No Broke Months For Salespeople - Best Tips in Real Estate Farming to Dominate Your Market - Wilson Leung

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Wilson Leung leads the #1 residential real estate team in South San Francisco, OWN Real Estate. They help individuals and families "build wealth through real estate" by providing expertise, education, and customer service. Wilson crafts his efforts around his "big why" and helps others visualize that achieving their goals is within arms' reach, beginning with purchasing their first home.   Join us this episode afternoon as Wilson discusses how you can Unleash Your Farming Power to Secure More Real Estate Leads. You can reach out to Wilson Leung using these links:WebsiteInstagram To find out more about Dan Rochon and the CPI Community, you can check these links:Website: No Broke MonthsPodcast: No Broke Months for Salespeople PodcastInstagram: @donrochonxFacebook: Dan RochonLinkedIn: Dan Rochon

I didn't believe in farming early in my career. And I think the reason I didn't believe in it was it was probably it took more friction to just get out there and have conversations and break a sweat. But what I realized first was I was a cold caller. Cold calling was a great way to build a database full of names, numbers, and emails. But the impact that was made per interaction wasn't as significant as the face-to-face that you would get, even if it's just a high buy relationship with someone in your neighborhood that you're looking to get a listing.

Clearly, it's very efficient to make phone calls using the dialer, but to be more effective, it's a balance of those two. And that's when I started to farm. Welcome to the No Broke Months for Real Estate Agents podcast. Working as a real estate agent can be incredibly rewarding and fulfilling, but it can also be frustrating if you aren't making the money you deserve. So if you're ready to end the stressful cycle of working hard for no results, then get started with a proven step-by-step system so that every month is no broke months. Wilson Leung leads the number one residential real estate team in South San Francisco,

Own Real Estate. They help individuals and families build wealth through real estate by providing expertise, education, and customer service. Wilson crafts his efforts around his big why and helps others visualize that achieving their goals is within arm's reach, beginning with purchasing their first home. Join us this episode afternoon as Wilson discusses how you can unleash your farming power to secure more real estate needs. My name is Dan Roshan. I'm the host of the No Broke Months podcast, which is a show for real estate agents to help you have no broke months. Thanks for joining me. Enjoy the show. Today, I'm happy to be able to welcome Wilson. Wilson Leung with us today. And Wilson and I

are going to be talking about the best tips in real estate for farming to be able to dominate your market. Wilson, welcome. How are you today? Good. Thank you for the intro. I'm happy to contribute to your community here. And if I could help, I've received so much help throughout my career. It's hard to believe it's been 13 years, but it's been 13 years and people have helped me along the way. So a podcast like this will contribute to many, I'm sure, to listeners. Hopefully I can give something away that will help them in their business. Thank you, Wilson. So tell me a little

bit about your beginnings to real estate, if you could. Yeah. So I grew up in a city, San Francisco. And as you guys may know, throughout the nation, San Francisco is a place with very strict rent control and just cause evictions. So I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. They were in the seafood trade. It required me to travel out of state by car or travel out of country by car to Mexico. And it was a high risk, high capital, high reward, although a business. And that taught me early on in my life that if I am to apply myself, I did not see myself at a day-to-day nine to five desk job. It just did not interest me. And also I felt like someone else controlled my income. So as I stumbled in real estate because of property management, property management, as we know, should be steady, but has its challenges too. That's what I did as a kid to help my parents. But right out of college, I took my eight credits at that time for the

California state broker's license. And I jumped in at 22 years old and I haven't looked back since. I sometimes say I've been lucky I stuck to the industry for that long. So it compounded for me. Yeah. So, all right. So before we get to real estate, high risk, high return driving to Mexico. Tell us more about that. What makes a high risk? What makes a high return? And you said you were doing seafood sales? Yes. So, um, basically my dad and I would drive down to Mexico and, um, the fishermen did not like to deal with proper invoices and checks. They like cash. So it required fanny packs of cash. We went down, we met with fishermen, we would get enough inventory to ship it to Hong Kong. The cost of doing business was being stopped by Border Patrol, you know, 20 minutes later to give you a white envelope and say, hey, if you put some U.S. dollars in here, we'll let you go.

