KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Selling Multi-Million Dollar Listings In Denver with Stuart Crowell

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

What's going on, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the luxury agent podcast. I'm your host, Juan Carl's Baranetti. And today we're going to be interviewing one of the number one agents in all of the Denver market out there in Colorado. Today we're going to be interviewing Stuart Krall. Him and his partner, Delroy Gill, are part of Sotheby's International in Denver, Colorado. And they are absolutely crushing the real estate game out there. They're young, they're ambitious, they're motivated. and they are here to deliver you value on what it takes to become a luxury agent in your market. So without further ado, let's jump straight into this store. How are you today? I'm great. I'm great. Thanks for having me, Juan Carlos. Really excited to dive in and chat, real estate. Absolutely. Listen, I'm excited as well. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience? Tell them a little about yourself and how you got started in real estate. Sure, yeah. Appreciate it. So I've been in the business actually four years to the month. So May 2017. I got in the business.

I moved to Denver in late 2016 from the D.C. area. And my wife and I didn't really know anyone, didn't know what we were going to do, but we figured, you know, Denver was a great place at the time to kind of recalibrate and meet some cool people. So we did just that. And lo and behold, you know, whenever you can't find a job and you're getting rejected in job interviews, what do you do? You sell real estate, right?

So that was me. I got in with a boutique firm and then I was at a branch of remax for about three months and by the end of my first year, found myself to my company now, which is Liv Sotheby's International Realty. And then, you know, the last four years has basically just been drinking out of a fire hose every day trying to make things happen and provide the best value for our wonderful clients. I love it. And listen, your average price that you're selling in is right over above a million dollars,

How did you start getting into this price range? Was it something where from day one, you knew you wanted to focus on luxury real estate? Or did it kind of just happen? Yeah. Great question. I mean, you guys are our social media studs. We did a lot of social media like personal branding. And I say we, my partner and I'm partnered with another fellow here named Delroy in our office.

But before we were partner, we were both doing a lot of personal branding. And when we didn't have deals to talk. about didn't have sellers to you know or listings to amplify you know a lot of the stuff we were doing was just around knowledge sharing and you know the the more deals you do the more consistency you have the more you can kind of talk the talk and walk the walk at the same time and so luxury was always a a focus of mine from the beginning even when i didn't have uh the deals meaning i was studying the markets i was knowing the players i was understanding the agents and who who who was doing the volume, what deals are being represented, who are the developers in those spaces

making waves. And so whenever I had opportunities to either host open houses or promote something, you know, a listing of a colleagues or, you know, just try and try and navigate that space, I always would take that opportunity. And, you know, that turns into opportunities inevitably. So I work generally by referral. I think our 95% of our business comes from the sphere, generated referrals. And so it was just about meeting the right people and then adding the right value at the right time. And ultimately, you're going to have that bats. No, I love it. And listen, I always tell any new agents looking to get started in this business, what it really comes down to is consistency, hard work, and patience until your sphere starts feeding you. I'm assuming in the

beginning, you obviously had to go out there and deliver value and meet these connections and build these relationships. What did you do year one as an agent to really go out there and nurture these relationships and start getting the referrals you're getting today. Yeah, great question. I'm going to give everyone my first like golden nugget tip. If we're going to go like new agent, kind of newer in the business or maybe kind of trying to trying to build a better client base, what I would do, we talked to social media briefly. This is back when I had, I don't know, a thousand followers or something like that on Instagram. I would really make sure that every day I was posting content about the market and about any activity I was doing in real estate.

And I would make sure that every day I also looked at who was viewing those stories. And if there was someone or a couple, three people that I thought that were, you know, or I saw looking at my stories every day, but I didn't know them. I would always reach out. Hey, I saw you, you saw this or that story. Did you have any questions? What made you interested? Let's grab a coffee.

And those were some of my first clients in the business. Because mostly those people, you know, you can see on social media where they're from, what they're doing, who they are, if we have any common connections, and create a little bit of report. And so in terms of meeting people, that's what I would do. Because again, I came to Denver news, zero people. I was starting with the zero foundation. So all the foundation was being laid as the car was, you know, on the freeway, so to speak.

