expert in their market, overcome objections, and consistently win listings.

And so that's where this guy was. He watched a video that I put out. And that one video, he said he was able to list 60 houses from just what he learned from that video. And he said, but what it really did was it helped me put food on the table for my family. That's what you've done for me. And I call that guys the paycheck that you'll never spend. Okay. I've gotten a lot of paychecks.

Welcome to the Success With Listings podcast where we help you get success in the real estate game, the easy way. Now you can get off the roller coaster of Feast and Famine and out of the rat race of competing with every other agent in town. Hi, I'm Nollie Williams. I took over a thousand listings during my first 10 years from the real estate game and in this podcast, I show you how to have success with listings. Let's go. Let's kick things off. So it's success with listings. My vision, guys, just so you know up front what my vision is, my vision is to have multiple events in this facility with different themes. So today we're going to be talking about why listings.

Anybody want more listings? Raise your hand if you want more listings. Yeah. You know, listings is the name of the game, guys, and we're going to talk about why that is as we move forward together. How many of you already know listings is the name of the game? Let me take a quick temperature of the room. How many of you guys that are in real estate, okay,

are doing at least, say, one listing a year right now? raise your hand doing at least one or you have hopes of doing at least one deal a year. How about 10? 10 a year? Listings? 20? Okay. Anybody doing more than 20 a year? Okay. Okay. That's good because it helps me to gauge the material and how fast to move with the material. Okay. Now, let me just share with you how my class works. Would that be okay with you? We like to smile. We like to have fun in my class. And if I see you guys not smiling, I'm just just going to smile to encourage you because we like the space to be energetic. See, here's the thing. A lot of you guys are doing real estate and it's no longer become fun for you. Okay? It's no longer

become fun for you. Real estate is something that you should be able to use your God-given abilities to help people and it should be fun. We're going to talk about some of the reasons why it's not fun and how to change that while we have our talk together. So by the way, there's a treat in here for you guys. We're doing three hours free MCE. You guys did, I didn't advertise that the class was MCE but because we didn't have MCE credit

yet, but we just got approved yesterday for MCE. So yay! But those of you that care about that, you need a little extra credit, so that's a surprise. Is it okay if I over-deliver? Is that okay? About me, 96% of my focus

has been on listings. I took over a thousand listings during my first 10 years in real estate. And now my life is dedicated to paying it forward, giving back, and doing that, right? My first 74 days in real estate, I took 21 listings. My first 74 days. However, let's put a caveat to that. I've been an entrepreneur since I was 13 years old. Nairon knows this. I've always sold something. Okay, it wasn't always the right thing, but I always sold something, you know. Yeah, I was a wayward kid, by the way. God, you know, when I was,

God got a hold of me when I was about 10 years old, and I didn't want to have anything to do with this guy that they called God. So I ran as far away from that as I could throughout my teenage years. I left home when I was 16 years old, okay, basically ran away from home. I don't really say, I never admit that, but it was really what it was. I ran away from home, and I stayed. with some friends of mine

that were knuckleheads just like me. We kind of flocked together. And it was, I call it the land of anything goes, okay? His mom was hooked on drugs. I was 16 years old. He was 16, house full of teenagers, and whatever

we wanted to do, that's what we did. So I did that, live that lifestyle. You remember in the scripture, scripture talks about that there was this prodigal son. He ran away from home, and he tasted all that stuff that he thought was the good life. He tasted that stuff. That's what I did. When I was 18 years old, I said, you know what? My life is leading me nowhere, and I need to make a change. And that's

where I fell in love with this guy, this dude, they called Jesus Christ. I fell in love with him. I'm still in love with him to this day. He led me to Austin, Texas, where my uncle lived. He said, boy, you need to get up out of, I was living in Los Angeles. I was born in Brooklyn, New York. Okay. Born in anybody in New York in the house? Yeah. You still admit it, huh? I was born in Brooklyn in 1970. Because I don't want you guys to be the whole seminar. How old is this due?

I'm 49, just turned 49 last month. And then my mom moved to L.A. when I was 10 years old. So I grew up in, she moved to South Central. We moved to Compton when I was 10. And I grew up kind of in that environment, in that area. And so that's kind of my life story. I moved here when I was 18. I've been here 30 years.