And although they did not have the right to really detain us, we would ship inventory from different parts of Mexico to the Tijuana airport. And they would give us difficulty there to actually retrieve our inventory that we already paid for by the, by the provider. Um, there, there are three checkpoints from Tijuana to Ensenada and all of them are military run and they would obviously be making sure that there's no drug trafficking, but when they smelled our seafood, they kind of knew that we weren't in that trade anyways. So they let us go. So the cost of doing business was high capital, some risk. The cost of doing business is very different in a different country as you could kind of hear from the little things that I've shared. It also meant that when we seal a container to ship to Asia, when we show up in Asia, there's going to be some sacks of seafood missing. So that's all cost of doing business.

That's just a part of that trade specifically. And I just saw that early on in my life and realized that there is risk associated with any sort of career path. And one could say the risk of taking a nine to five job is that someone else controls your income. Even if you work, you know, 60 hours, you're on salary, you may get a 5% pay bump and a title change. But does that really impact your life for the long term? Maybe. But for me, it was not interesting. It was not exciting. So that was, you know, hopefully that gives you a good explanation of what, what we dealt with. All right. So real estate sales at 22 years old and you take your eight credits from college, you get your, you get your license and what's next. Tell us about your, your, your beginning

times. Yeah. My first four years, I joined a firm that learned, that taught me how to cross T's and dot I's and contracts, but never really taught me to prospect. So I learned the right way of doing business. It took a while. I was still living at home. Some of our obligations were pretty small. So it afforded me the time to figure things out. And could I have gotten to what I would define as success faster, which is more production? Sure, I could have. But I think it did take those four years to figure it out for me to realize I needed a better environment. What do I mean by that? I was part of a traditional firm that I think people considered real estate a second and third career where they didn't have to sell real estate, but if they could sell five or 10 a year, they'd be very happy

because it's just additional income. So I just felt like that wasn't the right place for me. Eventually I made a change and I still didn't plug into the system and what they taught. And until I was willing and open to learning the right way of doing business or failing forward entrepreneurially, it wasn't until then, five years into this business that I was able to figure out what I needed to do to be able to grow past just being a productive real estate agent. So what were those things? You said the right way of doing business. What is the right way of doing business? Yeah, the right. I'll share with people the wrong way, the wrong way of doing business, at least in my opinion, because everyone has

obviously successes defined differently. But for me, it was when I got sick or when I had a family obligation or I had even something pleasurable, which is I was taking vacation, I wasn't there to work my business. And if I wasn't there to work my business, then no one was if I was doing it on my own. So all the hard work of prospecting, of building my pipeline, of putting people into homes and opening escrow and making money were kind of negated with my time because it's all dependent on how much time I could spend. So until I received proper training on hiring at least a first assistant and eventually building a team, that's when I saw my results compound as in I didn't have to work the 40 hours. I could

choose to take a Friday off or a Thursday off and still have a well functioning business that did not require my attention, energy, and time. And that, you know, that's, that's the journey, which was team building. Okay. So you learn around the five year mark, you learn leverage. That's correct. Who's your first hire? First hire should be an assistant. A lot of people do. Who's your first hire? Yeah, my first hire was a VA. And what I realized was a VA could do probably 60% of the job.

But guess who was the runner when the VA was international? It was me. So because they could only do 60% of the job, it required someone in person. And, you know, I used MREA or millionaire real estate agent as a benchmark. Salaries should be about 15% of your GCI. Well, when I hired my first assistant, it was 40%. And that's because I just believed in the process. I didn't actually make that much money as an individual agent, but I believe that I could if I had the right leverage and it turned out to be true. I would say I lucked out in hiring too. Of course, I followed a process,

but I'm sure even sometimes you follow the process, you're not going to be 100% in your ability to hire either. Right. Yeah. What I've learned from hiring is that you at best can get a 50 percent right. And then and then it's about getting out of business with the wrong people quickly. And because I get a lot of people often ask me, Dan, how do you get this? How do you hire these amazing people? I'm like, I don't. I keep these amazing people. And that's what I learned is the secret to success in hiring. Would you agree with that, Wilson? I would. And recently I heard Gary Keller say, even for him, hiring is important.

