KGCI: Real Estate on Air - The Secrets to Building a Powerful Real Estate Brand with Peggy Hill

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

Friday Focus is your weekly mini-series from KGCI Real Estate On Air—a deep dive into one theme, broken into tactical, easy-to-implement episodes. Every Friday and Saturday, we unpack the strategies, scripts, and systems agents use to win more business—without the fluff.Catch every episode in the series to get the full picture, and put these moves into play by Monday.Summary This episode features an in-depth interview with industry leader Peggy Hill, who reveals the foundational principles behind her decades of real estate success. The conversation focuses on building a powerful, recognizable brand and creating a repeatable system for client communication. It’s a practical guide for agents who want to build a legacy business that can thrive for years to come.Key TakeawaysSuccess is built on a repeatable system, not on one-off efforts.Invest in building a strong, recognizable brand that positions you as an expert in your market.To scale your business, you must be willing to hire great people and delegate tasks.Topics:Real estate brandPeggy HillReal estate successBuilding a legacy businessScaling a real estate businessCall-to-Action Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform! Ready for more? Subscribe to KGCI Real Estate On Air and grab the Always Free Real Estate On Air Mobile App for iPhone and Android. Inside, you’ll find our complete archive, 24/7 stream, and every Friday Focus mini-series—ready when you are.

Clarity, strategy, and step-by-step moves. Here's what you need to know from this week's Friday focus on KGCI, real estate on air. Welcome, guys, to another episode of Realtor Hacks, Tips and Tricks. I am one of your hosts, Hallie, MacCoree, based here in Texas. I live part-time in San Angelo and part-time in Dallas. So West and North Texas, also am a host for American Dream TV and be-nominated TV show. And, yeah, coach for Tarak El-Mose's team.

at EXP Realty. And I also have my lovely co-host on here, Casey Steyers, the downtown guru of Raleigh, North Carolina, and also a host for American Dream TV in the Raleigh area. Again, Emmy-nominated TV show. And we're so excited today to have one of Casey's good friends on, Eddie Wilson. If you're in the Raleigh area or anywhere in the East Coast, you probably know him from his influencer page. Raleigh is growing and all the affiliates with that.

And we'll get his tickers going here in a minute. But yeah, we're really excited. Just, you know, a lot of people, I feel like our best episodes are all based around social media. So we're really excited to have Eddie on. And Eddie, thanks for jumping on. And make your time. I know you're a busy guy. Day in a day out.

Okay. We always start our shows off. We want to hear a little bit about you and your history and how you got into real estate. I'm really curious. I know Casey probably knows your story, but I'm curious if you got into or made this Instagram first or got into real estate first. So when I was like, I came out of college and I went straight into working in corporate America. I worked for Lenovo for about four years.

Okay. Did you go to school in North Carolina? Yeah. I went to college at Greensboro. Nice. That's where I'm from. Yeah, it's definitely growing, it's blowing up now. I did not used to be blowing up 10 years ago.

Whenever I came back to Raleigh and I ended up being roommates with my brother. And he's 12 years older than me. And he's also in real estate. He's in the Charlotte area at the time was in the Raleigh area. And I bought a house at a very young age, say 21 probably. And I was like, okay, I bought on the east side. It was up and coming at the time. Now I'm surrounded by new construction.

And I was like, it was the biggest investment I'd ever made. I never even really bought a new car. So I was like, oh, I just put my life savings in a brick ranch. And so I started like following like all the rehabilitation going on around me as far as the new construction, like the commercial space being bought up. Gateway Plaza was the big one. And then as you saw every day, we were getting a new rezoning request for 2030, 40, 45 stories in North Hills. And so I just started saying hashtag Raleigh is growing. I would post news articles on Facebook.

Well, then I decided like, hey, I should maybe get into real estate. As I kept following, I kept following it. And at first, it was like a joke. Like Raleigh's growing. Like it's blowing up. And so then me and my, I decided to leave corporate America and get my real estate license. And I just picked up bartending for a little while. And I love me during that time.

And that's me how I like being a real estate. Yeah. And so the, um, so as I got into it, we started this Instagram handle. And for at first, it was like to post knowledge as far as like real estate for the local community through like, I wanted people to go to see what it's like to walk around Raleigh from a local point of view and go to support new restaurants. We used to just go to new places they open, not just take some photos, videos. My wife is the one that mainly runs the account. especially now. I was going to add.

Usually I email her stuff or I give her some things, especially if it has to do with like, for example, Wake County medium home values or something new coming into the area. I try to send her stuff and she may not use it immediately. But like eventually I'll see it pop up on Instagram and she like stashed the way until she needed something. She couldn't find something to do for that day.

Yeah. So then it became she started monetizing it. Yeah. So what year was this? Like when you started and to we started it in 2018, probably November. Okay. And then we started, she started monetizing it probably 2020 and 2021. Don't hold me to those dates.

It makes sense with like I feel like a lot of people got into that kind of like monetizing accounts and stuff during COVID. So that, you know, that that checks out. Yeah. So I mean, so she had learned a lot about social media. She owns a, they, her and her family. on a jewelry store called Joint Venture Jewelry and Carry. It's been open for around 30 years. Yeah.

