KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Live from eXpCon Miami (Wednesday)

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

In our final day from eXpCon Miami, we hear from eXp’s top talent. We kick off with John Scalia, eXp’s #1 individual agent, sharing his journey to the top in both volume and units. Mentor of the Year Ruben Garcia shares insights on guiding new agents. Commercial powerhouse Roland Loelkes offers expertise on navigating high-stakes deals. We also catch-up with many of our KGCI Real Estate On Air hosts and eXpCon panelists like Aaron Hendon on mindset, Gogo Bethke on empire-building, and Julie Nelson’s ‘eXtreme Open Houses.’ Dive into strategy, mentorship, and next-level real estate success! 

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome. This is KGCI Real Estate on Air. I'm E. And Wheatley. We are broadcasting live from the Miami Beach Convention Center. It's the final day. The final hours of EXP Khan Miami, Miami, 24. Thanks, XP Realting for inviting us down. We've had an absolute blast. Let me set the scene for you. We are on what they are calling the Explorer Floor of the Miami Beach Convention Center. Off to my far right is the VIP live stage. Nearer to my right, it is the EXP brand store, which is damn near sold out. Apparently, EXP agents really love their swag, and then I'm surrounded by a lot of KGCI Real Estate on air's partners that have been on with us since our inception in the end of February. So for many of you, this may be your first exposure to KGCI Real Estate on air. So let me just tell you a little bit about what we do. We are 24-7-365, always free, always live at realestateonair.com. What we do is we provide real estate agents, those highly effective real estate business building principles that they certainly didn't get when they made it through their pre-licensing course.

So just calling to Spade to Spade. We have this conversation with Brian Allington a little later on. He's the chief learning officer of EXP Realty. The systemic challenge of the real estate industry is that it is very, it is highly, effective in getting agents license. It is not so effective in making sure those agents are supported after they get that real estate license. So how do they support them in the real estate business building? That is what KGCI Real Estate on Air's mission is. It is always free for those real estate agents. It's radio, right? So it's always free to those agents. And if you have not heard,

you can subscribe to KGCI, Real Estate on Air, wherever you listen to podcasts. That would be Apple podcast, DISA, Spotify, IHeart Radio, Audible, Amazon. Um, Insert your preferred podcast player there, and you can find us. Just search KGCI Real Estate on air or just simply KGCI. It's really simple for us real estate folks to remember our car letters. It's a K and then the most important part of your business, GCI, right, gross commission income, okay? Just connecting the dots, making sure you know it. We are on demand wherever you listen to the podcast.

However, if you really want to get the full KGCI experience, if you want to make the car of the university, Here's my recommendation. Search KGCI in your app store. So if you're an iPhone user, pull up the app store. Search KGCI. You can download our mobile app there. If you're an Android user, we don't want to, we don't, we're not forgetting about you, right? We recognize, yes, I know.

We recognize. We understand that, you know, basically iPhones are just ripping off everything's at the Android's. We get it. We get it. We understand why you do this. We get it. We understand, but we're not leaving you behind. Go to your Google Play Store.

Search KGCI. You can download our mobile app. And one of the best parts about our mobile app is, yes. It allows you to take us anywhere you want to go. Download that KGCI, App Store, Google Play. But the main feedback that I got from y'all was, you know, our website was great. It was great streaming it on the web browser while you're in your car. But one thing y'all wanted is you guys want to.

wanted integration into Google Play and Apple CarPlay. And I heard that. I get it. It makes sense, right? We love to listen to radio while we're driving. We love to listen to these podcasts while we're driving, right? We do a lot of the big lift, making sure that you're getting that real estate business building content and to you, the way that you need it, the way that you want it.

And these apps, whether you're using the iPhone app, whether you're using the Android app, they work perfectly with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. So download the KGCI mobile apps today and do yourselves a favor. We have got a rather busy dance card. I guess it's the final day here at EXPCon Miami. My name's Ian Wheatley. This is KGCI Real Estate on Air. And we are at the Miami Beach Convention Center for the final day of EXPCon Miami.

And we've got a pretty busy docket. We're going to be checking in with KGCI Real Estate on Air's own, Ruben Garcia. He is the mentor of the year award winner here at KGCI at EXPCon Miami. So we're proud of our Rubin Garcia. We've had a couple of our KGCI Real Estate on-air award-winning hosts getting awards this year. We're all proud of them. We also have a couple of our KGCI Real Estate on-air agent hosts that are, they're busy.

This is not a pleasure cruise for them here at EXP on. They're working. They're working their tails off, doing all sorts of different breakouts, panels, whatnot. We'll be checking in with Aaron Hendon on Mindset. Go Go, Go, Befferson. on Empire Building, both of their podcast stream Monday as part of our mindset and motivation Monday here on KGCI Real Estate on Air. We're also going to be checking in with Julie Nelson on extreme open houses. What is an extreme open house?

I don't know. We're going to find out from Julie Nelson exactly what an extreme open house is. So we're going to be diving into strategy, mentorship, next level real estate of success. That's all going to be coming up through the next two and a half hours here at KGCI Real Estate on Air as part of our coverage of the final. day from ExPCon here in Miami. We're also later on going to be checking in with Roland Lowellcus. He

is a commercial agent here at EXP Realty. He's also a commercial production award winner here at EXP Realty. He got a big award last night, so we're going to be checking in with him. But right now what I want to turn my attention to is I want to talk with the man in front of me

who I am lovingly describing as the production heavyweight champion of EXP Realty. His name is John Scalia. John, it's impressive to win one award. It's a whole other thing to win two. John Scalia, the top individual agent at ExP Realty.

Full stop. He's basically got it because he's number one in units and number one in volume. And he's an individual agent. He's sitting down to share a lot of his hardwood and wisdom with us here at KGCI, real estate on air. So John, let's take you back to the very beginning, man. What initially drew you into real estate? And how did you develop your approach that has led to be, I guess, both number one in units and number one in value?

Actually, I did auto body and auto collision back in the late 90s, early 2000s. And then my good friend of mine and his wife joined Remax, basically, in early 2000s. And he just basically said, just go get your license. So I went at night to Gold Coast. And I got my license, passed my test, and started working with him in early 2000s. So basically, a good friend of mine got me in it to get out of the auto body business. You know, and it's kind of funny because I got into real estate. When I got into real estate, it was funny.

I started as an investor, my agent who ended up becoming my real estate partner. He was an indie. convinced me to join his production team or it was his brokerage, right? He joined his brokerage, and then he merged his brokerage over to EXP, and that's how I landed as an agent over at EXP Realty. It's just kind of funny, like, you know, how, and I was thinking about this from the perspective of I wanted to generate, I wanted to use the production to generate the capital in order to buy the investment properties.

And it's kind of funny, like how many people I talk to that end up at the higher end of everything. It's almost like they didn't necessarily choose. real estate, real estate kind of chose them. Correct. So what was the kind of the turning point for you in getting into real estate that you were in the auto body, but you know, you didn't necessarily start as top producer right out of the gate?

What was the turning point in your mind where you really started to get after? Well, when I started with the remax, we had a team, and I actually, before I got my license, was a broker-associate with his wife that helped me. So at that time, before I passed my test, they kind of owed me a decent amount of money from Remax, but they couldn't pay me because they didn't have my license. So once I passed, I'm like, oh, wow, they owe me this much. And I'm not even going to make that in the auto collision in a whole year, basically. And I was in my early 20s, late 20s.

So at that point, as soon as I passed, Remax paid me my fees. And it just went off from there. And who I worked with, they kind of got into investors right away as doing triplexes, fourplexes, and those kind of investments in the early 2000. So I've been through the up and downs of real estate that we have now. Catch you up with John Scalia. He is the top producing agent here at EXB Realty. With such high production volume, how do you manage your time effectively?

What does that look like? How do you stay focused? Well, I have a wife at home that pretty much supports me on doing it. So I do work all a lot hours of the night. I have a team as an associate like a assistant, two of them. Basically, I delegate what I don't think that I really want to handle where I don't have to really get in trouble through my big investors that need to get the work done correctly. So all the emails that I get from my either leads or investors come directly to me and then I delegate to my assistants that may help me do the work such as like skyslope addendums and all that kind of stuff to make it a little easier. I do have a team on the ground that does my drive-bys for the houses.

I have a maintenance team that if a place needs to be cleaned or lock changes and all of stuff. So I kind of built a good form around with my agents and my team and maintenance that kind of when I tell them to do something, they do it right away and I don't have to worry about it. So what I'm hearing is I'm hearing there's been a lot of scaling over the years. There's been a lot of process over the years. And you're using leverage where appropriate. How has AI and using any of those AI tools, have you been even using those? still largely. Yeah, I don't use them too much. My assistants use them to do like for MLSs and some emails and stuff, but I don't use it too much. I'm just quick to get the things done, get the

emails out. I don't really have time to send it to an AI to maybe work that way to do it. Now, the other thing that I heard you talking about, you're talking about client relationships. Obviously, you have mastered the strategy of client relationships. So what is your philosophy on those relationships and how do you maintain the trust, particularly with those long-term clients, and how do you keep their loyalty in such a fast-paced, eye-changing environment? So I kind of started working with these clients back in 2010, say, nine, when the market crashed in 2008. In 2008, it was one of the largest REO agents in Southeast Florida. I had over 200 Fannie Mae properties.

I worked with Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and a lot of Fannie Mae's. So a lot of them found me through the properties that I had to sell them. And then when it started slowing down in 14, 2014-15, they started asking me to start buying for them, find them deals, find them, you know, some acquisitions so they can do it as a single-sfr, so just single-family rentals. So they kind of stayed with me till 2014-15, so I kept loyal to them. I know how they work. I know what they want to hear. And I know what properties they want and how to get the deals done through pretty, pretty much. much almost 10 years now. You know, with the benefits of investors, I've seen this in my own

personal production business, which is probably, you know, mini scale of yours, right? But it's true. I mean, your investor clients, you get a handful of those, and they're doing two, three deals a year. I mean, you're doing pretty well just by taking care of those couple of investor clients. For agents that haven't gotten to figuring out how investors work, it's really a good place to start if you don't necessarily know where to start. Like my investors, would they have either 40,000 homes or 50,000 homes? You know, hopefully I can pick up another one that has 80,000 homes. So you don't get one or two or three. They're going to give you 10 or 15 or 20. So those numbers you have to be prepared for to know who's going to start driving the properties, who's going to start doing the BPO's,

who's going to start taking pictures in that kind of sense to make sure that you hit the right timelines that they're not going to be pissed. John, how come you didn't get me these BPO's? How come you didn't drive these properties. This door was unlocked. How come this key's not re-keyed? So you just have to be prepared to get 10, 20 properties instead of that one or two. Right. And so you've obviously faced some big challenges over the years because you've been, you've been in it for all of it, you know, in terms of, you know, recent real estate history here. So what are, what's, what's one of those bigger challenges that you had to deal with, especially if you're dealing with REOs? Well, I did, I don't know if you've heard of the condo conversions. So that was a

pretty much when the market crashed. So I sold a lot of those for another big investor that they bought multifamily properties in Orlando, Tampa and all that stuff. And we had to go sell those units that kind of conversions. That made the market crash basically in 07. So the biggest challenge I thought was when I really didn't do anything in 07, which was basically all I did was fish every day. And I was like, okay, something's going to happen. Yeah. We're coming into 2008, a good friend of mine, Kevin Berman, was like, hey, you got to come and help me with these foreclose. and I'm like I can't. I have too much of these condo conversions and then it kind of crashed and I'm like, okay. So I had to do something. I was either going back to the auto body in 2008 or I said, you know what? January 1st, I will come to Bankers Realty at Kevin and Herman and I'll start working with them.

So at that time, my biggest challenge was knowing that if I was going to go back to the auto body collision or, you know, start a new kind of business with foreclosures with Kevin in 2008. at that time I made the right choice and went to foreclosures I started going to these seminars in Dallas, San Diego, Cleveland for the banks, big banks. And you know, I always learned from my dad that, you know, we used, when the body shop bins, we had a body shop,

we used to do car, you know, big dealerships. We had the Mercedes dealerships. You know, when we had the people that walked off the street, so we had gravy in both ways. So I went to get the banks to make me grow as a big whale in this kind of business and that's what made me help it. Is there anything,

you wish you would have done differently early on? No, I think I kind of went through the right path. I kind of had good people behind me. They taught me well. They got me in front of the people that were big enough where I didn't really have to go knocking on doors and getting referrals to only do one or two or three or four deals. They got me in front of people where I can say,

you know, give me your 20 properties, give me your 49 properties and in that kind of sense where so I think that I went to the right path instead of going to door knocking and all that kind of stuff with the referrals. Now, you know, there's a massive operation side in managing all these transactions. What keeps you motivated to keep up with it all? Not to lose the clients that I have because then who knows what the next step is. Yeah. So I try not, I try to do whatever they need to do to whatever.

I can make work to keep them as a client because I would not like to go back as a regular realtor or buyer's agent knocking on doors and having one or two listings on the MLS where now I have anywhere from 30 to 60. Now, how do you handle the pressure of being at the top, right? Because that's a whole other ball of wax. A lot of people say that. They talk about they have stress. I kind of don't.

I've been doing it so long where I don't really. make myself pressure, I get so in with the asset managers and I know what they want that they don't look to say, hey, why are you not getting this done fast enough? They know if it's not done, there's a reason. I'm even in hospital or do something or something wrong, and I'm not getting it done. So it kind of comes natural to me to really just make it easy on myself and work and my work to work at night, work during a day, and that kind of sense to make it easy. So I kind of not really stress out too much. And I got to imagine there's enough systems and process that a lot of it at this point has got to be almost automatic.

