KGCI: Real Estate on Air - The Sky is Not the Limit, the True Limit is Your Mindset

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Everyone, Glenn Sanford here, founder of EXP Realty. And this is the expansion podcast, a podcast about personal and professional development here at EXP. And today, I'm excited to welcome Amir Ketchkovic. He's a three-time icon agent out of Sacramento, California. It's also a mean chess player, meaning really good, not that he's actually mean. But Amir, how are you doing? Doing good. How are you?

Good, good, good. I remember obviously at, I think it was in Cabo, you mentioned your chess.com handle as one of the places to connect with you. And obviously, you and I played a couple of games of chess. Should we say the score or not mention the score? You kicked my butt. Yeah. So I somehow won two games, but I'm pretty sure I got lucky. But anyway, maybe what's your background? How do you get into real estate? Yeah, with a little revision, it's actually not four, it's not three, it's four-time icon. And I'm on my way to fifth one because I kept in 27 days.

So it's going to be five-time icon soon. So I got in real estate, my background, I'm originally from Bosnia, and I escaped Bosnia before the war and I end up being in Germany. And I learn a German language, which is not easy language. I was able to get to the college. And during the college time, I was studying architecture. I was connected with one of the German real estate broker. So I was drafting some 3D plans for him.

And he said, why don't you help me with the sales? And I was a college student in Germany with my broken German. I sold two properties in Germany. I said, that's pretty good. So once I immigrated to US in 2001, I started working in corporate America as an architect. But in 2005, I got my real estate license, started selling real estate part-time. And once I started making more money in part-time real estate selling, than a full-time corporate job, I left my corporate job and started real estate full-time in 2011.

Awesome. And so obviously you had success in Germany, obviously had success here. Now, your PhD, what's your PhD in? In marketing, in marketing. So that's a good topic to be in real estate. So having master's in architecture plus PhD in marketing plus being broker. It's an in construction as well, it's a good combination, I would say. Oh yeah, for sure.

So now you were, I think you were a broker owner. Did you own your own real estate brokerage before EXP? Yes, yes, that's correct. I started my brokerage 2009, still having a full-time real estate corporate job. And then 2011, when I quit my corporate job, was full-time building my brokerage. My goal was 1,000 agents, start with 500 as a market and grow up to 1,000 throughout state of California. And I had five offices.

My peak was 57. I was way way behind my thousand agents. But I decided it's probably not the best model as a small independent broker to build because I cannot compete against. against big brokerages. I cannot duplicate what EXP has, right? So it would be spending millions of dollars in technology. And by the time I build something,

so EXP is already five steps ahead, right? Or some other companies, not to mention liability, liability building your own brokerage. So knowing what I know now, so I would never, never build my independent brokerage. It's probably better to build brokerage under EXP umbrella because now you have a, you have opportunity to build,

50 states instead one state and multiple countries right so as an independent broker you will never be able to do this right so right right i don't know any independent broker who can build that right well of course i make a little joke about this which is that um you know when somebody's a broker owner they are broker as an owner because it's it is tough to run and i ran my own boutique brokerage prior to exp and it's a it definitely um definitely tough to sort of figure out how do you compete when you're you're small if you don't have that that bigger footprint. If you allow me, I can say one story as a broker owner, what all the broker's owners, hopefully some of them listening to the podcast have to think about it.

So as a broker owner, you're not only liable for disclosures and real estate transactions. You're also liable what your agents are doing. right so I had a one agent who was 69 at that time and she had a client who was 84 and a nice lady she reminded me on my mom so she she was in business 30 plus years and she helped this person to buy a house during the process they fall in love and they started dating he was 84 she was 69 15 years difference and I don't care who is dating who right but they decided because her sons hated her they decided to buy a house in Hawaii using a different agent there as a color bank agent and then meanwhile the old man passed away and then she sued her for one million

dollar elderly abuse also because they used his money as a down payment right and they sued the caller banker broker just there but somehow she uh sent emails with my logo in email signature line and just because of that email i got sued as well all those they buy the house in different state so as a broker owner you libel whatever your agents are doing so driving in a car for example and you know, hitting pedestrian. Of course, I won the lawsuit, but it took two years and headache and all this. I mean, it's just not, you know, you cannot sleep when somebody's doing, although you know, you're not, you're right, but it's still, it's still not pleasant experience. Believe me, I'm, I'm living that experience right now. So if there's a, we're, of course, party to a few lawsuits as you, as you are well aware. Yeah.