She was doing a lot of like social media with clothing because she used to own a boutique as well. They own a boutique as well that they ended up getting rid of during the pandemic because retail kind of took a big show. Right. Everybody's online. Yeah. Yeah. And so she started learning how to like make reels and she was like, she self taught everything

by watching YouTube pretty much. YouTube and like she would take like little online social media classes and stuff to learn. And then she was like, I can monitor. this and do it. So now, fast forward. It's got to around 50,000 followers in the local area. It has really high engagement, which is good.

You'll see a lot of people they'll post. They might have like 200,000 followers, but they don't get real engagement with it. Like, like people sharing it and people actually participating. Also, you have the trolls that are mad that the area is blowing up because now they can't afford a house to live in. Which is fine. I mean, I get it. It's hard seeing things double in price. But

she also, she works with a lot of different people in the area, which is like, for example, she works with North Hills. She works with some people at Crabtree. She works with a lot of local businesses from bars, restaurants, attorneys. You name it. She's pretty much worked with it and does now. And so that's kind of like her in and out. She works with local developers as well to, we're actually going to an event tomorrow night.

It's at the exotic car club in North Raleigh. And they're going down in a new neighborhood called Shin Leaf. And so Shen Leaf is up in North Raleigh where Falls Lake is. But all of Falls Lake is all owned by the government. So you can't build or develop around it. But they've gotten some parcels pretty close by that they're developing around the $2 million price point, high luxury market, that you also want to have a greenway that walks down to like a private beach on the lake. Or you can like park your boat at the dock.

and walk up to your house and let the kids take turns, jet skiing, whatever you end up doing. Yeah. And so it definitely has brought about a lot of good opportunities. I've met a lot of people through it, which is cool. Yeah. It's been really good for meeting and networking for business. Yeah. So at what point did you start making these little like ancillary accounts?

Like Eddie in real, did you already have Eddie? So I just changed my current Instagram that's old to a different hashtag, different name, just so it kind of would flow, you know? Yeah. And then when we launched a firm, we launched a firm back in the summer, early fall of last year. This is your firm, right? Yeah, it's our firm, yeah. And so when we launched Raleigh is growing real estate with my partner, I have a business partner.

And he's actually my broker in charge, which I do not want to do all of that. But he's one of my best friends. And so it's very easy to get along with him. Right. And so from there, I was like, we should leverage some of this Raleigh's growing name. But I didn't want to like take necessarily from what my wife had built for the past five years. It's like her baby. And so I was like, we should do a different handle like Raleigh is growing real estate that's more based around real estate.

And so we started out, we launched it. We did. I partner with a couple lenders. One is Matt Valentine. The other one's Bart Pointer in the area. and I leveraged them and helped. They partnered with me to get to accumulate like a big giveaway. Yeah.

And so Matt was a big part of that. Bart really helps with the social media side. But we did like a big beach giveaway. I think it was like a Shabumi, like a Yeti cooler, two Bahama beach chairs, some cups. And we launched it. And we were able to grow like from one giveaway. I think you got up like 2,500 followers in like two days.

Yeah. That's amazing. Because you can leverage off of it. Now we, we do a lot of stuff for, around real estate on that page. Okay. Because people don't want to like that are following influence your accounts. They don't want to just be sold houses nonstop.

Right. Buy a house. Sell your house. Buy a house. It's a good time to buy. It's a good time to sell. You know what I mean? Yeah.

But at the same time, a lot of people who are probably looking at that account are people looking to move to Raleigh and with like that. Yeah. A lot of people, you know, it's weird working in real estate. And there is some leads that come in through social media platforms. Yeah. And it's always from out of state. Yeah.

It's randomly in interior, randomly. You might be have one or two here and there. But majority it's like relocating. And like the stay at home mom is following the account from Seattle, for example. That I'll give them an example if they see this. My good, he's really not one of my really good friends, but they relocated here from Seattle. And, and they were like, hey, we follow the account. Do you have time to meet?

We met. We got him a nice house and carry. And now they've become good friends. friends. I love it. I mean, it's like we kept talking about when you turn into friendships. I mean, you're building relationships. Yeah. And a lot of my people have, I will say I have more friends from my business than I have clients because it's all because they've all become friends. Yeah. For the most part. Well, and I feel like this is such a, you know, authentic way to pick up clients as well. You're obviously, have always been interested about the growth in Raleigh and

they're going to have an interest in it that's something to bond over um i don't know it makes sense that that they would turn into the or you know clients become friends and that's in that scenario so yeah it's random like sometimes like i used to be on the page a little bit it'd be weird like when we first started at a bartended and i was at brookside in a local in my neighborhood it was a local bar and people would randomly walk in be like you're that guy on that instagram account And I was like actually, yeah, that is me. It was just, but that was like low following. That was like two, three, four, five thousand following when she first launched it.

Yeah, yeah, but still, yeah. It just happened to be a couple people in my neighborhood followed it and they came into the bar to get a beer or bring their kids in and get pizza, whatever it was. Right. It was just, it was just interesting. I was like, all right, this could, this could be fun if it got bigger. And I'm sure. It's been fun.

I've got to do so much stuff. Like, for example, like, we went to a topping off last. last, what was this? Probably last spring. And in North Hills for like a 25, 30-story tower. So we got to go inside the tower, well, before you even had glass on it, we went up a buck hoist and got to see things.

