No Broke Months For Salespeople - Empowering Women in Real Estate

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

Karen Cooper is the CEO of the Platinum Group Real Estate team at Pearson Smith Realty. Not only does Karen have three kids of her own, but she also manages a team of 40 women – mostly moms. She also founded Empowering Women In Real Estate. The group was founded out of craving a safe place to share ideas and challenges for women in or supporting the real estate industry.This week, Karen will talk about what it's like to be a hard-working agent while raising kids and how she helped her mom-only team dominate Northern Virginia's busy real estate markets.--To find out more about Dan Rochon and the CPI Community, you can check this link:www.NoBrokeMonths.com --Do you want to win a FREE 45-minute complimentary coaching session with Dan Rochon and a FREE copy of the book "Real Estate Evolution," a comprehensive 10-step guide to achieving Consistent and Predictable Income?❗❗JOIN THE NO BROKE MONTHS FOR REAL ESTATE AGENTS MONTHLY RAFFLE HERE ❗❗--Stop 🛑 wasting your time ⏳ or spending too much money 💸not getting the results you want in sales; I would love you to join me for the upcoming 5-Day Listing Challenge.You will learn how to find YOUR Way to having closings every month.www.5daylistingchallenge.com--Get your free copy of the Real Estate Evolution here:bit.ly/RealEstateEvolution_GetYourBookThis book shows you the step by step on how to:Step 1: Believe in your unknown potentialStep 2: Deconstruct persuasion techniquesStep 3: Find a business and get hired consistentlyStep 4: Be proactive in the relationship with your clients.Step 5: Learn and implement the exact steps to hire, train, lead, and train virtual assistants so that they can build, support, and guide a winning team to scale.And if you’d like to have a consistent and predictable income, like this page, and don’t forget to join the Facebook group to network with the top agents:https://www.facebook.com/groups/newbieagents/ 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

Sometimes when things are hard, you know, right now things have been hard and you just have to sit in it, you know, as much as it sucks and find your way out of it. 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 karen cooper is the ceo of the platinum group real estate Estate Team at Pearson Smith Realty.

Not only does Karen have three kids of her own, but she also manages a team of 40 women, mostly moms. She also founded Empowering Women in Real Estate. The group was founded out of craving a safe place to share ideas and challenges for women in or supporting the real estate industry. This week, Karen will talk about what it's like to be a hardworking agent while raising kids and how she helped her mom-only team dominate Northern Virginia's busy real estate markets. My name is Dan Rochon. 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 am joined with a local, to me at least, maybe not local to you,

Karen Cooper. And Karen's going to be talking to us today about empowering women in real estate. And she and I are going to have a casual conversation. And if you're a man, I bet there's something in this conversation that you will benefit from. And if you're a woman, I know that there's something in this conversation you'll benefit from. But Karen, welcome. Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. I think this is the second time you and I have done one of these together. So I always enjoy chatting with you. And I enjoy chatting with you. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Karen.

I know you've been in the business for a while. I know you have a big, big team with Pierce and Smith, I believe. And tell us more about you. Yeah, that's right. So I've been in the real estate industry for 20 years now. And I like to say that I have held every role that there is to have. I started out on a Rainmaker team, one of those traditional team models. I've been an individual agent.

I've been a managing broker. And for the last seven years, I have been a team leader myself. So my business partner, Vicki Neufeld, and I are the owners of the Platinum Group Real Estate Team. We are based in Northern Virginia. And we are a team of 40. So we have six support team members. And the rest are agents. all women, except for one.

We like to say very brave man. God bless him. It could be the best or the worst, depending on how you look at it. And so our team, I love my team. My team is, like I said, we've been in business for over seven years. We have closed over 300 million in sales volume last year. And we are on pace to do more than that this year. I'm empowering women in real estate, which I think is what you want to talk about today, which is a group I founded eight years ago. It's a group of

over 31,000 women across the country. So happy to be here and talk about it. I'm curious before we jump into that, of those roles that you've had, which was your favorite and which was your least favorite? Probably being the least favorite is a tie between being the independent agent and the real estate broker. Those were not my favorite moments. I just felt, you know, as an independent agent, I think a lot of times we feel very lonely and isolated. And I definitely really felt that way. And I think like a lot of real estate agents, I didn't fully understand how to leverage my time and how to run a business. You know, you get into this, I think a lot of people get into real estate, not planning to run a business,

not realizing that that's actually what this is. And so I didn't know how, and I burned myself out, which led me to accept that position as a, as a managing broker, thinking that was the solution. And while I loved the, you know, the helping of my agents and the coaching and the training, which, you know, you'll hear kind of feeds into what I do. It was hard. It was brutal. And it was not something that I would wish to do again. So obviously that kind of leads into my favorite, which is being a team leader. It's really kind of where I feel is my best fit, where it's most natural for me. And it's what I enjoy the most. I love it, Karen. So I would, you know, of those roles, I've been a managing broker, sort of. I had a supervising broker who worked for me.

