Episode #67: Practice, Professionalism, & Knowing What To Say with Tom Toole

[00:00:00] When I say practice scripts, it's not like some magical thing you say that's gonna like get a sale. It's a series of questions to determine if it's a viable prospect and if you're able to help them. That's what people don't get. It's like the vetting process, the screening process. Well, we've all had clients that probably wasted a lot of our time and had no intent to transact, right? Absolutely. You talk about learning from mistakes, that's like a big one. Like you don't ask the pre-qualifying questions. You go out and meet with someone at their house and then you realize like this was a total waste of time. Yep.

[00:00:26] Just knowing what to say, it's not this like magical thing where everything closes. It's I gotta understand if it's worth my time and if I can help them. And your time's your most valuable asset as a business owner. So, if you're spending time with people that aren't motivated, you're not gonna be hitting the goals that you want because that time can be allotted for people that wanna work with you that are gonna buy into the skill set that you're offering to help them do whatever they want to accomplish.

[00:00:49] So, it's a vetting process. You're trying to understand them and what their goals are and if that aligns. That's some next level stuff right there.

[00:01:05] Welcome to the podcast dedicated to real estate, insurance, and building your business. Join us as we take you along our own business building journeys with additional wisdom from our network of local and national experts. Welcome to Bricks and Risk. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Bricks and Risk. I'm Tim Garrity. And I'm Sean Mooney.

[00:01:34] Today, Sean, we have a super successful agent, guest, business person. We have Tom Tool, team leader and real estate authority of the Tom Tool Sales Group. How you doing today, Tom? Grateful to be here, fellas. Thanks for having me. Welcome in. Thanks for coming in. Yes. So, Tom Tool Sales Group is about 52 agents strong. Yep. We were just talking about, about 12 staff.

[00:01:57] Tom is also the co-host of the Knowledge Brokers Podcast. It's a top 100 podcast on Apple Business and it made our top three list when we were talking about real estate and insurance podcasts. Heck yeah. Great one if you've never listened before. Tom has been a licensed real estate agent for over 20 years and is a lifetime Greater Philadelphian. He believes in professionalism, hard work, and has a passion for helping people. His team is the number one REMAX team in Pennsylvania since 2018.

[00:02:25] He's personally sold 90 plus homes a year for over a decade. Super impressive, man. His team will sell 500 homes and over 200 million in volume in 2024. And he's also the co-host of Tool Time, which is a weekly radio show about local news and real estate topics. Married to his wife, Bridget, who I met recently in person. She's great. It was a good time. Three kids, Leo, Gina, and Bryn, and a French Bulldog. Is his name Pierre by any chance? Wags.

[00:02:55] Okay, there we go. Kids came up with it, but if you're a Billions fan, I immediately signed off. What? So that was good. That's awesome. And he has no tail to boot. All right, so let's do this. Let's talk about the meaning behind the words knowledge broker, because that's the title of the podcast you're involved in. Why that term resonates with you after being in the business for over 20 years. So we were talking before the show, Tim, and there's a big canyon, I would call it,

[00:03:23] or whatever delta between agents that know what they're doing and the ones that don't. And today's consumers, they deserve a lot better, right? I mean, you know, what does the election mean for the housing market? What about these rising interest rates? Yeah. And these are normal questions that a lot of agents don't even know how to answer. They don't understand really anything about the market. And then there's the communication of it, because if you start talking in economic terms, most people aren't going to understand that.

[00:03:47] So for knowledge brokers, if you can just be informed when people are making big financial decisions, they're probably going to want to work with you. It's not that difficult. A lot of people don't want to put the time in, and it's not hours and hours of studying. I don't know how much you guys look at this stuff in your industries. It's like 15, 20 minutes a day. Yeah. Keeping up on what's going on. It's not that difficult. Familiarizing yourself with the market. And then sharing the information in a way people can understand. And the challenge with real estate especially, but a lot of industries, I don't think insurance is that different. No, pretty similar.

[00:04:17] Where people, they're like, all right, how can I close this sale? How can I get this client under contract? Where when you aim to educate versus aim to close, you're going to attract a lot more people, and it's going to end up helping you with your business. But the agents just, you know, you look at all the coaches and all the people in the industry, they don't really talk about learning the local market and understanding the national trends as well. So that's really what that podcast is all about. And it's been pretty well received. I don't think there's a lot of people talking about that kind of thing right now.

[00:04:47] Who came up with the name? Was that you? Was that Lisa? Oh, it was. So Lisa wasn't on the show at the beginning. We got her in afterwards because we realized we needed some female energy, which I think is good. Yeah, she's awesome. Although she doesn't have as much female energy as some other women, and she'll be the first one to tell you that. So this is not anything new. Dylan, can you cut that? You can definitely cut it. I'll text it to her myself. We're not hiding anything here. It's all good. Was it Byron? Yeah, Byron called me and said, hey, we're thinking about doing that.

[00:05:16] And we always talked about being the knowledge broker, just in general. And he said, we're going to do this. And apparently there was one called the knowledge broker, so we had to go knowledge brokers or something. I don't know. He did all that stuff. So he called me. I was immediately in. So I would say he's the one that came up with it for sure. Nice. How'd you guys all meet? How did you, Lisa, Byron, everyone? Yeah, so I've been in coaching with Tom Ferry for quite a while, and I met Byron and Lisa both at events in beautiful Secaucus, New Jersey. Oh, yeah.