And he's gone through six CEOs in the last five years. a organization of over 100,000 agents is going to take the necessary time and hire and fire to find the right person for the job. All right. So you learned leverage around five years. When did you start farming? So I want to talk a little bit about farming. Yeah, I didn't believe in farming early in my career. And I think the reason I didn't believe in it was it was probably it took more friction to just get out there and have conversations and, you know, break a sweat. Um, but what I realized first was I was a cold caller. Uh, I use mojo dial. I circle prospected and I got a lot of nurtures, but what I realized was the impact I was, I was able to make for a first appointment. It still was as if it was requiring a first impression

and feeling someone out. I didn't spend any face time with the person that I met, although I had some conversations. So I felt like cold calling was a great way to build a database full of names, numbers, and emails. But the impact that was made per interaction wasn't as significant as the face-to-face that you would get, even if it's just a high buy relationship with someone in your neighborhood that you're looking to get a listing. So as I came to that conclusion that, hey, look, I could be more effective with my time, clearly it's very efficient to make phone calls using a dialer, but to be more effective, it's a balance of those two. And that's when I started to farm. And I'll tell you, I was like

any other agent. Farming didn't come natural to farm. And I'll tell you, I was like any other agent. Farming didn't come natural to me. My body language was probably horrible. I tiptoed around front yards just to make sure I got in and out. And the intention as people could read my body language was, hey, what are you doing here? Because you look like you don't belong here. So I'm going to call it out. So over time, obviously you hone your skill and you understand what people are looking for. You attempt to deliver value to the people that obviously are living there and eventually it will become well-received. The detractors and the haters will eventually just come to realize that you're not going to go away. And because

you're so persistent, they actually come to respect that over the long haul. So farming is really about looking at the long term and not looking for the immediate business today. Although when you're lucky, it may come, but you position yourself to find that opportunity anyways, by putting yourself out there. Excuse me for interrupting my own show. You are freaking amazing. And because you're amazing, I'm going to ask for a quick favor. It'll just take you 30 seconds for you to leave a favorable five-star rating or review

on your favorite platform. Then what I'll do is I'll enter you into a raffle where we can meet 45 minutes for a free coaching session. And I'll also give you a copy of the book, Real Estate Evolution, which is the 10-step guide to CPI, consistent and predictable income. Oh, by the way, I'm the author of that book. So if you'd like for me to coach you, give you some nuggets, and help you in your business, go ahead and leave a review,

and you can enter into the monthly raffle to win. Yeah, so it takes around 18 months or so to be able to get a farm, would you say that's about right? Depends where. I think the more affluent, the more relationships they have. For me, it took six months to get the first two listings, which I would consider pretty lucky. I think it takes a lot of thought to pick a farm just because the area I picked was less affluent in our county, which meant there's less dominant agent market presence, which that's why six months was a little bit faster to success. Did you move into more affluent communities as you went along? I expanded in that city. I guess when we refer to affluent, I work a city that is below the median price in our county. So it's considered affordable or the last affordable corridor of the county that I live in.

Otherwise, you have to move across a bridge, which is at least 25 minutes away. Okay, got it. And so as you did this, what were the mistakes that you made? I would say, great question. First off, I think if you cannot identify the mistakes, you cannot troubleshoot and improve your craft. I would say the mistakes has, first is not starting sooner and early in my career. I think it does take time for an individual to realize what works and what doesn't. And I realized farming might not work for some people in general, but if I started sooner, I think I would have built the brand and name recognition with the neighbors sooner, which means my results would obviously be compounded to be better.

The other is I should have hosted events sooner as well. For example, I've been hosting a shred day ever since I began my farming, which is probably nine, 10 years ago at this point. And it was well attended. There's about 30 people. The people that take advantage of something like that, um, are usually homeowners that have, you know, boxes of paper that they've kept for statute of limitations. And those are the people I actually want to be in touch with. Um, cause they're the potential homeowners and home sellers that one day, you know, might, you know, life changes and they might need my help. So I wish I hosted events sooner. My best advice for someone starting a farm is you can promote just listed, just sold, market updates.