So that's a really good tip for folks who really want to develop their sphere early on because you're not guaranteed to get a million dollar deal by doing that. But you are guaranteed to meet some people in your marketplace who are interested in real estate and more importantly, interested in you for some reason. No, that's great advice. And with social media being so accessible nowadays, it doesn't cost you a dollar to just go out there, reach out to people. I like the idea of checking for stories and seeing who watched it, and now you are actually reaching out to some warm type of clientele or leads that could essentially turn into business for you. So that's a great tip. Now, let's say

you are in the business, right? Let's say you've been selling real estate for four, five or six years, but you've also been selling three, four, five hundred thousand dollar houses in your neighborhood. If you are out there and you wanted to transition into more of the higher luxury real estate properties in the one, two, and three million dollar property range, what would you do differently when it comes to your business? You're going to do differently when it comes to your business. It definitely starts with with knowledge. You know, I think in, in a lot of these podcasts and these kind of conversations, what's often talked about is the, the level of clientele, the savviness of the clientele, the demands, the scrutiny. That is all true. That's all

accurate. But that can all be really dissuaded by your knowledge, right? So if you have the opportunity to showcase two things to a client up for, you. front, one would be, how are you valuable to them? And to be valuable to them, you have to know what problems or challenges they have. And to know what problems, you have to ask questions. You've got to get to the root cause. And to get to the root cause, you really have to know what you're talking about with the market. Right. So you might not be from an affluent background. I certainly wasn't. You might not even have really an interest in luxury goods, which I don't either. But what I do have is a really deep understanding of the market just because I've taken the time to understand a market that I wasn't working at the time.

But when I have the opportunity, I can definitely craft my own value position with a potential client, whether they're a $10 million buyer or a $5 million seller or anywhere in between because I'm going to know where to pick up that conversation. So the biggest thing you can do in what's always in your control as a young agent or less experienced agent is to go and try to hunt down information. And that information can be found on your MLS hot sheets. It can be found by calling and contacting other brokers. It can be found hosting open houses within communities that you want to represent so that you get to know and speak the language of the local residents there or any kind of HOA website. any association websites. I mean, information is out there. But a lot of agents don't take the opportunity to kind of access that before they get in the ring.

And so they don't look as polished or as well read on what they're talking about. Because people can, if you're an affluent person, most people are bullshit in you all day. You can really, you can really smell it from a mile away on an agent. And so you have to kind of get around that. immediate hurdle. So know your market, become an expert in the properties you're selling, and have all the right context so you could add value to that client's life, right? Yep, exactly. Really, really good. Awesome. And now, let's talk about your recent success. You've recently sold $70 million worth of real estate last year alone between you and your

partner. What's that like now that you've built up your business? You described it to kind of drinking out of a fire hose sometimes. What's your day to day like as a real estate? Real estate agent. It's been a fun journey for sure. And it's been a lot of a lot of growth year over year the last the last couple of years. And we expect that to continue. The day to day is really, you know, we make sure, we run a small team. So my partner Delroy and I kind of manage the team and we have one full-time admin, one broker associate on our team. And then we have three folks who are kind of our, our ancillary support. So a marketing person, a media manager, and a web and ads manager.

And those folks kind of make up our whole team. And so we make sure that, you know, we set the course of the week going right with a, you know, Monday morning meeting and everyone's got their tasks and their to-does. And we know what we're focused on, you know, month over month and quarter over quarter. We also, you know, make sure that from a day to day perspective, like we're getting the little things done in the day

that allow us to go after, you know, bigger and bigger goals. And so you got to go from, and if I don't know if most of your, if the folks listening, you know, if you haven't done like a business plan or, you know, you haven't workshopped with a mentor or manager on your goals, and real estate is very, very easy to reverse engineer, meaning if you want to sell a hundred million in real estate and the average price point in your area is a million bucks or whatever, 500,000, you know you can reverse engineer the amount of sales you need, which means the amount of contacts you need, which means the amount of conversations you need to have, and then go and program that into your day to day and make sure that, you know, you're staying accountable to yourself and your goals and your vision. So, you know, we set our team up based around, you know, those types of metrics and, and just do the work and watch what happens. No, so I think where this goes over a lot of agents' heads is that it's so simple.

It's definitely not easy, but the concept is simple in terms of if you want to get a certain amount of consultations, you have to speak to a certain amount of people. If those consultations are going to lead to a contract, well, then you just have to do a certain amount of consultations. And then obviously, everyone knows for every certain amount of contracts, you're going to get a certain amount of sales. So it really boils down to the amount of conversations you're going to have daily. Where do you meet and find these people? Do you call them? Do you go to networking events? Do you join country clubs?