[00:05:45] It's a great place. Listen, if you're going to pick a place to go to, you know. Why would you not? Well, I get it from a conference standpoint, but you go there and just leave. No, you need to have a place that's a draw on Secaucus. I was going for the knowledge, not the vacation. Not the subs? Yeah, and we've been part of a longstanding mastermind group for, I believe it's been like seven, eight, nine years. And some other team leaders up and down the Northeast. So we got to know each other through that.

[00:06:15] And then, I mean, just, you know, relationships evolve. And I'm a big believer in, like, your peer group. Not necessarily the people you work with, but finding people that, like, you can talk to that are doing similar stuff to you. Because if not, like, you're going to run into challenges that most people aren't seeing. But if you have some people you can lean on, that's really going to lift you up with your business. And that's really how it all started. Yeah. It's almost like having those people to rely on. It's like, hey, I'm having trouble with this. Like, I'm trying to scale through staff. I'm trying to scale through training, through leads or whatever. And then you got people.

[00:06:44] I mean, when I started my agency, it was me. You didn't even have me. I had nothing. And I remember, like, there was periods of time where you'd run into stuff. And you're like, man, I need to talk to someone that went through, like, was able to navigate through this and get me to the other end of it. And so super, super helpful when you have those people to lean on. Yep. Awesome. All right. So here's another one for you.

[00:07:09] So from what I can see, and you and I have talked before, so the phone seems to be kind of like your weapon of choice. Like, you use the phone a lot to build your real estate business, build your team, build your brand, create opportunities. Why does making calls work for you and your style of business? Like, why has that always been something that works for you? So I want to preface this where I believe in the other ways to communicate. Absolutely. Whatever you want to call it. Like social media, obviously, we do a lot of stuff there.

[00:07:39] Video work, you know, texting, emailing, all those campaigns work. I don't want to give the wrong impression here. What I do know is that phone calls create conversations and conversations create appointments. So like you get a you get an email, right? Now that's intriguing. Or you see a social media post. You start following people. But the phone call creates the engagement. And then you can ask more questions and really just find who's in a spot to be motivated to either transact or, you know, make a move to a different real estate organization or whatever that is.

[00:08:09] And, you know, the funny thing about the phone is like a lot of agents, they say, like, I don't like making phone calls. And I'm like, well, do you not like selling a lot of houses? Like when it's you have to talk to people on the phone at some point. So we use the other media, the other channels. But the phone, that's kind of like the gas on the fire that can accelerate things. Right. Like our mutual buddy, Luke, he talks about starting a geographic farm. And we were at an event and he said, you're at least 12 months out from seeing anything if you're only mailing. But if you're doing other things, you can accelerate that. And true.

[00:08:39] I'm very impatient when it comes to getting results. And I want to make sure we're doing all the things there, not just trying to attract. I like to hunt as well. And there's people that they only attract and they have great businesses. Don't get me wrong. But there's other people to do both. And that's where you can really, really scale your business. Do you think that as social media becomes more prolific and younger agents lean on that specifically, like super heavy, I would assume, just a guess, does that make you on the phone

[00:09:08] more valuable because less people are doing phones? I would imagine yes. I mean, I just look at that. You got to look at who your audience is too, right? Yeah. Like there's going to. So if you're an agent attraction, right? So let's talk about that piece. And you're looking at maybe a younger demo, like in there, you know, like millennials or Gen Z, they may be more receptive to like an Instagram DM. Right. But then you're let's say you're taking a listing and maybe it's, you know, baby boomer or Gen X.

[00:09:37] They might be more receptive to the phone call. Right. Or they might want direct mail and then calls. I mean, you start DMing someone in their 60s or 70s. That may not go well. And I just think you have to understand who your audience is for sure. Yeah. That's why you got to test a whole bunch of stuff and actually track it. Because if you're if you're tracking your activities and it's like, all right, this yielded this. Well, I'm going to do more of what works, not less. The data is going to really help you there. So I like to be, you know, someone that has the skill set to go across a lot of different medians. I think that helps.

[00:10:08] There's not a wrong way to do things. It just that's worked really well for me. And I'm going to play to my strengths. Yeah. Nice. So. All right. So back to the phone. So were you were you kind of taught that way? Did someone say like, hey, you know, you've been in real estate for over 20 years. The industry has changed like in insane ways over that period of time. I've been doing it for 15. Yeah. When I came in, phone wasn't as popular. But I smart. I started smaller independent brokerages.

[00:10:35] It just wasn't something that they weren't offering that kind of like train, like big brokerage training, let's call it or like coaching training. It was a little bit more like it was a group of like six guys. And they were like, hey, we're working with investor clients, working with developers. That's kind of why I went to my first brokerage is I really wanted to learn that end of the market, which is why I was there. And it was really I remember in my first like, let's call it my first three months, I went to my broker and his name was Rudy Brown. What's up, man?

[00:11:03] And I said, all right, so I'm doing some things that I can control. Like I'm staying in front of my network. Like I'm doing some email marketing. I'm doing some other things in person. What can I do to meet people? I don't know. And he was a younger guy. He was actually a couple of years younger than me at the time. So I was 30 when I got in. He was probably like 28. He was like, can you write? And I said, I mean, I can figure that out. He was like, start a blog. I'm like, oh, interesting. I was like, I actually read a couple of blocks.

[00:11:32] He's like, yeah, just start your own. He's like, truly has got a free blog feature. Bloggers are free websites. So he just started like firing all this stuff out. I was like, OK. So that's like for me, the reason I make that example is like my broker told me focus on content marketing. Like that's how I got started. And I think once I started doing that, got confident and got some deals out of it, I've always stuck with that.