Yeah, doing a BPO is automatic. Like we were talking about in the seminar, you know, BPO. Yeah, get a little closer to the mic. We're here at EX-Speak on in Miami, and it's getting loud. It's starting to get loud. It's getting loud. You know, just making it easy, like I was telling them, I can do BPO and 10, 15 minutes. So I'm knocking as much as you can knock out fast enough in those kind of systems,

making it a lot easier for everybody. We're catching up with the top dog, John, here at Expe Realty. For those agents that are just starting out in the business, John, how should they, what should they be thinking about to build momentum? Communication, answer your phone. You never know what's the opportunity that's on that phone call. It can be a big investor. It can be someone that wants to sell five properties. So always be alert, be ready for the next opportunity that comes along. John, appreciate your insights. Appreciate your heart and thought wisdoms. Thanks for checking in with us here at KGCI Real Estate on air.

I appreciate. Thanks, Ian. It's a party. It's a party. Ian Wheatley, KGCI. Oh, there it goes. Sorry, John. Ian Wheatley, KGCI, Real Estate on air. We are here from EXPCon in Miami. It's been a busy time. It's been a lot of fun. We have been here. It's the final day of coverage of EXPCon Miami. They're going to be breaking down later on this afternoon. And it has been an absolute blast. For those of you that have not been able to make it down, I hope that you're going to be able to listen to all of what we've been doing here at EXPIC on Miami, checking it out on demand at real estate onair.fm. You can subscribe to KGCI, Real Estate on Air, anywhere that you're listening to podcasts. You can also we stream our station

24-7-365 at Real Estate onair.fm. We now have mobile apps. You asked, we delivered. So we got those real estate business building principles that do transcend. borders and download KGCI, Real Estate on Air's mobile app now from the App Store or Google Play. And you can take our real estate insights with you anywhere you need to go. All the insights that we get from our top producing agents from the United States, Canada, Africa, Europe, Oceana. So for those of you that are, so I've said this a few times. Apparently there's a discrept. I remembered a long time ago, right?

Australia. We call Australia continent. But I learned that the rest of the world doesn't do that. They call it Oceana. So when I say Oceana, what I'm also talking about is Australia and the whole rest of that section. So we've got agents from all around the world. They are streaming with us, KGCI, Real Estate on Air. And if you want to check that out, again, real estate onair.fm, but I highly recommend. We've got the stream. We've got the podcast all integrated. You can take it with you into Apple, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto. just by downloading the KGCI Real Estate on-air mobile apps. And, yeah, we're really excited about it. Had a lot of good feedback so far from a lot of the agents that are here at EXPCon.

We are here in Miami here on KGCI at Real Estate on Air. So we've been having a lot of fun. And we've been catching up with some award winners. We've been catching up with many of our KGCI Real Estate on Air agent hosts. And the next gentleman that we really want to check in with is one of KGCI Real Estate on Air's own, Ruben Garcia, proven by Ruben on Socials, his podcast streaming here at KGSI. DCI Real Estate on air. He is the mentor of the year. Rubin, congratulations. It's well deserved. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. So can you share a little bit about like what your approach is

towards the mentor of the year, right? So what's that approach to mentorship look like and what kind of drives you to work with those new agents? Yeah, I think it was born out of allowing the agents to tell me what they're going to do and then slightly being disappointed on maybe what the outcome of that was. So I've started to really build more of actually 100% of an action. based funnel, if you will. So I think that's what's kind of helped because only by doing A, you'll receive B, only by doing B, you'll receive C versus saying that, yes, I'm going to do this, and never really doing it, right? And there's a quote that goes, I can't hear you, I can't hear what you're saying because your actions are too loud. And that's essentially what this funnel is.

That makes a lot of sense. So how do you, how do you use that funnel to provide that guidance to allow new agents to space to kind of find their own path in this. Yeah, man. So we first start off with, so let's just start off by, they do the onboarding obviously here. But we trickle in some, some cool things like, hey, make sure to reach out to, oh, brokers are going to love this. Make sure you reach out to your broker or broker in charge depending on whatever state you're in. Make sure you reach out to them at least once a month and tell them you appreciate them, right? Don't even ask for anything. Just, I appreciate you. Today's an amazing day. Hope you're having one, that type of thing. So we do sprinkle in those things along the way before we move into like the actual real estate stuff so there

is a little bit of sprinkling on that but then we move into business 101 so then we talk about calendar building which is gonna i'm gonna get into that later but we talk about calendar building first putting in your priorities which is family date night exercise like all that stuff then we will identify the time for for business and then we also sprinkle in uh business account tax account business credit cards if they like credit cards um some like debit which is totally fine um have you set up your voice mail. Like the business 101 conversation first is what we do. Then we move into business building. Did that help? That makes a lot of sense. I mean, because here's the thing, because I'm still an agent in production, but I have a real estate radio station to run. I got a seven-year-old, a four-year-old,

and I also have a wife, right? So, you know, time blocking is absolutely essential in getting any of it done. 100%. And for the leverage for the mentor, it's going to allow you to when the agent says, hey, you know, I would totally do that. I just don't have time. Then you're like, oh, totally understand. Let me see your calendar. And then it hits them, right? They're like, well, you see what happened was.

But most of the time, if they've done this, they will pull out their calendar and you can help them identify the white space outside of their date nights, their family nights. We do something called state of the marriage or state of the relationship, depending on what that is. It's kind of like a business meeting with your spouse. We can find time outside of that as long as you've done a really good job of blocking the most important things in your life first, which, oh, by the way, keeps you the happiest. So a happy age, it's probably going to be more productive in the first place. There's no reason to push production down their throat and tell them, you know, go get more listeners. If they're unhappy at home, their

dog hates them and ever, you know, it just doesn't make any sense. So that's why that is our first conversation. And I don't want to hear any reasons on why you can't do anything in the future. Have you plugged in your priorities first. Got it. And so what are some of those for chat with Ruben Garcia. We're here at EXBCCon here in Miami, KGCI Real Estate on Air. I'mie and Wheatley. What are some of those common challenges that you see with those new agents, what they're dealing with, those first couple of transactions? How do you get them through it? Yeah. So some of the biggest things we're seeing is that they get ready to get ready, right?

To get ready and to get ready. And they never really take an action. And we talk about failing forward, right? And it's okay. And as long as you just try, in my book, you won because you at least took that step. So that's one of the biggest challenge I would see is they want to know it all. Like they want to study Sky Slope. I'm like, not yet, you know?

Like, we, the best thing that we can do is get your belief check, which is believing that you can even do this business, we need to get you paid. We need to get you doing the calendar first and then move straight into the lead generation. And then sometimes they do, they get ready to get ready to get ready to get ready to because they're so uncomfortable. But we do talk about some mindset stuff because this business is 90% mindset, you know? So, yeah. You know what's nice about the sky slope people though?

What? They send you an email if you don't do something right. Right. And they tell you how to do it right. And then you do it right. And it's an amazing thing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. 100%. Yep. So is there a particular area that you find that new agents, generally speaking, need more support in than others? Hmm, that's a good question. In the beginning, believe it or not, it is the calendar. Okay. We circle back to that thing all the time, building the habit of that. Outside of that, it's building their own business. What does that mean? That means building their own CRM, their own contacts, their own notes.

their own follow-up, their own call to actions, and building that habit, they could do any cold lead generation play or warden-le-generation play because they've done a really good job of building the foundation to build in their database. I would say the calendar and really truly building out a database, man. I went, I'm just real quick, I went and I taught in front of a remax before, and the owner came to me afterwards, this was years ago, and she was like, hey, man, I'm thinking about selling my business.

I was like, that's awesome. Let me see your database. By the way, been in the business for almost 30 years. She was like, I don't have a database. I was like, you don't have a business. You don't have a business. What are we selling here? The chair.

You know, like your past clients, but that's all those documents over there, right? Like, you don't have a physical database that we can sell or that you can rent out a part of it. So really putting them in the mindset of really truly building a business is probably one of the toughest things. You know, and here's the other thing. I mean, because you mentioned that business. I mean, my real estate partner got into real estate by buying. another agent's book of business, right? And we like,

like, exactly. So, so his, his whole process was, I don't want to have to build it. I'm going to buy what's already built. Yes.

And then plugged in, transitioned, and, you know, went from zero production to, you know, being a multi-million dollar producer. Exactly.

In the span of, and it was like, months and months, what's the secret? No, I just bought a book of business. Exactly. It's a brilliant business strategy.

Yeah. And, you know, the other guy's real happy because he got paid for his business that he's got a little retirement line. Exactly. And you're an investor, right? So we talk about this. And some of that, most of the, a decent amount of agents don't want to sell real estate forever, right? Right. So they use the funds or the money to fund the things that they enjoy.

So wouldn't it be nice to have that asset ready to roll when it's time that, when that time comes? And here's the investor part. We never sold ours. We rent it out. So you can buy and hold, essentially, your database, but only if you've done it from year one. And for the ones who are listening, it's like, man, this is too late. I've already done this many years. I started building that either five or six later after getting my real estate license.

So the time is now. And now it's pretty good. So starting now is the point. Remember, don't get ready to get ready to get ready to get ready. Yeah. And so some advice, we're chatting with Ruben Garcia here, KDCI Real Estate on Air. He's the winner of the Mentor of the Year Award. He is a KGCI Real Estate host.

And talking to those mentors, right? Talk to those experienced agents that might be interested in wanting to give back. Yeah. What advice would you have to them? Well, if you're interested in it, I would say do it. Yeah. If you're not, obviously, don't do it. So if you're interested in it, I mean, you can always reach out to me.

I don't know. Can I plug? Absolutely. Go ahead. So proven by Rubin on all social media platforms, you can just reach out me if you have any questions or what it looks like. And I can give you a little bit more of a highly leveraged system to make sure you're not wasting your time on agents who aren't willing to do the work. But if it's something you enjoy, man, I love it. Dude, I love getting them

in that first belief check and they're super excited about it and they finally believe that they can do this business. I'm with the expe. So, you know, first three deals and then they're essentially out. So it's not someone you have to keep on forever, but you could also mentor them forever. It's a really cool relationship that you can build because the more they win, the more you win. It's a pretty cool relationship. Rubin, it's clear you've got the passion. It's clear you love doing it, right? Enjoy it. Got to love what you do.

And congratulations on the award. Thanks for checking in with us, Air. KGCI Real Estate on Air. You're the man. Thank you. Yeah, we appreciate you. Ruben Garcia. Realize a Halloween's tomorrow. You got a little one at home. Halloween's a big deal. I'll be flying out later today. Ruben Garcia, host of the Ruben Garcia show,

Ruben by Rubin on Social's, mentor of the year. We are here at the Miami Beach Convention Center Broadcasting Live. This is the final day of EXPCon, Miami, IA, and Wheatley. This is KGCI, Real Estate on Air. We've already heard from some big agents. Later on, we're going to be checking in with the commercial powerhouse, Roland Lowellcus. He offers expertise on navigating high-stakes deals. We're also going to be checking in with some of our panelists that are going to be given some presentations through the day to day here at KGCI, Real Estate on Air. What we've got going on is we've got

out a lot of our hosts. We have a lot of our hosts that are here, and they are on some double duty. So we're going to be checking in with Julie Nelson about extreme open houses. We're going to be checking in with Go Go Bethke on how to manage, how to build an empire. But right now, we've got Aaron Hendon with us. He has a, he is the co-host of the mindful CEO. That one is heard Mondays as part of our Mindset Motivation Monday here on KGCI, a real estate on air. Aaron, thanks for checking in with us here at KGCI Real Estate on Air. Let's get to the basics. You've got this panel called a Better You Mindset Panel. How would you describe mindfulness and how does it inform a resilient mindset? Mindfulness is pretty much defined as to pay attention on purpose in the present moment.

and the opportunity is to it is the defining factor of a resilient mindset because when you think about resilience or what eats away at our resilience or what destroys our ability to be resilient, it's the recurring worries, the recurring thoughts, the looping of doubt, the tired, the fear, those sort of negative emotions that eat away at our natural enthusiasm. And all of those, all those different conversations, all those different little modalities are a function of not being in the present moment, not being actually in the present. We're worried about the future. We're upset about the past. But we're not sitting quietly in the present moment, even just for a moment to get that

piece. So it's, and developing that capability develops a resilient mindset, develops a resilience. You actually are growing the part of your brain that is resilient. It's fascinating. It is. It really is. And we could probably spend a solid hour on just that alone. But you've got a better you mindset panel. It's happening today here at EXPCon. What are some of the skills that agents are going to be learning about on this panel that will, I suppose, in turn, improve their businesses. Yeah. So, you know, one thing is we're going to do a lot of work on self-care, you know, the opportunity to take care of yourself as a way of developing a strength and power. Look, you know, we were talking earlier pre-show about how does this going to improve people's

bottom line? Because it's all nice and well and good to think about self-care. That'd be nice. if I had the time, if I had the business, I could take care of myself better, except you and I both know, and anyone listening knows intuitively, it doesn't work that way. You are at your best when you're at your best. You perform best when you're at your best, actually finding self-care practices that don't mean taking yourself out of the game, but taking yourself further into the game and taking care of yourself while you go. You know, my daughter and I joke around that about football all the time. And we talk about the best ability is availability.

And the opportunity for you to be available is very much a function of your willingness to take care of yourself. So self-care is going to be a big one. And then addressing fear. And that could be all the different ways fear shows up, fear of prospecting, fear of imposter syndrome, fear of looking bad, fear of failure.

We're going to look at procrastination as an outcome of fear. So all sorts of practice. And then we've dubbed the entire session, like our panel of Portia Ryan, Dr. Portia Ryan, Terrestone, and Andy Rosas and myself are the anti-fluff crew. There is no fluff in this panel. This is all actionable. Do this.

Get this result kind of thing. So it's going to be great. I think some agents that don't know much about mindfulness, I think they would probably describe a lot of it as fluff. So what are some of those more tactical, actionable steps that we're going to be talking about in this panel? Yeah, it's interesting. Just one more thing about the idea of mindfulness being fluff. You know, it's considered a soft skill. And when the army in the in the 70s developed the term soft skill, because they really, the US Army coined the term soft skill. And they were referencing, they're comparing it to hard skills.

Hard skills were like how to operate a tank. That's a hard skill. A soft skill was your leadership capabilities. It wasn't, you weren't dealing with something physical. So it was a soft skill. They later regretted calling it soft skills because it shows up in the listening. People think about soft skills is secondarily important, not as important. And because it's a soft skill.