So so I've never actually done the role because I already know that I would freaking hate it. I've had the title. I've had the title, but I've never done the job. And and I have been an independent agent as well. And I would agree with those comments that you just said. That would be like, eh, there's no way. For me. For me and for you. But that doesn't mean, again, I'm talking from my own perspective for the audience. My recommendation, and I'm sure, Karen, you would agree with this, is do what empowers you. And so with the word empowerment,

tell us about the group Empowering Women in Real Estate. Yeah. So I started this group eight years ago and it was really coming out of that place of feeling lonely. I was in the managing broker position. I felt really very kind of isolated. You know, the agents in my office, they only seemed to talk to me when they had a problem, which of course was often, right? So I had a lot of that going on. Other agents outside of my brokerage didn't really want to talk to me because they assumed that I was going to try to recruit them because that was my job, right? And so I was just feeling really lonely. And I saw some other groups, you know, that I spotted through social media that were

kind of had this sort of camaraderie together and seemed very supportive. And I was like, man, I really want that. I don't know that that exists in our industry. And so I was, and so one day, you know, we have the best ideas in the shower, right? So one day I'm in the shower and I was like, you know, if it doesn't exist, then maybe I should start it. And so I did. So I started that eight years ago. We started as just a small community with our local kind of Northern Virginia agents. Now there's over 31,000 members across the country. We're getting ready to have our next conference. We do an annual conference, over 200 women getting together at the beginning of

October. We have some great speakers coming in. We have a monthly membership coaching program. We have a podcast. So it's really kind of expanded and taken on its own life form and become a huge pillar in my business. So, you know, woman or not, I think that's a great lesson to hear because, you know, real estate can burn you out really fast. And if you are looking at it only as how many homes can I personally sell on my back, you are going to get burned out. So how can you take what you know and take what you do and leverage that in different ways, which is what has happened with impregnable men in real estate. It's become a huge referral source for me. My team loses many referrals every year as a result of this group. So what are, what's unique to a woman in real

estate that a man may not understand or recognize? Yeah. There's two, I would say primary things. One of them is there is a safety aspect, you know, I think anyone who's been a, you know, and I think men in real estate recognize this as well. I mean, you know, there is definitely that fear. And I know women who have been targeted through their business. And, you know, most women I know have had the experience of having that, you know, the red flags from that call that comes in and they need to go do the showing at the vacant house. It's in the middle of nowhere.

And so they, you know, they get the biggest guy in the office to go with them or something. Right. So that is certainly a concern. But I think the biggest issue or concern, which doesn't necessarily have to be unique to women, that I see, and as part of the conversations that happens in our group, most frequently, is just around the aspect of all of the roles that we have, you know, a lot of, you know, women, a lot of men also, we have a lot of roles where moms, we are, you know, at my age caring for elderly parents, you know, while still having kids in the home. You know, there's, there's a lot of responsibilities that we have beyond just our real estate business. And so it's not

trying to balance all of those things. You know, my husband, we've been married for almost 20 years and he's a firefighter. So very different line of work that I'm in. And, you know, he's in a position right now where he does have some more flexibility, but you know, when the call comes in from the school and says the kid's sick, who's going to pick them up, you know, it ends up being me, even though I'm the one that pays the bills, right? Unfortunately, that's kind of tends to be sort of the default of the roles that we've taken on. I think a lot of us take on and that's one of the biggest things that I hear talked about in the group most often. Yeah, I think if your spouse is working in employment, such as, you know, being a firefighter or any other employment that, and they may not bring, bring in the lion's share of the income into the family, but they have an obligation that we have an obligation as well. Uh, but it's, there's that fine line in between, like, um, you know, it's like, I have the flexibility to go to my daughter's soccer game,

you know, but I, you know, but I also have a responsibility to, you know, finding business, to serving my business, to serving my clients, uh, the people within my business as well. So it's a little bit, it's a little bit clouded there, I would think. Well, we do, we do. And we don't, you know. It is simultaneously the most flexible and the least flexible, right? I do get to decide who I'm going to work with and I do get to make those decisions. But when you're working with someone, if you're working in a buyer, especially maybe not right now, but in the market that we were in four months ago, right? If something came on the market, you had to drop everything and go right then. So it's the least

