KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Inside the Mind of a Top eXp Realty Agent James Stacy's Secrets to Success

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Hi and welcome to Let's Talk About Real Estate Podcast, the podcast for real estate agents absolutely everywhere. I'm Lisa B, and during this podcast we're going to be talking about everything real estate. What's working? What's not working? AI, automation, technology, EXP Realty, and absolutely everything to do with real estate. I'll have guest speakers as well where we'll answer your questions from the Facebook group, let's talk about real estate. So if you haven't joined the Facebook group, make sure you do that now, and we'd be happy to help answering any question. And again, welcome to the show. Welcome to the Let's Talk About Real Estate podcast for today.

And I've got Beyond Council joining me as well as James Stacey. Thank you so much for joining me today. And this is a podcast where we talk about everything real estate. So Beyond, can you please introduce the amazing James Stacey? Yes, welcome James Stacey to our podcast. And if you haven't already noticed by looking at the top of James' screen there, you can see that he is definitely an award-winning agent. So just to go for you, a little bit of background of James, James and I met back on the 23rd of September 2021.

And we had a quick conversation. James came and joined us and he started EXP on the 1st of January 2022. And since then on his journey, he's iconed in November 22, July 2020, he's iconed again in July 24. He took 35 days to cap recently in 2025. He's on track to ICON by July. 2025. So he's hitting goals. He's number one agent in SA and Australia, of course. You can't be number one in one and not be number one and the other, especially if you're leading Australia in

2023, not only for sales, but also for gross commission income. So number one agent in 2023, EXB Australia, and also number 10 international agent in 2023. And we are in 27 countries now with over 8,000000 and 9,000 agents. So outside of the United States and Canada, James made at top 10, which is a huge achievement. Also, number three in Australia in 2024 for total number of sales and number five in Australia 24 for gross commission income. So this man knows what he's talking about without further ado, James. Welcome to the show.

Let's get straight into it. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah. So James, there's a few questions that we'd like to ask you. So the first one is, what are three things that you do really well in real estate that's helped you get those results? So me, I'm a terrible prospector and a terrible, a terrible, terrible, terrible nurturer as well. But I'm really good at PR and relationships and building relationships with people and maintaining those relationships.

So it may not be all real estate based, but I've got really, really solid relationships with a number of key people in my community that do spend me a lot of business, which is good. And I think that's that's really important, you know, in any business setting that you're in. But most important when you're delivering a service based, like when you're in a service based industry like real estate, you don't have a product people can come to. So you have to have people telling others how good your service is. So, yeah, PR relationships is a big strength of mine. When I say PR, it's not necessarily like marketing and whatnot, but it's being out in my community as well. You know, I'm in Port Lincoln, South Australia, which is a, you know, smallish city,

15, 16,000 population. So I am concentrated pretty heavily in one little area. But, yeah, maintain those relationships in that area. So I also, I'm a bit of a market expert. I don't call yourself a market expert, but I think when people talk to me, they understand that I know what I'm talking about. I know what's happening in the area. I know what's happening, how many sales have been going through month by month, what's been sold, what prices are being achieved. I can pull out comparable sales off the top of my head if I'm at someone's property and they pull out a sale. I can put out three or four and say, look, these ones are similar. This is what they achieved. This is when they sold. I'm really good at maintaining and collecting data in my head

and regurgitating that data when I need to. I'm terrible with maintaining names and people's names. I'm really shit with names. But I can remember a property address, what they sold, when it's settled, you know, dates and things like that. But the people that bought it, I always forget their name. So, yeah. But the market data is what's important. And the third thing that I do, I think that I do really well is in my business, it's just consistency. I say to Bjorn all the time, like, I'm not flash.

I do nothing flash. I'm not a fancy agent. I don't, you know, like I said, I'm not. a great prospect. I don't do this. But the things that I do do do consistently, and I think that I do those well and consistently well. You know, I don't go to one open home, take just as an example, you know, take 20 bottles of water just because it's a premium home open, you know, 10 bottles of, 10 bottles of water, bunches of lollies, flags, flyers, all the works and jerks. And then to my next open two days later, just roll in with a form three in an offer form sitting on the table.