Not, they renamed it in the manuals as a core skill. So there's no more soft skills. And that's the way mindfulness shows up for people as a soft skill, like a secondarily important skill. Like, oh, yeah, that'd be nice if I had the time. Except 80% of the world's billionaires, high performers, and best performing athletes all have a mindfulness practice. It is a core skill to be able to manage your mindset. And every coach in the world talks about the importance of mindset. Who you are when you get on the phones, what your mindset is.

and every agent listening to this right now is either a new agent that has the direct personal experience of that fear of getting in the phone and I don't want to get the phone and they're going to think of my pain to ass or I don't want to, or you are senior agent,

you're a team leader and you train those people and you can't get them on the phone because their mindset is off and your mindset is often trying to get them on the phone so we're going to deal with mindset like your orientation to life

and then it ends with mindset because even, you know, I know personally that I could have five deals in escrow and have my pipeline full and still be worried and still be anxious. I have had that experience. So even when the circumstances are good, I could still have a terrible mindset and still not be enjoying life. It starts with mindset and it ends with mindset. And in the middle there, there's action. And we're going to talk about all of that.

That is awesome. KGCI Real Estate on air. I'm Ian Wheatley. We are here at EXPCon in Miami. me, we're chatting with the co-host of the mindful CEO, Aaron Hendon. He is on a panel today, a better you mindset panel. Aaron, I know we can listen to you Mondays here on KGCI, Real Estate on Air as part of our mindset and motivational Monday. But if an agent wants to connect with you, how can they do that? Well, they can just, well, first of all, if you're with EXP, you can find me on Workplace, or you can go to Aaron Hendon.com, and that's my website. And you can reach me there anytime. And then I'm on all the social media. If you've thought about meeting me, it'd be fairly easy to have me show up in your life.

We appreciate Aaron Hendon. You got the Better You Mindset panel. Co-host the Mindful CEO heard here on KGCI Real Estate on Air. We're going to keep it with that mindset and motivation Monday here at KGCI Real Estate on Air. We have many of our high-performing, top-producing real estate agents at EXP Realty that are also hosts here at KGCI Realty. real estate on air that are also doing presentations here at EXPCon, here at the final day of EXPCon Miami are going to be doing our continuing coverage here for a little while longer.

Let's check in with the host of the GoGoPreneur podcast. Go Go, Go Bethke. She is built a massive real estate empire here. Her panel is building a massive empire through a real estate. So I got to get out of here real quick because you got to get going. So you're going to be joining other individuals that have built these large organizations of agents all over the world. I don't want to keep you too too long. So what are you going to be sharing in like 20 minutes, GoGo? And building a downline organization and EXP is the best place to do that at, right? So instead of teaching how to do it, I wanted to interview a few people who's been there,

done that and done it successfully and find out why they decided to do region attraction and build an empire, how they're doing it, what are the day to day and the mindset that it requires to put yourself into the mindset to actually take action and reach your goals. And then also, how do they retain their agents, right? Because it's very important to, when you decide to build the downline organization, to actually build a culture. And right, what does that look like? What does it take to not only build a culture, but sustain that culture and then retain those agents, right? Because it's one thing to work so hard to find them and get them to come over here. And it's another thing to keep them. So I want to ask these questions and, you know, get different perspectives. Because the

beauty of it is that at EXP we get to do it, however we want to do it, right? However, we sip our tea. And I feel like Jay Kenner Abbey Stasek and Amanda, the traveling realtor, they're so different from each other, right? And being able to interview them all and see how they using this wealth that EXP allowed us to build through agent attraction, how they're using that in their everyday life. You know, what's interesting is because you, you have all been there and you've all done it. and there's a lot of learned insights that are going to be able to be taken away from all of you that are going to be there. What are some of the things that you're hoping to take away from being on this panel? Oh, gosh.

I mean, I learn from everyone every time. That's why I do my Google Printerer podcast, right? Because I love the ability to pick people's brains. I love the ability to learn from others. I believe that we all designed the way we are designed. So we can only see the world in that light, right? because that's how our eyes are designed to see. So when you get to interview others,

you actually get to see the world in a different light. You get to see it through somebody else's lenses, right? So I want to see what's important to them, what they enjoy, you know, what is the biggest change or what are some of the wins that the agents in their downline organization been able to achieve, right? Because it's one thing for us to be able to build these empires, but then there comes a time where you don't want your own weights

to be pulled by you. You want location, right? you want people to be able to do what you did in order for it to grow down. We have the control to grow our organizations. Why? Because as many agents as you bring is how white it's going to go. But we don't really have the control over how deep it's going to go, right? In order the depth, it's controlled by the agents that you bring, the caliber of the agents that you bring and teaching them how to duplicate. So I want to see how they did it.

I'm sure I'm going to learn all kinds of stuff. Then I can take back any way. That ain't so bad. Catching up with Go-Go Bethke. host of the gogo-poeneur podcast. That one streams Mondays here on KGCI real estate on air. For those that want to maybe get to know you better, they're not here in Miami. How can they get connected with you? They just get to Miami. I'm kidding. You can find me at Gogobati or Gogo's real estate everywhere if you want to meet your personally get back to your message

because I have 17 assistants. But if you want to talk to me personally, then Gogo's real estate on Instincts. You know, somewhere along the way, we should probably have a conversation of how to scale up to 17 assistance because that in and of itself, you've got, you got some VAs, you've got some ones that are kind of right around there with you. There's a, there's a lot of business building process that can be learned in just that process alone. Well, very early on, I learned my hourly rate and I will not do anything that doesn't make me that amount of money in that hour. It doesn't mean it doesn't need to get done. It does need to get done just not by me. It's an amazing. It's an amazing concept. Go Go, Bethy.

Thanks for checking in with us here at KGCI, Real Estate on Air. See you guys on stage. Yeah, have fun of that panel. You got like 15 minutes to get there. There she goes. Go Go Bethke, host of the Go-GoPreneur podcast. This is KGCI Real Estate on Air. I'm Ian Wheatley.

We are broadcasting from EXPCon Miami. This is the final day of EXPCon here in Miami from the Miami Beach Convention Center. It's been an absolute blast. It's been an absolute wonderful time. And we've just had such great opportunities to catch up with many of EXP Realty's top producers. coming up in about 30 minutes from now. We're going to be checking in with the commercial powerhouse. Roland Lowellcus, he is one of the award-winning commercial agents here at EXP Realty.

I guess technically not at EXP Realty, at EXP Commercial. So we're going to be checking in with him and getting some insights on how he's been able to navigate high-stakes deals. I know that a lot of the agents here at EXP Con in Miami are residential agents. and maybe they've been interested in that all commercial real estate thing. So we'll kind of pick Roland's brain on how you can get into commercial real estate and maybe how you can make that transition, get some support from a commercial broker in your area. That's going to be a conversation that we have with Roland Loewkelkes, the award-winning commercial agent here at EXP Realty.

Oh, coming up in about 30 minutes from now here on KGCI Real Estate on air. But this has been an absolutely incredible event. For those of you that we're not able to make it down, I hope that you are able to kind of glean some insights. We have been podcasting our conversations that we've been having with these award winners, whether they are the production award winners, Jess Nieto, who's a KGCI Real Estate on Air agent host. She's the icon agent of the year. We podcasted that interview. You can hear that at real estate onair.fm.

Or you can check it out anywhere that you listen to podcasts. But probably the best way to do that moving forward is we have brand new mobile apps here for KGCI, a real estate on air. Y'all were looking for daily motivation and real estate strategies on the go with you anywhere that you were. The other thing y'all were looking for you asked for was, hey, Ian, it would be a godsend if we could have KGCI, real estate on air, better integrated in our Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. And y'all ask, we delivered. So you can take it with you anywhere that you go. Download the KGCI Real Estate on-air mobile app for the unlimited access to 24-7 streaming, daily podcasts, exclusive real estate strategies, all available now on iOS and Android.

Just key up that search at your app store or on Google Play, KGCI. And if you're one of the folks that are walking around here at what we are lovingly calling the fishbowl here on the Explorer floor at EXPConn, Miami can scan that QR code now. And you can download our apps take us with you, always free, always available. Real Estate onair.fm. This is KGCI, Real Estate on Air, coming to you from the ExpeCon final day. It's the Miami Beach Convention Center here. We're on the Explorer floor between the brand store and the main entrance. And it's been a lot of fun. We've been catching up with some real estate agents that are here. Also been catching up with, you know, this is the thing that has surprised me probably the most is,

and I don't know if I've shared this yet. I've shared it in private conversations. I'm not sure, I'm not exactly sure if I've shared it with all y'all. But one of the interesting things that came up from launching real estate on air, oh, back in February of this year, was we had a lot of international hosts that partnered with us in this endeavor, right? So we have 53 of the top producing agents streaming 24, 7, 3. 365 here at KGCI Real Estate on air. You know, many of those agents are EXP agents.

We were happy that EXP Realty was able to invite us down and, you know, kind of get to get to hang out with some of those Asian hosts as well, get to know them a little bit better. But what really is surprised me about this event specifically is the international presence of this event. There has been, they added countries. I didn't even know that that was a thing, okay? So they announced from the general session stage on Monday that they were opening up a couple of new countries here at EXP Realty. So Egypt was among them.

We're going to be checking in with Chief Learning Officer Brian Allenton. Ellington a little bit later on about that. And it was just kind of interesting the number of international brokers that are here, the number of international agents that are here. We have people that are walking by, you know, folks from Texas. and whatnot. I mean, Texas is technically in the United States, ma'am. I'm just letting you know. Just letting you into Texas is still a part of the continental United States.

Just, you know, y'all think yourselves are different, but that's not quite right. Not quite right. For those of you, we are here at EXPConn Miami, and we are in, I've lovingly started calling this from the Fishbowl, because everybody likes to take a look at and see what we're doing. But the international presence of this event is something to behold. We have agents from all over the world here, and they're all jiving. They're all sort of getting to know what works in their countries. And one of the things that sort of sets the United States and Canada apart is the United States and Canada has co-brokerage.

And the United States and Canada has an MLS. And getting the insights of these agents on how do they manage. life without an MLS. How do they manage life without a co-brokerage? How do they how do they manage these portals, right? International and global real estate is a completely different beast and just knowing and learning the insights from those agents that are on our air that are that are practitioners of real estate outside of North America. Hearing these agents that are here at EXPCon Miami that are outside of North that are practitioners of real estate outside of North America, getting their experience and insights.

One of the things that is really crystallized in my mind that didn't exist before we launched KGCI Real Estate on air in February is that the strong sound real estate business building principles are the real estate business building principles that transcend borders. And getting to know some of these international agents has been absolutely incredible. Their presence here has just fundamentally changed this event. It's just been awesome.

The other thing we're going to be checking in with Chief Learning Officer Brian Ellington on a little bit later on is there's also a lot more training and development at this event. I was catching up with folks that were here at EXBCon last year, and what they realized, it wasn't lost on them that the number of breakouts and panels and, you know, the specific different things that agents need to move the needle in their business, this effectively double. from last year's event to this year's event. So we're going to be getting a little bit more insights on just how that was all made to be possible. That's going to be coming from Chief Learning Officer Brian Ellington in about an hour here on KGCI Real Estate on Air. I'm Ian Wheatley.

We are broadcasting from EXPCon Miami. It's the final day. We are on the Explorer floor, and we are catching up with many of our KGCI Real Estate on Air agent hosts who are finding themselves rather, rather busy. Chris Craddock, he had a panel on Monday. He's got a presentation that he's got to do today. It's called expand investing,

dominating distress sellers. He is the host of uncommon real estate. That streams Thursdays here on KGCI Real Estate on Air Chris. I'm not sure if you know this. I'm not sure if we talked about this. But I cut my real estate teeth on residential short sales and a hurry host when I was a new agent. And I have a sense that I know what a distress seller may be, but as a part of this panel, it'd be good to know. Oh, Chris, what is a distress seller? A little sneak peek and insider info to it. So we use the word distress seller,

even though that's not really completely what we're talking about. Because the reality is most people have an idea of what distressed sellers are. We like to call them quick sale client because not all of these sellers are necessarily distressed, right? There are people that inherit a property and maybe they've got five siblings and they do not want to do anything to the property, they just want to get it sold and get it sold fast. Those, you know, it's not really a distressed situation, but it's a quick sale situation. They want to get rid of the property fast, right? So these are the people we're looking for, people that are not looking to go on the MLS, people

that are looking to sell as is, you know, and oftentimes you'll see it with like a time sensitive thing where maybe they need to move. Maybe they're in a divorce situation and the judge ordered a sale by a certain date, they just drug their feet until then, or maybe they've got a foreclosure date coming, or maybe their house is in a total disaster situation where they just haven't fixed it up in years. So there's a lot of different reasons why these properties are where they are, where people just need to sell it as is, sell it quick and just be done with it. And so we like to call it quick sale, but the reality is most of them tend to be in distress.

But yeah, they just want to sell quick and get out. You know, Chris, you just described like my first 10 listings in the business. There you go. I'll tell you, this is the crazy thing that you see so many people they'll call like 4,000 expired listings and, you know, there's already 100 agents that are talking to them or you talk to people like this and they're like so happy to talk to somebody that may not be an investor looking to buy on 50 cents on the dollar. Right.

How do you identify these properties and think about newer agents here who, they don't have those network connections yet. They're still getting their feet underneath them. They really just have the MLS as like their primary tool because it is the primary tool. But how do agents identify these properties and identify these sellers specifically? There's a number of ways to do it. And it depends on where you are, right? Like I'm at a place where, you know, we have a pretty successful business. We'll do probably about 300 million in volume this year. So we have the cash to spend on marketing, right, to have the phone ring for us, right? When you're first getting started, maybe you don't have any cash.