And it'd eat lunch at the very top of it. That was really cool. Wow. And then we did 400H. We just did some partnerships with. And I got to go up there throughout the entire build process. I don't really like getting a buck hoist and going to the 30th floor. but it's been cool like to see some views that most people don't get to see necessarily.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's like that's one of my favorite things about being in real estate. You kind of like have an inside know or usually end up knowing about things before like the general public knows. So I mean, this is like even and even better in, you know, into finding out stuff. I love too that you with this so we just had a previous podcast

that we talked about like face to face is the best way to talk to people and get people to know you and the more they get to know you the more they like you the more they trust you but I feel like social media is second best

especially with video but then too because you can bring that to the masses but I just think You know, it's cool that people came in and they already, they already felt like they knew you. They're like, oh, you're that guy. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely rewarding when that happens. Yeah.

And then even I've, this is a side note too with the bartending, but like some of the best real estate agents that I know got into real estate from bartending and they're like, well, I already had all these people I know from, you know, I'm already out there talking. If I had the time, I'd go back and bartend more. Yeah. I gained so many long friendships and clients. from bartending. Yeah.

After I worked for Brookside bodega, I ended up working downtown at the Oak City Meatball Shop. So the majority of the clientele when I worked, I mainly work nights. And I would, I worked there because they closed at 10, nine during the week. So I could still get up and have an 8 o'clock meeting to not be drained. I mean, I wouldn't be the happiest person in the world. But I mean, I could do it and show a house at 745 in the morning and not neglect my business I was trying to grow.

But the majority of their clientele was, if you ever heard of the company Red Hat, Red Hat is 20 stories above it all office space before COVID hit. They would come in every day, the same faces for Happy Hour. I think I had a few friends that worked there out of college. Yeah, they're pretty big. They're owned by IBM now. But recruiting or something? So Red Hat is, I think it's cloud infrastructure.

Okay. I know it's tech. Recruiting for that. Okay. It's tech, but they got bought by IBM for like some crazy amount of money, like $40,000. I mean, they're really big company. And so I picked up a lot of clients that. were, it was as Red Hat was getting big.

And they were obviously taking care of their employees and paying them well. And they were like, I want to buy a house. And I would like to buy it in downtown because they can walk to work. Yeah. So I tried to leverage myself as an asset to help them do that. Yes. I love it. I love it.

So where, I guess like now for do you still do giveaways with the Instagram or like are you weaving, like how often are you weaving in real estate or are you at all? So with like the Raleigh is growing page or the real estate page? Well, I guess a little bit of both. So real estate is definitely more focused on real estate. Yeah, the Raleigh is growing page. Obviously, there's a lot of things. For example, let me pull up recently.

Like you remember there's a new development coming up? It's not necessarily that. You said you're in Austin. Dallas. You're in Dallas. Yeah. So we're a lot like Austin where we're busing on our scenes here. Yeah.

And so like, for example, you've got something like this that says Raleigh ranks number two as a top metro for women in tech 2024. Yeah. So or you've got something like, let's see, Wake County hit a new record, $82.6 million tourism dollars in 2023, 10 million more than 20202's record. I'm trying to see something. Do you guys do like a Facebook page with it at all too? Yeah, but it doesn't have as much traction. Yes. Instagram.

Yeah. But like you, we keep topping the charts for things. Yeah. And if we're not topping, like for example, we just did a post a couple weeks ago. USA Day News ranked Raleigh number two real estate market. I think it was Denver, Colorado was number one. Durham was number four, which is 20 minutes away. And then Charlotte was number five.

Okay. So I mean like it's, when you start getting stuff the news like that nonstop, it's very easy to have stuff. It's not necessarily real estate focus, but it's focused on like the hottest real estate market or top row states in the U.S. North Carolina was number three. With all those things coming about, it definitely brings an influx of people here because they're all sitting in places they don't like living.

And they're like, I want to go somewhere. The center of living is cheaper. It's half the price in New York or New Hampshire or California. They can most likely get a job that's worked from home or there, we have tons of tech here we have a ton of tech pharmaceuticals we're big on that huge here as well like like you know i don't know if you've heard of like uh the the weight loss drug of zimpic or wagovi so like no one probably even knows it but they're both made in clayton north carolina which is around the corner for oh yeah and you have new list and they're like i think they're 80 to a hundred billion

dollars drugs right now. Like that's going to bring an influx of manufacturing into the area which brings people in. Yeah, they may not be able to afford a million dollar house, but they can definitely afford the average price point of $465. If they're making a manufacturing salary of $85 to $120 and they have a wife that makes an income as well or a husband that makes income as well. Yeah. That's so interesting.

So do you try to like target those companies at all? You know, I probably should do better at that. I haven't really done that. I have a lot of friends. I've seen a good amount of business from being, I used to be in tech. So I just had a closing in January from someone I worked with in tech six, seven years ago. Yeah. I mean, the tech is, it's got its ups and downs, though.

You saw it was they raised interest rates last year. Yeah. They started laying everybody off because their stock was going to the bucket. So tech is, it's typical. I'm in the same way too. Like if they don't approve their drug, pharma, they just. lay off everybody. Well, my first job out of college was with Oracle and Austin.

So I did tech. And then after that, I moved to St. Angelo after I met my husband, we were doing long distance and worked pharmaceuticals. So I'm like, I know both and I got laid off too. That's when I got into real estate. So I'm like, I totally get this. Yeah, I mean, I got laid off from Lenovo. I hopped.