flexible. And I think people around us, kind know, kind of in our families or friend friend groups in general, they're not in real estate. They don't understand it. They don't understand our job. And so what they might see is, oh, you know, she or he has time to run out to the grocery store in the middle of the day or she or he is from home. And I think there's this perception of like if you're working from home, you're not really working. The safety aspect. I don't know if you're familiar. I bet you probably are, but there's a late tragic incident in Litchford, Virginia a few years ago. Are you familiar with it? Okay. And so I don't want to get deep into those details out of respect, but that's a situation where a lady, you know, got hurt, you know, like, like, like was, it was bad, bad, bad thing. Right. And that's something that I think that though it can happen to men as well,

but I think that it's, it's certainly something that women are more at risk for just to be, you know, just to be honest with. So what do you do? Like, you know, besides we got Rocky with us right now, right? Besides bringing Rocky with you on the appointment, right? You know, because anybody with the name of Rocky, like that, that in and of itself, it's just gotta be like, you know, Hey, I'm good. I'm good. I got Rocky with me. But besides bringing Rocky with you, what else would you recommend to keep people safe? Well, I think the one, the very first thing is we can't be afraid to ask hard questions. And this is applicable, whether you're concerned about your safety or just concerned about managing your time in general. I think a lot of times, because we don't treat our businesses

like a business, every time the lead comes in, the next opportunity comes in, we're like so thankful and grateful that we have this opportunity and that this call came in, but we don't want to do anything to spook them, right? I don't want to do anything that's going to make this person think they need to call somebody else. And so we don't ask the hard questions for fear of turning off that client because we desperately need the commission. And we have to be confident enough to ask those hard questions. I remember getting a call once from someone out of the blue, right? All the red flags were shining. You know, he calls up, you know, said he found me on whatever. And I was like, oh, great. And how did you come to contact me? Right. Same question I ask everybody. And he said, well, because I thought you looked

nice. So I was really firm with him about many things. I required him to contact my lender. Like we did all sorts of things and, and he was actually a real legit person. Like, and we actually, I did multiple transactions with them, but we can't be afraid to ask those hard questions. Have you been pre-approved before I'm going to come and meet you? You have to, you have to, you know, connect with my lender first before we're going to go look at this property out in the middle of the woods. We're going to meet at my lender first. Before we're going to go look at this property out in the middle of the woods, we're going to need it at my office first. We can't be afraid to ask those things because if the prospect is not willing to abide by

our boundaries, our terms for doing business, then chances are they're either not a great prospect to begin with, or even if they are a valid prospect, they're probably not somebody we're going to want to work with. Yeah. As you're sharing that, I'm thinking, you know, from the safety perspective, it's smart, but also from the business perspective, it's smart, you know, like, so it's not just keeping you safe, but it's also, you know, positioning yourself so that you're more likely to be able to do more business with, you know, more valid people.

That's right. Exactly. Thank you so much for listening. 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. Tell us about the event that you have coming up. You said you have a live event 200 ladies will attend.

I'd love to learn more about that. Coming up on October the 6th, it's in Ashburn, Virginia. We have people flying in from all over. We have people from California, from Florida, from all over the U.S. Of course, a lot of local folks too. Our topic for this year's conference, it's called Mastering the Juggle. And we're hitting on the four kind of primary topics, kind of back to what we talk about most with Empowering Women in Real Estate, is health, wealth, business, and family. And I think a lot of us in our industry, women in particular, but everyone in our industry, I think we tend to put our health last.

It's often the thing that is on the bottom of the list, if it even makes it onto the list. So we're starting there. We're talking about wealth. We, as real estate agents and real estate brokers, everything we do is helping other people build wealth through real estate. But the majority of agents that I know don't actually do that themselves. And so we have an amazing panel of women, people who, you know, we have a flipper who she has done over 50 projects. We have somebody who invests in commercial real estate. We have somebody who does short-term beach rentals. We have somebody who does long-term rentals. We're talking about business. We have Christy Belt-Gersman coming in from Ops Boss Coaching, who's going to be talking about how to actually to hire, how to train, how to retain. I mean, he's talking about time

management as well. So we have a whole day planned and we took some live tickets left. We also have virtual tickets. So for anybody who doesn't want to travel or kind of feeling interested in bits and pieces of that, we do have virtual tickets available too. How does somebody access the tickets? Yeah. So it's all on my website, empoweringwomeninrealestate.com. And you can click on the tab for conference. So health, wealth, business, and family. Interesting enough, what I didn't hear in there, because what so many of us see ourselves as, so many agents rather,