Then you're going to have to trade your time for dollars, right? So then you have things like it's called driving for dollars where you look for properties that need work. And if a property is in disrepair, it tells a story that the owners are overwhelmed, either financially over timewise. and you would be a godsend to them to say, hey, let me get you some money for this property. You know, you can cold call. You know, if you look at and obviously, you know, obey that TCPA rules, but if you, you know, if you call landlords, right,

there's a reason they call them tired landlord. The average landlord sells within three years of being a landlord, right? So those are some of the easy ways to do it. Then you can start, once you start doing deals, you can do some pay per lead advertising. Things Zillow, but for distressed sellers or quick sale sellers. You can do pay for click advertising. I know EXP is creating, you know, some partnerships with companies that are helping with some of this stuff. You can, I mean, there's just so many different opportunities.

CEO, hiring a cold calling team, you know, all the different pieces. There are a number of things out there. And that's some of the stuff that we're going to talk about in the PAM. Awesome. Chris Craddock, he is the host of uncommon real estate. You can hear that Tuesdays here on KGCI Real Estate on air. You and I could probably talk about this for for hours on end, but you're busy. I got, you got to get going. Chris, how can folks connect with you if they want to learn a little bit more about this, particularly if they're not sitting here at EXBCon in Miami? So the easiest way to get in touch with me, I still am checking personally on this at Krad Rock, C, R-A-D-D-R-C-K, cheesy high school nickname.

I probably need to change the handle that I've just held on to since I started my Instagram account. Look it. It's easy to say. It's easy to type. It's easy to remember. It's memorable, if nothing else. Chris Craddock hosts an uncommon real estate here here on KGCI Real Estate on here.

Thanks for checking in today. Thanks so much. There he goes. Chris Craddock host. the uncommon real estate podcast. That one has heard here on KGCI Real Estate on air. Super excited. We're coming down the final stretch. It is EXPCon Miami. 2024. I'm Ian Wheatley here from the Miami Beach Convention Center. And it has been an absolute just fun, fun event. It's been an international event. The other little bits and pieces that I've been taken away from the last

couple of days here at EXPCon Miami is just how motivated these ExP Realty agents are to support each other, to collaborate with each other. And you're seeing that, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, many of our hosts at KGCI Real Estate on air, their EXP, their EXP realty agents. I, myself, happen to be at Expe Realty agent, too. But, you know, you hear about the collaboration between the agents and kind of seeing. that all firsthand, seeing that all close up, how these agents from all around the country just kind of coming together to collaborate to support each other. It's been a lot of fun, and it's been a lot of fun seeing these KGCI Real Estate on Air agent hosts, given the value

here at EXP, Con Miami that they give to the listeners here at KGCI Real Estate on Air. So for those of you, maybe, it may very well be the first exposure that you have to KGCI real estate on air. So let me explain to you a little bit about what we do. So we are real estate on air. We are 24-7, 365. We are streaming the real estate business building strategies and practices to allow you to better drive what you need to be addressed in your business, right? So whether that's setting up a geographical farm, whether that is how do you set up lead generation funnels, how do you leverage social media to drive your market share, all these things that we need to know how to do as real estate professionals in 2024 and 2025 moving on and beyond,

you know, what AI tools allow you to leverage time in your business. This is what we do. This is the information that we provide you 24-7, 365, always free at real estate onair.fm. Or you can subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts, right? Just search KGCI, Apple Podcast, DZER, Spotify, Iheart Radio, Audible. Anywhere you're listening to the podcast, I promise you, they are sitting right there. Just search KGCI. And if you find that you have like some, you know, unknown podcast platform that you like to listen to your podcasts on, I want to be there too. So just let me know info at real estate onair.fm. Make sure that I know that we've got this thing everywhere that it ought to be. We also have brand new mobile apps.

You can just search KGCI in the iOS app store or for Android device users. That would be Google Play. So those real estate insights on demand, our app, lets you stream our content 24-7, download our podcast, and stay updated with all the industry leaders. It's always free and download today at the app store or on Google Play. Just search KGCI. I'm Ian Wheatley here at EXPCon. We are here in Miami.

And I learned a long time ago that life is a negotiation. Cliff Freeman is the host of Cliff's notes. He has got a panel coming up today here at ExPCon Miami for the final day. Negotiation skill and strategies that work is the title of the conference. Cliff, there are obviously, as getting married man. There are negotiating skills that work and there are some that do not. You're moderating this panel about those negotiation skills that do work. So with Cliff life being a negotiation, what works, brother?

Well, you know, just to kind of frame this conversation a little bit, negotiation is what makes the world go around. A lot of people get into this business and they think it's just showing houses and doing the basic tactical functions in real estate. But your negotiation skills are what are going to take you from being a novice, new agent, all the way up to being a super producer. and honing in on those skills, especially since the NAR settlement and what's been going on with the commission lawsuits, this has really become the single most important thing that any real estate agent can work on as far as their skill sets go,

because now we have completely changed the way that buyer agents are going to get paid in transactions. So in the past, you know, it was you get a call, you show, up, you go open the house up, you know, you do your stuff and you go get closed and you just get a paycheck automatically. But now going forward, every time you engage a client, you're going to have to articulate that value and negotiate your commission, which for buyer agents has been something that was done away with when clear cooperation was introduced. Back in the old days, when Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone and I were selling real estate, we had to start. out with negotiating our commissions and articulating our value. But that's why I'm super excited to be

facilitating this panel, because in my opinion, it is the number one consideration going forward, especially if you're a newer agent in the business. Let's talk a little bit more, a little bit deeper on those newer agents, and especially in this post-NAR settlement world. I know even in my own personal production business hasn't taken a hit, but there are certainly some systems that needed to be adjusted, right? There's some process changes that needed to occur, but at the end of the day, I know how to articulate my value. I know how to have these conversations. I've had these conversations over many, many, many years at this point. So for a newer, let's talk about those newer agents that are starting out. How do they effectively negotiate their value? Well, that's a great question.

And that is something that every single new agent needs to consider. What is the value proposition? What are you offering? And, you know, money flows to differentiation. If you're not doing something above and beyond what the typical real estate agent is doing, you're not going to be able to command the money that you really deserve if you're good and if you're an expert in your field. So it all starts with negotiating.

So articulating your value. So the question is, how do you do that? Well, you know, if you just look at negotiations, really everything that we do in life involve some type of negotiation. And you're a young father. You know, every time your kids come up, you have to engage in negotiation. If they want a piece of chocolate or a piece of something or whatever, you know, it's all about negotiation with your spouse, your friends, your employer, every day.

we negotiate just about everything that we do. Now, the question is, now that this is part of how we're going to earn a living, how do we look at this? What is the best way to negotiate? You know, if you haven't taken training in negotiation, number one, I would say you really got to get schooled up on this. Years ago, they had a certified negotiation expert class that I happened to take, and it really helped me understand the importance of things like building rapport with people. You know, some people think that negotiation is a one-way street and there's a winner and a loser. But in a good negotiation, there are two winners. Both sides can come out and be happy from the result. And if you're getting in real estate transactions and you're not getting those win-wins,

then something is off kilter, something is off track. So learning the skills of how to build rapport. How to win friends and influence people should be the number one book on your list. If you're just getting into real estate, that's got to be on your bookshelf. There are others as well, but that one will help you understand the importance of getting somebody to open their door, open their mind. And if you're not dealing with someone open-minded, Ian, you might as well be talking to a wall. You know, I just got to share this real quick, but one of my good friends that coached with for years he and I coached other agents together his favorite saying was a man's mind changed against his will is of the same opinion still and if you're a good negotiator you're not going to

be getting that other person than a headlock and thrown them to the mat that's not the goal the goal is to make them come to the right conclusion and influence them chieldini wrote a great book called influence. Another great book for your list of things to read if you're getting into real estate or if you, even if you've been doing this and you haven't read his book, it's called Influence and it's one of the best books ever written on the subject. I'll have to check that one out because Dale Carnegie and James Clear are typically annual reads in my repertoire. We're chatting with Cliff Freeman. Host of Cliff's Notes, that one streams here at KGCI Real Estate on air. We're talking about a panel he is moderating

today at EXPCon. We're here in Miami, negotiating skills and strategies that work. Cliff, why don't we talk a little bit, maybe a little bit deeper on the panel? Who's going to be there? And what are we discussing? Yeah, well, I am, I'm super stoked to have some really great agents on the panel. And, you know, the good news is it's going to be a very small, intimate panel. So we're going to be able to really dive in and do some discovery to get to the meat on the bone on this one. Denise Blevins is a great agent who has extensive knowledge in this business and is one of the top negotiators. You're going to want to get to meet her somehow if you never have. Angelo DePaula is going to be on the panel along with Teresa Bennington.

And I'm just super excited to have been chosen to help facilitate this. I mean, this is, you know, this is proximity is everything, right? and I feel like I'm in the right room for this one to really bring out a lot of of nuggets for folks. Yeah, it sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun. Cliff, for those folks that are unfortunately not with us here in Miami this morning, and they wanted to connect with you a little bit. How can agents get a hold of you? Yeah, sure. Hey, I'm on social, on Instagram, Facebook, Cliff Freeman. And of course, you can always reach me at my EXP email address, which is cliff.fremon at EXP Realty.com.

I'd love to hear from you if you enjoy this and if you'd like to know some more. And, you know, like I said, I think that negotiation skills from this point forward should be the single most important thing that agents focus on until they are just really masters of the negotiation skills. because the difference between somebody who is a master at negotiation and somebody who's not is at least six figures a year. Amen. Amen to that. Cliff, I'm looking at the clock. I realize you got to get going. Thanks for checking in with us this morning at KGCI Real Estate on air. Hey, love it. Ian. Thanks, man. We'll catch you when we're done here. Thanks a bunch. There he goes. Mr. Freeman. Thanks for checking in KGCI Real Estate on air. Ian Wheatley here from the final day of EXPConn Miami. It has been an absolutely incredible past couple of the days. It's been a lot of fun. And we got folks hanging out of what I've been endearingly lovingly referring to as my fishbow.

For those of you that are here at EXPCon Miami trying to track down, you can't miss it as soon as you walk into the Explorer for you walk in through the doors. There's a broadcast studio sitting right here. And it looks like we got a, oh, is that Russ? Oh, hi, Rob. I don't want to distract Russ. a speaker outside this thing. I don't want to distract them too much. But we are broadcasting live from the Miami Beach Convention Center here at KGCI, Real Estate on air. And we have been catching up with many of the partners that many of our partners are here, right? Zendlist is here. Utility Connect. Blended. Oh, my gosh, the blended sense to people. I feel so bad for the blended sense people there running around like mad. But they're following, whatever. They're found a lot of people around. They were capturing a lot of good stuff. It's been a lot of fun catching up.

with them. So we got the blended sense people, they're running around. But America's preferred home warranty. They have been one of our trusted partners here at KGCI Real Estate on Air since we launched. And we launched the last, we launched Leap Day. We launched February 29th of this past year. Michelle Loker is with America's preferred home warranty. And America's preferred home warranty has been a crucial partner here of ours here, KGCI Real Estate on air. And Michelle, this seems like a silly question, and I'm surprised at how few agents actually know it. But what is a home warranty? Right out of the gate, very basics.

It's really all about risk mitigation and reducing that overall out-of-pocket expense for a homeowner. Something breaks down, you know they're going to panic. And a home warranty is there to cover to help assist that homeowner so they don't go into panic mode to get those systems up and running. Got it. Now, what makes America's preferred home warranty unique and among the fastest growing in this space? That's a great question, too. And I've been licensed for 30 years, and using home warranty has never been one of those fun things. But I will tell you the difference between America's preferred home warranty and those other warranty companies that are out there is we allow the homeowner to choose their own licensed professional when it comes to repair work.

Other warranty companies, they employ contractors. We do not. We are just the middle person there that assist that homeowner with getting the repairs done, letting them use someone who they're comfortable with that they already know and trust. KGCI Real Estate on Air. I mean Wheatley, we're here to ExPCon in Miami alongside Michelle Oloker with America's Preferred Home Warranty. So I know I see this all the time. First time home buyers getting their first home inspection report.

They panic. They get a little nervous. A home warranty from America's preferred home warranty. can ease a lot of those nerves after that first home inspection for the first time home buyer. I guess how else can the services of America's preferred home warranty be used to improve either sellability of listings or even stabilize a transaction? Yeah, great question. You know, a home warranty, when that homeowner gets their home inspection, they start looking through it,

it doesn't necessarily mean that those items on there are going to go sideways, but they potentially go sideways. And so having that home warranty there provides that safety. at for the homeowner in the event down the road something does happen. They have peace of mind. So what that warranty will do is it will act as that cushion for the homeowner, solidifying their decision to purchase the home and knowing that if something does go wrong, they're helped out down the road with the home warranty. Also, a warranty will help keep deals together because of this. And statistics show that a home that is sold with a home warranty will actually sell

for faster and for more money, which is, great for our agents when you're looking at bottom line sales and making those commissions, right? It's very, very helpful. And especially because, you know, there was a, there was a time in a place where it wasn't a super heavy seller's market, right? And it was a buyer's market. And, you know, the, the home seller getting their home inspection done before the house was listed and that report being provided, you know, it's a tactic that you can use to improve sellability. But it does, doesn't really provide any actual coverage to a buyer. The home warranty actually does, and it does legitimately move that needle. Right. And on the knife side of that, too, not only do

we offer the home warranty on the buyer's side, but we offer complementary listing service for the agents that are looking to build their listing portfolio to be able to offer to those clients as well. That's an incredible value there. So what else do EXP agents gain by use in America's preferred home warranty as a trusted partner? Well, one of the things we like to do, too, is make sure that our warranty is very relevant, very up to date. And so we do a lot of research and data to find out the products and services that are out there that need coverage. So we have a data collection form, which an agent can fill out once an order, a warranty order is performed. And the agents get $75 just for completing that data collection form when the warranty is

ordered. It's free money and RESPA compliant. So there's no worries about getting in trouble anywhere. That's awesome. Michelle Loker, she is with America's Preferred Home Warranty. We are here at KGCI Real Estate on Air broadcasting from EXPCon in Miami. We're here. So are we doing anything special while we're here in Miami? We've got two wonderful interactive booths. We've got a few things planned with EXP's marketing team. Let's just say it's similar to an elf on the shelf concept.

