KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Million Dollar Listing Tactics (with Josh Flagg)

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Welcome to the Gold Bar podcast, where we speak with some of the most successful real estate agents, investors, and business professionals in the world. My name is Juan Carlos Baronecci, and I was able to build my real estate business to the point where it makes me more than half a million dollars a year working 100% virtually from home. If your goal is to close more deals and build a real estate business that brings you wealth, happiness, and peace, then this podcast is for you. What is going on, everyone? Juan Juan Carlos Baranetje here, founder of Gold Bar, and we just got off stage for the Gold Bar Live Conference with Josh Flagg. It was completely electric in there. Josh was just keeping it real in regards to how he built his business,

what he recommends as far as advice goes to luxury agents, and how to really continue succeeding when it comes to this hard business. So Josh, welcome to the Gold Bar Luxury Real Estate podcast. Thank you. Happy to be here. Yeah, so we just went an hour with about 100 people in the room. You answered a ton of questions. Let's just go ahead and get into it as far as this audience goes.

Give a little people a little background in terms of who you are and what you do. Well, it started when I was 18 years old. I've been doing this for, I don't know, like 8. I'm 38. I'm close to 20 years. Two decades, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I love what I do.

I love houses. I love interior design. I don't think there's any profession besides, you know, being a decorator or an architect that give you access to as many beautiful homes as the profession I'm in. Perfect. You've been doing this for two decades now. Do you want to develop or build one day? Is that a passion of yours?

Or do you just like being on the broker's side? Well, I kind of do that in the sense that I don't do it for other people. I do it for myself. Generally, I'll build a house and then either I'll move into it or I'll sell it during construction. But generally, somebody will come to me and just say, oh, here's this crazy offer. and I usually can't turn it down. But basically, I am a developer in the sense that I know I'm going to end up selling it, but I never really market it for sale.

It's really for myself. And, you know, does that make sense? I would have called it being a developer with a really good exit strategy. Yeah, I guess because the strategy is great. I'm moving in, and if I don't move in, somebody else can take it. Like, there's no really, there's no way I can lose, essentially. I don't have my house that I like or somebody else buys it. But as far as just going about the marketing,

process or anything like that. How do you even acquire clients that are celebrities? I don't really go after like acquiring celebrity clients. I mean, usually the celebrity clients always come to the business managers. So business managers will contact me. Whenever I'm dealing with the celebrity, I really have very little interface with, except for the actual showing of the property to them. Once they like the property, it's all with the business manager. No kidding. So 90% of the time, you're just dealing with a business manager all day long? Yeah. Wow. And then where do you meet these business managers? Is it in a formal setting?

Is it through networking? Is it through the DMs? Like, what's your strategy there? I've been doing this for so long. I think they just, a lot of them know me. So sometimes, you know, I'll work with them on one side of a deal. Then later they'll call me and ask me to represent them on another side of the deal. You know, it just depends.

There's like 10 really big business managers in L.A. Yeah. And then in regards to building your personal brand, you obviously have a million-dollar listing L.A. You're doing tons of PR. What would you recommend to an agent that wants to break into luxury? What PR strategy would you take? Well, PR, is the question about, like, how do you break into the luxury market? Yeah, well.

As far as your personal brand goes. I mean, I would immediately start working under a team. That's the first thing I would do. If you're breaking into real estate, I would go work for a team, build up a business, go sit open houses, be a part of that team. And then once you've built up a business, you know, I mean, I think two things. I think mailers, I think mailing to the same location over and over and over again is the best idea. Sending it like once or twice to one location is just a complete waste of money.

Yeah. The other thing is sitting open houses and picking up clientele. That's the best way to pick up a lead. It's a very old school strategy, but it works. Well, we're also going to have like that many people that are looking for a house coming, like, that are right in your face. Correct. And then when it comes to Instagram, do you do any social media ads? Any organic reels? Do you generate clients that way also?

On Instagram? No, I don't do ads. No ads, okay. No. So everything's purely organic or just direct mail and open houses? Well, I mean, I advertise my houses on Instagram and social media, but I don't run ads. No ads on that side. Yeah. Very cool.

What about your listing presentation? Do you have a strategy or a certain way you go about it? How do you ensure you come out with the listing on top? Well, I have a really impressive listing presentation that I've worked on for years. I mean, obviously, the content of it changes over the years, but it has basically everything about me, what I can do for them. It has information on their house. It has information on all the properties that I've sold in the area. It really has basically everything that when I leave the house and they can look through it,

there's probably no more questions they have for me afterwards. But I love the listing presentation book. because it's basically a highlight of 20 years of my career. In regards to the TV show, what's it like having a camera around you? Do they follow you all day long like a reality TV show, or is it a matter of like you set up days in time to film? We usually, they set it up with us in advance. It's not every day, but it's definitely a few days a week.

And they throw that camera in front of you and we just see what happens. And does it still get weird having that camera on your face? No, by now. Do you just forget at this point? No, I know it by now. Very cool, very cool. But no, listen, I really appreciate you coming out. We've had a really good session in regards to you, just going out there and just knocking out questions.

Let's just go ahead and just jump into the vision for Josh Flagg and his team. What are you looking to do? From what point? From what point? From your business. What do you want to do moving forward? Moving forward? Yeah. I want to continue doing what I'm doing.

I don't really want to change anything. It hasn't broken yet, so. just continue doing the same numbers every year. And if they grow, that'd be even better. Cool. And then you've broken several records, I'm assuming, right? Just being in California and everything on that. And is there a specific sale that you were like,

wow, I didn't have any chance of getting this thing sold and you just found that magical bar? Any scenarios like that? Yeah, it's happened a few times, actually. See, there's the thing. Most of my brothers aren't famous people. So if I gave you an instill, like a story or told you about that, it's not like you would know who the person was.

It's just a lot of wealthy people. But it's not like, you know, Celine Dion or someone name, a household name that you would recognize. Yeah. And then do you have any advice for where to meet these people or how to build relationships with them or what would you do there? Well, I mean, I think that charity work is a good place to meet people. If you're involved in charity work, that there's, I think that that's joining a, you know,

I think that that's a good place. I think, you know, going to the same places over and over again, you see the same people. Yeah, look, if it's not really hard to sell real estate, if you're a social person. Yeah. So just basically go to high-end places where you can meet these people, rub shoulders, and take it from that. Yeah, exactly. Cool, cool. All right, well, let's just end off with this.

If you could redo anything in the last two decades of being in this business, what would it be? I would say, how much time do you have? If you had to give us the 30 second answer. Oh, shit. No, that's too much to tell you on that one. I have to let me think about that one. Cool, cool. Thank you so much for coming out to New York.

I appreciate it. Definitely looking forward to doing more of these with you. I am Juan Carl's Baranetti, founder of Goldbar signing off. Please look forward to more content from us. And do us a favor and subscribe so we continue delivering tons of value. Take care.