I'm not going to include myself. So normally I do, but I'm not going to include myself. So normally I do, but I'm not going to include myself, but so many real estate agents see themselves as is not business people. And I love the fact that you don't even like, you don't even believe it as an option to not be a business person in your, in your, in your get together. So what do you think is the difference between a salesperson and a business owner? It's the person who has consistent predictable income, right? You know this. That's the difference, right? The person who is just the agent, the hobby agent, or the person that just wants to do a few transactions here and there, there's no business plan, there's no

marketing plan, there's no keep in touch plan, there's not usually a know, there's no business plan, there's no marketing plan, there's no keep in touch plan, there's not usually a database, there's, you know, certainly not a marketing budget. And it's just kind of all by the seat of their pants. And, you know, the business person, the person who actually approaches the real estate business as a business, they're the ones who tend to be the most successful, they have the most consistent closings, they have the most consistent income, because they are focused on those things. You know, that's something that we're doing right now with my team, this whole next few months, we're preparing and we're planning out our entire marketing plan for all of next year. We're planning out our marketing budget for next year. We're planning all our events for next year because, you know, we plan it now. So then that way, when the spring comes and we're bombarded, you know, the last thing that you have time to think about when you're busy, you don't have time to think about the things that are maybe not innate to you. Right. What am I going to what's my mail are going to be this month? What am I going to, you know, whatever. And so that stuff gets pushed and it keeps getting pushed, pushed, pushed. And so focus on it once, invest the time, and then it's going to pay dividends all year long.

So would you agree that you're either the business person or you're a part of the business creating it together? Because that doesn't mean that Karen is the only person within your company that, well, I can 100%, I know the answer to this. Well, let me ask it. Are you responsible for $300 million of volume of business? No, not at all. Yeah, yeah, right? Like, so, yeah.

So I wanted just to give it a chance to ask the question rather than presume the answer. So it's you and a team of very dedicated ladies and one brave soul of a man who create that as the outcome. That's right. Yeah. So you either become a part of an entity such as that and then contribute to it and grow together, or you start an entity such as that. And that's really, really where if you're looking for that CPI, the consistent predictable income, where that comes from. And it's understanding that one, I can't do everything.

Two, I don't want to do everything. And three, I suck at most. So let me figure out what my superpower is. And let me lean into that. Yeah. Well, that's exactly, I mean, what you're saying is exactly right because not everyone is that business person. Not everyone has that, that mindset or that bandwidth to do all of those things. That doesn't mean that you can't be a great real estate agent too. It's just going to be harder if you don't have the things in place. And so you have the ability to align yourself, you know, like with our team, we provide and teams are different. You know, I think teams kind of get a, we provide and teams are different. You know, I think teams kind of get a, can sometimes get a bad rap. I think when a lot of people hear team, they immediately think like the Rainmaker style team that I started out on in the beginning of

my career, you know, my split was like this. It was a training ground. You know, I had a lot of volume because a lot of leads were given to me because my team leader spent a lot of money and she had processes and she had systems for gathering those leads. But I had to do, you know, five times as much to make as much money, you know, under that kind of a model. And my name was nowhere, right? It was all under her name. And so you're always kind of behind the gun. Other models now, we're very lucky in our industry that things have really evolved. With my team, it's not like that at all. Our team members do business in their own name. Many of them have their own brands and logos. Our team is meant to support and lift up and enhance their personal brand, not take away from it. So we provide what's hard for them to do or

difficult to them to do. We're honestly, from a scale perspective, we can host a big event at a winery and have 300 people there and we can afford to do it because we are a large conglomerate of a group that does it. We have the staff to manage it. But if you are a solo agent on your own, closing 10, 15, 20, 30 deals a year, you don't, right? So I find a solo agent, you have really one of three pathways. Either you ride a roller coaster, one, two, three transactions close this today,

and then nothing, nothing, nothing, next month, next month, next month, and then one, two, three, or you work 18 hours a day, or you do zero. I don't find a fourth option. And I've studied this business as a business and I've studied agents, you know, that, you know, cause I've been in similar roles as you've been Karen, where, you know, in that position where you're recruiting into a company and you're attracting people, et cetera.

What are your thoughts about my perceptions? Yeah, no, I think you're attracting people, et cetera. What are your thoughts about, about my perceptions? Yeah, no, I think you're, you're spot on there. There's rarely any in between, you know and, and, you know, the people who are up and down it's, it's because they don't have those plans, right. Either they don't know how to do it or they don't hire somebody to help them do it, or, you know, they just don't know. So they, you know, they work their tails off to get things happening. And then once stuff starts happening, then they stop doing all the things they did to get business moving in the first place. And then those transactions go to closing and now they have to start all over again. Right. So it's just this constant role or, you know, you burn yourself out 18 hours a day,

which I've, I've done, I've been that person, um, or you're doing nothing. And a lot of times the people who are doing nothing are sitting on their couch, thinking that business is coming to them and real estate can't happen from your couch. It has to, it happens when you're out meeting with people and connecting with people. And that's how it happens. Or those sometimes I find, you know, from my experience working with hundreds of agents, managing hundreds of agents, um, is that they're so fixated on, I have to have the best logo and I have to have the perfect brand colors and I need

