No Broke Months For Salespeople - How to Build a Listing-Based Real Estate Business With Vulcan7 - Ren Jones

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

Ren Jones is the CEO of Vulcan7. He has 16 years of experience leading a successful real estate team, achieving 150-180 sales annually. For the past 15 years, he has also coached top real estate teams, sharing his expertise and strategies for Success. Ren's leadership and coaching have made him a respected figure in the industry, driving growth and innovation at Vulcan7. Join us this episode as Ren discusses how to Transform Your Real Estate Leads into Listings with the Help of Vulcan7.You can find Ren in these links below:WebsiteLinkedIn  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

Well, we have a lot of people and, you know, my favorite is when you see somebody, they're 24 or 27 years old, they've been working with buyers and owning open houses and doing all this insanity for about a year and a half. And they're like, I need to get a real job. All right. And then they find out about us. And all of a sudden you check in two or three years, I'm up to $650,000 a year. Good for you.

And they're, they're having so much fun and it's fun to watch. That's the nice part about this. 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. Ren Jones is the CEO of Vulcan 7. He has 16 years of experience leading a successful real estate team, achieving 150 to 180 sales annually. For the past 15 years, he has also coached top real estate teams,

sharing his expertise and strategies for success. Ren's leadership and coaching have made him a respected figure in the industry, driving growth and innovation at Vulcan 7. Join us this episode as Ren discusses how to transform your real estate leads into listings with the help of Vulcan 7. Join us this episode as Wren discusses how to transform your real estate leads into listings with the help of Vulcan 7. 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. We're going to talk today about how you can build a listing based real estate business and specifically how you can do that by using a tool like Vulcan 7. Ren welcome how are

you sir good to see you Dan we just jumped right in there we're like in the middle of the conversation and I was like hey you ready and you said yes And then I don't know. There we go. We're off to the races. Good deal. Let's have some fun. Ren. All right. Before we get started, I really want to learn more about you and your story of, and I also, of course, you know, want to be able to give some really, really like tactical lessons for, for the audience about how they can you know build a listing business um and i also want to learn like what is Vulcan 7 i mean i'm aware right but uh you know

for the audience like briefly let's start with what Vulcan 7 is and i want to learn more about you and then let's get into some tactics so what is Vulcan 7 yeah it's you know if you go to a real estate event or whatever and they have all these booths most of them have buyer lead buyer lead buyer lead buyer leads you know every kind of system for buyer leads and then there's very few of us out there seller leads so we're seller leads so if you want to build a listing business come on in because it's a lot easier. All right. And so it's a tool as an auto dialer to be able to do that? It's a platform. In the platform, and CRM includes dialing capabilities and expired. A lot of now business expires for rent by owners, for sale by owners,

people that have a property that they want to do something with, but they don't have an agent, at least for the few, for a week or two, and we call that now business. And then we have neighborhood searches and other search tools. And to get that closer to now business, we've subcategorized it. We have absentee owners, people that are, and then people that are free and clear, they owe nothing on the property. So they aren't nurturing some little 2.75% mortgage that we have empty nesters. The kids just moved out and they're in this big house. And then we have high equity and we have, we have a lot of categories like that, or, or people have pre foreclosure and they're getting

a little behind and things like, and another category called likely to list with 163 different public record items that predispose them to want to sell the property more so than other choices. So that moves it closer to now business. It's not now business, but you're narrowing down the work required to find the gems. So it's, it's a place to come for that, you know, probate and early probate. We just added early probate, which can be now business because sometimes by depending on the state law and the situation, sometimes these things by divisor, you know, something's passed immediately to an heir and they're like,

I don't want that property. I got to get rid of it. And so you reach out to them and you find out, yes, my uncle left me this house in Montana and I don't like Montana. I'm from New York. And sell it. So that's a good thing.

All right. So that's what Vulcan 7 is. Thank you for that. And what's your role within Vulcan 7? As a CEO, what would you say? How would you describe your role? I don't know. I've run the show. And my

CFO, who owns a lot of the company as well, we have a nice little tug of war. I spend money and he takes it back. We have fun. I'm spending the money so my CFO and I can have that tug of war yeah it's yeah you have to have a you have to have a little balance i hear you i hear you all right so tell us about like before volca 7 for you personally you you were a really random team in richmond

virginia and for 16 years for most of that time not the first three or four years for most of that time, not the first three or four years, but most of that time it was a hundred, 150, 170 homes sold a year. I listed the property. I had two buyer agents. So basically, you know, I would list, I would list 12, 15 homes a month and, and we would sell two out of three at that time period. And they would work with all the homeless people. They would work, you know, that we sold their home and they had nowhere to live.