I just do the same thing for every home open, whether it's a premium property or not. And my opens are very basic. Beyond me, it's one of my open before I'm blown away how basic they are. But it's consistently basic. So people, you know, people know what to expect when they come to one of my home opens. I don't have QR codes everywhere. I think they're disengaging personally. I think that people, you're almost asking people to scan them, you know, rather than,

than talking to them. I'm about the people more so. So what I'm hearing is birthable relationships and networking and obviously understanding your market, exceptional market knowledge, knowing exactly what's happening with every sale, with every property so that if somebody says, oh, I live on X, Y, Z street, oh, you're the house next to the two-story, next to the big gun tree, you know those sorts of fine details and like you said, consistency. So having known those are three things that you're really good at and really specialise that, be three things that you're. believe other agents, not yourself, but three things that you believe other agents could do to

improve their results. Yeah, so like consistency is one of the biggest things. I think any agent, any agent just needs to be consistent. You know, just like get the basic, and this is probably my point of two, is the basic things. Like just, just nailing the basics in the industry, you know, there's probably a very basic blueprint that you could find out or work at yourself was what it takes to be a good agent. And they're going to be very basic things. But the good agents do all five things or six things on that blueprint very, very well and very consistently.

You know, marketing is one of them. Negotiations, another one, you know, presentation and attitude and energy. You know what I mean? Like, they're very basic things to do. You've just got to do them all well. You know, if you're having a bad day, everyone has bad day. I'm more inclined to cancel appointment and reschedule appointment and rock up to a meeting that's going to maybe win me 10, 15 grand if my energy isn't right.

I would prefer to have a crack at that the following day and let them down, but try and reschedule that appointment if I can rather than rock in and do it half-assed or do it with a shitty attitude. So, yeah, get those basic things right, do them consistently. And then if you get new ideas and you think, geez, I, I could use that in my business and you want to pluck it and take what other agents are doing well in similar markets. Implementation is the biggest one. I think a lot of agents get the ideas.

They think they're great ideas and they don't implement them into their business or plug them into their businesses to how they're designed to be used. And then they rely too heavily on those things and stop doing the other things, the basic things, like talking to people. as you said consistency like you're showing up every day like it's game day whether it's your open house like you said before or you know to an appointment where you make sure your energy is right it's just that consistency isn't it absolutely yeah all right now you joined expe with us a few years ago so what are the three things that you love about expe um for me the support the network and the support is is pretty good um you know when you're transacting you know i'm averaging 60 transactions a year. I get great value in the support the EXP offer, you know, from Kirsten's

to onboarding and she's always there to take a call if I've got questions about it, anything. Chris Jansen in the leadership role, Renee and Trust the Canic, like they're all just guns in their field, like they've just really, really, and they're just decent people to be around as well, pick their brains, you know, anything I need is done the day that I ask for it to be done. If there's a new thing that I see the other day, it was unlocking some reviews on domain to let the back end talk to each other through another rate by agent and domain so they can talk to each other with reviews. I just sent an email off and it was done within 20 minutes or something, like done. So the support is like phenomenal, like really, really good. I can't

happen enough again. And again, transacting, you know, whether you're transacting 10 properties a year, or 200 properties a year, these people will support you through every transaction. And there's a cap to what that cost you as well, which is that's the benefit of EXP. You know, if you're going to transact 200 properties a year, you're still capped at your 25K costs or whatever, 27K costs, whatever. So that's a huge, that's a huge reason for high-performing agents to join. You can literally just throw as many transactions at these people as you want, and they'll facilitate it for you.

$28,300 a year, I think, James, it costs each of us regardless of how much we're conducting. So what are two other things that you love about? So the shares and the passive income is good for me as well. The share program I've been from the get-go. I've passively put away, you know, 5% of everything I've earned at EXP for the last three years. And, you know, I looked at, you look at it, you look at your share portfolio versus what my super balances and it's pretty scary to say I've had super since I was 16 and I've had shares for the last three years and I'm putting 5% into my shares and I'm putting 10% into my super,

11, 12% now. And my share portfolio is worth half of what my super is worth now, three years. And it's like you don't notice it comes off the top. It's pre-tax income. You can pay tax on it when you cash it in obviously, capital gains. but yeah it's a huge it's a huge incentive and they're gifting the shares as well obviously like I said you know you've got you've got the ability to create that passive wealth just from being just from doing transactions you know I've had I think it's was a 21k by three you know 60 I grand now in shares

gifted to me in three years from just doing my job every time you're sponsoring age nine You get gifted shares for when they settle their first transaction, right? Every time you sell your first transaction every anniversary year, every time you sell your first property, you get gifted shares again. They're not huge amounts of shares, but look, it's a gift nonetheless, and that's pretty cool. One more? Got one more in your time. Do I have my more?