[00:11:58] You know, for phone for you was, did someone tell you pound the phone? Did you're just like, hey, I'm just going to do it this way? Like, how did that? I'll tell you exactly what happened. It involves a mutual friend of all. It's actually my family member, your friend, my cousin, Ryan Petrucci. Tooch. Yeah. He's, I mean, obviously, you know, he's been, I know he's been on your show here and I've known him in my entire life. So we were in 2008. I was, I had been full time maybe four or five years at that point. And a lot of my business was like sphere referral. Yeah.

[00:12:28] I would maybe leverage some listings or some sales and go into the neighborhoods. But there really wasn't like a consistent plan. Then the market crashed. Right. And this was not like a good time to be selling real estate. I decided to get engaged in like the market crash, like the next day. Right. And like GM failed and deals are blowing up. And, and, you know, the market has slowed down a little bit, but that's when it came to a screeching halt. And that was a very tough time from 2008 to like the third quarter of 2012. Yeah.

[00:12:54] And so Ryan and I, we, I mean, he, we had gotten in the business around the same time and we worked together at our firm. And it's like, all right, what are we doing? And he goes, Hey, I sold these scripts. And there are these Mike Ferry scripts. You can still download them for free on his websites. So it's, it's the same script from like the 1970s. And I said, all right. And we decided like, we need to do something differently and really start reaching out to people. Like you said, and we didn't, we didn't know what else to do. No one, we just kind of stumbled upon it. And you know, you go out looking for information. It's interesting what you find.

[00:13:24] And then he and I just really started working the phones aggressively. And all of a sudden, like after a good amount of trial and error, a lot of, like a lot of hangups, a lot of bad calls, which still happen all the time, by the way. Comes with a territory. You're going to hear no more than yes. Yep. And it started to work and it was a way to do something else. And the reason that worked is I was going after expired listings and for sale by owners because like people weren't really transacting a lot. Then people are losing their jobs. It was a tough time. I mean, very tough time.

[00:13:53] Much harder than the market we just went through from a conversation standpoint. Sure. I agree. Maybe not a hustle standpoint. I think it was a little, it's a little different. What we just have gone through from like the post COVID years. And I'm like, all right, well, who am I going to talk to? And expired listings. I remember reading this book. It was the Mike Ferry pamphlet. You can't even buy this thing anymore. It's called a real estate by Mike. And it said, all right, call your sphere. That was number one. I'm like, all right, well, that's not working anymore. It's working, but not as much because people were concerned. Everyone's got what they need, let's say. Yeah.

[00:14:21] And I think it's a lot like this now with the lock-in effect in a lot of ways, where the people that are moving are motivated. And this is really the thing. If anyone listening here, if you get one thing out of this episode, you need to find motivated people. So then he said, expired listings. They signed a listing contract. They were on the market. The home didn't sell. They had people come through there. And I'm like, all right, well, that sounds like someone pretty motivated. Like the signs are there. Some intent. Yeah, intent, right? And for sale by owners, the same thing. Only they're raising their hands saying, hey, I want to sell.

[00:14:49] Well, I'm just not sure if I believe in real estate agents. Well, that's a skill thing you can work on. And I just stopped reading the book and then read the rest. And I was like, all right, I'm doing this. And that's just what we did. So it kind of was, it was almost like I had to do something different. You know what's kind of like fell into it, it sounds like. I mean, we were looking for something. I think we were looking for information. And this is the problem with this industry. The training sucks. No one tells you about this stuff. True. And they don't show you, or they say like, hey, call expired listings. But there's no like process to it. What are you supposed to say?

[00:15:18] Or what you got about blogging. Like that's actually very valuable training. It's like, hey, do this. Look at this. Check these out. Check out these websites. It's free. You know, it's all sweat. Just like the phone. Like it doesn't cost money to make phone calls. And if the script's already there, okay, I already have like a baseline for what my conversation is going to be. So it's really, I've always called it, it's like it's sweat or it's debt or it's both. Like you're just going to put in the hard work to get, you know, conversations as you

[00:15:46] call it, or get someone to reach out to you because you've put content into the world. And that's all through effort and consistency. I like how you got there because it was targeted, right? So it really gave some definition to what you were doing and really were trying to speak to the people that need to be spoken to.

[00:16:11] And it's great because you kind of got rid of the stuff that didn't work and almost doubled down on, all right, these people are going to be selling their home. So you're not trying to speak to the person that, oh, I might be selling, you know, a couple of years from now. It's like, you know. Expires and Fizbo's, like they want to sell, they're motivated to sell. It just hasn't worked yet. Yeah. And getting like locked in on that is tremendous real estate insurance and, you know, really

[00:16:40] any industry is really finding those people that are motivated or at least have an inkling of wanting to do business. Didn't you say on an episode before that you used to buy like a list that would tell you maybe when someone's policy- I do it now. I still do it. You still do it. Yeah. It's when they're what, like about to renew? No, no, no. So your policy, your policy expires on a certain date. So we buy lists based on that expiration date.

[00:17:09] So we know that their policies and we get the list probably 90 days prior so that we can set the list and set up automations to contact, communicate. But really it's done cyclically on that date because we know that their policy will, their renewal policy will go out 30 days prior to that date. Yeah. So we kind of time it up. So it's hitting them on their renewal and we know- It's coming. That's coming.

[00:17:39] That's cool. So we time it. Smart. Yeah. Awesome. But you're going after motivated people. Like, you know, there's a need there. And when you're in a climate where like transactions are dropping, you got to find the motivated people. A lot of folks, they don't understand that part. I mean, we do role play four days a week. And the biggest thing is like, hey, are you finding out if they're motivated or not? Because if someone's not motivated, they're not moving. Moving sucks. Is that in your flywheel meeting? Flywheel. So that's a role play is a little different. Look at that. So have you guys read Good to Great?