We've got a photo booth as well. And we've got some wonderful backdrops that show Miami EXPCon in the back. And in that photo booth area, we have our brand new. division of our APHW in Espagnol. So we, it's strictly for US only right now. Who knows if we'll branch out on the international side. But it's just a division that we thought was so very important to the Hispanic community and our Hispanic real estate agents or that work with that clientele.

We've got our marketing materials now in Spanish. We will have our national sales director, Felix, there with us at that booth. and he's wonderful, but we've got it all represented, and we want to make sure that we're taking care of all of our EXP real estate professionals on any side of that coin. And I think that's also some incredible value. Michelle, thanks for checking in with us here at KGCI Real Estate on air. Thank you so much, you know it was great.

And we are here at EXPCon Miami. It's day three. It's the full day four, technically, my bad. It's the final day. It's our third day of coverage here from EXP on Miami. We're at the Miami Beach Convention Center. We've been having an absolute blast. We've been having a lot of fun.

Folks been checking in, coming by. I'm in this space. It's lovingly ref- I'm calling it the fishbowl. And so basically, let me just set the stage for you. I am between the entrance of the Miami Beach Convention Center in the Convention Hall, what we are calling the Explorer floor here at EXBCon Miami. That is to my left. To my right is the brand store.

And further beyond that is the last. is the live stage where there's been a lot of live broadcasting and live streaming being done here. And so it's been kind of fun catching up with those folks and kind of being here and being a part of the action. And, you know, one of the takeaways that I've had, you know, now I guess technically four days into EXPCon here in Miami is there's, there's a, it's been a lot of fun. Obviously, it's been a lot of fun. It's been very collaborative. But there are a lot of agents that are out here doing a lot of different things, right? They're doing a lot of social media. They're doing a lot of branding. They're doing a lot of promotion. They're doing, but they're also

doing it together, which you talk to other real estate agents around, at least certainly in my experience, and they don't always play nice with each other, even if they, even if they're all in the same firm, but did you kind of see all these EXP realty agents, it's kind of all, doing these things together to collaborate it. It's just been, it's been a sight to be whole, to be honest with you. And it's been, it's kind of reinvigored me, to be honest with you, to kind of be around all this collaboration here are the last four days here at EXP Con Miami. My name's Ian Wheatley. This is KGCI, Real Estate on Air. For those of you that may not know, but what we are, I'll explain it. We are a 24-7-365 radio station, always streaming,

always free at real estate onair.fm. If the 24-7-365, always-free radio stream doesn't meet your needs, I have an always-free podcast, right? So you can subscribe to KGCI, Real Estate on Air, anywhere that you listen to podcasts. It'd be Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, IHR Radio, audible, literally anywhere that you are listening and consuming podcasts. You just search KGCI, Real Estate on Air, and you will find us there. We also have a mobile app. So you can search KGCI. If you're an iPhone use, That's the app store. If you're an Android user, that would be the Google Play Store. You just search KGCI, download the mobile app, and then you can take our 24-7 always-free radio stream. It integrates

perfectly with our always-free podcasts. And it also integrates perfectly into your Android Auto or your Apple CarPlay, depending on whether you got the iPhone, you got the Android device. So you can download the KGSI Real Estate on-air mobile app today. Always Free on-demand, Real Estate Business Building Principles, all the answers to your real estate business business. questions are always streaming at your fingertips. Now on your phone, just search KGCI Real Estate on Air in the app store or on Google Play. I've had a lot of opportunities to catch up and check in with a lot of the KGCI Real Estate on Air agent hosts that have found themselves busy here on the final day of EXPCon Miami. This final day of EXPCon was, I don't

want to say it was added just because, but it was added for a specific purpose. It was added so that way the agents that are here are able to participate more in panels and participate more in breakouts and make sure that they're getting the information that they need in their businesses. So we got many of our KGCI Real Estate on Air agent hosts that are also EXP Realty agents. And those EXP Realty agents that are KGCI Real Estate on air hosts have been finding themselves on breakout stages and on panels all over EXP on the last. last couple of days. Holly Kitchens, she is one of them. And her podcast Unleash Your Inner Legend streams Thursdays here on KGCI, Real Estate on Air. She's an expert on how you use social media to drive your business. Her session is called social media. That means business. Holly, first and

foremost, welcome to Miami. Oh my gosh. I am doing fabulous. I have never been to Miami. So first time we're here. And yeah, couldn't be more excited and more thrilled. The last time I was here, I was, I was like eight. So I think this samezies. We're calling it samezies. You've got a breakout panel coming up. Social media that means business. You've got a lot of expertise in how to leverage social media to drive business, particularly for those of us in real estate. So Holly, at a 20,000 foot view, what are we going to be going over at this panel? So we're covering a lot of things such as, you know, like, you know, fear or the hesitancy of why a lot of people hold themselves back, kind of diving into, you know, my personal journey on that and hopefully give some tips on how anyone else who struggle. Like I, I would say struggled, but I still struggle with it.

I mean, we all feel like there's something always holding us back. But kind of, you know, giving some tips on how to kind of, you know, mentally prepare and mentally build that muscle so that whenever, You hit go, you publish online and social media and all these other things. So hesitancy, but then also, too, some like tactics too when it comes to, you know, what to post, who you posting for, who's your avatar, who's your dream client, what kind of content should you be putting out? All those fun things. In my home studio for KGCI, Real Estate on Air, immediately to basically to the right of where I'm constantly working is, you know, we call them, you know, client avatars or audience avatars and radio.

we call them target listener profiles, right? Same, same thing. But that is always perpetually to my right, always available at a glance. So that way I know, you know, the person's name, their gender, their age. When did they graduate from high school? All of these are really important little pieces of information.

And it's not necessarily when you're talking about content. It's not necessarily like what are you saying, but also the style, the feel, what background music are you going to use, right? Are you going to use something that's nostalgic to folks that graduated in, you know, 2008, 2009 versus, you know, 1998 and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of important pieces

and information that those avatars create for us and helping to kind of automate some of that creation process. So that's a, that's one of those big things that a lot of people don't ever sit down and do. I think the other thing that you're going to be talking about is that hesitancy in getting started. By the grace, God, my first radio air check was done on a cassette that got a magnet taken to it, right? So it doesn't exist, right? It's gone. It is, it is abrogated from existence because getting started can be hard.

So we're talking about some of that performance anxiety and we're talking about being in front of the camera for the first time. A lot of people, you know, a lot of their first videos are the first time they're in front of the camera. What do they need to know to get started? Well, I always tell people to you, like before you even just hit record or, you know, start in content creation mode, it is getting that clarity. I think that helps a lot with who is your content for. And as real estate agents, we have so many avatars. We have,

you know, not just buyers and sellers, but we have like luxury first time home buyers, newlyweds, divorce, empty nasters. There's so many different types. And I think it's, it helps build that confidence whenever you're saying, okay, who do I thrive and shine for when I work with? So for instance, it could be first time buyer. Maybe you love the whole education process and everything else. And maybe you absolutely current at the thought of working with investors. So I always tell people, I'm like, okay, make a list of you love working with and what are the kind of content that you can have? So first time homebuyers, a question would be, what's earnest money. How long does it take to buy a house? What's needed? How much money?

Things like that. Make that list and really hit on topics that you're very comfortable already talking about. You have those conversations already. It's going to be a lot easier than if you just like are going to talk about, you know, say you're a newer agent and you heard about Fed rate cuts and you're not super familiar with what that is, it's going to be a lot more difficult and more challenging to convey that message versus something that you can talk about in your sleep. So I think first off would be that. Second off is identifying like what's holding you back other than the fact that you don't have content or you don't know what to say. We've already got that out of the way. What's holding you back for me personally? It was fear of rejection. I was thinking in my mind like, oh my gosh,

internet trolls, people are going to make fun of me. And to me, I'm like, okay, well, first off, that's not even real yet. So I'm scared of something that's not in reality. Second off, it's like, okay, what's the worst case scenario? Someone says, wow, her, you know, she has patch up on her shirt. She didn't even realize that L.O.L. I don't think of something silly. The likelihood of that person buying for me is probably not even going to happen anyways or using me to list her home or whatever. So it's like understanding what's the worst that can happen and just accept it. And honestly, the worst that could happen is you go viral over something silly. And then you capitalize on that viral video.

So I think it's like going through that mental check and that process. And it is a muscle. I feel like the first time you record, it's definitely scary. You might have like sweaty palms. You might be a little like stumbling over your words. But honestly, I think the second time you record is probably the hardest time because not only you still trying to mentally recover from that to like putting yourself out there. But now you have to do it again.

It's like going to the gym the first time. You're like, okay, that felt good. It wasn't too bad. And then you go the gym the second day or the third day and you're like, I am so sore. I could barely lift this whatever weight. So I think, you know, it's understanding what's holding you back, getting really clear on that. And then, you know, doing what's comfortable. If you're just not, if you're not comfortable with video just yet, just do it on a Zoom and maybe just take the audio, make it into like a little podcast or you can do like an audio snippet, things like that.

There's ways that you can kind of step into that comfort zone. But honestly, it's kind of like, you know, just jumping all in and doing it. And then the more you do it, the more comfortable you're going to get. Because my first podcast recording was the worst. And I wish there was a magnet that took to the cassette tape because, oh, it was awful. But you know what? Here I am since 2017 still doing it. And I can say this, I'm definitely a lot better than I was.

So just take action, identify what you're going to be talking about. Why are you nervous? And then also, too, having that in your head, too, is like, okay, so really if you're nervous about fear of rejection or haters or trolls or what do you want to call them, that's kind of being selfish because there can be that one person that you can really change their life when it comes to like, oh, I didn't realize buying a home was that easy or I didn't realize earnest money was this. You're holding yourself back selfishly to give value to your audience. So I think having that kind of mental prep talk helps a lot when starting out. Grangin up with Holly Kitchens.

She's the host of the podcast on Leash Your Interlegend, it streams here, KGCI, Real Estate on Air. Holly, you've been dropping bomb after bomb after bomb. That's been incredible. For those that are going to be missing out on this panel, but they want to connect with you, what's the best way for them to be able to do that? So on social media, it's just at Holly Kitchens. I try to keep it super easy when it comes to branding at Holly Kitchens.

You guys can DM me, smoke signals, send me a messenger pigeon, whatever. Just kidding. But Facebook and Instagram at Holly Kitchens is going to be the best way to connect with me. Awesome. Holly, thanks for catching up with us here at KGCI Real Estate on Air. Have fun. here in Miami. Thank you so much. And it is the final day of EXPCon here in Miami. We're at the

Miami Beach Convention Center. I'm Ian Wheatley. This is KGCI Real Estate on Air 24-7-365, always streaming, always free at real estate onair.fm. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Just search KGCI, Apple Podcast, Spotify, D,zer, IHeart Radio, Audible. O's would be our top five, not in any particular order. You can also always get our podcast, always free at real estate onair.fm. And don't forget, You can download the KGCI Real Estate on-air mobile apps now. Those are available for you at the App Store and on Google Play. If you want to build your business, the KGCI Real Estate on-air mobile app is backed with the insights from over 50 top-producing agents from all around the world. We're not just giving you the business building principles in real estate that can grow your business in North America and the U.S. and Canada.

We are giving you the insights from Africa, from Europe, from Oceana, for the Americans in the audience. That would be Australia. Okay. The KGCI Real Estate Mobile app got everything that you need there. Download that app today. Listen live or you can catch up on demand with those podcasts. More than 50,000 podcast downloads since we launched February 29th. Always free and available at the app store and on Google Play.

Always free at Real Estate onair.com. And always free anywhere that you're listening to podcasts. Just search KGCI in your favorite app store. We have been busy catching up. There's a lot of breakouts. There's a lot of panels. There's a lot of things going on this morning. We've been catching up with many of our KGCI Real Estate on-air agent hosts.

We've heard from Aaron Hendon, Chris Craddock, Gogh, Goughke, Cliff Freeman. We're going to be checking in a little later on with Julie Nelson on the concept of an extreme open house. I'm just as curious as you are. What does an extreme open house mean? Is it like an event? Is it got a red carpet in an orchestra? Does an extreme open house is just an extreme volume a moment? of open houses. We're going to catch up with Julie Nelson when she gets done. She's got doing

something else. She's going to pop over here. Then she's got to go do her panel on extreme open houses. We'll be checking up with her. And you can hear her broadcast, the Nelson Project streaming here at KGCI Real Estate on air, of course. But we have been catching up with many of the award winners here at EXPCon in Miami. We've been talking to a lot of residential agents, whether that was we heard from the absolute, I call him the undisputed heavyweight champion of individual agents, Scalia. We heard from John Scalia. He's the individual agent that's moved the most units and volume this year at EXP Realty. So he's the heavyweight champ of the brokerage. But we haven't really talked to many people on the commercial side of the house. Roland Lowellcus, he is the third highest producing commercial agent here at EXP Realty. And Roland,

thanks for checking in with us here at KGCI Real Estate on Air. I really appreciate your insights because, again, we've been so residential heavy. It's nice to get some commercial. perspective. Take me back to the very beginning. What actually drew you in to commercial real estate? And then how did you end up getting started with an EXP realty? So kind of a backstory with that is more of out of necessity. Working as a marketing director for Philip Morris and Marble in essence back in the 90s, you know, going, realizing that that kind of job was a no dead-end kind of job if I wanted to really be successful and financially free. And the one thing that was seamless to get into a business from scratch with low cost was real estate.

Yes. My big mental hindrance was I wanted nothing to do with residential. Okay. Too emotional. Too fabricated in a sense. Too, you know, just cookie cutter, in my opinion, right? Just from my own perspective, right? And I had already bought real estate in my younger years before I got into commercial.