I was actually pretty lucky. and I had done really well. I'm kind of shocked me. I was even got laid off at Lenovo. I was literally killing my quota every quarter for years. And so their stock went down. They laid off a bunch of people. And then I just went next door and I showed,

I went to a company called Dude Solutions at Timeouts on by Siemens called Brightly. But I went there and I literally said, hey, here's my sales numbers. And they hired me on the spot. I mean, I went through the interview process, but I had to go through like five interviews and I hated it. I tried to sell a soft. as a service like Oracle or rightly versus selling a commodity like a computer or a server or a

tablet or a cell phone because you have your accounts when you're when you're selling a commodity that just keeps rebind. Yeah. So that's definitely changed a lot. Yeah. I feel like a lot of like what I've learned from sales. I mean, it's tough doing B2B. I'm with that or like business to business for those that are in that field. But I do feel like it gave me a lot of my skills that I use every day in real estate. Yeah, and I agree. I learned a lot. Relationship based. Then I definitely didn't have the sound like that from teaching. So when Eddie met me, I was a school teacher. I love that. So how long have you guys known each other since like 20,000? You don't have been able to. 14, 15?

Did we meet at Brittany and Jake's wedding or before that? I think I knew you because you used to come into the neighborhood and grab a glass of wine with your friend. I got on her name, but they moved to Charlotte, like Norman. Keybert. Yeah, Kieber. And then we ended up staying in a house together at a wedding, far from Brittany, out in very south of Virginia somewhere. Southern Georgia. Between Maryland and Virginia.

We had to go on there. I've never been there. I remember this. She didn't tell. her significant other Adam that we were going and I didn't even know about it we pulled up on this toll bridge because it's like there's like this little part from the top of Virginia that that meets the very tip of Maryland but there's a toll bridge a bridge that goes under the ocean it comes back out so um and he's terrified of water yeah I don't know about this and I'm from North Carolina I'm like yeah so

I didn't know what either I pulled up to the toll bridge and they were like hey it's 25 and I'm like oh quarter that's it. And they're like, no, $25 on my $12 for a toll bridge. And they're like, I think it was like 11 miles long, right? It was long. It was 20, I think. It was long. I mean, you got to a point where you're sitting on the bridge and you can't even see

the land anywhere, if ever what you're on. And so when it goes constantly like over under the water like twice. And she, I remember. She's like, Adam's not going back over that bridge. And I think she drove all the way around to bring him back home. We went back north like you knew. Yeah, you came all the way up. back down, right? Adam's like, hell no. I'm not getting back on this bridge. And I don't blame

him. It's kind of scary, to be honest. We ate fast food. He had to build up the nerve to go through this. I told them, I said, go ahead and go. We'll be there eventually. It's so funny. We're trying to get Adam on the podcast as well. It's, it's going. Adam's like one of those people that like, He doesn't show it, but then you see on Instagram he's playing with the dog. Yeah. Like, bar owner. He's still running the bars, right? Yeah.

He just built Glenwood, you know, nothing big. I just was going to text you, actually. I was on my little five-mile loop this morning and over the Anthony La Piazza, whatever it's called, it's opening. Yes, they were unloading food from from Cisco or something this morning. They're about to open. Yeah. Which is exciting. I'm very excited.

We'll have to go, actually. So maybe that's where we keep trying to meet and get together. Hey, I have a question for you, Eddie. On your pages, do you ever do, like, sponsored listings and show listings? Yes. You want to do one of mine? I have to sync you up with Carly on that, but definitely, for sure. Yeah, I would like we just did some stuff.

Like, if you want to look, she just posted one this morning. But that was for something that she did in the fall. She just, like, reposted it. It was, I have a friend of mine that flips. It flips about 100, 200 houses a year. Wow. You may have heard of him. His name's Chris Papa Lottipus.

Chris Papa, what? If you ever see a red door and Stephanie Anson is the listing agent. Okay. That's usually his house. Okay. But usually he paints the brick gray and he paints the door red. Okay. And so he flips pretty, he was going to hold on to this, this neighbor.

He bought the entire neighborhood in Andrew. and I think it's about 30 or 40 townhomes he bought. Wow. And so what he usually does is he'll flip and then he'll take his profits from his flip and he'll buy commercial real estate. Yeah. And so he owns, I don't even know how much, but I bet you he owns, I bet he owns at least 1,000 units. I know I can know off top of my head where he has at least 400 and that's just for me, knowing the ones in Raleigh that he has.

But he buys all over. He goes on stage a lot and talks, but he flips. And so we just did some stuff with him on that. We just did one on Glymwood that's on the market. An agent came to us. They have it's across the street from LaSanta. It has a little cute front porch. It's a law firm.

Oh, it's a lot of law firm. So, yeah, we actually looked at that before it went on the market. Yeah, it's cute. I still with the agent on that. Yeah, the agent's really nice, too. So we've done some stuff with him. But yeah, we do a lot of stuff to sponsor. definitely gets in front of people.

You knew we needed the greenhouse, right? Huh? We have the green house. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew that. Yeah. And I was like, someone hasn't bought that property.

It's too overpriced. It's expensive. It is. I think it's too far. Everything else is around 550 a square feet, commercial-wise, which sounds like a lot. But you're only looking at 19-50.

So, I mean, $1 million to $1.2 would make that's worth out. Anything over that, it's not going to make sense of the rent and what everybody's landing at there. So there's a commercial hat. What's the listing go? I'll look it up. 2.5.