And that's the, one of the, those are the buyers you should be working with, you know, where you create your own buyer. You sell their home, they have nowhere to live. They will go out Tuesday at one o'clock. They won't wait, eat up all your weekends for a month or two. They will go out Tuesday at one o'clock

and they will pick out, they'll look at the five available and they'll pick one out. That's a better way to do it. So. Yeah. So you're creating your, yeah, you're creating your own, your own opportunity. Right. And the opportunity that you're creating is, it's motivated, right? Cause it's, they, you know, they're homeless. High quality buyer has to buy right away is loyal. All those things. And as we talked about, with that type of listing business, you work Monday through Friday.

You work a good eight, nine-hour day, Monday through Friday. And then you're off on the weekends and you take six to eight weeks vacation a year. I did. I did this for years. I can count on this hand how many Saturdays I worked in that 16-year period. Very, very, very few. So it exists. It exists. So we have a lot of our customers that have gone from working seven days a week and taking, you know, a few days off at Christmas and et cetera, et cetera, to where now they work weekdays, daytimes, weekday, and they can have a, you know,

nothing worse than mom or dad or whoever off in the corner working on their buyer deal while the kids are like, mom, dad, come on. We want to, we want to go swimming. You know what I mean? You, you deserve to have a life. So hopefully in a lot of ways we give people their life back. Yeah. And I've had a similar experience, Rand, where I've had around 17 years as a listing agent myself. And, uh, and I've had the, the, the experience of, I mean,

I could count on my hand to Saturdays and less than that on the Sundays that I've worked. Um, and, and, and really candidly, the only Saturdays I've worked has been, you know, if I really couldn't get the listing appointment Monday to Friday, I, I would take a, you know, listing appointment Saturday morning and that's it. You know, and, and, you know, I haven't for 17 years worked weekends either. So it is there. You can relate, you can run and it's easier to run this as a business on the

buy side. They have to do all the heavy lifting. They have to show all those properties. They have to write the offer. If it doesn't work out, they have to go show a whole bunch more and then write them more they do all the heavy lifting you just as a listing agent you just go next next and and just you're you know it's not quite that easy but it is definitely a better life so ren so tell us like how did you do that or how could an agent today use you know a system like vocalist 7 to do you know to create what you've created and you know a lot of what you maybe even what i've created

well we have a lot of people and you know my favorite is when you see somebody they're they're they're 24 or 27 years old they get involved they've been working with buyers and owning open houses doing all this insanity for about a year and a half. And they're like, I need to get a real job. All right. And then they find out about us and they start and all of a sudden they, they, they catch their stride. And all of a sudden they are, you know, they're, they'll turn around, you'll check in with them. Like I made $450,000 last year. I'm like, good for you. And, uh, and then, then you check in two or three years,

I'm up to $650,000 a year. Good for you. And they're, they're having so much fun and it's fun to watch. That's the nice part about this. Uh, you know, there's two groups of people, the people, you know, and the people you don't know one is a larger group. And if they participate with that, they can be brand new in the business and be making phenomenal amounts of money in short a very short period of time and how do they do that like like

walk me through the journey of what would an agent's day-to-day look like okay well i'll tell you what the day-to-day is and then the pitfall because here's the pitfall they get going like that and then all of a sudden four or five of those homes sell and this is this is the candy that lures them away from what they did all of a sudden somebody i sold their 350 000 house and they're gonna buy a 1.2 well i'm gonna work that i'm not gonna refer that i'm not gonna pay my little buyer agent i'm gonna work that and then they stop doing what they're doing. And they spend the next month taking that person around and they've lost five sales they would have made if they had stuck to that. So instead, 25, 50, 75,

meet with a couple of top, top agents in your office and say, I'm going to market you privately on listing appointments as my buyer agent. I said, here's the deal. If I'm not sure how strong they are, it's 25% referral. If they're good to go and they're solid 50-50, but if it's a trade up like that, I'm selling their $400,000 house, so I can buy 1.2, you'll get 25% because that's nine grand and you're only going gonna show four houses. Are you okay with that?

If they say yes, put it in writing and then move forward and stop carrying buyers around because it takes you out of the game. So every morning you roll play from 7.30 to eight in the morning. First call of the day is the fresh expireds at 8 a.m. Followed by some for sale by owners that are fresh, and then old expires, and then lead follow-up, and your past clients is fearing every other human being that you can think of that's, or any of the other leads in the system. And then around 11.30, do a little lead follow-up and go to lunch. And then you're either going to have one listing appointment or two listing appointments that afternoon, or maybe three. Every afternoon is going to be different.