to have my flyers have to be right. And I've got to get my slideshow ready. And so they spend so much time and effort on that, that they don't actually have any clients to actually show that stuff too. So, you know, it's kind of like the, what comes first, the chicken or the egg, you got to get, you got to get some business one first. So now comes the challenge. Because what you said earlier, I agree with as well, which is most real estate teams get a bad rap. And so now if you're that solo agent, you recognize, I don't want to work 18 hours a day. I don't want to ride the roller coaster. And I'm not willing to make nothing. Then what do I do about it? Because the teams out there, your team, Karen, is an anomaly. My team is an anomaly. The majority of the teams are led by

somebody who's really great at sales. But then they may or may not have taken the time to understand how to build an organization and then how to lead an organization so that you can make an impact. And so then that agent's looking for that team. Oftentimes the odds are you're going to find that team leader who rocket, who's the best freaking salesperson in the world. but they may not be great at getting the right people aligned with them they may not be great at then leading the people and my definition of leadership is to teach somebody else how to think so that they can get what they want so so if that's the challenge um what are your thoughts so i mean everything you're describing i'm sure you read the book the e-myth revisitedited, right? Michael Gerber.

Which is funny because when I first heard about that book, I thought it was about like E. I was like electronic, like online stuff. And that's not. It's a entrepreneurial myth, right? And it's exactly what you said. And a lot of teams you see, especially the ones that fail, are the ones that are hard to be a part of, right? Because we all know people. You know, I was on a team that was kind of hard to be a part of.

And it's because the team leader is a phenomenal salesperson, right? Because we all know people, I was on a team that was kind of hard to be a part of. And it's because the team leader is a phenomenal salesperson, right? They are the best like, you know, tactician at what they do, but not so much at the operations and the running and the leadership part. And unless they're willing to hire people, and that's okay, because we don't, we all have different gifts, right? Unless you're willing to hire people who can take on those roles and do those things for you, then it's going to be an uphill battle and it's going to be hard and it's going to be a struggle, you know, for the new agent who doesn't have any business going. And, you know, we experienced this all the time. You know, on my team, we, we hire, we don't hire that many brand new agents. We're, we're kind of more focused on experience. Our agents average at least 10 million in sales volume each. We have many who

do double, you know, close to triple, you know, at least 10 years of experience each. So it's a little bit of a different animal, but if you are that person who doesn't have business and you're kind of juggling, then honestly, I say your first couple of years in business, you're biting that bullet and you're working for one of those people because you need reps. And the only way you're kind of juggling, then honestly, I say your first couple of years in business, you're biting that bullet and you're working for one of those people because you need reps. And the only way you're going to get reps is by getting opportunities. And unless you're willing to, you know, to figure out or invest in, you know, the money and the time to get out there and get in front of people yourself, the best, fastest way to do it, honestly, is to join one of those teams where you can get reps quickly, you can can learn and then you can move on to your own.

And maybe while you start in the business and do that activity, you continue to look for Karen or Dan. Or you join the CPI community. I mean, that's one of the reasons why I put the CPI community together. It's essentially everything that you ever wanted in that team later, you wanted the coaching, the mentorship, the accountability the education the community that's what the cpi community is it's essentially but you don't want to pay 70 of your of your paycheck to get it yeah right to get it that you know that's why i put the cpi community together but i'm interested so what's the biggest challenge that you're facing today? It's growth and what's next. And one of his courses, Pathway to Mastery, he talks about there's this point that everyone gets to, whether you're an individual agent or a team leader,

but you kind of get to this point where you're kind of maxed out. You're kind of maxed out at what you can do with what you're doing or kind of what you've built. And so you have to kind of, it's where that kind of plot just starts to happen and you have to, you're kind of rebuilding and you're reevaluating and we're there, you know, we we've grown to a point where, you know, we've had the way our team looks now is very different than when it looks when, you know, the way it looked when it started. I haven't been in production in a couple of years. I do still do, you know, prospecting. That's very much a part of my daily activities because my, my, you know, my business is served by my team members. But it takes someone paying attention, right? We have a lot of people who are

counting on us. And so we have to be those leaders. and, and we're just learning a whole lot. It's hard. It's hard to be a leader. It's hard. It's hard. I, you know, I know, you know, Is it harder to be a leader or harder to be that solo agent? It's harder to be a leader. Is it more rewarding to be a leader or more rewarding to be that solo agent? It's more rewarding to be a leader or more rewarding to be that solo agent? It's more rewarding to be a leader. Yeah. What do you think causes it to be more challenging to be a leader? Yeah, I think it's because, and I don't know how to say it nicely.