I came here with an overnight bag because I didn't, I was like, man, I ain't moving to no Texas. Back then I didn't have, now I'm like all in, right? I'm all in with Texas. So I like to teach, train coach. When I was 45 years old, I call myself that I retired. Gary and I were talking about this earlier. I retired, right?

And what that meant for me, I paid off my house, had everything else paid off became completely debt free, no credit card debt, no debts of any kind. Now, let's rewind, though, when I was 22, okay, I started, or 23, more or less, I started my very first business, okay, that was, now I've been an entrepreneur since I was 13, but I always worked for someone and did entrepreneur on the side. Some of you might work, another job, and do real estate on the side. Some people do that. And so at 23, though, I started my very first business, it was a record label. Okay?

Within, and I started that with $1,800 that I, I say borrowed. I really, what would be a good word? I just basically asked family and friends for money to start my first business. I did a fundraiser. Yeah, I did a fundraiser, and I raised $1,800, and I started my very first business with that $1,800. Now, you fast forward four or five years later, I was making $150,000 a month. $150,000 a month in that business, spending 160.

Okay, that's dumb with a capital D, right? But that's what people do. And here's the thing, it doesn't matter how much money you make, that's not really the end game. Does that make sense? So by the time I was 29, I signed a lucrative deal with EMI Capital. They gave me $650,000 to sign on with them. I did.

And who gives a 29-year-old that kind of, of money well obviously people do that I mean even younger people are getting these big contracts and by the time I was 32 I was bankrupt okay we had a 6,000 square foot home on 10 acres right here in Round Rock okay we had a 1200 square foot recording studio and a 1,500 square foot office building I had I had 14 employees 18 recording artists on the label lost everything start off from scratch. And I said, what am I going to do now? Okay. I'm 33 years old, and you know what people would tell me? You do good in real estate? You ever had somebody tell you that? How many of you

guys came from another career? Raise your hand. You came from something else. Okay? Most of us have. Most of us didn't start in real estate. We came from another industry, another career. And so they said, I'd be good in real estate. I thought I'd maybe be pretty good. So I went ahead and got my license, but I was afraid to practice. So I didn't even start practicing, even though I got my license in June, I didn't start practicing until December of that same year. So that's how, I mean, I did a lot of research, a lot of study, and I put in the work. How many of you guys know that first you learn and then you earn? Some of y'all just want to go straight. Some of the people, and I'm not talking about you guys, when I say, y'all, that's just a Texas term. Doesn't mean in the

room. By the way, we're video on this. I got Tim and his crew back in the back. Thank you, Tim. I like to video these things so I can make it something that I can pass on to you guys for later and share it with the world. We're streaming into my Facebook account right now, and I don't know how to do any of that stuff, but I look smart enough like I know what I'm doing, but really the backbone of any professional person like you guys is a good team. So thank you guys for doing that in the back. Thank you. Clap my hands. Because they're going to provide you with a free copy of this as well. So 33 years old, I was scared to death of doing real estate, but I studied the game. I studied the game. And when I had the game tight, how many of y'all know what a game,

having your game type means? Some of y'all know what I'm talking about now. When I have my game tight, that's when I jumped in the game and I was able to take 21 listings during my first 74 days in this business. I still have the snapshot of my inventory, and I have that because I was with a company that's no longer exist, Prudential. I was with Prudential for 74 days until I moved my license over to Remax. Okay, join Remax, and within a few years, I was, well, within just a couple years at Remax, I was one of the top 10 in the state of Texas, okay, in the state of Texas. A lot, big state, I was ranked number seven in the city of Austin as of 2009. So it took me about five years to get to that spot.

That was 9,800 agents, and I was ranked number seven based on my production by Austin Business Journal. Now, why do I tell you guys all this? I tell it to you because I'm just a little old dude from South Central LA that has, you know, the only thing that I graduated from was kindergarten. That's God's honest truth. truth you can laugh if you want to but that's the truth I graduated from

kindergarten I did not graduate from from what they call junior high here we call it what's it called here it's middle school here junior high school I didn't I didn't I didn't graduate from elementary school why because I didn't have really the credits or whatever so I had to go through summer school anybody ever summer school so I did summer school and I did kind of but I didn't go get to walk across stage. Junior high, never graduated from that. Now, I did go to high school, because I did the summer school again,

never graduated from high school. Got my GED. And, you know, I'm just an average person. That's all I'm trying to say. But an average guy like me, I did over 100 listings a year for more than 10 years in a row. And I'm here to show you guys how to do the same. You up for it? Is that okay?