No, what's the listing for you hat that you have that you want to promote? Oh, 2650 Dresden. Farr that street name? D-R-E-S-D-E-N. Dresden. I know where this is. It advertised it a thousand times. The, um.

So what is one trick or hack that you feel like it's gotten you to where you are now with these pages? So the page part is I have Carly. I have my wife. I would definitely not have the pages without my wife. Someone did hire someone to help them too. They want to know. But so she's tried to leverage by hiring people because she's getting really thin. what you're doing.

And some people just, yeah, they want, the idea in their head is, yeah, they want to do it. What are they good at it? Okay. So, I envision. Yeah, envision.

And the thing that, the trick that, that gets so much attention to people is naturally done content. No stock, she will not do a stock photo unless, like, for some reason,

that's like a wine event and they already have photos from the last event or something. She tries not to use any stock photos. She tries to go out and try to make something organic from like her own iPhone or like

does she do like photography? Yeah we've got we've got she does everything professional photography she's done videography she's got we've got a drone we've got. She is like a mate we need to get her on too. And she also like so on top of like with her doing the

the Instagram she runs a bunch of events. Oh for this page or like in conjunction with other people. So she has Raleigh Boutique Warehouse sale that she usually does a spring, summer, fall, winter sale. And since she sees the hard parts of owning a boutique and like trying to unload your

leftovers and stuff, at least you can like throw it all in the, instead of having to sell it for dirt cheap in your store, just throw it in a bin, come to the show. We just have one this past Sunday, actually. A sample sale, it sounds like. It's like a way, like, for example, you show up and all these boutiques have like a a $10 bin, a $20 bin, a $30 bin. And it could be like things that are usually $100, $150. They're just trying to get their cost back

out of it. And just and also unload it to someone that's happy. And so this last one we just did, it was about 60 60 vendors, I believe. Wow. So it's all local boutiques. And then every spring

and fall, she does what they call a fashion fest, which is we part, she partners with models for charity. I was going to say she does models for charity. That's a thing here. She does model for charity. And basically what they do is we have a runway set up.

Usually it's in like a newer development that the developer wants people to come to. So like we've done it in Smoky Hollow, which is a newer developed downtown. We've done it at Ironworks. We've done Fenton and Carrie. And so she tries to negotiate the space for a way that she can still donate a good amount of money to charity for it. Yeah. And if she does is she covers costs by. selling booths usually 50 60 70 vendors and um and when she has the vendors they're all of

they're all boutiques usually and the patiques have their clothes on the runway from the models for charity so if you like it you can go over here to x y z boutique and buy that look wow it's good it's good for women also get out of the house because there's something to do on the random Thursday. Yeah. And it's like something she's passionate about too. Like, well,

I assume because she used to own. She's really passionate about fashion. She went to school for fashion. Yeah. And like, Jules. Yeah. Wow.

So do you get a lot of clients from her doing all these events and stuff? Or yes and no. I mean, definitely brings, it brings a lot more people around me than I would see. Yeah. Because I'm out of, I'm there helping her every day.

Yeah. And so it gets me back in front of them whenever she's doing events. It's seeing people. I don't be someone I talk to every day. But it's definitely like someone that I'm like, maybe friends with on Facebook or social media. And I'm like, hey, I mean, man, we talk, we chat. I haven't mean to call you. I wanted to buy a house of the beach.

Yeah. Yada yada. So that's, it's definitely helped. Yeah. Well, I guess I've asked you like, I keep asking you like, what do you do? Does this get you a lot of leads? I guess I could ask you direct. What do you think is your big biggest like lead generation source?

Sphere of influence. Fear of influence. but yeah, I feel like you probably do stay top of mind from your wife, like her doing all these events in this page. And I'm from here. To the one-stop shop. Yeah, the big part is I'm from here. And so I have a lot of people that are like,

I call my cheerleader. They're in different parts. I have, I'm from here. My dad's from here. My grandmother's from here. So the only person that doesn't live in Raleigh that's in my family is my brother. And he moved to Charlotte for his significant other's job. Yeah, and he does real estate there.

Yeah, he's in real estate there full time. Yeah, and I'm sure you guys can do referrals back and forth. Yeah, we do a bunch of back and forth referrals. Yeah. But it's been, yeah, it's definitely been a rewarding business to be in. It's been life changing. Do you stay, do you do anything to really like harness into your sphere of influence or is it just natural at this point? Um, like, I don't know, like, you know, yearly gifts or like.

So like, during Christmas. time. I go around and I do a drop off cookies. Okay. Love that. And it's getting to a point. I love doing it. It's getting to be really exhausting. It used to take a day. Now it takes two days. Now it takes a week. It's all past client. I do that too and I get help at a certain spot and have them pick them up. It's not the same. People really like when I show up with it. And my wife makes these cookies. So it's like a cornflake crunched cookie. It's like. Yeah. So it's like a cornflake crunched cookie. It's like this big and it's crispy. And so I drop it off and people look forward to them every year. They're like, where are my cookies? And so I drop them off and it definitely brings a good

amount of referrals back to. Yeah. Every year we do a food drive. So we as a firm, we just did a big food drive. I forgot. I think it was, I can't remember that amount of pounds of food. A lot. I'll say. It was a lot. And so what we did is we either we drop off bags. We gave everybody in the firm like 25, 30 bags. I got, I got them donated from Publix, the paper bags. And I just tell them what I'm doing. And they throw it through corporate, corporate approves it. Then I go pick them up. Yeah. And then we put like a little half sheet that says what the current mission is looking for, like or the food bank or whatever we identify as. And, and so yeah, so we donated 1,200 pounds of food. And they said the estimate,