[00:18:09] I haven't. Okay. So they talk about a flywheel and any great company, they talk about like GE, right? Or how Netflix like overtook Blockbuster and all these, or how Kodak like really took the forefront when it came to film. Like there's these companies throughout history that have outperformed the average for their industry. And imagine there's like a thousand pound stone wheel here. In order to get that moving, it's not going to be like one push, right? It's going to be over time. And that's really what a flywheel is. So it's sustained action over time.

[00:18:39] So we have numbers, everyone on the staff reports. So like our sales manager reports how many pending sales we got for the week. Our operations manager reports reviews we're getting. Our listing manager reports how many listings we're taking. Our marketing coordinator, how many come like sell me a house or come list me calls she's able to generate from the marketing. Because if we're not tracking those things on a daily basis, like everything kind of touches each other. And you got to see if, you know, if you're not getting enough appointments from the inside sales team, then we can't maybe sell enough houses. So, and we talk about any issues.

[00:19:09] So it's really just a chance for the staff to get together. So you're not dealing with like, Hey Tim, got a minute. Hey Sean, got a minute. Right. All day long. It's like, Hey, bring it to the meeting. We got 15 minutes and we can all do the stuff we need to do to hit our numbers. So plus everyone's there too. So it's, it's an accountability thing. So everyone's got to listen to it. Whether they don't have anything to add, they're, they're learning because they're like, look, Tom's not messing around here. Like he's got goals for our squad. This is how he keeps track of what's going on. I mean, he's not, how often do you do that? I would think you'd have to have input, right? How often do you do that?

[00:19:38] We do it daily. Daily? It's like a 10 minute meeting. It's not, but, but you think about this a lot of times, like with a great company and, and you know, I'm sure you guys go through this too. People come to you because they think you have the answer and you have no idea what's going on. Right. And so the, we get all the people here in the departments because in any company, if you don't have a clear org chart of who does what, and then sometimes people don't pay attention to it anyway, and they're going to shop for answers. Well, it brings the issue there and then we can handle it in one way. So it's consistent messaging.

[00:20:07] So you're not getting people trying to like, you know, you, so you got a daughter, right? Right. Do you ever shop for answers? Like, well, mom said no dad. Oh God. Yeah. All the time. Kids do that to me all the time too. So we want to eliminate that, but we also want to have a clear direction because when you got 60 some people, everyone's not going in the same direction. You got problems. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Very cool. All right. So here's another thing that you had brought up to us when we sent out our question. So you're big on knowing what to say.

[00:20:33] So why is knowing what to say so important to you as an agent, as well as a team leader? Like why, why did you put that down? Well, so the worst time to think, figure out what to say is when you're actually saying it, right? This is, this is Phil Jones. Like he's, he talks about this stuff all the time and the answers are usually pretty clear to most things, right? In real estate, there's like 10 objections. I'm going to wait for more inventory to come to the market. I'm sure we hear that all the time. I'm waiting for rates to come down. Well, do you know what, what do you understand about rates?

[00:21:01] Tell me more about that because these are sometimes defense mechanisms or they're just questions about people doing business. It's the same thing with real estate agents. Or the roadblock that's preventing them. For sure. Yeah. I mean, objections aren't necessarily a bad thing. It means they want to do something. They're just trying to figure out what's best for the person making the decision. It's like something's almost like preventing them from pulling the trigger. A hundred percent. They're just like, I don't know yet. I keep thinking about this. And then like, you know, and you've done some objection handling, like you've done live

[00:21:30] objection handling. You know, you've, you've talked about things on different podcast episodes. So how did you get good at that? Like, why, why is that important to you? I practiced a lot. I was role-playing five days a week for over a decade. We play four days a week now at our team. And, and because when you think about these calls with consumers and you know, you guys are dealing with this stuff all the time. So there's, you hear something that's like, I know what to say. I got this. Yep. Is that a pretty good feeling? It's great. Happened to me the other day.

[00:21:59] And I had, you know, if, if you know, if you know it's coming, right, because you can kind of anticipate it because you've done thousands of them. You have that catalog in your head. So when that presents itself, it's like you're doing, you already know. Yeah. Preparation. It's like presenting. You've, you've presented. Yeah. I've presented. I've presented in front of like almost a hundred people. It's probably the biggest one I ever did. And if you know your material and you know the presentation, you know,

[00:22:26] where it's going to go, it's much easier to speak publicly. It's one of the biggest fears on earth. Like people are scared to speak up when they feel like they're going to be judged or their body language or they're like, what if I forget? Like, what am I supposed to say? But to your point, if you know what to say, I think knowing is different than remembering or reciting. Sure. You know, you can like look at scripts and practice scripts, but they probably come out

[00:22:55] a little bit differently every time because you're just trying to get good at the foundation. Like what, what am I talking about here? Like, what am I scripting? Is it a for sale by owner? And we just called them cold. Like that's different than someone who had an expired listing, who chose to work with a listing agent who chose to say, yeah, put it out there publicly. I'm going to pay the buyer agent. I'm going to pay the selling agent. You know, I'm okay with that. Those are two different conversations.