All right. So I like to teach, train coach. I travel all across the world. like I said, when I was 45, I retired. And all retirement means for me is being able to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. That's retirement. Because some people get the idea that retirement is sitting on a beach. That's real nice for about three weeks.

After three weeks, old. Okay? God put us on earth for more than just to fill our own bellies and to make money, right? We're here to serve other people. and some people get the luxury of getting to that position. I think that in the real estate game, we have the luxury from day one because we get to serve our creator

and we get to serve others from the first day we get into business. Chad Mullinix will be here later. He's the one that sponsored lunch for us. And by the way, we need to give him a headcount. You already did? For head count, cool. He's with CMG Financial. He's going to be here at noon,

tell you a little bit more about what he does, but he's the one that speeding us. I want to thank each and every one of you. I want to give yourselves a round of applause, right? And I want to thank you for being here, okay, because what are you giving up by being here? Your time. Your time.

Is that not the most precious commodity that we have? Every single one of us has 168 hours a week. 168. Nobody gets more, nobody gets less, okay? And it's what we do with the time that we have on this earth that counts, okay, while we're in this realm. So you can take meticulous notes. Every one of you guys has a handout. There is a handout that if you open it up, you fold it in the middle, it's got a place to take notes, okay?

And that's kind of a handy place if you want to do that for you to take your notes because that way you'll keep it together. You've got one right there. Let me grab yours just as a visual aid. I always do this where I don't bring my own materials to the stage, so I have to grab somebody else. So in the middle of this is a great place to take notes, and that way you'll kind of cement this experience in your memory forever. All right.

So you'll all get the video of the event and that handout. Now, we have some ground rules. Cell phones on vibrate, minimize side talking, have fun and no chewing gum. Okay? Those are my rules. Any questions? Anybody chewing gum right now? You're chewing gum?

We got some tissues on the thing. Now that's a joke, guys. How many of y'all do, you guys, are you okay with a few jokes here and there? Yeah. I was at one place, it was in Seattle, and the lady was so compliant, she swallowed her gum. I felt so bad for her. I gave her a free book. Free copy of my book, autograph and everything.

I was like, do y'all do jokes here? Like, come on. Because I don't like rules. Why do you think I left home when I was 16? Now, when I left home, when I was 16 years old, I said my mom didn't know anything. When I reconciled with her when I was 18, I was like, Mom, you sure learned a lot in two years. She was saying the same stuff, but, you know, something happened with me, right? All right.

So here's what I like to do. I do God first, then family, then life, and then business. God first, family life, and then business. Okay, that's how I run my operation. A lot of agents have it in reverse, where they put business first, and then all the other stuff, and God, maybe if I have a little bit of time for him later. The paycheck that you'll never spend, and I like to start off with this just a little bit,

talking about how one time I was at a seminar, and I've always loved to pay it forward. I've always loved to share. I think most of us do. Okay, even though, even if we don't spend as much time doing it as we would like to, in our heart, in our heart of hearts, it's there. Okay. And I was the guy that would be taking calls from agents just because they needed help. And my wife's like, go out and sell some houses.

You know, you're taking, because I wasn't, you know, charging for coaching or anything. I was just helping them out. They called me up because they felt like I had the answer and I didn't want to let them down. Make sense? I mean, some of you guys do that now. So the paycheck you'll never spend, I was in a coffee line at this convention years and years ago. And it was a long line. This guy walks up behind me, he says, are you Nollie Williams?