Every afternoon is going to be different. But in the morning, that's your routine. So you follow the perfect Monday through Friday schedule from 7.30 in the morning till noon. You do the exact same thing for 235 days a year. Not 365, but 235 days a year. That gives you your weekends and your six to eight weeks vacation, or I got the flu or I wanted to go to an event or whatever.

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. We'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 cI 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. So 235 days a year, half days right because your your work your focus time well yeah i mean you've got it you've got a full day right there are days where you have no listing appointments but if i were you i would i'd do some lead follow-up you know do something in the afternoon that generates business because you know why not i mean work a full day honestly i realize the listing side's easier but work a full day, honestly. I realize the listening side's easier, but work a full day. When I say half a day of work, like from my perspective, work is lead generation and everything else is play. Going on a listening appointment, like I don't consider that work, right?

Like that's just, it's almost like, it's like the difference between like a football player, like going to practice, that's work. But on game day, that's play, right? So when I say like four hours a day, and yes, if you, in the afternoons, if you have no appointments, get back to work, right? But if you do that four hours a day, Monday to Friday, 235 days a year, you're going to have a hell of a business. Would you agree with that? It is.

And you just have to resist the temptation of being pulled away from what made you successful. I worked, I did one or two buyers a year, but this is how they look. They call me up and they go, I want to buy this house. Yeah. And I go, great, come on in, we'll write it up. And they go, well, can we just walk through it one more time? All right. And then we just walk through it and they'd sign. We'd be done. That's it. That's the only buyers you're allowed to work. It,

you've got to refer them all out. 25, 50, 75. Got to, got to, got to, got to, or you'll get pulled away. You will get pulled away because here's the thing. Repetitious boredom is boring. And that's what you do from eight to 1130 in the morning. That's boring. Working with buyers is gratifying. The only problem is it's exhausting and it doesn't pay well. And it's nights and weekends.

I had a coach early on in my career. And my first listing appointment I went on was an expired listing. I was licensed for six days I didn't get the listing and um I remember I had a coach early on I was scared like not scared for the appointment but scared for making the phone calls uh and that was long ago and so um but I remember I had this coach and he said to me and he's a well-known coach like you would know his name you know and so um you know but he was my private coach and he said to me, and he's a well-known coach, like you would know his name, you know, and so, you know, but he was my private coach. And he said to me, he said, Dan, you're going to do this for so long and so often that you're going to get bored with it.

And at the time, I was still somewhat, I want to say terrified, but I was anxious to make the calls. And I was like, dude, you're crazy. Right. make the calls and i was like dude you're crazy right but then just like what you said ran not long after that it started it started to become boring right and it's like but the but the the the habit of it creates success today because i'm still active in the business right i'm still actively selling so today if i'm if I don't lead generate in the morning, I don't care if I have five closings that day. I feel like I didn't work.

And that goes back to what I said earlier about like, you work four hours a day, then the rest of the time you're doing stuff. You're going to closings, you're going on listing appointments, you're whatever, you're leading, you're whatever the case're leading, you're, you're, you know, whatever the case may be. Right. But if I don't lead generate five days a week, I feel like I'm doing the people that I lead myself, my family, the people that rely on me, I feel like

I'm doing them a disservice. And that's a scary thought when you don't make those calls and you're like, I know my business is going to tank in about six weeks if I don't get back doing it. And it's unconscious competence. Like you say, you just do it and that routine pulls you. Especially if you have role play partners at 7.30 in the morning that you meet because they're as excited as you are if you have good ones so it's uh there's a guy um remember pythagoras pythagorean theorem pythagoras he was there he was in old rome he had an r he was a real tour in old rome and he said take the road that's best no matter how rough and soon it becomes easy and agreeable and pythagoras is right so what happens is once you've done that for a while, it's not easy, but after a while,

it's just this routine and smooth and you become really good at it as you've experienced and you're made a lot of money doing it too. So Pythagoras was right. I hadn't heard that, that, that, that spin on it about. That's a true quote from Pythagoras. It really is. I know he's more known for his isosceles triangles and all that, but, you know.