How do you find people that are luxury buyers and sellers that you could believe? relationships with. Yeah, great question. And I'm actually doing a lot on this right now. Like we, we've made a goal this quarter to add three people, just three people into our core luxury database, meaning for us, what that really is defined at is people who would buy or sell or refer us without question. But, but key being, you know, they're in the right areas. They know the right people, right? So this isn't just anyone. And, and so to meet these people, what we're doing is really cultivating our current connections to develop introductions strategically in, you know, industries that where Denver holds a lot of weight in the luxury space. So we've got a lot of

finance and private equity. We've got a lot of oil and gas. We have some folks who have, you know, sold startups and, and, you know, moved to Colorado and usually have mountain properties as well. And we have various inroads through our current connections to get to a lot of those people. Now, if I had none of those inroads, all I'd be really trying to do was just making sure that if I knew anyone, I asked for an introduction to someone else. Meaning if you and I were going to coffee and I knew you were in finance, maybe you don't have the biggest, fanciest job in the world, but you work with an office of 80 people. I might ask you about your company, ask you who you know within your company. Are you really close to the CMO, the CFO, the CEO, anything like that? And then, you know, we would try and develop a relationship from there just based on being around you and in proximity to those key people, right?

So my angle is not really like a just spray in all angles networking. I actually can't stand going to networking events. I'm not a country club guy. All those things do not jive with me. No dis on any of them, but it's not what I do. I'm more of a strategic kind of point and shoot and figure out, you know, how I can run up the right ladders based on who I already know. That's an awesome strategy because you're leveraging the current relationships you have

to get the intros you need to the people that you want to go ahead and strengthen. So that's awesome. And it's kind of funny because I use the same exact strategy to meet you, meaning I don't know you through a hole in the wall. Me and Bo are good friends. We've been in contact for the last two years. He was previously on my podcast. And I reached out to Bo and I was like, Bo, I need the top agent that you know of to go

ahead and get me on this podcast so we can deliver some awesome value. And you connected me with you. So it's a small world. I think you just described the whole thing works. Yeah, exactly right. And you know what? The thing about our business that's irreplaceable is the relationships, right? and the knowledge. So you can't get sidetracked by all the different, you know, potential

disruptive technologies or anything like you need to focus on those two things that automatically you as an agent independently control for yourself. No, this is great. And listen, it's a lot of values. So I want to keep this podcast short and brief because I think a lot of people could take some really actionable steps from this and go away to their business. One last question. So you mentioned you have a luxury core database that you consistently market to to further nurture and strengthen those relationships. I actually have something very similar. I call it a VIP list. And although my database has about 10, 12,000 people of all the people we've met over the last couple of years, I only have 120 people in that VIP list that we even go ahead and we take care of a little bit more

and we concentrate on. Tell me more about the luxury core database you have and how do you market to them on a week-to-week basis? Yeah, I want to ask you the same question. because I could learn a lot from what you guys are doing too. But we have very similar numbers, actually. It's kind of a 2000-ish footperson database. And then between both my partner and I, there's 70 people that we call our platinum list. So very, very similar breakdown that we definitely make sure

we're taking care of at the highest level. We're spending the most money on those folks in terms of marketing and reach out gifts and stuff like that. So in a non-COVID era, we were doing a lot of events. We were throwing huge events and small targeted events as well. We were doing around one a month. And some of these events, we had multiple thousands of people.

Some of them had like 12, right? But we were doing a lot of that. Now it's more of, for example, I believe Sunday is Mother's Day. So this week we just sent out a custom bouquets of flowers made by a local flower shop to all of the mothers in our platinum and A grouping of clientele, which was, I think, around 80 households, something in that range. And so those will get there around Mother's Day, and that's a good touch point to say, you know, we're not sending it to every single person we know who's a mom,

but we are sending it strategically to the folks who we know we, A, have a good relationship with, or B, want to really enhance and develop the relationship we already are building on. And so things like that, just looking at the calendar and thinking a couple steps ahead, really, really good way to continue to foster and maintain a close relationship with, you know, your core sphere. So, you know, there's a lot of ways to do this business. I just find that we're thinking from just a customer service aspect, you know,

then we're going to try and add the most value. and that's how we're going to win in the long run. Listen, if you're listening right now, you miss the golden nugget. If you want to get multi-million dollar properties, send bouquets of flowers to moms. That's it. We have the entire solution to how to break it into it. Listen, Stuart, you've been so great so far. I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up because as mentioned, there's just so much value in this podcast,

everyone could go ahead and take and listen into. But how can people find you? How can people reach out to you if they do want to work with you or if they want to just get your info? Easiest is just Instagram. I answer all the. direct messages. So it's at my name, Stuart, S-D-U-A-R-T, Kroll, C-R-O-W-E-L. And you just search me there. Find me, follow me, message me. I'm happy to connect with anyone. And I'm an open book. Phenomenal. We're going to be putting Stewart's information, including his website and his

Instagram on the show notes. We're going to go ahead and wrap up for the day. But thanks so much for tuning in. We'll catch you all soon.