and 950 people to feed. Wow. Our families to feed a meal. And so what we do is I go around and give them to my neighbors and stuff. And I say, hey, we partner with like, obviously our attorney that we work with and our lenders. And we throw a big party. And so we say, hey, come on in. Like, you can either text us and I'll pick it up if you just want to donate and not

participate. If you would like to donate, come get a cocktail or something or a drink or a beer. and we'll have appetizers and stuff and you can drop it off. And then we try to donate it like right before Thanksgiving to try to give it a push for them. Love that. I haven't thought about what we're all going to do as a spring event, but I think we'll probably do something spring or summer related. Yeah.

Something fun. I really like how involved you and your wife are with charity while, you know, meshing it with your passion. It's more of my wife that's pushed the charity into me. It's good to give that. That's difficult. We're all not stressing for it. It's good to give back.

It helps people to kind of show what you're about and what you stand for. And I feel like people like knowing that about people. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so like it's where I was going out with it as far as sphere is that when you, when you touch people organically without saying here's a birthday card or here is a thank you card. you're saying, hey, thanks for donating. Come see me, hang out.

Let's have a beer together and you socialize with everybody. People remember that more than they remember like a birthday card or an email, a monthly email or something I feel like. Yeah. And I've kind of gotten a lot of these ideas off of my brother that's been doing this a lot longer than me. Yeah. What he does is he does his specific neighborhood. Okay.

And he will doork, he does a lot more than 25 bags. So he doesn't on a bigger spectrum. Yeah. And then he usually does, like, says, hey, come do a food drive. He does a big pie giveaway at his house. Yeah. He has, like, a big band and everything and throws a big party. That's so fun.

That's so fun. That's been where I got into it. Yeah. Love it. So tell me a little bit about your, this new firm or like, so me and my partner, Brad, we left, we left Keller Williams back in. Is that who you started out with? Yeah, we left back in September.

And when we left, we took a few people with us that we were close with. Yeah. And yeah, we took our team with us. And from there, we have an office. We're in downtown Raleigh, right, across the street from the governor's mansion. We work with an attorney pretty closely. His name is Dwayne Hall. Okay.

And we leverage him for help, legal questions, et cetera. And now we've grown to. I think we're at 13 agents. 14. We're at 14 agents. And we're cooking. We got a couple that are part-time, mostly or full-time. But we've got some people that, like, have an insurance license,

and they just want to do referrals or do a deal here and there. They just want to leverage it because they can get leads off being an insurance agent. Right. And then, yeah, grow it a little bit. We don't want to get crazy big. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

with it all. Yeah. And you still want to, I feel like you still want to keep a boutique vibe to it. Yeah. In some fashion. Um, because you have more of a level of service at that point. And what's the name of it? It's called Raleigh's growing real estate. That's, oh, I love it. Awesome. Okay. So, um, that's what we do. I love it. I love that you leverage the name too. Yeah. Like definitely helped a lot. Have you guys had to like trademark that at all or? So I have it. We have LLCs and corporations and stuff like that. But yeah, I mean, there's someone that's doing Clayton is growing.

And so it's kind of annoying, but they have like a thousand followers. So I just like whatever. Yeah. I'm an agent. I can't knack someone trying to. One in Charlotte too. Is that your brother? It does that one?

My brother does close with Chris. Okay. Because there's one of those videos. He's real heavy in the video business. And I'm trying to figure out if it has been very beneficial. So his partner is a CMO for a Fortune 500 company. And he's been in marketing for, he's been head of marketing for like Bank of America,

Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, like really big companies. And he, for example, you probably saw when Wells Fargo went through their whole thing a couple years ago. And they had a Labrador retriever on a commercial. I remember that. So he was in charge for doing commercials like that and shooting them and stuff. I mean, he oversees it. And so as they're getting more into doing stuff like that, they are,

John has been assisting Chris with some marketing. And now Chris is like so busy that he's running around like his head was chicken, like his head's cut off. He was telling me, he's like, I don't know how to gauge. That's what we were just talking about this last. He's like, I can't gauge if it's from doing all these videos. I'm thinking of explore Charlotte is what I'm thinking of. Because so.

Yeah, I really, I'm a big believer in video right now. I just. It's hard to get on video though. Like for him, like I did one with him one day because his partner was out of town for work last minute. And like, it's real nerve reckoning when you got a camera on you. I know. It's a lot easier because you're recording it. And then like if something you don't want, you can just restart it.

Yeah. Right. But like it's just a little, it's a little different. Yeah. Yeah, when you're like, the camera's on you. And so like whenever, I'm sure you've done videos before. But like when you're doing a video like and you mess up, you just got to keep talking. You're like, we'll cut it out.

Right. I'm like, I usually just send them to an editor. And then by the time I thought about that I messed up, I forgot what I wanted to say. And so that's the biggest reason I haven't done them yet because I'm kind of afraid of it. Okay. So I have a tip for you and for our audience. I think this is one I've already given. But I, so I have, I discovered this app called captions.