I'm looking around, I'm like, man, ain't too many black cowboys up in here. You know, like, yeah, I'm Nolly Williams, you know. And, you know, it's early in the morning, so I was a little cranky. Hadn't had my coffee yet. And he says, well, can I buy you coffee? So I'm like, okay, now what happens when somebody tells you they want to buy you something? You've never met them before. Can I buy you coffee?

what do you want what's it about you know some of you guys came came to seminar like what does he want what's he going to try to sell me free seminar right and so i said okay yeah you can buy my coffee and i'm thinking this guy wants a once a 15 minute coaching session because i knew it was a 15 minute line while i go he says i said do i know you have we met before he says we've never met but i want to share with you how you've changed my life he said it wasn't but just last year that i I was on my way out of the business. Some of you guys have been there. Maybe you might be there now.

Your family, go get a real job. You know, some of you can remember what that was like. You're not meeting up to you. You're not reaching your potential, okay? And you don't know how to do it. And so that's where this guy was. He watched a video that I put out. And that one video, he said he was able to list 60 houses

from just what he learned from that video. And he said, but what it really did was help me put food on the table for my family. That's what you've done for me. And I call that guys the paycheck that you'll never spend. Okay, I've gotten a lot of paychecks. I remember when I got the big paycheck from EMI, it's over 600,000. That money's gone. But this paycheck that he gave me and that I keep getting from other people that have come to my events, seen my videos, watch my my stuff, I'll never be able to spend it. Make sense? That's the paycheck that you'll never spend. That's why I do this. I do have, I do have,

I don't have the books here for sale, but I just want to remind everybody that I wrote the book on listings. It's called Success with Listings. How many of y'all have this book already? Okay, some of you guys have it. It's 430 pages because people always ask me, and I guarantee that there will be someone that asked me today. Nollie, can I pick your brain?

Okay. So I went ahead and picked it myself. It took 430 pages, 430. And by the way, this is not something you have to sit down because I know some of y'all do not like to read. That's okay. If you don't like to read, it's all right. Because this is not a book that you sit down and read.

It's a resource manual. So I have a 46-step listing system, and as you go through the different steps, you go back to the resource, and you look up that step and say, what am I supposed to do now? What are the scripts, et cetera? This book is, I give it away free at nali.com. Don't go there now. I'm just letting you know that's a free resource for you guys as well. Now, what are we going to learn today?

We're going to learn these five things. Why listings are the best opportunity in real estate? Why you should transition your core business to listings. We're going to learn that. How to win the listing before you ever meet with a seller. Did you all know that in today's economy, if you will, you've got to win that listing before you ever meet with the seller? Did you all even know that?

Some people are like, what is he talking about? We live in what I call an Amazon age, a Google age. We live in an age of Yelp. How many of you guys go to a restaurant without looking up that restaurant first? Some of y'all do, okay? And you're going to have a kind of an iffy chance of getting something good, right? Now, if you looked up a restaurant and you see it's got, the Yelp reviews are like 1.5 stars, are we going to eat there?

We ain't trying to get sick. You know, we got places to be, right? So you have to win the listing before you ever meet with the seller. Okay, sellers have a lot of options, and they actually, before I ever meet a seller, they know me already. Here's a trick, guys. Write this down. When you first meet a person, okay, they're going to have resistance to you. When you first meet a person, they are going to be resistant.

Why is that? Now, anybody ever watch Westerns? Raise your hand if you care to admit it. There's a few of us, right? And if you saw on a Western movie, you know, the family sees a couple of cowboys riding up to the ranch. What's the first thing they do? Get their shotguns. The first thing they do, okay?

And then they walk out, friend or foe? Friend or foe. That's the question they're asking. Are you friend or foe? Guys, we have not evolved that far to where we don't do the same thing. When somebody meets you for the first time, they got their shotgun. That's the first thing they do. They get their shotgun.

Now, what happens when they meet you the second time? They don't have a shotgun. They're like, come on in, have some coffee. Hey, David, come on in, man. Have a cup of coffee, right? So when someone meet you the first time, resistance. When they meet you the second time, no resistance. So that's why you have to pre-sell.

I'm going to show you how to do that. Do number three. How to earn more money and work less, okay? And how to get all the success tools that I use in my business that I use in my business every single day, and I've used for more than 10 years in a row to take over 1,000 listings, how are you going to get all my stuff for free?

I'm going to show you how to do those five things. Are y'all up for it? You ready? Okay? I want to hear a yes. All right. Okay. Now, why listings?