You can always promote those. Those are never really, you know, time sensitive or there's always something to talk about for that. However, if you are promoting something that benefits the community, such as a shred day, or you're hosting a picnic at a local park, it's what I would consider giving back to the community that has helped our small business. And it positions you as a different agent, especially if they're getting bombarded with postcards of just listed, just sold. Got it. Got it. And so how many communities do you farm now?

Is it just the one and you expanded it or have you done multiple? Yeah, so it's definitely grown. So my original farm was 2000 homes. It was a neighborhood. There's probably 14 to 16 small neighborhoods in the city. And now it's the whole city. Now, do I knock every door in the city? I don't. Do I canvas every door in the city? I don't. But what it is, is, you know, at the beginning of your career, you might have a little bit more time to spend as you build your confidence to sign listings. And once you have that, and you have the systems down, you supplement your time with obviously money you invest in your farm and building relationships. Obviously a postcard does not build a relationship, but it builds brand recognition. And even if you're out in each respective neighborhood, even once every half year, I think it's enough to build a brand as long as you position yourself as, let's say, the neighborhood expert for that area. How often are you mailing?

Currently, it's two times a month. So there's 18,000 addresses of the 18,000, 15,000 are owner occupants. So there's 3,000 that are absentee. For the owner occupants, we use Every Door Direct Mail. We mail twice a month. And then for absentees, we mail once a month direct to their mailing address. So they own a property in South San Francisco, for example, and then we mail it to wherever they live. What we've also seen is over the last 18 months, ever since rates have gone up, there's less owner occupied sales and there's a lot more absentee sellers.

Absentee sellers could be an inheritance, could be an investment sale. And then of course, there's still going to be death, which is inheritance, divorce, and unfortunately, financial burden that people are forced to sell as well. Very little, but there are some. So how much does that cost the mail? So that $15,000, I guess that's cheaper because you're using the every door system and then the absentee is more expensive. Is that right? Yeah. So I'll give you the 12 month overview. We spend about $160,000 on direct mail alone. And then what's your return on that? Return is last year as a team, we sold 109 million, which over half our listings.

And then as a team Ridge, we've represented 194 transactions. Average price went over a million per transaction. And that's in your market or is that outside your market or any of the 194 outside your market? Most of the listings are in the market. It's because of the brand recognition. And how long have you been doing that for? So you started around your five-year mark, but it took you a while to get that ramped up on the ceiling? Yeah. So we currently have 10% market share in the city that we farm. In the neighborhood that was my core farm in the 2000, we have close to 20% market share.

And then because of just the city's, I guess, name recognition that we have, the city north and the city south, which is all like suburb towns of San Francisco, we also have number one market share in the respective cities without necessarily direct mailing to the cities north and south. Okay, so walk us through besides the mailings, what else are you doing to be able to get market share? Yeah, to get market share, I think, you know, it's not going to be rocket science and it's not something that you guys haven't heard before. I think just being intentional with everything you do from mailing, consistently mailing the same places. Don't just do just sold, just listed around the listing that you got,

because it's not going to be consistent. It's going to be hosting events in that city as well and the local parks. It's going to be, so we got events, we got sending, obviously mail, canvassing in the areas, obviously, if you don't have someone delivering it for you, because you start to get listings in the area, intentionally putting signs in a fair amount of them in mainly traveled areas. And really, it's keeping it simple. Some of the people that I know that are listing heavy agents here in the Bay Area, stick to three things. It's going to be postcards, open houses, and signs. And the last that I haven't implemented myself is a billboard. So it's really three core things that is just keeping the spend consistent to build name recognition.

Do you anticipate undoing billboards in the future? I don't just because I think it depends where it's placed. A lot of the billboards are near main freeways and the people that are necessarily driving up and down a freeway don't necessarily live in that farm. But I realize that that could be for expansion purposes too, in case there's people living within the Bay Area. But I would say it's weighing the return on investment for the dollar invested. And so you mentioned you have 20 agents now, is that correct? Yeah, we have 10 agents on the team and over a dozen agents on the team ridge, which is a different structure.