And I think it's like $55 for the year. And then there's like, you can do a monthly fee, but it was a lot cheaper to do the yearly. And it has teleprompters on it. And you can change whatever the teleprompter says. You can change speed. But it looks like you're talking into it. And then there's actually another feature to it that if you wanted to just like, let's say you're looking like you're reporting yourself here, you can actually talk.

or like be reading off of the script, but there's an AI tool that will correct your eyes to make it look like you're looking at the camera too. That's cool. So I don't just, I don't know, that might help. And I feel like that will get you more in the groove of doing video too, possibly. Yeah, I think I'm,

what we've discussed is maybe doing like some conversational based videos. Okay, yeah. Like more like a market update or what's going on on the side of town. know the information. I don't even to look it up. I tell what's going on every sub part of Riley because I read the news every single morning and every single, I have like 15 news apps on my phone that pop up. And when something's good that I like, I forward over to my wife, she makes it look cute and organically and puts it on social media.

Yes. What's her name, Carly? Her name's Carly. I'm going to Carly. With a K. Ew, I love it. What's her Instagram? We'll shout her out, too.

She's Peachy Carly. P-A-C-C-C-A-C-C-C-C. H-H-Y-R-L-Y. Oh, and you have that in the bio for Raleigh is growing. Love it. Yeah, it's such a cute page. And there's a little bit of everything. There's food.

There's drinks. There's fashion. There's real estate. There's attorneys. I mean, gosh, good for y'all for getting this all started. This is, and just for this. I will say it has been 90% her. Yeah.

I do a lot. But, I mean, it's her like, she says how. exhaust and it is to always have to, because everything she does for her job is she has to create. Right. She's like eventually, I'm like, she's like, it's way different than sitting at a desk working nine to five because she's nonstop doing creative energy. Yeah. Yeah. I feel I can understand that because I do a lot of like creativity and creation for my real estate page. And now I've brought on a new person that's tremendously, but it's, it's a lot of brain power. For example, all right. So if you have the page pulled up one from like last week find the one that look that has patty it's number

six has patio season on it and then turn your volume up a little bit it took her and her sister she called me but i was busy doing something and it took her a while to this video yeah well it looks great patio season's calling i love that that's great we all love sitting on the yeah we need to add that to your Raleigh's growing page. She's been doing a little bit of Wilmington as growing. Oh, nice. Big.

Like, we own a house down there. And so she's like, what you was doing yesterday. They remodeled it. He had to drop time. Yeah, we've been, I have a house that, um,

I got it from my grandmother. Um, and she bought it for penny. You would be pennies now. Back in 1954, I think. And it's in like an area right at Carolina Beach, which is like,

I'd probably say it's probably like one of the faster growing areas of the beach here outside of Riceville Beach. And it's like right at the water. There's a house in front of me in the water. And it's a little cottage built in like 1944. And so we've done everything from redo the foundation, windows, vault the ceilings, all new electrical plumbing ruffins, new plywood for the floor. Wow. And I've tried to do it with like since the house is only like 800 square feet. Yeah.

It's a two bed, two bath. It was a three one. And so I've tried to do a lot of things where like it's got some real character to it. Yeah, I bet. And keep like the original doors, go paint them teal and stuff and re-sand them down and make them look cool. So it has some kind of actual charm to it. And it has been a project that we have been doing for going on almost two years. That's so cool.

Like you're keeping it in the family, like it was your grandmothers. Yeah. And so, yeah, my day yesterday was. was I got up. I drove to the beach to drop off one box of tile. We were short. And I got it. I ordered. I sourced bright teal tile, subway tile for the shop. I love that. And the, uh, the builder called me last week and was like, hey, we're out of that tile. We need more. And I was like, how much you need? Can't be that much because I measured it. He said, we need just order another box. So I got a box. I was like, well, I have to order that because it's not

in stock. So I had to wait a week, get it and take it down yesterday. But I've been going down, like yesterday was like 70, 72, 70 degrees and sunny. So I got, I get, I get, even though it's annoying to drive to the beach, I got to go down to the beach. I dropped out of the tile, met with the builder for briefly. I ran like a little four or five mile loop. I ate my, I packed my lunch. I ate my lunch on the beach. That's so nice.

I showed two condos to a friend of mine. And then I drove back home. How far is the drive? It's like an hour and 45, hour, 50 minutes. It's a pretty easy drive, but it's all one high. It's closed. Since they close, the main bridge. It wasn't so bad yesterday.

Yesterday I didn't have a really new traffic. It's been horrible. Yeah. They've only got one in the Wilmington right now. Yeah, but usually it's an 85 mile an hour cruising one highway until you get the Wilmington go through town in 20 months. It was a trolley stop. So that was my favorite.