So the one thing about commercial is that I thought no two days are going to be alike. And I think it's just more of a different breed of industry because of the transactions. So commercial was something that was more enticing to me. I was more interested in ground up construction, which is where I got my start on land brokering. But yeah, it was just out of necessity just going from a 9 to 5 job, you know, Valerie, knowing that, you know, it was an unknown where that career was going to take me. Right. So this really kind of opened the door of you're going to get into it, get out of it, what you put into it.

Right. And then, you know, what's interesting is because you and I probably bond over similar. I cut my real estate. I'm on the residential side still technically, but I cut my teeth on short sales, REOs, and investors. Yep. Right. So that's, so there, I'll work with a first-time home buyer, but it's like there's a little bit of like, I need a little bit of a dispassionate, like, settle.

It's going to be okay because, yeah, there's a lot of emotions. It's a lot of emotionally driven. I do prefer that numbers-driven process, which is kind of why I just hang with my investors. And we do multiple deals a year together, and life goes on, and it's all pretty good. So with the commercial real estate, that comes with its own unique set of challenges compared to the residential side of the house. So what are some of those biggest obstacles you've faced, and especially as, you're getting ramped up, you just went all in on commercial right out of the gate. What were some of those early obstacles?

Well, right off the bat is you're a newbie. No one knows who you are. They know you have no experience and how do you even obtain any potential clientele? Well, the time that I got started in the area that I was in, residential and commercial development was on the ramp. Okay. It was increasing, especially in Southern California. Vegas, Florida, everywhere, right? But specifically southern California.

And so I thought, well, I'm just going to have to go out. find it. And so I started basically networking with builders and developers. And even though they knew nothing about me, all I went directly to them is what are you looking for, I will find it. If I find it and it's off market, can I get paid?

And you know those term, you know, hitting the streets? Well, I was hit the dirt roads. Okay. I always hit the dirt roads of specific areas within Southern California that were very undeveloped. You had a house on 20 acres here, 10 acres there, 5 acres there. But you can join all that acreage. You've got a large development site.

So I would just basically door knock people's houses who weren't even on site because a lot of these were raw land and maybe rental properties. And so I had to find them somewhere else, door knock and hit them up and see if they were willing to sell. Once confirming that they'd be interested, putting them together with the buyer who said absolutely I'd be interested and just forming that relationship and that deal structure, putting it together and from that on. So it was really, I had zero listings for the first four or five years. It was all on the buyer's side. Okay. But it's really just pounding streets. Pound of streets and seeing where the opportunities were.

When you start getting into it, I mean, the scale of commercial, everything is just larger scale. How did you get that establishing of the trust and the credibility, especially with some of those higher stakes, higher scale deals? One by one, and strictly because I was hungrier than the next guy. A lot of guys out there who are just simple. looking for delivering a listed property to a client, I was looking for everything that was not on the market because I couldn't compete with those guys who were trying to get listings or even

deliver them to the client. And so I just decided, you know what, go to where there's zero contact and making that connection with a potential buyer. Now, again, there were certain buyers that, you know, looked at me still as very raw and didn't know I was doing. And they saw through me sometimes, but just the fact that I was making the effort, I mean, I'll give you an example. There was a property that was in Inland Empire in Southern California. It was 60 acres owned for 30 plus years by this family.

They lived in Santa Barbara. I sent them letter after letter and never responded. Screw it. I drove to Santa Barbara two and a half, three hours from my house. Door knocked.

Told him who I was, why I was there and were the incident selling. Just that effort alone and knowing where I came from they said, actually, you hit us right. We've been looking to sell and we didn't know to who.

And there we go. And that was just kind of the process that I took. And those buyers looked at that level of commitment. And slowly I was able to get a lot more credibility. But it took time. Yeah, a lot of time. We're checking in with Ron Loalkis here at KGCI Real Estate on air. We're broadcast at ExPCon here in Miami.

He is an award-winning commercial agent here at EXP Realty. And we're looking at kind of the general shift in real estate. There's a lot more data-driven. decision making. What role does the data play in your strategy and are there any tools that you use regularly as everything's kind of shifted towards data, shifted towards AI? So I will be, I'm guilty of not using AI to my, to the extent that I should be right now, probably because I'm more in just of the standard, standard simple processes that we've been using for year after year. But as far as data goes, unlike in the residential side, where the

MLS is pretty much your data and title, right? Right. And there's a lot of tools within every source around the country with those MLS services. In commercial, there's multiple services and there's multiple data sources. The number one, which may or may not be aware of for a lot of people, it's co-star. And they're the juggernaut, they're the monopoly, the data company that we all like to hate because they control the most, right? But as far as data, they're a huge source when it comes to demographics, when it comes to past sales, when it comes to future trends and where things are going.

That's really where us in the commercial industry utilize a majority of our data is the co-star software. Not cheap. I mean, when people look at or talk about getting into commercial, I tell them, you know, what they pay annually for their MLS services, I pay monthly for the same. And they're like, mind-blown. I believe it. It's the cost of doing business. I believe it. I mean, so for those residential agents that might be interested in moving into commercial,

obviously there's a cost there. But what advice would you give to them if they wanted to have a successful transition? I would say, first off, everybody's got some client out there who's got their home. But at some point in their lifestyle, they're looking at buying an investment property, even if it's a duplex or a fourplex. Start with that. Start tapping into that client who maybe you sold a house to seven years ago. But look at the amount of equity they got. and maybe they're content with where they're living, right?

And they have no desire to move. But why not look at tapping on that equity and go into that next step? So start with just the small properties, which is, again, residential, two duplex, fourplex. Once you start getting above a four or fiveplex, you know, once five or above, it's considered commercial, right? Doesn't mean, though, you can't handle it. Right. So I would start with just that concept and tap in more into those clients that have, you know, unfortunately, life events happen. People inherit money, people sell off of their assets, 4-1Ks,

whatever, depending, and so they might have that capital that they want to start investing in. So I would start with that. And, you know, once you get more experience in that sector, some people start leaning like, well, what about a retail site, you know, a little restaurant? Maybe I've got a client who's looking to buy a building because they're now in the restaurant business and they've been leasing all these years. I can work with them on that. So getting into it, partner with someone like me and put together an agreement that you'll

do a lot of their legwork with them along your side. and just getting that experience without you shifting straight over to the commercial division, stay in the residential. And there are those select people out there that I've been working with who have been dabbling just to get a taste. I've got all the tools. I pay for all the services, and they have a real estate knowledge.

But I'll guide them along with being able to tap into a clientele base that may start looking into more investment properties. So that is a good way. I would say just communicate with your local EXP commercial agent and a broker, have a dialogue with them, share with them that you're interested in just dabbing into this. And could you work along with them on any deals you bring with a client, whether a buy or sell? That is great advice because, I mean, all of my commercial deals have been exactly as you described,

those five unit and above residential deals. And honestly, they function pretty much the same as a residential transaction. But there is some nuance. There is some difference. It is a good way to maybe start that transition. I love that, yeah, ExB Realty all across the U.S.B. U.S. and Canada, they have these different brokers that you can reach out to and get connected to and that, you know, you can get connected that way. I mean, looking ahead into 2025 and beyond,

what are some of those trends that you see emerging on the commercial side that maybe the might be a little bit different than what some of those residential agents are seeing right now? Well, you know, I would say one big shift is the office market. I mean, look at where we are with this company, right? We all are remote, staff and agents. So one shift is, I think, if anybody's going to get into commercial or looking to dabble into that, is looking at what's hot and what's going to continue, I think, as a product and a sector. So retail, industrial, multifamily, and development. I think those are the ones that are, is where the market's going to be shifting more and more. Not that office isn't a desired or still a sector that's,

going to be an occupied space, it's just diminished quite a bit. We're seeing a lot in California, for example, a lot of the high-rise office buildings in downtown LA, they've shifted from taking, you know, 20 stories of the office building, shifting those offices down to maybe the top, bottom five floors, and then we're turning those other properties into residential units. So I would say having those residential agents to communicate and pick the brain of the commercial broker around you, you know, anybody that you can network with like myself. And, um, and, and, um, and, get educated on where kind of things are shifting, but I think that's kind of where, for the most part, things are veering that in that direction.

And Roland, for those that want to connect with you, they're not here at EXPCon to run you down, how could they do that? Workplace chat is probably the best, well, okay, before not even knowing my name, EXPcom. EXP Commercial.com. EXP Commercial.com. Go on there, just like if you go to BXPreality.com, looking for an agent, just look for an area. And if you're looking for someone in your local area, you can look by city or state, If you're looking for the top 10, top three, that's a good question.

I don't know the answer to that. I don't know where they would go. Probably just talking to going into their commercial office, which we're in the world, just like you are with the Realty Division. This is the first time I've been asked this as far of that. But yeah, I would probably just say, hey, if I'm looking for the top five brokers in the country, who are they? Go in the commercial office. You can just go in, take a ticket, and ask the question, right?

But a YXP commercial is your source. If you're looking for just someone local in your area to start picking their brains, someone like me, and seeing if there's a potential to build that relationship and start dabbling into the commercial and getting a feel for it, it's a great option. Roland, congratulations again on your ward. Thanks for checking in with us here at KGCI Real Estate on Air. Thank you very much. It's been an absolute pleasure, and we have been busy here at KGCI Real Estate on Air. We are here on the Explorer floor, for those of you that are maybe between some sessions right now. We are at the Explorer floor of the Miami Beach Convention Center. We are broadcasting live.

We're going to be sitting out this out this way for, oh, about another 30 or 40 minutes or so. We're going to be catching up with a couple more folks here that have been kind of trickling in and trickling out. Brian Ellington is EXP Realty's chief learning officer. He's been a bit of a visionary in real estate education. We're going to be focusing on practical agent-centric learning. We're going to be talking about some of the programs that have been rolled out prior to EXP. P-Con and then some of the programs that have been rolled out here at EXPCon, even including all the breakouts and all the sessions, all the different EXP agents from around the world that I've been

giving these presentations and supporting the needs of these EXP Realty agents that have been attending here at EXPCon. It's been a lot of fun. We're going to be catching up with him a little bit about that a little later on here at KGCI, a real estate on air. But we, what are we? Well, Real Estate on Air is a 24-7-365 radio station. We are streaming the Realt.

estate business building principles to help support your business. And it's, and it's what we do. And we are always free, always on demand at real estate onair.fm. You can subscribe to KGCI, real estate on air anywhere that you're listening to podcasts. So Apple Podcasts, DZER, Spotify, Iheart Radio, Audible, Amazon Music, podchaser, podcaster, any of them. Okay, there's a lot of them out there. I don't know if you know that. There's a lot of them out there. We got them everywhere. So far, no one's told me, hey, Ian, I can't find KGCI anywhere. If you have a preferred little podcast, podcast, little area where you like to listen to your podcast on, just let me know. Info at real estate onair.fm, you can let me know that, hey, you don't have KGCI over here,

and I'll be happy to go to whatever that hoopla is. I will happily walk through it just so that way we can get that podcast where you want it to be. We just search KGCI, Real Estate on Air. Failing that, maybe there's like, hey, you know what? maybe it'd be better if I just downloaded that app. Ian, well, yeah, we got those real estate business building principles, all the answers to your real estate building questions. Yeah, we got them always free on demand.

Anytime you want them, real estate onair. Dot FM. There's a link there to download the apps, or you can just search KGCI. All right. That's easy, right? It's easy for real estate agents to remember the call letters, okay, because it's K. All you got to do is remember K and then just remember the most important part of your business, GCI, right?

K. GCI, K, gross commission income, KGCI, Real Estate on Air. You can just search that in your app store or on Google Play. Download the apps and then you got the stream, always free there. You got the always

free podcast there as well. And you can take us with you anywhere that you go here at KGCI Real Estate on Air. We are broadcasting from ExPCon here in Miami. We've been having an absolutely great time. For those that are here, there was some

breaking news here at EXPCon Miami. I would just say there's a, there's a party that's going on at like 6 o'clock tonight. It was supposed to be some beachfront property at the, at the Lowe's Hotel. As a guy that went on a run this morning, it was really windy. And apparently that wind is going to continue.

So for those of you that are floating around here at EXPCon on the Explorer floor, a friendly little reminder that the party that begins at 6 tonight, that was supposed to be beachfront at the lows. That has going inside of the lows at the Americana ballroom. Still, same start time. It's coming up at 6 o'clock just so that way you are aware. KGCI Real Estate on Air. I'm Ian Wheatley.

We are broadcasting from the Miami Beach Convention Center, the final day coming down the final stretch at EXPCon here in Miami, joined by Carrie Sovey, everything they never told you about real estate streams Thursdays on KGCI Real Estate on Air. You've been busy. You've been doing breakouts. You've been doing general sessions. I asked you earlier, are you staying hydrated?

Are you still staying hydrated, Gary? I was a little too hydrated last night. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. But you're feeling all right? No, I'm fine now. I have to feel good.

I'm on stage again in a little bit, so. It'll be a lot of fun. It'll be fun. And we are joined by Mr. Sobey. Yep, that's me. Mr. Sovay, Ricardo. How are you, sir? I'm doing very well.

Thank you. How are you? I'm doing well. What brings you to EXP? I'm my beautiful wife. I come and follow her everywhere she goes. I'm so proud of her. That's awesome.

So you get to come to all these different events. You get to see her up on the stage. When there's someone you love and support and you see him, you know, kind of get catapulted in the way that Carrie's been catapulted in the last 18 to 24 months. What's that like for you? It's humbling, actually. I tell her this morning we were laughing with her assistant Brianna. I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to cry. I want to cry.

She does so well. I saw the hard work she put into it for two years before everything. And now her success. and honestly I'm getting teary out again. I'm just so proud of her. We can hear it. We can hear it. Now, so you follow her around to all these different events and, you know, she's getting on

stages once, two, three, four times a month. So, Carrie, what's, you come to all these events now and you're present at all these different things. Why is it important to be getting out for if you're an agent, real estate agent, maybe just getting started out, maybe you just don't go to conferences, you know, maybe you think about getting to that big conference your brokerage does every year. why is it important to get to events in the first place? Okay, so I'm going to be really honest here.