What's the difference between those two? over a dozen agents on a team ridge, which is a different structure. What's the difference between those two? Yeah, so the team is much more traditional where we have, you know, starting at 40, 60 splits, 40 to the agent, scaling up to 70. And the people on a team ridge, they're on an 80 to 90, 10 split. And the services we provide is a la carte. So if they choose to work with our staff, they can. The intention I built the Team Bridge is that they have the optionality of building their own team. And I'm basically a coach with a brokerage relationship to help them build their team. So I spend at the very least 30 minutes every other week to 30 minutes a week, kind of like a coaching relationship, but people within Boots Underground within the local marketplace.

You already know 87% of all real estate agents fail in this business. And you also know it doesn't have to be that way. If you're a real estate agent and you're looking for consistent and predictable income, I invite for you to get your free copy of Real Estate Evolution, The 10-Step Guide to CPI, Consistent and Predictable Income for Real Estate Agents. And you can do so when you visit www.therealestateevolution.com. I'll share with you your book that I authored to show you the way. Thanks. How long has that been in existence for? I've had that probably the last four years without getting into, I guess, companies. I'm happy to, if you want.

We have our own brand. It's called Own Real Estate. It's a white label brand. And to the market, we just look independent, but we're a part of a big brokerage. Ever since that time, we've offered Team Ridge relationships with the agents within our marketplace. And so going through, you're sharing a lot with us. So thank you for that. So I want to go back into,

I asked you the biggest mistake in marketing, but what's your biggest mistake? Or actually, I think in developing your team, what's your biggest mistake that you've had just in general in all real estate sales? What would you say the one thing that you did that you wish you did not do? I don't know if it's one thing I did that I wouldn't do, but I know my flaws.

What are your flaws? So my flaw is I like to figure things out myself, which is a blessing and also a curse. The blessing is I think I'm going to be proactive enough to try things as an agent and, you know, fail forward, as some would say. But I think the flaw in that is I don't ask for help soon enough in the process because I want to, obviously, I realize I own the result and I own the outcome, which means I have to put in the activity to make it work. But even as a team lead at times, that means I'm working through myself much more than I am working through my people, or I'm maybe missing a relationship that could move the ball forward faster. So I would say that, you know, knowing that about myself, at times, I need to take a pause and just ask myself

who can help me in this situation, and make sure that I reach out to the person, even if I don't get a response, hey, at least I did my due diligence to make sure I'm not just depending on my brute effort, if that makes sense. So instead of brute efforting it, you could possibly rely on others more effectively. That's correct. I think that's not uncommon for high achievers to recognize. And of course, for you to be able to scale, it's got to be able to exist without you.

You mentioned that earlier today as well. How many days a week do you work now? I show up to the office three times a week. I now have a just turned eight month old. So, you know, when I started my team building career, maybe eight, nine years ago, the intention was that one day I probably would not have as much time to spend on my first baby, which is my business because I have a real one. And I would say I don't include thinking time in work.

If I actually counted the hours that I work, so three times a week, I show up to the office, that's probably 12 hours in itself. And then if I am consistently farming per week, I really only spend five to eight hours per week. And then that probably gets plus or minus depending on if I have appointments for both recruiting and then also for listing consults. And I don't work buyers anymore. Our agents do that. So I would say I probably average 20 to 25 hours per week on average. Are you still going on with the department? I am. I am what we would consider a sixth level team.

It's still one of, at least for me in this area, I consider it a high skill kind of responsibility. And winning a listing, it's usually competitive. You're going up against a handful of agents and winning it still gives me fulfillment and satisfaction that I'm in tune with the market as well. Do you have listing agents besides yourself? So our agents are able to take buyers and sellers. So, I guess the answer is yes. I have two agents that are capable, on the team at least, out of the 10, including myself. So, there's two of the nine agents I would trust to be able to take listings. But it really depends what it is too. Just because I think the profile, the behavior of the seller is all going to vary across the board. And on average, how many appointments do you go on in a month? In a month, I would say, you know, the last, last year was a slower year. I think, um,