Yeah. I know. It's crazy. But it goes with the territory for sure. So now, what's your life? I hear you have a life motto. What is your life motto? Mindset is everything. So it's really everything because I turned 50 last year. And my goal was to finish one Ironman race.

And I never was swimming or running longer than six miles in my life. And Iron Man, as you know, I did half Iron Man first. So it's half Maritime. I never run six miles, but now you have to run a swim 1.2 miles, 56 bike, and then half marathon. But once you put mindset to it, you can finish it. And I finished one and after that I finish another one and then full, full Iron Man, which is double the distance, you know. And I'm talking and teaching a lot of agents and a lot of people, agents asking me, hey, how can I be successful in real estate? And there's no magic pill.

There's no magic pill. do this system and you're going to make quarter million on commissions it does not exist but a magic system exists and that's a consistency and discipline which starts with changing your mindset so once you're disciplined and consistent everybody can run a marathon as long as you have a healthy knees right so but you have to run three times to five times a week if you want to be successful in real estate you have to prospect three times to five times a week so and if you do this every every week that's impossible not to be successful. Impossible. Right.

Yeah, one of my, I did judo for 27 years. And one of my coaches, probably my most influential coach that I, and it was probably I was a brown belt by the time that he, that I heard this. And he said, what's the difference between a white belt and a black belt? And he said, a black belt is someone who shows up to every person. someone who shows up to every practice. And if you show up to enough practices over time, you will become a black belt, just like you said,

if you prospect consistently, and then eventually you're going to have clients, and you will figure it out. It kind of goes with the territory. And now with AI, it's changing a lot of in our business, not only our industry, but many other industries, but AI is a huge thing which, we all should start using it.

Otherwise, we'll be out of business soon. Well, in fact, I think didn't you talk a little bit about AI in Cabo? Yes, yes. So how are you leveraging AI and where does that sort of fit into your lead gen, lead follow-up, organization? When I say, yeah, so when I say AI, a lot of people think chat GPT, right? and everybody thinks about chat GPT. And yes, that's a chat GPT. And most people using chat GPT for simple tasks,

like rewrite this email or rewrite listing description or whatever. But chat GPT can be used as a full assistant. You know, like I'm giving some classes, teaching agents how to use a chat GPT to create your own personality. And then once you create your own personality, you save your personality. And based on your personality, you can ask, what are the best lead generation systems I should use as a real estate professional.

And then give me, you know, 15 different tips how to use for each lead generation system, etc. Now you can go to next level, create a protocols. And protocols are a combination of multiple prompts. And I'm using protocols to create within a few seconds description of my YouTube videos and titles and SEO optimize and everything else. Now, if you remember, so I presented the video avatars, you can create a save yourself and create three different avatars of yourself. And it's really realistic because not only you're moving face and lips, but you're moving hands and body as well.

So it's very hard to see the difference. Is it life or not life? Are you using platform like Hagen or what platform? Hagen, yes. Yeah, Hagen. That's Hagen. And then you can clone your voice, of course. My voice in H& is cloned, but my accent is not cloned.

But for accent cloning, I'm using 11 laps. So with 11 laps, you can clone your accent pretty much 995%. So and now you can use 11 laps to create, you know, text, use a chat GPT to create a text, import to 11 laps and create audio file. And now you can create a whole podcast series for a whole year, right? And then it's all about content creation. I think that's the biggest advantage now would we have with AI. A lot of people were having trouble in the past how to create a content

because ideas and how are you going to create a content? So now with AI, with chat GPT changed, right? So you can ask chat GPT, a very simple question. Give me 52 topics for whatever. And now you have 52 weeks of content. But now next step is you use H&. H&HN, you can create a bunch of videos, import to different AI. like Opus clip and different different ones which automatically edits and now you can