Oh, yeah, of course. Like the flexibility to do what I want, when I want. Like, how good is that? You're not, you're not answerable to anyone. Like, you don't have to, you're the boss. The buck stops with you. And the beauty of doing that is you do what you want when you want. You don't have to rock up to meetings if you don't want to.

But they're there and available. The training is there and available for anyone that wants to partake in it. But it's not, you don't have to do it if you don't want to do it. If you've got something else in the day, you know, there's a huge level of flexibility. For the last three years, I've gone to like swimming appointments with my kids. I've gone to every sports day, you know, every basketball game they've played for the last couple of years as well. so I've not missed out on seeing what my family are doing just because the office want to have a meeting, right?

And that's really important to me, is having that flexibility. Like, yeah, I mean, working at home has its challenges when I've got a young family that has its challenges, but I wouldn't change it for the world. Cool. So just to wrap up, what were three reasons why you think somebody should consider joining yourself

at the A team, which is obviously our team here at EXP. What are three reasons, three benefits that you could give somebody that's thinking about making a change? Yeah, so for me, like I, and I touched it with my own thing as well, the biggest, one of the biggest things for me is the passive and the ability to generate passive income and grow your own team as well. But yeah, through the, through the shares, the share program that we've got, honestly, it's just, it creates wealth and it's, you don't even know it's there. You can log in and check it once a month like it's in it just growing um the share prices fluctuates the balance

goes up and down all the time but that's that shares 101 um yeah like i said you know every time you settle your first property um every time your icon every time you deliver your training again we do training sessions i think they're paid out it i think it works out to about a thousand dollars of shares per training session you do um like where where else in the world would be able to do a 25 minute phone call, online phone call and get paid $1,000 for it in shares, like, gifted to you. Just rocking up and telling people about yourself and what you do. Like, it's not hard. And I think, like, iconing for me should be a pretty attainable thing.

You know, most agents that are listing, you know, if you're listing 35, 40 properties a year, selling 35, 40 properties and your average commission, you know, 10, 12 grand, you will icon every year at EXP and you will get those shares at the. That's the, I think that's the, that's the benefit there. The second thing is like, it's flexible branding. Like, you can brand whatever you want. Like, you know, you can brand, you know, I'm, this way now. There it is there. James Stacey land agent, I've sort of gone into more branding me over the

XP brand now as well. I still run as ESP realty. But the James Stacey land agent is sort of more so front and center on some of my branding. I'll try and get this in. It's not going to block it anyway. It's a folder. So it's all about, it's me personally, and then EXP is secondary in the branding there as well. I run as EXP Realty.

A lot of people ask me if it's my business. I love explaining what it is because it gives people an understanding how the industry is molding and adapting and changing. And I always say to people, like, it's the way forward for the independent agents that don't necessarily want to run a traditional real estate business, but want to get all the perks and benefits of having their own business. And that's, that to me, again, that's probably number three is the biggest reason as you join, is you can run your own business, how you want to do it, what you want to do,

when you want to do it, with your own branding and without having to worry about some of the biggest headaches in invoicing, trust accounting, you know, all those shitty things in business, in real estate businesses that are time consuming and generally you have to have like a full-time staff or just to manage a trust account and invoicing in accounts, EXP take care of all of that. So again, that's probably the third reason to join if you're a transacting agent. Awesome. So, yeah, your multiple streams of income and assets.

So you've also got your role as well. So, you know, you've got different ways that you're building assets for your future and exit strategy out of real estate as well as reoccurring income monthly and obviously your sales. the sport that you get. And you can't put a price on your family. Seeing your family, you just cannot put a price on that, can you? Like, you know, grow up.

There's so many agents that are, yeah, working in offices that miss out on all those things. Why? They don't need to, you know. That's right. Yeah. See your family grow up. Yeah. I think the biddy is like the whole office environment.