we were down 45% in total sellable or sold units from 21, 22 in 22, just within one quarter, sorry, in two quarters, first half of the year, you know, as rates were low and started to go high, I myself listed 40 homes and the average price one was probably one three to one four. And that was like a tremendous half year. And ever since then, 23, 24, definitely have been slower. Last year, I think in total, we probably did about 40 myself. And then this year we're probably pacing to be a little bit more than 40. So if you broke it down, divided by let's say 48 weeks that I work, it's almost a listing a week that's sold. But of course our business is seasonal. But if you had to average out, I would say that, by the way, I'm not a one call closer and I'll kind of explain why. I think most people in the sales industry would know what a one call closer is, but I would say I, I, I probably have a 50 to 60% close rate on listing appointments. And that's done intentionally because, um, I rather give a lot of information,

even if the person's not ready. And I consider that a listing consult, um, because I think if I help them make a decision, if they decide to hold off on a sale, it's still a win for me in the future that they're probably going to contact me. Why you're not a one call closer is to be able to provide that sort of care? I would say so. Yeah. I'd rather walk away and let them take the time to make a decision. I think that contrast usually favors over the long haul conversion. Where do you see the direction of the industry over the next year to five? I think that's a loaded question. Clearly, there's a lot of headwinds in our industry,

from the lawsuit to less transactions to rates being high. I do think that there's going to be a gradual and then sudden, more compounding exit of licensees, which is normal when they're chasing less commission dollars because there's less to sell. I do think that real estate has technically been in its own recession with rates being higher. It's not necessarily prices going down, but it's definitely much less to sell. I personally don't think the settlement will make a huge change to available commissions. I just think that it's going to change when we talk about it for a buyer. And of course, sellers are going to ask, but even with the settlement

kind of announcement passing at this point, I think two months ago, sellers might ask about it, but as long as you have a diplomatic way to help them understand the benefits of cooperating compensation, they will still offer it because they trust the person that they're working with, which is hopefully you. I think if they're rate conscious or if they are expense and cost conscious, they are definitely going to cut you down on how much do I really need to offer? And my question then becomes as a business person and business practice, is that the type of client that you want to work? Now, if you don't have a thorough pipeline, maybe because it's business regardless, but if you have a good pipeline, a good business, a good sphere, a good database, I think you have the optionality

of not necessarily, well, you can choose who you work with. So just like they could as well. Of course. Wilson, what's the one thing that I should have asked you that I did not today? Um, I don't know. What would you like to share with us that maybe I haven't asked you about? Yeah. Um, I think it's probably has to do with what, how we define success. I think we have just like myself, I'm sure a lot of agents are friends with other agents on social media. And sometimes we're chasing the wrong prize and the wrong prize is volume and production and looking good in front of a camera purely is not the reason why we're in real estate. At least that's not why I'm in it. The reason why we're in real estate is to have

high income. The reason why we're in real estate is to have high income. If we have high income, we can have tax strategies to defer or deduct. And at the end of the year, for me, it's about how much of that money am I able to deploy or invest? Because if I'm not investing in anything, we've seen where inflation has been the last couple of years. Asset values are bound to rise inversely when rates come down. And if you're not holding anything, the purchasing power of your dollar is going to go down, already has gone down significantly. So we work hard, not necessarily just to live a good lifestyle. I think that's part of it. And just not to just spend it, but to really reinvest it. And I'm focused on how much can I invest every year? And a lot of it is going back into real estate since real estate is such a

tax advantage asset class. Can somebody refer to you? How can somebody get in touch with you if they have a referral from the South San Francisco area? Yeah, you can reach out to me on Instagram. I'm happy to chat with you just through DMs or you can email me. And then my Instagram handle is Wilson, W-L-R-E-A. Wilson, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Have the best day of your life. Thank you, Wilson. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for listening to the No Broke Months podcast today. Until the next show, I invite for you to be grateful, make good choices, help someone, have the best day of your life, and go find a listing. I'm very excited about the conversation we're about to have. I want to introduce you to Dan Rochon,

who is the owner and co-founder of Greetings Virginia. I am so excited to introduce my next guest, Dan Rochon. He reads, he writes, he does improv. A frequent speaker and often quoted about the real estate market. I'm going to bring on a guy that is a winner. We had some really cool conversations before going live with this show. We have Dan Rochon. So I'm going to encourage for you to think big.

I'm going to encourage you to think big and then multiply it by two. And then take huge action. Because whatever you want, you're only five years away from that.