upload to your social media and YouTube channel and etc and it's all about creating Brent and and doing this you can create get more interaction online and get more more clients yeah I mean one example is going with SOI so the sphere of influence so you should let's say you have 500 clients in SOI it's how are the easiest way to take the phone and create a video and send to, you know, thanks for coming for my open house or interest rates going down or whatever. So, but you should get personalized video like, hey, Glenn, this some year. And then, hey, Jennifer, there's some here. So it's, you have to record 500 different videos,

which is very time consuming. That's AI called B human, letter B and nonhuman. So you can upload your database there. you record video once and then they merge the names and take your video with your voice and your video is saying, hey Glenn, hey Jennifer, hey John, and then send personalized videos with one click. It's like merging the mailing addresses in a world, right? So instead of writing 500 letters, you do one letter and then merge with a spreadsheet and that's the same here, but just in video format. Yeah. Okay, now be human. So it's kind of like it's it's similar to to Hey Gen, but it's a different different platform than obviously agent. Yeah, correct. Correct. And there's many many others. So it's every day it's come something else coming coming on the market. So it's crazy.

Yeah, one of my my new favorite ones is have you played with yama dot app? No. Okay, well, it's with one prompt, it will build you an entire pitch deck or buyer presentation or listing presentation or all kinds of different things. It'll literally build you however many slides you want for that particular presentation. So when you're going in on a presentation, you can actually just use that. And there's some ways to sort of tweak it beyond that. So it's a pretty cool platform. and I've been having a lot of fun with that one.

Yamma. So, Gamma, G-A-M-A. Okay, gamma, okay. Now, what are you using CRM-wise to manage all of this? Well, before I had a lion desk and different stuff, and then when I joined E-X-B, we got KV-C-C-Core, right? And I didn't pay attention for first year, right? So I joined March, and then,

In December, Russell, actually, one of my friends, he moved with us. And then he was paying $800 a month to KV Core with a different company. And I said, man, so this guy is paying 800 bucks, and I'm getting this included in my EXP. Let me at least take a look. And I started playing with it in December time because it a little bit slower in holiday season. And by January, I got first leads and I closed cash transaction by end of January. So I said, this is awesome. Since then, actually last three and a half years,

I'm using KV core only. And it's a great software. It's pretty much, as you know, you can create unlimited number of squeeze pages, et cetera. So if you do it strategically, you can get leads. Awesome. So is that your only CRM now or are you using any others? Only CRM, no.

Okay, awesome. And you're obviously, You mentioned that you're almost five-time icon. You've been, your production's been increasing substantially using sort of the AI and elements. You mentioned these AI elements with be human. How much of your lead generation is generated through AI versus, say, either PPC or organic showing up on Google or some other method of lead gen. What's your sort of division of lead gen labor?

That's a good question. Over time since 2010-11, I developed 23 lead generation systems, 23 different lead generation systems. And based on those lead generation systems, I was growing my company and now with the XP on growing my group organization with helping other agents. But I have from social media targeted marketing to list brokers. A lot of people don't even know list brokers than EDDM to, you know, Heroes Credit.

I set up Heroes Foundation to, you know, for military firefighters, you know, teachers and medical professionals, police officers. And then to 3-D mailers. For example, you know, mailers instead sending the letters, I'm sending in a medical bottle. So it's a 3D. I'm pretty sure it's 100% opening rate. I have a system how to leverage CraxList. But I say Craigslist, I mean all other free classified ads. So because a lot of people, if I ask and then one of the events, I ask 200 people,

how many agents using Crax list? Only one person said yes and $1.99 are not using, which is very good for me, whoever is using it. And it's all different combination. I mean, from AI, strategically from AI, probably not much leads generated right now. It's more for branding purposes. I'm trying to figure out the way how to generate with AI,

specifically now searching from specific distressed sellers or highly motivated buyers. Because as you know, I mean, people buying and selling houses when a life changing event happens. And that's different ways now to go out. after a sumable loan. For example, I have two listings right now. They have a 3% and 4.87% interest rate. So they are more desirable to buy it because you're getting 3% interest today when the interest is, I don't even know, 7%. So and then if you go strategically after houses with a sumable loan with a law equity, not high equity, because you don't want too much equity because

people will have to come up with a lot of money. But high equity and a sumable loan, they can sell for more money because they have a very good interest rate, right? And that's different ways. So if you go after, you know, you need to reverse engineering your lead generation. As you know, I mean, go after the stress sellers, which, you know, would be divorce, death in the family, etc. So they have a higher motivation to sell versus somebody else who doesn't have any motivation, right? any life changing event.