Okay, I've been... Honesty's the best policy, Gary. I've been licensed for almost 15 years, and I didn't go to a real estate conference until they put me on stage at EXPCon Canada last year in Vancouver. And when I get on stage, that's at one of our EXP conferences, I've been with EXP for three years. Okay. And you couldn't pay me to go hang out with realtors at Remax and any of the other brokerages that I used to be with.

I thought, why would I go to a conference? It was just such a, I had a very rough career. My brokerages, I don't know if it's like specific to Canada and Ontario, but they were very competitive, overly competitive. So I didn't have any friends in real estate. So I'm like, why the hell would I go to a conference? It wasn't until I came to EXP and I completely changed my opinion of real estate agents because it's the exact opposite of anywhere else. And then when they asked me to go on stage, I'm like, I'll give this a try and now I'm addicted. I'm addicted.

It's so very important to be at the right conferences. I want to say that. Okay. Because not all conferences are created equal. You know, one of the things that has jumped out to me is, you know, being at EXPCon, even this particular EXPCon, right? If we're comparing vast EXPCon, right, this one is highly more international. They have at least doubled the number of breakouts that they've done in previous years. The panels, the general session has been on absolute fire both days.

Your session included, I mean, it was bomb after bomb after bomb. you know, you look at how this conference is now setting itself apart from even its, it's got other, you know, brokerage competition, but even in its own history, there's a lot of power that's going on at these events. You know, Ricardo's been following you around to a bunch of these. You know, where does this one rank at some of these other ones? Oh, it's top level. This is a game changer.

I walked in and I went, oh, my God, babe, this is amazing. They're stepping it up every single year. It gets better and better and better. Thanks to Mindy. Mindy's great. Thanks, Minnie knows how to throw up. party. Mindy runs events for EXP Realty for those that are on the outside

looking in and I was told Mindy knows how to throw a party and I have, she does she really does. This event the way it's laid out, the way it's structured, the way that people are able to move from event to event to event is something incredible and it is it is

really a sight to behold if you haven't been able to participate here at EXP con down here in Miami. Carrie, so for those of you that want to kind of connect with you You've got this EXP elevate coaching. You've got everything they never told you about real estate. You're streaming here Thursdays on KGCI Real Estate on air.

You have become the AI expert for EXP Realty. I know I've picked your brain quite a few times on different AI stuff. For those agents that are here that they want to connect with you, they want to learn more about AI specifically. How can they do that? What's the best way for them to like go? I can use chat GPT to write my listing descriptions to I want to leverage AI in my real estate business. Yeah.

How can they connect with you to make that connection happen? Okay. So first, they have to follow me on Instagram. Okay. It's Carrie Sovey and Associates, C-A-R-R-I-E-S-O-A-V. Okay? And then next what they're going to do is they're going to comment on any of my posts or DM-M-E-E-S-A-V-E. me the word NAR, N-A-R.

And I am going to send them a N-R-compliance wizard. It is a custom AI tool that I built, especially for E-X-P-Con. It will help you stay compliant with all the new regulations, answer all of your questions around paperwork, and you can even roleplay with it, which is so cool. So make sure you do that. follow me, comment, or DM me the word gnar. Perfect. Carrie, Ricardo, thanks for checking in with us at KGCI Real Estate on air.

Thanks, yeah. Thank you. KGCI, Real Estate on air. We are here for the final day of EXPCon, Miami. We are broadcasting from the Miami Beach Convention Center, and we are having an absolute blast. We're having a ton of fun, and I am in my beloved fishbowl. I've been calling it my beloved fishbowl.

For those of you, let me set the scene for you for obviously, because I'm here, you're not. Over to my left is where we have the main entrance of the Miami Beach Convention Center. Shout out to Puerto Rico. I see you. I see you. And what we have going on, going back to that, the massive international presence of EXPCon here in Miami, it's not just because it's Miami. It's because there's people from like literally, I'm not joking, like 30 different countries here.

It's absolutely incredible. But setting the scene immediately to my left is, We have the main entrance of the Miami Beach Convention Center. You come through here. I have a You Cannot Miss It Broadcast Podcast Studio set up where I've been broadcasting last couple days here on KGCI Real Estate on air. I've been really excited. I've been watching the – there's a lot of people that –

I've gotten to know the people at the brand store really well because we're like right next to each other. We're next door neighbors. And I've just been watching – I've just been watching everybody just doing the – buying their EXP, Realty swag. It's been a lot of fun. And they're moving some volume. If there was a third, if there's anybody that thought retail was dead.

Negative. Negative. The folks at the EXP brand store apparently know how to move merchandise. And then over further off to the right is we have the EXP live stage. They have been doing a ton of different presentations and breakouts and all sorts of good stuff over on that EXP live stage. It's been really interesting just kind of seeing the dynamic of over there. There's been more than 100-some-odd breakout.

So the whole kind of nature of this event has been fundamentally changed from prior years as a consequence of the number of breakouts and panels in these EXP realty agents that have just been coming in and just, they've just been pouring it out. They've just been giving it. They've just been giving nothing but value to all these other agents, right? They're not necessarily bringing in like, well, here's what's incredible, is they're bringing in industry experts in their areas of focus. They also happen to be EXP Realty agents.

And so the value that these EXP Realty agents are able to give to these other agents that are attending this EXPCon here in Miami at the Miami Beach Convention Center is. It's been absolutely awesome just to just kind of see that collaboration just kind of play out in real time. We're going to be catching up with the Chief Learning Officer Brian Ellington about, I'd like to talk to him just really about that, about how is this event going to address what is a fundamental need, what is a systemic issue in the real estate industry. It is certainly what Real Estate on Air was launched to provide,

which is rip the, let's just rip the Band-Aid off and call it for what it is. The real estate industry does a great job of moving agents that get them through licensing, gets them licensed, and there's a lot of agents that don't get that support. They don't get that, they don't get the guidance, the mentorship on how to actually build a successful real estate business. And so this convention and KGCI Real Estate on air, we were sitting here to try to address that same need is how do we connect agents with the resources that they need so that they, that way they can go on and build highly successful real estate businesses. So we're going to be checking in with the chief learning office. here at expe realty, Brian Ellington, a little later on about that, probably, oh, and about

10, that conversation is going to be coming up somewhere in the ballpark of about 10 minutes here on KGCI, real estate on air. But Julie Nelson, she is the host of the Nelson Project. That one streams here on KGCI, a real estate on air. She's also an EXP realty agent, KGCI Real Estate on air host. And she has a panel that she is going to be discussing open houses, but not just regular open houses. Every realtor knows what an open house is, but what is an extreme open house? Open houses remain an important tool

as in an agent's toolbox to earn, you can earn a new buyer clients. You can get obviously listing marketed and sold. You can use it as a reason to doorknock into better geographically farming. There's a million different ways to effectively use an open house. But as much as there is a process,

there's also an art to having an open house really standout. So Julie Nelson, host of the Nelson Project, sitting down here at KGCI Real Estate on air. You got this breakout about extreme open houses. So exactly what is an extreme open house? Well, I'll tell you, an agent friend of mine did an open house recently. It was probably just a couple months ago,

where literally she had an orchestra and red carpet. And it blew my mind. And I'm like, wow, that is such an extreme open house. And literally I shot off a message to EHP University and said, I want to do a panel on extreme open houses. So what it is, there's really two categories of extreme open houses. One is the extreme event. It's an event open house.

And that was the orchestra red carpet. example. And the other is the super high volume open house. So I have two other people on the panel who are crankyed out like four and five open houses a week. And it literally is the cornerstone of their business. And so we've got this awesome panel where we get to talk about that. It's just it's a tool. I want to see more and more agents turn into really a money machine. Right. You know, because it's a good open house can be extraordinarily difficult and to build process around good open houses. It can be difficult, particularly for newer agents. So, Julie, I mean, maybe let's go back to the very beginning. What should an agent's

primary goal be with an open house and what does taking the, I don't want to call them extreme steps, but the extra steps, the additional steps in a higher level of an open house, how does that better allow an agent to realize what those primary goals should be? You know, it depends on the agent because of the three people on this panel, like one person I have on the panel is high process. They've got a system. It's they cram. out the system and they don't miss a beat with it. And so they're super organized. Another agent has less of a system. And his goal is to have rapport with one person with every open house. So he doesn't worry so much about the system. He's just there being his personable self.

And he's looking for that one person where there's a great connection. Because if he's doing four or five open houses a week and he ends up let's say with three or four meaning like one per open house and that's his that's his strong client lead that's an awesome business plan so you see you see the difference one is a small team run in an an impressive system organized system the other is just Adam Coates being himself in Seattle. And then I've got Mary Sinton in Ashefield, North Carolina, who pulled up this amazing event that she didn't pay for. So we'll talk about that.

How do you pay for something like that? And then what it has done for her business. Because one of the things that jumps out to me, I mean, here's the thing, right? Who wouldn't like 12 quality? buyer leads or you've got the neighbor who's coming to look at that open house and they're a seller and you can then duplicate the open house process with with that lead who wouldn't want that coming into their business that they didn't have to pay for exactly and for the majority of open houses this is a low marketing spend a low to no marketing spend now the events that's a

spend, but you get sponsors. But the other models, for the most part, there's very little, you know, kind of dollar per lead, spend is very, very low. And I have to imagine that once you're doing multiple open houses in a week, it's not just the one thing you do on a weekend, maybe every other month. It's like doing the scripts when you're making your calls, right? They become natural. You become better at it, right? Your ability to have those conversations, it feels more natural. And I have to imagine that, especially for newer agents, there's probably a lot that they can take away from this. And especially if you're geographically tight with your open houses, that is an ideal because then you are such an in-depth expert on that geography and in every single

single thing that is sold every, every good restaurant, every good coffee shop, every school, every home, you've been in half of the homes in the geography. That is an ideal if you can pull that off. Not everyone can pull that off, but that helps. That helps with the success quotient. We're catching up with Julie Nelson here at EXPCon in Miami. She is the host of the Nelson Project. She's also going to be doing a breakout panel, Extreme Open Houses, Julie, for the EXP agents, for the non-EXP agents that are listening right now to KGCI Real Estate on Air, how can they connect with you to learn a little bit more about maybe open houses or get some insights on, you know, maybe some of the other challenges that they're having in their business.

Sounds good. I'm really easy to find pretty much on any of the platforms you can find me as the Nelson Project. And if you go to the Nelsonproject.org that has just all of my blog, my book, my book, by coaching. It's a little of everything. I'm pretty easy to find online. Awesome. Julie, thanks for checking in with us here at KGCI Real Estate on Air. Have fun at the panel and have fun to the rest of EXPCon. It'll be awesome. Thanks, Ian. We're wrapping up here is the final day of EXPCon here in Miami Broadcasting Live for the Miami Beach Convention Center. I'm Eighty and Wheatley here. On KGCI Real Estate on Air, we've had some great opportunities to catch up with, we caught up with John Scalia at the start of the broadcast.

He is, I'm calling him the heavyweight champ because there's, give me a better description, okay? Info at real estate on air.fm. I know this isn't boxing, but when you're the number one producing individual agents on volume and units, I'm sorry to, in my mind, you're a heavyweight boxing champion and there's no other way around it. We also caught up with Roland the Welkis and Roland is a award-winning commercial agent here at EXP Realty and just kind of got his insights on how do you, how do you get it? How do you get into commercial real estate?

Like, how is that even a thing? Right, the data systems are all different. Like, it's so much more expensive. And he gave us some really great practical advice on how an agent could, you know, try out commercial. See if it's for them. That's available now as a podcast at real estate onair.fm. Or you can subscribe to KGCI, Real Estate on Air. Anywhere that you're listening to podcast, just search KGCI.

Also search KGCI in your iOS app store or on Google Play. can download our free apps and integrates the 24-7 stream with the podcasts. Also, it works perfectly with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. So you can just download those two apps, make that car, that university, have always streaming real estate business building principles anywhere that you are. Just search KGCI in your iOS and App Store. Absolute pleasure to be checking in now with the chief learning officer here at ExP Realty, Mr. Brian Ellington.

Thanks for joining us here at KGCI, Real Estate on Air. Brian, I heard a rumor that you're celebrating a birthday, or you celebrated a birthday this week. Happy belated birthday. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Yes. So there's this challenge in the real estate industry.

It's at its core. It is what Real Estate on Air has been launched to address. It's that this real estate industry tends to be really great at licensing agents and not so great at supporting them. And KGCI Real Estate on Airstreams 24-7, 365, the real estate business building principles that transcends borders to help agents grow and develop their businesses in the way that they want them to be grown and developed.

You have a long pedigree of being able to do that at other real estate firms. You've come to ExB Realty here in the last year. How has some of that expertise and insight that you have from, past experience. How have you already brought that over here to EXB Realty? Yeah, that's a great question. And a great way to start, too, because you're absolutely right. You know, I've been around this business for a couple of decades now, and I've often heard agents talk about the level of professionalism in our business and bemoaning that fact, right, wanting it to be higher. And I get that. And I think so do the agents who come into

this industry. They just don't know yet that they weren't properly armed. I read this stat, NAR did an article, excuse me, Emin did an article about NAR. They said 49% of real estate agents in the past 12 months have done one or no deals, 49%, right? And the vast majority of that is zero, zero deals in 12 months. I got to understand that those people have families, they have lives, they have loved ones, they have things that depend on them earning a living. And then you hear the stats of 75% to 80% failure. in the first two years in this business and it goes up as the years go up. And that's wrong.

You got to look at that and go, okay, that's wrong. What aren't we doing? And here's what we're not doing. Pre-licensing training, it's only really preparing you to fill out a contract, to stay out of jail when you're in a transaction. What it really doesn't do is teach you how to get a transaction well. There may be some marketing class in your pre-licensing package, but it's really not going to prepare you for what you actually have to do. And when you think about it like this, every industry for a startup, you have a concept called burn rate. And burn rate, quite simply, here's the way I think about it. If you have $10,000 in your bank account in your monthly expenses or $2,000 a month, well, you get five months before you need to start putting money

back in that bank account. And somewhere around that couple of months in, three months in, your loved one starts saying, honey, you think maybe you should go talk to your old boss and get your job back? Right? Yeah. Because we're not prepared for that fact. And if you think about it, most pre-licensing, when you talk to the folks that like C.E. Shopper, capital, the major players, they'll tell you it takes about six months to a year for their

average customer to go through all the pre-licensing classes and go take their certifications. And that's a ticking clock. Most agents have no idea when they start their first class. There's a clock that's ticking over their heads and they don't realize it. And then when they jump into the business, leave whatever they were doing before, behind, and that clock starts ticking a lot faster. Right. And so the question is, how do you get these folks into production as quickly as possible?