[00:23:20] The FSBO is the person that says, I don't want anyone through my house unless I say so. And no one knows the market better than me. And I'm going to go down to, you know, Home Depot and I'm going to buy a sign for $10 and stick it on my front lawn. They got to call me if they want to see my house. You know, as well as I know, that's, that's not a good approach. Well, 71% of for sale by owners listen, 62 days or less. So, I mean, it's, it's documented knowing what to say. I mean, and also it shows people, you know what you're talking about, right?

[00:23:49] The worst answer if you're in front of a client is, hey, let me get back to you. I don't know the answer to that. And in certain instances, that's okay. But preparation is going to help you perform better than you would if you're not. I mean, that's anything you're doing, no matter what it is, whether it's, you know, you're running a company, you're going in front of clients, you're doing both, you know, you're on a podcast like this, like you guys have an agenda, you know what you want to talk about, like all that prep work matters. Yep. I agree, man. Hey everyone. This is Tim, your favorite bricks and risk co-host. But don't tell Sean.

[00:24:19] I hope you're enjoying this episode and I'll get right back to it in a moment. Our audience grows through word of mouth. So if you would please take a moment of your time and give us a review on the platform you're on, that would be fantastic. Please also help spread the BNR word by sharing your favorite episode with a friend. We greatly appreciate your time and trust. Now, back to the show.

[00:24:47] Can you, uh, I saw a video of you one time, uh, talking about video itself. Yes. Was it doing an Eagles champ by any chance? Uh, could have been. Um, but video. And you made the point to say that you do the presentation and then the day after is a video, maybe like a, like an email, bomb, bomb, something like that to, to reach out, um, to the client as kind of a post meeting follow-up.

[00:25:15] Can you talk about the, the value of the video and kind of why you do it? Sure. So, um, there, there's two components to this. Uh, one is you send the video before you meet with them. You know, imagine you're, you're going to see a new client. It doesn't matter what industry they're interviewing three people. One person sets the appointment, does nothing and just shows up. The second maybe sends like a text. Hey, does this time still work? Are you good? Yeah. And the third sends a video with their resume and a link to reviews and, you know, makes it really passionate and you're excited to meet with them.

[00:25:45] Yeah. So for some people, you know, remember you're meeting these people for the first time in a lot of cases, I think there's, it alleviates that stress when they see you and you look like you do on the video. Oh, I know you. There's a familiarity. Well, think about like the realtor headshot, right? I mean, they're like, you don't look like, was that circa 98? Yeah. But, and all joking aside, I think there's a safety thing and it makes people feel a little more comfortable. Oh. And also, you know, video is going to be way more engaging. They can see you smile. They can see your facial expressions.

[00:26:12] Like you touch your chest and say, I'm really excited at the opportunity to work with you. Yeah. That stuff goes a long way. They're going to remember that. When was the last time you got a video? Both of you guys. I mean, literally. Like a video text message. Yeah. Months. Right. I didn't even tell you. So, I mean, think about like that. Yeah, you stand out. You're going to stand out. And then afterwards, you know, in any sales business, and I'm a big believer in insurance and sales and real estate's obviously sales. People don't say they want the business enough, right? Like, hey, I'd love to work with you. I'm super clear. I'll deliver. It shows excellent follow up.

[00:26:41] The biggest complaint about real estate agents is people don't hear back from them. That's every year. It's the same complaint. So all you're doing is just showing them like, hey, this person, they're going to go after getting the job done just like they're going after my business. And nobody likes an aggressive agent until they have one. I say that to people over the phone all the time. It's like lawyers. I mean, you know, if I'm going to hire a lawyer, you know, I want an aggressive lawyer. 100%. Yeah. So, I mean, all that stuff does, it helps you stand out and people see your face.

[00:27:10] Like, and it takes some effort to send these things. It's actually not that difficult, but most people just don't do it because they're afraid. And when you're making a decision, you're in a competitive environment. I want to do everything to stand out, not the other way around. Is video the same as the phone in that it takes a lot of getting used to, you know, your first video where you did that? Takes guts, man. Takes guts to cold call someone. Takes guts to send a video text message before you go on a listing appointment. It does. If you want to look on YouTube, you can see my first video.

[00:27:39] I'm going to go like puffy and bloated and like the lighting's horrible. I did it on like a Dell laptop. Nice. Nice. And it was, I was way outside my comfort zone for sure. The thing about video is these are the same questions you're answering when you're doing like content marketing, like you talked about the same questions you get all the time. Yeah. You know what you're saying. It's not that difficult. And video, it's another thing where I'm going to do stuff that other people don't want to do. And it's going to help me have a better business and better results. So, and it works.

[00:28:06] Like I see, you know, I see someone on stage say, Hey, you send videos out before you go on a listing appointment. I'm not going to question that. I'm just going to do it. Yeah. Try it. Ryan, my cousin, you mentioned this before the show. He's like, I know this works. I'm just going to do it. And you know, if someone that looks like me can do a video, anybody can. So I'd like everyone gets all stressed. They're going to see what you look like when you show up. It's not a big deal. So, you know, it's, I I'm, I'm a big believer. You win with the extra things you do. And these are just a couple examples that it works.

[00:28:36] And I mean, you look, you're setting yourself apart from, from other agents. That's the idea. Yeah. But I mean, and how many times have you heard this though? Like, I mean, at real estate training seminars, get on video, send out video messages. Video is where it's at. And it works. So just like you guys, we talked about your consistency with your podcast, right? It's the same thing. Most people quit. Yeah. They have to do a couple episodes, but you're doing it over and over and over again. It's going to work. People get to know you and then it's going to help you attract. And, and also when you call someone and they're like, Oh, I get your videos. Like at that point, I know it's a done deal. I'm like, all right, great.