Right. So obviously 23 different lead gen systems. If you had to pick one that you were using, that you had to use today, and that's the only one that you could use today, and then if you could pick one that you think is going to be the future, what would, I know AI is probably in there, but I don't know for sure, but what would be the one way that you would say, hey, use this way, you're going to generate your leads and hopefully enough

business to serve your needs as an agent. That's very easy answer. Mailers. Mailers. So either direct mailing or EDDM. Between my 23 legionary systems, I do not have door knocking and I don't have a call calling, right? So because I'm not strong in that, I don't like it, but Mailish is the best. So, especially, I mean, I'm using mailers to do my flips. I'm using mailers to get my listings because instead of you chasing the leads, buyers, sellers chasing you, but you need to present and reach out to them. So mailers, it's probably the best for me.

I do understand for brand new agents, the mailers are probably not the best option because of funds, financial funds, right? So either you have time or money. So once in the beginning you have time, so then you invest and the calling and door knocking, but not door knocking the farm, but door knocking more targeted door knocking. So for example, for sale by owners, it's potential NODs, these stress sellers, etc. But once you have funds, which I would recommend 15 to 20% of each closing put on the side as a separate marketing account, use that money to reinvest in your business. Because you have to, you're building the business, right?

So you have to reinvest the business. It doesn't matter if you're a real estate agent or you owning the restaurant. If you own the restaurant, you have to reinvest in the marketing. Otherwise, nobody will know about your restaurant. And the same here. So you have to reinvest in the business to generate leads. And then which I'm not saying wasting money, spending money. I'm saying investing money because investment, you invest one dollar.

You get two, three, five dollars back. Awesome. Well, good stuff. Well, Amir, this has been a lot of fun. One last question. If you could give one piece of advice to agents at EXP, what would it be? So in terms, I mean, first of all, as we all know, EXP is probably not probably, it's the best company right now, right?

So they may change in 20 years. We never know if we don't have crystal ball. But as of right now, it still puzzles me. puzzles me, I mean, why somebody will not be with EXP because of different reasons, right? So we have multiple streams of income. You can build your passive income residual income unless somebody wants to sell real estate until they're 92 years old, which I don't want it. But with EXP, so spent invest time on building your clientele, meaning buyers and sellers. That's our bread and butter.

So because we're in the business of helping buyers and sellers buying and selling houses, right? So and then invest some of your time, either 5% or 20 or 25% and building your team, building your organization because that's the key for the secure and safe retirement because it's much better to go to sleep and wake up and make passive money than go and work for money, right? But in the beginning, we need both, right? So and then once, and that's why I like about real estate, once doors open to different opportunities like investment, long-term, short-term rental, et cetera. For example, I bought some properties in Panama, right?

Panama City and Santa Catalina, so for the long-term investment. So with the real estate, you can start building your real estate portfolio, not only in the U.S., but internationally as well. And that's, as you know, nine out of 10 millionaires worldwide are made with real estate. That's why I like real estate myself. Awesome. Well, great stuff. Amir, thank you so much for joining me today.

Hopefully you guys picked up some clues out there. I know I did. And you can also check out Amir on his website at Amir. And it's Chakkovich, C-A-C-K-O-V-I-C-C-O-V-C-C-C-O-V-C-C.com. So you can see if you're watching the podcast, you can see his name here. And with that, thanks again. And until next time, take care. And Glenn, accept my chess request at chess.com.

So I'm waiting for you. Okay, send it over. I'll accept right now. Yeah. Awesome, good stuff. Thanks everyone.