And you're taking me back to middle school here, Ryan. This is a great, what we should do is tell them if they want to get into the shallow end of the pool and get some traction right away, I'd like to share that piece because that's really important. Because what happens is when we see people sign up, they'll watch something like this, or they'll hear somebody else, or they'll see an agent down the hall who's, you know, listing three properties a week using Vulcan 7. And they're like, ah, I'm going to do it. And then they make six eight ten calls and they're like ah oh oh you know and it's not a pretty sight so what i would encourage them to do so that it's so that they feel encouraged

all the way is to start in the shallow end of the pool and that's two categories one is old expires and when i use that definition i say three weeks or later, call them. They are friendly. And that's a big piece. Nothing worse than getting your ear melted down. They're friendly. Not many people, if any, are calling them. And the odds of them going back on the market are very high. So old expires, you may be happy with this number, but you'll pick up one or two extra listings a month with old expires with

very little effort. The other is for sale bonus. Oh, okay. Well, I wouldn't go on after G. Fizbo's with a recipe and this is the recipe. And I'd called listed for sale bonus for decades. Somebody explained this to me and I'm like, yeah, that is where I'm wasting all my time. Somebody said, you follow this recipe and you'll do a lot better.

And I'd been doing it for 10 years and somebody explained it. They said, you're looking for two yeses, two questions. When you're talking to these people, do they have to sell? Not do they want to sell? Do they have to sell? If it's a yes, write down yes.

And then the second question is, do they have to sell rather quickly? If that's a yes, those two yeses, they have to sell and they have to sell quickly. You call 20 and have 20 conversations with for sale monitors and let's say you have four that fit that category. You can park those, move the other 16 over there and do something now and then. But the problem with those 16 is they're going to dabble around and be unrealistic for months and months and months. They're going to talk to 47 realtors and they won't even remember that they ever talked to you. And so you get deluded so badly. those four with intensity. They will make a decision within a matter of days and you're going to be able to get a gold star next to your name and move forward and you're going to be happy

about it. The nice thing about for sale owners is they are friendly also. So friendly with the old expires three weeks later, friendly with the FSBO recipe. And we find that helps people get, you know, get good at the the conversations then they can move to the front lines with those expires so if they do that we find a lot of success would you agree i would i would throw absentees in there because nobody's well they're friendly right and they just need to talk to a lot of them so absentees the nice thing about it they're not you know because a lot of times they're like well when i'm ready to sell, we're going to use a gym down the street because the signs are all over. They're not in the house, so they rely on you.

It still takes a lot more calls. It's not quite now business. Those old expires and those Fizbo's can be now business. But absentees are really good for that reason. It used to be only people that did them in a resort market, but honestly, it's really good in your market to talk to that group, that subgroup for sure. And then I would check the box that says likely to list, call absentees and likely to list, check both boxes.

And that may shrink it down from 800 down to 87, but talk to those 87 people. Yeah, great advice. See how far you can go. 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. Yeah. All right. Let's change the conversation just a little bit because you have an incredible amount of experience, which I value.

And I value your time. going for the buyers and, and that type of thing. What would you say in general is the most common mistake that you see agents make? Well, as the earlier piece where they stopped doing what they made them successful, they, they all of a sudden they've sold a lot of the listings. They stopped looking for more. They've just got to do that. There's a lot of mistakes. What do you see? Well, it's a long sales cycle.

And so because it's a long sales cycle, I see agents that will take the time to find some business. And then if they're working with buyers specifically, right, then even more so with buyers then they're taking their all their time working with the buyers and while they're doing that they're not getting any more new business and then they get a closing or three and then they realize oh i have nothing in my pipeline and then they got to start it all over so it's almost like this cycle of like three or four throughout the year of start get one to three closings start and that would be fine if the sales cycle was a week but it's not it's a 90-day sales cycle from the from the point of identifying a prospect and then if you're working with buyers there's another 30 days to find them a home and there's another 30 days to be able to uh go from contacts

to close the sales cycles for listings also that's a slower or a faster sales cycle because it's just however long it takes to market the home which is going to be typically quicker than working with a buyer and that's that's what i see as the mistake yeah they can't they can't miss a day if it's one of the scheduled 230 work days they can't miss a day they because you lose your consistency they got a hot lead and then a week later they're not following up with that hot lead because they're running around with the buyer that came in from chicago you know it all goes crumbling down they've got to be consistent for those 230 days the good news is they get 135 days off every year and but here's even the better news those 135 days that they're not actively working their business is still working yeah on the

listing side that's what i go out of town for five days and come back and see how many buyer sales you had i don't think so but you may have four listings sold. Sure. Yeah. And so that's again, you know, and that's been something that, and I think even more so today as the, as you know, there's, I mean, we all know that, you know, there's some significant changes in the marketplace today. I believe that that's going to create an opportunity because I believe that in times of change, that the people that have the foresight and the ability to be able to provide value and the ability to be able to stay confident and to be able to communicate your value effectively, I believe you're going to see like a separation today from the average to the ones that are willing to do what it takes

to make it work and be trusted. And I think that right now is probably the biggest opportunity in my career and I think in my time in the business, I think the second biggest opportunity was back in 2007 to 2009 and if you listen when I say there's opportunity the opportunity at least then and I believe now is when things get hard and they're absolutely right whenever whenever you have chaos there's a lot of people that make a lot of money that are focused. If you look at human nature, you've got all these people deer in the headlights. Every time the first six weeks of COVID, for example, all these deer in the headlights, but the is one of them. You know, first it was August. Now it's August 17th now. It was July.