[00:29:05] Like, I'll just send you the paperwork. I don't need to come over. Like it, it, it, it makes a big difference. So that, that's where content marketing and getting on videos. What are the number, I guess you wouldn't even know because you don't do the videos, but is there anything that you have data wise, like conversion wise type of thing? You know, it's tough to, you know, YouTube and that's because there's people silently watching all the time. Yeah. Um, now what I do know is like we had a listing appointment on new year's Eve and the guy said, Hey, I love getting your videos. I've been watching them and I'm like, great. And then the agent coming with me, I'm like, we're going to get this thing done today.

[00:29:35] I can tell you right now. And he's like, why? And I told him that I had an appointment yesterday. Um, they said, I've been getting your, I've been getting your, uh, postcards for years. I'm like, and then the postcard was out on the table and we got there and I'm like, all right, this is, we're getting this signed. I just better not blow the appointment. So it makes the appointments easier. And I think that's the thing people don't get. Like they already know you. Have you ever walked into a listing appointment and someone said, Tom, you're even sexier in person than you are from the postcard or the pre-listing video.

[00:30:05] Some people told me I look better in person. Uh, and it was usually like friends of mine or something like that, but that's, that's about it. Oh, that's funny. Um, all right. So, um, one of the questions we asked, what do you love most about what you do? You said helping people. This is a common topic on our show. Most of the foundation of bricks and risks that has just organically come out over time is relationships, like having relationships with clients, with vendors, with your agents. Um, so why does that drive you personally in real estate? Why is helping people important to you?

[00:30:34] So how it started was, um, I was a 20 some year old knucklehead and I didn't realize how little people knew about real estate when I got into the business. Yeah. Most consumers, they don't know anything. Right. And the average consumer moves every 11, 12 years right now. So think about the world was like 12 years ago. I didn't have any kids 12 years ago. So I just like it. I mean, it's, it's, it's a wild thing to think about. Me too. And so one is that letting them know like what to expect, like how to, how the process is

[00:31:00] going to go, what the market's like, what the financing environment's like, that's good information for anybody. And that when you talk about knowledge brokers, that that's really why, why it's there and expired listings. Well, a lot of times they expire for, I found three reasons. One, they got bad advice, right? And it was, they didn't hire the right agent. Two is that they didn't listen to the agent. And the agent might've given them good advice, but they weren't open-minded to it. Or three, it was just maybe not the right timing for them. Like something changed in their lives. And that one you can't really control.

[00:31:30] But if you can go in and give people a plan and show them, Hey, I can really help you. And you know, when people put their homes on the market, it's not always like a happy move. Like there's, I got financial problems. I'm getting divorced. Right. Yeah. And I got an estate. I need to clear out. I'm moving and my husband's already living across the country and I'm not there for the new job. Like these are, these are major problems for people. So when you can deliver them a result that's predictable, I'm a big believer. You help people in a lot of ways and it's okay to be compensated well for that. So that's how it kind of, kind of started.

[00:32:00] One of my first listings I took, um, it's actually the first listing I took, uh, I called the woman and she had, she was moving to a nursing home. So she like really needed to sell and didn't have any guidance whatsoever. Um, one of the first five, they were having some, this was like a foreclosure before foreclosures were a big deal. It was like Oh four. Like no one even knew what to do with those. What do you do? So then that kind of opened my eyes a bit. And then as it, you know, transition, as we've grown our team, we talked about how training and real estate sucks. Yeah.

[00:32:29] We run plays that work at our team. So we're not going to tell you anything. We haven't tested. We haven't actually documented that works. We're not going to, we test stuff all the time, but that's not what you want to give a brand new agent is looking to grow their business. I used to call it teaching by application, not by theory for sure. You applied it. And, and you know, there's practice, right? There's performance and there's classroom. Those are the kind of the three phases. So a lot of people stop at classroom or they say, Hey Tim, um, Hey Sean, just call everyone on your phone right now. Then you'll get some deals out of it, but they don't tell you what to say. They don't give you the cadence.

[00:32:58] They don't give you the numbers every day. And we've had a lot of agents that have come to our team that were not doing well. And they've been able to, you know, come in double, triple, you know, sell 20 homes their first year. These are numbers that most people never hit. So the fact that we can give people like they have the ability to do it, but they don't know what to do. There's no business, business planning. They don't, they don't teach it anywhere. And that's one of the biggest implementation gaps in real estate. And I would argue any sales business because people don't know what to do. They wake up, they got no game plan, right?

[00:33:28] You're done. Like just, just call it a day. If you don't know, if you don't have a game plan, that's tied to math. So those are things that don't get talked about enough. And you know, when you can help someone with a move or grow their business and their income, like that, that's exciting to me because not a lot of people focus on that in this business. It's impactful. You know, you're changing people's lives. Yeah. Thanks, man. So biggest struggle. It's one of the questions we ask because, you know, it's nice to talk about all the,

[00:33:53] the, the great, the great things that we do, the successes we've had, but obviously every day in business is kind of a little bit of a struggle. Things change, you know, agents come and go, clients come and go, you know, relationships change. So, um, the biggest struggle you put down was putting the right people in the right seats. So to me, that sounds like almost like scaling delegating. So like, why has that been a struggle for you? Um, it's not a struggle as much as it has been.

[00:34:20] Cause I think when you're growing, uh, a company, sometimes just like hire people and you don't, you don't know how to manage them. You look great. You're qualified. Well, or they need some bodies. Yep. That, that, that's a factor. Um, and also the hiring process is full of dishonesty. Like this is documented. People lie all the time in the interview process. So, um, chat GPT resumes. Yeah. I'm sure. I'm sure people are doing that. I didn't even think about that. Yeah. And so there's all these, all these challenges you're dealing with.