In all my years of being there, I'd never eaten there. Have you? Are you from you? I'm from Greensboro originally. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. My really good friend worked there. Oh, really? Okay, cool. Yeah, my parents still live there. My aunt and uncle, I mean, I know a ton of people there still. So, but I graduated from Wake Forest and Winston in 2016 and then immediately moved to Austin. So I haven't, I don't go back that often, but I'll be back in September for sure. You know, who knows, I might sprinkle something in before, but I'll be back in Greensboro for a wedding.

in September. So it's exciting to see all the growth in North Carolina and my my grandma grew up in Apex. I was always in Raleigh for I was a big swimmer. So before we got the big complex for swimming in Greensboro, we were always at the one in Raleigh. And so I spent a lot of time there in Charlotte too. And now my little cousin goes to UNC. My other cousin, he graduated from NC State. All my family is like big NC State people. So they're always at the games. and stuff. So I keep up with stuff, but I don't go back as often as I should. It's a different vibe. I can't leave you went to Texas. It's too hot. I know. I love Texas. It's just, it is hot. It is hot. I can't do it. I know. I want to bring my husband

to, like, Wilmington and stuff. I'm like, this is where we go to, like, spring break and Ritesville and every, like a lot of our friends had figure eight houses and stuff. It was just, it's funny and even now with outer banks like the tv show coming out you know they i think they filmed in charleston but they're back filming and they filmed at carolina beach this past summer i love all the dock side movies and it's usually the nicholas spark ones that uses dockside so yeah yeah uh i think that was um the one with julia huff or whatever one one was safe haven safe haven that's what i'm thinking of that's southport yeah okay that was southport that's right on street. Yeah. Well, it's nice that you guys can really like bop over there and, you know,

sell a beach condo or whatever. I mean, I'm trying to do the same, but it's a, San Angelo is West Texas and Dallas is North Texas. And it's a four-hour drive. So a little bit farther. Wilmington's pretty easy to deal with too. Like Wilmington doing deals there. They're pretty straight. And it's like you guys have grown up going for like going to forever, you know. know bigger condition and the agents are easier to deport. True. Houses are half the price unless you're at the beach. Yeah,

I hate to say it, but I kind of run circles around those people. So what's the future to come for just the Raleigh is growing brand? Like I want to like, do you have a future plan for the Instagram, future plans for the brokerage? Just grow. Just grow.

Just keep it. It's amazing. Well, it's like you never know. I mean, shoot, we're in an election year. I mean, things can change so rapidly. I mean, shoot, you never know. We just had a pandemic out of nowhere. So just all about adapting to it.

Any other last hacks, tips, or tricks that you've picked up in real estate that you want to share with our audience? My God and not that you would give everybody. Or it can be a book or a podcast. anything that would help. Let me pull something up. I'll give you what I recommend. While you're pulling that up, I do want to point out to everybody,

I think we talked about this on the podcast, recapping our Gold Bar conference. Take note that he said that he can give you any of the stats from the market reports. He already knows that in his head. Remember that it's very important to know, like, off the top of your head, If someone were to ask you in the grocery store, know your market knowledge or have that in your pocket.

So I like that you said that, Eddie. I'm going to. Yeah. I know. I do national market stats pretty well. Yeah. Have you ever heard of sell it like Sirhart? Sirhan.

Yes. Yeah. That's who he's. I listen to his stuff a lot. So I do. I alternate if I run five miles or if I walk. I walk. I've been listening to some podcasts.

Yeah. Like call me a nerd. I've been listening also some like some older commencement speeches from like some of the bigger university. I just listened to Steve Jobs from 05 at Stanford. Yeah. There's still a bunch of knowledge from these people, even though Jobs is dead. I mean, he literally talks about, like, don't get up from Apple,

create a Pixar and re-bought. Yeah, pretty much came right back to Apple because they bought Pixar. Yeah. Which made Toy Story. I love people don't know that. But like I've listened to his audio book. He actually is the person reading the book. Yes.

It's pretty hilarious. Yeah. We just saw him this past weekend in New York. It's insane. Sorry, Eddie. He's one of my mentor. John, it works with him at Surhant. He's one of the mentors.

So we got to go on a penthouse condo viewing in New York. And we were in New York last week, right? Yes. That's all we're... And then S-O-I. That's what I try to give new agents. It's a building a real estate agent's sphere of influence pretty much. Yeah.

Like that. Yeah. And you know, he just came out with a brand new book. It's a brand it like Sirhan. Yeah, I haven't, I haven't on that one yet. I know. That's on my list. I want to finish my two other.

I actually am doing that. I'm almost what you do with that, my suggestion for that, John, tell me, take it chapter by chapter and actually do what he tells you. Do a chapter a day and then do that and then do another chapter because he breaks down how to build your brand kind of thing. And if you've already got a brand, how you can improvise and how to tweak it kind of thing. Love that. Yeah. All right. So we like Ryan Sirhant's books. That's one of my favorite, too. I think about stuff in that book all the time. Well, go negative. Love it. Well, cool. Any other last comments or questions from you guys? No, good. Thanks for having me on.

Thank you for everyone. Eddie. We really appreciate it. It's amazing to know you. And I'm excited to follow your pages. I mean, it's, yeah, Raleigh is an awesome market to follow. And I think that, even if you're not in that market or plan to like move to that market i think that you know like it's very insulated market yeah yeah and it's just it's interesting because i think um a lot of markets do follow like these these raleys and austins and denbors of the of the united states so yeah everybody make sure you follow uh we've got the ticker going eddie and raleigh raleigh is growing and raleigh is growing real estate uh give me a follow to hallie be McCory, shameless plug, and Casey is CB Stiers, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, we've got it all. And please don't forget to leave us a review, especially if you liked this podcast.

We're on Apple and Spotify. You can do reviews on both those platforms. Leave comments on YouTube. We try to be everywhere. So, yeah, and if you have any other suggestions or people that you want to hear, drop us a line and we'll get them on. as best as we can. So thank you, Eddie, again, for coming on. And we will see you guys next week. Bye, y'all. Good, buddy.

Bye, Eddie. Thank you. Bye, y'all.