Now it's August. It'll be September something. But, you know, people are going to be deer in the headlights. I got to know exactly how I'm going to get paid. Don't worry about it. You have what we call creative avoidance behavior. You got all these people that are like, I should prospect now. I'll join.

I'll be on the MLS committee. There's throngs of people that are on the MLS committee. There's throngs of people that are on the MLS committee that are going to help you have a roadmap on how you're going to get paid. Let them figure it out. You just list property. You have a homeless buyer because you sold their home, or you have a strong one from your database that definitely wants to buy immediately, and then work with them. And don't worry, nobody's asking you to do it for free. They'll give you the roadmap. So don't worry about that. Just go to work while the other people are going, I got to know exactly.

I got to know exactly. No, they don't. They just don't want to work. So thinking about you as an agent, you know, before you, your role today with Vulcan 7 and and within your role of Vulcan 7 what failure has Ren Jones experience that you've learned the most from? Oh when I sold my team in Virginia yeah I sold that and I'm like you know it was just humming along and I could have just kept it and done other things but I ended up selling that and I'm like, you know, it was just humming along and I could have just kept it and done other things, but I ended up selling that. And I, I would, I would have kept it probably. Yeah.

Once the wheel starts turning, cause we had, we, I had the perfect listing coordinator and the perfect closing coordinator. I had two great buyer agents and, and I, i was listening it was unconscious competence it just ran by itself it was so such a well-oiled business yeah i mean you had and you could have worked without such a well-oiled machine it was just a machine and it was designed it was it was flawless and just was smooth and we would you know we'd sell 15 to 18 homes a month. And, you know, life was good. What's the biggest challenge you're facing today?

I don't know if I am. I think I'm living the dream, to be honest with you. So don't call it a challenge, but the thing that gets me excited and moving really fast is AI has come in, and there's a lot of movement right now in tech space. And so I've shifted a lot of stuff from year to year. Our marketing department has tripled in size. Our innovation department, the innovation department, and I'm heading up a lot of that. I'm innovating like there's no tomorrow.

To have everything related to the listing side of the business, we have so many new pieces coming in. We're way ahead of our competitors in a lot of ways. It's kind of fun. There are only about four or five of us in this space. And still to this day, not with neighborhoods so much, not with first sale owners but with expireds 80 of the expireds we all have the same numbers contact information it's the 20 that we've been able to get and still they haven't cracked the code on that which

creates a very devoted subscriber base because there are a lot of conversations with that 20% where they can talk to that seller that very few other people are reaching them. So I feel very lucky that we've, we've been able to keep that now for about 12 years. That's fantastic, Ryan. Thank you for sharing that. How can a, how can a real estate agent find your services? Welcome7.com. All right. Make it, make it as it as easy as possible and it's number seven not spilled out correct right right right exactly but i'm sure you can type it in wrong we

put all the misspells in there yeah you're right yeah you figured that piece out there i'm sure but i mean honestly folks go after the listing side and see remember there used to be a there used to be a a show called Wants to Be a Millionaire? Yeah. And all you had to do was answer all these questions correctly, and you'd make a million dollars. The good news is in this listing business, you can make a million every year, and there are only three questions you have to answer,

and the sellers ask the question, you know, what are you going to do to sell my home? What's it worth? And how much are you going to charge? And then every year you get a million dollars. Just answer those three questions to all those sellers and you get a million dollars. Yeah, but the key to that is- For life.

For life. We have a lot of people making a lot of money. You got to be in front of the sellers to answer the questions. And you could do that by using a system like Vulcan 7 and taking action. That's it. Ren, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate your insight and sharing your wisdom and your, and your experience with us. It's really helpful. And real estate agents,

consumers, everybody that's watching right now, lenders, et cetera. I want to wish that you have the best day of your life. Be grateful. Make good choices. Go help somebody. And go take some freaking listings. God bless you. 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 Dan you are such a fascinating man 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 Future Shining Every 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 gonna find that you do activities that are gonna lead to the outcome of having whatever it is in this 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.