So I'll just say it. Human beings, people are inherently selfish. And we all have this, this like, you know, this me, me, me, right? What do I need? And when you have a team, you know, there's a lot of things behind the scenes that are not appropriate for me to share with my team members. Right. So, and I'm not saying that this is exactly something that we deal with, but this is something that can happen. Right. You know, we want this, bring us this, do that. Why can't we do that? But without any, and only seeing that, like, can we do this? This is a great idea. Let's just do it. But not seeing all the other things that are happening. What about the staff? What about the P&L? What about the bottom line? What

about the expenses? And so that's really hard. That's a very difficult balance. I mean, I do think though, you know, it is very, it's much more rewarding to be the leader. And I recently did a podcast episode about this. Everybody is a leader though. You know, even when you are the solo agent, you are leading your clients. You know, you have been through many real estate transactions. They maybe do this two or three times in their lifetime, right? Maybe five. And so you are leading them. So you, we, we are all leaders just in different ways. Hey there, it's Dan. Excuse me for interrupting my own show. I just wanted to do so because I wanted to share with you, I was having a

conversation with one of my buyer's agents, Lucia, the other day. And she was sharing with me, she had a client that wrote an offer in today's market on 12 different homes. And she did actually end up getting the last offer accepted. So they didn't go and rent. But maybe right now you may be in that same situation and maybe you in that same situation, they did end up renting. And I know that that can be like, that can just suck.

Well, let me tell you, since 2008, there hasn't been a single month that I've missed a closing in real estate sales on an average of 10. And I want to share with you in the last one year, I've taken 79 listings by attending 93 listing appointments. I don't say that to brag. I say that to share with you that I know how to take listings in today's market. And I want to invite you if you want to learn how to take listings in today's market to join me at the five day listing challenge coming up. You can visit www.fivedaylistingchallenge.com and learn how to take listings in today's market without having a cold call, door knock, or beg. That's www.5daylistingchallenge.com.

Now, back to the most awesome real estate show ever, CPI Real Estate Podcast. What's your podcast? It's called Empowering Women in Real Estate Podcast. Hey, I was going to guess that. We're actually just about to hit our 200th episode in about two weeks. That's awesome. So what I would say the most challenging for me about leadership is the fact that each person who you lead is unique, has different goals, different backgrounds, different behaviors, different skill sets. And as a leader, you, I think it took me a long time to learn this. And so I'll be transparent on this. I initially thought my job as a leader was to get people to see, you know, like, here's a way to think, you know, which it is to help them to think to reach their goals, but it's not necessarily my way. And so what I've learned is, is I have, it's more effective to meet them where they're at, and then guide them, rather than to say, hey, here's the goal. Here's where, here's where we should be. And you come to me. Right. Okay.

And then as, as I've done that, it's, it's each different person that you're reaching that you're moving towards is, is unique, you know? So, and if you're leading 40 people, 46 people, then you have 46 different unique human beings that you have to, you know, figure out. How do I lead Jane? How do I. What's what's your guy's name? What's your name is Zach. Zach. OK. How do I lead Jane? How do I lead Jill? How do I lead Karen? How do I lead Les? And there's Zach over there. And here's the other thing, too, like, we're all whole people, right? We're not just real estate sales agents. And so,

you know, things happen in our lives. And it seems like the older you get, the more shit happens, right? And so there are moments where we have to focus on something at home, or we're forced to focus on something in our health, and business becomes secondary. And how do you learn to lead people through those challenges, right? Because it's not just about the metrics, and it's not just about the numbers, you have to look at the whole of, okay, this is what's happening right now. Performance may not be, you know, where it was, or where it could be, or where it's going to be in the future. But this is where it is right now, kind of what you said, right, like meeting them where they are. And that, you know, that can be

a challenge too. What's the, what failure have you learned from the most? I think the biggest failure, and I hate to say it was the failure because I learned a lot from it, right? That's what, that's the answer we're supposed to give. But it is the truth. Um, uh, is when I, is when I quit sales to become a managing broker, because I had reached a point as a solo agent in my business, I was doing 50 to 60 transactions a year. I was pumping out a ton of volume and I had barely a part-time assistant and I needed at that point really to start building the team, right? That's really what I needed to do, but I didn't know how, and I was afraid. And so I went for what I thought was the easiest choice. And so, you know, when, when the owner of