Like some agents need it. I get it. Like some people need it. They really do. They're like, some people are like lost sheep in. when they go out as independence. And it's no different to when they go and start their own business. You quite often see successful agents go out and start their own business, run their own brand,

and maybe fail the first time because they just don't know. They're just not experienced, you know, they have a full concept or understanding of what it takes to run a business as well as being a real estate agent. They're really, really good agents, but not great business people. They spend more money than what they earn to start with. And it ends in it, and they end up going back to work for someone else. and then maybe giving you another go down the track and then succeeding. So, you know, I think the most important thing to know is like and realize that there is no good

time to change. There's no good or bad time or no right or wrong time to do it. You've got to do it when it's right for you, when it fits right. But there's going to be a discomfort in change or regardless of, oh, I've got some big properties I've just listed. You're always going to have those big settlements and those big cherry. But, you know, like when you join, when I join and I think I've put a lot. off two or three months when I first talked to Bjorn.

And that was like getting my head around the change, getting ready for the change and whatnot. You know, it took me two or three months to actually make that change. I've been talking to agents now that, you know, that enjoy my team that took, you know, six months to make the change to come across, you know, waiting for big settlements or or waiting for big pay days. But you've got to understand when you go from doing a 50-50 split with your principal and then you go in straight into a 75% split, like you can,

less properties and earn more money. You go to 100% commission after your first split. And it's like, it's a game changer. It's a game changer for an agent. So forget about what you've got like coming in. There's no right or wrong time. Just do it. Like just make the change.

And that's probably the biggest advice I can give to anyone that's sort of maybe sitting on the fence, maybe outgrown their business, maybe don't look up to their leadership in their business anymore, maybe sort of ready to go, start their own business. EXP is a far better model to do that in. Absolutely. It's a natural revolution, isn't it, James, from being an employee to then wanting more, wanting to do more, wanting to be more. But it's scary if you do it outside of this model because you are sort of doing it on

your own. But within this model, like, you know, we all support one another and help one another. I think that's one of the biggest things that anybody watching is can understand is that when you do join the 18 and EXP is you do nominate a sponsor, somebody that brings you into the company. Lisa B brought me into the company. I brought you into the company. For anybody watching this,

I would say, look at all James's awards. If success leaves clues, and if you're an agent that wants to get more, be more, become more, and you nominate someone like James Stacey to be your sponsor to bring you into the company,

well, can you imagine having a line open to James for anything that you need to be able to pick his brains of how many years experience have you got James in total? 13 maybe, 13 years of experience, multi-award winning agent, one of our top performing, if not the top performing agent year on year. Imagine having somebody like that in your corner so that you can call on James if you need assistance in your business to get you up and running at EXP. And then you've also got access to myself and also got access to Lisa B.

select James as your sponsor. So if you are watching this and you are thinking about EXP and you are thinking about joining and you don't quite know exactly who to join under, give this guy a call because this guy is an absolute gun. But the one thing I noticed about James, and I'll say this, James, is he's very humble. What you see is what you get

with James. He's not bells and whistles. He's not Maserati driving. You know, the guy drives a big, what is it, a big, a Dutch. It's a ram. It's a ram. Right? You know, and he's just, he's a good boy. He tells it like is and there's no BS with James.

There's no beating around the bush. There's no smoke. There's no mirrors. So if you are watching this and you're thinking about making a change and you want to know more, reach out to James Stacey. He's very easy to find. He's the number one agent in Port Lincoln by a long shot. Look him up.

He's not hard to find. Have a chat to James and hear firsthand on how James can maybe help you take your business to that next level because we'd love to see every industry agent achieving and succeeding and having the freedom like what we all experience. And so thanks for joining us today, James, and thanks for sharing. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me. Thanks, James.

And I'll put all your details underneath the video as well. So anybody definitely reach out to James Stacey. Thank you so much for the show. Thanks, mate. See ya. See ya. Thank you for listening to Let's Talk About Real Estate podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show.

If you have a question about real estate, then please join the group on Facebook, also called Let's Talk About Real Estate. For those of you who are interested in EXP, please join us at 10 a.m Brisbane time every Wednesday morning for EXP Explained. Thank you again for joining us and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and see you next week.