Okay? Focusing on seller listings will allow you to get what you want faster and will allow you to have a life. How many of y'all want to have a life? Okay. Because if you have right now today, you have 13 buyers, they all want to buy right now, are you going on that cruise?

You're not going on the cruise. Unpack your bags. Cancel your plans. But if you have 13 listings, all you're going to do is go to a colleague in your office and say, hey, I've got these listings, you know, and I need you to babysit these. And all they're going to do, guys, is they're going to babysit them into escrow. They're not going to close by the time you get back.

Does that make sense? I mean, it's just, you're talking about you're going to be gone for 10 days. all they're going to do is babysit them in the escrow. You give them a few hundred bucks. Not a lot. Not a lot. You're not giving them a referral fee because it's your listings, right? And you go on your vacation.

You notify your clients and say, hey, such and such is going to help you while I'm out of town. That's it. Okay. Listings will allow you to have a life guide. Guys, don't be afraid of listings. Now, why listings? Okay. Oh, let's go back.

So what percentage, and I read this book called the Millionaire Real Estate Agent when I first got into real estate. Before I got in real estate, I read the book. What percentage does Gary say that we should be focused on listings? What percentage of our time? Some of y'all know the answer. Just give it a guess, guys. My class is cool. This ain't teacher so-and-so now. Don't be flashback on me now. What is it? 80-20? 90%? I heard of 90? 100%. What else? Over 90%? Who else? 75%. Now here's where people get mixed up. Now here's what the book actually says. It says there are so many great reasons to devote how much? How much? All of your time and effort to taking and marketing listings. Make listings your primary focus. So what Gary taught me was to spend all of my time

focused on listings. That's what he taught me. So how much time did I spend on buyers? Zero none. Okay. All means all. Does that mean that you're not going to have buyers? Of course not. The people that attract the most buyers are the listeners. Okay? Your name is out there. You got signs.

One of the heart, well, we'll talk about that later, about the sign thing. I'll remember, because I've got a slide that are making me remember about that. Sometimes I go on a tangent, y'all. I go into these rabbit holes, and it's okay. I just go with the spirit. Sometimes the spirit's like, we ain't talking about that today. I'm like, what you mean? Boy, I got my slides right here.

You know, what's up? But I just do, and Naira knows, I just do my thing, you know. I just flow with the spirit. So what I want to get into is, I want us to look at the 10 reasons why we should focus on listings. Now, I don't want you guys to think that just because it says that you should focus all of your time on listings, that that doesn't mean if you get a buyer lead, you shouldn't work it.

That's not what it says. It just says that you're going to spend all of your time focused on, on marketing for listings. Does that make sense? So that means, and when you start to think that way, guys, something happens in the cerebral cortex, something happens, and it just changes the way that you operate. When you know what your focus is,

everything else becomes what? A distraction. When you know what your focus is, everything else becomes a distraction. And if your focus is on, is listing. So I would do things like I had my van, and on the back it was like thinking about selling your house,

lists with knowledge, selling less time, get more money, free consultation. Okay. And that's where I put, all my marketing was geared toward listings, period. Okay. When I got my business card, what was my title on the business card? What did I call myself? Brand new in the business, never sold a house, never showed a buyer, never worked with a seller, brand new.

What was my title? Listing specialist. That's right. Listing specialists. Some of you are good students. Good student. You've seen some of my YouTube stuff. So listing specialist never helped a buyer, never worked with a seller, but I was a listing specialist, okay? Because we get to choose and pick what we specialize in. All right? So your whole mindset needs to shift toward listings. Now, I'm going to tell you what to do, okay? And this is what I tell my mentorship master's members. okay we've got a couple of VIP mentorship masters raise your hands what's up all right i've got a group called mentorship masters i'll talk to you guys about them but what i what i

teach these guys is you always want to be focused on listings listings listings listings that's the key that's the name of the game well thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the successful listings podcast if you are serious about taking your real estate career to the highest heights making more money and helping more clients while working less hours and spending more time with your family, be sure to get your copy of my free book, triple my listing. Absolutely free at Successwithlistings.com. Now you want to be sure that you subscribe to the podcast and check out success with listings.com to get your copy of my free book. Hey, I'll see you on the next one.