our company came to me and said, Hey, you know, I'm sure you're not interested. Like, you know, I was the number one agent at the brokerage. I'm sure you're not interested, but you know, we're growing and we need to hire a managing broker. And so, you know, what was the number one agent at the brokerage. I'm sure you're not interested, but you know, we're growing and we need to hire a managing broker. And so, you know, what do you think? And I was like, yes, because all I could envision was nine to five, I get to go home. You know, my evenings are free, my weekends, which is not what it's like, by the way, when you're a managing broker by a long shot. But that was, that was a failure. I feel like that was a failure of mine to not. And I, I'm glad, I'm glad I went through that experience because I learned a lot,

but what I have learned from it is when things get hard, you don't quit, you know, things were hard. And so I quit and I took what I thought was going to be the easier path. And sometimes when things are hard, you know, right now things have been hard and you just have to sit in it, you know, as much as it sucks and, and find your way out of it or find your way through it. Because you don't want to give up on what you've built up until the top point. Got to embrace to suck sometimes. You do. So there's another lesson there that you skip past. I'm sure you're you may or may not notice it from that owner, the owner of the organization's point of view, from a leader's point of view.

You don't know what the other person wants unless you ask. And I can understand why. Here's an agent doing 50 or 60 transactions a year. There's no way she wants this. I mean, I've been in that position, right? And then you ask, and then you find out, oh, my goodness, it's exactly what he wants. Exactly what she wants. You know, it's like, my goodness. Yeah, you have to ask. Yeah.

So, you know, so I think that's another valuable lesson from what you just shared there as well. How would you describe your daily habits? I am all about the daily habits. I am. That is one thing that I'm pretty strong at. Efficiency is like my middle name. So those are the big morning routine person. You know, my morning routine is really what kind of grounds me.

It's the only time I get that's really mine in the day, which means I'm very happy to get up an hour, hour and a half early so that I can have that time and, you know, use it however I want to use it. Sometimes I do a little work that I, you know, I need some focus on. I'm not a time block person just because that stresses me out. You know, our, our, none of our days look the same and I can start my day thinking it's going to go one way and have it beautifully, you know, boxed and colored and planned. And then something happens, you know, an issue with the team member this morning, I was a technology problem. You know, if you're in the field, it's, you know, that appraisal issue and, and suddenly your day's gone to hell on a handbasket. And so that stresses me out. I prefer chunks. So

I have basically like two chunks that I make sure that I fit in every single day. And one is that morning routine, which happens without fail every day, even if I have to get up at, you know, three 30 in the morning, which I've done before to make sure I get it in before I have to do whatever. And then the other one is what I call my daily business builders, which is my kinder, gentler form of prospecting. And it's the way I keep in touch with my clients. It's a specific set of habits that I have done every day for almost seven years. Help me with this because there's some gold right here. What are those? So you have two buckets. You've got your business builders, and then you've got your morning activities. What specifically are the morning activities? Yeah, so my morning routine,

it's all about me. So I have a devotional that I read every morning, some kind of reading to fill myself up. I do usually some kind of a journaling exercise every morning, doesn't take a long time, couple minutes. And then I have kind of a very specific routine. So the first thing for me is I open my Facebook and I go to my Empowering Women in Real Estate group and I write a post. And I have done that five to seven days a week for eight years. And it's kind of, you know, I've before said it's like my therapy. So just writing and sharing that really resonates with me. Connecting with people online, that's important with me. Connecting with people on online. That's important to me,

connecting with my community. I don't usually get to do it throughout the day. So the first thing in the morning is kind of my day to my time to do that. I do a quick scroll through my email because I'm looking for the junk because you know, that's what happens, right? We are a lot of the stuff in our boxes are not their junk or somebody else can handle it. So I just do a quick scan, not that I'm working and responding to people, but okay, I don't need this. Let me forward this to somebody who, who does. And then reading, you know, whether it's reading a book or reading blogs or, you know, whatever it is. I had a yoga habit for a long

time. I'm recovering from knee surgery right now. So yoga has been kind of off the table for a little bit. Hopefully that'll come back. And then it's my kids, you know, what do they need in the morning so that we can get out the door? All right. So now the other box. So what, what are those activities? So mine are surrounded by a certain number of things. So it's a certain number of calls, a certain number of notes, a certain number of pop buys.