[00:34:49] Um, and so what we found is that, you know, when, when you're growing a company there, there's like, I don't know. Are you guys familiar with like EOS and like rocket fuel? So traction. Yeah. So we, we use that to run our business. Um, that's how we did Copper Hill. It makes, it makes a huge difference where people have to get it. They need to want it and they have the ability to do it. Now, some people can understand the job. They can want the job, but they don't have the skillset to do it. Some people have the skillset, but don't want to do it. So it's gotta be all three.

[00:35:14] And once you find those people, then you can really scale up because the difference between like a B and an A is dramatic. And if you're going to rate someone by skillset for the job, right. And you can get way more out of that person. Uh, that's an A that has the bandwidth to do it than you can like a B or a C. And if you're not hiring the right skillsets for the right job, you're not going to get the results that you want. And you know, when you're running a team, everything touches each other. So finding those right people, I mean, business would be easy without the people, right?

[00:35:43] I mean, just, Hey, just do your job and it's fine, but that's not how it goes sometimes. No nonsense. It's and, and you know what, everyone who's built any company and I'm sure you two include it. Like you've gone through this, right? Like we made some bad hires, you learn from it. Um, and I'm, I'm glad we're talking about this stuff, Tim, because a lot of people, they always talk about like, um, I'm so great. Look at this. This is real life. Like there's going to be things that go wrong. And you know, because of learning from those mistakes that you make, like that, that's where things can get exciting. Cause now you know what not to do the next time. And that alone can really help you.

[00:36:12] I always say they're more educational. Like I, I learn more from, from doing things wrong or failures or, or missteps. I always learn more than, you know, something that goes right as planned. Yep. One of my favorite quotes is actually, uh, Lurie Grenier said it on Shark Tank one time was look back to learn, look forward to succeed. Because if you don't, uh, learn from your mistakes, well, first of all, you have to make a mistake in order to learn from it.

[00:36:40] So you make the mistake, you recognize it, and then you learn from it. Then you can keep moving forward. And no one's ever going to figure anything out if you don't make mistakes. Because if you just think everything's just going to go exactly as you planned, then you're surely mistaken in life and in business. Um, which brings me to one of the, so we asked for like a tip for like listeners and watchers. And you had said one of the tips that you would give people, it's kind of piggybacking off our conversation would be like practicing scripts.

[00:37:09] So why do you encourage like other people, whether you're real estate, insurance, you're in sales, let's say. Why do scripts matter? So, and I think it goes way beyond that. We had, um, the, uh, a hair salon owner coming in and talk to our team and they role play when the people sit in the chair, right? Like think about that. When you get your hair cut, like, and I'm like, wow. And this is the reason why we had her come in and, um, she went to salon in, in Ardmore, um, right on Rittenhouse. Amazing place. And if you're thinking about that, someone's going to get their hair.

[00:37:39] Not the very intimate experience for a lot of people. Um, I mean, you're like me and you're losing your hair. There's less to cut. That's a different story. But you know, like you think about that, like think about when like your wife gets her hair. And that's like a big deal. Big deal. And so they go over exactly what to say to them. She trains her people on this. So they get repeat business. Cause they're not, you know. Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. Let's go back one second. So you brought this woman who owns a salon. Her name's Laura Capaldo. I mean, she owns Lolly Hair Lounge in Ardmore.

[00:38:07] I've been going to her myself, like personally for probably, I don't know, like 13, 14 years. So. Nice. So you bring her in. So, so, so give us the backtrack of the conversations that led to, Hey Laura, you should come in and talk. I've known her for 13 years. So I think, and she runs her business a lot. Like she's a business owner. She's not a, like a, and obviously she's a stylist as well, I think is the proper time. I don't know. I mean, even a stylist would be a business owner cause technically they own their chair. Yes, I agree. Um, and you know, so the reason we had her come in is because like, you know, you sit

[00:38:37] there and I'm there every two weeks. Right. Like, I mean, all kidding aside, like I like to look a certain way when I show up to appointments. Like if you show, I mean, that's, that's a big deal for me. I'm suited up like, you know, like, like, like, like an athlete, right. They have a uniform. They wear them the same way. You don't go in with like hoodies and jackets from like 1973 and with corduroy hats. You're not here interviewing me. So it's all good. I mean, not, not as a client, right. A client interview is different. And, um, so like she, and she got to our, gets to our team and goes, Hey, yeah, I role play every time someone sits in the chair.

[00:39:05] And it blew these people's minds because you think about that. Most people are a lot more scripted than you think. You go into a store in the mall. I haven't been to the mall in years, but I used to work at American Eagle in high school and they had a way you greet people. Right. Here's how you greet them. And it's, it's the same thing. So when I say practice scripts, it's not like some magical thing you say that's going to like get a sale. It's a series of questions to determine if it's a viable prospect and if you're able to help them. Yeah. And that, that's what people don't get. It's like the vetting process, the screening process.

[00:39:35] Well, we've all had clients that probably wasted a lot of our time and had no intent to transact. Right. That's how you learn. You talk about learning from mistakes. That's like a big one. Like you don't ask the pre-qualifying questions. You go out and meet with someone at their house and then you realize like this was a total waste of time. Yep. So just knowing what to say, it, it's not, it's not this like magical thing where everything closes. It's, I got to understand if it's worth my time and if I can help them and your time's your most valuable asset as a business owner. So you're spending time with people that aren't motivated.