And for us, the answer is you better have productivity training, not education. And there's a big difference between the two, right? Education, you can sit, eat popcorn and watch. Training gets you into action. And so when we think about the training that we created at EXB, we're really trying to imbue that with the action that we know will build results. The thing that is in our industry, you could do everything right today. Everything.

You could go find somebody who is ready, willing, and able. You might find several somebody's if you did that today, if you really got after it. But it's going to be about 100 days before that deal comes to fruition, and you get a commission check. And so when you think about it, you know, today's October, whatever, that's not really today's date. Today's date is really 100 days from now, whatever that is, January, whatever.

And so the question is, how can I help you do all the things that you need to do today and feel good about doing it such that you'll continue to do those things tomorrow? and tomorrow and tomorrow so that when you finally do get to 100 days from now, not only do you have a commission check waiting for you, but you've got one the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day. And that's not an easy trick, right? And what you're going to find when you really look at the industry is there are some people who got into this for the wrong reasons, right?

They didn't understand the reality of real estate and what it takes to actually get a client into your backseat or what it takes to get to the kitchen. and table. What I love about KGCI and our partnership with you is that this is an opportunity for folks who, even before they go into pre-licensing, and I hope there's several of you listening to this, right? Or those of you who are in pre-licensing, and I hope there's a lot of you listening to this. This is your opportunity to learn from the very best people who have succeeded before you about how they succeeded so that you can get your game plan together now so that when you finally do get that letter, that email from your state that congratulations, you're now

licensed, you're ready to go immediately. You know exactly what to go do. You're already prepared and you can get into action to really start building your business so that that ticking clock becomes just a vanished thing that you don't have to think about anymore. Talking with Chief Learning Officer of EXP Realty, Brian Ellington. This is KGCI Real Estate on Air. We are live from the Miami Beach Convention Center for the final day. Coming down the final stretch of EXPCon Miami. You mentioned productivity training. There's been a lot of talk at this event of this program called FastCap.

Yeah. Is Fast Cap that productivity training you were talking about? It's the start of our productivity training. You know, EXP University, we build training at every level. Emerging ICON, which is what we call those experienced successful agents who've gone beyond the cap and have created. created that opportunity for them to earn their cap back with E-XP, and then even team leaders. And we call that level legacy, because whether you want to build a team, like a production

team, or you want to build a team through your revenue share, we've got training for you. But yes, FastCap is the beginning of that. So that's a six-week productivity program that we started. We piloted it back in June, and then we launched it in September. Here's what's interesting. So I mentioned the 49% number, right? So that's what's average in the industry. What's average in fast cap?

In six weeks, the average person going through FastCap did 4.1 appointments, two agreements, in six weeks. Wow. Now, again, we have a hundred-day sales cycle. They didn't do closings in there, but they were doing the things that will lead to closings, right? 4.1 appointments, 2.0 agreements. That's average for FastCAP. So here's the thing. Faskat's very clear about getting you to a certain level of activity.

And for those people who followed the prescribed level of activity, and we ramp you up in that program. We don't start you from Cold Star. We kind of get your toes in the water, so speak. The people who followed that activity, it was 6.9 appointments, 3.8 agreements in six weeks. And by the way, new agents or people who are not yet in the industry, you might be hearing that number and going, is that impressive? Go ask an agent in front of years.

And by the way, the experienced agents who were listening to this, what did your last six weeks like? Because for a lot of you, it was not that. No, it wasn't that. And, you know, and here's the thing. I also remember when I did, when I did 23 deals in a year, I also remember how I felt at the end of that 12-month period. And I was absolutely gassed, right? And so I think, you know, when you get there, it's not necessarily, especially when you get there and you don't have systems, right? It's really hard to sustain that for a period.

Yeah, until you get the systems around you, and that seems to be what FastCAP is providing to these agents, which is incredible. Well, we refer to it as business operation systems. And what's interesting, when you talk to an agent, they'll talk to you about their challenges or their opportunities in a few different buckets. Lead generation, lead conversion, going on an appointment, servicing a buyer, servicing a seller, a contracted close, and then post-close. When you think about it, those are all business operation systems, but for the majority of agents, even successful ones, by the way, they don't have. have real systems. They have kind of things that they kind of do the same each time if they remember it right. And their systems were based on trial and error. Well, when we built FastCAP, we actually went out and we found the best of the best agents in terms of who launched their

business. So to get on our research call list, you had to have done at least two deals in the first six months and at least 12 deals in the first 12 months. And we just sat there and studied those folks' business scores of them and modeled out what they did. And that's what we bring to you in FastCAP so that you don't have to invent everything from scratch, but you also don't have to be without a system, right? We've built that in for you, and then you can just tweak it, and that's what we do in the training program, is help them tweak it. We're catching up with the chief learning officer of EXP Realty, Brian Ellington.

This is KGCI Real Estate on air. We are here at EXPCon Miami for the final day. We should probably mention this event, a couple key takeaways that I've had. It is highly international. The international presence here at this event. has been something that has absolutely blew my mind. I was expecting some diversity being in Miami, but I wasn't expecting the presence from Europe,

all of South Africa, Asia, from Africa, from Oceania, Australia, right? I just, there's been a lot, there's been a lot of diversity at this event and at this conference. That's been incredible. That was takeaway number one. Takeaway number two is sort of the buzz

of a lot of the agents that I've had the opportunity to catch up with is, I'm basically sitting here at a conference floor in a fishbowl and everybody likes to come in and talk. You know, they've been talking about all of the benefits that they've gotten out of this conference from the breakout to the panels that more than double what was done last year. That seems like an absolutely tremendous feat. I think that that has your fingerprints all over it. Can you tell me a little bit about why the shift, again, towards having more education and more training at a conference like EXBCon here in Miami?

Yeah, so you mentioned the diversity. I would have said we were in 24 countries and then we announced that we're now in 27. So we announced Peru, we announced Turkey, and we announced Egypt. So we announced three new countries and amazing growth is the gist of it here. The funny thing is that we are 87,000 agents. We have 27 countries that we're going through. that's an amazing opportunity. And when you think about it,

how I just described the model of building the training, it's based on what our top agents are doing. And so as we grow, when we come to an event like this, this is an opportunity to bring these top agents who've flown from all over the world to come and share what they're doing. And to have just a handful of breakout sessions, that just wouldn't do, man.

We've got too many amazing rock stars. I'll tell you, if we put the top two hundred, 150 agents in our company just alone, they'd be the number six brokerage in the world. Wow. Right? That's a wild number. That's a wild number. And so when we talk about this, this event, we have over 100 plus breakout sessions, and we're growing.

Next year, it'll be even more because we've got so many agents coming in that have such a diversity in their business. And gone are the days where, you know, certain coaching organizations in our industry will tell you, you do FISBOs, you do expires. Whether that's your personality or not, you're going to have to do it if you're part of that organization. With us, I don't care how you have conversations with folks. How you go about engineering those conversations is it's completely up to you and how you want to do business. What I want to put in front of you are a number of different opportunities for you to learn

from about how to go do that and learn the ones that suit you best, right? So when we have amazing talents like Dan Beer and Ollie Williams, Go Go, just a slew of top, top agents Tina Call who are willing to come up here and for free give of their hard one wisdom about what they're doing to succeed, man, I want to give that as many stages as possible. And we are the premier training and coaching company in this industry. And I'm really delighted that we're growing the number of sessions here to be able to really highlight more and more of those talented individuals. We're catching up with Chief Learning Officer Vexby Realty, Brian Ellington here on KGCI, Real Estate on Air.

I'm going to give you one more question because so much of, I think, your passion for agents and agent training and development comes from addressing that systemic issue in the real estate industry that we get agents licensed and we don't necessarily support them for there. So for those newly licensed agents, what's the one or two key things that they should be doing in order to establish themselves as a strong practitioner here in the real estate? state industry. Yeah. So Jim Rohn said you are the combination of the five people you hang around. James Clear said we followed the close, the many, and the powerful. However you want to say it, the people that you hang around matters. Right. So the first thing I'd say is get into a company that has amazingly talented individuals that are going to be open and share with you about how they became amazingly talented. The second thing I would say is that, look, every business has a discipline. whatever particular bent you take in real estate. And there's a ton of ways that you can create business

for yourself. I tell the story of my friend Shannon Maxwell, who she does great agent-to-agent referral business, right? That's one of the mainstays of her business. But funny enough, she plays a video game online where she captures people's castles and then makes them give her a real estate referral if they want it back. Okay. That's not a big lane of business for it. And yet she's not a big lane of business for it. And yet she's closed over 12 deals from it. Wow. Okay.

12 deals would change a lot of agents, you know, businesses if they did that in a year. Yeah, crazy. I mean, she does great production through other means. But that just goes to show you. It doesn't matter which form of lead generation you want to go pursue. If you master it, if you get really good and consistent and disciplined about it, you will succeed in this business. You just got to really buckle down, figure out what the best or the best are doing it,

and then tailor that to you. And then above all else, I would say form the habits that you need. And look, every real estate agent in this business who's been in the business for a while will tell you they go through lulls in their business. And it takes something like a training program or something like that to remind them to get back to the basics that made them successful in the first place. Because it gets so busy with whatever leads that they have that they're going to work those clients at the cost of tomorrow's business. and my advice is never let today's business get in the way of tomorrow's. Figure out the consistent habits that you're going to be able to do, however you're going to generate those leads,

figure out those consistent habits to generate those leads, day in, day out, play those mental games with yourself, get into great programs with energy, with other people. We're going to help you do that and go be successful. Brian, I'm going to steal a phrase from you. Thanks for sharing your hard-won wisdom with us here on KGCI Real Estate on air. Thank you, man. I really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. Pleasure has been mine. This is the final day from EXPCon here in Miami. This is KGCI Real Estate on air. I'm Ian Wheatley. We are broadcasting live from the Miami Beach Convention Center. I got those big Asian meeting guys back along with me, Russ Lagan, Frank Benuto. They are checking in here at KGCI Real Estate on air. I want to hear from you two. We got about three minutes before the broadcast wraps for EXPCon here in Miami. Key takeaways from the event. You know what? I think it's really simple to me. And I think maybe this is just because the way I roll through the world, but it really is the people. I mean, the amount of connection and the feel when you're talking to people, getting live with people, the amount of, you know, contact, and there's just a certain vibe when you're face to face and toe to toe with people.

And I think you don't realize how much of a difference you're making in the world until you get to something like this and you really get to see the people and talk to the people. And again, it's just about the people. And they are just absolutely amazing. Couldn't be any more proud of our team and the people we've built. Now was Russ Lagin, Frank Benuto, to you. Yeah, I'll piggyback on that because I was going to be. going the same direction. And it's, when you're here, it's the culture. You know, you feel the culture and then you feel the collaboration. And I don't know that there's any stronger tool or any stronger asset to accompany the collaboration. When you have all these great minds and all

these great people with these ideas sharing with each other, you know, there's no walls up and nobody's afraid to give their best ideas. And people, you see the, the gratitude that people have for each other. You just can't put a value on that. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the, the and the value of the people. It's really it. It really is. I'm just, I can't believe how blessed we are by having so many amazing people around us. You know, what jumped out to me was truly the collaboration piece. And I guess my three, three key takeaways. Collaboration, the international presence. This year. Oh, my God. It has been incredible. Did you see Alex just going by here? Alex is the, the principal. He's the one that runs Israel for us. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, I just saw him go by. He was shooting pictures as he's going by. That's awesome. Say hi to Alex as we're going around.

But we've got like, what, two dozen countries here? Yes. That blows my mind. And what the, what I loved of where the international presence meets the collaboration. Number one, I haven't spoken this much Spanish ever in my life, right? I know my bikino, Español, and I have had to use literally every word I know. But the agents that are here from the dozens of dozens of countries, they're over here. There also, there's this education piece, which is my other key takeaway, is that the sheer number of agents from North America and all around the world are,

collaborating with each other, whether they are on a panel, whether they are doing a breakout, whether they are bumping into each other on the explorer floor and shooting social media together. And the only thing that connects them, because they are all damn near perfect strangers to each other, the only connection is this brokerage, XB Realty. You know, we used to talk about being borderless, talking about not having to stay in your local market and not being able to have to stay in your local state. Now you don't have to stay in the country. Yeah. You've got 26 countries to choose from that are represented here today, and another one coming on Lord.

We're adding three new countries next year, or in the very near future, and all of them but two are represented here. That's incredible. That's incredible. Isn't it amazing how much connection there is for a cloud-based brokerage that nobody ever talks to each other?

The amount of human connection that actually goes on in this company is unmatched. So I've never felt anything like it before. It is absolutely incredible. Super thrilled to be here. Yeah, this is the final day, final day of coverage here at Key EXPCon in Miami. I'm Ian Wheatley.

This is KGCI Real Estate on air. and it has been an absolute pleasure. It has been an absolute blast. We have been broadcasting here the last three days. It's the fourth day, technically, of EXPCon. And it has been an absolute pleasure. It has been we appreciate EXP Realty for inviting us down. It has been a lot of fun connecting with these EXP Realty agents. It has been an even more of a pleasure of mind just to be able to sit and hang out and be in the presence of such greatness, such collaboration, the international presence. And, you know, what I didn't expect when we launched KGCI, really. estate on air back in February was the borderless real estate business building principles. Those that transcends everything. And that has been affirmed here at KExPCon in Miami. My name is Ian Wheatley. This is KGCI Real Estate on Air. Take care.