I give a certain number of referrals and I add a certain number of people to my database. So these five things. How many? How many? So yeah, I'll tell you. So right now I'm doing five notes a week. I'm doing three calls a week. I'm doing one pop buy a week and I'm giving five referrals a week and I'm adding one person to my database a week. Now I am in a very different phase of my business right now. I consider myself to be more of a maintenance phase. When I am, you know, cranking in my business, then those numbers are increased significantly. For a long time, I delivered a pot by a day. I wrote five notes a day. I added five people a week. So, and that's what I like about these business builders and why it's really

resonated with me is because when I have been through different things, you know, I've been through some really challenging health situations over the last several years where I couldn't, you know, my business was the least important thing happening in my world. But I knew from my experience of stopping to be a managing broker is that when you stop in our business, it stops. And so, you know, during some of those challenging periods, my goal sometimes was just to write one note a week because that felt like I could do it. And it just, it, it just kind of kept me no matter how crawling, but it kept me moving in a slightly forward motion. So I compare business to a flywheel. And when you start, if you can imagine that there's a big rock at the end of a string, that's 10,000 pounds, and maybe even more than that as a real estate

sales business owner. And the first day you push it and you get nothing. You push it, you get nothing. But eventually you start getting a little bit of momentum. And then eventually at some point the momentum takes over. And now that ball's got momentum. At times it takes a whole lot of exertion. And then you have a choice at some point in your career where you could continue to um uh to expend to be able to continue to scale to be able to continue to grow but you can also have the

choice to sit back and just sort of uh just sort of swat at that you know which is one note a week, three pop buys a week, five referrals a week. And that's just really more than maintaining is what I heard you say. And I'm curious, who are you referring to? What type of referrals are those? It's most likely. So a lot of what I do, I'm all about generosity. It's all about my geographic farm. That's the biggest pillar in my business. So it's mostly vendors related to my business or in my geographic farm. So I make a really concerted effort to, you know, when I'm visiting, I did it over the weekend. I visited a local business. I took some pictures. I did some Instagram stories. I did a couple of posts

about it. Right. In that case, I consider that a referral, right. Cause I'm telling my whole audience, you know, you need to go here and check this out. Sometimes it's connecting with my clients. Somebody yesterday emailed me and said, are well pumps going bad? Who do I reach out to? You know, I am the resource of the resource. And that's how I teach my clients and my community to treat me or to view me. So multiple times on a, you know, weekly, monthly basis, people are

reaching out and saying, you know, they know that I know all the best, right? If you're in real estate, you know, all the best people, because we, we do this on a very large scale. And so it's a lot of those kinds of people. We're running a little bit short on time. If you were starting today, what would you tell yourself? Don't be afraid to put yourself out there because I think we're afraid to show up. We're afraid, you know, go back to what you said about the broker, right? Ask the question, you know, we're afraid, we're afraid of what people are going to think, you know, and so you just, you can't be afraid to put yourself out there, connecting to people, you know, meeting with people. I mean, that's the, if we focused more on that than a lot of,

I think the other things that we do, that would solve a lot of the problems with our business, because it's done by getting eye to eye to people and meeting with people and, oh, you know, them getting to know you as the real estate expert. That's what's going to that's what's going to drive your business. You think fear has stopped you at times? Oh, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I have no doubt.

I mean, I know it has held me back many a time. And so that's where having the right people around you are are critical, you know, whether it's coaches or groups like yours or groups like mine that you're in, mentors, you know, I've worked with the same lender for 20 years and she is like my mentor. And so she and my business partner are usually the ones who are pushing me to say, you know. So you can be afraid, take the action anyways, and have a great success and i really want to make sure that as we finish up today that the the whoever's listening to this whoever's watching this right now what i what i'm getting from karen is that even and i've known this but even even the top of the top of the top who karen is by the way, have fears, have things that they're like,

what's going to happen? Or why me? Or, you know, why should I step through that door? You know, who am I to take that to make that phone call? Or what are they thinking about me or something along those lines? And Karen, you've done it anyways. And you've had extraordinary success. It's a muscle. It's like a muscle, you know, and the more you do it, you know, there's things I do now that I was terrified to do 10 years, five years, 10 years, 15 years ago. But the more you do it, the more it's like a muscle and it just it becomes easier over time. Karen, thank you for your time. How could somebody get in touch with you? My pleasure. I love to connect on Instagram. It's my favorite thing.

Karen.Cooper is the best way to do that. And if you have a business in the Northern Virginia metro area, then check out my team. Our website is goplatinumgroup.com. So goplatinumgroup.com for referrals of northern virginia area and karen.w.cooper and and then finally empowering women in real estate and i recommend if you are a lady looking for a tribe i know um i know of the group through karen all right. Thanks, Karen. Take care.

Thank you, Dan. Appreciate it. Bye-bye. 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, you'll find a listing. Dan, you are such a fascinating man. I mean, he has this purpose in life to help people achieve their dreams, their greatness. And he doesn't just say it. He actually has steps and mythologies in order for them to follow. Our very special guest in Featured Time of the Day, I cannot even sit in my chair.

I'm so excited. Dan Rochon, all the way from beautiful Virginia. Dan, it's an honor to have you on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time. And what I'm encouraging for you

is to focus on who you're being because that's your foundation. And when you focus on that, you're going to find that you do activities that are going to lead to the outcome of having whatever it is in this life

that you're looking for.