[00:40:03] You're not going to be hitting the goals that you want because that time can be a lot of for people that want to work with you that are going to buy into the, the, the skill set that you're offering to help them do whatever they want to accomplish. So it's a vetting process. You're, you're, you're trying to understand them and what their goals are. Yeah. And if that aligns. And I think that's a, that bringing her in, I mean, that's, yeah, that's, that's some next level stuff right there. That's cool. We had her and we had a gentleman who opened a, our sales manager had 37 years of management

[00:40:33] experience in an auto body shop. So he would scale like all the different systems. Then he got into real estate during COVID. Um, and he, uh, uh, Brian's awesome. He sold 50 homes his first 24 months with us. And he, um, so he brought in someone he knew and it was the guy ran an auto body shop and it was the same thing, like how to deal with like customers. Cause it was about customer service. Cause these are think about like, when you get like, you're going to an auto body shop, you probably got into an accident. It's probably a really stressful time. Well, you know what's more stressful moving is one of the top two or three most stressful

[00:41:01] things that are right behind like divorce and death of a spouse. So we had those two come in and it was, it was such a different, um, conversation, but it wasn't that different because business, kind of the same application, business principles apply across all industries. Yeah. Yep. Uh, that's, uh, it's funny too, because intertwined in that is, uh, is customer service, right? Yeah. And Pav was involved in a car accident recently.

[00:41:30] Oh, is this news that we're releasing to the public? Everyone okay. First and foremost, that's a number one. But the reason I bring it up is because this, we had to get to a shop, but it needed to be quick. So like he needed the car back, took it to the first shop and they were like, oh, we can't see you for weeks or whatever. So he landed on this other shop out by King of Prussia. So it was like a little bit of a haul to get out there and get everything. He's just like blown away. He's like, this shop was like the best I could have. Unbelievable. Yeah.

[00:42:00] He's like the communication, the way they kept me up to like every day. Clean, presentable. Every detail was given. And it's kind of like what you were speaking to is like, how do you separate? And it's, you can use customer service by being very good at that. You can separate yourself a lot from the big pool of mediocre people that are doing what you're doing. Totally. All right.

[00:42:28] So the quote you gave us, which I have to say, I'm pretty flattered. This is a great quote. We're going to roll this one. I have another quote if you want something. This is pretty funny though. We'll go with this first. I like it. So who wouldn't want to eat shrimp, drink free beer, and watch the birds in a climate controlled environment by yours truly, Tim Garrity. There you go. It was more of a joke that you're putting this down, but I appreciate it. Um, what is there a quote or quotes that kind of like, you know, you're leading an army

[00:42:58] of agents. You have huge staff, you know, a couple hundred million in volume. Like, are there things that you kind of like pull out of your pocket from time to time that motivate people or that you just like? Yeah, there's a few for sure. One that really sticks out. Um, it's, uh, it's from a Peloton instructor. Um, that discipline will carry you when motivation can't because there's days like you don't feel like making your calls. You don't feel like going to work. Right. And the people that are disciplined, they do it anyway, even when they don't feel like it.

[00:43:27] And we talked about consistency right at the beginning of the episode here that that it's not like a secret, but if you look at anyone that's successful in like sales or a business owner, they're consistent. Right. And they do the same things every day. They know what's going to make them money. They know what's going to drive income and results. So it's, it's not about getting motivated because you can't motivate people. Right. I mean, I mean, we've all, we've all worked with people. People are either motivated or they're not, and they're doing it for their reasons, not yours, but the ones that are disciplined and doing the stuff every day.

[00:43:54] Like that's, that's really where, where you can see a big difference in folks. And a lot of time that discipline has to do with like who you're accountable to. And I'm not talking about like a someone in your office or something. I'm talking like, Hey, are you married? Right. Do you got kids? Who's counting on you at home? Or do you have like a significant other? You're maybe trying to like, maybe you want to get engaged or get married. Like that's a house. Yeah. All those things. And you know, that's where that, that can come from. And I think, you know, that discipline comes from like, Hey, I've got other people counting on me. Not necessarily like I'm disciplined.

[00:44:24] I'm going to do this every day, but it's like, it's real life. I mean, people are going to do things for their reasons, not yours every single time. Yeah. Love it, man. Dude. Nuggets galore on this one. But before we shut it down, why don't you tell our listeners and watchers, you know, where they can learn more about you and everything you got going on. Sure. Yeah. Best place to follow me is on Instagram. It's at TomTool3rd, at TomTool3rd or our YouTube channel. We put out like four or five videos a week, all sorts of different content. And it's going to help you with whatever you're doing. If you like this episode, you'll like what we're putting out. Yeah.

[00:44:53] I caught one of your shorts. I forget. It was a recent one or just popped up in the feed. And it was like six different things that were like super informative. You know, people have a very short attention span right now. So it's, um, Hey, the shorts on our YouTube channel do very well, much better than the episodes. Well, and I think there, there's something to the long form content for sure, but people like they, they can't pay attention to like anything. So, I mean, that's just the world we live in right now. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Well, Hey man, really appreciate you coming in today. And that's all we have for this one, folks.

[00:45:24] Thank you for tuning in again to another episode of Bricks and Risk. See you soon. Thank you for joining us on another episode of Bricks and Risk. Our goal is that you walk away with one or two valuable nuggets. And we greatly appreciate you sharing your time with us today. You can find all BNR episodes on Spotify, Apple music, YouTube, and anywhere else you get your podcast content until next time. Keep learning and keep growing.